The biggest film story of the last few months has been the crumbling Scream franchise, which after being revived with two hit horror sequels, fired its star Melissa Barrera and saw the red-hot Jenna Ortega leave quickly after. None of this sat well with incoming director, Christopher Landon, who also quit without having shot a single frame of Scream VII. On the way out he called the experience “a dream job that turned into a nightmare.”
A popular filmmaker after his Happy Death Day and Freaky horror comedies, Landon was never going to be out of work for long. And now we know his next project will be Big Bad, with THR reporting that Landon will direct the film based on Chandler Baker’s werewolf story about a family who must survive the night while trapped in an isolated farmhouse surrounded by werewolves. Lionsgate is nearing a deal to land the project. Baker’s story was part of Amazon’s Creature Feature horror collection, alongside a story about Joe Hill, writer of The Black Phone.
Landon most recently directed We Have a Ghost, which hit Netflix last year. Landon tends to write the movies he helms, but it’s unclear if he’ll handle the Big Bad adaptation. It’s just good to see him land on his feet so quickly, because Landon’s horror movies are always a lot of fun. He’s come a long way from his stint aboard the Paranormal Activity franchise, which he helped shepherd through multiple sequels, including 2014’s Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, which he directed.
It wasn’t always this way, but Sundance has become a go-to festival for buzz horror titles to make their mark. And one that’s part of the Midnight section which has people here in Park City talking is Krazy House, starring Shaun of the Dead‘s Nick Frost and Clueless‘ Alicia Silverstone.
Marking the English-language debut of directors Steffen Haars and Flip van der Kuil, the Netherlands duo have delivered a horror comedy that Frost calls “a completely bonkers project to be a part of and I’ve absolutely loved every minute of it.”
And I can see why. The film looks absolutely nuts, especially as presented in the style of ’90s family sitcom!
Here’s the synopsis: When Russian workers in Bernie’s house turn out to be wanted criminals, Bernie has to man up and save his ’90s sitcom family.
Also in the cast are Kevin Connolly, Jan Bijvoet, Gaite Jansen, Walt Klink, Chris Peters, and Matti Stooker.
Haars and van der Kuil previously worked with Frost on Svalta, a serial killer film that recently wrapped shooting and should arrive this year, as well.
Krazy House will have its world premiere on January 20th, and we’ll let you know of any post-festival release plans. This one is high on my list and I already have it schedule to see, so my review should be up in a few days!
The 2024 Sundance Film Festival is here. The event kicks off in earnest today, and there are loads of new movies to choose from. One that already has distribution by Searchlight, and will hit Hulu next month, is Suncoast, the directorial debut of actor/filmmaker Laura Chinn who is telling her personal story of growing up in St. Petersburg, FL.
Nico Parker, the daughter of filmmaker Ol Parker and Thandiwe Newton, stars in the film about a Florida teen caring for her brother and audacious mother, while also striking up an unexpected friendship with an eccentric activist.
For a debut film, Chinn has put together quite the cast. Joining Parker are Laura Linney, Woody Harrelson, Ella Anderson, Daniella Taylor, Amarr, and Ariel Martin.
In Sundance’s write-up on Suncoast, they call it “Separately and together, a mother and daughter face a situation bigger than themselves that builds to a crescendo of deep emotional power and pathos.”
Here’s the official synopsis: Inspired by the semi-autobiographical story of a teenager (Nico Parker) who, while caring for her brother along with her audacious mother (Laura Linney), strikes up an unlikely friendship with an eccentric activist (Woody Harrelson) who is protesting one of the most landmark medical cases of all time.
Suncoast will have its world premiere here in Park City on January 21st, then hits Hulu on February 9th.
Almost exactly one year ago, Jonathan Majors was poised to have the most epic year of his career. And it was all going to kick off with the world premiere of Magazine Dreams right here at the Sundance Film Festival. And now today that movie, which received rave reviews despite the controversial nature of its story, is searching for a new distributor.
Searchlight has droppedMagazine Dreams and returned it to the filmmakers, who will shop around for a new home. gThe film stars Majors as a disturbed bodybuilder whose antisocial behavior becomes increasingly erratic. It was acquired by Searchlight at Sundance and pegged for an awards season run in December 2023. Majors, and director Elijah Bynum, were expected to factor heavily in the awards race.
This is just the latest blow for Majors, who was recently found guilty of assault and harassment against his girlfriend. When the accusations emerged last March, Disney, which owns Searchlight, pulled Magazine Dreams from the release schedule, a precursor to this latest decision. Majors also lost out on a high-profile gig as Kang the Conqueror in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s a role he has played in both the Loki series and in Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania.
Majors was also booted from the Dennis Rodman biopic, 48 Hours in Vegas, and the potential Spike Lee-directed film Da Understudy.
So how long before Magazine Dreams turns up on BET+ or Tubi?
We’re happy to offer our DC readers the chance to attend a free early screening of The UnderDoggs, starring Snoop Dogg, Tika Sumpter, Mike Epps, Andrew Schulz, Kandi Burruss, Kal Penn and George Lopez.
SYNOPSIS: Jaycen “Two Js” Jennings (Snoop Dogg) is a washed-up ex-professional football star who has hit rock bottom. When Jaycen is sentenced to community service coaching the Underdoggs, an unruly pee-wee football team in his hometown of Long Beach, California, he sees it as an opportunity to rebuild his public image and turn his life around. As Jaycen works to transform the foul-mouthed Underdoggs into top-notch champions, he reconnects with his past, including an old flame and few of his ex-teammates and rediscovers his love of the game.
The screening takes place on Tuesday, January 23rd at 7:00pm at Landmark E Street. If you’d like to attend, RSVP at the MGM site here. Please remember all screenings are first come first served and you’ll need to arrive early to ensure seating. Enjoy the show!
The UnderDoggs streams exclusively on Prime Video on January 26th.
It’s always cool to see a parent and their child act together in the same movie, especially when they get to replicate their relationship. Such is the case for Bleeding Love, which premiered at SXSW under the title You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder, and stars Ewan McGregor alongside his real-life daughter, Clara McGregor.
As seen in the new trailer ahead of its release next month, Bleeding Love centers on an estranged father and daughter on a road trip to Santa Fe, confronting the issues that drove a wedge between them, and encountering offbeat characters.
The film was directed by Emma Westenberg, known mostly for TV work and Janelle Monae’s 2018 sci-fi companion piece, Dirty Computer.
Also in the cast are Sasha Alexander, Jake Weary, Kim Zimmer and Vera Bulder.
Here’s the synopsis: Starring real-life father and daughter Ewan and Clara McGregor, Bleeding Love is a gritty, emotional tale about healing familial wounds through re-connection. After a drastic incident in her life, a young woman (Clara) embarks on an impromptu road trip with her estranged father (Ewan). En-route to their destination of Santa Fe, New Mexico, the two are forced to confront the issues of their past that have led to their frail relationship, while encountering an eccentric array of characters along the way, in order to bring them closer together again.
Bleeding Love hits theaters and VOD on February 16th.
Has there ever been a Holocaust movie where a character makes an impassioned plea to stay in Auschwitz, rather than to escape such a nightmarish Hell? That is the perverse humor in Jonathan Glazer’s first film in a decade, The Zone of Interest. And it’s that twisted perspective capturing the banality, the ho-hum everyday nature of horrors committed by the Nazis, that Glazer is determined to emphasize without having much else to say. Once that sick joke has worn out its welcome, which it does fairly early, there’s nowhere else to go.
Based loosely on the 2014 Martin Amis novel of the same name, the film follows Hedwig Höss (Sandra Hüller), the wife of Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), who lives in an idyllic Nazi Dreamhouse just beyond the walls of Auschwitz. She has built a comfortable little Aryan paradise, with lush gardens she takes quite a lot of pride in, a swimming pool, and plenty of space for their little pure-blood children to grow strong. If it wasn’t for the constant drone of horror ringing in the background, a sound you as a viewer will disturbingly learn to block out as well, you’d never know that a genocide was taking place mere feet away.
