If there’s anything we learned from everyone’s favorite movie, the beloved global blockbuster The Flash, it’s that you shouldn’t fuck with the past. Only bad things can come from trying to fix the terrible things that make us who we are. And it’s a lesson that Judy Greer has to grapple with in Aporia, a sci-fi drama set to make its world premiere at Fantasia Fest.
Written and directed by Jared Moshé (The Ballad of Lefty Brown), the film finds Greer as a mother struggling to cope with the death of her husband in a car accident. When the chance to fix what happened and get back her life arises, she must grapple with the inevitably awful consequences.
Greer is mostly known for her comedic work, but she has long since proven herself an excellent dramatic actress. She’s joined in the cast by Payman Maadi, Faithe Herman, and Edi Gathegi who was just cast in Superman: Legacy.
At this point, there’s simply no such thing as an uninteresting Nicolas Cage role. Even his latest movie, The Retirement Plan, which has a totally generic action movie formula of the old guy who kicks ass, is worth checking out because we all know Cage is going to do some wild shit in the role.
The plot of The Retirment Plan fins Cage as an old guy, with crazy long, flowing gray hair, who is secretly a retired assassin. That comes in handy when his daughter arrives with his granddaughter, fleeing a bunch of criminals she stole something from.
Tim Brown directs, with Ashley Greene, Thalia Campbell, Jackie Earle Haley, Ron Perlman, and Ernie Hudson as Cage’s co-stars.
Here’s the synopsis: In the film, when Ashley (Ashley Greene) and her young daughter Sarah (Thalia Campbell) get mixed up with a criminal group putting their lives at risk, she turns to the only person who can help – her estranged father Matt (Nicolas Cage), currently living the life of a retired beach bumout in the Cayman Islands. Their reunion is fleeting as they are soon tracked down on the island by crime boss Donnie (Jackie Earle Haley) and his lieutenant Bobo (Ron Perlman). As Ashley, Sarah and Matt become even more entangled in an increasingly dangerous web, Ashley quickly learns her father had a secret past that she knew nothing about and that there is more to her father than meets the eye.
Godzilla is more popular than ever right now. Of course, Legendary’s MonsterVerse has been going strong with blockbuster movies like Godzilla vs Kong and various spinoffs. But we can’t forget that the original Toho-produced Godzilla has been wrecking shit around the world for decades, and shows no signs of slowing down with the latest film, Godzilla Minus One.
The first Toho Godzilla film since the smash success of 2016’s Shin Godzilla, this one finds postwar Japan facing the atomic breath and stomping feet of a giant pissed-off kaiju. Even the plot synopsis is delightfully thin:
Godzilla Minus One sees an already devastated postwar Japan facing a new threat in the form of Godzilla.
The new teaser doesn’t reveal much, but then does it really have to? Godzilla smash!!!
Takashi Yamazaki serves as writer, director, and does the visual effects for Godzilla Minus One which opens in the US on December 1st.
A24 has done it again. The boutique distributor that has made a knack of releasing hit films that fly against the mainstream, has found another with Medusa Deluxe, a murder mysfilm set in the world of competitive hairdressing. And somehow it’s not titled Bad Hair! That tile has been taken many times over.
Thomas Hardiman makes his feature-length directorial debut after making a name with shorts such as Time On My Hands and Pitch Black Panacea. Anita-Joy Uwajeh, Clare Perksins, Darrell D’Silva, Debris Stevenson, Harriet Webb, Heider Ali, Kae Alexander, Kayla Meikle, Lilit Lesser, Luke Pasqualino, and Nicholas Karimi lead the cast.
A real feather in the film’s cap and the reason it looks so good is cinematographer Robbie Ryan, who worked with Andrea Arnold on Fish Tank, Yorgos Lanthimos on The Favourite, and others.
Here’s the synopsis: Talented, ambitious, and backstabbing hairstylists gather for a competition in England, only to find one of their own murdered before judging can begin. Winding through neon-lit halls and backstage dressing rooms, competitors unspool long-simmering resentments and secrets as they search for the killer among them in this devilishly funny whodunit from debut filmmaker Thomas Hardiman.
Medusa Deluxe hits select theaters and VOD on August 11th, so the wait isn’t long at all.
While 2019’s Alita: Battle Angel wasn’t a huge box office hit, it did fairly well and has built a cult following who are rabid for a sequel. But will one actually happen? James Cameron, director Robert Rodriguez, and others close to the film have all expressed various degrees of optimism, and now a promising update teases multiple projects could be on the way.
The word comes from Cameron himself in an interview with Forbes over the sale of the filmmaker’s California home and the reasons it was listed…
Cameron said, “And on Avatar, I’m working in Wellington and Los Angeles. And on the new Alita: Battle Angel films, I’ll be working in Austin, so it just didn’t make sense for us anymore.”
I’m sorry, what was that? “Alita: Battle Angel FILMS”? According to Cameron, fans can look forward to multiple movies featuring the amnesiac cyborg warrior. Both Cameron and Rodriguez have teased the idea of a streaming home for future Alita: Battle Angel movies. Without a concrete announcement, anything has to be considered on the table.
More to come soon, hopefully. Perhaps there will be some news at Comic-Con next week?
The shock value is starting to wear thin as Secret Invasion episode four, titled “Beloved”, ends the way practically every episode has ended, with an unexpected death. So far, only one of them has actually stuck. Why is that? Well…
This week’s episode begins where the last one left off, with G’iah’s (Emilia Clarke) dead body laying where Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) left it after shooting her. Of course, this already tells us that she ain’t really dead. Flashbacks reveal that G’iah, before going to meet Gravik, infused herself with the Extremis virus, making her a Super-Skrull with incredible healing powers. The gaping wound to her chest begins to heal itself, and soon she’s up and about; no muss no fuss.
Another flashback takes us back to Paris 2012…hey, that was the year the Avengers formed, wasn’t it? Yep, and this scene shows Priscilla (Charlayne Woodard) meeting Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) in a restaurant. The Battle of New York is on the news reports in the background, and Priscilla suggests that she knows it was Fury who brought the Avengers together to save all of humanity. She also introduces him to her favorite poem by Robert Carver, titled “Late Fragment.” It’ll come up again later in a fateful showdown, but it’s also the poem that gives this episode its title.
A hilarious scene follows next. Remember how Priscilla got a phone call from someone who sounded like Rhodey (Don Cheadle), telling her to meet him at a church? She came armed, so obviously she doesn’t trust what might happen next. Well, it is definitely Rhodey. She tells him that Fury just got fired. Of course, Rhodey knew this because he did it. He says he “DDT’ed him off the top rope” like the Undertaker. Cheadle says it much cooler than I ever could. Basically, this Rhodey, who is clearly a Skrull, orders Priscilla to kill Fury…or he’ll kill her. She tries to convince him that Fury is no threat, but Rhodey ain’t havin’ it. Neither knows that Fury is outside eavesdropping on the convo.
Next, we see Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) on a park bench apologizing to his very-not-dead daughter G’iah for putting her in such a situation, revealing that her alignment with Gravik was all part of a larger plan. But now G’iah needs to know how Talos plans to actually find the Skrulls a new home. His plan, which is basically to just be really good and ask the President for help, does not please her one bit and she walks off. At least Gravik is doing something and his plan seems to be working.
Fury finally confronts Priscilla in their home. He asks her to tell the story of how she adopted her human form, and she reveals she asked the permission of a woman dying of a terminal illness. The dying woman made her keep three promises, all of which she has kept…but can she keep the last one which was to NEVER hurt Fury? Fury and Priscilla recite the previous Carver poem to one another than point their guns at one another and fire, intentionally missing. They patch things up, and Fury warns her that Gravik will be coming for her.
As if it wasn’t obvious at this point, the next scene makes it clear that Rhody is a Skrull. Actually, it seems that it’s a female Skrull playing Rhodey. He’s met by Fury, who has broken in and is enjoying a really expensive bottle of bourbon. Neat thing about this bourbon, it’s Pappy Van Winkle, which Paul Newman’s Henry Gondorff drank in the ultimate con artist film, The Sting. Isn’t Secret Invasion just one long con game? Anyway, Fury tells Rhodey that there are Skrulls inside the U.S. government, very high up to the President. He asks for his old job back, and Rhodey just laughs it off and shows a video of Granik murdering Maria Hill…except in this footage Gravik looks like Fury. He threatens to release all of these tapes if Fury keeps talking about Skrull infiltration. Before he leaves, Fury drops a tracker inside Rhodey’s glass of bourbon whiskey.
