Tag: Stephanie Hsu

Reviews For The Easily Distracted: The Fall Guy

Title: The Fall Guy

Heather Thomas or Heather Locklear? Heather Graham

Brief Plot Synopsis: He’s not the kind to kiss and tell, but he’s been seen with Emily.

Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 3.5 praying hand emojis out of 5.

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Tagline: “Fall hard.”

Better Tagline: “Fun, dumb, and full of stunts.”

Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) had it all: a flourishing career as stunt double for action star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnston) and a relationship with cameraperson Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). But after breaking his back during a stunt gone awry, he abandons both. That is, until mega-producer Gail Myer (Hannah Waddingham) tells him Jody is now a director, and wants Colt to come join the production of her new movie in Australia. Two problems: Jody didn’t *actually* ask for him, and Ryder — the star of the picture — has disappeared.
“Critical” Analysis: Gosling and Blunt have finally buried their Barbenheimer hatchet by appearing in a movie together. The Fall Guy, directed by former stunt dude David Leitch, is an action-comedy in the truest sense of both words. The stunt sequences are suitably pants-dampening, and the jokes are unforced and effective, thanks in large part to the chemistry between our leads.

Though it’s a little dicey at the outset. The opening titles kick off with the extremely disagreeable “I Was Made For Loving You” by Kiss. And if that wasn’t a bad enough omen, it’s the signature tune of the film, with remixes popping up alongside songs like “Thunderstruck,” a karaoke version of “Against All Odds” (performed by Blunt), and other selections likely to appeal to people in Leitch’s age group.

*cough*

Butt-rock selections aside, Leitch deftly weaves Colt’s onscreen punishment with a surprisingly satisfying romantic arc. It’s easy to chalk it up to the snappy dialogue between Gosling and Blunt, but it’s more likely they’re just naturally charismatic people. Blunt was able to convincingly portray being in love with *John Krasinski*, for crying out loud. And Gosling’s greatest onscreen romance was clearly with Russell Crowe.

Speaking of bad ’80s decisions, calling Jody’s breakthrough movie Metalstorm has to be an in-joke for Reagan era nerds, right? Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (spoiler!)? Not to be confused with Megaforce? Fun fact: in my rabbit-holing for this review, I learned that Jared-Syn was played by Michael Preston, who was Pappagallo in The Road Warrior! Maybe five of you care, but I thought that was pretty rad.

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This version of Metalstorm sounds distinctly dumber than the original (if you can believe that), but that’s part of The Fall Guy’s charm. This movie-inside-a-movie approach allows Leitch to wink at the camera in a slightly less meta way than he did in Deadpool 2. Or almost, such as when Colt ruminates on why there’s no Academy Award for stunt performers

It’s also a bit of an insulting premise that Gosling isn’t good looking enough to be a lead (and hence, is eclipsed by Tom Ryder). Then again, Taylor-Johnson is quite the hunk.

And it’s just as well that The Fall Guy doesn’t take anything too seriously, because the key romantic conflict — Colt’s failure to reach out to Jody after his accident — is hardly “cheating on her with her best friend” territory. The guy was going through an existential crisis, for pity’s sake. So let he who hasn’t ghosted someone after 18 months cast the first stone.

Also: 18 months? Didn’t Batman heal his own broken back in, like, six weeks?

The Fall Guy is a rarity these days: a mainstream popcorn flick that appeals to just about everyone. With some brains, a lot of heart, old school stunt work, and an authentic romance, it’s some real old-fashioned moviemaking, and a less maudlin look at the industry than Hal Needham’s Hooper.

Could’ve used more bar brawls, though.

The Fall Guy is in theaters today.

Pete Vonder Haar

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May 3, 2024
The Fall Guy Blows Up Tom Cruise’s Braggadocio and Quentin Tarantino’s Tributes to Stuntmen

As far as movies that acknowledge the importance of stuntmen (because no one thinks of this as a profession for stuntwomen, clearly), the only one of mainstream note—up until now—has been Death Proof (unfortunately for Drew Barrymore, The Stand In doesn’t qualify). The Quentin Tarantino-directed film that was part of 2007’s Grindhouse double feature (which commenced with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror), wherein Kurt Russell plays the part of Stuntman Mike (and there is actually some play for a stuntwoman in the form of Zoë Bell). Like David Leitch’s The Fall Guy, Death Proof delights in its cleverness and meta-ness, but in a way that isn’t, shall we say, quite as fun. Though Tarantino surely thought that “sweet revenge” ending was all the fun any audience could want. But screenwriter Drew Pearce seems to be aware that they want something more than “Tarantino cleverness”—they want some fucking Ryan Gosling “hey girl”-style romance peppered in. With a dash of Tom Cruise roasting thrown into the mix, too. And that’s exactly what they get.

Starting from the beginning, Gosling as Colt Seavers delivers on both ingredients, with one of the first scenes consisting of Colt being told that Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, making better movies than his wife at the moment), “the biggest action star on the planet,” wants to speak with him. The name alone is already a dead giveaway that this is a major troll on Cruise, who has often boasted about doing his own stunts. This includes declaring one of the bigger stunts in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (namely, driving a motorcycle off a roughly four-thousand-foot high structure) to be “far and away the most dangerous thing I’ve ever attempted.”

