For his next project, George Clooney is directing and co-starring in an adaptation of Lily Brooks-Dalton’s novel Good Morning, Midnight. Re-titled The Midnight Sky, the first trailer has arrived and the dystopian science fiction film looks like a mix of previous direct-to-Netflix projects The Cloverfield Paradox and IO, both mid-level sci-fi you probably wouldn’t want to pay to see in the theater. Are audiences ready for another dreary take on Earth’s future?
Why do you wear a mask?
I think they are just terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.
Since–like everyone else–actors are unable to do their jobs until the risk of the COVID-19 pandemic has passed, many have offered up some of their time over the past 120 to 150 days to provide fans with extra interviews, table reads (like the Community table read we discussed here at borg), and comic-cons at home, creating some content for the fan base we wouldn’t have otherwise had access to without this strange new normal of sheltering at home, social distancing, and masks. If you don’t subscribe to or know what Quibi is, you may have missed the latest–an ensemble of actors from popular to more obscure re-enacting scenes from Rob Reiner’s fan-favorite fantasy, comedy, and romance, The Princess Bride.
The style is all intentionally low budget–think of the kind of backyard films you might have made as a kid, and in fact, the film is called Home Movie: The Princess Bride. But it’s great fun, all filmed with quarantine safety rules in place (those filming together were already living together), and the kind of thing any classic film fan base would be overjoyed to see created. The best part is learning who had actual historical costumes in their closet to work with (Mad Men man Jon Hamm had a Renaissance shirt in his closet, as did comedic actors Neil Patrick Harris and David Spade, and Rogue One’s Diego Luna), those who didn’t, and who might be better actors than you’ve given them credit for.
Something in the air is hinting that autumn is on the way, and that means Halloween and more horror movies are coming. This weekend a new twist on a modern trope arrives in theaters with director Jacob Estes’ new film Don’t Let Go. Estes is a relatively new director, with the horror classic Ring sequel Rings under his belt. His latest project is billed as drama, fantasy, horror, mystery, and thriller, and it’s from Blumhouse, so expect plenty of blood and gore. The trailer suggests it has a science fiction element, too.
That’s the part that looks like the modern sci-fi movie classic Frequency (later made into a TV series), which starred Dennis Quaid and James Caviezel as a father and son who can communicate via HAM radio, years after the father’s death. In Frequency (despite the rantings of how time travel works in Avengers: Endgame, ahem) you are able to alter the past, and in Don’t Let Go it looks like it relies on the same understanding of time. After a man’s brother, sister-in-law, and their daughter/his niece are murdered, he gets a phone call from the niece, only she’s calling him her funeral–from two weeks ago. So just like in Frequency, it’s up to the lead character to prevent a murder. Time travel with a twist, this time with a horror set-up.
Don’t Let Go stars David Oyelowo (The Cloverfield Paradox, Star Wars Rebels, Jack Reacher, A Sound of Thunder, As Time Goes By) as an ex-L.A. cop, with Mykelti Williamson as his partner, Alfred Molina as their boss, Brian Tyree Henry as his brother, and young actor Storm Reid as his niece. Whodunnit? The cop, his partner, his brother, or the criminal element laid out in the trailer?
Here’s the trailer:
Review by C.J. Bunce
How far back has this latest chapter in J.J. Abrams mash-up of science fiction and giant monsters been brewing? Back to his 2011 summer coming of age release Super 8? Like M. Night Shyamalan, all of Abrams’ projects, whether as executive producer or director or even writer-director, may not be successful, but they both take exciting risks with their projects. Cloverfield was a well-crafted homage to Godzilla pictures. 10 Cloverfield Lane was a genre surprise, a mix of straight dramatic horror that ended up as a sci-fi monster movie. And this week Netflix released a theatrical worthy next installment, The Cloverfield Paradox, this time providing that relentless sci-fi horror fix perfected with James Cameron’s Aliens. And like Shyamalan’s recent thriller Split, a cool surprise is in store for viewers.
The Cloverfield Paradox is easily comparable to one of the best Doctor Who space station-based episodes (think The Waters of Mars). In fact absent Matt Smith or David Tennant you might forget you’re not watching Doctor Who as so many tropes from Whovian space disaster episodes are weaved into the film. And that’s a good thing for fans of the type of science fiction stories that Doctor Who tends to attract. The cast of The Cloverfield Paradox forms a crew you wish would be around for a TV series. Led by David Oyelowo (Star Wars: Rebels, Jack Reacher) as Commander Kiel, with physicists played by Daniel Brühl (Rush, Goodbye Lenin, Captain America: Civil War) as Schmidt and Ziyi Zhang (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Rush Hour 2) as Tam, and other crewmembers played by John Ortiz (Kong: Skull Island, Alien vs. Predator), Aksel Hennie (The Martian), and Chris O’Dowd (Thor: The Dark World), the space station Cloverfield has a legitimate international crew. But the focus is on crewmember Hamilton played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Beauty and the Beast, Jupiter Ascending), who leaves her husband (Roger Davies) back on Earth after her children die in a fire to help the scientists test a particle accelerator. The success or failure of that test could mean a leap ahead for the planet or certain doom.
Anyone who has ever read an issue of DC Comics can understand the multi-verse science here. Dabbling in quantum physics comes with uncertain risks, and after nearly a year of failed trials, when the station finally creates a stable particle beam, something has changed. Leaving the audience always wondering whether this is going to be another Aliens episode or something else, the effect of the anomaly creates the stuff of The Philadelphia Experiment, smashing one reality into another. One of the results is the appearance from another parallel universe of a Cloverfield physicist played by Elizabeth Debicki (Guardians of the Galaxy 2, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.). Only Debicki’s character was not on the mission in the universe the film started out in, and as radio signals reflect an apparently altered Earth below, the loyalties of the crewmembers come into question. It’s all great fun, and the production quality is good enough–with bonuses like crew costumes from Academy Award-winning designer Colleen Atwood–that it’s a shame audiences can’t watch this play out on a big movie theater screen.
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:
