The latest entry in Kevin Costner’s four-part Western, Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2, premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival, and select outlets have weighed in on whether the film is a project of progress or a bumpy ride along a dusty trail. Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 launched to mixed reactions, with many from its Cannes debut saying the over-long film lacked punch despite being a love letter to the Western genre Costner loves so much. After Chapter 1 failed to find its audience in theaters, New Line/WB rushed the film to digital platforms, hoping to recover dollars from an unexpected upset. To Costner’s credit, he’s determined to see his Horizon project through, though the latest reactions to Chapter 2 aren’t likely to convince others to saddle up for the long haul.
In Leslie Felperin’s review for The Hollywood Reporter, Felperin says Costner’s second three-hour chapter suffers from many of the same problems as the original: “too much setup and not enough payoff; jagged editing that only highlights the lack of harmony between its disparate narrative strands; and cliché-tinged production values that often make it feel corny and old-fashioned, and not in a good way.”
However, Felperin notes that Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2 is more fun than the first. Still, Felperin notes that this feeling could result from Horizon Stockholm syndrome, as they watched the first entry the night before to prepare for the Venice screening. That’s a lot of any movie, especially something as weighted as Horizon. Felperin says Chapter 2 boasts solid female-driven storylines, with Sienna Miller and Georgia MacPhail given a chance to shine in their respective roles.
Disappointingly, Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2 appears to short-change the perspective of its Indigenous characters, lacking the perspective of their land getting invaded by settlers and forced to adapt to white society. Considering the American frontier was built upon the backs of these individuals, this lack of perspective feels like a gross oversight.
Meanwhile, Jessica Kiang of Variety says no one can deny Costner’s flare for the Western genre. His eye for detail from this era of filmmaking makes him an ideal storyteller for the territory, but that doesn’t stop Chapter 2 from becoming an “unwieldy and bewilderingly scattershot” sequel.
Kiang adds that Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2 “has its stirring, majestic set pieces such as a wagon burning or a barn-dance gunfight, and, courtesy especially of J. Michael Muro’s grand cinematography, lots of gorgeously epic shots of the wagon train wending across bright, arid plains or the settlement that will, we imagine, become Horizon, gradually springing up from the dirt. But too often its best-imagined sequences take place on either side of inexplicable gaps, during which the emotional tempo has changed so completely, it leaves viewers forced to wonder if we somehow missed something. This herky-jerk rhythm only increases as we hurtle towards an ending which, once again without warning suddenly segues into a dialogue-free montage of clips from the forthcoming installment.”
Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 2 does not sound like it will attract new fans to Costner’s Western odyssey or impress those who were disappointed by the first entry. Still, it’s essential to make your own opinion if you’ve got three hours and ten minutes to spare. One could argue there are better ways to spend your movie-watching time, but if epic Westerns are your jam, you could find something special in Costner’s vision, others do not.
Are you interested in seeing Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2? Let us know in the comments section below.
FThe biggest story of the week was probably the announcement that Sony was shutting down Concord, its big, expensive, long-in-development hero shooter, just two weeks after its disappointing launch. We’ve got the details on the original announcement, as well as reactions from across the internet.
FThe biggest story of the week was probably the announcement that Sony was shutting down Concord, its big, expensive, long-in-development hero shooter, just two weeks after its disappointing launch. We’ve got the details on the original announcement, as well as reactions from across the internet.
PLOT: In the aftermath of WW2, László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who survived the holocaust, emigrates to America. While there, he gets a taste of the American dream from a wealthy benefactor (Guy Pearce), although success may carry a price too difficult to bear.
REVIEW: It would be fair to say there hasn’t been a movie like The Brutalist in about forty years. One-time actor Brady Corbet, who emerged as a director following The Childhood of a Leader and the underrated Vox Lux, makes movies in the vein of David Lean, with this telling a deeply personal story on an epic scale the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long time. Shooting in 70mm VistaVision, The Brutalist is a three-and-a-half hour masterwork (with an intermission) that will go a long way towards establishing Corbett as one of the great modern directors.
Indeed, The Brutalist is a full meal (I skipped all the TIFF screenings after it because I needed to digest what I’d seen for a while). It’s a whole lot of movie, but right from the opening scenes, where Adrien Brody’s Toth arrives at Ellis Island and gets a first glimpse at the Statue of Liberty as Daniel Blumberg’s masterful score blares, you know you’re in the hands of a master of his craft.
