Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis are colaborating for another film, which is pretty much all this reporter needed to be there opening day. But the mystery around the project has been pretty compelling in and of itself.
The title has been made official: Phantom Thread.
Focus Features debuted their webpage for the film, which gives us scant tidbits of information beyond what we already knew. And that is, quite frankly, the best:
Continuing their creative collaboration following 2007’s There Will Be Blood, three-time Academy Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis stars in Phantom Thread from Paul Thomas Anderson. The writer/director will once again explore a distinctive milieu of the 20th century. The new movie is a drama set in the couture world of 1950s London. The story illuminates the life behind the curtain of an uncompromising dressmaker commissioned by royalty and high society.
Don’t let this stodgy “synopsis” fool you, there will be more afoot here than just some royally-commissioned dressmaker.
Much of the hullabaloo surrounding this project was the announcement from Daniel Day-Lewis that this will be his final film before he retreats, once again, to Ireland. Presumably to make shoes, which was what he was doing when Martin Scorsese coaxed him out of retirement for Gangs of New York.
This website for Phantom Thread also means we might be getting a teaser or trailer some time soon, so stay tuned for more exciting updates.
Before you get chased around the galaxy by Admiral Thrawn, relive the first three season of ‘Star Wars Rebels’ in the five-minute recap by Lucasfilm.
Wait! Thrawn chased us around the galaxy last season.
The final season of ‘Star Wars Rebels’ launches on October 16. “Heroes of Mandalore: Parts One and Two” will be available on Disney XD and the DisneyNow App.
About “Heroes of Mandalore: Parts One and Two” In this premiere episode, Sabine leads Ezra, Kanan and an army of her fellow Mandalorians back to her homeworld to rescue her father from the clutches of the Empire. When she discovers the Empire has resurrected a devastating weapon, she must decide whether to destroy it or use it herself.
Lucasfilm also released images from the first two episodes.
Are you excited to see how ‘Star Wars Rebels’ ties into ‘Rogue One’? Comment below.
David Marconi’s balanced storyline and strong performances make The Foreigner a must see.
Summary
Ngoc Minh Quan (Jackie Chan), is a father living in London whose world shatters when an IRA bombing tragically kills his last living child. Quan has already suffered a great deal heartache, but over the years he’s developed an exceptional set of skills (sound familiar?). He wants answers and is prepared to do anything to get them. It eventually comes to light that Liam Hennessy (Pierce Brosnan), a British deputy minister who was once a member of the IRA, might have an idea who committed this act. Quan begins to apply pressure just as things are getting much worse for Hennessy. At this point, he has nothing to lose, and Quan’s only goal is revenge.
What Worked
Marconi did a lovely job adapting Stephen Leather’s novel ‘The Chinaman’ for the big screen. He strikes an appropriate balance between the source material and a storyline involving political betrayal. For a movie which appeared just to be another Jackie Chan flick, it indeed struck a different tone.
Director Martin Campbell presented the world with a side of Chan which we’ve never seen before. Usually, audiences are accustomed to seeing Chan engaged in eye-popping stunts while chasing down the bad guys. Occasionally we have even seen him flourish in a comedic role. In The Foreigner, one of the worlds greatest action stars proves he’s just as good in a dramatic role. His character is extremely reserved and not nearly the typical part we are accustomed to seeing from Chan.
Loved the action sequences when Quan is hiding out at Hennessy’s farm. Instead of seeing Chan just kung-fu his way out of every situation, he played the aggressor blowing up various building and cars just to get his attention.
Orla Murphy plays Brosnan’s wife and does outstanding work. While she put up this loyal front to Mr. Hennessy, in reality, she’s the reason these bombings have been successful. Easily one of the best performances in ‘The Foreigner.’
What Didn’t Work
The Cinematography was very basic and didn’t take advantage during the films most important action sequences. Instead of sticking with a two-shot when Hennesy’s henchmen attacked him in the boarding house, they should have gone with one continuous shot. This would have allowed for more flow during these action sequences.
Brosnan’s portrayal of the embattled deputy minister went from being entertaining to slightly annoying quickly. His character spends most of the time complaining about Quan, Ireland, and not knowing the identity of the bombers. What initially came across as a reasonably good accent from Brosnan became more of a growl as it slipped between English and Irish. At times, it was as if we were watching an Irish version of Grumpy Old Men.
Overall
The Foreigner is a film which will make Chan’s fans very pleased. Don’t expect the movie to draw many new fans but those who take a chance on it won’t be disappointed. If the choices are between ‘Marshall’ and ‘The Foreigner,’ pick the one where the main character cauterizes his gunshot wound.
Horror fans today is Friday The 13th, but it’s also October. And October means Halloween! So in the spirit of the ‘season of the witch’ check out Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross covering John Carpenter’s brilliant and iconic theme from Halloween. Listen below!
It’s pretty awesome, huh? If you want to download it for free, you can do so right here.
What do you guys think? Will this become a regular rotation in your Halloween festivities playlists? Comment and discuss below!
Brawl in Cell Block 99, S. Craig Zahler’s new blood-soaked pulp crime thriller, isn’t interested in your sociopolitical ideals. It is here to offend you, to thrill you, and to kick your ass, and it does so in some of the most unpredictable and brutally violent ways. To top it off, this is the most fascinating performance of Vince Vaughn’s career.
Vaughn plays Bradley (Not Brad), a southern dude in upstate New York whose run of bad luck has become part of his life’s story. In a prologue we see Bradley get laid off from his tow-truck driver job, show up at home, discover his wife Lauren (Jennifer Carpenter) has been having an affair, and vent his frustrations by tearing apart her car with his bare hands. It’s a set up to make us believe Lauren is not long for the film, but Bradley’s pragmatic approach to his lot in life takes over. He calms himself, he understands her reasons for the affair, and he vows to make things better. This means calling an old friend and running drugs.
Fast forward 18 months and everything is better. Bradley and Lauren are happy, Lauren is expecting, and they live a life of serene, upper middle-class comfort. But a drug deal goes horribly wrong and Bradley is sentenced to a seven-year stint in a medium-security prison. If that weren’t bad enough, the drug kingpin whose money Bradley lost comes calling, and threatens to kill his wife and unborn child if he doesn’t kill an inmate at a Red Leaf, a maximum security prison across town.
All of this happens and we are merely halfway through Brawl in Cell Block 99. The job requires Bradley to assault some prison guards in order to get transferred to Red Leaf. Then, when inside the walls of Red Leaf he must do even more to get transferred to Cell Block 99, a hellish dungeon, the “prison inside the prison” according to the sadistic warden, Tuggs, played by a perfectly slimy Don Johnson. It’s best to say no more about the plot; let’s just say things get crazy. For some readers out there, the notion of prison violence doesn’t deter them, but be warned, this is violence like you have rarely seen. Hold on tight.
Zahler’s film unfolds at a deliberate pace, a slow-burning fuse simmering down to the stick of dynamite that is the third act. This is a Charles Bronson 70s exploitation film, a B-movie in sleeker clothes, and it all hinges on Vince Vaughn’s incredible performance. He is a revelation. Bradley is a good person, a patriot (he has two American flags at home, after all) a straight-shooting pragmatist who accepts his fates as they come barreling towards him over and over. Vaughn handles the southern accent with surprising accuracy, and he spits out Zahler’s hard-boiled dialogue like a deep-fried Raymond Chandler traversing the pit of hell.
Vaughn is in every scene, but the supporting players all add wonderful texture and grit. Johnson’s warden is cooly corrupt, Jennifer Carpenter is much more than the damsel in distress, and Udo Kier makes the most of a small part as a henchman for the scorned drug lord. It all works in concert to create a film that is unique, unpredictable, and increasingly shocking.
Zahler employs wide angle lenses to let a film set inside narrow prison hallways and dingy cells breathe. And he choreographs the hand-to-hand brutality with a keen eye for spatial geography and static, medium shots. It allows Vaughn to show off an athleticism we’ve never seen in his other roles. The big guy can move here, he can take a punch, and he can most certainly dole out punishment in increasingly brutal forms. This is not a film for everyone, because it doesn’t want to be. It is a movie for genre enthusiasts who love a good romp, who aren’t easily offended by racial stereotypes, and who have a strong enough stomach to handle the brutality.
Netflix loves to play with our emotions and what better way to do that than releasing a ‘Stanger Things’ Season 2 trailer on Friday the 13th.
You might get goosebumps:
About Season 2: It’s 1984 and the citizens of Hawkins, Indiana are still reeling from the horrors of the Demogorgon and the secrets of Hawkins Lab. Will Byers has been rescued from the Upside Down but a bigger, sinister entity still threatens those who survived.
The series was created by Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer, the duo also directs the show. The growing cast includes Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Natalia Dyer, Winona Ryder, Gaten Matarazzo, David Harbour, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Cara Buono, Sean Astin, Dacre Montgomery, Noah Schnapp, Abigail F. Cowen, Paul Reiser, and Caleb McLaughlin.
