Nick Frost and Simon Pegg are a magical team. Usually Pegg takes the driver’s seat, but not so in the Amazon Prime series Truth Seekers, which puts Pegg back in the office of a British telecom company and Frost on the road as chief broadband installer. If you ever wondered what The X-Files might look like if produced in England, here is your chance. With better special effects and even some better scares than the 1990s show featuring agents Mulder and Scully, Truth Seekers is also full of good British humor, the kind that would make it the perfect sequel to the 1999-2001 series Spaced, starring Pegg and Frost. And it has the supernatural and horror elements that keep the content right in the veins of their big screen Cornetto Trilogy films Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End, their pop culture references in Paul, and secrets from afar of Frost’s Attack the Block. It also has two of the best award-winning British actors you could hope to find in an eight-part half-hour horror comedy. Truth Seekers has been streaming for a few weeks, but we want to make sure you don’t overlook this one.
Before the actual Ghostbusters returns next year with its sequel Ghostbusters: Afterlife, you can relive the theme in a new Amazon series. Another new 2020 television series previewed at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con 2020 that is coming your way features the stars of the popular Cornetto trilogy horror-comedies Shaun of the Dead, The World’s End, and Hot Fuzz (plus Paul, and the series Spaced). Nick Frost takes the lead over Simon Pegg this time in Truth Seekers. Pegg plays his boss, the head of a broadband company who may have his own secrets. The eight-episode, half-hour series follows Frost as Gus, an Internet installer who is also a ghostbuster.
For a new generation, the new adventure-thriller Tomb Raider may be an entry point into the adventure genre. If you like the concepts in Tomb Raider, you’re likely to love adventure classics like that other “raider,” Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,The Mummy, and Disney’s National Treasure series. Tomb Raider borrows much from these movies, even key sequences that serve as the high points of the film. The film itself? It’s all about that upper-body strength and holding on for dear life. (How many action films feature the hero holding on to the edge of a precipice with one hand anyway?) It’s good, not great, but a fun enough popcorn flick for a late winter release, particularly to see someone the size of Alicia Vikander racing through all the required harrowing action scenes. She leaps, fights, sprints, and dodges pitfalls, and gets kicked, punched, and bruised in a part typically reserved for the likes of Dwayne Johnson.
In the role last explored by Angelina Jolie, Academy Award-winning actress Alicia Vikander (The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Ex Machina, Jason Bourne) becomes video game heroine Lara Croft, only this version of the story is more rooted in the real world, with less heroine posing and no cocky catch phrases–and more sweat. The new Tomb Raider definitely fits alongside past video game adaptations, better than the prior films in the franchise, and nudging out more recent video game adaptations Warcraft and Assassin’s Creed. Unfortunately it comes on the heels of the immensely entertaining Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, which opted for humor instead of drama. This isn’t a comedy, but would have benefited from some more levity along the way.
For an adventure about secrets and riddles, it doesn’t present much for the audience to sleuth out, as was done so well in the entertaining National Treasure movies. But to its credit it has some good special effects and exceptional chase sequences that are best viewed on the big screen. And this Lara Croft is always being chased or running from something. A bicycle race early on and a foot chase across boats docked off the coast of Hong Kong are filmed like a riveting James Bond opener. And an escape through raging rapids at the edge of a waterfall is perfectly executed and full-on exciting (in a good theater your acrophobia and claustrophobia may even kick in). The overall plot is a bit thin–Lara receives a key left by her father as she is about to sign an affidavit acknowledging his death and her inheritance, and she pursues clues to his secret work that leave her stranded on a secluded, legendary island housing an ancient tomb. This is about a fantasy video game character, so if you can push aside reality you may have a really good time.
Norwegian film director Roar Uthaug (Escape, The Wave) and writer Geneva Robertson-Dworet (ROM, M.A.S.K., Sherlock Holmes 3, Captain Marvel, Dungeons & Dragons, Gotham City Sirens) are returning to the core of the character designed and created by Toby Gard to become one of the world’s best-selling franchises in the new trailer released today for the reboot of the Lara Croft franchise. Even more than the last trailer for the film, clips from today’s preview mirror some of the same kind of cliffhanger scenes found in each of the original trilogy of Indiana Jones movies–the same kind of adventure that made the original video game a success.
If you have any doubts that Vikander looks the part, just check out the comparison video discussed here earlier, which shows just how closely Vikander matches the Lara in the video gameRise of the Tomb Raider. Lara Croft has been around since 1996, in various versions of game play, based on at least eight different real-life models, and even voiced by the likes of Ashes to Ashes star Keeley Hawes and Good Will Hunting and The Riches star Minnie Driver.
All you need to do to tell Alicia Vikander can not only act but has star power is watch her as the dramatic yet humorous secret agent in 2015’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Or you could watch her portray a reality without a soul as a borg in 2014’s critically acclaimed sci-fi film Ex Machina. Or how about her Oscar-winning performance awarded last year for her work in The Danish Girl? She’s in theaters right now opposite Christoph Waltz in Tulip Fever and it seems more than fitting that the critically acclaimed dramatic actress is stepping into what could be a lucrative, major action hero role for her, taking over for Angelina Jolie in the reboot of Tomb Raider.
This week started with the first official look at Vikander as video game franchise character Lara Croft in the first teaser poster for the film. With the first trailer for the movie now available it’s clear that Norwegian film director Roar Uthaug(Escape, The Wave) and writer Geneva Robertson-Dworet (ROM, M.A.S.K., Sherlock Holmes 3, Captain Marvel, Dungeons & Dragons, Gotham City Sirens) are returning to the core of the character designed and created by Toby Gard to become one of the world’s best-selling franchises. Gard said he left the company he created Lara Croft for because he was opposed to the idea and marketing of Lara’s sex appeal, with ever-increasing breast size in the game sequels after he left. The sex appeal is still there but the film in the first trailer looks to be all about the adventure, exploring environments, solving riddles, and navigating traps with villains on her tail. Clips from the trailer mirror some of the same kind of cliffhanger scenes found in each of the original trilogy of Indiana Jones movies–the same kind of adventure that made the original video game a success. If you have any doubts that Vikander looks the part, just check out the comparison video after the clip below, which shows just how closely Vikander matches the Lara in the video game Rise of the Tomb Raider.
Lara Croft has been around since 1996, in various versions of game play, based on at least eight different real-life models, and even voiced by the likes of Ashes to Ashes star Keeley Hawes and Good Will Hunting and The Riches star Minnie Driver. The new film co-stars Walton Goggins, who always plays that half-cocked villain you are pleased to see get crushed under the hero’s toes, popping up in films like Predators, Cowboys and Aliens, Django Unchained, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, and The Hateful Eight. A big surprise–one of our favorite genre actors, Nick Frost (Attack the Block, Doctor Who, Shaun of the Dead, The World’s End), is in the film, plus Hannah-John Kamen(Killjoys, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Ready Player One, Ant-Man and the Wasp),Dominic West (The Hour, John Carter, The Wire), and Kristin Scott Thomas(Mission: Impossible, The Golden Compass, The English Patient).
It’s been nearly five years since we first reviewed the award-winning, low-budget sci-fi alien invasion flick Attack the Block. Now that Jodie Whittaker is in the spotlight for her selection as the next Doctor in the BBC’s Doctor Who, and John Boyega will be returning this December for his second stint as Imperial turned Resistance fighter Finn in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, let’s look back to them working together as co-leads in writer/director Joe Cornish’s modern cult classic. Attack the Block should be in every sci-fi fan’s arsenal. When we first reviewed Attack the Blockhere at borg.com, we compared it to another low-budget British sci-fi/horror mash-up, 1985’s Lifeforce (which co-starred a then less-known Patrick Stewart). After repeat viewings since then, it’s clear Attack the Block is a much better film, full of action, suspense, humor, and good acting by young actors who all feel very real on-screen. In 2011 only fans of the actors from the Cornetto films would have noticed it, because of the slightly larger than cameo performance by Nick Frost, one-half of the Simon Pegg/Frost comic duo (Shaun of the Dead, The Fuzz, Spaced, Paul). Attack the Block was an unknown commodity that didn’t get much reaction at the U.S. box office in 2011 because it was not marketed well and it was not a typical, Hollywood-made sci-fi epic. It was before its time–it’s Stranger Things, UK style. It’s Judgment Night and John Carpenter’s original Attack on Precinct 13 meets E.T., if E.T. didn’t have good intentions and Elliot wasn’t a nice little kid.
