Maybe ten minutes into Transformers One, the computer-animated prequel to the entire existing saga of Hasbro’s robots in disguise, Scarlett Johansson’s focused mining manager Elita says to Chris Hemsworth’s idealistic worker Orion Pax, “You don’t have the touch or the power.” It’s a clunky, forced reference to a…
Maybe ten minutes into Transformers One, the computer-animated prequel to the entire existing saga of Hasbro’s robots in disguise, Scarlett Johansson’s focused mining manager Elita says to Chris Hemsworth’s idealistic worker Orion Pax, “You don’t have the touch or the power.” It’s a clunky, forced reference to a…
PLOT: An origin story set on Cybertron focused on the friendship between a young Optimus Prime (Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron (Bryan Tyree Henry) before they became arch-enemies.
REVIEW: It figures that the best movie Paramount’s ever made from the Transformers franchise is animated. When I hit Comic Con in San Diego a few months ago, the folks behind Transformers One mentioned that by adopting an animated format, for the first time in the history of the big screen franchise, they were able to make a Transformers movie without any human characters, set 100% on Cybertron. It would have cost about $400 million had this been live-action. And, indeed, with no limit on the story’s scope, for the first time, we have a Transformers movie that can legitimately be called terrific.
Indeed, folks are in for a surprise with this one, which is very much in the vein of the recent animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot and the Spider-Verse movies. While it’s definitely not as good as either Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse or Across the Spider-Verse, it comes much closer than you might expect.
In it, we get a deep dive into the history of the Autobots and Decepticons, tracking how Optimus Prime and Megatron liberated Cybertronians from virtual enslavement before being split into two warring factions. In this one, the young Optimus, here called Orion Pax, and Megatron (D-16) are two miners who don’t have transforming cogs and exist in the lower echelon of Cybertronian society, which Jon Hamm’s Sentinel Prime lords over. Chris Hemsworth and Bryan Tyree Henry do a good job evoking the buddy-movie chemistry needed between Orion Pax and D-16, with much of the movie playing almost like an animated version of Tango & Cash as the two embark on a mission that leads to their eventual transformation into the iconic characters as we know them.
While it all sounds like you have to be steeped in Transformers lore to appreciate what director Josh Cooley (Toy Story 4) and his writers are going for, the movie is much more compelling than you’d think. It starts off as your typical sci-fi adventure movie, complete with a humorous sidekick (Keegan Michael-Key as Bumblebee before he lost his voice) and a robot love interest (Scarlett Johansson’s Elita), but eventually takes a dark turn as the truth about Cybertron emerges, and D-16’s more ruthless side comes to the surface. You can’t help but get invested in the brotherhood between the two robots, and when they eventually turn on each other, it feels pretty epic.
The voice work by Hemsworth and Tyree Henry certainly helps it. While many may have issues with Peter Cullen no longer voicing Optimus, Hemsworth works in many vocal references to his predecessor, paying homage to his iconic performance as the film goes on. Likewise, Tyree-Henry’s vocal performance once he becomes Megatron begins to change, and he imbues the character with a surprising amount of pathos.
It also doesn’t hurt that the film is gorgeous to look at. The animation style is fresh-feeling, and it makes an effort to be distinctive while also paying tribute to the old cartoon show and 1986 film. It’s also set in the same timeline as the modern Transformer movies, but it’s distinct enough that you really don’t have to have seen any of them to enjoy it.
One thing worth noting is that the audience I saw this with REALLY seemed to love the movie. They laughed and cheered throughout, and when it was over, the audience gave it a huge round of applause, which is something you really never get at free screenings in my neck of the woods. There’s a reason why Paramount’s been doing so many word-of-mouth screenings, as this has the potential to be a major hit, and, again, it’s the best Transformers movie ever made by a wide margin.
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Just when I think I don’t give a Took about the many branching narratives in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the Amazon Prime series drops an episode that cleverly pulls together the disparate stories, justifying their (somewhat plodding) existence. Episode five is one of the more potent examples of the…
Just when I think I don’t give a Took about the many branching narratives in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the Amazon Prime series drops an episode that cleverly pulls together the disparate stories, justifying their (somewhat plodding) existence. Episode five is one of the more potent examples of the…
According to Variety, Song Kang-ho, star of the Academy Award-winning film Parasite, has lined up his next project, which will be the series adaptation of a political thriller titled Inside Men. Hive Media Corp, who will be producing the series, had announced the development of the project Thursday morning and the studio has revealed it is currently in early pre-production. The filming is expected to commence sometime next year. However, it is not yet revealed where the show is intending to broadcast or stream.
This adaptation will be based on the 2015 film of the same name. That film was said to have been adapted into “an incomplete webtoon,” which was written by Yoon Tae-ho. This incarnation was called The Insiders and it had been published between 2010-2012 in the Hankyoreh newspaper. Per Variety, “The webtoon featured a political bruiser, played by Lee Byung-hun in the film, who seeks revenge after being ruined by politicians and the media. Directed and written by Woo Min-ho, the film added other elements including a prosecutor (portrayed by Cho Sueng-woo), a presidential candidate Portrayed by Lee Gyeong-young) and a newspaper editor (portrayed by Baek Yoon-sik).”
