Hark! Is that the sound of lightsabers I hear? Yes, the first trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi has finally arrived. During the panel at this year’s 40th Anniversary Star Wars Celebration, President of Lucasfilm Kathleen Kennedy, director Rian Johnson, and cast members of The Last Jedi revealed the first footage of the new film. For those unfamiliar with Johnson, the director of Looper, this entry of the new series might be most anticipated of them all.
Thanks to some toy reveals earlier this year, we know that Rey, Finn, and Poe will be back in action. It also stands to reason that Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) will play a much more prominent role in the story going forward, at least that is what Kennedy said during the The Last Jedi panel. While not too much of the actual story has been revealed Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, shared what it might be like for Rey to finally meet the iconic Jedi. Ridley said of the plot, “We go deeper into Rey’s story … Rey has a certain expectation of what she might get from Luke and what that might entail. It’s difficult when you meet your heroes because it might not be what you expect.”
Before we go deep into what the trailer has shown us, a new member of the Resistance was introduced during the panel.
Kelly Marie Tran (left) and Rose (right), a new character in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Star Wars/YouTube
Actress Kelly Marie Tran was brought out on stage and was able to talk about her character, Rose, who will be a vital part of The Last Jedi story. Johnson said that her character has the “biggest new role” in the story. Right now she is simply known as a mechanic, but we can’t wait to see how she’ll fit into the universe.
Here is the new trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi
The trailer wastes no time getting right back to where Rey and Luke were when we left them at the end of The Force Awakens.
Luke: “Breathe, just breathe.” He is likely having Rey begin her training, but he might also be breaking the fourth wall telling Star Wars fans to breathe.
Luke: “Now reach out.” Here is Rey using some Force abilities in order to raise the rocks.
One thing that is extremely noticable from the trailer is the contrasting images of the Light Side and the Dark Side. Here we have shot of General Leia (the late Carrie Fisher) and what is possibly the destroyed Kylo Ren mask. It is a very similar image to what was used to show the Darth Vader mask in The Force Awakens trailer.
These are probably the two most puzzling images in the trailer. What exactly could they be eluding towards? Is that the voice of Yoda in the trailer? Regardless it looks as though they will once again be trying to find a balance to the force and perhaps that means a new society, one that doesn’t include the Jedi code.
Easily the best shot in the trailer. Johnson has cinematographer Steve Yedlin (Looper, SanAndreas) capturing the film for him and this a stunner. It also reminds me a bit of the Highlander training sequence, but that’s not a bad thing.
It is nice to know that Star Wars: The Last Jedi will be hitting theaters this Christmas.
Next we have another great action shot. This looks like new units from the Empire because of the red smoke, but since they are heading toward what look like AT-AT in the distance could they be a new rebel fleet? That would also help to explain the ship that looks like it is crashing.
So like we mentioned at the top, Finn (John Boyega) is still alive for The Last Jedi, but exactly what shape he will be in is another story all together. This looks like some kind of transport unit that is moving him to another location.
Poe (Oscar Issac) and BB-8 are back as well. The Empire is attacking a Rebel base and Poe’s ship is no more.
The Millennium Falcon is still around as well. After the dramatic finale of The Force Awakens, it will be intriguing to find out who exactly is flying the Falcon now or whether Chewbacca is just flying solo.
Here is that light and dark imagery once again. Back to back shots of Rey and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver).
Perhaps the most significant shot in the entire trailer. We have what we assume is Luke Skywalker and R2-D2 looking upon a destroyed Jedi temple. Is this the doing of Kylo Ren? Where exactly was Luke that he wasn’t there for this? We have questions that need answers.
Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) is back as well. Nothing to really go on here except her return.
SPACE COMBAT! Two action shots of some classic Star Wars space combat. Thankfully the lasers here have the appropriate colors, as opposed to a certain Blu-ray release that got the colors wrong.
Luke: “It’s time for the Jedi to end.” What exactly does Luke mean here!? Well like I said earlier I propose that he means a new order needs to rise up from the ashes of the Jedi. He can’t possibly mean there can be no more Jedi period can he? Maybe he says this before he starts training Rey and then he is convinced otherwise? I guess we will find out more answers this Christmas.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi will open in theaters December 15, 2017.
In Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, Freddie Quell undertakes a spiritual journey that instead of a straight line takes a crooked kind of circle for its path, coming back to where and who he began. But along the way Quell with the aid of Lancaster Dodd and The Cause experiences several pivotal moments that either push him towards or pull him away from spiritual betterment, each of which the director has paired with water-based symbolism. In the following video essay I seek to explain these symbols as they pertain to the evolution — and devolution — of Freddie’s soul.
We bring in a Star Wars expert to break down the first look at Rian Johnson’s entry into the continuing saga.
At Star Wars Celebration Orlando, Lucasfilm debuted the first trailer for the next Star Wars film, The Last Jedi. Luke is back and he’s got opinions. Rey is back and she’s training. BB-8 is back and he’s Buster Keaton. We talk about all this an more with Star Wars expert Da7e Gonzales.
Be sure to follow us on Twitter (@OnePerfectPod) and Facebook (facebook.com/oneperfectshot). Subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher, on TuneIn, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow host Neil Miller (@rejects) and guest Dave Gonzales (@da7e).
We’d very much appreciate your feedback, as well. Leave us a review on iTunes or email us: pod@filmschoolrejects.com.
Garth Davis’ powerful film Lion is about Saroo, an Indian child adopted by Australian parents who as a man tries to find the family he lost more than two decades ago. In retracing a journey he only partially remembers, he comes face to face with the boy he was and the culture he was reared in, both of which are in conflict with the man he’s become. In undertaking this quest, then, Saroo is seeking not just to find his roots, but to find himself, his real self, a self he’s never known but can feel in quiet moments of reflection.
Narratively, that reflection is shown in flashbacks; visually, Oscar-nominated cinematographer Greig Fraser illustrated this reflection with a series of paired shots that match the journey of Saroo the boy with that of Saroo the man, helping us to understand the connections even before the character does.
In the following video from editor Zackery Ramos-Taylor, these paired images have been set side-by-side to reveal not only how they complement one another, but also how they inform a story that takes place half in the past, half in the present, and always with an eye towards the future.
The action comedy about…heavily damaged Vietnam vets?
Lethal Weapon often gets heralded at the preeminent buddy cop film, despite the fact that the genre existed for decades prior to its 1987 release. So what makes Lethal Weapon the mold-breaker? Is it (then) wunderkind Shane Black’s razor-sharp script? The legendary cast? The quotable quips? Or is that so many members of the audience identified with the characters because they too possibly felt a general sense of being too old for life’s shit?
How about the fact that Lethal Weapon is the Apocalypse Now of buddy cop movies? It’s true, Shane Black’s script is just as concerned with the heavily damaged psyches of Vietnam War veterans as was Apocalypse Now’s. Nearly every major character in Lethal Weapon, hero and villain alike, served in Vietnam and came back with a hefty amount of baggage. While this is reasonable considering the realities of that war, it’s the way Black weaves these heavy psychological repercussions into a rip-roaring action comedy…one you soon realize is more gallows humor than slapstick.
Two mismatched cops go up against a violent drug cartel. Sounds pretty standard, right? Except that what makes those cops mismatched is that one is suffering from a dangerous combination of grief and PTSD that makes him suicidal and the cartel is comprised of former military operatives who maintain a heroin smuggling route from Vietnam. The sinister Mr. Joshua is, very much like Riggs, a character whose sociopathic tendencies were fostered by and flourished during the Vietnam War; making violence his only viable occupation afterward. And then there’s that quippy dialogue we mentioned.
Everyone remembers, “I’m too old for this shit,” and Rigg’s impression of Curly from The Three Stooges. But less quoted is this exchange between Murtaugh and Riggs…
Murtaugh: “God hates me, that’s what it is.” Riggs: “Hate him back, it works for me.”
We fondly recall Riggs’ wacky antics as he blows away bad guys with ease, but what about the quiet moment outside his new partner’s home wherein he confesses that killing is the only thing he’s ever been good at, and THAT’S why he became a cop in the first place?! While it’s true that he became more of a lovable loon as the franchise progressed, Riggs is as scarred and on-the-edge as John Rambo. Consider the fact that were it not for a quick movement from Murtaugh, Riggs would have killed himself in the middle of the workday directly after he jumped off a building handcuffed to a man threatening to commit suicide. There’s crazy, and then there’s damaged.
But damaged is exactly how Shane Black likes his characters, and it is the firm believe of the hosts of the Junkfood Cinema podcast that Black must have had a close relationship (either friend or more likely family member given his age) with someone who was irrevocably broken by Vietnam. He is a screenwriter who, at such a young age, seemed intimately acquainted with those specific scars.
