Film
Chan-wook Park’s Decision to Leave Is a Sizzling Romantic Thriller: Review
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: A mountain climber is found dead at the bottom of one of Busan’s most intimidating peaks. An accident? Probably. But ace Busan detective Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) still finds himself drawn to the man’s Chinese widow, Seo-rae (Tang Wei), with whom he shares a beguiling, unspoken connection. She’s elusive, enigmatic; he grows more obsessed with her the longer he watches her on long stakeouts. And the closer the two get, the harder it is for him to see the woman she truly is — and the harder for her to hide it. The Mist: If there’s one thing you can count on from a Chan-wook Park film, it’s that it will be chock full of surprises. That’s certainly true of Oldboy, Stoker, and The Handmaiden, thre...
Bill Skarsgård and Lily-Rose Depp to Star in Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu
In one of the most perfect casting decisions since, uh, the last time he was picked to play a heavy-lidded horror character, Bill Skarsgård will star as the titular vampire in Robert Eggers’ upcoming Nosferatu retelling. Joining him in Transylvania is Lily-Rose Depp, playing a haunted young woman who becomes Nosferatu’s latest obsession, Deadline reports. There’s not much else we know about Eggers’ follow-up to The Northman, but we do know he’s been wanting to do this for a while. The director almost got his Nosferatu off the ground back in 2019, with Harry Styles and Anya Taylor-Joy attached to the project. Budgeting and schedule conflicts eventually brought the film to a halt, but Eggers made sure to nab Skarsgård — whose portrayal of Pennywis...
Danny Boyle to Direct a Dance Stage Show Based on The Matrix
Did someone ask for a hip-hop stage adaptation of The Matrix? Of course not, but Danny Boyle is giving us one anyway. As Variety reports, Boyle will turn the 1999 sci-fi smash into a “large-scale immersive performance” titled Free Your Mind. Its logline reads as follows: “Combining the hip-hop choreography of hundreds of dancers with the latest immersive design, Free Your Mind will take audiences on a thrilling journey through The Matrix and into a new realm of possibilities.” Licensed by Warner Bros. Theater Ventures, Free Your Mind is also scheduled to be the inaugural performance at Factory International, a new arts venue in Manchester, UK, in October 2023: “This eye-opening production will stretch across the building’s ultra-flexible spaces, responding to them and h...
Bruce Willis Could Appear in Future Projects Thanks to Deepfake Twin
Bruce Willis was forced to retire from acting earlier this year after being diagnosed with a language disorder called aphasia, but we may see him on screen for future projects thanks to the use of deepfake technology. Last year, Willis worked with an AI-powered technology firm called Deepcake so his likeness could be used in a commercial without stepping a foot on set. Engineers at the company used AI technology to create a 4K “digital twin” of Willis by loading 34,000 “image fragments” from movies like Die Hard and Fifth Element into their neural network. That data was then used to superimpose his face onto the face of understudies with “surgical precision.” Though making Willis’ replica was a 14-day process, Deepcake claims their engineers only need “three to five days” to recr...
Bryan Fuller on New Docuseries Queer for Fear and How Hannibal Is “Explicitly Queer”
In working on the new AMC documentary series Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror, director/executive producer Bryan Fuller (Hannibal) was excited to dig into all the facets of storytelling around this genre — including the way in which queer themes have been hidden within mainstream works for centuries. “As somebody who grew up used to the codes, and faced obstacles in my own career as a storyteller with queer representation, and having that eradicated or suppressed by studios or other creatives who just felt that the world wasn’t ready for queerness in that regard… I have a great affection for the codes of queerness, because there’s so much about being queer that is already coded,” he tells Consequence over Zoom. In fact, he says, that affection for codes ended up having a big inf...
NYFF Review: Bones And All Sucks the Marrow Of Its Horrific Premise
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: Something’s a bit off about Maren (Taylor Russell) — when we first meet her, she looks like an ordinary teen just trying to finish high school and fit in with her new environment. But it’s not long before a get-to-know-you sleepover (and a torn-off ring finger) reveals her for who she is: an “eater,” someone with the insatiable need to consume human flesh. Fed up with the constant moving and the pressure of looking after such a dangerous girl, her father (André Holland) abandons her one morning, leaving only her birth certificate and a cassette tape detailing his account of their early years together. The rest, as he narrates, is up to her. Related Video Thus begins her odyssey to track down her long-mi...
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard Court Drama Revived in Trailer for Hot Take: Watch
A full-length feature film centered on this summer’s closely-followed defamation case between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard has its first trailer. Hot Take: The Depp/Heard Trial is set to premiere on the free, ad-supported streaming platform Tubi (you know, home of the Gumbyverse) on September 30th. The trailer reveals the first look at Mark Hapka and Megan Davis as Depp and Heard, respectively, who recreate familiar moments from the court proceedings as well as past incidents between the couple that were shared during their individual testimonies. The clip also suggests that the retelling will include an angle about the influence of social media on the trial, with one cut-away showing a fictional influencer named @deppqueen$$$ telling her followers, “Girl just wants some attention...
Cate Blanchett Is a Conductor on the Edge in Trailer for Todd Field’s TÁR: Watch
Todd Field has readied TÁR, his first film in 16 years, and he’s enlisted none other than Cate Blanchett for the occasion. Watch Blanchett play Lydia Tár, a famous but floundering composer, in the film’s first trailer below. The fictional Tár, as the trailer explains, is a talented composer who rises to become the first-ever female chief conductor of a major German orchestra. Despite her success, the film makes clear that she struggles to write. “I keep hearing something,” she explains of the issue, as the clip shows her devolving into paranoia. Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kauer, Julian Glover, Allan Corduner, and Mark Stron round out the cast of TÁR. The film marks writer and director Field’s first project since 2006’s Little Children, and it contains original mu...
Live Like a Sanderson Sister at Hocus Pocus 2 Cottage on Airbnb
Listen up, witches, Airbnb has unveiled a recreation of the Sanderson sisters’ cottage in Salem, Massachusetts ahead of the premiere of Hocus Pocus 2. Now you can live like a Sanderson sister, by which we mean you can have enchanting fun for one night only before getting banished to wherever you came from. This officially sanctioned, privately owned and operated cottage comes with a real mix of amenities. On the one hand, there’s a bubbling cauldron, an ancient spellbook where guests can “try their hand at enchantments,” and you can read by Black Flame Candle. On the other, “Guests should also note that because our precious cottage doesn’t come with ‘facilities’, if you will, we’ve added a modern outhouse just steps from the home for your convenience.” If that “modern outhouse” doesn’t tur...
The Munsters Review: Rob Zombie’s ‘60s Sitcom Reboot Embraces Its Campy Source Material
The Pitch: Herman Munster, a big goofy lummox made of reanimated dead bodies in the style of Frankenstein’s monster, marries the ghoul of his dreams, a vampire named Lily. But the newlyweds aren’t shacked up in her father The Count’s castle in Transylvania for long before they’re unceremoniously kicked out, and decide to start a new life in America. The Munsters is rock star-turned-horror auteur Rob Zombie’s reboot of the CBS series of the same name, which ran for two seasons in the mid-‘60s, and then staggered around for decades in syndication like the living dead. And while the Netflix film is a prequel, detailing Herman and Lily’s meet cute before the birth of their sitcom son, werewolf boy Eddie Munster, it’s otherwise impressively faithful to the source material’s look and sense of hu...
Tom Hanks Says He’s Only Made Four “Pretty Good” Movies
Wit his usual self-deprecating humor, Tom Hanks said in a new interview with PEOPLE that, “I’ve made a ton of movies,” and added, “Four of them are pretty good, I think.” Hanks did not specify which four films (Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3, and Toy Story 4 perhaps?), but the quote came as he was promoting his just-announced debut novel, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, due out May 9th, 2023. The occasion prompted him to reflect on the act of filmmaking. “No one knows how a movie is made — though everyone thinks they do,” he said. “I’ve made a ton of movies (and four of them are pretty good, I think) and I’m still amazed at how films come together. From a flicker of an idea to the flickering image onscreen, the whole process is a miracl...
Kevin Sorbo Thinks He’d Win an Oscar if He Played an “Islamic Pedophile Terrorist”
Besides 2011’s Soul Surfer and 2014’s God’s Not Dead, Kevin Sorbo hasn’t done much in the way of major Hollywood projects since Hercules: The Legendary Journeys wrapped in 1999, and he says his faith and politics are to blame. The actor, who has jumped down the Trump rabbit hole in recent years, claims being a conservative Christian has hurt his career — but that he’d be a shoo-in for an Oscar if he “played a radical Islamic pedophile terrorist.” “My manager and agent called me in about 10 or 11 years ago and said, ‘We can’t work with you anymore because you’re conservative and a Christian,’ which is like being a double leper, apparently, in Hollywood,” Sorbo said during a recent appearance on the ominously titled program Just the News, Not Noise. “The whole thing in Hollywood is, the...
