Taking Taron Egerton out of this seems a smart play.
Check out the cast for “The King’s Man” — Djimon and Rafe and Gemma, Rhys and Hollander and Matthew Goode and Tucci and on and on.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson of “Kick Ass” becomes the new recruit learning that “clothes make the man.”
Feb. of next year, we find out if this prequel, beginning in “The Great War,” works and this moribund franchise will survive.
At least in the beginning of the 25th James Bond film.
Craig’s Bond has retired and 007 has been assigned to another agent.
Suck on that for a minute.
British actress. 31. In “Captain Marvel.”
Very “Casino Royale” — not the “canonical” one either. Granted, they’re not calling her “Bond.” But the idea that 007 changes hands is one that dates from that much maligned comedy.
Lashana Lynch is Britain’s “licensed to kill” go to agent.
The film, leaning heavily on the insights and career of Michael Waltrip, hits screens in Sept.
Maybe it will add clarity. Maybe not.
Not sure this Swedish slow jam of horror needs to be longer and theoretically even slower.
Ari Aster is taking a shot at getting the audience that has already seen it to come back. Doubt if this works. Not sure I care enough to go again.
But for those deep down inside rabbit hole on “Midsommar,” well it’s going to stretch out to near fall for your cult film about a Swedish cult delectation.
https://t.co/TBddNRchT8 https://t.co/RxOQNUGbrG https://twitter.com/IndieWire/status/1150449879560413184?s=17
A summer of blockbusters and counter programming duds.
That’s what 2019 has given us. No real breakouts, the odd horror franchise moment in the sun, no breakout comedies since April.
Deadline com is pushing lower ticket prices for non spectacles, such as “Yesterday,” “Late Show” and this weekend’s underwhelmers — “Crawl” ($10.6 million) and “Stuber” $9ish).
“Spider-Man” added another $44, “Toy Story 4” another $20 and change.
“Yesterday” is still doing well and might be the sleeper with legs the summer has craved.
https://deadline.com/2019/07/spider-man-far-from-home-crawl-stuber-weekend-box-office-1202645451/
A little late August horror for your late summer viewing pleasure?
Like a fine wine, Louis Garrel‘s “A Faithful Man” needs to be opened to the elements, to “breathe.”
Because if there’s ever been a more airless, so-dry-one-hesitates-to-label-it “romantic comedy,” I’ve yet to set parched eyes upon it.
It is very French, with a ménage á trois, naturellement. It has a few laughs, or at least chuckles. But the deadpan has only 75 minutes to pay off. Letting in a little air would not have unraveled the script’s peculiar, cultural difference qualities. But it might have made it funnier and let it go down easier.
Garrel, an actor (“The Dreamers”) turned actor-director (“Two Friends”) plays Abel, and we meet him as he narrates his oddly emotionless college breakup with Marianne (Laetitia Casta, who is married to Garrel).
They were together three years, and “Things were fine, until one day” she tells him (in French, with English subtitles), “I’m pregnant.”
It’s not his. It is to be the baby of his best friend, Paul. Oh, and Paul wants you to come to the wedding.
Perhaps Garrel just isn’t a funny enough actor to make Abel’s under-reaction to all that score.
“When is it?”
She adds, “I’m glad you’re taking this well.” And “Can he call you today?”
“Maybe not today.”
I mean, we know the French are supposed to be oh-so-sophisticated about things like this, even in their 20s, but come on.
Abel saves his heartbreak for his icy, nosebleeding, “What a loser” exit.
The one person who sees that is Paul’s little sister. Years pass, Paul dies, leaving Marianne with a son (Joseph Engel) Abel meets at the funeral.
Because, naturellement, he shows up. He narrates his continuing love for Marianne and wonders how he can wangle his way back into her life.
But there’s Paul’s baby sister Eve (Lily-Rose Depp).
“I knew her as a child, she had become a woman.”
So even though he’s all-in on Marianne, our story shifts narrators (all three principals eventually narrate), and Eve tells us of her childhood crush on “the most attractive man alive.”
Beware co-writer/directors who script such a description of themselves to be delivered by the beautiful daughter of Vanessa Paradis and Johnny You-Know-Who. It might be ironically intended, but it doesn’t play that way.
And that doesn’t lessen the picture’s inherently iffy — from an American #MeToo point of view — crush to have Eve tell us, “I did only one thing well…I grew up.”
The leading ladies outshine the leading man in “A Faithful Man,” with young Ms Depp showing promise if not a lot of spark, here.
Voice-over narration, the cinema’s laziest storytelling device, is meant to move this along by EXPLAINING all that is happening — “We chatted during lunch. About Paul, of course.” — when the actors as characters could be SHOWING us with their performances, the situations and witty dialogue.
There’s a little of that here. The funniest thing in “A Faithful Man” is all the scenes that paint Abel as a gullible, passive drone, borderline “on the spectrum.”
