How much do the world of high-priced art and the criminal underworld have in common? In The Kill Room, filmmaker Nicol Paone directs Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, Joe Manganiello, Maya Hawke, Debi Mazar, and more in the art world satire made available digitally on November 3rd.
The film stars Thurman as Patrice, a struggling art gallery owner whose love of art is being crushed by her need to pay the bills and please her shrinking clientele base. Thurman is reunited with Pulp Fiction co-star Jackson who plays Gordon, a Jewish crimelord and bakery owner who comes up with a money-laundering scheme that could save her gallery. All they need to do is have his hitman colleague Reggie (Manganiello) paint something that she could “sell” for a high price. But what happens when Reggie’s scribbles become the buzz of the industry, and everybody is dying for a piece of his work?
I had a chance to speak with Paone about The Kill Room, her start in comedy as a Groundlings alumna, her move to filmmaking, and how Uma Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson came to star in her movie.
You can check out my review of The Kill Roomhere, and please check out the interview with Nicol Paone below!
Somewhere out there the two really big fans of Me Time are smiling, because this morning sees the release of trailers for new films led by both Mark Wahlberg (The Family Plan) and his co-star in that 2022 comedy, Kevin Hart. In Hart’s case, he’s leading Netflix’s upcoming heist comedy, Lift, which finds him leading an international band of thieves on an impossible job.
Would you trust an impossible heist to Kevin Hart?
As seen in the trailer for Lift, Hart plays Cyrus Whittaker, whose team is tasked with their biggest score yet. Only this job is going to need to be pulled off at 40,000 feet aboard a passenger plane.
Joining Hart are a bunch of well-known co-stars with a lot of franchise experience, and that’s probably not a coincidence. Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Loki), Vincent D’Onofrio (Daredevil), Úrsula Corberó (Snake Eyes), Billy Magnussen (No Time to Die), Jacob Batalon (Spider-Man trilogy), Jean Reno (The Professional), Sam Worthington (Avatar), and Burn Gorman (Pacific Rim) co-star.
Behind the camera is another guy with a ton of experience with action flicks, F. Gary Gray, who directed The Fate of the Furious, The Italian Job, and more.
The synopsis is appropriately light: An international heist crew led by Cyrus Whitaker (Kevin Hart) races to lift $500 million in gold from a passenger plane at 40,000 feet.
You know Netflix is dying for there to be sequels. We’ll see if it’s possible when Lifthits the streamer on January 12th 2024.
While Tom Cruise has stayed true to his death-defying path, Mark Wahlberg has made the transition from action star to star of family-friendly comedies. Wahlberg still has fans who undoubtedly still want to see him be the tough guy, and that’s where a movie like The Family Plan comes in, because in this Apple TV+ original he gets to be both a suburban dad and an elite assassin.
Wahlberg gets the best of both worlds in The Family Plan, playing a husband and father of three kids, living a life of domesticated bliss. But that’s only half of his story, because dear old Dad is basically James Bond, and when his past comes back to haunt him it threatens to expose the secret to his family.
Joining Wahlberg in the cast is Michelle Monaghan, who has also done her fair share of action flicks and family comedies. They’re joined by the always-awesome Maggie Q, Saïd Taghmaoui, Ciaran Hinds, Zoe Colletti, and Van Crosby.
The film is directed by veteran TV filmmaker Simon Cellan Jones, who recently helmed episodes of See, Jessica Jones, and The Expanse.
Here’s the synopsis: Dan Morgan (Mark Wahlberg) loves his quiet suburban life as a devoted husband, father of three and successful car salesman. But that’s only half the story. Decades earlier, he was an elite government assassin tasked with eliminating the world’s deadliest threats. When enemies from his past track him down, Dan packs his unsuspecting wife (Michelle Monaghan), angsty teen daughter, pro-gamer teen son and adorable 10-month-old baby into their minivan and takes off on an impromptu cross-country road trip to Las Vegas. Determined to protect his family — while treating them to the vacation of a lifetime — Dan must put his long-dormant skills into action, without revealing his true identity.
It’s been a tough year for Marvel with lower box offices and more criticism aimed at their Disney+ programs. But what’s at the root of this all of a sudden? One of the many complaints is that there is simply too much content out there, and it feels like fans need to watch everything just to keep up with MCU continuity. Disney is taking steps to change that by shelving some projects and delaying others, but with the release of Echonext year we’re seeing another major change: the introduction of Marvel Spotlight.
The trailer for Echo, a spinoff of the Hawkeye series centered on deaf Native American assassin Maya Lopez, is only days old. And recently there was a special screening for the Choctaw Nation’s annual Powwow. Marvel.com chronicled the event, and in the article it mentions that Echo is the first that’s part of the Marvel Spotlight line, a sub-brand designed to tell smaller, character-focused stories with no overt connections to the larger MCU.
