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scifihorroradventure · 6 years

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ELVES (1989)

When Kirsten (Julie Austin) and her friends head into the forest to perform an "anti-Christmas ritual," she inadvertently raises an elf from the depths of Hell. The elf wanders about the small town, moving around in secret, killing the occasional townsfolk. Kirsten, meanwhile, has to put up with her abusive mother (Deanna Lund) and eccentric, wheelchair-bound grandfather (Borah Silver). As ex-con Mike (Dan Haggerty) tries to go straight and gets himself a job as a mall Santa, former Nazis arrive at Kirsten's house and begin discussing past doings with her grandfather. When Kirsten, Brooke (Laura Lichstein), and Amy (Stacey Dye) break into the mall they work at for some late night fun, they run into Mike and all come under attack by the Nazis and the elf. Brooke and Amy are killed and Kirsten and Mike try to figure out what's going on. Kirsten discovers that her grandfather is actually her father while Mike seeks out the origins of the elf and how it figures into the Nazis' supernatural plan to conquer the Earth with an army of human/elf hybrids. Caught between an elf that wants to mate with her and Nazis that want to ensure it happens, Kirsten fights to escape her twisted destiny.

Clearly an attempt to cash in on the craze of films about miniature monsters such as Gremlins, Critters, and Ghoulies that were popular at the time, Elves is an utter abomination of film. There are no likeable characters, almost all the scenes are barely even lit, the effects are bad, and worst of all, it's boring - And for a movie involving a killer elf, Nazis, and incest, that's a hell of a feat. To begin with, the title is a lie. There are no elves, only a single elf, an elf that is never really shown. We occasionally see its face in extreme close up, or its arm reaching out to grab something, but we never see the full elf in action. Though perhaps that's for the best, as each time we see the elf's face it is painfully stiff and expressionless. Perhaps most bizarrely about the film, even though it takes place during Christmas and revolves around a killer elf, the obvious connection between the two is never made by anybody. One would expect Kirsten or Mike to say "I thought elves were cute little people who work for Santa," or for Dr. Fitzpatrick or Professor O'Conner to say something along the lines of "People these days think elves are short people with pointy ears who make toys for Santa Claus, but that isn't true at all. Our perception of them has drastically changed since the olden days," but nothing like this ever comes, with everyone instead talking as if elves are universally agreed upon as being ugly little demons, which is just noticeably off in a film like this. Even movies like Santa's Slay and Jack Frost weren't foolish enough to ignore their monsters' connection to the holiday.

Another big problem are all the long stretches where nothing happens, or the things that seem as if they're going to be ongoing subplots only to fizzle out before they even get started. The film opens with Kirsten performing an anti-Christmas ritual, only for her to apparently be back into the holiday for the rest of the film. Kirsten's mom kills Kirsten's cat only for Kirsten to never find out. There's the a-hole store manager at the mall who never gets killed by the elf or really becomes an obstacle to our heroes. There's the police officer who might suspect Kirsten of the elf's killings but it's never pursued beyond his first scene. There's the bit with the tape on the door that allows Kirsten and Mike entrance to the mall at night. The film spends a lot of time on these things and they all result in nothing.

Julie Austin plays heroine Kirsten and she's okay at best. She's not outright unlikable, but she doesn't really do anything to endear herself to the audience, either. She's just sort of... there. Visually, she's reminiscent of Amy Steel from Friday the 13th Part 2 and April Fool's Day and that's about all she really brings to the table. It's also a little ridiculous that the film keeps treating her like she's a teenager because she’s clearly in her mid thirties. Dan Haggerty of Grizzly Adams fame plays Mike "Santa" McGavin, Kirsten's only real ally in this elf-related chaos, and again, all we really get from him is that he's a nice guy. He's not a bad or useless character (in fact, Mike does nearly all the work when it comes to researching the elf and how to stop it), just not a very fleshed out one. Also, maybe he dies at the end of the film? It's not really clear. Deanna Lund as Kirsten's mother, meanwhile, pulls off the impressive feat of becoming an even bigger hate sink than Nazis or a killer demon elf. Hating Kirsten with a force that would make the Evil Stepmother from Cinderella blush, Kirsten's mother is downright reprehensible in her hatred of her own daughter, even going so far as to kill Kirsten's cat while she's away. True, we eventually get a reason as to why she's so mean, but it's far too late to make her sympathetic, and it's never explained why she's even still living with her elf worshipping, daughter raping, Nazi father in the first place. Laura Lichstein and Stacey Dye as Kirsten's friends Brooke and Amy respectively provide a couple laughs, but they're killed off halfway through. Dr. Fitzpatrick and Professor O'Conner are fun enough eccentric monster expert types (mainly Dr. Fitzpatrick), but they too are only featured briefly. Like the quickly discarded subplots, if a character might be interesting or fun to watch, the movie quickly does away with them.

Ultimately, Elves is a chore to watch. It has enough going for it in its premise that it should be a fairly entertaining watch - Not good by any means, but fun in a bad, cheesy horror movie type way. But instead it just squanders what it has and feels like it does everything it can to make you dislike it. The film is just filled to the brim with unpleasantness and feels roughly twenty minutes too long. Even among stupidly bad Christmas horror movies, this is one entry in the genre that should forever remain wrapped.

Rating: ★

Cast: Julie Austin ... Kirsten Dan Haggerty ... Mike McGavin Borah Silver ... Kirsten's Grandfather Deanna Lund ... Kirsten's Mother Mansell Rivers-Bland ... Rubinkreuz Laura Lichstein ... Brooke Stacey Dye ... Amy Christopher Graham ... Willy Allen Lee ... Dr. James Fitzpatrick Paul Rohrer ... Professor O'Conner

Director: Jeffrey Mandel. Producer: John Fitzgerald (executive producer), Jerry Graham (executive producer), Dan Haggerty (associate producer), Al Loberger (line producer), Dale Mitchell (executive producer), Mark Paglia, and Michelle Werry (line producer). Writer: Jeffrey Mandel, Mike Griffin, and Bruce A. Taylor. Music: Vladimir Horunzhy. Special Effects: Ken Brilliant (sculptor: close up elf), Evan Campbell (creator: fetus elf / designer and sculpturer: elf fetus), Patrick Denver (radio control mechanics: elf), Jane Dispersio (additional special effects crew), Tim Drnec (special effects coordinator), Vincent J. Guastini (designer: elf / sculptor: elf / shop supervisor / operator: elf, second unit), Joe Macchia (additional special effects crew), Mike Rios (chief technician / operator: elf, second unit), Brian D. Veatch (special effects), Ken Walker (mechanics: close up elf), Linda K. Wilson (manager: Fantasy Workshop), Gary Yee (additional special effects crew), Evan Campbell (sculptor, uncredited), Bryan Sisson (special effects assistant, uncredited), Lynn Cress (special visual effects), Tom Matthies (visual effects: apocalypse sequence), and Tom Richardson (special visual effects).

#sci fi horror adventure #elves #christmas #holidays #horror #1980s

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daydreamer0078 · 4 years

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16 Most Anticipated Movies in 2020 that Must Watch

There are special movies coming in 2020. We have to watch them without missing them. It's exciting that so many special movies releasing in 2020 that include birds of prey, do little, quiet place 2, black widow and other movies. These movies are producing by the major studios and releasing in 2020. If you're a movie lover, you shouldn't miss them. I don't think you don't miss them. As a movie lover, you are gonna watch all of them because the movies that are gonna release have a great expectations. The following list are the most anticipated movies which are gonna release in 2020. Do Little

About Movie: Dolittle is an American action fantasy film directed by Stephen Gaghan from Gaghan's script and Thomas Shepherd's plot. The film is based on Hugh Lofting's character Doctor Dolittle, and primarily based on Doctor Dolittle's Voyages. Robert Downey Jr. appears as the title character in live-action performances along with Antonio Banderas and Michael Sheen; the voice cast features Emma Thompson, Rami Malek, John Cena, Kumail Nanjiani, Octavia Spencer, Tom Holland, Craig Robinson, Ralph Fiennes, Selena Gomez and Marion Cotillard. Dolittle is scheduled to be released on January 17, 2020, in the United States. Plot: A doctor finds he can speak to animals Birds of Prey

About Movie: Birds of Prey: And One Harley Quinn's Fantabulous Emancipation is an American superhero film based on Birds of Prey's DC Comics team. The film, directed by Cathy Yan and written by Christina Hodson, is intended to be the eighth film in the DC Extended Universe and a follow-up spin-off to the 2016 film Suicide Squad. Margot Robbie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, Chris Messina, Ali Wong, Ella Jay Basco, and Ewan McGregor. Birds of Prey is the first R-rated DCEU film. On February 7, 2020, Warner Bros is scheduled to release Birds of Prey in the United States. Plot: Harley Quinn meets Black Canary, Huntress and Renee Montoya after breaking with the Joker to save a young girl from a lord of bad crime. A Quiet Place: Part II

About Movie: A Quiet Place: Part II is the sequel to A Quiet Place (2018) of an upcoming American horror film. The sequel film, directed and written by John Krasinski, stars Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, and Noah Jupe. The cast is also joined by Cillian Murphy and Djimon Hounsou. After the first film's box office success. Krasinski wrote the film by August 2018 and was hired to direct in February 2019. From June 2019 to September 2019, production took place in Western New York. On March 20, 2020, Paramount Pictures plans to release A Quiet Place: Part II at theaters. Plot: The Abbott family is now facing the outside world's horror after the events at home. Forced to venture into the unknown, they realize the creatures that are not the only threats that lie beyond the path of the sand. The New Mutants

About Movie: The New Mutants is a group of new teenaged mutant superheroes-in-training distributed by Marvel Comics. They were the main characters of three successive series of comic books that were X-Men franchise spin-offs. Chris Claremont and artist Bob McLeod created the first team of characters from New Mutants. They first appeared in The New Mutants 1982, part of the Marvel Graphic Novel series, followed by their own cover from 1983 to 1991. A new group of young mutants is introduced in the second New Mutants in 2003. It was relaunched in 2004 as New X-Men: Academy X, after which the core squad was collectively called the "Young Mutants." The surviving members were incorporated into one junior team, the New X-Men, after the "M-Day" crossover event at the end of 2005. The third series of New Mutants was released in May 2009, putting together most of the original team. A film will be released on 3 April 2020 about the New Mutants. Plot: Five young mutants, just discovering their abilities while held in a secret facility against their will, fight to escape their past sins and save themselves. No Time to Die

About Movie: No Time to Die is an spy film and the twenty-fifth installment to be produced by Eon Productions in the James Bond film franchise. This features Daniel Craig as fictional MI6 agent James Bond in his fifth outing. It is written by Cary Joji Fukunaga, who also co-wrote the script with Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. With Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch and Ana de Armas joining the cast, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, Rory Kinnear, Jeffrey Wright, Léa Seydoux and Christoph Waltz take over from previous films. It will be the first film in the series to be internationally distributed by Universal Pictures.The film is scheduled to be released in the United Kingdom on April 2, 2020, and in the United States on April 10, 2020. Plot: Bond has left active service. His peace is short-lived when his old CIA friend Felix Leiter turns up asking for assistance, leading Bond to the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology. Black Widow

About Movie: Black Widow is a forthcoming American superhero film based on the same name's Marvel Comics character. Produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. The film is directed by Jac Schaeffer and Ned Benson, Cate Shortland, and stars Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff, alongside David Harbour, Florence Pugh, O-T Fagbenle, and Rachel Weisz. Black Widow is scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States on May 1, 2020. Plot: Not yet revealed , but the film took place between the events Civil War and Infinity War. Fast & Furious 9

About Movie: Fast & Furious 9 is an film directed by Justin Lin and penned by Daniel Casey on American violence. It will be the ninth installment in the Fast & Furious franchise, a sequel to 2017's The Fate of the Furious. The film will feature stars like Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Chris Bridges "Ludacris," Nathalie Emmanuel, John Cena, Helen Mirren, Charlize Theron, and Michael Rooker. Fast & Furious 9 is scheduled to be released by Universal Pictures in the U.S. on May 22, 2020. Plot: Not yet revealed. Wonder Woman 1984

About Movie: Wonder Woman 1984 is an American superhero film based on the character DC Comics Wonder Woman, distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It's a sequel to the Wonder Woman in 2017. Patty Jenkins directs the film from the screenplay she wrote with Geoff Johns and David Callaham, From Johns and Jenkins's narrative. Together with Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, Robin Wright, and Connie Nielsen, it stars Gal Gadot as Diana Prince / Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman will be released by Warner Bros in the United States in 1984. From June 5, 2020 Plot: Not yet revealed. Top Gun: Maverick

About Movie: Top Gun: Maverick is an American adventure drama movie directed by Joseph Kosinski, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, Tom Cruise, and David Ellison, composed by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie. It is the sequel to Top Gun (1986) and Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Ed Harris, and Val Kilmer stars. From the first film, Cruise and Kilmer take over their roles. Top Gun: Maverick is scheduled to be released by Paramount Pictures in the U.S. on June 26, 2020. Plot: Pete Mitchell is where he belongs after more than thirty years of service as one of the best aviators in the Navy, pushing the envelope as a daring test pilot and dodging the rise of rank that would ground him. Free Guy

About Movie: Free Guy is an American science fiction action comedy movie directed by Shawn Levy, Matt Lieberman's plot, and Lieberman and Zak Penn's screenplay in 2020. The movie stars Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Joe Keery, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Lil Rel Howery, and Taika Waititi. Free Guy will be released by 20th Century Fox on July 3, 2020. Plot: A bank teller discovers that within a brutal, open-world video game, he's actually an NPC. Ghostbusters: Afterlife

About Movie: Ghostbusters: Afterlife is a future supernatural American comedy movie directed by Jason Reitman and written by Reitman and Gil Kenan. It stars Mckenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard, Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd, Logan Kim, and Celeste O'Connor, while from the original films Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver and Annie Potts take over their roles. It's a reference to the franchise of Ghostbusters. Ghostbusters: Paramount Pictures, by Sony Pictures Releasing, is scheduled to be released in the United States on July 10, 2020. Plot: When a single mother and her two children arrive in a small town, they start to discover their connection with the original Ghostbusters and their grandfather left behind the secret legacy. Tenet

About Movie: Tenet is an action thriller movie produced by Nolan and Emma Thomas, written and directed by Christopher Nolan. It stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Dimple Kapadia, Elizabeth Debicki, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh. Warner Bros is scheduled to release Tenet on July 17, 2020. Plot: An epic action revolving around spying, time travel and evolution around the world. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

About Movie: The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is a supernatural American horror film written by David Leslie Johnson's Michael Chaves from a screenplay. The film is the Conjuring Universe's eighth chapter. Together with Sterling Jerins, Julian Hilliard, Sarah Catherine Hook, Charlene Amoia and Ruairi O'Connor, Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga will also take on their roles as paranormal investigators and authors, Ed and Lorraine Warren. The project is being co-produced by James Wan and Peter Safran. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is expected to be released on September 11, 2020 in the United States and will be distributed by Warner Bros. and New Cinema Line. Plot: Not yet revealed. Venom 2

About Movie: Venom 2 is an upcoming American superhero movie based on the character of Marvel Comics Venom, produced in partnership with Marvel by Columbia Pictures. It is planned to be the third installment of Sony's Marvel Universe and the successor to Venom (2018), released by Sony Pictures Releasing. The film is directed by Andy Serkis from a script by Kelly Marcel and, along with Woody Harrelson, Michelle Williams, Reid Scott, and Naomie Harris, stars Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock / Venom. The release of Venom 2 in the United States is scheduled for October 2, 2020. Plot: Not yet revealed. The Eternals

About Movie: The Eternals is a potential American superhero movie based on the same name's Marvel Comics race. Produced by Marvel Studios and produced by Motion Pictures at Walt Disney Studios. The film is directed by Matthew and Ryan Firpo's Chloé Zhao, and features an ensemble cast including Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lauren Ridloff, Brian Tyree Henry, Salma Hayek, Lia McHugh, Don Lee, Barry Keoghan, Gemma Chan, and Kit Harington. The Eternals are scheduled to be released in the United States on November 6, 2020. Plot: The Eternals ' saga, a race of immortal beings that lived on Earth and shaped their history and civilizations. Godzilla vs. Kong

About Movie: Godzilla vs. Kong is Adam Wingard's new American monster movie, produced by Terry Rossio. The movie is also the 36th film in the Godzilla series, the 12th film in the King Kong franchise, and the fourth Godzilla film to be made exclusively by a Hollywood studio. The film stars are Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Shun Oguri, Eiza González, Jessica Henwick, Julian Dennison, Kyle Chandler, Zhang Ziyi, and Demián Bichir. Godzilla vs. Kong is expected to be released on November 20, 2020. Plot: As the gigantic Kong meets the unstoppable Godzilla, the world watches to see which one of them will become King of the Monsters. You might be interested in these articles, Have a look at them. MARVEL PHASE 5 MOVIES AND SHOWS LIST HUGE MARVEL PHASE 5 LEAK – MCU Deadpool will Join with Avengers Soon – MCU Best Hollywood Movies of 2019 that You Must See! Read the full article

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weekendwarriorblog · 5 years

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WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND January 25, 2019 - The Kid Who Would Be King, Serenity

(Yes, I realize the weekend just ended for most, but hey, might as well get an early crack at NEXT weekend, huh? January is winding down with what’s going to be seem like a fairly boring weekend after last week’s M. Night Shyamalan sequel disappointing when compared to the sensation of Dragon Ball Super: Brolly, a movie that few movie writers knew about before Wednesday but grossed $21 million in six days. But hey, variety is the spice of life, and the two movies opening wide this week certainly add some spice with a duo of films from reputable British writer/directors.

THE KID WHO WOULD BE KING (20thCentury Fox)

Written and directed by Joe Cornish (Attack the Block) Cast: Louis Ashbourne Serkis, Dean Chaumoo, Angus Imrie, Tom Taylor, Rebecca Ferguson, Patrick Stewart, Rhianna Doris, Denise Gough MPAA Rating: PG

On the one hand, this action-adventure film is an exciting one, because it’s the second feature from Joe Cornish following his astonishing 2011 debut Attack the Block, but also, because it’s Cornish’s first studio feature for a mainstream audience, geared towards family audiences in particular.

It’s a fairly standard take on the King Arthur mythos with a young British lad (played by Andy Serkis’ son) finding Excalibur, the legendary sword in the stone and having to team with his best friend (and a couple school bullies) to take on the return of Morgana le Fey (Rebecca Ferguson).

It seems like a good idea to get kids, especially young boys, interested in the tales of King Arthur even though the last few movies have bombed as neither Guy Ritchie’s 2017 film King Arthur: Legend of the Sword or the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced 2004 movie King Arthur found much of an audience. In fact, trying to bring any British legend to the screen and get American moviegoers interested might be a fool’s errand, as seen by last year’s Robin Hood bomb.

The thing is that other than Patrick Stewart – star of Fox’s ongoing X-Men franchise, which seems to be in limbo these days -- and Rebecca Ferguson from the last couple Mission: Impossible movies, there are no stars in the movie that could entice those on the fence about whether to see this movie. On the other hand, reviews have generally been good which could help boost interest a little more going into the weekend.

At first, I thought maybe this would end up with around $10 million, but it’s basically going to be a family movie coming into a market where most other family films have been in theaters for three weeks or more. (Dragon Ball is an exception.) Fox was also able to get it into more than 3,4000 nationwide, because wisely, it waited until after Glass opened for this. Because of this, I’m going to goose up my number to somewhere between $11 and 13 million with most of the family movies geared towards boys falling away and Joe Cornish’s older fans maybe giving this a look. Sadly, the movie is not being marketed as “from the director of Attack the Block” as it clearly should be.

Mini-Review: Granted that Attack the Block was always going to be a hard act to follow for Joe Cornish, and yet he has written and directed a follow-up that might appeal to younger moviegoers though maybe not so much Cornish’s older teen fans from his directorial debut.

Louis Ashbourne Serkis, who is indeed the son of Andy Serkis, plays Alex Elliot, a fairly normal 10-year-old, who stands up to a couple school bullies and while being chased by them finds a sword embedded in rock on a construction site. It is indeed the fabled “Sword in the Stone” Excalibur as used by King Arthur. Along with his best friend Bedders (Dean Chaumoo) and their two relentless bullies (Tom Taylor, Rhianna Doris), they all go on a quest to fight Arthur’s evil sister Morgana (Rebecca Ferguson) and save Britain.

The first major hurdle this otherwise fine kids’ action-adventure faces is the fairly weak cast, because without liking Alex or his colleagues, it’s hard to root for them even with the stakes never feeling too great. The one exception is Angus Imrie as the young Merlin who somehow manages to get more laughs than the older Merlin, played by Sir Patrick Stewart. Alex’s mother is played by Claire Foy lookalike Denise Gough, and she also doesn’t bring much to what should have been touching scenes with Serkis. Ferguson is decent as Morgana, although the role doesn’t give her much to do.

Using many of the same creative team used by buddy and sometime producer Edgar Wright on Baby Driver, including DP Tim Pope and editors Jonathan Amos and Paul Machliss, as well as production designer Marcus Rowland, it’s a safe bet that Cornish has made another movie that looks damn good. As with Attack, Cornish’s FX team perfectly integrate the many CG beasties with the human characters.

The thing is that Cornish does a fine job with this material, so that the movie is better than the Percy Jackson movies or other similar family films, and he should be commended for making such a smooth transition to studio family films. Even so, by the third act, I was just getting very bored, especially when I thought it was ending, and it went on for another 15 minutes.

The Kid Who Would Be King is perfectly fine -- it has its moments -- but there’s something about it that left me wanting, because it seems like it should have been a lot better overall.

Rating: 6.5/10

SERENITY (Aviron)

Written and directed by Steven Knight (Locke, Redemption, “Peaky Blinders,” “Taboo”) Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Diane Lane, Jason Clarke, Djimon Hounsou MPAA Rating: R

The other new release of the weekend is something that possibly could have done very well in the ‘90s or early ‘00s as an erotic thriller, a genre that has had its ups and downs but has mostly done decently at the box office. This is the third movie from Steven Knight, the director of Lockeand writer of Eastern Promises, “Peaky Blinders” and “Taboo,” though I’m not sure his previous hits will convince many to see this in theaters.

Matthew McConaughey plays fishing boat captain Baker Dill, who has been living in hiding on Plymouth Island after his divorce. His ex-wife Karen, played by Anne Hathaway, shows wanting her to kill her violent and abusive husband (Jason Clarke) in order to save her and Baker’s teen son.

McConaughey’s career has been all over the place in recent years, but his recent crime-thriller White Boy Rick didn’t do very well, and it feels like Serenity is heading towards a similar fate. In fact, McConaughey has been in quite a string of bombs since winning an Oscar for 2013’s Dallas Buyers Club with his biggest hit being the animated Sing. His most high-profile movie The Dark Tower made $120 million worldwide based on $60 million budget which made it barely profitable but especially disappointing due to its studio’s franchise plans.

Having Anne Hathaway could help as she’s been a lot more careful about her choices since winning her own Oscar a year earlier with last year’s Ocean’s 8, in which she played herself,being a relative hit with almost $300 million worldwide. Her last movie with McConaughey was Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar in 2014, which grossed $188 million domestically, so that’s somewhat of a bonus. The cast is rounded out by the ever-present Jason Clarke, who has yet to really break-out despite being involved in many Oscar-caliber films, as well as Djimon Hounsou, who is becoming a superhero film regular, having just appeared in Aquaman and having roles in Captain Marveland Shazam. (Some might remember that he also had a great scene with Chris Pratt early in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie.)

While erotic thrillers have done well in the past, this movie was originally supposed to come out last September, and there was advertising trailers all summer – I know that because I saw the trailer for this in front of a ton of movies – but then it was moved to January, which is never a good sign of faith. This is a rare release from fledgling distributor Aviron Pictures, who released just two movies in 2018. Aviron is releasing this one into just 2,500 theaters, which might already be too many screens considering how little marketing the film has

Reviews are still embargoed until Thursday (never a good sign), but I’m probably not going to review the movie, since I saw it quite some time ago, though I do have to say that that the big twist in this movie angered me more than anything in M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass.

This movie looks like the epitome of a late January bomb, one that probably won’t come close to $10 million for the weekend and might even end up closer to $5 million or a little more. Either way, it won’t have to make that much to end up in the top 5 this weekend since it’s going up against many movies that have been playing since before Christmas.

This week’s Top 10 should look something like this…

1. Glass (Universal) - $19 million -53%

2. The Kid Who Would Be King (20thCentury Fox) - $11.6 million N/A

3. The Upside (STX) – $10 million -33%

4. Serenity (Aviron) - $6.5 million N/A

5. Aquaman (Warner Bros.) - $5.5 million -47%

6. Dragon Ball Super: Brolly (Funimation) – $5 million -49%

7. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse (Sony) - $4.8 million -37%

8. A Dog’s Way Home (Sony) – $4.2 million -42%

9. Mary Poppins Returns (Disney) - $3.1 million -45%

10. Escape Room (Sony) - $2.8 million -46%

LIMITED RELEASES

Many of my colleagues will be heading to the Sundance Film Festival this week, but I’m not going, so I don’t have much to say about it. Sorry!

On a more local level , we get FIAF ANIMATION FIRST FEST over the weekend, focused on the booming French animation film industry with a 20thanniversary screening of Michel Ocelot’s Kirikou and the Sorceress and 17 US and New York premieres, including the New York premiere of Funanand a number of shorts programs. Studio Ghibli’s Isao Takahata, who died last year, will be honored. You can read the full program and schedule of events Here. I personally have never attended, but if I wasn’t busy I might check out some of the programs.

As far as the limited releases…

Following its November qualifying run as Germany’s Oscar entry and with two Oscar nominations under its belt, Oscar-winning filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s (The Lives of Others) new movie NEVER LOOK AWAY (Sony Pictures Classics). The historic drama is loosely based on the life of visual artist Gerhard Richter with Tom Schilling (Woman in Gold) playing a young artist who has watched East Berlin go from Nazi occupation, watching his older sister be sentenced to death due to her mental illness by a ruthless Nazi doctor (Sebastian Koch), to falling in love with a young woman (Paula Beer) who happens to be that doctor’s daughter and escaping to West Berlin during the country’s contemporary art movement. I found the movie to be overly long and a little confusing, because I wasn’t sure what the movie was supposed to be about until about 30 minutes into it.

Just a few months after his last film The Mercy barely got a glance, The Theory of Everything director James Marsh’s new heist film KING OF THIEVES (Saban Films) will open in theaters (including New York’s Cinema Village) and on VOD and Digital HD on Friday. The true crime tale about a group of retired crooks trying to stage an elaborate jewelry heist stars an ensemble of legendary British actors in Michael Caine, Jim Broadbent, Michael Gambon, Ray Winstone, Tom Courtenay along with Charlie Cox aka Daredevil. I had high hopes for this movie being better than the likes of Zach Braff’s Going in Style, something classier like last year’s The Old Man and the Gun, but sadly, it’s an obvious money grab for older British men and women reminiscing about all the better crime movies made by the cast.

Claus Räfle’s docudrama THE INVISIBLES (Greenwich) follows four German-Jewish youth who decide to stay behind in Berlin as World War II is beginning, living vicariously while dodging Nazi officials before eventually joining the resistance. This story of survival opens at New York’s Quad Cinema and Landmark 57, as well as in L.A. at the Laemmle Royal on Friday.

The Brazilian animated film TITO AND THE BIRDS (Shout! Studios) from filmmakers Gustavo Steinberg, Gabriel Bitar and André Catoto tells the story of a boy and his father who are looking for the cure for an illness inflicted on someone after being scared. After playing a number of film festivals, it also opens at the Quad Cinema in New York

It’s hard to believe that 88-year-old French New Wave filmmaker Jean Luc Goddard is still with us and making movies, but all the recent repertory series in New York and L.A. have been leading up to his latest film THE IMAGE BOOK (Kino Lorber). Don’t know much about this film which received a special Palme d’or at Cannes last year, but apparently it’s a “collage film essay,” which means that it probably doesn’t have a plot or narrative that’s easy to explain. It opens at the IFC Center and Lincoln Center in New York.

Tom Arnold and Sean Astin star in Ron Carlson’s Dead Ant (Cinedigm) as the members of an ‘80s hair metal band called Sonic Grave who had a power ballad hit 30 years earlier, and while they’re on a road trip to Coachella, they find themselves trying to be relevant again…. Until they’re attacked by giant killer ants. Okay, I think I need to see this movie, as it seems like my kind of movie.

Playing for one night only nationwide on Thursday as a Fathom Event is Timothy Woodward Jr.’s horror film The Final Wish (Cinedigm), starring the wonderful Lin Shaye (Insidious), Michael Welsh, Melissa Bolona and Tony Todd, and produced by Jeffrey Reddic (writer/producer of Final Destination). Welsh plays Aaron Hammond who returns to his hometown after the death of his father to help his bereaved mother (Shaye) and deal with the demons from his past, finding a mysterious item while going through his father’s belongings.

Opening at New York’s Cinema Village on Friday and at L.A.’s Laemmle Music Hall on Feb. 1 is Francois Margolin’s controversial French drama Jihadists (Cinema Libre), co-directed by by Lemine Ould Salem, which was banned in France. It follows two filmmakers who were given access to fundamentalist clerics of Sunni Islam to show what it’s like to live your life under jihadi rule.

From Bollywood comes Vikas Bahl ‘s drama Super 30 (Reliance Entertainment), starring Hrithik Roshan as Patna-based mathematician Anand Kumar, who runs the famed and prestigious Super 30 program in Patna. Not sure of the theater count but it’s probably opening in a dozen or so theaters.

Opening on Wednesday following its premiere at Doc-NYC is Robert Townsend’s doc The 5 Browns: Digging through the Darkness, which looks at the 5 Browns, a group of Julliard-trained sibling pianists who rose to stardom only to be devastated when it’s revealed that the three sisters were sexually abused by their manager father Keith Brown. It opens at the IFC Center for a single-week run.

Also opening at the Cinema Village and in select cities is John Kauffman’s Heartlock (Dark Star Pictures), a love story about a female prison guard, played by Lesley-Ann Brandt, who becomes the subject of affection from a charming male convict (Alexander Dreymo) who wants to use their relationship to help him escape.

STREAMING

The main film streaming on Netflix on Friday is Jonas Akerlund’s POLAR, his follow-up to Lords of Chaos, which premiered at Sundance last year and comes out a few weeks later. Based on the Dark Horse graphic novel, it stars Mads Mikkelson as assassin Duncan Vizla, known as the Black Kaiser, who is getting ready for retirement in a suburban town when he’s dragged back into one last job, but when it goes wrong, Duncan’s new love interest (Vanessa Hudgens) is dragged into it. I’ve never read the graphic novel, and I’ve generally been mixed on Akerlund’s films, but this one is definitely in the same absolute insanity realm of his earlier film Spun with a lot of crazy over-the-top performance from the likes of Matt Lucas (Little Britain) and Johnny Knoxville (Jackass), but in this case, it’s not a good thing. Mikkelson gives another stellar performance, and Hudgens is also quite good (didn’t even recognize her) but the craziness surrounding them from Lucas and the other assassins sent after Duncan made it hard to enjoy the film, especially compared to Mikkelson’s other upcoming film Arctic, but hey, it’s on Netflix so I’m sure people will watch it anyway.

Speaking of which, I also want to note that last week, I didn’t notice that a science fiction film called IO: Last on Earth, starring Margaret Qualley (Novitiate),was also streaming on Netflix. I haven’t watched it yet, but one of the writers also co-wrote Claire Carée’s Embers, which is one of my favorite festival discoveries from the past few years.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

The Metrograph has a couple new series starting Friday, including Hou Hsiao-Hsien in the 21st Century, featuring 35mm prints of four of the Chinese filmmaker’s recent films: Millenium Mambo, Three Times, Flight of the Red Balloon and Café Lumieré. Then on Saturday, the Metrograph will show the classic Gone with the Windto kick off its Produced by David O. Selznick series, and there’s some great stuff to come, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellboundand Rebecca. The theater will also be screening a 35mm of Ken Loach’s 1991 film Riff Raff, starring Robert Carlyle, who would breakout in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting. On top of that, Kay Francis: Queen of Pleasure continues with William Dieterle’s Jewel Robbery (1932) and 1929’s The Cocoanuts this weekend, while this weekend’s Late Nites at Metrograph option is Chantal Akerman’s News from Home (1977) and Playtime: Family Matinees shows the 2015 animated film Shaun the Sheep.

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

Weds. and Thurs. see double features of the 1977 film The Late Show and ‘78’s The Big Fix, starring Richard Dreyfuss. Friday sees a double feature of American Graffiti (1973) and The Lords of Flatbush (1974) with More American Graffiti (1979) added on Saturday… for just 10 bucks!The weekend family matinee is 1947’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, starring Danny Kaye. The Sunday/Monday Franco Zeffirelli double feature is Romeo & Juliet (1968) with Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972). Tarantion’s Jackie Brownonce again plays at midnight Friday and the Tuesday Grindhouse triple feature is Katt Shea’s Poison Ivy (1992), Streets (1990) and Stripped to Kill (1987), which is already sold out online but may have more tickets at the door.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

Far Out in the 70s: A New Wave of Comedy, 1969 - 1979 continues with La Cage Aux Folles and The Seduction of Mimi on Wednesday, double features of Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? and Theater of Blood on Thursday, Woody Allen’s Sleeper and Bananas on Friday, then Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, Monty Python and the Holy Grail on Saturday, and Papermoon, What’s Up, Doc? starring Barbara Streisand and Woody Allen’s Play It Again Sam on Sunday. As part of the series focusing on the great filmmaker and actor Elaine May, Film Forum will show A New Leaf (1971) and Mickey and Nicky (1976) next Tuesday. The weekend’s Film Forum Jr. is Gordon Parks’ 1969 film The Learning Tree.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Beginning another fun series of double features this weekend with Argento/De Palma with a double feature of Suspiria and Carrie on Thursday, Blow Out and Inferno on Friday, and Dressed to Kill and Tenebrae on Saturday. Saturday sees a special presentation of Craig Owen’s The Silent Film Era at the Alexandria Hotel, while the 1916 Douglas Fairbanks film His Picture in the Papers will also screen on Saturday with live music accompaniment.

AERO (LA):

The AERO is offering an eclectic mixed bag of films this weekend including the 4k restoration of Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1987; Janus Films) on Friday night, David Fincher’s Fight Club on Saturday, and the WC Fields comedy My Little Chickadee (1940) on Sunday night.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

Continuing the theater’s attempt to keep up with ‘90s Cinemax with its X-rated fare, Just Jaekin’s erotic drama Emmanuelle (Kino Lorber; 1974) will screen in a special engagement, leading up to next week’s Beyond Emmanuelle Just Jaeckin retrospective and Erotic Journeys: The Many Faces of Em(m)anuelle.

IFC CENTER (NYC):

On Friday and Saturday at midnight, the IFC Center will show the 4k restoration of Dario Argento’s Suspiria as part of its Late Night Favorites series. While The Image Book opens here on Friday, Weekend Classics: Early Godard continues with a 35mm print of A Woman is a Woman (1961) and Waverly Midnights: The Feds screens Michael Mann’s Manhunter(with Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal coming in the next two weekends!)

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART (LA):

Friday night’s midnight screening is the Rocky Horror Picture Show follow-up Shock Treatment (1981).

MOMA (NYC):

This week’s Modern Matinees: Sir Sidney Poitier offerings are A Patch of Blue (1965) on Weds, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs! (1970) Thurs, and No Way Out (1950) on Friday. MOMA is also screening Ida Lupino’s Never Fear (The Young Lovers) (1950) to end its 16th annual To Save and Project series, although there’s a couple second screenings for those (like me) who only just found out about it now.

That’s it for this week… next week, it’s February! Already?? While many movie writers are still at Sundance and others are preparing for Super Bowl Sunday, Sony releases the crime-thriller remake Miss Bala.

#WhatToWatchThisWeekend WeekendWarrior TheKidWhoWouldBeKing Serenity Movies Reviews BoxOffice

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betadunsparce · 7 years

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Timeline of Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe

2018: S.C.O.O.B.

2019: The Invincible Grape Ape, where he is confirmed as a kaiju.

*A different studio then acquires the rights to all Cartoon-Cartoons, and in a bizarre legal twist, the Flintstones and Tom and Jerry, splitting the universe into two separate franchises, this is indicated in the timeline with a (CC)

2019 (CC): Untitled Powerpuff Girls live action movie

2020: Yogi, an environmentalist themed action movie that pits animal versus human. In the climatic scene, it turns out that the antagonist is actually a robot, and the humans team up with Yogi to defeat him. In the post credit scene, we see Boo-Boo studying the remains of the robot in order to build his own robotic armor in the hopes of being as powerful as his idol Yogi.

2020 (CC): Bravo. The studio in charge of the Johnny Bravo movie reboots the franchise to appeal to a more adult audience: now, rather than being constantly rejected, Johnny is a rich playboy who gets all the babes he wants until his friend, Carl, threatens to take it all away from him.

2021: The Hound. Huckleberry Hound has been hired by a mercenary corporation to take out insurgents in the Middle East. The movie ends with the reveal that Huckleberry’s employers, the enigmatic S.A.W.Y.E.R., were actually using him to commit war crimes.

*A third studio acquires the rights to The Berenstain Bears, denoted by (BB).

2022: Untitled S.C.O.O.B sequel. Teases for the upcoming Barbera movie.

2022 (CC): Boy Genius. Dexter faces of against Mandark, who has stolen his sister and arranged a marriage between them in order to gain access to Dexter’s family fortune. Dexter fails at his task, only to awaken with his sister safe. Unbeknownst to him, Monkey had save the day after Dexter had been defeated, thwarting Mandark’s plans.

2022 (BB): The Berenstain Bears. A standard, mediocre action movie staring the Berenstain Bears. Many critics denounce it as being a ripoff of the better received Yogi movie.

2022: Barbera. When the the entire world is threatened, Earth’s mightiest warriors assemble. Scooby, Shaggy, Yogi, Huckleberry Hound, Grape Ape, and the newly introduced Smurfette team up to stop an army of nondescript aliens from destroying the planet.

2023 (CC): Flintstones. Quickly becoming the CC studios star franchise, the Flintstones raises to the top of the industry due to the properties previous fame as a hit television program.

2023: Yogi 2.

2023 (CC): The Cartoons. Dexter forms a guild of heroes alongside the Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Bravo, and a diverse cast of lesser known cartoons. Notably absent from the roster are Cow and Chicken.

2023: Hound 2.

2024 (CC): Flintstones 2

2024: Untitled third movie in the S.C.O.O.B. series

2024 (BB). Untitled Berenstain Bears sequel. This movie is critically panned, with many critics citing the bizarre and frankly stupid introduction of an alternative “Baerenstein” universe as chief among the movie’s flaws.

2024 (CC): Cartoon 2. Of particular note, Jerry from Tom and Jerry makes an appearance in this movie, and quickly gains a cut following.

2025: Barbera 2. The original studio has managed to gain the rights to Tom and Jerry for this movie. In a climatic scene towards the climax of the movie, Tom sacrifices himself to save Jerry’s life.

2025 (CC): Flintstones 3. The third installment of the Flintstones franchise is heavily pained, in part owing to a scene where Fred rather embarrassingly dances down a street. The series is put on hiatus.

2025: Captain Planet. Critics are surprised by the well adapted Captain Planet movie, which features an emotional environmental message and has a remarkably developed humor to it. Captain Planet quickly becomes a fan favorite as it is hint that he will later feature in the Barbera movies.

2026: Agents of S.C.O.O.B. Owing to the success of the cinematic universe, Hanna-Barbera launches a television series featuring Daphne, Fred, and Velma, with Dynomutt filling in for Scooby.

2026: The Jetsons. The Jetsons movie is met with positive feedback, citing the sci-fi setting as a nice change of pace in the franchise. Fans wonder if the Jetson will ever interact with the main cast of heroes.

2026 (CC): Cartoon 3. Following the disaster that was Flintstones 3, Cartoon-Cartoons has decided to focus entirely on the Cartoon series.

