Daily Archives: September 19, 2024

Steve McQueen’s new British World War II movie stars Saoirse Ronan in first epic trailer

One of the big contenders at next year’s Oscars is expected to be the new British World War II film Blitz.Today the first trailer arrived for Oscar-winner Sir Steve McQueen’s latest movie starring Saoirse Ronan in a role that could finally win her an Academy Award.The official synopsis reads: “Sir Steve McQueen’s Blitz follows the epic journey of George (Elliott Heffernan), a 9-year-old boy in World War II London whose mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) sends him to safety in the English countryside.“George, defiant and determined to return home to his mom and his grandfather Gerald (Paul Weller) in East London, embarks on an adventure, only to find himself in immense peril, while a distraught Rita searches for her missing son.”Written and directed by McQueen, the new film co-stars Harris Dickinson, Stephen Graham and Alex Jennings.Blitz will open the BFI London Film Festival on October 9 before a release in select cinemas on November 1 and then will head to streaming on Apple TV+ from November 22, 2024.

One Of The Best Trash Action Movies Ever Finally Has A Sequel – And A Trailer

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Calling all dudes and dudes at heart: “Den of Thieves 2” just unleashed its first action-packed trailer. Clocking in at almost 3 full minutes, this sequel to 2018’s action hit looks like just what the doctor ordered, provided your doctor wants you to eat fried cheese and chug PBRs. “Den of Thieves,” written and directed by Christian Gudegast, was essentially “‘Heat’ for dirtbags” — a big, greasy pastiche of a bunch of far better crime thrillers that came before it. It was derivative, it was silly, it was kind of amazing. The common consensus about “Den of Thieves” is that its trash — and I agree, but I don’t mean that in a mean-spirited way! I love trash, especially when it’s handled with care, and Gudegast worked hard to craft a surprisingly entertaining shoot-em-up about cops and robbers. 

At the center of the film was B-movie king Gerard Butler, who spends the majority of the film looking more hungover than anyone has ever looked in the entire history of people being hungover. Butler played Detective Nick “Big Nick” O’Brien, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department cop who is first introduced eating a donut off the ground at a bloody crime scene. Nick and his boys have become aware of a gang of bank robbers, lead by Marine vet Ray Merrimen, played by Pablo Schreiber. The cops think they have an inside man, flipping one of Ray’s crew members, Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), to their side. But ah, there was more than meets the eye here! In an ending shamefully stolen from “The Usual Suspects,” Nick learns that Donnie was not a hapless member of the gang — he was actually the mastermind! And while the rest of the gang ends up being killed in a hail of bullets, Donnie gets away, heading off to London with the loot.

“Den of Thieves” could’ve been a one-and-done film, but the movie proved to be a surprisingly big hit. As a result, a sequel was announced all the way back in 2018. Now, that sequel is almost upon us in the form of “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” (can I get a hell yeah?). Watch the trailer above. 

Gerard Butler is back, baby!

Lionsgate

At the end of the first “Den of Thieves,” Donnie had set up shop across the street from a diamond exchange in London. “Den of Thieves 2” will continue with this idea: Donnie seems to be working with a new crew, and they’re going to pull off a diamond heist. But that’s not all! Big Nick has tracked Donnie down, but he’s not there to arrest him. As we learn, Big Nick has been fired from the police force and he’s broke. His solution: team up with his enemy Donnie and get in on that sick heist action. F**k yes.

I want to be perfectly clear here: I don’t think the first “Den of Thieves” movie is a “so bad it’s good” situation. The movie isn’t bad at all! It’s just very, very trashy. But trash can also be art, and writer-director Christian Gudegast had a great handle on his material. As a result, “Den of Thieves” was compelling and exciting, and some of the action scenes pack a real punch. On top of all that, you had Gerard Butler owning the entire movie as the perpetually drunk Big Nick, a memorable character from the jump. 
Now, “Den of Thieves 2” looks like it’s going to amp things up. It looks bigger than the first movie, and I’m sure Gudegast has more twists in store for us. In fact, he said as much when he talked about the movie back in 2018, stating: “It’s all going to be set in Europe. And it’s going be about Big Nick hunting Donnie, who’s involved in a diamond heist and he’s teamed up with the former Pink Panther mafia, and it’s about Nick hunting him … Nick is also going to be hunted by another group, I won’t reveal right now … there’ll be a few different kinds of twist in this one. It’ll be hopefully very surprising.”

