movie

DC’s ‘Suicide Squad’ Movie to Star Will Smith, Tom Hardy, Jared Leto and More

suicide squad movie

Borys Kit | THR

Will Smith, Tom Hardy, Margot Robbie and Jared Leto are officially set to star in Suicide Squad, Warner Bros. announced Tuesday.

Also cast in the movie based on the DC Entertainment villains-forced-to-be-heroes are Jai Courtney and Cara Delevingne. Much of the castings have been previously reported, but the studio also confirmed which characters the actors will play.

Smith will play Deadshot, best known as a Batman villain, while Hardy plays the group’s leader, Rick Flagg.

Leto will take on the Joker, while Robbie will play Harley Quinn, his on-and-off girlfriend. Courtney will be Boomerang, while Delevingne, the model-turned-actress who is also in Warners’ Pan tentpole, will play Enchantress, a sorceress.

Is anyone else shocked that Will Smith’s superhero debut (Hancock notwithstanding) is not just as Deadshot, but in an ensemble role?

Tom Hardy pulling a Chris Evans and being TWO characters within the same universe?

Jared Leto playing…Well, OK the Jared Leto as Joker part makes perfect sense.

Anyway, this movie could be really good. You know, as long as Jaden Smith stays plenty far away from it.

Review: ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1’

hunger games mockingjay

As expected, the worst book of a trilogy is, in fact, the worst movie. At least the Part 1 aspect.

Picking up right after the shattering events of Catching Fire, part 1 of the final two installments takes Katniss to her destroyed home in District 12, a not-so-subtle reminder that everything she loved has changed forever. And she’s never getting it back.

Her new set of problems are rightfully different from the ongoing threat of a battle royale with her peers. She’s now thrust into the center of a political revolution, where she’s the strategically ineffective mouthpiece for a war she doesn’t want to be a part of. While not as exciting as her previous obstacles, at least Mockingjay tries to do something new with the character. It’s just unfortunate that watching these politics play out onscreen aren’t much more scintillating than the book its based on.

The filmmakers worked hard to manufacture a climax, but it falls flat as the audience is left wondering why the film was cut in two in the first place. But in the world where sequels double profits, there was no doubt Lionsgate would capitalize. Perhaps marathons with both installments will solve this off-putting interruption.

Even without an actual Hunger Games this time around, Mockingjay: Part 1 has a fair share of action, albeit scattered in varying attempts to capture Katniss’s bravery and compassion on television for the revolutionary masses. This satire of how public relations can skew a war is brilliantly written, though forced to be a little too much of the focus of a movie that needs more going on with its characters, who stare blankly at walls with flashlights for extended scenes.

The parallels between Katniss the character and Jennifer Lawrence the movie star are obvious enough to appreciated, as several logos are shared between both properties (and a great marketing campaign utilizes their symmetry to great effect). Just as Katniss is being exploited to sell a war, Lawrence’s youth and charisma is being exploited by Hollywood to sell a franchise, and it works.

But overall, Mockingjay: Part 1 is a slow adaptation that suffers from being based on what amounts to a rough draft of a book. It still transcends its source material as these movies have consistently done, as they take us out of Katniss’s head and into the lives of other, sometimes richer, characters. Let’s just hope that the final installment is a wrap up worthy of the franchise.

Grade: C+

A Closer Look Into The Changes Behind Pixar’s ‘Good Dinosaur’

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Rebecca Keegan | LA Times

“The heart of the story remains the same,” Sohn said, in an interview last week. “It’s always been about this young dinosaur growing up. But the world itself has changed a lot. Nature has become a character.”

…the film still posits that an asteroid never hit the Earth and the dinosaurs never went extinct; a teenage Apatosaurus named Arlo takes a wild, young human boy named Spot as a pet.

This is a wonderful piece by the LA Times that details the transition this film has gone through, both in terms of leadership and creative vision.

Bob Peterson exited The Good Dinosaur as its director, due to conflicts with the story. He’s been quietly replaced by Peter Sohn, an inexperienced director who got the job thanks to a gutsy presentation of a new take on the movie (which he did with storyboards last summer).

Peterson’s moved on to helping write Inside Out and Finding Dory, so we’ll still see some of his finesse in coming years. And from what we’re slowly learning about The Good Dinosaur in terms of story and visual treatment, I’m happily excited as we get closer to next November.

Though I have to admit the whole “brute takes on a human pet” thing sounds a little too Monsters Inc.

The Stills (and First Trailer) For The New ‘Peanuts’ Movie Are Glorious

new peanuts movie

Cartoon Brew | Five New High-Res Stills from Blue Sky’s ‘Peanuts’ Movie:

Blue Sky Studios has released five new high-res stills from The Peanuts Movie via an article in USA Today. And thanks to the wonders of computer animation, they’ve finally added all the glorious details—fully-rendered hair, fur, cloth, lighting, shadows, even reflective eye highlights—that Peanuts creator Charles Schulz was too lazy to draw himself.

Blue Sky is no stranger to gorgeous animated moviemaking (Ice Age, Rio, Epic, and so on), but this is technically their first attempt at making an adaptation.

And from what I can tell, they’re off to a splendid start with their take on Peanuts, which is set for release next November (2015).

Go on…The Stills (and First Trailer) For The New ‘Peanuts’ Movie Are Glorious

Review: ‘Interstellar’

interstellar worth watching

Is Interstellar worth watching?

Yes, but manage your expectations.

I watched the film in its best format — 70mm IMAX on one of the biggest screens in the country. I couldn’t have been any closer to the content.

It’s a spectacle of a movie. It uses a lot of flair and constrained visual effects to justify its ridiculously long runtime. And it’s best feature is the emotional story that evolves between Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and his daughter Murphy (played by Jessica Chastain as an adult).

But the fantastic performances and literally epic world-building is undercut by the science of it all. The ultimate story. It doesn’t wrap up as nicely as it ought to, as the final act tries to be a deserved payoff, but for me it felt confusing and underwhelming.

But it’s still a blast of a movie, and among Nolan’s most ambitious. It’s just not his best.

The trick with Nolan is that he’s often misunderstood as more of a thinking filmmaker than he really is. The director excels most at spectacle that is raised by high concepts, so it’s easy to expect a little too much out of his offerings. 2001, this isn’t.

In other words, he’s very serious, but you shouldn’t take him too seriously. Here, he scatters his near-future world with interesting locations, a race against time, and deep familial relationships, but the only matter truly at the center here is the latter. Otherwise, it’s a lot of exposition carried on by mostly relaxed scientists placed in a hopeless situation. Interstellar gets much of this drama right, but it comes sparsely within the meat of the movie’s middle.

By the end, the power and mystery of love get a little too much attention, as the film trades its interesting themes of man versus nature for a strange admission that both are one in the same. For most moviegoers, this message won’t resonate. But perhaps they’ll be too enthralled by the gorgeous vistas and raw human emotions that are also in play.

Interstellar speaks a lot of sacrifice, both unseen and through our main character, Cooper. Strangely, a lot of the sacrifice he undergoes is written out of the story in favor of a convenient resolution. That said, Nolan shouldn’t be faulted for putting so much effort into injecting spirituality into a film void of hardly anything else.

If the tide continues to turn in favor of Christopher Nolan being one of our most overrated filmmakers, then Interstellar will likely be one of the jewels of that argument. Strangely, it’s probably Nolan’s boldest work.

Grade: B-

Celebrating 10 Years of ‘The Incredibles’ (With Myth-Busting)

Today marks the 10th anniversary of one of Pixar’s most treasured films, The Incredibles. A sequel is in the works, but it’s not due for another few years. In the meantime, let’s take a look at some myths about the movie that deserve to be busted.

Specifically, one of my favorite websites (as you know) is Cracked.com, and they’ve celebrated the anniversary by poking some light-hearted fun at the movie and Pixar. Let’s take a look!

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Mark Hill and JM McNab | ‘The Incredibles’ is Disney’s ‘Watchmen:’

The Incredibles shares more than just a premise with the graphic novel Watchmen, which later became a movie itself, albeit one that replaces the source material’s Reagan-era malaise with emo hissy fits. As pointed out by Baltimore Sun writer Michael Sragow, both stories concern a world where superheroes exist but have been forced to retire after the American government outlaws their work for political reasons (apparently Canada and Mexico don’t have any crime worth fighting).

