The interview is going poorly. Rebecca (Margaret Qualley) has a lot of pointed questions for Hal Porterfield (Christopher Abbott), heir to a booming hotel empire. He seems pretty chill aboutt answering her questions, but it’s clear she doesn’t like what she’s hearing. His height and weight is clearly a lie. So she presses him further with more personal, intimate questions, like how frequently he masturbates. Rebecca has shown up for business. With her business suit, tight blonde hair, and briefcase full of papers she is clearly someone used to being in control. Hal is reluctant, but willing. This should be going better than it is.
The veil comes down as frustration bubbles over. This isn’t a typical business meeting. Rebecca is in a complicated, no-touch relationship with Hal, controlling him as a high-priced dominatrix. Before long, she has him on all fours cleaning up a messy bathroom, and denying him the sexual gratification he so covets.
Everyone has their kinks. There is power in knowing what another person’s kinks are. That power is explored through the prism of wealth, class, and gender dynamics in Zachary Wigon’s fun and flirty two-hander, Sanctuary. As Hal prepares to take his place as CEO of a very high-profile company, he tries to gently end his relationship with Rebecca for fear of what it could mean if publicly revealed. His attempts to do so, buy playing nice and even buying her an expensive watch, go over like a lead balloon. Realizing the power she has over Hal with this knowledge, Rebecca decides to play it for all of its worth.
But…is this exertion of her control also part of the game? Wigon deftly slips and slides between the power dynamics at play, so that we’re never quite sure who has the upper hand or what their true motivations are. Each one has specific cards to play, some playful and some potentially deadly. Rebecca has no qualms using her power to seduce Hal and lower his defenses, only to twist the knife with a threat that would keep them tied-together “in perpetuity.” Things get serious when Hal, who has been controlled his entire life, finally gets the advantage and violence looks like his answer to the whole Rebecca problem.
Unfolding like a well-choreographed theatrical performance, one could easily see Sanctuary adaptated for the stage. Qualley and Abbott skillfully navigate the intellectual and sexual brinksmanship, showing strength and vulnerability in measured doses, whenever one will suit their character best in the moment. Because sometimes showing a bit of weakness is just another move in Rebecca and Hal’s twisted chess game. If anything, Wigon and screenwriter Micah Bloomberg could’ve pushed things even further, especially when exploring how wealth, influence, and status impact a person’s emotional needs. Even more interesting would be how the denial of such things can push someone to become cold, calcuating, and domineering.
While it goes to some dark places, Sanctuary always feels like a really kinky meet-cute. The sexual attraction between Hal and Rebecca is obvious, but what happens when what the heart wants is entangled with the need for psychological dominance? When two people find that they share the same kink, even if it throws the rest of their life into chaos, can they ever truly let one another go? There are plenty of comfortable rom-coms out there, but Sanctuary is a surprisingly beguiling and witty romance for those who like their love stories to need a safe word.
Sanctuary opens in select theaters on May 19th, before expanding nationwide on May 26th.
The Starling Girl starts out with a dance. A group of young women sashay into a church sanctuary in form-fitting white leotards and flowing skirts. With sweeping arms and lyrical twirls, they move their bodies to praise god.
The camera gradually focuses on one particular face as she dances for her congregation. Eliza Scanlen stars as Jem, the titular character who tries her hardest to be “that good Christian girl” despite her community’s constant criticism. Soon after their dance is finished and the service ends, a church member goes out of her way to tell Jem her bra was visible and that she needed to be more “mindful.”
This type of religious judgment continues throughout her life. Her mother (Wrenn Schmidt) pushes many of the child-rearing responsibilities on Jem, with very little grace or regard for her eldest. The pressure to marry is placed upon her by Pastor Taylor (a menacing Kyle Secor), who offers up his dweeby teenaged-son Ben (Austin Abrams) for courtship. She gets some reprieve in the form of her charismatic father (Jimmi Simpson), a former rock star and drug addict who left the business when he was saved. That soon dissipates when he relapses after the death of his former bandmate.
The arrival of Ben’s 28-year-old married brother, Owen (Lewis Pullman), as the church’s youth leader, sets Jem out on a period of self-discovery. His mysterious return after a mission trip to Puerto Rico sparks her curiosity beyond the church and family unit. She starts to lead the dance troop, experiment with herself sexually, and subtly hit on Owen.
When he takes up her advances, she starts to gain new confidence outside of her relationship with God. As their relationship escalates her young age starts to show, being jealous of his wife and subtly acting out in youth activities.
The Starling Girl is ultimately a character study of a young woman in a predatory relationship with her partner and her church. First-time writer/director Laurel Parmet works hand and hand with Scanlen’s portrayal, showing the character’s immaturity and age by the way she eats and her constant need for male approval. Scanlen knows just how to play the character, knowing when to give in to the character’s lust and when to show her innocence.
Pullman does the complete opposite, showing his character’s desires and true motivations from the jump. His chemistry with Scanlen is electric though he knows when to switch on wolf-like tendencies as needed.
Religious sexual abuse and trauma are nothing new to cinema but under Parmet’s direction, Jem’s journey is all the more heartbreaking and relatable. With her wants conflicting with the church’s message of selflessness and god-centered worship, she starts to reexamine her place in her own family and church. When the affair is ultimately discovered, not enough attention is paid to the underage-consent issue, rather focusing on the cheating. Parmet’s message gets lost amidst her characterizations as a result.
After a climactic final 20 minutes, (which I won’t spoil), the film ends with Jem dancing by herself. As she sways in a bar to her dad’s song, it’s the first time Parmet shows Jem as free. It’s a fitting visual to end the film on, showing the character’s own parabolic journey.
You know the joke: in horror movies it’s always the Black character who dies first. Well, what happens when everyone is Black? That’s the hilarious question at the center of The Blackening, a horror-comedy that made a splash at TIFF for its outrageous look at Black horror movies in a post-Get Out landscape.
Directed by Tim Story (Ride Along) and co-written by Girls Trip writer Tracy Oliver and actor Dewayne Perkins, The Blackening follows a group of African-American friends, reunited from their college days in a remote cabin in the woods for a Juneteenth celebration. There they are trapped by a masked killer who targets them in order of their blackness, forcing the group to try and survive while denying horror movie tropes.
Basically, it’s got the self-awareness of Scream with the smarts of Get Out, a deadly combination for laughs. Having seen the movie myself just last night, I can confirm that it’s extremely funny.
The film is led by Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, X Mayo, Melvin Gregg, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Yvonne Orji, Jay Pharoah, and Perkins who wrote himself one gem of a role.
It’s been seven years since Gareth Edwards’ troubled Rogue One production, and in that time he’s quietly been working on a mysterious sci-fi project. The details have been kept a secret, other than it having to do with humans confronting robots in a futuristic setting. Well, that shadowy project now has an ominous title, The Creator, a fall release date, and an impressive new trailer.
Edwards has gathered quite the cast for The Creator, led by John David Washington, Gemma Chan, and Ken Watanabe. They’re joined by Allison Janney, Sturgill Simpson, and newcomer Madeleine Yuna Voyles, with a screenplay by Edwards and fellow Rogue One writer Chris Weitz.
The trailer promises an all-out war between humanity and artificial intelligence in a post-apocalyptic landscape. Just based on the visual effects, it looks to be on the scale of Edwards’ previous work, including Godzilla and his breakout debut Monsters. We forget that Edwards first became such a red-hot prospect because of what he was able to accomplish on a limited budget. Whatever the price tag is on The Creator it looks as if Edwards is maximizing every dollar. I’ve got serious District 9 vibes from this one.
Here’s the synopsis: Amidst a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence, Joshua (Washington), a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife (Chan), is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI who has developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end the war… and mankind itself. Joshua and his team of elite operatives journey across enemy lines, into the dark heart of AI-occupied territory… only to discover the world-ending weapon he’s been instructed to destroy is an AI in the form of a young child.
The Creator hits theaters on September 29th, and this has quickly leapt to the top of my must-see list for the year.
While delighting in Fast X like a kid with a giant bucket of popcorn and Milk Duds, I remarked to my friend and colleague Jen Chaney that the moment this franchise broke free from the shackles of logic was in Fast Five. You probably know the scene, too, when Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) and the fam raced away with an entire stolen vault of money from Brazilian crime kingpin Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida). Ironic, because that moment was the catalyst for everything that happens in this latest film, the tenth in the epic 22-year race and (for now) the penultimate chapter. From that scene on, these movies have never cared one wit about what makes sense, and it’s to their credit that we as its fans no longer care, either. Cars in outer space? Sure. Former garage mechanics manning nuclear submarines? Okay, whatever. People coming back from the dead? We’re down for any and all of it.
Now, imagine that this franchise, with all of the ludicrous shit it’s done over the years, only has two movies to cram as much ludicrosity (That’s not a word but I’m running with it.) as possible. That’s basically what Fast X is, as not a lot makes any kind of sense but you won’t care because it’s all too Goddamned fun and exciting to deny. There’s bombastic and then there’s this, with so many car crashes and explosions per-minute they make Michael Bay feel woefully inadequate. In numerous ways this is to be expected. For the first time in a long time, these movies have a legit action filmmaker in Louis Leterrier. This guy doesn’t do anything else well other than craft ridiculous set pieces (he directed Now You See Me and Incredible Hulk) and make muscular bald-headed dudes look like gods (and also Transporter 2), so he’s right in the proverbial wheelhouse.
The story is absurd and demands that you be an expert at the Fast & Furious trivia game to understand what the Hell is going on. Even those of us who have studied these movies ad nauseum can get knocked loopy by some of it, while convenient editing of footage attempts to make it all seamless. Picking up from those events in Fast Five, the death of Reyes leads to the emergence of his vengeful son, Dante, played by Jason Momoa doing what I can only describe as the RuPaul’s Drag Race version of Jared Leto’s Joker. I’m pretty sure they gave Momoa zero notes on this performance. Dante is both menacing and fabulous, the first truly unique character to hit these movies in ages. He makes a statement by putting a hurt on the villainous Cipher (Charlize Theron) so bad that she comes running to archnemesis Dom for help. He’s skeptical, given that she murdered his ex-wife and mother to his son Brian Marcos (Leo Abelo Perry), but soon it becomes clear that Cipher is telling the truth.
Dom has a lot more to worry about this time, and you can probably guess what this is in a single word: FAMILY. Yes, “family”, literally mentioned in various languages no less than 17 times and possibly more since I gave up counting near the end. With Dom’s son growing up, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) by his side, sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) off doing who knows what with her husband Brian O’Connor eternally out getting groceries (They should’ve killed Brian off years ago, sorry to say. His absence is just weird.), newly rehabilitated little bro Jakob (John Cena), and now grandmother Abuelita (Rita Moreno) saying grace over the dinner table, the Toretto clan could now field a baseball team if it wanted to. A lot of narrative cartwheels are done to connect these characters together by blood, and that includes the infamous Shaw family (Jason Statham, Helen Mirren), all of which find themselves at odds with Dante, who seeks revenge for his own family. Having been retroactively added to past footage, Dante now has years of pent-up rage to unleash and a lot of psychopathic urges to indulge.
Fast & Furious once had a gritty, street-level nobility that drove (no pun intended) the first few movies to varying degrees of success. That’s long gone, replaced by what is essentially Mission: Impossible on four wheels, with ever-escalating spectacle in the place of storyline cohesion. In this case, one of the huge sequences finds Dom and his team chasing down a flaming bomb as it hurtles towards the Vatican, unleashed by Dante in an effort to wipe out Han (Sung Kang), Tej (Ludacris), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), and Roman (Tyrese Gibson), who has deluded himself into thinking he can lead this mission with any degree of success.
After so long, you sorta forget just how many characters are part of this universe, until Fast Xslaps you over the head and reminds you of each and every one of them. Even a side character like Kurt Russell’s clandestine Mr. Nobody has spawned a little mini-universe of his own. Brie Larson turns up the star power for a glorified bit role as Tess, Mr. Nobody’s daughter who also works for the mysterious Agency, while Scott Eastwood is “Little Nobody”, a sort of generic functionary only notable because he’s played by Eastwood. There’s also refrigerator-sized Jack Reacher star Alan Ritchson as Aimes, who has taken control over the Agency and turned its considerable resources against Dom, making life even more difficult.
It used to be that critics would say “If you like one you’ll like them all’ when it came to these movies, but Fate of the Furious was so terrible it put an end to that lazy analysis that too was guilty of. While F9 reached a farcical apex with a literal trip into outer space, Fast X is comparatively grounded in terms of stakes. This isn’t a case of the entire world being in jeopardy, although the world is nonetheless scarred by billions of dollars in property damage. The story here is a deeply personal one that strikes at the movies’ core theme. Family has its benefits, but also its share of pain. One consistent narrative is that every character that enters Dom’s orbit becomes a part of that family, but there has to be a breaking point. Not everyone can have the family’s best interests at heart, and what happens when that is someone close to Dom’s inner circle? The script, crafted together by Dan Mazeau and previous director Justin Lin, is arguably the worst and most expository yet. But it doesn’t really have much choice in being that way, and at this point lousy writing is part of the charm. You don’t even really notice it until you get legends like Moreno and Mirren spouting nonsense.
There are too many guest stars to list, and some shock twists that will have longtime fans literally screaming in their seats. I know, because I did at least twice. Whether Fast X is the start of a two-part finale or the first leg of a new trilogy, we don’t know, but this film is everything you’ve come to love and hate about Fast & Furious all condensed and powered by rocket fuel. My suggestion is that you see it with others who also live their lives a quarter mile at a time, and who pray at the altar of Dom’s indestructible Dodge Charger. Fast X is overstuffed and over-the-top fan service, and after more than two decades this franchise knows how to keep its fans on the edge of their seats.
It has been a long journey, too long if you ask the bestselling horror video game’s fans, but a Five Nights at Freddy’s movie is finally upon us. Blumhouse and Universal have unleashed animatronic mayhem in the newly-released trailer, which looks incredibly faithful to the source material. After nearly a decade of trying to get this movie off the ground, it’s the least they can do for everyone who is anticipating the film’s Halloween release.