It takes a bit to warm up to the main cast of Attack the Block. We follow a teen gang of British kids in masks led by John Boyega’s character Moses as they unabashedly and violently mug a nurse named Sam, played by Jodie Whittaker. From the beginning Whittaker’s Sam really is the only person in the film we are completely sympathetic toward, despite efforts of the writer to get viewers to understand this gang of kids. We almost get to the point of sympathy for the others once Sam decides she may very well be killed by aliens if she does not join up with the gang, and this film takes a swing at answering the question: “Under what situation would a victim, however reluctantly, join up with her attacker?” Violent alien beast invasion, of course! Despite playing the thug, Boyega had charisma even early on and it’s understandable why he has his own band of followers. He gets in over his head dealing with a slightly older drug kingpin who “owns the block” and takes the kid under his wing for a drug sale. His followers are a motley sort. Along with a pair of much younger kids that add some comic relief, and an additional wandering, stoned teenager, they must come together to fight the gang leader and worse—the onslaught of big hairy aliens.
The scarf of a future Doctor! Jodie Whittaker in Attack the Block.
Six years later, Attack the Block easily holds its own. For alien invasion film fans, it offers one of the best aliens of any 21st century production–big or low budget—giant dark, furry beasts built like hybrid gorilla/buffalos, with phosphorescent blue fangs, able to leap and spring and climb buildings. We don’t ever see clear views of these creatures, and that mystery and an overall lack of gore throughout the movie helps form the mystique of these creatures–think the uncertainty of when the shark appears next in Jaws–and it makes them just plain scary as they chase their targets down hallways and up buildings. They aren’t hive-minded aliens from Alien or conniving predators as in Predator, but they don’t need to be.
We’ve said it before: It’s the rare sequel that’s actually better than its preceding installment (Terminator 2, The Empire Strikes Back, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), but back in a preview last month here at borg.com, we predicted that The Huntsman: Winter’s War might just break through to join those few. The original Snow White & The Huntsman (2012) was fun but forgettable, despite high-profile headliners Kristen Stewart (the Twilight Saga), Chris Hemsworth (Thor, Star Trek), and Charlize Theron (Mad Max: Fury Road, The Italian Job, Aeon Flux). It must have been fun enough, however, since Theron and Hemsworth, along with several other original cast members, signed on for a second film–and convinced star-powered newcomers Emily Blunt (Edge of Tomorrow, The Adjustment Bureau) and Jessica Chastain (Crimson Peak, Zero Dark Thirty) to join them. Thanks in no small part to the stellar cast, plus gorgeous special effects, and elaborate costumes by Academy Award-winning costumer Colleen Atwood (Arrow), The Huntsman: Winter’s War stepped up its game and really delivered a great fantasy film experience.
It’s no secret that a great backstory adds layers and richness to a film, and filmmakers capitalized on that to develop the all-new plot to Winter’s War, reaching well beyond the Grimm-fairytale framework of the “Snow White” story. In the original film we were introduced to Theron’s incarnation of Snow White’s evil stepmother, Queen Ravenna, and her magical, corrupting golden mirror. In Winter’s War, we meet Ravenna’s younger sister, the lovely Freya, content to live in her sister’s shadow, as long as she has love in her life. But when her infant daughter dies, Freya’s heart is frozen, and her own cold magic awakens. In an unsubtle nod to Disney’s Frozen, Freya becomes the Ice Queen (actually called “The Frozen Queen” in the trailer), and conquers all the lands of the north, marshaling unbeatable armies of child soldiers she raises in place of her lost daughter. “In my kingdom we have but one law,” she says: “Do not love.”
