(L to R) Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield present the Oscar® for Original Screenplay during the live ABC telecast of the 95th Oscars® at the Dolby® Theatre at Ovation Hollywood on Sunday, March 12, 2023.
They’re both respected popular actors, have massive online followings and near broke the internet when they showed up at the Oscars this weekend past, presenting the screenplay prizes.
So it should be no surprise that word of Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh in negotiations to star together in a new romantic drama is big news.
According to Deadline, they’re now circling the leads in ‘We Live in Time’, which unusually for a non-Marvel/big studio blockbuster is being kept very quiet in terms of plot.
All that the site has been able to ferret out is that it’s “a funny, deeply moving and immersive love story.” We can already imagine the Tumblr posts.
(L to R) Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield present the Oscar® for Original Screenplay during the live ABC telecast of the 95th Oscars® at the Dolby® Theatre at Ovation Hollywood on Sunday, March 12, 2023.
Who is making the new movie?
While neither Pugh nor Garfield’s deals are in place yet, the movie does have a team ready to make it. Nick Crowley, who directed ‘Brooklyn’ and previously worked with Garfield on 2007’s ‘Boy A’ (in which the actor played a man recently released from prison after committing a crime as a child), is on to call the shots.
Leah Clarke, Adam Ackland and Guy Heeley are among the producers and, thanks to the involvement of the actor’s Sunny March company, Benedict Cumberbatch is an executive producer.
If everything works out with the casting, Crowley should have the cameras rolling later this year.
(L to R) Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire from ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home.’ Photo Courtesy of Marvel Entertainment’s Instagram.
Garfield was most recently seen on the big screen in the one-two punch of ‘tick, tick… BOOM!’ (for which he was nominated as Best Actor at the 2022 Oscars) and ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ in which he reprised the role of Peter Parker/Spider-Man and appeared alongside Tom Holland and Tobey Maguire.
He also received acclaim for TV drama ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’, which saw him as a Mormon police officer investigating a murder mystery within his community.
Pugh, meanwhile, was seen last year in ‘The Wonder’ and ‘Don’t Worry Darling’, the latter of which became more infamous for its behind-the-scenes (and press tour) drama than its twisty mystery. She was also heard as the voice of Goldilocks in ‘Puss in Boots: The Last Wish’.
Upcoming for the actor is Zach Braff’s new drama ‘A Good Person’ (in theaters on March 24th) and even higher profile projects including Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’, in which she’ll be Jean Tatlock, who has an affair with Cillian Murphy’s titular scientist (and will be released on July 21st) and Denis Villeneuve much-anticipated ‘Dune: Part Two’, where she’ll play Princess Irulan Corrino.
Steven Yeun’s career has been on a roll lately, and ever since leaving ‘The Walking Dead’, he’s been enjoying plenty of success on screens big and small. He was Oscar nominated for 2020 family drama ‘Minari’ and last summer appeared in Jordan Peele’s hit horror/sci-fi thriller ‘Nope’.
It was, perhaps, only a matter of time until he caught Marvel’s attention, and he’s now been cast in ‘Thunderbolts’. The movie has Jake Schreier directing and ‘Black Widow’s Eric Pearson writing the script.
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Just who are the ‘Thunderbolts?’
It isn’t an exact match, but the simple way of explaining the Thunderbolts is that they’re Marvel’s version of The Suicide Squad: a group of villains –– or at least anti-heroes –– brought together by third-party schemers in a possibly ill-advised attempt to turn them into a force for good.
In Marvel’s case, they were originally assembled by Baron Zemo and the Masters Of Evil and have sometimes been linked to Hulk regular General Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross (hence the name). They made their debut in the pages of ‘The Incredible Hulk’ in 1996, introduced by writer and artist team Peter David and Mike Deodato. They continued to their own series the same year, created by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley, and have been brought back with a bunch of alternative line-ups in comics ever since.
David Harbour from ‘Thunderbolts’ at D23 Expo 2022.
We know (most of) the characters who will be showing up, since they were announced last year at Disney’s D23 event: Bucky Barnes (formerly The Winter Soldier), played by Sebastian Stan, is a key figure alongside Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, Olga Kurylenko’s Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster and David Harbour’s Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, those three having been introduced in ‘Black Widow’.
Then there’s John Walker, AKA US Agent, played by Wyatt Russell and first seen in ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ and Hannah John-Kamen’s Ava Starr, the phasing character known as Ghost, who debuted in ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’.
As for those overseeing the team, we have Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, AKA Val, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who was also introduced in the ‘Falcon’ series and has since cropped up in the likes of ‘Black Widow’ and ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’. We also have Thaddeus Ross––last seen in ‘Black Widow’ and played since ‘The Incredible Hulk’ by William Hurt. But because of the actor’s death last year, Marvel has had to recast the role, tapping genre icon Harrison Ford to take over. Ross is reportedly the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s current President of the US (at least in ‘Captain America: New World Order’) so that’ll likely factor in.
As for Yeun, Marvel has yet to say –– and Deadline couldn’t dig up –– what part he’s playing, but he’s apparently a key figure in this movie, one who could well end up recurring in the MCU.
‘Thunderbolts’ is scheduled to land in theaters on July 26th next year.
Ayo Edebiri has gained a lot of attention lately for her role as driven chef Sydney Adamu in FX’s ‘The Bear’, for which she has been nominated for several awards and won some trophies.
Which has led to her getting a call from the Marvel team, and now Deadline reports that Edebiri has been recruited for the ‘Thunderbolts’ cast.
Ayo Edebiri from ‘The Bear.’ Photo courtesy of FX.
It isn’t an exact match, but the simple way of explaining the Thunderbolts is that they’re Marvel’s version of The Suicide Squad: a group of villains––or at least anti-heroes––brought together by third-party schemers in a possibly ill-advised attempt to turn them into a force for good.
In Marvel’s case, they were originally assembled by Baron Zemo and the Masters Of Evil and have sometimes been linked to Hulk regular General Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross (hence the name). They made their debut in the pages of ‘The Incredible Hulk’ in 1996, introduced by writer and artist team Peter David and Mike Deodato. They continued to their own series the same year, created by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley, and have been brought back with a bunch of alternative line-ups in comics ever since.
Sebastian Stan from ‘Thunderbolts’ at D23 Expo 2022.
For the movie we know (most of) the characters who will be showing up: Bucky Barnes (formerly The Winter Soldier), played by Sebastian Stan, is a key figure alongside Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, Olga Kurylenko’s Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster and David Harbour’s Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, those three having been introduced in ‘Black Widow’.
Then there’s John Walker, AKA US Agent, played by Wyatt Russell and first seen in ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ and Hannah John-Kamen’s Ava Starr, the phasing character known as Ghost, who debuted in ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’.
Wyatt Russell from ‘Thunderbolts’ at D23 Expo 2022.
As for those overseeing the team, we have Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, AKA Val, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who was also introduced in the ‘Falcon’ series and has since cropped up in the likes of ‘Black Widow’ and ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’. We also have Thaddeus Ross––last seen in ‘Black Widow’ and played since ‘The Incredible Hulk’ by William Hurt. But because of the actor’s death last year, Marvel has had to recast the role, tapping genre icon Harrison Ford to take over. It’s unknown what position Ross will have in the new movie––the former General was Secretary of State in ‘Captain America: Civil War’.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus from ‘Thunderbolts’ at D23 Expo 2022.
Given Marvel’s typical shroud of secrecy, nothing is yet known about how Edebiri will fit into the story or what character she’s playing. She could be a character drawn from the comics, but even if that’s the case, her backstory could be changed for the film’s story.
So far, all that is really confirmed about the film beyond the main cast is the presence of ‘Paper Towns’ and ‘Robot and Frank’ director Jake Schreier and ‘Black Widow’ writer Eric Pearson providing the script.
‘Thunderbolts’ will be in theaters on July 26th next year.
David Harbour from ‘Thunderbolts’ at D23 Expo 2022.
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Debuting in theaters on December 21st, ‘Puss in Boots: The Last Wish’ reunites audiences with the dashing, daring feline hero who got his start in the ‘Shrek’ movies to humorous effect.
With 12 years between ‘Puss in Boots’ entries, you might be forgiven for thinking that DreamWorks Animation had decided to close the door on movies based on its ‘Shrek’ universe altogether, outside of occasional straight-to-streaming spin-offs.
Yet here comes Puss, riding back with a full theatrical release and leaving hints that we’ll be revisiting the wider ‘Shrek’-verse before too long.
Judged on its own merits, however, ‘The Last Wish’ is a worthy, funny follow-up to the 2011 movie, which gives a little extra depth to the charismatic hero, who has little time for rules or regulations.
