We’ve had ‘American Sniper,’ ‘Sully,’ and now ‘The 15:17 to Paris.’

Hot off American Sniper’s (2014) adaptation of US navy Seal Chris Kyle’s memoir and the depiction of Chesley Sullenberg’s water landing in the more controlled Sully (2016), Clint Eastwood’s true-life American tales will go from a duo to a trio with his next film. As per Deadline Hollywood, it has been confirmed that Eastwood’s next film will be a drama based on Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, Spencer Stone and Jeffrey E. Stern’s book The 15:17 To Paris: The True Story Of A Terrorist, A Train, And Three American Heroes. The deal to the book also includes the rights to the three friends’ life stories.

The script has been written by Dorothy Blyskal, and tells the tale of not one hero as per Eastwood’s previous films, but three. When an ISIS terrorist boarded the #9364 train from Brussels to Paris with enough ammo to kill over 500 people, three friends (Sadler, Skarlatos and Stone) “refused to give in to fear” and fought back. Using their combined skills in the martial arts, US Air Force and as a National Guard, they were able to overpowered the terrorist and stopped the death of multiple lives.

Eastwood’s focus on true-life stories is creating a running trend through his body of work, but, more importantly, it leaves us asking: why does he feel the need to tell these stories now? Perhaps the success of American Sniper, which had a budget of just under $60 million but grossed more than $500 million worldwide, proved the profitability of these stories. No doubt, American Sniper’s success allowed Sully, a story that is ostensibly more difficult to make entertaining due to its subject matter, to be made. However, while American Sniper is morally ambiguous compared to the thoughtful direction by Eastwood (and, notably, reserved acting by Tom Hanks) with Sully, it’s clear the director is more concerned with the inner psyches of his different kinds of heroes rather than the direct effects their heroism has had on the world. The tagline of Sully tells audiences how it is telling the “untold story” behind what we already know, this becoming applicable to the director’s previous true-life story in the fact that the “untold story” is the story of the mind of the central figure.

With Eastwood’s adaptation of The 15:17 to Paris, audiences can expect a focus on the underdog heroes and more than a few action codes. But, in terms of the direction of American Sniper and Sully, audiences can also expect a large focus on the inner workings of the heroes being depicted.

Clint Eastwood to Direct Patriotic Real Life Heroism Tale, Again was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sophie Turner is what was, what is, what will be in the ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ sequel.

Over the weekend 20th Century Fox announced a slew of 2018 release dates: New Mutants on April 13, Deadpool 2 on June 1, and Dark Phoenix on November 2. Saturday cartoons and movie news. Wasn’t the weekend grand? Let’s fight the urge to speculate wildly about Deadpool 2 and instead speculate wildly about the X-Men: Apocalypse sequel, Dark Phoenix.

Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones) will reprise her role as Jean Grey which makes sense given that X-Men: Apocalypse showed off her Phoenix-y powers to defeat the big baddie. The interesting, potentially bad thing about this is that the current X-Men: Apocalypse continuity envisions The Phoenix Force as being an already existing part of Jean. There is a bittersweet quality to this because it is both interesting and worrisome.

The interesting aspect is that Turner has a great acting opportunity. We’ve seen in X-Men: Apocalypse that Fox is willing to play fast and loose with the source material to give a female star more to do. Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique is just blue Katniss Everdeen because if you pay for an Oscar-winning actress to be in your superhero movie, it’s in your best interest to get your money’s worth. Turner’s already got experience showing a character grow from wilting flower to talented power player. We’ve already seen Jean use her Phoenix-like powers to save her friends at the climax of X-Men: Apocalypse. Further, she’s shown her Phoenix-ed out facial expression can be pretty menacing.

Now the worrisome aspect, the X-Men movies have been lackluster. Fox hasn’t perfected the art of the team up movie. To be fair, X-Men: Apocalypse was incredibly overcrowded but so was Age of Ultron and Civil War. The best move would be to scale down to a personal story between the core members of the existing team. Turner as the emotional core could work. The only problem is there is an uphill battle to build the narrative infrastructure to make the Dark Phoenix Saga land.

A narrative that retcons runs the risk of losing some character building background. Also, it misses out on a big theme in Jean’s history, The Phoenix Force. The Phoenix Force is meant to protect life. Specifically, through the protection of a crystal whose continued existence is the only thing between a giant multidimensional Ctrl + Alt + Delete and the world’s continued existence. For example, when it cracks we get some Doctor Who level time craziness that would make Memento look linear.

Retconning is an atrocious idea. Like, so bad. But Jean Grey’s relationship with The Phoenix Force leading up to the Dark Phoenix Saga is worth noting. Initially, and in multiple tellings, Jean interacted with the Phoenix Force following the death of her childhood friend Anne. However, Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men run 96–100 — a Jean Grey-aissance of sorts — has her interact poignantly with the Phoenix Force during a mission with the X-Men. After some drama in a space station, Jean tries desperately to save her friends as their ship gets bombarded with solar radiation. At the brink of death but fighting it by sheer force of will, Jean reaches out and strikes a deal with the Phoenix Force to give up a part of herself in return for everyone’s lives. The X-Men’s ship then crashes into the ocean, and Jean emerges from the water reborn as Phoenix. Thereby, reaching a level so badass that she has the power to nickname herself.

Since Jean is now “one with force and the force is with her,” her powers get a godlike boost. When Jean returns to earth she is able to consciously suppress the force enough to go on with her life. However, that doesn’t last long, and soon she becomes overwhelmed by her power after saving Cyclops when he goes head to head, literally, with Mastermind — all this after some Hellfire Club shenanigans. No spoilers, but if you’ve seen X-Men: The Last Stand, you’ve gotten a peek at this story already. However unsatisfying it was to watch.

The Dark Phoenix Saga is important both commercially and narratively. Dark Phoenix is a benchmark; a touchstone that you have to partake in when burning your way through X-Men continuity. To understand later X-Men storylines you need to have some understanding of Jean Grey’s history. Personally, and controversially, I liken it to The Killing Joke’s place within Batman’s continuity. It’s a similar story to the Dark Phoenix Saga in that what Chris Claremont did was build Jean’s thematic place within the X-Men universe. The same way that Moore set the thematic tone for later Joker stories. Every writer after Claremont assumes Dark Phoenix Saga’s mythos, spirit, or that its central events transpired. With just cause, Chris Claremont did great working moving Jean from being the B-member token girl of the team to an Omega level mutant powerhouse. In early continuity, Jean Grey could only mentally lift something her weight and lower. Any bigger and the other X-Men would have to help her (I know!). Dark Phoenix is an important story and it deserves a good film. Only time will tell if it will get it.

The X-Men Franchise is Doing ‘Dark Phoenix’ in November 2018 was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The reference-r becomes the referenced.

You can’t talk about Quentin Tarantino without talking about his penchant for pop culture references. The worlds of film, television, literature, music, art, animation, and more are all fodder for QT’s frenetic screen language. Because of this, in part, pop culture has embraced Tarantino in a way it does few other filmmakers, it made him a figurehead overnight, a touchstone source for all things kooky and cult-y, and in fact on several occasions pop culture has returned the favor by referencing the director and his work.

Movies like Swingers, Neighbors, and Space Jam, and television shows like The Simpsons, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and The Office, and even the music of pop princess Lady Gaga are just a few of the various media that have paid homage to Tarantino, and now thanks to editor extraordinaire Jacob T. Swinney, you can see them all in one place.

These are clips and artifacts that span the last quarter-century, which is a testament to Tarantino’s pop cultural staying power and in fact makes him bigger than many of the fads, trends, movements and moments by which he’s inspired. In a sense then, he’s become an indispensable part of our culture by drawing from the most temporal and dispensable elements of said culture. Pretty neat trick, that.

Turnabout: Pop Culture Homages to Quentin Tarantino was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Short of the Day

From writer-director Zach Fleming

Okay, so I’m not entirely sure just what’s going on in Zach Fleming’s Staycation, but I am 150% sure that I love it. Fleming has taken elements of comedy, romance, and drama and woven them into a narratively experimental short film that isn’t quite horror but comes damn close in the most intriguing, intelligent, and subversive ways.

An unnamed man (Rob Malone) visits New York City. His girlfriend was supposed to come with him but she’s not there. But she’s kinda there. Or at least some woman (Joanna Arnow) is, but the man can’t see her. She can see him, though. And her throat is open.

The story of Staycation occurs entirely within the Air bnb the man has taken for his stay, which gives the film a sense of forbiddenness, this space that’s his but not really his, and when you add this to the voyeurism of the woman/spirit/figment/memory/metaphor of the cut-throat woman, what you get is a haunting, ephemeral, comically unsettling experience that will follow you around in your thoughts as surely as whatever that thing is following our hero.

We found this over at NoBudge, which also has links to more of Fleming’s work, as well as a couple films from Ms. Arnow, including the very funny Bad at Dancing. Once you’ve got Staycation under your skin, give these other shorts a look as well.

‘Staycation’ is a Captivating, Unsettling Slice of Experimental Storytelling was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

‘Sweet Virginia’ and the Effect of Violence and Moral Ambiguity in Rural Towns

We chat with Jamie M. Dagg about his latest film ‘Sweet Virginia’…and Ewoks? It gets awesomely weird!

The Shallow Pocket Project is going to Tribeca (in spirit)! We’ll be chatting with several independent filmmakers making the trek to New York for this year’s film festival. Stay tuned! Check out our last Tribeca chat with Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson (‘The Endless’). Special thanks, as always, to In The Mouth of Dorkness, Brad Gullickson, and Darren Smith.

You never really know what’s going on in small town life. There’s a general perception that these sparsely populated towns are quiet places filled with people who know each other as well as I know my own family. We suppose that feuds can last generations, but we allow that it happens in the open and is known to everyone. Sweet Virginia shows that’s all surface. There are dark depths to rural towns. Closed doors, hiding mean secrets. Some hide passionate affairs. Others, murderous conspiracies or financial malfeasance. Jamie M. Dagg’s latest gives us a taste of the dangerous icebergs hidden by the deep, still waters of rural life.

We talk about growing up in small towns. I grew up outside of a beach town in the panhandle of Florida. Dagg grew up in a small mining town called Timmins, Ontario. Both of us have since been to many different parts of the world and moved to much larger, metropolitan areas. The pace of life is different in smaller towns. The way people stop and interact with each other is different. Not better or worse, but different. You do get a sense of knowing everybody’s business. Rumors spread. A single event typically affects many other people. But, there are, of course, always surprises. The thing about small towns though is that the people are surprised to be surprised. As in, how could they not have known this thing? Whatever the secret may be. Dagg captures that dynamic very well in his latest film.

Sweet Virginia is aces neo-noir. It’s quiet. Motivations are mysterious and slowly uncovered. And the film revels in its exploration of the difference between anonymity and secrets. I feel No Country For Old Men watching this film. The movies have a similar weight to them. It’s a comparison I think Sweet Virginia can withstand. They’re about men, broken by violence and hard lives who struggle with the idea of what could have been.

The film opens with a murder. It is a cold act and executed with deliberate intention. Elwood (Christopher Abbott) comes into a diner looking to order a meal after hours. After being refused service, he threatens the three friendly locals running the place. He is very specific about sussing out the name of one of the men. Elwood leaves the diner and returns with a pistol. And then calmly shoots all three men to death.

Sam (Jon Bernthal) is a broken-down, retired rodeo cowboy who runs a motel in town. He is having an affair with Bernadette (Rosemarie DeWitt), who is the wife of one of the murdered men. Elwood, clearly with further business to accomplish in town, has rented a room at Sam’s motel. He recognizes Sam as a rodeo hero of his father’s. Sam finds the recognition to be a bit awkward, and as much as he may be put off by it there’s a hint of pleasure at being recognized for who he was rather than who he is.

I see a lot of Anton Chigurh in Abbott’s performance as Elwood. The determination. The deliberate and unyielding application of violence. Chigurh, though, is practically a force of nature, the grim reaper himself. Elwood isn’t there yet. He comes across as a broken man looking for purpose. He isn’t a sympathetic character by any stretch, as he’s clearly comfortable with cold blooded murder. But, Elwood has a vulnerability and a sense of loss that isn’t present in Chigurh’s character. It’s something that Sam sees and connects with emotionally.

Dagg’s success at working with broken characters is not suprising. He has a knack for looking at murderers and the aftermath of their actions. His first film, River (currently on Netflix Instant), which he wrote, is a thriller of an escape film as a man runs from the law after dealing a murderous dose of street justice to a rapist. He is desperate. And alone. And completely at a loss for what to do.

The photography, especially of the nature surrounding this small town, is gorgeous. It’s funny how it’s become a cliche to say, but the environment should be a character. We talked extensively about the importance of the location of the town. He insisted the story take place in Alaska. It’s a state populated by people who are perfectly content and capable of living rough and tough. They build close, but isolated communities. And then there are folks who venture off to live strictly from what they can take from the land. Locals versus outsiders is a recurring theme for him and a significant part of our conversation. In River, he had terrific shots showcasing the beauty of the land and the physical distance separating those rural communities from a more urban area. He brings that same eye to Sweet Virginia.

Dagg marshals all of these elements together into a tight story. The script is a China Brothers joint which made the Black List in 2012. You can feel the substance of the story they’ve written. When Dagg signed on to work with their script, he shares that they got together and trimmed it by thirty or forty percent. For me, the best of this kind of film present you with just enough information to put the depth of the story together for yourself. Nothing more. However! The underlying framework of knowledge is absolutely essential for all the little details to add up.

Due in no small part to that heavy preproduction for story development, they had an interesting time coming to terms with Bernthal as Sam. Dagg had come to envision the character as someone older, maybe like Michael Caine’s role in Daniel Barber’s Harry Brown. At this point, Bernthal was already bulking up for his role an The Punisher. After a few chats, though, Dagg came around to the idea of him along. Despite the physicality that felt at odds with the choice, Bernthal hits a home run on this performance. Sam is meant to be broken. Yet, Bernthal looks like he could push a tank off the road. But, my oh my, he brings everything to this role. The amazing physicality of Bernthal’s performance comes in his ability to make his imposing stature a painful reminder of Sam’s long-gone physical prowess. He walks with a limp. His limbs go just a little wobbly as he tries to use them. His hands shake. You can tell he hurts simply from trying to walk around.

Honestly, Dagg has an embarassment of riches on the casting front. Christopher Abbott and Jon Bernthal give some of the best performances I’ve seen so far this year. Their relationship is amazing. Imogen Poots and Rosemarie DeWitt play outstanding supporting roles. But, Dagg gets a lot out of his actors by bringing a detailed understanding of the emotional center of the movie and the beats in which that can and should reveal itself.

Dagg was a ton of fun to talk to, and I truly dig his movies. It’s a super tight neo-noir with outstanding performances. I encourage you to check this one out as soon as you can. As for our conversation, well. It starts off, like a simple slice of small town life. Great, on-topic discussion of the development of Sweet Virginia and Dagg’s influences. And then, uh, some closed doors get opened. I’ll just note that we conclude the chat by discussing the future of the Star Wars franchise and trading suggestions of the most inappropriate directors to work on the Ewok’s Revenge trilogy. Which is to say it finishes awesome! Click the link (or here for iTunes) and check it out.

CHATcast: Jamie Dagg (Director of Sweet Virginia)

Interview: ‘Sweet Virginia’ and the Effect of Violence and Moral Ambiguity in Rural Towns was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Bambi is nowhere to be found in this story riddled with poverty, meth and violence.

Thumper opens with a bit of misdirection. We’re drawn into the chaotic and clustered home life of Wyatt (Pablo Schreiber), a charismatic, larger than life figure whom we soon learn looms large in the poverty-stricken, unnamed California neighborhood. With a child on one hip, Wyatt scrambles through empty kitchen cabinets, trying to salvage together breakfast for his two children. The house is messy, littered with toys and mismatched furniture, but Wyatt is the perfect picture of a doting father, showering both children with genuine affection that belies his tattooed shaved head.

But once his children have shuffled off with their mother, we see a different side of Wyatt. When Troy (Grant Harvey) comes into the house, unexpectedly bringing along Beaver (Daniel Webber), Wyatt is outraged and starts menacing the two teenagers. Eventually, he brings them to a padlocked shed in his backyard where he cooks crystal meth. Troy is short on cash due to a “slow month” and Beaver pipes up, offering to sell product for Wyatt. In response, Wyatt pins the boy up against a cabinet, threatening to spill a container of chemicals into his eyes. When he feels Beaver has been scared enough into keeping his mouth shut, Wyatt lets him go. From here, the film picks up with Beaver and a new girl in his high school, Kat (Eliza Taylor). This story isn’t about Wyatt but he will affect it in a dangerous way.

This subtle shift, where things aren’t what they seem to be, where danger — real danger — lurks under every surface, is woven throughout Thumper, the directorial debut of Jordan Ross, who also wrote the film. Executive produced by Cary Fukunaga, Thumper doesn’t have the same dizzying conspiracy theory terror that was woven into the first season of True Detective, but it deftly exposes a similar hopeless seediness, one kept tucked away from middle-class America but one infused with stories and struggles that are just as important to explore.

When Kat accepts an invitation to party with Beaver and his friends, it brings her to an abandoned lot where her new peers converge to sip vodka from the bottle of backseats, tag up on crumbling walls and pass around blunts. From here, she plunges headfirst into this new life, held afloat by the proliferation of drugs, booze and parties at Troy’s house. But Kat remains on the outskirts, keeping the drugs and sex at arms length while harboring her own dark secret that will soon worm its way into the close knit group of friends.

Kat begins to connect with Beaver, getting insight into his troubled home life where he cares for a younger brother with Down Syndrome and protects him from their abusive father. Beaver hopes to save up enough money to take his brother out west, where he can attend a better school and have a better life. Here, Kat sees firsthand how the influx of drugs, while providing an escape from a truly harsh reality, also allow economic possibilities otherwise not available. But sandwiched alongside this we hear of overdoses ravaging the community and see how the teens have become addicted to the drugs outside of weekend partying, reminding us that life is never quite as black and white as we would like it to be.

As a newcomer, Kat finds herself accepted by everyone but Wyatt, the de facto leader of the group, who has already established himself as unpredictable and violent and who will do anything to keep himself out of jail and his business booming. When Kat’s secret is finally exposed, it results in an eruption of violence and tension that threatens not only her life, but also the lives of her newfound friends.

Thumper succeeds due to a well-written script elevated by a number of strong performances, including lead actress Eliza Taylor, who shines as the complex and multi-layered Kat, as well as Daniel Webber, who brings depth to Beaver, elevating him from a lovable loser to complicated and tortured teen seeking something better for himself. But it is Pablo Schreiber who truly stands out as the menacing Wyatt, giving an electric and commanding performance that will be talked about long after the film’s release. Alongside his role as Mad Sweeney in Starz’ adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, Schreiber seems poised to have a breakout year that will reward his immense talent.

Although some curious viewers may initially be drawn to Thumper due to Fukunaga’s involvement, they won’t be disappointed with what they discover: a dark and subversive thriller that exposes the underbelly of crime and poverty not for shock value but instead to expose the uncomfortable parallels between our tidy lives and the messy secrets we try to keep locked inside.

‘Thumper’ is an Unmissable and Taut Crime Thriller was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Let’s teach Marvel about spoilers.

Does Marvel know what spoilers are? We’re skeptical. On the subject of the title of the follow-up movie of Avengers: Infinity War, a yet untitled sequel, they appear to be confused. Yesterday, Cinema Blend published an interview with Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, who answered the direct question of “I’m curious if the reason [they’re not going to announce the title] is because it’s a spoiler” with “Yeah, for sure.”

This led to all sorts of speculation as to what kind of spoiler would be so hot that Marvel wouldn’t want to release the title of the Infinity War sequel until after we’ve seen the first movie. For a time, it was fun. Then later in the day, a BBC News reporter talked to Zoe Saldana on the red carpet for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, who said that after Infinity War, they had to go back for Gauntlet. This infers that Infinity Gauntlet is the title of the fourth Avengers film. And that’s not a spoiler. As our friends at io9 point out, not only is “Gauntlet” not a spoiler, it’s possible that’s just the working title of the film.

So either Marvel doesn’t have a handle on what a spoiler is, or they’ve given their actors a placeholder title to talk about. At this point, we don’t particularly care. Eventually they will release all kinds of news about their fourth Avengers film and the pop culture blogosphere will cover it breathlessly. In the mean time, we’d like to have some fun with this idea and present pitches for Avengers 4 plots that would actually be spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War.

Let’s see how this goes…

Avengers: Annihilation

Brad Gullickson: Here is my dream scenario: the cadre of 20th Century Fox executives press stop on the Fantastic Four franchise, shrug their shoulders at the stillborn monstrosity flat-lining on the table, and simply pass the problem back to Marvel Studios. No need for any fancy Sony/Spider-Man business dealings, they’ve proven that they have no understanding for these characters, and concede the property back to the House of Ideas. This will launch Phase Fantastic 4…I mean, where can you go after defeating the omnipotent onslaught of Thanos and his Infinity Gauntlet? With the Fantastic Four comes Doctor Doom, The Silver Surfer, the Skrulls, Dragon Man, Moloids, the Negative Zone, and Galactus. GALACTUS!!! And we’re not talking some fart cloud of techno bugs like we last saw in Tim Story’s embarrassing sequel. I want to see The Devourer of Worlds: that giant, goofy, purple crowned, Jack Kirby drawn, intergalactic titan. Own it. That’s what the MCU is all about.

So why, Annihilation? We cannot dive directly into the Herald of Galactus storyline; obviously, you leave that potential planetary destruction for the final end credits tag of Avengers 4. Annihilation announces to the comic book freaks in the crowd that the FF have returned home, and tantalizes at a myriad of epic comic book possibilities. The Annihilation arc that spread throughout the cosmic titles at Marvel back in 2006 certainly took advantage of several characters that the modern fanbase is already aware of (Drax, Ronan The Accuser, Nova, Thanos, and the rest of the Guardians), but it also requires the involvement of the dimensional tyrant, Annihilus. A metallic green, freakshow arachnid, Annihilus escapes from The Negative Zone to wreak havoc on the cosmos. Bugboy does this by unleashing “The Annihilation Wave,” an endless armada of warships that obliterates any homeworld that dares stand in its path. Imagine The Last Starfighter plot stretched to Lawrence of Arabia’s epic landscape and runtime. The saga easily allows for The Avengers to be drawn into the conflict, and will provide ample opportunity to tease a number of future projects. A true war film that will still pale under the inevitable threat of Galactus and his unstoppable hunger.

The Avengers: Hydra Strikes Back

Max Covill: Everyone expects Captain America and/or Iron Man to die in Avengers: Infinity War. That much isn’t much of a surprise. Listen to this though. Perhaps even though the Avengers suffer great loses, Thanos is ultimately defeated. This leaves a massive hole in the MCU as to where to go next. The has been one underlining thread through all these films and it is that Hydra is not dead yet.

The biggest way they could do this is by having Captain America go over to Hydra like the current comic book arc. It would be matching what Marvel has been doing in current comic arcs and would totally shock audiences who aren’t familiar with the comic book storyline. This would allow Hydra to come back in a big way and prove that Thanos wasn’t the ultimate villain all along. Of course, this would mean Captain America has to survive Infinity War, but given where Iron Man and Captain America left off anything could happen.

Avengers: Forever

William Dass: Nathaniel Richards, baby. Rama-Tut! If we’re letting backroom deals go wild, I say we go all in for the time traveling Kang the Conqueror. I know, 20th Century Fox owns the rights. But, Marvel has “weird” deal powers, right? Aren’t you looking forward to that (Sony) Spider-Man movie? Kurt Busiek’s Forever arc is the original story line, but the MCU has some flexibility. Kang made a great television appearance in Avengers: Ultron Revolution. And that featured Old Man Thor! Bonus, the time-traveling Kang gives us a chance to pull new heroes out of thin air. New Avengers plus Jason Aaron’s Old Man Thor with the arm of the Destroyer? Yes, please. I can’t think of a more fun way to send off our current roster of Avengers and try out new ones in the process.

Avengers: Secret Invasion

Brad Gullickson: Having spent the last two films meandering through space while having their butts handed to them by the Mad Titan, The Avengers return to Earth only to discover that the shapeshifting Skrulls have invaded every branch of government. Based on the popular mega event written by Brian Michael Bendis and illustrated by Leinil Yu, Secret Invasion provides plenty of paranoid conspiracy to keep the Russo Brothers interested, and a heap of tragedy to infuriate the ravenous fan base. Oh, you thought you loved Black Widow? Well, she’s been a Skrull since Iron Man 2 and everything you know has been a lie!!! An absolutely horrific climax that sets the stage for a truly villainous sequel — Norman Osborne is your new Iron Patriot! Plus, while the Skrulls are devastating the population that still leaves a giant gap in space for Galactus to trounce through (all things must build to Galactus).

Avengers: Infinity War Part II: Electric Boogaloo

Jake Orthwein: After Thanos gets hold of the Infinity Stones, he subjugates the earth, stripping both the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy of their power. But universal domination soon bores the supervillain, so he decides to stage a competition: the Avengers and the Guardians will be pitted against one another in a breakdance competition for the future of humanity. The catch of the dance off is of course that only one team can win; Thanos plans to destroy the losers before surrendering the Infinity Stones to the winners. Paralyzed by their nobility, both teams initially refuse to accept the terms of the competition. But when Starlord busts an unexpected move, the two sets of heroes are locked in a disco-tastic boogie to the death, with the fate of the planet hanging in the balance.

Avengers: Secret Wars

Brad Gullickson: By the time we reach the fourth Avengers film, we will have witnessed 21 interconnected movies in the MCU cycle. We will have ventured multiple times to the cosmos, the dark dimension, the micro-verse, and Planet Hulk. We are ready to get real weird, bring on the Multiverse.

The Avengers are broken. Ripped apart during their conflict with Thanos, Doctor Strange attempts to right some wrongs when he pulls the Infinity Gauntlet free from the Titan. Accessing both the Time and Reality gems, Strange unleashes a series of alternate realities, and they all come smashing together on one celestial body — BATTLEWORLD. Based loosely on Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic’s relaunch of Marvel’s first epic crossover event, Secret Wars pits multiple Spider-Mans, Hulks, and Captain Americas against each other. Each corner of Battleworld represents a possible reality. Over one wall you could find Marvel Zombies, over another, The Age of Ultron succeeded in its global extinction. Characters we thought we lost are resurrected, dark paths they could have taken have been ventured. It’s all a big setup to re-start reality, re-introduce the Fantastic Four, and that purple planetary gobbler, Galactus. Again — all terrors must lead to Galactus!

Avengers: Down with the Sickness

Jake Orthwein: With Thanos safely defeated, the Avengers decide to take advantage of their newly amassed Infinity Stones to explore the Galaxy. Ever-conscious of their roles as role models to the community, they decide to share their space travels with an intern: a shy, young biology student named Peter Parker. While collecting organic samples on an alien planet, Peter gets bonded to a Symbiote, amplifying his powers dramatically. At first the Avengers are pleased to learn they have another hero in their midst, but soon Parker becomes aggressive. Convinced that the Avengers are no match for his superior new powers, he plots to steal the Infinity Stones and rule the world for himself. Parker’s plan nearly comes to fruition but is stopped when the Symbiote migrates to a new host: Eddie Brock.

Avengers: The Child Of [Insert Avenger Here]

Ciara Wardlow: The Avengers franchise has already made it clear that it’s not opposed to giving people super-secret families (see: Hawkeye’s weird-ass rural utopia). Unfortunately, family man Clint in Age of Ultron played off less like a major plot twist and more like a major plot face-plant. With this in mind, maybe the MCU feels compelled to make one of those “repeat yourself to redeem yourself” moves, like the Star Wars franchise did with Kylo Ren and prequel Anakin Skywalker, to prove it can do a secret family reveal that doesn’t play out like the world’s most boring fever dream.

Avengers: Zombies

Christopher Campbell: We’re all expecting someone to die by the end of Avengers: Infinity War, but confirming that would be a spoiler, for sure. Maybe it’s a couple characters, namely Iron Man and Captain America, because it’s time for Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans to get out of the franchise. Infinity War ends with their funerals and then a cliffhanger where they’re hands reach out of their graves. Then the next movie sees them come back as zombies. It turns out that something out in the cosmos infected their dead bodies, and that infection returned to Earth with the mighty heroes. Zombie Iron Man and Zombie Cap attack the other Avengers and more and more of them become undead monsters, as well.

Turning Downey and Evans’s characters into zombies would make it so they could continue on screen without their actors being involved. Surely Marvel has bought them off for their likenesses, right? So they can digitally throw zombified versions of their faces onto surrogate actors and maybe by the time of their being cured the technology is so good that even normal versions of the characters can be portrayed completely digitally. Disney and Marvel have been developing this enough that by 2019, it should be more passable than it was with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Of course, with Infinity War and Avengers 4 filming back to back right now it’s likely Downey and Evans don’t need to be replaced just yet.

So maybe Avengers 5 can be Avengers: We Don’t Need Actors Anymore.

These ‘Avengers 4’ Subtitles Would Actually Be Spoilers was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The One Perfect Pod crew reviews Ben Wheatley’s shoot-em-up.

For this week’s review, Matthew welcomes back FSR chief film critic Rob Hunter to explore the films of director Ben Wheatley before diving into his latest, the gun deal gone wrong actioner Free Fire.

Show Notes:
00:00:00 — Before the Credits
00:15:25 — 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 Rob Hunter (@fakerobhunter).

We’d very much appreciate your feedback, as well. Leave us a review on iTunes or email us: pod@filmschoolrejects.com.

Thanks for listening!

A Gentlemen’s Disagreement About ‘Free Fire’ was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The future of the streaming giant might not be streaming.

When streaming companies like Netlfix and Amazon got into the business of making original feature films, the industry was poised for a major change. Because these weren’t B-movies the companies were making, they weren’t the kind of low-brow fodder that gets released directly for home viewing every week, they were full-on, talent-backed, major motion pictures. Netflix had an amazing critical run (and some would say an Oscar snub or two) with Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation, and Amazon last year produced a slew of significant films from significant directors, including Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq, Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon, and most notably, Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea, which did manage to snag a handful of Oscar noms and even walked away with a pair of wins, one for Lonergan for Best Original Screenplay, and one for Casey Affleck for Best Actor.

The difference? The Amazon productions mentioned above all had regular theatrical runs before appearing on Prime’s streaming service, while Netflix debuts its films online and hardly ever releases them into theaters. Sure, Beasts of No Nation had a limited theatrical run, but that was simultaneous with the streaming release. Until now, Netflix has remained adamant about sticking to what it knows — streaming — and for a pretty noble reason: members fund their productions, so members should have first access to them. But according to the company’s latest quarterly report (via Screen Rant), that might be changing.

Mentioned in the report is the hiring of Scott Stuber — producer of such Mark Wahlberg films as Patriot’s Day and Ted — who’s been tapped to head up a new initiative in original films. In mentioning the hire, the report also mentions a few of the company’s expectations for the new role:

We recently hired Scott Stuber to lead our original films initiative. Our goal remains the same: to offer a variety of new movies that will attract and delight members at better economics relative to licensing movies under traditional windowing. Some of our early movies have been successful by this measure, such as the Sandler movies and Siege of Jadotville. Others, such as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, have not. Scott’s mandate is to increase both the portfolio and the percentage of films that delight many of our members relative to the film’s cost.

Since our members are funding these films, they should be the first to see them. But we are also open to supporting the large theater chains, such as AMC and Regal in the US, if they want to offer our films, such as our upcoming Will Smith film Bright, in theatres simultaneous to Netflix. Let consumers choose.

It’s not a concrete plan, and in fact it sounds a little condescending — “supporting the larger theater chains,” ouch — and as for the film mentioned, Bright from David Ayer (Suicide Squad), I’m not too sure it’s the best flagship for the Netflix theatrical distribution model, seeing as no one’s really turned up to see a Will Smith vehicle in the theater since Men in Black 3.

And of course there’s the theater side of things. Besides being competitors with Netflix in the major motion picture department, simultaneous releases still favor the streaming service — you can pay the same for a month of Netflix or a night at the movies — so it remains to be seen how interested they’ll be in giving up screen space for something already available on every TV in America.

So what do you think? Would you go see Netlfix original films in the theater over the comfort of your own home? I for one would not. That’s just a double-dip in the wallet, I’m already paying for the film at home, so why would I shell out more cash to see it somewhere else? But I’m a bit of a skinflint and a fuddy-dud, so let’s hear your opinion: Netflix original films — to stream, or not to stream?

Over in our corner of the internet we had a lot of really interesting posts go up yesterday, including a review of The Lost City of Z, a look at the shifting on-screen image of actress Margot Robbie, a peek at Clint Eastwood’s next project and the next X-Men movie, and a video that compiles instances of pop culture referencing Quentin Tarantino.

And lastly, take a look at five of the most popular shots we tweeted over the last 24 hours. Want more? You know where to find us.

Netflix Original Films: Coming Soon to a Theater Near You? was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In 1997, a film cynic was born.

Seeing Star Wars ruined should have been a sign that 1997 would be the worst year ever for blockbusters. George Lucas’s Special Editions, intended to “improve” the original trilogy but mostly doing the opposite, started arriving in January. By the time of the release of the new version of Return of the Jedi in March, my anticipation for anything ought to have been demolished. But I couldn’t have imagined that was only the beginning.

Actually, the first steps towards the end of an era were made in the early ’90s. That just wasn’t a great time for big movies compared to the prior decade. Some of my biggest letdowns of all time included Hudson Hawk in 1991 and Death Becomes Her in 1992. Jurassic Park wasn’t good enough for me, having read the book. Independence Day put me to sleep in the theater. Beloved series begun in the ’80s such as Batman, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Alien, Terminator, and Beverly Hills Cop had already gone south.