Adrien Brody has his best role since The Pianist as Toth, who’s survived the holocaust and now has to make do in an America that views him as an interloper. Going to work for his Americanized cousin (Alessandro Nivola), he gets lucky when he scores a gig designing a library at the urging of a Pennsylvania playboy (Joe Alwyn) who wants to surprise his father (Guy Pearce). When the patriarch sees the Bauhaus-style library, he has a fit but eventually sees the light and becomes Laszlo’s benefactor.
However, the man, Harrison Lee Van Buren, is a tyrant, castigating Laszlo for employing a black man (Isaac De Bankolé) as his assistant and never letting him forget who his boss is. Brody and Pearce are electric opposite each other, with both clearly relishing sinking their teeth into truly great roles after years of toiling (at times) is smaller-scaled fare. Pearce, in particular, has never played a role like Van Buren, with him hiding his sadism behind a polished mid-Atlantic accent similar to the one used by John Huston when he played one of the screen’s great villains in Chinatown. Pearce plays him as a man of great charisma but little in the way of scruples. Yet, he’s not two-dimensional; he is also capable of great compassion, even if it comes with an asterisk.
While Brody dominates The Brutalist as Laszlo toils for his place in post-war America, with the wounds of the holocaust driving him towards self-destruction through a horrible heroin habit, he has an amazing foil in this movie. Felicity Jones plays Laszlo’s wife, Erzsébet, who finally rejoins them (with their mute niece – played by Raffey Cassidy- in tow) after many years. While physically weak, with her wheelchair-bound, she’s portrayed as a woman of great intellectual and mental strength. She only shows up in the film’s second half (after its intermission), but she has a few of the film’s most arresting moments.
Corbet, who wrote the movie with his partner Mona Fastvold (an accomplished filmmaker in her own right), does an excellent job crafting an allegorical tale that can be applied to anyone who’s ever struggled to overcome personal trauma by creating meaningful work. Technically, this is impeccable, with cinematography by Lol Crawley that makes the most of the 70mm format and the locations filmed in Pennsylvania, Budapest, Italy and more. Truly, this is a sprawling work.
The Brutalist was the toast of the Venice Film Festival and is already taking TIFF by storm. If it comes out this year and it’s given a proper push, it would be reasonable to expect it to be a major Oscar contender in most categories, with acting nods a no-brainer for Brody, Pearce and Jones. However, it also demands to be seen theatrically, as more than any movie since Oppenheimer, it’s been designed to be enjoyed as a cinematic event – and those belong on the big screen. Hopefully, audiences can see it how intended, as this is pretty close to being a masterpiece.
I’m gonna give you to the count of ten to get your ugly, yella, no-good keister into a theater with Macaulay Culkin. Sure, it’s barely after Labor Day but that means it’s basically Halloween. And if Halloween is around the corner then it’s only a matter of time before Christmas decorations are on shelves. With that, it’s fair game to start thinking about our favorite holiday movies. (Look, I don’t make the rules here – I’m barely finished putting up my Killer Klowns animatronics.) And so, this holiday season, Culkin is headed to the road with his most famous movie, Home Alone, sitting in for a special screening and audience Q&A.
The event – hosted by Standing Ovations Live – is titled “A Nostalgic Night with Macaulay Culkin”, with the Home Alone star sitting down to give fans insight into his on-set experiences and share some of his favorite behind-the-scenes stories. Those who pay a premium price – which could run you around $250 per ticket – will be treated to a post-screening photo op with Culkin. Something tells us you can get him to do that face…
The tour will find Macaulay Culkin sitting in for the Home Alone screening 14 times, which is about the average that most people should be watching it every year. The tour kicks off in Buffalo on November 30th and concludes on December 15th in Medford, Massachusetts, with other stops including Indianapolis, Detroit, Newark, and more. Presale for tickets is Monday, September 9th, with general sale happening on September 13th.