I can’t friggin’ wait. Here’s the official synopsis:

Gerard Butler (Plane, Has Fallen series) and O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Straight Out of Compton, Godzilla: King of the Monsters) return in the sequel to 2018’s action-heist hit Den of Thieves. In DEN OF THIEVES: PANTERA, Big Nick (Butler) is back on the hunt in Europe and closing in on Donnie (Jackson), who is embroiled in the treacherous and unpredictable world of diamond thieves and the infamous Panther mafia, as they plot a massive heist of the world’s largest diamond exchange.

“Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” shoots its way into theaters on January 10, 2025. And if you can’t get enough of that “Den of Thieves” action, I have good news. In a new piece over at The Ringer, Gudegast seems to confirm there will be yet another movie! “The idea is to constantly have movement with the franchise, which we’re going to do with [Den of Thieves] 3,” he said. “We’re going to go to another world.”

Joker 2 Answers One Of The Biggest Questions About The First Movie

Warner Bros

Todd Phillips’ “Joker” is the most divisive film to ever gross over $1 billion worldwide. This might sound like a strange thing to say about a film that was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won two, but many of the film’s detractors absolutely abhor the film. There are several reasons for this (one of them being certain critics’ knee-jerk hatred of all things comic book related), but Phillips’ most egregious offense might’ve been paying aggressive homage to Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” and “The King of Comedy.” These are two of the most emotionally scarring character studies of psychically damaged loners ever put to film; they’re peak Scorsese, and they are not to be touched by a filmmaker best known for his rowdy R-rated comedies about men who, in their way, are every bit as dangerous to society as Travis Bickle and Rupert Pupkin.

The problem with “Joker” for me is that it is, like most of Phillips’ movies, undeniably well directed and not exactly enamored of its messed up male characters. The main trio of “Old School” is largely harmless by the end of the film, but “The Hangover” trilogy is an unrepentant, drain-swirling depiction of toxic masculinity that seems to hate its characters as much as we kind of do by the conclusion of the third movie.
Phillips’ misanthropy sloshes over the bile-crusted rim of the cracked whiskey glass that is “Joker,” and I squeamishly admire the film for going as hard as it does – even though I think it’s one of the most misread dark comedies since David Fincher’s “Fight Club.” Unfortunately, in making $1 billion worldwide, this means Phillips and his star/co-conspirator Joaquin Phoenix were obligated to further explore the broken brain of Arthur Fleck. In doing so, they felt they owed their fans answers to questions that the Scorsese films intentionally left dangling.

All that stuff really happened

Warner Bros

During a pre-screening Q&A attended by /Film’s Bill Bria (who also reviewed the movie), Phillips and co-screenwriter Scott Silver discussed their approach to the musical mélange of “Joker Folie à Deux.” While kicking around ideas during the pandemic, Phillips thought it would be “fun” to give fans of the first movie some concrete answers. As he told the audience at the screening;

“A lot of people thought in the first one, a lot of people say to me, ‘What was real, what was…’ And he had a lot of fantasies in the first movie. This movie really finds Arthur, answers everything as far as, well, that movie really happened. All that stuff really happened. He really killed Murray Franklin, [played by] Robert De Niro. He really killed those kids on the subway. And here he is, ready to face the music, for lack of a better word, and sort of pay for the crimes that he committed. So it’s a very logical two years later in movie world where we find Arthur, and I’m going to leave it at that.”

“Very logical” doesn’t feel like a logical treatment of a character as erratic and downright savage as the Joker, so it’ll be interesting to see how fans feel about Phillips and Silver’s tack. For those who loathed “Joker,” this will no doubt used as a cudgel to bash the first film’s travestying of “Taxi Driver” and “The King of Comedy,” two films that are interested less in the consequences of their protagonists’ actions, than the internal and external pressures that drive them to such shocking extremes. So there’s every reason to expect a thrillingly inflamed discourse. Get ready to rumble all over again, if that’s your thing.

