Over the last few days, rumors surfaced that Kenneth Branagh would be directing Disney’s live-action Gargoyles movie, and fans went wild at the prospect. Unfortunately, those rumors were quickly debunked, and fans of Branagh will just have to deal with him making more Agatha Christie mysteries for now. His latest, the spooky A Haunting in Venice, is right around the corner and a new trailer featuring its starry cast has arrived.
An adaptation of Christie’s book Hallowe’en Party, the film finds Branagh once again starring as legendary sleith, Hercule Poirot, who is retired but finds himself investigating a murder case involving a medium who claims to be able to speak with the dead.
Branagh is joined in the cast by Kyle Allen, Camille Cottin, Jamie Dornan, Tina Fey, Jude Hill, Ali Khan, Emma Laird, Kelly Reilly, Riccardo Scamarcio, and Michelle Yeoh. This is Branagh’s third Christie adaptation following Murder On the Orient Express and last year’s Death On the Nile. Both have managed to find success while unabashedly skewing for an older audience.
Here’s the synopsis: “A Haunting in Venice” is set in eerie, post-World War II Venice on All Hallows’ Eve and is a terrifying mystery featuring the return of the celebrated sleuth, Hercule Poirot. Now retired and living in self-imposed exile in the world’s most glamorous city, Poirot reluctantly attends a séance at a decaying, haunted palazzo. When one of the guests is murdered, the detective is thrust into a sinister world of shadows and secrets.
What the Hell has happened to Secret Invasion? While the earliest episodes weren’t blow-your-mind great or anything, they were superior to the two most recent episodes which just feel really bland and perfunctory. This isn’t a series that is barrelling to an exciting conclusion, but plugging away in hopes of crossing the finish line.
That said, a lot happens in a fairly short episode so let’s get to it.
Episode 4 ended with the apparent death of Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) during a Skrull attack on President Kitson (Dermot Mulroney). Of course, death has been a fickle thing in this series, used as a cliffhanger again and again. However, it isn’t long before Talos’ actual death is confirmed, and we see Kitson being wheeled into a hospital in critical condition. Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) tries to follow but he isn’t cleared, and so he sits outside, gun drawn, because he doesn’t know who he can trust. One person he definitely can’t is Rhodye (Don Cheadle), who is actually the Skrull known as Raava. Rhodey gleefully tells Fury the doctored video of him shooting Maria Hill has been leaked, and soon Fury will be the most hated man in the worldd. If there’s an upside to all of this, it’s that news reports also show Talos fighting to protect the President. His hope was always that Skrulls would earn humanity’s trust through their actions. Too bad he had to die for it.
Meanwhile, Gravik’s (Kingsley Ben-Adir) plan is falling apart. The goal was to kill Kitson and have the Russians blamed for it, but failing that, his people are starting to get fed up. Not only that, but Gravik is acting like an asshole bossing everybody around, and risking his soldiers’ lives to achieve his own goals. This leads to Pagon (Killian Scott) questioning his leadership, and Gravik responds by impaling him with his Groot powers. Ouch. Yeah, that’ll win you some loyalty points, boss man! Also, Gravik has told Raava to inform the President that he was attacked by Russians, and to reveal to him the location of New Skrullos, where Super-Skrull formula is being developed. This will lead to a US military strike on Russian soil, which would threaten the lives of the Skrulls stationed there. More loyalty points! Finally, he orders his men to seek out and kill Varra, the Skrull who is Fury’s wife Priscilla and also has a long history with Gravik. He basically spends this entire episode ordering the deaths of his own clan or just outright killing them himself.
After her bewildering absence last week, Olivia Colman returns as MI6 agent Sonya Falsworth. She gets right down to business, revealing her Director to be a Skrull by pointing a gun to his head. All she wants is the location of Dr. Rosa Dalton (Katie Finneran), who has been working on the Super-Skrull formula for Gravik. Sonya arrives there later and confronts Rosa and her husband, telling them she knows they are Skrulls and knows what they are doing. Sonya orders them taken in and their labs burned to the ground, but when Rosa’s spouse tries to fight back, Sonya shoots him point blank in the skull. Damn, she’s badass. Good use of Colman here.