But that’s the point that Glazer makes fairly early on and keeps repeating throughout. We see Hedwig and Rudolf go through the everyday rigamarole of married life. She orders the servants around, makes casual comments to her friends about the expensive trinkets they’ve claimed from exterminated Jews, and begs her husband for a return trip to Italy. Meanwhile, Rudolf is stuck in the Nazi version of The Office, having meetings about a new crematorium to be built, admonishing the idiot junior Nazis about plucking flowers haphazardly, and ultimately fighting a move to be transferred elsewhere.
Glazer parallels this with an odd sequence involving a Polish girl stealing food to be taken back to her family. Captured in monochrome and not too dissimilar to Scarlett Johansson’s devouring of Scottish men in Glazer’s Under the Skin, we expect that this is where we will eventually see the shocking violence we have been kept at a distance from. Instead, Glazer offers a weak comparison to Hansel and Gretel, read to the children at bedtime. To be fair, Glazer doesn’t usually flesh out his characters very deeply, allowing for imagery to do the work for him. And in that regard, The Zone of Interest is bleak, chilling, and unrelenting, especially when matched with Mica Levi’s disconcerting score.
The point Glazer reaches for and hits in the first five minutes is that life for the Nazis responsible for the Holocaust was pretty damn awesome, indeed. They had everything and what they didn’t have, they simply took. As Hedwig pleads to Rudolf at the nearby lake they use to paddleboat frequently, this is the life they had been dreaming of since they were 17 years old. And now they have it, living the kind of simple life that Hitler demanded of his people. Hedwig appears to be a normal, everyday wife and mother caring for her family, but we see her casual cruelty when stirred to anger. She threatens one innocent maid that she’ll have her husband spread the poor girl’s ashes if she makes another mistake.
Glazer makes his point so early that we expect for there to be some new angle, some fresh perspective. While there’s a bizarre contemporary coda as a last ditch effort, nothing meaningful comes out of The Zone of Interest, leaving us with the sinking realization that this hollow feeling is all Glazer had intended from the beginning.
The Zone of Interest opens nationwide on January 19th.
*NOTE: This review was originally part of our 2023 Middleburg Film Festival coverage.*
It’s that time of year again! Readers of this site know that while others are suffering through the slow movie month of January, this is when I and many other movie fanatics head to Park City for the Sundance Film Festival! Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, Sundance has another strong lineup of movies that will be looking to emerge and be discussed throughout 2024.
Although, I’ll admit to entering this festival with less certainty about the movies I’ll be checking out. Most years I can pick out a few that are extremely high on my list. Last year, those were easy picks such as Flora & Son, Infinity Pool, Cassandro, and Magazine Dreams. While I do have some films that have caught my attention, I’d be lying if I said there was one that stood out above the rest. It feels like I’m going in more blind than ever before, and that’s both a bit scary and kind of exciting. It could mean that I’ll run across more movies that become instant all-time favorites, such as Rye Lane.
So here are my 10 most-anticipated features at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. If all goes according to plan, I’ll have reviews for them in the coming days.
Cast: Pedro Pascal, Jay Ellis, Normandi Kordei Hamilton, Dominique Thorne, Ben Mendelsohn, Ji-Young Yoo, Jack Champion, Angus Cloud, Kier Gilchrist
SYNOPSIS: In 1987 Oakland, a mysterious force guides The Town’s underdogs in four interconnected tales: Teen punks defend their turf against Nazi skinheads, a rap duo battles for hip-hop immortality, a weary henchman gets a shot at redemption, and an NBA All-Star settles the score. Basically another day in the Bay.
Buzz: The duo of Fleck and Boden is Sundance royalty, but they haven’t been to the festival since 2015’s Mississippi Grind, which I saw there and loved. Their track record speaks for itself with their films Half Nelson and Sugar both premiering at the festival. The cast for this one is among the best they’ve put together, and the interconnected plot of such seemingly disparate stories is intriguing.
Love Me
Love Me
Directors: Sam & Andy Zuchero
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Steven Yeun
SYNOPSIS: Long after humanity’s extinction, a buoy and a satellite meet online and fall in love.
Buzz: It’s Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun. No offense to the filmmakers making their feature debuts here, but they aren’t my reason for wanting to see this. And that they’re playing inanimate objects in some sort of digital romance makes me want to see this even more.
Buzz: The synopsis is…well, a bit vague. This is indeed about a family of sasquatches. A Bigfoot movie from the Zellners, who gave us the Fargo-esque weirdness of Kumiko the Treasure Hunter and the dark comedy western Damsel, feels totally on brand. David once directed a short titled Sasquatch Birth Journal 2 and it’s possible this is connected in some way?
The American Society of Magical Negroes
The American Society of Magical Negroes
Director: Kobi Libii
Cast: Justice Smith, David Alan Grier, Drew Tarver, An-Li Bogan, Michaela Watkins, Nicole Byer
SYNOPSIS: A young man, Aren, is recruited into a secret society of magical Black people who dedicate their lives to a cause of utmost importance: making white people’s lives easier.
Buzz: Sundance is the place to go for movies that attempt to explore issues of race using humor or horror, and the results are often mixed: see also Get Out (great) and Dear White People (it was alright). Libii makes light of the storytelling trope of the “magical negro” character who shows up to help white people achieve their goal (see also The Legend of Bagger Vance) by pushing the idea to its furthest extent. The trailer is pretty funny, and Focus Features already plans to release it in March. Fingers crossed.
A Different Man
Director: Aaron Schimberg
Cast: Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve
SYNOPSIS: Aspiring actor Edward undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance. But his new dream face quickly turns into a nightmare, as he loses out on the role he was born to play and becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost.
Buzz: This sounds bonkers, with Stan playing a man with neurofibromatosis who gets it corrected, only for his ex-girlfriend to write a play about the man he used to be, leading to his obsession with the actor playing him. Reinsve broke out a couple of years ago with The Worst Person in the World, but she’s still hardly a household name here in the States. It could be this is the movie to change that.
Love Lies Bleeding
Director: Rose Glass
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Ed Harris, Dave Franco, Jena Malone
SYNOPSIS: Reclusive gym manager Lou falls hard for Jackie, an ambitious bodybuilder headed through town to Las Vegas in pursuit of her dream. But their love ignites violence, pulling them deep into the web of Lou’s criminal family.
Buzz: Love, sex, crime, and Kristen Stewart. Yes, please. If I haven’t said it before, I make a beeline to any films K-Stew has here in Park City, because she always delivers and it’s here that she takes on her most challenging roles. Glass is hot after her 2019 debut Saint Maud, band this is probably going to be the most sought-after film at the festival.
Presence
Presence
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Julia Fox
SYNOPSIS: A family moves into a suburban house and becomes convinced they’re not alone.
Buzz: When you think about filmmakers most closely associated with Sundance, Steven Soderbergh is right at the top of the list. If he’s here with a new movie, it HAS to be seen, and that goes double if it’s a suspenseful haunted house story like this.
The Outrun
The Outrun
Director: Nora Fingscheidt
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Paapa Essiedu, Saskia Reeves, Stephen Dillane
SYNOPSIS: After living life on the edge in London, Rona attempts to come to terms with her troubled past. She returns to the wild beauty of Scotland’s Orkney Islands — where she grew up — hoping to heal. Adapted from the bestselling memoir by Amy Liptrot.
Buzz: The last time Saoirse Ronan was at Sundance was in 2015 with Brooklyn. Not only is that one of my all-time favorite Sundance movies, but it earned Ronan an Oscar nomination for Best Actress she SHOULD’VE WON, while the film earned a nod for Best Picture. I haven’t read Amy Liptrot’s memoir but I’m assuming the best for this adaptation. Director Nora Fingscheidt last directed Sandra Bullock in the 2021 movie The Unforgivable.
