We all know the feeling: We’ve blazed through a productive morning, banged out a few important items on our to-do list, enjoyed the benefits of some post-lunchtime energy—and then boom. Sometime around three o’clock we begin to move with the speed and mental acuity of a tranquilized hippopotamus. Drooping eyelids,…
What is arguably the best Star Trek game available on PC isn't its own game, it's actually a huge mod for space strategy game Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. That mod, Star Trek Armada 3, has just been released in what the mod team is calling the 'final version,' ready for you to boldly download where no one has downloaded before.
Star Trek Armada 3 has been in development since 2012, which is right around when Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion launched. It's set during Trek's Dominion Wars, which were popping off during the last few seasons of Deep Space Nine. The mod replaces just about everything in Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion with Trek universe equivalents, allowing you to play as the United Federation of Planets, the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Star Empire, the Cardassian Union-Dominion Alliance, and the menacing Borg Collective.
The modding team, Stellar Parallax, has created a host of new ship models, art, UI designs, and tonnes more for the mod, which even includes custom Trek cinematics and authentic voice lines for hero units like Captain Picard, Martok, and Commander Sela.
RELATED LINKS: Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion mods
Norm Macdonald, the brilliant comedian known for his work on "Saturday Night Live" and movies such as "Billy Madison," has died. He was 61 years old. Macdonald had reportedly been battling cancer quietly for the last nine years.
According to Deadline, Macdonald's passing has been confirmed by his management company, Brillstein Entertainment. Lori Jo Hoekstra, a longtime friend to Macdonald, as well as his producing partner, said the following:
"He was most proud of his comedy. He never wanted the diagnosis to affect the way the audience or any of his loved ones saw him. Norm was a pure comic. He once wrote that 'a joke should catch someone by surprise, it should never pander.' He certainly never pandered. Norm will be missed terribly."
Norm Macdonald was boring in Quebec City, Quebec on October 17, 1959. The Canadian asserted himself as a voice in the comedy world in the 90s, appearing as a contestant on "Star Search." He was later hired as a writer on "Roseanne" before making moves in front of the camera. Macdonald truly broke out as a member of the "Saturday Night Live" cast. The dry-witted, fearless comic was a key player on "SNL" from 1993 through 1998, with his time as host of "Weekend Update" proving particularly impactful. Macdonald was not one to shy away from tough and timely topics, such as O.J Simpson's murder trial, tackling the subjects head-on with his brand of humor.
Following his departure from "SNL," which was messy and clouded with controversy, the comedian starred in his own sitcom, "Norm," which aired from 1999 through 2001. Macdonald has also had a steady film career. His credits include "Dr. Dolittle," "Billy Madison" and quite a few other Adam Sandler comedies. He also headlined the cult comedy "Dirty Work," directed by Bob Saget. Macdonald was also a regular in the world of episodic television, with credits in shows such as "My Name is Earl," "The Middle" and "The Orville." Additionally, he did quite a bit of voice work in shows such as "Family Guy" as Death and "Mike Tyson Mysteries" as Pigeon.
But Macdonald's lasting legacy is as himself. His appearances on late-night talk shows, as well as on Comedy Central roasts, were often highlights, with his dry-witted personality taking center stage. More recently, Macdonald hosted a Netflix chat show titled "Norm Macdonald Has a Show." The show came about following the success of his podcast, "Norm MacDdonald Live."
RIP, Norm Macdonald. You will be missed.
Read this next: 'Norm Macdonald Has A Show' Trailer: The 'SNL' Star Heads To Netflix With A Candid Talk Show
The post Norm Macdonald, Legendary Comedian and SNL Star, Dead at 61 appeared first on /Film.
The 1988 comedy hit "Twins" is getting a sequel, with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito reprising their brotherly roles as unlikely siblings Julian and Vincent. The sequel, titled "Triplets," will introduce the two stars to yet another unlikely third brother, played by Tracy Morgan.
"Twins" director Ivan Reitman is also on board to direct "Triplets." The filmmaker has talked about making a sequel for years, and originally planned to make it with Eddie Murphy. Reitman talked with Deadline about the sequel, and how Morgan joined the cast:
"Twins" was quite successful, and some years after, this whole thing started with Arnold meeting Eddie Murphy, and the suggestion came from one of them. It was, "I should be a triplet, that could be a very funny comedy." We started a script with Eddie, and after the success he had with Amazon Prime on "Coming 2 America," he got himself booked up heavily. And we knew we were going to make it at the beginning of next year. I'd been good friends with Tracy Morgan for a long time and always thought he was one of the funniest men in the world. I thought he would make a terrific triplet, and we rewrote the whole script for him. Now, we'll go out and try and put the money together and get it made.
Given the popularity of "Twins," there's little doubt that Reitman will find producers to invest in the project. The rights to the film are also up in the air, as Universal — the distributor for "Twins" — only had rights to a sequel if they made it quickly (AKA in a timeframe less than 33 years).
Reitman also shared with Deadline that he hopes to shoot the movie soon, probably in Boston. As for the premise of the movie, Reitman provided the following description:
Secretly, there was a third baby born, a Black baby, who hasn't been in touch with his siblings. They don't know each other and very early in the movie they meet and it's how they achieve a bond together after all these years. It's really a film about family and, no matter how different we all are, we have to learn to get along. These guys have great chemistry together, and you can see that in the reel, and how much energy they bring out in each other.
While Reitman, DaVito, and Schwarzenegger are all 33 years older, they all seem excited about the project as well. "I haven't directed in a couple years, but Arnold kept saying, 'c'mon, we had such a great time.'" Reitman told Deadline. "I just called him in Budapest and he's so excited to see how people respond to the reel as we send it out. The initial reaction has been very strong, and how young Arnold and Danny look and how great the chemistry is with Tracy. I had a great time doing the first one, and this is going to be fun."
It's still early days on this project, so there's no news yet on when we'll be able to see "Triplets" in theaters.
Read this next: The Not-So-Secret Ingredient To Making A Successful Sequel More Than A Decade Later
The post Twins Sequel Triplets is Actually Happening, With Tracy Morgan Joining Schwarzenegger and DeVito appeared first on /Film.
The "Luther" movie is finally official! Idris Elba will don his famous gray trenchcoat once more, and return to screens as the titular tortured detective, Luther.
This time around, Elba will be joined by a few new faces, franchise newcomers, Cynthia Erivo ("Widows," "Bad Times at the El Royale") and Andy Serkis ("The Lord of the Rings"). Continuing the "Luther" saga, the film sees the character dealing with a double threat. He'll have to fend off his detective nemesis, played by Erivo, in addition to Serkis, who stars as the story's criminal villain.
Netflix made the big announcement via Twitter, confirming the three cast members as well as the return of creator and writer Neil Cross. According to The HollyWood Reporter, the film also sees the return of director Jamie Payne, who directed the final season of the series.
The movie is a continuation of the BBC psychological drama, "Luther" which aired five seasons between 2010 and 2019. Elba stars as Detective Chief Inspector John Luther, a dedicated officer who quickly proves to be obsessive, possessive, and sometimes driven to violence. More than anything, he's susceptible to the darkness of the crimes he investigates and struggles to keep himself from being consumed by them. The acclaimed series earned 11 Emmy nominations and won Elba the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Miniseries. And like so many of his roles, "Luther" really makes the case for Elba's ability to balance suave charm and intense emotion.
Plenty of shows face cancelation only to make a final stand with a film that wraps up the tale in a grand, celebratory fashion — but fans will be thrilled to learn that the "Luther" movie isn't necessarily the end of the story. While the film is certainly a celebration of all things "Luther," creator Neil Cross has no plans to wrap things up. Earlier this year he told Radio Times that he's leaving the possibilities open. Cross said:
"I think the thing with Luther is never to rule out anything. All we've ever wanted to do is, within the parameters that we're given, make the best possible show.
The "Luther'' movie could very well be a jumping off point for the continuation of the series. Not to be overly optimistic, but Elba has already made clear his dedication to the character he originated. He spent years publicly campaigning for "Luther" to come to film. At the very least, Elba and Cross are putting their all into the film, using it as an opportunity to expand the world. In the same interview, Cross said:
What we've been able to do [with the movie] – having delivered every episode of Luther on budgets which are comically small – is to have a wider canvas. And we've really been given the opportunity – while staying entirely true... I mean, Idris and I have shared this character for more than 10 years. And the key aspect of this whole conversation is primarily, how do we stay true to Luther?"
Read this next: Upcoming Netflix Original Movies You Need To Know About
The post Idris Elba Returns to Luther Once More, With a Netflix Movie appeared first on /Film.
After Marvel made the move to recast Bruce Banner/Hulk actor Ed Norton with Mark Ruffalo, few among us could've expected that we'd ever see any of the cast of "The Incredible Hulk" show up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe again. The movie seemed to slip between the cracks as the rest of the MCU quickly evolved far beyond its humble aspirations.
That is, we assumed that to be the case until the Russos brought back William Hurt's General Thaddeus Ross in a supporting role for "Captain America: Civil War" and then, more recently, "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" surprisingly brought back the Abomination for a quick cameo. That won't be the last we see of Tim Roth's Emil Blonsky, as he is also set to appear in the Disney+ series "She-Hulk" as the "Incredible Hulk" villain. And the actor couldn't be more amused by the notion of returning to the MCU.
Nobody could have blamed Tim Roth for being too busy to fit any more unexpected Marvel appearances into his schedule these days, as the British actor is currently promoting his latest film "Sundown" and will next be seen alongside Neal McDonough (who coincidentally made an appearance in the MCU himself as Dum Dum Dugan in "Captain America: The First Avenger") and Ron Perlman in "The Jesuit," written by Paul Schrader. But to the delight of many fans, Roth's one-time villainous Abomination appeared out of nowhere in an underground fight club of sorts in "Shang-Chi" and will once again reprise the role for the legal comedy series, "She-Hulk." THR caught up with the actor and, during the course of their interview, talk soon turned to his upcoming appearance in "She-Hulk" and the reasons why Roth accepted the role in the first place.
"I did The Incredible Hulk years ago, just because I thought my kids would be embarrassed by it. I did it for them and I really enjoyed making it. So when they came to me and said: 'We're adapting the She-Hulk thing. Can you come back as that character again?' I was like, sure. It should be fun. I was very surprised though because it was difficult at first. It was only when Mark Ruffalo came in to shoot his stuff [reprising his role as Bruce Banner] that I went: 'Oh, that's how you do it! With a sense of humor!'"
