We all love the flourescent trailers for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie, right? It looks like it could be the blast of the summer, and that showdown with Oppenheimer in July is hella intriguing. What will audiences choose, anyway? But for all of the star-studded hijinks with Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, and a cast of thousands, the plot has remained somewhat vague.
Well, that changes with the latest trailer which reveals just how bizarre and meta this movie is actually going to get. The story finds Barbie, Mattel’s iconic doll, kicked out of the idyllic Barbieland because…well, her feet are imperfect. Can’t have imperfections in a place like Barbieland! So Barbie heads out into the real world to find true happiness, which is where things get even crazier.
The list of A-plus actors playing various versions of Barbie and Ken is basically a who’s who of Hollywood, with Issa Rae, Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Kate McKinnon, Alexandra Shipp, John Cena, and Emma Mackey just to name a few. You also have other actors filling in this massive ensemble, such as Will Ferrell, Michael Cera, Emerald Fennell, America Ferrera, and Helen Mirren.
So yeah, this is gonna get wild. Barbie opens in theaters on July 21st.
After being expelled from Barbieland for being a less than perfect-looking doll, Barbie sets off for the human world to find true happiness.
I feel like Hollywood has really missed the boat on Idris Elba the action star. Sure, Hobbs & Shaw was a lot of fun, and so was Beast, but he really should’ve had a franchise of flicks and the time has likely passed. However, Apple is attempting to make up for it with Hijack, a new thriller series that puts Elba squarely in the role of hero.
The Apple TV+ series stars Elba as Sam Nelson, a skilled business negotiator who must put his talents to the test and find a peaceful solution when his flight from Dubai to London is hijacked. To find a way to keep the passengers safe, Nelson works with a counter-terrorism played by the always-great Archie Panjabi.
Others in the cast include Max Beesley, Neil Maskell, Christine Adams, and Eve Myles. The series was created by Jim Field Smith and George Kay, the duo behind Netflix’s Criminal, and appears to unfold in real-time similar to 24.
Hijack hits Apple TV+ with the first two episodes on June 28th, with new episodes debuting on Wednesdays.
The most useless question in all of film criticism is “Why does Disney keep doing these live-action remakes”? The answer has been transparent from the very beginning, and I don’t even need to say it. They have for the most part been a mixed bag in terms of quality. For me, The Jungle Book, Pete’s Dragon, and Aladdin are highlights. For someone else it might be Cinderella. For absolutely nobody it’s Pinocchio. Your mileage on these films likely depends on how close to the heart you keep the original. That will certainly be the case with The Little Mermaid, a new and mostly faithful, but needlessly longer take on arguably the most beloved Disney animated film ever.
To be fair, remaking The Little Mermaid poses a greater challenge than Disney’s previous efforts. The original is more than just another classic; it is a cultural touchstone to millions with some of the most iconic music and characters ever to grace the screen. It’s story, while undeniably powerful and romantic, carries with it antiquated notions of true love and female agency, so it needs a contemporary overhaul. While Disney doesn’t actually change much in the latter regard, bold choices were at least made in the diversity of casting, led by pop star Halle Bailey as Ariel.
Bailey brings heart, youthful exuberance, and a powerful voice to the role of Ariel, a mermaid whose one desire is to be part of the human world. Her father, King Triton (Javier Bardem) is not a fan of his daughter’s obsession with the world of man, and forbids her from interacting with humans in any way. However, when Ariel intervenes to save the courageous Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) after a shipwreck, she is more determined than ever. This is where the evil sea witch Ursula (Melissa McCarthy) comes in, luring the girl in with a deadly spell that allows Ariel to walk among men, but at the cost of her precious voice. If Ariel can’t find a way to make Eric fall in love with her in three days, she will lose her freedom once and for all.
You know the story, and once again Disney has entrusted director Rob Marshall (of Into the Woods and Mary Poppins Returns fame) and screenwriter David Magee to bring it to life, sticking to the comforting tale we all know and love. There are a few welcome updates to give it a more modern feel; Triton’s undersea kingdom, as well as the Caribbean-flavored kingdom above, are considerably more colorful with people of every ethnicity swimming or dancing to the music. Most importantly, Ariel and Eric are given a reason to fall in love. They both share a desire to be more than what their family expects of them. They yearn for something more out there in the high seas. So when we see them finally falling in love, it feels genuinely earned and not just the dictates of a fairy tale.
It’s a good thing that Halle Bailey was there to shoulder the emotional weight of this storybook courtship. She’s truly a force of nature, whose rendition of “Part of Your World” is tremendous and heartfelt, grabbing you by the chest. It’s unfortunate that Hauer-King comes across so bland, even if Eric is better written here than in the original movie. I get why Disney does this; they cast dull actors who won’t distract from the headliner, which is always the female lead. But it makes for unintentionally awkward moments when Eric breaks into the lamest song of them all and it feels like a reason to take a bathroom break.
Along with “Part of Your World”, the songs manage to capture the magical feeling while bringing added depth of emotion. “Kiss the Girl”, I would argue, is even better this time. Performed by Sebastian (Daveed Diggs), Scuttle (Awkwafina), and Flounder (Jacob Tremblay), it feels like it’s coming from friends who not only want to save Ariel from Ursula’s curse, but for the girl to be truly happy. As a fan of vilainous numbers, I got a kick of Ursula’s “Poor Unfortunate Souls”, with McCarthy proving she’s got the pipes to go big and bold. Along with Bailey, it’s McCarthy who is another showstopper, clearly having the time of her life as the devilish sea witch.
The brand new songs fit right in, with one major exception that you’ll recognize immediately. “Scuttlebutt”, a hip-hop track from Lin-Manuel Miranda that has all of the Hamilton rhythm you know and love from him, is sure to be controversial. It’s a very fun song, especially with Awkwafina and Diggs tag-teaming the lyrics like old school pros, but it does feel a little out of place and could be a distraction to traditionalists.
Like all Disney remakes, more musical numbers and time spent showing off the screen saver-like underwater realm mean The Little Mermaid is quite a bit longer than its predecessor. For what it’s worth the visual effects are solid until the big finale, which features murky CGI that makes one character look a giant ball of Play-Doh. Ariel’s friends Sebastian, Flounder, and Scuttle looked kinda weird in production photos, especially their very-human mouths, but when put to action they actually make a lot of sense. You won’t even notice.
So does The Little Mermaid make a case for its own existence? Halle Bailey is a star, and young girls, particularly those of color, will fall in love with her as Ariel. That is reason enough for this remake to set itself apart. No reimagining will ever mean as much to us as the version we watched as children. There’s too much nostalgia all tied into what makes them special to us. But The Little Mermaid has a magical spell to weave, and it will surely be the favorite version of many out there who will cherish it as part of their world.
When a director and actor truly click as well as Gerard Butler and filmmaker Ric Roman Waugh, expectations are exceeded when you least expect it. Such is the case for Kandahar, a knotty, surprisingly rich war thriller that, on the surface, looks like an action-heavy version of Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant. Certainly that’s what I thought it would be. But I should’ve known that Butler and Waugh would provide something more, given their previous work on Angel Has Fallen, the deepest and best movie in that franchise, and the disaster film Greenland which showed surprising levels of human emotion. Perhaps it’s time to stop underestimating these two and to start expecting greatness.
Butler leads a sizable ensemble as Tom Harris, an undercover CIA operative who we are introduced to as he, with considerable ease, obliterates a secret Iranian nuclear facility. This is the kind of act that, in a different kind of Butler movie, would lead to endless shootouts, chases over desert sands, and glib one-liners. But Kandahar is not that movie. Instead, Tom’s cover is blown by a devastating leak on the scale of Edward Snowden, and immediately he is on a race to get out of hostile territory in Afghanistan, accompanied by his translator Mohammad (Navid Negahban).
Okay, to be fair, this does become a rather action-heavy movie that Butler fits quite neatly into. However, Kandahar is never as simple as one would expect from a major studio film. Waugh and screenwriter Mitchell LaFortune, the latter basing it on his own experiences in Afghanistan as part of the Defense Intelligence Agency, present a balanced account of American and Middle Eastern interests. The opening hour of the film is heavy in exposition, but it’s necessary to sort out the snake pit of factions who are warring one day and frenemies the next. You’ve got Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, the Taliban, ISIS, and various warlords all converging and it can get cryptic and hard to follow. But that’s also the point; for someone like Tom, who has already seen his family life crumble because of his clandestine work, it all just becomes part of the job. And the job now is to get out of Afghanistan alive.
Tom is also the easiest character to keep track of. His goals are singular, which can’t be said about anyone else in the film. He wants to get home to his family in time to attend an event for his daughter, yet still accepts a dangerous three-day mission to destroy another Iranian nuclear facility, which is when the leak screws things up. Mohammed has greater designs than just his own safety; in fact that seems to be the least of his concerns. His face is etched with the pain of working for the Americans when their occupation has already cost him dearly, and now he fights to find a missing loved one. Revolutionary Guard agent Farzad (Bahador Foladi) is a family man, and wants to capture Tom as quickly as possible just to get back to a sense of normalcy. Meanwhile, hip ISI hitman Kahil (Ali Fazal) balks at the return of the old ways because it makes modern life less cool. He loves his dating apps, not so much having to swipe left on women forced to wear burqas. The characters are colorful, alive, and considerably more interesting than the genre typically provides.
By adding depth to these complicated characters, the action has more punch. Waugh is a terrific filmmaker when it comes to crafting an intense, visceral scene, but he doesn’t use a ton of bells and whistles. The opening chase kicks off simply, built on the stress of the moment causing Tom to make a hasty choice. Later, an incredible shootout with a helicopter under the cover of night makes impeccable use of sound to bolster the flashes of light. When people die, and it has an impact; these aren’t nameless, faceless strangers whose lives have no meaning.
While Kandahar can be a bit sluggish at times, it’s all in service of a film that goes to great lengths to be more substantial than the typical action movie or political thriller. The first major U.S. film to shoot in Saudi Arabia in decades, Ii’s another recent career highlight for Butler, who has found in Waugh a director that can best capture his rugged charm and vulnerability, maximizing his potential as a crowd-pleasing star. Let’s hope this partnership continues for the long haul.
Maryam Keshavarz won over the Sundance crowd with her culture class comedy, The Persian Version, coming away with two awards and a quick pick-up by Sony Pictures Classics. Now the rest of us get to see what all of the fuss is about with a new trailer ahead of the film’s release this fall.
Written and directed by Keshavarz, The Persian Version tells a familiar tale of balancing family expectations with one’s own dreams. Layla Mohammadi stars as Leila, an Iranian-American woman who returns home after a medical emergency and tries to navigate complicated relationships with her family while also keeping the other side of her life separate from them.
Also in the cast are Nioshua Noor, Bijan Daneshmand, and Kamand Shafieisabat.
The film marked Keshavarz’s return to Park City after her breakout film, 2011’s Circumstance. She also directed Susan Sarandon in 2018’s Viper Club.
Coming from two countries at odds with each other, Iranian-American Leila (Layla Mohammadi) strives to find balance and embrace her opposing cultures, while boldly challenging the labels society is so quick to project upon her. When her family reunites in New York City for her father’s heart transplant, Leila navigates her relationships from arms length in an effort to keep her “real” life separate from her family life. However, when her secret is unceremoniously revealed, so are the distinct parallels between her life and that of her mother Shireen (Niousha Noor).
Successful novelist Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her husband Don (Tobias Menzies), a therapist, share everything. Annoyingly so, or at least to their son Eliot (Owen Teague), who works at a weed dispensary in their Upper West Side neighborhood. Eliot hates that Beth and Don share one another’s meals at lunch, and dare to eat from the same ice cream cone. They’re just happy. They seem to have the perfect marriage. “SEEM” is the operative word, because there’s a serious communication breakdown that’s about to occur in Nicole Holofcener’s latest comedy, You Hurt My Feelings.
Anyone who has lived a married life knows that nothing is ever quite as happy as it seems. Beth’s second book was rejected by her publisher, and she’s struggling with her abilities as a writer. And Don, while he appears to be the pillar of calm and reason, actually might be a pretty terrible therapist. He certainly can’t help the squabbling couple (played by comic champs David Cross and Amber Tamblyn, both great) he’s been seeing for years, and another patient mumbles his displeasure at the end of every session. He offers little in actual advice and insight, leaving his patients in the same place they’ve always been. And as for Eliot, he’s also attempting to be a writer just like his mom, but he’s also adrift since leaving school.
But at home, things are about to get a lot worse. Beth and her sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins) accidentally overhear Don telling Sarah’s husband Mark (Arian Moayed) that he doesn’t really like her new book. From that moment on, a trust has been shattered. Don, like any spouse would, has given her tons of encouragement and read multiple drafts. He’s always said the right thing.
Holofcener is exploring the way people who love one another communicate and support each other. Do you do it with complete honesty, even if that truth might hurt? Or do you encourage and bolster that person’s confidence so they believe in their best self? And there are no easy answers. Perhaps pulling from her own experiences as a filmmaker and writer, Holofcener doesn’t shy away from the hurt that a few words can bring to a creative person. It’s actually quite a balancing act that Holofcener is trying to pull off. The comedy is spot-on and there are more quotable lines here than in any Holofcener film that I can imagine (My favorite “Are we dead yet? You carry around TUMS in your purse??”). But the fallout is actually quite serious, and Beth is genuinely destroyed by losing trust in the one person she felt she could count on.
Fortunately, Holofcener has Louis-Dreyfus to rely on. A reunion following 2013’s Enough Said, Louis-Dreyfus and Holofcener speak the same comedy language and they speak it fluently. This is a film that relies on subtle gestures and physical humor alike, both of which Louis-Dreyfus is a master of. In an early scene, Don gives Beth an anniversary gift of leaf-shaped earrings and the look of phony appreciation she gives is just too delicious. Louis-Dreyfus is just such a terrific actor that Beth’s breakdown moments will tear you apart, as well. Is she being a bit hard on Don for doing what any supportive partner would do? Sure, but we can see her side of things, too. It does feel that Louis-Dreyfus is missing a co-star who can be as much of a presence as she is. The late James Gandolfini, who she paired so wonderfully with in Enough Said, would have been perfect here.
You Hurt My Feelingsis overloaded with comic talent. Along with Louis-Dreyfus and the aforementioned Cross and Tamblyn, you’ve also got the great Jeannie Berlin as Beth and Sarah’s mother. She drives them crazy but we can also see where they get their various neuroses from. Menzies is also solid as Don, whose concerns about aging and being a bad therapist get overshadowed a little bit.
Holofcener has also improved greatly at telling stories that can appeal to a wider audience. Sure, her films continue to be about privileged white people and what would amount to minor concerns for most people, but she’s gotten better at creating characters that everyone can relate to in some way. And we all like to feel that the person we love has our back, although if everyone was honest all of the time, a movie like You Hurt My Feelings wouldn’t exist and we don’t want that.
You Hurt My Feelings opens in theaters on May 26th.
*NOTE: This review was originally part of our Sundance Film Festival coverage.*
We’re happy to offer our DMV readers the chance to attend a free early screening of The Boogeyman, a supernatural horror that springs from the mind of Stephen King. The film stars Sophie Thatcher, Chris Messina, Vivien Lyra Blair and David Dastmalchian.
SYNOPSIS: From the mind of best-selling author Stephen King comes “The Boogeyman.” High school student Sadie Harper and her younger sister Sawyer are reeling from the recent death of their mother and aren’t getting much support from their father, Will, a therapist who is dealing with his own pain. When a desperate patient unexpectedly shows up at their home seeking help, he leaves behind a terrifying supernatural entity that preys on families and feeds on the suffering of its victims.
The screening takes place on Tuesday, May 30th at 7:00pm at AMC Tysons Corner. If you’d like to attend, simply RSVP at the Gofobo ticketing site here. Please remember all screenings are first come first served and you’ll need to arrive early to ensure seating. Enjoy the show!
You’ll be wanting to keep an eye on Julio Torres, who is primed to be a huge star. The writer/director/actor who wrote for SNL and created HBO series Los Espookys had no trouble attracting A24 and Tilda Swinton to his feature directorial debut, Problemista, which had its world premiere at SXSW to glowing reviews.
The semiautobiographical comedy stars Torres as an aspiring toy designer from El Salavador, struggling to make it in New York City. With time on his work visa running out, he lands a job assisting an erratic art-world outcast and it becomes his last hope to survive the U.S. immigration system.
With Torres playing himself and Swinton as Elizabeth the art world misfit, the rest of the cast consists of RZA, Catalina Saavedra, Larry Owens, Greta Lee, Kelly McCormack, and Isabella Rossellini. Not only that, but Emma Stone and Dave McCrary are aboard as producers, showing their faith in Torres and his story.
A24 will open Problemista into theaters on August 4th.
Alejandro is an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador, struggling to bring his unusual ideas to life in New York City. As time on his work visa runs out, a job assisting an erratic art-world outcast becomes his only hope to stay in the country and realize his dream. From writer/director, Julio Torres comes a surreal adventure through the equally treacherous worlds of New York City and the U.S. Immigration system.
I went to see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 for a second time over the weekend, and as emotional as it was for me the first time, it really hit me in the gut all over again. A big part of the reason was James Gunn’s choice in music, which, fitting for a movie that is basically one long “farewell”, had a certain gracefulness and elegance to it.
You can get a sense of what I’m talking about now, as Sarosfky, a one-stop cross-media production company specialized in producing outstanding long format, motion graphics, VFX, live-action, main titles, animation, editorial, design, and concept solutions,” has released the four-minute opening title sequence featuring that beautiful acoustic version of Radiohead’s “Creep”, played as we are reintroduced to the team on Knowhere.
Sarofsky describes the seen this way: “For the third and last film of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, the vibe of the main title sequence is definitely a departure from the upbeat ones in Vol. 1 and 2. We needed to develop a solution that felt much softer and introspective in order for it to work well with the tone of the sequence.”
“Set to a beautiful acoustic version of “Creep” by Radiohead, the animation of the letters blowing on and off the screen had to feel light as a feather – having an almost ethereal quality to it.”
In a funny little note, James Gunn shared on Tiktok that the drunken Star-Lord being carried away is actually an inflatable dummy. What, was Chris Pratt too heavy?
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is in theaters now and currently has earned $664M worldwide.
With Karim Aïnouz’s latest film Firebrand having heated up Cannes, the filmmaker’s next project is already taking shape. And it’s looking like quite the doozy with a cast led by Kristen Stewart, Elle Fanning, and Josh O’Connor.
The Match Factory and MUBI have announced that Aïnouz will direct Rosebushpruning, with Stewart, Fanning, and O’Connor leading the cast. The film is a remake of 1965 Italian classic Fists in the Pocket from director Marco Bellocchino, which centered on four siblings, three of which who suffer from severe epilepsy and are unable to work, who live in a villa with their blind mother. One of the siblings determines that the one healthy sibling would be free to live his own life if the mother and other siblings were done away with.
Efthimis Filippou, a frequent collaborator with Yorgos Lanthimos, will pen the script.
“Marco Bellocchio’s astonishing debut, ‘Fists in the Pocket,’ was released over 50 years ago and had a huge impact on Italian cinema and storytelling at the time,” Aïnouz said. “I’m excited to be collaborating with Efthimis Filippou to revisit this iconic work to create a contemporary parable about the death of the traditional patriarchal family — which I hope will be touching and provocative in equal measure. It’s a dream come true to be working with such a dynamic ensemble of actors that I have long admired to bring this explosive adaptation to audiences today.”
With Firebrand a potential awards contender, and now the starry cast of Rosebushpruning, Aïnouz is set to be introduced to a much wider audience.
