(Right) Channing Tatum stars as Slater King in director Zoë Kravitz’s ‘Blink Twice’, an Amazon MGM Studios film. (Left) Kirsten Dunst in FX’s ‘Fargo’ season 2. Photo: Mathias Clamer/FX.
Preview:
Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst are starring in ‘Roofman’.
It’s the new movie from ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ director Derek Cianfrance.
Channing Tatum at the Los Angeles premiere of ‘Blink Twice’. Photo Credit: JC Olivera.
‘Roofman’, co-written by Cianfrance and Kirt Gunn, follows Jeffrey Manchester (Tatum in the movie), an eccentric and charming serial robber who broke into more than 60 McDonald’s overnight via their roofs, then emptied the cash register in the morning after herding staff into freezers.
The former U.S. Army Reserve officer became known as the ‘Rooftop Robber’ or ‘Roofman’ and was known for his gentle demeanor and for rarely resorting to violence.
After he was caught and imprisoned in 2000, he escaped jail and then evaded capture by holing up for months in a Toys “R” Us and Circuit City store in North Carolina. He lived off baby food and would ride bicycles for exercise in the toy store.
After reportedly leaving his fingerprints on a ‘Catch Me If You Can’ DVD in the electronics store (irony alert!), he was recaptured and sent back to jail.
Dunst will play an employee at the Toys “R” Us who is struggling to make ends meet and to provide for her two girls. She has no idea that Jeffrey has been secretly watching her from inside the store and slowly falling for her.
When she meets him, she’s charmed and finds him endearing, and the two form a serious bond until she finds out the truth about him –– but even that can’t stop her for caring for him.
Where else will we see Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst?
Kirsten Dunst in ‘Civil War.’ Photo: A24.
Tatum will next be seen in Beth de Araújo’s drama ‘Josephine,’ about a young girl who witnesses a brutal attack in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, spurring a spiral of complicated behavior. The movie is now in post-production.
He’s also attached to a wide variety of projects, including new drama ‘Soundtrack of Silence’ and crime drama ‘Bloodlines.’
As for Dunst, she’s the subject of awards chatter for ‘Civil War,’ and has worked on a new drama called ‘Rhubarb,’ about adult siblings navigating the grief over their beloved pet’s death.
When will ‘Roofman’ be in theaters?
The film’s distribution rights are up for sale, so there is no news on a release date until it has found a home.
Ryan Gosling in ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’. Photo: Focus Features.
Actors sometimes have trouble crossing over to take up a position behind the camera, but Zoë Kravitz seems to be making the transition effectively. ‘Blink Twice’ is a confident directorial showcase for the ‘Big Little Lies’ and ‘The Batman’ star: she may hit a few narrative and tonal bumps, but she stays focused on the story she wants to tell and gets the most out of a terrific cast while doing so.
‘Blink Twice’ starts off as a satire, not to mention a riff on the kind of setup we’ve seen before in movies like ‘The Menu’ and ‘Get Out,’ where the protagonist finds themselves in a remote, seemingly friendly (and luxurious) location before things start go off the rails. ‘Blink Twice’ tests the viewer’s forbearance for a chunk of its 100 minutes, but if you’re patient enough the ending should be rewarding in many ways.
Frida (Naomi Ackie) sits in her cramped apartment obsessing over tech-bro gazillionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum), who’s re-entering public life with an apology tour following an unnamed indiscretion (or series of them) that got him canceled. Frida and her roommate/bestie Jess (Alia Shawkat) are waitresses who manage to get work at a reception thrown for King, where they finagle their way into the VIP area and Frida gets a chance to meet-cute with the man himself.
The charming Slater and Frida hit it off right away, flirting furiously with each other until he invites her and Jess to travel with him and his entourage that night to his private island. Neither woman has packed a bag, but that’s no matter: once they get to Slater’s luxurious, decadent private resort, they are provided bathing suits and white linen robes to wear, even perfume to dab on, plus drinks and drugs aplenty along with fabulously curated meals prepared by star chef Cody (Simon Rex), all using locally farmed produce.
It’s the middle stretch of ‘Blink Twice’ that’s ostensibly the most troublesome for Kravitz and her screenwriting partner, E.T. Feigenbaum: the second act becomes a repetitive series of hedonistic montages punctuated like clockwork every now and then by a strange occurrence, as Frida and another guest, reality show veteran Sarah (Adria Arjona), compete for Slater’s attention and the rest – including Slater’s right-hand man Vic (Christian Slater), scuzzy hanger-on Tom (Haley Joel Osment), a couple of other party-hardy girls, and Slater’s perpetually flaky personal assistant Stacy (Geena Davis) – indulge in night after night of booze, drugs, and poolside languor until even the days seem to dissolve into each other.
We know this is not going to end well, but Kravitz makes us wait a bit longer than necessary. Perhaps the way in which she extends that wait makes the movie’s pivot that much more shocking even when you know it’s coming eventually. When things do turn, it’s quick: Frida discovers that Jess has gone missing, and not only does no one seem to remember that she was there in the first place, but Frida herself begins to realize that her memories of the past few days are murky at best and barely there at worst. With the help of a reluctant but increasingly trusting Sarah, Frida learns the horrible, toxic truth.
We’ll let you discover that truth for yourself, but it’s here that ‘Blink Twice’ makes its full turn from satire to horror to revenge thriller, with a final act that is both crazy in its sheer energy and bracing in its aggressive sense of purpose. It’s a tribute to Kravitz and her cast that the shift, while jarring at first, leads to a violently satisfying climax that makes the more morally ambiguous coda easier to swallow.
