Another trailer has arrived for director and auteur Martin Scorsese′s new movie The Irishman (we ran the first trailer here), this time focusing more on Al Pacino′s take on ill-fated labor leader Jimmy Hoffa, and comedic actor “Everybody Loves” Ray Romano bringing his charm back to audiences as Teamsters lawyer Bill Bufalino, asking questions of Robert De Niro as one of the guys alleged to have murdered Hoffa.
At first blush, the issue with The Irishman is twofold. First, we’ve already seen Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, etc., when they were younger, and now they have been extensively de-aged via CGI and makeup for this film. So we know what they looked like at the ages of the characters in the film, but they didn’t look like the de-aged characters in the trailer. Second, preview audiences that have seen the movie in theater screenings have already commented on the dreaded “uncanny valley”–that difficulty in adapting the eye to the CGI efforts to make humans look real via digital effects manipulation.
The positive is that most viewers will see The Irishman on the small screen. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’s CGI re-creation of Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin was easier for the eye to adapt to on the small screen than in the theatrical release where more detail was present. Maybe the same will be true for The Irishman? The film is a direct-to-Netflix release, and Scorsese is a tried and true filmmaker, so audiences have nothing to lose but three-and-a-half hours (yep, this is a long one, folks).
With the first trailer for The Irishman out, it may be getting clearer why Martin Scorsese′s latest in a 45-year career-spanning string of films is going straight to Netflix. Despite Netflix claims that it can compete financially with movie theater releases, it has yet to provide a reliable run of hits. Can The Irishman help? Even heavy hitters of Scorsese’s past, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, can’t seem to make this movie look compelling. The audience is left with only “another crime movie with those guys,” with no reference to who or what it’s about. And is any amount of CGI and makeup going to get audiences to believe in a married couple played by 36-year-old Anna Paquin paired with 75-year-old De Niro playing 55-year-old Frank Sheeran? If you’re like everyone else you may not know Sheeran claimed late in life to have killed teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa. So it’s no wonder this feels like Scorsese’s version of an Oliver Stone movie.
Take away the Las Vegas and this first trailer for The Irishman looks plenty like a trailer for Scorsese’s Casino, complete with an attempt to get De Niro and Pesci back to how they looked in 1995, De Niro and Pesci looking like they did in 1990 in Goodfellas, Pacino looking like he did back in 1973 in Mean Streets, or, to jump into Francis Ford Coppola pictures, like Pacino and De Niro looked in 1974 in The Godfather, Part II. As much as we loved Peter Cushing’s transformation in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Michael Douglas’s transformation in the Ant-Man movies, a legion of fans will need more improvements in technology before they get past the “uncanny valley”–that reaction you have when something digital is trying to look real but doesn’t quite succeed.
Long-time “bad guy” club member Harvey Keitel, Ant-Man’s and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’sBobby Cannavale, and “Everybody Loves” Ray Romano are not seen in this trailer, but expected to have key roles. See whether the CGI works for you in this first trailer from Netflix for The Irishman:
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.
Following the success of last year’s Studio Ghibli Fest, animated film distributor GKIDS and Fathom Events are bringing back to U.S. theaters nine critically acclaimed films throughout the year for Studio Ghibli Fest 2018. Starting this weekend the series will feature both dubbed and subtitled versions of Studio Ghibli classics, beginning with a 10th anniversary screening of the fan-favorite family adventure Ponyo (2008) on March 25 (dubbed), 26 (subtitled), and 28 (dubbed), with original actors Tomoko Yamaguchi, Kazushige Nagashima, and Yuria Nara in the subtitled version and Cate Blanchett, Cloris Leachman, Liam Neeson, and Matt Damon in the dubbed version. In a spin-off of the Hayao Miyazaki story Whisper of the Heart, the character Baron re-emerges in The Cat Returns (2002), back in theaters April 22 (dubbed), 23 (subtitled), and 25 (dubbed), with stars Chizuru Ikewaki, Yoshihiko Hakamada, and Aki Maeda in the subtitled version, and Anne Hathaway, Cary Elwes, and Tim Curry in the dubbed version. Miyazaki directs his tale of a pigman pilot bounty hunter in Porco Rosso (1992), back in theaters May 20 (dubbed), 21 (subtitled), and 23 (dubbed), with original stars Shûichirô Moriyama, Tokiko Katô, and Bunshi Katsura Vi in the subtitled version, and Michael Keaton and David Ogden Stiers in the dubbed version.
