In advance of a two-part set of movies starring Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Zendaya, David Dastmalchian, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, and Javier Bardem targeted to come to theaters beginning this December from director Denis Villeneuve, a new three-book graphic novel series is heading your way this Fall from Abrams Books. Frank Herbert’s Dune: The Graphic Novel, Book One is now available for pre-order here at Amazon.
Review by C.J. Bunce
Say what you like about the three sequels to 2003’s surprise Disney hit Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, if you love adventures on the high seas, you’ve had a place to come home to, with Dead Man’s Chest (2006), At World’s End (2007), and On Stranger Tides (2011). If you love the full scope of 3D technology, the series has revealed the potential beauty of the technology as the films provided some beautiful cinematography. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales truly brings pirate lore full circle, with Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, and more all coming back and as barnacled as ever. The fifth entry in the series is now streaming on Netflix and available on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD, and 4K.
In a year that should see award shows celebrating 17 years of Hugh Jackman fleshing out the story of genre favorite character Logan, also known as Wolverine, 14 of those years saw Johnny Depp create the most memorable character of his career as Captain Jack Sparrow. Always coming back for more and playing the heart out of his stumbling, distracted, but savvy survivor of visits to the bottom of the ocean and back, Depp solidified what a generation (or two) will always think of first when they hear the word pirate. Taking a close second for that honor is Geoffrey Rush’s Captain Hector Barbossa, who also graced the screen in each film in the series as an equally interesting but different kind of salty pirate. When you think of great, modern, master thespians stepping into high-profile genre roles to make them compelling, Rush as Barbossa should be at the top of your list.
Along with the great costumes, weapons, ships, and locations, audiences will find even more Rube Goldberg and Charlie Chaplin-inspired physical comedy in Dead Men Tell No Tales. For the perennial dose of pirate gravitas, Academy Award winning actor Javier Bardem steps in to the guest star space filled in past adventures by the likes of Ian McShane, Bill Nighy, Penélope Cruz, Zoe Saldana, and Stellan Skarsgård. Bardem is another perfectly cast actor, as a gritty, mighty captain condemned to death with his crew by a young Jack Sparrow. With some of the series’ best visual effects, Bardem’s Spanish Captain Salazar and his crew roam the high seas looking like they are walking on the ocean’s floor, complete with wet flowing hair and clothes–and missing body parts. They are ghosts, but a new–and brilliant–take on pirate ghosts (or are they ghost pirates?). Plus… ghost sharks!
Beyond the summer blockbuster and the winter holiday hits, every year movie studios shuffle in a stream of contenders during the interim, fighting for your movie dollars. Today we’re highlighting three new trailers for high adventure movies coming your way over the next three months. This weekend will see the latest in one of the oldest movie franchises, King Kong, as Kong: Skull Island arrives in theaters. The Warner Bros. production stars Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, and John Goodman, and, of course, the return of Kong.
Appropriately enough Amazon Studios is releasing a true life adventure story next month about the search for a lost city of the Amazon. The Lost City of Z stars Charlie Hunnam (Pacific Rim, Crimson Peak), Robert Pattinson (Harry Potter, Twilight), Sienna Miller (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Layer Cake), Tom Holland (Captain America: Civil War, Wolf Hall), and Angus Macfadyen (Braveheart, Timeless, Chuck, Psych).
And Disney reports the end of its enormous box office hit series is coming with the fifth entry in the Pirates of the Caribbean series premiering in May. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales looks as swashbuckling and fun as the franchise’s prior entries. Javier Bardem, Brenton Thwaites, Kaya Scoledario–and Sir Paul McCartney!–join Johnny Depp and the rest of the cast.
Check out these new trailers for three high adventure movies: Continue reading
Our annual “All the Movies You’ll Want to See…” series has been one of the most viewed of all of our entries at borg.com each year. So this year we again scoured Hollywood and its publicity machine for as many genre films coming out in 2017 that have been disclosed. The result is a whopping 58 movies, many you’ll probably want to see in the theater or catch on video (and some you may want to skip). We bet you’ll find a bunch below you’ve never heard of. Bookmark this now for your 2017 calendar!
Most coming out in the second half of 2017 don’t even have posters released yet. We’ve included descriptions and key cast so you can start planning accordingly.
What do we think will be the biggest hits of the year? How about Star Wars: Episode VIII or Wonder Woman? Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of 1,000 Planets? Ghost in the Shell? Or Beauty and the Beast?
You’ve heard endlessly about Logan and Justice League, but 2017 will also see numerous other sequels, like Alien: Covenant, Blade Runner 2049, Thor: Ragnarok, and sequels for Underworld, Resident Evil, Planet of the Apes, Pirates of the Caribbean, XXX, John Wick, King Kong, The Fast and the Furious, Cars, The Kingsman, Transformers, Despicable Me. And The Six Billion Dollar Man is finally on its way. Look for plenty of Dwayne Johnson, Tom Cruise, Vin Diesel, Ben Affleck, Samuel L. Jackson, Zoe Saldana, Hugh Jackman, John Goodman, Michael Peña, Ryan Reynolds, Sofia Boutella, and Elle Fanning in theaters this year.
So wait no further, here are your genre films for 2017:
The Pirates of the Caribbean series is a rare franchise in Hollywood. Any other film based on a game or something like an amusement park ride would have died after the initial movie. But Pirates has withstood critical acclaim, and Jack Sparrow, the lead in each adventure, gave Johnny Depp one of several well-deserved Academy Award nominations. The fifth installment in the series, Dead Men Tell No Tales, is coming next year, and we have the first trailer for the film, a brilliantly moody clip where we meet the new undead antagonist Captain Salazar played by Javier Bardem. Call them ghost pirates or pirate ghosts, the inhabitants of this fantasy world continue to excite fans of a good adventure story. Thank Sir Walter Scott and later Robert Louis Stevenson for getting generations excited about a good pirate story. Add in a ghost story and just tell us the time and place to show up and we’ll be there.
The last Pirates entry, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, was such a visually stunning production with–more importantly–an interesting story, that it could be the franchise may just be hitting its stride. On Stranger Tides kicked up the film’s action compared to the prior two films, Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End. Check out my review here. It was almost as good as The Curse of the Black Pearl, which made my Top 10 fantasy movie list.
We just can’t get enough of Johnny Depp and the roles he takes on, especially with this character–a character he has been able to develop over a 14-year span. Depp and Ethan Hawke, who we discussed here at borg.com last week in our review of The Magnificent Seven, are the best actors of their generation. It’s hard to beat Depp continuing on with a recurring role like this. And just look at the guest stars of this series: Jonathan Pryce, Bill Nighy, Naomie Harris, Stellan Skarsgaard, Penelope Cruz, Ian McShane, and Keith Richards? Geoffrey Rush is back as Barbossa in Dead Men Tell No Tales, and its rumored David Wenham and Paul McCartney will appear.
So check out this preview for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales:
Review by C.J. Bunce
After more trailers than we can count, more minutes of screen-time revealed in advance, and more advertising and hype than any Star Trek film in recent memory, Star Trek Into Darkness is not only better than you’ve heard, it’s the best Star Trek movie since Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Considering all my fellow uber-Trek fan friends had more negative to say than positive on this 12th motion picture entry, I was scratching my head to try to figure why this was the most fun I’ve had watching a movie in years–or maybe why they didn’t have as much fun as me.
Star Trek, the Original Series, is pretty much sacred, and not only sacred, its sacrosanct in the eyes of loyal fans, so J.J. Abrams was taking a risk by getting his claws into the franchise in 2009’s Star Trek. When I read that he was taking on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan material specifically, I thought he was just plain nuts. But then I asked myself, if I had the keys to the candy store what would I do if I wanted to make my mark on the franchise? Bring back Christopher Lloyd’s Klingon Commander Kruge or Ricardo Montalban’s regal Khan? Kill off a main character? Abrams did just what any of us would love to do, and I expect, this should set our expectations for what he will do with the third trilogy of the Star Wars franchise, which will have a much larger international audience and implications for Abrams’ own future.
As a viewer well-versed in the minutia of Star Trek, I expected to nitpick this film to death when walking into the theater and actually put off watching the film instead of seeing it on opening weekend like I had historically viewed the past films back to Star Trek VI. But not 15 minutes into the movie, when Kirk is being scolded by Admiral Christopher Pike (played deftly again by Bruce Greenwood) for violating the prime directive and then rightfully demoted, I was reeled into a cleverly twisting plot that delivered the goods at every level with a non-stop, action packed thrill ride that also managed to offer some of the best characterization for key roles than has been given to them in any prior Star Trek film, period.
Take for instance Simon Pegg’s Scotty. Not since the TV series was Scotty given the opportunity to play a key role in the story of a Trek film. Here he plants the seeds not as the throwaway silly Scottish chap, but as the moral voice for the film. Karl Urban’s Bones similarly gets many lines–good lines– and we learn something about him other than his “wait a damn minute” grunting, which was all we ever saw from him in Star Trek: The Motion Picture through Star Trek VI. We learn for example that he once gave a C section to a pregnant Gorn (with octuplets). And that they bite. Awesome! This sheds some light on why he later would try to work on the dying Klingon ambassador in Star Trek VI. And someone finally, onscreen, calls out Bones for his repeated metaphors.
Review by C.J. Bunce
The 23rd James Bond film has a lot it must accomplish compared to other franchise movies. On the 50th anniversary of Bond on film, director Sam Mendes had to deliver something special, more than just the latest entry in the Bond canon. And despite Mendes’s influences, Skyfall had to be more than another Christopher Nolan action romp like the recent Batman films. After 50 years, Bond is a British tradition, an international icon, the star of every diehard action film fan’s awaited pilgrimage every few years. Mendes had to blend the classic with the new as each of his predecessors had, and make sure that even that was done in a new way, without copying other action film franchises like the Jason Bourne movies, as the last movie, Quantum of Solace, has been accused of. Messing with the Bond formula is like messing with the formula for Coca-Cola. A director of a Bond film has a delicate trapeze act to maneuver to create a successful Bond picture connecting all the elements of the Bond formula.
So how did Skyfall fair?
Nice timing! Right when everyone is absorbed in the middle of the Olympics in England, it’s good to know someone is paying attention and releasing an expansive new trailer for Skyfall, including bits released two weeks ago in advance of The Dark Knight Rises.
Not only do we see Ben Whishaw as the new Q,
we also get to see Javier Bardem as the blonde villain!
You can actually see why someone thought of him as a possible Khan in the next Star Trek movie.
Enjoy!
Skyfall hits theaters November 9, 2012.
C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com
Despite my ongoing appreciation for every actor who has taken the 007 reins as our favorite British master spy, my favorite is Daniel Craig. Every actor who has played James Bond has had his own interesting spin on the character, whether you’re talking about the cool baritone-voiced Scot, Sean Connery, or the straight-laced but campy Roger Moore, or the seemingly born-for-the-role Pierce Brosnan, or even the suave and modern (if not overlooked) Timothy Dalton.
What I like about Craig is his ability to so easily and visibly take over the room as he enters, simply through his walk and attitude. Like John Wayne used to do, albeit in a very different manner. He has presence, and it reflects the sure-footed, suave, and brilliant character Ian Fleming created in his novels. As Bond, Craig has become “the man every man wants to be, and the man every woman wants to be with.” Craig is the ultimate British hero, but he plays it as a different, more modern type of British character, more relaxed in his mannerisms than the classic, more rigid and maybe even stodgy portrayal.
In Casino Royale Craig took the character to new places returning to Bond’s first 007 super-spy mission. Edgier than ever before, we saw someone in a foot race that seemed like he really was actually in a foot race and actually trying to catch the bad guy, and not caring whether he got scars along he way or his clothing rumpled, unlike some past Bonds. Playing a high-stakes card game this Bond is not mild-mannered so much as cool and cocky. Like Steve McQueen in Bullitt, this Bond doesn’t care what anyone else is doing around him. As much as we are glued to the every move of each “Bond girl” in this film–Caterina Murino as the first bad guy’s girlfriend, and then Eva Green as Vesper, soon to be his first and last love in the series–they are focused on Bond.
The follow-up film, Quantum of Solace, whose title comes from a Fleming short story, was not as great from a a story standpoint, but Craig made the best of it. His best on-screen relationship is with Judi Dench’s M, who strangely comes across as a determined and scornful but somewhat caring mother figure to Bond as much as a boss and head of covert ops at MI6.
Luckily we get to see Craig at least one more time as Bond, as production of the 23rd James Bond film begins this week with Craig reprising the role for the third time. Titled Skyfall, the new film will feature Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men) as the villain, with Dame Judi Dench (Henry V, Shakespeare in Love, Mrs. Brown) returning as M, with Ralph Fiennes (Harry Potter series, English Patient, Schindler’s List), Albert Finney (Big Fish, Tom Jones), Helen McCrory (Life, Harry Potter series, Doctor Who) and Ben Whishaw (The Hour, Layer Cake) in key supporting roles, and Naomie Harris (28 Days Later, Pirates of the Caribbean series) and French actress Berenice Marlohe as the next “Bond Girls.” Sam Mendes (Road to Perdition) will direct, with filming locations in Scotland, Istanbul and Shanghai. No word has been released as to whether we will see anyone reprise the role perfected by Desmond Llewelyn and later by John Cleese as Q.
But as with past actors in the Bond role, especially more recently, they don’t stay around for very long, with Dalton playing Bond twice and Brosnan playing the role four times.
So…who do you think is a good candidate for the next James Bond? Check back later this week for a few of my ideas.
C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com