If you ask me, taking on a blockbuster role just for the sake of embarrassing your kids is as valid a reason as it gets. It's a nice bonus that Tim Roth apparently had so much fun with the part, despite "The Incredible Hulk" mostly being forgotten as a relic of the early MCU. But one of the pleasures of any franchise that runs for as long as the MCU has is that it allows the opportunity to draw unexpected connections and pay off earlier setups that most fans assumed would never happen (also see: the "F&F" franchise). Getting more of Roth's Abomination in both "Shang-Chi" and "She-Hulk" absolutely counts and, as Roth referenced in his above quote, acting opposite Mark Ruffalo's Bruce as opposed to Ed Norton's should be fascinating in its own right.
"Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" is currently playing in theaters and "She-Hulk" will debut on Disney+ sometime in 2022.
Read this next: 'She-Hulk' Will Be A Half-Hour Legal Comedy, Kevin Feige Reveals
The post Tim Roth Explains Why He's Returning to the MCU in She-Hulk appeared first on /Film.
This week brings the fifth episode of Marvel's "What If...?" animated series, and with only nine episodes in the show's first season, that means we're almost past the midpoint of this dive into multiverse. Marvel Studios has released a mid-season trailer to tease what's to come in the remaining five episodes of the series. Though it's mostly footage from the episodes that we've already seen, there are some glimpses of new episodes that offer some perplexing and enticing sneak peeks at the next round of Marvel Cinematic Universe remixes. Let's give the new footage one of our deep dive trailer breakdowns and see what's going on.
Here's a shot of Black Panther in what appears to be the palace of Wakanda. I think this might be the Erik Killmonger version of Black Panther that we haven't seen in the show yet, but is likely debuting in this week's episode (based on the poster that was released yesterday). Things don't look so great for Wakanda, since the windows of the palace have been shattered and there appears to be military helicopters flying around outside. Perhaps the friendship between Killmonger and Tony Stark that was teased in the full trailer for "What If...?" awhile back takes a nasty turn.
Black Widow makes quite an entrance as she drops in on what appear to be a couple of Ultron drones, using a motorcycle to wipe them both out. This appears to be from an episode where Natasha Romanoff finds herself in some kind of post-apocalyptic world. It also appears to be the same episode teased in the previously released trailer that revealed Black Widow throwing a vibranium shield that had a red star on it, which made us think it had something to do with her becoming The Winter Soldier instead of Bucky. But more on that later.
It looks like "Avengers: Endgame" will get some kind of multiverse remix, because here's a shot of Tony Stark sacrificing himself to use the Infinity Stones to wipe out Thanos and his army. There haven't been any other hints at how the events of Endgame could be changed in "What If...?," so this one has us scratching our heads quite a bit.
The full trailer for Marvel's "What If...?" included a shot of what appeared to be a new assembly of Avengers that included Erik Millmonger's Black Panther, Captain Carter, T'Challa as Star-Lord, Gamora, and Thor. It appears that Black Widow is also part of this new team. However, we don't see Black Panther among the group in this shot. It might just be because of the angle of the shot, but we'll have to wait and see. This shot also gives us a sense that the environment is entirely in disarray. Could all these heroes be coming together because of a clash of several different timelines?
Even though the evil (or maybe misguided) Doctor Strange appeared to be wiped out of existence along with his own universe, it would seem that he somehow survived. The alternate, gaunt version of the Sorcerer Supreme is seen here standing alongside Thor. They appear to be somewhere in space. Could they be seeking out the Watcher? Strange had a direct encounter with the all-seeing being, and if Strange survived his brush with the end of his universe, maybe he wants answers from the Watcher. But what is Thor doing there, and why is he talking about the zombies when he wasn't part of that episode at all? Maybe we'll pick up where that story left off somehow.
Captain Marvel makes two brief appearances in this trailer, and neither of them are from her cameo at the end of the episode where almost all the Avengers were killed one-by-one by Hank Pym in retaliation for his daughter Hope Van Dyne dying during a SHIELD mission in the Ukraine. In the first shot, she's winking and saluting like a cool superhero would do. Then later in the trailer, we see this shot:
The cosmic superhero is charged up and flying towards something or someone, but we have no idea who or what it could be. That's mostly because we haven't seen any other teases of episodes involving Captain Marvel, so we don't know what kind of alternate universe story the character will be involved in.
A new shot of Gamora finds the daughter of Thanos leaping through the air with a familiar-looking double bladed weapon. It's the same one that Thanos wielded when fighting the Avengers, and even her armor looks like a variation on what the Mad Titan wore in battle. However, since we've seen Gamora in the line-up of New Avengers, it's clear she hasn't taken a villainous turn like Thanos. But what's her place in "What If...?," and when will we see her story unfold?
We know this week's episode will feature Erik Killmonger, and presumably it's the episode that finds him becoming an ally of Tony Stark. But where that story goes from there, we're not sure. This shot offers up a somewhat ominous prospect as we see Killmonger marching with an army of Stark Industries robots that look like modern versions of the Hydra Stomper that Howard Stark created for Steve Rogers in the first episode of "What If...?" with Captain Carter. Could Killmonger teaming up with Tony Stark result in some kind of villainous duo? Maybe there's an unseen threat for them to face that we're not yet privy to. After all, there's also this shot in the trailer:
That's Pepper Potts, and she's armed with a massive gun as she runs alongside T'Challa's sister Shuri (who looks rather young, perhaps because this story unfolds in the time of the original "Iron Man") and members of the Dora Milaje. That would seem to indicate that Killmonger and Stark are facing a villain together. This is certainly one of the more intriguing alternate storylines that has been teased so far.
There have been rumblings about "What If...?" featuring an episode with "Party Thor." This version of Thor would be one who didn't redeem himself and prove his worthiness after he was banished from Asgard and stripped of his powers. Instead, Thor just goes on a bender and creates a massive party on Earth. Could this scene be from that episode? Maybe The Grandmaster hears about this epic bash and comes to Earth to throw down some sick beats. It certainly looks like Korg is enjoying it:
However, this party looks like it's happening on Sakaar rather than Earth, so maybe this is an entirely different episode altogether. All we know is things are always going to get a bit weird when The Grandmaster shows up.
Here's a curious shot from the mid-season trailer for "What If...?" That's Hawkeye leaping and drawing his bow and arrow. It appears that environment is the base from the climax of "Captain America: Civil War" where Captain America, Iron Man and the Winter Soldier had their epic showdown. Since we've seen what appears to be Black Widow in place of the Winter Soldier, could there be some kind of confrontation between her and Hawkeye? Having their relationship turned into a rivalry would be rather interesting, especially if it's a fight that has them coming to blows in a much more brutal way, unlike their battle in "Civil War" and "Endgame," where the two were still allies who were merely forced to fight.
The end of the "What If...?" episode that saw T'Challa become Star-Lord also teased another tale in the same alternate universe. The final scene found Ego the Living Planet coming back to Earth to find his son Peter Quill all grown up and working at Dairy Queen. The scene ended with an ominous tease of what's to come of that, and it would appear that we'll see that story unfold sometime in the second half of this season.
Here's a swarm of robots that look like a bunch of Ultron drones. When the full trailer for "What If...?" debuted awhile back, there were shots of Thor fighting these robots in what appeared to be Las Vegas. This mid-season trailer shows part of that scene as well, but we're still unsure what kind of spin will be put on the Ultron story. This mid-season trailer really raises a lot more questions than answers.
In one of the final snippets of new footage, we see Black Widow wielding a bow and arrow. Based on her looking a little scuffed up and the muted colors in the background, this looks like another shot from the episode that finds her in a desolate, apocalyptic landscape. Perhaps she's been forced to survive on her own and she's taken up some of Hawkeye's skills. Part of me wonders if this episode finds her living in some kind of robot apocalypse where the Avengers failed to stop Ultron and his army. After all, one of the early shots sees her taking down two robots with her motorcycle.
There are so many lingering questions from this tease. We're still waiting to see how these episodes will crossover into each other, especially since there's clearly some kind of connective tissue that brings several of these alternate universe versions of Marvel characters together. But beyond that, we're also curious about what the Watcher's continued place in this story will be, especially after his role in the Doctor Strange episode. Hopefully more hints are coming sooner than later.
New episodes of Marvel's "What If...?" arrive on Disney+ each Wednesday.
Read this next: Marvel's 'What If...?' Trailer Breakdown: Everything The New Footage And Poster Reveals About The Animated Series
The post Marvel's What If...? Mid-Season Trailer Breakdown: The Multiverse Offers Up More Mystery and Remixes appeared first on /Film.
The first season of Netflix's "Locke & Key" premiered in 2020 and, while wrapping up some loose threads, ended on quite a cliffhanger. The show's fans won't have to wait much longer to find out what happens next, however, as the second season is set to come out this October. While we count down the final days, Netflix released a trailer that gives us a clue as to what's in store for the Locke siblings.
Netflix teased yesterday that the season 2 trailer was coming and that "new magic will be forged." What kind of magic? Probably not the good kind given the Locke kids' luck.
"Locke & Key" is based on the best-selling comic book series by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez. The story follows the Locke family, who have moved into their father's ancestral home, Keyhouse, after he was mysteriously murdered. The children end up finding magical keys in their home that can do supernatural things like physically take them inside their psyche or leave their bodies in ghost-like fashion. In exploring the different keys, however, they wake up a malevolent force that will do whatever it takes to steal those keys for themselves.
At the end of the first season of the Netflix series, the Locke kids, along with their friends, think they've banished that evil entity. We find out, however, that they haven't, and what that means for them in season 2 can't be anything good. Given that Netflix already greenlit season 3 of the show, chances are things won't all be resolved by the end of this season either, but at least we can rest somewhat easy knowing there will be a third season coming down the pipeline.
"Locke & Key" stars Darby Stanchfield as the mother, Nina Locke, Connor Jessup as Tyler Locke, Emilia Jones as Kinsey Locke, and Jackson Robert Scott as Bode Locke. Carlton Cuse ("Lost," "Bates Motel") and Meredith Averill ("The Haunting of Hill House") showrun the coming-of-age series about love, loss, and the unshakable bonds that define family.
Season 2 of "Locke & Key" will unlock on Netflix in October 2021. Read the synopsis for "Locke & Key" below.
After their father is murdered under mysterious circumstances, the three Locke siblings and their mother move into their ancestral home, Keyhouse, which they discover is full of magical keys that may be connected to their father's death.
Read this next: Locke & Key Season 2: Release Date, Cast And More
The post Locke & Key Season 2 Trailer: The Locke Kids Face More Foes in the Netflix Show appeared first on /Film.
Nvidia's RTX technology comes with an impressive arsenal of gaming PC enhancements, from DLSS AI rendering to mesmerising ray tracing techniques. Unfortunately, RTX compatibility isn't a given and developers must weave the feature into games both old and new. However, thanks to a recent Geforce Now server datamine, it looks like the classic retrofuturistic FPS game, Bioshock, could be getting an RTX makeover.
