Alex Garland‘s Civil War has turned a lot of heads on a number of issues. His hypothetical film about a modern-day civil war can be incendiary on its concept alone, and with a lesser respected filmmaker and studio behind the project, many would accuse the film of exploiting a seemingly boiling issue. However, Garland is a director that movie fans know isn’t necessarily going to emulate Michael Bay after such heady films like Men and Annihilation. When the trailers were released and it was revealed that the film featured an alliance between two states with notably opposing politics, many questioned the possibility and purpose behind it.
So, how did California and Texas unite to form the Western Forces? According to The Hollywood Reporter, Garland addressed this decision at a special screening of the film. The director says it was “intentional” as it was “partly to get around a kind of reflexive, polarizing position that people might fall into, that’s one thing, but actually that’s not the main thing. The main thing is to do with how the president is presented and what can be inferred from that.” Nick Offerman plays the president in the film, who uses air strikes on American citizens as a way of acquiring additional terms.
Garland continued to expound, “Then it’s saying that two states that have a different political position have said, ‘Our political difference is less important than this.’ And then the counter to that is if you cannot conceive of that, what you’re saying is that your polarized political position would be more important than a fascist president. Which, when you put it like that, I would suggest, is insane. That’s an insane position to hold. So it’s sort of an oblique commentary and I think that’s how the film works in general. It’s not explaining this stuff but it’s also not avoiding this stuff.”
Offerman would also add that the plot point of the Western Forces “serves a few purposes but one of them is to immediately say, ‘This is not supposed to represent the world as it is.’ But I think it also serves to say the way the world is working these days, anything is possible and so quickly.” As Garland wrote the story in 2020, he says having it release in an election year “is really strange, just the sense of déjà vu.” He also says, “I think the film was written really not just about this country, about a weird state we’re in to do with division and polarization and extremism, the things that flow from populism. At the moment I wrote it, I don’t think I imagined it would take four years to get to this point, but also if it did take four years, that things would be so similar.”
The latest Palworld patch is a big one, bringing a host of new features to the survival-sim-meets-monster-catcher. Still in early access, Palworld is constantly being updated by developer Pocketpair, but this may be the most exciting update yet. Most notably, it introduces the game’s highly anticipated first Raid Boss,…
The latest Palworld patch is a big one, bringing a host of new features to the survival-sim-meets-monster-catcher. Still in early access, Palworld is constantly being updated by developer Pocketpair, but this may be the most exciting update yet. Most notably, it introduces the game’s highly anticipated first Raid Boss,…
When Warner Bros. and Legendary released Godzilla vs. Kong in 2021, the folks at The Asylum quickly put together a mockbuster called Ape vs. Monster, which featured a giant chimpanzee battling a giant Gila monster (after both creatures were enlarged by consuming a mysterious substance leaking from a space capsule). A sequel called Ape vs. Mecha Ape followed in 2023. Now the Godzilla vs. Kong sequel Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is in theatres, and The Asylum will be giving their mockbuster Ape x Mecha Ape: New World Order a digital and theatrical release this Friday, April 5th. In anticipation of the release, a trailer has arrived online, and you can check it out in the embed above.
Ape x Mecha Ape: New World Order has been written and directed by Marc Gottlieb, who previously directed Ape vs. Mecha Ape and the 1995 comedy Cousin Howard. Gottlieb’s other writing credits include Planet of the Sharks, Triassic World, Fast and Fierce: Death Race, Aquarium of the Dead, Jungle Run, Top Gunner: Danger Zone, 2025 Armageddon, and Megalodon: The Frenzy, among other titles. For this film, he crafted the following story: A global cabal of world leaders awakens an ancient creature beneath the ocean floor. Now mankind’s only hope rests on an uneasy alliance between the giant ape and his mechanical arch-nemesis, Mecha Ape MkII, to save the Earth.
Sean Young (Blader Runner), Ashley Dakin (Betrayed by My Bridesmaid), and Jared Rivet (How to Kill Your Roommates and Get Away with It) star.
Ape x Mecha Ape: New World Order will be showing on the big screen in the following theatres:
Laemmle – Glendale, California
Hickory Ridge Cinemas – Brunswick, Ohio
Trylon Cinema – Minneapolis, Minnesota
O Cinema – South Beach, Miami, Florida
Aurora Cineplex – Roswell, Georgia
What did you think of the Ape x Mecha Ape: New World Order trailer? Will you be watching this mockbuster? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
The Asylum also released the mockbuster King of the Lost World when Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake was released in 2005, and made a movie called Monster Island to coincide with the release of Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 2019.
As Ryan Coogler‘s reboot of The X-Files finds its way to come together, the original creator of the show, Chris Carter, recently commented on how difficult it would be to question reality for the new series since conspiracy theories are thrown around much more commonly these days. Carter said, “Everything’s a conspiracy. No one knows what the truth is. It’s completely subjective and relative now.“ Then went on to use Kate Middleton’s recent breaking news of her cancer diagnosis as an example when the public created a conspiracy theory about it, “Can you imagine, first of all, being sick — but then everyone’s got a take on it? The most private thing becomes the most public thing, and then the most misunderstood thing.”
Even with these new hurdles, Coogler’s reboot is still working its way forward, and although there are no details on what characters the reboot will feature, one thing that people will still question is if the original actors will make any kind of return to the show. According to Deadline, Gillian Anderson found Coogler’s involvement to be the shot in the arm the show needed to come back in a new form. Anderson recently appeared on The Today Show when she said, “It’s so funny because for most of my life, since I have finished The X-Files, every interview I do, people have asked and the answer has always been, ‘Nope, not going to happen, not going to happen.’ Now, Ryan Coogler, who is the director of Black Panther — brilliant, brilliant director — has approached Chris Carter to say that he wants to do a take on it, and I cannot think of a better way around for a reboot to happen.”
Anderson continued to show her admiration for Coogler, saying he’s “a bit of a genius” and that “there’s a chance [a reboot will] happen.” As for Anderson making an appearance, even she will search for an answer,
Whether I am involved in it is a whole other thing. I’m not saying no. I think he’s really cool and I think if he did it, it would probably be done incredibly well. And maybe I’ll pop in for a little something something.”
Carter gave his blessings to Coogler when he said they had a “really nice conversation.” Then he went on to say, “It’s interesting, people say, ‘Aren’t you possessive of it?’ And I say, ‘No, I’m looking forward to seeing what somebody else does with it.’” He’s also not envious of his task, “No matter what, he’s got a hard job. Casting is a hard job. Mounting it is a hard job. All the problems that I dealt with are going to be his problems.“
The fifth Indiana Jones movie was supposed to send the franchise out on a high note, but it proved to be a sad anti-climax to an amazing franchise. Indeed, yesterday, Disney boss Bob Iger won a brutal proxy battle against a group led by Nelson Pelts over control of the Disney board. One of the issues was how the company had a pretty dire 100th anniversary, with them posting a shocking number of flops, which included The Marvels, Haunted Mansion, and more. Yet, of all the films, none was a more bitter loss to the company than Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
It’s now being estimated that the fifth Indiana Jones film lost upwards of $130 million. While the movie grossed $174 million domestically for a $383 million worldwide total, the film cost a staggering $387 million. When a studio releases a movie, typically they only get to collect about 50% of the box office earnings. In fact, the figures put out by Disney that estimate a $137 million loss are probably generous, as there were probably a number of gross participants in the movie who likely collected from the net rather than the gross. The film will likely make up some of its losses in ancillary media, but even those prospects seem dire, as the movie is (so far) exclusive on Disney Plus. It’s gotten a physical media release, but it seems doubtful that sales will be able to make up for that shortfall.
So what happened? Fan reaction to the film was cool, and reviews (including ours) were mixed, with many pointing the finger at Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s shoe-horned in role, the annoying kid sidekick, and unconvincing de-aging effects. Indeed, it was a sad way to end the franchise, with it grossing hundreds of millions less than Kingdom of the Crystal Skulldid, and no one really liked that movie, did they? Some fans even think Dial of Destiny was worse. Indeed, it’s a sad end to one of the greatest franchises ever. Alas, we’ll always have that original trilogy.
The list of people that bug Larry David could fill a phone book, but one target of his general disdain for humanity isn’t one we would have expected: Elmo – and he’s not even human! The same week that Elmo began trending for doing a wellness check on his followers, Larry David did what so many wanted to do when Tickle Me Elmo came out. Yes, Larry David assaulted Elmo…and he’d do it again if he had the chance.
When asked about the incident not too long ago on Today – in which Larry David grabbed Elmo’s face and swatted at his father, Louie (who, we have to say, was standing around like a chump while his son was assaulted) – David told Seth Meyers, “Elmo was talking. I was waiting to be interviewed, and Elmo was going on about mental health and I had to listen to every word. And I was going, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, I don’t think I can take another second of this!’ And so I got off my chair and I approached him and I throttled him! I couldn’t take it!…And you know what? I would do it again.”
For what it’s worth, Larry David did apologize to Elmo immediately after the attack, although his clear lack of genuine remorse does make us wonder what it might be like if the two stepped into the ring for a reboot of Celebrity Boxing…
While Larry David has no doubt become public enemy #1 for the Sesame Street gang for his blatant attack on Elmo, he currently has his hands full with the likes of Susie Greene with the 12th and final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which ends depressingly soon.
To date, Larry David has won two Emmy Awards for Curb Your Enthusiasm, while Elmo himself has zero, as he is ineligible due to his being a Muppet. Still, Kevin Clash did win nine Daytime Emmys for voicing the character, while current portrayer Ryan Dillon also has one.
Have you been watching the latest season of Curb Your Enthusiasm? Let us know what you think.
Plot: Tom Ripley, a grifter scraping by in early 1960s New York, is hired by a wealthy man to travel to Italy to try to convince his vagabond son to return home. Tom’s acceptance of the job is the first step into a complex life of deceit, fraud and murder. The drama series is based on Patricia Highsmith’s bestselling Tom Ripley novels.
Review: The 1999 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley was a critical and commercial success with a cast of hot new talent, including Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Directed by the late Anthony Minghella, The Talented Mr. Ripley adapted the first novel featuring the charismatic title criminal but spawned two less successful sequels, Ripley’s Game, starring John Malkovich, and Ripley Under Ground, starring Barry Pepper. Acclaimed screenwriter Steven Zaillian has returned to the first book for his eight-part limited series Ripley, featuring Andrew Scott in the lead role. A slow-burn thriller that takes a much different tone and feel compared to the three prior adaptations, Ripley is a beautifully shot drama that will have you questioning whether Tom Ripley is a psychopath or something even more sinister. Ripley is fantastic, featuring Dakota Fanning, Johnny Flynn, and Eliot Sumner.
Filmed in black and white, Ripley opens in New York City, where Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) makes ends meet by forging checks and committing mail fraud. Keeping his activities low-key, Tom is approached by a private investigator on behalf of shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf. Thinking Tom is a close friend of his son, Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), Herbert offers him a stipend to travel to Italy and convince Dickie to return home. Sensing a chance to make some substantial money, Tom accepts and heads across the Atlantic. Setting up a meeting with Dickie and his girlfriend, Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning), Tom pretends to be a former acquaintance and ingratiates himself with the young couple. As Tom begins to like living the life of a wealthy expatriate, his diabolical sensibilities take over and lead to identity theft and even murder. While the 1999 film condensed these elements into just over two hours, Ripley shows us who Tom Ripley is and accentuates his sociopathic tendencies as he shifts from harmless to very dangerous.