Cruise’s long-running insistence that he does all his own stunts was parodied as far back as the 2000 MTV Movie Awards, during which a segment centered on Cruise’s supposedly nonexistent stunt double was featured, with Ben Stiller playing “Tom Crooze,” the stuntman in question. Presented as a behind-the-scenes documentary, even John Woo appears in it to say, “Tom Cruise does most of his own stunts. So he doesn’t really need a stunt double. But we make good use of the other Tom Cruise.” Meanwhile, The Fall Guy makes good use of both Tom Cruise (jokes) and the actor that’s clearly based on him and his ego: Tom Ryder. What’s more, seeing as how Pearce is credited as coming up with the story for Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (the fifth installment in the film series), the amount of Tom Cruise-related wisecracks feels particularly pointed. Almost like Pearce is putting him in his place for having such arrogance. To that point, we see what happens to Colt as a result of his own so-called hubris (that is, in Tom Ryder’s estimation, who never, never wants to be overshadowed—least of all by his stunt double).

Although Gosling has previously starred in movies heavy with action (including Drive), this is his first proper “Hollywood action movie” (even if action-comedy). One that, incidentally, pokes fun at the Hollywood action movie (complete with an over-bloated third act). And yes, it’s surprising that it took Gosling this long to become an action hero (in lieu of his usual anti-hero) considering this was the boy compelled to bring steak knives to school and throw them at classmates thanks to inspiration from First Blood. The sense of homage in general to action movies past is a constant presence in The Fall Guy as well, whether including scenes of famous stunts from classic movies, mentioning that stunt work doesn’t qualify for having an Oscar category despite being the backbone of most major films or simply quoting action movies in general. This last form of reverence for the stuntman being an ongoing bit between Colt and his friend/stunt coordinator, Dan Tucker (Winston Duke).

Indeed, the first thing Dan quotes to Colt is Rambo—specifically, “It’s not about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” This is meant to serve as motivation for conquering his fear of getting back in the proverbial saddle for “stunting.” For, by this point in the movie, the audience has been flashed with the title card “18 Months Later.” As in: eighteen months after Colt embodied the literal meaning of being a fall guy by plummeting from a twelve-story building and botching the stunt by landing right on his back. Moments after the fall, viewers see him being rushed to the hospital on a gurney as he gives the crew his customary “stuntman’s thumbs up” to indicate he’s fine.

But, of course, he’s not fine at all. No longer a stuntman, but an emotionally stunted man who has lost all sense of identity in the wake of realizing, in a very humiliating way, that he’s not invincible at all. The shame of the incident prompts him to cut off all communication with everyone he knew from that part of his life, even Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt, coming for Emma Stone in terms of onscreen chemistry with Gosling). The camera operator with directorial ambitions who became as sweet on Colt as he is on her over the course of working on many film productions together.

Having descended into the depths of “normalcy” after hanging up his kneepads, Colt has become a valet at a restaurant called El Cacatúa del Capitán (and yes, later a cockatoo will figure into the plot, along with an attack dog named Jean-Claude who only responds to commands given to him in French). It is Tom Ryder’s go-to producer, Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham), that manages to track Colt down and call his new phone number to lure him to the set of a movie Ryder is currently working on called Metalstorm (something that looks a lot like a sendup of Dune, and even Edge of Tomorrow…an action-alien movie that Emily Blunt co-starred in with, you guessed it, Tom Cruise).

The project is already (down) underway in, where else, Sydney (a place that must be offering a lot of tax breaks lately if we’re to go by the recent rash of films shot there, such as The Invisible Man, Thor: Love and Thunder and Anyone But You). Although Colt is initially quick to rebuff Gail’s request to come and assist her with keeping Tom in line, he can’t help but respond positively to the dangled carrot (or “sexy bacon,” in this case) of her insistence that Jody, who has been hired as the director, expressly asked for him to be the stuntman.

Seeing an opportunity to right the wrong he did by ghosting her, Colt hops on the next plane, greeted promptly by facial scans from the set’s resident “effects person,” Venti Kushner (Zara Michales). When Colt asks why there’s suddenly all these bells and whistles, Venti informs him that they’re taking the scans so they can seamlessly computer-generate Tom’s face onto Colt’s face for any stunt scenes. Colt replies, “Like a deepfake situation? If you get a chance, turn me into Tom Cruise.” Oh my, Leitch and Pearce are really overestimating Cruise’s sense of humor about this sort of thing. An actor whose ego has steadily ballooned since he started out in the 80s, the decade when the TV series, The Fall Guy, originally aired. Because, yes, of course, it’s a movie based on a TV show (as LL Cool J once meta-ly complained at the beginning of Charlie’s Angels upon seeing the opening credits for T. J. Hooker: The Movie, “Another movie from an old TV show”).

This is something that Leitch and Pearce give a nod to via a post-credits scene focused on two cops played by Lee Majors and Heather Thomas (a.k.a. the stars of The Fall Guy). In the series, Lee Majors’ Colt is also a bounty hunter on the side (which is where that element comes into play for the movie) and Thomas’ Jody is a fellow stuntwoman whose last name is the more anglicized Banks instead of Moreno (and no, there is nothing about Blunt that makes her look like a Moreno).

As for being “upgraded” to director in the movie version, Jody is also given the chance to shine as a singer, with a lengthy karaoke scene providing her with the occasion to belt out Phil Collins’ “Against All Odds” (granted, Mariah Carey delivers a possibly superior cover on Rainbow). Blunt kept right on singing for her cameo in Gosling’s monologue on SNL, during which the two duetted a parody version of Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” (a song that features prominently in the movie). In their version of the song, they explore letting go of the characters that made them part of two of the biggest blockbusters of Summer 2023, Barbie and Oppenheimer (so yes, Barbenheimer did manage to reanimate in 2024 by way of Blunt and Gosling working together).

