Final Fantasy XVI is finally out on PC today, but it’s PlayStation 5 where some players are facing unexpected issues so far. A new firmware update for the console appears to have severely broken something related to the game’s performance mode, with players reporting giant, screen-tearing glitches while exploring its…
Next weekend, a number of big-name publishers will be attending Tokyo Game Show 2024. The annual event will showcase a host of previously announced and new games to fans. To give everybody a chance to enjoy some of the celebrations, several of the publishers making announcements at TGS are also holding sales on Steam.…
Next weekend, a number of big-name publishers will be attending Tokyo Game Show 2024. The annual event will showcase a host of previously announced and new games to fans. To give everybody a chance to enjoy some of the celebrations, several of the publishers making announcements at TGS are also holding sales on Steam.…
When the character Riri Williams (played by Dominique Thorne) made her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut back in 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the idea was that we’d be seeing the character again the following year in her own six-episode Disney+ show Ironheart… but 2023 came and went without Ironheart, and the show still doesn’t have an official premiere date. It is expected to come along sometime in 2025, and a trailer was recently shown at the D23 event. It will be a while before we get to see the show’s characters in action, but during a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, cast member Anthony Ramos (In the Heights, Twisters) took a moment to talk about the character he plays in the series: Parker Robbins, a.k.a. The Hood.
Ramos said, “I saw a trailer at D23. We walked onstage, and they played this new trailer of Ironheart, and it was my first time seeing it. And I’m not gonna lie, just as a fan, I was like, ‘Yo, this is crazy. If this show is half as good as this trailer, we in the mix.’ Dominique Thorne is incredible. She plays this genius, and she creates this new suit out of basically just spare parts. In her genius way, she creates this state-of-the-art, beautiful, high-tech suit. She becomes Ironheart. I get to play this villain, The Hood, and Parker Robbins in the comics, he gets this hood, and it’s too powerful for him. It’s overwhelming, and it starts to damage his body. You can see it on the outside, and you can see how it’s even affecting him on the inside and his personality and how it’s actually, literally, physically and mentally and emotionally breaking him, but it’s giving him so much power that he’s addicted. He’s like, ‘I can’t let it go.’ It becomes this weapon to seek vengeance, and for him, he’s starting off small, and he’s stealing in the comics, and then gradually it grows. It grows and grows and grows, and just like his power, I think, it becomes a little overwhelming for him. But I’m excited. I’m excited for y’all to see what we did with this character and just the art department, and our visual effects team and special effects makeup, too. Jonah [Levy] and his whole team, they were amazing with the tattoos and the scars. They really did a crazy job.“
As mentioned, Dominique Thorne stars in Ironheart as Riri Williams, “a genius inventor who creates the most advanced suit of armor since Iron Man.” Thorne and Ramos are joined in the cast by Manny Montana, Shakira Barrera, Alden Ehrenreich, Regan Aliyah, Shea Couleé, Zoe Terakes, Lyric Ross, Matthew Elam, Anji White, Jim Rash, Harper Anthony, Sonia Denis, Rashida “Sheedz” Olayiwola, Paul Calderón, and Cree Summer. We’ve also heard that Sacha Baron Cohen was in talks to play Mephisto.
Chinaka Hodge, whose previous credits include Snowpiercer and The Midnight Club, is the head writer on the series. Sam Bailey and Angela Barnes direct the episodes. Ryan Coogler, who was behind the Black Panther movies, is an executive producer on the show.
As for why Ironheart is taking so long to make its way out into the world, that is entirely due to the decision to take more time between the releases of Marvel movies and shows. Marvel Studios’ Head of Streaming, Television, and Animation Brad Winderbaum told Agents of Fandom, “Frankly, in all honesty, there was a mandate to kind of create as much as we could for Disney+ as quickly as we could. And then, there was a shift, and all of a sudden, we have to start spreading our release dates out. So, that really accounts for a lot of the delays.“
Are you looking forward to seeing Anthony Ramos play The Hood on Ironheart? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
The post Ironheart: Anthony Ramos on playing the Marvel character The Hood appeared first on JoBlo.
Entertainment Weekly continues its preview of fall releases, and it has recently looked at the upcoming acclaimed Jesse Eisenberg film A Real Pain. The film is directed by Eisenberg and stars him and Succession star Kieran Culkin. The plot synopsis reads, “Mismatched cousins David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the odd-couple’s old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history.” Their family history involves their grandmother’s survival of the Holocaust.
While the plot elements of A Real Pain are heavy, Eisenberg and Culkin talk about how they were able to make a dark comedy from the subject matter. Eisenberg would proclaim, “I became interested in that topic and thinking about the privilege versus trauma and how people like me walk around feeling bad for themselves over petty things when I actually know for a fact that my family suffered existential trauma, and just trying to reconcile how to think about that. So I’ve been thinking about it and writing stuff around this topic for a long time. And then the movie came. I also have a certain taste in World War II movies about Jews, and I guess this movie was also staking a claim on what the tone could be…that you can have an irreverent tone of a movie while still maintaining reverence for the subject.”
The writer-director-star also stated that his ace up his sleeve with finding the balance of the tone was Culkin’s casting. He explained, “The movie really lives or dies on that character. It’s funny, when I was going through actors and Kieran was immediately recommended to me, my first thought was, ‘Wait, does he do comedy or drama?’ And that for me is the answer — that this person can be so funny, but you don’t know them as a comic…. That’s what Kieran brought to it; it’s exactly the tone that I wanted. It can swing from lowbrow comedy to highbrow philosophical discussions in the same scene. Kieran just naturally is able to do that because he’s super smart and he’s super funny, but he has so much feeling inside.”
Culkin admits he was curious about Eisenberg wearing so many hats for this film, “I thought he wrote a brilliant script — I didn’t know he was a great writer. I like him as an actor. So [I thought,] let’s see how he is as a director.” He added later, “A lot of times, for better or for worse, you end up with a director that’s completely in charge of every tiny little aspect of things — which has its upsides and downsides sometimes, depending on the personality — and then there’s also the directors [who make you question,] ‘Who the hell’s in charge here?’” Culkin says dryly, “He wasn’t either of those. He found the balance between the two.”
The post A Real Pain stars Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin talk about finding humor in tragedy appeared first on JoBlo.
The new Infernal Hordes in Diablo 4 are fun, to say the least, but to engage in hellish and intense combat with these hordes, you will need an Infernal Compass. In this guide, we will discuss how to farm Infernal Compasses and Abyssal Scrolls to enter hell and bring the heat against the Infernal Hordes.
The new Infernal Hordes in Diablo 4 are fun, to say the least, but to engage in hellish and intense combat with these hordes, you will need an Infernal Compass. In this guide, we will discuss how to farm Infernal Compasses and Abyssal Scrolls to enter hell and bring the heat against the Infernal Hordes.
Cuckoo, a horror film from writer/director Tilman Singer that stars Hunter Schafer (Euphoria), Dan Stevens (The Guest), Jessica Henwick (Love and Monsters), Marton Csókás (Freelance), Greta Fernández (Santo), and Jan Bluthardt (Tatort), was given a theatrical release on August 9th. One month later, it has now received a digital release and can be found on Amazon’s Prime Video, where it’s available to rent for $9.99 or purchase for $19.99.
JoBlo’s own Tyler Nichols gave Cuckoo an 8/10 review you can read at THIS LINK, and we have interviews with the lead actors HERE.
The film has the following official synopsis: Reluctantly, 17-year-old Gretchen leaves her American home to live with her father, who has just moved into a resort in the German Alps with his new family. Arriving at their future residence, they are greeted by Mr. König, her father’s boss, who takes an inexplicable interest in Gretchen’s mute half-sister Alma. Something doesn’t seem right in this tranquil vacation paradise. Gretchen is plagued by strange noises and bloody visions until she discovers a shocking secret that also concerns her own family. A while back, Variety revealed that the film sees Schafer face off against a mysterious bird-like monster with a scream-like call who seeks to impregnate women with her evil spawn. The story, written by Singer, is based off the lore of the cuckoo bird, some of which are brood parasites, meaning they lay their eggs in the nests of other species.
This is the second feature for Singer, following the 2018 supernatural horror film Luz, which Bluthardt had a role in. Luz told the story of “a young cab driver fleeing from the grasp of a possessed woman, whose confession could endanger the lives of everyone who crosses her path.” Several of Singer’s Luz collaborators joined him on Cuckoo. In addition to Bluthardt, also returning from Luz were cinematographer Paul Faltz, composer Simon Waskow, and production designer Dario Mendez Acosta.
Cuckoo was financed by Neon. The film was produced by Markus Halberschmidt, Josh Rosenbaum, Maria Tsigka, Ken Kao, Thor Bradwell, Ben Rimmer, in a cooperation between Germany’s Fiction Park and the States’ Waypoint Entertainment. It’s executive produced by Tom Quinn, Jeff Deutchman, Emily Thomas, and Ryan Friscia for Neon. Additional funding came from the Film und Medien Stiftung NRW, HessenFilm, and the German Federal Film Fund.
Will you be watching Cuckoo now that it has been given a digital release? Let us know by leaving a comment below – and if you caught the movie during its theatrical run, let us know what you thought of it!
The post Cuckoo: Hunter Schafer, Dan Stevens horror film has been given a digital release appeared first on JoBlo.
Gremlins may have stopped at only 2 movies and a recent animated TV show, but a lot of its imitators went on to make a killing in the sequel market. Sure, we had one offs like Munchies from Roger Corman and Goobers from the mind of Charles Band which should have rightfully stayed one and done but others wanted in on that franchise action. The Gate would have 2 entries as would Hobgoblins. Troll would get a few sequels, kinda, if you want to go down the rabbit hole of strange Italian sequels in name only that are just called that to capitalize on the profits of other movies and Ghoulies would somehow, miraculously, get 4 films although if I’m being honest, I actually enjoy watching that series. Critters also had 4 (initially) but has a much stronger legacy in terms of enjoyment and interesting background including the fact that even though it came out after Gremlins, the first Critters may have been in various stages of production before and during the making of Gremlins. While 1 is a classic and 2 is one of the few Easter horrors flicks I like to put it on yearly, where does that leave the other two? Part 4 sends the critters, like most of the slasher villains of our time, into space but 3 is a forgotten and mostly maligned entry into a series that mostly holds up. It’s a black sheep if I ever saw one and today it gets its due.
While you can find it easily as one of the 4 Blu-rays included in Scream Factory’s wonderful box set, its original release was in the burgeoning age of home video. Specifically, it was released in the first year of New Line Cinema’s home label being created. New Line Home Entertainment was created in May of 1991 when they decided to release their movies on their own brand after having multiple other companies do their work for them. While they certainly received money for selling the release rights, this allowed them to keep all of the profit and also gave them the idea to look into their catalogue for movies that could get more sequels that maybe weren’t good enough for the big screen but surely ok to go straight to video both for purchase and renting. The first movie made a solid 13 million on its 3-million-dollar budget but part 2 was a certified bomb. Critters 2 got an extra million for its budget but only brought in 3.8 at the box office.
Critters 3 and 4 were actually shot at the same time to capitalize on budget and crew. Critters 3 has the distinction of coming out that first year of New Line Home Entertainment’s life and while I don’t have any revenue numbers, home video was a big deal at the time and Critters was still a name brand. Not an overly impressive one anymore but a name all the same. The director chosen for the project was Kristine Peterson who only had two features to her name before this in Deadly Dreams and Body Chemistry but also would be assistant director on stuff like Tremors, Chopping Mall, and Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child. The story for the film would be developed by producers Rupert Harvey and Barry Opper while the actual screenplay was done by David J Schow. Schow, we have talked about before with his contributions to the Texas Chainsaw franchise and The Crow.
Critters 3 (watch it HERE) has some fun in front of the camera folks too and that probably has to start with Leonardo DiCaprio as one of the leads in his first movie. I think a lot of us go with Johnny Depp in the first Nightmare movie or Jennifer Anniston putting in the work for Leprechaun, but DiCaprio is definitely right there. As you can guess, he hates it, referring to it only when mentioning that all actors make crap from time to time. He would only show up in horror one other time in the horror adjacent Shutter Island. Aimee Brooks, John Calvin, Jeffery Blake, Dianna Bellamy, Bill Zuckert, and Nina Axelrod are all recognizable faces who have done other things in and out of the horror realm. The only carry over from the other films, or at least main one because Ug appears literally during the credits, is Don Keith Opper who has appeared in other TV and movies but really has the distinction of being the only actor to appear in all of the original Critters movies. For better and for worse.
Critters 3 is certainly a forgotten film whether you are talking about within the context of its own series or in general. I get why as the first movie had the small farm location and being the first movie in the series while the second movie expanded to the whole town and the 4th movie went to space, as one does. Part 3 tried to almost remake the first movie with its small setting being duplicated here but transported to a building rather than a farm. It has a similar character dynamic and even copies the fact that there are only two deaths and some characters being poisoned by the Crites thorn darts. I say Crites at least once because I know that’s what they are called even though I grew up calling them Critters and still refer to them that way. The movie doesn’t stand out traditionally even with it being Leo’s movie debut.
One of the things I do love about this movie is that the Chiodo brothers and really family worked on it. From being credited for characters and consulting on the movie to doing the special effects of the little garbage disposal fuzz balls, having them on is a win regardless of how the movie turned out. The creatures still look and act similarly to the previous two movies and even though some of the charm and humor is gone, this isn’t a case of the main draw of the film betraying its source material. The movie does use one of the more common straight to video and sequel tropes though with a character explaining the events of what happened prior while clips of the first two films play in the background. It’s not as egregious as Silent Night Deadly Night 2 where that is 40% of the finished product but it does feel a little lazy.
The movie opens with a family of three moving to a city before getting a flat tire right near a rest stop. We are introduced to pretty much everyone here and their violently 90s wardrobe before Charlie warns a group of kids and us about both a corrupt landlord, who happens to be Leo’s character’s stepdad, and the Critters. We get our previously mentioned flashback before seeing that there are fresh eggs under our new family’s car. We get to the apartment that looks like it could be one of the mazes at universal studios and eventually we get our first kill. It’s set up really well and feels exactly as it should. While there isn’t as much blood as you might hope, it gets the job done. It’s a perfect example of why this movie is worth your time as it’s workman like in every aspect. The characters that die are a holes and the rest of the cast is full of quirky and likeable ones that we hope make it out alive.
The Critters are fun to watch regardless of if it’s a close up of their disgusting and well detailed face or a shot of them rolling to attack someone. They look more believable than Leo playing on his Gameboy in the car at night without the mega light you could purchase to go with it. That’s just plain ridiculous. The movie really picks up when it turns into a siege movie of sorts where the human characters have to keep moving up the apartment building while some of them get poisoned by the quills getting shot at them. The power also goes out and we get a flair lit scene that tries it’s hardest to be something out of Aliens. Leo’s character Josh gets so fed up with his stepfather that he locks him in a room to eventually be the films second and final casualty. I don’t mean that as a knock on the movie either, there is enough tension that we may see nearly any of these characters go at any time.
The remaining characters make it to the very top of the building while the critters eat their way through the rest of the rooms. The adults end up stuck or unable to help while the kids have to put in the extra effort to find a way out before Charlie makes his way back into the movie with all of his gear. With less than 20 minutes to go we get to see some exploding critters that is funny, satisfying, and a good boost of action for the end of the movie. Charlie’s gun malfunctions and the building is mostly on fire before the Critters are reduced to 1 remaining. Charlie is able to help kill it while avoiding death and saving the youngest kid character and the rest of the movie is wrapped up with friendships, burgeoning relationships, and one of the earliest examples of mid and post credits scenes I can remember. This movie also leads directly into part 4 and it’s nice to see a horror series do that let alone a direct to video one.
Critters 3 knows exactly what it is and while I could absolutely see parts be changed or cut out, it’s not the dud its reputation makes it out to be. It’s a fun pairing either with just part 4 or if you are going to run the series and there’s nothing here that your younger, human critters can’t see if they are starting their journey into horror. It was long overdue that we gave this little movie a shout out and it has an important history in both its casting and release. The Critters series should have been left alone after part 4 but we would unfortunately, decades later, get another movie and a TV show that both failed to recapture the magic of the original run. Magic that might I add is wholly present in this maligned third entry. Critters 3 is a fun sci-fi horror flick that is exactly what you think it is, the black sheep of a famous series that deserves much more than it gets.
A couple of the previous episodes of The Black Sheep can be seen at the bottom of this article. To see more, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
The post Critters 3 (1991) Revisited – Horror Movie Review appeared first on JoBlo.
A Minecraft Movie revealed itself to the world earlier this month with actor Jason Momoa in a bubble gum leather jacket and a trailer that looked pretty bad. New gossip from the set of the movie also suggests there were some toxic moments lurking beneath the vibrant green screens.