The hammer has come down hard on Jonathan Majors, and this was a double whammy. The Marvel actor was found guilty by a New York jury of reckless assault in the third degree and guilty of harassment. It took a panel of six jurors just over four hours across three days to decide on the verdict. As far as penalties go, the charges carry a sentence of up to one year in prison. Sentencing is set for February 6th 2024.
And then the second blow, as Majors was swiftly fired by Disney following news of the guilty verdict. That means no more of Majors as Kang in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He had played the role of the villain in two seasons of Loki, as well as in this year’s Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania. He was set to continue on as the major MCU baddie through phase six, culminating in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty in 2026. That film saw its director, Destin Daniel Cretton, exit amidst rumors of a major creative shift. Those rumors are that Majors’ Kang would be written out and a new villain set as the centerpiece. That’s looking pretty inevitable now.
This was going to be the biggest year of Majors’ acting career. Along with his Marvel work, he had a role in Creed III opposite Michael B. Jordan. Another Majors film, Magazine Dreams, debuted at Sundance to critical acclaim and was seen by many as the role that could win him an Oscar. Instead, it was shelved and currently has no release date. The Lovecraft Country star and Primetime Emmy Award nominee was also fired by his talent agency.
At this point, it might be a good idea to keep a close watch on Jordan as he’s lost a lot in a single day. His mental health could be in question, and let’s hope his support system of friends and family keep a watch on him before and after sentencing. [THR/Deadline]
Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut American Fiction is in select theaters now, and is receiving some of the best reviews of the year. It’s high up there for me, as well, and can’t wait for more people to check out this brilliant satire that skewers a literary world for its racist hypocrisy.
Accolades are already beginning to shower the film and its cast, led by Jeffrey Wright as frustrated author Thelonius “Monk” Ellison, who is sick of reading trite Black stories full of stereotypes. His solution is to create a fake persona and write a book that also reduces Black people to racist tropes, only to be appalled when the book is a bestseller.
What’s great about American Fiction is that Jefferson tells a complete and complex story full of romance, family drama, tragedy, and more. Issa Rae, Tracee Ellis Ross, Sterling K. Brown, Erika Alexander and Leslie Uggams fill out a stellar cast who bring it all to life.
Here’s the synopsis: AMERICAN FICTION is Cord Jefferson’s hilarious directorial debut, which confronts our culture’s obsession with reducing people to outrageous stereotypes. Jeffrey Wright stars as Monk, a frustrated novelist who’s fed up with the establishment profiting from “Black” entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish “Black” book of his own, a book that propels him to the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.
American Fiction expands to more theaters on December 22nd, before going nationwide in January. You can check out my interview with Cord Jefferson here, and my review here.
Released in 2019 on Netflix, the version of Triple Frontier that we ultimately got was a far cry from where it had started. Originally a film reuniting The Hurt Locker duo of director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal, it languished for years before being taken over by JC Chandor, while the cast also saw major fluctuations. While Tom Hanks, Channing Tatum, Johnny Depp, and Will Smith eyed the drug war thriller at different points, the final version was led by Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, and Pedro Pascal. Despite that, it was clear Netflix didn’t get a ton of viewership because it just sorta came and disappeared.
However, that could be about to change. Speaking with The Mary Sue, Hunnam says he’s working with Netflix on a sequel to Triple Frontier. The original movie centered on a team of ex-Special Forces soldiers who plan a heist of a drug kingpin in the dangerous “triple frontier” region of South America.
“Nothing guaranteed, but I just set up recently as the main producer on a potential sequel to ‘Triple Frontier’ at Netflix,” Hunnam said. “So we’re working on that. It’s in its absolute infancy, but I feel like I’ve got a lot more to say about the sort of after life of military personnel. I’m really hopeful.”
This is news I never would’ve expected to hear. Triple Frontier was my most anticipated movie for so long, that when it finally showed up and it wasn’t all I expected, it was a huge disappointment. Not a bad movie, it just could’ve been so much more. John liked it more than I did.
