If you attended this year’s Sundance Film Festival then you almost certainly found a way into a movie Andrea Riseborough was starring in. It was impossible to miss her as she had four prominent projects in Park City: The Death of Stalin, Mandy opposite Nicolas Cage, the race drama Burden, and the missing persons thriller, Nancy. It’s the latter film that really puts the spotlight on her, though, as she takes on the chilling role of a woman who may not be all that she claims to be.
Directed by Christina Choe, Nancy stars Riseborough as a woman who believes she resembles someone kidnapped years ago as a child. Introducing herself to the family, doubts begin to arise whether she truly is who she says she is, and just how tight is her grip on reality. J. Smith-Cameron, Steve Buscemi, Ann Dowd, and John Leguizamo co-star.
One of the cool things about Avengers: Infinity War is that Marvel lets you know right from jump street that this is going to be a bumpy ride. In the opening scene we see a couple of crucial deaths that send your mind reeling. If they can go, is anybody safe? Well, turns out yeah, at least one is safe. For now.
The scene I’m talking about obviously has to do with the unexpected deaths of Heimdall and Loki, slaughtered at the hands of Thanos and his Black Order. And it doesn’t look like there’s any way for them to come back. While we know Thor managed to survive the assault somehow, there were other prominent characters from Thor: Ragnarok unaccounted for: Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie and the Taika Waititi-voiced Korg. So what happened to them?
Apparently the Russo Brothers gave a Q&A (via Reddit) and revealed that Valkyrie somehow survived when Thanos killed half of the people on the ship. Presumably from there she managed to escape with the Asgardians who weren’t left dying on the floor. As for Korg, they didn’t make mention of him but in the past Marvel’s Kevin Feige has said “big plans” are in store for him, and his buddy Miek, so maybe they’ll show up with Valkyrie to save the day in Avengers 4?
In the last couple of years we’ve seen Charlize Theron battle post-apocalyptic warlords and defeat scores of armed goons all by her lonesome, but that’s not remotely the toughest task she has to face. In Tully, a reunion with her Young Adult team of director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody, she plays Marlo, a mother of three on the verge of a physical and emotional breakdown after too many sleepless nights, too many feedings, and not enough support. Turns out Furiosa had it pretty easy compared to the rigors of modern parenting, but Theron’s fierce performance and Cody’s witty script will have you believing she can overcome anything.
Every ounce of the glamour we’ve come to associate with Theron is drained as she slips into the swollen, fatigued body of Marlo. She’s let herself fall into drastic disarray following the birth of her third child, compounding the daily drama she faces taking care of the other two, one of which appears to be on the spectrum. Her husband (Ron Livingston) is a good guy but busy with work and a little bit oblivious to what’s going on right in front of him. The deep resignation in her glassy eyes is like the thousand-mile stare of soldiers returning home from the battlefield, and we feel her pain even as we chuckle a little bit at her troubles. A perfectly calibrated montage zips us through the nightly feedings, the bottles, the diaper changes, the driving the kids to school, the indignity of being covered in baby vomit and spilled milk but too tired to shower it off. So she just takes her shirt off at the table, to the further-humiliating retort, “Mom, what happened to your body?”
Help arrives in the form of perky 26-year-old night nurse, Tully (Mackenzie Davis), offered by Marlo’s well-off brother (Mark Duplass) who sees his sister’s dire straits. While initially apprehensive about letting a complete stranger watch over her child, all of that disappears when she has the best night’s sleep in years. Tully, who Marlo describes as being like “a book of fun facts for unpopular fourth graders”, is like a gift from God. Plucky, and strangely attuned to Marlo’s needs, Tully tells her that she’s not really there to care for the kids, but for the mother. “You have to treat the whole”, she tells Marlo before receiving an X-rated reply that sparks a whole new conversation. Soon Tully is not only helping with the kids, but helping Marlo and her husband get reacquainted.
Cody and Reitman have a kind of magic when they work together. Their first film, the teen pregnancy comedy Juno, struck the balance between Reitman’s sensitivity and Cody’s snappy, challenging screenplay that would become their trademark as a duo. With Tully we see the further evolution of Cody as a screenwriter as she confronts a number of hard truths with slightly less sarcasm than we’re accustomed to. In its place is an eye-opening gentleness about the joys and pains of being a mother. With such a huge responsibility comes an equal amount of loss; a loss of the wide-eyed enthusiasm of youth. Cody repeatedly challenges our notions of what motherhood is supposed to look like, and does so with all of the insightful humor we’ve come to expect.
