It’s unlikely anyone in 1976 could have foreseen the direction the adaptation of Mary Rodgers’ novel Freaky Friday could take in the 2020s. One of those Walt Disney studio classics before the company issued special re-release limited VHS tapes and merchandised every film to its hilt to become a corporate behemoth, the film starred Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris as mom and daughter swapping bodies and needing to live life literally in the skin of the other. Swap in part-time wacky comedic actor (Wedding Crashers), part-time horror actor (Psycho)Vince Vaughn as a creepy 50-year-old serial killer, and a high schooler named Millie played by young actress Kathryn Newton(Supernatural, Paranormal Activity 4) and you get Freaky, Blumhouse’s latest horror film, now streaming on Vudu, Amazon Prime Video, and other services. Continue reading →
Forget about that 2003 remake starring Lindsay Lohan. Freaky Friday is one of those Walt Disney studio classics before the company issued special re-release limited VHS tapes and merchandised every film to its hilt to become a corporate behemoth. The 1976 movie (written by Mary Rodgers, based on her novel) starred Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris as mom and daughter swapping bodies and needing to live life literally in the skin of the other. It was the kind of film your parents would take you to and you’d have a great time (I did). Flash forward a few generations and we now have an homage that might as well be a remake of Freaky Friday, only this time it stars wacky comedic actor Vince Vaughn as a creepy 50-year-old serial killer, swapped with a high schooler played by young actress Kathryn Newton(Supernatural, Paranormal Activity 4). It’s called simply Freaky, and it’s from Blumhouse and directed by 1970s icon Michael Landon’s son Christopher Landon, well established now as a slasher movie and slasher comedy movie director. Unfortunately the release will miss Halloween, but it looks like one to keep on the radar for its inevitable home release. Check out the trailer below.
If you think about it, who would have taken better advantage of staying home from school during a pandemic than Ferris Bueller? (That’s some pretty good social distancing in the above museum image). In advance of its 35th anniversary next year, the cast of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is one of many groups that have reunited for fans in such an unprecedented way this summer in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. These great panel discussion events are a good start at sharing some positive vibes right when everyone needs it. It’s like a year long comic-con. This Ferris reunion definitely belongs on the top shelf of what not to miss. This event was part of Josh Gad’s Reunited Apart videos. The upbeat actor hosts Ferris himself, Matthew Broderick, along with co-stars Alan Ruck (Cameron) with great COVID hair, Mia Sara (Sloane), Jennifer Grey (Jeanie), Cindy Pickett (Mom), Lyman Ward (Dad), and some charming bits from Ben Stein (Ferris’s econ teacher).
It’s that time of year again, time to take a look forward at what movies should be on your radar for 2019. Are you going to see them all? Heck no. These are the genre films we think borg readers will want to know about to make their own checklists for the coming year–and they are only the films we know about so far. We pulled 78 of the hundreds of films that have been finalized or are in varying stages of final production, slated for next year’s movie calendar.
What looks to top the list for most fanboys and fangirls? The last of the nine films in theStar Wars saga. Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, and Spider-Man: Far From Home.Shazam!is DC’s contribution. Quentin Tarantino returns to movies to direct Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Martin Scorsese is back with an all-star cast in The Irishman (on Netflix). M. Night Shyamalan finishes his dark superhero trilogy with Glass. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton return in Terminator. Jordan Peele is back with another horror film with Us.
Do you like sequels? This is your year. Another Men in Black, X-Men, Shaft, Happy Death Day, Lego Movie, Hellboy, John Wick, Kingsman, Jumanji, The Secret Life of Pets, How to Train Your Dragon, Fast and the Furious, Zombieland, Addams Family, Charlie’s Angels, Godzilla, Shaun the Sheep, Annabelle,and Stephen King’s It and Pet Sematary—Disney is trying to get you to move into your local theater with another Toy Story, Aladdin, Dumbo, Frozen, and Lion King–all in one year. Yep, lots and lots of sequels are coming.