New cast members include Sean Astin, his character Bob Newby works at the local Radio Shack. Paul Reiser plays Dr. Owens, who appears to be Will Byers’ psych doctor.
‘Stranger Things’ returns to Netflix on October 27.
Halloween may have opened the door to the slasher films of the ’80s, but it was Friday the 13th that set the table upon which these ripoff films would feast. It took some time for the franchise to find its voice, and when it did it devolved into self parody over the span of only a few movies. There is a sweet spot in the series, and it is noticeable.
Here, now, is the definitive ranking of the Friday the 13th franchise, scrutinized and analyzed and… who am I kidding, I just watched these things and ranked them based on what I liked. And along the way, I added a few tidbits of information where it was warranted. Enjoy… or get mad. It’s up to you.
1Jason Lives: Friday the 13th, Part VI (1986)
Tommy Jarvis is back… well, the character is back, and he’s played by the third different actor (Thom Mathews) in as many sequels and years. Turns out John Shepherd, who played Tommy in A New Beginning, was a born-again Christian so he decided to pass on this one. Now, this dreamy 20-something Tommy accidentally revives Jason in his grave after a bolt of lightning hits the spear sticking out of his chest. This gives Jason some amped up super powers, and he stalks through the best entry in the franchise to this point.
Everything about Part VI is an improvement on the previous films. Jason is wreaking havoc from the get go, the kills are more creative and comedic, and production values are a notch better – which makes sense, given the budget was $3 million compared to an average of $1.5 million for the others. There’s also a few cool cameos, like Tony Goldwyn as an early victim and Ron Palilo as Tommy’s ill-fated friend in the opening scene. Having Horshack from Welcome Back, Kotter was probably a bigger deal in 1986, but I digress…
Part VI is a marked improvement in the franchise, a high point. Director Tom McLoughlin would never be confused with a great director, but his dedication to the more silly aspects of this series pay off here and make him look like John Ford in comparison.
As promised, 20th Century Fox has released the first trailer for the upcoming X-Men spin-off The New Mutants. Switching Xavier’s School for a haunted asylum, The New Mutants has jumped into the horror genre, once again proving that Fox is willing to take risks with its superhero properties and create unique superhero movies.
Directed by Josh Bone and starring Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Henry Zaga, Blu Hunt, and Alice Braga. The film will be released in theatres on April 13, 2018.
Yesterday marked the long-awaited return of USA’s Mr. Robot for a third season. This article is a review and recap of “eps3.0_power-saver-mode.h“. It will contain spoilers, so don’t read any further than the end of this sentence unless you’ve watched the episode.
“When we lose our principles, we invite chaos.”
As anyone who watched the preview USA released a few days ago knows, Season 3 starts with new character Irving (Bobby Cannavale – Master of None, Ant-Man) in line at Red Wheelbarrow BBQ, dissecting the absurdity of corporate regulations when he gets a panicked phone call, which he answers with utmost calm. It turns out the phone call was from Tyrell Wellick who, at the end of last season, shot Elliot to keep him from ruining Stage Two (the destruction of all E-Corp’s physical records). Resolving a pseudo-cliffhanger, we quickly find out that Elliot is still alive.*
We are then taken to a nuclear power plant where a man giving a tour ponders the nature of reality “How many copies of ourselves exist and might our mental states be conjoined?”. Walking past him is White Rose (BD Wong – Gotham, Law and Order: SVU), who reveals that Elliot’s father worked for The Dark Army (albeit without knowing that he was) before Elliot. She also says that when the time comes, Elliot will die for them, just like his father. Then, in a beautiful shot, the camera takes us down the tunnel of a massive apparatus of some kind (more on this below).
Awakenings
Elliot, who at this point thinks that Tyrell is an aspect of his own mind (and thus couldn’t have shot him), finds out when he wakes up in Angela’s apartment that Tyrell is indeed real, and so is the gunshot wound in his belly. He can’t feel Mr. Robot in his head anymore and wonders if the bullet somehow killed him. Then he sets out to stop Stage Two. He gets to his apartment and finds Darlene, who tells him Cisco is dead, she was picked up by the FBI, and she’s hiding out from the Dark Army. She leads Elliot to an underground hacker area called 1984 and Elliot manages to close the ‘back door’ that would allow the Dark Army to destroy E-Corp’s physical storage facility, but before he can uninstall the malware, agents of the Dark Army stop him and escort him and Darlene out.