Ripley‘s core plot and structure are closer to Highsmith’s 1955 novel than the 1999 movie. In the film, the homosexual undertones were not subtle in the least and factored into the plot substantially. Here, whether Tom Ripley is gay is referenced but is no longer a driving element of the plot. By taking sexuality out of the mix and making Tom’s obsession with Dickie more sinister, Steve Zaillian’s series allows Andrew Scott to channel Tom’s chameleon-like skills as he mimics Dickie’s mannerisms, signature, and even his physical appearance. The series also changes Dickie Greenleaf from the film where Jude Law played him as a cad and a playboy who was stringing Marge along. Here, Dickie is carefree and enjoys his European solitude, and is very welcoming to Tom. That changed relationship makes their final confrontation much different than in the film. It also showcases the exacting and precise thinking that Tom Ripley employs in his criminal actions, which is made all the more disturbing in the extended series format. Andrew Scott’s deliberate and subdued approach to playing Tom Ripley is enthralling to watch, especially in the third and fifth episodes of the series, which feature extended sequences without any dialogue.
In addition to the main characters, Ripley also features Eliot Sumner as Freddie Miles, taking over for the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. In the 1999 film, Hoffman portrayed Freddie as a lout and bon vivant who instantly has an acrimonious relationship with Tom. Here, Sumner, the child of Sting (aka Gordon Sumber) only appears in a limited number of sequences but immediately comes across as more of a quiet foil for Tom rather than an in-your-face nemesis. The scenes shared between Scott and Sumner unfold like a chess match, with each character choosing their words and moves very carefully. There is also an appearance from John Malkovich, who previously played Tom on screen, in a key role that I will not spoil here. The predominant supporting cast comprises Italian natives with the series taking place almost entirely between Naples and Rome, with the main actors speaking both English and Italian.
All eight episodes of Ripley were written and directed by Steve Zaillian. An accomplished and award-winning screenwriter, Zaillian is responsible for Schindler’s List, Gangs of New York, American Gangster, and The Irishman, with directing credits on Searching for Bobby Fischer, A Civil Action, and 2006’s All The King’s Men. On the small screen, Zaillian wrote and directed the fantastic HBO series The Night Of, but Ripley is his masterpiece. The black-and-white photography accentuates the European locales lenses by There Will Be Blood cinematographer Robert Elswit. There are motifs aplenty throughout the film, with recurring shots that recall everything from The Third Man to Psycho. The crisp scenes are haunting and reminiscent of the series’ callbacks to the chiaroscuro art of Caravaggio. There are also a few color moments, a connection to Schindler’s List, that are perfectly placed through the series and enhanced by Jeff Russo’s score. The music also includes numerous songs from the 1940s through the 1960s, recreating the mid-twentieth century in a fashion unlike many other series.
Ripley is easily one of the year’s best series and yet another triumph for Andrew Scott. The actor has stolen the show in everything from Sherlock to Fleabag and last year’s All Of Us Strangers, but Scott makes Tom Ripley his own, unlike any other actor working today. At 47, Scott easily passes for ten to twenty years younger and is chillingly good in this performance. Whether it be the subtext in his dialogue, the way he carries scenes without a single spoken word or the sly hint of a smile on the corners of his mouth, Andrew Scott echoes everything from Anthony Perkins to Laurence Olivier. This limited series is eight episodes long. I am sure viewers will be divided on whether it is paced too slowly or if they want more of this tale. Still, I found Ripley to be wonderfully and intricately constructed, with every episode an hour-long treat thanks to Steve Zaillain’s wonderful script and insightful direction. Ripley is a character study wrapped in a thriller wrapped in a mystery and one that I will not soon forget.
You know your movie’s a failure when it’s been bested by Morbius, but that’s where Madame Web has found itself. The critically panned movie is part of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, a franchise which doesn’t seem to include the web-slinger, but some recently released Madame Web concept art does feature Tom Holland’s Spider-Man battling Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahims).
Concept artist Sebastian Meyer, who has worked on movies such as Doctor Strange, Star Trek Beyond, Aquaman, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and more, revealed a series of Madame Web illustrations, some of which include Spider-Man.
You can check out the rest of Meyer’s wonderful Madame Web concept art on his site. Of course, Spider-Man didn’t appear in Madame Web, but it was once rumoured that Sony wanted to include the character.
Madame Web stars Dakota Johnson as Cassandra Webb, “a paramedic in Manhattan who develops the power to see the future… and realizes she can use that insight to change it. Forced to confront revelations about her past, she forges a relationship with three young women bound for powerful destinies…if they can all survive a deadly present.“
Johnson later slammed the movie, saying she would never do anything like it again. “It was definitely an experience for me to make that movie,” Johnson said. “I had never done anything like it before. I probably will never do anything like it again, because I don’t make sense in that world. And I know that now. But sometimes in this industry, you sign on to something, and it’s one thing and then as you’re making it, it becomes a completely different thing, and you’re like, ‘Wait, what?’ But it was a real learning experience, and of course it’s not nice to be a part of something that’s ripped to shreds, but I can’t say that I don’t understand.“
Our own Chris Bumbray reviewed Madame Web, which he called a “big mess.” It doesn’t seem as though this will be the franchise starter that Sony doubtlessly hoped it would be, as the “terrible, cornball dialogue and lacklustre pace” doom what would have been a “decent little B-side of a superhero film.” You can check out the rest of Bumbray’s review right here.
Would Madame Web have been better with Spider-Man? Well, it certainly couldn’t have been any worse.
The first trailer for Netflix’s animated reboot of the iconic ’70s sitcom Good Times was released last week, and the reaction has been… let’s say, mixed.
The original Norman Lear sitcom ran for six seasons from 1974 to 1979 and earned praise for its portrayal of a working-class Black family. The animated reboot follows a new generation of the Evans family as they keep their heads above water in a Chicago housing project, but the tone of the trailer, complete with a drug-dealing baby, didn’t exactly rub fans the right way.
While speaking with THR, original Good Times stars John Amos (James Evans) and BernNadette Stanis (Thelma) shared their thoughts on the trailer. Both actors made it clear that they aren’t ready to pass judgment until they’re able to see full episodes. “I really can’t form an opinion, as I’ve not seen any of the episodes yet,” Amos said. “Norman — and the entire cast and company — set the bar pretty high. They’ll have a hard time reaching that level of entertainment [and] education. I wish them the best. I see people aspiring to that, but I don’t see anybody reaching that goal, especially in an animated version.“
Stanis wonders if some fans would have assumed that the original cast was involved in the Good Times reboot. “Probably a lot of people don’t know how Hollywood works,” Stanis said. “A lot of times, you use a certain name to open up the door for a new show. That could be what it is. But I’m sure a lot of people will be a little confused at first because they have to think that it’s us. They think, ‘Oh, my God! That’s got to be Thelma, J.J. [Jimmie Walker] and Michael [Ralph Carter].’ And then you come in there, and you don’t see anything like that.” Along with Jimmie Walker (J.J.), Stanis does have a small voice part on the show. “I think they did that because they knew what their show was going to be like,” Stanis explained. “So I guess they figured, if you put us in there, it wouldn’t look so bad or whatever.“
The Good Times reboot stars J.B Smoove, Yvette Nicole Brown, Jay Pharoah, Marsai Martin, and Gerald “Slink” Johnson. Brown has defended the show on X, saying, “This show is edgier and more irreverent than the Good Times of our childhood but it’s still a show about family, fighting the system and working to make things better despite where you start out in the world.“
Good Times will premiere on Netflix on April 12th.