In something of a missed opportunity, SNL didn’t opt to include a sketch of Gosling as a stuntman. But that’s fine, one supposes, for Gosling is no stranger to playing a serious stunt performer instead, having also done so in Drive and The Place Beyond the Pines (the set where he and Eva Mendes would translate their onscreen romance into an offscreen one). What’s more, it probably would have been too much for Gosling to play Tom Cruise in one of the sketches (for whatever reason, choosing to play Beavis was more important). Because even in the promo interviews for The Fall Guy, Gosling and Blunt still find time to rib Cruise. Case in point, when Gosling admits to IMDb, “I have a fear of heights,” Blunt replies, “Who doesn’t? Who doesn’t have a fear of heights?” “Tom Cruise,” Gosling says without missing a beat. But, for the most part, the duo keeps the focus of their interviews on having a deep respect and appreciation for what stunt people do. “It’s a love letter to the stunt community,” Gosling reiterates in an interview for MTV. Blunt adds, “They risk their souls, their bodies, their lives for us to make us look cool.” Gosling then concludes, “They risk more than anyone… You can’t separate the history of film [from] the history of stunts.”

History that continues to be made with The Fall Guy, which just secured an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for showcasing the most cannon rolls (eight and a half) ever performed in a film (executed by stunt driver Logan Holladay). It also happens to be the kind of laugh-a-minute film not seen since The Lost City (a movie that Argylle attempted to heavily emulate with less success). And that’s hard for someone like Tarantino, the only other person with as much well-documented “love” for stuntmen, to compete with, even when he also paid homage to the stunt community in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood via Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). A character who, in addition to Stuntman Mike, doesn’t exactly make for the best representation of the “average” stuntman.

Funnily enough, Leitch would also enlist Pitt for the lead in Bullet Train, a far less intelligent (read: not intelligent at all) action movie than what the director has on offer here. Thus, whatever “bad mojo” he was suffering from in 2022 (*cough cough* a bad script), he seems to have recovered from it as nicely as Colt Seavers after his massive, back-breaking fall…with more than just a little help from Pearce and a leading man as charismatic as Gosling and his “tousled just so” coif.

Genna Rivieccio

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May 2, 2024
What to Watch on Streaming This Week: February 23-29

Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal in All of Us Strangers. Photo by Parisa Taghizadeh, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

From a major Oscar winner to one of this year’s biggest awards snubs, this week is filled with some recent quality content. Plus, a fun new spin-off of The Good Wife, FX’s newest blockbuster series, and some animated fun are all premiering.

What to watch on Netflix

Everything Everywhere All at Once

With the Oscars now less than a month away, why not refresh your awards season memory by watching last year’s undeniable winner? Everything Everywhere All at Once all but swept the season, taking home seven Oscars (including Best Picture). In this genre-bending exercise in action and absurdism, Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn, a middle-aged Chinese immigrant who’s struggling to hold her life together: her business is getting audited by the IRS (represented by Jamie Lee Curtis), her husband (Ke Huy Quan) feels like their marriage is a mess, and her daughter (Stephanie Hsu) is tired of her mom not accepting her. Everything Everywhere All at Once streams Friday, February 23rd. Read Observer’s review.

The Tourist

A British export recently picked up by Netflix, The Tourist is a thrilling ride. Jamie Dornan stars as a man who, in Season 1, woke up alone and amnesiac in the Australian Outback. With a bevy of people out to get him, he had to act fast to try to piece together his true identity. Now, in Season 2, Dornan’s Elliot has an idea of who he is, and it’s not pretty. He ventures back to his native Ireland with Constable Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald), where plenty of surprises await. Season 2 of The Tourist premieres Thursday, February 29th.

What to watch on Hulu

All of Us Strangers

A moving, heartbreaking, devastatingly relatable drama, All of Us Strangers takes a fantastical conceit and makes it into one of last year’s most human films. Andrew Scott stars as a lonely writer, dealing with unresolved guilt from his parents’ sudden passing several decades ago. But after a chance encounter with one of his apartment block’s few other residents (Paul Mescal), he ventures to his childhood home and finds his parents, exactly as they were all those years earlier. It’s a difficult needle to thread, but writer-director Andrew Haigh does it with a deep sense of sympathy. All of Us Strangers premiered Thursday, February 22nd. Read Observer’s review.

Shōgun

Based on the novel of the same name, Shōgun is a new historical epic on FX. The series take place in feudal Japan, where three people’s paths intertwine. First, there’s the shipwrecked English sailor, John Blackstone (Cosmo Jarvis); second, there’s Lord Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), who’s contending with his keen political rivals; lastly, there’s the Lady Moriko (Anna Sawai), whose necessary skills belie her mysterious past. It’s a sprawling drama filled with political intrigue, richly realized medieval battles, and fascinating characters, all coming together to make a spectacle of a show. Shōgun will be available to stream Tuesday, February 27th.

What to watch on Amazon Prime

The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy

Following Hazbin Hotel, Amazon is looking to further bulk up its adult animated slate with The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy. The series follows Dr. Sleech (Stephanie Hsu) and Dr. Klak (Keke Palmer), a pair of brilliant besties with expertise in all sorts of intergalactic injuries and illnesses. But when a new patient presents a new possibility to cure a universal ill, they decide to take the opportunity—even if they may lose their lives (or their licenses) in the process. The rest of the talented voice cast includes Kieran Culkin, Maya Rudolph, Natasha Lyonne, and Sam Smith. The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy premieres Friday, February 23rd.

The Green Knight

An Arthurian legend stunningly brought to life by filmmaker David Lowery, A24’s The Green Knight stars Dev Patel as Gawain. Taking cues from the 14th century poem, the film follows Gawain as he strikes down the mystical Green Knight for glory—in exchange for an equal blow bestowed by the knight the following year. It’s a medieval fantasy movie that feels decidedly out of place in the ‘20s, but that’s a good thing. The supporting cast of Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Barry Keoghan, and Sarita Choudhury help instill things with dread and mystery in equal measure, and Patel makes for quite the convincing knight. The Green Knight streams until Thursday, February 29th. Read Observer’s review.