So it doesn’t quite sound like they’re pulling an “Elseworlds” in the same way DC is doing with The Batman and Joker, in which they are completely isolated, standalone stories. It sounds as if Echo will be set in the MCU but the story will be free from having to acknowledge, say, stuff going on with the Avengers. It’s similar to what Marvel did during the Netflix years, where shows such as Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and The Defenders existed within the MCU but never had any storyline connection to it.
“Marvel Spotlight gives us a platform to bring more grounded, character-driven stories to the screen, and in the case of ‘Echo,’ focusing on street-level stakes over larger MCU continuity,” explained Marvel Studios’ Head of Streaming Brad Winderbaum. “Just like comics fans didn’t need to read ‘Avengers’ or ‘Fantastic Four’ to enjoy a ‘Ghost Rider’ Spotlight comic, our audience doesn’t need to have seen other Marvel series to understand what’s happening in Maya’s story.”
This makes sense from a marketing standpoint. On a creative level, they could’ve done this and not made a big deal out of it. But Marvel needs those fans turned off by the excessive MCU continuity to know there are shows out there where they don’t have to think about it.
That said, I also think this will turn off people who are 100% invested in the MCU, because they’ll feel like Echo is a show they can ignore. We’ll have to see which way the wind blows on this one.
Echo debuts on January 10th 2024 with all five episodes available on Disney+ and Hulu.
An especially slow weekend must have factored in but, critics be damned, the people love those funky animatronics. The film industry has definitely seen a backslide post-COVID, making FNAF’s (as the kids call it) $100M in two weeks an even bigger accomplishment.
2. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour– $13.5M/$166M
3. Killers of the Flower Moon– $7M/$52.3M
After a huge 61% drop last week Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest seems to have stopped the bleeding, losing only 24% of it’s audience from last week and allowing the extra-long historical epic to hold on to it’s third place spot. Honestly, I can’t remember a time that all three top films in the box office didn’t change from one week to the next, I suppose that speaks to the lack of options out for viewers right now.
4. Priscilla– $5M/$5.3M
5. Radical- $2.7M
This “teacher reaches kids everyone else gave up on” drama dropped on 419 theaters in the US this week, when you consider the reach a fifth place start is pretty damn impressive.
6. The Exorcist: Believer– $2.1M/$63.1M
7. After Death– $2M/$9M
8. Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie– $1.9M/$62M
9. What Happens Later– $1.5M
Honestly, I can’t say I’m surprised by the poor start for the years first holiday-esque romance film. What can you expect when you have Meg Ryan and David Duchovny as your romantic leads. 30 years ago? Yeah, sure, but it’s been so long since either of their heydays that the 18-24 demo probably doesn’t even know who they are.
10. Freelance– $1.2M/$4.2M
OOOF! If “should have released on Netflix” was a person, it would be sitting here in the number 10 spot.
It’s tough to complain about a film that boasts Talia Ryder, Jacob Elordi, Ayo Edibiri, and Simon Rex in the cast. And audiences who saw Sean Price Williams’The Sweet East at its Cannes world premiere definitely didn’t, with the film earning strong reviews right out of the gate. And now this absurdist road trip movie is coming to theaters next month.
Here’s the official synopsis: THE SWEET EAST is a picaresque journey through the cities and woods of the Eastern seaboard of the United States. Lillian, a high school senior from South Carolina, gets her first glimpse of the wider world on a class trip to Washington, D.C. Separated from her schoolmates, she embarks on a fractured road trip in search of America. Along the way, she falls in with a variety of strange factions, each living out their own alternative realities in our present day.
How hot is that cast right now? Ryder can be seen right now in Dumb Money, while Elordi is all over the place in both Priscilla and Emerald Fennell’s upcoming thriller Saltburn. Edibiri recently starred in the comedy Bottoms, and of course fans love her from The Bear.
Also in the cast are Earl Cave, Jeremy O. Harris, Rish Shah, and Gibby Haynes.
Williams is a renowned cinematographer known for his work with Alex Ross Perry, who is aboard as an exec-producer. The film marks Williams’ directorial debut.
Fans of Godzilla, you’ve got an entire kaiju buffet to choose from. Legendary’s Monsterverse is serving up Apple series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, while Adam Wingard’s big-screen sequel Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is right around the corner. And then there’s Toho who is bringing the O.G. franchise back with Godzilla Minus One later this year.
Writer/director Takashi Yamazaki’s take is a throwback to those kaiju classics that served as a metaphor for Japan’s post-war recovery after the atomic bombings. The film takes place in the fallout of WWII when a struggling recovery is made staggeringly worse by the arrival of Godzilla, stomping flat an already-devastated country.
