Kate McKinnon and Mila Kunis are both funny ladies. Having them get wrapped up in the world of espionage, similar to what Melissa McCarthy pulled off with Spy, is just a great idea. And it looks like director Susanna Fogel has pulled off the new comedy, The Spy Who Dumped Me, because this trailer is hilarious.
The title is an obvious riff on James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, but this looks closer to Spy or Spies Like Us than anything else. McKinnon and Kunis play friends who get entangled in a global conspiracy when one’s ex-boyfriend turns out to be a secret agent.
McKinnon has been smart, killing it in these mid-level comedies like Rough Night and Office Christmas Party. The same goes for Kunis in both Bad Moms movies. They could probably carry a film like this by themselves but together should be comedy gold.
Also starring Sam Heughan, Justin Theroux and Gillian Anderson, The Spy Who Dumped Me opens August 3rd.
A movie that has its story unfold entire on a computer screen? You may be getting unwanted flashbacks to Unfriended right now, but the word is much better about Searching, which made a huge impact at Sundance earlier this year. John Cho takes on another challenging role in what may be the most unique thriller of the year.
Directed by Aneesh Chaganty, who debuted the film as part of Sundance’s NEXT program, Searching centers on a father whose teenage daughter goes missing. When the cops fail to come up with any leads he starts digging through her computer for answers.
You wouldn’t think a missing persons movie told via computer windows would be able to connect with audiences but the film was a huge success, winning the Alfred P. Sloane and Best of NEXT! awards in Park City. Here’s the synopsis:
After David Kim (John Cho)’s 16-year-old daughter goes missing, a local investigation is opened and a detective is assigned to the case. But 37 hours later and without a single lead, David decides to search the one place no one has looked yet, where all secrets are kept today: his daughter’s laptop. In a hyper-modern thriller told via the technology devices we use every day to communicate, David must trace his daughter’s digital footprints before she disappears forever.
Also starring Debra Messing and Michelle La, Searching opens August 3rd.
Breaking In
follows the story of the Russell family in the days following the death of
Shaun’s (Gabrielle Union) father. Shaun and her father have a fractured
relationship, mostly due to his shady dealings that she wanted no part of.
Shaun is in charge of her father’s estate and takes her two children, Jasmine
(Ajiona Alexus) and Glover (Seth Carr), to his giant lake house on Lake
Constance, Wisconsin for the weekend. Shaun was planning on going through her
father’s belongings and getting the house ready to put on the market. The house
is massive and has state of the art security throughout including cameras in
every room, motion sensors, and retractable bullet proof siding. The house is a
fortress, but who was her father protecting himself from? As
soon as Shaun gets to the house, memories of her childhood begin flooding back,
but she doesn’t have time to reminisce – a group of men show up and let
themselves in.
Eddie (Billy Burke) is the leader of the group. He is
calculated and the most intelligent of the men. There is Duncan (Richard
Cabral) – a loose cannon that is clearly a handful to control, and Sam (Levi
Meaden) – who is incredibly uncomfortable with the idea of causing any harm to
Shaun and her family, he only wants to get what they came for and get out. Shaun’s father has something hidden in the
house that the men are after, and the pesky Russell family is not supposed to
be at the house to get in their way. The men take Shaun’s children hostage and
due to some unfortunate circumstances, Shaun is locked out of the house and she
finds herself…breaking in. Shaun must pull out all the stops to try and save her family and
make sure they all make it through the night.
Breaking In wastes
no time getting into the action. Eddie and his men show up very early on to
begin their torment of Shaun and her family. The film plays off of the fears
that many have. Intruders coming into your home, your safe place, and you are
helpless to stop them. The film flips the script on this with Shaun being
anything but helpless. Even though the odds seemed stacked against her – outnumbered,
with no training, and no weapons – Shaun won’t let that stop her from doing all
she can to rescue her kids. Breaking In
is chock full of inconsistencies and is very formulaic, but is a decent action
movie. Don’t bother spending big bucks on it in the theaters, but keep it in
mind for a future red box rental or Netflix viewing – I wouldn’t want you
missing all of the smoldering looks Gabrielle Union drops throughout.
This is Hollywood for you. How in the world could there be two competing biopics on composer Leonard Bernstein?? A few weeks ago we brought word on Cary Fukunaga’s Bernstein film, The American, which has Jake Gyllenhaal on board to star. And now today comes word on the other one, which has Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese producing.
We actually have known about this one for a while, too. It was the “secret” project Spielberg was potentially eyeing as a replacement for his West Side Story remake. But with West Side Story a go, and Indiana Jones 5 coming first, there was simply no time for Spielberg to direct it himself. The reins have instead been handed over to Bradley Cooper, who will direct and star as Bernstein. This will be Cooper’s directorial followup to A Star is Born, working from a script by Spotlight writer Josh Singer.
I’ll say this for Cooper, he’s not starting this new phase of his career slowly. He’s jumping in deep with both feet and that is tremendously exciting to see if he can pull it off.