The series is set to be directed by Mo Wan-il, whose credits include The World of the Married and the recent Netflix film The Frog. Mo will expand on the story for the show. Song is expected to be portraying the newspaper editor. However, no other cast has yet been disclosed. The studio, Hive Media Corp, was described as “Korea’s top production company” by the Korean Film Council. Last year, they released 12.12: The Day, which was a fictionalized account of the 1979 military coup, and that would go on to become the highest-grossing film of the year in Korea. Additionally, they released a similarly themed political drama The Man Standing Next, which examined events building up to the assassination of President Park Chung-hee, which happened earlier in 1979.
The 2015 film Inside Men was produced by Kim Won-kuk, who has been an investor in an earlier film of Woo Min-ho, Man of Vendetta. It had a surprise hit status with seven million admissions for the original version and a further 2 million for a director’s cut. This allowed Kim and partners to form Hive Media Corp in 2016.
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Jon Bon Jovi is giving love a good name, saving a woman from jumping from a bridge in Tennessee this week.
While Jon Bon Jovi isn’t currently on tour – he and his band haven’t been on the road in that sense since 2022 – he was in Nashville shooting a music video for “The People’s House” off of their album Forever, which came out in June.
In a video posted this week – which many outlets have deleted or not shown due to the sensitive nature – you can see a woman over the barrier of The John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge, just off of downtown Nashville. Jon Bon Jovi and an assistant on the music video approach the woman and speak with her for a few moments. After some time, he and the PA pull her safely back over the barrier. From there, those who were watching from a distance come closer, but it is Jon Bon Jovi who pulls the woman in for a hug, which she embraces. The woman is then guided away.
The police chief of the Nashville Metro Police Department expressed his gratitude for the actions on social media: “A shout out to @jonbonjovi & his team for helping a woman on the Seigenthaler Ped Bridge Tue night. Bon Jovi helped persuade her to come off the ledge over the Cumberland River to safety. “It takes all of us to help keep each other safe”.” Jon Bon Jovi, for his part, is apparently refusing to discuss the matter with the media.
If ever there was a hopeful story many of us could use right now, it’s that one. But this is far from being uncharacteristic of the iconic singer, who has made it one of his duties to help out those in need. A lot of it just so happens to be in and around his home state of New Jersey, as when he opened the JBL Soul Kitchen, a community restaurant which has no set prices on the menu; instead, people pay what they can afford. Previously, he started a charity which aims to reduce homelessness and poverty.
We here at JoBlo.com would like to commend Jon Bon Jovi and his team for this swift actions that saved that woman’s life.
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PLOT: A mushroom trip brings free-spirited Elliott face-to-face with her 39-year-old self. But when Elliott’s “old ass” delivers warnings to her younger self, Elliott realizes she has to rethink everything about her family, life, and love.
REVIEW: Whether it’s Weird Science or even a Freaky Friday, it can be fun in a film where logic takes a backseat to entertainment. Do I need a full-blown explanation for how a computer and a barbie doll resulted in one of the most beautiful women in existence? Of course not! This is a movie after all and if we’re able to suspend our disbelief that people can fly, I think a little lunacy for the sake of a story can be quite appealing. So I was intrigued by My Old Ass and its focus on a young girl meeting her older self and rethinking her future. But it doesn’t really feel like the movie that the trailers were selling.
Maisy Stella stars as Elliott, a teenage lesbian who is enjoying the last bits of her hometown until she leaves for the city. She’s a free spirit and so focused on the future, that she doesn’t appreciate the people around her. When her older self appears to her during a shroom trip, will she take her warnings or continue on her current path? I struggle with Elliott types in film as they often come across as self-absorbed and ignorant. While the writer is clearly trying to make her carefree and fun, there’s an inherent unlikability to her. Her friends are simply props and she treats them as such. There’s even a moment where she acknowledges that, even after getting what she wanted, she’s still left unsatisfied. Maybe if she wasn’t such a know-it-all, this would be a fun revelation to have. Instead, I was just annoyed we’re stuck with her as our protagonist.
Aubrey Plaza is great as older Elliott but she’s massively underutilized. There’s a constant charisma black hole when she’s not on screen. As funny as she is, she’s really the emotional anchor of the film. She provides all the most heartfelt moments and really brings the movie to life. But she hardly has ten minutes of screentime, so her absence is often felt. I also enjoyed Percy Hynes White (from Netflix’s Wednesday) as Chad, the boy that older Elliott warns younger Elliott to stay away from. He has great chemistry with Maisy and fits the role well.
I like magical realism but one thing I really need is an established rule for the strange happenings. Outside of the excuse of a shroom trip, there’s no real explanation for how Elliott can interact with her older self. It’s made all the more complicated when people outside of Elliott get involved as well. There’s no time limit or really any clear limitation. Plaza’s appearances are entirely plot-reliant and don’t feel very thought out. Giving some kind of parameters for it would have resulted in tension around the ticking time bomb of help. Instead it feels lazy.
As much as the movie wants to be about self-discovery, the message is completely lost by the end. The second half devolves into this strange Nicolas Sparks-style love story and it clashes with the prior tone. It also further frames Elliott as an unlikeable character, completely dismissing a girl she’s involved with, without any kind of proper acknowledgment. It’s one of many baffling decisions that Megan Park makes with her film.
I’m not sure there’s a single instance where a non-musical movie does a random musical scene and it works. It’s easily the worst part of the film and, had I been watching it on streaming, would have been the moment I shut it off. When it’s all said and done, My Old Ass is about a woman deciding the life she thought she wanted to live, isn’t as important as she thought. It’s a nice message about not planning out everything and living outside of your own expectations. Unfortunately it comes across in a very strange way with its very confusing LGBT messaging. I’m not sure what point the filmmakers were trying to get across outside of the obvious.
MY OLD ASS IN PLAYING IN THEATERS ON SEPTEMBER 13TH, 2024.
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Ewan McGregor finally returned as Obi-Wan Kenobi for a series released on Disney+ in 2022. While it was a success, there was no word on a potential second season. When the show was released on Blu-ray/4K, it was billed as ‘The Complete Series’ rather than ‘The Complete First Season,’ which seemed to indicate that Lucasfilm wasn’t going to bring the show back. However, McGregor told Variety that he hopes he gets the chance to do another season.
“I loved, more than anything, getting to know Alec Guinness’ work because I was playing him as a young man. Even now with the series, that’s my personal challenge — if a take feels a bit like him, I’m happy,” McGregor said. “I really do hope we get a chance to do another one. Between where we ended off in the series and when Alec Guinness comes on screen with Luke Skywalker, I think there’s another few stories to tell in there.“
While the show had its critics, I found plenty to enjoy. Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi is always delightful, and seeing him sharing the screen with Hayden Christensen once again was a highlight. Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy said last year that while a second season wasn’t in the works, it’s always possible that Kenobi could return in another project, perhaps even in a movie. “I always hesitate to say no to more Obi-Wan Kenobi. Maybe we end up doing something that gets incorporated into some of the other stories that we’re doing, or eventually into a movie, but who knows?” Kennedy said. “But right now, it’s still our standard stand-alone limited series, we have no plans for expansion right now.“
The Obi-Wan Kenobi series took place ten years after the events of Revenge of the Sith and followed the former Jedi master as he set off on a mission to rescue a young Leia Organa. Along the way, he confronts his former apprentice and accepts that Anakin Skywalker has been consumed by Darth Vader. The project had originally been pitched as a trilogy of movies by Stuart Beattie, who conceived a story which would have explored Kenobi’s transition from the character we saw at the end of Revenge of the Sith to the one we first met in A New Hope. The underperformance of Solo: A Star Wars Story caused Disney to reconsider, and Obi-Wan Kenobi’s story made the leap to the small screen.
Would you like to see Ewan McGregor return for Obi-Wan Kenobi season 2? Or should the franchise over on to new projects?
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A trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis was released last month but was pulled just hours later. It became apparent that the quotes from negative reviews of Coppola’s previous movies, such as The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, had been faked. Lionsgate apologized, a longtime marketing consultant was fired, and the world kept on moving. While speaking with Entertainment Tonight at the Megalopolis premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Coppola took credit for the concept of using bad review quotes in the trailer but isn’t sure how it went so wrong.
“Well I know that there were bad reviews. I’m the one that who said there were bad reviews,” Coppola said. “But I don’t know. It was a mistake, an accident, I’m not sure what happened.“
The Megalopolis trailer included a quote from iconic critic Pauline Kael, who was cited as saying that The Godfather is “diminished by its artsiness.” Not only did Kael not say that, but her original review of The Godfather was very complimentary. The Village Voice critic Andrew Sarris is also quoted, trashing The Godfather as a “sloppy self-indulgent movie” that “doesn’t know what it wants to be.” Once again, those quotes do not appear in Sarris’ review. It’s suspected that an AI engine was used to search for the quotes, but instead formed its own. “Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for Megalopolis,” said a Lionsgate spokesperson after the trailer was pull. “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.“
Our own Chris Bumbray caught Megalopolis at TIFF, and unfortunately, he wasn’t a fan. “In the last forty minutes, Megalopolis becomes a real disaster, with so much jam-packed into the movie’s third act that it becomes almost impossible to keep up with it,” Bumbray wrote. “It becomes nonsensical as it races towards its ending. Again, one can’t fault Coppola for his ambition. He financed the movie with money he earned, so he had every right to make exactly the film he wanted to make. But it’s hard to imagine this ever connecting with anyone other than hardcore Coppola devotees or maybe connoisseurs of bad cinema.” You can check out the rest of Bumbray’s review right here.
The official synopsis for Megalopolis reads: “Megalopolis is a Roman Epic fable set in an imagined Modern America. The City of New Rome must change, causing conflict between Cesar Catilina, a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero, who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare. Torn between them is socialite Julia Cicero, the mayor’s daughter, whose love for Cesar has divided her loyalties, forcing her to discover what she truly believes humanity deserves.” The film is currently slated to hit theaters on September 27th.
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