Lethal Weapon remains an action standard and one full of effective comedy beats, but equally effective is its examination of the consequences of America’s most controversial war. In that way, while a massive hit for Richard Donner, Lethal Weapon could have just as easily have been directed by Oliver Stone.
For more musings on Lethal Weapon, including its even darker deleted scenes and the many actors who turned down the role of Riggs, download and listen to this week’s episode of Junkfood Cinema. We’re kicking off our Summer 0f 87 series wherein we’ll be examining all the best and junkiest films of that landmark year!
As a special treat, anyone who backs JFC on Patreon will have access to weekly bonus episodes covering an additional cult movie, a new movie in theaters, or a mailbag episode devoted to your submitted questions! During Summer of 87, there will be an entirely separate Summer of 77 miniseries just for Patrons! Have a couple bucks to throw in the hat, we’ll reward you!
On This Week’s Show:
Appetizers [0:00–4:08]
The Main Course[4:09–1:08:26]
The Junkfood Pairing[59:09–1:09:53]
Want to check out this week’s movie AND support the show, rent/buy it from Amazon via our link!
The director of Cannes Film Festival seems to think so.
On Thursday, the director of Cannes Film Festival, Thierry Frémaux, announced a surprisingly refreshing new line-up for its seventieth anniversary. Not only has Alejandro G. Iñńaritu’s virtual reality project been chosen as an Official Selection, but the festival will screen two TV series for the first time. This year, on Frémaux’s tenth anniversary as the Artistic Festival Director, two episodes of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks will be shown, along with the second season of Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake.
Frémaux has been known to resist screening television series, even saying he isn’t a ‘big fan’ of them. And while he urges that Cannes will not follow the likes of the Berlin Film Festival in opening a section for television series, with Frémaux saying ‘that’s not our intention,’ the artistic director’s comments on television suggest that it is an extension of the form of cinema. After all, if ‘the Cannes Film Festival is a festival of films,’ the screenings of Twin Peaks and Top of the Lake prove the case for TV-as-cinema.
From SXSW introducing their ‘Episodic’ section this year, New York’s IFC Center set to launch the Split Sreens Festival, and the ATX Television Festival, television festivals are appearing around America at an increasing rate. And from the success of the UK’s Radio Times and BFI TV Festival, along with Monte Carlo’s own and France’s Series Mania, it’s clear television can exist in a world that was initially created for film. The festivals screen the series without adverts, with the episode(s) playing for the audience in whole on a big screen, consumed in exactly the same style as a film.
What this placement of television in cinema does is emphasise the art of the TV series. While there are shows that clearly wouldn’t work on a big screen, the ones that do, or could — such as Twin Peaks — do so because as much detail is put into their creation as is put into a film. And it’s more often than not that the best series are now created by film directors and major Hollywood stars, with the most recent successful example of this being the Jean-Marc Vallée-directed Big Little Lies, starring recent collaborators Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern (all three worked on Wild together). Moreover, with the popularised phenomenon of watching a series in one go, television has quickly become consumed closer to the style of a film than a TV series.
Festivals created for TV reconfirm the split between television and film. However, the screening of a series on a big screen blurs the boundary between the way an audience consumes TV and film. Frémaux observes that ‘cinema remains a singular art, and we [Cannes] want to emphasize this while keeping our eyes open on the world that surrounds it. And this world is more and more about TV series, virtual reality.’ It’s clear Frémaux sees a split between television and cinema, but, ultimately, it does not come down to whether a story has been filmed as VR, a series, or as a film, but who’s creating it. Frémaux has recognized Lynch’s and Campion’s series because they are ‘artists,’ artists ‘who experiment and try to invent new narrative means.’
Twin Peaks and Top of the Lake’s series debuts present a turning for television, since they are TV shows screened at festival exclusively for films. As Frémaux says, television uses ‘the classical art of filmmaking and of cinematic narration.’ Whilst for Frémaux the screenings of these series are purely based on the auteurs behind them, the very fact Lynch and Campion want to work in television prove the form’s worth.
Before Dom was flexing his muscles Cage was getting fast and furious in order to protect his family.
This weekend movie theaters are going to be packed with hordes of people eager to check out The Fate of the Furious, the 8th film in the unexpectedly super popular Fast and Furious franchise. And that’s all fine and well. I enjoy the films; they’re dumb, stupid, exciting fun. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever, but we must remember that a year before Dom and his crew ripped off Point Break, the legendary Nicolas Cage was snatching up cars left and right and doing so in under 60 seconds.
Of course I’m going to talk about Gone in 60 Seconds.
Cage stars as the Memphis Raines, a notorious car thief that retired a number of years back in an effort to go straight. And he does. Memphis is working at a little go-kart track for kids, teaching them about cars and how to race. He’s stepped away from the game and he’s doing real well for himself. And hey, Long Beach, the area where he did most of his damage, it benefits as well as car thefts drop by 47% with Memphis out of the picture. The problem occurs with Kip (Giovanni Ribisi), the younger brother of Memphis.
When Memphis left Kip felt abandoned. His whole life he looked up to Memphis and wanted to be a master thief just like him. In fact it’s the only life Kip knows. With Memphis not there to keep him in line, Kip tries to follow his older brother’s footsteps and takes on a nearly impossible job with the vicious and deadly Raymond Calitri (Christopher Eccleston).
Calitri specializes in dealing exotic stolen cars and he’s expecting 50 of them in 4 days. Kip has already proven unable to do the job and is on the verge of being murdered by Calitri. Memphis steps in to save the day and Calitri offers him a deal — he won’t kill Kip as long as Memphis can get the cars. Memphis is torn. He’s cleaned his life up, promised his mom that he would never steal cars again and he wants to keep that promise. But Kip is his little brother and family comes first, so Memphis reluctantly agrees.
As if stealing 50 exotic cars in a handful of days wasn’t already hard enough, Memphis has a number of other issues to worry about. For starters he has to assemble a crew which means convincing his old cronies to get back in the game. Watching every move he makes is Detective Roland Castleback (Delroy Lindo), who views Memphis as his great white whale. And through all of this he has to deal with an annoying low level gangster played by Master P. Oh, and he also manages to rekindle an old romance with Sway (Angelina Jolie).
Yes, Gone in 60 Seconds truly has everything.
Will Memphis and Dom ever square off?
When I’m looking through Cage’s filmography and trying to figure out where I’d rank everything I always settle on placing Gone in 60 Seconds somewhere in the middle. In fact last week I wrote that it was “mid-tier Cage.” After re-watching it last night I’m still going to place it in the middle, but mid-tier Cage is still great.
For reference, top-tier Cage is like chicken fettuccine with broccoli (but not mushrooms!). Chicken fettuccine is awesome. Fettuccine Alfredo, on the other hand, is still awesome but just slightly less awesome. Sometimes you just want fettuccine Alfredo, and that’s ok. Gone in 60 Seconds is fettuccine Alfredo.
While it’s not nearly his best role or performance, Gone in 60 Seconds highlights a lot of what Cage can do as an actor. Its a great example of his ability to carry a big budget, high octane action film while also providing these flashes of what makes him great in something like Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.
Memphis Raines is a pretty subtle character for Cage. Throughout the movie Cage delivers a laid back and restrained performance. He’s not as in-your-face as we’re used to, but there are some flashes.
There’s a scene early in the film when Cage’s Memphis is trying to convince Jolie’s Sway to join his new crew. At this point Sway is working as a bartender and she’s at work while Memphis makes his pitch. While Sway listens there’s a man at the bar wanting a drink. Sway ignores him as she continues to focus on Memphis but the man keeps persisting. Memphis finally loses his cool and slams his fist on the countertop while giving the man an angry look, but then he quickly pulls it back. Later in the film Cage takes it up just a notch when Memphis and Kip get into your typical shouting match between brothers.
These are just snippets of what Cage can do. You may not even notice them thrown in here and there because throughout the majority of the film Cage is reserved. Memphis is a sarcastically funny and charming man but he’s rarely intense, which is a rarity for Cage. These moments can act as subliminal messages for the non-Cage fans in your life.
Beyond Cage the big selling point in Gone in 60 Seconds is the film’s big car chase that ends with Cage jumping Eleanor, the film’s star ‘67 Shelby Mustang GT 500, across the Vincent Thomas Bridge. Now there are some nasty rumors out there that would have you believe that scene is assisted by the use of computer generated imagery. That is a lie. This car chase is 100% pure Cage.
Ok, fine. Maybe there is a little CGI mixed in. Doesn’t change the fact that this is one of cinemas all-time great car chase sequences. Plus Cage still did a good a chunk of his own stunt driving and that really is true. Cage attended multiple driving schools to learn these sweet stunt driving skills. I bet Vin Diesel has never performed his stunt driving and if he has I don’t care.
In the 17 years since Memphis Raines reigned, we’ve only seen Cage show off his driving chops a handful of times on the big screen, most notably in the wildly entertaining Drive Angry. During that same time period we’ve seen the Toretto clan get together for 8 different adventures. This is outrageous.
I’m not asking for a direct sequel to Gone in 60 Seconds. That ship has sailed. But we know there’s going to be like 75 more Fast and Furious movies. So I’m going to ask once again that Nicolas Cage join the franchise. I wrote about this before and I’ll probably write about it again and again until it happens.
In the perfect world Cage gets to reprise his role of Memphis Raines in the Fast and Furious franchise. It would be easy to come up with a plot that resolves around Raines having a run in with the Toretto family. Just re-hash the Gone in 60 Seconds plot. Kip does something dumb and the only way out is for Memphis to still the cars of everyone in Dom’s crew. The big finale is a car fight between Memphis and Dom. When it’s all said and done Dom respects Memphis because he did what he did to protect his family and as we all know it’s all about family.
The Fast and Furious franchise loves to push the limits and raise the stakes. No actor in the history of acting has pushed the limits and raised the stakes more than Nicolas Cage. This is a match made in heaven and frankly the fact that it hasn’t happened yet is stupid.
Failure to insert Nicolas Cage into the Fast and Furious universe is depriving the world of something truly special while allowing Cage’s driving talents to wither away. Are we going to allow that to happen? I like to think we’re better than that.
After we all head to the theater this weekend to see The Fate of the Furious let’s reconvene on Monday and start demanding Disney and Universal come together to resurrect Gone in 60 Seconds by giving us Fast 9: The Return of Memphis Raines.
‘The Fate of the Furious’ Is Little More Than a Loud Family Reunion
The only thing furious here is the slapping of keyboards as hackers wage war.
If you look up “unlikeliest franchises” in the dictionary, well, you’re a fool, because that’s not how dictionaries work. But if they did, and if you did, the picture you’d see staring back at you from what has now become a picture dictionary of some sort would probably be of Vin Diesel grimacing behind the wheel of a car while flaming semi-trucks do wheelies out his back window. What started with the simple joys of street-racing in 2001’s The Fast and the Furious has morphed into the biggest and silliest film series out there.
After peaking with Fast Five in 2011 the franchise left that film’s perfect balance of beautiful, ridiculous action and entertainingly silly writing to tilt further and further into full-on, regrettably bland stupidity. The latest entry, The Fate of the Furious, continues that unfortunate decline even while implementing the biggest narrative shift since the series went from focusing on street racing to international heists. Don’t worry though, it still has something to do with family.
Two things happen half a world apart of combined significance. First, an EMP has fallen into the wrong hands, and the human face of the U.S. government’s black ops division, Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) tasks Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) with snatching it back. In Cuba meanwhile, Dom (Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) have their honeymoon interrupted when legendary hacker Cipher (Charlize Theron) secretly convinces him to switch sides and work for her. The team comes together to retrieve the EMP, but Dom suddenly goes rogue, steals the weapon, and sends Hobbs to jail.
The group, and the films themselves, have been increasingly about themes of family and friendship (and then a bit more family), but while this tight-knit gang has faced death before they’re now forced to accept that one of their own has turned against them. Cipher is their toughest challenge yet, in theory, but while she’s seemingly planned for every possible situation and outcome she neglected to take into account two things — cartoon physics and bad writing.
There’s no mystery in Chris Morgan’s script as to Dom’s about face — we see early on that Cipher is blackmailing him — so there’s no suspense in his or his team’s actions. The specifics of it come a little later, but rather than feel weighty in their dramatic implication it’s little more than a contrivance. Cipher’s grand plan is more in line with a Bond villain’s, but as cool and brilliant as she clearly is her decision to involve Dom and friends is both unnecessary and nonsensical.
Or at least it would be if the film took place in a world where not everything could be solved with a muscle car. The stupidity doesn’t end there though.
Why does the government once again need this ragtag group to save the world? Why not shoot out Dom’s car tires instead of relying on a convoluted system involving harpoons? Why is Letty still wearing her scoop-top tee-shirt in Siberia? And perhaps most importantly, are we really supposed to forget what (and who) happened to Han? I could go on, but this franchise has never been accused of being overly smart, and director F. Gary Gray’s (The Negotiator) entry isn’t about to change that now.
Instead these movies are all about the action (and family), so how does part eight compare? Not well unfortunately.
As mentioned earlier, even the action has been on a downward decline since part five’s high. The “stunts” have gotten bigger, but they’ve also grown to almost exclusively require those quotation marks around the word stunts. The abundance of CG involved, both in car chases and big set-pieces involving a nuclear submarine, negates much of the fun factor. There’s no personality to generic cars crashing and exploding, and worse, there’s no feeling of risk. Bad guys’ vehicles always blow up at the first scratch while our heroes can drive delicate sports cars through waves of gunfire and mayhem and continue functioning just fine.
The film’s action only finds its footing in the more intimate realm of hand to hand fight scenes. There’s still plenty of digital trickery at work here, but the fisticuffs — typically involving Johnson or returning baddie Jason Statham — offer up some exciting and stylish brawls. A prison riot sequence is good fun, although anyone who enjoys it should make an immediate point of watching SPL 2 and The Raid 2 to see it done far better on a far smaller budget.
Cast and character-wise, the film once again reveals guest stars and newcomers as being far more entertaining and interesting than the series regulars. Diesel and Rodriguez are lifeless lumps of flesh with zero chemistry, while Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris exist solely to crack jokes and fight over Nathalie Emmanuel as less important characters die all around them. Johnson, Statham, and Theron are left to carry the bulk of the film and fill its gaping charisma void, and it’s enough to make you wish they’d grab Russell and go make their own movie.
The Fate of the Furious is a bloated and dull film that’s kept alive by the thinnest of threads — fight scenes, an effortlessly charming Russell, the desire to make your own entertainment by counting how many times someone says “family” — but it’s also a strong case for ending the franchise before things get even worse.
Technology is awesome, and technology sucks, it both connects us and disconnects us, it makes us feel a part of the global society while simultaneously increasing our individualism, and as a result of all this, technology is the sharpest double-edged sword maybe of all-time.
Under that technological umbrella, social media is its own separate black hole, a virtual construct that has almost entirely replaced old forms of socialization. The people with whom I interact most in a week — my FSR/OPS colleagues — are people I have never been in the same room with, and until we started the One Perfect Podcast a few weeks ago, I had never even heard most of their voices.
Point is, modern technology is a conundrum, a force for good and a divisive force at the same time, a field whose every advance comes with at least one trap door. This is often explored in media, with Black Mirror being the most poignant contemporary example, but as with that series, most often the kerfuffles associated with technology and social media are treated dramatically, and dystopically so. In 5 Films About Technology, a series of minute-long vignettes, writer-director Peter Huang has opted for a comic but still dystopic look at the perils of technology, including device addiction, the inherent and pointless competitiveness of social media, and the ubiquitous dangers of accidentally sharing pornography (don’t act like you haven’t ever had a scare or two).
While drama is of course effective as a deterrent to over-reliance on technology, it’s also dour and heavy-handed, which makes it all kind of one-note. By filtering his themes through comedy, though, Huang has made them not only more palatable, but also more relatable. So grab your favorite device and get this one in front of your eyes toot suite, and don’t forget to share the good word with all your “friends.”
The official lineup for the 70th Cannes Film Festival, which will run from May 18–28, was announced April 13. While a few more screenings will undoubtably be added as we creep nearer to the festival, the selections announced feature a lot worth getting excited over — including, for the first time, two television shows (Twin Peaks and Top of the Lake) and a virtual reality film (Carne y Arena). Also, considering that The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Beguiled are both in the main competition, there is, assuming equal probability, an 11.1% chance that a film starring Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell will take home the top prize. Considering
This year, the festival jury will be headed by acclaimed Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, with French actress Sandrine Kiberlain presiding over the Camera d’Or jury and Romanian director Cristian Mungiu overseeing the short and student film juries.
Without further ado, here’s a closer look at twelve of the 49 announced titles:
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Alicia Silverstone, and Barry Keoghan
About: A successful surgeon (Farrell) bonds with a teenager of questionable repute. Consequences ensue.
‘Sacred Deer’ reteams Lanthimos with ‘The Lobster’ star Colin Farrell
Reasons to be Excited: In the US, Lanthimos’ most recent film, The Lobster, was one of the few highlights of the cinematically underwhelming summer of 2016 (it was released in 2015 throughout Europe and parts of Asia). With seemingly twodifferent television projects in the works and in the midst of filming The Favourite, a historical political drama set in the court of Queen Anne, Lanthimos appears to be in an ideal position to continue his upward trajectory in a major way. Also posed to have something of a breakout year is Sacred Deer star and relative newcomer Barry Keoghan, who also has a role in the upcoming Dunkirk.
When Can We See It?: IMDb says 2017, so hopefully by the end of this year.
Happy End
Director: Michael Haneke
Starring: Isabelle Huppert
What It’s About: A “portrait” of a bourgeois family in Calais with the European refugee crisis as a backdrop. [Note: if you think there will be a “Happy End” to this story, you’ve never seen a Haneke film.]
Reasons to be Excited: Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke is arguably one of the festival’s favorite people. His last two films, The White Ribbon (2009) and Amour (2012), not only both premiered at Cannes but took home the Palme d’Or. And Isabelle Huppert is, of course, always a reason to be excited.
When Can We See It?: TBD.
Top of the Lake: China Girl
Directors: Jane Campion and Ariel Kleiman
Starring: Elisabeth Moss, Nicole Kidman, and Gwendolyn Christie
About: Detective Robin Griffin (Moss) is back, this time investigating the murder of an Asian girl whose body washes up on Sydney’s Bondi Beach.
‘Top of the Lake’ (2013)
Reasons to be Excited: When a series isn’t necessarily intended to have a second season, does well, and then a second season is announced, one can’t help but be a little suspicious. That said, both Campion and Moss are back, the additions to the cast are far from disappointing, and even if the motivation behind making season 2 wasn’t necessarily the purest, that doesn’t mean the outcome can’t still be good. Between this and Twin Peaks, the rest of 2017 seems to be promising for murder mysteries on the TV front, though Top of the Lake has an advantage with those who like their murder mysteries to unfold slightly less like an acid trip.
When Can We See It?: Sundance TV still hasn’t given a release date for season 2, but it will be this year.
Wind River
Director: Taylor Sheridan
Starring: Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen
About: US Fish and Wildlife agent Lambert (Renner) finds the brutally raped and murdered body of an eighteen-year-old girl on a Native American reservation, and proceeds to investigate with the help of FBI agent Banner (Olsen).
Reasons to be Excited:Wind River is considered Taylor Sheridan’s directorial debut (we’re all pretending 2011’s Vile didn’t happen, I guess), and after garnering screenwriting acclaim with Sicario and Hell or High Water, hopes were high when the film premiered at Sundance earlier this year. Reviews were generally decent, but not overly enthusiastic, dampening the buzz. But still, if nothing else, a new film score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis is always something to look forward to.
Reasons to be Excited: It’s been six years since Ramsay’s last feature film, We Need To Talk About Kevin, and it’s looking like You Were Never Really Here has the potential to be just as good. Ramsay has demonstrated she’s more than capable of adapting novels dealing with graphic and controversial subject matter for the screen, and Joaquin Phoenix can definitely pull off mentally unhinged crusader type.
When Can We See It?: Unknown, butAmazon Studios has the rights, so hopefully sooner (i.e. this year) rather than later.
Wonderstruck
Director: Todd Haynes
Starring: Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, Oakes Fegley, and Millicent Simmonds
About: A girl in the 1920s sneaks away from home to see her idol while a boy in the 1970s runs away from home following the death of his mother. Adapted from the illustrated novel of the same name by Brian Selznick.
‘Hugo’ (2011)
Reasons to be Excited: Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret adapted extremely well to film in Scorsese’s Hugo, and considering the similarity in style between the novels, one would anticipate there being at least a similar potential. However, unlike Hugo, Selznick will be adapting his own work this time. Historically, this tends to go either very well or very poorly, so we’ll see.
When Can We See It?: Some time later this year.
Visages, Villages
Director: Agnès Varda and JR
Starring: A documentary collaboration with French street artist JR, it sounds like both will feature heavily in the film as well.
Synopsis: According to Varda in an interview: “We went to the countryside and met people in villages. The title in French is: Visage Villages. We met people, listened to them, and I took photos of them, and he enlarged them and made huge images out of them.”
Reasons to be Excited: It sounds like it has the potential to be something along the lines of the brilliance that is Exit Through the Gift Shop, but perhaps with just a little more hope for humanity. Also, Varda is a living legend, and unlike some living legends who are mostly living off their legends at this point, her newer work — the most recent being the autobiographical documentary The Beaches of Agnès (2008) — demonstrates that she has very much still got it.
When Can We See It?: There doesn’t seem to be a US distributor yet, so unknown.
The Beguiled
Director: Sophia Coppola
Starring: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, and Elle Fanning
What It’s About: The trailer below should give you a pretty good idea. If it looks or sounds weirdly familiar to you, you’ve probably either read the book or watched the 1971 film adaptation starring Clint Eastwood.
Reasons to be Excited: It’s an intriguing story, and Coppola’s brought together a great cast. However, even though Coppola argues that she’s shifting the focus more towards the dynamics among the female characters and away from the soldier, considering how, from the trailer, the dynamics themselves seem remarkably consistent (the Freud is strong with this one), it seems like it leans somewhat towards the more unnecessary side of the remakes scale. After all, the failure of Don Siegel’s 1971 version is generally regarded to not have been a fault of the films so much as abysmal mis-marketing. Still, it definitely looks like it could be an atmospheric, engaging film, if also a slightly repetitive one.
When Can We See It? In theaters June 23.
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
Directors: Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk
Starring: Al Gore and Climate Change
About: All the stuff that’s happened since the first one.
Reasons to be Excited: As a science nerd and person who enjoys living on earth and breathing non-toxic air, I am all for trying to get more science and tech non-fiction into the mainstream, and
When Can We See It? In theaters July 28.
Twin Peaks
Director: David Lynch
Starring: Kyle MacLachlan, Mädchen Amick, Dana Ashbrook, and literally a hundred other people ranging from Tim Roth to Amanda Seyfried.
About: The most descriptive statement I could find comes from Showtime president/CEO David Nevins, who said back in January of the revival that, “the core of it is Agent Cooper’s odyssey back to Twin Peaks.”
Reasons to be Excited: If you were not aware that Twin Peaks is kind of a big deal, you’ve either been living under a rock or in a coma since 1989 and only just woke up. In that aforementioned interview Nevins also claimed that this new series is “the ‘pure heroin’ version of David Lynch” — which, depending on your opinion of Lynch, is either great or terrible news. Even for those who aren’t fans of Lynch, seeing how this revival fares, both critically and commercially, will be interesting to watch.
When Can We See It? Episodes 1 and 2 will premiere May 21 on Showtime. Episodes 3 and 4 will then be made available on Showtime’s digital platform, but otherwise the episodes will premiere the old-fashioned way, because David Lynch “believes in weekly TV.”
The Meyerowitz Stories
Director: Noah Baumbach
Starring: Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman
About: Estranged adult siblings deal with the impact their father has had on their lives.
Reasons to be Excited: Baumbach has established his niche as Woody Allen lite — i.e., comparable sense of humor and aesthetic, no stepdaughter-wife or noticeable fascination with pairing barely legal actresses with middle-aged men — and all signs point that he seems pretty comfortable there and intends to stay. There is probably only one way in which Lynch and Baumbach’s new projects are comparable and that is that if you like their old work, odds are in favor these will also be up your alley. If you don’t, it looks unlikely that you’ll be won over.
When Can We See It?: Netflix has acquired global rights, so later this year.
Okja
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Starring: Ahn Seo-hyun, Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, and Lily Collins
About: A young girl (Ahn) fights to keep a powerful company from taking away her best friend, a giant creature named Okja.
Reasons to be Excited: To be perfectly honest, the trailer did not wow me. In fact, I was singularly unimpressed — “I took nature and science, and I synthesized,” seriously? — but Bong Joon Ho gave us Snowpiercer, and for that I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Plus, he’s lined up a pretty stellar cast.
When Can We See It? June 28 on Netflix.
Full Cannes Lineup:
Opening Night Film
Ismael’s Ghost, Arnaud Desplechin
Competition
The Day After, Hong Sangsoo
Loveless, Andrey Zvyagintsev
Good Time, Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie
You Were Never Really Here, Lynne Ramsay
Jupiter’s Moon, Kornél Mandruczo
L’amant Double, François Ozon
The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Yorgos Lanthimos
A Gentle Creature, Sergei Loznitsa
Radiance, directed by Naomi Kawase
Wonderstruck, Todd Haynes
Happy End, Michael Haneke
In the Fade, Fatih Akin
Rodin, Jacques Doillon
The Beguiled, Sofia Coppola
Le Redoutable, Michel Hazanavicius
Okja, Bong Joon-ho
120 Battements Par Minute, Robin Campillo
The Meyerowitz Stories, Noah Baumbach
Un Certain Regard
April’s Daughter, Michel Franco
Lucky, Sergio Castellitto
Jeune Femme, Léonor Serraille
Western, Valeska Grisebach
Wind River, Taylor Sheridan
Directions, Stephan Komandarev
After the War, Annarita Zambrano
Dregs, Mohammad Rasoulof
Out, György Kristóf
The Nature of Time, Karim Moussaoui
Before We Vanish, Kurosawa Kiyoshi
L’atelier, Laurent Cantet
Beauty and the Dogs, Kaouther Ben Hania
Barbara, Mathieu Amalric
Closeness, Kantemir Balagov
The Desert Bride, Cecilia Atan and Valeria Pivato
Out of Competition
Blade of the Immortal, Takashi Miike
How to Talk to Girls at Parties, John Cameron Mitchell
Visages, Villages, Agnès Varda
Special Screenings
12 Jours, Raymond Depardon
They, Anahita Ghazvinizadeh
An Inconvenient Sequel, Ronni Cohen and Jon Shenk
Top of the Lake: China Girl, directed by Jane Campion & Ariel Kleiman
Promised Land, Eugene Jarecki
24 Frames, Abbas Kiarostami
Napalm, Claude Lanzmann
Come Swim, Kristen Stewart
Demons in Paradise, Jude Ratman
Sea Sorrow, Vanessa Redgrave
Clair’s Camera, Hong Sangsoo
Twin Peaks, David Lynch
Midnight Screenings
The Villainess, Jung Byung Gil
The Merciless, Byun Sung-Hyun
Prayer Before Dawn, Jean Stephane Sauvaire
Virtual Reality Film
Carne y Arena (Flesh and Sand), Alejandro G Inarritu
It’s not enough to love films, we now must enumerate that love or hate relative to any similar films.
It has become a familiar ritual — the latest release in a franchise or a noted director’s canon spawns more than one site to run a “The Films of ___________, Ranked” article. We’ve done this dance with the Marvel movies since AT LEAST 2012 when The Avengers came out, and no doubt someone is at this very moment preparing a ranking of the 14 previous films in the MCU to accompany the release of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. Wonder Woman will likely spur on a ranking of all the DC Films, and we saw just in the past week where everyone stood on the existing Fast & Furious movies.
However, the most absurd such ranking I saw was a recent article that sought to list every episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 according to quality. When the quantity of what you’re ranking stretches into the hundreds, doesn’t the distinction between slots start to lose something? How much energy goes into placing Women of the Prehistoric Planet specifically above Space Travelers? More importantly, what use does that have for the audience of the article?
The ubiquity of practice certainly suggests the writer and the readers must be getting SOMETHING out of it. Is it that in our society, we find it less satisfying to praise a winner if we’re not simultaneously mocking and debasing the losers? I’ll plead guilty to relishing the act of putting HOOK at the bottom of every “Spielberg Movies, Ranked” list I’ve ever been a part of. Would others argue that the list serves the purpose highlighting the cream of the crop? If that was so, why not just write a post called “The Five Best Marvel Movies?” What makes that different from this:
1. The Avengers
2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
3. Captain America: Civil War
4. Captain America : The First Avenger
5. Iron Man
6. Iron Man 3
7. Guardians of the Galaxy
8. Doctor Strange
9. Ant-Man
10. Thor
11. Avengers: Age of Ultron
12. The Incredible Hulk
13. Iron Man 2
14. Thor: The Dark World
I guarantee you that someone is pissed off by that list, and angrier than if I had just listed my top five films. There are some people who really hate the first Captain America, for reasons that mystify me because it’s EASILY the best solo movie of Phase One. (Yes, the original Iron Man is a great showcase for Downey and set the stage for everything that followed. If I could rank just the first half of the movie, it would easily be at the top of the list. Alas, the second hour is less remarkable and drags down the average a bit.) I’m sure there are also a lot of GOTG foaming at the mouth that I’ve placed it at the exact middle. Sorry guys, I call ’em like I see ‘em.
If you’ve ever made a “Best of” list available in a public forum, you’re probably familiar with what I call “You Forgot” Syndrome. Here, I’ll demonstrate. The category is “Best Horror Movies”:
Psycho
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Scream
Jaws
Halloween
The Exorcist
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Fly
Get Out
The Blair Witch Project
Was your first reaction, “You forgot The Thing?” Or “Rosemary’s Baby?” Or “It Follows?” Because I guarantee you that posting a list like this always gets someone “helpfully” pointing out entries that the author must not have thought of. The implication, of course, is that the omitted work is so singular in its genius that it’s lack of placement must have been oversight, for surely there’s no rational reason why it wouldn’t be universally hailed as brilliant. An exhaustive ranking removes that. It says, “No, I didn’t forget your favorite movie out of ignorance. I’m completely aware of it and I think it SUCKS (or at least is lesser than all of these other ones.)
Perhaps the subtext of my Marvel list is, “GOTG is nothing special, gang. Praise it all you want, but it’s middle-range Marvel and no matter how much you love Slither, Joe Johnson made an adventure film WAY better than James Gunn did.” Maybe I’m not saying that, but that’s what some people are hearing and it gets a reaction — a far more powerful reaction than if I’d just “forgotten” GOTG entirely. It’s a preemptive sneer at your own tastes. It mocks you, as if to say, “Really? You like THAT one? Loser.”
Tarantino films, Ranked:
Reservoir Dogs
Pulp Fiction
Django Unchained
Inglourious Basterds
Death Proof (theatrical)
Kill Bill 2
Kill Bill 1
The Hateful Eight
Jackie Brown
I can see some of you fighting to not be provoked here, resisting like Roger Rabbit trying not to reply to “Shave an a haircut.” On a deep personal level, some of you have been violated by this list. I can’t imagine how mad Jackie Brown fans are feeling right now, even as the other Death Proof partisans in the house are pumping their fists and going, “Finally! Someone who gets that it’s not his worst film!”
Am I saying that everyone who makes a “_______, Ranked” list is trolling? I’m not inclined to go that far, but it’s not out of line to suggest an intent to be provocative there. Because ranking is less passive than selecting a favorite, the odds of pushing someone’s buttons goes up, which makes engagement more likely, and which also leads to people spreading the piece, for support and derision. The response becomes a mix of “Can you believe this idiot?” and “Yes! Someone else finally sees what I’ve said for years!”
Perhaps there’s doubt in your mind that a simple list could be that threatening or affirming to a reader. I submit that you have never written anything critical about Zack Snyder or a WB/DC movie on Twitter. In my twenty years on the internet, I have moved through many fandom that cut across sci-fi, comics, legal shows, horror, and teen drama and I can tell you that there are no fans more aggressive, obnoxious and convinced they are the victim than a particular Zack Snyder/DCEU fans. Any negative story about a forthcoming DC film is met with belligerent accusatory responses, usually including some version of “Marvel paid you to write this! You never write bad things about Marvel!” I always smile when I see the targeted journalist reply with articles they did indeed write about production problems on Marvel films, just to demonstrate the fan’s ignorance.
Now more than ever, it feels like a certain audience equates the movies they love with their identity. When The Dark Knight Rises was about to come out, the first critic to post a “rotten” review on Rotten Tomatoes got death threats for ruining the film’s “perfect” 100% rating. The fans leading this pitchfork mob had yet to see the movie themselves, so this was not a case where they had any basis to question the writer’s integrity. So why would they be so aggressive?
A while back, Drew McWeeny wrote a brilliant piece that touched on how he and people he knew had at one time or another tied their identity to the pop culture that they love. This relationship was so tight that a Star Trek fan friend of his completely flipped out when Star Trek V became the source of scorn in their group. I think we can agree Trek V is an awful film, but this friend couldn’t grok an attack on the film — because deriding Trek was like offending him as a person.
McWeeny dubbed these outbursts “fan-trums” and it’s certainly an apt term. There’s a tribalism to a lot of film culture circles that manifests in this way. “What I like is better than what you like,” and so on. “My culture is the best culture.” I have never seen a passionate Zack Snyder fan defend Batman v. Superman without derisively comparing it to Marvel. Such comparisons are rarely intellectual either, and more often are of the “Well, you just like Marvel movies because they’re simple and filled with jokes. You can’t handle ARTISTRY!”
That to me was the skeleton key here. It was no longer enough to enjoy Batman v. Superman. It was no longer enough to have that validated by other people who gave it their thumbs up. No, Batman v. Superman had to be acknowledged as BETTER than “the other team.” I can’t believe I’m about to quote Superman III, but one character in that film attributes a quote to Genghis Khan that quite appropriately describes this motivation: “It is not enough that I succeed; everyone else… must fail.”
Thus, making this ranked lists is an expression of that identity: Praise Empire Strikes Back and make sure you stick it to the prequels. Show how much you hated Dark Knight Rises (because geek culture eventually turns on everything) and rank it below Batman & Robin. Be the one person who thinks season one of Buffy The Vampire Slayer is the superior season because it doesn’t wallow in melodrama.
Tell me how you rank the James Bond canon and I’ll tell you who you are.
Each ranked list is born of a writer throwing down the gauntlet of their identity, daring you to disagree with them. It’s simultaneously an effort at individuality, while hoping for conformity from everyone who reads it.
“I am a unique flower that contains multitudes, but don’t you dare dispute my conclusive evaluations of this particular canon.”
Two of the best series on television return this week as HBO brings back Veep and FX debuts another season of Fargo. Additionally, there are anticipated fiction and nonfiction shows as well as a new HBO biopic we’re excited about, at the same time we’re set to say goodbye to other favorites, either for the year or forever. To help you keep track of the most important programs over the next seven days, here’s our guide to everything worth watching, whether it’s on broadcast, cable, or streaming for April 16–22:
(All listed times are Eastern)
SUNDAY
Veep (HBO, 10:30pm)
This show is back for the first time since the election, and fans are surely wondering how the political humor will reflect the new administration. Probably not at all, considering it was never a reaction to current events before. Instead, the focus on the first episode of season six, “Omaha,” is immediately on what Selina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) has been doing during the year since she lost her presidential election. No matter the story or plot, though, we can be certain Louis-Dreyfus will continue to be the funniest woman on TV and the show one of the greatest of our time.
Girls (HBO, 10pm)
Half an hour before Veep returns, it’s time to say goodbye to Hannah, Marnie, Jessa, and Shoshanna, as well as Adam, Ray, and Elijah, with the series finale (“Latching”) of Lena Dunham’s award-winning show, which is sure to go down as one of this decade’s most iconic. We will probably to have something more written on Girls’s legacy this week.
Also on Sunday: The Circus (Showtime, 8pm) The White Princess: a sequel to The White Queen,miniseries premiere (Starz, 8pm) Guerrilla: miniseries premiere (Showtime, 9pm) The Leftovers S3E1: “The Book of Kevin” final season premiere (HBO, 9pm) American Crime S3E5 (ABC, 10pm) Billions S2E8 (Showtime, 10pm) Feud: Bette and Joan: “Abandoned”(FX, 10pm)
MONDAY
Better Call Saul (AMC, 10pm)
The first episode of the third season was only a tip of the iceberg, and we can’t wait for more. How is any kind of a prequel this good, this intense, and so suspenseful? It seems like we’re actually going to see Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) enter the picture in this episode, “Witness,” but it’s still going to be Chuck (Michael McKean) that keeps us anxious with every new installment.
Also on Monday: SEED: The Untold Story (Independent Lens): doc debut (PBS) Bates MotelS5E9: “Visiting Hours” (A&E, 10pm) Angie Tribeca S3E2: “Brockman Turner Overdrive” (TBS, 10:30pm)
TUESDAY
Frontline: Last Days of Solitary: doc debut (PBS, 9pm)
Frontline reports with three years’ worth of coverage on the issue of solitary confinement in American prisons and how the practice is starting to decrease. The doc, which follows a handful of subjects at Maine State Prison, is by Daniel Edge and Lauren Mucciolo, who’ve delivered Frontline episodes on the prison system and solitary confinement in the past.
Also on Tuesday: Brooklyn Nine-Nine S4E14: “Serve & Protect” (Fox, 8pm) Deadliest Catch S13E2: “Seismic Shift” (Discovery 9pm)
WEDNESDAY
Fargo (FX, 10pm)
The third installment of Noah Hawley’s Coen Brothers-inspired series brings the setting up to 2010 as a sibling rivalry between brothers (both played by Ewan McGregor) leads to more of the blood and dark humor we expect. Carrie Coon is another of the leads, in the role of the latest small town sheriff, while Mary Elizabeth Winstead, David Thewlis, Jim Gaffigan, Scoot McNairy, Olivia Sandoval, Shea Whigham, and Michael Stuhlbarg round out the main cast. The first of this season’s 10 episodes is titled “The Law of Vacant Places,” named after a theory based on the card game bridge.
Also on Wednesday: Archer: DreamlandS8E3: “Jane Doe” (FXX, 10pm)
THURSDAY
Soundtracks: Songs That Defined History (CNN, 10pm)
Dwayne Johnson is one of the producers of this new eight-part doc series on the music associated with significant moments in history, including the Vietnam War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and 9/11. The first episode is based around the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the continuation of the Civil Rights Movement and includes tracks from James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Peter, Paul and Mary, and, more recently, Kendrick Lamar, whose contribution ties in the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Also on Thursday: Bosch: third season debut (Amazon) RiverdaleS1E11: “To Riverdale and Back Again” (CW, 9pm) Scandal S6E13 “Trojan Horse” (ABC, 9pm) The Amazing RaceS29E4 “Another One Bites the Dust” (CBS, 10pm)
FRIDAY
Girlboss (Netflix)
Enough of our favorite people, including Melanie Lynskey, Scott Pilgrim’s Johnny Simmons, Dean Norris, and RuPaul, show up in this new, 13-episode Netflix release that we’re willing to give star Britt Robertson (Tomorrowland) a shot as a series lead. Plus the show was created by Kay Cannon, of 30 Rock and the Pitch Perfect movies, has Charlize Theron as a producer, and is based on the kick-ass autobiography of Sophia Amoruso, “#Girlboss,” about her entrepreneurial experiences starting a vintage clothing business.
Also on Friday: Bill Nye Saves the World: full series debut (Netflix) Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On: doc spinoff miniseries debut (Netflix) Sand Castle: movie debut (Netflix) Tramps: movie debut (Netflix) RuPaul’s Drag RaceS9E5 (VH1, 8pm)
SATURDAY
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (HBO, 8pm)
Hamilton’s Renée Elise Goldsberry stars in this biopic about the titular cervical cancer patient who helped to change the course of cancer research in the 1950s. Oprah Winfrey, one of the movie’s producers, co-stars as Lacks’s daughter in present-day scenes while Rose Byrne portrays Rebecca Skloot, author of the book being adapted here by George C. Wolfe, who also directs. Courtney B. Vance and Reg E. Cathey round out the cast.
Also on Saturday: Doctor WhoS10E2: “Smile” (BBC America, 9pm) Class S1E2: “The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo” (BBC America, 10pm) Saturday Night Live:Chris Pine hosts (NBC, 11:30pm ET)
After the dust has settled, the album still stands tall.
Just a few days after Prince left us, Beyoncé dropped her masterpiece upon the world. With Lemonade, she not only made a new high bar for herself musically, but artistically as well. When it was revealed on April, 23rd 2016, for many this was not just the release as a new album, but “as a near-religious experience.” Yet, now a year later when the dust has settled, Lemonade received minimal critical acclaim for its achievements as music or a film. It lost the Emmy to a live musical. It lost the Grammy to a safe choice. Just what is the significance of Lemonade? Was it truly a landmark achievement?
First, let’s start with a little background. There is truly no better way to describe how Lemonade was released than to say it was unleashed. On the evening of the 23rd, Beyoncé revealed what she calls “a conceptual project based on every woman’s journey of self-knowledge and healing.” No one knew what Beyoncé has in store. Was it an album? Was it a music video? No one could of imagined the sheer scope of Lemonade. Working in collaboration with HBO, the project might simply be defined as a music video by some, but it is a lot more than that.
Lemonade’s larger strokes describes the difficulties of marriage, with the trails and tribulations of the Beyoncé/Jay Z romance aired out to the world. Throughout the length of the album she goes through many different emotions regarding her relationship from denial, to acceptance, and then perhaps finally achieving forgiveness. Beyoncé, above even many of her peers, is a very public persona. Those of us who thought we knew the things she kept hidden, perhaps never really understood her feelings underneath.
The album itself has been described as a movie, but what about what Beyoncé showed us with her visual album. She was certainly influenced by Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, which in essence, is the story of African-America survivors, those descendants of former slave trying to make a life for themselves. Beyoncé made an album that speaks on many levels and according to Thrillist, “[Lemonade’s] celebration and intimate conversation surrounding black womanhood gives it an emotional and artistic heft that Beyoncé has never demonstrated before.” Perhaps its greatest strength was giving hope when there might not be any. Especially since when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
I WANTED TO SET HER ASIDE AND BELIEVE AT LEAST ONE BLACK WOMAN WAS NOT HANDED LEMONS, BUT LEMONADE, ALREADY CHILLED AND SWEETENED. — Melissa Harris Perry
As a visual album, Lemonade was nominated for four Emmy awards including Outstanding Variety Special, Outstanding Production Design for a Variety, Nonfiction Event or Award Special, Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming, and Outstanding Directing for a Variety Special. Lemonade ended up walking away with nothing. Among the fine programs it lost to were things like Grease Live! and James Corden’s The Late Late Show Carpool Karaoke Prime Time Special. We ran an article shortly after the launch of Lemonade showcasing some of the talent that worked with Beyoncé to achieve her vision. Directors such as Khalil Joseph, Melina Matsoukas, Dikayl Rimmaschwere a few of talents behind the camera. They all worked together to create something that wasn’t so easily categorized.
Many were quick to note that while Lemonade lost the Emmys it was eligible for, when it came time to recognize the music, it wouldn’t be forgotten. Well, it was mostly tossed aside. Even though it was nominated for multiple awards including album of the year, the most notable achievement it picked up was Best Urban Contemporary Album, which singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens famously described as such:
Q: WTF is “Urban Contemporary”?
A: It’s where the white man puts the incomparable pregnant black woman because he is so threatened by her talent, power, persuasion and potential.
Everyone acknowledge something had gone horribly wrong, including Adele who publicly announced her own astonishment that Lemonade did not win the album of the year achievement. There are many reasons, mostly music politics, that Lemonade didn’t win including sales numbers and black artists continually struggling to garner the acclaim that their achievements deserve.
So, where are we now? As her album would suggest, Beyoncé forgave Jay Z for his infidelity and is now expecting twins. While the album failed to win many achievements in either the Emmys or Grammys, it won plenty of awards and acclaim from journalists and music aficionados alike. Sometimes true works of art are hard to place into categories. Lemonade might have struggled with traditional awards because of how revolutionary it is.
Artists are still trying to catch up to just what Beyoncé accomplished with Lemonade. Every week you see an someone trying to replicate the stealth release of a new album. Music Videos have never reached the heights of Lemonade, with its feature length quality. Musicians will be continue chasing after Beyoncé hoping to match her artistic flair, but perhaps only she will be able to take this art form to a new level.
Lemonade might be more of an anthem now than it was when it was released. Before we had a democratic president that cared about women and minorities, now we have a republican president who is restricting women’s rights on a regular basis. Every morning we seem to be waking up to even more bad news. We are continuously given lemons that need to be squeezed into lemonade. As a work of art, Lemonade provides something extremely valuable. It provides a message will resonate far longer than any awards would have. Hope that even in the darkest of times, we have the ability to grow stronger.
Is the ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise running out of gas? We have thoughts.
For this week’s After the Credits review, Matthew Monagle welcomes ScreenCrush senior editor Erin Whitney on to talk about Fate of the Furious. They talk on-set beefs, Jason Statham and The Rock as buddies, and how the franchise might be running low on gas.
Show Notes: 00:00:00 — Before the Credits 00:13:02 — After the Credits (includes spoilers)
Be sure to follow us on Twitter (@OnePerfectPod) and Facebook (facebook.com/oneperfectshot). Subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher, on TuneIn, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow host Matthew Monagle (@Labsplice) and guest Erin Whitney (@cinemabite).
We’d very much appreciate your feedback, as well. Leave us a review on iTunes or email us: pod@filmschoolrejects.com.
Three performances show what you can do with characters over half a decade.
Say what you will about Girls (and trust me, a LOT has been said by a LOT of dudes), but Lena Dunham and crew have crafted a final season as fresh and endearing as its first. And that’s not even as shady as it sounds. The first succeeded both because and in spite of its expectations and the sixth has followed suit, only now its stars are as good as they thought they were when the show started.
In a final season playing on our presumptions and familiarity, like all good shows with a consistent, if not loyal, fanbase, the actors and actresses starring in it have gotten really good at performing the inconsistent, weird, often hateable characters they’re written. The final episode especially allows its three recurring actresses (Lena Dunham, Allison Williams, and Becky Ann Baker) all their favorite and best ways to embody their characters. Let’s take a look at them, shall we? And please know that, going forward, all spoilers are game.
Marnie (Allison Williams)
The Get Out star has perfected her scary-perfect form of type-A severity in pronunciation, posture, and her dead-eyed stare. There’s no easy way to give off the impression that a character has a stick up their ass without making a face like you’re playing charades, yet Williams does it easily with a thin-lipped grimace. She’s pent up in every imaginable sense of the word (seen in the finale when she affects an odd British accent during some Facetime airline attendant/pilot role play with a mystery man) and can translate that from absurd friendship to horrifying sociopathic extreme.
While she hasn’t had as much success with different character types, her range is still widening and hopefully she isn’t typecasting as evil, cold bitch for long — though, I think with her film debut Get Out’s smash success it’ll be inevitable.
Hannah (Lena Dunham)
When did Lena Dunham become such a good actress? Sure she disrobes at a moment’s notice and the flimsiest excuse, but when her character is allowed to dodge the hyper-sexual caricature whose shock value brought in initial viewers to the show, it allows her to show off the deep emotional connection she’s forged with the character over the years. When holding her newborn son, attempting to breastfeed him, all the narcissistic bitterness of an intolerable twenty-something writer alchemically transforms inside her and spills out in deluges of frustration.
Dunham’s body may have been the focus of many an episode, but her eyes work the magic. Her tears, hurt, and manic joy all come from her eye expressions. The final shot of the series, her baby finally relatching and breastfeeding again offscreen, allows a tenuous peace to spread across her face. Before this she excels at Apatow-style joke riffing, comic asides more in her mumblecore style, an absurdly frustrating discussion with a teenager, and a heartfelt screaming match with her mother. The range of emotions felt in Girls has been crammed into one episode and, even if we didn’t get a sex scene (to which Dunham always brings a lighthearted and unromanticized realism), she excels. But back to that mother-daughter screaming match…
Loreen (Becky Ann Baker)
If there is an unsung hero of Girls (aside from prime spin-off candidate Andrew Rannells who plays Elijah), it’s Hannah’s mom Loreen and the actress who plays her, Becky Ann Baker. You may know her from playing John Francis Daley’s mom on Freaks and Geeks, but Baker’s not a one-mom pony…er, actress. Over the course of Girls, Baker’s Loreen has been fighting against the coddling world holding up Hannah. Suppressing her criticism, her desire for tough love, stuffed her with potential energy ripe for bursting. As her marriage collapsed and she began life anew as, basically, a single mother, she began dabbling in the immaturity that so invitingly welcomed her fragmented and messy daughter.
This allowed Baker to intermingle a drug trip, a spa trip, and the ever-mounting lonesomeness of a late-life separation with her maternal counsel. The growing weight of her personal drama seeps into her body, her very breathing. She sighs heavier or masks her weariness when Hannah looks on. Her biggest moment is when all this quiet denial and substance-numbing finally rubs away, leaving her exposed nerves raw and throbbing. When she flies out to help Hannah with her newborn, she’s not expecting the same bratty Hannah looking to renege on her biological deal. The ensuing tracking shots follow Baker like she’s a protestor breaking down her subject with well-reasoned rhetoric and the decibels to back it up. Even if the circumstances in which she’s screaming at Hannah are suspect or dramatically uneven, Baker unearths a rage made no less fiery by the unconditional love underpinning her voice.
In this, her performance is indicative of the series: even if they’re made to say frustrating, asinine things, the actors of Girls bring the kind of ever-evolving skill you’d expect from artists honing characters over more than half a decade.
The fate of the franchise is still in pretty good shape.
Sequels continue to disappoint at the box office this year, overall. Sure, there’s the John Wick: Chapter 2 exception, and both xXx: Return of Xander Cage and Logan at least just barely (and somewhat easily) topped their series’ previous efforts, but domestic flops include Underworld: Blood Wars, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, and T2: Trainspotting, while The Lego Batman Movie, Kong: Skull Island, Fifty Shades Darker, and now The Fate of the Furiousall opened relatively low for their franchises in America.
Universal doesn’t have to worry about F8's estimated $100m debut being far below the $147m opening of Furious 7 and just slightly under the $101m (adjusted for inflation) of Fast & Furious 6. Its global gross of $533m puts it not only much higher than F7’s $392m but also above Jurassic World ($526m) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($529m) to become holder of the new world record for the largest international opening of all time. That is in part thanks to its also-record-breaking $190m bow in China.
It’s no surprise the Fast and the Furious sequel did so well overseas, but it is a shocker it didn’t do even more worldwide. As late as last week, F8 was tracking to fall short of its predecessor but still open as high as $120m (Variety guessed better with “$100m and change”). Let’s not forget that Hollywood tries to lowball with these predictions, too. They missed the mark the other way with overseas numbers, expecting only $380m, with $400m being a dream. It blew past the latter for $432m outside the US.
The explanation for why F8 didn’t do as well as F7 is that Paul Walker’s death before the latter’s release pushed its appeal up so high. The explanation for why F8 opened so much higher overseas than F7 is not being addressed anywhere I’ve seen, but it is also simply explained: this time China’s figures are included. When F7 posted a nevertheless impressive $392m worldwide opening, it hadn’t yet released in China. That came a week later with an until-now record three-day total of $182m. Add that to the initial number, and you get $574m. More than F8’s total by $41m! If the new movie had performed as well domestically as the last, its record would actually be noteworthy. Put into perspective, it’s a rather empty bit of hype.
Of course, global box office is always tricky like that. It’s important to pay attention to what territories are included, especially with regards to China’s contribution. And obviously international records are going to keep breaking as more markets coincide with the US release and each other and also as more of those markets get bigger and bigger due to population growth combined with distribution growth, or just greater access for the people to see movies theatrically. Plus, inflation adjustments aren’t typically available with foreign numbers, so it’s difficult to compare past figures to today’s.
Regardless of the circumstances and the likelihood, how F8 does overall by the end of its run and how much higher above a billion dollars it goes (F7 topped out at $1.5b) will still be an interesting feat to watch for. If it not only opens better than Jurassic World and Star Wars: The Force Awakens but also finishes higher than those movies and The Avengers, that’s a remarkable achievement, considering its rise as a franchise and its lack of built-in brand merchandising strength compared to its competition.
So far, with the exception of Tokyo Drift, the Fast and the Furious movies have incrementally performed better with each installment, domestically (unadjusted — when inflation is considered, it goes 3, 4, 2, 1, 5, 6, 7) and globally. Their adjusted openings in the US also had been bettered incrementally with each sequel, until F8 ruined the tradition. Despite having the worst reviews of the series since part four, its popularity metrics, including an A grade from Cinemacore are consistent with other recent installments. It will only continue to make a whole lot of money.
If you spent the end of last week comatose or otherwise off the grid, then perhaps you missed the release of the first ever teaser trailer for Rian Johnson’s Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, which dropped on Friday. But then again, maybe you didn’t really miss as much as you might be thinking. That’s because while, yes, all the footage is new, the structure and world-building of the new trailer isn’t quite so new; a lot of the imagery is a mirror to the franchise’s previous episode, J.J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens.
Don’t believe me? That’s okay, you don’t have to, because an eagle-eyed editor for YouTube channel Morphin Bad has laid it all out for us by setting various clips from various teasers, trailers, and The Force Awakens final film side-by-side with The Last Jedi’s teaser so the connections are indisputable. The comparison has been edited so that shots line up, music cues and swells line up, voiceover narration lines up, even the nostalgic nods line up.
There’s a ‘Back to the Future’ joke in here somewhere.
Time Freak (2011)
Writer-directors John Ridleyand Andrew Bowler will explore the personal side of time travel. Namely, how to use time travel to fix a relationship. You know, because time is a thief and we need to show it who’s boss.
John Ridley closed a deal with Miramax that has him set to write and direct an adaptation of Needle in a Timestack, a short story by Robert Silverberg. The short story is about a man who uses a time machine to fix his marriage after his nefarious time traveling rival destroys it. Ridley won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2014 for 12 Years a Slave. He’s also the showrunner of American Crime, the miniseries Guerilla, and the director of the forthcoming documentary, Let it Fall.
Meanwhile, writer-director Andrew Bowler is revisiting the past with his own time travel film. The cast is set for a full-length adaptation of Bowler’s 2011 Oscar-nominated short Time Freak. Time Freak is a romantic comedy about a physics student, Stillman (Asa Butterfield), who builds a time machine. Stillman proceeds to use the time machine to patch things up with his girlfriend Debbie (Sophia Turner). Along for the time traveling fun and games is Stillman’s friend, Evan (Skyler Gisondo) because if Back to the Future and Hot Tub Time Machine taught the world anything it’s that you always time travel in groups of two to four.
These films beg the question: what would you use time travel for? Personally, I would photobomb historical events like an anachronistic Where’s Waldo? because, you know, some people just want to watch the world burn. The universal answer is to kill Hitler but that would take, like, what? Ten or twenty minutes? Maybe an hour or two of planning to streamline the whole thing. If you’re not killing Hitler or once you’re done killing Hitler, what are you doing? Probably what Ridley and Bowler’s protagonists will do: fix their personal lives.
In the RPG that is life, we are almost never allowed to see what happens if we choose one dialogue tree over another. It may seem completely narcissistic to use the impossible to do the unapologetically self-indulgent, but don’t we all kind of wish that we had the ability to go back to mulligan a mistake? If only we had said something instead of being quiet. If only we had thought of that snappy comeback when we needed it most. If only we married that person when they asked. Life is full of what-ifs. Time travel is too. The beauty of two talented, passionate filmmakers making time travel films is that we get to see how they effectuate a what-if scenario, because, in actuality, we can’t.
John Ridley’s miniseries Guerilla is currently airing on Showtime this month. Ridley’s American Crime is currently in its third season on ABC. Finally, Ridley’s documentary on the L.A. riots, Let it Fall is set to open in theaters this month. We’ll have to wait awhile for Andrew Bowler’s full-length Time Freak. Until then you can catch the trailer for the original here as well as this fun interview with the L.A. Times in 2011. Think of it as a time travel simulation.
The Golden Globe-winning actress Gina Rodriguez will be the new voice of Carmen Sandiego in an animated series that is currently in the works at Netflix, according to The Tracking Board. The series will be based on the 80s educational video game that inspired PBS’ early-to-mid 90s children’s game show, both called Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Netflix still has yet to confirm the series, but The Tracking Board has said the streaming service “has ordered 20 episodes of the series, which aims to be as educational as it is entertaining, given the title character’s globetrotting adventures.”
So far what has been said about the adaptation seems to follow in the “educational” footsteps of its 90s predecessor, so we can expect to see a modernised version of the three gumshoes tracking Carmen Sandiego’s whereabouts. However, while the location of Sandiego’s whereabouts remains unknown, one question viewers won’t need to ask is where Rodriguez will be.
Aside from portraying the realistically flawed and multitasking mother in her breakout role on Jane the Virgin, Rodriguez has also recently starred in the Peter Berg-directed Deepwater Horizon, will appear in Alex Garland’s (Ex Machina) much-anticipated Annihilation, and is currently up for two roles with two major studios: Miss Bala and Fire Me.
Sony’s Miss Bala, could see Rodriguez as a beauty pageant contestant who witnesses a crime, resulting in the character being forced to work in the drug trade. The film will be a Sony remake of the 2011 Gerardo Naranjo film of the same name, which was nominated for the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes. Rodriguez is also up for a role in 20th Century Fox’s Fire Me, which, according to The Tracking Board, is a comedy based off of a novel from Libby Malin. The film would see the feature directorial debut of the Emmy-winning editor and director Ryan Case (Modern Family, Brooklyn Nine-Nine), while Ben Stiller’s Red Hour Films is attached to produce. Where the former presents an interesting character role for Rodriguez, the latter could also see the actress’ career become even bigger with the caliber of talent attached to it. It’s likely Rodriguez will have to choose between the roles, too, since they are set to be filmed at the same time. Either way, it’s her choice, and her decisions so far have showcased Rodriguez’s acting ability.
Rodriguez proven she can work in both the climate of commercialized films as well as more cinematic events. As seen with her titular character Jane on Jane the Virgin, Rodriguez’s acting ability is able to evolve at the same pace as the evolution of her characters. At the same time, the actress’ roles in films such as Deepwater Horizon showcase her ability to portray a character convincingly in a short space of time. Rodriguez’s voice work in the Carmen Sandiego series is sure to only further showcase her acting abilities. Meanwhile, with Ex Machina Garland brought unique and unexpected performances out of Alicia Vikander, Domnhall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac, and Annihilation suggests the same will be done for Rodriguez too.
So, where in the world is Gina Rodriguez? Well, she’s everywhere.
A new video essay offers a perfect analysis of a perfect film.
Anyone who knows me even just a little bit knows I hold David Lynch in ridiculously high regard. I’ve dedicated a good chunk of my thinking life — and a sizeable patch of my right forearm — to Twin Peaks, and I watch the rest of his work the way some people go to church: weekly, with great devotion, and usually dressed for the occasion. Out of all his work though, Mulholland Drive has been my absolute favorite of his films from the first time I saw it, and upon each subsequent viewing, somewhere in the 20s now, I am only further convinced of its greatness. It’s my third favorite film of all-time behind Jaws and The Third Man, it’s my second favorite horror film of all-time (again behind Jaws), and I, like a lot of folks, consider it to be the greatest film made thus far in the 21st century.
But for all the time I’ve spent thinking about Mulholland Drive in relation to itself and Lynch’s other work, I never really considered until today when I saw the following video, that maybe the reason I love Mulholland Drive above the rest of the directors oeuvre is because Mulholland Drive is the culmination of all things Lynchian; the themes, aesthetic style, characterization, and storytelling patterns he spent a career developing come to a perfect head in this one film, making it — pardon the pun — the peak of his art.
Our friend Leigh Singer is the brains behind this video, made for the fine folks at Fandor, and it is, quite simply, the best video about Mulholland Drive that I’ve ever seen. That’s right, I said it. Singer traces Lynch’s career and deftly demonstrates how the director pulls from everything he’s done in Mulholland, making it without a doubt exactly what Singer posits it to be: the ultimate and essential David Lynch experience.