Meanwhile, Reitman is smart to let his actors do much of the heavy lifting. The first thing we notice about Theron is her physical appearance, but the transformation she undergoes is more complete than that. As the story goes on we see Marlo, who has lost touch with the optimistic, hopeful girl she used to be, growing more comfortable with the person she is now. And that is largely due to Tully, who embodies so much of what Marlo misses about her self. It’s a wonderful dynamic between them and I hope this is the movie that catapults Davis into stardom. She’s long overdue at this point.
The blossoming friendship between Marlo and Tully has its share of surprises, some bigger than others but all beneficial to the story being told. Don’t let anyone spoil it. While I think Reitman is a little too on-the-nose symbolically (visions of a mermaid, really?) he mostly allows for his leading ladies to carry Tully on their more than capable shoulders. The combination of Theron, Reitman, and Cody is among the best Hollywood has to offer and they have never been better.
Cary Fukunaga has kept plenty busy on the small screen with True Detective, TNT’s The Alienist, and this summer’s Maniac on Netflix, but he hasn’t directed a film since 2015’s Beasts of No Nation. That’s entirely too long and thankfully is about to change as he’s decided on his next film, and it’s going to put Jake Gyllenhaal in the role of legendary composer Leonard Bernstein.
Fukunaga will direct Gyllenhaal in The American, a biopic based on the biography Leonard Bernstein by Humphrey Burton. Bernstein earned an Oscar nomination for composing On the Waterfront, and earned 11 Emmys throughout his career, plus a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1985. Here’s the official synopsis:
“In five movements, like a symphony, “The American” follows Leonard Bernstein from conducting the New York Philharmonic at the impressive age of 25 through the meteoric rise to fame, all while struggling both personally and publicly to be everything that everyone expected him to be, most of all himself.”
This will be the first time Fukunaga and Gyllenhaal have ever paired up on a feature film, although they did work together on the actor’s rehearsal video of “Finishing the Hat” from Stephen Sondheim‘s Sunday in the Park with George. They will both produce, as well, with Michael Mitnick (Vinyl) providing the screenplay. Gyllenhaal will be seen next in Paul Dano’s directorial debut, Wildlife, which premiered at Sundance. [Deadline]
Of all the big surprises in Avengers: Infinity War, the one that caught me the most offguard was the return of an early Marvel villain we hadn’t seen in a long time. I know I shouldn’t, but here’s one final chance for you to turn away in case that giant SPOILER warning in the headline wasn’t obvious enough…
Okay, so I was completely taken aback by the sudden unexpected return of the Red Skull as the guardian of the Soul Stone. The villain hasn’t been seen since Captain America: The First Avenger, as the first wielder of the Tesseract. It was clear to me that it wasn’t Hugo Weaving back in the role, the voice sounded different and the actor swore to never do it again, but I didn’t know until much later it was The Walking Dead‘s Ross Marquand doing his best impression.
Now Marquand has opened up to EW about the surprise role, and his thoughts on a possible return of the Red Skull…
“The biggest thing that Marvel wanted to do was come as close to the iconic role that Hugo Weaving portrayed seven years ago and pay homage to it while also giving it a new flavor. Once Red Skull touched the Tesseract, he goes into this intergalactic astral plane for 70 years. And as the Russo brothers pointed out to me — because I was trying to do a straight voice match to Hugo’s performance — they said, “You know, he’s been by himself essentially in this intergalactic prison of his own making for 70 years. He’s going to sound a little different. We want him to have this kind of ethereal almost ghost-like quality to his voice, so please try that.” I think the reference they might have given is Yoda-esque. His ambition has brought him this great pain, but also this great wisdom, and I think that’s what I tried to imbue that performance with.
“I think the main thing I wanted to get across is that this Red Skull is quite remorseful. He does feel a certain degree of shame and loss, and he’s conquered by his own ambition, really. It’s very much like Icarus; he flew way too high — literally because he touched the Tesseract and got launched into space — and he got way too ambitious and lost sight of his humanity, and now he feels genuinely remorseful about that. And there is kind of a forlorn energy to him. It was coming across in the dialogue, and I just really wanted to honor that.”
“…I think that I would obviously love to play that role again anytime. It’s such a rich character, especially now that he’s gone to this intergalactic hellscape and he’s found his own prison there — not to quote Creed. That was a Creed song, right? But he’s a changed man, and I don’t even know if he is a man anymore. He’s almost like this ghostlike deity, and he’s at the service of the Soul Stone now, and his sole purpose is to essentially guide people to this, but you have to wonder: Is there still a part of him that does have ambition? I don’t know. It would be really cool to see where that character goes. But that’s really a question for all the folks at Marvel and the Russo brothers and the writers. I certainly couldn’t speak to that.”