Rhodey must’ve downed quite a few because President Ritson (Dermot Mulroney) can smell it on his breath. Oops. Do Skrulls register on a breathalyzer? Anyway, their cavalcade is attacked by Gravik’s forces, blowing the President’s vehicle right off the road. The Secret Service are getting shredded by the Skrulls, with Gravik showing off his stolen Groot powers until Fury and Talos show up. Fury takes charge and the start to beat back the Skrulls. Talos gets shot while trying to save the President, revealing his Skrull identity. He rescues Ritson, but is stabbed and apparently killed by Gravik while Fury watches in horror. Fury shoots Gravik but…well, Extremis! Gravik and his crew escape, after one last look at the fallen Talos.
This episode didn’t do much for me. As I said in the beginning, I’m tiring of the “shocking death” cliffhangers, leaving us to ponder for a week whether this death will actually stick. And while I appreciate all of the character work with Fury, something doesn’t feel right about him. It was cool to see him in action, but that’s not the Fury I want to see. Fury is a planner, a big ideas guy who moves people around like chess pieces. What is he REALLY doing in this show? It proves to me that Fury is best in a supporting role and not as a driver of the narrative. Also, where was Olivia Colman? She was nowhere to be found and her role in this feels more unnecessary by the week. I still like the show overall, but this episode was disappointing.
James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy is set to be the launching point of the new DCU, breaking away for good from the Zack Snyder era and the DCEU. With that comes all-new casting for the Kryptonian’s upcoming movie, with David Corenswet recently cast as Clark Kent/Kal-El and Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane. But now we’re learning that one of Gunn’s reliable pals is joining, too, along with two other fellow Marvel alums as prominent DC characters.
According to Vanity Fair, Nathan Fillion has snagged a role in Superman: Legacy as Guy Gardner, the brash Green Lantern Corps member who famously got punched by Batman. He’s also my favorite GL of all-time so this has me pretty pumped. Also joining the cast are Sicario 2 and Madame Web actress Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl and X-Men: First Class actor Edi Gathegi as Mister Terrific. Those last two are key members of the Justice Society of America, most recently seen in the Black Adam movie.
Gunn took to Twitter and confirmed the news himself, as he’s wont to do.
With the SAG-AFTRA strike looming, we may not hear more casting news for a while. But this is a pretty big update as all of these characters have long-term potential.
There won’t be anyone leaping off of skyscrapers or jumping off of mountains, but on this episode of Cinema Royale we’ll be talking about someone who does. Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part 1 finds Tom Cruise returning as Ethan Hunt for the seventh explosive action flick in the franchise. And I’m joined by my pal Chris Bumbray of Joblo.com to talk about the biggest movie of the summer, and possibly the best Mission: Impossible yet.
All of this, plus insight from Chris’ interview with Pom Klementieff who plays the assassin Paris. And we actually managed to stay relatively on topic for once! Relatively.
With the SAG strike looming, studios are pumping out trailers with the fear that talent won’t be available to do any promotion. And so today we have Warner Bros.’ extended Blue Beetle trailer, which features some new footage featuring star Xolo Maridueña as Jaime Reyes.
In the new footage, we see Reyes, an ordinary teen who gains a powerful suit of armor when he touches an extraterrestrial scarab. He faces off against the villainous Victoria Kord, played by Susan Sarandon, and the Indestructible Man played by Raoul Max Trujillo. Also in the cast are George Lopez, Adriana Barraza, Damián Alcázar, Harvey Guillén, and Becky G as the voice of Khaji-Da, the AI that controls the scarab.
A lot is riding on this film to be a strong lead-in to James Gunn’s DCU, so if it does well expect to see a lot more of Blue Beetle in the future. Based on what we’ve seen, it looks like director Angel Manuel Soto continues to step up his game after the excellent Charm City Kings.
For fans of French actress Adèle Exarchopoulos, this has been a wonderful past few months. The Blue is the Warmest Colour breakout has been very busy with roles in The Five Devils, Smoking Causes Coughing, and Passages. And now she can be seen in Wingwomen, a heist film that teams her up with director/co-star Mélanie Laurent.
Exarchopoulos stars with Laurent and Manon Bresch in the story of two best friends and expert thieves, sick of life on the run, who take on a feisty new recruit for one last big job. How do you think that goes? Does “one last job” ever work out for anyone?
The cast includes Philippe Katerine, Felix Moati and screen legend Isabelle Adjani in what appears to be a mentor role. Very cool to see Adjani again because she’s pretty picky. And that speaks to Laurent as a filmmaker that she can get someone like Adjani. Laurent is probably best known for her roles in Inglourious Basterds, Beginners, and Now You See Me, but her directorial career has arguably begun to surpass her acting with films including Breathe, Galveston, and The Mad Women’s Ball.
Wingwomen finds its way to Netflix on November 1st.