Girlfriend of three years is preggers with your best friend’s baby? And she’s marrying him?
The kid is plainly playing Abel when the first time Marianne leaves the two of them alone, he whispers, “Mom poisoned dad” and the reason nobody found out is “she was sleeping with the doctor” who signed off on his father’s death.
Garrel could be playing around with the cliches of French romances — ducking into the cinema to watch classic Hollywood film noirs (“The Strange Love of Martha Ivers”) — or maybe not.
I couldn’t decide if he was having us on, even if he gives us a hint he might be, here and there.
I couldn’t decide because his movie’s too brief to flesh out the stories, find funnier lines or beef up the comedy. And never once, in all the characters’ incessant narration, does anybody say, “Drôle, non?”
MPAA Rating: unrated
Cast: Louis Garrel, Lily-Rose Depp, Laetitia Casta
Credits: Directed by Louis Garrel, script by Jean-Claude Carrière, Louis Garrel. A Kino-Lorber release.
Running time: 1:15
Perhaps it’s a national stereotype played out on the big screen. But the beginning of “Kidnapping Stella” is a veritable “How To” guide to carrying out such a crime, for the detail-oriented.
A bearded tough (Clemens Schick) steals the Citroen Jumpy van they’ll use for the job. Together with blonder, younger Tom (Max von der Groeben) they make the necessary hardware store run.
Let’s see, we’ll need soundproof foam insulation, rope, a saw, drill, fiberboard, locks, plastic sheeting.
They sound and lightproof the van, install some U-bolts to, you know, handcuff the victim in place.
Then they soundproof an abandoned flat, bolt a bed to the floor, plastic sheet it for toilet or torture “accidents.”
They go digging in the woods.
No, they don’t show us EVERYthing. They sourced handcuffs, a gun, masks, hypodermics and drugs elsewhere. But they’re being thorough, grabbing their victim (Jella Hasse), screaming, on a remote city industrial block she walks on her way home.
The violence has a clinical, heartless feel. Vic slaps her to get her father’s email address and cell number.
“We are your only friends, now,” he tells her, in the least-comforting way possible — in German with English subtitles. They snip off her clothes for photos to send her father, leave her gagged and keep her degraded.
But Tom quavers at some of this. He won’t eat his chicken nuggets afterward. That’s when Vic shoves some in his mouth and calmly, cruelly, keeps them on task.
“Your emotions are suppressing your appetite. Means you’re thinking too much. You are having second thoughts.”
Thomas Sieben’s thriller has a few surprise twists, which I won’t give away here. Most, but not all, are well within the realm of possibility.
More than a few are melodramatic — mere plot devices designed to complicate a seriously simple tale — and melodramatic enough to make you roll your eyes.
There’s history between the two thugs, and history between one of them and the victim, who has inner resources that her crying and pleading for her life (she fully unloads in the video they send to her father) don’t cover.
And the deeper we get into it, the more violence we expect from “Kidnapping Stella.”
It’s just that the script lets us get two steps ahead of it, long before the midway point. And it never catches up and gets ahead of us again.
The performances carry it, with Schick suggesting a ruthless, callous Mark Strong villain in his turn and Hasse deftly managing to keep Stella’s cunning something she’s able to hide from her tormentors.
But the players can’t sprint ahead fast enough to keep us from getting to the finish line minutes and minutes before “Kidnapping Stella” does. It’s not bad. But it’s not surprising either.
MPAA Rating: TV MA (violence)
Cast: Jella Hasse, Max von der Groeben, Clemens Schick
Credits: Written and directed by Thomas Sieben. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:29
Irate Conan O’Brien fans — both of them — boycotting “Stuber” over Kumail Nanjiani being a no-show on TBS this week were not enough to kill the opening weekend of the action comedy co-starring Dave Bautista.
It is on pace to clear $9 million.
“Crawl” is the winner between the two new wide releases opening this weekend, with a $1 million Thursday, and a $5 million Friday set it up for a $12 million weekend.
Both films are performing right up to pre release expectations, according to Deadline’s early AM take on the numbers. “Stuber” was picked to hit $7.5 so maybe standing up Conan paid off.
“Spider Man: Far from Home” should hit $40, “Toy Story 4” maybe $20. Yes, it is fading quicker than is usual for that franchise.
“Yesterday” is holding audience and it’s place in the top five, another $5-6 million this weekend. “Avengers” is clinging to it’s last place in the top ten.
https://deadline.com/2019/07/spider-man-far-from-home-crawl-stuber-weekend-box-office-1202645451/
Two-time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz is set to return as James Bond adversary Ernst Stavro Blofeld in #Bond25 https://t.co/PLHS0YJ6rk https://twitter.com/DEADLINE/status/1149813809139163136?s=17
Movie Nation 