You're gonna be a star. 💫
In This Week's Edition: death in many forms. some lighter than others.
THE QUOTE 🎬 💬
“Let's face it, this is not the worst thing you've caught me doing.”
hint: beginning of the most successful franchise of all time
THINK THOUGHTS 💭
It’s so close.
In the mean time, the “Office of the CEO” is sharing a “shared vision” with investors, but nothing with the employees who currently have no idea what the hell is happening and are probably scared for their jobs. Priorities and all that. 🙃
NEWSY BITS 👾
Paramount, Skydance Agree on New M&A Deal Terms but Shari Redstone Hasn’t Approved Pact Yet: Shari Redstone owns the controlling stake that makes this all go - Variety
EXTRA CREDIT MOVIE(S) 📝
Am I Ok? - another movie where friendship is the central relationship. I am loving this trend. This time it’s Dakota Johnson discovering she maaaay be into the opposite opposite sex. (as in, she might be gay) right as her best friend is moving to London. So it’s a lot of feelings happening. The reviews say it’s a satisfying story and vibe, if somewhat inevitable conclusion, where Johnson conveys well the struggle and awkward realities. Streaming on Max Friday
I Used to Be Funny - contrary to the title, star Rachel Sennott is quite funny. But in the movie she plays someone having a hard time being funny. Even though that portrayal itself might be funny. It’s kinda confusing. But the reviews say it’s not actually that complicated and it’s pretty easy to like this dramedy where Sennott plays a stand-up comic / nanny to a girl who disappears. Playing in Limited Theaters Friday
NOTABLE NEW RELEASES 🎟 & 📺
Hit Man
Pretty sure if Glen Powell believes in jinxing, he is writing sternly worded emails to nearly every single critic right about now, telling them to STF uuuuup because oh boy are they laying the “Glen Powell is a god damn movie star, you just don’t know it yet” jam on pretty damn thickly.
I mean, sure, he’s getting more known, but from everything you read, they’re all saying this guy should be Brad Pitt / Tom Cruise in the 90’s level (or hell, Ryan Gosling circa now). Which he just might be on track for after he starred with Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick and then Cruise showed him his six hour “film school” which apparently contains everything the man formerly named Mapother learned throughout his career. And nothing else Tom? ….👀 Right, moving along.
But critics seem to think Hit Man is the movie that really highlights Powell’s bright, shiny star like qualities. It doesn’t hurt that he apparently has very good chemistry with co-star Adria Arjona, in part because “Adria did this really, really smart thing where she would print out—we would send images to each other of things we found to be hot and sexy.“
In what other industry can you send your co-worker porn adjacent material and not get fired instantly? ….. Ok fine, porn. You can probably send porn to your co-workers if you work in porn. But man, movies, they are (almost) unique!
On top of the sexy smut connection1, Powell had Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, Boyhood, Before trilog) as his co-writer and director. Which has all combined to result in…
…one of the year’s funniest, sexiest, most enjoyable movies — and somehow it’s surprisingly deep, too. - from the New York Times review of Hit Man
I mean damn, that’s got literally everything. Well, almost everything. I didn’t read anything about tears, so maybe we’ll have to wait until Powell does his own Born on the 4th of July. But until then, you can watch him transform from Gary Johnson - a nerdy philosophy professor who lives alone with two cats, eats cereal for dinner - into a police contractor who portrays various forms of hit men to lure people into admitting they want to kill someone, but gets tripped up when he encounters a wife wanting to off her abusive ex.
And just maybe, you’ll also be watching Glen Powell go from burgeoning name to full-fledged movie star.
⭐️
Out: Friday (Now)
Where: Netflix (Limited Theaters)
Details: 1 hr 53 mins | R | 🍅: 97%
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
Bad Boys: We Out
Bad Boys: Tank on E
Bad Boys: Cinco de Bye-o
I’m just tossing out new titles in case the studio wants to start thinking about ending the series with the fifth entry in this quite unlikely long running series. A holdover from the 90’s directed by Michael Bay, the first two installments even started to feel aged in that the buddy cop concept was kind of fading out. It went dormant, then saw a hell of a return (after 16 years!) with new directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, but kept the same vibes and charming partners of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.
But when it works, it works. And for lots of people, it really works. Cuz in 2020, Bad Boys: For Life had the biggest opening of the series by far, and thanks to “the bullshit,” was the highest earning movie of the year. Which means they said “yes, please” to another entry.
And from the reviews, these last two have been way better than anything the Baymeister ever put together - critics are even saying Adil and Bilall “out-Bayed, Bay.” That means you should expect helicopters, and slow-mo, lots of slo-mo, and saturated colors and kind of an overall over-the-top sensibility.
And right, the Will Smith factor. This is his first big movie since the Oscars. Do people still care? Is it an issue? Dunno. But it doesn’t seem to be for critics who say this is kind of the perfect role to see him in again. Ya know, doin’ movie star stuff and bein’ “Will Smith.”
One review was mentioning how these movies have a whiff of mid Fast and the Furious on them, which is honestly a pretty good template if you’re a studio exec. But as a viewer, you just have to consider if you want to be responsible for another series turning itself into a pseudo superhero movie where they send cars to space.
So, do you want that cultural blood on your hands?
Out: Friday
Where: Theaters
Details: 1 hr 55 mins | R | 🍅: 70%
The Watchers
I always hate referencing another person when trying to explain who someone is, but it’s kind of hard to avoid when your dad / mentor is responsible for some of the most iconic twists in cinematic history and you’re following in his creepy footsteps.
But Ishana Shyamalan, daughter of M. Night Shyamalan, is tryin to do her thing with The Watchers, her feature film debut (she’s also directed episodes of her dad’s TV series Servant).
You probably won’t be shocked to hear… it’s a thriller with a twist. Or rather a reveal. Or maybe, we should just call it an unknown. But it’s definitely a “high concept” kinda thing, much like her father is wont to do.
The younger Shyamalan has mined Irish folklore for a story about a young woman who becomes lost in the woods, but instead of finding an old creepy cabin, is forced to retreat into a modern looking building with mirrored one-way windows. Why retreat? Weeell, “the watchers” of course. It sets up an obvious question of what are the watchers and what do they want. Even if I knew, you know I couldn’t answer that.
But it also sets up the question of whether this is yet another Shyamalan movie that sets up an intriguing premise, but kind falters once you learn too much. There aren’t any reviews yet to lead us one way or another, so you just might have to *gulp* trust your instincts.
Out: Friday
Where: Limited Theaters
Details: 1 hr 42 mins | PG-13 | 🍅: TBD
Tuesday
Death is a fairly easy to understand concept on its surface, and yet so difficult to fully internalize.
There is simply a moment where each one of us can, or rather will, simply cease to exist. Gone. Forever. And then those who surrounded the no longer living continue to live with the life of the dead replaying in their memories. It’s kinda trippy. And not something many people want to confront.
It’s a concept that’s explored to seemingly very good, and as you might imagine, heart-wrenching end in Tuesday, a story about a dying young woman (named Tuesday) who is visited by death, in the form of a beautiful and size-shifting parrot, and her avoidant mother, played by Julia Louis Dreyfus, who continues to show why she is the friggen’ best.
“She gives us not just the psychology but the feelings of fear, loss and resilience that infuse Tuesday, a story with the sensibility of an Eastern European fairy tale. She’s a performer whose radiant ferocity has never been in doubt, but until now we haven’t seen all sides of the prism.” - from The Hollywood Reporter review of Tuesday
You kind of need this level of performance when you’re asking viewers to dive into this level of heavy. Because you can imagine it’s not going to be an easy journey, but it sure sounds like it’ll be a rewarding one.
Out: Friday
Where: Limited Theaters
Details: 1 hr 51 mins | R | 🍅: 100%
TRAILERS! ⏯
Alien Romulus - while it’s not technically a remake, it sure as hell looks a lot like a remake (small crew, trapped in tight quarters w/ the double-mouthed killer). But the director also did this sort of thing with the recent Evil Dead (which I thought was great, if not ever touching the og), which was also not technically a remake, but carried similar tenets of the original.
Venom: The Last Dance - I sincerely hope Michael Jordan makes an appearance.
MaXXXine - it’s the sequel to the movie X, which was about people in the 70’s shootin’ 🌽2 on a farm when it all goes wrong, that already had a prequel in Pearl. All starring Mia Goth.
Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play. - a documentary on the actual Broadway play that looks very much different than most documentaries. I’m into it.
The Nature of Love - few do complicated stories about love like the French, and this one looks like a fun rom-com that’s got more going than your typical, with a few great reviews seeming to confirm it.
I’m kidding. It’s actually a smart idea. Put out the vibe.
that’s how the internet denotes “porn” now, on account of “the algorithms”