2027: S.C.O.O.B. Civil War. After an argument on the best flavor of Scooby Snacks, Scooby and Shaggy get into a bitter fight that test both their resolve and friendship. Jerry, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi, and Boo-Boo join Scooby in his fight against Shaggy, Grape Ape, and Smurfette. Additionally, the Hanna-Barbera movie recently acquired the rights to the Flintstones, and Bamm-Bamm joins the fight on the side of Shaggy. Things get even weirder when Scooby recruits one of his oldest friends, Pac-Man, to help him. The Climax of the movie reveals that the fight had been secretly planned and orchestrated by none other than Scrappy, who had poisoned the Scooby Snacks so that they would taste differently to Scooby and Shaggy. His ultimate plan was to release Josie and the Pussycats from their deep-freeze hibernation and use their power to take over the world, but it was thwarted when Pac-Man, who was mostly a neutral party, stops him; in the process, he too realizes that he has ghost in his past that he needs to move on from.

2027: Hong Kong. Previously deemed to racist too make a movie out of, Hanna-Barbera works around this problem by whitewashing the cast. The movie turns out to be a mediocre physiological thriller about Hong Kong Phooey.

2027 (CC): Cow and Chicken. In a surprise development, Cartoon-Cartoon released the long awaited Cow and Chicken movie. The movie, being the first in either series to be rated R, quickly gained a massive following and became of the most iconic in the franchise despite its low budget.

2027 (BB): The Bears. This movie fucking sucks.

#hanna-barbera cinematic universe #alolandunsparce original

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jillmckenzie1 · 6 years

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Done The Impossible

You have an opinion on Tom Cruise. You might be an obsessive cineaste like me, or you might be a casual filmgoer. But I guarantee you that, when I bring up the man formerly known as Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, a person who’s coming up on 40 years in the movie business, you likely aren’t responding with a hearty “Meh.”

For a while, a long while there, he was the biggest movie star in the world.* The 80’s and 90’s were his time. Go take a gander at his IMDB page, and I’m willing to bet that anyone can find a movie he’s in that they like. He racked up some well-deserved Academy Award nominations,** and proved definitively that he was more than a pretty boy movie star. Add to that, his movies have made billions at the box office, and you start to see why he’s a film icon.

Is Cruise a beloved icon, though? Ah…no, not entirely. During a 2005 appearance on Oprah to promote War of the Worlds, Cruise got a little, let’s say, overly excited while declaring his love for then girlfriend Katie Holmes and proceeded to jump up and down on Oprah’s couch. The same year, he criticized Brooke Shields’ struggle with postpartum depression, and criticized the entire field of psychiatry. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the alarming details about his involvement with the church of Scientology.

All of that acted as a flamethrower to Cruise’s image, and the former Cruise Missile found his stature diminished. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Cruise kept working. He insisted on generally high levels of quality for his films, and unlike a wide variety of actors I could name, he’s never made a movie just for the money or sleepwalked through a role. His latest film, Mission: Impossible – Fallout is proof of that.

This is the sixth film in the franchise, and like previous entries, there’s a convoluted plot. Unlike previous entries, it’s a direct sequel to Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. In that film, Impossible Mission Force leader Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) did battle with Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), the anarchist leader of criminal organization The Syndicate. Now, his boss Hunley (Alec Baldwin) has tasked him to track down The Apostles, a Syndicate splinter group.

The Apostles have this dandy plan involving setting off nuclear bombs in major cities. They need plutonium. Hunt, along with team members Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), must stop them from getting their grubby paws on it. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Oh, ho ho ho, no. Problem number one occurs when the team screws the proverbial pooch and the plutonium is taken.

Problem number two takes the form of CIA boss Erica Sloan (Angela Bassett). She thinks Hunt and company can’t be trusted, and she assigns August Walker (Henry Cavill) to keep tabs on them. Walker’s a brutal CIA assassin, and if Hunt is a scalpel, Walker is a sledgehammer. So now what’s Hunt’s mission, should he choose to accept it? Well…let me take a deep breath first.

Hunt must make a deal with the White Widow*** (Vanessa Kirby), a shadowy information broker, to obtain the plutonium. In return, the Widow demands that Hunt break Solomon Lane out of prison. There’s also talk of the mysterious John Lark, a terrorist who may be working as a mole. Complicating matters further is the return of Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), an MI-6 operative who wants to nab Solomon Lane and return him to jolly old England. Mostly, there’s explosions, fisticuffs, people dangling from things, and lots and lots of running. It is a Tom Cruise film, after all.

For a while there, Cruise envisioned the Mission: Impossible series to act as a showcase for different directors. That brought us a wide variety of styles, everything from the two-gun melodrama of John Woo to the humor and clockwork setpieces of Brad Bird. Christopher McQuarrie directed Rogue Nation, and delivered a meticulously crafted action movie with an all-timer of a set piece located at the Vienna Opera.

McQuarrie returned, and I was initially disappointed, as I was looking for a new voice to add to the series. Foolish critic! The precision on display in the previous film is here, and McQuarrie has successfully built on it and taken it to the next level. We have a number of action scenes that are wholly unique and effectively escalate the stakes. The choreography is intricate, action geography is always clear and the stunt work is, frankly, astonishing.****

Also a series first, McQuarrie wrote the screenplay. He continues the proud tradition of crafting a plot that requires a flow chart to understand it, but that’s a feature and not a bug for these films. His script also kind of gives the character of Ethan Hunt an actual character. Prior to this, there wasn’t much there, and Hunt simply had an inhuman focus on completing the mission at hand. Here, Hunt feels guilt over his imploded marriage, and he’s trying to gain perspective on what his role in all this means. Guys, it’s a character arc! Plus, McQuarrie is juggling a bunch of characters here, and he’s able to efficiently sketch them so that we quickly understand what makes them all tick.

If you know anything about the reputation of Tom Cruise, you know he has a work ethic that puts virtually any human being to shame. At 56, we can see him starting to slow down a little, and start to see some pouches around his eyes. Willpower is pushing him forward, and that’s on display just as much in emotional scenes as when he flies a helicopter, operates a mounted camera, and acts — all at the same time. You may not like the guy, but you sure as hell have to respect him.

That work ethic also forces the rest of the cast to bring it, and bring it they do. Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg are fun as usual, Alec Baldwin shows up to yell a little, and Angela Bassett glowers at everyone. The two standouts are Rebecca Ferguson and Henry Cavill. As Ilsa Faust, Ferguson has a character on a similar trajectory as Ethan Hunt. She’s charismatic, fun, and should be a massive star by now. Most of us know Henry Cavill as the perpetually gloomy Superman, and he hasn’t had too many chances to show off what he can do. His Walker is a human wrecking ball, and we see Cavill vibrating for a chance to just pummel someone. He’s proving himself by going toe-to-toe with Cruise, and Cavill effectively holds his own.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout is one of the best action movies of the 21st century, and the combination of relentless pacing and top-flight stunt work seals its reputation. But what happens to Cruise now? For most actors of comparable age, they couldn’t believably make movies like this for too much longer. Does Cruise channel his famous willpower into character acting and finally attain an Oscar? Does he shift to producing or even directing? Or does he continue to make phenomenal blockbusters with suicidally dangerous stunts? This is Cruise we’re talking about here, and it’s a fool’s wager to bet against him. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that, “There are no second acts in American lives.” He was wrong. Tom Cruise is proof of that.

*Want to learn more about why Cruise matters as a film actor? Read Amy Nicholson’s excellent Tom Cruise: Anatomy of an Actor.

**Cruise was nominated for Best actor in 1990 for Born on the Fourth of July, nominated for Best Actor in 1997 for Jerry Maguire, and nominated for Best Supporting Actor in 2000 for Magnolia.

***All of these movies have shadowy people/organizations with wildly dramatic nicknames. Doesn’t that serve the purpose of…um…making them less shadowy?

****I’ve said this before, but it’s a damn crime that stunt performances aren’t recognized by the Academy Awards. You can read more about the madness on display here and here to see amazing stunt professionals at work, and to see Tom Cruise shove his middle finger into the face of Death.

from Blog https://ondenver.com/done-the-impossible/

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houstonlocalus-blog · 7 years

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Ben Wheatley on “Free Fire”

Ben Wheatley may not be a household name, but to cinema mavens he’s one of the best writer/directors currently making movies. None of Wheatley’s films are the same, yet they all share a love of mixing genre conventions.

Speaking with Wheatley at a press junket for his latest film, Free Fire, last March during SXSW, it’s obvious he’s spent time in the trenches of 1970s cinema, observing and learning. Wheatley, a native of Essex, England, now lives in Brighton with his wife Amy Jump who also co-writes most of his films. The junket was held at Stunt Ranch, located about twenty minutes from downtown Austin.

“I feel like one of those British indie bands. They come over and do one gig and then go home again,” says Wheatley to Free Press Houston, along with other outlets at an outdoor round table.

Wheatley’s previous film High Rise, based on a novel by J. G. Ballard, was set in the ‘70s and depicted the class struggle between the lower and upper floors of a luxury apartment. Wheatley’s other films blur the line between good and bad yet always with a wry comic grin.

For instance, Kill List (2011) starts out like a secret agent film only to become involved with Druid conspiracies. Sightseers (2012) begins innocently enough with a couple that meet cute and decide to go on a road trip. The first day they accidently run over and kill a pedestrian, and before long the couple are driving around landmark sites on a killing spree. A Field in England follows trekking soldiers during civil war in the 17th century and a combination of one-on-one combat situations, alchemy and psychedelic mushrooms transform the players, and the audience, into another realm.

Free Fire is going to make a splash. It’s getting a multi-theater release, not going the way of Wheatley’s previous films that played one week at the Alamo Drafthouse or Sundance Cinemas Houston. The ensemble cast of Free Fire includes Brie Larson, Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy and Jack Raynor.

During our conversation, Wheatley or maybe one of the reporters present at the round table brought up ’70s/’60s films like Zardoz (1974) and Modesty Blaise (1966). Wheatley is able to drop those films and their meaning into the gist of the conversation.

About the immortals that populate Zardoz, Wheatley quips: “I don’t know about living forever. That’s a tough gig. Why would you want to? There’s this guy, he says if he takes the right selection of pills he can live to 200. I mean why would you want that? I asked him, ‘Why the fuck would you want to do that?’ And he told me so I can talk to my great great grandchildren.

“And I was like, they won’t want to be fucking talking to you,” says Wheatley.

Free Fire depicts a massive shoot-out in a Boston warehouse. A gun deal between arms dealers and the IRA goes wrong. The setting is the 1970s so everyone has wide lapels and flowery clothing. “There was detail to everything, my hair, my facial hair, my clothing,” says Hammer, also at the table.

“We had one training session. We were still inside the warehouse and in a little room off to the side. It was even more full of rumble,” adds Hammer. “Everyone had their character gun and they were like, here we go. ‘You want to fire off a couple of shots?’ Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Great. Training over.”

Wheatley used transcripts of a shoot-out as the genesis of the script. “There was a shoot-out in Miami between the FBI and some guys who were going to rob a bank. The FBI had to write down a report shot-for-shot where they were, where the police were, where the bullets were. When I read that I thought, ‘How messy and horrible,’ and how it went on for a long time. People got shot a lot; this was no great epiphany,” says Wheatley. “Everything I’d seen in Hollywood wasn’t like that.

“There has to be a way to show a procedural of a gun battle in real time. I’m not saying that Free Fire is a documentary, but it is using some of that realism.

“There’s no mystery anymore is there?” asks Wheatley referring to why the film is set in a pre-cell phone era. “Nowadays you have teenagers walking past a haunted house and they look at their cell phones and go ‘Five people died there, let’s not go inside,’ or ‘There was a witch in 1520, let’s not go there either,’” says Wheatley.

“There’s a real issue with modern cinema where we really haven’t addressed the whole way of communicating by phone. There’s an American cable show, Ray Donovan. They use the phone a lot in that and it’s not about communication.

“When Amy and I are writing contemporary thrillers we always work out where the flow of information is coming from,” says Wheatley. “It moves between characters.”

Free Fire takes place in a single location. For the most part, the film was shot chronologically. “It’s hard, the issue is if there’s a screw-up at the start you might not know about that until five weeks in, when you find two characters are really too close to each other. There’s a lot of planning that went into it,” says Wheatley. Storyboards were rendered in 3D so Wheatley and cinematographer Laurie Rose could “go inside and walk around the space to make sure it would work. The sets had to be built in a certain way so that all the explosives were wired into the walls. This was all done seven or eight weeks beforehand.”

In a departure from their previous collaborations, Wheatley and Jump would write updates to the script on the set to mirror the relationships that were evolving between the characters.

One reporter asks Wheatley about the cinematic influences going into this film. “Evil Dead 2 and the Warner Brothers cartoons of Tom and Jerry,” replies Wheatley. “In the Raimi movies, there’s the thing where they set up the gags, slapstick gags, and then it pays off. There’re two types of actions cinema. The stuff that comes from Seven Samurai and James Cameron, which is very specific. There’s a cause and effect.

“Or the cinema of Tony Scott or Michael Bay, which is a bit more impressionistic. You have the flags waving in slow motion and shit.

“I also was thinking about the comic book Sgt. Rock. How you always have the platoon and how they make an effort to tell each single person apart. There are individual things, so you know which character is which. In Free Fire it’s similar,” says Wheatley. “Their clothes are very specific to their characters. I have this theory that fashion stops for you when you become 22. You buy your last fashionable clothes and then you wear them constantly for the rest of your life.”

Wheatley ends the interview with an anecdote about watching movies. “Do you know the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? So this guy went to see it with his dad. And it has a break in the middle of it, an intermission where you go get some ice cream and come back. But this guy was like ‘that’s the end of the film?’ The break comes just as the car goes off the edge of the cliff, before it flies back up in the next part. So that was the most depressing film they had ever seen.”

Free Fire opens this weekend at area theaters.

Ben Wheatley on “Free Fire” this is a repost

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