The “Atlanta” and “If Beale Street Could Talk” star is in talks to join Emily Blunt in the horror hit’s sequel, according to The Wrap.
The first movie starred Blunt and John Krasinski as parents of a family who are forced to live in near-silence due to a threat from creatures who hunt by sound.
Krasinsk is returning to write and direct the sequel. However, since his character died in the first film, he won’t be back as a cast member.
“A Quiet Place” was a smash success, earning over $340 million at the box office. The sequel is slated for March 20, 2020.
Henry has been extremely busy. Aside from his Emmy-nominated turn in “Atlanta,” he recently starred in “If Beale Street Could Talk” and “Widows.” He can next be seen in “Child’s Play,” “Joker,” and “Godzilla vs. Kong.”
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is desperately trying to win back some public goodwill, after a disastrous few weeks of poor decision-making surrounding the Oscars telecast. And one way it’s hoping to mend some fences is by inviting a bunch of awesome people to serve as presenters at the ceremony.
This week, the Academy revealed another round of stars who will hand out awards at the Oscars, which will air without a host for the first time in 30 years. It remains to be seen how that choice will affect the broadcast, but at least the banter between presenters should be pretty solid, if this lineup is any indication.
The latest batch of presenters is:
Elsie Fisher, Danai Gurira, Brian Tyree Henry, Michael B. Jordan, Michael Keaton, Helen Mirren, John Mulaney, Tyler Perry, Pharrell Williams, Krysten Ritter, Paul Rudd, and Michelle Yeoh.
Awkwafina, Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Tina Fey, Whoopi Goldberg, Brie Larson, Jennifer Lopez, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Amandla Stenberg, Charlize Theron, Tessa Thompson, and Constance Wu.
The group from round two:
Javier Bardem, Angela Bassett, Chadwick Boseman, Emilia Clarke, Laura Dern, Samuel L. Jackson, Stephan James, Keegan-Michael Key, KiKi Layne, James McAvoy, Melissa McCarthy, Jason Momoa and Sarah Paulson.
And the previously snubbed — but thankfully finally invited — acting winners from last year:
“Into the Spider-Verse” is unlike any “Spider-Man” movie or almost any superhero movie you’ve ever seen.
Rendered like a four-color comic book and featuring spectacle that unfolds like the most abstract and boldest splash pages you’ve ever seen, and produced by “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” and “The LEGO Movie” filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller, their latest feels like a celebration — and perhaps overdue reminder — of all of the things that made them such an refreshing, inventive presence to both animated and live-action filmmaking.
Bolstered by voice performances from a uniquely eclectic cast against a backdrop that defies description (and may possibly induce a few seizures), “Spider-Verse” offers a welcome new chapter that intersects and beautifully expands the series — and cinematic mythology — of existing Spider-films.
Shameik Moore plays Miles Morales, a mild-mannered teen reluctantly shuttled to a new high school for academically gifted teens after demonstrating an exceptional aptitude for science and math. His dad Jefferson (Bryan Tyree Henry), a police officer, doesn’t know quite how to connect with him, choosing rigid discipline over gentle encouragement. But Miles ne’er-do-well uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali) encourages his artistic impulses, even when they manifest themselves through graffiti and decidedly less legally suitable means of expression. After being bitten by a radioactive spider, Miles unexpectedly develops superhuman abilities, which he fails roundly to control, much less understand. But after his universe’s Spider-Man dies trying to save New York from Kingpin (Liev Schreiber), Miles decides to take up the hero’s alter ego and finish the task that he failed to complete.
What Miles soon learns, however, is that Kingpin’s mysterious plan has brought multiple universes crashing together — including multiple versions of the superhero whose shoes he aspires to fill. There’s Spider-Man (Jake Johnson), a dumpy unmotivated divorcee; Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), a spunky teenage musician; Spider-Noir (Nic Cage), a hard-boiled detective; Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), a Japanese orphan with a mech-suit possessed by her father’s spirit; and Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), a spider who was bit by a radioactive pig.
As Kingpin gets closer to achieving his fiendish goals, this unexpected and unwitting team of Spider-People reluctantly decide to team up to stop him before his device unlocks their parallel universes, crashing them down upon one another and destroying reality as everyone in each of them knows it.
Sony
“Spider-Verse” feels like it takes place inside a comic book — so much so, in fact, that the colors and shading of the artist’s pens feel like a part of each character’s personality. But writers Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman do more than pay homage to the storytellers and artists who brought their own unique spin to on generation of Spider-Man comics after another: They deconstruct the very nature of continuity, of multiple universes and storylines that create the cinematic continuities we slavishly examine as moviegoers and fans. There are no fewer than six different origin stories, one for each universe’s Spider-Man, and they’re all different only by a matter of degrees. These speak to the universality not only of the character’s journey, but to the elements that motivate their choices as heroes. That the movie acknowledges this openly only further enriches its smart, sophisticated look at timelines and connective tissue between not just various Spider-People but heroes in general — it’s that sameness that we recognize and which resonates when their stories hit individual speed bumps.
At the same time, there’s a very specific and unique story at the heart of “Spider-Verse” between Miles, his father, and eventually, his uncle Aaron, two viewpoints that don’t seem equally appealing to a rule-breaking teenager, but he doesn’t yet recognize want the same things for him. He’s thrilled by the prospect of becoming a superhero, and recognizes the responsibility he’s inherited; but from whom does he learn how to use his powers? He soon discovers that it takes a village — a village of Spider-People, no less — as well as the values instilled by his family, and eventually, his own innate goodness and altruism. This reflexively gets rediscovered by some of his Spider-counterparts, in particular Johnson’s middle-aged Spider-Man, whose failed marriage and loneliness led him away from the sense of simple do-gooding that made him such an effective and beloved hero.
All of this adds up to much more than a conventional comic book movie. Though it’s aimed at kids, the complexity of “Spider-Verse’s” world-building makes it enormously appealing to grown-up fans of superheroes, especially those familiar with even a few of the variations that pop up. The film’s animated format — which seems like the best way to describe it, given its live-action adjacent mythology, which references almost all of the Spider-films that preceded it — creates a canvas that not only afford the filmmakers unique visual opportunities, but virtually reimagines the language used for Spider-Man himself. That two different Spider-Men can have a discussion down one side of a building and up the adjacent one, filmed vertically, and have it not only make sense but communicate details about each’s abilities and personality — is no small artistic triumph.
But what eventually works best (and resonates most) about this superhero story is its deepest message –namely, that in the right circumstances, anyone could be Spider-Man. Though it sounds superficial, in a cinematic world where heroes are black, white, Asian, female, young, old and yes, even porcine, there’s something powerfully empowering about seeing them achieve on their own, and work together towards a common goal.
That’s what makes “Into the Spider-Verse” so special — it recognizes that with great power comes great responsibility, and the filmmakers are able to wield both with sensitivity and precision.
Heist movies are often compelling because of their mechanics — the thrill (and spectacle) of watching crooks dismantle a system, outsmart the law and escape with their lives, and bounty, intact. Steve McQueen’s “Widows” offers a lot of superficial window dressing to make his heist unique — the fact that the would-be perpetrators are the wives of “real” thieves — but what’s compelling, even riveting, about his film is not how they are pulling it off, but why.
Bolstered by an impressive ensemble including Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell, Daniel Kaluuya, and Liam Neeson, “Widows” brings to irresistible life the determination, and desperation, of four women struggling to control their own fate within a system built upon, and preoccupied by, its own greed, corruption, and indifference.
Davis (“Fences”) plays Veronica Rawlins, a Chicago teacher’s union delegate whose life is thrown into disarray after her husband, Harry (Neeson), dies during a botched robbery — one he staged with his colleagues Carlos (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), Florek (Jon Bernthal), and Coburn (Jimmy Goss). Before she can begin to grieve, local crime boss Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry) contacts her, demanding the money that Harry took, which he hopes will cushion his campaign for South Side alderman against incumbent Jack Mulligan (Farrell). But after retrieving Harry’s notebook, which contains the plans for his failed robbery, Veronica reaches out to the wives of his former partners — Linda (Rodriguez), Alice (Debicki), and Amanda (Carrie Coon) — enlisting them to complete the job and pay off Jamal.
Twentieth Century Fox.
Though initially reluctant to participate, Linda and Alice quickly discover an aptitude for the kind of reconnaissance and deception needed to mount a robbery, while Veronica canvasses Mulligan, a friend of Harry’s, for help. But even as everything finally seems to come together— hiring Belle, a resourceful babysitter, as driver after Veronica’s trusted chauffeur, Bash (Garret Dillahunt), suffers an attack at the hands of Jamal’s cold-blooded brother Jatemme (Kaluuya) — the details of the heist, and the motives of the players involved, force them to confront new and uncomfortable elements of their individual pasts. They do so even as time rapidly approaches to launch a desperate plan intended to protect their collective futures.
Adapted with Gillian Flynn (“Gone Girl”) from a British miniseries of the same name, McQueen condenses what was originally six hours of BBC television into a very dense 129 minutes, though you’re unlikely to feel that there’s anything missing. They not only conjure extraordinarily vivid portraits of all of the characters involved — women and men, bad and good — but provide a rich and detailed world that gave birth to or shaped their identities. Set in Chicago against the backdrop of one of its poverty-stricken boroughs, there’s automatically a divide between the haves and have-nots, but McQueen turns that dialectic into a pathology, and a commentary on the dynamic that continues to metastasize in contemporary American society.
Veronica lives comfortably in an apartment provided by Harry’s extracurricular exploits. But, after his death, she is left with nothing; none of it is in her name, and she is immediately reminded of her powerlessness by Jamal, who dreams of finding a legitimate role in his community but backslides into the criminality that made it financially possible for him to aspire to something greater. The always beautiful and obedient Linda was raised in an atmosphere of domestic violence, but soon discovers that there’s power in people underestimating her. And Belle, literally running from one job to the next, stumbles across the moneymaking opportunity of a lifetime — the one for which she’s inadvertently been preparing her whole adult life.
Davis brings polished, flinty resolve to Veronica’s plight, concealing her grief behind immaculate presentation of her clothes and lifestyle to the world, not to mention a fluffy little dog that accompanies her everywhere. McQueen lets her be sexy, vulnerable, tough and unlikeable, often simultaneously, and you can feel Davis’ already-sophisticated faculties as an actress flexing with a freedom she hasn’t experienced before.
20th Century Fox
Debicki seems to deliver one “star-making” performance after another, but here she transforms in a really profound way that isn’t merely a byproduct of playing a women who chooses not to be a victim. She literally towers over her co-stars (she’s 6’3”), but she carries a feverish, improvisational energy and commands the screen with utter believability. Erivo is another standout as Belle, tougher and more fearless than any of the women to whom she’s meant to prove herself.
But Kaluuya creates a singular sort of menace felt even when he’s not on screen as Jatemme, a person indoctrinated to not feel and not care about anything except his own needs and goals — and his brother’s. He is willing to stop at nothing, and do anything, to accomplish them.
McQueen’s movies have long since explored the deeper roots of what makes us work — and not work — as a society, which may be why the film’s central robbery feels like sleight of hand. By the time it goes down, we care more about the characters at the center of this story and how they will survive than whether the machinery of their plans comes easily together. Working with longtime cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, McQueen delivers the visceral thrills of criminality, but always injects them with the greater cultural and emotional dimensions of people in a world where it feels necessary, or justified.
Ultimately, McQueen’s latest certainly joins the ranks of films like “Heat” and “The Usual Suspects” in terms of its intelligence, intensity and complexity, but its goals are different than most heist movies, as is its success. As the best entries in the subgenre tend to build to some sort of climactic showdown and a quick getaway, “Widows” lingers in the messy, relatable humanity of the perpetrators, it cares why they are committing their crimes, and it examines what it means — not just financially, but emotionally — if they succeed.
The latest installment in Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment’s Monsterverse series, “Godzilla vs. Kong,” has officially started production, and has also revealed its full cast list and film synopsis.
The flick, which will unite the two titular beasts for an epic showdown, has actually been in the works for several years, and is set to be a follow-up to last year’s “Kong: Skull Island” and next year’s “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.” Two stars of that latter film, Millie Bobby Brown and Kyle Chandler, are the only returning actors from either movie who will be appearing in “Godzilla vs. Kong.” (Is that considered a bit of a “King of Monsters” spoiler?)
In a time when monsters walk the Earth, humanity’s fight for its future sets Godzilla and Kong on a collision course that will see the two most powerful forces of nature on the planet collide in a spectacular battle for the ages. As Monarch embarks on a perilous mission into uncharted terrain and unearths clues to the Titans’ origins, a human conspiracy threatens to wipe the creatures, both good and bad, from the face of the earth forever.
“Godzilla vs. Kong,” directed by Adam Wingard (“You’re Next,” “Death Notice”), is due in theaters on May 22, 2020.
