Get ready for the year of Lily Gladstone. We’ve been saying it a lot, due to her blowing up for her performance in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, and the upcoming film Fancy Dance which we saw and loved from Sundance. But Gladstone has another one coming up, The Unknown Country, which debuted at SXSW in 2022 and finally hits theaters next month.
The film is written and directed by Morrisa Maltz, with Gladstone sharing a story credit and starring as Tana, a Native American woman recovering from tragedy by taking a cross-country journey for the soul.
Here’s the synopsis: Reeling from a devastating loss, Tana (Lily Gladstone) is pulled back into the world by an unexpected invitation to her cousin’s wedding. She packs up her late grandmother’s Cadillac and hits the open road, driving from her home in Minnesota to South Dakota. After reconnecting with her Oglala Lakota family, Tana sets off to retrace a surreal journey that her grandmother took decades ago, searching for the spot captured in an old family photograph. As she travels, Tana finds connection in the stories of everyday people who’ve settled down far off the main roads including Isaac (Raymond Lee), who provides a pivotal clue to understanding the lost location that could cultivate closure. A personal reverie summoned from a beguiling mix of fact and fiction, THE UNKNOWN COUNTRY is an arresting debut feature from Morrisa Maltz.
Also in the cast are Raymond Lee and Richard Ray Whitman.
The Unknown Country opens July 28th at the Quad NYC and Nuart in Los Angeles. Hopefully, it will expand from there.
For good reason, Illumination and Nintendo are very happy with how their partnership is turning out. The Super Mario Bros Movie has gone gangbusters, earning over $1.3B at the box office and surpassing Minions as Illumination’s highest-grossing movie. And in the wake of that success, rumors have been flying about which Nintendo property would be next. Of course, The Legend of Zelda is the one that gets talked about most.
However, it ain’t happening. At least, that’s what Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri said at the Annecy International Animation Festival. According to TheWrap, Meledandri shot the rumor down, saying “I don’t know where that came from. I mean, I can understand how people would surmise all sorts of things, because obviously, we’ve had a great experience working together. My relationship with Nintendo now includes being on their board of directors, so I understand how people can surmise these things. But in terms of the specifics, that was just something that I’ve been hearing lots of rumors [about]. This is just about what’s next between Nintendo and Illumination.”
And what’s next for Illumination is this December’s Migration, from director Benjamin Renner.
I’m sure that Meledandri was being truthful in that moment, but let’s be realistic here. Universal and Nintendo are going to want to maximize this relationship with Nintendo, and that means the upcoming Mario Bros sequel, probably a Zelda movie, a Metroid movie, and many more. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is one of the most popular games in the world right now. So while the rumor might not be true today, they will be eventually and all of those people who have been spreading it can say “See, I told you so!”
In Celine Song’s Past Lives, two childhood friends reconnect after 24 years apart. Nora (Greta Lee) immigrated with her family from Korea to the Western world in grade school and has rarely spoken to Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) since. She has since moved to New York City and married but there is clearly some unspoken and unresolved business between the two.
This isn’t a story about cheating as the pair never do, but its one of longing and grieving the people and possibilities you could have been. This idea is something that Song is and was all too aware of when she was making this film. As she told me when we sat down together in a DC hotel a few weeks ago, she was taken a back by how much this story, inspired by her own, is relatable to others. Read further into my interview to find out how.
This story is partially based on your own as an immigrant who fell in love as a kid in Korea, and then again with a different person as an adult. You were inspired by a meeting between the three of you where you were translating between these two men. Through that experience, you came up with this idea about missed opportunities and the choices that we make that affect the one life that we have to live. Talk to me about developing this deeply personal story for your first feature.
When I was finding myself in that bar, sitting between my childhood sweetheart and my husband, I feel like there was a kind of contradiction or something that I could feel in myself. That felt like such an amazing tension. Then I was wondering if something so specific as that could be a story worth telling. Over time, it became pretty clear that, because I was sharing that story with some of my friends, they had stories of their own, even if they weren’t from the same or similar walks of life that I was in. I think that we all have this feeling sometimes of these two maybe contradicting or separate parts of ourselves that are somehow able to coexist. It’s sometimes hard to imagine reconciling them, but just by living, you just do it.
So I think that became kind of a thing where I was like, “Oh, it’s not just myself.” Everybody can have a version of that. It can be something as simple as a job too. I know people who used to be lawyers that are now chefs, and then they’re just like, “In my past life as a lawyer…” Or you can move from Houston to L.A. Or you can leave a relationship. You can be like, “I was married to a musician and now I’m dating this person.” I think there is a way that you can think of your past selves as a past life.
