For those who were hoping to get more Elden Ring content after the release of Shadow of the Erdtree this summer, I’ve got some bad news. The game’s director, Hidetaka Miyazaki, has confirmed that the meaty expansion will be the game’s “first and last,” meaning the team will be moving on to whatever’s next after its…
In 2004, a little movie called Napoleon Dynamite came out and quickly became THE cult movie of the decade. It made the director, Jared Hess, a hot ticket, and for his follow-up, he opted to team with Jack Black for a luchador wrestling comedy called Nacho Libre. In it, Black plays Ignacio, a cook at an orphanage run by monks in Mexico, who idolizes luchador wrestlers, even though the sport is forbidden within the monastery. When the church runs out of the funds needed to feed the many orphans they take care of, Ignacio decides to pursue his dream of being a wrestler to raise money for the kids.
Too bad he sucks as a wrestler.
In this pretty hilarious little comedy, Black delivers perhaps his greatest physical performance as Ignacio transforms into the legendary wrestler Nacho Libre. While it’s become a somewhat forgotten film, it’s worth noting that it was actually a decent-sized box office hit back in the summer of 2006. It made close to $100 million worldwide but was seen as a disappointment as it had the misfortune of being compared not only to Napoleon Dynamite but also Black’s recent smash, School of Rock.
Interestingly, it’s also a favorite movie of one of our most talented guys here at JoBlo, Kier Gomes, who’s decided to make a deep dive video into what he thinks are the movie’s deeper themes. He did something similar for Napoleon Dynamite just a few months ago, and it became a smash hit video, so let’s see if lightning strikes twice with Nacho Libre – What’s It Really About! In this video, he digs into how the film’s wrestling story had parallels to Hess’s own career as a director, with Nacho’s religious upbringing similar, in some ways, to Hess’s own life as a Mormon, something which uniquely informs his work. While Hess is undoubtedly a hit-and-miss director for some, Kier’s video makes a case for him as a true auteur, so give it a watch and let us know in the comments what you think!
The post Nacho Libre: What’s It Really About? appeared first on JoBlo.
Helldivers 2‘s next battle pass is just around the corner. Arrowhead Studios announced that the Polar Patriots Warbond, featuring new weapons and Arctic-themed armor, will drop on May 9. It’s the third battle pass the co-op shooter has received in as many months, and the latest example of how the PlayStation/ Steam…
Helldivers 2‘s next battle pass is just around the corner. Arrowhead Studios announced that the Polar Patriots Warbond, featuring new weapons and Arctic-themed armor, will drop on May 9. It’s the third battle pass the co-op shooter has received in as many months, and the latest example of how the PlayStation/ Steam…
Production on the sixth and final season of the hit Netflix series Cobra Kai, a continuation of the Karate Kid film franchise, was delayed several months due to the writers and actors strikes last year – but the extended wait is going to be worth it, because Netflix has just announced that the show is wrapping up with a 15 episode season (previous seasons consisted of 10 episodes), and they’re splitting the episodes up to make it a three part event! As they put it, “The end of a legacy… deserves a GRAND FINALE.” They’ve also revealed premiere dates: Cobra Kai Season 6, Part 1 premieres July 18, 2024. Part 2 premieres November 28, 2024. The Finale Event comes in 2025.
I’m hyped to finally have premiere dates for most of the episodes, because this show has become one of my all-time favorites over the course of the previous five seasons. I grew up on the Karate Kid movies and always enjoyed them, but Cobra Kai has even managed to increase my appreciation for the movies it follows.
Ralph Macchio and William Zabka star as their Karate Kid characters Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence, and they’re joined in the cast by Xolo Maridueña, Tanner Buchanan, Mary Mouser, Jacob Bertrand, Gianni DeCenzo, Peyton List, Vanessa Rubio, and Griffin Santopietro. Martin Kove reprises the role of John Kreese from the films, with Thomas Ian Griffith as The Karate Kid Part III villain Terry Silver and Yuji Okumoto as Chozen Toguchi from The Karate Kid Part II. As of seasons 5 and 6, Alicia Hannah-Kim plays the villainous sensei Kim Da-Eun, and we’ve heard that C.S. Lee (Dexter) will be playing her grandfather Master Kim Sun-Young, who taught the type of karate used by the students at the Cobra Kai dojo, in season 6.