That said, it’s highly unlikely that Netflix will actually go through with this. Sure, they might want to keep Hunnam happy, he’s one of the stars of Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon, but Netflix also seems to be pulling back on the number or projects they greenlight. We’ll see how this shakes out, but I’m curious enough that I kinda want to see how this Triple Frontier sequel could work. That cast would definitely be tough to pull together again.
With acclaimed performances in Get Out, Judas and the Black Messiah, Nope, and more, it didn’t take long for Daniel Kaluuya to show he’s one of today’s strongest actors. Could he be just as effective as a filmmaker? We’re about to find out, as Kaluuya’s directorial debut, The Kitchen, is coming to Netflix next month.
Kaluuya’s debut is a dystopian sci-fi film set in a future London where the wealth gap has been stretched to the breaking point. The have-nots are relegated to a community called The Kitchen, where we follow two people struggling against a system that is stacked against them.
The film marks Kaluuya’s directorial debut, but he’s not alone. He co-directs alongside Kibwe Tavares, and co-wrote the script with Joe Murtagh. Kaluuya also produces the film, and it’s clear this is a story he has strong feelings about.
Leading the cast is Kane Robinson, joined by Jedaiah Bannerman, Hope Ikpoku Jr, Ian Wright, BackRoad Gee, Cristale, Teija Kabs, and Demmy Ladipo.
Here’s the synopsis: In a dystopian London, the gap between rich and poor has been stretched to its limits. All forms of social housing have been eradicated and only The Kitchen remains. A community that refuses to move out of the place they call home. This is where we meet a solitary Izi, living here by necessity and desperately trying to find a way out, and a 12-year-old Benji, who has lost his mother and is searching for a family. We follow our unlikely pair as they struggle to forge a relationship in a system that is stacked against them.
It was a delectable debut for Wonka, with the chocolatier musical topping all with $39M domestically, and a sweet $151M worldwide. Timothee Chalamet’s turn as Willy Wonka is earning positive reviews, as is the direction by Paul King. He might have another favorite to go along with his two Paddington movies. This being the season for family movie get-togethers, we could see Wonka leg this out for a number of weeks and into 2024.
2. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes– $5.8M/$145.2M
After five weeks, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes continues to hold strong, falling just 37%. It currently stands at $145M stateside and $289M globally.
3. The Boy and the Heron– $5.1M/$23.1M
Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron surprised everyone when it won the box office last weekend, but this week the Studio Ghibli fantasy fell back down to earth a little bit. The film is still doing exceptionally well, earning $5.1M and $23M domestic, $109M worldwide.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ raunchy Frankenstein-esque fantasy Poor Things broke into the top 10 with $1.2M after a slight theater expansion. The film is earning buzz for Emma Stone and her performance, which could lead her to her next Oscar.
Here’s a project I don’t think anyone could’ve seen coming. George Clooney and Adam Sandler are set to star together, for the first time I think, in a new Netflix comedy from Noah Baumbach. Deadline has news on the untitled film, which is part of Baumbach’s exclusive deal with Netflix.
Baumbach is, of course, coming off his co-writing gig with Greta Gerwig on Barbie, which made a few dollars this year. As for this new film, it’s being described as a “funny and emotional coming-of-age film about adults”, directed by Baumbach from a script he co-wrote with actress Emily Mortimer. That descriptor could cover just about all of Baumbach’s previous work, which includes The Squid and the Whale, Greenberg, and While We’re Young. He last directed an adaptation of White Noise for Netflix. His other films for the streamer include Marriage Story and The Meyerowitz Stories.
Sandler is also under an exclusive Netflix deal. He most recently voiced the title lizard in Leo, and starred in Murder Mystery 2 and You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah for them this year.
Coming up for Clooney is his rowing biopic The Boys in the Boat, which arrives this Christmas.
