I’ve been interviewing people for a long time, but as a child of the 80s, one of my bucket list interviews has always been Michael Keaton. Not only was he Batman and Beetlejuice, but he also starred in a whole bunch of childhood favourites of mine, including Johnny Dangerously (coming soon to The Best Movie You Never Saw), The Dream Team, Gung-Ho, and even a drama he did called Clean & Sober, which for some reason I enjoyed as a child.
Keaton’s in the middle of a great career resurgence that began with Birdman. Fresh off his Batman stare-down at the Oscars, Keaton is in theaters this week with his film noir throwback Knox Goes Away. In it, he plays a hitman stricken with early-onset dementia. The fast-moving illness is set to destroy his memory (hence the title) completely, and as if that weren’t bad enough, his estranged son just killed someone and needs his father’s help to cover up the crime.
I actually caught Knox Goes Away at TIFF (read my review) and admired how Keaton, who also directed the film, shoots it in a way that makes Knox an unreliable narrator. He’s confused, and the film is shot in a way that we never really know what’s real and what’s not. It’s really well done and features a standout role from James Marsden, who gets to be highly dramatic here. I was lucky enough to sit down with both Keaton and Marsden to discuss the film. Keaton, in particular, seemed very excited to have audiences discover a film that means a lot to him and told me all about how he got Al Pacino to costar in the film and how blown away he was by all the performances, even if the film, as he admits, was shot very quickly due to the limited budget.
Let’s just pause and take stock of how much has happened in everyone’s favorite new co-op shooter, Helldivers 2, since it launched a month ago: the first players dropped in to find a bug-infested galaxy, quickly found there were also killer robots on the other side of said galaxy, fought for a planet they believed was…
Let’s just pause and take stock of how much has happened in everyone’s favorite new co-op shooter, Helldivers 2, since it launched a month ago: the first players dropped in to find a bug-infested galaxy, quickly found there were also killer robots on the other side of said galaxy, fought for a planet they believed was…
Last month, the Motion Picture Association ratings board announced that they had given the psychological horror film Immaculate, which reunites Sydney Sweeney with Michael Mohan, who directed her in the erotic thriller The Voyeurs and the Netflix series Everything Sucks!, an R rating for strong and bloody violent content, grisly images, nudity and some language. Now, in an interview with Variety, Mohan has promised that the film gets extreme, just like that rating explanation indicated.
Scripted by Andrew Lobel, Immaculate sees Sweeney taking on the role of Cecilia, a woman of devout faith who is offered a fulfilling new role at an illustrious Italian convent. Her warm welcome to the picture-perfect Italian countryside is soon interrupted as it becomes clearer to Cecilia that her new home harbors some dark and horrifying secrets.
Simona Tabasco (The White Lotus), Alvaro Morte (Money Heist), Benedetta Porcaroli (Baby), and Dora Romano (The Hand of God) are also in the cast.
During his Variety interview, Mohan also revealed that this is a project that Sweeney first auditioned for a decade ago. He said, “It’s the first film I’ve directed that I did not write myself. Andrew Lobel wrote this script about 18 years ago, and in the mid-2010s it was about to be made with a studio. Sydney, when she was 15 or 16, auditioned for the lead role. The character wasn’t a nun back then — it was a high schooler — and she was one of the last two people up for the role. Then it just sort of evaporated. Andrew stepped away from the business at that point. He was fed up and went and worked in video games for a while. Years later, Sydney does Euphoria Season 2, and all of her fans are going, ‘You need to do a horror movie.’ She wanted to get into producing too, and so they were reading every single script around town, just trying to find something that resonated. And she said, ‘You know what? The best horror script I ever read was this thing I auditioned for. I wonder if I can resurrect it.’ Imagine you’re Andrew Lobel, you get a phone call, and it’s Sydney Sweeney on the other end, saying, ‘Hey, I auditioned for your script 10 years ago. Do you think I could make it?’ And she did. She sent the script to me, and when I read it… it takes a lot to shock me. When I saw the different reveals that happen in the script, I genuinely didn’t see them coming, and I’m someone who writes movies with lots of twist endings.“
Mohan said he drew inspiration from classics like Rosemary’s Baby, Don’t Look Now, and The Exorcist will working on Immaculate, film where, “you feel intimate with the main characters, yet they are cinematic. Even though the stories are told in these elegant and classy ways, they have this sense of danger. In The Exorcist, there are images in that film that movies today have not topped, in terms of how disturbing they are. So that’s what I wanted to do: make the boldest film I possibly could that will, hopefully, stand the test of time and get under your skin. … I think this horror movie is a popcorn movie first and foremost. It’s a roller coaster ride, but the ending is fucking extreme. People are going to walk away having an extreme reaction to it, and that’s all her. She wants to push the envelope, but she wants to do it thoughtfully. I know she loves the movie, and I’m proud of us for not pulling our punches.“
The director also disagreed with the recent study that found that Gen Z is less interested in seeing sex and sensuality depicted onscreen, as he feels, “They’re watching it, they’re just not admitting to watching it.” He also feels that it’s necessary for sex and sensuality to be onscreen, describing it as “a spice that is missing in our current cinematic landscape that we absolutely need.” He added that there was a scene in the Immaculate script where Cecilia and a friend (Porcaroli’s character) have a heart-to-heart conversation, and he chose to have the characters have that talk while in a bathtub, wearing gowns that are “a little bit sheer.” He said, “The fact that it’s sexy is not a bad thing. It is OK to make movies that are sexy. And if that’s something that you’re not into, don’t watch. That’s not the audience I’m going for.“
Sweeney produced the film through her company Fifty-Fifty Films, alongside Jonathan Davino. Also producing are Teddy Schwarzman and Michael Heimler of Black Bear and Middle Child Pictures’ David Bernad, who developed the project with Sweeney after they worked together on the Emmy-winning series The White Lotus. Will Greenfield and Black Bear’s John Friedberg and Christopher Casanova serve as executive producers. Black Bear provided the financing.