In a Violent Nature
Director: Chris Nash
Cast: Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love
SYNOPSIS: The enigmatic resurrection, rampage, and retribution of an undead monster in a remote wilderness.
Buzz: Everybody knows horror isn’t really my thing, but I do love a good slasher movie. And I’m intrigued by this one which turns the tables by putting the focus on the killer, rather than the prey. It’s a novel approach, and if Nash, who is making his feature debut after a string of popular shorts including a segment in The ABCs of Death, can pull this off then we could be on the groundfloor of a new horror maestro.
Exhibiting Forgiveness
Director: Titus Kaphar
Cast: Andre Holland, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, John Earl Jelks, Andra Day
SYNOPSIS: Utilizing his paintings to find freedom from his past, a Black artist on the path to success is derailed by an unexpected visit from his estranged father, a recovering addict desperate to reconcile. Together, they learn that forgetting might be a greater challenge than forgiving.
Buzz: Renowned artist Titus Kaphar wrote and directed this film, pulling together an all-star cast that includes the vastly underrated and underutilized Andre Holland (he should be in everything), Origin star Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, and Andra Day who I feel I haven’t seen since her role as Billie Holliday. Movies set in the art world scene are frequent, especially at Sundance, but so rarely from the Black perspective and I want to be there for it.
Adam Sandler has done some of the best work of his career through his partnership with Netflix. While he’s occasionally shown us that he can be an incredible dramatic actor when given the right material, since signing on with the streamer he’s delivered more than ever. And that looks to be happening again with Spaceman, a sci-fi drama about an astronaut who gets some unusual help in figuring out what his life should be back on Earth.
Three years ago it was announced that Sandler would lead Spaceman, a sci-fi drama from Chernobyl director Johan Renck. Sandler stars with Carey Mulligan, Paul Dano, Kunal Nayyar, Lena Olin, and Isabella Rossellini in the film about a lonely astronaut on a faraway research mission in outer space, while at home his marriage is falling apart. Fortunately, he has some help in dealing with all of this, and it’s a mysterious creature that lurks in the shadows of his ship.
Sandler does some of his best acting when playing characters with one foot in reality, while Mulligan is simply one of the best actors in the world and a contender to receive an Oscar nomination for her recent performance in Maestro.
The film was penned by Colby Day, and adapted from Jaroslav Kalfař’s 2017 book, Spaceman of Bohemia.
Here is the synopsis: Six months into a solitary research mission to the edge of the solar system, an astronaut, Jakub (Adam Sandler), realizes that the marriage he left behind might not be waiting for him when he returns to Earth. Desperate to fix things with his wife, Lenka (Carey Mulligan), he is helped by a mysterious creature from the beginning of time he finds hiding in the bowels of his ship. Hanuš (voiced by Paul Dano) works with Jakub to make sense of what went wrong before it is too late.
Netflix will begin streaming Spaceman on March 1st and you can find out more here.
Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions and Universal are ready to make Marlon Wayans the GOAT. Deadline reports that Wayans will star in the psychological horror pic that Peele will produce. The film will be directed by Justin Tipping from an original spec script by Zack Akers and Skip Bronkie.
In GOAT, Wayans will play a retiring star, one of the greatest of all-time, who must train a promising young athlete. No word yet as to who will play the upstart athlete, but reports say that Wayans was always the top choice for the living legend role.
Wayans recently had a key role in another sports-related film, Ben Affleck’s Air, in which he played Basketball Hall of Fame player/coach George Raveling, who helped Nike recruit a young Michael Jordan. Along with a number of hit stand-up comedy specials, Wayans spent part of 2023 as a guest host on The Daily Show after Trevor Noah’s departure.
Tipping is primarily a television director on such shows as The Chi, Joe vs. Carole, Black Monday, and Dear White People. He made his feature directing debut with the 2016 sneaker drama, Kicks.
We’ve known about two untitled Monkeypaw productions in development. The other is a mystery project directed by Peele himself that should arrive later this year.
