Not many sequels match the original. One of those rare gems is Happy Death Day 2U, an impressive, hilarious, amped-up horror meets sci-fi version of the original horror comedy featuring one of our favorite tropes: time loops. The first look audiences had of a sequel to the October 2017 surprise hit Happy Death Day was the trailer in front of the 40th anniversary screening of Halloween in October 2018, receiving overwhelming positive feedback. Director Christopher Landon’s 2019 sequel is so well-written, so well-acted by star Jessica Rothe, it may be better than the original, and it’s good enough to warrant an ongoing horror franchise on the scale of the Final Destination series. The movie revisits Teresa “Tree” Gelbman, a strong, quick-thinking college student who keeps waking up to the same day, learning she must save not only herself but her friends from a freakish masked killer. Yes, Happy Death Day 2U is Tru Calling meets Groundhog Day, but this time it suggests why the events of the first film happened, with the addition of some of clever sci-fi in the vein of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle.
Despite every other war of the 20th century being well covered, audiences are still waiting for the great modern movie to depict World War I in a realistic and believable way. Will Sam Mendes′s next film be the answer? The director of Road to Perdition and successful James Bond movies Skyfall and Spectre is next bringing us 1917, with Universal Pictures releasing its first trailer for the film this week. The film follows two British soldiers at a key point in the war. Soldiers Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) must complete a mission that takes them across enemy lines to deliver a vital message that could save another band of British brothers from walking into a trap.
If the two young stars of Game of Thrones and Captain Fantastic don’t excite you, then the actors that anchor the film might. Looks for supporting characters played by a current Who’s Who of British film: Benedict Cumberbatch(Doctor Strange, Sherlock, Star Trek Into Darkness, The Hobbit),Colin Firth (Kingsman, The King’s Speech, Pride and Prejudice),Mark Strong(Kingsman, Shazam!, Sherlock Holmes, Kick-Ass, Green Lantern),Daniel Mays (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Ashes to Ashes, The Bank Job, Doctor Who), and Andrew Scott(Sherlock, Spectre, The Hour, Saving Private Ryan).
Beyond that, the cinematography shown in the trailer, filmed by the great Roger Deakins(The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, A Beautiful Mind, No Country for Old Men, True Grit, Skyfall, Sicario, Blade Runner 2049) should get you across the line. And finally a film depicting the era has the clothing right, thanks to Academy Award-winning designer Jacqueline Durran(Darkest Hour, Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, Beauty and the Beast). With music by Thomas Newman(Real Genius, The Great Outdoors, Finding Nemo, The Adjustment Bureau, Skyfall, The Highwaymen), this is quite promising.
Take a look at the trailer for the new Sam Mendes film, 1917:
A reminder for fans of fantasy, comedic actors, Jim Henson, and his beloved Muppets: Celebrating the 40th anniversary of The Muppet Movie,Fathom Events is partnering with The Jim Henson Company and Universal Pictures to show the classic big-screen debut of the Muppets on more than 700 screens nationwide for two days, beginning tomorrow. Order tickets now before they sell out at the Fathom Events website here.
For two days only, The Muppet Moviereturns with screenings on Thursday, July 25, and Tuesday, July 30. The Muppet Moviewill play at 12:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. (local time) each day. Following the international success of the television show The Muppet Show, which at its peak aired in more than 100 countries, Muppets creator Jim Henson took a creative risk to have the characters star in their first motion picture. The result, directed by James Frawley, became a box-office hit, starring Kermit (performed by Henson), Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear (performed by Frank Oz), Gonzo (performed by Dave Goelz) and his chicken Camilla (performed by Jerry Nelson), Scooter (performed by Richard Hunt), and dozens of other favorite characters.
In addition to the Muppet performers, The Muppet Movie showcased a Who’s Who of 1970s comedy, with cameo roles by Dom DeLuise, James Coburn, Madeline Kahn, Carol Kane, Telly Savalas, Milton Berle, Elliott Gould, Edgar Bergen, Bob Hope, Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, Mel Brooks, Cloris Leachman, and Orson Welles.
Seven years ago the writers at borg came up with our top ten favorite fantasy movies (take a look at my list here). I’m happy to see that my list hasn’t changed much. Two of my top ten fantasy movies are returning to theaters nationwide for limited showings. First, Field of Dreams (my #6 favorite), is back next week, followed in July by The Muppet Movie (my #3 favorite). Celebrating its 30th anniversary, Field of Dreamswill be in theaters for Fathers’ Day, an opportunity to share the ultimate story of believing in yourself and trusting your instincts with a new generation. It’s scheduled to appear at more than 600 theaters. Then celebrating the 40th anniversary of The Muppet Movie,Fathom Events is partnering with The Jim Henson Company and Universal Pictures to show the classic big-screen debut of the Muppets on more than 700 screens nationwide.
Fathom Events joins Universal Pictures and Turner Classic Movies to bring Field of Dreams to theaters Sunday, June 16, for showings at 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. local time, and Tuesday, June 18, at 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. local time. Director Phil Alden Robinson′s re-write of W.P. Kinsella’s novel Shoeless Joe(reviewed here at borg), features three of cinema’s most fantastic characters coming together: reclusive author Terence Mann (James Earl Jones), baseball player Archibald “Moonlight” Graham (Burt Lancaster and Frank Whaley) and “Shoeless Joe” Jackson (Ray Liotta). It was nominated for six–and made three–of the American Film Institute’s lists of the top American films of all time, including being named the all-time #6 top fantasy film.
For two days only this July, The Muppet Moviereturns with screenings on Thursday, July 25, and Tuesday, July 30. The Muppet Movie will play at 12:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. (local time) each day. Following the international success of the television show The Muppet Show, which at its peak aired in more than 100 countries, Muppets creator Jim Henson took a creative risk to have the characters star in their first motion picture. The result, directed by James Frawley, became a box-office hit, starring Kermit (performed by Henson), Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear (performed by Frank Oz), Gonzo (performed by Dave Goelz) and his chicken Camilla (performed by Jerry Nelson), Scooter (performed by Richard Hunt), and dozens of other favorite characters.
Of the dozens of movies coming to your local theater between now and August, we spotted ten to highlight today. Although Disney continues to recycle past hits into new variants, like Dumbo, Aladdin, Toy Story, and Lion King, Warner Brothers, Universal Pictures, and the rest of the pack are still holding their own with their latest efforts, all vying for the biggest box office win. So along with Columbia Pictures’Spider-Man: Far From Home (partnering with Disney’s Marvel Studios) and the latest Disney purchase, 20th Century Fox’s Dark Phoenix, there’s Legendary Pictures’ Godzilla: King of the Monsters coming next week, Universal’s The Secret Life of Pets 2, Columbia and Amblin’s Men in Black: International, New Line and Warner Brothers’ Shaftsequel, Universal’s Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, Luc Besson’s Anna, and Columbia delivering Quentin Tarantino’s next feature, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, all in the coming summer season (realizing the studios don’t follow the actual calendar seasons).
You may have seen a few of these movie trailers before, but most we’ve been stacking up for today. We’re even throwing in the trailer for the Downton Abbeymovie, which eeks into the summer calendar, arriving September 20.
So start planning to fit these in. This week sees Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown team up with Godzilla in the first big movie on our list, Godzilla: King of the Monsters. The final X-Men movie of the 20-year run arrives the following week with Dark Phoenix. We’re sure Men in Black: Internationalwill be a big hit. And the third Marvel movie of the year arrives withSpider-Man: Far from Home for the Fourth of July weekend. Some good prospects lie ahead!
In case you missed them, here are the movie trailers for the summer’s biggest releases:
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.
A few big names are coming to theaters with throwbacks of a sort this summer, including Academy Award winner Anne Hathaway and Screen Actors Guild Award winner Lily James. This summer the second adaptation of the 1964 comedy Bedtime Story comes to theaters, followed by a comedic take on the alternate history genre featuring the music of The Beatles.
The Hustlefinds Hathaway taking on a role previously played by both David Niven and Michael Caine, with Rebel Wilson filling the shoes of a role played by both Marlon Brando and Steve Martin. Doctor Who and Veep’s Chris Addison directs The Hustle, remaking both 1988’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and 1964’s Bedtime Story. The comedy also stars Doctor Who‘s Osgood, Ingrid Oliver, and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’Tim Blake Nelson, revisiting the story of a chance encounter between two con artists with strikingly different styles. It’s coming to theaters this May.
A month later Academy Award winning director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, 28 Days Later, Trainspotting) releases his next film, Yesterday, starring Himesh Patel(EastEnders) as a struggling singer who awakens one day to learn he is the only person that has ever heard of The Beatles and their music. This parallel universe divergence allows him to introduce and become famous today for all of The Beatles songs as his own, to not surprisingly huge success. Yesterday co-stars Lily James(Baby Driver, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Downton Abbey),Ana de Armas(Blade Runner 2049),James Corden (Doctor Who, Ocean’s 8), Ed Sheeran(The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug), and Kate McKinnon(Ghostbusters, Ferdinand).