Studio Ghibli’s village of magical raccoon dogs fight back in Pom Poko (1994), in theaters June 17 (dubbed), 18 (subtitled), and 20 (dubbed), starring Shinchô Kokontei, Makoto Nonomura, and Yuriko Ishida in the subtitled version, and Clancy Brown and J.K. Simmons in the dubbed version. One of Miyazaki’s most thrilling films, the legendary Princess Mononoke (1997) is back July 22 (dubbed), 23 (subtitled), and 25 (dubbed), starring Yôji Matsuda, Yuriko Ishida, and Yûko Tanaka in the subtitled version, and Minnie Driver, Clare Danes, and Gillian Anderson in the dubbed version. Director Isao Takahata offers one of the finest World War II stories in all of cinema in his gut-wrenching Grave of the Fireflies (1988), back in theaters August 12 (dubbed), 13 (subtitled), and 15 (dubbed), starring Tsutomu Tatsumi, Ayano Shiraishi, and Akemi Yamaguchi in the subtitled version, and Adam Gibbs and Emily Neves in the dubbed version.
Everyone’s favorite gentle giant cat is back September 30 (dubbed), October 1 (subtitled), and October 3 (dubbed), when My Neighbor Totoro (1988) returns, starring Hitoshi Takagi, Noriko Hidaka, and Chika Sakamoto in the subtitled version, and Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning, and Tim Daly in the dubbed version. Perhaps Miyazaki’s most acclaimed film, the fantastical, spiritual, riveting epic Spirited Away (2001) is in theaters October 28 (dubbed), 29 (subtitled), and 30 (dubbed), starring Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, and Mari Natsuki in the subtitled version, and Suzanne Pleshette, David Ogden Stiers, and James Marsden in the dubbed version. And finally, a boy and girl search for a floating castle in Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky (1986), in theaters November 18 (dubbed), 29 (subtitled), and 20 (dubbed), starring Keiko Yokozawa, Mayumi Tanaka, and Kotoe Hatsui in the subtitled version, and Anna Paquin, Mark Hamill, James Van Der Beek, Cloris Leachman, and Mandy Patinkin in the dubbed version.
Here is a quick preview of Studio Ghibli Fest 2018:
The movie-going world first met Anna Paquin when she co-starred in Jane Campion’s The Piano, which earned her the Academy Award for her supporting role at age 11–the second youngest Oscar winner in history. As the New Zealand actress gained experience in her craft she went on to star in True Blood, which earned her a Golden Globe Award. These days she’s best known as Rogue in the X-Men series, appearing in four X-Men movies so far. This past fall she starred as a murder victim in Netflix’s 19th century historical drama series Alias Grace, and this month U.S. audiences were introduced to her performance as a cop in one of the better episodes of season one of Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams. This week she returns to television in a starring role again as a cop in the new series Bellevue on WGN America.
Paquin continues to show her Oscar and Golden Globe wins were deserved. The actor has a command of the stage, and consistently her presence in a scene brings authority to her characters. In Bellevue we meet a down-to-Earth side of Paquin as she plays Detective Annie Ryder, a local institution in her small town, whose brash personality and working class roots put her at odds with other officers in her department and every other faction in the town of Bellevue. Her new case is locating a missing young man, a local hockey player and celebrity of sorts who we learn had a transgendered lifestyle and possibly was being counseled by a priest at a local church. Paquin’s Ryder has her own odd sense of humor as she makes the best of handling a daughter, a sad sack ex-husband, and the residents of a mining town with a newly closed mine and a newly opened brewery. The first episode really kicks in as we watch Ryder find a connection between the recent crime and strange messages left to her after her father’s suicide when she was a child.
You can see bits and pieces of a myriad of dark-murder-mystery genre TV and film in Bellevue, everything from the dark creepy vibe of Haven, Grimm, Twin Peaks, The Returned,The X-Files, and Wayward Pines–minus the supernatural elements–along with the serious crime material of Broadchurch, Fargo, and Thirteen. As for its pacing, this Canada production for WGN America is presented like many British mystery series–there seems to be more time spent in study of each scene, as found in better mysteries like Shetland or Hinterlands. One episode in and it already is more compelling than The Killing. For current audiences Bellevue may feel more like Riverdale–the series pilot even has Ryder’s daughter recounting a past murder in the small town as Jughead often narrates in Riverdale.
By the time of his death in 1982, science fiction writer and future visionary Philip K. Dick wrote some 44 novels and 121 short stories. A master storyteller, Dick’s short story writing was often simple and straightforward, but it was packed with amazing worlds, prescient technologies (and glimpses at what would be real problems resulting from those technologies), plus truly unique and inspiring ideas and ideals. The real genius of Dick can be found in these quick stories. The 2017 British and American co-production Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams is a science fiction series of ten episodes inspired by ten of his short stories, available now in the U.S. for the first time via Amazon Video. If you find you’re not a fan of the series, don’t hold it against Philip K. Dick–the episodes are only very, very loosely based on his short stories, opting instead to expand on the stories and update most of the settings and plots, including swapping new technologies for those he wrote about. Ideally those new to Dick’s works will be inspired by the ideas in the series to delve into his written works and experience his creations for themselves.
Written and directed by a variety of filmmakers, Electric Dreams is a hodgepodge of styles, storytelling, and continuity. Surprisingly the writers opted against sticking with the magic of Dick’s stories, deleting key memorable scenes, and choosing to add extra subplots with a few stories barely recognizable from their source material. Most of the updates detract from the underlying story. Three episodes fare the best–coincidentally or not, these are episodes that stay the truest to Dick’s own work. The rest are less compelling, but each has its high points, either via surprisingly good special effects and production values for TV, or the choice of and performances by the actors (including Vera Farmiga (Bates Motel, Source Code), Anna Paquin (X-Men series), Timothy Spall (Harry Potter series), Steve Buscemi (Reservoir Dogs, Fargo), Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad, Total Recall), Jacob Vargas (Luke Cage), Terrence Howard (Wayward Pines), and Anne Reid (Hot Fuzz, Doctor Who, Marchlands). Based on one of the best of all Dick’s stories, Impossible Planet follows the original story to create the best episode of the series, taking viewers on a final voyage home accompanying an old (more than 300 years old) woman played by Geraldine Chaplin (even this episode cuts the most powerful scene from the short story). The Father Thing takes its time getting to the story, but once there it keeps the guts and spirit of the original story. Loyal to the source material, it also has a great John Carpenter-esque soundtrack and Greg Kinnear is perfectly cast as the father. For a person who was not remembered as a family man, Dick’s stories involving children are among his best and “The Father Thing” is no different. Ideas furthered in a story familiar to most sci-fi fans, “The Minority Report,” are examined in The Hood Maker, complete with precognitive telepaths and the concept of pre-crime. The episode follows the original story, and its “buddy cop” duo would make a great spin-off series.
The remainder of the series offers concepts that will be familiar to fans of Dick’s works, particularly those short stories previously committed to film, including “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” adapted into two Total Recall films, Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, John Woo’s Paycheck, The Adjustment Bureau, and Next (from “The Golden Man”), among others. Many Dick full-length novels have made it to the big screen, too, most notably Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? released as Blade Runner, and although it does not credit Dick, The Truman Show is obviously sourced in Dick’s novel Time Out of Joint. In addition, recently Dick’s award-winning novel The Man From the High Castle made it to home video as another Amazon series.
If you agree last year’s X-Men: Days of Future Past is among the best superhero films of all time, and probably the single best film in the Marvel Universe, then you’ll want to see a new director’s cut released this month: X-Men: Days of Future Past, The Rogue Cut. Especially if you haven’t picked up a copy of the 2014 version on Blu-Ray, this new edition brings together the original theatrical release and The Rogue Cut, plus a disc full of new features, making this the definitive edition for most fans.
It’s the lack of a 3D edition that is the only miss with the new release. For most people that won’t be a problem. But if you have embraced 3D television technology like us, you’re just going to be buying a new Blu-Ray to add to last year’s superb Ultimate Edition so you can watch each version from time to time–because you just can’t miss this new edit of the film.
If you’re not aware of the quality of this movie by ace director Bryan Singer, check out our review from last year here at borg.com. On repeat viewings X-Men: Days of Future Past proves its worthiness as a superhero flick future superhero films will be compared to. This expanded edition certainly does nothing to diminish the original. It instead provides 17 minutes of additional scenes that explain plot elements skipped over in the original cut and it provides a better character study of nearly every major player: Professor X, Magneto, Wolverine, Mystique, Trask, Beast, Iceman, Kitty Pryde, and of course, Rogue. More Quicksilver (Evan Peters) would have been fun, but you can’t have everything. But we do learn more from Singer on his audio commentary about that character’s role, and that of Mystique, Beast, Magneto, and the rest of the mutants in next year’s sequel X-Men: Apocalypse.
The features disc includes a nine-part “making of” series and a 30-minute roundtable featuring Singer and most of the show’s stars. The audio track features Singer and editor/composer John Ottman. Both provide an excellent look at the storytelling process as adapted to the filmmaker’s role.
Yes, it’s that time again. Time for another edition of Trailer Park. This time we’re looking at four coming attractions of the animated variety. Two hail from Illumination Entertainment and two from Disney companies.
The Secret Life of Pets gives a look into the world of animals at home when humans are not around. Zootopia looks at a parallel universe of animals living their lives like humans. The Good Dinosaur is another parallel universe story, following the lives of dinosaurs if that giant asteroid bypassed Earth 65 million years ago. And Minions follows the little yellow fellows from Despicable Me as they look for the ultimate villain to support.
And then we have our recommendation of viewing while you’re waiting for the talking animal shows to hit your local theater. Let’s get on with it!
First up, The Secret Life of Pets from Illumination Entertainment. Here’s the trailer:
Voice actors include comedians Kevin Hart, Louis C.K., Bobby Moynihan, and the great Albert Brooks. The Secret Life of Pets arrives in theaters July 8, 2016.
BOULEVARD DRIVE-IN — It’s hard to believe it has only been six years since Jon Favreau surprised the world, taking a typically underwhelming character like Tony Stark, casting Robert Downey, Jr. as Iron Man, and making the best modern superhero movie. Although fanboy director Favreau made the Christmas classic Elf before Iron Man, who knew he was going to change how we evaluate the modern superhero film? So it shouldn’t be surprising that a proven genre director like Bryan Singer, with titles under his belt like The Usual Suspects, X-Men, X-Men 2, X-men Origins: Wolverine, Superman Returns, and Valkyrie, has set the new standard in the summer blockbuster sci-fi, fantasy, and superhero sphere with his latest X-title, X-Men: Days of Future Past. You don’t even need to be an X-Men or Marvel fan to realize what a triumph Singer has achieved.
The movie is gigantic from the opening set-up. The giant mechanical Sentinels of the comic books take over Earth in the distant future, weeding out once and for all the small bands of survivors, creating a very Terminator-influenced opening. Now see if you can spot a theme here. A band of what you might call Tier 3 X-Men, led by Kitty Pryde (played by Oscar nominee Ellen Page), find a way to send something back into the past to save themselves from Sentinel strikes. Golden Globe and Emmy nominee Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, Oscar nominee Ian McKellen’s Magneto and Oscar nominee Hugh Jackman’s Logan aka Wolverine take Pryde’s method to come up with a time travel plan that results in dual casts trying to save their world, one in 1973, the other in the future. Storm, played by returning Oscar winner Halle Berry, tries to fend off the Sentinels to allow the time travel trick to work.
For Marvel Comics and X-Men fans, the next in the line of X-Men movies to hit the big screen looks to be an epic production, starring the stars of the first three X-Men and Wolverine movies and the younger stars of X-Men’s past in X-Men: First Class. Not only does that mean Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Hugh Jackman, Anna Paquin, Shawn Ashmore, Halle Berry, and Ellen Page are back, but we get to meet new characters, too, including Peter Dinklage as Bolivar Trask, Omar Sy as Bishop, Booboo Stewart as Warpath, Bingbing Fan as Blink, and Adan Canto as Sunspot.
Check out this first full-length trailer for X-Men: Days of Future Past:
We have a long wait for this one. X-Men: Days of Future Past is scheduled for release in theaters May 23, 2014.
so you can watch each version from time to time–because you just can’t miss this new edit of the film.