Whatever issues Kravitz may have with putting her twisty narrative through its paces, she doesn’t seem to have any with the technical aspects of directing. Under her command, the sound design is excellent, the soundtrack is popping (no surprise there, really), and the cinematography by Adam Newport-Berra captures the saturated excess of Slater King’s lifestyle, the foggy wooziness of what at first seems to be endless nights and days of partying, and the dark, bloody reality underneath. It’ll be fascinating to see what Kravitz does next.
We’ve only seen Naomi Ackie being largely underused in ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,’ but she did garner praise for 2022’s Whitney Houston biopic, ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody.’ This is our first time watching her in a lead role and Ackie nails it easily. Her work as Frida is initially vulnerable and open-hearted, even if her obsession with Slater seems questionable. But she never fully trades in her self-respect, which makes her transformation from victim to avenging warrior all the more believable.
She also makes a great pairing with Arjona, who starts out as competitive and distrusting – especially with Frida – before recalling and embracing the time-honored (and perpetually true) maxim that women only have each other to look out for them in the end. Her arc here is better developed than Arjona’s last major role, as a femme fatale in ‘Hit Man,’ and she runs with it for all its worth, delivering an excellent performance that may mark her a star in the making.
Channing Tatum initially turns on the charm and faux vulnerability as Slater, a man who may be doing his best to appear humbled but never quite makes it seem genuine – underneath, he’s angry that he has to take responsibility for his actions. He says all the right things about therapy and rehab and spirituality, but Tatum’s essential blandness works for him in this instance, hinting at the emptiness that lurks inside Slater. Even his seeming interest in Frida curdles after a while, long before things really go south, and his air of entitlement during the film’s third act is as horrifying as anything else.
‘Blink Twice’ initially begins, somewhat eccentrically, as one of those poke-fun-at-the-super-rich send-ups that can easily become boring because the fruit is so low-hanging. But there’s just enough of a feeling from the beginning that something is out of sorts – even with Kravitz dropping clues throughout – to allow a sense of dread to creep into the proceedings. That still doesn’t prepare you for what the director has in store, and it’s refreshing that she’s not interested in returning to any satirical comfort zone once the mayhem begins.
There are no doubt some who will label ‘Blink Twice’ as “divisive,” but they’d be really missing the point about the systemic failure that keeps letting someone at a certain level of wealth and fame get away with the unspeakable just because he says he’s all better now. ‘Blink Twice’ is also a cautionary tale about what happens when too much power and opportunity is left in the hands of truly stunted personalities, and a rallying cry for people – especially women – to look after each other.
Kravitz certainly comes from wealth and fame herself, but she has almost certainly come up against those toxic types as well despite her privilege. ‘Blink Twice’ is a scream of rage on behalf of those who don’t have the resources to defend themselves, and while it gets messy and scattershot at times, it manifests a primal power that we’d like see Kravitz keep channeling.
‘Blink Twice’ receives 7 out of 10 stars.
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What is the plot of ‘Blink Twice’?
A starstruck waitress and her friend are invited to the private island of a billionaire tech mogul, where endless days and nights of debauchery and partying soon give way to the realization that something is very wrong.
The film will be based on Charlie Huston’s novel, which follows burned out former baseball pro Hank Thompson (Butler).
Hank’s neighbor, Russ, has to leave town in a rush and hands over his cat, named Bud, in a carrier. But it isn’t until two Russians in tracksuits drag Hank over the bar at the joint where he works and beat him to a pulp that he starts to get the idea: someone wants something from him. He just doesn’t know what it is, where it is, or how to make them understand he doesn’t have it.
Within twenty-four hours Hank is running over rooftops, swinging his old aluminum bat for the sweet spot of a guy’s head, playing hide and seek with the NYPD, riding the subway with a dead man at his side, and counting a whole lot of cash on a concrete floor…
Aronofsky has Huston aboard to adapt the book for the screen.
As for Kravitz, her role in the story has yet to be revealed.
‘Caught Stealing’: The Director Speaks
Director Darren Aronofsky on the set of ‘The Whale’ from A24.
The new movie finds Aronofsky in business with Sony, which picked up the book package and got the director interested.
Here’s what Aronofsky had to say:
“I am excited to be teaming up with my old friends at Sony Pictures to bring Charlie’s adrenaline-soaked roller coaster ride to life. I can’t wait to start working with Austin and my family of NYC filmmakers,” said Aronofsky.
And here’s what Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group president Sanford Panitch commented:
0“Darren is one of the most brilliant audiovisual storytellers in the world and adapting these wonderful books by Charlie Huston for Austin to star was too exciting an opportunity to not be a part of.”
Kravitz, who was last seen in ‘The Batman’ as Selina Kyle, stepped behind the cameras for ‘Blink Twice’, a new thriller she co-wrote with E.T. Feigenbaum.
It sees cocktail waitress Frida (Naomi Ackie) meeting tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum) and scoring an invite to his private island for what appears to be a dream vacation. One that quickly starts to feel more like a nightmare.
The movie will be in theaters on August 23rd.
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When will ‘Caught Stealing’ be in theaters?
With the movie still at a relatively early stage, Sony has yet to schedule a release date. But if it can be shot this year, it could be on screens later in 2025.