Discovered by developer Ighor July, the Geforce Now leak mentions various other unannounced games; like a Final Fantasy IX remake, Resident Evil 4 remake, and, as Windows Central points out, a remastered collection of classic Grand Theft Auto titles. Bioshock remastered is the only game on the list with ‘RTX’ fixed to its title, which suggests that it could go above and beyond its 2016 predecessor.
Bioshock still looks fantastic, and the game’s most recent remaster brings a lot to the table in terms of fidelity. Nevertheless, being able to explore a ray traced rendition of Rapture would enhance the game's experience tenfold. On top of that, the prospects of DLSS could boost fps to make 4K resolution playable at a high frame rate with minimal visual compromise.
RELATED LINKS: RTX 2070 Super review, RTX 2060 Super review, Best graphics card
Want to know how long Deathloop is? Compared to Arkane’s linear Dishonored games which only take around ten hours to get through, Deathloop’s unusual structure makes it slightly harder to nail down an average completion time. This action game has been designed around playing the same set of levels repeatedly until you discover enough clues to break the loop.
The events on each level change depending on the time of day, giving you plenty of information to discover as you piece together the most optimal assassination route. Our review of Deathloop highlights exactly what makes this game so special and why it deserves the highest score we can award.
Deathloop also features a multiplayer mode that challenges players to take down one another as they fight to break or preserve the time loop, increasing the replayability even further. We haven’t factored in the optional multiplayer component into the completion time, though you’ll be missing out if you don’t try it. If you’re only looking to finish the game once without spending any time playing as Julianna, here’s how long it’ll take you to finish Deathloop.
RELATED LINKS: Deathloop review, Pre-order Deathloop, The best FPS games on PC
(The Morning Watch is a recurring feature that highlights a handful of noteworthy videos from around the web. They could be video essays, fan-made productions, featurettes, short films, hilarious sketches, or just anything that has to do with our favorite movies and TV shows.)
In this edition, take a closer look at Marvel's first trailer for the upcoming "Hawkeye" series with a rundown of Easter eggs, comic references, and Marvel Cinematic Universe callbacks. Plus, watch as the VFX artists from Corridor Crew react to the work done on movies like "The Interview," "Green Hornet," and "This Is The End" with Seth Rogen making a guest appearance. And finally, watch a nearly two-hour conversation between writer/director Kevin Smith and actor Steve Buscemi from a recent charity benefit.
First up, now that Marvel Studios has released the first trailer for the new "Hawkeye" series, it's time for ScreenCrush to take a closer look at the footage to look for Easter eggs, plot hints, comic references, and ties to the MCU. Find out some details about the series that you might not have heard of yet, and get a load of some interesting speculation about what we can expect from the series starring Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld.
Next, Corridor Crew scored their biggest guest star yet by bringing in actor, writer, producer, and director Seth Rogen to talk about the VFX done on some of the film's he's worked on over the years. Listen as Rogen talks about the process of shooting effects-heavy scenes for movies like "The Interview," "Green Hornet," and "This Is The End," and hear what the gang has to say about the VFX work. Plus, see how they all react to some scenes from the sci-fi classic "Total Recall."
Finally, as a benefit for Friends Of Firefighters in honor of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Kevin Smith hosted an extensive chat with actor Steve Buscemi about his ongoing and eclectic career in film and television. The conversation dives into all the projects you'd want to hear Buscemi talk about at length, and Kevin Smith, being the movie nerd he is, asks all the right questions. It makes for a fascinating conversation, and if you enjoy it, maybe consider supporting Friends of Firefighters right here.
Read this next: The Morning Watch: The Matrix Resurrections Trailer Easter Eggs, Behind The Scenes Of Cinderella & More
The post The Morning Watch: Hawkeye Trailer Easter Eggs, VFX Artists React to Seth Rogen Movies with Seth Rogen & More appeared first on /Film.
The voice of Kevin Smith is probably more prominently and frequently heard than any other filmmaker working today. Aside from becoming an influential writer/director thanks to his sensational Sundance-selected comedy "Clerks," the growth of geek culture, the popularity of comic books, and the rise of podcasting as a popular medium paved the way for Smith to become a pillar of pop culture. After writing several books collecting various life stories, podcast anecdotes and Hollywood hullabaloo across three decades of showbiz experience, Kevin Smith is now delivering the definitive chronicle of his life and career with "Kevin Smith's Secret Stash: The Definitive Visual History," and it's an intimate and candid look back at how this kid from New Jersey became an indie darling, professional fanboy, podcast master, and more.
"Kevin Smith's: Secret Stash" is a title inspired by the multi-hyphenate's own comic book shop, Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash in Red Bank, New Jersey, which is inspired by the stoner stars of the filmmaker's own interconnected series of films that exist in a world known as the View Askewniverse, which is based on the production company banner he created with his former producing partner Scott Mosier. If that's a little hard to follow, don't worry, because this book tells you pretty much everything you'd want to know about the life and times of Kevin Smith.
Written by Kevin Smith himself as a memoir mixed with an oral history from a singular subject, the book acts as a chronological history of his own journey from real-life clerk to "Clerks" filmmaker and everything that came after he opened the magic door to Hollywood at 23 years old. Most of the book is compartmentalized by the filmmaker's movies, with each and every film getting its own section. But the book begins with Kevin Smith's youth, laying the groundwork for his obsession with pop culture before diving into his extensive career that has been full of ups and downs.
Early in the book you can read an entire student profile that Smith filled out at length for a class at the Vancouver Film School, where his hand-written responses to formal questions already show the filmmaker's penchant for writing and talking casually and candidly with wit and edge. It's one of the many tangible inserts that fans can pore over, along with a few pages of the "Clerks" screenplay, a call sheet from "Mallrats," and other amusing bonus items such as a set of Mooby's stickers, a View Askew business card, a variety of pieces of concept art, and more.
Though 99% of the book comes from Kevin Smith himself, each section features a breakout from one of his many friends and collaborators over the years, talking about how the filmmaker has impacted their lives and why he's such a revered name in pop culture. Lifelong friends such as Walt Flanagan and Bryan Johnson (who you might know from "Comic Book Men" or the "Tell'em Steve-Dave" podcast) chime in, "Star Wars" icon Mark Hamill offers up thoughtful and kind words, and once-estranged friend Ben Affleck gives a lovely, touching tribute that clearly came after his heartfelt reunion on "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot," which came after Smith had a near-fatal heart attack. There's also an entire foreword by Smith's co-star and longtime best friend Jason Mewes, the Jay to his Silent Bob.
Longtime fans of Kevin Smith may not find a lot of stories in this book that they haven't heard before. I've listened to all of Kevin Smith's director commentaries on home video, read a couple of his books, watched most of his comedy specials, and attended several multi-hour Q&A sessions live in-person, and many of the anecdotes and memories about the making of Smith's films are recounted in this book. There's an additional layer of hindsight with some of the stories, not to mention a much more organized flow of thoughts in written form, but there's a lot of retreading if you've been following Smith's career for a long time. It's likely even more familiar if you've been listening to all of his podcasts over the years.
However, hearing some of these stories again and going through Kevin Smith's filmography brought a feeling of nostalgia for watching (and re-watching) all of his movies during my formative years. Adding to this trip down memory lane is the outstanding assembly of photos from behind the scenes, whether from Smith and his cast and crew or a professional still photographer working for the studio. For me, it was like reading a cinematic yearbook about the movies I fell in love with in high school, listening to a friend reminisce about the good ole days in spectacular detail. It's certainly less satisfying when we get around to the likes of "Tusk" or "Yoga Hosers," but reading Smith's perspective on those films and this phase of his career is still a fascinating and worthwhile read.
Thankfully, there are also still things to learn (at least for this fan), such as the story of how "Dogma" co-star Alan Rickman almost got Emma Thompson to play God in the movie, along with a copy of the hand-written letter the actress wrote to Smith as she lamented not being able to make it happen. You'll also read how Bob Weinstein wanted to cast Tom Green as Federal Wildlife Marshal Willenholly in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back," the role that eventually went to Will Ferrell. And yes, Smith addresses the elephant in the room that is Harvey Weinstein being a key part of kickstarting his career, albeit briefly, and only when absolutely necessary.
But it's not just Smith's filmography that takes the spotlight. One section focuses on Smith's "side hustles," like acting in movies other than his own, such as "Live Free or Die Hard" and "Southland Tales," or writing "Daredevil" and "Green Arrow" comic books. There's also an entire section on the podcast empire that Kevin Smith built through SModcast, an endeavor that arrived when podcasting became a breakthrough, popular medium. On top of that, personal elements of Smith's life come through in each of the film sections, mostly because Smith put so much of his own life into many of his movies, and the making of those movies influenced his ongoing personal and professional relationships. So along with reading about the making of "Chasing Amy," you'll find out about his romance with star Joey Lauren Adams. Smith also has no problem digging into the recurring complications with Jason Mewes and his well-known struggles with heroin. And you read about how Smith met his wife, Jennifer Schwalbach, when she was interviewing him for USA Today during a publicity tour, though he thankfully doesn't ever get as graphic about their relationship as he has on social media in the past.
Throughout this entire book, Smith's humility shines through. You'd be hard-pressed to find a filmmaker who is more self-aware than Smith, especially as he reflects on some of the moments he's spent in the spotlight. Whether it's due to the success and failures of his work as a filmmaker or the time that he publicly railed on Southwest Airlines for kicking him off a plane for being too fat, Smith is reflective in such an earnest way and never sounds full of himself. He looks back at key moments in his life with hindsight and knowledge from the experiences that followed. It's clear Smith is grateful for every opportunity he's ever been given, even still in disbelief in many cases. Even those who have come to be annoyed by Kevin Smith's pop culture commentary and latter career efforts would likely respect what Smith has to say in this book. Plus, he's also not shy about throwing certain people under the bus with entertaining showbiz stories, especially if that person is Bruce Willis.
"Kevin Smith's Secret Stash" is an entertaining history of the kind of career that many of his fans have dreamed of, and perhaps that's always been a big part of Kevin Smith's appeal as a filmmaker and entertainer. Starting with "Clerks," Kevin Smith felt like a filmmaker who could have been the close friend of cinephiles and geeks alike, because that's exactly what he was in his real life. Smith is one of many filmmakers in the 1990s who made what was considered an elite profession feel tangible to anyone and everyone. Reading the stories of how it all unfolded only solidifies his place in pop culture history, from making waves in independent film to putting loads of d*ck and fart jokes and other assorted filth in the mouths of Oscar-winning actors. Kevin Smith's story remains impressive and amusing, and it's clear that he's supposed to be here today.
"Kevin Smith's Secret Stash: The Definitive Visual History" is out today.