What to watch on Paramount+

Elsbeth

The Good Wife has already spawned a successful spin-off in The Good Fight, and now Elsbeth is ready to join the proceedings. Carrie Preston returns as fan-favorite Elsbeth Tascioni, the brilliant but unusual attorney. This new series sees her uprooting her successful Chicago career and bringing her unique talents to New York, where she works with NYPD Captain Wagner (Wendell Pierce) and Officer Blanke (Carra Patterson) to solve a litany of legal cases. For a character that’s existed in the background of shows for over a decade, it’s sure to be an interesting adventure for Elsbeth. Elsbeth will be available to stream starting Thursday, February 29th.

What to Watch is a regular endorsement of movies and TV worth your streaming time.

Laura Babiak

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February 22, 2024
Summer movie season is in full swing. Here’s what’s coming through Labor Day

The summer movie season goes into high-gear in July, with the arrival of the seventh “Mission: Impossible” movie followed by the “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie” showdown on July 21.

Not that you have to choose one or the other — as Tom Cruise said on Twitter, “I love a double feature, and it doesn’t get more explosive (or more pink) than the one with Oppenheimer and Barbie.”

August also promises a new take on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and introduces a new DC superhero, Blue Beetle.

Moviegoers were only moderately interested in going to the theater to say goodbye to Harrison Ford’s archaeologist character in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.”

Indiana Jones. Karen Allen always knew he’d come walking back through her door. Since 1981’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Allen’s Marion Ravenwood has been only a sporadic presence in the subsequent sequels.

An international film festival in the Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary has kicked off its 57th edition with an award planned for Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe.

A London prosecutor says Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey is a “sexual bully” who assaults other men and doesn’t respect personal boundaries.

Here’s a month-by-month guide of this summer’s new movies. Keep scrolling for more info and review links for May and June’s releases.

July 7

” Insidious: The Red Door ” (Sony, theaters): Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne are back to scare everyone in the fifth edition.

“ Joy Ride ” (Lionsgate, theaters): Adele Lim directs this raucous comedy about a friends trip to China to find someone’s birth mother, starring Ashley Park, Stephanie Hsu, Sherry Cola and Sabrina Wu.

“ The Lesson ” (Bleecker Street, theaters): A young novelist helps an acclaimed author in this thriller with Richard E. Grant.

“ Biosphere ” (IFC, theaters and VOD): Mark Duplass and Sterling K. Brown are the last two men on Earth.

“ Earth Mama ” (A24, theaters): This acclaimed debut from Savannah Leaf focuses on a woman, single and pregnant with two kids in foster care, trying to reclaim her family in the Bay Area.

July 14

“ Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part I” (Paramount, theaters, on July 12): Tom Cruise? Death-defying stunts in Venice? The return of Kittridge? What more do you need?

“ Theater Camp ”(Searchlight, theaters): Musical theater nerds (and comedy fans) will delight in this loving satire of a childhood institution, with Ben Platt and Molly Gordon.

“ The Miracle Club ” (Sony Pictures Classics, theaters): Lifetime friends (Kathy Bates, Maggie Smith, Agnes O’Casey) in a small Dublin community in 1967 dream of a trip to Lourdes, a town in France where miracles are supposed to happen. Laura Linney co-stars.

“ 20 Days in Mariupol ” (in theaters in New York): AP’s Mstyslav Chernov directs this documentary, a joint project between The Associated Press and PBS “Frontline,” about the first weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in which Chernov, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka, and field producer Vasilisa Stepanenko, became the only international journalists operating in the city. Their coverage won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

“ Afire ” (Janus Films, theaters): This drama from German director Christian Petzold is set at a vacation home by the Baltic Sea where tensions rise between a writer, a photographer and a mysterious guest (Paula Beer) as a wildfire looms.

“ They Cloned Tyrone ” (Netflix): John Boyega, Teyonah Parris and Jamie Foxx lead this mystery caper.

July 21

“ Oppenheimer ” (Universal, theaters): Christopher Nolan takes audiences into the mind of the “father of the atomic bomb,” J. Robert Oppenheimer ( Cillian Murphy ) as he and his peers build up to the trinity test at Los Alamos.

“ Barbie ” (Warner Bros., theaters): Margot Robbie plays the world’s most famous doll (as do many others) opposite Ryan Gosling’s Ken in Greta Gerwig’s comedic look at their perfect world.

“ Stephen Curry: Underrated ” (Apple TV+): Peter Nicks directs a documentary about the four-time NBA champion.

“ The Beanie Bubble ” (in select theaters; on Apple TV+ on July 28): Zach Galifianakis stars as the man behind Beanie Babies in this comedic drama, co-starring Elizabeth Banks, Sarah Snook and Geraldine Viswanathan.

July 28

“ Haunted Mansion ” (Disney, theaters): A Disney ride comes to life in with the help of Rosario Dawson, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson and Danny DeVito.

“ Talk to Me ” (A24, theaters): A group of friends conjure spirits in this horror starring Sophie Wilde and Joe Bird.

“ Happiness for Beginners ” (Netflix, on July 27): Ellie Kemper is a newly divorced woman looking to shake things up.

“ Sympathy for the Devil ” (RLJE Films): Joel Kinnaman is forced to drive a mysterious gunman (Nicolas Cage) in this thriller.

“ Kokomo City ” (Magnolia): A documentary following four Black transgender sex workers. One of the subjects, Koko Da Doll, was shot and killed in April.