Both movies feature a pathetic hero who feels emasculated in retirement — Nite Owl in Watchmen, Mr. Incredible in The Incredibles. They’re getting old, they’re getting fat, and they’re disillusioned by their mundane lives.

Both superheroes are drawn out of retirement to investigate the disappearances of other retired superheroes. They eventually discover that the murderers are exceptionally intelligent supervillains with no actual powers. There’s Ozymandias in Watchmen and Syndrome in The Incredibles — both once wanted to be superheroes, and even as villains they believe they’re serving the greater good. Also, they both have dumb hair.

There are a lot of issues with that last point, the main one being that Ozymandias wasn’t an outsider to the superheroes like Syndrome was. And his motivations have nothing to do with being accepted as a superhero, as opposed to Syndrome. Their goals, endgame and character arcs are wildly distinct.

The hair thing is pretty accurate, though.

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Going further, the reasons for why superheroes were outlawed are vastly different between to the two stories. In Incredibles, supers were banned because of their collateral damage and perceived negative influence on the world. Humans just wanted them gone.

In Watchmen, superheroes weren’t really necessary anymore because Mr. Manhattan was a demigod who could solve everyone’s problems (and wars) at will. So the differences between these stories come down to need vs. want.

Lastly, Mr. Incredible is not “drawn out of retirement to investigate the disappearances of other retired superheroes.” That’s just completely false. He’s lured out of retirement to relive the glory days and work for what he believes to be a top-secret government agency. He just wants to be a super again. He doesn’t even realize superheroes are being hunted and killed en masse until a while after Syndrome betrays him on Nomanisan.

I suppose Syndrome believes he’s serving the “greater good,” but it’s certainly not in the same vein as the more serious Ozymandias. Syndrome is really only concerned with satisfying his own ego and eliminating the very concept of being “special” or super. Ozymandias carries his plan forth because he honestly believes it’s the best solution for mankind.

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Mike Guernsey | The Incredibles — The Return of Heroes Means the Return of Villains:

The ban on heroism prevented heroes from heroing without the fear of legal action, but the supervillains were already operating outside the law — the ban opened the door to a whole new world of crime. You’d half-expect the newly unstoppable villains to take over the planet, but flash-forward 15 years and there’s no evidence of mass slavery, destroyed cities, a villain king — nothing. The supervillains are apparently as extinct as the heroes. When Mr. Incredible sneaks out to do some occasional crime fighting by night, he’s taking on regular old petty criminals.

The article also points out that not long after the Incredibles return to the public eye at the end of the movie, the Underminer arises (literally out of nowhere) as a new, malicious supervillain. Mike, the author, makes the assumption that he’s the first supervillain in a long time, thus claiming the Incredibles to be the cause of some sort of supervillain outbreak.

This isn’t really grounded in any tangible proof, though. Supervillains may not be running around on the screen during the movie (besides Syndrome), but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. And even if it did, that’s correlation, not causation.

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Also, that makes me wonder the motivations of these supposed villains. Why would it make sense for you to only be a supervillain if there are superheroes around? Is the assumption that they’re bored and only willing to commit crimes if there’s someone as strong as them ready to foil their plans? When you think about it, the whole thing falls a bit flat.

I think it’s more reasonable to assume that the super villains were still around, but never a pervasive threat. In fact, there probably weren’t that many of them at all to begin with. Mike even points out that the villains (like Bomb Voyage) don’t have any “super powers,” which means the authorities were probably enough to deal with them.

They just did what they pleased and avoided capture, which became that much easier once the superheroes were banned. We also don’t know if superheroes still fought villains as vigilantes (similar to Mr. Incredible and Frozone) over the years despite the ban.

So there you have it. 10 years later and we’re still talking about The Incredibles. Now that’s how you know Pixar is good at making movies.

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First Trailer For ‘Minions’ Shows A World Before Gru.

Honestly, I’ve never been the biggest fan of the Despicable Me franchise. I fell asleep during the sequel.

So when Illumination announced that there would be a standalone movie focusing only on the minions (AKA everyone’s Halloween costume last year), I rolled my eyes like many other people.

Go on…First Trailer For ‘Minions’ Shows A World Before Gru.