Meeting G’iah (Emilia Clarke) at a safehouse in Brixton, Fury tries to talk about the death of her father. But G’iah isn’t having it, believing his death to have been in vain on a foreign planet. Fury knows she’s a Super-Skrull now; G’iah reveals that Gravik only has limited amounts of DNA for the formula. She also mentions Gravik wanting something called the Harvest, and Fury recognizes the name immediately. She leaves to give her father a proper burial, while Fury heads to Finland.
G’iah heads to Fury’s home where she encounters a wary Priscilla/Varra, who thinks the girl is working with Gravik. But she says she’s there to bury her father, and Priscilla helps her to give him a well-earned farewell. G’iah resents that he isn’t getting a much bigger send-off, but Priscilla tells her that Talos was never much for ceremony. The older woman also talks about the house and how she and Fury managed to build a life together, something G’iah doesn’t fully understand yet being so young. It’s around this time that Gravik’s men attack and are easily beaten by the two.
Did I mention that Gravik, who has shown so much loyalty to his soldiers this episode, was attacked by them? They beat him down pretty good, too, but he’s a Super-Skrull and manages to survive. He kills many of them, including Beto (Samuel Adewunmi) who is executed in front of the others, but not before Beto tells Gravik that he’s acting like a monster.
At the hospital, the President has recovered enough that Rhodey can do everything Gravik asked him to do. While the President is hesitant to call a military strike on Russian land for fear of starting WWIII, Rhodey convinces him it’s the right thing to do if they want to stop the Skrull invasion.
Good lord, there’s still more. Gravik calls up Fury like they’re old chums, and agrees to call off the military strike if Fury will give him the Harvest. It’s here that we get a cool cameo by Rick Mason, who we last saw in Black Widow played by O-T Fagbenle. Mason is there to give Fury something that he’ll need “on the other side”, and then he splits as fast as he arrived. We also learn that the SHIELD helicarrier is basically on the shelf. Good because all it ever does is crash, anyway.
Arriving in Finalnd, Fury uses masking tech similar to get past airport security with no problem. It’s like some Mission: Impossible shit, except we saw this used in the MCU already in the Captain America movies. Fury mets with Sonya, who was already cool before we learned that “Audacity” by Stormzy is in her car playlist. Fury wants to know why Sonya was trusting Rhodey with so much information, and she’s shocked to learn that he’s actually a Skrull. Apparently, the super spy was the last to know.
Fury then finally reveals why won’t call in the Avengers for help. He says this mission is “personal” and the world can’t keep depending on superheroes to do everything for them. He says the only power he’s ever needed was “planted between my ears by a single mother” and “wrapped around my finger by a woman who’s far greater” than he’ll ever be. Fury also reveals what Harvest really is. In the wake of Avengers: Endgame, nearly all of the Avengers spilled their blood in the fighting. Afterwards, Fury had a stealth team of Skrulls, which included Gravik, sweep in and collect all of that DNA. Fury speculates this is when Gravik came up with his Super-Skrull idea. Fury also reveals to Sonya that his wife is a Skrull, and Finland is where they liked to honeymoon. It’s also here that Fury has one of many fake tombstones with his name on them. The Harvest is hidden within one. Retrieving it, Fury goes inside of a small cathedral and retrieves his familiar leather suit and eyepath, along with a gun. It’s time to finish this war.
As you can see, there’s a ton of shit going on here and all crammed into an episode less than 40-minutes long. Because of that, nothing feels like it’s given the proper time to breathe. The big emotional moments don’t have the same impact. This is when we should be dealing with the devastating loss of Talos, but it kinda feels like an afterthought. Gravik’s sudden turn from a freedom fighter to a brutal slayer of his own kind is too sudden to make sense. Fury’s past machinations coming back to haunt him is a good twist, though, and he’s great when paired up with Colman’s Sonya Falsworth. More of these two elite spies working together, please.
With just one episode to go, Secret Invasion has actually set itself up for a straight-forward, exciting finale. While this one was overstuffed, it was in service of clearing the decks for Fury and Gravik to have their showdown, and with a bunch of Avengers super-powers in the mix it could be awesome. I also really want to see how this whole deal with Rhodey shakes out. How long has he been replaced and where is the real one? That answer might not come next week, or it could be teased for the future Armor Wars movie.
What does it mean to be a woman? It’s a question as complicated and cliche as asking, “Who really is Barbie?” Greta Gerwig attempts to answer both in her weird, vibrant feminist musical comedy named after Mattel’s infamous doll. Starring a stirring Margot Robbie and a delicious Ryan Gosling, Barbieis an imperfect nostalgic ride through women’s most existential questions, something you wouldn’t expect from the most anticipated film of the summer.
When we first meet Barbie, narrator Helen Mirren describes the doll’s initial impact on the toy market. Before spinning off into different careers, colors, and iterations, its first release disrupted the type of play young girls were doing. Instead of baby dolls, which mimicked motherhood, you had a statuesque woman with curves and boobs to introduce womanhood. With a clever nod to 2001: A Space Odyssey, we are then spun off to Barbieland, where everything is perfect and bespoke songs are the norm.
As Stereotypical Barbie™, Robbie’s character supports the rest of her Barbie sisters as they rule their world with strength, knowledge, and feminist ideology. All truly believe that the real world’s systematic problems were solved with their creation. Coexisting with them are the hapless and highly jealous Kens, Skippers (which we only initially see one of), a Midge, and an Allan, Ken’s best friend played wonderfully by Michael Cera.
In the first 30 or so minutes of the film, Gerwig’s production team makes it known they are not here to play. This set and colorization is a feast for the eyes. Whether you’re a Barbie fan or casually played as a child, there’s something to connect to. From the sticker decal that replaces the contents of the fridge to the waterless shower and pool one can walk on, Gerwig, her team, and co-writer Noah Baumbach have thought about every detail meticulously and how it functions in a kid’s world.
After another perfect, pink day, Barbie starts to have feelings of overwhelming doubt. She starts thinking about mortality and discovers cellulite on her thighs. After expressing her concern to her peers, she goes off to get answers from Weird Barbie (a pitch-perfect Kate McKinnon), who was ostracized from the rest after someone played with her too hard, cutting her hair and drawing on her face.
She tells Barbie that she needs to go to the real world to connect with the little girl who is playing with her, in order to make her existential crisis go away. As Barbie travels, Ken (Gosling) hitches a ride with her, much to her annoyance. Gerwig described Gosling’s performance as “some combination of Marlon Brando meets Gene Wilder meets John Barrymore meets John Travolta.” This couldn’t be a more accurate description. He steals and savors every scene he is in with naïveté and himbo energy. His dumb emotionality is one of the smartest things I’ve ever seen onscreen. His wide-eyed, confused and slightly angry expressions bring laughs you weren’t expecting, where you weren’t expecting them.
When they make it to the real world, Barbie has trouble adjusting and finding the child playing with her. Her flamboyant presence causes a stir at Mattel and a group of execs led by Will Ferrel go to find her. The “real world” storyline leaves much to be desired, as not a lot of time is spent there. I was expecting more of Amy Adams in Enchanted Energy. Instead, Barbie finds her owner (Ariana Greenblatt) and realizes that her very big feelings belong to her child’s mother, a Mattel secretary named Gloria.
Meanwhile, wanting to be loved by Barbie and resenting her for not returning his feelings, Ken finds the patriarchy of real world absolutely wonderful and uses it to gain the upper hand on his should-be lady love. As everyone returns to Barbieland, they find that it was not the same as they left it.
Laugh-out-loud funny, Barbie has some of the best pop-culture jokes of the year. Its self-awareness is what makes the film special. It’s not afraid to call out its source material for its past of unrealistic body standards and problematic history. The nods to 1950s musicals and painted set pieces bring back a level of craftsmanship onscreen we haven’t seen in years. The film takes risks, the main one being a movie about a toy not aimed at children. Overall its weird, but wonderfully so.