Some films don’t have locked-in release dates yet. Amazon Prime and Netflix haven’t revealed dates for these 2019 releases:
Martin Scorcese’s The Irishman, a film about Jimmy Hoffa starring Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, and Bobby Cannavale (Netflix)
The Kid, a Western biopic with Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Dane DeHaan, and Vincent D’Onofrio (Netflix)
The Man Who Killed Hitler Then Bigfoot, starring Sam Elliott (Netflix)
6 Underground, a Michael Bay film starring Ryan Reynolds, Ben Hardy, Dave Franco, and Mélanie Laurent (Netflix)
The Last Thing He Wanted, Dee Rees directs Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Willem Dafoe, and Toby Jones; journalist quits newspaper job to become an arms dealer for a covert government agency (Netflix)
The Laundromat, Steven Soderbergh directs Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, James Cromwell, about the Pentagon Papers (Netflix)
Radioactive, Rosamund Pike plays Marie Curie, with Anya Taylor-Joy (Amazon)
Some of these films will have revised release dates, or get pushed to 2020.
So grab your calendar and start making your plans–here are the movies you’ll want to see in 2019 (and many you might not):
January
Glass – Superhero, M. Night Shyamalan trilogy part 3, stars Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, James McAvoy; continues where Unbreakable and Split left off – January 18.
Serenity– Mystery/Thriller, stars Anne Hathaway, Jason Clarke, Djimon Hounsou, Jeremy Strong, Diane Lane; sorry, no relation to Firefly – January 25.
King of Thieves– Heist Comedy, stars Jim Broadbent, Tom Courtenay, Charlie Cox, Michael Gambon, and Ray Winstone – January 25.
Is it just me or do these look like the same movie? On the one hand you have the dark and serious second chapter in the Sicario series, Sicario 2: Soldado, following a badass mercenary in the world of international drug smuggling played by Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Guardians of the Galaxy’s own Benicio Del Toro. On the other you have the dark comedy Gringo, starring David Oyelowo as a businessman who gets caught up in a bad drug deal with a cartel in Mexico.
Sicario had some great things going for it, including Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, and Del Toro. But Blunt was the lead, and the typically fantastic actress seemed stuck in a role where she was the only one making mistakes and the big bad guys were the only ones knowing what was going on. Del Toro’s character was by far the best thing the film had going for it, the kind of character that got Kevin Spacey his Academy Award and in another year could have done the same for Del Toro. But the 2015 film was most memorable for its long, slow, atmospheric scenes where nothing happened, making it feel like the film would never end. But with Del Toro’s character driving the sequel and a new director (swapping Stefano Sollima for Denis Villeneuve), is there hope Sicario 2 could rise above the original?
Gringo has a different kind of cast of stars. In addition to Oyelowo it stars Charlize Theron, Joel Edgerton, Amanda Seyfried, and Alan Ruck. This one will be an Amazon Studios release–the studio is still looking for its breakout equivalent of a box office hit. As with Sicario 2, again we have the theme of drug smuggling and drug deals gone bad. both of these arrive on the heels of this year’s mildly successful and critically acclaimed drama comedy American Made with Tom Cruise, which took the whole drug smuggling concept in its own direction, poking fun at a real-life drug smuggler from the 1980s as his world crashed in on him.
So which one is for you? Check out these trailers for Sicario 2 and Gringo:
When Brad Pitt has another winning performance you find you’re glued to the screen. From Twelve Monkeys to Meet Joe Black, Ocean’s Eleven to Inglourious Basterds and Moneyball, Pitt has range, plus the charisma and presence that translates to star power. As with Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp, if you can strip away the celebrity and focus on the performance, Pitt seems like he just can’t fail. Pitt is just as mesmerizing as any character in his past body of work in the new film War Machine.
In another time War Machine would be a theatrical release–it carries the production values, cast, script, and studio support as much as any other movie, and is produced by Pitt’s own Plan B Entertainment, the same company that garnered a Best Picture Academy Award for 12 Years a Slave. But we’re now in No Man’s Land. With Netflix making not only its own competitive, award-winning shows for the small screen, it has moved on to the theatrical film that simply isn’t intended for a theatrical release. War Machine is based on Rolling Stone writer Michael Hasting’s book The Operators, a biographical account of now retired General Stanley McChrystal that was expanded from the piece he wrote when he was embedded with the general and his men. You’ve heard the story, the one that took down the general’s career as he was attempting to gain traction in his efforts in Afghanistan in 2010. McChrystal’s was an American story, one that has plagued leadership in wartime notably since World War II– how do you win a seemingly unwinnable war? You’ll be hard-pressed not to find story elements from Vietnam days in War Machine, but also echoes of the Persian Gulf War, and other actions where data, facts, politics, economics, miscommunication, and personalities muddled direction and purpose. Only War Machine isn’t about McChrystal really–Brad Pitt’s character is only based on McChrystal. For storytelling purposes it’s close enough, and fortunately allows the viewer to enjoy the fictional story being told without the effort of comparing the story to the real events the underlying book was chronicling. So throw out your own politics for a few hours and get ready for an interesting character study.
Were War Machine released in theaters, there’d no doubt be discussion of the film as the next chapter in a line of films with Twelve O’Clock High, The Best Years of Our Lives, Apocalypse Now, Patton, Full Metal Jacket, and Born on the Fourth of July. Pitt’s General Glen McMahon is Pitt aged a decade or so, sporting gray hair and a fixed sideways sneer, a raised eyebrow, and a stature (especially when running exercise laps before the other troops awaken) that makes him almost unrecognizable. McMahon is smart, fierce, determined, and strong–the perfect selection for someone who has been appointed to complete an impossible task–in essence, do all that needs to be done to fix Afghanistan and get ready to leave without bringing in more troops–when he should have known he was doomed to failure from the beginning. Don’t we want our generals to be confident, strident, and to a certain extent, bold risk takers? McMahon is quirky, just a little bit off, while exhibiting a bravado and charisma–albeit awkwardly packaged–that entrenches the picture in believability. Pitt believes in his character so we do as well. This includes the loyalty of his men, which begins to form the movie’s all-star cast, including McMahon’s obnoxiously loyal, angry, and mouthy#2 man played by Anthony Michael Hall (the film’s take on then-Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served 24 days recently as national security adviser) and an image guy played by Topher Grace. The cast is rounded out on all sides by Ben Kingsley as President Karzai, Alan Ruck and Griffin Dunne as Administration policy wonks, Tilda Swinton as a German politician, and Meg Tilly taking on the role (brilliantly) of McMahon’s wife (plus a nicely handled cameo by Russell Crowe).
When USA Network announced last year that its hit spy series Burn Notice would see its last season this year, it really seemed like the right decision. The ramifications of Jeffrey Donovan’s Michael Westen getting a burn notice, blacklisting him and leaving him with nothing: no cash, no credit, no job history, stuck in Miami doing whatever came his way for six years with his trigger happy girlfriend/ex-girlfriend/girlfriend again (Gabrielle Anwar), his old friend that used to inform on him to the FBI (Bruce Campbell), his mom (Sharon Gless) and another spy who he burnt along the way (Coby Bell)–it all seemed like there was not much left for the series to show us that hadn’t been done.
But as happens with writers and creators of many TV series who know they are working on their swan song, it’s like someone gave them some java juice, and they delivered the best of their past three seasons.
Much credit goes to some superb casting this year. Heroes’ Jack Coleman, featured throughout the year as Michael’s CIA handler Andrew Strong, was the best featured character to come along since Coby Bell signed on as Jesse Porter in Season 4. Coleman was believable and likeable, in contrast with the misery the series put us through with Jere Burns’ black hat villain Anson Fullerton last season. Veronica Mars and CW’s Cult lead actress Alona Tal was also a welcome and interesting addition this year as Russian spy Sonya.
Thursday night’s series finale even featured a small role for genre favorite Alan Ruck as a scientist working for this season’s villain James Kendrick, played by John Pyper-Ferguson. If there was one storyline this season that almost turned us off it was leaving viewers to figure out what were the motivations of Kendrick, although Pyper-Ferguson managed to give us the best layered villain of the past several seasons. Was Kendrick ultimately “doing good” or was he a villain? Would Michael be justified in a continued support of Kendrick’s causes, or would the other villains–the CIA–win out in the end? Who would Michael eventually side with? With the penultimate episode and the finale last night, all of the questions posed over the past year, and even over the entire series, were laid to rest.