The Red Skull has proven notoriously hard to kill in the comics, and it stands to reason the same would apply on the screen. With the Soul Stone now in Thanos’ possession we could see Red Skull possibly given physical form and returned to Earth. Who knows? Maybe if/when the Captain America mantle is passed to another the Red Skull can be his first enemy?
To show just how dominant Blumhouse has been in crafting small-budget horror smashes, last year’s unassuming Happy Death Day earned $123M on a budget of just $5M. That’s with no big stars to speak of, just a clever premise that revolved around a Groundhog Day-esque scenario of murder. And now Blumhouse is ready to light the candles on a sequel.
Production will begin next week on Happy Death Day 2, with original stars Jessica Rothe and Israel Broussard returning. Christopher Landon will return to direct but this time he will take over scripting duties from former Uncanny X-Men writer Scott Lobdell. Joining the cast are Life of Pi and Million Dollar Arm‘s Suraj Sharma, playing Samar Gosh, a science enthusiast and geek who enjoys coding. Sarah Yorkin (The Middle) plays Dre Morgan, a fellow science nerd and tomboy who is Samar’s partner in crime.
Happy Death Day opened last October, and I’m guessing Blumhouse will slot its sequel similarly in 2019.
Last week on The Flash we started to see cracks form between Devoe and his wife. This week not only do we get to see their own origin story, but we also get to see his motivations and his endgame, plus those cracks seriously widen. Even though Team Flash had Earth-X’s Snart helping them, they are still way behind in stopping DeVoe.
Speaking of DeVoe and Marlize, The Flash continues Arrow-style flashback in giving us the history of the villainous couple. Before he became The Thinker and she his accomplice, they were academics who met each other while they were both participating in a group lecture 8 years ago at Cambridge. They are arguing about human development. Marlize is talking about the benefits of humanity growing with technology. DeVoe, is on the opposite side of the debate and he believes that as technology grows, so does mankind’s capacity for evil, citing past atrocities committed by people throughout history. Even though they were on opposing sides of the debate, opposites attract. The two begin dating and eventually fall in love with each other. The two hit a roadblock when the two are about to move in together and she finds a diary that he’s written. She rightly calls it a manifesto for a technophobe with global domination ambitions. DeVoe’s master plan is to get rid of our dependence on technology by rebooting people’s brains to a more primitive state. Naturally, she’s out and goes to work for an NGO. Happy with helping the world, she refuses his calls to come back. It’s only when she is attacked by warlords at the NGO and they rob the village she was helping of a water filtration system, does she accept that DeVoe was right. The two agree to bring about “The Enlightenment.” In the present, DeVoe and Marlize are working on making The Enlightenment to come true. He is stealing various pieces of technology from different warehouses. DeVoe’s willingness to kill poor security guards further disgusted his wife every time he raided different warehouses.
Team Flash is dealing with their own issues. Harry’s intelligence is continuing to devolve. Everyone is noticing that he’s forgetting simple things, thinks that he (as a super genius) would not know as well. Cisco, knowing the truth convinces Harry to fess up to Team Flash. The team of course, is supportive as they respect him not only for his intelligence, but also because he is a member of their family. With Harry’s intelligence dwindling, Barry asks Cisco to vibe to try and figure out what they can do next. Cisco is not powerful enough and will need the help of another person with vibe powers. His girlfriend Gypsy and he are somewhat at odds. In addition to him being on Earth-1 and she on Earth-19, her father Breacher wants him to team up with her and be a trans-dimensional bounty hunter, something he’s clearly on the fence with. She agrees to help him vibe, but because they aren’t thinking on the same wavelength due to their problems with each other, they are unable to get one of the devices before DeVoe is able to. After unsuccessfully meddling with the two of them, Barry convinces Cisco to have a conversation with his girlfriend. They both agree that he shouldn’t join her in the bounty hunter business, but then they are at an even bigger impasse. Cisco is tired of the long-distance relationship. Neither wants to leave their earth, and even though Gypsy is fine with their relationship, Cisco isn’t and they agree to end their relationship.
Team Flash finally gets the drop on DeVoe as he’s about to rob another place. Working together, they are able to stop him temporarily. Marlize engages in the fight which evens the odds. When DeVoe escapes Cisco and Gypsy’s vibe powers as a result, he is able to use his full powers to take them down. He first is about to attack Caitlin, but if her adrenaline kicks in, she could bring back Killer Frost, so he turns the table on and uses his powers to “force choke” Gypsy. Before he is about to kill Gypsy, Marlize convinces him to stop killing her as she is tired of him senselessly killing people. DeVoe relents and they escape, allowing Team Flash to recuperate. Later on, Marlize leaves DeVoe as she’s tired of him, stating that her real husband is dead.
