Three friends playing a giant game of tag across Europe is my idea of a good time. The hosts of “Jet Lag” have done this before, and it always makes great television. From a single starting point the three have their own equidistant destination, and 72 hours to get there. If they don’t make it all the way to their…
Three friends playing a giant game of tag across Europe is my idea of a good time. The hosts of “Jet Lag” have done this before, and it always makes great television. From a single starting point the three have their own equidistant destination, and 72 hours to get there. If they don’t make it all the way to their…
Robert Downey Jr. has the power to steal any scene he wants. Just take one look at his surprise SDCC appearance this summer and you get an idea of what we mean. But this is nothing new, and one of the best examples of this is 1994’s Natural Born Killers, in which he played Wayne Gale, the personification of exploiting criminals to the point of cult status. It’s undoubtedly one of the standout performances in Natural Born Killers (although I would pick Rodney Dangerfield’s as the most memorable), but according to Oliver Stone, he almost ruined the entire film.
By most accounts, Downey Jr. was rarely sober on the set of Natural Born Killers, but on one particular day, he happened to be completely straight. But that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t get out of control to the point of pissing off his director. In one instance, he dipped his shirt tail in fake blood and pulled it through his unzipped pants, making it his own bloody “iron man”, to which Stone responded, “Oh come on—that’s too much! You’re going too far, Robert…You’re ruining my movie! Forget the dumb dick idea. This isn’t…This isn’t some slapstick bullsh*t.” Except, anyone who has seen Natural Born Killers knows just how over-the-top it gets (even Woody Harrelson considers it a romantic comedy)…But Stone would eventually meet in the middle (or thereabouts…), telling Downey Jr. to pull the shirt tail back in half an inch.
When cameras rolled on Natural Born Killers, Downey Jr. was fresh off of an Oscar nomination for Chaplin but still had his share of troubles going on, telling Esquire (in a terrific new piece recounting the making of Natural Born Killers), “The only time I was awake…was between Action and Cut.” Woody Harrelson, who played Mickey to Juliette Lewis’ Mallory, recounted, “I don’t want to say I was the moral center on this movie, but I was the one doing the least amount of drugs! Which is—it’s never happened in my career or my life. And no one’s ever done more drugs than me, but I was Mother Teresa on this one.”
Natural Born Killers celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, so there’s really no better way to celebrate than to revisit the film and rewatch our episode of WTF Happened to This Movie?! (we know, it’s not about us…).
Are you a fan of Natural Born Killers? What is the standout scene for you?
The post Oliver Stone thoughts Downey Jr.’s on-set antics would ruin the tone of Natural Born Killers appeared first on JoBlo.
Ever hear someone say “No one hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans?” Passion for intellectual property can manifest in many ways, but it’s often drenched in a bit of pessimism. This happens anytime a new entry is made in a franchise that is beloved and has a rabid fanbase. And with The Crow having one fantastic initial entry and a bunch of dull follow-ups, it’s even easier to understand any kind of trepidation regarding new material. Whether it’s the Brandon Lee tragedy or just the 90s grunge of it all, the magic formula has always felt like it can not be recreated. We’ve gotten the one good one, and a whole lot of mediocrity to follow. Yet why is that? This Crow fan is going to try and break it down.
This is where I’m going to get into some SPOILERS for The Crow (2024) so if you’re desperate to see the film, then you may have to look away. We’re going to look into why it just didn’t work.
So for this 2024 entry, the filmmakers decided to move away from the story of the original film and instead adapt the James O’Barr graphic novel. At least, that’s what they say. I’m not sure that’s really true because the graphic novel follows much closer to the 94 film, complete with T-Bird’s gang and young Sherri (Sarah in the film). Because outside of the basic concept of a man coming back to life to avenge his slain girlfriend, there’s not much about the new film that is similar. So in that regard, its lack of connection to the original is sort of a good thing. But why the hell did it need to be called The Crow?
Remember how tragic the event of Eric and Shelly’s death are? Their tortuous deaths are so brutal, so prolonged, that it is the catalyst for Eric being brought back to life. You know what it isn’t? A brief moment where they’re both choked out with plastic bags and quickly offed. It’s so underwhelming and lacking in any sort of impact. Sarah’s line from the original makes it very clear: “People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can’t rest. Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right.”
Yet this murder doesn’t seem any worse than the murder we’ve already seen in the film to that point. It’s a cleanup job done by henchmen. Hell, the actual crow feels like an absolute afterthought. If you took out the crow, it would have zero effect on the story or how it unfolds. I’d say that’s a pretty big problem when your movie is called The Crow. Gone is the concept of Devil’s Night; a night where gangs set fire to the city of Detroit. Shelly and Eric are innocent victims, making their deaths all the more tragic. Yet here, they’re both targeted by an evil dude’s people because Shelly has a videotape that will implicate the immortal demon man? Certainly takes away some of the random tragedy of it all.
I think they changed the last names because neither character embodies anything that made Eric Draven and Shelly Martinez what they were. Admittedly, Shelly is more a conduit for Eric’s love, but even that is difficult to land when the characters have only known each other for a couple of days. So I’m not going to rail against FKA Twigs’ version of Shelly. If anything she was quite charming. But it doesn’t get rid of the fact that we witness the entirety of their relationship unfold before our very eyes on screen. It’s hard to really get invested in their love. Then add the vanilla way in which they’re killed, and I hardly think they’re deserving of some big revenge escapade.
This is where the next issue lies: Eric just isn’t an intriguing character. Yes, we could talk for days about Brandon Lee’s wonderful performance as Eric Draven. Yet, outside of the performance, the character himself is actually great, with his infectious energy and command of the situation. Skarsgård’s Eric is bumbling through his revenge mission, lacking in any sort of coolness or drive. Hell, he gets completely wasted by gangmembers, to the point that he has to renegotiate his deal, and magically comes back suddenly able to kick ass. And that’s not to say that Skarsgård is bad because he’s not. But there’s nothing meaty on the page for him to latch onto. Rather than a badass on a mission for revenge, he looks like a SoundCloud rapper fumbling his way through an action sequence.
Rupert Sanders certainly knows how to provide some interesting visuals, and I won’t deny there being some really cool shots. The warehouse-looking structure was visually intriguing, if not a little music video-y. The Crow franchise has always had a supernatural element so I won’t bemoan that part. The Danny Huston character of Vincent Roeg being able to just talk people into killing themselves was…interesting. But there’s not really any setup or proper explanation for what he’s even doing. Sure, I get that he’s sucking the life force out of various women, like he’s a vampire from Lifeforce. But it doesn’t seem to result in much outside of his immortality. Top Dollar felt like a scumbag and Vincent Roeg just seems like a lame vampire.
It’s also frustrating that they didn’t even complete Eric’s story out of the sheer unwarranted hope that they’d be able to make a sequel. He is simply lost in limbo at the end of the film (even though it was explicitly stated that he’d be changing places with Shelly–guess they forgot that). Even Bill Skarsgård has bemoaned the ending saying, “I personally preferred something more definitive.” Me too, Bill. Me too.
It’s hard for a film to succeed when it doesn’t even know what it wants to be. Is this a revenge story? Is it a love story? Is it a weird supernatural action movie? The original is a revenge story with the driving force being love. Eric Draven is a cool character who demands your attention for every moment he’s on screen. Eric (!) is an emo boy in lust with a girl he barely knows, fighting an immortal vampire man. It’s easy to see why fans of the original would be upset at this. And audiences seemed to answer with their wallets. Maybe, like many Star Wars fans, I’m unable to accept anything new in the franchise that doesn’t fit into the mold of what I think makes the series what it is. Because to me, The Crow is a tragic revenge tale, not a meet-cute love story about a SoundCloud rapper taking his girlfriend’s place in Hell.
What did you think of The Crow (2024)? Am I being too harsh? What elements work for you? Let us know in the comments!
The post Why Was The Crow (2024) Such A Bomb? appeared first on JoBlo.
Pop quiz: who has the best voice in the history of movies? You’re dead wrong if your answer is anything other than James Earl Jones. Indeed, the classic, rich baritone is the defining voice of multiple generations, with him famously voicing the Sith Lord himself, Darth Vader, in the Star Wars franchise. In a much friendlier vein, he also voiced The Lion King himself, Mufasa, and when that movie was remade, even though no one else in the cast reprised their roles, there was never any doubt that only one man could voice the wise king. Plus, he famously voiced the iconic phrase, “This is CNN”. If Jones were only a voice actor, he’d be an indisputable icon.
Yet, there’s so much more to him than just his voice work. James Earl Jones is also one of the great modern character actors, making his film debut in none other than Dr. Strangelove (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb) before earning an Academy Award nomination for his starring role in The Great White Hope. As a child of the eighties and nineties, I always knew him as a kindly, reassuring grandfatherly figure in movies like The Sandlot, but he could also be tough and cool, such as in his classic Sneakers cameo, and his recurring role as Jack Ryan’s boss and mentor, James Greer, in The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger. Plus, he could do comedy, with him famously playing Eddie Murphy’s father in Coming to America and its sequel.
At ninety-three, Jones has more-or-less retired, with Coming 2 America being his swan song. But, he remains an icon among icons, and in this special episode of What Happened to this Celebrity, we pay homage to a giant talent all of us admire.
What’s your favorite James Earl Jones role? Let us know in the comments.
The post What Happened to James Earl Jones? appeared first on JoBlo.
The early box office results are starting to roll in, and as expected, it looks like The Gipper is no match for the MCU’s Deadpool & Wolverine, which seems set to top the charts one last time this Labor Day weekend. Indeed, the Dennis Quaid-led Reagan, a biopic of the 40th President of the United States, is performing more-or-less in line with what we predicted, with Deadline reporting its $500k preview night should land it somewhere around $7 or 8 million for the weekend. That’s not a bad result for an independently released movie. Critics don’t like the biopic much, and many complain that the faith-based film presents the president as a saint-like figure. However, the folks buying tickets seem to love it, with the movie having a terrific 98% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. So, there’s a chance word-of-mouth could propel this movie to a higher opening.
However, it’s unlikely the movie has a prayer of competing with Deadpool & Wolverine, which is on track to make in the $12 million-ish range. One thing in the movie’s favor is that it’s getting a re-release this weekend on the premium screens it had to lose when Alien: Romulus opened.
The weekend’s other new release, AfrAId, a Blumhouse production about a family terrorized by AI, is on track for a disastrous $4-5 million weekend. The barely promoted horror flick only made about $400k in previews, and the reviews have been brutal, with our own Tyler Nichols slamming it as “just another in a line of bad PG-13 Blumhouse horror movies with no soul or originality.”
To note, Labor Day weekend has always been slow, with many theatres using the weekend to play classic films, with some theatres playing a 50th-anniversary re-release of Blazing Saddles. I caught this last weekend, and the classic comedy Western still plays like gangbusters, so if it’s open in your neighbourhood, I’d check it out (the controversial 4K re-release of The Terminator is worth catching, too).
What (if anything) are you seeing this weekend?
The post Box Office Update: Reagan no match (so far) for Deadpool & Wolverine appeared first on JoBlo.
The early box office results are starting to roll in, and as expected, it looks like The Gipper is no match for the MCU’s Deadpool & Wolverine, which seems set to top the charts one last time this Labor Day weekend. Indeed, the Dennis Quaid-led Reagan, a biopic of the 40th President of the United States, is performing more-or-less in line with what we predicted, with Deadline reporting its $500k preview night should land it somewhere around $7 or 8 million for the weekend. That’s not a bad result for an independently released movie. Critics don’t like the biopic much, and many complain that the faith-based film presents the president as a saint-like figure. However, the folks buying tickets seem to love it, with the movie having a terrific 98% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. So, there’s a chance word-of-mouth could propel this movie to a higher opening.
However, it’s unlikely the movie has a prayer of competing with Deadpool & Wolverine, which is on track to make in the $12 million-ish range. One thing in the movie’s favor is that it’s getting a re-release this weekend on the premium screens it had to lose when Alien: Romulus opened.
The weekend’s other new release, AfrAId, a Blumhouse production about a family terrorized by AI, is on track for a disastrous $4-5 million weekend. The barely promoted horror flick only made about $400k in previews, and the reviews have been brutal, with our own Tyler Nichols slamming it as “just another in a line of bad PG-13 Blumhouse horror movies with no soul or originality.”
To note, Labor Day weekend has always been slow, with many theatres using the weekend to play classic films, with some theatres playing a 50th-anniversary re-release of Blazing Saddles. I caught this last weekend, and the classic comedy Western still plays like gangbusters, so if it’s open in your neighbourhood, I’d check it out (the controversial 4K re-release of The Terminator is worth catching, too).
What (if anything) are you seeing this weekend?
The post Box Office Update: Reagan no match (so far) for Deadpool & Wolverine appeared first on JoBlo.
We had a veritable cornucopia of hands-on previews land this past week, kicking things off with a look at Obsidian’s upcoming first-person RPG Avowed. We also spent four hours with the promising Metaphor: ReFantazio, a new RPG from the folks behind the Persona series, put Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade…
We had a veritable cornucopia of hands-on previews land this past week, kicking things off with a look at Obsidian’s upcoming first-person RPG Avowed. We also spent four hours with the promising Metaphor: ReFantazio, a new RPG from the folks behind the Persona series, put Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade…
This week, we got a Nintendo Direct that was one part Indie World, one part partner showcase. We’ve got a roundup of every game featured in the 40-minute presentation. Also, new leaks suggest that an official announcement of Sony’s PS5 Pro is imminent, the hottest incarnation of Indy ever (Temple of Doom Indy, of…