Dermot Mulroney has signed up for some interesting roles lately. One could argue he is officially in his “old man action film” with nine films released this year alone. Over the last couple of years, the quality of the parts he’s taken has varied from the well-liked Scream VI to the shaky Umma and Gone in the Night. His latest work in Ruthless doesn’t stray much from his last few roles on his IMDB page. This character is stoic with alternative ideals about moral justice which he demonstrates by protecting a young woman somehow connected to his life. While he tries to elevate the material, director, and co-writer Art Camacho’s take on this “ruthless” character comes off as more laughable than watchable.
Mulroney plays an everyday slightly disgruntled wrestling coach named Harry, though you wouldn’t know it from the first scene. While watching a movie, he admonishes a young man for groping his date without consent, something that escalates in the parking lot. Harry breaks the kid’s arm, and then asks him if he has health insurance before offering him a ride to the hospital.
From there, his daughter is killed by her abuser and he returns to the hallowed halls of a high school gym. There he reluctantly connects with student Catia (Melissa Diaz) who is being abused by her step-father and neglected by her mother. When she is eventually trafficked by her father to a criminal organization run by Dale Remington (Jeffy Fahey), Harry does whatever he can to bring her home from Las Vegas no matter the consequences.
I’ve said on this site before that when a film has more than three writers, be prepared for clunky dialogue. Four people are credited with this script besides Camacho, including James Dean Simington, Javier Reyna, and Koji Steven Sakai. With Ruthless, the dialogue is stale with an unnatural feel. There are comfortable pauses after statements and everything is said with serious sincerity. The plot feels like the low-budget version of Nobody but without any stable story structure.
While Mulroney’s commitment to the part is worth watching nothing else much is. What he chooses to do next remains unknown but here’s hoping it’s better than Ruthless.
Ruthless is in theaters and on-demand. Watch the trailer below.
As Americans, we love our meat. Hamburgers, hotdogs, bacon, and everything in between are a part of our daily lives. Sure, it helps contribute to the obesity epidemic and plenty of other poor health issues that plague our nation, but we have almost collectively come to accept that as a part of our lives. The taste (and convenience of that taste) is just something that we have agreed is acceptable. However, we sometimes don’t think about the actual cost of our food.
There have been countless documentaries about the conditions of animals that are on various farms and how it’s inhumane as well as contributes to animal diseases, which then contribute to human diseases. However, not often do we get to explore the human cost of the mass-produced, corporate conglomerate-controlled hog industry, which is what director Shawn Bannon’s latest documentary The Smell of Money explores the communities (mostly poor communities of color) that have to deal with the environmental impact of this industry.
Exec-produced by Kate Mara and Oscar-winners Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe, The Smell of Money spends most of its time with Elsie Herring, a citizen in Duplin County, NC whose family has owned their land for more than 100 years. After becoming free from slavery, her ancestors purchased land and have been living there with no issues for that time. However, in the late 1990s North Carolina saw a massive boom in their farming industry and many Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) started popping up all over Eastern North Carolina, and for the past 30 years the industry has transformed that region, and the people who live there believe it’s for the worse.
In addition to Elsie, The Smell of Money interviews a wide range of people in Rural North Carolina communities as they detail how their lives have been affected by the hog industry and their legal battles. Everyone from water testers, lawyers representing plaintiffs, academics, Robert F Kennedy Jr., Corey Booker, and countless others. One very interesting subject is Don Webb a former hog farmer who saw the error of his ways by saying “A good American won’t intentionally stink up another man’s home” and then dedicated his life to fighting back against the hog industry.
The Smell of Money explores the conditions of these “factory farms” that in addition to the inhumane treatment of the hogs on these farms, it spends a great deal of time exploring the (lack of) hog waste treatment on these farms. Instead of using the environmentally friendly (and more expensive) way of cleaning and disposing of hog carcasses and their waste, they instead opt to save a few bucks by creating “lagoons” to store the waste in as well as “recycling” the wastewater for fertilizer for their farms. However, this causes problems for the people who live near these factory farms as there is not only a permanent stench in their communities, but sickness in the residents in those communities that’s often ignored.
And not often do many documentaries explore environmental racism. It’s another weird thing we collectively have just accepted. Corporations that pollute often do their polluting in communities of color. Poor black, brown, and Indigenous people don’t have a lot of political power or their own lobbyists to advocate on their behalf. That’s why The Smell of Money spending so much time with Elsie Herring and many activists is so refreshing. We get to see on a local level the damage the hog industry does, but we also get to see the activism, organization, and resilience of the people on the ground level as they wage a decades-long fight for accountability.
The Smell of Money did reach out to Smithfield Foods (the corporation that ran the factory farms), but of course, they declined to comment. In fact, only one hog farmer was even brave enough to be the subject of the documentary. So as a result, the film is very one-sided regarding what is wanted to discuss. But truth be told, this issue is very straightforward and doesn’t need to be a “both sides” issue.
The Smell of Money is also a very organic documentary as it follows the subjects in real-time. Many of the plaintiff’s court cases are filmed as well as their reactions and frustrations. Another aspect of the film that really hits hard with it being a real-time filmed film is that a few of the interview subjects succumb to illnesses they developed because of the hog industry and pass away. Because we get to spend some time and learn about these people, it’s heartbreaking when they pass away, and you can get just as emotional as their family members are. The Smell of Money also gets impacted by the COVID pandemic as many of the interview subjects remind the camera crew that the Swine Flu outbreak was a result of factory farming in Eastern North Carolina so they weren’t surprised that a global pandemic could happen.
The Smell of Money is an emotional, honest, and wonderful exploration of people often neglected and taking it upon themselves to fight for their rights and the rights of their community: to exist. They aren’t asking for anyone to lose their jobs, they just don’t want to die and dedicate their lives to improving their communities, and that’s one of the worthwhile causes.
The Smell of Money is currently available in select theaters and On Demand.
It’s like the recent strikes never happened at all, because studios are happily throwing down big money to land superstar projects. Ryan Reynolds is particularly in demand, it seems, with Deadline reporting that Calamity Hustle, the action-comedy he’s in with Channing Tatum, going to Warner Bros. after another bidding war. This follows on recent news of Netflix out-bidding other studios for an untitled Reynolds heist flick directed by Shawn Levy.
Calamity Hustle reunites Tatum with directors Adam and Aaron Nee, who he worked with on The Lost City. The tone is being described as similar to Lethal Weapon and Die Hard. Reynolds plays a cop estranged from his brother, a criminal played by Tatum. When Tatum’s character gets involved with a holiday diamond heist, Reynolds must find his bro before those he ripped off do.
Add Calamity Hustle to Reynolds’ busy slate of projects, which include the aforementioned heist movie, John Krasinski’s imaginary friend comedy IF, and something called Deadpool 3. Actually, there’s a chance you’ll see Tatum in that last film, too, finally playing that Gambit role he was meant to years ago. The two previously came face-to-face in a funny Free Guy scene that Tatum made a cameo in.
Have you ever heard of the movie trope of the “magical Negro” character? An example would be Will Smith in The Legend of Bagger Vance or Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile. They are Black supporting characters, always unnaturally good and pure, who come to the aid of white protagonists and impart valuable lessons. Well, that trope gets parodied in a fun way in The American Society of Magical Negroes, which is sure to be one of the biggest titles debuting at Sundance next month.
Writer-director Kobi Libii’s film stars Justice Smith as a young man who is recruited into a secret group of magical Black people whose lives are dedicated to the sole purpose of making white lives better. And that becomes all the more important when you’re Black and living in a world of extreme white fragility.
As one character played by David Alan Grier says, “What’s the most dangerous animal in the world? White people when they feel uncomfortable.”
Also in the cast are An-Li Bogan, Drew Tarver, Michaela Watkins, Aisha Hinds, Tim Baltz, Rupert Friend, and Nicole Byer.
Here’s the official synopsis: THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MAGICAL NEGROES is a fresh, satirical comedy about a young man, Aren, who 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.
