Just as a new look is unveiled of body horror maestro David Cronenberg’s new movie, The Shrouds, another movie that treads in his specialty has broken a bit of news. International director Coralie Fargeat will be releasing a body horror film of her own with some big names attached. The Substance is an English-language film from the French native and will be starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid. The movie is set to make its debut at the Cannes Film Festival this year, and Deadline has revealed that the company Mubi has acquired all rights in North America, UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Latin America and Benelux, where they will be releasing theatrically sometime this year. Mubi has also acquired the rights for markets in Turkey and India.

Additionally, it is also reported that The Match Factory will be handling sales for the movie in all the other territories. The plot details of the film has yet to be released. However, it is said to be a feminist take on the body horror film. It will be Fargeat’s follow-up to her much-talked-about directorial debut with the film Revenge. That film had premiered to good buzz at the Toronto International Film Festival back in 2017. The Director of Photography on the film is Benjamin Kracun (Promising Young Woman, Beast), while co-editors on the feature are Fargeat, Jerome Eltabet (Revenge) and Valentin Féron. The music is composed by Raffertie (I May Destroy You) with Production Design being led by Stanislas Reydellet (Le Bal Des Folles), and Costume Design is credited to Emmanuelle Youchnovski (Café de Flore, La belle époque).

Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan are on board as producers of the movie for the company Working Title. Meanwhile, Alexandra Loewy of Working Title and Nicolas Royer of A Good Story are credited as the Executive Producers.

Margaret Qualley has also recently been reported to join Glen Powell and Ed Harris for the revenge thriller Huntington. Drawing inspiration from the 1949 crime comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, Huntington will see Powell taking on the role of Becket Redfellow, the heir to a multi-billion-dollar fortune who will stop at nothing to get what he deserves… Or what he thinks he deserves. Kind Hearts and Coronets told the following story: When Louis D’Ascoyne Mazzini, who hails from a royal family, is denied dukedom, he plans to kill all the potential threats in his way.

The post The Substance: Mubi gets the rights to body horror film with Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid appeared first on JoBlo.

On May 7, Microsoft closed down four first-party development studios it had acquired from Zenimax Media in 2021 including Tango Gameworks, developer of The Evil Within series and 2023’s surprise hit Hi-Fi Rush. It’s the latest round of layoffs and closures that the gaming industry, and Xbox specifically, has seen in…

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On May 7, Microsoft closed down four first-party development studios it had acquired from Zenimax Media in 2021 including Tango Gameworks, developer of The Evil Within series and 2023’s surprise hit Hi-Fi Rush. It’s the latest round of layoffs and closures that the gaming industry, and Xbox specifically, has seen in…

Read more…

PLOT: A spacey pool cleaner (Chris Pine) discovers a plot to steal water from Los Angeles during a drought. 

REVIEW: (NOTE – POOLMAN WAS REVIEWED AT TIFF 2023) In the fourteen years I’ve been covering TIFF, I’ve seen only a handful of movies that I’d say were shockingly bad. The Mickey Rourke/ Megan Fox/ Bill Murray dud Passion Play comes to mind. Poolman ranks with the worst movies I’ve ever reviewed at JoBlo. It’s a stunningly unfunny comic noir vanity project for star Chris Pine, who also directed and co-wrote the film. That it was made at all is a testament to the power of celebrity, as it has already become notorious at the festival for the amount of walkouts taking place at the screenings. 

So why is Poolman so awful? It comes down to the screenplay and Pine’s grating lead performance as a kind of “lovable” loser that’s clearly patterned on Jeff Bridges’s turn as The Dude in The Big Lebowski. Alas, Pine isn’t either of the Coen Bros, with the character insufferable right from the start, as he cranks out daily letters to Erin Brokovich (a fact the movie thinks is hilarious) and hooks up with his aloof girlfriend, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who’s sleeping with everyone else around him. He lives in an old apartment complex owned by Jack (Danny DeVito) and Diane (Annette Bening), who may or may not be his adopted parents; the movie never quite makes up its mind. 

His character, Darren, is obsessed with public transit in Los Angeles and attends weekly city council meetings where he tortures his city councilman nemesis (Stephen Tobolowsky) with his “wacky” presentations. He is approached by a femme fatale (the gorgeous DeWanda Wise) with a scoop that something shady may be going on with the local water supply, and before you know it, he’s popping Chinatown into the VHS and going on his own L.A odyssey. 

A movie like this lives and dies by its central character, and Pine is never convincing as a down-and-out hippie Poolman. He’s trying to stretch beyond his leading man comfort level, and while his roguish charm was funny in Dungeons & Dragons, he’s not able to make Darren anything more than a joke, and a bad one at that. His attempts at Coen Bros-type absurdist humour fall deadly flat, with two henchmen inexplicably dressed like Crocket and Tubbs in Miami Vice and Tobolowski’s Rabbi doing drag shows as one of the Golden Girls. You never invest in the mystery because Pine is nothing less than grating in the lead role.

What’s especially grating about Poolman is how self-satisfied it is. Pine had built the entire movie around himself, with none of the supporting cast ever really getting a chance to shine. None of them, not even the always reliable DeVito and Bening, make an impression, with only Wise somehow walking away looking good as she suits the femme fatale role. Technically, the film is impeccable, with Pine shooting the movie on 35mm with his Wonder Woman DP Matthew Jensen (Patty Jenkins is a producer). But as pretty as it looks, sitting through 100 minutes of Pine doing desperately unfunny schtick becomes a chore. 

The fact is, TIFF audiences are notoriously kind to movies. I’ve seen duds get bit rounds of applause, as we Canadians are respectful, no matter how bad a movie is. Yet, the buzz around TIFF following Poolman‘s premiere has been deadly (adding insult to injury, there was a big plan to screen this on 35mm on specifically created prints that never happened). Pine’s first film landed with a thud, but it’s proof that comedy can be tough to pull off, even when tinged with drama. This desperately wants to be the next Big Lebowski or Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but it would be better for all involved if Poolman comes and goes without much fuss. 

Poolman

TERRIBLE

3

The post Poolman Review appeared first on JoBlo.

We can’t stop here! This is Bear Country! While Russell Crowe passes the Gladiator torch to Paul Mescal for Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II, the Oscar-winning actor is getting behind the bar for Derrick Borte’s (Unhinged, London Town, The Joneses) upcoming action-thriller Bear Country. The project marks another collaboration between Crowe and Borte after teaming up for Unhinged, a thriller starring Crowe as an unstable man obsessed with a woman after a spat of road rage.

According to Deadline‘s exclusive report, Bear Country finds Crowe playing an aging but redoubtable club owner, Manco Kapak, whom a masked gunman robs. When the robbery sidelines his retirement plans and his girlfriend grows distant, his aspirations to live a quiet life shatter like glass breaking against a hardwood floor. As cartel bosses harass Manco and a young status seeker aims to purchase the club, Kapak must decide how to show them who the boss is.

In addition to directing Bear Country, Borte co-wrote the script with Daniel Forte (American Dreamer, H8RZ) based on the Thomas Perry novel Strip.

“After the great experience we shared on Unhinged, I’d been looking for another project with Russell – one that would allow him to show more of what so many people (including myself) loved so much about Jackson Healy in The Nice Guys – and we both immediately knew that Bear Country was the one,” Borte said about re-teaming with Crowe.

“The way Russell and Derrick took such a simple concept and turned Unhinged into a nonstop white knuckle ride is exactly what excites me about re-teaming the two for this sophisticated and fun ride through the sexy and seedy streets of Los Angeles. In addition to having action and comedy, this one allows Derrick to do what he does best, ratcheting up the suspense via a highly castable ensemble cast of characters in Bear Country,” said producer Jeffrey Greenstein.

People should know better than to mess with a person’s livelihood, especially when Russell Crowe plays the person you’re trying to screw over. It’s like they’ve never seen Gladiator or Cinderella Man. Are you interested in checking out Bear Country? Let us know in the comments section below.

The post Russell Crowe to sharpen his claws as a steadfast club owner up against a cartel in the action-thriller Bear Country appeared first on JoBlo.

Shudder and IFC Film are on a roll. Their release, Late Night With the Devil, wracked up a truly impressive $10 million gross at the domestic box office this winter, despite only being in limited release and only playing during a short window before its streaming debut. They’re also getting a lot of fresh critical attention for Caitlin Cronenberg’s debut, Humane (check out our interview with the director here).  Horror fans love Shudder (including us), and sure enough, it looks like they might have another big winner on their hands with the violent slasher flick In a Violent Nature.

In the lead-up to the film’s theatrical debut on May 31st, IFC’s issued four retro-style lobby cards that bring to mind some of the seventies classics the movie is vibing on, like The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left, and (natch) Friday the 13th. Check them out out:

I caught In a Violent Nature at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year (read my review). While I wasn’t as crazy about it as some other horror critics there, watching it on the big screen was indeed a gnarly experience. Director Chris Nash’s retro flick does something interesting in that it takes the perspective of our monstrous, masked hero as he tracks down and kills his victims. It’s like Terrence Malick meets Sean S. Cunningham, with it adopting the now trendy minimalist 1:33:1 arthouse aspect ratio but then filling it with some truly mind-blowing carnage. Again, I didn’t feel like the movie entirely worked, but I still found it entertaining, with some of the goriest kills outside of the Terrifier franchise in recent memory. While it’ll likely do great numbers on Shudder, this is a movie designed to be watched in movie theaters, and with the unrated cut going semi-wide, legit horror fans owe it to themselves to check it out.

What’s your favorite Shudder movie so far? Let us know in the comments!

The post In A Violent Nature: Shudder/IFC’s unrated slasher flick gets gnarly retro lobby cards appeared first on JoBlo.

David Cronenberg is known as one of the masters of body horror films, and the director is in a unique position to be one of three Cronenbergs who are partaking in this world. Indeed, his children are now filmmaking peers who specialize in the wretched and strange. Brandon Cronenberg has made splashes with his films Possessor and Infinity Pool. Now, Caitlin Cronenberg has stepped up with her directorial debut, Humane. David’s newest project, The Shrouds, is set to premiere at Cannes and The Film Stage has revealed previously unreleased images from the film as well as its new poster.

Vincent Cassel (who worked with Cronenberg on Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method) takes on the role of Karsh, an innovative businessman and grieving widower, who builds a novel device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud. This burial tool installed at his own state-of-the-art though controversial cemetery allows him and his clients to watch their specific departed loved one decompose in real time. Karsh’s revolutionary business is on the verge of breaking into the international mainstream when several graves within his cemetery are vandalized and nearly destroyed, including that of his wife. While he struggles to uncover a clear motive for the attack, the mystery of who wrought this havoc, and why, drive him to reevaluate his business, marriage and fidelity to his late wife’s memory, as well as push him to new beginnings.

He’s joined in the cast of The Shrouds by Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds), Guy Pearce (Memento), and Sandrine Holt (American Gigolo). Holt plays “a mysterious woman, the wife of a billionaire, who contacts Cassel’s Karsh about a strange project involving her husband”. Cronenberg has said that The Shrouds is “a very personal project for me. People who know me will know parts of it are autobiographical.“

The Shrouds started filming in Toronto last May and wrapped in June. Saïd Ben Saïd of SBS Productions and Martin Katz of Prospero Pictures, both of whom worked with Cronenberg on Crimes of the Future, are producing. Given that Crimes of the Future only made $4.5 million at the global box office, it’s good to see that they’re still sticking with Cronenberg. Distribution is being handled by SBS International.

The post The Shrouds: New posters and images have been released for David Cronenberg’s new film appeared first on JoBlo.

There’s really no gentle way to ease you into this situation so I’ll just be blunt: Yoda got removed from Fortnite because an emote inspired by Zoidberg from Futurama was turning the little Jedi master into a nasty monster that crashed people’s games. What a world we live in?

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There’s really no gentle way to ease you into this situation so I’ll just be blunt: Yoda got removed from Fortnite because an emote inspired by Zoidberg from Futurama was turning the little Jedi master into a nasty monster that crashed people’s games. What a world we live in?

Read more…

Electronic Arts, the publisher of most sports games on the market, Battlefield, Mass Effect, and plenty of other huge franchises, is considering putting ads inside its video games as another source of revenue. This isn’t the first time the company has done this, but given how poorly it’s gone in the past, I’m…

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