The footage shows star Josh Hutcherson as Mike, the troubled security guard working the late shift at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. He soon comes to discover that getting through the night comes with unique challenges.
Here’s the synopsis: The film follows a troubled security guard as he begins working at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. While spending his first night on the job, he realizes the night shift at Freddy’s won’t be so easy to make it through.
Hutcherson is joined in the cast by Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Kat Conner Sterling, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Matthew Lillard as villain William Afton, creator of the deadly Funtime Animatronics.
Emma Tammi directs from a script co-written by Seth Cuddeback and franchise creator Scott Cawthorne. Cawthorne had given up on the movie a few years ago before Blumhouse swooped in for the rescue. Some of the project’s momentum was also hurt by the 2021 release of the Nicolas Cage flick Willy’s Wonderlandwhich shares the same basic premise.
Five Nights at Freddy’s will hit theaters and Peacock on October 27th.
Can Tom Cruise be stopped? At 60 years old, Cruise successfully led the box office and Oscar-nominated success of Top Gun: Maverick, while his other long-running franchise, Mission: Impossible, keeps on chugging along this summer with Dead Reckoning Part One!
A new trailer has arrived for the first of an epic two-part storyline that will serve as the “culmination” of IMF agent Ethan Hunt’s story. While that sure sounds like the end of the road for this franchise, nobody has actually confirmed that, least of all Cruise himself and what he says goes. Frankly, these movies are making more money now than ever before, so why would Cruise or Paramount want to quit now?
Here’s the official synopsis! Shocker, it involves the fate of the entire world!
In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team embark on their most dangerous mission yet: To track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands. With control of the future and the fate of the world at stake, and dark forces from Ethan’s past closing in, a deadly race around the globe begins. Confronted by a mysterious, all-powerful enemy, Ethan is forced to consider that nothing can matter more than his mission – not even the lives of those he cares about most.
Once again directed by Cruise’s pal, Christopher McQuarrie, the film stars Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Angela Bassett, Henry Czerny, Esai Morales, Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, Cary Elwes, Rob Delaney, Indira Varma, Charles Parnell, and Mark Gatiss.
With this many badass ladies, could we get an all-female spinoff or something, please?
Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part One opens July 12th!
It seems that Chiwetel Ejiofor just can’t get enough of Marvel superheroics. Or perhaps, Marvel can’t get enough of him? The Doctor Strange actor who has been a fixture of the MCU as Baron Mordo, is making the jump to Sony’s universe as part of Venom 3!
Deadline has the news on Ejiofor joining Sony/Marvel’s Spider-Man universe, although his co-starring role is unclear. Could he be playing a version of Mordo? That would be possible given all of the multiverse shenanigans that have been going on, but it’s unlikely. Mordo doesn’t seem like a natural friend or foe to the Lethal Protector, especially when there are so many other options.
Ejiofor joins the returning Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock/Venom, along with Ted Lasso actress Juno Temple. Kelly Marcel will direct from a script she co-wrote with Hardy.
Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige dropped some news at Disney’s upfronts that is sure to please MCU fans. The anticipated second season of Loki will hit Disney+ on October 6th, while Hawkeye spinoff Echo will drop on November 29th.
Loki‘s second season will run for six total episodes, with new ones dropping each week until November 10th, release date of The Marvels. Coincidence? Probably not. Tom Hiddleston is obviously back as the god of mischief, along with Sophia Di Martino as fan-favorite Sylvie, Owen Wilson as Mobius M. Mobius, Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15, Tara strong as Miss Minutes, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ravonna Renslayer. Jonathan Majors is also back as Kang, although the trailer Feige showed at the presentation excluded him, and he wasn’t mentioned at all as part of the cast. Oof.
New additions to the show include Rafael Casal, Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan, and Kate Dickie.
Echo will see the return of Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez, who returns home to Oklahoma to reconnect with her Native American roots and come to terms with her past. Also in the cast are Charlie Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, Chaske Spencer, Tantoo Cardinal, Devery Jacobs, Cody Lightning, Graham Greene, and Zahn McClarnon.
All of the Echo episodes will be made available at once on Disney+, but it’s unclear the episode count.
Andrew Niccol surprised us with news of a Lord of War sequel, but before he gets around to that, he’s another promising film to get to first. THR reports that Niccol will direct I, Object and he’s gathered an all-star group of fellow Kiwis to lead it.
Melanie Lynskey, Thomasin McKenzie, Karl Urban, and Jemaine Clement will star in I, Object, making this a full-on New Zealand production. The story is fascinating, too, as it centers on a grieving 10-year-old boy, struggling after the death of his father who was the only one he could relate to. In order to cope, he begins talking with the everyday objects in his life, and they actually come to life and communicate back to him.
This has the potential to be Niccol’s best film in years, possibly since Gattaca, especially with such a great cast. Filming looks to begin later this year.