A quick burst of exposition catches us up with what Puss (Antonio Banderas, on enthusiastic vocal form as always) has been up to and provides a handy sketch for those who have not watched one of his appearances before.
Which is all to say: Puss has been being Puss––drinking lots of milk, pulling off daring feats, annoying local authorities and hosting raucous parties (the initial scene features a combination of all three).
But after his latest scrape, he realizes that his passion for peril and disregard for safety have taken their toll: Puss has burned through eight of his nine lives. An early highlight is a flashback clip showing how the others were lost, the character falling afoul of canons, weightlifting accidents, and falls from great heights.
Worried that he’s on borrowed time, he initially decides to retire, heading for Mama Luna’s (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), a home for stray cats. Initially rebellious, he soon falls into a routine of eating with the others and using the litter tray like a regular moggy.
A chance encounter with thieves who come looking for something at the house reveals the existence of the titular last wish––a star that could help him restore his spent lives. And along for the quest will be his former flame, Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) and new friend/annoyance Perro (Harvey Guillén), a pug who longs to find his place in the world and who had been hiding out at Mama Luna’s disguised as a cat.
Puss isn’t the only one looking for the star, though. He and his friends will have to stay one step ahead of Goldi (Florence Pugh) and the Three Bears Crime Family, and Jack Horner (John Mulaney), a rich, spoiled brat who is constantly trying to shake his reputation as “Little” Jack Horner.
Plus, Puss is being pursued by a mysterious bounty hunter, the Big Bad Wolf (Wagner Moura), who appears to be more supernatural than your usual tracker. Could this be death on Puss’ trail given his lack of lives?
‘The Last Wish’ certainly stands as a solid sequel to ‘Puss in Boots’, and boasts an attractive, imaginative animation style that, like ‘The Bad Guys’ before it, owes a debt to ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ for its blend of techniques that give the movie a painterly quality and the feeling of anime at different points.
It’s certainly a shift from the standard look of the previous movie and other ‘Shrek’ entries, and makes for a frenetic, yet clear visual palette. If the teams behind these films are going to keep experimenting and finding new ways to present these movies, it’s something to be encouraged.
Story-wise, this remains your basic quest mixed with pop culture references (though the latter side has been toned down some). Wacky villains are brought to life by a fine cast of voices beyond those we’ve already listed, including Olivia Colman as Mama Bear and Ray Winstone as Papa Bear.
Banderas is still the beating, comical heart of the film, but combined with the updated animation, Puss really does seem to have a new life in this story. He’s always been one of the more entertaining characters from this fairy tale-spoofing cinematic universe (and deserving of spin-off films), and ‘The Last Wish’ earns its place in the canon.
Hayek, meanwhile, is still a delight as Kitty, every bit Puss’ equal on the action front and even more cunning when the moment calls for it. And though some of the others don’t get as much to do (Colman, Winstone and Samson Kayo as the bears are rarely handled the best material, though Mulaney’s vocal style makes Jack work on a level he might not otherwise), this is more visually dynamic than vocal.
The nods to classic stories are smart and feed into the plot, directors Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, along with writers Tommy Swerdlow and Paul Fisher keeping the whole affair light on its feet (as is befitting a crafty cat). And the jokes come thick and fast––if some don’t land, another is on the way to make up for it a few seconds later. It’s fast and fun.
And yes, there are of course callbacks to past Puss stories, including the deployment of nuclear-level cute faces from both Puss and Kitty (Perro trying his own with, let’s charitably call them, “mixed” results).
It’s never going to challenge the minutely crafted likes of ‘Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio’ or ‘Marcel the Shell with Shoes On’, but it’s far from a pumped-out moneymaking exercise. But unlike ‘Pinocchio’ it features little––aside, perhaps from a couple of moments with the wolf––likely to traumatize the youngest in the audience.
‘Puss in Boots: The Last Wish’ receives 3.5 out of 5 stars.
(L to R) Bryan Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson star in Sony’s ‘Bullet Train.’ Photo: Scott Garfield.
Now that the pieces have fallen into place (on a crash pad, we hope), director David Leitch and star Ryan Gosling are pushing their movie adaptation of ‘The Fall Guy’ into top gear.
When his movie work starts to dry up, Seavers pivots to become a bounty hunter, using all the know-how he’s acquired to craft film action to track down and defeat swindlers, thieves, bikers, conmen, fugitives, and corrupt officials using his fists and his vehicle skills.
Majors starred alongside Douglas Barr and Heather Thomas as Colt’s colleagues Howie Munson and Jody Banks, who helped him out on his missions. Though the show was often a giant slab of ‘80s cheese TV, the concept clearly has legs.
(L to R) Heather Thomas and Lee Majors in ‘The Fall Guy.’ Photo courtesy of IMDB.
Word of Leitch and Gosling’s take first surfaced in 2020, then referred to as ‘Unknown Stuntman Movie’ and backing via Universal.
With The Hollywood Reporter’s story on Taylor-Johnson’s casting comes fresh information as to the storyline for this one, which looks to be largely jettisoning the side-hustle part of the original show.
Gosling is playing battered and past-his-prime stuntman who finds himself back on a movie with the star he worked with long ago and who replaced him. The problem, however, is that the star is now missing…
Taylor-Johnson will be the movie star that Gosling is doubling, while Blunt is a prosthetic makeup artist that has a romantic past with our hero.
The new film will see Leitch – a former expert stuntman himself, who has used that experience in his action-packed directorial career – reunite with Taylor-Johnson after the latter played opinionated assassin Tangerine in ‘Bullet Train’.
With a script from ‘Iron Man 3’s Drew Pearce and cameras rolling in Australia, ‘The Fall Guy’ is taking aim at a March 1st, 2024, release.
(L to R) Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brad Pitt in Sony Pictures’ ‘Bullet Train.’
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In other casting news, the ever-busy Florence Pugh has another acting job. And it’s an intriguing one – as according to Deadline, the new movie is Alexander Skarsgård’s directorial debut ‘The Pack.’
Skarsgård will kick off shooting in March, and the story follows a group of documentarians who brave the remote wilderness of Alaska in an effort to save a nearly extinct species of wolves.
When the crew is brought back together at a prestigious awards ceremony, tensions flare as a deadly truth threatens to unravel their work. This team lived through the harsh elements of the wild but will a secret they share survive the night?
Skarsgård will star alongside Pugh as well as directing.
And the new film is a very, very different beast from that initial offering, swapping charming, warm coming-of-age antics and slapstick humor for paranoia, gaslighting and a theme that would feel right at home in a thriller from the 1970s.
We’re introduced to Alice Chambers (Florence Pugh) and husband Jack (Harry Styles) who count themselves lucky to be living in the idealized community of Victory, the experimental company town housing the men who work for the highly top secret Victory Project and their families.
The 1950’s societal optimism espoused by their boss Frank (Chris Pine) – who is equal parts corporate visionary and motivational life coach – influences every aspect of daily life in the tight-knit desert utopia, which is seemingly carved from the landscape in California’s Palm Springs.
While the husbands spend every day inside the Victory Project Headquarters, working on the “development of progressive materials,” their wives, including Frank’s elegant partner, Shelley (Gemma Chan) fill their time enjoying the beauty, luxury and debauchery of their community. Life is perfect, with every resident’s needs met by the company. All they ask in return is discretion and unquestioning commitment to the Victory cause.
Alice and Jack are initially thrilled with their lives, sizzling with sexual chemistry and barely able to keep their hands off each other when they’re at home, and at one point in Frank’s bedroom during a party.
Even though it might seem repetitive – Jack heads off to work, Alice cleans the house and busies herself with cooking, ballet and shopping – it’s so comfortable that no-one questions it. Until Alice starts to.
She’s spurred by the behavior of another wife, KiKi Layne’s Margaret, who has been having serious second thoughts after taking her son out to the restricted desert area outside the community, where he disappeared and is seemingly dead.
As Margaret’s actions grow more out of keeping with everyone else, Alice starts to feel a tingling sense of paranoia. Is this idealized life she’s living as, well, ideal? And her sense of reality starts to crumble.
Given that this is a psychological thriller, you know there will be something going on, but we won’t get into that here – the basic set-up is all you really need.
Wilde weaves a compelling, mysterious and stylish story, stretching a relatively thrifty $20-$30 million budget into an effective, layered world. She drip-feeds tension into the narrative from the off with the mysterious rumbles that shake the houses from time to time, written off by the residents as a side-effect of whatever the men are working on.