In the film’s opening scene, we see what we learn to be our three leads being talked about by unseen strangers at a bar. The voices speculate about who Greta Lee’s character is to both of these men, whether or not Joe Magaro’s character is hitting on this Asian couple, and whether this is a fetish situation. If I’m remembering correctly, Greta breaks the fourth wall and looks directly at the camera at the end of the scene. We never hear from these people again. What were you trying to do as a writer in that scene?
What I wanted first of all was for it to implicate the audience, so that the audience can feel like they’re being asked to also play this game. So I’m kind of welcoming them into playing this game. It’s meant to be a little bit confrontational. That’s what I always wanted the eye contact to be. I feel like there’s a confrontational element when you break the fourth wall. Part of this confrontation is to really welcome the audience into the mystery of this movie, which is who are these three people to each other? It’s not like a who done it, but it really is like, “Who are they to each other?” as a kind of an ineffable thing. So you’re introducing the mystery almost.
I think it’s also this thing where they’re being closely observed. What Nora is doing in that moment is being like, “If you want to observe me and these two guys, let’s really observe me.” This is why we go back to childhood, to really not just observe them superficially, but to observe them from even their origin story of this relationship. So I think that that really was the thought for it. And then of course, when we come back to that scene at the end of the movie, suddenly the audience is in on it. The audience now knows some version of the answer to the question, “Who are they to each other?” Now they’re gonna see the three people that they met a little over an hour ago completely differently.
Body language and touch are such integral visual parts of the film, that you insert individual shots of hands and various parts of their posture. Was that something you worked out with the actors beforehand or knew you were going to shoot and just kind of captured what was interesting to you on the day?
It needed to be such a big part of the movie. Because I think that the closeness and the distance is actually what the movie’s about. So much of the movie is about the space. So the space had to be determined really specifically. For example, there’s a question of like, are they touching when they are holding the same subway pole? We did shoot that, there’s a tiny bit of footage of them, but it then it felt too close. And then so you have to distance it a little bit, but if it’s too far, then it feels like they don’t like each other. So you’re just always finding that moment where it is both things. It has to be too close and too far.It seems like the hands are too close to each other, but also they’re a little too far because they’re not touching. So I think that is how you build longing in just the distance of the characters.
When they first see each other for the first time in 24 years at Madison Square Park, the distance between them has to be just the right distance. It can’t be too close and it also can’t be too far. It has to be something where it’s like, if you just reach over, you can hug them. That builds a longing for wanting to hug them.
Teo Yoo, John Magaro, and Greta Lee have all talked about different methods you used in rehearsal and prep in order to get the reactions you wanted on Camera. John and Teo were purposefully hidden from one another in Zoom meetings. Greta and Teo weren’t allowed within a certain number of feet of one another, let alone touch until we see that on camera. Talk to me about coming up with that strategy. I’m sure that that’s something that lots of directors do, but I just felt that it was so purposeful for a first-time director.
I feel like the thing that I do know is what people are like and actors are people who sort of like need the support. Because what they do is so difficult. I was thinking “How do I set them up for success in terms of the work that they have to do?” So I think it really is about setting that up and making sure that is actually possible, more than anything. I think that was at the end of the day what was at the heart of those decisions. I feel like I kind of knew that it was gonna be helpful and if it didn’t feel like it was gonna be that helpful, we weren’t gonna do it.
I feel like if the movie is about longing through time and space and this life to the next, then there has to be longing. The longing is going to go away if it’s consummated. We also gotta think about the kind of marriage that Nora is in. Nora is not in a bad marriage. Arthur is not some asshole that she can just be awful to. She’s married to him and she’s really committed to him. The two of them have something special together, which is like, they’re in love. They’re a married couple that’s in love and they’re partners. I don’t think that Nora would do that to him. So I think that to me it really is driven by character, first of all, that like, she would never do that.
Greta would say that she never wanted to kiss because I think she understood that. She also has a relationship that she was building with John for Nora and Arthur. I think that honestly, the person who was one who asked me about it was Teo. I think it’s because Teo didn’t know the relationship that Nora was building with Arthur in the movie because I separated them. He didn’t know how deep that relationship was because he was building his own chemistry with Nora. Of course, he was frustrated. Thankfully Greta and I, and of course John, we all knew what it needed to be. At the end of the day, think it was clear to them that there should not be a kiss.
Also it was never scripted. It was never gonna be okay. That’s not the movie. The movie is not about cheating. The movie is about possibilities that die in our lives. Maybe in a couple more hundreds of lives from now, Nora and Hae Sung are gonna be fully together. But it’s certainly not in this one because she’s in a great marriage with somebody else.
I love how Teo’s own like experience as an actor is completely the same as in the film. I love that. You have such empathy for your characters. John’S Arthur could have easily been painted as the out of touch, angry, and jealous white husband in the way of the love between these to childhood lovers. Talk to about not taking the easy way out with your characters because I think that’s something that we see throughout the film.
I have to just think about these characters as fully fledged people who have their own autonomous way to live. That’s the only way that you can really depict any character. I don’t believe that there is a villain in real life. Of course, there’s some villains in my perspective. But it doesn’t mean that they’re villains to themselves. I think that that really is at the heart of what this relationship is, but it’s also a movie about three people that are mature and they take care of each other. I
t is about three people that are being really sweet, trying to be really decent to each other. Even when it’s really hard for them because I don’t think that it is easy for all of us to be good to each other. I think every time it’s heroic. So I think that because it is about the heroism of three ordinary people who are trying to be there for an extraordinary thing. That really was at the heart of why I didn’t want any of the characters to have any kind of lacking when it comes to the depths of their character or the intelligence behind their character. I wanted all three of them to have emotional intelligence because I think that in real life, I think everybody has a great deal of emotional intelligence.
The final shot Past Lives, when everyone is sending Teo’s character on his way back home, was filmed as a one-shot. You’ve described this as the hill the film dies on. Talk to me a bit about why.
Nora’s walk home, the walk to the Uber and then the walk home, that whole sequence needed to be kind of a purely emotional experience. It allows room for Nora to have an emotional response and have an emotional outpouring. And that gives room for the audience too. The audience needs a moment too, because who they’re grieving together. They’re grieving the little girl, the little Nora together. I just thought that the little girl needed a moment to be grieved and grieve properly. Because it’s not just the little Na Young, the little Nora. I think we all have that somebody. We just all have that part of us that we have to grieve. So it really was about giving the audience the room to let go and breathe.
One thing I noticed when preparing for this interview, of course by doing that you watch more interviews, was how passionate your cast is about this project, which is so rare to see in junkets. They seem so protective of the material and of you. Can you pinpoint what you did as a director in order to get that response?
I think that a part of it is, I really did think of my relationship with the actors as very much a relationship. It’s more than a friendship. You just have to be so connected to them and you have to build a really unique relationship with all three of them because that’s what where the collaboration is. They’re collaborating with each other, but they’re also collaborating with me. It’s a creative relationship that is very deep and it has to be intimate because I need to get to know them in such a deep way and they need to get to know the characters and me in such a deep way. So I really think it really had to do with how close we got creatively around making this movie. Part of it is the actors feeling like they also have ownership of the project. They also feel connected to the project and feel like it’s not just the job. It is something that’s part of their work in such a deep way. So I feel like that’s really what it is.
One of my favorite movies to emerge from Sundance this year was Passages, Ira Sachs’ latest film about a doomed same-sex relationship. The film features a charismatic performance by Franz Rogowski as Tomas, a filmmaker and bisexual fuckboy who enters into a chaotic love triangle with his soft-spoken lover, Martin, played by Ben Whishaw, and the sexy Agathe, played by Blue is the Warmest Colour‘s Adèle Exarchopoulos.
I just shot a whole segment on this film for WETA Around Town, so it’s again fresh in my mind. Tomas is one of the most fascinating characters I’ve seen on screen in a while. He’s a total chaos agent, wrecking the hearts of everyone in his wake. The only things he cares about are being the center of attention and his own personal pleasure, but all of this hides deep insecurities. Sachs invites us to hate Tomas, while recognizing how troubled he really is.
Here’s the synopsis: Set in Paris, this seductive drama tells the story of Tomas (Rogowski) and Martin (Whishaw), a gay couple whose marriage is thrown into crisis when Tomas begins a passionate affair with Agathe (Exarchopoulos), a younger woman he meets after completing his latest film.
Passages opens in theaters on August 4th. Check it out if you can!
Lionsgate really wants you to know how raunchy and R-rated their new comedy Joy Ride really is. With buzz for the film louder than ever following its world premiere at SXSW, the second red band trailer has dropped featuring stars Ashley Park, Oscar-nominee Stephanie Hsu, Sherry Cola, and Sabrina Wu.
Directed by Crazy Rich Asians writer Adele Lim in her debut feature, Joy Ride features an all-female Asian-American set of leads, along with a nonbinary star, offering fresh diversity to the well-worn road trip comedy. Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao wrote the script, with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg aboard as producers.
Here’s the synopsis: The hilarious and unapologetically explicit story of identity and self-discovery centers on four unlikely friends who embark on a once-in-a-lifetime international adventure. When Audrey’s business trip to Asia goes sideways, she enlists the aid of Lolo, her irreverent, childhood best friend who also happens to be a hot mess; Kat, her college friend turned Chinese soap star; and Deadeye, Lolo’s eccentric cousin. Their no-holds-barred, epic experience becomes a journey of bonding, friendship, belonging, and wild debauchery that reveals the universal truth of what it means to know and love who you are.
Movies to TV series adaptations don’t always turn out so great, but Netflix found themselves a hit last year with The Lincoln Lawyer. Based on the books by Michael Connelly made famous by the movie starring Matthew McConaughey, the series version won over fans with new star Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Los Angeles defense attorney Mickey Haller, who runs his firm out of the back of his Lincoln.
The second season is based on Connelly’s fourth book, The Fifth Witness, and finds Haller defending a longtime client from charges she murdered a wealthy businessman with a hammer shot to the head.
Joining Garcia-Rulfo this season are Neve Campbell, Becki Newton, Jazz Raycole, and Angus Sampson. Krista Warner, Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Lana Parilla, Yaya DaCosta, Matt Angel, and Angélica María. The series was created by David E. Kelley, a TV veteran with an extraordinary string of hits from The Practice, Ally McBeal, Big Little Lies, and too many more to list. The guy knows his stuff, especially when it comes to legal drama.
Our reviewer Khalil loved the first season, so let’s see if season two of The Lincoln Lawyer can measure up. It hits Netflix on July 6th for Part One, with Part Two arriving on August 3rd.
Mickey Haller, an iconoclastic idealist, runs his law practice out of the back seat of his Lincoln, as he takes on cases big and small across the expansive city of Los Angeles. Based on the series of bestselling novels by renowned author Michael Connelly, the second season is based on the fourth book in The Lincoln Lawyer series, The Fifth Witness.
Bradley Cooper is really digging into the directorial side of his career, but doing so in a way that also keeps him in front of the camera. Following his debut with A Star is Born, Cooper has Maestro headed to Netflix in a few months. Before that film is even finished, Cooper has already lined up his third effort behind the camera, and he’ll be bringing along a longtime friend to join him.
Deadline reports Cooper will direct and star in Is This Thing On?, from his longtime friend Will Arnett, who will co-star and also co-wrote the script with Mark Chappell. The Searchlight Pictures project will likely see Cooper do some rewriting on the screenplay, but none of that can happen while the WGA strike is going on, so things are on hold for the moment.
As for the plot? It’s being kept under wraps for now.
The next time we see Cooper it will be in Maestro, which has awards season buzz surrounding it. He was most recently heard reprising the voice of Rocket in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, but before that he hadn’t had a starring role since Nightmare Alley. Arnett can be seen next in Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins alongside Michael Fassbender.
A romantic comedy from Pixar? Um…finally? On the one hand, the vaunted animation studio known for boundary-pushing films such as Wall-E, Inside Out, Up!, and Toy Story, is attempting something new with their first rom-com, Elemental. But what difference does it make when that rom-com subscribes to a tired old formula, one that continues a worrying trend that Pixar has fallen off into creaive laziness. With truly groundbreaking films out there such as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Pixar’s latest simply can’t compete.
Set in the fictional Element City, a lively place where people comprised of Earth’s four prime elements reside. There are the Earth folks, who have all types of green life growing out of them. There are the Air people, who resemble walking clouds. The majority of folks tend to be Water, liquid people who can basically move fluidly wherever they want. They are chiefly opposed to the Fire people, whose scorching hot nature threatens to turn Water into steam. Fire people are regularly treated as outcasts, undesireables often told to go back to Fireland, the place where they originated.
It’s against this backdrop of discrimination that we meet Ember (Leah Lewis), a young Fire elemental whose parents emigrated to Elemental City after their home was destroyed. Starting from nothing, they built themselves a home and a successful business, but have largely stuck to themselves, as Fire people tend to do. That is until city inspector Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie), a sensitive Water elemental, enters their lives and becomes fast friends with Ember.
Fire and Water elementals don’t mix, but these two find they are more alike than different. When they discover a threat to all of Element City, it’s up to the two of them to stop it. But along the way they must all in love, too. The folks at Pixar are geniuses at building fully-realized worlds, and Elemental does feel alive in all of the best ways. It’s a bustling utopia of pipes and waterways and skyscrapers, resembling New York City. Honestly, it and the movie as a whole resembles a non-animal version of Disney’s terrific Zootopia, and follows many of the same themes of cultural diversity and harmony. While always a welcome message, it’s also hard not to pinpoint the similarities between them. Even some of the subplots, like an information stop derailed by a sloth-like Earth elemental, feel like they were cribbed from elsewhere.