In this trailer there’s a very clear emphasis on the visual devastation caused by nuclear attack, and that feels like a statement that is being made. Mainly, though, Godzilla looks like an absolute monster and not like he’s destined for a cool team-up movie crossover.
Here’s the synopsis: Japan, devastated after the war, faces a new threat in the form of Godzilla. How will the country confront this impossible situation?
The film stars Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, and Yuki Yamada.
Godzilla Minus One opens in theaters on December 1st, but will be available on November 29th in select IMAX locations.
When Marvel’s Echo series arrives in January, it’ll be a game-changer for the studio and the future of Marvel projects on Disney+. Fans already know the series will star Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez, the deaf Indigenous assassin who kicked ass for the Kingpin in Hawkeye. While she is someone we are already familiar with, the TV-MA rating for the show isn’t, and will be Marvel Studios‘ first. Not only that, but the full season will drop all at once for your binge-watching pleasure, rather than new episodes dropping weekly.
Echo won’t be alone. Vincent D’Onofrio returns as Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin, her old boss. Charlie Cox suits up once again as Matt Murdock aka Daredevil, preceding his own Daredevil: Born Again series that is undergoing a creative overhaul right now.
The story finds Maya ditching New York to return to her native Oklahoma to face her family, heritage, and a tough history with Kingpin.
Looking like it sprang from the gritty Marvel Netflix period, Echo features more violence and adult content, with characters who really get hurt and really die.
Zahn McClarnon, Graham Greene, Tantoo Cardinal, Devery Jacobs, Chaske Spencer, and Cody Lightning co-star. Sydney Freeland and Catriona McKenzie act as directors.
Echo hits Disney+ and Hulu with all episodes available on January 10th 2024.
Remember Children of Men? Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 masterpiece which centered on a world where pregnancy was a thing of the past and the world broke down as a result, until there was a special and unique way that the human race could keep existing. Yeah, well director Eddie Alcazar’s latest film Divinity ain’t it. Divinity tries to borrow a little bit, concept-wise, but instead tries to remix it into its own story… with mixed results.
It takes a while to finally understand the plot of Divinity, because the film prefers to prioritize its unique visuals instead of actually telling us what the hell is going on. In fact, the first couple of minutes is almost silent except for some brief (but not specific) narration by scientist Sterling Pierce (Scott Bakula) about his creation “Divinity” which is the key to human longevity in a world where 97% of the planet is infertile. By the time Divinity begins, Sterling Prince is long dead, and his son Jaxxon (Stephen Dorff) has perfected his father’s formula which allows humans to live forever in their peak physical and mental shape. Jaxxon is living high on his father’s invention, but that all changes when he’s visited by two strangers.
Brothers (Moises Arias and Jason Genao) ironically both named Star, break into Jaxxon’s home and hold him hostage. Their goal is to explore immortality in a different way (which unfortunately is never explicitly told to the audience, but we can guestimate that they are other-worldly), and in the process, they take Jaxxon hostage and punish him by pumping him with his father’s creation. As Jaxxon reveals, too much of a good thing is actually bad and the side-effects prove to be monstrous and disastrous.
At the same time, a call girl named Nikita (Karrueche Tran) was ordered by Jaxxson before he was attacked by the Star brothers (even though he just finished having sex with another call girl) and she quickly befriends the two, and even becomes their accomplice as they keep pumping Jaxxon up with the miracle drug. This causes Jaxxon to start morphing into a grotesque muscle-bound version of himself. He gets so jacked that muscles grow over his eyes as well. The body horror of Divinity is actually quite unique and interesting. There’s a stranger dream sequence Nikita has after having sex with the Star brothers that’s eerie as we get to see strange squid-faced people. Yeah, this movie gets weird. Speaking of weird, there’s also a cult of women who seem to be able to appear and disappear at whim and search for other women to recruit. Led by their leader Ziva (Bella Thorne), these women just happen to come and go as they search for other women. Their storyline isn’t ever made clear in Divinity, other than to try and explain this world, and to help pad the runtime for the film.
Having Divinity be almost 100% in black and white is a gift and a curse for the film. The scenes shot during the night don’t translate well as the lighting feels off. However, it’s clear that Divinity was going for a throwback indie vibe for the film, and in doing that, it’s a successful pull-off. That said, Divinity seems to favor having a unique visual aesthetic, as it is severely lacking in the overall narrative of the film. While the endgame is finally revealed, it’s too little, too late as the film did not deliver story-wise. A lot of the marketing materials claim the film is a “cult classic” in the making, and it feels like the film was actually going for the visual look of the past to try and earn that title, but it fails to actually earn it.