She and her team have built something that looks and sounds fabulous, whether it’s cinematographer Matthew Libatique’s sun-bleached visions of this community with its pastel, mid-century modern houses or John Powell’s score, which dials up the creepiness as the narrative moves on. Together with the sound team, it creates a real feeling of unease.
The script, from ‘Booksmart’s Katie Silberman, based on a story by her alongside Carey Van Dyke and Shane Van Dyke (yes, as in Dick Van Dyke – they’re his grandsons) serves as a solid example of the paranoia genre, crafting this world before challenging it.
While ‘Booksmart’ explored female friendship and teenage frustration, ‘Darling’ switches genres and attitude, but still keeps the focus on the experiences of women, taking in divided gender expectations of the past and gaslighting.
Pugh is, of course, fantastic, breathing conflicted life into Alice at every moment, whether she’s happily cooking up a roast, engaging in enthusiastic romance with her husband or seeing a plane crash in the desert that no one else wants to acknowledge.
Styles isn’t quite on her level, but he brings a charm and eagerness to Jack that works for the character, and when he’s called upon to do more than that, he handles it effectively.
Pine, meanwhile, is a smooth guru type, his voice full of a hypnotic, magnetic, confident smoothness that has everyone both ready to hang on his every word and yet remain slightly afraid of him.
The rest of the cast fill their roles well too – Chan playing the alpha wife to the hilt, while Wilde is Alice’s best friend Bunny, an amusing and slightly sarcastic homemaker with two kids and a slight drinking problem (though given the 1950s period, everyone happily guzzles booze, so it’s not as noticeable to them).
Despite being a key element of the story Layne doesn’t get as much to do, Margaret a slightly underserved character who edges towards cliché at times. It’s no fault of the actor, who brings a pained vulnerability to her role.
As the truth begins to dawn on Alice, and on us, the pace speeds up and the overall effect unravels slightly, the final act never quite as compelling as the build-up, the various details undercut in a more straightforward action-focused finale.
You might well figure out ahead of the characters what’s going on, and there are clues here and there sprinkled throughout the movie that verge on the less than subtle. Wilde has plenty of ideas that she wants to unpack, but not all of them arrive completely thought through – when the big revelations start to drop, the cracks in more than just Alice’s reality start to show and you’ll have questions not easily answered by the script.
Yet it still doesn’t diminish what has gone before and Pugh remains as committed as ever, spurring you to empathize with Alice even as she worries that she might be losing her mind. It’s twisted, audacious and, at least until the end, surprising. Ignore the unnecessary noise around the movie and let it transport you.
‘Don’t Worry Darling’ receives 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Everyone might still be talking about the behind-the-scenes and festival drama of ‘Don’t Worry Darling’, but Florence Pugh’s career is about more than that controversial headline magnet.
With strong reviews out of the Telluride and Toronto film festivals, Netflix has now released some new images from Pugh’s next film, ‘The Wonder’.
For ‘The Wonder’, the director worked with co-writer Alice Birch to adapt the novel by Emma Donoghue, who wrote the book ‘Room’, which itself was turned into a movie that helped Brie Larson win an Oscar.
Donoghue herself was inspired by a real-life phenomenon from the 19th Century, primarily found in the UK and Europe, of “fasting girls”. They were young, Victorian era girls, usually pre-adolescent, who claimed to be able to survive over indefinitely long periods of time without consuming any food or other nourishment. In addition to refusing food, fasting girls claimed to have special religious or magical powers.
The story for the movie itself is set in the Irish Midlands, in 1862. A young girl stops eating but remains miraculously alive and well. English nurse Lib Wright is brought to a tiny village to observe eleven-year old Anna O’Donnell (Kila Lord Cassidy). Tourists and pilgrims mass to witness the girl who is said to have survived without food for months.
(L to R) Tom Burke, Kíla Lord Cassidy and Florence Pugh in Netflix’s ‘The Wonder.’
Is the village harboring a saint ‘surviving on manna from heaven’ or are there more ominous motives at work?
A big part of the movie is the debate between fact and faith – Pugh’s Wright is a firm believer in the former, where the event has many in the area convinced of the latter.
“Lib was an incredibly realistic and open-minded character to play,” Pugh told Indiewire. “While that was easy morally to understand, it was also tricky to find that balance. The instinct for her to push back had to be tame and discreet, which is always tricky for me.” And she felt comfortable with her director. “We felt very connected the moment we met,” she wrote. “I felt very safe and heard instantly.”
And while Pugh would be a good get for any movie, one person on the creative team in particular was happy to reunite with her: Alice Birch, who also wrote ‘Lady Macbeth’, in which Pugh starred.
“Alice was very happy when Florence signed on,” Lelio said in that same Indiewire interview. “She is an actress who brings a great level of interpretation to her roles. She makes you want to be on her side. You feel invited into a film because of her magnetism and strength. We had to rethink the script in a way. The energy of the scenes were redefined by her presence.”
(L to R) Florence Pugh and director Sebastián Lelio on the set of Netflix’s ‘The Wonder.’(L to R) Tom Burke and Florence Pugh in Netflix’s ‘The Wonder.’(L to R) Florence Pugh and Elaine Cassidy in Netflix’s ‘The Wonder.’(L to R) Florence Pugh, and Kíla Lord Cassidy in Netflix’s ‘The Wonder.’Kíla Lord Cassidy in Netflix’s ‘The Wonder.’Niamh Algar in Netflix’s ‘The Wonder.’(L to R) Tom Burke, Florence Pugh, and Kíla Lord Cassidy in Netflix’s ‘The Wonder.’(L to R) Elaine Cassidy, Toby Jones, Kíla Lord Cassidy, Niamh Algar, and Florence Pugh in Netflix’s ‘The Wonder.’Tom Burke in Netflix’s ‘The Wonder.’(L to R) Toby Jones, Dermot Crowley, and Ciarán Hinds in Netflix’s ‘The Wonder.’
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Having famously switched his filmmaking operations to Universal from longtime home Warner Bros. after dissatisfaction with the straight-to-HBO handling of some movies and its treatment of ‘Tenet’, Christopher Nolan has been working away on his next movie, ‘Oppenheimer’.
Universal, naturally, is going all out to promote this one, including with this first, unusual teaser, which features fragments of footage from the film, some voice-over dialogue referring to its subject matter and an ominous countdown clock.
Some have speculated that it’s to the release date – but not in America, as those figures don’t sync up. But with the movie opening in Singapore the day before its Stateside release, it makes more sense.
Nolan here is adapting the Pulitzer Prize-winning book ‘American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer’ by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin. It chronicles how he was part of the infamous Manhattan Project and played a key role in the creation of atomic weapons, yet later came to have complicated feelings about their deadly power. He lobbied for international control of nuclear power and opposed the creation of the even more destructive hydrogen bomb.
Cillian Murphy, a Nolan regular, plays Oppenheimer, who is glimpsed briefly in this first footage.
Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in ‘Oppenheimer’ written and directed by Christopher Nolan.
Emily Blunt is playing his wife, biologist, and botanist Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, with Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves Jr., director of the Manhattan Project and Robert Downey, Jr. as Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
Florence Pugh will portray psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, who turns out to have a hidden agenda, while Benny Safdie plays theoretical physicist Edward Teller. Michael Angarano is physicist Robert Serber and Josh Hartnett plays pioneering American nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence.
Look, at this point it’s probably easier just to list the people who aren’t in Nolan’s latest. It might be the first end credits crawl in years where the cast runs for a longer time than the effects teams.
‘Oppenheimer’ sees Nolan tackling a historical subject again, and one that surely offers the opportunity for plenty of his terse dialogue and large-canvas visions. It won’t surprise you to learn that it has been shot and be and released on 65mm IMAX and large-format film. Providing the beautiful footage is another repeat Nolan colleague, director of photography Hoyte Van Hoytema, while composer Ludwig Göransson returns after scoring ‘Tenet’. A pulse-pounding biopic thriller with high stakes certainly feels like it could work well for Nolan.
‘Oppenheimer’ will be in theaters here from July 21st.
Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in ‘Oppenheimer’ written and directed by Christopher Nolan.
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You know how it is… you think you’re living the perfect life in an idyllic community with all your needs taken care of and your neighbors a group of the best-looking people around.
And then you start to dig a little deeper and discover that it might all be built on a lie, and that the closer you get to the truth, the more danger there is.
All right, so very few people actually live that sort of life out of the movies, but that’s exactly the quandary that Alice (Florence Pugh) finds herself in in the latest trailer for Olivia Wilde’s ‘Don’t Worry Darling’.