Read this next: Kevin Smith Reveals A First Look At Clerks III Meticulously Recreating The Original Clerks
The post Kevin Smith's Secret Stash Book Candidly Chronicles the Life and Career of the Clerks Filmmaker appeared first on /Film.
Joe Carnahan made a name for himself with the brutal, intense cop drama "Narc." He followed that film up with "Smokin' Aces," a star-studded, rather messy shoot 'em up that was oozing with style, and far removed from the more serious tone of "Narc." Since then, Carnahan has occasionally dipped back into seriousness with entries like the criminally underrated "The Grey." But it's clear his heart belongs to pulpy trash where everyone is an ass, and everyone's got a gun. And there's certainly nothing wrong with that. When I say "trash," I say so lovingly. There's something refreshing about a trashy movie that knows it's trash and has no intention of being anything else. Carnahan's latest is "Copshop," which often feels like the smaller budgeted cousin to "Smokin' Aces." It's not a particularly great movie, and there's nothing here you probably haven't seen in half a dozen other action pics. And yet, there's a dirtbag charm to what Carnahan has cooked up here. You may not love what "Copshop" is doing, but you've gotta respect it. Here is a movie that knows exactly what it wants to do, and does it. It's a story of bad men, crooked cops, deep-seated corruption, and lots and lots of gunfire.
As "Copshop" kicks off, well-dressed hustler Teddy Murretto (Frank Grillo, sporting a man bun) has just gotten himself arrested for punching out rookie cop Valerie Young (Alexis Louder). The punch was deliberate because, unlike most people, Teddy wants to get locked up in jail. But he's about to have some company, because a wildly drunk man crashes his car into a cop car and ends up in the cell right next to Teddy's. But the drunk isn't really drunk. He's actually well-known hitman Bob Viddick, played by reigning B-movie king Gerard Butler. Viddick has been sent to kill Teddy because Teddy got in over his head working for some corrupt officials. He also stole some money, which is always a no-no in the criminal underworld.
Grillo and Butler have both played these kinds of roles before, and it's fun to watch them shout vulgarities at each other. The two men have just the right amount of sleazy charm, with Grillo here looking like a Vegas magician and Butler ruddy and burly. This is almost like the trash movie version of De Niro and Pacino teaming up for "Heat," and there's probably considerable crossover between fans of Grillo and Butler and their particular brand of tough-guy acting.
Before Bob can get to Teddy, things go south rather quickly. A corrupt cop inside the police station starts bumping off his fellow officers, and then yet another hitman arrives. That would be the psychotic Anthony Lamb, played with scene-stealing gusto by Toby Huss. Huss' unhinged performance ends up stealing a lot of the limelight from Butler and Grillo, but that's not such a bad thing -- it's a lot of fun to watch him act like a nutjob.
Soon, all the cops at the station are dead except Valerie, who has to decide if she can trust either Bob or Teddy before Lamb kills them all. And thus the stage is set for a one-location stand-off akin to John Carpenter's "Assault on Precinct 13," or the horror flick "Demon Knight," which feels like it would make a great double-feature with "Copshop." Eventually, the film will have to give us what we really want -- Grillo vs. Butler: Dawn of Angry Beard Guys. But first, they'll have to survive long enough.
I want to be very clear: "Copshop" is a rather simple movie. For all its twists and turns and flashbacks, the whole thing boils down to a story about violent men trying to kill each other while a female cop is caught in the middle. And that's fine! There's nothing wrong with simplicity, and I have a feeling fans of trashy actioners of yesteryear will get a kick out of how stripped-down Carnahan has made this thing. Those with a thirst for constant gunfire and torrents of blood are going to get what they want.
But none of this results in "Copshop" being as good as it could be. Carnahan has a knack for stylish action, and all the pieces are in place here for something special. But "Copshop" never quite gets there. While Alexis Louder brings plenty of verve to her part, her character just isn't very interesting. And as fun as it is to watch Butler and Grillo spar, the movie keeps them apart way too long. Butler spends almost the entire movie sitting on the floor handcuffed to some prison bars. When he's finally let out we get to watch him kick into gear, but it comes a little too late. The script, by Carnahan and Kurt McLeod, also doesn't seem to have a grasp on who Grillo's Teddy is, and what his motivations are.
But the target audience for "Copshop" isn't going to care about those things. They want to watch Gerard Butler fire a shotgun repeatedly into someone's face, and they're going to get that here. They're also going to get man bun Frank Grillo and over-the-top murderer Toby Huss, and all of that stuff will likely congeal into a kind of fried cheese entertainment. In the end, "Copshop" is aggressively okay, and that'll probably be more than enough for most viewers.
/Film Rating: 6 out of 10
Read this next: 'Copshop' Trailer: Gerard Butler Vs. Frank Grillo In The Battle Of The B-Movie Kings
The post Copshop Review: Gerard Butler and Frank Grillo Face Off In Joe Carnahan's Trashy, Fun Actioner appeared first on /Film.
ATOM RPG: Trudograd, the standalone follow-up to the post-apocalyptic, Fallout-inspired ATOM RPG, is here, available on Steam and GOG for $10.99 or your regional equivalent. Initially positioned as a smaller-scale project, following over a year of early access, Trudograd now features an expansive city with over 45 locations, 200 quests and 300 characters.
Here's the official launch trailer:
And a quick overview of the game's content and its special editions:
Greetings, friends!
The moment has come and ATOM RPG: Trudograd has finally been released from Early Access.
We want to use this opportunity to once again state how thankful we are for your ceaseless support, and we can’t wait to read your reviews, critiques, new ideas and suggestions. Trudograd will still grow and develop, so feedback is paramount even after the release.
If you ever stumble upon a bug, please report it on the Steam forum or by sending us your save game to support [at] atomrpg.com
However, we must warn you that the fact that save files made in Early Access no longer work in 1.0 is not a bug. It is a regrettable, yet completely standard and very important measure made by us in order to guarantee quality support and avoid current and future technological problems with the game.
Apart from that, our team will be on 24\7 stand-by to read your reports and improve the game if any errors are found.
Now, let’s talk about what awaits you in Trudograd. Planned as a small DLC, this game quickly grew thanks to your suggestions, and currently boasts the following traits:...And many more additions that make Trudograd a great single player RPG experience!
- Ability to continue playing as your ATOM RPG character - for this you must make a save file after beating ATOM RPG’s last boss and upload it into Trudograd via a helpful menu;
- A vast open world, containing 45+ populated locations, from a snowy post apocalyptic megapolis and its outskirts to secret Soviet military bunkers, a large pirate tanker in the frozen sea and a mysterious island, among many more;
- 30+ combat-only locations where players will get to fight tens of foe varieties from mercenaries to merciless mutants;
- 300+ characters, each with a unique portrait and branching dialogue;
- 200+ quests, most with multiple solutions and outcomes;
- Fully voiced visual text quests with branching plots and unique hand made artwork;
- 100+ models of distinct weaponry with 75+ weapon mods for further customization;
- 3 unique powered Soviet-style exoskeleton armor suits, with 20+ ways to customize and modify them for any playstyle;
- 45+ hours of gameplay with heightened replayability compared to our studio’s first game;
- Original soundtrack;
Now we want to tell you about all the new packs, kits and bundles you might see on our game’s page.
This did not happen often, however we did get messages from people saying they want to wait until the release of Trudograd to check out our original game, ATOM RPG. Probably in order to play both titles one straight after another. For those folks, we have created the special ATOM RPG 2-in-1 Edition which features both of our studio’s games. It being a bundle makes it easier to purchase, and allowed us to add a special little discount to boot!
Also, just like with ATOM RPG, we have decided to make an optional purely cosmetic DLC for Trudograd, called the Supporter Pack. This kit was made solely for people who wish to support our studio further even after buying our game. The items in it are purely cosmetic and do not affect the player’s experience. They are only there as a small gift of gratitude for additional support, which is always greatly appreciated. Thank you so much!
Finally, as you know, those of you who supported us in Early Access, received a free cosmetic DLC called Veteran’s Pack.
For those of you who missed this opportunity but still want to have something similar to it, or simply wish to support us, we have made the War Supply Pack, which features similar items with similar functions.
Just as before, nothing in the War Supply Pack will change, add to or improve your gaming experience with Trudograd. It is simply a cosmetic addition made in thanks for purely optional, additional support.
We really hope you enjoy our game!
Welcome to Trudograd! And let there be… ATOM!
What is undead will never die -- at least, not at the movies. Shambling restlessly out of their graves and into our popular culture's collective unconscious, zombies have endured throughout the decades as an essential horror symbol.
Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that filmmakers continue to unearth fresh, frightening spins on what amounts to an existential threat. Mass destruction and social decay go hand-in-hand with zombies, whose shiftless masses inevitably overwhelm any semblance of civilization. In corrupting the ideas of death and resurrection, zombies can be read along religious lines as an apocalyptic reckoning. On a socioeconomic level, what is a zombie if not a soulless, braindead consumer, symptomatic of the larger systems that make slaves of us all?
The zombie, in other words, is both a rich, multi-faceted metaphor and also an objectively terrifying concept, even on a surface level. On this list of 11 great zombie movies now streaming on Netflix, you'll find intimate and character-driven dramas, action-packed epics, and even a surprisingly touching animated feature -- the spread of which speaks, above all else, to the staying power of the walking dead.
Australia's arid Outback serves as the unusually haunting backdrop to a zombie outbreak in Netflix's "Cargo," which takes a restrained, character-driven approach to its central apocalypse.
At the center of this quietly philosophical story is Andy Rose (Martin Freeman, of "Sherlock" and the Hobbit trilogy), who must navigate the dangerous new normal of Australia's zombie-infested interior with his wife Kay (Susie Porter) and infant daughter Rosie. As "Cargo" opens, the trio are traveling down river on a houseboat, running low on supplies and conflicted about where to go next. Through a series of misfortunes, Andy ends up roaming the Outback with Rosie strapped to his back in a race against time to find shelter and evade hordes of ravenous brain-eaters. Eventually, his story intersects with that of a young Aboriginal woman named Thoomi (Simone Landers), who's hiding her infected father from the rest of her community, aware that they plan to track down and exterminate all zombies.
With its red dirt and heat-cracked, sun-scorched earth, there's a primordial mysticism to Australia's interior that's inspired many a cinematic masterpiece, from George Miller's "Mad Max" to Nicolas Roeg's "Walkabout" (the breakout star of which, Australian film icon David Gulpilil, makes a supporting appearance in "Cargo"). As human-sized dramas play out against its endless sprawl, the Outback suggests an elemental collision of civilization and savagery. It's a thematically rich and satisfying location in which to explore a zombie outbreak that frequently forces survivors into morally questionable, potentially soul-corrupting positions.
Before DC married his maximal sensibilities to the superhero genre, Zack Snyder delivered one of the great modern zombie movies in 2004's "Dawn of the Dead." Steeped in the thematic subtext of George A. Romero's original, yet faster on its feet, it was a lean, mean, just-right reboot. Everything's since changed for Snyder, and his grand return to zombie horror is suitably scaled up, turning the Vegas strip into a hive of undead depravity.
The opening credits sequence (Snyder's specialty, as fans of "Watchmen" will attest) presents this takeover as a series of slow-motion tableaux: casino patrons hit the jackpot then get ripped apart, an undead Elvis impersonator is crushed by a collapsing replica of the Eiffel Tower, and aircraft explode against skyscrapers as the city descends into chaos. Set to a cover of "Viva Las Vegas" by Richard Cheese (who covered Disturbed's "Down with the Sickness" in Snyder's "Dawn"), the sequence establishes a tone of bitter, nihilistic irony preserved by the film's heist storyline.
As Dave Bautista's haunted mercenary leads a team to lift $200 million from a casino basement, "Army of the Dead" throws all manner of zombie tigers and horses in his path, though the thieves are most imperiled by an undead king and queen, who reign over this bloodthirsty civilization in Sin City's ruins. "Army of the Dead" is Snyder's zombie epic: splashy, sensational, overindulgent carnage on a huge canvas, as only one of Hollywood's most inspired visual stylists could orchestrate.
Looking for a zombie thriller that can channel the COVID era's sense of isolation and claustrophobia? Cho Il-hyung's "#Alive" will satisfy that particular craving. Tight as a drum and flavored by fine performances, this small-scale siege picture finds Oh Joon-wo (Yoo Ah-in, best known for his scene-stealing role in "Burning") holed up in his apartment as a mysterious infection tears through the outside world. A video game streamer, Joon-wo initially attempts to sit out the apocalypse, even as his supplies dwindle and his hopes of rescue soon follow.
Close to ending it all, Joon-wo eventually comes into contact with Kim Yoo-bin (Park Shin-hye), a mysterious and dry-witted woman who helps him regain the will to survive. But with zombies swarming the apartment complex on all sides, what kind of life is left for either of these two survivors to lead?
As hinted at by the hashtag in its title, "#Alive" explores the digitized, heavily commodified social realities of Korean millennial culture as much as it does the universal panic and uncertainty of a global pandemic. And through Yoo's committed, emotional lead performance, the film is as much as a character study as it is a horror-thriller. But the real appeal of "#Alive" is in the low-key ingenuity of its execution; Cho, making his feature filmmaking debut, works wonders with drone footage in the film's most heart-in-mouth sequence, and its use of technology feels interwoven with the protagonist's journey in ways spine-tingling and dramatically satisfying.
In Juan Antonio de la Riva's "Ladronas de Almas" ("Soul Robbers"), insurgents strike out during the Mexican War for Independence in search of lost gold. Happening upon a hacienda populated only by wheelchair-bound owner Agustín Cordero (Ricardo Dalmacci), his lovely daughters Maria (Sofía Sisniega), Roberta (Natasha Dupeyrón), and Camila (Ana Sofía Durán), and Haitian servant Indalesio (Harding Junior), the looters resolve to help themselves to both the treasure and the hacienda's seemingly defenseless women.
But as the insurgents soon discover, these women command an army of the dead, turning an easy conquest into a terrifying battle for survival. A classy and invigorating throwback to the subtle, supernatural chillers that Val Lewton oversaw for RKO Studios in the '40s, "Ladronas de Almas" is most refreshing in its simplicity and remarkably high production values. De la Riva's slick and brooding camerawork, coupled with the film's penchant for evocative shadow play, add an air of lingering, uncanny mystery to the proceedings.
The story, meanwhile, suggests a playful cross between "The Beguiled" and "I Walked with a Zombie," even as stagey performances and special effects heighten the film's melodramatic feel. Ultimately, "Ladronas de Almas" feels most like an extended episode of an forgotten Mexican soap opera, or a lost relic of the country's mid-20th century boom, when the likes of Fernando Méndez, Rafael Baledón, and Chano Urueta were ushering in a golden age of horror, inspired by both RKO's black-and-white chillers and Hammer's gorier gothics.
Netflix's South Korean period horror epic "Kingdom" is one of the very best television series to emerge from the peak-TV zombie craze first precipitated by AMC's "The Walking Dead." Set in Korea's medieval Joseon period, "Kingdom" channels all the palace intrigue of "Game of Thrones" without its rushed later-season plotting; at least initially, "Kingdom" centers on the efforts of Crown Prince Lee Chang (Ju Hi-hoon) to determine the source of an unnatural plague that's turning his dead countrymen into reanimated corpses.
Filled with fierce sword-fighting, period-accurate costuming, and genuinely terrifying zombie action (these undead ravagers are nocturnal and move ferociously fast to attack their prey), "Kingdom" is an epic new take on the zombie mythos. Even better is feature-length spinoff "Kingdom: Ashin of the North," which tells the story of a mysterious woman (Jun Ji-hyun) whom Lee Chang encounters at the end of the show's first season.
Dark and thrilling, "Ashin of the North" is a standalone war epic and a fascinating villain origin story, focusing on Ashin's discovery of a resurrection flower that can bring the dead back to life, as well as the systemic mistreatment she endures as a second-class citizen in Joseon's borderlands. After Ashin (played as a child by Kim Shi-a) survives a vicious slaughter that wipes out her family, she dedicates herself to the art of vengeance, becoming a master archer and traveling down a path that will ultimately transform the kingdom forever.
In the third "Resident Evil" installment, Milla Jovovich's kinetic action heroine Alice battles her way across the Mojave Desert in hopes of escaping the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is the continental United States. Specifically, she's set her sights on a safe haven in far-away Alaska. But when the villainous Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen) tracks Alice down near Las Vegas, he brings the zombie apocalypse to her, forcing Alice to launch a counterattack against the evil Umbrella Corporation. Inspired by George Miller's "Mad Max" and other such dystopian road epics, "Extinction" pits Alice against zombified dogs (in an early sequence indebted to "The Hills Have Eyes") and bloodthirsty zombie crows (a twisted homage to "The Birds"), as well as the requisite hordes of mutated, humanoid undead.
"Resident Evil" is the horror franchise most overdue for a critical reappraisal, and two of its installments appear on this list. "Extinction" is one of only two entries not helmed by series architect Paul W.S. Anderson (who just wrote the script this time around), though director Russell Mulcahy brings to the table the same technical bravura and surreal visual aesthetic he previously pioneered across the "Highlander" films and "Ricochet," not to mention countless '80s music videos. Standing in contrast to the claustrophobic industrial confines that dominate Anderson's "Resident Evil" films, "Extinction" is a surprisingly expansive, ambitious mid-franchise entry, and is all the better for it.
Laika, the award-winning stop-motion studio behind "Missing Link" and "Kubo & the Two Strings," delivered a Halloween classic with 2012's "ParaNorman." Laika's second feature, following 2009's masterfully morbid "Coraline," is set in the small town of Blithe Hollow (modeled after creaky colonial burgs like Salem, Massachusetts) and follows a young boy who sees dead people. Rather than recoil from this ability, Norman (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee) has embraced it, carrying on a friendship with his deceased grandmother (Elaine Stritch) and other friendly neighborhood ghosts. When a witch's curse causes the dead to rise, terrorizing clueless townspeople, it's up to Norman and his allies (including his sister, voiced by Anna Kendrick, and a cheerfully dim jock played by Casey Affleck) to save the day.
Laika's handcrafted animation, overseen by directors Sam Fell and Chris Butler, grows evermore dazzling as "ParaNorman" guides its characters around town and into a dark forest, where they must contend with hordes of the undead as well as a young witch (Jodelle Ferland) and an angry mob. More enthusiastically comical than "Coraline," yet shot through with much of the same eerie beauty, "ParaNorman" is a marvelous stop-motion contraption: spooky enough to scare the kids, but never gruesome enough to wipe the awestruck smiles off their faces. And it's through the film's menagerie of macabre characters, from slack-jawed zombies to ectoplasmic specters, that Laika's artists set their imaginations most free to play. An ode to the monster movies of yore, "ParaNorman" is wickedly smart and endearing.
"Resident Evil" stalwart Paul W.S. Anderson returned to helm the fourth entry in the series, a direct sequel to "Extinction" and the first installment in the franchise to utilize slow motion and 3D. No extraneous follow-up, "Afterlife" resuscitates "Resident Evil" in style, launching a new trilogy even as Anderson exploits the stereoscopic format to bring audiences virtually inside his frame. Hasty post-production conversions to 3D became increasingly common throughout the 2010s; this wasn't the case with "Afterlife," a film Anderson crafted to feature endless tunnels, elevator shafts, and vast landscapes specifically so that his camera rig could make each one burst off the screen.
All the "Resident Evil" movies are chase films, as Alice (Milla Jovovich) sprints through a booby-trapped, zombie-infested setpieces with the tactical efficiency of a game piece navigating a deadly board. "Afterlife" follows in that tradition, with Alice darting between the smoldering ruins of a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles and eventually coming face-to-face with Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts), monstrous head of the Umbrella Corporation.
Along the way, Anderson executes many of the franchise's best action sequences, from an acrobatic opening raid on Umbrella's Tokyo headquarters to the climactic fight against Wesker, which includes a sensational beat involving falling glass, Alice's high kick, and a mutated zombie dog. But look to the film's bathroom brawl, in which Alice and Ali Larter's Claire Redfield square off against a brawny Axeman, for a prime example of Anderson's direction firing on all cylinders, spatially positioning audiences inside his viscerally kinetic mayhem.
Canadian zombie thrillers are all the rage these days, from Jeff Barnaby's Indigenous horror-thriller "Blood Quantum" (available on Shudder) to Bruce McDonald's witty, small-scale "Pontypool" (available on Sling). One of the very best on Netflix is Robin Aubert's conceptually bold and tonally assured "Ravenous", a reimagining of zombie-apocalypse thrillers in which a group of eccentric Quebecois survivors hide out from undead hordes in the once-bucolic countryside.
Across its first hour, "Ravenous" unspools as a series of interconnected vignettes, as disparate survivors haphazardly move through civilization's remains in hopes of finding a theoretical safe haven. Lost in the woods, an elderly man (Luc Proulx) mourns the infected family members he shot. In a nearby village, a businesswoman (Brigitte Poupart) unlocks her inner slayer. Elsewhere, a young woman (Monia Chokri) defiantly soldiers on through the landscape, accordion in hand. Gradually, these characters intersect and form a rag-tag unit, with a self-styled hero (Marc-André Grondin) leading them toward one last stand at a remote farmstead.
Scary, melancholic, and rewardingly meditative, Aubert's genre-bending vision of a zombie apocalypse is rife with surreal touches, such as the unnerving piles of furniture stacked high by the walking dead. Could these zombies retain some vestige of their humanity? Through these immense stacks, are they memorializing what they once were? In its elliptical, spiritually minded style, the film is as inspired by cinematic masters Robert Bresson, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Michelangelo Antonioni as it is the political, dramatically forceful horror of George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead."
Trey Edward Shults emerged with the agonized family portrait "Krisha" before cementing his status as a premier chronicler of such scenarios with "It Comes at Night" and "Waves," two equally foreboding and emotionally seismic studies of families in crisis. Still his most unsettling work, "It Comes to Night" grafts the painful truths about familial bonds under pressure onto a post-apocalyptic setup, making for one of the most effective horror films in recent years.
After an infectious disease sweeps across the globe, one family -- husband Paul (Joel Edgerton), wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo), and son Travis (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.) -- hides out at a remote house deep in the woods. Although they're insulated from the plague, fear has crept into this family structure, with Paul wielding authoritarian power over their new normal in hopes of keeping everyone alive. When Will (Christopher Abbott) breaks into the house seeking refuge for his family, Sarah convinces Paul to spare his life. But once Paul reluctantly allows Will, his wife Kim (Riley Keough), and his young son Andrew to stay with them, Travis forms a bond with Kim that puts his father on edge.
Paul's paranoia fuels "It Comes at Night," as Shults turns the insides of this supposed sanctuary into a waking nightmare. Dread-soaked atmosphere, dead-eyed zombies dribbling black bile from their mouths, and the deep-seated terror of a family turning against itself all factor into the film's inexorable, unshakeable sense of tension.
A ghost story so gorgeously enigmatic it appears to slip through one's fingers even as it lingers in the mind, "Atlantics" is extraordinary. That the film is the debut feature of French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop only makes its lyrical tone more breathtaking. Blending unsparing class critique with doomed romance, magical realism, and images of startling beauty, it's a hauntingly powerful work by a formidable artist.
Set in Dakar, Senegal, "Atlantics" focuses on Ada (Mama Sané), who's engaged to marry wealthy suitor Omar (Babacar Sylla) but remains enamored of Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré), a construction worker owed four months' wages by his exploitative boss (Diankou Sembene). Souleiman sets off into the North Atlantic, one of countless refugees fleeing the coastal city of Dakar in hopes of securing a better future; it's later reported that his boat has capsized with no survivors. But Souleiman isn't gone, not entirely; as a fire ruins Ada's wedding and an unexplained fever spreads through Dakar, Ada's mourning takes on supernatural dimensions.
To say more would be to deny "Atlantics" the staggering force of its most surprising moments, but it's worth noting that the film is out to return the concept of the zombie to its roots as a symbol of the African diaspora. All that folklore of bodies forcibly dispossessed of their souls, condemned to wander the earth, is reclaimed by Diop's film, which turns the undead into avatars of justice, enacting a supernatural reckoning on those who once drove them into the sea.
Read this next: 'Army Of The Dead' Star Dave Bautista On Bringing Emotion To A Zombie Movie And The Future Of Drax In The MCU [Interview]
The post The 11 best zombie movies you can watch on Netflix right now appeared first on /Film.
James Wan is back in the horror game. Carrying his "Aquaman" clout straight into the bonkers genre project that he's seemingly always longed to do, the "Insidious" director has returned to the horror game with a big swing in the form of "Malignant." In a chat with Bloody Disgusting, Wan credits a handful of Italian and horror-centric directors, calling his latest "my version of a Giallo." He applies an apt metaphor to elaborate:
"The best way I describe 'Malignant' is, growing up in the late '80s and '90s when I would go to the video store -- when video stores were still around -- we would go to the video store. I would go all the way to the back of the video store to the horror section because that's where they usually keep the horror section. They were too embarrassed to have it upfront. And then, once I get to that section, I would venture even deeper into the horror section, into the back shelves, and take down a video cover that I've never seen before, but the cover was so cool. I don't know what the movie is. That is how I describe 'Malignant.' 'Malignant' is that movie that I take from the back shelves."
Having beheld it in the merciful A/C of my local movie theater on a sweltering, triple-digit weekend, I can gleefully confirm that Malignant is indeed that back shelf type of movie. But what if you've never ventured that far into the corners of that mom-and-pop video shop, or (my condolences) the video store died long before you had a chance to browse its aisles? We've got you covered! Longtime horror fans have probably seen most of these. But if nothing else, this should prompt a revisit before dusting off the Letterboxd app.
If you're not a longtime horror fan but you want more of the theatre bizarre that Wan taps into, welcome and read on.
Where To Stream: Shudder, AMC+, TubiTV
The best recommendation will come straight from the horse's mouth, and so we'll turn back to Bloody Disgusting where the Australian writer-director name-drops Dario Argento and one of his most "out-there" films, "Phenomena." Perhaps during your "Malignant" screening, you heard Joseph Bishara's strings and synth-heavy score alongside the increasingly unsettling visuals, and you leaned forward in your seat. If those vibes hit you right, then you'll want to check out Dario Argento's mid-career 1985 effort.
"Phenomena" follows a young woman, played by Jennifer Connelly ("The Labyrinth," "Requiem For A Dream"), at a boarding school who realizes that she has psychic powers, and uses them to track down a killer. Neither this nor the synopsis of "Malignant" — "Madison is paralyzed by shocking visions of grisly murders, and her torment worsens as she discovers that these waking dreams are in fact terrifying realities," according to IMDb — adequately showcase the insanity of each film's third act, but the two share striking macabre imagery, choice needle drops, and arresting compositions.
A note: a truncated cut of the film with the alternate title of "Creepers" is floating around. That's generally not the one you want. You want the near-two-hour runtime of "Phenomena," the one with a chimpanzee and bug minions and all of the weird goodies that make the normies flee from the theater.
For further viewing: Argento's "Opera" (1987), and Lamberto Bava's "A Blade in the Dark" (1983).
Where To Stream: Hulu
Wan has done this before, you know. Some of his past works don't drip-feed the tension so much as they strap you in and tell you to hold onto your butts.
On the action side of things, Wan's "Death Wish" riff "Death Sentence" from 2007 carries unforgiving energy with every sawed-off shotgun blast, while "Dead Silence" opts to ratchet up the moody Hammer Horror atmosphere alongside its increasingly absurd premise: a creepy ventriloquist doll might be connected to a growing number of deaths in a small town. Wan and co-writer Leigh Whannell churned this out on the heels of their success with "Saw," and both purport to have had a negative studio experience with "Dead Silence." Despite the experience, Wan's zealous fingerprints cover the over-the-top climax of "Malignant" in a similar fashion and refuse to let go until you've got ample nightmare fuel, whether it's a backward-running assassin or a body missing a tongue.
For further viewing in the same high-octane horror ballpark, try Sam Raimi's 2009 horror-comedy "Drag Me To Hell."
Where To Stream: Amazon Prime Video, Shudder, Hoopla, AMC+, TubiTV, The Roku Channel
I can hear the comments now. "Men have trauma, too! Where are the horror movies that work through that?" You're in luck because Adam Egypt Mortimer has done just that with his 2019 feature-length bloodletting exercise "Daniel Isn't Real."
Based on Brian DeLeeuw's novel "In This Way I Was Saved," the story is about college student Luke (Miles Robbins) and his imaginary friend. Daniel (the friend, played by Patrick Schwarzenegger) may not be real, but he was useful for young Luke in the aftermath of a traumatic event. His return during a troubled period of Luke's adult life causes just as many problems as Gabriel does for Maddie, but this is a SpectreVision joint so they're going to get weird with it. Daniel's true form plays more in the cosmic horror sandbox, with incredible makeup FX and intense performances from a stellar cast.
"Intense" turn you off? Want something lighter but still focused on a hurt man hurting people? You want to try "Psychic Killer," Ray Danton's 1973 revenge horror that miraculously got a PG rating from the MPAA in spite of its nudity and blood. Bonus for horror heads: Neville Brand (he of Tobe Hooper's "Eaten Alive") shows up for a memorable scene involving a butcher's shop!
Where To Stream: Shudder, Fandor Amazon Channel, AMC+, Arrow
One source of power for "Malignant" is its sincere pathos. Wrapped up within the grotesquery of Maddie's ordeal is the beauty of her relationship with her sister, Sydney (Maddie Hasson), the only one who believes her when the bodies start dropping. In this cruel world, Sydney's advocacy for someone who acts monstrous works as a tether for all of the bloodshed surrounding them.
For similar vibes, look no further than Frank Henenlotter's 1982 cult classic, "Basket Case." The story entails the relationship between a young man and his deformed twin brother (born conjoined but separated at birth) that he keeps in a wicker basket, all on the grimy streets of early '80s New York. Shot on 16mm film with a rock-bottom budget of $35,000, Henenlotter's exploitation B-movie is a grindhouse gem that critic Rex Reed famously called "The sickest movie ever made!"
Where To Stream: Shudder, DIRECTV, Spectrum On Demand, AMC+
Wan is not the only contemporary horror director who goes balls-to-the-wall for his traumatized characters. Turkish filmmaker Can Evrenol revels in putting his protagonists on the rack and treating its crank like a fidget spinner, as he does with poor, poor Holly (Clémentine Poidatz) in his 2017 sophomore effort "Housewife."
Holly is hurting in a dead marriage and still wrestling with childhood trauma when she happens upon a mysterious group that offers answers. But there's something vaguely sinister about the Umbrella of Love and Light, and as Holly engages with them further, her grip on reality loosens, culminating in a final festival of mayhem just as memorable as that of "Malignant."
If the potent blend of gore and hysterics does something for you, go ahead and add Evrenol's 2016 bonkers-in-Yonkers debut feature "Baskin" to your watchlist, along with Robert Altman's '72 art thriller "Images" and Francesco Barilli's 1974 psych-horror (and giallo, depending on who you ask) "The Perfume of the Lady in Black."
Read this next: Malignant Review: James Wan Goes Wild With His Bloody, Bonkers Return To Horror
The post 5 Horror Movies to Stream If You Loved Malignant appeared first on /Film.
Deathloop is the coolest escape room I’ve ever experienced. That may not sound like much, considering plenty of escape rooms are cheesy monuments to corporate team-building exercises and gentrification, but I mean it as a compliment. Deathloop uses the fundamentals of old-school locked-room mysteries to deliver a rich and stylish universe driven by intrigue, action and strategy. The main difference between Deathloop and an actual escape room is, well, all the death.
Unsurprisingly, there’s a fair amount of dying in Deathloop. Dying is a core mechanic of the game, and it’s the first thing players actually do in the campaign, called Break the Loop. The opening scene has Colt, the main character, on his back with a murderous woman called Julianna sitting on top of him, pressing a massive blade to his chest. After some banter, she plunges the knife into Colt’s heart, and he sputters and dies.
