Tag Archive: Anya Taylor-Joy


Radioactive–Rosamund Pike stars in new Amazon Studios biopic

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July 29, 2020

Review by C.J. Bunce

The price of knowledge is often great and grim.  If you like your historical biopics about scientific discoveries of the inspiring and motivational variety, Amazon Studios and Studiocanal’s latest film Radioactive, a barely recognizable adaptation of the Lauren Redniss graphic novel, Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout, may not be for you.  Yet exceptional performances by Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl, Jack Reacher, Die Another Day) as Maria Skłodowska aka Madame Marie Curie and Anya Taylor-Joy (Emma, Split, The New Mutants) as her daughter Iréne, and a dearth of new films this summer, will likely make this 2018 production worth your time.  It arrived in the U.S. for the first time this week streaming on Amazon Prime.

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Comic-Con@Home–More footage from The New Mutants, a new trailer, Bill Sienkiewicz, and yet another opening date

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July 25, 2020

The most eagerly awaited movie in years received some nice treatment this week as part of San Diego Comic-Con@Home.  We’ve previewed and re-previewed new trailers for The New Mutants probably more than any other movie in our past decade of coverage here at borg (just type The New Mutants in the search box to the right and you’ll see it all).  The new and improved, post-merger 20th Century Studios even nicely mocks the delayed release dates in its Comic-Con@Home panel footage below, which features the director, cast members, and the legendary comic artist most closely aligned with The New Mutants by way of his 1980s artwork, Bill Sienkiewicz.  It also previews the entire opening scene and a trailer with new content from the film.  All in all, some good stuff for a very patient fanbase for a film made in the summer of 2017.

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New trailer–Finally! X-Men origin story The New Mutants is almost here

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January 7, 2020

Disney and Fox have no expectations for this one, so it would be great for X-Men fans to see it in the theater and make known the X-Men are as important to fans as the Avengers, twenty years after the first X-Men movie arrived in theaters.

We’re hoping The New Mutants was worth the wait.  At last we have a trailer that shows the potential of these characters, with this week’s release of the final trailer for the final film of the longest running continuous superhero movie franchise, Fox’s X-Men.  This is movie #13, and with it, the first horror superhero movie for Marvel.  April 13, 2018, was the original release date for the movie, but it was bumped a few times by the studio to accommodate bigger superhero stories including Deadpool 2 and X-Men: Dark Phoenix, and then Marvel movies after the merger of Fox and Disney.  We previewed it here at borg more than two years ago.  It looks like M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass (and even co-stars that movie’s Anya Taylor-Joy) merged with the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, with Stranger Things star Charlie Heaton carrying forward the Johnny Depp look.  Or a really haywire The Breakfast Club.  As a result of the success of modern horror stories like Get Out and It, the original cut is in final reshoots by director Josh Boone to make it scarier.  It’s not exactly the same, but it’s also easy to envision these mutant kids as an offshoot or tie-in story related to the lab that produced Laura aka X-23 in James Mangold’s Academy Award-nominated Logan.

And speaking of Anya Taylor-Joy, the film was made before these young actors’ careers really took off.  Taylor-Joy filmed Split just before this and then Glass, was a lead voice (of Brea) in The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, and in Playmobil: The Movie, starred in Peaky Blinders, and filmed the lead role in a new remake of Emma, with five other films coming out in the next year.  Maisie Williams grew up on Game of Thrones.  And since filming The New Mutants, Charlie Heaton, Henry Zaga, and Blu Hunt have appeared in several movies and TV shows.  The bad news of the reshoots is that Jon Hamm’s character Mister Sinister was reportedly cut entirely.

It’s the original roster of New Mutants (Cannonball, Mirage, Sunspot, and Wolfsbane), plus Magik from the second roster.  Finally!  Check out this great new trailer for The New Mutants:

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All the movies you’ll want to see in 2020

Filed under: Fantasy Realms, Movies, Retro Fix, Sci-Fi Café, Superheroes, TV — Leave a comment
December 25, 2019

Merry Christmas!

It’s that time of year again, time to take a look forward at what movies should be on your radar for 2020.  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 85 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?  Ghostbusters: Afterlife!  Scarlett Johannson solo in Black Widow!  A new James Bond movie, No Time to Die.  Vin Diesel in Bloodshot and a new Fast & Furious.  The original Tom Clancy novel series is finally continuing with an adaptation of Without Remorse.  Comic book adaptations are in less supply in 2020, but look for Venom 2, Wonder Woman 1984, Eternals, The New Mutants, Morbius, Birds of Prey, The Old Guard, and did we mention Black Widow?  Compare the below list to our 2019 list and even the 2018 list, 2017 list, 2016 list, 2015 list, or 2014 list, and your takeaway may be seeing the studios moving genre content from the big screen to the small screen via streaming services.

Do you like sequels?  There are far less coming to theaters in 2020 than in 2019, but many more remakes of movies, books, and TV shows are on the way.  In fact, with all the blockbusters in 2019, 2020 looks pretty tame as the cinema marquee is concerned.  Some films don’t have locked in release dates yet: Amazon Studios and Netflix haven’t revealed dates for the following 2020 releases (those we know you’ll find on the calendar below):

  • 7500, a film about a highjacked airplane, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Amazon Studios)
  • The Dig, a film about a woman finding archaeological treasures on her land, starring Ralph Fiennes, Lily James, and Carey Mulligan (Netflix)
  • Horse Girl, Alison Brie stars and directs this story about an awkward girl who fuses her dreams with reality (Netflix)
  • Jingle Jangle, an animated Christmas story with the voices of Forest Whitaker, Keegan-Michael Key, and Hugh Bonneville (Netflix)
  • Louis Wain, biopic of the 19th century artist starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Claire Foy, and Andrea Riseborough (Amazon Studios)
  • The Old Guard, adaptation of comic book story, starring Charlize Theron and Chiwetel Ejiofor (Netflix)
  • Radioactive, a film about Marie Curie, starring Rosamund Pike and Anya Taylor-Joy (Amazon)
  • Rebecca, adaptation and remake of the Daphne Du Maurier classic novel, starring Lily James, Keely Hawes, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Armie Hammer (Netflix)
  • Welcome to Sudden Death, sequel to Jean-Claude van Damme 1995 movie starring Michael Jai White (Netflix)
  • The Willoughbys, animated adaptation of the Lois Lowry book, with voices of Maya Rudolph, Martin Short, and Jane Krakowski (Netflix)
  • Wonderland, murder conspiracy mystery starring Mark Wahlberg, Allan Arkin, and Colleen Camp (Netflix)

Some of these films will have revised release dates, or get pushed to 2021.

So grab your calendar and start making your plans–here are the movies you’ll want to see in 2020 (and some you might not!):

January

The Informer – Thriller, starring Joel Kinnaman, Rosamund Pike, Ana de Armas, Common, and Clive Owen – January 10.

Underwater – Thriller, stars Kristin Stewart in underwater horror story – January 10.

Dolittle – Family/Comedy, stars Robert Downey, Jr. in remake of the classic, with voices of Tom Holland, Rami Malek, Octavia Spencer, Emma Thompson, Antonio Banderas, Ralph Fiennes, and Michael Sheen – January 17.

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The Aeronauts–New trailer arrives for steampunk era Redmayne and Jones adventure

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October 27, 2019

It’s not historical fact as much as a depiction of an era, but Amazon′s original movie The Aeronauts has a gorgeous look with plenty of historical elements.  We previewed the first trailer for the film two months ago, and Amazon just released the next.  The film is billed as biographical adventure, and that comes from its depiction of Eddie Redmayne (Fantastic Beasts) as real-life balloonist James Glaisher.  Glaisher, with another British aeronaut named Henry Coxwell, beat the world flight altitude record by reaching nearly 39,000 feet with a hot air balloon.  For the Amazon production Coxwell is being swapped out for a fictional character played by Rogue One’s Felicity Jones.  Both Jones and Redmayne were nominated for Oscars for The Theory of Everything, with Redmayne taking home an award.  Jones’ character in this film will be an amalgam of the first woman who was a professional balloonist, Sophie Blanchard, and another famous aeronaut of the era, Margaret Graham.

Even if you dismiss the elements that aren’t historical, you’re left with a big budget steampunk era film, which is a rarity for fans of the genre, The Aeronauts had top designers re-create the 1860s.  Alice Sutton, who was production designer on Bohemian Rhapsody, is production designer on this film (as well as next year’s Emma adaptation starring Anya Taylor-Joy).  The historical costumes were created by Alexandra Byrne, Oscar-winner for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and she’s known for her work on Marvel movies Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor, The Avengers, and Avengers: Age of Ultron, plus The Phantom of the Opera and Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet.

Take a look at the new trailer for Amazon’s The Aeronauts:

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Daniel Radcliffe and Anya Taylor-Joy headline Playmobil: The Movie

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September 19, 2019

At some point a studio needs to create the Fisher Price Little People movie.  (We all need to see that black-and-white freckled dog driving the tugboat on the big screen).  We’ve seen LEGO movies (two that were top-notch films) and movies based on UglyDolls, Pokémon, Bratz dolls, and even Clue and the Battleship board game (not to mention G.I. Joe and Transformers).  So the only question we should be asking is, “Why not Playmobil?”  This Christmas you can find out.

What does the new animated Playmobil: The Movie have going for it?

It may be worth watching just for the Viking character.  Beyond that, legions of Harry Potter fans may want to see what Daniel Radcliffe has been up to lately.  He voices the lead character, a suave James Bond type named Rex Dasher.  The film co-stars Anya Taylor-Joy, the current young go-to actress who seems to be in every franchise lately, from M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass to Marvel’s The New Mutants to The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.  Plus it includes an odd assemblage of people you might not think of for their voice roles in animated shows, like Meghan Trainor, Kenan Thompson, and Jim Gaffigan.

If you grew up with Playmobil–as hundreds of millions of people around the world have since the toy brand’s creation in 1974 and its creation of 3 billion figures to date–you may think a movie may be worth a try, even if that means waiting for it to arrive on Netflix.  In case you missed it, here’s the trailer for Playmobil: The Movie:

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The Aeronauts–19th century ballooning is cutting edge tech in new biographical adventure

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September 5, 2019

It’s not historical fact as much as a depiction of an era, but Amazon′s forthcoming original movie The Aeronauts has a gorgeous look with plenty of historical elements.  It’s billed as biographical adventure, and that comes from its depiction of Eddie Redmayne (Fantastic Beasts) as real-life balloonist James Glaisher.  On this day in September 1862, Glaisher with another British aeronaut Henry Coxwell beat the world flight altitude record by reaching nearly 39,000 feet with a hot air balloon.  For the Amazon production Coxwell is being swapped out for a fictional character played by Rogue One’s Felicity Jones.  Both Jones and Redmayne were nominated for Oscars for The Theory of Everything, with Redmayne taking home an award.  Jones’ character in this film will be an amalgam of the first woman who was a professional balloonist, Sophie Blanchard, and another famous aeronaut of the era, Margaret Graham.

Besides having the greatest steampunk title you can think of, The Aeronauts had top designers re-create the 1860s.  So even if we’re not going to get historical accuracy, this seems like it may provide a good feel for an era that hasn’t seen much screen-time outside the fictional realm of the steampunk genre.  Alice Sutton, who was production designer on Bohemian Rhapsody, is production designer on this film (as well as next year’s Emma adaptation starring Anya Taylor-Joy).  The historical costumes were created by Alexandra Byrne, Oscar-winner for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and she’s known for her work on Marvel movies Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor, The Avengers, and Avengers: Age of Ultron, plus The Phantom of the Opera and Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet.

Take a look at the trailer for Amazon’s The Aeronauts:

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The Lighthouse–Dafoe and Pattinson focus of intriguing trailer for moody B&W film

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August 10, 2019

It looks entirely like an experimental expressionistic film, something created by an aspiring filmmaker in film school, maybe an ambitious effort to create something historical and strange like Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.  Is production and costume designer-turned-director Robert Eggers′ The Lighthouse simply a horror movie about two lighthouse keepers or can we hope for something bigger, more of metaphor and allegory?  Shot in black and white 35mm film, the initial appeal is for anyone fond of classic black and white Gothic horror.  It’s billed as psychological horror, but will it feature psychological horrors of today or stick with more reserved terrors that reflect its more tempting, classic appearance?

The Lighthouse stars character actor Willem Dafoe, and co-stars Robert Pattinson in his most public role since the announcement he will don the cowl and cape in a forthcoming Batman movie.  Remember Michael Keaton releasing Beetlejuice, Clean and Sober, and The Dream Team with the new acting range spin to get us prepared to see him on the big screen as the dark knight detective?  Genre niche popularity of the Twilight series and his brief stint in the Harry Potter franchise aside, Pattinson hasn’t had the universal appeal and popularity Keaton had with Night Shift and Mr. Mom, making him a household name.  Can he convince fanboys and fangirls he has what it takes?  Can audiences push the future aside and appreciate The Lighthouse for whatever Eggers is trying to do?

As for Eggers, who co-wrote the story with brother Max, this is his second film after the Anya Taylor-Joy vehicle The Witch.  Here he’s trying that tried and re-tried convention of bringing black and white films to modern audiences.  It often works, as it did with popular and critical success for Paper Moon, Young Frankenstein, Raging Bull, Dead Again, Schindler’s List, The Artist, Logan Noir, and Roma.

Take a look at this nicely moody trailer for The Lighthouse:

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Fizzgig, Aughra, Skeksis, and more return in new Dark Crystal series coming this summer to Netflix

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May 31, 2019

After seeing Jim Henson and Frank Oz‘s The Dark Crystal return to theaters back in 2017 for its 35th anniversary, we were reminded why the movie kept up its status as the best live-action, high-fantasy film for two decades–until the arrival of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings series.  The set for Aughra′s beautiful pinnacle of all set pieces–the location of that mechanical wonder called the Orrery–showcased a fantasy creation that has yet to be surpassed in any film.  We first mentioned Netflix green-lighting the return of The Dark Crystal universe way back in 2017 here at borg, as the studio began work on the ten episode series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.  At last the first trailer has arrived (below) and the arrival date for the first season: August 30, 2019.  The best part?  Fizzgig is back, along with Aughra (voiced by Donna Kimball (Community)) and a re-creation of her incredible Orrery, and Henson’s vile Skeksis, complete with that familiar, creepily sniveling voice.  And as with the 1982 movie, the series uses puppets, which were created by Jim Henson Co.’s Creature Shop and Brian Froud, the original conceptual designer — there will be no CGI in the series.

Taron Egerton (Robin Hood, Rocketman, Kingsman series) will be playing the voice of Rian, Nathalie Emmanuel (Furious 7, Game of Thrones) is the voice of Deet, and Anya Taylor-Joy (Glass, Split, The New Mutants) is the voice of Brea (above)–making up the trio to lead the film as Gelflings.  Other Gelfling characters will be voiced by Oscar winner Alicia Vikander (Tomb Raider, Ex Machina, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), Oscar nominee Helena Bonham Carter (Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter series), Emmy winner Eddie Izzard (Valkyrie, The Riches, Treasure Island), BAFTA nominee Mark Strong (Shazam!, Green Lantern, Kick-Ass, Kingsman series), Golden Globe nominee Toby Jones (Doctor Who, Harry Potter series, Marvel movies, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), Golden Globe nominee Caitriona Balfe (Super 8, Outlander), plus Natalie Dormer (The Hunger Games series, Captain America: The First Avenger), Shazad Latif (The Commuter, Black Mirror, Star Trek Discovery), and Theo James (Underworld series).

Voicing the Skeksis and urRu (or “Mystics”) are BAFTA winner Mark Hamill (Star Wars, The Flash, and Kingsman series, Batman animated series), Golden Globe nominee Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter series, Star Wars Rebels, Star Trek Discovery), BAFTA nominee Simon Pegg (Star Trek, Star Wars series), Emmy winner Keegan-Michael Key (The Predator, Tomorrowland), Emmy nominee Harvey Fierstein (Hercules, Independence Day), Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (The BFG), Ralph Ineson (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars, Kingsman, and Harry Potter series), and Golden Globe winner Andy Samberg (Saturday Night Live).  Other voice roles will be performed by the puppet actors.

Wait no longer–check out this great first trailer for The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance:

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Now streaming–Glass, Shyamalan’s truly epic final chapter in his superhero trilogy

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May 9, 2019

Review by C.J. Bunce

M. Night Shyamalan is an auteur in a small league of directors that includes Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Wes Anderson, the Coen Brothers, and Stanley Kubrick.  First, you either love or hate each creator’s oeuvre, their signature, their style.  But their works are unmistakably their own.  Shyamalan’s impact to modern film can’t be overstated.  You can look at films before and after his surprise hit The Sixth Sense and see a shift toward films that require that surprise at the end.  That trademark is now an integral part of cinema, even though it has been used as a story tool throughout the history of film and storytelling.  But his use of this, his success from it, made everyone else jump on the bandwagon.  Each of his films has something new to say, but his approach is unique compared to his peers.  His take on superheroes is entirely different from anything else, and yet his love for comics and his genius in digging into what makes a great superhero tale proves his knowledge of the genre.  If you’re a fan of the modern Detective Comics, where Batman is so dark it’s almost as much horror as superhero crimefighter, then you should check out his trilogy, beginning with Unbreakable, followed by Split, and now streaming on Vudu, GooglePlay, YouTube, Amazon, and other home video media, his third chapter in the trilogy, Glass.  It is truly an epic film, the kind of story written by a comics reader and for a comics reader.

Most superhero movies follow a certain formula.  The tropes are all there for the plucking, so it’s how the story is told that makes the exceptional superhero movie.  Shyamalan’s slowly simmering follow-up returns to Bruce Willis′s David Dunn and Samuel L. Jackson′s Elijah Price from the 2000 first chapter Unbreakable.  We find Dunn has continued his pursuit of justice, brilliantly partnered with his own “man in the chair,” his son from Unbreakable, played again by Spencer Treat Clark (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) now all grown up, in an intriguing update to the character.  Price, however, has been relegated to a medical facility, visited frequently by his doting mother, played by returning actress Charlayne Woodard (Pose, Medium).

Sarah Paulson (Ocean’s Eight) proves exactly why she’s been cast as a young Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in the coming series Ratched, co-starring in Glass as Dr. Ellie Staple, a psychiatrist studying people who think they are superheroes, out to prove them wrong and get them the mental help she believes they need.  Enter Kevin Wendell Crumb, who has multiple personality disorders–24 personalities in all–brilliantly portrayed by James McAvoy (X-Men: Days of Future Past, Dark Phoenix) who introduced the character in the suspense-horror film Split.  Split was a surprise for everyone, carefully marketed as just another creepy Shyamalan movie, with the surprise ending that Crumb’s supervillain persona was The Beast, and an even bigger surprise: that Split was a sequel to Unbreakable.

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