The story for the new movie finds Alice and Jack (Harry Styles), who consider themselves lucky to be living in the idealized community of Victory, the experimental company town housing the men who work for the top-secret Victory Project and their families. The 1950’s societal optimism espoused by their CEO, Frank (Chris Pine) — equal parts corporate visionary and motivational life coach — anchors every aspect of daily life in the tight-knit desert utopia.
While the husbands spend every day inside the Victory Project Headquarters, working on the “development of progressive materials,” their wives — including Frank’s elegant partner, Shelley (Gemma Chan) — get to spend their time enjoying the beauty, luxury, and debauchery of their community. Life is perfect, with every resident’s needs met by the company. All they ask in return is discretion and unquestioning commitment to the Victory cause.
But when cracks in their idyllic life begin to appear, exposing flashes of something much more sinister lurking beneath the attractive façade, Alice can’t help questioning exactly what they’re doing in Victory, and why. Just how much is she willing to lose to expose what’s really going on in this paradise?
Wilde, who broke into directing with ‘Booksmart’ has made what looks like an intriguingly paranoid period thriller with shades of 1970s movies, ‘The Prisoner’ and the style of something that Stanley Kubrick would nod approvingly towards.
She also steps in front of the camera this time, as Mary, one of the wives who seeks to keeps the others from looking to deeply into their situation. Wilde also has Nick Kroll, Douglas Smith, Timothy Simons and KiKi Layne on the roster.
Working with cinematographer Matthew Libatique (a regular collaborator with Darren Aronofsky), and ‘Booksmart’ production designer Katie Byron, Wilde, who has a script from Katie Silberman, Carey Van Dyke, and Shane Van Dyke, certainly appears to have created something exciting, dramatic, and visually arresting.
‘Don’t’ Worry Darling’ will have you questioning the nature of your own reality when it arrives in theaters on September 23rd.
(L to R) Léa Seydoux and Viggo Mortensen in David Cronenberg’s ‘Crimes of the Future.’ Photo courtesy of Neon.
‘Dune: Part 2’ is still one of the most anticipated movies, following the huge success of Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic of last year. He’s preparing to adapt the second half of Frank Herbert’s weighty tome and is adding more and more new cast members as he heads towards a potential summer shoot in Budapest.
The latest name to join the sprawling ensemble is Léa Seydoux, who will play a character called Lady Margot.
To use her full title, Lady Margot Fenring is the Bene Gesserit wife of the Mentat Count Hasimir Fenring, who leads House Fenring. Though considered a “minor” House (not as powerful or in control of a planet as, say, House Harkonnen), it is allied to House Corrino the Emperor’s House.
While Margot is a loyal member of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, helping to guide the bloodlines of powerful families, Margot and her husband dedicated themselves to serving their own ends after the order became much less influential later in the story.
The first ‘Dune’ movie delved into the huge universe of Herbert’s book (the start of a series) that chronicles warring houses vying for power and control of a planet called Arrakis, AKA Dune. The source of a “spice” that is valuable for space travel, it’s a rich prize and one that that Emperor used to entrap House Atreides (led by Oscar Isaac’s ill-fated) Duke Leto.
Timothée Chalamet in Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune.’
Working with the evil House Harkonnen, the Emperor attacked the Atreides once they’d landed on the planet and slaughtered much of the family and their forces.
‘Dune: Part Two’ continues the story of Leto’s son and heir Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) as they regroup and earn the trust of the native Fremen (including leader Stilgar, played by Javier Bardem) and warrior Chani (Zendaya). They’ll survive while plotting a reprisal, as Paul becomes a spiritual and military leader among the Fremen.
The new movie already boasts the likes of fellow new recruits Christopher Walken as Emperor Shaddam, who essentially rules the galaxy of the story, Florence Pugh, playing the Emperor’s daughter, Princess Irulan and ‘Elvis’ star Austin Butler, who will take the role of Feyd-Rautha, the cunning nephew of the pitiless baron who heads House Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), and who is being groomed to rule Arrakis.
Returning cast for ‘Part Two’ – which Villeneuve again co-wrote alongside Jon Spaihts – also includes Josh Brolin as loyal Atreides military man Gurney Halleck, who survives the attack.
Villeneuve’s movie racked up 10 Oscar nominations this year, and won six of them, including Editing, Cinematography, Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture. While there was surprise that the director didn’t feature in his own category, there’s already chatter that if ‘Part Two’ turns out as well as the first, it’ll be a major player come awards season 2024.
‘Dune: Part Two’ is currently aiming for an October 20th, 2023 release date.