Colin Farrell’s 5 Best Movies & TV Shows, Ranked According To Rotten Tomatoes

Static Media

This article contains discussion of addiction and sexual assault.
It’s been a long time coming, but the world finally knows, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Colin Farrell is one of the best actors currently working today. The Irish-born performer got his start in genuinely great projects like “Minority Report,” but when he followed that particular film with filler thrillers like “The Recruit” and “S.W.A.T.,” it became easy to overlook his talent. (His turn as Bullseye in Ben Affleck’s dud “Daredevil” didn’t help either.) In 2008, though, he starred in Martin McDonagh’s drama “In Bruges” alongside Brendan Gleeson — two collaborators he’d team up with again years later — and in recent years, Farrell’s projects have skewed more towards quality like “In Bruges” rather than, say, “Alexander.”

The point here is that Colin Farrell has appeared in some pretty excellent projects, and he’s really good in all of them — so here are the top five Colin Farrell projects on both the big and small screen based on their Rotten Tomatoes ratings.

5. Crazy Heart (90%)

Searchlight Pictures

Colin Farrell isn’t the star of the 2009 drama “Crazy Heart” — Jeff Bridges plays the film’s central figure, Otis “Bad” Blake — but his character Tommy Sweets drives a decent amount of the film’s action and he actually sings his own songs. (He’s pretty good!) Basically, Farrell’s Tommy is the young successor to Otis, an aging country music star struggling with alcoholism who now plays small gigs in bars. Throughout the movie, Otis, who is estranged from multiple ex-wives and his children, begins a romantic relationship with journalist Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and tries to collaborate with Tommy, but as it turns out, Tommy would prefer to remain a solo act and just license Otis’ original songs.

This all works out for the best — Otis basically retires and, as a result, makes a mint from Tommy performing his music as the younger man becomes a bigger star. Farrell is a perfect counterpart to Bridges, who earned most of the film’s praise, but critics generally liked the film’s portrayal of a familiar tale; as David Denby wrote in The New Yorker, “If ever a movie demonstrated how country music emerges from private sorrows, this is it.”

4. The Penguin (91%)

Macall Polay/HBO

After playing the classic DC comics villain in Matt Reeves’ 2022 reboot “The Batman,” Colin Farrell is donning his prosthetics from that film once again for “The Penguin,” an original HBO series chronicling the kingpin’s criminal activity in Gotham and his strained relationship with the recently incarcerated crime heiress Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti). Farrell was an absolute delight in “The Batman” as Oz, a man whose demeanor and exterior mask the fact that he’s a borderline brilliant criminal mastermind willing to stop at nothing to overtake Gotham — and guess what? You’ll be pleased to know he’s also excellent in “The Penguin,” which lets him take center stage by sidelining Robert Pattinson’s Caped Crusader.

Even though its first season is only just getting underway, critics have soundly praised Farrell’s turn in “The Penguin” (as well as his leading lady Milioti, a welcome presence in literally any project). /Film’s own Chris Evangelista loved Farrell’s performance; though he had some misgivings about the show overall, he wrote, “Whatever the flaws of ‘The Penguin,’ the series is elevated by Farrell’s layered performance — the show and the actor aren’t afraid to make Oz one of the most unlikable main characters on TV.” Over at The Daily Beast, Nick Schager was downright effusive where Farrell was concerned, writing, “Thanks to an outright phenomenal lead performance by Colin Farrell as the iconic villain, it proves as engrossing and exciting as a Batman-adjacent show could hope to be.”

3. Widows (91%)

20th Century Studios

Justice for “Widows!” Steve McQueen’s heist drama — which is anchored by a murderer’s row of actors like Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Rodriguez, and Cynthia Erivo — was criminally underrated when it was released in 2018, and if you forgot Colin Farrell was even in this movie, I completely get where you’re coming from. (Daniel Kaluuya and Brian Tyree Henry, two other members of the supporting cast, tend to dominate any conversations about the male characters in “Widows,” which is fair to them — they’re outstanding — and unfair to Farrell at the same time.)

The gist of “Widows” is that after Davis’ Veronica Rawlings loses her husband Harry (Liam Neeson) during a botched bank heist, she decides to finish the job … and assemble other crime widows to help her. Where does Farrell come in? He plays a supporting role as Jack Mulligan, a Chicago politician whose powerful father Tom (Robert DuVall) is pressuring him to run for an alderman position against crime boss Jamal Manning (Henry). Farrell’s great as Jack, but it’s really the ensemble that makes this movie tick; as Alissa Wilkinson wrote in her review for Vox, “A cast this stacked can’t help but generate glory.”

2. The North Water (96%)

BBC

Unfortunately, Colin Farrell’s five-episode BBC miniseries “The North Water” (directed by “All of Us Strangers” auteur Andrew Haigh) flew way under the radar when it came out in 2021 — he’s excellent in it, and the whole series is definitely worth watching. Alongside Jack O’Connell (“Godless”) as Patrick Sumner, a surgeon on the whaling ship Volunteer, Farrell plays the vessel’s coxswain and harpooner Henry Drax, who has a seriously dark past. (Honestly, “The North Water” is a really brutal show that depicts a lot of sexual violence and other upsetting things; approach it with some caution.) Farrell’s Henry is, without question, the absolute worst guy on the show. He’s violent, unstable, and routinely sexually assaults other crew members on board the Volunteer — so you certainly won’t be rooting for him if and when you watch “The North Water.”

Farrell is terrifying as Henry, and though he’s entirely unsettling on “The North Water,” critics loved his performance. Some, like John Doyle writing for Globe and Mail, singled him out: “This might be Farrell’s best work yet. His Drax is a believable monster of a man, uncivilized in thought and action, epitomizing the rawness under the surface of Victorian niceties.” Again, it’s worth noting that this project came out in 2021 … before Farrell gave yet another career-best performance in his second collaboration with Martin McDonagh and Brendan Gleeson.

1. The Banshees of Inisherin (96%)

Searchlight Pictures

What if your best friend told you he didn’t want to hang out any more and went to genuinely twisted lengths to prove it? That’s the main conflict explored in Martin McDonagh’s brilliant 2022 dark dramedy “The Banshees of Inisherin,” which begins when the simpled-minded Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) can’t figure out why his best friend Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) is giving him the cold shoulder. As it turns out, Colm really wants Pádraic to stop talking to him and he’ll do just about anything to make his point (including severing his own fingers). Why? Colm just thinks Pádraic is really boring, and he’s sick of him. No, really; that’s it.

“The Banshees of Inisherin” is a perfect showcase for both Gleeson and Farrell — as well as Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan, who play supporting roles as Pádraic’s sister Siobhán and downtrodden local boy Dominic Kearney — so it makes sense that Farrell earned his first-ever Oscar nod for the role. (Condon and Keoghan picked up nominations as well). His take on Pádraic — an earnest but admittedly dull Irishman — is both charming and devastating, and critics took notice as well; Peter Travers at ABC News said in his review that the movie contains “career-best” performances from Gleeson and Farrell alike and anointed it as one of 2022’s very best films.
If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN’s National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

There Is Only One Real Contender For The Greatest Body Horror Movie Of All Time

David Cronenberg’s “The Fly” is undoubtedly his masterpiece, a perfect blend of body horror, science fiction, psychological torture, and a biting dissection of humans destroyed by their own hubris. Jeff Goldblum shines as the brilliant scientist Dr. Seth Brundle, who uses himself as a test subject on a teleportation device, unknowingly using it at the same time a fly flew into the device. The result is Brundle’s DNA merging with the fly, transforming him into a gooey, gross, and downright disturbing creature. But what makes “The Fly” so incredible is that this transformation progresses over time, and the people around him who love him (and we as the audience) are forced to watch his body give over to the inevitable.

It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion, if that car crash featured ears falling off, barfing up obscene amounts of liquid, or the nightmare of birthing a maggot. The monstrous metamorphosis happens in tandem with Brundle’s psychological deterioration, so “The Fly” isn’t just a gross body horror film, it’s also a character study of a man obsessed with playing God.
Chris Walas’ special effects were groundbreaking at the time, but still hold up as some of the best in cinema history even today. As he becomes more fly than man, Dr. Brundle’s appearance unravels into something unrecognizable, but we never lose Goldblum’s touches. This makes it even harder for his partner Veronica (Geena Davis) to process his change, because she can always see the man she loves within the creature. This is where the true tragedy of the film sinks in — it’s not just about Seth Brundle losing himself, it’s about the people in his life losing him in the process. “The Fly” is a relentless, painful, and often-times beautiful watch, and it’s hard to imagine another film ever surpassing it.

We ranked the best body horror movies on today’s episode of the /Film Daily podcast, which you can listen to below:

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