August 4

“ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem ” (Paramount, theaters): This animated movie puts the teenage back in the equation with a very funny voice cast including Seth Rogen and John Cena as Bebop and Rocksteady.

“ Shortcomings ” (Sony Pictures Classics, theaters): Randall Park directs this adaptation of Adrian Tomine’s graphic novel about Asian American friends in the Bay Area starring Sherry Cola as Alice, Ally Maki as Miko and Justin H. Min as Ben.

“ Meg 2: The Trench ” (Warner Bros., theaters): Jason Statham is back fighting sharks.

“ Passages ” (Mubi): The relationship of a longtime couple (Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw) is thrown when one begins an affair with a woman (Adèle Exarchopoulos).

“ A Compassionate Spy ” (Magnolia): Steve James’ documentary about the youngest physicist on the Manhattan Project who fed information to the Soviets.

“Dreamin’ Wild” (Roadside Attractions): Casey Affleck stars in this film about musical duo Donnie and Joe Emerson.

“ Problemista ” (A24, theaters): Julio Torres plays an aspiring toy designer in this surreal comedy co-starring Tilda Swinton that he also wrote, directed and produced.

August 11

“ Gran Turismo ” (Sony, theaters): A gamer gets a chance to drive a professional course in this video game adaptation starring David Harbour and Orlando Bloom.

“ The Last Voyage of the Demeter ” (Universal, theaters): This supernatural horror film draws from a chapter of “Dracula.”

“ Heart of Stone ” (Netflix): Gal Gadot played an intelligence operative in this action thriller, with Jamie Dornan.

“The Eternal Memory” (MTV Documentary Films): This documentary explores a marriage and Alzheimer’s disease.

“The Pod Generation” (Vertical, theaters): Emilia Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor star in this sci-fi comedy about a new path to parenthood.

“Jules” (Bleecker Street, theaters): Ben Kingsley stars in this film about a UFO that crashes in his backyard in rural Pennsylvania.

August 18

“ Blue Beetle ” (Warner Bros., theaters): Xolo Maridueña plays the DC superhero Jaime Reyes / Blue Beetle in this origin story.

“ Strays ” (Universal, theaters): Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx voice dogs in this not-animated, R-rated comedy.

“birth/rebirth” (IFC, theaters): A woman and a morgue technician bring a little girl back to life in this horror.

“ White Bird ” (Lionsgate, theaters): Helen Mirren tells her grandson, expelled from school for bullying, a story about herself in Nazi-occupied France.

“Landscape with Invisible Hand” (MGM, theaters): Teens come up with a unique moneymaking scheme in a world taken over by aliens.

“The Hill” (Briarcliff Entertainment): This baseball drama starring Dennis Quaid is based on the true story of Rickey Hill.

August 25

“They Listen” (Sony, theaters): John Cho and Katherine Waterston lead this secretive Blumhouse horror.

“Golda” (Bleecker Street): Helen Mirren stars in this drama about Golda Meir, the Prime Minister of Israel during the Yom Kippur War.

“ Bottoms ” (MGM, theaters): Two unpopular teenage girls (Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri) start a fight club to impress the cheerleaders they want to lose their virginity to in this parody of the teen sex comedy.

“The Dive” (RLJE Films): In this suspense pic about two sisters out for a dive, one gets hurt and is trapped underwater.

“Scrapper” (Kino Lorber, theaters): A 12-year-old girl (Lola Campbell) is living alone in a London flat until her estranged father (Harris Dickinson) shows up.

“Fremont” (Music Box Films, theaters): A former army translator in Afghanistan (Anaita Wali Zada) relocates to Fremont, California and gets a job at a fortune cookie factory. “The Bear’s” Jeremy Allen White co-stars.

September 1

“ The Equalizer 3 ” (Sony, theaters): Denzel Washington is back as Robert McCall, who is supposed to be retired from the assassin business but things get complicated in Southern Italy.

ALREADY IN THEATERS AND STREAMING

“ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ” (Disney/Marvel): Nine years after the non-comic obsessed world was introduced to Peter Quill, Rocket, Groot and the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy, the misfits are closing out the trilogy and saying goodbye to director James Gunn, who is now leading rival DC. ( AP’s review.)

“ What’s Love Got to Do with It? ” (Shout! Studios): Lily James plays a documentary filmmaker whose next project follows her neighbor (Shazad Latif) on his road to an arranged marriage in this charming romantic comedy.

“ Book Club: The Next Chapter ” (Focus Features): Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen travel to Italy to celebrate an engagement.

“ The Mother,” ( Netflix ): Jennifer Lopez is an assassin and a mother in this action pic timed to Mother’s Day. (AP’s review here.)

“ Love Again ” (Sony): Priyanka Chopra Jonas plays a woman mourning the death of her boyfriend who texts his old number not knowing it belongs to someone new (Sam Heughan). Celine Dion (and her music) co-star in this romantic drama.

“ STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie ” ( AppleTV+ ): Davis Guggenheim helps Michael J. Fox tell his story, from his rise in Hollywood to his Parkinson’s diagnosis and beyond.

“ Monica ” (IFC): A transgender woman, estranged from her family, goes home to visit her dying mother in this film starring Tracee Lysette and Patricia Clarkson.

“ The Starling Girl ” (Bleecker Street): Eliza Scanlen plays a 17-year-old girl living in a fundamentalist Christian community in Kentucky whose life changes with the arrival of Lewis Pullman’s charismatic youth pastor.

“ Fool’s Paradise ” (Roadside Attractions): Charlie Day writes, directs and plays dual roles in this comedic Hollywood satire.

“ Hypnotic ” (Ketchup Entertainment): Ben Affleck plays a detective whose daughter goes missing in this Robert Rodriguez movie.

“ It Ain’t Over ” (Sony Pictures Classics): A documentary about Lawrence Peter ‘Yogi’ Berra.

“Blackberry” (IFC): Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton star in this movie about the rise of the Blackberry. ( AP’s review.)

“ Fast X ” (Universal): In the tenth installment of the Fast franchise, Jason Momoa joins as the vengeful son of a slain drug lord intent to take out Vin Diesel’s Dom. ( AP’s review.)

“ White Men Can’t Jump ” (20th Century Studios, streaming on Hulu): Sinqua Walls and Jack Harlow co-star in this remake of the 1992 film, co-written by Kenya Barris and featuring the late Lance Reddick. ( AP’s review.)

“ Master Gardener ” (Magnolia): Joel Edgerton is a horticulturist in this Paul Schrader drama, co-starring Sigourney Weaver as a wealthy dowager. ( AP’s review.)

“ Sanctuary ” (Neon): A dark comedy about a dominatrix (Margaret Qualley) and her wealth client (Christopher Abbott).

“ The Little Mermaid ” (Disney): Halle Bailey plays Ariel in this technically ambitious live-action remake of a recent Disney classic directed by Rob Marshall (“Chicago”) and co-starring Melissa McCarthy as Ursula. ( AP’s review.)

“ You Hurt My Feelings ” (A24): Nicole Holofcener takes a nuanced and funny look at a white lie that unsettles the marriage between a New York City writer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and a therapist (Tobias Menzies). ( AP’s review.)

“ About My Father ” (Lionsgate): Stand-up comic Sebastian Maniscalco co-wrote this culture clash movie in which he takes his Italian-American father (Robert De Niro) on a vacation with his wife’s WASPy family. ( AP’s review.)

“ Victim/Suspect ” ( Netflix ): This documentary explores how law enforcement sometimes indicts victims of sexual assault instead of helping.

“ The Machine,” (Sony): Stand-up comedian Bert Kreischer brings Mark Hamill into the fray for this action-comedy.

“ Kandahar ” (Open Road Films): Gerard Butler plays an undercover CIA operative in hostile territory in Afghanistan.

“ Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse ” (Sony): Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is back, but with things not going so well in Brooklyn, he opts to visit the multiverse with his old pal Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), where he encounters the Spider-Society. ( AP’s review.)

“ The Boogeyman ” (20th Century Studios): “It’s the thing that comes for your kids when you’re not paying attention,” David Dastmalchian explains to Chris Messina in this Stephen King adaptation.

“ Past Lives ” (A24): Already being hailed as one of the best of the year after its Sundance debut, Celine Song’s directorial debut is a decades and continent-spanning romance about two friends separated in childhood who meet 20 years later in New York. ( AP’s review.)

“ Transformers: Rise of the Beasts ” (Paramount): Steven Caple Jr directs the seventh Transformers movie, starring Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback. ( AP’s review.)

“Flamin’ Hot” ( Hulu, Disney+): Eva Longoria directs this story about Richard Montañez, a janitor at Frito-Lay who came up with the idea for Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. ( AP’s review.)

“ Blue Jean ” (Magnolia): It’s 1988 in England and hostilities are mounting towards the LGBTQ community in Georgia Oakley’s BAFTA-nominated directorial debut about a gym teacher (Rosy McEwan) and the arrival of a new student. ( AP’s review.)

“Daliland” (Magnolia): Mary Harron directs Ben Kingsley as Salvador Dalí.

“ The Flash ” (Warner Bros.): Batmans past Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton assemble for this standalone Flash movie directed by Andy Muschietti and starring Ezra Miller as the titular superhero. ( AP’s review.)

“ Elemental ” (Pixar): In Element City, residents include Air, Earth, Water and Fire in the new Pixar original, featuring the voices of Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie and Catherine O’Hara. ( AP’s review.)

“ Extraction 2 ” ( Netflix ): Chris Hemsworth’s mercenary Tyler Rake is back for another dangerous mission. ( AP’s review.)

“ Asteroid City ” (Focus Features): Wes Anderson assembles Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Jason Schwartzman and Jeffrey Wright for a stargazer convention in the mid-century American desert. ( AP’s review.)

“ The Blackening ” (Lionsgate): This scary movie satire sends a group of Black friends including Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg and X Mayo to a cabin in the woods.

“ No Hard Feelings ” (Sony): Jennifer Lawrence leads a raunchy comedy about a woman hired by a shy teen’s parents to help him get out of his shell before Princeton. ( AP’s review.)

“ Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ” (Lucasfilm): Harrison Ford puts his iconic fedora back on for a fifth outing as Indy in this new adventure directed by James Mangold and co-starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge. ( AP’s review.)

“ Every Body ” (Focus Features): Oscar-nominated documentarian Julie Cohen turns her lens on three intersex individuals in her latest film. ( AP’s review.)

“ Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken ” (Universal): Lana Condor (“To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before”) lends her voice to this animated action-comedy about a shy teenager trying to survive high school as a part-Kraken. (AP’s review.)

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July 2, 2023
‘Joyride’ Trailer: Stephanie Hsu And More Smuggle Drugs And Impersonate K-Pop Stars In Attempt To Find Birth Mom

By Emerson Pearson.
Published: 3 mins ago

The “Joy Ride” trailer is out now and certainly will take you for one.

“Crazy Rich Asians” director Adele Lim is behind the film, along with production credits from the comedic minds of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. It follows four women as they embark on a chaotic and explicit journey across Asia to search for one of the character’s birth mothers.

Audrey (Ashley Park) links up with her childhood best friend Lolo (Sherry Cola), her college roommate who is now a Chinese soap star (Oscar nominee Stephanie Hsu), and her unconventional cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu).

READ MORE:
Jamie Lee Curtis Told Photographers To ‘Put The Cameras Down’, Didn’t Want To Take Pics Without Stephanie Hsu

The four girls are embroiled in everything from cocaine smuggling to K-Pop star impersonating. Still, the main lesson they take from their adventure is the importance of friendship and self-discovery.

In a recent profile with Variety, Lim stated that the film is more than a raunchy comedy and aims to redefine the status of Asian women in media.

“”There’s a history of being exoticized, fetishized and sexualized, but through a white male point of view,” she shared with Variety. “The solution is not to strip away the fun and the sexuality; we wanted to tell a story, but on our terms. It’s a story about friendship that shows that we can be messy and thirsty with problems but from the female gaze.”

“Joy Ride” swings into theatres on July 7, 2023.

Emerson Pearson

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March 17, 2023
The Oscars 2023: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

Whenever I watch an awards ceremony for the “biggest names in Hollywood,” I regret tuning in about 30 minutes in. It sounds like a great idea to watch
The Oscars in theory, but in practice, it’s more agonizing than a low-scoring football game. Last night’s 95th Annual Academy Awards hosted by Jimmy Kimmel held us hostage and threatened to go on for almost four hours.

This year, we were faced with the cold, hard truth: every celeb we know and love is on Ozempic. And Nicole Kidman will forever give us a meme even if she doesn’t speak.

<br />

The Winners

The worst part about these award shows is that you know who’s going to win.
Everything, Everywhere, All At Once was going for a sweep of their 11 Oscar nominations, so why do I have to watch everyone, everywhere, all at once make a five minute speech? Seems borderline criminal.

The first award of the night was given to Best Supporting Actress, with
EEAO having two nominees in Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu, alongside a roster of talent in Angela Bassett (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) and Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin). Controversially, or maybe not, Jamie Lee won.

A24’s multiverse
EEAO became the most awarded filem of all time, winning Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Leading Actress with Michelle Yeoh becoming the first Asian actress to win. I was on the edge of my seat for one of the closer races of the night, Best Leading Actor. With names like Austin Butler (Elvis), Brendan Fraser (The Whale), Colin Farrell (Banshees), Paul Mescal (Aftersun), and Bill Nighy (Living), Fraser ended up taking home the Best Leading Actor award.

Believe me, between Ke Huy Quan and Brendan Fraser’s speeches, not a dry eye was in the house.

The Drama

It wouldn’t be
The Oscars without drama. So let’s dig in. Starting with the red carpet – which was actually champagne colored and very ugly this year – we had Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Graham doing interviews. There was a very clear opportunity for millions of TikTok clips if you would have let Baby V interview ex-boyfriend and permanent Elvis stand-in, Austin Butler, but no. Of course not.

Ashley Graham instead interviewed Hugh Grant for quite possibly the most awkward interview of all time. Hugh Grant all but refused to answer questions, even calling
The Oscars “Vanity Fair,” to which Graham responds “Vanity Fair is where you’ll be letting loose later.” The whole thing made me sick to my stomach.

And does anyone else feel bad that we keep inviting Rihanna to perform “Lift Me Up” at these shows and then she doesn’t win the award? I think adding her and A$AP Rocky to the audience brings added style and attractiveness that would otherwise lack without them – so maybe give her an award to keep her coming back?

We also have Jamie Lee Curtis’s controversial win as one of the only white women nominated in her category. And while I agree Angela Bassett
did the thing both in her performance in Black Panther and her outfit last night, it’s hard to get mad at an actress for winning an award the Academy designated for her. Blame The Academy, not the women.

This year’s major cringe wasn’t a slap, but rather Jimmy Kimmel asking activist Malala Yousafzai if she thought Harry Styles really spit on Chris Pine. After she proceeds to say she only talks about peace, Kimmel nicknamed her Malala-land. Again, just gauge my eyes out at this point.

And for those wondering about hookups, Bad Bunny and Kendall Jenner were seen together at Jay-Z and Beyonce’s afterparty. Also in attendance? Gigi Hadid and Leonardo DiCaprio. Do with that information what you will.

The Style

Perhaps my favorite part of the night: the clothes. Some of my favorite looks of the night were as follows:

Hunter Schafer

Hunter Schafer

Anthony Harvey/Shutterstock

Megan Thee Stallion

Megan Thee Stallion

Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock

Rihanna

Rihanna

Rob Latour/Shutterstock

Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga

Chelsea Lauren/Shutterstock

Angela Bassett

Angela Bassett

Chelsea Lauren/Shutterstock

Tems

Tems

Chelsea Lauren/Shutterstock

Jai Phillips

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March 13, 2023
Are You Surprised A Visual Effects Extravaganza About Paying Your Taxes and Honoring Family Was the Oscar Darling?

Triangle of Sadness never stood a chance as a major Oscar contender, of course. And as a skewering of the rich and a society that worships them, it was certainly not going to topple the likes of Everything Everywhere All At Once. Which, say what you will about it, is not some kind of “love letter” to moms (in the spirit of the 1942 children’s book, Runaway Bunny) or “ordinary people,” so much as a thinly-veiled push to accept your fate—no matter how mediocre—make the most of it and, obviously, never try to outsmart/dodge the IRS. Even though it seems like one ought to be able to mentally maneuver around somebody as toady as Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis, who swept up an Oscar for her part in the movie as well), Kafka long ago made it clear that bureaucracy always triumphs. And so do schmaltzy movies at the Oscars—regardless of such movies being masked as “profound” and “rooted in realism.”

That “realism” begins when Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) is confronted at the IRS office by Alpha-Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), another version of her husband from the multiverse. But it’s difficult to focus on what Alpha-Waymond is saying to her about the collapse of every universe while the “voice of reason” throughout the film, Deirdre, a star IRS agent (with the butt plug-shaped Auditor of the Month awards to prove it), keeps trying to bring Evelyn back to “reality,” whatever that means. But to Deirdre, it means reminding this non-taxpayer that “hobbies” are not businesses, and that Evelyn is going to be in some serious trouble if she doesn’t get her story straight with regard to her tax return “narrative.” Notably, Everything Everywhere All at Once’s major sweep of the Oscars comes just in time for tax season—how fucking convenient is that, as Cardi B would say. Because yes, amid all the smokescreens about nihilism and how “nothing matters,” the Daniels (Kwan and Scheinert) ultimately seem to want to remind viewers that nothing is ever so chaotic in any universe as to excuse away not correctly filling out and filing a tax return.

In truth, the only way to gauge whether or not a bona fide apocalypse has occurred is if people stop paying their taxes and are able to “get away with it.” This tending to refer to something like a The Last of Us scenario wherein it’s irrefutably true that nothing matters, save for basic survival (thanks to the 28 Days Theory on Humans Enduring for No Good Reason Other Than It’s Encoded Within Them). Or, in the instance of Triangle of Sadness, you find yourself in a Lord of the Flies situation, stranded on a deserted island. That’s when humanity in its most unbridled form reveals itself. But naturally, the Academy doesn’t likely care to remind viewers of such “ugly” realities, like “buying sex with the common food” as Abigail (Dolly de Lion) does in her newfound role as leader.

In contrast, while she was a cleaner on a 250-million-dollar yacht, Abigail was “valueless.” In the rough of the wild, however, her skills (what the Daniels would bill as being part of “competency porn”) are worth everything to the passengers that now depend on her for survival. Paula (Vicki Berlin), the head of staff on the yacht, makes the mistake of trying to treat Abigail the same way she does on the boat, having the gall to ask her after Abigail does all the work to finagle them a fish dinner, “Why do you get so much food? Why?” This question forces Abigail, The Little Red Hen of the outfit, to spell it out by explaining, “I caught the fish, I made the fire, I cooked. I did all the work, and everybody got something.” In capitalist existence, this is simply called a laborer. In Lord of the Flies existence, this is called running shit and everyone else without any viable skills can shut the fuck up.

When Yaya (Charlbi Dean), the proverbial hot model/influencer of the yacht’s remaining passengers, ends up hiking with Abigail over a mountain to find that they’re actually on an island that houses a bougie resort, the look on Abigail’s face is one of sheer disappointment. She doesn’t want to go back to how it used to be. To the existence, or “universe,” as Everything Everywhere All at Once would bill it, where she’s a lowly peon whose skills are rendered useless again now that money as the sole source of clout has reentered the equation. In Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Daniels attempt to lift up the working class by spotlighting them as the “real superheroes” in this world. Of course, what would be far more uplifting to them is if they were paid accordingly. Not given some propaganda about accepting how shitty things are and, by the way, keep paying your taxes.

Perhaps the vastly opposing messages of each film, with Everything Everywhere All at Once disguised as something it’s not, proves that the only side people want to see of themselves is the rose-colored one. With “normal” Waymond saying such dialogue as, “The only thing I do know is that we have to be kind.” A more debonair Waymond in the universe where Evelyn is a film star and didn’t up marrying him finds her telling Waymond how bleak it would have been if she had opted for a life with him. As he leaves, Waymond ripostes, “In another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.”

This is what finally warms Evelyn’s heart back up to Waymond in the universe where they do just that, turning her back on the darkness that Jobu Tupaki a.k.a. her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), has infected Evelyn with on her journey through the multiverse. Although it seems like Joy might have won with her darkness (and the everything bagel that encompasses it), Evelyn chooses to employ Waymond’s combat style of “killing with kindness” (it was a grave error that Selena Gomez’s “Kill ‘Em With Kindness” was not used at any point during this scene). This, in turn, leads laundromat owner Evelyn to not let her daughter go even though she asks to be.

Chasing after Joy outside the laundromat, Evelyn explains that she would rather be in this universe with Joy over any other. Joy counters, “[But] here all we get are a few specks of time where any of this actually makes sense.” Needless to say, Joy isn’t referring only to the literal way in which she and her mother have a tendency to tune their being into different universes, but the way in which none of life really makes sense to any of us. Except for those rare moments of clarity we’re meant to get by being surrounded with loved ones and friends during those precious, errant hours of time off from work. Work is what people do, after all, in order to support those around them. Including institutions that profit from (usually underpaid) labor. Especially the IRS.

“Then I will cherish these few specks of time,” Evelyn assures. As though to say that we all should do the same with vacation weeks and “leisure hours” spent recovering from the horrors of working so that said wage can be gutted like a fucking fish by the government. To act like the Daniels aren’t complicit in perpetuating this inherently flawed cycle, they have Joy announce at the end, “Taxes suck.” But, clearly, you still have to do them if you want to be considered a Viable Member of Society (meaning, ultimately, a law-abiding one—laws being a social construct created by—ding! ding! ding!—the government a.k.a. the rich people that control it).

Incidentally, the final line of the movie consists of Evelyn inquiring, “Sorry, what did you say?” It’s an appropriate question for those viewers who thought that they had heard something infinitely wise and profound when, at the core of Everything Everywhere All at Once is the longstanding societal reiteration that you must do your taxes and honor the family unit. Not just by never abandoning it, but by making sure that the same “beliefs” are imparted down the generational line. In other words, of course this would get the Academy hard as a rock compared to something as “Eat the Rich” in sentiment as the aforementioned Triangle of Sadness.

Genna Rivieccio

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March 13, 2023