Melissa McCarthy pulls a Rodney Dangerfield and goes back to school in the perfectly-timed for Mother’s Day comedy, Life of the Party. Only in this case she’s not going to the head of the class, but finding a comfortable seat squarely in the middle. McCarthy once again teams up with her director/actor husband, Ben Falcone, for what is far and away their most successful film as a pair, although to be fair the bar is so low that any application would have been accepted.
Certainly, Life of the Party is an improvement over Tammy and The Boss, which were embarrassing spectacles that wasted McCarthy’s natural comedic gifts. She’s at least pretty funny here, especially at physical humor, but the story fails to create much of a connection and it feels like a series of skits rather than a cohesive story. McCarthy, whose idea of homespun humor always involves really big hair, plays Deanna, a loyal wife and mother who finds herself newly-single when her sleazeball husband (Matt Walsh, a McCarthy mainstay) asks for a divorce literally moments after dropping their daughter Maddy (Molly Gordon) off at college.
Deanna is struck by an epiphany, after a certain amount of time to curse her husband and his snotty new gal (Julie Bowen). She had quit college with one year to go so that he could pursue his career and she could have a child. So why not take this opportunity to finish what she started by enrolling in the same school as her daughter? Hijinks ensues.
Life of the Party has its heart in the right place, and briefly preaches the value of female independence. But it’s much stronger when showing how a sisterly bond empowers Deanna to be her best. While there is the expected awkwardness when Deanna starts hanging out in the same sorority as her daughter, and making the same friends (played by Adria Arjona, Jessie Ennis, and the brilliant Gillian Jacobs), she never changes from the uncool matriarch she was in the beginning. And that’s despite receiving a makeover (Is there a makeover in every McCarthy film, too??) so she can party with the gals and hook up with Jack (Luke Benward), a student Deanna embarrassingly admits is “less than half her age.” Despite that, she finds confidence in the ladies around her, and regains her passion for archaeology and bad archaeologist puns.
Laughs are sporadic at best, though. McCarthy is at her best alongside Bridesmaids alum Maya Rudolph, who plays her unhappily married and sex-crazed best friend. A highlight finds them trying to combine drinking with a game of racquetball and it ends disastrously as expected. Jacobs scores the film’s biggest laughs as a sorority sister who is famous for being in a coma, and she isn’t afraid to use that fame to scare off would-be suitors. Individual scenes work, like McCarthy getting her groove on to the sounds of Sugarhill Gang’s “Apache”, but they don’t make for a cohesive story. The lack of a compelling foil for Deanna is another problem; there simply isn’t much conflict and the story is little more than a series of party sketches.
McCarthy and Falcone have yet to find their groove as creative partners, and maybe one day they will. Life of the Party is a small step in the right direction, but it still doesn’t manage a passing grade.
Jackson is said to be eyeing two gigs for his next project, a return to Middle Earth or surprisingly a jump to the DCEU for a DC Comics movie. The rumor was tweeted by TheOneRing.net who are usually pretty good when it comes to Tolkien-esque info.
Decisions are being made by Peter Jackson and his NZ crew:
We know that Amazon has invested a ton, more than a billion dollars, in their Lord of the Rings TV series and they want Jackson to be a part of it. The question is whether Jackson wants to return to the franchise he’s already spent seven movies building. Although it’s hard to argue that this wouldn’t be the perfect fit for him. Nobody knows that world better.
That said, it’s very intriguing the idea of him venturing into the superhero genre. Jackson has a very good relationship with Warner Bros. so they would probably let him write his own ticket. So what would that mean? Maybe Man of Steel 2? Probably not; Jackson doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to jump into a sequel when he could launch something new.
Whatever Jackson decides it’s going to send shockwaves. With Lord of the Rings expected to begin production soon we shouldn’t have to wait too long to find out.
Julianne Hough and Tyler “Superman” Hoechlin are showing off their beach bods in the first look at Bigger, the rags to riches story about bodybuilding icons Joe and Ben Weider. The muscular biopic is based on the siblings’ memoir and directed by George Gallo, with Kevin Durand (The Strain) and Aneurin Barnard (Dunkirk) co-starring. Here is the official synopsis:
In the depths of the Great Depression a scrawny, dirt-poor Jewish kid with a seventh-grade education picked up a barbell and got hooked on weight training. Building his muscles gave him confidence and hope for a better life. He pledged to make the great, transforming power of strength training available to everyone and to give bodybuilding all the glory it deserved. The kid, Joe Weider, enlisted his younger brother Ben in his quest, and together the Weider brothers accomplished things much bigger than Joe’s boyhood dreams. The little muscle magazine Joe started, working at his family’s dining room table, grew into a publishing empire. From a backyard barbell business, Joe and Ben built equipment and food supplement companies each as big as Weider Publishing. And they transformed bodybuilding into a hugely successful sport, organized under one of the largest and best-run athletic federations in the world.
I’m still waiting to find out if there will be an appearance by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had his big break when he won the Mr. Olympia competition that the Weiders founded. Maybe they can borrow the CGI Arnold model from Terminator Salvation?
Does it feel like you’ve been waiting a very long time for this, the first trailer for Shane Black’s The Predator? Well, that’s because you have. And so have I, so why beat around the bush? The hunt is on…
I love this trailer, but then I’m a sucker for anything with the Predator in it. The original movie is among my handful of true favorites, and while this could easily be just another reboot/sequel I don’t think that’s the case. First of all it’s co-written and directed by Shane Black, who along with having a role in the 1987 film is also the guy behind Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Nice Guys, and Iron Man 3. He simply does not make crappy films and he wouldn’t have taken this on without a fresh take on the material.
The trailer is cut so that you could almost make the connection between the boy (Jacob Tremblay) playing the Predator gear he receives in the mail (???) and the plane crashing. Then we see a familiar setup of hardened mercenaries taking an “L” at the various bladed weapons of a Predator, while a scientist played by Olivia Munn theorizes about the aliens’ upgrading themselves at every planet they visit. That’s a new wrinkle. While he doesn’t appear in this footage, Jake Busey has a role as the son of Peter Keyes, who was played by his father Gary Busey in Predator 2. That’s for all you continuity sticklers like me.
Most importantly, this movie looks both scary and action packed, which is exactly what it should be. I can’t wait.
Also starring Boyd Holbrook, Keegan-Michael Key, Trevante Rhodes, Alfie Allen, Yvonne Strahovski, and Thomas Jane, The Predator slices up theaters on September 14th.
Margot Robbie has been very chatty when it comes to the direction of Harley Quinn, more so than any other member of the Suicide Squad cast. You don’t see Joel Kinnaman out there talking about all those Rick Flag spinoffs Warner Bros. should be working on, do you? No, it’s clear that Robbie has been granted a ton of control over the character’s future, probably for two reasons. First, is that Harley is arguably the most popular DCEU character other than Wonder Woman. Two, Robbie has grown to become quite a powerful producer, as well.
Robbie is out there doing press for her new movie, the film noir Terminal, and of course the Collider interviewer really just wants to ask her about Harley Quinn. Robbie talked about the upcoming all-girl spinoff, Birds of Prey, and says she pitched it to Warner Bros. as an R-rated gang movie.
“I pitched the idea of an R-rated girl gang film including Harley, because I was like, ‘Harley needs friends.’ Harley loves interacting with people, so don’t ever make her do a standalone film. She’s got to be with other people, it should be a girl gang. I wasn’t seeing enough girl gangs on screen, especially in the action space. So that was always a big part of it.”
Robbie goes on to talk about her other motivations in doing this particular movie, and that included hiring a female director. As we know, it will be Cathy Yan behind the camera working from a script by red-hot screenwriter Christina Hodson, who is also working on the Batgirl movie…
“And then of course having a female director to tell that story. And giving a female director the chance to do big budget stuff. They always get ‘Here’s the tiny little film’…So it was a hugely important to find a female director for this, if possible. But at the end of the day — male, female — the best director gets the job and Cathy was the best director.”
As for all of those other Harley Quinn movies that seemed to pop up out of the woodwork, like that Harley vs. Joker films, Gotham City Sirens, and others? Robbie tells Moviefone she has nothing to do with them, which only serves to make the DCEU look even more screwed up than before…
“I know that they were exploring ‘Gotham City Sirens’ with David Ayer, and I know they were exploring a Joker and Harley Quinn movie, and they were exploring doing I don’t know what else. I wasn’t a part of those. I was focusing on this. I kept presenting it to the studio until they felt it was at a point where they were ready to do it. And now we’re all in.”
Last we heard, Gotham City Sirens had Suicide Squad director David Ayer attached, so it would be really weird if Robbie wasn’t in it. I can’t believe any of these projects are going to happen without her. And if they do then Warner Bros. is cutting their own throat once again. Why can’t they just keep it simple? The people like Robbie in the role, so focus on that and do away with all of the clutter.
You just can’t keep a bad boy down, apparently. Sony Pictures has once again given Bad Boys for Life, the third film in the Bad Boys franchise, a new release date. This time they’ve set the action sequel for January 17th 2020. Is there any reason to think this one will stick?
Of course, Martin Lawrence and Will Smith are expected to return, 20 years after their action careers were launched with the first movie. A sequel, directed by Michael bay like the first one, was released three years later and was also a hit. A third film has been in the works ever since and has been delayed time and time again. It was originally to be released in 2017 with Joe Carnahan directing from his own script, but the film was yanked off the schedule last summer. Bad Boys for Life has up ‘n coming duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (Gangsta) directing.
Meanwhile, Tom Hanks’s Fred Rogers drama, titled You Are My Friend, has been set for October 18th 2019. You know as well as I do that date puts it in line for awards consideration. The film stars Hanks as Rogers, best known from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and centers on his friendship with journalist Tom Junod. The biopic will be directed by Diary of a Teenage Girl‘s Marielle Heller.
