Hopefully yesterday you stuffed your face full of hamburgers and hot dogs, as a way of celebrating this country’s independence on the Fourth of July. For Robin Wright, yesterday was a chance to celebrate her independence in a totally different way, in a new teaser for House of Cards‘ sixth and final season.
The video is only 12 seconds long and it features Wright as Claire Underwood, who will take over as the central character next season. While short, the message is pretty clear: she, and the entire show, are now independent from Kevin Spacey who was fired last year over sexual misconduct allegations. This is now her show, 100 % free and clear. The prior season’s finale featured Claire, who had just taken over as President after her husband resigned in disgrace, breaking the fourth wall to say “My turn.” You see that quote return in this teaser as a hashtag, too.
House of Cards returns to Netflix later this year.
*NOTE: This is an edited reprint of my review from the Sundance Film Festival.*
If you know the name Boots Riley then you know his rap group, The Coup, and the pro-black anti-establishment message that became one of their hallmarks. Riley brings that same attitude, and The Coup’s funky baselines, to his bizarre, overly-stuffed satire Sorry to Bother You, which is like Livin’ Large, Hollywood Shuffle, and Putney Swope all rolled into one.
Plus an army of genetically altered….well, I’ll keep that a secret or the studios will fillet me.
Suffice it to say there are a lot of unexpected surprises in the oddball reality Riley has created. It’s like the freakazoid cherry atop a satirical sundae of racism, gentrification, capitalism, slavery, and good old fashioned selling out to the man. Lakeith Stanfield plays Cassius Green, an Oakland native who we meet as he’s trying to bullshit his way into a much-needed job. If it were anything else the lies he’s caught telling would get him thrown out, but it’s only a telemarketing gig. “You have initiative, and you can read”, he’s told by his new boss. Cassius doesn’t care about the super low expectations, he just needs the work. He’s living out of his uncle’s (Terry Crews) garage along with his activist/artist girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson), who ekes out a living twirling signs on street corners.
Cassius sucks at his job, though, at least in the beginning. With every cold call he gets a quick hang-up, which is no way to make money at a commissions-based job. Plus, there’s the promise of becoming a Power Caller, the elite big money earners who sit atop the corporate structure. They even have their own elevator. Everything startst to turn around for Cassius when a veteran caller (Danny Glover) tells him to use his white voice. “Not Will Smith white”, he says. It’s about projecting confidence, and that Cassius’ white voice sounds a lot like David Cross (because it is David Cross) seems to work because soon he’s racking up sales and becoming a Power Caller.
All of this comes at the chagrin of Detroit and Cassius’ buddies who are trying to force his employer to give them better wages. In essence, the film is a simple story of a guy selling out his friends and everything he holds dear for the promise of wealth and power. But did I mention WorryFree yet? Riley’s commentary on slavery and capitalism involves WorryFree, a company that promises three meals a day and a place to live (“Three hots and a cot”) for a lifetime of employment. They’re all the rage and CEO Steve Lift (Armie Hammer, in gonzo territory) is one of the most powerful men in the country. He takes a liking to Cassius and helps him rise up the corporate ladder, which leads to other bizarre occurrences. As Cassius slips further into becoming an Uncle Tom, a hilarious bit has him forced by Lift into rapping, to which he entertains the all-white crowd with a chorus of “Nigga shit!!” to rapturous ovation. This after Lift tries to entice Cassius to tell gangsta stories because all black people must have them.
Anyone who has heard The Coup’s lyrics knows Riley has a lot to get off his chest, but he unloads too much of it here. I haven’t even gotten to his commentary on the media and our YouTube generation, which finds Cassius going viral when an activist’s soda can hits him on the head. The most popular TV show is ” I Got The Shit Kicked Out Of Me” which is exactly as the title suggests. And still we haven’t come close to those horse/human hybrids. There’s just so much to wade through that the film doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, stuck as Riley gets sidetracked with a brand new observation.
For his debut feature, Riley already has more creativity and style than directors with ten times his experience. In an early scene, as Cassius is failing miserably to make sales, each of his calls finds him magically transported into the homes of those he’s disrupting. And of course he’s calling at the worst times; a couple having sex, an older woman dealing with her husband’s cancer diagnosis. Riley peppers each scene with enough sight gags and visual cues to warrant a second viewing, and they help set up a crackpot world where we aren’t completely shocked by the sudden introduction of something truly freakish into the narrative. Why and how they exist is something best discovered on your own because it’s just another notch on the wacko scale.
Sorry to Bother You shows Riley to be a filmmaker with a ton of promise. He has a point of view, something to say, and a distinct way of saying it. What I’m torn about is whether or not he needs to narrow the focus to make clearer points. As long as Boots keeps being Boots I’m going to be intrigued to see what his future as a director holds.
Ever year you can count on at least a handful of Malick-esque dramas to pass through the Sundance Film Festival. This year it was Jeremiah Zagar’s surreal, lyrical adaptation of We the Animals that most captured the Terrence Malick mystique, captured in a mesmeric new trailer before the film’s release towards the end of summer.
Based on the 2011 book by Justin Torres, We the Animals centers on three brothers: Jonah, Manny, and Joel, whose childhood in upstate New York is shaped by their parents’ volatile relationship. Torres’ book follows the siblings from youth to adulthood, as two of the boys become mirror images of their irresponsible father, and the youngest brother looks for an escape.
Zagar took home the coveted NEXT Innovator Award at Sundance, and it’s easy to see why. The trailer strikes an impressive, haunting image, and it’s easy to see some of the Tree of Life visual cues. But Zagar has an energy that’s raw, less polished than Malick’s, almost like Benh Zeitlin’s masterful Beasts of the Southern Wild. And the performances by a cast mostly of unknowns look strong, as well.
Here’s the synopsis:
Manny, Joel, and Jonah tear their way through childhood. Their mother and father have a volatile relationship that makes and unmakes the family many times over, often leaving the boys fending for themselves. As their parents rip at one another, Manny and Joel harden and grow into versions of their father. With the triumvirate fractured, Jonah, who is the youngest, becomes increasingly aware of his desperate need to escape. Driven to the edge, Jonah embraces an imagined world all his own.
Starring Sheila Vand, Raul Castillo, Evan Rosado, Isaiah Kristian, and Josiah Gabriel, We the Animals opens August 17th.
For Anthony Scott Burns’ feature directing debut, Our House, he’s not content to stick with one genre, but to combine two of them to hopefully make something great. Paranormal horror and science-fiction merge with the IFC Midnight release, which stars Thomas Mann of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and Nicolas Peltz from Transformers: Age of Extinction.
Featuring a script co-written by Nathan Parker (Moon), Our House centers on a tragedy that forces an older brother to stay at home caring for his younger siblings. In his spare time he works on an invention that he hopes will generate wireless electricity, but instead it inadvertently raises the spirits of the dead, and that may include those of his dead parents.
This looks to me like your typical everyday indie chiller, but the thing that has me interested is the duo of Mann and Peltz. Mann appears seemingly everywhere, from Project X to Kong: Skull Island to last month’s Brain on Fire, and he’s always solid. Peltz gets flack for her Transformers role but we know how badly women are written in those. She did good stuff over on Bates Motel, so maybe horror is the genre that suits her best.
ScarJo just can’t win. Last year Scarlett Johansson took heat for her role in Ghost in the Shell, in which she played a character that is Asian in the source material, leading to a frankly overblown discussion on whitewashing. It was recently reported the actress would star in biopic Rub & Tug, a reunion with that film’s director Rupert Sanders, and the role called for her to play Jean Marie Gill, or as he would be later known as, Dante “Tex” Gill. Why is this a big deal and a headache for Johansson? Because Gill was transgender, and Johansson…well, she ain’t.
There’s more to this than just outrage that an LGBTQ actor hasn’t been hired to play the role of Gill, there’s the fact that Gill was misidentified in the original reporting. In reality, Gill is nearly always misidentified as a gay woman who cross-dressed as a man, when it turns out Gill had transitioned to male. It’s a mistake I made, as well, but to be fair EVERYTHING I’ve ever read on Gill has misidentified him, even official accounts of his crime activities running massage parlors that were a front for an illegal steroids ring.
Some of the backlash to Johansson’s casting has caught up to the actress and she issued this statement: “Tell them that they can be directed to Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto, and Felicity Huffman’s reps for comment.”
Damn, Widow! She pulled out the award winners on ya’ll! Leto won an Oscar for playing a trans woman in Dallas Buyers Club, while Huffman was an Oscar nominee for her role in Transamaerica. Tambor was the Emmy-winning lead of acclaimed Amazon series Transparent.
I do feel like Johansson is being singled out here, because she’s such a high-profile star and due to the controversy stirred by Ghost in the Shell. Her agents probably should have warned her this would happen. As trans stories are being told more and more, and we are seeing a slight increase in the appropriate actors starring in those productions, it’s only going to draw more attention when they are passed over for a cisgender star. [Bustle]
I don’t know if Sony will ever reach the heights of Marvel Studios, but they’re going to give it a go. Not only do they have their growing Spider-Man cinematic universe, they’ve begun to establish a franchise around the Valiant Comics characters including Bloodshot, Harbinger and the newly-acquired Faith. And now they’re adding another comic title, an adaptation of Image Comics series Skyward brought to the big screen by Rampage director Brad Peyton and Lucifer showrunner Joe Henderson.
Variety confirms Sony has acquired the film rights to Skyward, which Henderson co-created with Lee Garbett and launched in April. Henderson will adapt the script himself and exec-produce, with Peyton directing. The concept behind the comic is pretty cool, taking place in a world where gravity has become a fraction of what it is now, due to an event called G-Day. Years later, the world has adapted to the change in gravity and many have come to love it. One of those is Willa Fowler, a young woman born the day after G-Day, but has uncovered a dangerous conspiracy to restore gravity to what it was.
I don’t know much about Skyward, but I do know Brad Peyton is a filmmaker given to making big, crowd-pleasing action movies. His most successful ones, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, San Andreas, and Rampage, have all starred Dwayne Johnson. Makes me wonder if there’s a role that could fit the superstar actor.
Well, the casting agents for Top Gun: Maverick were showing a need for speed on this one. It was only a few days ago we learned Miles Teller, Glen Powell, and Nicholas Hoult were up to play the son of Nick “Goose” Bradshaw in the long-awaited sequel. And already we know who won the gig, and it’s the guy with an inside track the others didn’t have.
Variety confirms Teller for the role, making this a reteaming with director Joseph Kosinski who he worked with on last year’s firefighter film Only the Brave. He joins Tom Cruise, returning as Peter “Maverick” Mitchell, and Val Kilmer as Tom “Iceman” Kazanski. While we don’t know how Goose’s son will factor into the plot, the character seems like an obvious choice to be the central focus. Teller has been in some prominent films already; Fantastic Four, Divergent, War Dogs, and of course Best Picture contender Whiplash, but this could be the one that really gets him noticed. Assuming he gets any time with Cruise still around taking up all the oxygen.
You can’t keep a good killer doll down. The Child’s Play franchise has been going strong for 30 years, and MGM plans to keep it alive for 30 more. Lars Klevberg (Polaroid) is to direct a new reboot from a script by Kung Fury‘s Tyler Burton Smith. Hoping to score another horror hit will be It producers Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg.
So how will Chucky be brought back to kill this time? Well, that’s where things get a little complicated. The reboot is expected to feature a “technologically advanced’ version of the murderous doll, and when I hear that I get thoughts of Chucky flying weaponized drones or something. He’ll be terrorizing a group of kids said to be in the Stranger Things mold. That said, it’s not clear this new film will even have Chucky in it, or if Brad Dourif will be providing his voice as he has since the beginning. Also, series creator Don Mancini may not have anything to do with it as he just confirmed a Chucky TV series is in the works.
There’s also some boring legal stuff going on with the franchise’s rights. Universal has control over the home release market, while MGM seems to have found a way to work around that and do this new thing. That means there’s a greater likelihood of a totally different creative team to give this Child’s Play reboot a fresh spin. Collider, who broke this news, speculate MGM wanted to pull a fast one on audiences in the same way The Woods was suddenly revealed to be a new Blair Witch. Didn’t they get the memo those cheap gimmicks don’t work anymore? Speaking of gimmicks, the entire Chucky franchise turned into one, getting dumber and more over-the-top as they went along.
The most recent Child’s Play film was last year’s Cult of Chucky. There have been seven movies total centering on a young boy who receives a Good Guy doll possessed by the malevolent spirit of serial killer Charles Lee Ray.
Production on the reboot is expected to begin in September, so we should start hearing more details soon.
Is there such a thing as a good overtly right-wing Hollywood movie? I mean the ones that seem to only exist to speak to their particular audience and shame another? I don’t think so, and it’s almost a guarantee that the “secret” pro-life Roe v. Wade film directed by Sofia Vergara’s ex Nick Loeb (he of that whole frozen embryo debacle) and starring a bunch of anti-choice conservatives is going to be awful.
Former Fox News pundit and GOP congressional flameout Stacey Dash will star as Mildred Jefferson, the first black woman to graduate from Harvard and the former president of the National Right to Life. Playing Supreme Court justices are a veritable who’s who of conservative actors such as Jon Voight, John Schneider, and Robert Davi, along with Corbin Bernsen, William Forsythe, Steve Guttenberg, Wade Williams, and Richard Portnow. Loeb says to expect some surprising cameos from “controversial figures” in the news, too. Would anybody be surprised if Neil Gorsuch or Clarence Thomas does a walk-on? This has Ann Coulter or Dinesh D’Souza written all over it.
The film centers on the landmark Supreme Court case, but it takes a decidedly anti-abortion stance that has made production a headache. See, Roe v. Wade is incredibly popular and especially so right now when it’s under greater threat than ever before. So people don’t want to have anything to do with a movie that attacks the decision. That’s forced Loeb to basically shoot the film in secret, even keeping aspects of its plot away from the people making the damn thing. Still, he’s had stars walk out, even crew such as electricians leaving in disgust, and he was barred from shooting at Louisiana State University. They were protested at Tulane, even though Loeb is an alumni.
Some of the shooting was done here in Washington, DC, and when the location manager found out what the movie was, promptly sent an email quitting the project.
Also leaving the film was the actress who reportedly “begged” for the role of Norma McCorvey aka Jane Roe when she found out it was taking a pro-life perspective.
Did I mention the original director also quit on the first day of shooting? Yeah, that’s how bad this is. It’s the only reason why Loeb and Cathy Allyn are co-directing when they were meant to just co-produce and co-write the script.
So why is this movie happening at all? Loeb says his feud with Vergara over frozen embryos informed his outlook..
“I have my own pro-life issue going on with my fight over embryos, but no one has really told the whole truth about Roe v. Wade in a film. When I delved into this, I discovered conspiracy theories, fake news, made-up statistics and a whole lot of people involved who switched their positions from pro-choice to pro-life, including Norma.”
Loeb insists that despite losing some investors he has enough notable ones, although he won’t say who they are. That’s fine, they deserve their privacy. A January release date is being negotiated with distributors now, and we’ll see where that goes and who it ends up with. They’ll hope for the God’s Not Dead marketing package, not the Atlas Shrugged one, I’m guessing.
I’m sure conservatives will look at this as an example of the stranglehold the “liberal elites” have over Hollywood, but that’s not what this is. I don’t see any “elite” anything working on this, and people are within their rights to not want to be part of it. Those who protest don’t appear to have done so violently, they also just don’t want to have anything to do with it. This strikes me as a broader example of the civility argument going through political circles right now.
I believe anything with Stacey Dash in it deserves some form of protest, and that goes double for Jon Voight. Not necessarily because they’re conservative, but because they’re both nuts. And they’re bad at their jobs. [THR]
We know the Fast and the Furious movies are all about “family”, Vin Diesel always tells us so. Little did we know that also meant the bad guy’s family, because we’re getting a new member of the Shaw clan in the Hobbs & Shaw spinoff film. Joining the fam is The Crown‘s Vanessa Kirby, who will star alongside Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham.
Kirby, who has earned acclaim for her performance as Princess Margaret on Netflix’s royal drama, will play an MI-5 agent and the sister to Statham’s Deckard Shaw. Shaw started out as a criminal mastermind directly responsible for the death of Dominic Toretto’s friend, Han, but in films since he’s been refashioned into an antihero and partner for Johnson’s Luke Hobbs. Presumably screenwriter Chris Morgan will keep Shaw’s evolution going. So far we’ve met two other members of the Shaw crime family; Luke Evans as villain Owen Shaw and Helen Mirren as their matriarch, Magdalene.
For Kirby, this is her latest action flick since ending her run on The Crown. She also has a role in this summer’s Mission: Impossible-Fallout.
Directed by Deadpool 2‘s David Leitch, Hobbs & Shaw opens July 26th 2019. [Variety]