While the little details are impeccable, like the way Water elementals’ mustaches look like crashing waterfalls, some aspects are confusing. We see that certain Fire elementals can succumb to sickness, but it was unclear what can actually harm any of them. The film finds humor in the many ways fire can screw up a Water elemental, like when Ember’s father forces Wade to eat flaming hot food that literally turns him into a puddle of steamy anguish. In another, a young Wade gets soaked up into a sponge (why do sponges exist in a place like this anyway??) and is stuck for hours, but turns out is okay. That said, I did like that Wade and his family, being Water elementals, can cry at the drop of a hat and often do. Comparitively, Ember and her family are hot-tempered and prone to explosive outbursts. The Earth and Air elementals aren’t nearly as developed, and feels like an attempt to hold something back so a sequel can explore them further.
But will there be demand for a return to Elemental? Honestly, this film doesn’t really make a case for it. While the world Pixar has created is cool and it delivers a heartfelt message about family, the treatment of immigrants, and more, much of the film follows basic rom-com tropes, pulled right from the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan playbook. Kids, who would seemingly be the target audience, aren’t going to have any interest in this “will they or won’t they kiss?” courtship between Wade and Ember. In our screening, nearing the moment when that question is about to be answered, a kid a few rows from me could be heard saying “This is dumb” to laughter from her friends. That’s not a good sign.
Pixar is capable of better than this. Elemental isn’t a terrible movie but it is an underwhelming one, far beneath what we know Pixar is capable of.
Go ahead and predict what Tim Story will do next, I dare ya. One of the reasons Story is an interesting filmmaker to keep an eye on is that he’s done pretty much everything. This is the same guy who gave us two live-action Fantastic Four movies in the pre-MCU era. He’s also directed loads of music videos, multiple stand-up specials with Kevin Hart, not to mention directing Hart in two Ride Along films and a pair of Think Like A Man comedies, sports drama Hurricane Season, and his breakout film, Barbershop. In short, Story can skillfully handle anything you put in front of him, which makes him also the perfect choice to direct horror-comedy, The Blackening.
The Blackening centers on a group of Black college pals who reunite at a remote house in the woods for a Juneteenth weekend of partying and games of Spades. What they instead find is a racist board game and a sadistic killer who challenges them to prove their Blackness or die. Something has to give. Since Black characters always die first in horror movies, who dies first when all of the characters are Black?
It’s hilarious, topical stuff perfect for the new wave of diverse genre films since Get Out changed the game.
I had the chance to speak with Tim Story about The Blackening, how he got involved with the project, and what it was like directing so many funny people as they destroy all of the horror tropes pertaining to people of color.
The Blackening opens in theaters on June 16th. Check out the interview below!
Long-running franchises have it tough, because no matter how good they are, it’s inevitable that somewhere along the way it will jump the shark. When it comes to movies, oftentimes it happens with the fourth movie. You know what has a fourth film coming up? Marvel and Sony’s Spider-Man, and while we know Tom Holland is coming back for a sequel at some point, he’s got concerns. Because, y’know, fourth films tend to suck.
Speaking with THR about his Apple series The Crowded Room (which was so emotional he’s taking a year off from acting), Holland expressed his excitement about returning as Peter Parker for a story that has genuine reason to exist…
“It was myself, [Spider-Man producer] Amy [Pascal], [Marvel Studios president] Kevin Feige, [executive producer] Rachel [O’Connor], sometimes other executives from Marvel will sit in,” Holland said. “It’s a collaborative process. The first few meetings were about, ‘Why would we do this again?’ And I think we found the reason why. I’m really, really happy with where we’re at in terms of the creative.”
However, Holland knows the history and reputation of fourth movies, and he’s a bit concerned…
“But I’m also a little apprehensive about it,” he continued. “There’s a bit of a stigma about the fourth one in all franchises. I feel like we hit a home run with our first franchise, and there’s a part of me that wants to walk away with my head held high and pass the baton to the next lucky kid that gets to bring this character to life.”
Of course, the writers strike has everything on pause right now, so who knows when Spider-Man 4 will arrive. I’ll just note that by the time it does get here, Holland is likely to be 30 years old and we might spend that movie joking about his old ass trying to play a teen. Just sayin’, it’s the kind of thing that could cause a movie to suck.