Still, I was young and hopeful 20 years ago, and the summer of 1997 looked so promising. Always willing to give second chances back then, I even felt strongly that the next installments of Alien, Jurassic Park, and maybe even Batman would be improvements. Big new projects were on the way from auteurs I’d recently latched onto as a loyal follower, directors like Luc Besson, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Danny Boyle, and of course Quentin Tarantino. Plus there were new works from Ridley Scott, Oliver Stone, Richard Donner, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Zemeckis, and James Cameron.

None of the movies I looked forward to lived up to my expectations. Kicking off the summer, Besson’s The Fifth Element wound up the kind of movie that easily looked amazing in trailers, thanks to incredible special effects, production design, and costumes, but failed as a whole thanks to shoddy storytelling and a few obnoxious and/or just downright awful performances. Chris Tucker didn’t fit right. Ian Holm took on a broad characterization and failed me completely in the third act. It was no Nikita or The Professional.

Two weeks later, Steven Spielberg’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park managed to be even more disappointing than the original. Not just because, again, I’d read the book — it was hardly based on Crichton’s sequel novel anyway — but it turned something that was at least thrilling into a dull yet kind of goofy rehash. Honestly, by the movie’s final third, with the T.rex stomping through San Diego, I had given up on it being the movie I wanted it to be and appreciated some of its ridiculousness. At least it made me laugh.

Through the summer, I continued to be crushed by movies I wanted to love so badly. Zemeckis’s Contact was smart and serious and satisfying up to the ending, which didn’t work for me. Spawn was a dumb and silly and unsatisfying movie with terrible special effects from start to finish. Donner’s Conspiracy Theory was a convoluted mess. And if you think last year was the worst for DC superhero movies, you didn’t live through 1997’s Batman & Robin and the Shaquille O’Neal-led Steel.

Worst of the worst, though, hit theaters in November. Like The Fifth Element, the latest Alien movie looked stunning in stills. Jeunet was imported by Hollywood complete with his Delicatessen and City of Lost Children DP, Darius Khondji, in tow. Marc Caro, who’d co-directed those two prior features was also on board to help conceive the visuals. Certainly Alien: Resurrection would have the best style of the franchise. Unfortunately, the substance didn’t carry over, possibly due to the language barrier, as Jeunet didn’t speak English at the time he made his first English-language movie.

And 1997 closed out with Cameron’s Titanic, which would go on to claim a nearly unbreakable box office record and win Best Picture at the Oscars. True story: my eyes watered the first time I saw the Titanic trailer and it showed the poor people trapped in the lower floors who’d wind up drowning for being lower class. I felt embarrassed of that while watching the movie in full because it lacks any sort of emotional engagement. Yes, I was wowed by the disaster spectacle but surprised at how bad the script is.

Don’t get me wrong, 1997 is not the worst year for movies. A lot of great stuff came out that year, including Boogie Nights, Good Will Hunting, Gattaca, Grosse Pointe Blank, and Face/Off, none of which I was thinking about much, if at all, before seeing them. And looking back, there’s at least one truly terrific movie that initially disappointed me because it wasn’t what I’d anticipated: Tarantino’s Jackie Brown.

As I nostalgically reflect on the time when I stopped having high expectations, when I ceased to hang up photos from magazines of movies not yet seen, when I realized that no favorite filmmaker of mine was infallible, when I basically became “The Film Cynic,” a name that would be cemented as my reputation via social media handles, I do honestly think more about what I love about The Fifth Element more than the parts that disappointed me. That fight sequence on the cruise ship set to operatic dance music, for example, is superb.

In context with everything else, the movies of 1997 just happened to be a cheesier bunch than I was used to or had been prepared for. To appreciate most of that year’s output requires an appreciation of more camp. Batman & Robin goes overboard in a bad way, and Face/Off and Starship Troopers go over the top with better effect than others, and in between we got humorously stupid blockbusters like Con Air, Volcano, and The Postman.

To now enjoy The Lost World, The Fifth Element, Titanic, Alien: Resurrection, and Boyle’s A Life Less Ordinary, which also didn’t work for me then, is to accept them more as lighter, maybe more cartoonish comedies than I did when they were released — and maybe more than they’d been intended to be. But the truth still stands that a lot of 1997 movies, including those disappointments, are not good movies. They’re big-budget B movies, similar to the stuff Mystery Science Theater 3000 lampoons, except they feature more expensive, greater-quality craftsmanship and artistry visible on screen.

How I Earned a Reputation for Hating Movies

It took me 20 years of life to become cynical about the movies, and now it’s been another 20 and I’m still always hesitant to have high expectations for anything. We’ve actually seen worse Jurassic Park, Alien, and Luc Besson movies since 1997, and as we head into the summer of 2017 (which has its own Alien and Besson movies), it’s still difficult to have complete hope that seemingly sure things like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, War for the Planet of the Apes, and Dunkirk will be triumphs.

So I keep up with the low expectations and yet remain optimistic that something, among those three or the rest of the year’s crop of movies, surprises me. If this is the “wrong” way to look forward to what lies ahead, so be it, but it’s much rarer that I’m disappointed, and I’ve never been so disenchanted by the movies as a whole as I was two decades ago.

The Most Disappointing Year in Movies was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A new video looks beyond Fincher at the Evil Men Do

Sin, as defined by most major religions and moral institutions, is as old as man. It is inherent to our nature, because ultimately sin is self-serving, and at the end of the day we are all self-serving creatures. Wrath, pride, sloth, lust, envy, gluttony, greed — as opposed to the Ten Commandments of Christianity which include distinct acts like adultery and murder, the seven deadly sins are things of which most all of us are guilty of multiple times over. We’ve all committed them, even on a minor scale. Ever think someone has a nicer car than you? Envy. Ever gotten a touch of road rage? Wrath. Ever hit the snooze button more than once? Sloth.

These are petty examples to be sure, but they illustrate how commonplace the seven deadly sins are in our daily lives, and thus they prove why the seven deadly sins are featured so often in film, that great reflection of the human condition. The obvious go-to here is David Fincher’s Se7en, which of course is based around a serial killer enacting the seven deadly sins, but long before and long after that film the seven deadly sins have manifested in countless characters from countless films. Think about the greed of Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, or the wrath of William Foster in Falling Down, or the uncontrollable lust of Dan Gallagher in Fatal Attraction.

The point is, the seven deadly sins are all over cinema, and not just in Michael Douglas movies. To prove this, check out the latest video from Room 237 which has compiled examples of each sin from scores of different films (all of which are listed below the video) to reveal just how pervasive sin is in our culture, and thus in our entertainment.

WRATH
Full Metal Jacket
Trainspotting
Nightcrawler
The Shining
Drive
Casino
La Haine
Prisioners
Citizen Kane
Falling Down
The Untouchables
The Avengers
The Color Of Money
Pulp Fiction
Raging Bull

PRIDE
Citizen Kane
The Man Who Would Be King
Django Unchained
There Will Be Blood
Inglourious Basterds
American History X
Steve Jobs
Gone With The Wind
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Devil Wears Prada

SLOTH
The Master
Fight Club
Clerks
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
A Clockwork Orange
The Big Lebowski

LUST
Shame
A Clockwork Orange
Nymphomaniac
Las Edades De Lulú
The Wolf Of Wall Street
American Psycho
Ultimo Tango A Parigi
Eyes Wide Shut
In The Realm Of The Senses

ENVY
Seven
The Lion King
Amadeus
Black Swan
Gladiator
Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs
Rush
All About Eve
The Godfather: Part II

GLUTTONY
Matilda
Hook
Spirited Away
La Grande Bouffe
Delicatessen
The Meaning Of Life

GREED
Wall Street
The Big Short
The Revenant
There Will Be Blood
Glengarry Glen Ross
Margin Call
The Return Of The King
The Wolf Of Wall Street
Greed
Scarface

The Seven Deadly Sins On Screen was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This Week in Home Video

Plus 20 more new releases to watch at home this week on Blu-ray/DVD.

Welcome to this week in home video! Click the title to buy a Blu-ray/DVD from Amazon and help support FSR in the process!

Pick of the Week

Catfight

What is it? Two old college friends cross paths as adults and beat the ever-loving crap out of each other.

Why see it? Onur Tukel’s latest is also his best thanks in part to the lead performances by Sandra Oh and Anne Heche. They do a good job of manipulating our sympathies and concerns ensuring that our loyalties shift from act to act. Themes of female friendships, class distinctions, and redemption run through alongside a satirical look at modern life, and there’s a terrifically wicked streak throughout. Funny, smart, and brutal are all apt descriptors for this cynical look at our violent selves.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Commentaries, featurette, deleted scenes]

Catfight [Blu-ray]

The Best

Anatahan [Kino Classics]

What is it? A dozen Japanese soldiers stranded on a small island descend into chaos after discovering a young woman living there.

Why see it? Josef von Sternberg’s early ’50s feature offers an intriguing exploration of the conflict between structure and disorder, and while the simplicity of its thesis — a woman is enough to turn men into animals — seems trite these days it’s presented with a raw awareness and intelligence. The film itself is oddly crafted as narration details the events and translates the Japanese soldiers words, but the beauty of it all, both stark and in the form of Akemi Negishi, makes for a compelling experience. Sternberg’s preferred cut features nudity which has been restored here, and it adds far more than pure salaciousness as the femininity, purity, and freedom she displays is at odds with the men’s behaviors.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: New 2k restoration, alternate version, featurettes, interview]

Anatahan [Blu-ray]

Bokeh

What is it? A young couple vacationing in Iceland awake to discover the rest of humankind has disappeared.

Why see it? Writers/directors Geoffrey Orthwein and Andrew Sullivan deliver a feature debut that’s one part Icelandic tourism video, one part extended Twilight Zone episode, and one part existential exploration of our core beliefs and truths. It’s a beautifully-filmed look at personal themes both important and uncomfortable, and the end result is a film that resembles an engaging dream every bit as much as it does a harrowing nightmare. Maika Monroe and Matt O’Leary are the film’s sole performers for most of its running time, and they do equally strong work convincing viewers of both their love for each other and their fight to resist falling apart. We’re with them every step of the way, from the joyous freedom of vacation through the pained reality that becomes their new normal. The film moves at a very deliberate pace, and its interest in human revelations over narrative ones might test some viewers, but the journey is well worth the patience required.

[DVD extras: None?]

Bokeh

Double Exposure [Vinegar Syndrome]

What is it? A photographer dreams about killing his models then wonders if he’s responsible when they end up murdered in real life.

Why see it? I’m legitimately unclear why this film isn’t better known. It’s no classic, but it’s far better than most late-night thrillers produced over the decades that played endlessly on cable TV. Michael Callan’s lead performance is an intense and engaging one channeling a grittier yet every bit as playful Christopher George, and the inclusion of a second lead character — one played by a double amputee — feels both ahead of its time and long overdue. Violence and T&A are plentiful, but the core of the film’s pull is in its twisty narrative, solid performances, and atmospheric visuals. Vinegar Syndrome rescues a lot of entertaining gems from obscurity, but this is one that deserves a much wider audience.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: New 2k restoration, commentary, interviews]

Double Exposure [Blu-ray/DVD Combo]

The Girl with All the Gifts

What is it? Soldiers and civilians attempt to survive a zombie apocalypse by understanding a group of children only partially affected by the disease.

Why see it? Too many zombie films fail to find a fresh, exciting angle or to even do the bare minimum all that well. There are exceptions though, and the latest to deliver thrills with an original voice is this UK import which delivers solid zombie thrills both horrific and action-oriented, but the heart and soul of the film is young Melanie. She’s Day of the Dead’s Bub after a proper education, but the threat within her is always present just beneath the surface. She learns from those around her, for better and worse, and as her awareness grows so does the scope of the film. This is very much a sibling of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (and its subsequent sequel) as the starkly colored world contains immediate and visceral threats in the form of fast-moving, homicidal munchers. Their appearances lend feelings of suspense, terror, and loneliness to much of the film, and while a third-act story turn infuses some goofy imagery into the mix the film remains a dramatically engaging thriller through to the end.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Featurette]

The Girl With All The Gifts [Bluray] [Blu-ray]

La La Land

What is it? A struggling actress meets a wannabe jazz club owner, and together they fall in love and pursue their dreams.

Why see it? There are those among you who claim to hate Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash follow-up, but I really don’t see how that’s possible. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are both terrifically charismatic and very funny, and the film’s production design is filled with beautiful sets and cinematography. The story offers an honest tale of love, heartbreak, ambition, and desire, and it sticks a landing that satisfies even as it eschews Hollywood convention. It is a musical of course with characters breaking out in song and dance on a regular basis, but even for someone who’s not much of a musical fan it’s harmless and occasionally catchy in its execution.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Featurettes, commentary]

La La Land [Blu-ray]

Rumble Fish [Criterion]

What is it? Teenagers in Tulsa deal with their angst.

Why see it? Francis Ford Coppola’s second adaptation of an S.E. Hinton novel after The Outsiders takes a far more stylistic approach to become something of a YA art film. That’s not a knock as the result is an experience that goes beyond the narrative. Black & white cinematography, Stewart Copeland’s percussive score, and a bevy of familiar faces including Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, Mickey Rourke, Dennis Hopper, Nicolas Cage, and more all make for an at-times mesmerizing approach to teenage rumblings and fumblings. Criterion’s new release offers up a gorgeous transfer of this b&w beauty highlighting the art in Coppola’s film.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: New 4k restoration, commentary, interviews, featurettes, music video, deleted scenes]

Rumble Fish (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

We Are X

What is it? A documentary exploring the ups and downs of the band X Japan.

Why see it? X Japan has been huge in Japan since the ’80s and found big success elsewhere in the world too, and the film counts down the days to their big Madison Square Garden show while looking back on a career marked by big hits, suicides, brain washing, and more. The band’s leader, Yoshiki, is also their drummer, keyboardist, and composer, and his story is the focus here even as time is given to the band’s other members. It’s an engaging and affecting story at times, and even better, their music is legitimately good.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Deleted scenes, featurette, concert performances]

We Are X [Blu-ray]

The Rest

Animal Kingdom — The Complete First Season

What is it? A teen finds crime, violence, and adventure after being sent to live with extended family.

Why see it? David Michod’s acclaimed 2010 film gets the series treatment here with mixed results. The drama and conflict remain as do the aggressively engaging characters, but the impact lessens stretched across multiple episodes. It trades the immediacy of the film for longer, denser looks at these people and their relationships. Happily the characters and their respective performers (Ellen Barkin, Scott Speedman, Shawn Hatosy) all work hard to hold viewer attention.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Featurettes, deleted scenes]

Blanche

What is it? A medieval nobleman suspects his young bride has wandering eyes.

Why see it? Walerian Borowczyk is probably best known for his adult fairy tale rendition, The Beast, but his fascination with period tales goes well beyond that one. This one sets the stage for a morally secure kingdom to be rocked by infidelity both real and accused, and the character dynamics and hierarchies all play out against some attractive locales and settings.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras:]

Caltiki the Immortal Monster [Arrow Video]

What is it? Scientists meddling in ancient realms disturb something beyond their knowledge.

Why see it? This late ’50s horror thriller is familiar in a lot of ways — ego, curiosity, and ambition lead to disaster — but the film remains an enjoyable romp. The knowledge that the film’s cinematographer, Mario Bava, also co-directed makes it something of a curiosity for Bava’s many fans. Arrow’s new release offers a gorgeous black & white transfer of the film along with a full-frame presentation to show more of Bava’s visuals. Even better, the disc comes loaded with new supplements including commentaries with Tim Lucas and Troy Howarth that delve into immense amount of detail on the film and its talents.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: New 2k restoration, commentaries, interviews]

Dark Waters [Severin Films]

What is it? A woman arrives at a mysterious island convent to explore her dead father’s connection with the place, and she finds the answer.

Why see it? Mariano Baino’s horror thriller blends Italian inspirations from Bava to Fulci into a tale of demonic awakening. Script and performances are sketchy at best, but Baino delivers an attractively-shot feature in both landscape and interior set-pieces. There’s an odd sense of restraint though in that the film never shifts into areas you fully expect are coming including naughty nuns and elaborate perversions. Or maybe that’s just me? Instead it’s a slow build as somewhat strange events occur without ever finding the suspense, tension, or terror to accompany it.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Commentary, featurettes, intro, deleted scenes, short films]

Detour

What is it? A drunken request for homicidal help leaves a young man in a very bad situation.

Why see it? Writer/director Christopher Smith is no stranger to twisty plots — see his sharply-written Triangle — and he pairs that shifty agenda with a desert noir here. Familiar genre character types are thrust together with ever-changing motivations and a narrative that teases a Sliding Doors-meets-murder aesthetic. Smith’s script doesn’t keep a tight enough grip on it though tipping his hand too early and deflating some of the effect. The big issue here exists in the casting of the leads. Tye Sheridan is fine as he brings a bewildered innocence to a young man in way over his head, but both Emory Cohen and Bel Powley feel somewhat out of place. Cohen, so terrific in Brooklyn, can’t quite fill the shoes of an unpredictably violent and threatening criminal. The promise of danger is never felt in his presence or performance even if the dialogue is trying to tell us otherwise. Powley gave a tremendous turn in The Diary of a Teenage Girl, but as with Cohen’s not-quite-there heavy her portrayal of a dive-bar stripper lacks weight. The character traits are there, but they rarely feel convincing as instead she too frequently feels lost in her surroundings. It’s ultimately a fun-enough diversion that takes some wrong turns along the way but still brings you to a satisfying enough end.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Deleted scenes, featurettes]

Django Prepare a Coffin [Arrow Video]

What is it? A drifter seeks revenge against the land baron who had his wife murdered.

Why see it? Of the many Django films produced over the years this is neither the best nor the worst, but it is the first to star Super Fuzz’s Terence Hill. It follows some familiar beats, but awareness of what’s in Django’s coffin doesn’t diminish the joy of seeing it unleashed in the film’s third act. Gunfights, bad behavior, and worse attitudes are plentiful throughout. Arrow’s new release is light on extras, but the included primer on the Django films offers a great introduction to the character.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Featurette]

Goto, Isle of Love

What is it? An early 20th century dictator suspects his young bride has wandering eyes.

Why see it? Walerian Borowczyk continues his affair with affairs and delivers another dramatic breakdown in relations between lovers and strangers alike. Small bursts of absurdity and even shorter ones of color are peppered throughout this black & white period piece charting the rise and fall of those attempting to win the hand of the man’s wife. Far from comical though, the film heads towards a climax befitting of the self-centered darkness behind their agendas.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras:]

The Marine 5: Battleground

What is it? A pair of medics find themselves targeted by gang members after attempting to help their latest victim.

Why see it? It’s The Marine 5, so you already know if you’re the target audience. For those unfamiliar though the franchise has morphed away from its theatrical beginning with John Cena to feature other WWE “stars” in the lead role as US Marines who return home only to find more violence awaiting them. It’s direct to DVD action, and the budgetary restraints tied with the talents of those involved make for a fairly mediocre action picture. Fights include hands, knives, guns, and more, but it never rises above the level of competent.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Featurettes]

Microcosmos

What is it? Bugs!

Why see it? Amazing nature documentaries have become something of the norm these days, but one of the earliest to offer truly impressive looks at the natural world around us was this mid ’90s exploration of insects. Close-up photography catches the tiny beasts in all manner of action from rest to “play” to war. This new release adds little to the mix, but households fond of the beauty and educational nature of documentaries like these will want to add it to their home video collection.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Making of, interview]

The Other Hell [Severin Films]

What is it? Nuns are dying at the hands of a a murderer, and that’s not cool.

Why see it? Like this week’s other nunsploitation release (also from Severin Films) this early ’80s feature from Bruno Mattei never really reaches the level of perverse or disturbing that should easily be within reach. Worse, unlike Dark Waters this one doesn’t even have attractive cinematography to fall back on. It’s no surprise of course as Mattei is a pretty terrible filmmaker, but it’s disappointing as the tale sets up a minor interest as to what’s happening and who’s behind the mysterious deaths.

[Blu-ray extras: Commentary, interviews]

Psycho Cop Returns [Vinegar Syndrome]

What is it? A psycho cop returns.

Why see it? Adam Rifkin’s early ’90s slasher/comedy may be a sequel to a film I’ve never heard of, but that’s okay as I’d never heard of the sequel either. The laughs are a bit slight as most fall flat, but the film delivers on the gore front with plenty of bloody bits and kills. Rifkin, who would go on to make the more mainstream Detroit Rock City, spends a bit too much time in the shadows (and on scenes with the strippers) but keeps things moving with an energetic nuttiness. There’s a good variety to the kills, and while the script is dumb — women find the glass front doors of an office building locked, so instead of smashing or even shooting out the glass they head back upstairs to where the killer is — it’s never at risk of feeling dull. Vinegar Syndrome’s new release should delight fans

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: 2k restoration, commentary, making of, featurette]

Underworld: Blood Wars

What is it? A saucy vampire lady seeks to end the feud between her kind and the hairy ones.

Why see it? The initial appeal of the Underworld films was a combination of factors — they’re a genre mash-up of action and horror, there’s a female ass-kicker front and center, and Len Wiseman’s style was a slick appropriation of fight scenes straight out of The Matrix. All three of these strengths have seen diminishing returns over the years leading to a fifth film that lacks much in the way of entertainment value. Underworld: Blood Wars is a dull, jumbled film that fails to excite with either its characters’ plights or its action sequences. The action troubles continue with amateurish choreography, coverage, and writing as it feels throughout as if characters on both sides almost want to lose. There’s no urgency or drama to the fights, and characters seem lackluster in their effort until it’s apparently time for them to win. Director Anna Foerster fails to generate thrills or suspense from any of the sequences leaving us with monochromatic characters and sets that seem to all blend together.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Graphic novel, featurettes]

The Witness for the Prosecution

What is it? A man is accused of murdering his wealthy mistress, but there’s something amiss with the key witnesses against him.

Why see it? Agatha Christie’s novel gets a new adaptation capturing setting, character, and plot twists with equal skill. The mystery feels at times more than a little predictable, but as was often her skill the denouement proves Christie remains one step ahead of the readers/watchers. Toby Jones and Andrea Riseborough headline a tale that grows increasingly engaging as new details come to life.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras:]

Also Out This Week:

Blanche, From Hell it Came [Warner Archive], Goto, Hot Flashes, The Levelling, Ophelia, Peekarama, Tampopo [Criterion], Three Brothers [Arrow Academy], The Wheeler Dealers [Warner Archive], Witness for the Prosecution

‘Catfight’ Finds Both Brutality and Humanity In Its Bloody Brawls was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Less is sometimes so much more.

Before the advent of sound in the movies, silence was an obstacle to storytelling, it was a thing to be covered, interrupted, and worked around. Once sound came along, though, it changed the nature of the relationship between silence and storytelling, taking a once-ubiquitous element and transforming it into something far more meaningful. Silence now was not a necessity, it was a decision, a choice to relay information a certain way, unspoken, or at least unheard by those of us in the audience. In modern cinema, the most blatant example of silence as a storytelling booster can be found at the very end of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, when Bill Murray’s character whispers some mysterious goodbye to Scarlett Johansson’s after their platonic but emotional courtship.

Silence can convey things, thoughts, and emotions words never could, and as such a properly utilized bit of cinematic silence can lead to some of the medium’s most powerful moments, as evidenced by the following video from our talented friends over at Filmscalpel, who have linked together a score of film’s best silent moments after the silent era to illustrate the many impacts willful silence can have on a narrative, a character, and us in the audience. As noted in the video’s written intro, it was French director Robert Bresson who first posited that it was the soundtrack that invented meaningful silence in movies. Behold some of the most meaningful bits of evidence.

When Words Fail: The Implications of Intentional Silence in Cinema was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Short of the Day

A high-octane short.

It just takes a momentary twist to make a good film great. Think about The Sixth Sense: until it’s final revelation that [SPOILER (?)] Bruce Willis has been dead the whole time, the most intriguing bit of that film was wondering how a mook like Willis got a doctorate in psychology. But then they drop that twist and oh shit, you got yourself a movie.

Getaway Driver, a short film directed by Abner Pastoll, is another example of this. What starts out as a cool, slick, high-octane short about a lady and her pug trying to escape a bad guy via a sweet ride becomes something else entirely in its final seconds, something I’m obviously not going to spoil here. As for that escape, Pastoll and director of photography Richard Bell have choreographed a thrilling, breakneck, nail-biter of a chase set in a parking garage that’s highly reminiscent — in the best way — of a certain scene from Walter Hill’s immortal The Driver. The action tells the story here, and the result is a beautifully engaging adrenaline boost.

Couple of fun facts: first, the orange Ford Capri MKiii used in the film was borrowed from a stranger. Seriously, they had another vehicle in mind then saw the Ford just parked on the street and knock on doors until they found the owner. When you see what they do with this Capri, you’ll agree that the owner is either the most trusting person in the world, or the most careless. Two, if you recognize the pug in the film, then you’re a fan of The Crown; Mabel is her name, and she’s one of the Duke of Windsor’s pets on the Netflix series. Getaway Driver is her final film, and largest, most important role to date. Way to go out on top, Mabel, enjoy retirement.

As for Pastoll, Getaway Driver is his ninth short, and is evidence of a filmmaker on the brink of bigger things. He’s also directed two features to-date, Shooting Shona from 2004 and 2015’s Road Games. His next feature, A Good Woman is Hard to Find, is in pre-production now and will star actress Sarah Bolger, best known to Americans from the TV series The Tudors, Once Upon a Time, and Into the Badlands. Get to know Pastoll’s work now, here and on his Vimeo page.

‘Getaway Driver’ Hearkens Back to Hollywood’s Classic Car Chases was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Everything old is new again, especially when it comes to distribution.

So let’s say you start with Netflix, because everyone has Netflix, and you’re not going to pass on another season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 or Stranger Things. That’s $9.99 a month out of the gate. And then maybe you add FilmStruck, because who wouldn’t want to watch all those AMC and Criterion Collection titles? That’s another $10.99. Finally, let’s throw in another niche streaming service for some of that specific content that the broader services may not provide. Maybe you’d like to scratch your horror itch with Shudder ($4.99), catch up on every season of Star Trek on CBS All Access ($5.99), or finally get around to watching The Wire on HBOGo ($14.99). And of course, none of this even touches on the bigger Netflix competitors like Amazon Prime or the international platforms not yet available in the United States (DisneyLife). There’s a lot going on in the streaming world these days.

The proliferation — or fracturing — of streaming services has been a question on the minds of countless audience members for years now, but despite this, yesterday’s announcement that Warner Bros. would be launching its own streaming platform for DC adaptations seemed to be a bridge too far for some. Mere months after Warner Bros. created a dedicated streaming service for its backlog of animated shows, the studio has now promised to launch its latest streaming platform with Titans, a live-action adaptation of the Teen Titans series from DC Comics. Now fans can’t even hope to discover all Warner Bros. movies and shows in a single place; even their animated series will be split between the superheroes and the non-superheroes. And so what was once fresh and now — pay a single rate! watch a bunch of stuff! — is now in danger of following the same distribution models that have busted, boomed, and busted again.

Look at the old model. In the past, mergers and acquisitions provided studios with new titles or connected them to audiences they were previously unable to reach. When Disney bought Miramax in 1993, for example, pundits noted that it allowed Disney entry into “niche markets it could not reach through its own films.” Conversely, more recent television purchases — such as MGM’s acquisition of Epix or the more recent purchase of Starz by Lionsgate — have given studios a direct conduit to audiences for their properties. The more content studios can dump into that conduit, the better. “Scale has never been more important,” Viacom vice chair Shari Redstone told The Hollywood Reporter last December, noting that consumers, advertisers, and dealmakers all preferred to engage in “one-stop shopping” over chasing down a variety of titles across a handful of channels or VOD services.

Amazon vs. Netflix: An Itemized Guide to What You Should Be Streaming This Year

And as major studios have dedicated themselves to scale, smaller streaming services have suffered the consequences. Last August, for example, The Wrap published a piece arguing against the volume of streaming services currently available to consumers. According to that piece, as some of the more niche platforms struggle to maintain audience interest, they may once more seek out buyers or partners to help share the load; in other words, they may usher in a new era of mergers and acquisitions. Here’s what The Wrap sees in our future:

At a certain point, streaming services that are intriguing but not sufficient alone could become stronger together. And the longer they continue to struggle in an uphill battle to bring on new customers in an increasingly crowded space — and Wall Street takes notice — there could be more of an incentive to team up. Joining forces could also allow for offerings that include the content of several existing providers at a price point lower than subscribing independently.

That will probably never be a platform like Netflix — they’re too deeply invested in original content these days to ever allow themselves to be bought out — but there are niche sites that could see themselves struggling to carve out a space for themselves. Vinegar Syndrome’s Exploitation.TV, for example, describes itself as the internet’s “largest and ever-growing collection of (s)exploitation, cult, underground and other under-appreciated oddities,” with 80% of its titles not available anywhere else online, but even that promise of exclusivity may not be enough to justify another $7.00 a month that you’re already devoting to another platform. Sure, there are fans out there who don’t have to think twice about Vinegar Syndrome’s lineup, but your typical consumer? They’re going to go for the buzzy sure thing, and Vinegar’s Sexy Timetrip Ninjas is a tough sell when compared to another season of House of Cards.

So someone with some money and a desire to access a new audience purchases Exploitation.TV’s catalogue, and then someone with even more money purchases them, and suddenly we’re looking at the same corporate buyout of Hollywood that everyone complained about in decades past, only this time it’s taking place entirely online. A few niche providers — people who tend to operate less for the money and more for the art — will hang in there, but audiences will find themselves either paying a slew of monthly subscription fees to get what they want or a few exorbitant rates offered by the major studios. And we’re right back where we started, only this time, we can make those decisions with the flick of a button rather than an arduous call to our local cable provider. Is this progress? Sure. But those who are hoping for a single-payer system for entertainment are bound to be disappointed. The streaming game is better than ever, but it’s also bigger than ever. The bigger the fish, the bigger the predators, and soon the water will only be big enough for a select few.

The Bursting Bubble of Streaming Services was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“No one, and I mean no one wanted to make this movie.”

James Mangold delivered one of this year’s best films with Logan, and among its many acclaimed aspects is its vibe and feel of a modern-day western. It’s something he’s done before with Cop Land, but Mangold also made a point of directing an actual western as well.

Keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary track for…

3:10 to Yuma (2007)

Commentator: James Mangold (director)

1. He assumes the first question we might have for him regarding this film is “why” make a remake at all? “That original film had had such power on me ever since I saw it when I was seventeen years old, and I felt that the story could have power again in a very relevant way now.”

2. While he thinks most remakes are motivated by greed in his eyes for easy, recognizable targets (Starsky & Hutch, Mission: Impossible) he says this original wasn’t nearly well-known enough to be accused of the same.

3. He appreciates how older films often started fast, right into the action of things, so he aimed for something similar here by dropping viewers immediately into the assault on Dan Evans’ (Christian Bale) farm.

4. The original film’s writer, Halsted Welles, gets first credit on the remake because “we felt an awful lot that Halsted did in his screenplay in 1957… was really right, was dead-on right.”

5. One big change in the remake is the attempt to explain Evans’ motivation towards hesitance better by including his war injury and his need to appear stronger to his children. Similarly, he wanted to enhance Ben Wade’s (Russell Crowe) ambivalence about his own gangster career.

6. The opening stagecoach robbery was filmed in National Park Land in New Mexico and featured some locations that required access by mule.

7. One of his requirements for performers auditioning to be a part of Wade’s gang was that they be “extremely proficient riders, if not stuntmen.” He refused to feature “a bunch of Malibu actors who normally do day work on The O.C. coming in and looking cute on a bunch of horses.”

8. One of the plusses of casting Bale and Crowe was that in addition to extremely talented actors they’re also extremely physical. While several actors attended a pre-production boot camp the two leads were excused.

9. Charlie Prince was a highly sought after role in the film, especially after the two leads were cast, and they saw “a lot” of Hollywood’s young male actors. Mangold wisely chose Ben Foster.

10. He compares Wade’s short speech after shooting his own gang member, Darden (Johnny Whitworth), to the complacent and bored speech of a “Manager of McDonalds explaining to an employee that you can’t leave the fryer on.”

11. One of the appeals of making a western was his belief that aside from Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven “and a couple others” — by which he probably means Kevin Costner’s Open Range and Tom Dey’s Shanghai Noon (let me have this Mangold!) — the genre was generally full of misfires.

12. He says one giveaway regarding the people who don’t like the movie is that they’re often the ones who think of Wade as a villain. “I don’t think he is,” he says, adding “if you took away all of the western attributes it’s kind of a buddy film.” He compares it in some ways to The Silence of the Lambs.

13. He loves the scene where Wade confronts Emma Nelson (Vinessa Shaw) at the bar. “She does remarkable work, and it’s a very, very small role, and that reality sometimes will scare a really good actor away because they don’t want to play a small role.”

14. Marco Beltrami’s score serves in a part as a reference of sorts towards the spaghetti westerns of the past. They didn’t want the score to feel overblown “in the way that every western made for the past twenty years feels like it’s very, quote, important.”

15. He realized while watching TV that the town of Bisbee, AZ where they filmed has since been used for the reality show Kid Nation. This of course means James Mangold, director of Walk the Line and Girl, Interrupted watched Kid Nation.

16. He and cinematographer Phedon Papamichael bonded while filming Identity over a shared embrace of the widescreen format. “I think one of the things that’s misunderstood about the widescreen is while it’s brilliant at capturing landscape and broad vistas, one of the other things it’s really great at is closeups. Particularly two-shots, asymmetrical kind of compositions that are really beautiful.”

17. His second feature, Cop Land, was viewed by him as “a western, but setting it in the context of the suburban tri-state area.” The original 3:10 to Yuma served as an inspiration of sorts, and he extended that film a nod “in the sense that Stallone’s character is actually named Freddy Heflin and I named him after Ben Heflin, the actor who played Dan Evans in the original.”

18. He and producer Cathy Conrad pursued the remake rights while making Identity at Sony/Colombia which owned the rights to the original including Elmore Leonard’s source story. They had been approached before by people wanting to update it, but as Mangold had already made a modern western he was interested in making a more authentic one.

19. The time period where many westerns sit — “after the end of the Civil War but before the railroads completed their journey across the country” — was actually just a couple of decades, “a sliver of history.” He says that adds to the period’s mystique and “has as much in common with science fiction or fantasy epics like The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings more than it does with aspects of historical film-making in which you’re telling the battle of the Alamo.”

20. Crowe introduced Kevin Durand to Mangold which led to his casting here.

21. Mangold had final cut on the film and was independently financed apart from any studio including its distributor, Lionsgate. He and Konrad were surprised that even after the big success of Walk the Line, and even with Bale and Crowe attached, no studio would take on the project. “Which only gives you a sense of how incredibly dismal the reputation of the western is right now as a business proposition for most studios. All you have to do is look at all the movies they’ve made that cost less than $50 million, some of them so inanely stupid you can’t even begin to figure out how they had the pride to pull the lever on them, and yet at the same time a film like this is an incredible struggle to get made.”

22. The moment that comes in a surprising amount of commentaries comes here at the 1:02:16 mark. “First of all,” he says, “don’t do that.”

23. As part of maintaining Wade as more than a simple villain, “he only kills people that I hope the audience will find annoying.”

24. The cave where they huddle against a nighttime assault of bullets is in Los Angeles and is actually the same one featured in the Batman TV series where the Batmobile exited. It had gotten “so cold” in New Mexico that they returned to Hollywood to film the scene.

25. The film’s armorer was Luke Wilson’s roommate, and the actor sent word back to Mangold that he’d love to appear in the film in any capacity leading to his presence in the labor camp scene. The armorer is glimpsed at 1:13:26.

26. They built the town of Contention from scratch, but while he loves the result he has a single regret. “Because we got hit with so much snow it was impossible for me to shoot any kind of geographical shots of the landscapes because we were literally digging ourselves out one street at a time.”

27. After filming the scene where the Marshall and his men drop their guns and walk outside Papamichael turned to Mangold and said “Don’t you think this looks stupid?” The director agreed, and they decided there and then that the Marshall was going to die.

28. The steam train was carted by truck from Alabama to the site of filming. There’s only a limited stretch of real tracks on the ground with those in the distance being nothing more than sticks.

29. Regarding the ending of the film, Mangold finds it rewarding that viewers are so opinionated one way or the other. The original ends with Evans and Wade boarding the train and riding off together, “but I didn’t buy it and didn’t think that audiences would buy it.” He didn’t think it fit in today’s world and that “the clarity of happy and sad was never gonna be there.” He was looking for “more of a biblical quality, a washing clean of the earth, of both the tragedy that had been Dan Evans life and finding something redemptive in it and the misguided venture that had been Ben Wade’s life.”

30. He’s received compliments and comments on “the almost heartbeat-like chug of this steam engine” during the final dramatic scenes, but while he’d love to take credit for it being some brilliant idea on his part it was actually just the reality of having to keep the engine running so as not to freeze in the very cold weather.

Best in Context-Free Commentary

“You certainly don’t want to make another bad one because you’ll be putting a tombstone, if you will, on the genre.”

“No one should be playing a villain. Everyone should be playing a fully-realized person.”

“No person in the world including Hitler or Osama Bin Laden walks around believing they’re a bad guy.”

“Peter was really brave in letting me make him as leathery and dirty as I possibly could in this role.”

“Every movie needs a special effect of some kind.”

“The horse might shuffle to the left, move to the right, sneeze, cough, move, eat, piss, shit.”

“Part of what makes an interesting morality tale is that every side thinks they have God on their side.”

3:10 to Yuma 4K Ultra HD [Blu-ray + Digital HD]

Final Thoughts

I was already wanting one, but after hearing this track I’m sincerely hoping Mangold will also be recording a commentary for the upcoming release of Logan. The track here is a great listen as he discusses logistics, inspirations, and anecdotes throughout offering both details and explanations where necessary. I still take issue with the film’s ending — not that Evans dies but with the specifics of his death because seriously, after all that, you’re gonna turn your back on a gang of ruthless killers just so you can say goodbye to your new friend? — but Mangold’s comments on it lend weight to the overall narrative decision. If you don’t already own the film on Blu-ray it’s being re-issued next week on 4K Ultra/Blu-ray and is well worth a pick-up.

30 Things We Learned from James Mangold’s ‘3:10 to Yuma’ Commentary was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Why so glum, chum? Movies are fun and they need watching.

In the immortal words of Shane Black via Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight, “Life is pain. Get used to it.” These days life has been really painful though, and it’s not so easy to get used to it. Thankfully movies are always here to pick us up when we need it, or bring us down if we’re looking to wallow. This month we’ve made a list of movies that will leave you smiling and feeling good about humanity after you watch them — at least for a little while. Click on their titles to be taken to their Netflix pages.

Pick of the Month: Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

It’s possible that Big Trouble in Little China might be the stupidest movie ever made. It’s about a fast-talking, rock-stupid, man-child truck driver battling Asian mystics over the fate of his pilfered big rig and a nonsense prophecy about a Chinese girl who has green eyes, after all. That said, because the blowhard white guy is being played by Kurt Russel, the decrepit bad guy is being played by James Hong, and the whole thing was put together by John Carpenter, it just can’t help but be one of the most fun dumb movies you’ll ever see. Any time you’re in a bad mood you can put this movie on, sit back, crack open a beer (domestic), and rest assured that you’ll spend the next couple of days casually dropping Jack Burton quotes into your conversations and humming sections of Carpenter’s score in your alone moments. The music in this movie is some of the best struttin’ music ever written. Big Trouble in Little China is pure movie popcorn at its saltiest and most buttery, and can always be counted on to lift you out of even the funkiest of funks.

Adventures in Babysitting (1987)

One of the easiest ways to add good feelings into your mental diet is to inject a healthy dose of 80s nostalgia. Everybody seems to like looking back to the 80s for some reason — even super-young people who didn’t live through them the first time. A lot of the movies that were popular in the 80s run solely on nostalgia, and aren’t actually very good when viewed in a bubble though. Well, not Adventures in Babysitting. There’s a subplot about a Playboy pictorial that’s a little problematic in here, but in general this is just a really sweet, really nice adventure comedy that develops memorable characters, puts them through an entertaining gauntlet of perfectly paced obstacles that never get boring, and that then wraps up with an inspiring ending that leaves you feeling that maybe “the other” isn’t really so scary after all, and that maybe a group of wide-eyed suburban kids really can make it in the big city.

Doubt this movie’s ability to lift your mood? Just picture that opening scene where Elisabeth Shue is dancing around her 80s as shit bedroom, singing into her hairbrush, and putting on 80s as shit clothes. You’re smiling already, right?

Amélie (2001)

Amélie is all about romance and orgasms and the strange little corners of the world where quirkiness lives. It’s about a person living in the comfortable little nest they’ve made for themselves finally stepping out into the big world and finding out that there are even better things out there than the already awesome stuff they’ve surrounded themselves with, if they just take a chance. This movie is funny, it’s gorgeous to look at, and it doesn’t have a cynical bone in its cinematic body. It finds weird things to love about even the most normal-seeming street characters who we all come across in our day to day lives. It takes the world we live in and turns it on its head until it starts to look more interesting and more magical than the basic, depressing drabness we perceive around us as we’re slogging through our daily routines. It’s a gift given to us by director Jean-Pierre Jeunet that basically works as tonic for the soul whenever we’re feeling low.

Babe: Pig in the City (1998)

Not very many movies that start off with a kindly old farmer getting crippled in a terrible accident are uplifting, but Babe: Pig in the City is one of them. Pretty much any movie about a cute, talking animal going on an adventure is going to give you the warm fuzzies while you’re watching it, but that doesn’t mean that most of them are necessarily good movies when you break them down critically. Babe is one of the rare talking animal movies that’s not just adorable, but is also actually good, and Babe: Pig in the City is one of the rare sequels that might actually improve on its predecessor. What the heck is this country bumpkin pig going to do in the city? He’s completely out of his element! Completely out of his element, but worming his way right into all of our hearts. Am I right? Also, can we talk about how fun the city Babe visits in this movie being a giant amalgam of every famous city in the world is? Pig in the City has production design for days.

Cool Runnings (1993)

There are few things out there that are able to fill hearts quite so full of joy as underdog sports stories, and there few stories more underdog than that of a ragamuffin group of Jamaican sprinters trying to break into Olympic-level winter sports while pushing around a rickety old bobsled. This movie has it all — lovable heroes, Scandinavian villains, the unique comedic stylings of Doug E. Doug, John Candy doing that thing he’s able to do where he plays a slobby scumbag who you end up loving anyway, and, most importantly, an inspiring story about a group of outsiders working hard to gain respect and acceptance, and eventually seeing their hard work pay off. If you want to watch an uplifting movie, you want to watch a movie that includes at least one slow clap, and Cool Runnings delivers on that front as well as so many others.

Cuban Fury (2014)

Everybody who’s seen an Edgar Wright film knows that Nick Frost is always lovable when playing the goofy sidekick. What wasn’t clear until Cuban Fury came out was whether or not he could support a film as the lead. Well, maybe he can’t open a film financially, because this one came and went without anyone really noticing, but he sure as shit can handle the challenges of being a leading man creatively. This movie is an absolute delight. It makes you so invested in salsa dancing that you’re likely to audibly cheer whenever that big teddy bear of a man scores some kind of dancing-related victory. It’s pretty much impossible to see how much fun Frost is having here busting his ass in a very earnest dancing picture and not come away from it smiling and feeling inspired. Also, in addition to Frost killing it as the lead, Cuban Fury also treats us with Rashida Jones and Chris O’Dowd killing it in supporting roles, and they’re as likable and crush-worthy as anyone alive has ever been.

ET the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Sure, sure, the end of ET manages to get a little weepy, so it’s not fully a pick-me-up sort of movie, but the rest of it is filled with so much Spielbergian wide-eyed wonder and wholesome Amblin charm that even as you’re wiping away your tears, you’re likely to come away from any sort of re-watch of it feeling emotionally fortified and experiencing a strange craving for peanut butter-based candies. People don’t think about the bittersweet moment of growing up and letting things go that the film ends on when they think about ET anyway. They think about the triumphant, sticking your middle finger up at the man moment where Elliott and his little brown potato-looking friend take flight on their bike and avoid the evil authorities, all while striking a wicked-awesome silhouette in front of the moon. Steven Spielberg — the dude made pretty movies. Damn the man! Little alien friends for everyone!

Happy (2011)

What exactly is it that makes human beings happy? It’s not binge watching reality television, peacocking on social media, and hoarding stockpiles of slickly marketed consumer goods, that’s for sure. You wouldn’t know that from looking at our pathetic, miserable, modern lives though. Happy is a documentary that tries to delve into the mysterious state of happiness by going around the world and talking to weirdos who have much better heads on their shoulders than the typical idiot who participates in mainstream Western culture. Okay, so it talks to some scientists too, but it’s much less interesting listening to them prattle on about dopamine and whatnot than it is listening to a hard-nosed rickshaw driver and a sun-fried surfer dude shell out homespun wisdom. There are lessons to be learned by watching this movie, but also it’s just really uplifting watching so much footage of people smiling while doing the things that bring joy to their lives. Is it possible that happiness loves company just as much as misery?

Heavyweights (1995)

What’s the best thing Judd Apatow has ever done in his career? Unless you answered, “co-write the script for Heavyweights,” you don’t know what you’re talking about. One of the themes that ties a bunch of these feel good movies together is that they’re often stories about underdogs triumphing over adversity, and who’s a bigger underdog than the school fat kid? Get the fat kids from every school together in one place like this movie does and you’ve got a recipe for inspiration. Heavyweights is wholly wholesome, but it’s also subversively clever. Ben Stiller gives what’s easily the funniest performance of his career as the fit and villainous Tony Perkis. The kids are all great and not annoying. Tom Hodges became a movie legend thanks to his portrayal of pasty and foreign camp counselor Lars. Heavyweights even gives us an always welcome dose of Tim Blake Nelson. Pretty hard to get all of that and not come away feeling like you’ve been stuffed full of comfort food.

Midnight in Paris (2011)

There haven’t been very many good Woody Allen movies in recent years, but Midnight in Paris is the bright shining star as far as his modern work is concerned. What makes this movie such a good time is how obsessed with escapism it is. The main character is a wannabe writer played by Owen Wilson who’s obsessed with the moveable feast that was the artsy cosmopolitan scene in Paris in the 1920s, and who spends his nights magically being transported to this time period so that he can spend time with characters as interesting and iconic as Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald (Alison Pill and Tom Hiddleston), and Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody). Sure, this sort of escapism plays to a pretty niche audience, but if you happen to be in that audience then it really plays to you. There are few things I can think of more comforting than retreating to the city of lights of yesteryear alongside Owen Wilson’s delightfully crooked nose and comfortably relaxed drawl. Watching this one feels like being a baby who’s being coed by a particularly adept maternal figure of some consequence.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Wes Anderson movies are always able to establish a really unique Wes Anderson tone. There’s an element of bittersweet melancholy to them, for sure, but they also contain a celebration of the diverse array of humanity-defining quirks and neuroses that can’t help but make you thankful to be a part of the species. His movies are also often imbued with a strong sense of nostalgia for childhood, and that’s especially true in Moonrise Kingdom, the story of a couple of childhood sweethearts who decide that they’re too rebellious and cool for their mundane surroundings, so they run off into the forest to get away from it all. An adorable manhunt led by Cub Scouts, a ridiculous dance to sexy French music, plans for a guerrilla wedding, and a blossoming relationship between a surrogate father/son pair follows. So much adorableness gets packed into this one movie that Anderson probably could have saved some and made two more adequately adorable movies with the leftovers.

Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985)

Even after the very public and very unfortunate sex scandal that Paul Reubens went through, his Pee-Wee character was still able to exist as a teflon, untouchable icon of innocence and childlike glee who wouldn’t go away. That’s a testament to just how unique and memorable the character and the exaggerated world that exists around him is. There’s nothing mean or bad in any Pee-Wee property. It’s one of the brightest, shiningest examples of inclusivity in modern popular culture. That his message of joy gets presented to us in the charming trappings of camp weirdness makes it even more appealing. Is this the best movie Tim Burton ever directed? No, that’s Ed Wood, but it’s certainly the second best movie he ever directed, and it’s certainly the most important piece of the Pee-Wee franchise. People will be watching this one with their kids for generations, and it will still keep putting smiles on everyone’s faces, because it’s just so danged strange, and just so danged nice.

Pete’s Dragon (2016)

We’re living in the age of snark and sass and Meta commentary, so it’s rare to find a piece of entertainment that’s not trying to be funny or cool, but that’s just plain earnest. The recent remake of Pete’s Dragon is exactly that movie. Not only does it have a big, derpy mystical figure as its star who will appeal to little kids and grown-ass animal lovers alike, but it’s also got a heart of gold. This is a movie about family ties, and good people fighting for what’s right, and it manages to still be entertaining without even having a sassy sidekick or a big mess of bathroom humor. Could it be possible that we might be about to experience a new wave of movies that honestly try to touch us without being ironic or detached about it? Probably not, but it’s nice to think about.

Reptilicus (1961)

Is Reptilicus actually a movie pick-me-up? No. It’s a terrible creature feature that came out of Denmark in the early 60s, and it’s nearly unwatchable. It gets a heck of a lot more fun when it’s lovingly mocked by the minds behind the classic cult comedy show Mystery Science Theater 3000 though, and that’s relevant here because it serves as the cheesy movie that gets skewered in the first episode of Netflix’s new MST3K revival. Back in the 90s this TV show not only created a whole generation of movie nerds, it defined the comedic sensibilities of an entire generation of nerds in general, and to have a revival that recreates the heart of what made the original work so well in 2017 feels too good to be true. Nonetheless, before the first act of Reptilicus ends, it becomes pretty undeniable that this new MST3K feels just like going back home again.

This is Spinal Tap (1984)

One of the easiest ways to feel uplifted is to laugh. One of the easiest ways to laugh is to laugh at the stupid behavior of morons. This is Spinal Tap is a mockumentary about a group of stupid, arrogant, silly morons (Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer) bumbling their way through a rock & roll lifestyle, and it’s been making people laugh and feel better about themselves for decades. There may be more funny lines and ridiculous throwaway gags that get quoted in this movie than any other comedy that’s ever been made — which is especially the case if you’re anywhere near a college campus. Put this one on in a room where a group of people are hanging out and its pretty much guaranteed that they’ll be laughing and comparing favorite scenes in no time.

Sing Street (2016)

People love Sing Street. I’ve literally yet to come across anyone who doesn’t love Sing Street. That’s been frustrating for me, because I seem to be the only person on the planet who didn’t fall for the charms of this movie, but it’s enough evidence to make it an easy recommendation for a list of movies that are meant to leave people feeling good. What do people like in this movie? It harkens back to that early teenaged time in everyone’s life where the world couldn’t be more confusing, but that just meant that the world couldn’t be anymore filled with possibility. It works as a love letter to a period of time where popular music was wildly experimental, rapidly changing, and in general just very interesting. It’s also full of catchy, ear worm tunes that tend to make the heart soar, which is great if you happen to be the sort of person who isn’t disgusted by catchy, ear worm tunes that make the heart soar.

Seriously, people love this movie, and even us curmudgeons can appreciate how good Jack Reynor is as the older brother with the cool record collection. Anyone who grew up with an older brother who had a cool record collection had a real leg up on everyone else in the neighborhood.

16 Good Movie Pick-Me-Ups on Netflix Right Now was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you weren’t excited before…

A few years ago when it was announced that we were being invited back into the world of Jurassic Park, the big question on everyone’s mind was, “how will this new film connect to the original trilogy?” There were theories that Chris Pratt’s character was a grown version of a little boy seen in the first film — a theory Pratt himself recently shot down — but aside from assurances by the producers that this would be a continuation and not a full-on reboot, and a few lines of dialogue here and there, Jurassic World stands on its own, dependent on its own characters to propel the film. But now, with Jurassic World 2 in production for director J.A. Bayona, there’s word that we’re getting an honest to goodness, verifiable link to the original films, via perhaps the most beloved character in the franchise: Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm.

Goldblum last surfaced in a Jurassic movie back in the other part two, The Lost World, and now according to The Hollywood Reporter he’s set to slip back into that form-fitting black shirt and ready to wage intellectual war with genetically engineered dinos all over again. There’s no word how Goldblum — who will be joining returning stars Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, and newcomers James Cromwell, Toby Jones, Rafe Spall, Ted Levine, and Justice Smith — will fit into the story, but come on, it’s Ian Malcolm, the guy who (literally) wrote the book on modern day thunder lizards, so there are plenty of opportunities to work him in.

This will be the second classic character Goldblum has resurrected lately; last year he reprised his role from Independence Day in Independence Day: Resurgence. I like to think he’s pulling a Harrison Ford and revisiting all his best roles a few decades after the fact. If there’s a god who loves us, up next will be The Fly III.

In reality, Goldblum can next be seen in Thor: Ragnarok, which is out later this year. Jurassic World 2: Malcolm’s Revenge, hits theaters June 22, 2018.

Over in our corner of the internet we had a lot of really interesting posts go up yesterday, including an interview with the director of the neo-noir Sweet Virginia, a review of the thriller Thumper, our own take on the spoilers that could have been Avengers 4, a trip back to “the most disappointing year in movies,” and a roundup of the week’s Blu-Ray and DVD releases.

And lastly, take a look at five of the most popular shots we tweeted over the last 24 hours. Want more? You know where to find us.

There’s a Familiar Face Returning to ‘Jurassic World 2’ was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Art of the strange and grotesque was his forte.

Alien would not be what it is today without the art from H.R. Giger. Just take a cursory image search on Google for ‘Alien’ and the first thing that will come up is the design for the terrifying creatures from Giger’s pages. The aliens of H.R. Giger have tied everything together throughout the Alien series, even as the actors and actresses portraying the prey frequently change. While those designs might be his most memorable achievement, Giger created countless art pieces conjuring up nightmare fuel.

By 1967, at the age of 27, Giger was fully immersed in his art. Even though he had a 9-to-5 job, he would spend his evenings creating larger ink drawings. According to the HR Giger Museum, he created some of his early celebrated pieces during that time such as The Astro-Eunuchs seen below.

You can see where many of his future concepts came from with this early drawing. His style that would be come to be known as “biomechanical”, mixing lifeforms with technology. Apparently it was his own source of nightmares, as it was born out of art therapy for his night tremors.

In the mid 70’s, Alejandro Jodorowsky was trying to bring Frank Herbert’s Dune to the big screen. Giger was part of the early concept art for the film showcasing some designs that never really put to fruition. It’s easy to imagine that Giger might’ve gotten the same amount of attention he ended up receiving for Alien had this come out, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

There’s no question that Giger’s designs give people very divisive reactions — either you are absolutely floored by their concepts and design, or you are terrified beyond your wildest dreams. They can also be interpreted as extremely sexual. According to Bloody Disgusting, “His unnervingly stunning work within the pages predominantly features illustrations of the human form coalescing with meticulously envisioned machinery, in a multitude of different, and often times, sexually explicit ways. Torment, pain, and sexual ecstasy seem to be a common theme.” Take a look at one what many would call the signature image for the Alien franchise.

From this image you can see the inspiration for what would become the ‘Xenomorph’, the signature antagonist of the Alien franchise. It’s hard to imagine any other design for the creatures that would come to terrorize the crew of the Nostromo. Thankfully, Ripley gets to kick it out into space.

Working on Dune did eventually get Giger the work on Alien though. During the production, he got friendly with Dan O’Bannon who was the script writer for Alien. O’Bannon introduced Ridley Scott to Giger’s designs, in particular the Necronomicon IV. Giger was originally brought onto Alien only to be a creature designer, but Ridley Scott saw a lot more in Giger’s designs. Not only did Giger give his designs for the Xenomorph, but also for Alien eggs, the Pilot, and ship designs. These incredible sketches and ideas elevated Scott’s story of a crew being attacked on a undiscovered planet from B-movie status to something really special.

Giger’s work continues to be an intricate part of everything involving the Alien franchise some thirty plus years later. While Ridley Scott will be credited as shepherding the franchise to where it is today (for better or for worse), Giger was perhaps the true visionary. Some of the designs and imagery used for new entries in the Alien franchise that continue to use his groundbreaking imagery are featured below:

There are few images in science-fiction that are as memorable as the Xenomorph. It has stood the test of time for a good reason — it is terrifying. Although it made its home on LV-426, it has also made its home in our subconscious, always lurking in the shadows. H.R. Giger might not be with us anymore, but his widely inventive designs will always be.

Exploring The Art of H.R. Giger, The Architect of Your ‘Alien’ Nightmares was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.