Created by Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg, Cobra Kai started out thirty four years after events of the 1984 All Valley Karate Tournament, when a down-and-out Johnny Lawrence sought redemption by reopening the infamous Cobra Kai dojo, reigniting his rivalry with a now successful Daniel LaRusso. A lot has happened, and a lot has changed, since that happened. Cobra Kai season 6 has the following synopsis: Picking up with Cobra Kai eliminated from the Valley, our senseis and students must decide if and how they will compete in the Sekai Taikai — the world championships of karate.
Are you excited to hear that Cobra Kai season 6 is a 15 episode, three part event, and that the premiere date for the first batch of episodes is just two months away? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
The post Cobra Kai season 6: Netflix announces premiere dates for 15 episode, 3 part conclusion to the series appeared first on JoBlo.
Deadpool & Wolverine has garnered anticipation ever since Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman released an announcement video where Reynolds would ask a seemingly apathetic Jackman if he’d like to appear in the third Deadpool movie as Wolverine. The two popular X-Men characters would famously have a love/hate relationship in the comic world, and previous Deadpool entries would only feature fourth wall-breaking jabs at each other both inside and outside of the movies. Now that they’re officially capitalizing on their bromance with a multiverse plot which opens up possibilities for more cameos, many fans have been theorizing about who could possibly appear in the film.
The movie is centering on this mismatched partnership, but one person who is disappointed that they didn’t get invited back is Josh Brolin. Brolin would deliver a one-two punch to the Marvel cinematic world by portraying both Thanos and Cable in 2018 for both Avengers: Infinity War and Deadpool 2. ScreenRant reports that Brolin was bummed that the upcoming film couldn’t find room for Cable. Brolin recently appeared in an interview for The Playlist, where he addressed his disappointment.
Brolin explained, “I so wanted to be in that movie. [Marvel] is a more complex labyrinth than Outer Range will ever be, my friend. And I will never know where that went or what that is or what I’m involved with or what I’m not involved with —the MCU being involved now. Cable was a lot of fun. I really liked doing that role. That was a lot of fun. Hugh [Jackman], I’m absolutely in love with. I know Ryan [Reynolds] now, and I’ve met Hugh a couple of times, and I think when he did Logan—forget it! I mean, Scott Frank, who wrote it, is a good friend of mine and I just think the coming together of [these characters] is just fantastic. And Hugh, I don’t know how old Hugh is now—is he 56, 57? I mean, seriously, the dude doesn’t age. So, yeah. I’m a big fan of his.”
On the other hand, it should not be ruled out that this could possibly be a red herring to keep a surprise. The secretive studio has already had a ton of fun playing around with the multiverse in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. On top of that, Deadpool notoriously breaks the fourth wall, which adds layers to these possibilities.
The post Josh Brolin really wanted to return as Cable for Deadpool & Wolverine appeared first on JoBlo.
Horror fans have had a whole lot of zombie entertainment sent our way in the last couple decades, much of it broadcast on television by AMC. There have been so many flesh-eaters and brain-munchers on our screens, some of us are feeling zombie overload. But if you’re still looking for zombie stories that do things a little differently from the others, we have a recommendation for you: a Japanese film that mixes the walking dead with shootouts, swordfights, and lengthy martial arts fights. It’s called Versus – and if you haven’t seen this one yet, it’s the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw.
Versus (watch it HERE) was an independent production made by a bunch of unknowns, and many of the people involved with the movie remain unknowns to this day. It marked the feature directorial debut of Ryuhei Kitamura, who has gone on to have a solid career, directing movies like The Midnight Meat Train, Aragami, Azumi, and Godzilla: Final Wars. If you get hired to make a Godzilla movie, your career is definitely a winner, even if your Godzilla movie doesn’t turn out to be one of the better ones. Kitamura wrote the Versus screenplay with Yudai Yamaguchi, who has built a directing career of his own over the years. Together, they crafted an incredibly simple story.
The movie begins with text appearing on screen to provide the only set-up that’s really necessary. It tells us there are six hundred and sixty-six portals scattered around the planet that connect our world to “the other side.” One of these portals – the four hundred and forty-fourth, to be exact – is located in the Forest of Resurrection in Japan. Once we’ve been given that information, we’re treated to the extremely cool sight of a samurai taking down a large group of zombies in the Forest of Resurrection. Then things move ahead to modern day, where another zombie outbreak is about to occur within the woods.
A pair of escaped prisoners make their way to the forest for a meeting with a carload of organized crime types. Our hero is Prisoner KSC2-303, played by Tak Sakaguchi. We’re told he was locked up for first degree murder, robbery, manslaughter, and excessive self-defense, but we know he’s our hero because he doesn’t react well when he sees that the gangsters have taken a young woman hostage. The Prisoner refuses to take part in the kidnapping, and is willing to fight the criminals to protect the girl, played by Chieko Misaka. She’ll say he saved her, but he’ll say he wasn’t actually standing up to the others for her. The other guys just pissed him off. Whatever his reasons may be, he does help her. A fight breaks out, one of the gangsters is killed… and then that dead gangster rises as a flesh-eating zombie. This all happens in the first fifteen minutes, and the movie is off and running from there. The entire rest of the film is about the Prisoner and the Girl fighting off zombies and gangsters as they try to escape from the woods. And there is a lot of fighting in this movie. Enough that the original version sported a running time of one hundred and twenty minutes. Four years after the initial release, Kitamura and his cast and crew returned to the forest to film new scenes and enhance the action sequences, resulting in what’s called the Ultimate Versus cut, which is ten minutes longer.
Kitamura and Yamaguchi didn’t bother to name any of the characters in their script. Aside from Prisoner KSC2-303 and The Girl, most of them are credited based on their appearance, their clothes, or their weapons. Versus was the first screen acting credit for the majority of the cast members, and many of them haven’t done much in the film industry since this movie. A few have only worked on Kitamura projects. Sakaguchi and Misaka are two exceptions who have gone on to do a lot more film work. So are Kenji Matsuda, who delivers a wonderfully over-the-top performance as Yakuza Leader with Butterfly Knife; Minoru Matsumoto, the Crazy Yakuza with Amulet; Ryosuke Watabe, the Yakuza Zombie in Alligator Skin Coat; Shoichiro Masumoto, who played the One-Handed Cop; and Hideo Sakaki, who lurks around as a mysterious, supernatural character called The Man. One actor who should have gotten a lot more work after this is Yukihito Tanikado. He only has a couple other credits, but he’s hilarious as Masumoto’s fellow Cop, a guy who is highly confident and arrogant. He says he’ll have no trouble tracking down the escaped prisoners because he was trained by the FBI. The fact that they’re in the forest is no trouble because he grew up in Yellowstone. When challenged, he claims to be the master of all martial arts, with reflexes five hundred times faster than Mike Tyson’s. He even thinks he’s faster than a bullet.
While growing up in Japan, Kitamura discovered he enjoyed watching movies more than anything else, so he figured he should become a filmmaker. Tired of wasting his time on things that didn’t involve movies, he dropped out of high school, then moved to Australia, since it was the home of many of his heroes, like George Miller, Russel Mulcahy, and Peter Weir. Despite his lack of a high school diploma, he was able to talk his way into attending a school for visual arts. After two years of schooling, he had to make a movie to graduate. So he went out into the woods and shot a short film that involved zombies, punching, kicking, and knife fights. Step one on the path to making Versus. Returning to Japan, he made the fifty minute crime film Heat after Dark and the forty-seven minute horror film Down to Hell. Then he was ready to extend his running times. Down to Hell really paved the way for Versus, as it was about criminals abducting people, setting them loose in the woods, and hunting them down. But this forest turns out to be a place where the dead come back to life. When Kitamura started developing Versus, it was meant to be a sequel to Down to Hell, but it gradually evolved into a separate story.
Since Down to Hell was made for three thousand dollars, Kitamura figured he could get the follow-up made for ten thousand. But as it became an original idea, it also became a bigger project. It took several months of filming for Kitamura and his cast and crew to complete Versus, and they had to keep scraping together more money as they went along. It had to be an independent production because Kitamura wasn’t able to find any supportive producers. They said an action-heavy Japanese movie wouldn’t do well, because audiences preferred to get their action from America and Hong Kong. So Kitamura had to prove them wrong. This was such a big undertaking that it could have broken him financially. It could have ended up being the only feature film he ever made. So he had to try to pack as much into it as he could. As he told Midnight Eye, “I just put everything I loved into the movie. People categorize things too easily. They say it’s a horror movie, so you shouldn’t add comedy or action. They want to limit it too much to one genre. … The inspiration for Versus came from the films of the 1980s, Sam Raimi movies, John Carpenter movies, George Miller movies. Everything I like: zombies, gun fighting, kung fu fighting, sword fighting. I wanted to do car action, too, because I love Mad Max so much, but I didn’t have enough money for it. So, aside from the car action, everything is in there.”
Kitamura found his lead actor, Tak Sakaguchi, by being in the right place at the right time. Sakaguchi was a streetfighter, and Kitamura met him when he was out on the street, beating someone up. The filmmaker told the fighter he should be brawling in movies instead of on the street. So they made it happen.
Versus was first screened at the Tokyo International Fantastic Film Festival in October of 2000. Then it slowly made its way out across the rest of the world over the next couple years. To Kitamura’s delight, and the surprise of the producers who had turned him down, it did very well in Japan. Allowing Kitamura to start making bigger movies, to the point where he was even given the chance to direct the fiftieth anniversary Godzilla movie. A film that, at the time, was being marketed as the final Godzilla movie. Then he moved on to making American productions, mixing in the occasional Japanese film. But as his career goes on, Versus still manages to linger over everything else.
At one time, Kitamura considered directing an American remake of Versus, and even wrote a script for it, but it never went into production. Then, he set his sights on making a sequel to Versus. Again, he put together a script. He has Versus 2 written and ready to go, and has revealed that it starts out with a thirty minute action sequence. A car action sequence, to be exact. The one thing he wasn’t able to work into the first movie. Unfortunately, it’s being held back by budget issues. Kitamura told Dread Central he intends for the sequel to be “big and insane, and I’m not going to do a watered down version of that. That means I need to have a much, much bigger movie than the original. When I do it, it’s gonna be like Versus: Fury Road. That’s what it is. I’m trying to do an even longer car battle than Mad Max: Fury Road, so obviously you need a lot of money to do that. I’m working on it, so I’m going to do it someday. I just don’t know when.”
Even though we’re a couple decades away from the release of Versus now, there’s still interest in a sequel because Kitamura made the first movie such a fun ride. For two hours, it just throws action scene after action scene at the audience. It never gets old because there’s so much variety to the action. For example, one scene might be a lengthy martial arts fight between the Prisoner and one of the gangsters. Then we’ll see the other gangsters emptying their guns into a large group of zombies. The number of zombies is increased due to the fact that this forest has been the gangsters’ dumping ground for the bodies of people they have killed. And they have killed a lot of people. Along the way, some depth is also added to the story with the revelation that Prisoner KSC2-303, The Girl, and The Man are all reincarnations of people who have been in the forest before. In fact, all three of them were involved with that “samurai vs. zombies” situation at the beginning of the movie. And their connection might continue on far into the future as well.
It’s evident that Versus was made on a small budget. Which makes it all the more impressive to see how much action Kitamura was able to pack into it and how stylish his direction of the action is. The inspiration he drew from Sam Raimi really comes through in some of his shot choices. At this point, there’s also a bit of a nostalgic edge to the film, because it’s saturated with a sense of cool that is very much of its time. You can tell that it was made around the turn of the millennium, especially when the Prisoner puts on a black leather trenchcoat during his struggle to survive. He gets his hands on a pair of sunglasses as well, but he can’t pull off the look as well as Keanu Reeves did in The Matrix or Tom Cruise did in Mission: Impossible 2, so he ditches the sunglasses pretty quick. There’s an even funnier Matrix reference when the arrogant cop tries to do some back-bend bullet-dodging. But he’s another character who just can’t live up to Keanu.
Versus is a non-stop onslaught of gunfire, martial arts fights, gore, comedic moments, and hilariously over-the-top performances. So if you enjoy seeing those things in movies, you’ll probably have a blast watching this one. We usually like to cover one or two of the best scenes in these write-ups, but it’s difficult to decide which of the action scenes is the best, since they’re all so cool in their own way. You can’t really pick and choose with this one. You just have to take it all in and bask in the glory of its two hours of violence.
Watching Versus, you’d think Ryuhei Kitamura was on his way to becoming one of the biggest action directors in the entertainment industry. But right now, it sort of seems like his career reached its peak with the Godzilla movie. He’s gotten a couple major opportunities since then, but has never reached the level he deserved to. The Midnight Meat Train is the biggest English-language movie he has gotten to make. That one has its fans, but it’s a shame he has never been given something larger so he could really follow in the footsteps of his heroes Sam Raimi and George Miller. Who knows? Maybe there are still bigger things ahead of Kitamura. Maybe he’ll even get the budget for the long-awaited Versus sequel, with its thirty minutes of car action right up front. In the meantime, we still have the original film to go back to, and we can watch it over and over any time we’re in the mood to see a legion of zombies get slashed, blasted, kicked, and punched in the Forest of Resurrection.
A couple previous episodes of the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw series can be seen below. To see more, and to check out some of our other shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
The post Versus (2000) Revisited – Horror Movie Review appeared first on JoBlo.
Following a limited theatrical release, director Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire (read our review HERE) was released through the Netflix streaming service back in December, then Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver (read our review of that one HERE) reached the service last month… but we’ve known from early on that these PG-13 versions of the movies wouldn’t be the only versions we’d see. Snyder has also put together extended director’s cut of both films, which will each have around an hour of additional footage. They’re expected to be released through Netflix sometime this summer, possibly in August, and the director’s cut of Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire just got its rating from the Motion Picture Association ratings board. It earned an R for brutal bloody violence and gore, sexual content, graphic nudity and language.
Snyder said the director’s cuts of both films will be released the same day, so we should hear about the extended version of Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver receiving its rating very soon.
Snyder has always been open about the fact that he’s hoping “a massive IP and a universe that can be built out” from the foundation of Rebel Moon. He crafted the story for Rebel Moon with 300 co-writer Kurt Johnstad, and the pair wrote the screenplay with Army of the Dead co-writer Shay Hatten. The events of the two films, which draw inspiration from Seven Samurai, are set in motion when a peaceful colony on the edge of the galaxy is threatened by the armies of a tyrannical regent named Balisarius. Desperate, the colonists dispatch a young woman with a mysterious past to seek out warriors from neighboring planets to help them make a stand.
The films star Sofia Boutella (The Mummy), Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy), Djimon Hounsou (A Quiet Place Part II), Ray Fisher (Justice League), Doona Bae (The Host), Jena Malone (Sucker Punch), Staz Nair (Supergirl), E. Duffy (whose previous credits are all short films), Charlotte Maggi (MaveriX), Sky Yang (Tomb Raider), Michiel Huisman (Game of Thrones), Alfonso Herrera (Ozark), Cary Elwes (Saw), Corey Stoll (Ant-Man), Ed Skrein (Deadpool), Anthony Hopkins (Hannibal), and Stuart Martin (Army of Thieves).
Snyder, his wife Deborah Snyder, and Wesley Coller are producing the Rebel Moon films through their company Stone Quarry. Eric Newman is producing via his banner, Grand Electric, while Grand Electric’s Sarah Bowen executive produces.
Are you looking forward to the Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire director’s cut? What do you think of the reason given for the R rating? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
The post Rebel Moon: Part One director’s cut earns its R rating with brutal bloody violence, gore, & more appeared first on JoBlo.
You know how you’re always saying, “I wish I could play Tetris on an unwieldy plastic Slurpee cup that doesn’t actually function as a drinking vessel,” and we’re all like, “Shut up, Steve”? Well now you can have the last laugh, because thanks to a team-up between Tetris and 7-Eleven, your dream has come true.
You know how you’re always saying, “I wish I could play Tetris on an unwieldy plastic Slurpee cup that doesn’t actually function as a drinking vessel,” and we’re all like, “Shut up, Steve”? Well now you can have the last laugh, because thanks to a team-up between Tetris and 7-Eleven, your dream has come true.