Upon leaving, the siblings are picked up in a cab by the mysterious Irving, who informs them that an FBI vehicle has been tailing them since they left Elliot’s apartment. He makes a phone call on OnStar, referring to himself as “Detective Robert Abernathy” and says that the FBI vehicle is stolen and has OnStar shut down the engine remotely, allowing them to slip the pursuit. He takes them to Red Wheelbarrow BBQ and this is where Elliot tells him he wants to call off Stage Two. Irving gives the impression that White Rose will be disappointed, but that she believes “a plan lives or dies by its creator”, so Irving accepts. When Elliot presses Irving for confirmation, Irving reminds Elliot how easily the Dark Army could kill him and Darlene.
As Elliot leaves, he walks down streets devastated by the E-Corp hack and ponders what his revolution accomplished, and if he has done more harm than good. Does E-Corp now have an even tighter hold over everyone’s lives? Creator Sam Esmail utilizes a stock footage montage to show Elliot envisioning what the future could hold as a result of his actions, and it’s unsurprisingly bleak.
What if I told you we could make it like none of this ever happened?
He ends up back at Angela’s apartment and says he needs a job at E-Corp to fix what he’s done. She tells him she’ll try, and asks him “What if I told you we could make it like none of this ever happened?” Not just the 5/9 hack, but everything, including the deaths of Angela’s mother and Elliot’s father. What would he sacrifice to make that happen? He says that’s impossible and she plays it off like she was just tired. When Elliot tries to kiss her, she tells him their prior kiss (at the end of last season) was a mistake. Pained by this, Elliot says to himself that she never loves the ones that love her back.
After Elliot falls asleep on Angela’s couch, he wakes up as Mr. Robot, and we find that he and Angela have been working together, unbeknownst to Elliot. Mr. Robot and Angela head to a bunker where they meet with Irving and Tyrell to move forward with Stage Two. As the episode ends, Mr. Robot questions Angela’s motives and power is finally restored.
Questions/Theories:
What’s going on with Trenton and Mobley? At the end of last season (if you missed it, I mean the very end, after the credits of the season finale) we saw Leon approach them outside the electronics store at which they now work and ask them for the time. Was Leon sent by the Dark Army to kill them? To recruit them? Did he just want to talk about Seinfeld?
What is White Rose building? It reminded me of images of the Large Hadron Collider. Could this be some manner of time machine? It seems a little far-fetched considering where the show has taken us so far, but with White Rose’s devotion to time, what else could it be? And is this what Angela was talking about to Elliot, is this the way to make it like none of this ever happened?
What happened between Darlene and the FBI that we might have missed? Has she been turned? The Dark Army did kill Cisco, who seems to have meant more to her than she had admitted to herself.
What are Angela’s motivations? Is she really doing this to get justice for her dead mother? And what exactly did she and White Rose discuss?
*I say pseudo-cliffhanger because most people never thought there was a chance Elliot was really going to die, but a tiny sliver of my mind thought that if any show could figure out a way to kill its main character between seasons and still exist, it would be Mr. Robot.
According to early reactions, Thor: Ragnarok is one of the most comedic and fun adventures in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the studio is confident that the guy behind the camera will return for future projects.
In a recent interview with Screen Rant, Marvel boss Kevin Feige revealed that he believes the studio will work with TaikaWaititi on a future project. Feige also discusses the influence that Jack Kirby and Walt Simonson have had one the Thor movies and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
See what Feige said below:
“Well, we’ll see. I would love, love, love to work with Taika again and I have every confidence that we will. What we’re working on right now is the next six movies. The next six movies that will bring us to Untitled Avengers in May 2019, which carries off a lot of what you see in this movie. In some cases very directly, and continues to build and grow. The notion of the Jack Kirby elements. Walt Simonson has always been an influence on the Thor series for us, obviously, he’s done such amazing work in Thor. Jack Kirby has been an influence on every Marvel movie we’ve ever made because he built the Marvel Universe with Stan, Steve Ditko, and the whole gang there, but this movie, and coincidentally being the 100th year anniversary of Jack Kirby’s birth, we really wanted to be that unabashed love letter, and a film by Taika, when talking to the art department, and saying, “oh look at that, it really should be like this”, looking at Jack Kirby costumes and background panels, and the art department doing something inspired by it and then Taika going no, no. Do this! [referencing exact Kirby art] And that’s why you have, it’s direct to translation of Kirby’s artwork which hasn’t been seen in a movie before.”
While we won’t know if Taika Waititi has done a good job for a few more weeks, it’s exciting to see that Marvel wants to work with the director again. Obviously, a studio wouldn’t be interested in working with a director that they didn’t like or weren’t confident in, so this is an exciting sign that Waititi has delivered something great with Thor: Ragnarok.