Although they lost (again), Team Flash celebrates Cecile’s baby shower. Cisco is in a little bit of a slump having broken up with Gypsy with Barry to comfort her. Just then, someone comes to the door with a baby gift, the mystery girl we keep seeing throughout the series. She gives them some diapers but just before Iris comes to see who she is, she leaves. Hiding around the corner of the apartment, the woman then speeds away. Her speed has the same purple streak that Iris has. Something tells us that she’s Iris and Barry’s child lid many have been predicting.
Next week, to take on DeVoe, Team Flash will make a deal with the devil: Amunet!
It feels petty to keep piling on DC Films like this, but how embarrassing must it be to have Avengers: Infinity War surpass the entire $657M theatrical run of Justice League in only four days. Yeah, that’s what happened, and we saw it coming when Marvel’s blockbuster sent shockwaves with a $640M opening weekend. It only took a few hours into Monday for it to lap Justice League and now sits at over $700M worldwide.
DC, you got a lot of work to do. Just sayin’.
Infinity War continues to level box office records like Thanos leveling half the universe. The $640m global debut is the biggest of all-time, besting The Fate of the Furious‘ $541.9M by a healthy margin. Infinity War also finds itself the unquestioned champ on the domestic front, claiming the mantle of biggest opening ever for a superhero movie. But most impressive is the $258M domestic total which bests 2015’s The Force Awakens.
Customarily when a studio loses the title for biggest opening weekend there is some public display of congratulations, and now we have a tweet from Lucasfilm celebrating Marvel’s phenomenal success. The tweet shows Rey passing the baton, or in this case a lightsaber, over into Iron Man’s hands. I bet he wishes he had that in his fight against Thanos…
Even better is the congratulatory tweet by Ryan Reynolds, showing the rejection letter Deadpool received after applying to the Avengers. Awwwww, poor guy. Don’t worry, in about a year you may be able to join the team more easily.
You might think with Avengers: Infinity War‘s $640M opening weekend it would put the incredible three-month long run of Black Panther to an end. But that’s not the case, in fact the film had the strongest hold of any movie in the top 10 and continues to earn big bucks, and that’s with the home release now only a week away. With the Blu-Ray and digital availability so close we’re now getting a look at the first deleted scene, featuring on a key moment between lovers Okoye (Danai Gurira) and W’Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya).
I really wish Ryan Coogler had found a way to keep this scene in, but he explains in the intro that it just didn’t fit. First of all, it takes place moments after T’Challa’s death at the hands of Killmonger as Wakanda faces a brutal new regime dedicated to global conflict. It also deepens our understanding of the relationship between Okoye and W’Kabi in that they are actually married, not just “dating” or whatever it is Wakandans do. She’s understandably angry with her husband for betraying T’Challa and helping Killmonger gain entry to the Tribal Council. But the most stinging jab comes when she accuses W’Kabi of actually wanting T’Challa to lose and die in the fight, a charge he does not deny.
Black Panther is still in theaters now, but hits digital on May 8th and Blu-ray a week later.
We may have Infinity War in the rear view mirror finally, but the year is still full of superhero movies of different stripes. Of course we have Deadpool 2, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Venom, and one that could be the most enjoyable of the bunch is the animated Teen Titans GO! To The Movies, which looks to skewer the comic book world worse than Ryan Reynolds’ mouthy mercenary.
The film reunites the talented voice cast from the beloved cartoon series, while adding Kristen Bell as Jade, Will Arnett as Slade “Deathstroke” Wilson, Halsey as Wonder Woman, Lil Yachty as Green Lantern, and Jimmy Kimmel as Batman. But wait…how can you have all of those characters but no Superman? Of course he makes a cameo in this, too, voiced by Nicolas Cage who finally gets to play the Man of Steel after that failed movie with Tim Burton years ago.
There are two moments I love in this footage. The first is right off the bat as Robin mistakenly thinks they’re making a movie about him, but it turns out to be an Alfred action flick. The second is when the team tells Slade he must be Deadpool which drives the villain nuts. Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld totally copied his design (and name, Wade Wilson/Slade Wilson) from Deathstroke because that’s pretty much all he did in the ’90s was copy others.
Ok, I also love that even the animated Green Lantern doesn’t want to talk about that terrible live-action Green Lantern movie.