Here are trailers for both The Hustle and Yesterday:
It’s time for borg′s annual look at the Best Kick-Ass Genre Heroines in film and television. This year we selected 25 characters that rose to the top. Again the studios gave us more to cheer about than ever. We’re highlighting the very best from a slate of fantastic heroines, with characteristics to learn from and cheer on. Determined, decisive, loyal, brave, smart, fierce, strong (and, okay, sometimes evil), you’ll find no one here timid or weepy, but all rely on their individual skills to beat the odds and overcome any obstacle that comes their way. Over the years we have expanded the list to include any tough, savvy, gritty character played by a woman, so villains are welcome here, too. Some may be frazzled, put-upon, war-weary, or human, but all have fought, some against difficult circumstances, others against personal demons (literally, figuratively, or both), and some against gun and laser fire. And they all showed what a tough, kick-ass character is about.
In 2018 these characters broke new ground, and unlike last year’s great list, this year’s selections would not have worked as well had the characters been swapped for males. We had a former MI-5 agent, bounty hunters, assassins, doctors, defenders, advanced superhumans, superheroines, warriors, witches, and even a few cyborgs–with a roster evenly split between television and movie characters.
Better yet, here’s something we haven’t said before. Several of our selections this year were played by women over 50.
These are the Best Kick-Ass Genre Heroines of 2018:
Enfys Nest(Solo: A Star Wars Story). For the first half of Solo: A Star Wars Story, Enfys Nest was the leader of a band of pirates, a character as cool and ruthless as anyone Han Solo ever faced. But once she took off her mask, it became clear how important she was, how significant her mission was–even more so than Han Solo’s own pursuit of mere wealth. She foreshadowed what Han would later find with Leia, an early glimpse at a rogue and scoundrel who actually had some good in him. When they joined forces, it made their characters even better. And she became one of the best warriors in the Star Wars universe since the original trilogy. (Disney/Lucasfilm)
Okoye(Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War). Is there any woman warrior as powerful and impressive in a fantasy movie this year as Danai Gurira’s Okoye? We can’t think of any. A smart commander, a brave soldier, a loyal ally. Stalwart, devoted, steadfast, strong physically, intimidating and wise, with a keen unwavering ferocity, she represented the best of Wakanda, and fought bravely to defend the world at the last stand against Thanos. (Disney/Marvel)
Higgins(Magnum PI). Few television characters are as beloved as Jonathan Higgins in the original Magnum, p.i. So it was going to be risky having any actor step into the role John Hillerman made famous. So when the show honored the original character and late actor with such a finely tuned, updated character and actor, we took notice. Perdita Weeks’s Juliet Higgins is everything Robin Masters was–the character we all thought Higgins was in secret. We don’t know whether we’ll learn the truth this time around and what that truth will be, but as an ex-British secret service agent, she’s a James Bond for Thomas Magnum to partner with–literally running alongside the show’s star and fighting and shooting her way as an equal. And the result? Every episode of the first season was full of great action and fun. (CBS) Continue reading →
This October one of the trailers in front of the 40th anniversary screening of Halloween received some surprising positive audience responses. The trailer was for Happy Death Day 2U, the sequel to the mildly well-received horror movie ($50 million+ profits and better than average reviews), director Christopher Landon‘s October 2017 release, Happy Death Day.
We couldn’t wait to preview the trailer here at borg.com. But we waited. And waited.
At last Universal Pictures has released the October trailer online. As with the original movie, Happy Death Day 2U deals with one of our favorite sci-fi tropes, thetime loop. The sequel appears to shift from a Tru Calling type time loop story to more of a full-on Final Destination vibe, as star Jessica Rothe‘s put-upon college student Tree Gelbman must save not only herself from those freakish masked fiends, this time she must save all of her friends.
We think the trailer is hilarious and Rothe delivers a particularly funny performance. Take a look at the trailer:
One of the more overlooked animated movies of 2016 was Illumination Entertainment’s cute talking animal movie, The Secret Life of Pets. This week Illumination released the first teaser poster and the first look at its sequel, The Secret Life of Pets 2. Take a look at the trailer below. Voice actor comedians Kevin Hart, Bobby Moynihan, Dana Carvey, and the great Albert Brooks are back. Also returning are voice actors Jenny Slate, Lake Bell, and Eric Stonestreet.
Comedic actor Patton Oswalt is stepping in to replace Louis CK in the lead role as the voice of Max the terrier. The first trailer looks like great family fun, all at the expense of your dog, cat, or guinea pig. If you’ve had a dog who had any kind of surgery or rash, then you’ll recognize Max in the poster sporting the Cone of Shame. The first trailer features Max on his first visit to the veterinarian. Keep an eye out at the movie’s website here for more character teasers arriving from Universal Pictures.
Check out this new trailer for The Secret Life of Pets 2:
