I post the fake Grindhouse trailer for Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving every single year during on the holiday. The reason? Well, because I love the idea of a killer pilgrim stalking his prey on Turkey Day, but also because it seemed for the longest time that an actual feature film would never happen. But that has now changed, and Thanksgivingarrives with a full helping of blood, death, and stuffing.
The holiday slasher flick stars Patrick Dempsey, Nell Verlaque, TikToker Addison Rae, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Milo Manheim, Gina Gershon, Tim Dillon and Rick Hoffman.
What’s cool about this is that much of the original trailer appears to have made it into the full-length version, like the frolicking cheerleader and the gory parade massacre. Gone is the gritty grindhouse aesthetic in favor of something that looks a lot slicker and polished. Nothing wrong with that.
Here’s the synopsis: After a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy, a mysterious Thanksgiving-inspired killer terrorizes Plymouth, Massachusetts – the birthplace of the infamous holiday.
Thanksgiving carves its way into theaters on November 17th, right on time. Check out the real trailer below, followed by the original faux version.
A background in documentaries is often a good basis for a career in narrative filmmaking, especially at crafting intelligent, informative, and entertaining biopics. Directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin have exactly that experience with hard-hitting docs such as Free Solo, Meru, and Wild Life to their credit. And now they turn their attention to Nyad, a narrative sports drama with a stellar cast led by Annette Bening and Jodie Foster.
Bening stars as the real-life Diana Nyad, who in 1979 at the age of 60, takes on the personal goal of swimming the 110 miles from Cuba to Florida.
Also in the cast is Rhys Ifans. The screenplay is by Julia Cox, based on Nyad’s autobiography Find A Way.
Here’s the synopsis: A remarkable true story of tenacity, friendship and the triumph of the human spirit, NYAD recounts a riveting chapter in the life of world-class athlete Diana Nyad. Three decades after giving up marathon swimming in exchange for a prominent career as a sports journalist, at the age of 60, Diana (four-time Academy Award nominee Annette Bening) becomes obsessed with completing an epic swim that always eluded her: the 110 mile trek from Cuba to Florida, often referred to as the “Mount Everest” of swims. Determined to become the first person to finish the swim without a shark cage, Diana goes on a thrilling, four-year journey with her best friend and coach Bonnie Stoll (two-time Academy Award winner Jodie Foster) and a dedicated sailing team.
Will Vasarhelyi and Chin find the same success with their narrative feature debut as they have crafting documentaries? Nyadrecently had its world premiere at Telluride, and will open in theaters on October 20th. The film will then head to Netflix on November 3rd.
The last time Ozark star Julia Garner teamed with filmmaker Kitty Green it was for The Assistant, one of the most chilling films to emerge out of the post-Weinstein #MeToo period. And now they are reunited for the TIFF premiere of The Royal Hotel, an outback thriller that also stars The Matrix alums Jessica Henwick and Hugo Weaving.
Here’s the synopsis: Americans Hanna (Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) are best friends backpacking in Australia. After they run out of money, Liv, looking for an adventure, convinces Hanna to take a temporary live-in job behind the bar of a pub called The Royal Hotel in a remote Outback mining town. Bar owner Billy (Hugo Weaving) and a host of locals give the girls a riotous introduction to Down Under drinking culture but soon Hanna and Livy find themselves trapped in an unnerving situation that grows rapidly out of their control.
The cast also features Toby Wallace, Ursula Yovich, Daniel Henshall, James Frecheville, and Herbert Nordrum also star.
As unbelievable as that plot sounds, Green based it on true events. She co-wrote the screenplay with Australian filmmaker Oscar Redding.
Neon will release The Royal Hotel into theaters on October 6th.
An all-new generation of Spy Kids are here! I mean, Robert Rodriguez can’t very well use the same kids from 2011’s Spy Kids: All the Time in the World, can he? With Spy Kids: Armageddon, Rodriguez reboots the franchise with a cast led by Gina Rodriguez, Zachary Levi, Everly Carganilla, and Connor Esterton.
The basic premise remains the same, as a family of super spies take on a dangerous megalomaniac. Billy Magnussen plays the villain, a megalomaniacal video game designer who unleashes a computer virus giving him control of the world’s technology.
Also in the cast are DJ Cotrona and Fabiola Andujar. Robert Rodriguez directs, as he has every Spy Kids movie, and co-wrote the script with his son, Racer.
This is the second Spy Kids project that Rodriguez has done with Netflix, following the animated series Spy Kids: Mission Critical.
Here’s the synopsis: When the children of the world’s greatest secret agents unwittingly help a powerful Game Developer unleash a computer virus that gives him control of all technology, they must become spies themselves to save their parents and the world.
Spy Kids: Armageddon hits Netflix on September 22nd.
With the arrival of the fall festival season, we’re getting a bunch of new trailers for films set to make their world premiere. One that has flown a bit under the radar is Quiz Lady, a new comedy starring Sandra Oh and Awkwafina. With those two set for the lead roles, don’t expect it to be overlooked for very long.
Set to have its world premiere at TIFF, Quiz Lady centers on two sisters in a dysfunctional family, who must utilize one’s gameshow obsession to turn their lives around.
The film is directed by Jessica Yu, who is mostly known for her work in documentaries such as Misconception, but did direct the sports comedy Ping Pong Playa.
Jason Schwartzman, Holland Taylor, Tony Hale, and Will Ferrell have roles in the film, while Ferrell is also aboard as a producer.
Netflix had been the film’s original home, but when they dropped it 20th Century Studios jumped in. Now Quiz Lady will be released as a Hulu exclusive on November 3rd.
Here’s the synopsis: In “Quiz Lady,” a brilliant but tightly wound, gameshow-obsessed young woman, Anne, and her estranged, train-wreck of a sister Jenny, must work together to help cover their mother’s gambling debts. When Anne’s beloved dog is kidnapped, they set out on a wild, cross-country trek to get the cash the only way they know how: by turning Anne into a bona-fide gameshow champion.
It’s great to see that Jamie Foxx is so busy lately, following his recovery from a life-threatening health scare. Not only did he have the sci-fi film They Cloned Tyrone, he also scored the role of God in an upcoming comedy. And now he’ll also be at TIFF with The Burial, a legal drama set to make its world premiere at the festival.
Foxx stars with Tommy Lee Jones in a film about the owner of a small funeral home business who enlists a smooth-talking attorney to help take on a corrupt industry. The film is based on a real-life underdog story captured in Jonathan Hart’s 1999 New Yorker article.
Behind the camera is Maggie Betts, who is probably best known for directing 2017’s Novitiate with Margaret Qualley.
The cast includes Jurnee Smollett, Mamoudou Athie, and Pamela Reed, with Bill Camp, and Alan Ruck.
This one has been in the works for years, and at one point had Alexander Payne in talks to direct. But it didn’t really get moving until Betts came aboard, working from a script by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Doug Wright.
Here’s the synopsis: Inspired by true events, when a handshake deal goes sour, funeral home owner Jeremiah O’Keefe (Academy Award® winner Tommy Lee Jones) enlists charismatic, smooth-talking attorney Willie E. Gary (Academy Award® winner Jamie Foxx) to save his family business. Tempers flare, and laughter ensues as the unlikely pair bond while exposing corporate corruption and racial injustice in this inspirational, triumphant story.
The Burial opens in theaters on October 6th, followed by Prime Video on October 13th.
Tonight is going to be huge at TIFF, and not just because it’s the Toronto festival’s kickoff. The Opening Night film is going to be a special one, as legendary Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki returns with his first movie in a decade, The Boy and the Heron.
While the title references the 1937 novel of the same name by Genzaburō Yoshino, which plays a pivotal role in the film, Miyazki is presenting an original story set in 1943 Japan during the Pacific War. A young boy coping with the death of his mother, a move to a new town, and his father’s remarriage, encounters a talking grey heron who leads him into a fantastical alternate world.
Miyazaki famously retired more than a decade ago with 2013’s The Wind Rises believed to be his final movie. Much to his millions of fans, the retirement was short-lived. This film has been a long time in the making.
Here’s the synopsis: A young boy named Mahito
yearning for his mother
ventures into a world shared by the living and the dead.
There, death comes to an end,
and life finds a new beginning.
A semi-autobiographical fantasy
about life, death, and creation,
in tribute to friendship,
from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki.
The Boy and the Heron will hit theaters and IMAX on December 8th, following an appearance at New York Film Festival.
The Boys is quite simply one of the best shows on TV. Ultra-violence, abundant humor and stinging social commentary (that seems to slip right by those it’s targeted to) mixed together in a superhero blender delivering something the likes of which we had never seen on TV before. Sooo, obviously we were going to get a spin-off…enter Gen V. Now the idea of a spin-off to a loved property is always dicey, more so when it’s a spin-off of a property that’s an adaptation in the first place.
Not to worry, Gen V isn’t exactly going off book with it’s plot, the story is pulled (somewhat) straight from the 4th volume of Garth Ennis’s beloved series, an arc called We Gotta Go Now. While we’ve yet to see how closely they follow the source material, which was a rip on the X-Men, the trailer Amazon released today shows that they have at least some of the core features right.
It’s hard to say that gratuitous violence, vulgarity, and nudity are important to a story, but in the case of The Boys it really just is. Take that away and you just have another superhero story, albeit one smarter then most. That’s where I’m questioning Gen V‘s ability to mimic the world created by Garth Ennis on the page and Eric Kripke on the screen.
As you’ll see in the trailer below there’s plenty of violence and a cartoonish amount of blood but other then that it REALLY feels like any other standard CW type show. The dialogue and characters don’t seem to have the edge that Billy Butcher and co do…and that could be the shows downfall. If that’s the case, that it’s just Gossip Girl, with superpowers and a metric ton of blood then this thing is going to fall flat, and hard.
I’m trying to withhold my negativity until I see at least a full episode but you should check out the trailer below and see for yourself. Let me know in the comments…am I off?
Official Synopsis:
From the world of “The Boys” comes “Gen V,” which explores the first generation of superheroes to know that their super powers are from Compound V. These heroes put their physical and moral boundaries to the test competing for the school’s top ranking.
After facing the Children of the Corn in this year’s reboot, Elena Kampouris finds herself in the crosshairs of a serial killer in the new thriller, Vindicta! The film sees her paired up with Lord of the Rings icon Sean Astin and Entourage‘s Jeremy Piven.
The edge-of-your-seat thriller is directed by Sean McNamara, best known for films such as On a Wing and a Prayer and Soul Surfer.
Here’s the synopsis: When a city is terrorized by a sadistic serial killer, a seasoned detective and a newly recruited paramedic are forced into a deadly game of vengeance, only to discover the key to stopping the bloodshed lies in unlocking the truth of their own haunted pasts. Elena Kampouris (Children of the Corn), Sean Astin (The Lord of the Rings franchise), and Jeremy Piven (Entourage) star in this edge-of-your-seat thriller from the director of On a Wing and a Prayer.
Travis Nelson (The Recruit), Daniel Cudmore (Twilight), Jaime M. Callica (Ruthless), Bradley Stryker (Crawlspace), and Karolina Cubitt (Autumn in the City) are also in the cast.
Vindicta opens in select theaters and digital on October 6th.
The Middleburg Film Festival continues to be the gold standard for cinephiles here in the DMV, and that will not change in 2023. The first round of movies and award honorees have been set as the festival prepares to return for the 11th time, running from October 19th-22nd.
Opening Night at Middleburg will be led by George C. Wolfe’s civil rights drama, Rustin, which stars Colman Domingo as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, while also being ostracized by his own community over his homosexuality. The film has Comingo possibly eyed for his first Best Actor Oscar nomination.
Leading the Saturday Centerpiece will be Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, a reunion with his Sideways star Paul Giamatti. Starring Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and Dominic Sessa, the ’70s-set film centers on a grumpy teacher at a New England prep school asked to stay behind over Christmas break to watch over some students. He forges an unlikely bond with one of them, as well as the school cook who has just lost a son in Vietnam.
Another prestigious film on the slate is Emerald Fennell’s follow-up to Promising Young Woman. The Oxford-set Saltburn, led by Oscar nominee Barry Keoghan and Euphoria’s Jacob Elordi, follows Oliver Quick, a normal guy until his world gets turned upside down while at Oxford University. It’s there that he meets Felix Catton, played by Euphoria’s Jacob Elordi, who invites Oliver to his family’s estate in Saltburn.
J.A. Bayona’s survival thriller Society of the Snow will also be part of the upcoming Middleburg slate. The film composed by Oscar winner Michael Giacchino centers on the Uruguayan 1972 Andes flight disaster, carrying a rugby team headed to Chile.
In addition, the directors of all three films will be receiving special awards at the festival. The Impact Award will go to Rustin director George C. Wolfe for his efforts in shedding light on Bayard Rustin’s story, which has largely been overlooked. Alexander Payne will receive the Director Spotlight Award, which has previously been awarded to Wolfe along with Noah Baumbach and Kenneth Branagh. The Agnès Varda Trailblazing Film Artist Award will be awarded to Emerald Fennell, joining prior honorees Gina Prince-Bythewood, Chloe Zhao, and Ann Dowd.
The festival’s popular Distinguished Composer Award will be awarded to Oscar winner Michael Giacchino, joining previous honorees Nicholas Britell, Carter Burwell, Terence Blanchard, Kris Bowers, and Diane Warren.
There will also be a panel of several top Ukrainian filmmakers, discussing their recent works and showcasing the country’s distinct and growing film industry which plays a critical role in expressing their cultural identity. This is accomplished in collaboration with the U.S. Department of State and the United States’ flagship film diplomacy program, the American Film Showcase.