However, Barbie doesn’t carry the emotional weight it thinks it does. Late into the film, America Ferrera delivers a beautifully written (if not derivative) speech on the complexities and contradictions of womanhood. Up until that point, we’ve spent very little time with her character, and with no real scenes to back up the speech’s emotionality, it doesn’t pack the desired punch. Margot Robbie, though fully dedicated to her role, fades slightly into the pink background when up against Gosling’s irresistible Kenergy and the film’s feminist ideals.
With so much anticipation and too many clips released in the last three weeks, your mileage may vary on Barbie. But its imperfections culminate into a brilliantly thought-out tribute to an iconic piece of American culture. Gerwig’s vision isn’t just a fun way to embody womanhood but it captures what it’s like to be alive: beautiful and overwhelming.
Barbie is in theaters Friday. Watch the trailer below.
Growing up in the 80’s and being exposed to movies like Beastmaster, The Neverending Story and Princess Bride I figured quicksand would be more of a worry as I got older. The terror of being trapped in a situation where even the slightest fight would drag you further down terrified me. As I got older, I came to realize that quicksand isn’t what film makes it out to be. In reality it is physically impossible for a human to be completely immersed in the stuff but that doesn’t stop filmmakers from using it. Judging by how often the trope is used, it’s a quick way to bring in some tension to the story and add a ticking time bomb element to the plot. That brings us to today’s offering Quicksand from director Andres Beltran.
In the midst of a divorce, a married couple travels to Colombia to meet up with a friend for a conference. Upon heading back from a hike in the rainforests, they encounter a thief attempting to steal their car. Retreating back into trees they fall in quicksand and quickly learn they need to work together in order to survive.
The majority of this film takes place in the quicksand so it keeps things confined to a small space where this separated couple needs to put their differences aside in order to get out alive. Seems like the recipe for a decent survival horror but this dialogue heavy slog just didn’t deliver. Honestly it felt like 86 minutes of marriage counseling with quicksand thrown in as an afterthought. I’ll hand it to Carolina Gaitan (Sofia) and Allan Hawco (Josh) for doing what they could with the script and creating what I thought was a pretty believable couple in the throes of divorce but that’s where it stops. I mean, yeah, being stuck in quicksand with a nightfall approaching and being surrounded by venomous snakes seems like it would be enough to create tension but it all just wasn’t enough to distract my focus from the arguing couple. If I want to nitpick, I could mention the fact that the snake used wasn’t even of the venomous variety but my biggest issue though, had to be with the inconsistencies. One minute they are easily moving around the viscous fluid while the next they are fighting for their life. With tight shots they are far from the firm ground with the wide shots showing the edge clearly within reach. Is that enough to pull me out of the story entirely? No, I can suspend my disbelief but I just found myself doing that way too much to enjoy the film. It has its moments but those moments are few and far between. I honestly wanted to like this more but there just wasn’t enough to draw me in and keep my attention.
If you’re a fan of survival horror, then by all means check this one out and judge for yourself but I, myself can’t recommend it with any kind of fervor. As of right now, you can find Quicksand streaming on Shudder and later on AMC+.
Vuk Lungulov-Klotz’s Sundance Award winner Mutt couldn’t arrive at a better time. With all of the hurtful legislation being passed arount the country impacting the LGBTQ community and specifically trans people, movies that tell trans stories are more important than ever. It doesn’t hurt that the film also features a stunning lead performance by star Lío Mehiel who won the acting award in Park City, the first trans actor ever to do so.
Mehiel stars as Feña, a trans man living his life in New York City and dealing with the reemergence of three important relationships from across various stages of his transition.
Lungulov-Klots directed and co-wrote the screenplay, earning praise for its honesty and humanistic qualities. Our review by Cortland praised the film, as well, calling it “simple, emotional, and heartbreaking.”
Here’s the synopsis: Feña, a young trans guy bustling through life in New York City, is afflicted with an incessantly challenging day that resurrects ghosts from his past. Laundromats, subway turnstiles, and airport transfers are the hectic background to this emotional drama that overlaps past, present, and future. Settling the disharmony of transitional upheaval in relationships familial, romantic, and platonic is Feña’s task at hand, and his resulting juggling act is equal parts skillful, fumbling, and honest. In negotiating his obliqueness, the poignant moments he finds between himself and others – as the distance between them closes – are warm, true, and touching.
With Disney’s release of Haunted Mansion only a couple of weeks away, a new trailer has dropped revealing new footage of the horror-comedy based on the popular amusement park ride. It’s like they’re afraid you won’t pay to see it, perhaps fearing a similar number as what Jungle Cruise got a few years ago, or Tomorrowland before it. Making movies based on attractions at Disney has been a mixed bag, with Pirates of the Caribbean cream of the crop.
LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Rosario Dawson, Chase W. Dillon, Winona Ryder, and Daniel Levy star, with Jamie Lee Curtis as Madame Leota and Jared Leto as Hatbox Ghost. Dear White People‘s Justin Simien directs from a script by Spy writer Katie Dippold.
Here’s the synopsis: Inspired by the classic theme park attraction, “Haunted Mansion” is about a woman and her son who enlist a motley crew of so-called spiritual experts to help rid their home of supernatural squatters.
With The Super Mario Bros Movie soaring past $1.3B at the box office, Illumination hopes they have a similar hit on their hands with Migration. The animated film about a family of mallards attempting to migrate to the Bahamas was penned by The White Lotus creator Mike White and features the voices of Kumail Nanjiani, Elizabeth Banks, Awkwafina, Keegan-Michael Key, and Danny DeVito.
Here’s the synopsis:The Mallard family is in a bit of rut. While dad Mack is content to keep his family safe paddling around their New England pond forever, mom Pam is eager to shake things up and show their kids—teen son Dax and duckling daughter Gwen—the whole wide world. After a migrating duck family alights on their pond with thrilling tales of far-flung places, Pam persuades Mack to embark on a family trip, via New York City, to tropical Jamaica.
As the Mallards make their way South for the winter, their well-laid plans quickly go awry. The experience will inspire them to expand their horizons, open themselves up to new friends and accomplish more than they ever thought possible, while teaching them more about each other—and themselves—than they ever imagined.
The film is directed by Benjamin Renner, who earned accolades for the 2012 animated movie Ernest & Celestine.
The Flash is getting dunked on all over again! Why is that? Because DCEU’s worst-ever flop is available now on digital, and that also means high-res video of some of the terrible CG cameos.
The entire Speed Force sequence, featuring the…well, let’s just call it a “busy” interpretation of The Flash’s power source, is online and people are killing it on social media. In particular, the Nicolas Cage scene featuring the actor suited up as what appears to be a zombie Superman.
Look, I actually like the film and I can admit Cage looks fucking weird and like Bizarro just got dug up out of the ground. The CG throughout is pretty awful, and the multiverse cameos chosen don’t even make much sense within the context of the movie, not that very many people would know that. It’ll be interesting to see if people give it a shot now that it can be watched comfortably at home. Probably not. James Gunn’s DCU isn’t far behind and all of this can be forgotten.
The Flash cameos in HD share with your friends to tell them why they shouldnt watch this fucking movie pic.twitter.com/ncKWkBIC6d
Stephen King’s scariest franchise, Pet Sematary, has dropped a first-look at the upcoming Paramount+ film, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, which serves as a prequel to the 1983 horror novel that has been adapted twice in 1989 and 2019. Fans of King can look for it to hit the streamer just in time for Halloween on October 6th.
The film marks the directorial debut of Chaos Walking writer Lindsey Beer, and takes us back to the fictional town of Ludlow, Maine. Set in 1969, the story centers on a young Jud Crandall, played by Jackson White, who has dreams of leaving his hometown behind until he unearths sinister secrets and an evil presence buried within the town’s dark past. Joining with his childhood friends, Jud must battle this terrible force that has haunted Ludlow since its founding.
Joining White in the cast are Henry Thomas, David Duchovny, Pam Grier, Forrest Goodluck, Isabella Star LaBlanc, and Natalie Alyn Lind. Beer directed and co-wrote the script with Jeff Buhler.
Check out the photos from Pet Sematary: Bloodlines below, and watch the dead come back to life on Paramount+ on October 6th.
THEY CLONED TYRONE- Pimps, clones, conspiracies, existential crisis; Juel Taylor’s directorial debut is a lot to take in, but it’s also the most fun movie of the summer and one of Netflix’s best this year. A sci-fi mystery with a heavy dose of jive-talkin’ blaxploitation, the film features go-for-broke performances by the unbeatable trio of John Boyega, Teyonah Parris, and Jamie Foxx who quietly had the best year of his career since winning the Oscar for Ray.
Juel Taylor has set an impossibly high bar for his feature-length directorial debut, the genre-bending Netflix film They Cloned Tyrone. It’s not often one can say that a film combines the best of blaxploitation with the satirical insight of Robert Townsend and the social consciousness of Jordan Peele, Boots Riley, and Donald Glover, but that’s what Taylor has done with this hilarious look at an oddball threesome who uncover a vast government conspiracy led by, who else, The Man.
The fictional neighborhood known as The Glen could’ve been ripped right out of Menace II Society, Friday, or many other films from the ’90s that sought to capture what Black life was like in the inner city. It’s here that we meet Fontaine (John Boyega), a no-nonsense drug dealer whose life is a common routine of hustling, lifting weights, buying liquor at the corner market, and jackin’ up anybody who gets in his way. That is until he pisses off the wrong guy and gets murdered, shot dead in the street, only to reawaken the next day completely unaware of what happened. He goes about his typical day, until those who actually saw him get shot, the ridiculously-pompadoured pimp Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) and his most loyal prostitute Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), freak out at his return.
One of the many joys of They Cloned Tyrone is that it’s never just one thing. While starting out a bit dark and grim, it isn’t long before mystery sets in and it steers into sci-fi territory, while also poking fun at the tools used to hold Black people down from reaching their full potential. The first time you see a commercial of Black people dancing wildly over a bucket of fried chicken, you’re already in full-blown blaxploitation mode. Liquor, hair products, and hip-hop music are also deployed to keep the people of The Glen vulnerable and stuck in this place where nothing changes and nobody ever leaves.
In the midst of all this, They Cloned Tyrone keeps you off-balance with its humor. Slick Rick, Yo-Yo, and Fontaine are such unique, wonderful characters that they are a blast to watch together. Neither Rick or Yo-Yo can ever shut up, with him dropping movie references and her pretending to be the next Nancy Drew, which comes in handy when they launch their offbeat investigation. I can’t stress just how much fun Slick Rick and Yo-Yo are together, highlighted by a scene on an elevator when they break into an impromptu rendition of Mary J. Blige’s “I’m Going Down”.
Fontaine is a bruiser, and a mopey one at that, but we come to see the tragic circumstances that have led him to be who he is. While the film often threatens to get too bizarre, Boyega’s performance as Fontaine is what keeps it steady and somewhat grounded. Fontaine represents every Black man who has let tragedy drag him down to becoming someone he never was meant to be. In a place as hopeless as The Glen, it’s easier to just go with the flow and get through the day.
Meanwhile, white people stroll around like they own the place, which they kinda do. The jokes at their expense pinpoint how bland their culture really is, which is why they appropriate it from others. In one great moment that one could easily miss, a pair of white-suited scientists discuss how flavorful boiled chicken with no seasoning really is. The only thing that’s missing is a joke about raisins in the potato salad.
Taylor, who also co-wrote the screenplay, isn’t afraid to push this already-crazy story to the edge, effectively introducing horror elements, gun battles, and a surprising twist at the conclusion. While at just over two hours there could have been some trimming down, I wouldn’t want it if it meant reducing the amount of time we get to spend with Fontaine, Slick Charles, and Yo-Yo. This makeshift band of urban gumshoes help make They Cloned Tyrone the must-see Netflix movie of the summer. Taylor’s future is a bright one, and hopefully we won’t have to wait long to see what comes next.
They Cloned Tyrone is in select theaters now, and streams on Netflix beginning July 21st.