That said, this could possibly be a hit with the college crowd who might drink/smoke/ingest some substance/alcohol to help make the viewing experience of Divinity a little better, but for those that don’t this may not work 100%. The film also dials it up to 11 on the violence/sex side of things, so for those that enjoy that, you’ll get your fill as well. But for the most part, Divinity seems like a worthy attempt at trying something completely different, it just failed in the execution.
Daisy Ridley will probably always be known for her role as Rey in the Star Wars movies. It doesn’t really matter how long of a career she has, that sci-fi/fantasy franchise dominates. Finding quality roles outside of that has been Ridley’s problem ever since. The Marsh King’s Daughtermight sound like the title to another kind of fantasy tale, and the isolated, forest setting of the film’s opening has a storybook quality to it. But this is no fairy tale, but a Cape Fear-esque psychological thriller that never quite pulls itself free of the bog enough to measure up to Ridley’s measured performance.
An adaptation of Karen Dionne’s 2017 novel, The Marsh King’s Daughter centers on Helena Holbrook, who we first encounter as a tween girl played by Brooklynn Prince. Interestingly, the reality of Helena’s existence is similar to that of Prince’s most famous character, The Florida’s Project‘s Moonie, who believed she was living an idyllic existence while the reality was considerably uglier. For Helena, the off-the-grid, hunter-gatherer life she’s had with her father Jacob (Ben Mendelsohn) and mother (Caren Pistorius) in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has been pure magic. Her father trains her to be as much of a survivalist as him; teaching her to hunt, to kill, and to “always protect your family.” So imagine how her little mind was blown to discover that the man she looked up to most was actually “the Marsh King”, a violent man who abducted her mother years earlier and forced her to bear his child. When her mother risks all to escape and Jacob is finally apprehended, Helena sees the fantasy world she was living in turn out to be a nightmare.
20 years later, and Helena is now a mother, with a caring husband in Stephen (Garrett Hedlund) and a boring office job. But time and distance have not helped her cope with the duality of her childhood memories. She remembers Jacob fondly for all of the things he taught her, but also hates him for the things he didn’t tell her. Ironically, Helena withholds the truth of her past from Stephen, who thinks she’s just a boring gal he met who moved around a lot as a kid and has an unusually large number of tattoos. This guy is sort of an idiot, but then he’s not much of a character at all, really. He’s barely there. Imagine Helena’s mental state when Jacob breaks out of prison with plans of being reunited with his daughter…well, she’s going to have to put all of those useful hunting skills to the test. But does she have the will to fight her own father?
If this movie belongs to anyone, it’s Ridley. That much should be obvious, but it needs to be said that she’s too good for this material. Directed by Neil Burger, The Marsh King’s Daughter never seems comfortable in its own kind, a little bit like Helena herself. A decision should’ve been made whether to present this story with the wild, pulpy tone a vengeful story like this demands, or to go full-blown character drama with it. Personally, I would’ve went for the former, because Ridley, with her stern jaw and surprising intensity and physicality, would make one Hell of a mama bear protecting her den. And we know that Mendelsohn can ham it up like a champ, especially when playing a creepy, manipulative baddie as he does here. He could’ve gone totally into De Niro in Cape Fear territory, and this would’ve been a more enjoyable film for it.
Instead, Ridley plays it serious, and Burger tries his best to make every scene feel weighty. But this is clearly a trimmed-down production and there simply isn’t enough time to fully sink into Helena’s struggle with the past and present. Ridley has played this kind of complex, secretive loner character before, one who is forced to fight for the new family she has found against the threat of another. Her sturdy performance here resembles Rey in a lot of ways, especially in how she internalizes Helena’s confusion and rage. Helena is someone who is always playing a role, in order to not be the semi-feral person she was raised to be. It’s genuinely fascinating to watch Ridley as she slides between Helena’s maternal side and her predatory nature.
Fans of Ridley will want to check this out for her, because there’s not much suspense to be found elsewhere. Even with the atmospheric, remote setting and the looming threat of Jacob’s return, the sense of danger simply isn’t there. Try as he might, Burger isn’t the right filmmaker to capture the muderous game of cat-and-mouse between Helena and Jacob in the very marshlands where their bond was formed. Also, this film would’ve done better to tie the bulk of the story to the threads that continue to bind father and daughter. While Jacob’s lessons ring in Helena’s head, more a direct connection was needed to drive up tension for the big showdown. Instead, Jacob is gone for large chunks of the movie, while Helena spends that time with her Native American stepdad Chuck (Gil Birmingham), who never feels like anything more than a potential target.
The Marsh King’s Daughter sells itself short in the end, abandoning any ambiguity with a finale that is disappointingly black and white. But Ridley powers through and delivers the way she always does, even if she’s still tracking down the next film that lives up to her talents.