While this does sound like a fun night, it would have been even cooler to have more of the Home Alone cast than just Macaulay Culkin. How great would it be to also have Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern pop in, maybe even have Harry bite off those fingers like he promised? It would bring an even more heartwarming touch if Catherine O’Hara – who Culkin still keeps in touch with – turned up for an appearance. With such a good reception from part of the Christmas Vacation cast reuniting, at least one other cast member taking the stage would be more than welcome.
Where does Home Alone rank in your favorite holiday movies? Keep the change and let us know below!
It may be Saturday, but it’s possible your week’s work has just begun. Sure, Fortnite dropped its Week 3 quests for Absolute Doom days ago, but you got a little busy, and now you’ve got some catching up to do. If Robert Downey Jr. has taught us anything, though, it’s that it’s never too late to return to Marvel.
It may be Saturday, but it’s possible your week’s work has just begun. Sure, Fortnite dropped its Week 3 quests for Absolute Doom days ago, but you got a little busy, and now you’ve got some catching up to do. If Robert Downey Jr. has taught us anything, though, it’s that it’s never too late to return to Marvel.
As a filmmaker, knowing the right balance to tell the perfect cinematic story can be challenging. While on set, you film everything you think you’ll need to create a great film, but when you hit the editing bay, you realize that some stuff may not work. Scenes that add different aspects may end up on the cutting room floor. Not all of them actually take away from the film, but they add some more layers to it that add a lot. It could be a case of budget or just for time, but some things need to be chopped. What are some deleted scenes that changed the movie?
Fans fell in love with everyone’s favorite anti-authority high schooler when the film hit the big screen. As the secretary says, “He’s a righteous dude.” The big key was keeping the viewer on his side the entire runtime of the film. We can all understand wanting a day of adventure in the big city. Go to a game, see some art, eat at an expensive restaurant. Yes, to all of this. Ever wonder how they could afford to do all of these things?
In a deleted scene from the film, we see Ferris talking to his dad on the phone while he is at work. He gets his dad to mention where his bonds are kept in his home office. With this information, we see Ferris stealing them to help fund his day trip into the city. The filmmakers decided that it would turn the audience against Ferris. While he spends the entire movie sticking to obnoxious authority figures, stealing from his own parents would have given the audience a different idea of our fun-loving hero.
Most fans of the Alien franchise already know that Ripley had a daughter, but no one knew back in 1986. What is deemed an important motivational scene was deleted from the theatrical cut of Aliens, where we learn that while Ripley was floating around in space for 80 years, her 10-year-old daughter grew up and died. It ended up being cut for time and James Cameron has said that Weaver was not happy about it. She says she based her entire performance around the fact that Ripley had missed out on her daughter’s entire life because of the company’s insistence on capturing a xenomorph.
This is very present in her bond with Newt throughout their time running from the deadly life forms. She can save this little girl since she wasn’t there for her own daughter. It also adds a deeper connection between her and the Xenomorph Queen. Both are mothers. Both will do anything to protect their children. Adopted or not. All of this is on screen anyway, but this one scene really adds so many more layers to it. Ripley’s daughter would show up as the main character in the fantastic video game Alien: Isolation. While on a space station looking for clues to her mother’s whereabouts, another killing machine is let loose. The goal isn’t to win, but just to survive.
While someone could say this doesn’t drastically change the outcome of the movie, this deleted scene will make the viewer completely re-evaluate a character throughout the entire trilogy. That’s no small feat. In a deleted scene we see that Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen is a thorn in the side of Marshall Strickland. After a slight confrontation, Tannen shoots Marshall in the back in front of his young son. As he dies in his son’s arms, he tells him to always remember the word discipline. This would be passed down to his son, who would become the principal of Hill Valley High School. No wonder Strickland didn’t seem to like Biff Tannen all that much.
Alternate endings are their own kind of scenes. Obviously, ending the movie differently will completely change a movie. The stark difference between ending the movie on a down note and a more upbeat ending can be as simple as one small cut. Kevin Smith built his entire empire on the 1994 film Clerks, and the ending originally would have put the brakes on any future plans at The Quick Stop.
Originally the movie ended with Dante and Randal mending their friendship as the store closed. Dante stuck around to finish up and a robber came in to empty the register. Dante is shot and left bleeding behind the counter. Once the movie was picked up, it was suggested that he end the movie with Randal throwing the open sign in at Dante proclaiming, “You’re closed,” which is really the perfect way to end the day from hell for our main character. A jaunty song gives the close of the film the good feeling you need as the credits roll.
This slasher made it so you weren’t even safe in your sleep. Somehow, the story of a child killer would rocket Freddy Kruger to a pop culture icon, and we’d see kids dressed up as him for Halloween. Did we forget he was a child killer and implied sexual predator? Well, one scene in the film made things a lot more personal for Nancy and Freddy.
We already see that her parent’s marriage fell apart because of the secrets that they kept, but if a deleted scene was kept, we’d know there was a lot more to all of it. When Nancy’s mom shows her that she still has Freddy’s glove in their furnace, originally, this is where we would have learned that Nancy used to have a brother. She was little when it happened, so she forgot, but her older brother was killed by Freddy. Now things suddenly jump into focus.
Nancy’s dad is a cop. The explanation is that a cop screwed up, and Freddy got off due to a loophole. Does Nancy’s mom blame her father for the screw-up? Possibly. They were never able to move past it, and the death of their firstborn just destroyed their marriage. It’s suddenly very personal. Freddy didn’t just give her nightmares, he took her entire family away from her. She was already upset that her friends were dying. Now she sees he has ruined her entire life.
The third installment in George Lucas’ Star Wars trilogy seemed to wrap up all the storylines we had been seeing since the 1977 original film. One thread that was kind of left hanging is why Obi-Wan never told Luke that Darth Vader was his father. Since then, it has been explored many times over, but we almost found out way earlier.
In a deleted scene, Yoda reveals before his death that Obi-Wan actually wanted to tell Luke much sooner. Maybe even before the original film took place. Yoda instructed him not to. New Star Wars material shows that the Jedi may not have been as pure as we originally thought. Back in Return Of The Jedi, it is possible they were trying not to tarnish their reputation. Taking this out leaves Yoda as a wise Jedi master rather than someone who manipulates situations to keep questions from being asked.
Somehow, a Roger Corman B-Movie became a smash stage musical, and a theatrical film was quickly to follow. When fans went and saw the movie, they learned it had a drastically different ending. We see Seymour defeat Audrey II, and he ends up happily married to the original Audrey. We do get a quick wink that not everything is as cleaned up as we thought when we see a new plant in front of their house.
In the film, they originally planned to show something more akin to how the stage play ends. The plants win! The original Audrey dies and is fed to her plant successor. Seymour allows himself to be eaten out of guilt. Then, we are shown a wild montage of a bunch of plants running amok through New York as they have grown to kaiju size. Humans are doomed and the last image is a plant bursting through the movie screen towards the audience.
When the original Lord Of The Rings trilogy was released in theaters, it was a spectacle to behold. Peter Jackson brought pure magic to the screen and brought the books to life. While much of what was shown was from Tolkien’s books, a few things were invented for the films. Most of them didn’t detract too much from their source material, but one altered scene bothered the director, so it was digitally changed in post-production.
Aragorn was originally going to have a sword fight with the physical manifestation of Sauron in the final battle. As Gandalf and the army he has assembled battle the forces of Sauron, he appears in physical form only for Aragorn to attempt to slay him. In the end, the director felt this detracted too much from the true name of the quest, so he altered it, and instead, Aragorn now fights a large troll. Probably smart to keep Sauron more of an overseeing presence.
The third adaptation of the book I Am Legend by Richard Matheson had a few different endings they tried out. The one that actually got closer to the idea of the book but was still pretty different had Smith’s character finally seeing the enemy’s point of view. When the creatures raid his home, he finally realizes they are there to save the female creature he had been running experiments on. He sees that in their eyes, he is the monster that has been kidnapping and experimenting on them.
Welcome to the weekend, puzzlers! And welcome to that long stretch between Labor Day and Thanksgiving, when holidays are few and far between. We’re counting down the weeks to Indigenous Peoples’ Day and, of course, Halloween (if only we got the day off for that one). Speaking of Halloween, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is…
Welcome to the weekend, puzzlers! And welcome to that long stretch between Labor Day and Thanksgiving, when holidays are few and far between. We’re counting down the weeks to Indigenous Peoples’ Day and, of course, Halloween (if only we got the day off for that one). Speaking of Halloween, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is…