Immaculate is set to reach theatres on March 22nd. Will you be catching this one on the big screen? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Sliver is a movie most of us probably haven’t thought about since we last saw it in the dollar bin. But here we are more than 30 years later discussing Sharon Stone, William Baldwin and their steamy sex scene…As it turns out, there is a pretty awful backstory to it, with Stone recently naming producer Robert Evans as the one who tried to coax her into having actual sex with Baldwin in order to improve his performance. And we all saw how that turned out…Now, Baldwin is attacking Stone, saying she must still have the hots for him if she’s digging up old dirt.
Taking to X following Stone’s Sliver revelation, Baldwin wrote, “Not sure why Sharon Stone keep talking about me all these years later? Does she still have a crush on me or is she still hurt after all these years because I shunned her advances? Did she say to her gal pal Janice Dickinson the day after I screen tested and ran into them on our MGM Grand flight back to New York… “I’m gonna make him fall so hard for me, it’s gonna make his head spin.” ??? I have so much dirt on her it would make her head spin but I’ve kept quiet.”
Not sure why Sharon Stone keep talking about me all these years later?
Does she still have a crush on me or is she still hurt after all these years because I shunned her advances?
Did she say to her gal pal Janice Dickinson the day after I screen tested and ran into them on our… pic.twitter.com/PtgqMC6Sgz
Baldwin continued going after Stone, building on the story behind the aforementioned scene in Sliver. “The story of the meeting I had with Bob Evans imploring him allow me to choreograph the final sex scene in the photo below so I wouldn’t have to kiss Sharon is absolute legend. Wonder if I should write a book and tell the many, many disturbing, kinky and unprofessional tales about Sharon? That might be fun.”
For her part, Stone would suggest that she worked with far better actors (see: Douglas, Michael) who didn’t need any sort of special assignments to deliver a good performance. She also supposedly had final say on who would be the male lead in Sliver but was overstepped by Hollywood legend Evans.
Sliver was part of Joe Eszterhas’ run of adult-geared thrillers (particularly of the erotic kind), hitting a high mark with Basic Instinct – which has its own sketchy behind-the-scenes stories – the sale of which made him the highest-paid screenwriter in the business.
Where does Sliver rank in your favorite Joe Eszterhas movies? Pick your fav in the comments section below.
Sliver is a movie most of us probably haven’t thought about since we last saw it in the dollar bin. But here we are more than 30 years later discussing Sharon Stone, William Baldwin and their steamy sex scene…As it turns out, there is a pretty awful backstory to it, with Stone recently naming producer Robert Evans as the one who tried to coax her into having actual sex with Baldwin in order to improve his performance. And we all saw how that turned out…Now, Baldwin is attacking Stone, saying she must still have the hots for him if she’s digging up old dirt.
Taking to X following Stone’s Sliver revelation, Baldwin wrote, “Not sure why Sharon Stone keep talking about me all these years later? Does she still have a crush on me or is she still hurt after all these years because I shunned her advances? Did she say to her gal pal Janice Dickinson the day after I screen tested and ran into them on our MGM Grand flight back to New York… “I’m gonna make him fall so hard for me, it’s gonna make his head spin.” ??? I have so much dirt on her it would make her head spin but I’ve kept quiet.”
Not sure why Sharon Stone keep talking about me all these years later?
Does she still have a crush on me or is she still hurt after all these years because I shunned her advances?
Did she say to her gal pal Janice Dickinson the day after I screen tested and ran into them on our… pic.twitter.com/PtgqMC6Sgz
Baldwin continued going after Stone, building on the story behind the aforementioned scene in Sliver. “The story of the meeting I had with Bob Evans imploring him allow me to choreograph the final sex scene in the photo below so I wouldn’t have to kiss Sharon is absolute legend. Wonder if I should write a book and tell the many, many disturbing, kinky and unprofessional tales about Sharon? That might be fun.”
For her part, Stone would suggest that she worked with far better actors (see: Douglas, Michael) who didn’t need any sort of special assignments to deliver a good performance. She also supposedly had final say on who would be the male lead in Sliver but was overstepped by Hollywood legend Evans.
Sliver was part of Joe Eszterhas’ run of adult-geared thrillers (particularly of the erotic kind), hitting a high mark with Basic Instinct – which has its own sketchy behind-the-scenes stories – the sale of which made him the highest-paid screenwriter in the business.
Where does Sliver rank in your favorite Joe Eszterhas movies? Pick your fav in the comments section below.
2023 was a year full of critically acclaimed remakes. From Dead Space to Resident Evil 4, players could enjoy old favorites on modern consoles. One of the best remakes of the year was Nightdive’s System Shock, a remake of the influential sci-fi immersive sim released in 1994. Now Nightdive is taking one more step to…
2023 was a year full of critically acclaimed remakes. From Dead Space to Resident Evil 4, players could enjoy old favorites on modern consoles. One of the best remakes of the year was Nightdive’s System Shock, a remake of the influential sci-fi immersive sim released in 1994. Now Nightdive is taking one more step to…
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has a lot of mini-games—some might argue it has too many—but one thing we can all agree on is that Queen’s Blood, the in-universe card game Cloud plays with various NPCs, is one of the highlights. In fact, the game has become such a hit that Square Enix is open to adding more cards to shake…
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has a lot of mini-games—some might argue it has too many—but one thing we can all agree on is that Queen’s Blood, the in-universe card game Cloud plays with various NPCs, is one of the highlights. In fact, the game has become such a hit that Square Enix is open to adding more cards to shake…