And then the game begins. Colt awakens on a cold, empty beach littered with bottles, and he makes his way to a compound built into the side of the sea wall. As he walks, glowing words appear around the environment, as if a loved one is leaving words of encouragement and warning for him. Colt is confused — he doesn’t even know his own name at this point, let alone how he got here or who’s trying to talk to him.
The identity of the message-writer is just one of a dozen or so core mysteries in Deathloop, and these are the driving force of the campaign. Colt’s job is to explore Blackreef, the island where he’s been trapped in an infinite respawn cycle, and learn as much about its leaders and technology as possible, in order to burn it all down. Blackreef is a retrofuturistic bubble populated by residents who split their time between partying and violently defending their consequence-free way of life, and Colt can either sneak or shoot his way through their ranks.
In action, Deathloop feels a lot like Dishonored (of course), with a chaser of We Happy Few and Quadrilateral Cowboy. It’s mechanically mature and narratively dense, but best of all, it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Deathloop is one of the few first-person action games that I can successfully play in stealth mode, silently taking down enemies, hacking turrets and sniping from the rooftops in order to stay alive. Usually with games like this — I’m thinking Deus Ex and Far Cry — I intend to play stealthily, but it doesn’t work out. I get too close to an enemy, or miss my headshot, or forget about that security camera, and I end up just throwing a grenade and emptying my magazine, recklessly running into danger.
Deathloop invites the kind of stealth that I can sustain. The environments are endlessly climbable, offering plenty of vantage points for Colt to survey and mark his enemies, tracking their movements and revealing the kinds of weapons they’re carrying. If something in Deathloop looks scalable, it likely is, opening up the game world in all directions. Additionally, if I accidentally alert the enemies in one location, I don’t feel like I have to abandon my plans and roll in guns blazing. Generally speaking, I can find some cover, pick off the folks that follow me, and return to the rest of the mission in stealth mode. My favorite weapons in these moments are the Tribunal and the PT-6 Spiker, both of which are silent and deliver instant-kill headshots.
I’d like to blame the success of Deathloop’s stealth mechanics on my own skills or the masterful sense of level design coming out of Arkane Studios, but it might just be the game’s hit-or-miss AI. There are times it feels too easy to sneak up on enemies, and moments when they fail to react appropriately to Colt’s presence, standing still for seconds too long, piling up in hallways or ignoring nearby scuffles. It’s not every encounter, and there are still plenty of moments when I’m bested by the NPCs, but it’s enough that I’d classify the enemy AI in Deathloop as OK, rather than good.
Along his way, Colt picks up a variety of weapons and ultra-high-tech artifacts that grant him special abilities and perks. There are Trinkets, which are small glowing items that enhance whatever gun they’re attached to, and Slabs, which give Colt — and his enemies — superhuman powers like invisibility, telekinesis and short-distance teleportation. Once collected, the Slabs are swappable in Colt's loadout, and they tend to be tons of fun.
Blackreef is controlled by eight Visionaries of the AEON Program, one of whom is Julianna, and the only way to escape the island is for Colt to kill them all in a single day, breaking the loop. However, it’s not as simple as speedrunning through Blackreef in order to take them all out. Colt has deep ties to the AEON Program and the Visionaries all keep their own schedules, meaning a successful assassination run will require hours of information-gathering and strategizing. And, it turns out, dying.
Once he gets going, Colt is able to die twice during any playthrough with few consequences; he’s simply transported to a previous location and allowed to keep going, health restored. On the third death, however, he’s sent back to that bottle-lined beach, resources depleted.
He also loses his gear after a full day of activity, regardless of progress. Deathloop is divided into four times — morning, noon, afternoon and night — and after each complete sequence, Colt is beached. Certain missions can only be completed at specific times of day, so players have to plan their attacks accordingly, either shifting time forward or simply delaying until the next loop.
Eventually, Colt gains the ability to carry some slabs, trinkets and weapons with him between loops, though he has to infuse the items he wants to keep with a resource called Residiuum. Colt can harvest Residiuum from the shiny, glitched-out objects in Blackreef, or by killing visionaries and absorbing their energy. Residiuum can then be applied to specific items in Colt's kit, holding them for good.
With all of these trinkets, slabs, weapons, Residiuum, visionaries and loops, there’s a lot to keep tabs on in Deathlooop. The amount of stuff in the game is overwhelming at times, and it’s complicated by an intense plot filled with overlapping, time-bending mysteries. Small scraps of paper and brief audio recordings often contain crucial bits of information, rewarding players who obsessively explore every bookshelf, desk and dead-end with reams of notes and leads. The game does a good job of organizing all of these details in the resource-management screen, but overall, Deathloop demands full and complete attention, lest you completely lose the plot.
For those who pay attention, the story and environment of Blackreef unravels beautifully, with important secrets hidden in plain view, and new parts of the world opening and closing depending on the time of day. From this perspective, the density of things to collect, use and learn in Deathloop makes perfect sense. This game is built on the idea of replaying the same four maps again and again — Colt needs something new to do every time.
Julianna is a charming constant in Deathloop, generally talking shit and fleshing out the background of Blackreef. She’s also the star of the game’s second mode, Protect the Loop. Here, players are able to invade the games of friends or strangers, playing as Julianna and hunting down Colt as he tries to complete a mission. She has her own loadout, trinkets and slabs, including a masquerade ability that lets her trade appearances with allied NPCs — meaning, everyone except Colt.
Protect the Loop is marked by long periods of silence and inactivity, followed by furious gunfire and death. Colt can take any route he wants through the various maps, and Julianna has to actively hunt him down or wait for him to appear near the objective. She may be able to disguise herself, but she only has one life, while Colt has to die three times to make it final. This results in a delicious cat-and-mouse game that’s different with each new player.
That said, Protect the Loop is also where I’ve encountered the most technical issues. I played on PS5, and one round crashed fully right after launching, while two more were completely unplayable from my end, repeatedly setting my Julianna back a few frames until Colt finally showed up and shot her. That’s in comparison with four glitch-free rounds. My recommendation here is to use an ethernet cable, rather than Wi-Fi, and make sure your friends do, too.
Deathloop is incredibly dense, but it’s also inherently forgiving. Relying on death as a mechanic in Break the Loop takes the sting out of failing a cycle or two, since retrying is built into the narrative. Colt uncovers helpful information in most of his runs, even when he ends up dead — like, dead dead — and it feels like there’s always something new to uncover in Blackreef, no matter how many times he returns to the same location. If it does ever get old, there’s always the option to Protect the Loop.
And then Break the Loop. And then Protect the Loop. And then Break the Loop.
You get the idea.
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The first trailer for the long-in-coming fourth Matrix film dropped last week, and it’s looking good—but were I trying to explain the premise of The Matrix Resurrections based only on that new footage, I’d probably wind up more or less describing The Matrix (the 1999 original, that is). Is this thing really a…
![[Steam] (DLC) Dead by Daylight DLC](https://external-preview.redd.it/oTXEAlumk8yRNzERk9xOXv7SHo0nDgN0_-KeQbtxI4E.jpg?width=320&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=239825ec5572f3c366e1569dfc5e0f90b6fe8be4 "[Steam] (DLC) Dead by Daylight DLC") |
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In this day and age, it's amazingly easy to be a cynic. It could be argued that remakes are lazy cash-ins, that they're a sign of the lack of original ideas left in cinema, or that they exist only to appease that sizable portion of the cinema-going audience that needs to see films in their native tongue, without subtitles.
That's true in a great many cases (I'm looking at you, "Jacob's Ladder," "Quarantine," and "The Fog"), and yet there are times when a remake is a golden opportunity to do something bigger and better, or to revisit an idea that never got the audience it deserved. In fact, it's surprisingly common to find examples of remakes that work really well -- there are even a handful that improve upon the original films (but don't worry; Gus Van Sant's critically loathed shot-for-shot remake of "Psycho," one of the most beloved movies ever made, will not be featured here). These are a few of them.
Based on the 1991 French spy comedy "La Totale!," "True Lies" is an oft-forgotten James Cameron film that follows the exploits of a husband and father who, unknown to his family, just happens to be a secret agent trying to save the world. Ignoring the fact that it's difficult to believe that somebody like Arnold Schwarzenegger could ever blend in as a normal husband and father, "True Lies," like the original, is a fun and entertaining romp; as you'd expect, Cameron ups the stakes with incredible stunt work and action set pieces.
History hasn't been particularly kind to "True Lies" -- a scene in which Arnold interrogates his wife (Jamie Lee Curtis) in secret and forces her to do a striptease comes across as abusive and creepy now, and it's yet another '90s action movie with generic Arab bad guys. That said, "True Lies" remains eminently watchable. Cameron regular Bill Paxton is clearly having the time of his life as a used-car salesman pretending to be a secret agent, and it sets itself up nicely for a sequel that sadly never materialized (although rumors about a TV spin-off still persist).
We're still waiting patiently for a decent movie adaptation of H. G. Wells' 1898 novel material set in the Victorian era. The BBC released a flawed and mediocre three-part TV adaptation of the book back in 2019, but nobody seems to have gotten it right quite yet.
Some movies get close, though. George Pal released the first "War of the Worlds" movie in 1953, giving it a contemporary setting and moving it to America. The beats are the same as those of the novel, but the aliens themselves are a disappointment -- rather than the distinctive tripods of the novel, they're piloting spaceships. Due to this, "War of the Worlds" feels like another, generic "Earth versus flying saucers" film of the '50s.
By contrast, Spielberg's 2005 update keeps the contemporary timeline and the American setting, but brings back the tripods -- vast and towering, with ominous and terrifying silhouettes. From the brutal and overwhelming first attack wave through to abrupt end, in which the Martians' war plans crumble as a direct result of their anti-vaccination mindset (If you've avoided spoilers for more than a century and I've ruined the ending, I can only apologize), Spielberg shows us the entire war. Tom Cruise, despite his star-power, plays a convincing everyman. It's not perfect -- Cruise and his son appear to possess either incredible luck or immortality -- but it'll do until the perfect Victorian adaption comes along.
This is an unusual one. The classic 1995 crime drama -- notorious for featuring the first proper dialogue scene between Robert De Niro and Al Pacino -- is a remake of one of writer-director Michael Mann's own movies. "L.A. Takedown," originally a two-part pilot episode for a proposed series, was reworked into a TV movie that aired in 1989.
Both "Heat" and "L.A. Takedown" tell the tale of a dedicated homicide detective who hunts down a gang of professional thieves led by an enigmatic boss. Both men are two sides of the same coin, and it's the interesting nature of their symbiotic relationship that forms the crux of the film -- interestingly, we have a certain sympathy with the villain, while the cop and his methods are far from perfect.
In hindsight, "L.A. Takedown" feels like a prototype. With the benefit of a $60 million budget, "Heat" is more refined, makes the most of newly introduced sub-plots, and has the significant star power of De Niro and Pacino behind it. The aforementioned scene between the two actors is cinema history; the iconic bank robbery is so well observed that it was used by the military to show how to effectively coordinate combat troops.
The 1954 novel "I Am Legend" had already been adapted twice for the big screen before, once as Vincent Price's "The Last Man on Earth," and again as Charlton Heston's "The Omega Man." All three movies share a common story: that of the last survivor on Earth after a plague has turned the rest of humanity into bestial creatures. The original two films, while fine, are flawed. The usually reliable Price was miscast in the first one, and the latter is weakened by underpowered antagonists.
There's no such danger in Will Smith's take on the story. Here, the "Darkseekers" are vampiric ghouls, shunning sunlight but armed with preternatural senses, speed, strength, and endurance. They hunt in packs and are genuinely terrifying, albeit a little over CGI-ed.
The Will Smith vehicle isn't without its flaws. The premise of the book is that the hero realizes that he has been the true villain all long; the ending of the 2007 movie removes this aspect completely (although the home video release does contain an alternate conclusion). Still, "I Am Legend" depicts a convincing dead Earth, and contains an excellent performance by Will Smith.
The original 1958 version of "The Fly" always towered over the other mad scientist films from the same era, elevated by both Vincent Price and a truly chilling ending that shows the other victim of the film's teleporter accident: a tiny fly with a human head who pleads for his life as he struggles to free himself from a spider's web.
Cronenberg takes that same premise -- a rogue fly in a teleporter pod causes trouble -- and gives it the body-horror twist at which the horror maestro excels. In the 1986 remake, rather than split the subject into two distinct entities, doomed scientist Seth Brundle starts to metamorphose, his DNA merging with that of the wayward musca domestica.
Not simply a great remake, but one of the best horror films of the '80s, "The Fly" is one of the more mainstream movies in Cronenberg's loaded portfolio. It's hard to think of anybody better than Jeff Goldblum for the role -- he brings just the right level of eccentricity to the film, but remains sympathetic enough throughout. The original is a great B-movie monster flick. The remake is a smart and sophisticated horror film with just enough "ick" to keep the gore-hounds happy.
The 1956 version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," based on the novel by author Jack Finney, is a stone-cold classic. Telling a subtler alien invasion story than audiences in the '50s were used to, it's a tale of conspiracy and paranoia. Humanity is being replaced by spores from space, which grow into duplicates that are indistinguishable from the original people, aside from the fact that they're emotionless. It's a striking, if unsubtle, political metaphor, calling out the supposed creep of communism and left-wing paranoia about the rise of McCarthyism.
The '70s remake treads a similar path, although we get to see the grisly pod-making process in all its gruesome detail. Like many films from its era, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is darkly nihilistic. The original ends on an optimistic note, with the hero, played by Kevin McCarthy, convincing others of the alien threat. The remake sees him cameo as the same character, although he meets with a darker fate. The bad guys won a lot in the '70s.
"The Body Snatchers" was revisited in 1993 by director Abel Ferrera, who made a smaller scale but surprisingly good movie, and again to lesser results in 2007's "The Invasion."
A remake of the 1978 Franco-Italian film "La Cage aux Folles," "The Birdcage" is a comedy about Albert and Armand, two flamboyant gay people who have to pretend to be a straight married couple to appease their son's fiancée's puritanical parents.
Both original and remake are excellent, with Mike Nichols' 1996 remake just edging ahead thanks to the perfect casting of Robin Williams and Nathan Lane. Lane is uproarious in a role originally intended for Williams, who turned it down due to having just filmed "Mrs. Doubtfire" (Lane spends almost the entire movie in drag).
The movie is a classic farce with all of the elements that genre entails: mistaken identities, slapstick, and an improbable situation that leads to increasingly outlandish comedic scenes. Robin Williams is as dependable as ever, reminding the audience what a great comedic talent we lost with a role that carries a surprising amount of poignancy. Gene Hackman and Dianne West play the conservative parents with great gusto, and there's a wonderful inspirational -- and surprisingly prescient -- theme to what initially seems like a throwaway comedy.
The first adaption of Robert Ludlum's 1980 novel was a two-part made-for-TV movie originally shown back in 1988 that starred Richard Chamberlain as the titular superspy. Both 2002 movie and TV series tread similar ground, with the protagonist trying to piece together his life after one of those bouts of amnesia that mostly seem to happen in movies. However, the TV version is less dark, and all its plotlines are neatly resolved at the end -- unlike the ambiguous conclusion of the first Damon movie, which led on to a number of sequels.
Chamberlain, always an excellent actor, is perfectly adequate as Bourne, and his film is a perfectly watchable spy romp. But Damon's movie has novel set pieces, a wonderfully convoluted plot, and -- most importantly -- redefined spy cinema for the new century. "The Bourne Identity" had a major influence on the Daniel Craig-led Bond reboot, which saw 007 move away from gadgetry and more towards the spycraft of Ian Fleming's original novels; without the success of "The Bourne Identity," we probably wouldn't have "Casino Royale," "Skyfall," and the rest.
"The Thing," a remake of the 1951 film "The Thing from Another World," based on the classic novella by John W. Campbell, is a masterpiece. The original movie is a competent enough science-fiction adventure, but radically changes the nature of the antagonist from the source material, and is the poorer film for it. See, in the 1951 version, the titular thing is a vegetative lifeform that feeds on blood -- one character calls it a "super carrot" -- and is basically reduced to a generic monster movie with a man in a costume.
By contrast, John Carpenter's remake takes the original's tight plot and crackling dialogue and reintroduces the novella's thawed-out foe. In doing so, Carpenter adds a level of paranoia and tension that the original struggles to maintain. Add in exemplary practical effects work, and Carpenter's version of the story is the superior one by far. It's closer to the source material, and remains a movie that holds up today (but let's not talk about the prequel).
One of the very first examples of film noir, 1941's "The Maltese Falcon" was released just a decade after the original. It's notable for being the first appearance of Humphrey Bogart as tough hard-boiled detective Sam Spade, whose character and demeanor would go on to be highly influential on the genre as a whole.
This remake is closer to the source material (a novel of the same name, published by Dashiell Hammett in 1930), and is by far the greater film in every regard, but the history behind why this was remade in the first place is interesting. The original "The Maltese Falcon" was shot before the introduction of the Hays Production Code in Hollywood, and wasn't able to be screened because of unsavory content (most notably, lots sexual innuendo and some almost-nudity). That being said, the 1941 film is Hammett's favorite adaption of his work -- seriously, who's to argue with him?
The original "The Mummy," released in 1932, is a classic, but it's also one of the weaker Universal monster movies. The bandaged Imhotep always seemed like a second-stringer in comparison to his fanged, lycanthrope, amphibian, and bolt-necked cousins.
It's interesting to note that Brendan Fraser-led remake, like the doomed Tom Cruise movie, was intended to be a horror movie. At one stage, directors like George A. Romero and Clive Barker were attached. However, after an age in development hell, "The Mummy" became a swashbuckling adventure, more "Raiders of the Lost Ark" than "Return of the Living Dead."
The series is guilty of ever-diminishing returns and an execrable spin-off in "The Scorpion King," but the first movie emerged out of nowhere and felt like a genuine revelation. Fresh-faced Fraser was a star in ascendance as the square-jawed all-American hero Rick O'Connell, and it's a movie as fun as it is loud and entertaining. My preference for the 1999 remake may be shallow, but even horror royalty like Boris Karloff can't save the original from being a plodding and dated ordeal.
The original "Planet of the Apes" movies began with the concept of a simian-conquered world, revealed in one of cinema's most famous twist endings. However, despite an excellent start to the series, with a screenplay courtesy of "The Twilight Zone" creator Rod Serling, subsequent films were weaker, rushed cash-ins (and we're not even going to breathe a word about Tim Burton's 2001 abomination).
The 21st-century remake, which features three films -- "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes," and "War for the Planet of the Apes" -- met far greater critical acclaim. Where the original series jumped backwards in time to bring its protagonists to the modern day, the remakes tell a more conventional narrative, following an evolved chimpanzee named Caesar and his ongoing and increasingly bloody struggle for freedom.
Unlike the warlike and aggressive apes of the original, here the anthropoids are portrayed as sympathetic. With some notable exceptions, it's the humans who are the villains. Andy Serkis and his fellow actors' motion capture work are the stars of this show, making for completely convincing CGI heroes.
"Evil Dead 2" is not officially a remake, but it might as well be (lead actor Bruce Campbell has, in the past, referred to it as a "requel"). Granted ten times the budget thanks to the success of the first film, director and writer Sam Raimi essentially had the opportunity to make his movie all over again -- and to make it bigger, better, and closer to the vision he had in his head.
Ash is a non-descript character in the first film, but the sequel -- sorry, requel -- fleshes him out, making him more like the wisecracking, sardonic antihero we know him as today. "Evil Dead 2" resembles a superhero origin story in that regard, although a chainsaw-hand is an admittedly weird superpower.
"Evil Dead 2" is also a more confident film than its predecessor, as Raimi had picked up -- and mastered -- some new tricks in the 6 years since the release of "Evil Dead." The thoroughly unpleasant tree molestation scene from the original is thankfully gone, evidence of a less childishly gratuitous direction for the series. "The Evil Dead 2" also introduced humor and slapstick to the franchise, a direction that Raimi would push even further in 1992's fully-fledged sequel, "Army of Darkness" (working title "Medieval Dead").
Whether you prefer the original "True Grit" or the Coen brothers' remake comes down to how you feel about the legend that is John Wayne. The original 1969 film is one movie in which the man's larger-than-life persona works against him. In the first movie, Rooster Cogburn, former U.S. Marshall, always feels like John Wayne, not a character in his own right. It's an excellent film and a worthy Oscar-winner, but the 2011 remake has the edge.
"True Grit" is an unusually restrained movie from the Coens, with few of their typical eccentricities. It's not only a better-looking movie than the original, but it's also closer to the Charles Portis source material -- Jeff Bridge's Rooster is less warm and endearing than Wayne's, and the film's general mood is darker and more violent. Still, all told, this is the closest fight of any of the movies on this list.
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Fall is upon us, which means that apple season—arguably the best season of them all—is just around the corner. As you make your plans for what to do with All Those Apples, it’s good to stop for a moment and consider an important component: the peel.
The An0m phone is something you were unlikely to have been offered, as it was designed specifically for people involved in criminal enterprises to communicate without being monitored. The phone was never…
