Stephen Belber wrote his story Tape as a play back in 1999, so it was always intended to get multiple interpretations over the years, with productions that would take place in different locations, with different casts and directors. Productions of Tape have been performed in Louisville, Kentucky; New York City; Dublin, Ireland; London, England; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Williamstown, Massachusetts; Buxton, England; Orlando, Florida; Alexandria, Minnesota; and Tehran, Iran, among other places. In 2001, Richard Linklater directed a film adaptation of the story that starred Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, and Uma Thurman. And now, Variety reports that Tape has gotten a Hong Kong reimagining. A trailer can be seen in the embed above.

Directed by banker turned film producer and director Bizhan Tong (Forensic Psychologist), the new cinematic take on Tape stars Kenny Kwan (The Legend of Luzhen), Selena Lee (Queen of News), and Adam Pak (A Guilty Conscience). The story explores the fallout from a traumatic event at a high school graduation party, forcing the three former friends to confront their past in a story that delves into themes of power, manipulation, and the subjective nature of truth. The remake transposes the story from the U.S. to Hong Kong, a region that has yet to fully reckon with the #MeToo movement, while adapting to today’s technology-dependent age. Traditionally, Tape centers entirely on three people talking in a hotel room, but the trailer for Bizhan Tong’s film reveals that this one goes outside of the hotel room. Tong, Lee, and Bonnie Lo wrote the Hong Kong adaptation of Belber’s story.

Tong and Lee produced the film, with Belber serving as an executive producer alongside John Sloss, Jaeson Ma, Kris Eiamsakulrat, Tenten Wei, and Andy Wang. Tong provided the following statement: “Bringing Tape to a Hong Kong setting has allowed us to explore a cultural dimension rarely touched upon in Asian cinema. The themes of the original resonate even more deeply in today’s context, and I’m excited to share this reimagined version with audiences around the world, in a further attempt to bridge East and West and support Hong Kong film.“

Variety notes that Beijing Sita Digital Technology has acquired the distribution rights for the film in China, and international sales are being handled by EST N8. Pre-release theatrical screenings will begin in Hong Kong on November 16th.

Richard Linklater’s Tape will always have a special place in my heart, because it was one of a group of films that I was watching on repeat during the weeks building up to my high school graduation, an event that happened long ago (the other movies in the rotation being Mission: Impossible, Mission: Impossible II, Vanilla Sky, and Linklater’s Waking Life). That movie is the only production of Belber’s story I have ever seen, but I’m interested in watching the Hong Kong reimagining.

Are you interested in seeing a Hong Kong reimagining of Tape? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

The post Richard Linklater’s Tape gets a Hong Kong reimagining appeared first on JoBlo.

PLOT: When Anne and Patrick hail a black cab after a night out their driver is chatty, jovial even, but they are in no mood to talk. In fact, the couple is barely on speaking terms. That is, until they realize the driver has no intention of taking them home. Locked in the cab with no means of escape, the driver transports the couple to a stretch of deserted and supposedly haunted road. But what is his purpose? Is he mad or just plain evil? And why has he selected Anne and Patrick as his victims?

REVIEW: Most of us have had a less-than-enjoyable ride in a cab or an Uber. At least with rideshares, you can tell if the driver has been a creep or not, while a taxi is a complete crapshoot. Jumping into a cab, we generally trust that we are safe, but everyone knows someone who has a horror story about a nightmare ride. The new film Black Cab takes that idea and twists it for an unconventional ghost story involving a nameless driver and a young couple stuck in the backseat for a terrifying journey. With a rare dramatic performance from Nick Frost, Black Cab may not be nearly as scary as it could have been, but the lead role of the Shaun of the Dead actor makes up for the film’s shortcomings. With a brisk running time and some tricks up its sleeve, Black Cab is worth checking out.

Black Cab opens with Anne (Synnove Karlsen) and Patrick (Luke Norris) leaving a get-together with friends, and they reveal that they have recently gotten back together. The group’s mixed feelings at hearing the news throw a wrench in the shared ride home that they take in a typical British black cab. Driven by an unnamed but jovial driver (Nick Frost), the cab begins its commute with Anne and Patrick bickering about their reunion as a couple. The driver tries to lighten the mood by chatting up the young passengers, with Anne being quietly nice and Patrick acting like the worst fare. Rather quickly, the ride escalates as the couple’s argument shifts toward the driver, who makes repeated insults towards Patrick and several detours along the way. When they make one particular stop, things turn for the worse.

At first, Black Cab has the hallmarks of countless horror films about kidnappings and maniacs who take advantage of unsuspecting civilians. Echoing elements of The Hitcher and even The Vanishing, Black Cab starts out as an unsettlingly realistic thriller about what could happen if you set foot in an average taxi cab. Nick Frost’s performance begins with his sense of humor, making the driver seem like an average guy behind the wheel, making either groanworthy comments in their dad-jokiness or slightly off from what you would expect in a normal conversation. Frost does a great job of shifting his demeanor from awkward to friendly and suddenly to sinister and menacing without missing a beat, giving the driver an air of psychopathy that makes it difficult to know if he is crazy or just incredibly calculating. That is until the film shifts into the final act.

Without giving away the reveal/twist as to why the driver has taken Anne and Patrick hostage, I will say that it did not completely work for me. It does help shift your perspective as to why the driver does what he does, but it also changes the dynamic of what kind of a movie Black Cab is. The sequences outside of the cab offer a nice change of pace, but I was hopeful that Black Cab would mimic the single-location conceit of Steven Knight’s Locke rather than follow a more conventional genre route. Even so, the beats that Black Cab hits as it presses through the third act towards the ending did not entirely work for me outside of Nick Frost’s performance. By playing the driver as an everyman, Frost imbues elements of his physicality that could have you underestimate that this cabbie is capable of what he does over the course of the film, but without Frost’s charisma and presence, I don’t think this movie would have worked at all.

Written by Virgina Gilbert, Black Cab does boast some script work from Nick Frost himself. The nature of Frost’s character required his input, as I cannot imagine the role would have worked as well without his involvement in the dialogue. Gilbert has scripted and directed several films heavy in character drama rather than the supernatural. Still, director Bruce Goodison invests his visual style and approach to Black Cab in the tried and true of the genre. From jumpscares to the dimly lit sets, Goodison mines tropes from countless horror movies that came before it, which detracts a bit from the originality of what Nick Frost’s character brings to the tale. It is not a terrible horror film, but it certainly does not innovate much in the genre.

Black Cab would have been a forgettable horror movie without Nick Frost’s lead performance. As an unhinged driver with a supernatural mission, Black Cab is the actor’s third horror film of the year and one of the better performances of his career. When a film entirely hinges on a single performance, you know that there is something special about it. Nick Frost may be most associated with the lighter and more humorous genre outings in his filmography, but Black Cab proves that he is more than up to the task of playing dead serious dramatic roles. This is not a terrible movie or a great one, but Nick Frost makes it destination viewing with a charismatic and creepy lead performance.

Black Cab begins streaming on November 8th on Shudder.

Black Cab

AVERAGE

6

The post Black Cab Review: Nick Frost plays a creepy taxi driver in this ghostly tale appeared first on JoBlo.

Resident Evil star Milla Jovovich may have moved on from that franchise, but she stays busy. We’ll soon be seeing her face off with Dave Bautista in her husband Paul W.S. Anderson’s fantasy film In the Lost Lands (a George R. R. Martin adaptation), we recently heard she’ll be working with Rosario Dawson and Alexandra Shipp on the action thriller Midnight, she’s gearing up to work with director Brad Anderson on both the sci-fi film World Breaker and the zombie movie Twilight of the Dead (based on an idea by the late, great George A. Romero), and now The Hollywood Reporter has broken the news that she’s set to star in the Taken-esque action thriller Protector.

Adrian Grunberg, whose credits include Rambo: Last Blood, Get the Gringo, and The Black Demon, will be directing Protector from a screenplay by Bong-Seeb Mun. Filming is expected to take place in New Mexico this winter.

Jovovich will be taking on the role of Nikki, a former war hero who believed she had left her violent past behind to raise her daughter, Chloe, in peace. When she wakes up in an abandoned factory and learns that Chloe has been kidnapped, Nikki has navigate the city’s criminal underworld, pursued by both the cops and the military, to get her daughter back. The names of the other cast members have not yet been announced.

Bong-Seeb Mun is producing Protector alongside Kenneth Kim and Bang-Ok Joo for Aanaxion Studio. Arianne Fraser and Delphine Perrier of Highland Film Group are also producers on the film, and so is martial artist and stunt coordinator Ho-Sung Pak. Highland Film Group is co-financing the project and will handle worldwide rights. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Protector is one of a slew of action projects heading to the American Film Market this week, “as producers double down on a return to shoot-’em-up thrillers.” And a return to shoot-’em-up thrillers sounds like a great thing to me.

Are you a Milla Jovovich fan, and are you glad to hear that she’ll be working with director Adrian Grunberg on the action thriller Protector? Share your thoughts on this project by leaving a comment below.

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With the absurd amount of content we’re inundated with in this era of streaming, I often find myself avoiding trailers when I can. This allows for films to come along and surprise me given my complete lack of expectations. I’d recommend taking this option when it comes to Cellar Door, the Jordana Brewster and Scott Speedman film that feels like it will be one thing and goes in an entirely different direction. What seems like supernatural hokeyness, turns into a more Fatal Attraction-style story of broken trust and murder. And as someone who has to watch a lot of indie horror for the job, I love those who do something a bit different.

I had an absolute blast talking with Jordana Brewster about Cellar Door. She had to be sure to give our other critic Alex Maidy some flack for his poor review of the film (thanks Alex) and under other circumstances, my soul would have probably escaped my body during that moment. But thankfully Jordana kept things light and we were able to get past it with a laugh. It helped that I actually got a kick out of the film. She gets into why her chemistry with Scott Speedman is so great, the most important element to get her to accept a role, and how she feels about the ending of the Fast and Furious franchise being right around the corner. This is a great talk that you won’t want to miss.

CELLAR DOOR PLOT: Looking for a fresh start after a miscarriage, a couple (Brewster and Speedman) find themselves being gifted the house of their dreams from a wealthy homeowner (Laurence Fishburne) with one caveat – they can never open the cellar door. Whether they can live without knowing triggers shocking consequences.

CELLAR DOOR IS PLAYING IN SELECT THEATERS AND ON DIGITAL NOVEMBER 1ST, 2024.

The post Interview: Jordana Brewster gets into all things Cellar Door! appeared first on JoBlo.

Barbarians have been a mainstay in Diablo for a long time at this point, and Diablo IV has revamped them significantly. Weapon masters of the highest order, they have a versatile set of abilities they can use to trample through enemies and carve a path to victory. As a live-service game, Diablo IV has gone through a…

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Barbarians have been a mainstay in Diablo for a long time at this point, and Diablo IV has revamped them significantly. Weapon masters of the highest order, they have a versatile set of abilities they can use to trample through enemies and carve a path to victory. As a live-service game, Diablo IV has gone through a…

Read more…

There is a way to play the PokémonTCG on your phone or tablet that is entirely free. Not “free-to-play,” but “free to leave it with your kid and not ever worry.” While it’s not the world’s best piece of software, PokémonTCG Live is an application that lets you play the full-size, 60-card deck version of the trading…

Read more…

There is a way to play the PokémonTCG on your phone or tablet that is entirely free. Not “free-to-play,” but “free to leave it with your kid and not ever worry.” While it’s not the world’s best piece of software, PokémonTCG Live is an application that lets you play the full-size, 60-card deck version of the trading…

Read more…

Recently, director Quentin Tarantino praised the much-maligned direct-to-video Bruce Willis films on his Video Archives Podcast. “I was really impressed by Bruce Willis in these movies,” he said. “I thought he was really charming in them. He’s really fun.” The director admitted that it was obvious that Willis was operating with an earpiece. “You can never have a scene where he says a line, somebody else says a line, and he says a line back,” he explained. “You’re getting one line out of him at a time, so there’s always a cut. But he’s making it work. He’s not phoning in his performances.“

When speaking of former stars who transitioned to DTV movies, Tarantino would also address Nicolas Cage’s uniquely zig-zagging career. However, he would spotlight one of Cage’s more recently acclaimed movies, Pig. Tarantino said, “In watching some of the Nic Cage stuff, the one that BLEW ME AWAY was that movie he did, Pig. That’s one of the best of the last five years. That’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in the last five years.” He continues, “He deserves to be proud of it… that guy who directed it did a killer job. He did a really, really terrific job. One of the things that’s great about it, especially after watching all the ‘revenge-o-matics’ we’ve seen, the movie sets it up like all the revenge-o-matics Nic Cage seems to have done in the last five years…this sets itself up to be that only to decidedly not go down that road in the most creative way possible.”

The outspoken auteur has been giving his impressions on many subjects recently, including why he refuses to watch the Denis Villeneuve Dune films and the FX series Shōgun. His other recent takes involve praising the not-so-well-received Joker: Folie à Deux. He explained, “I’m just nihilistic enough to kind of enjoy a movie that doesn’t quite work as a movie.” Then, he continued. “That’s like a big, giant mess to some degree. And I didn’t find it an intellectual exercise. I really got caught up into it. I really liked the musical sequences. I got really caught up. I thought the more banal the songs were, the better they were.”

The post Quentin Tarantino praises the Nicolas Cage film, Pig, for subverting the revenge genre appeared first on JoBlo.

When Red Dead Redemption launched initially on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, I was still in my senior year of high school. I didn’t have much time to complete such a monumental open-world adventure. So, despite spending countless hours exploring the Wild West, RDR fell on the back burner until the following summer, when…

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