Inevitably, two of her most prized soldiers–her children–break that law. Young warriors Sara (Chastain) and Eric (Hemsworth) woo and wed in secret, until betrayed and ripped apart by the queen’s jealousy. Eric ends up in service to Ravenna, to play out the adventure in The Huntsman. Seven years pass, and Winter’s War then turns from prequel to sequel. When in service to Snow White’s kingdom, Eric is charged with a task worthy of a true Huntsman: Recover Ravenna’s mirror and deliver it safely to Sanctuary, where it and its magic can be locked away for good. Thus begins a lively quest, aided by familiar dwarf ally Nion (Nick Frost, Shaun of the Dead, Attack the Block) and delightful newcomers Mrs. Bromwyn (Sheridan Smith, Galivant), Gryff (Rob Bryson, Cinderella), and Doreena (Alexandra Roach, Being Human).
You get the feeling that we’re in store for the year’s best fantasy movie with each new look at next month’s release The Huntsman – Winter’s War, the sequel to the 2012 fairy tale film Snow White and the Huntsman. It would also be a rare, but welcome, sequel that could improve on the original. With the expanded cast this one could be that next surprise hit.
Most of the cast of the original, a pretty fun romp that told a completely re-imagined version of Grimm’s Snow White story, is back in The Huntsman – Winter’s War. Except for Snow White. The next chapter provides a version of the Ice Queen tale with one of our favorite actresses, Edge of Tomorrow’s Emily Blunt, as the new antagonist.
Blunt plays the sister of evil queen Ravenna, played again by Academy Award winning actress Charlize Theron. Also returning is Chris Hemsworth as The Huntsman, Nick Frost as Nion, and Sam Claflin as William. New to the story is Crimson Peak’s Jessica Chastain as the warrior Sara.
Check out this action-packed trailer just released by Universal Pictures for The Huntsman – Winter’s War:
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 2016 as have been disclosed. Usually we select the 24 that look like the biggest hits, but we’re going all out for 2016. The result is a whopping 48 movies, many you’ll probably want to see in the theater or catch on video. We bet you’ll find a bunch below you’ve never heard of. Bookmark this now for your 2016 calendar!
Most coming out in the second half of 2016 don’t even have posters released yet, but many do. 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: Rogue One? Or Star Trek Beyond? You’ve heard endlessly about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but 2016 will also see Doctor Strange, Captain America: Civil War, and X-Men: Apocalypse. There’s even a handful of Westerns, with The Hateful 8, Jane Got a Gun, and another remake of The Magnificent Seven heading our way.
The Hateful Eight – January 1
Tarentino’s Western! Ennio Morricone score! Kurt Russell, Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Channing Tatum!
The 5th Wave – January 8
Chloe Grace Moretz and Liev Schreiber in an alien invasion.
400 Days – January 12
The CW’s Brandon Routh, Caity Lotz, and Tom Cavanaugh in a movie about astronauts that seems to be a play on Ender’s Game.
The 2012 fairy tale film Snow White and the Huntsman was a pretty fun romp, telling a completely re-imagined version of Grimm’s Snow White story. Next year most of the cast (no Snow White) is back in The Huntsman – Winter’s War, a version of the Ice Queen tale with one of our favorite actresses, Edge of Tomorrow’s Emily Blunt, as the new antagonist.
Blunt plays the sister of evil queen Ravenna. Played again by Academy Award winning actress Charlize Theron. Also returning is Chris Hemsorth as The Huntsman, Nick Frost as Nion, and Sam Claflin as William. New to the story is Crimson Peak’s Jessica Chastain as the warrior Sara.
Check out this beautifully done trailer for The Huntsman – Winter’s War:
