PLOT: A 19th-century widow has to make an impossible choice when, during an especially cruel winter, a foreign ship sinks off the coast of her Icelandic fishing village.
REVIEW: There’s something about a period piece that lends itself to a dreadful atmosphere. Maybe it’s the harsh time period itself, which carries within it such tragedies and misfortune. Death was a constant presence. But there’s also so much room for metaphor and beautiful imagery, making it an ideal candidate for emotionally resonant stories. Especially within the horror genre. And The Damned fully utilizes its time period and setting to deliver a story that resonates even in modern times.
Odessa Young stars as Eva, the widow who owns the primary ship for a fishing village. They’ve had a particularly cruel winter, and their food supplies are growing smaller and smaller. She’s faced with some difficult choices. When a ship sinks in their bay, they’re faced with the ultimate dilemma: help the sinking ship and risk the lives of everyone, or let the sailors die and allow themselves to live to see another die. After the decision is made, they find their village meeting misfortune after misfortune. The Damned asks the question: what will you do to survive, and will you still recognize yourself when the dust is settled?
The entire cast feels absolutely exhausted at all times and it really adds to this harsh and cruel environment. Young has the most showy role, getting to stew in dark moments. Her eyes are so expressive that she’s able to convey a lot with very little dialogue. I appreciated how valued she was in the village and not just cast to the side once her husband passed. Rory McCann‘s role in Game of Thrones as The Hound pretty much set him up for life with period pieces and he works tremendously well here. There’s an immediate familiarity and control that he exerts over the rest of the cast.
As is often the case with period films, this is a slow burn so those seeking energetic pacing may need to look elsewhere. They really take their time, and allow the viewer to soak in the dread. Though, there are times when I have to question the logistics of some of these events. If they’re having issues with keeping fed, chances are they don’t have the resources or energy to build a bunch of coffins. Not to mention then having to bury them in the frozen ground. But it makes for a good visual and people often go against logic when it comes to traditions of death. So it never ruined the film.
The visuals are where The Damned really impresses with beautiful scenic landscapes on display. How the darkness of night contrasts with the whiteness of the snow, and how it leaves highlights on other elements make for a gorgeous look. It can be a bit dark at times but given the setting, I think that is more than appropriate. Flatter lighting would have taken away the realism of the world.
I wasn’t really sure what to think of The Damned until an intriguing third-act reveal. While I won’t go into detail, this was the final piece of the puzzle that made for a satisfying film. They play with the idea of the supernatural throughout the film, so to get a definitive answer, retexturizes the rest of the film. I’m curious as to how others will take it, as I felt that it gave the film more meaning. Okay, that’s enough being vague as hell. Ultimately, I enjoyed the dark journey that The Damned takes us on.
THE DAMNED IS IN SELECT THEATERS ON JANUARY 3RD, 2024.
PLOT: A 19th-century widow has to make an impossible choice when, during an especially cruel winter, a foreign ship sinks off the coast of her Icelandic fishing village.
REVIEW: There’s something about a period piece that lends itself to a dreadful atmosphere. Maybe it’s the harsh time period itself, which carries within it such tragedies and misfortune. Death was a constant presence. But there’s also so much room for metaphor and beautiful imagery, making it an ideal candidate for emotionally resonant stories. Especially within the horror genre. And The Damned fully utilizes its time period and setting to deliver a story that resonates even in modern times.
Odessa Young stars as Eva, the widow who owns the primary ship for a fishing village. They’ve had a particularly cruel winter, and their food supplies are growing smaller and smaller. She’s faced with some difficult choices. When a ship sinks in their bay, they’re faced with the ultimate dilemma: help the sinking ship and risk the lives of everyone, or let the sailors die and allow themselves to live to see another die. After the decision is made, they find their village meeting misfortune after misfortune. The Damned asks the question: what will you do to survive, and will you still recognize yourself when the dust is settled?
The entire cast feels absolutely exhausted at all times and it really adds to this harsh and cruel environment. Young has the most showy role, getting to stew in dark moments. Her eyes are so expressive that she’s able to convey a lot with very little dialogue. I appreciated how valued she was in the village and not just cast to the side once her husband passed. Rory McCann‘s role in Game of Thrones as The Hound pretty much set him up for life with period pieces and he works tremendously well here. There’s an immediate familiarity and control that he exerts over the rest of the cast.
As is often the case with period films, this is a slow burn so those seeking energetic pacing may need to look elsewhere. They really take their time, and allow the viewer to soak in the dread. Though, there are times when I have to question the logistics of some of these events. If they’re having issues with keeping fed, chances are they don’t have the resources or energy to build a bunch of coffins. Not to mention then having to bury them in the frozen ground. But it makes for a good visual and people often go against logic when it comes to traditions of death. So it never ruined the film.
The visuals are where The Damned really impresses with beautiful scenic landscapes on display. How the darkness of night contrasts with the whiteness of the snow, and how it leaves highlights on other elements make for a gorgeous look. It can be a bit dark at times but given the setting, I think that is more than appropriate. Flatter lighting would have taken away the realism of the world.
I wasn’t really sure what to think of The Damned until an intriguing third-act reveal. While I won’t go into detail, this was the final piece of the puzzle that made for a satisfying film. They play with the idea of the supernatural throughout the film, so to get a definitive answer, retexturizes the rest of the film. I’m curious as to how others will take it, as I felt that it gave the film more meaning. Okay, that’s enough being vague as hell. Ultimately, I enjoyed the dark journey that The Damned takes us on.
THE DAMNED IS IN SELECT THEATERS ON JANUARY 3RD, 2024.
With 2024 coming to a close, it’s time to start looking to the future for our cinema needs. What does the year hold in store for us cinephiles? While 2024 held some surprise hits, giant blockbusters, and small films that could, it’s looking like 2025 movie releases will hold more of the same. We can hope that the good fortune that Hollywood has brought us will continue into the new year and keep theater attendance up.
Gerard Butler is back chasing down diamond thieves on the streets of Europe. He stumbles across the planning of the largest diamond heist ever planned. If you liked the first movie, then this will probably be more of the same. I’m personally happy that Gerard Butler is making some fun B-movie action films like back in the day. Plane was fun, and I’m excited to see these types of films at the theater again.
Cameron Diaz is coming out of retirement and teaming up with Jamie Foxx for this Netflix original film. They play former CIA agents who are pulled back in when their identities are exposed. While I’m glad to see Diaz back on screen after a decade away, it’s odd that this generic spy action movie did it. Maybe just the idea of being in a movie with Jamie Foxx again was enough.
A biopic about UK pop star Robbie Williams as we see his childhood all the way through his superstardom. Robbie will be playing himself, but how do you do that without it being weird? What if you make it so he’s a chimp? Sure. With Pharrell releasing his biopic as a Lego movie and now Robbie Williams replacing himself with a CGI chimp it seems biopics are really trying to gain quirk appeal.
This direct to Paramount+ film is a spin off from Star Trek: Discovery starring Michelle Yeoh as her character Philippa Georgiou. This was originally planned as a series, but after COVID-19 delays, it was scrapped. Later they revived the idea for an original movie. Star Trek has always been a beloved franchise but with new movies going direct to streaming, will we ever see them return to the big screen?
For the first time in nine years, Bridget Jones is back! Only this time, it will be on Peacock in the United States and then in theaters everywhere else in the world. Seems backwards but okay. Bridget Jones is now a single mom and trying to figure out how that works when you’re trying to get back into the dating pool. Renee Zellweger and Hugh Grant return, along with some other familiar faces. Are we past the Bridget Jones fandom, or is there still more life in this franchise?
After the events of Falcon And The Winter Soldier, Anthony Mackie is donning the shield as the new Captain America. Harrison Ford steps in for the late William Hurt as the new President Ross, who has a big red secret to share. Marvel only had one release last summer, and it seemed to work really well for them. Let’s see if something without Hugh Jackman’s claws still registers for Marvel fans.
The new film from Bong Joon-ho sees Robert Pattinson sent on a space mission because he is seen as expendable. With technology, he can be regenerated if something goes wrong. This time, something goes wrong, and he begins to experience an existential crisis. This darkly comedic film looks like a good time as we see Mickey die in numerous different ways and still have to get up to go to work the next day.
Steven Soderberg’s spy thriller is coming out with no details on the plot. With a cast that includes Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, and Pierce Brosnan, you can bet lots of people will be interested in checking it out. Soderberg has always had an interesting take on just about any film he releases, and this will be no different.
Disney continues its trend of doing live-action remakes of its old animated films. This one caused a stir when it was announced, as people seemed divided on how to handle the seven dwarfs aspect of the film. Ultimately, the dwarves will be completely CGI. It will be interesting to see how this plays in a modern culture. Expect some new songs, and Gal Gadot will be playing the evil queen, which is inspired casting compared to the look of the original character.
With Super Mario Bros. and the Sonic movies being big hits, it’s no surprise that the hugely popular game Minecraft would be getting its own movie. Jack Black once again jumps on board to play Steve, the generic character most players take control of when booting up Minecraft. Jason Mamoa, Jennifer Coolidge, and Kate McKinnon round out the cast as random characters are pulled into the cubic world and need the help of an expert crafter to get home. Seems very Jumanji.
I don’t think anyone saw this sequel coming. In the first film, Ben Affleck played a neuro-divergent accountant who had a side job as a hitman. The film was a modest hit but nothing that would seem to warrant a sequel. Some other familiar faces from the first one return.
The second of Marvel’s offerings this year sees a bunch of cast-off characters from previous Marvel films being rounded up for a new agency. Yelena will be leading the team of previous supervillains who are now taking jobs for the government. Of course, this will be complicated by a lot of in-fighting and some unexpected speedbumps. The trailer makes this look like a lot of fun so here’s hoping it will give MCU fans some laughs while providing some great action scenes.
This is the second of Disney’s live-action remakes. Stitch crash-lands on Earth and is adopted by a young girl. Hijinks ensue as others come looking for him. The original had a great sense of humor, and the trailers showing Stitch invading other Disney properties were great. I have no idea if this will translate well into live-action, but kids will probably love it.
This was originally titled Dead Reckoning Part II, but after the last film underperformed, the title was quickly changed. It will continue the storyline from the last film, and we see Ethan Hunt trying to stop the deadly AI from causing worldwide chaos. Of course in order to shut it down, they have to make their way to the submarine that is crashed on the ocean floor.
The franchise returns to the big screen as we see Daniel from the original and Mr. Han from the 2010 “remake” join forces to mentor a new student. It’s a strange crossing of the streams which retcons the remake into being set in the same continuity. With Cobra Kai just ending when this hits theaters, will fans even care enough to go check it out? Fans of the original movie got their nostalgia fix with the series. Are there people who have nostalgia for the 2010 movie?
The spin-off of the John Wick films hits the big screen. We were introduced to the Ballerinas in John Wick 3. Now they get a film all their own while Keanu Reeves will still make an appearance since this is set during that time period. Ana de Armas takes over the role of Eve as she looks to get revenge on the people who killed her family. The intricate world of John Wick is fascinating to explore, and this gives us a chance to see even more of it.
An animated film from Disney that follows Elio. He’s a young space fanatic who gets tasked with saving the universe. They have been struggling to come up with animated films that really stick with audiences that aren’t already established Pixar properties. The shine of the early Pixar films has really dimmed after Disney bought them. Hopefully we can see Disney regain its footing with animated films like we used to have.
Dreamworks seems to be taking a cue from Disney and remaking some of their more popular animated properties. We’re getting another round of dragons as we see the first meeting of Hiccup and Toothless. Again. Not sure if this trend will ever end, but at least Dreamworks doesn’t have as deep of a catalog as Disney. When can we expect to see a live-action Kung Fu Panda?
Scarlett Johanssen is taking the lead role this time around. No one seems to have learned any lesson about bringing dinosaurs back to life. This time it looks like explorers have to go in to get DNA samples from some prehistoric animals to help cure a disease. Universal really just wants to see if there is any juice left to squeeze out of this fruit. It may be time to let it sleep for a few decades before heading back in.
James Gunn takes his stab at the Man of Steel as the DC Universe reboots itself on-screen once again. Reports are that Gunn held an early screening for WB execs and that it did not go well. That could be internet fodder, but it doesn’t instill a lot of hope for the new version of the DCU. With the DC shows on the CW just wrapping up, we’ll have to see if Gunn’s Superman will connect with comic fans. The recent trailer seemed to gain a lot of views very quickly, so we at least know that fans are interested.
Those magical little blue creatures will grace theater screens once again. This time, the film will be fully animated and musical. Paramount/Nickelodeon will take on the film, and it seems to be inspired by the popularity of the Troll movies. Rhianna will voice Smurfette and be joined by Nick Offerman, John Goodman, Kurt Russell, Dan Levy, and Hannah Waddingham.
Marvel’s first family finally makes their way into the MCU. While they have been on-screen before as part of Fox’s Marvel movies, this time, we’ll see what the MCU has in store for the group. Marvel’s third film in six months will really test if audiences are in superhero fatigue or not. The early footage shown at Comicon seems fun, so hopefully, it will bring something new.
Liam Neeson is hoping to try something drastically different than we’ve seen from him before. He has some big shoes to fill, as Leslie Nielsen based the whole second half of his career on the original Naked Gun. It will be hard to see anyone else trying to play that role. Plus, does that type of comedy have a place anymore?
Disney’s calendar of releases this year is crazy, as we see the reteaming of Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan. The last film was a remake of an old Disney Classic. Now, twenty-one years later, we are getting a sequel. Expect more body-swapping jokes as the Lindsay Lohan resurgence seems to be taking shape. She’s been on an upswing lately, and hopefully, we can see her get a victory lap as she has matured.
Somehow, Bob Odenkirk became an action star after starring in Nobody back in 2021. Now, we get to see some more middle-aged dad action as he returns for this sequel. The first movie really worked to show what appears to be an ordinary man who decides to get back into a life he left a long time ago. Now that we have seen him for what he really is, here’s hoping for more action and more Christopher Lloyd running around with a shotgun.
The third film spin-off of the popular period drama. Many of the cast return to once again play their characters, showing the divide between the upper class and the working class. This drama captivated audiences when it first premiered, and both previous films have been big hits. It only makes sense to keep it going with another film.
We’re traveling back into the world of Tron. Jeff Bridges is back, along with a slew of other familiar faces like Jodie Turner-Smith, Evan Peters, and Jared Leto. This time, a program is sent from the digital world to the real world. Each Tron film so far has pushed the boundaries in terms of special effects and technical marvels. Let’s see what they come up with this time.
We’re heading back to the arcade, so get your quarters ready. The reboot of the Mortal Kombat franchise continues as our heroes are heading back to Outland to continue the fight for all existence. The last film was released during the pandemic, so a true gauge of the popularity is hard to judge, but audiences seem to have a positive response. During the initial film franchise run, the second entry pushed it off a cliff. We can hope they learned their lesson.
Another entry into the magic mystery franchise is in the pipeline. All of our sleight-of-hand artists are returning, but no plot has been released so far. The previous movies have gained an audience through their unique use of stage magic and illusions to foil their adversaries. It is a fun and interesting way of doing a mystery based action film. If it lives up to the previous entries, then audiences should leave the theater happy.
The second part of the recent smash hit. Those who haven’t seen the Broadway play or read the book will get to see how the story ends. I expect more fantastic songs, some great visuals, and more Oz. We all need all the Oz we can get. Let’s all get ready to defy gravity once again.
Disney has quite the release schedule this year, and we’re not even done yet. Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde are teaming up to solve a wild case that could change their entire lives. It will be fun to travel back into the world of Zootopia and see where the characters are. It looks like more of the same fun we had in the last film.
It’s time to head back to Pandora. Last time James Cameron dealt with water motifs and explored more of the world. Looks like we’ll be dealing with fire this time around. While the films seem to always be a wonder of motion capture and CGI, it would be great to see Cameron go back to other projects before his film career comes to an end. We can always hope.
Hey Kids! SpongeBob is back with another movie. This time, he will explore the depths of the ocean to deal with the ghost of the Flying Dutchman. This franchise just keeps engaging generation after generation. At this point, The Simpsons might be about the only animated franchise that has lasted longer. As long as fans keep checking out the movies, the more they will keep making.
What 2025 movie releases are you looking forward to? Let us know in the comments. And, if you’re looking for more info on horror releases, check out our horror movie preview HERE!
I’ve been very fortunate in my career here at JoBlo to chat with various actors for extended times about their careers. Getting to go over Weird Science with Anthony Michael Hall is still a life highlight. Getting to talk about a wide variety of projects versus just the most recent one that they’re promoting provides insight that we otherwise wouldn’t receive. So I was very grateful to be able to sit down for an interview with Mike Flanagan regular Molly C. Quinn to talk about her unique career.
Being a massive Flanagan fan, Molly and I geeked out a bit about the sheer brilliance of the writer/director. Really, this was just a great excuse to be able to gush about a filmmaker I admire with someone who knows his work on a personal level. Molly gives some really insightful answers and this feels far from the usual guarded interview that can come from a publicity circuit. Molly’s energy is infectious as she goes over what makes Flanagan so special, joining the Night Vale podcast network, as well as what it’s like to scare people for a living. Make sure to check out Scare Tactics on the USA Network as well as Unlicensed on Audible. And don’t forget to check her out in Life of Chuck early next year.
Unlicensed Season 2 plot synopsis: T.L. Thompson returns as the series narrator, and Molly C. Quinn and Lusia Strus reprise their roles as the unlicensed private detectives Molly Hatch and Lou Rosen who work in the far reaches of Los Angeles County, where the glamor of Hollywood fades into the long empty of the desert.
What did you think of our Molly C. Quinn interview? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
I’ve been very fortunate in my career here at JoBlo to chat with various actors for extended times about their careers. Getting to go over Weird Science with Anthony Michael Hall is still a life highlight. Getting to talk about a wide variety of projects versus just the most recent one that they’re promoting provides insight that we otherwise wouldn’t receive. So I was very grateful to be able to sit down with Mike Flanagan regular Molly C. Quinn to talk about her unique career.
Being a massive Flanagan fan, Molly and I geeked out a bit about the sheer brilliance of the writer/director. Really, this was just a great excuse to be able to gush about a filmmaker I admire with someone who knows his work on a personal level. Molly gives some really insightful answers and this feels far from the usual guarded interview that can come from a publicity circuit. Molly’s energy is infectious as she goes over what makes Flanagan so special, joining the Night Vale podcast network, as well as what it’s like to scare people for a living. Make sure to check out Scare Tactics on the USA Network as well as Unlicensed on Audible. And don’t forget to check her out in Life of Chuck early next year.
Unlicensed Season 2 plot synopsis:
T.L. Thompson returns as the series narrator, and Molly C. Quinn and Lusia Strus reprise their roles as the unlicensed private detectives Molly Hatch and Lou Rosen who work in the far reaches of Los Angeles County, where the glamor of Hollywood fades into the long empty of the desert.
This is the fictional story of five strangers picked to live in a house and have their lives taped to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting murdered… My Little Eye. And if you haven’t seen this one, it’s the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw.
Reality shows are nearly unavoidable these days, but back in the ‘90s they were still rare. Aside from MTV’s The Real World and episodes of Cops, we hadn’t been exposed to much reality programming yet. And when word started leaking out about the development of shows like Big Brother and Survivor, they sounded odd. A little twisted, potentially dangerous. Big Brother was offering the chance to watch its contestants on 24/7 live streams. Survivor was taking its contestants out to isolated locations and leaving them to provide basic survival necessities for themselves. While the concept of Big Brother just seemed weird, the description of Survivor stirred up real concern that somebody could die on that show. We know now that everything has turned out fine. Survivor has aired for over forty seasons to date and Big Brother has proven to be so popular that more than sixty countries have put together their own version of the show, resulting in over five hundred seasons airing across the last few decades.
It was when we were hearing the first rumblings of Big Brother and Survivor that writer David Hilton realized these reality shows were presenting the perfect set-up for psychological thrills. And there were also web cam streams online to provide more inspiration. A treatment was written that made its way into the hands of director Marc Evans, who had gotten his start in TV before moving into features with the drama House of America and the crime thriller Resurrection Man. Neither of which had been successful. So when Evans started developing the My Little Eye script with Hilton, he saw this as a make or break project. His directing career depended on it. If this one failed, he might never direct another movie. James Watkins was brought in to work on the screenplay alongside Hilton. And once a couple drafts had been written, the project was pitched to Working Title, a British film studio that’s a subsidiary of Universal. By then, it was the summer of 2000. Big Brother and Survivor had both made it to American airwaves. And right around the time the first season of Big Brother aired its finale, Working Title gave My Little Eye the green light.
The screenplay crafted by Hilton and Watkins begins with an online ad. Five contestants are being sought for a reality webcast. If they spend six months living in an isolated house that’s full of cameras, they’ll win one million dollars. There won’t be any competitions or evictions. All they have to do is live in the house – a place so far out in the middle of nowhere that they’ll be taken there by helicopter. Occasionally, supplies like food, booze, and cigarettes will be delivered to their door. But they will also have to fend for themselves, setting snares for animals in the surrounding forest, hunting deer, stuff like that. And if anyone leaves during that six month period, everyone loses. No one will get a single dollar.
We’re shown clips from the audition tapes for the five characters we’ll be following through the film. Stephen O’Reilly, who works primarily as a composer these days, was cast as Danny, the sensitive guy who’s into woodworking and was raised by his grandfather. His main goal is to be able to take his grandpa on a nice vacation once he gets out of the house. Sean C. W. Johnson, who may be best known for his work in the Power Rangers franchise, was cast as Matt, the good-looking guy who says he’s there for the challenge. Jennifer Sky was cast as Charlie, who’s on a quest to become famous. Sky hasn’t done much acting in the last twenty years, but at the time she had a following from her roles on the TV shows Cleopatra 2525 and Xena: Warrior Princess. She’s also known for having a short-lived marriage to Alex Band, the lead singer in the rock group The Calling and the son of Full Moon founder Charles Band. For genre fans, Kris Lemche may be the most well-known cast member among the contestants. Around this time, he was also in Final Destination 3 and the Canadian werewolf classic Ginger Snaps… And if you want to spend a day just watching Lemche be awesome, Ginger Snaps, My Little Eye, and Final Destination 3 would make for a great triple feature.
The character of Emma is the obvious horror movie final girl. She auditions to be on this webcast because she thinks it will be a positive life experience, a way for her to learn about herself. How nice and wholesome. Of course she’s going to make it to the end. As he was putting the movie together, Marc Evans was drawing inspiration from John Carpenter. There are hints of The Thing in the film’s snowbound, isolated setting and the fact that the characters feel increasingly paranoid. But he has also cited the works of Roman Polanski as a source of inspiration, and part of the reason why he cast Laura Regan as Emma is the fact that she had a Mia Farrow vibe to her.
Evans told Jigsaw Lounge the Polanski influence can be found in “the atmosphere. Because a lot of his stuff relates to a house becoming a sort of malign presence. Repulsion, and Rosemary’s Baby as well.” He liked that Regan was reminiscent of Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby because “that character was in the same sort of position of not knowing what was happening to her.”
Regan has gone on to do more genre work, in the films They, Hollow Man 2, and Dead Silence, and a lot of television. O’Reilly, Johnson, Sky, Lemche, and Regan play the five contestants. But two other characters show up as the story goes on. Nick Mennell, who would later be killed by Michael Myers in Rob Zombie’s Halloween and Jason Voorhees in Platinum Dunes’ Friday the 13th, plays a cop. And Bradley Cooper, who has since been nominated for many Oscars, makes a brief appearance as Travis, a guy who says he got lost while skiing through the forest. But can he be trusted?
That’s the problem in this place, it’s never clear who you can trust. Knowing it wouldn’t be interesting to show the six months the characters spend in the house, Evans and the writers jump straight to the final week. That’s when everything starts to fall apart. The furnace breaks down. Food isn’t being delivered anymore. It seems like a stalker might be lurking at the edge of the forest. A message left on a frosty window and a bloody hammer on a pillow reference a traumatic incident from Emma’s past. Danny receives a devastating letter from home. The outsider Travis says he has never even heard of this webcast. A supply delivery contains nothing but a gun and some bullets. Is it taunting Rex about his father’s suicide? Is The Company trying to drive the contestants out of the house so they won’t have to pay them? Would The Company go so far as to kill them?
Filming on My Little Eye took place in Nova Scotia throughout the months of March and April in 2001, with sets being built inside an abandoned leisure center. To achieve the webcast look, the movie was shot on mini-DV camcorders. And since the house is meant to have cameras all over the place, much like the Big Brother house, there were around eight cameras covering each scene. So once Evans was in the editing room, any moment would have eight angles to choose from and he could pick which angles he thought a webcast viewer would click on.
As he put together the sound design, another filmmaker became a source of inspiration: David Lynch. Because, as Evans put it, Lynch “just knows to put you in this place that’s really strange that you’ve never been to before, with a masterful use of sound. He was a big influence.” The sound was recorded normally, then beat up in post-production to drop in aural disturbances, the constant sound of whirring cameras, and low industrial rumbles. Creating an atmosphere meant to get under the viewer’s skin.
The aim was to get the movie as close to a ninety minute running time as possible. Evans wanted it to be the cinematic equivalent of a thrash metal single. Short, effective, and nasty. But it proved to be very difficult to get the film down to ninety minutes. The first rough cut was four hours long. Evans started to lose confidence in the film as he went through the editing process, so Working Title suggested holding a test screening in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, that screening was held on September 11, 2001. And, understandably, the test results were terrible. Nothing was going to go over well with an audience on 9/11. For a while, the companies behind My Little Eye didn’t know what to do with it. It was so dark and unnerving. Was there any place for it in the post-9/11 market? It looked like it might go straight to video. Then they found distributor Momentum Pictures, which believed in the film and wanted to give it a theatrical release. And when a woman had a panic attack at a festival screening in Scotland, that just made it clear that Momentum had made a great decision when they acquired this movie.
Made on a budget of three million, My Little Eye earned nine million during its theatrical run. so it was a solid success. And when Universal brought it to DVD, they did some interesting things with it. An audio track called Conversations of the Company allowed viewers to eavesdrop on what members of The Company are saying to each other throughout the film. In a UK release, viewers could choose to watch a version of the film that was presented as if it was being viewed on the Company-run website. The interactive mode even lets you see certain scenes from multiple different angles. This includes the Travis and Charlie sex scene, so it proved to be a popular option for some viewers.
It’s cool that there’s a Company audio track and an interactive website version of the movie. But My Little Eye didn’t need those enhancements to be entertaining and intriguing. Evans put a lot of effort into creating a dark, unsettling atmosphere for his movie – and it paid off. When you’re watching My Little Eye, the imagery and sound really make you feel like you’re in the house with the contestants. Stuck in the middle of nowhere with something dangerous lurking outside. Evans and the writers did an excellent job building up the paranoia, and the cast did great work bringing their characters to life. That’s not to say all of the characters themselves are great. Some of them definitely could have been given more depth and made more interesting. But we still get drawn into the situation and want to see them come out of it okay. And if they don’t all come out of it okay, there are some expendable ones we wouldn’t mind seeing removed from the story.
As mentioned, Kris Lemche is awesome in this movie, making Rex the most fun character of the bunch to watch. While Emma worries about her past, Danny and Matt hang around being bland, and Charlies does her “horny girl wants fame” thing, Rex tries to keep things under control for as long as possible, in hopes of getting his money. And when things start getting too strange, it’s Rex who is able to start figuring out exactly what’s going on.
Rex is the MVP of the contestants, but the standout sequence of the film is the appearance by Bradley Cooper. Paranoia is already running high by the time his character Travis shows up at the door. Things have been getting increasingly uncomfortable in the house. Then this guy arrives, saying he got lost skiing. His GPS died and he’s not sure how to get back to his truck. Now it’s dark out and he needs shelter. So the contestants take him in – and he soon reveals that he has never heard of the webcast they’re supposedly on, even though he’s a programmer who says he lives on the internet when he’s not out skiing in the middle of nowhere. This gets the contestants more worried than they already were. Travis, on the other hand, seems surprisingly at ease. He quickly sets out to seduce Charlie, which is not a challenge. And not only do the cameras everywhere not bother him… he even gives them suspicious looks. When he speaks directly to one of the cameras the following the morning, it becomes very clear: there’s something bad going on here. Bradley Cooper is only in the movie for around nine minutes, but he makes an impact.
My Little Eye makes for an impactful viewing experience overall, even if you don’t remember the details of what happens in it beyond the fact that people get murdered. Somehow, by someone. The imagery and the atmosphere can stick with you for years. Marc Evans took the concept and made it into a very effective psychological thriller, and its success saved his directing career. He has continued working steadily ever since this movie was released in 2002, bouncing back and forth between feature films and episodes of TV shows. He has more projects lined up, making their way through pre-production. And it’s all because of My Little Eye.
A couple previous episodes of the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw series can be seen below. To see more, and to check out some of our other shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
As 2024 comes to a close, we here at JoBlo.com would like to take a moment to pay tribute to some of the people who sadly passed away this year. Our deepest respect goes out to everyone in the industry we have lost, and our thoughts and prayers are with the friends and family of those who died in 2024. These talented individuals will always be remembered for their impact on the world of film and television.
In Memory Of…
David Soul
David Soul died on January 4th at the age of 80. The actor was best known for playing Detective Kenneth “Hutch” Hutchinson on Starsky & Hutch alongside Paul Michael Glaser.
Although Starsky & Hutch would become one of the most iconic shows of the ’70s, Soul and Glaser had no clue it would become as successful as it did. “We didn’t have a clue it was going to be so successful. That only happened in the second year,” Soul said in 2020. “Paul and I basically ran the shoot — the streets were our playground, and we’d be driving around with people shouting, ‘It’s Starsky and Hutch!’ But we took it very seriously. We improvised a lot, and we trusted each other, totally. There was no one-upmanship or anything like that.” The show lasted four seasons, with Soul and Glaser both directing multiple episodes.
In addition to Starsky & Hutch, Soul appeared in TV shows such as Flipper, I Dream of Jeannie, Star Trek, All in the Family, The F.B.I., Cannon, The Yellow Rose, Murder, She Wrote, Little Britain, and more. He also starred in Here Comes the Brides, a Western comedy series starring Joan Blondell. Soul also played Ben Mears in the Salem’s Lot miniseries.
On the big screen, Soul appeared in Magnum Force, The Hanoi Hilton, Appointment with Death, Pentathlon, and Filth. He also made a cameo appearance in the Starsky & Hutch remake starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. Soul succeeded as a singer with a number-one single on the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1977, Don’t Give Up on Us.
Glynis Johns
Glynis Johns was born into a theatrical family and debuted on stage at just three weeks old. She joined the London Ballet School when she was five years old, and just five years later, she was already working as a Ballet instructor. Although Johns had interests outside of show business, it felt like she was destined to be on screen. “There were situations that were hard for parents to turn down. It’s difficult to turn down a chance to star with Laurence Olivier, to say, ‘No, she has to go to school,’” Johns said in 1991. “They had a big decision to make … I was interested in everything. I wanted to be a scientist. I would’ve loved to go on and on at university. But you can’t do everything in life.“
Johns rose to international fame appearing alongside Laurence Olivier in 49th Parallel and went on to star in The Sword and the Rose, Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue, Mad About Men, The Court Jester, Around the World in 80 Days, The Sundowners (for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress), Lock Up Your Daughters, The Vault of Horror, The Ref, While You Were Sleeping, Superstar, and many more. But she’s best known for playing Mrs. Banks in Mary Poppins. She memorably performs the song Sister Suffragette in the film. Johns died on January 4th at the age of 100.
Peter Crombie
Seinfeld included plenty of stand-out characters throughout its nine-year run, but none were quite as menacing as Crazy Joe Davola, a writer who developed a pathological hatred of Jerry throughout the fourth season. Peter Crombie’s performance as the unhinged character never failed to spark fear in Jerry. He made his last appearance in the fourth season finale, where he leapt from the stands at a taping of Jerry’s pilot, bellowing “Sic semper tyrannis!”
In addition to Seinfeld, Crombie also made appearances on Spenser: For Hire, Perfect Strangers, Law & Order, Star Trek; Deep Space Nine, Diagnosis: Murder, L.A. Law, Grace Under Fire, L.A. Firefighters, House of Frankenstein, NYPD Blue, and Walker, Texas Ranger. He also appeared in movies such as The Blob, Born on the Fourth of July, Desperate Hours, The Doors, Rising Sun, Natural Born Killers, Seven, My Dog Skip, and more. Crombie died on January 10th at the age of 71.
Joyce Randolph
Joyce Randolph died on January 13th at the age of 99. She’s best known for playing Trixie Norton on The Jackie Gleason Show and The Honeymooners and was the last surviving member of the classic sitcom foursome. Her character was married to Ed Norton (Art Carney) on The Honeymooners. They were the neighbours of Ralph (Jackie Gleason) and Alice Kramden (Audrey Meadows).
Gleason hired Randolph to play Trixie after spotting her in a commercial for Clorets, and she made her first appearance as the character as a sketch on Cavalcade of Stars. “We just played ourselves,” Randolph explained. “Nobody told us to characterize in any way. It was learn those lines and go on… I love them all, but I love the sleepwalking one [when Norton wanders downstairs while snoozing]. And oh, any show in which I had more than six or seven lines I really loved.“
The Honeymooners sketches were so popular on The Jackie Gleason Show that they were spun into a half-hour sitcom. The show ended after just one season (consisting of 39 episodes). The show gained a huge following thanks to syndication, with some stations airing the episodes repeatedly for decades.
David Emge
David Emge may not have had many credits to his name, but he earned a place in horror royalty thanks to his starring role as Stephen “Flyboy” Andrews in George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.
“I loved that movie,” Emge said in a 1979 interview. “It was filmed outside of Pittsburgh in a nine-week shooting schedule with two weeks off for Christmas. A cold spooky show…Half of it was shot inside the shopping mall. We worked from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and had free run of the place.” By the film’s end, Flyboy unfortunately becomes one of the undead, and his zombie is one of the most iconic in the entire movie.
“Being the zombie was something that I could just like, grab onto,” said Emge in a Dawn of the Dead documentary. “I sat there for weeks and weeks watching all of these people coming up with ‘their’ zombie. And I’m thinking, what am I gonna do? I had to come up with something that was distinctive enough, so I thought, okay, now, so what happens to this guy? He gets bit in the neck, he’s bit in the leg, he’s shot in the arm, so basically the zombie image came out of the wounds that he received.” Emge also appeared in The Booby Hatch, Basket Case 2, and Hellmaster. He died on January 20th at the age of 77.
Norman Jewison
Norman Jewison, one of Canada’s most acclaimed filmmakers, died on January 20th at the age of 97. Jewison did it all throughout his long career, ranging from musicals to dramas to romantic comedies. He’s best known for In the Heat of the Night, Moonstruck, Fiddler on the Roof, and more.
Born in Toronto, Canada, Norman Jewison was an assistant director when CBC Television debuted. He went on to write, direct, and produce a variety of programming for the young network over the next seven years before moving to the U.S. His breakthrough movie was The Cincinnati Kid, which starred Steve McQueen. He went on to direct The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, The Thomas Crown Affair, Fiddler on the Roof, Jesus Christ Superstar, Rollerball, F.I.S.T., A Soldier’s Story, …And Justice for All, Moonstruck, In Country, Other People’s Money, Only You, and The Hurricane.
An experience with racial prejudice during his younger years stuck with him, prompting him to direct In the Heat of the Night years later. He had been hitchhiking through the U.S. when he wound up in Memphis, Tennessee, hopped on a bus and sat near the back. “The bus driver looked at me,” Jewison told NPR in 2011. “He said, ‘Can’t you read the sign?’ And there was a little sign, made of tin, swinging off a wire in the center of the bus and it said, ‘Colored people to the rear.’ And I turned around and I saw two or three Black citizens sitting around me, and … a few white people sitting way at the top of the bus. And I didn’t know what to do, I was just embarrassed. So I just got off the bus and he left me there. I was left standing in this hot sun and thinking about what I had just been through. That this was my first experience with racial prejudice. And it really stuck with me.“
Jewison also launched the Canadian Film Centre after visiting the American Film Institute in the ’80s. “I got a phone call to visit the AFI in Beverly Hills,” Jewison told THR. “So I went up there and there’s a group of young filmmakers sitting on the floor and there’s John Ford with a bottle of whiskey. And he’s answering all their questions. I was just blown away. It was very exciting. So I thought, ‘Gee, if I could set up something like this in Canada, that would be great.’“
Gary Graham
Gary Graham died on January 22nd at the age of 73. He was best known for playing Detective Matthew Sikes on the Alien Nation TV series. Although the series was cancelled after just one season, it was followed by five TV movies, including Alien Nation: Dark Horizon, Alien Nation: Body and Soul, Alien Nation: Millennium, Alien Nation: The Enemy Within, and Alien Nation: The Udara Legacy. Graham returned for all the movies.
Graham is also known for his involvement in the Star Trek franchise. He made his first appearance in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, but his history with the franchise goes back even further as he was considered for the roles of Sisko in Deep Space Nine and Janeway in Voyager before it was decided that Deep Space Nine should have an African-American lead and Voyager should have a female captain. “That’s what I heard, from my agent and also from another source at Paramount,” Graham said in 2012. “I never heard it from either Berman or Braga, so I can’t give it full veracity. You’ll have to ask them. And the audition for any lead is always pretty exhaustive. I think I remember the initial audition and two subsequent callbacks.“
He went on to play the recurring role of Ambassador Soval on Star Trek: Enterprise and turned up in several Star Trek fan productions, including Star Trek: Of Gods and Men, Prelude to Axanar, and Star Trek: Renegades. He also appeared in TV shows such as Starsky & Hutch, The Incredible Hulk, Knots Landing, CHiPs, The Dukes of Hazzard, T.J. Hooker, Moonlighting, M.A.N.T.I.S, JAG, and Nip/Tuck, as well as movies such as Hardcore, All the Right Movies, Robot Jox, Necronomicon, Steel, and Jeepers Creepers: Reborn.
Carl Weathers
Carl Weathers is best known for playing Apollo Creed in the Rocky franchise. As he explained in 2015, a verbal jab at Sylvester Stallone got him the role. “There was nobody to read with, and they said you’re going to read with the writer,” Weathers said. That writer was Stallone. “And we read through the scene, and at the end of it, I didn’t feel like it had really sailed, that the scene had sailed, and they were quiet and there was this moment of awkwardness, I felt, anyway,” Weathers said. “So I just blurted out, ‘I could do a lot better if you got me a real actor to work with.’ So I just insulted the star of the movie without really knowing it and not intending to.” Stallone felt like that was something Apollo would say, so he got the gig. “Sometimes the mistakes are the ones that get you the gig,” he said. Weathers would return for Rocky II, Rocky III, and Rocky IV.
He’s also known for playing Colonel Al Dillon in Predator. Weathers told GQ that the production was a constant competition between the cast. “You know, there’s a great line: what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. What happened during Predator stays in Predator,” Weathers explained. “But, yes, all is true. There were nightclubs. We were a bunch of young guys. We were all in our own way trying to one up each other. Of course, with training, Arnold had an entire gym there, so we were going to the gym working out to get all puffed up before scenes. Nobody wanted to look any weaker than the other guy. So, you know, it was competition constantly, competition in front of the camera, competition behind the camera, competition at night.” He also appeared in movies such as Magnum Force, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Semi-Tough, Force 10 from Navarone, Death Hunt, Action Jackson, Hurricane Smith, Happy Gilmore, Little Nicky, Eight Crazy Nights, Toy Story 4, and more.
Weathers played roles in TV shows such as The Six Million Dollar Man, Starsky & Hutch, Street Justice, In the Heat of the Night, The Shield, ER, and more. He also played himself in several episodes of Arrested Development, where he frequently stole the show (Baby, you’ve got a stew going!) Weathers’ final role took him to the Star Wars franchise, where he played Greef Karga in The Mandalorian and directed several episodes of the series. Weathers died on February 2nd at the age of 76.
Chris Gauthier
Chris Gauthier died on February 23rd at the age of 48. Many of us likely remember Gauthier from his role in Freddy vs. Jason, where he memorably tells Jason Voorhees to “go find yourself a pig to f***,” which prompts the supernatural killer to throw a flaming machete through Gauthier’s chest.
On the small screen, Gauthier is best known for playing Vincent on Eureka, the owner of the Cafe Diem. In a 2010 interview, the actor explained that the producers were looking for a very different type of actor. “If you’ve seen me you know I have the long curly hair, the big sideburns and all of that,” he said. “When they had the casting call for the Eureka pilot, they were looking for, I’ll use the term metrosexual, was sort of what they were after with Vincent. So when I arrived at the audition it was basically a bunch of guys who were wearing half-tops and skintight jeans, and there I was in my plaid shirt. If they were going for another look, then I gave them the antithesis of that, so it was really funny.“
Gauthier continued, “As each actor came out of the audition room, they commented, ‘Tone it down,’ or don’t be too eccentric, let’s say. When it was my turn, I just did my thing and they [the producers] were like, ‘Perfect.’ They loved it, and I think it was probably the juxtaposition of my burlyesque physique mixed with some effeminate tones.“
The actor also made appearances in TV shows such as Da Vinci’s Inquest, The L Word, Dead Like Me, Stargate Atlantis, Masters of Horror, Bionic Woman, Reaper, Supernatural, Harper’s Island, Sanctuary, Smallville, Psych, Once Upon a Time, and A Series of Unfortunate Events. He can be seen in movies such as 40 Days and 40 Nights, Insomnia, Agent Cody Banks, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, Little Man, The Butterfly Effect 2, Stargate: The Ark of Truth, Watchmen, Monster Trucks, and more.
Kenneth Mitchell
Kenneth Mitchell died on February 24th at the age of 49. Mitchell is best known for playing multiple roles in Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek Lower Decks.
After experiencing constant twitching in his muscles, Mitchell believed he was suffering from either a pinched nerve or multiple sclerosis, so he was shocked when he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). This debilitating neurological disease slowly takes away a person’s ability to control their muscles. “The moment that they told us it was [ALS], it was like I was in my own movie,” Mitchell told People. “That’s what it felt like, like I was watching that scene where someone is being told that they have a terminal illness. It was just a complete disbelief, a shock.” A year later, Mitchell required a wheelchair, but many productions adapted, including Star Trek: Discovery. The role of Aurellio in the third season was written especially for him, with the character being a scientist who uses a hoverchair.
Mitchell appeared on TV shows such as Leap Year, Odyssey 5, Grey’s Anatomy, CSI: Miami, Jericho, Ghost Whisperer, Without a Trace, Lie to Me, Criminal Minds, Private Practice, Castle, The Mentalist, Grimm, Bones, Switched at Birth, The Astronaut Wives Club, Frequency, Nancy Drew, and The Old Man, as well as movies The Recruit, Miracle, Home of the Giants, and Captain Marvel.
Richard Lewis
Richard Lewis died on February 27th at the age of 76. He’s best known for playing a fictionalized version of himself on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. Lewis was a long-time friend of Larry David, although their relationship didn’t start on the best foot. They first met as teenagers at a summer sports camp, and Lewis couldn’t stand his future collaborator. “I disliked him intensely,” Lewis said last year. “He was cocky, he was arrogant… When we played baseball, I tried to hit him with the ball; we were arch-rivals. I couldn’t wait for the camp to be over just to get away from Larry. I’m sure he felt the same way.“
Years later, the pair reconnected. “We became friendly years later as young comics in New York, but I noticed something one night,” Lewis recalled. “‘There’s something about you I hate,’ I told him. ‘Wait, you’re that Larry David from summer camp.’ And he said, ‘You’re that Richard Lewis.’ We nearly came to blows.” Thankfully, they overcame it and gifted us with one of TV’s most delightful comic duos.
Lewis appeared in movies such as Once Upon a Crime, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Wagons East, Leaving Las Vegas, Vamps, She’s Funny That Way, Sandy Wexler, and TV shows such as Anything but Love, Tales from the Crypt, Hiller and Diller, Rude Awakening, 7th Heaven, Alias, Two and a Half Men, The Dead Zone, The Simpsons, Everybody Hates Chris, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, The Cleaner, ‘Til Death, Blunt Talk, and BoJack Horseman.
Akira Toriyama
Akira Toriyama is best known as the creator of Dragon Ball, one of the best-selling manga series of all time. Toriyama had an interest in drawing but didn’t consider manga as a possible career until he quit his job at an advertising agency. He submitted work to a Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine contest for the prize money. He didn’t win, but he was encouraged to keep drawing by Kazuhiko Torishima, who would become his future editor.
His first published work was Wonder Island, but he found his first significant success with Dr. Slump, which followed a little girl robot, her creator, and residents of the bizarre Penguin Village. The manga spawned its own anime series, as well as video games and nearly a dozen animated films. However, it was Dragon Ball which gave him his biggest success. The anime adaptations of Dragon Ball were even more successful than the manga, with the latest, Dragon Ball Daima, premiering months after Toriyama’s death.
Despite the tremendous success of the Dragon Ball anime series, it took Toriyama some time to appreciate it. “To be honest, I’ve never had a great interest in anime, not even in the past. Even when my works have been adapted into anime format, I end up being embarrassed to admit that I don’t like them,” he said. “About ten years ago, I was invited to review the script for a Dragon Ball anime film and, at the same time, I ended up drawing the character’s backgrounds and making some simple designs. It was amazing to discover that this kind of work could be rewarding and fun.” Toriyama died on March 1st at the age of 68.
M. Emmet Walsh
M. Emmet Walsh is best known for playing Bryant in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, the captain of the Los Angeles Police Department who tasks Deckard with tracking down the replicants at the beginning of the film. He told THR that the cast and crew weren’t quite sure what the make of the movie when they first saw it. “I don’t know if I really understood what in the hell it was all about,” Walsh said. “We all sat there and it ended. And nothing. We didn’t know what to say or to think or do! We didn’t know what in the hell we had done! The only one who seemed to get it was Ridley.“
He also played Loren Visser in Blood Simple, the first film directed by the Coen brothers. The unscrupulous private detective is one of Walsh’s best-known roles. “Every time, you [have to] try to figure something individual that works for the character,” Walsh told The Guardian in 2017. “If you’re playing a villain, you don’t play villain… Visser doesn’t think of himself as particularly bad or evil. He’s on the edge of what’s legal, but he’s having a lot of fun with all that. He’s a simple fella trying to make an extra buck and going a little further than he’d normally go in his business enterprises.“
Walsh made appearances in movies such as Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, What’s Up, Doc?, Serpico, The Gambler, Slap Shot, Airport ’77, The Jerk, Brubaker, Raise the Titanic, Ordinary People, Red, Missing in Action, Fletch, Critters, Back to School, Harry and the Hendersons, Raising Arizona, Red Scorpion, Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home, Romeo + Juliet, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Wild Wild West, The Iron Giant, Christmas with the Kranks, and Knives Out.
He was equally as prolific on the small screen, with roles in TV shows such as All in the Family, Bonanza, McMillan & Wife, The Rockford Files, Baretta, Starsky & Hutch, Little House on the Prairie, AfterMASH, The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Crypt, Home Improvement, The Outer Limits, The X-Files, NYPD Blue, Frasier, Damages, Empire, Sneaky Pete, The Righteous Gemstones, and more. Walsh died on March 19th at the age of 88.
Chance Perdomo
Chance Perdomo died on March 29th at the age of 27. He’s best known for playing Andre Anderson on the first season of Gen V, the popular spinoff of The Boys. Perdomo was already a fan of the main series and had auditioned for the role of Hughie. “I came into this as a fan of ‘The Boys,’ I actually had originally auditioned for Hughie, years ago,” Perdomo told Variety last year. “I read it and I thought it was such a great script. And I was like, ‘Whether I get it or not, I still want to watch the show.’ Then I watched ‘The Boys’ and I think, ‘Wow this has never been done, it’s amazing’. So then to get Andre was such a blessing because I come into it and I get to enjoy the playground that is ‘The Boys’ universe.“
He also played Ambrose Spellman in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. One of his first auditions was for the role of Jughead in Riverdale, and although Cole Sprouse wound up taking on the role, creator Roberto Aquirre-Sacasa kept him in mind for his next series. “[I] did some self-tapes, and I got quite a few rounds and I had no idea how close I got,” Perdomo told THR. “They kept me in mind, and I had no idea until later Roberto was like, ‘Brother, do you know how close you got?… It was almost you.’” The actor added that he didn’t have any hard feelings towards Sprouse. “I’m not even made,” he said. “I grew up watching Cole Sprouse and his brother [Dylan Sprouse], and to have come close and lose it to one of the people I used to watch, it’s good.“
Perdomo also played Landon Gibson in After We Fell, After Ever Happy, and After Everything.
Louis Gossett Jr.
Louis Gossett Jr. died on March 29th at the age of 87. His most memorable role was Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley in An Officier and a Gentleman. The role won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, making him the first African-American actor to do so and the second African-American to win for acting after Sidney Poitier. During the climactic fight between himself and Richard Gere at the end of the film, the original script called for Gere’s character to win, but Gossett Jr. said the Marines forced a change. “The Marines changed it,” he said in 2010. “They said that an enlisted man would never beat up a Drill Sergeant. We’ll tear the place up unless you change it. They said, ‘If you don’t do this well, Mr. Gossett, we’re going to have to kill you.’“
Gossett Jr. is also known for playing Charles “Chappy” Sinclair in Iron Eagle, Iron Eagle II, Aces: Iron Eagle III, and Iron Eagle on the Attack. He’s also known for his appearances in movies such as The Landlord, The Deep, Jaws 3-D, Enemy Mine, Firewalker, The Principal, The Punisher, Toy Soldiers, The Perfect Game, Why Did I Get Married Too?, Outlaw Johnny Black, The Color Purple, and IF.
He also made appearances in TV shows such as The Mod Squad, The Young Rebels, Bonanza, Good Times, The Jeffersons, The Six Million Dollar Man, Little House on the Prairie, The Rockford Files, Touched by an Angel, The Dead Zone, Stargate SG-1, Family Guy, The Batman, Boardwalk Empire, Extant, Hap and Leonard, Watchmen, and more.
He also played Fiddler on Roots, an older slave who teaches Kunta Kinte English. Initially, he didn’t think much of the part, but he grew to appreciate Fiddler’s role in the story. “I was insulted when they decided to give me the part of Fiddler. He resembled Stepin Fetchit, the Uncle Tom part. But I said, ‘OK, I will take it. I’ll do something,’” Gossett Jr. told Parade in 2016. “Then doing the research I realized there’s no such thing as an Uncle Tom. If it wasn’t for Fiddler, we wouldn’t be in America. He was a survivor. He understood both cultures and knew how to maneuver to stay alive and be solvent. We needed that lesson in order to survive here today. Having done Fiddler is a stripe on my uniform now.” He reprised the role for Roots: The Gift.
Joe Flaherty
“You will not make this putt, ya jackass!” Joe Flaherty certainly made the most of his brief role as Donald the heckler in Happy Gilmore, and it’s no surprise that he had little trouble stealing the show considering his long comedy career.
Flaherty was a founding member of Second City Television (SCTV), along with John Candy, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Harold Ramis, and Dave Thomas. “We didn’t have a producer, nobody told us what to write, who to appeal to, we just wrote for ourselves,” Flaherty said in a 1999 interview. “We were the inmates running the asylum. We created our own little world and it paid off. … I wish we could do it again.“
Eugene Levy said Flaherty was the only comedian who could get him to break character on stage. “When you saw his eyes dancing on stage, you knew that his brain was churning up something incredibly funny,” Levy said. “And you just had to brace yourself for it, certainly if you’re working with him on stage, because he was the only guy who could really get me laughing on stage in a very unprofessional way.“
He appeared on TV shows such as Married… with Children, Maniac Mansion, Dinosaurs, Police Academy: The Series, Even Stevens, That ’70s Show, The King of Queens, Frasier, Clone High, Family Guy, and American Dad. He’s also known for playing Harold Weir on Freaks and Geeks. He made appearances in movies such as 1941, Stripes, Heavy Metal, Johnny Dangerously, Innerspace, Blue Monkey, Who’s Harry Crumb, Back to the Future Part II, The Wrong Guy, Detroit Rock City, Freddy Got Fingered, Slackers, National Security, Home on the Range, and more. Flaherty died on April 1st at the age of 82.
O.J. Simpson
O.J. Simpson died on April 10th at the age of 76. Considered one of the greatest running backs of all time, Simpson spent nine seasons playing for the Buffalo Bills before he was traded to the San Francisco 49ers. He was always interested in acting and even appeared in movies such as The Towering Inferno, Killer Force, Capricorn One, and Firepower while playing in the NFL.
Upon his retirement, Simpson continued acting, most notably as Detective Nordberg in The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad, The Naked Gun 2+1⁄2: The Smell of Fear, and Naked Gun 33+1⁄3: The Final Insult. He also appeared on TV shows such as Medical Center, Roots, and In the Heat of the Night, and he even hosted Saturday Night Live, becoming the second athlete to do so.
However, all of his success was quickly overshadowed when he was charged with murdering his former wife, Nicole Brown and her friend, Ron Goldman, in 1994. The lengthy murder trial captured the attention of America unlike anything else, and his ultimate acquittal proved to be divisive. Just three years later, Simpson was found liable for the wrongful death of and battery against Goldman and battery against Brown in a civil suit. He also wrote If I Did It, a hypothetical description of the murders. The initial release of the book was cancelled, but the publishing rights were later awarded to the Goldman family, who released it under the title If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer with the word “If” significantly reduced on the cover.
Simpson found himself in trouble once again in 2007, when he and some friends attempted to recover sports memorabilia at the Palace Station hotel-casino in Las Vegas at gunpoint. He was sentenced to 33 years in prison but was released in 2017 after serving nine years.
Eleanor Coppola
Eleanor Coppola, wife of Francis Ford Coppola, died on April 12th at the age of 87. She is best known for Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, the 1991 documentary that chronicled the making of Apocalypse Now, the iconic 1979 movie plagued by a myriad of issues.
Eleanor first met her future husband on the set of Dementia 13, Francis’ feature directorial debut. Eleanor was the assistant art director on the movie, and the pair soon began dating before getting married in 1963. Each of their children, Gian-Carlo, Roman, and Sofia, would get into the movie business after spending their childhood years growing up on film sets, although Gian-Carlo sadly died in 1986 at the age of 22.
“I don’t know what the family has given except I hope they’ve set an example of a family encouraging each other in their creative process whatever it may be,” Eleanor told The Associated Press in 2017. “It happens in our family that everyone chose to sort of follow in the family business. We weren’t asking them to or expecting them to, but they did. At one point Sofia said, ‘The nut does not fall far from the tree.’“
Eleanor documented the making of Apocalypse Now, capturing events such as Martin Sheen’s nervous breakdown and the aftermath of the destruction of an expensive set, which nearly led to the entire project being abandoned. “I was just trying to keep myself occupied with something to do because we were out there for so long,” Eleanor said in 1991. “They wanted five minutes for a TV promotional or something and I thought sooner of later I could get five minutes of film and then it went on to 15 minutes. I just kept shooting but I had no idea … the evolution of myself that I saw with my camera,” continued Eleanor, who ended up shooting 60 hours worth of footage. “So, it was a surprise for both of us and a life-changing experience.“
Joining forces with co-directors Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper, Eleanor transformed Hearts of Darkness into one of the best filmmaking documentaries ever made. She went on to helm several documentaries about the making of other films made by family members, including Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. At the age of 80, she made the leap to narrative features with Paris Can Wait, a comedy starring Diane Lane and Alec Baldwin, which Eleanor wrote and directed. She followed that up with Love Is Love Is Love in 2020.
Terry Carter
Terry Carter died on April 23rd at the age of 95. He’s best known for playing Colonel Tigh on Battlestar Galactica. He was initially cast to play Lieutenant Boomer but had to be replaced after he broke his ankle in a roller skating accident. Thankfully, creator Glen A. Larson wanted to keep him onboard and offered him the role of Tigh instead. Decades later, Carter reprised the role (now President Tigh) in Richard Hatch’s Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming, a proof-of-concept trailer produced to convince the studio to develop a new TV series or movie.
He’s also known for starring alongside Dennis Weaver in McCloud. The pair reunited for The Return of Sam McCloud, a TV movie which aired over a decade after the original series. Carter appeared in TV shows such as That Girl, Mannix, The Jeffersons, The Fall Guy, Mr. Belvedere, and Hamilton, and movies such as Foxy Brown, Benji, and Abby. He was one of the first Black actors to appear regularly on a TV sitcom series. He appeared in 92 episodes of The Phil Silvers Show as Private Sugarman.
Bernard Hill
Bernard Hill is best known for playing King Théoden in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Hill brought a lot to the character, including suggesting what would become one of Théoden’s best moments: When the Rohan King touches everyone’s spears with his sword at the battle of Pelennor Fields. “That was all my idea – which terrified me,” Hill explained in an interview with The One Ring. “That came out of a visit to the Weta workshop in the first week. I saw all the spears and weapons and stuff like that; and for some reason I thought of Pelennor Fields y’know, like you do [chuckles] and I thought of a kid going down the railings with a stick hmmm the king touching everybody’s spear it might be a Rohan tradition that kind of thing. I was thinking in those kind of terms; that the king gives his spirit and sword to them, that he goes into their spirit somehow through the spear, and we’re all in this together. This is it, we’re all going to die, but you’ve got the king’s spirit in you. That kind of stuff.“
Hill phoned writers Phillipa Boyens and Fran Walsh to pitch the idea and kept at it until they wrote it into the script. “Then I thought, ‘s**t! What have I said?!?’ Coz I couldn’t do it. From the horse performer’s point of view, I couldn’t have done it,” Hill said. “Then I went to more and more horse training, and I took more and more lessons; maybe 20 hours a week. And that’s apart from riding socially on the weekends and I turned myself from a rider to a horseman. And that was the pay off really that fact that we actually went out and did it, that we filmed it, I did it and it was my idea. That was a real trip. And I actually DID it. I thought it was going to be… one of my big things, they gave me this unbelievable dialogue to say. ‘Ride for ruin and the world’s end.’ For something to say, you don’t get better than that, really. ‘Death! Spears shall be broken a red day.’ I can’t remember now, but God, was it a good speech.“
He appeared in Gandhi, The Bounty, The Ghost and the Darkness, True Crime, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Scorpion King, Gothika, Wimbledon, Valkyrie, ParaNorman, and more. He also played Captain Edward Smith in James Cameron’s Titanic. Hill died on May 5th at the age of 79.
Roger Corman
Roger Corman studied industrial engineering at Stanford University, but upon getting a job at U.S. Electrical Motors, he quickly realized it was not for him and quit after just four days, telling his boss, “I’ve made a terrible mistake. I really have to quit. Today.” He got a job at 20th Century Fox as a messenger, and a life-long career in film was born.
Corman worked his way up but realized that if he wanted to make his own films, he would have to do it himself. He wrote and directed movies Day the World Ended, Swamp Women, It Conquered the World, Not of This Earth, Attack of the Crab Monsters, The Undead, Teenage Caveman, A Bucket of Blood, The Wasp Woman, Last Woman on Earth, House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, Tales of Terror, Tower of London, The Raven, The Terror, The Haunted Palace, X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, The Masque of the Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, and so many more. He also famously shot The Little Shop of Horrors in just two days.
“I was having lunch with the head of a small rental studio where I had my office, and he said they had this rather nice set they had built, and it was a shame that they were going to have to tear it down,” Corman recalled. “I said, ‘I’ve always wanted to see what I could do with two cameras. I’ll rent that set for two days if I can experiment with it.’ He said, ‘Sure. Why not.’ We redressed the set a bit. Chuck and I went out to exactly the same coffeehouses and made up the story of Little Shop of Horrors. And I shot it in two days.“
Beyond the films he wrote, directed, and produced, Corman also gave a start to many young directors and actors, including Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Ron Howard, Joe Dante, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jonathan Demme, Peter Bogdanovich, and more.
Corman received an Academy Honorary Award in 2009. In his acceptance speech, Corman said: “Many of my friends and compatriots and people who’ve started with me are here tonight, and they’ve all succeeded. Some of them succeeded to an extraordinary degree. And I believe they’ve succeeded because they had the courage to take chances, to gamble. But they gambled because they knew the odds were with them; they knew they had the ability to create what they wanted to make. It’s very easy for a major studio or somebody else to repeat their successes, to spend vast amounts of money on remakes, on special effects-driven tentpole franchise films. But I believe the finest films being done today are done by the original, innovative filmmakers who have the courage to take a chance and to gamble. So I say to you, ‘Keep gambling, keep taking chances.’“
He also made appearances in a handful of movies, many directed by the people whose careers he helped start. He can be seen in The Godfather Part II, The Howling, The Silence of the Lambs, Body Bags, Philadelphia, Apollo 13, Scream 3, and more. Corman died on May 9th at the age of 98.
Dabney Coleman
Dabney Coleman died on May 16th at the age of 92. He played Merle Jeeter on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, which he called “the turning point in my career” and “probably the best thing I ever did” while speaking with The A.V. Club in 2012. “[Jeeter] was just wonderful, just a once-in-a-lifetime character,” he said. “He was just the worst human being. … That’s kind of where it all started, as far as people’s belief that I could do comedy, particularly that negative, caustic, cynical kind of guy. I was pretty good at doing that.” He reprised the role on Fernwood 2 Night and Forever Fernwood.
He was also included in the main casts of a many shows, including Buffalo Bill, Fresno, The Slap Maxwell Story, Drexell’s Cast, Madman of the People, The Guardian, and more. He also voiced Principal Peter Prickly in Recess. He appeared in episodes of That Girl, Columbo, Boardwalk Empire, Ray Donovan, NCIS, Yellowstone, and more.
Coleman found that his career took off when he decided to grow a mustache. “Without the mustache, I looked too much like Richard Nixon,” Coleman said. “There’s no question that when I grew that, all of a sudden, everything changed.” Coleman also made appearances in movies such as The Scalphunters, Downhill Racer, The Towering Inferno, Midway, Rolling Thunder, 9 to 5, On Golden Pond, Tootsie, WarGames, The Muppets Take Manhattan, Cloak & Dagger, Dragnet, Clifford, You’ve Got Mail, Inspector Gadget, Stuart Little, Where the Red Fern Grows, Domino, and more.
Morgan Spurlock
Morgan Spurlock is best known for Super Size Me, the documentary that took America by storm upon its release in 2004. The concept was simple: Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days. He was also not allowed to refuse the “super-size” option when it was offered, but he couldn’t ask for it himself. At the close of the experiment, Spurlock had gained 25 pounds and suffered from mood swings, sexual dysfunction, and fat accumulation in his liver. The massive success of the documentary prompted a widespread debate about eating habits, although Spurlock’s later admission that he had not been “sober for more than a week” in three decades called into question some of the symptoms he experienced.
While Super Size Me took aim at McDonald’s, Spurlock said it could have been any fast-food company. “For me, it’s about the culture. If you think fast food as an American, you think McDonalds,” he said in a 2006 interview. “To me they represent every food chain you can think of. They have influenced every other chain, they all follow McDonalds business practices. It’s follow the leader, McDonalds came out with ‘Super Sizing’ in America, everyone else followed suit. I picked the company that in my mind, could most easily institute change across the board, if they wanted to.“
After Super Size Me, Spurlock directed many other documentaries, including Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope, Mansome, One Direction: This Is Us, and Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!. He also created and starred in 30 Days, a reality series in which he, or someone else, spends 30 days immersing themselves in a particular lifestyle, such as being in prison, living on minimum wage, living off the grid, etc. Spurlock died on May 23rd at the age of 53.
Albert S. Ruddy
Albert S. Ruddy died on May 25th at the age of 94. Ruddy is best known for producing The Godfather, now regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. Getting the film off the ground was no easy task, and Ruddy was pivotal in negotiating with the Italian-American Civil Rights League, which was led by mobster Joseph Colombo. One of the conditions the League insisted on was that the words “mafia” and “cosa nostra” could not be spoken in the film.
Ruddy was also responsible for ensuring Mario Puzo (who wrote the original novel and the screenplay for the movie) would watch his diet, which was easier said than done. “I had to promise his wife that if she let him come to California, I would watch his diet. Because Mario had diabetes. I said, ‘I’m gonna eat with him every night, Mrs. Puzo. I promise you. Every day.’” Ruddy told /Film. “So for the first month and a half, I’m picking up Mario in the morning; we’re both having a poached egg and a buttered muffin. And I’m losing weight and Mario isn’t. So I go into this pizza joint one night—Frankie’s—and Frankie’s telling me what a nice guy Mario Puzo is. I said, ‘How do you know Mario?’ He said, ‘I bring him a pizza every night!’ [Mario’s] getting f***ing heavy and my pants are falling down!“
Before The Godfather, Ruddy had his first big success by co-creating Hogan’s Heroes. “When the show became a smash, I got calls from every studio in town, asking for ideas for other shows that I had,” Ruddy said. He’s also credited as one of the creators of Walker, Texas Ranger.
Ruddy also created the story for The Longest Yard, which he produced. He reunited with star Burt Reynolds for The Cannonball Run and Cannonball Run II. He also produced Megaforce (and co-wrote the script), Impulse, Ladybugs, Bad Girls, The Scout, Million Dollar Baby, Cry Macho, and more.
Tom Bower
Tom Bower died on May 30th at the age of 86. He’s best known for his appearance in Die Hard 2, where he played the janitor of Dulles International Airport, who assists John McClane. He appeared in movies such as River’s Edge, Beverly Hills Cop II, Split Decisions, True Believer, Aces: Iron Eagle III, Raising Cain, White Man’s Burde, Nixon, Pollock, Hearts in Atlantis, High Crimes, The Hills Have Eyes, Appaloosa, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Crazy Heart, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, We Have a Ghost, and more.
The actor was also known for The Waltons, becoming a regular cast member on the series’ fifth season. He played Curtis Willard, a doctor who arrives to replace the previous physician. After hiring Mary Ellen Walton as his nurse, they fell in love and married. However, the character was killed off during the attack on Pearl Harbor, which Bower said was due to him asking for a little more money. “I asked for a very small raise, so they sent me to Pearl Harbor,” he explained in 2022. “Then, when they decided to bring the character back, washed up on a shore somewhere — which I didn’t think was a great idea anyway — I asked for the same small raise. … They just cast a different actor.“
Bower made appearances in TV shows such as The Rockford Files, The Bionic Woman, Hill Street Blues, Murder, She Wrote, Miami Vice, The X-Files, Roswell, The West Wing, Cold Case, Monk, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Criminal Minds, Grey’s Anatomy, and Lucky Hank.
Benji Gregory
Benji Gregory died on June 13th at the age of 46. He was best known for playing Brian Tanner on ALF, the classic ’80s sitcom which followed a suburban middle-class family who takes in a wise-cracking alien life form with a taste for eating cats.
Gregory reflected on his time on the show while speaking with People in 2000, saying, “The only times it felt like work was when the lights were on, and it was real hot.” He recalled “climbing under the stage and messing around with the staff,” but added that it came as a “relief” when the series was cancelled as he was done with acting. In addition to ALF, Gregory also appeared on TV shows such as The A-Team, T.J. Hooker, Punky Brewster, Amazing Stories, The Twilight Zone, and Murphy Brown. He also appeared in movies such as Never Forget and Jumpin’ Jack Flash. His final role was voicing Edgar the Mole in Once Upon a Forest.
After stepping away from Hollywood and graduating from school, Gregory enlisted in the U.S. Navy and became an aerographer’s mate on the USS Carl Vinson, specializing in meteorology and oceanography.
Donald Sutherland
Donald Sutherland died on June 20th at the age of 88. With very few exceptions, Sutherland appeared in at least one movie yearly throughout his seven-decade-long career. The actor started in horror films such as Castle of the Living Dead, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, and Die! Die! My Darling! before he landed the role of Vernon L. Pinkley in The Dirty Dozen.
The classic World War II movie put Sutherland on the map, but he would achieve immense fame just a few years later when he starred in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H as Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce. In a 2023 interview, Sutherland recalled the scene in which his character waves at a camera to say hello to his father and his parent’s reaction when they watched the movie in theaters. “When I said ‘Hi Dad,’ my father stood up in the Las Vegas cinema and said, ‘Hi Donny,’” Sutherland said. “And my mother tried to drag him down into the seat and his suspenders were elasticized. I mean, she nearly slingshotted him through the air.“
The prolific actor appeared in movies such as Kelly’s Heroes, Klute, Don’t Look Now, S*P*Y*S, 1900, The Eagle Has Landed, Animal House, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The First Great Train Robbery, Ordinary People, Lock Up, JFK, Backdraft, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Puppet Masters, Disclosure, Outbreak, A Time to Kill, Fallen, Virus, Space Cowboys, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, The Italian Job, Cold Mountain, Pride & Prejudice, Lord of War, Horrible Bosses, The Eagle, Ad Astra, Moonfall, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, and many more.
He’s also known for playing President Coriolanus Snow in The Hunger Games franchise. As he told GQ in 2014, he wasn’t actually offered the role; he pursued it himself. “I wasn’t offered it,” he said. “I like to read scripts, and it captured my passion. I wrote them a letter. The role of the president had maybe a line in the script. Maybe two. Didn’t make any difference. I thought it was an incredibly important film, and I wanted to be a part of it… I hadn’t read the books. To be truthful, I was unaware of them. But they showed my letter to the director, Gary Ross, and he thought it’d be a good idea if I did it. He wrote those wonderfully poetic scenes in the rose garden, and they formed the mind and wit of Coriolanus Snow.“
Sutherland also made appearances in TV shows such as The Saint, The Avengers, The Simpsons, the 2004 Salem’s Lot miniseries, Dirty Sexy Money, The Pillars of the Earth, Crossing Lines, Ice, Trust, The Undoing, Swimming with Sharks, and Lawmen: Bass Reeves.
Bill Cobbs
Bill Cobbs died on June 25th at the age of 90. He had memorable roles in movies such as The Hudsucker Proxy, The Bodyguard, That Thing You Do!, Ghosts of Mississippi, Night at the Museum, and so much more.
After serving for eight years in the U.S. Air Force, Cobbs sold cars and worked for IBM before he decided to give acting a try. After appearing in various theater productions, he made his feature film debut in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. “I came back home to see my mom and dad, and all our friends and neighbors went to see the movie, and everyone was waiting for my appearance,” Cobbs recalled in 2013. “I walk up to a policeman in the subway and say, ‘Hey, man. What’s goin’ on?’“
He went on to make appearances in movies such as Trading Places, Silkwood, The Brother from Another Planet, The Cotton Club, The Color of Money, Bird, New Jack City, The Hard Way, The People Under the Stairs, Demolition Man, Fluke, First Kid, Air Bud, Hope Floats, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, A Mighty Wind, Oz the Great and Powerful, and more.
Cobbs also made frequent appearances on the small screen in TV shows such as Good Times, The Equalizer, Sesame Street, L.A. Law, Empty Nest, Northern Exposure, NYPD Blue, ER, The Outer Limits, The Sopranos, Touched by an Angel, Six Feet Under, JAG, The West Wing, The Drew Carey Show, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and more. He was also a regular on shows such as The Slap Maxwell Story, I’ll Fly Away, The Gregory Hines Show, The Others, The Michael Richards Show, and Go On. As a Star Trek fan, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Cobbs also played Dr. Emory Erickson, the inventor of the transporter, on Star Trek: Enterprise.
Martin Mull
Martin Mull died on June 27th at the age of 80. The hugely talented comedian and actor is best known for playing Colonel Mustard in Clue, Leon Carp in Roseanne, and Gene Parmesan in Arrested Development.
Mull got his start as a songwriter, penning A Girl Named Johnny Cash for singer Jane Morgan. He later set off on his own as a musical comedian before making the leap to acting. He quickly found fame as Garth Gimble in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, but the wife-beating character was not one he enjoyed playing.
“I thought they hired me because I was a comedian,” Mull said in 2014. “I was kind of surprised when all of a sudden we got all this Virginia Woolfish high drama. I didn’t like the character at all. I don’t care for violence, and wife beating is particularly repugnant to me, so it was quite hard.” He also played Barth Gimble, Garth’s twin brother, in the talk show parodies Fernwood 2 Night and America 2 Night alongside Fred Willard, who played his sidekick and announcer.
He went on to appear in TV shows such as The Golden Girls, The Larry Sanders Show, Just Shoot Me!, The Ellen Show, Reba, Reno 911, The War at Home, Two and a Half Men, ‘Til Death, Dads, Community, Life in Pieces, The Ranch, The Cool Kids, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and more. He also plays Willard Kraft in Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the principal of Westbridge High and was nominated for an Emmy for his guest-starring role in HBO’s Veep. Mull was also a prolific voice actor, lending his talents to The Simpsons, Family Guy, The Wild Thornberrys, Dexter’s Laboratory, Danny Phantom, American Dad!, and Bob’s Burgers.
Mull also appeared in movies such as FM, Serial, Mr. Mom, Cutting Class, Ski Patrol, Mrs. Doubtfire, How the West Was Fun, Jingle All the Way, 101 Dalmatians, Richie Rich’s Christmas Wish, A Futile and Stupid Gesture, and more.
Robert Towne
Robert Towne died on July 1st at the age of 89. Best known as the screenwriter of Chinatown, Towne initially set out to work as an actor and writer and quickly found employment with Roger Corman. He scripted Corman’s Last Woman on Earth and co-starred in the film under the pseudonym Edward Wain. He also wrote The Tomb of Ligeia for Corman. Towne then earned a reputation as a top script doctor after Warren Beatty asked him to help out on Bonnie and Clyde. He made uncredited contributions to movies such as The Godfather, The Parallax View, Marathon Man, The Missouri Breaks, Heaven Can Wait, Crimson Tide, and more.
Towne first met Chinatown star Jack Nicholson in the late 1950s at an acting class taught by blacklisted actor Jeff Corey. They became friends and even lived together at one point, and Towne knew Nicholson was destined for fame. “From the moment I laid eyes on him, I knew Jack was gonna be a star. … I wouldn’t have been able to envision anyone else in the part,” Towne told Variety. “It wasn’t just his capacity for indignation, an innate sense that the world may not be fair but that it damn well should be. It was also his passion for clothing, a certain eye for the finer things, a disregard for — even aversion to — the ordinary.”
He wrote Chinatown with Nicholson in mind for the role of Jake Gittes but battled with director Roman Polanski over the ending, which he had imagined as more upbeat. “I felt it was too melodramatic to end it his way,” Towne said, but years later, he admitted, “I was wrong, and he was right.“
Decades later, Towne would return to the world of Jake Gittes with The Two Jakes, but the Jack Nicholson-directed sequel was met with mixed reviews and a lacklustre box office, forcing Towne to abandon plans for a third installment. Before his death, he had been working on a Chinatown prequel series with David Fincher and recently said that all the scripts had been completed.
Towne penned the scripts for The Last Detail, The Yakuza, Shampoo, Days of Thunder, The Firm, Love Affair, Mission: Impossible, and Mission: Impossible 2. He also directed several of his screenplays with Personal Best, Tequila Sunrise, Without Limits, and Ask the Dust.
He also wrote the script for Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, with the intention of directing it, but he was forced to sell his rights to the project, which he later said was “the biggest creative regret of my life.” He removed his name from the script, choosing to be credited as P.H. Vazak, which happened to be the name of his dog.
Jon Landau
Jon Landau died on July 5th at the age of 63. Not many people can say that they produced three of the biggest movies of all time, but that’s precisely what Landau did. Through his partnership with James Cameron, Landau produced Titanic, Avatar, and Avatar: The Way of Water, all of which belong to the illustrious $2 billion box office club.
After graduating from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Landau moved back to New York, where he worked as a production assistant on a TV movie of the week. When that job wrapped up, he was offered some accounting work. “I had no interest in accounting and certainly had no interest in filing, but I said yes,” Landau explained. “I read everything I filed. I don’t know that I was supposed to, but I did. I learned [a lot] in those two weeks.” From that moment, Landau climbed the rungs of the Hollywood ladder until he was hired to oversee physical production at 20th Century Fox at just 28 years old. It was there that he met James Cameron, who was in the midst of production on True Lies. While Landau was the “studio suit,” as Cameron put it, the pair came to respect each other, and the director convinced him to join his production company.
When Cameron showed Landau an early draft of Titanic, the producer knew this was something special. “[I] fell in love with it,” he said. “It was not just the script, but the idea that this could be the last time that an epic, old-fashioned movie is made, with hundreds and hundreds of extras — who aren’t digital.” With a budget that quickly ballooned and production delays, Titanic was a gamble, but it paid off big time. It became the highest-grossing movie of all time, a title it held for over a decade until Cameron’s own Avatar dethroned it. “James comes up with the great dreams,” said Landau in 2010. “And it’s my job to make those dreams come true.“
In addition to his work with Cameron, Landau also had a hand in Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Dick Tracy, Solaris, and more.
Shelley Duvall
Shelley Duvall got her start in Robert Altman’s Brewster McCloud during an audition she didn’t even realize was an audition. She had hosted a party which featured paintings by her then-fiance Bernard Sampson, and several crew members from Brewster McCloud happened to be there. Intrigued by her looks, they invited her to pitch Bernard’s paintings to some “art patrons,” but it was really a secret audition. “I was really quite mean to her, as I thought she was an actress,” Altman later recalled. “But she wasn’t kidding; that was her. She was an untrained, truthful person. She was very raw in Brewster but quite magic.“
Duvall would continue working with Altman on McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Thieves Like Us, Nashville, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson, 3 Women, and Popeye. She also appeared in movies such as Annie Hall, Time Bandits, Roxanne, Suburban Commando, The Underneath, The Portrait of a Lady, Home Fries, and more.
Of course, Duvall’s most iconic role is that of Wendy Torrance in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The role was emotionally and physically draining as Kubrick demanded, at times, hundreds of takes. “[Kubrick] doesn’t print anything until at least the 35th take. Thirty-five takes, running and crying and carrying a little boy, it gets hard. And full performance from the first rehearsal. That’s difficult,” Duvall told THR. “But after a while, your body rebels. It says: ‘Stop doing this to me. I don’t want to cry every day.’ And sometimes just that thought alone would make me cry. To wake up on a Monday morning, so early, and realize that you had to cry all day because it was scheduled — I would just start crying. I’d be like, ‘Oh no, I can’t, I can’t.’ And yet I did it. I don’t know how I did it. Jack said that to me, too. He said, ‘I don’t know how you do it.’“
Kubrick was later accused of being unusually cruel to push Duvall’s performance, but the actress said the director was “very warm and friendly to me.” She continued, “He spent a lot of time with Jack and me. He just wanted to sit down and talk for hours while the crew waited. And the crew would say, ‘Stanley, we have about 60 people waiting.’ But it was very important work.“
Duvall also created several TV shows aimed at families, including Faerie Tale Theatre (which she introduced by saying, ‘Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall’), Tall Tales & Legends, and Shelley Duvall’s Bedtime Stories. She died on July 11th at the age of 75.
Richard Simmons
Richard Simmons died on July 13th at the age of 76. The iconic fitness guru always played himself in one way or another. “You know, when I first did my videos, I’m sure people thought I was silly and a little bit different,” Simmons told People. “But they seemed to embrace that I was just an ordinary guy, nothing special about me, except maybe my sense of humor. When I was a waiter at Derrick’s [a now-closed restaurant in L.A.], I was a real cut-up…I made people laugh. There was no menu, so I did the menu verbally — and if there was a guy at the table, I would sit on the guy’s lap.“
Simmons struggled with his weight as a child and was nearly 270 pounds by the time he graduated high school. When he was 20 years old, he found an anonymous note on the windshield of his car that read: “Dear Richard: Fat people die young. Please don’t die.” Simmons started taking his health and fitness more seriously and moved to Los Angeles, where he opened Ruffage and the Anatomy Asylum, a combination health-food restaurant and exercise studio.
After appearing in an interview with Regis Philbin, Simmons got a call offering him a role on the popular soap opera General Hospital. “I met with the most powerful woman in daytime television. Gloria Monty. I also met with the head writer Pat Falken Smith. These ladies were very smart,” Simmons said. “They told me their idea. I would teach exercise classes in a disco for all the ladies on the show. A week before taping the show the studio asked me if I could drive over and do some promotional photos. In my car I brought with me six jogging suits….My make up…some towels and five pound weights. I still could not believe I was going to be on a soap.” He played a recurring role on the soap, appearing in over 80 episodes.
He appeared in TV series such as CHiPs, Amazing Stories, Dinosaurs, The Larry Sanders Show, Rocko’s Modern Life, All My Children, Hercules, Johnny Bravo, Arrested Development, and Fish Hooks. Of course, who can forget Sweatin’ to the Oldies, a series of videos which became some of the most popular workout videos of the decade.
James B. Sikking
James B. Sikking died on July 13th at the age of 90. The actor was best known for playing Howard Hunter on Hill Street Blues, the leader of the Emergency Action Team. Sikking has said he based the character on a drill instructor he met during basic training at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. “The drill instructor looked like he had steel for hair and his uniform had so much starch in it, you knew it would [stand] in the corner when he took it off in the barracks,” Sikking said in 2014. “So when I started to play Howard, I picked out the way he should be dressed. It had to be a very military look.“
Sikking is also known for Doogie Howser M.D., in which he played Dr. David Howser, the father of Neil Patrick Harris’s character. He appeared in TV shows such as The Outer Limits, The Fugitive, Bonanza, Hogan’s Heroes, Mission: Impossible, M*A*S*H, Columbo, Little House on the Praire, Hawaii Five-O, Brooklyn South, Batman Beyond, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and The Closer.
The actor also made plenty of appearances on the big screen, with roles in Point Blank, Charro!, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, The Magnificent Seven Ride!, Scorpio, The Terminal Man, Capricorn One, Ordinary People, Outland, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, The Pelican Brief, Fever Pitch, Made of Honor, and more.
Shannon Doherty
Shannen Doherty died on July 13th at the age of 53. At a young age, Doherty appeared on Father Murphy, a series produced by Michael Landon, who cast her as Jenny Wilder on Little House on the Prairie.
“That show, Little House, shaped me in so many ways and it still is the best experience of my entire career,” Doherty recalled. “It’s kind of amazing because, when I think about the long span of my career, but also how rough some jobs were — and unenjoyable to be a part of, a little bit toxic — it was really the experience on Little House that spurred that passion on for being an actor. And it was having a mentor like Michael Landon — and I don’t care what anybody else’s experience was like, I know the truth about that man, and he was just unbelievable.“
Following Little House, Doherty starred alongside Wilfred Brimley on Our House and made appearances in TV shows such as Magnum, P.I., Airwolf, Highway to Heaven, 21 Jump Street, Heathers, Riverdale, and more. Of course, she’s best known for playing Brenda Walsh on Beverly Hills, 90210. After four seasons, she was dismissed from the show amid conflicts with other cast members and producers. “There was definitely a time that I did not want to be there. I was unhappy,” Doherty said in 2005. “It sounds odd to say that I was on a hit show making a lot of money and I was unhappy, because it makes me sound unappreciative — I wasn’t. It’s just that the sacrifice at the time seemed too large to me. The sacrifice of a camera pointed in my face 24 hours a day while I was desperately trying to grow up, to figure out my spirituality, to figure out my boyfriends. I mean, I was a teenager.” She returned years later for the 90210 reboot series and played a heightened version of herself on BH90210 alongside many of the original cast members.
Doherty also starred alongside Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs in Charmed, but her character was killed off in the third season and replaced by Rose McGowan. The actress was also featured in movies such as The Secret of NIMH, Night Shift, Heathers, Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult, Mallrats, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and more.
Cheng Pei-pei
Cheng Pei-pei is best known for playing Golden Swallow in Come Drink with Me, widely considered to be one of the greatest wuxia films of all time. The film also turned the actress into a martial arts pioneer, paving the way for strong, independent female characters in martial arts movies. She’s also known for playing Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
She appeared in movies such as Princess Iron Fan, Golden Swallow, Brothers Five, Flirting Scholar, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, Meditation Park, and Disney’s live-action Mulan. Despite her status as a martial arts legend, Pei-pei said she “never considered herself a martial arts lady, I’m really a dancer. I tell my children that it’s a bonus to be a dancer because you are graceful, can kick high, bend low. But kung fu is different; you must learn to use your power, and the body types are different. In Crouching Tiger, people ask me how come Chow Yun-fat doesn’t know how to fight? I tell them it’s not important, because he’s an actor and the movie is a movie and not a documentary. Fights are universal, but in drama you must know your culture and accept that; otherwise you won’t understand why something happens the way it does. Love in Chinese and Western films are communicated differently, but fights are the same, and we can understand what they’re fighting about.“
Like many martial arts stars, Pei-pei faced her fair share of injuries. “I used to get injured a lot and my ankles were always twisted. The worse one was with Lo Wei, a Golden Harvest Film, None But the Brave,” she said. “I was married, had children, and the stunt coordinator wants be to jump down from a second floor window in a split. But my legs are too long, so my legs hit the window and then hit my nose when I jumped. I was out cold. I also broke my ankle, but I insist that I finish the scene because I didn’t want to hold up production and lose any money.” Pei-pei died on July 17th at the age of 78.
Bob Newhart
Bob Newhart died on July 18th at the age of 94. Known for his pitch-perfect, deadpan humour, the comedian is best known for starring in The Bob Newhart Show as psychologist Robert “Bob” Hartley. The show was a big hit and is regarded as one of the best sitcoms of all time. He followed it up with Newhart, where he played Dick Loudon, an author who moves to rural Vermont with his wife to operate the Stratford Inn. The finale of Newhart is one of the most memorable in TV history, as it revealed that the entire series was a dream of his character from The Bob Newhart Show.
Newhart initially started as an accountant and didn’t have any dreams of show business. Still, he began developing a comedy routine by making prank phone calls with a friend to amuse themselves at work. This later led to a record deal. “Keep in mind, when I started in the late fifties, I didn’t say to myself, ‘Oh, here’s a great void to fill — I’ll be a balding ex-accountant who specializes in low-key humor,’” Newhart said. “That’s simply what I was and that’s the direction my mind always went in, so it was natural for me to be that way… I tend to find humor in the macabre. I would say 85 percent of me is what you see on the show. And the other 15 percent is a very sick man with a very deranged mind.“
After the failure of his third sitcom, Bob, he went on to make appearances on TV shows such as Murphy Brown, The Simpsons, ER, Desperate Housewives, NCIS, Hot in Cleveland, and The Librarians. He also played Arthur Jeffries, aka Professor Proton, on The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon. Newhart can also be seen in movies such as Hell Is for Heroes, Catch-22, The Rescuers, First Family, The Rescuers Down Under, In & Out, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde, Elf, Horrible Bosses, and more.
Charles Cyphers
Charles Cyphers is best known for his collaborations with filmmaker John Carpenter, appearing in Assault on Precinct 13, Someone’s Watching Me!, Elvis, The Fog, and Escape from New York. He also played Sheriff Leigh Brackett in Halloween and Halloween II. He reprised the role for Halloween Kills. During an appearance at HorrorConUK 2022, Cyphers said it was “shocking” but “wonderful” to be asked back. “To be called back again in a film, it’s unheard of after 40 years. Most people are dead.“
Cyphers also made appearances in movies such as Truck Turner, Vigilante Force, MacArthur, A Force of One, The Onion Field, Death Wish II, Grizzly II: Revenge, Major League, Loaded Weapon 1, and more. On the small screen, he can be seen in episodes of Cannon, Barnaby Jones, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Starsky & Hutch, Roots, Wonder Woman, The Dukes of Hazzard, Hill Street Blues, Night Court, 21 Jump Street, Freddy’s Nightmares, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, seaQuest DSV, Murder One, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He died on August 4th at the age of 85.
Patti Yasutake
Patti Yasutake died on August 5th at the age of 70. She’s best known for playing Nurse Alyssa Ogawa on Star Trek: The Next Generation. She debuted in the fourth season and was featured in multiple episodes each season until the series came to a close, but she always wanted to appear more. “I’m an actor – you wanna be there all the time,” she said. “You wanna be on the lot working all the time. But it was really fun when you get the call to come back because it made you feel good that you were probably doing something that they appreciated. Joy, the head hair designer, used to say ‘You’re her mascot!’ [Points to Gates McFadden]. So I thought fine, I’ll take it.” She reprised the role in Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact.
Yasutake made appearances in TV shows such as T.J. Hooker, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Mr. Belvedere, Tales from the Crypt, Murphy Brown, Picket Fences, Judging Amy, Crossing Jordan, Grey’s Anatomy, Bones, Boston Legal, Flashforward, The Closer, Pretty Little Liars, and Notorious. One of her final roles found her playing Fumi in the first season of Netflix’s Beef. “I was just elated, this many decades into my career, that a role like this would come along,” she said, adding that the script from creator Lee Sung Jin really connected with her. “[It] really, really, really spoke to the Asian American experience, and yet it wasn’t necessarily about that. Because he writes from such a humanistic standpoint, and he writes from such humanity. Then all the details come from the specifics of their lives. There were so many [moments where] I thought, ‘Are people going to get some of this?’ Because there’s so many inside jokes in terms of our cultural communities — and he included so many of them, from Southeast Asian to Chinese to Korean to Japanese.“
Yasutake also appeared in movies such as Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, Drop Dead Gorgeous, and more.
Rachael Lillis
Rachael Lillis died on August 10th at the age of 55. She’s best known for providing the voices of Misty and Jessie in the English dub of the Pokémon TV series. She also voiced a number of Pokémon throughout the series, including Jigglypuff, Vulpix, Venonat, Goldeen, and more. She returned for many of the Pokémon movies, including Pokémon: The First Movie, Pokémon The Movie 2000, Pokémon 3: The Movie, Pokémon 4Ever, and more.
Veronica Taylor, who voiced Ash Ketchum for the first eight seasons, announced Lillis’ death with a touching tribute. “Rachael was an extraordinary talent, a bright light that shone through her voice whether speaking or singing. She will be forever remembered for the many animated roles she played, with her iconic performances as Pokemon’s Misty and Jessie being the most beloved,” Taylor wrote. “Rachael was so thankful for all the generous love and support that was given to her as she battled cancer. It truly made a positive difference. I was lucky enough to know Rachael as a friend. She had unlimited kindness and compassion, even until the very end. She had a great sense of humor, was wonderful to be with, incredibly intelligent, and had such a memory. She worked hard and cared deeply. I am not sure how this very dark void will be filled now that her light no longer shines in it.“
In addition to her work on Pokémon, Lillis also lent her voice to Revolutionary Girl Utena, Berserk, Sonic X, Genshiken, Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, Hunter x Hunter, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Winx Club, and much more.
Alain Delon
Alain Delon died on August 18th at the age of 88. After a stint in the French Navy, Delon caught the attention of producer David O. Selznick, who offered him a seven-year contract in the United States on the condition that he learn English. Instead, his lover, Michèle Cordoue, convinced her husband, Yves Allégret, to give him a role in Send a Woman When the Devil Fails.
“I didn’t know how to do anything,” Delon recalled. “Yves Allégret took one look at me and said: ‘Listen to me very carefully, Alain: Talk like you talk to me. Look like you look at me. Listen like you listen to me. Don’t act, live.’ That changed everything.” The actor’s breakthrough role came with Purple Noon, the first adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley.
He went on to appear in movies such as Rocco and His Brothers, L’Eclisse, The Leopard, La Piscine, The Sicilian Clan, Borsalino, Le Cercle Rouge, Un flic, Scorpio, Borsalino & Co, The Concorde… Airport ’79, Asterix at the Olympic Games, and more. His most iconic role is that of assassin Jef Costello in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï. His portrayal was highly praised and has continued to influence characters in movies worldwide. “It’s something that surpasses me, that exists beyond me,” Delon said of his character. “The samurai is me, but unconsciously so.“
John Amos
John Amos died on August 21st at the age of 84. He’s best known for playing James Evans Sr. on Good Times, a spin-off of Maude, which was itself a spin-off of All In the Family.
Amos was invited to read for the role alongside Esther Rolle, who would play Florida Evans. “Everybody knew who Norman Lear was. I’d seen the pilot episode of All in the Family and thought, ‘There’s no way in the world they’re going to put that on television.’ … Sure enough, it became a hit,” Amos recalled in 2014. “So I went in and read with Miss Rolle for Norman Lear, with just the three of us in his office. When we finished the reading, Norman looked at Esther, and Esther looked at me and looked at Norman and said, ‘He’ll do just fine.’“
However, Amos disagreed with the show’s increased focus on Jimmie Walker’s character J.J. and his “Dyn-o-mite!” catchphrase. “We had a number of differences. I felt too much emphasis was being put on J.J. in his chicken hat, saying ‘Dy-no-mite!’ every third page,” Amos said. “I felt just as much emphasis and mileage could have been gotten out of my other two children, one of whom aspired to become a Supreme Court justice, played by Ralph Carter, and the other, BernNadette Stanis, who aspired to become a surgeon. But I wasn’t the most diplomatic guy in those days, and [the show’s producers] got tired of having their lives threatened over jokes. So they said, ‘Tell you what, why don’t we kill him off? We can get on with our lives!’ That taught me a lesson — I wasn’t as important as I thought I was to the show or to Norman Lear’s plans.“
In addition to Good Times, Amos made appearances in TV shows such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Maude, Future Cop, The Love Boat, The A-Team, Hunter, 704 Hauser, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, In the House, King of the Hill, The West Wing, The Outer Limited, All About the Andersons, Men in Trees, Psych, Two and a Half Men, 30 Rock, The Ranch, The Last O.G., The Righteous Gemstones, and more. He also played the adult Kunta Kinta in Roots.
He also appeared in movies such as Vanishing Point, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, The Beastmaster, Coming to America, Lock Up, Two Evil Eyes, Die Hard 2, Ricochet, Dr. Dolittle 3, Madea’s Witness Protection, Bad Asses on the Bayou, Uncut Gems, Coming 2 America, and more.
Obi Ndefo
Obi Ndefo died on August 28th at the age of 51. Ndefo is best known for playing Bodie Wells on Dawson’s Creek and Rak’nor on Stargate SG-1. The actor had memorable roles in TV shows such as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Angel, Star Trek: Voyager, Crossing Jordan, NYPD Blue, The West Wing, NCIS: Los Angeles, and more.
Five years ago, Ndefo’s life changed forever when he was struck by a drunk driver in a grocery store parking lot. The impact of the crash led to the amputation of both of Ndefo’s legs above the knee. The driver fled the scene and was captured the next day, but not before he injured someone else in another hit-and-run. “I just started repeating, ‘I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive,’ just to keep myself calm,” Ndefo said.
Throughout the various surgeries and rehab, Ndefo doubted whether he could continue without legs, but he put himself on a positive path. “I can do this,” he said. “And I want to keep being a contributor to the world.” At the time of the crash, he had been writing Juice Bar, a potential TV series focused on the health movement. He had even included a character who faced the same obstacles that Ndefo found himself in following the hit-and-run. “I was in the process of interviewing amputees, and it’s really surreal,” Ndefo said.
James Darren
James Darren died on September 2nd at the age of 88. The actor got his big break playing Jeffrey Matthews, aka Moondoggie, in Gidget, the surf film starring Sandra Dee and Cliff Robertson. He also sang the film’s main theme but had to convince the producers he could do it. “They were thinking about having someone do the vocal and I would lip sync,” Darren recalled. “I told them I could do it. So we went into one of the sound stages and I sang ‘Gidget.’ They said, ‘He sings fine,’ then I did all the other songs.” He reprised the role for Gidget Goes Hawaiian and Gidget Goes to Rome.
Darren appeared in movies such as Rumble on the Docks, Let No Man Write My Epitaph, The Guns of Navarone, Venus in Furs, Lucky, and more.
On the small screen, he’s best known for playing Officer Jim Corrigan in T.J. Hooker and holographic crooner Vic Fontaine on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. At first, Darren turned down the Star Trek role, but it became one of his favourites. “They said I was going to be playing a singer and I said, ‘No, that’s too much on the nose. I want to pass.’ That’s what I told my agent,” Darren said in 2019. “Then, my agent called me again and I passed again. I passed three times. Finally, my agent said, ‘Why don’t you at least read the script? If you read the script you may love it.’ Of course, I did read the script and, of course, I did love it. It was just a great role. Vic Fontaine was like – what can I say? – it was a dream come true for me. It was one of the most enjoyable roles for me to have played.“
He also starred alongside Robert Colbert and Lee Meriwether in Irwin Allen’s The Time Tunnel and appeared in TV shows such as Hawaii Five-O, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Diagnosis: Murder, Melrose Place, and more.
James Earl Jones
James Earl Jones died on September 9th at the age of 93. The actor is best known for providing the iconic voice of Darth Vader throughout the Star Wars franchise, but that’s only scratching the surface of his incredible legacy.
For an actor known for his deep, commanding voice, it’s remarkable that he struggled with speaking at an early age. When he was five, he was sent to live with his grandparents in Michigan. The experience was so traumatic that he developed a severe stutter that led to him refusing to speak. “I was a stutterer. I couldn’t talk,” Jones explained. “So my first year of school was my first mute year, and then those mute years continued until I got to high school.” The actor credited his English teacher, Donald Crouch, with helping him overcome his stutter. Crouch discovered Jones wrote poetry and encouraged him to read it aloud to his class.
Jones took a liking to drama during his University years, and like many young actors, he got his start on the stage. He even won a Tony Award for Best Actor for his starring role in The Great White Hope and later reprised the role for the feature film adaptation. Jones made his film debut in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, and went on to appear in movies such as Claudine, The Greatest, Exorcist II: The Heretic, Conan The Barbarian, Coming to America, Field of Dreams, The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Sneakers, The Sandlot, Clear and Present Danger, Coming 2 America, and so much more.
As for Star Wars, Jones was paid just $7000 for the voice role and went uncredited for the first two films. By the time Return of the Jedi rolled around, he finally agreed to be credited as the voice of Darth Vader. “When Linda Blair did the girl in The Exorcist, they hired Mercedes McCambridge to do the voice of the devil coming out of her. And there was controversy as to whether Mercedes should get credit. I was one who thought no, she was just special effects,” Jones said in 2009. “So when it came to Darth Vader, I said, no, I’m just special effects. But it became so identified that by the third one, I thought, OK I’ll let them put my name on it.” Jones voiced the character in the original trilogy and returned for Revenge of the Sith, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and several episodes of Star Wars: Rebels. For the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, Lucasfilm used archival recordings and AI to recreate the voice.
He also voiced Mufasa in The Lion King and even reprised the role for the 2019 remake. Next to Darth Vader, Mufasa is probably Jones’ most recognizable role, and he always enjoyed the reaction of young children as they realized he played the character. “Their parents will say, ‘There’s Mufasa!’ But I don’t look like a lion, and if they’re real little kids, they think they’re being shafted or having the wool pulled over their eyes,” Jones said in a 2011 interview. “And I can’t roar to prove it to them, but I can say [in Mufasa’s voice], ‘Simba. You have deliberately disobeyed me!’“
Maggie Smith
Maggie Smith died on September 27th at the age of 89. The iconic British actress is best known for playing Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter franchise. Although Smith had been a well-known actress for decades, her appearances in the franchise changed her life by introducing her to a new legion of young fans. “A lot of very small people used to say hello to me,” Smith recalled during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show. “And that was nice. One kid once said to me ‘Where you really a cat?’ And I heard myself say ‘Just pull yourself together, how could I have been?’“
She’s also known for playing Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, in Downton Abbey. Despite the grand nature of her character, the world of English aristocracy wasn’t something Smith could relate to. “Oh, goodness, it’s so way beyond me. I’m far, far, far from that,” Smith told NPR. “But of course, that’s one of the joys of acting is that you can move up in the world, even if – you know, in the characters that you’re playing, even if you don’t. So it was – it’s always very nice to be somebody rather grand. Now I seem to be stuck with it, which is a bit of a strain.” She reprised the role in the first two Downton Abbey movies.
Smith also had a reputation for being blunt and not suffering fools gladly. “Every time I start anything, I think, ‘This time I’m going to be like Jude [Dench], and it will all be lovely, it will be merry and bright, the Quaker will come out in me,’” Smith said. “It’s gone too far now to take back. If I suddenly came on like Pollyanna, it wouldn’t work — it would frighten people more if I were nice. They’d be paralyzed with fear. And wonder what I was up to.“
She appeared in movies such as Othello, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Murder by Death, Death on the Nile, California Suite, Clash of the Titans, Evil Under the Sun, A Room with a View, Hook, Sister Act, The Secret Garden, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, Richard III, The First Wives Club, Gosford Park, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
Kris Kristofferson
After leaving the U.S. Army, Kris Kristofferson moved to Nashville to try to make it as a songwriter. He got a job sweeping floors at Columbia Recording Studios and met June Carter and asked her to pass along a tape of his to give to Johnny Cash. Kristofferson also worked as a commercial helicopter pilot, and when weeks went by without hearing anything from Cash, he landed a helicopter on his front lawn. The move paid off big time. “It started a whole performing career I just didn’t anticipate,” Kristofferson said. “I was tickled to death that people were just starting to cut my songs.“
Once Kristofferson had established himself as a singer and songwriter, he turned his attention to Hollywood. He worked with Martin Scorsese on Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. “I was scared to death and stupid and slow and Marty was bright and fast and articulate and compassionate and intense, and it was wonderful,” he said. “And then on Taxi Driver, you had Robert De Niro giving Cybill Shepherd one of my albums [and] quoting my songs; she said my name like I was Bob Dylan or something.” Kristofferson appeared in movies such as Cisco Pike, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Vigilante Force, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, A Star is Born, Semi-Tough, Convoy, Heaven’s Gate, Big Top Pee-wee, Millennium, Lone Star, Payback, Planet of the Apes, D-Tox, Where the Red Fern Grows, Dolphin Tale, and more.
Of course, many know him best for playing Whistler alongside Wesley Snipes in Blade, Blade II, and Blade Trinity. Kristofferson died on September 28th at the age of 88.
John Ashton
John Ashton is best known for playing Sergeant John Taggart in Beverly Hills Cop. The action-comedy helped propel Eddie Murphy to super-stardom, but Ashton had no idea the film would become as huge as it did. “It totally surprised me,” Ashton said in 2020. “I mean, I got my degree in theater, and I did theater for a lot of years. [In theater] you just go in and do your job, hope for the best and hope you’re doing the job well. I don’t think ahead, I just go in day by day and do my work, do the best that I can, and hopefully, it turns out well. But I don’t think of results when I’m working. I just think of the moment. And [on Beverly Hills Cop] every day was a pleasure, and then luckily, it came out to be a huge hit. Judge [Reinhold] and I were blown away by the reception it got. And of course, after that, you can’t walk down the street. So it was quite the surprise but a pleasant surprise.“
He returned for Beverly Hills Cop II, but scheduling conflicts prevented him from taking part in Beverly Hills Cop III. However, he did return for Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, which was released just two months before his death. He was also featured in movies such as The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Last Resort, King Kong Lives, She’s Having a Baby, Midnight Run, Little Big League, Instinct, Gone Baby Gone, and more.
Ashton appeared in TV shows such as Columbo, Police Woman, Wonder Woman, M*A*S*H, Starsky & Hutch, Dallas, Police Squad!, The Twilight Zone, The Tommyknockers, King of the Hill, Judging Amy, and more. He also took the lead in his own crime drama, Hardball, but it was cancelled after just one season. Ashton died on September 26th at the age of 76.
Nicholas Pryor
Nicholas Pryor died on October 7th at the age of 89. The actor is best known for playing the father of Tom Cruise’s character in Ricky Business, the father of Robert Downey Jr.’s character in Less Than Zero, and Chancellor Milton Arnold on Beverly Hills, 90210. In a note delivered to THR after his death, Pryor wrote that he “was enormously grateful to have been, for nearly 70 years, a working actor.“
Pryor appeared on several soap operas throughout his long career, including stints on Another World, Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, The Nurses, and Port Charles. He was also featured in episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Eight is Enough, East of Eden, M*A*S*H, Little House on the Praire, Dallas, Knight Rider, The Bronx Zoo, Moonlighting, Murder, She Wrote, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, Party of Five, The West Wing, NYPD Blue, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and more.
He also made appearances in movies such as Damien: Omen II, Airplane!, Brain Dead, Hoffa, Executive Decision, Murder at 1600, Collateral Damage, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, Doctor Sleep, and Halloween Kills.
Paul Morrissey
Paul Morrissey died on October 28th at the age of 86. He started making short silent comedies on 16mm, but his career took on a new direction when he met Andy Warhol, who invited him to The Factory to work on his films. His collaborations with Warhol include My Hustler, Chelsea Girls, The Velvet Underground and Nico: A Symphony of Sound, Flesh, Lonesome Cowboys, Trash, Women in Revolt, Heat, L’Amour, and more.
He later left for Italy, where he wrote and directed Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula back-to-back. During the initial release, they were titled Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein and Andy Warhol’s Dracula. In his later years, Morrissey didn’t exactly seem fond of Warhol. “Don’t say ‘Warhol films’ when you talk about my films! Are you so stupid, you talk to people like that? I have to live through this for fifty years,” Morrissey said during a 2020 interview. “Everything I did, it’s Warhol this, or he did them with me. Forget it. He was incompetent, anorexic, illiterate, autistic, Asperger’s — he never did a thing in his entire life. He sort of walked through it as a zombie, and that paid off in the long run. But I just cannot take that shitty reference.“
Morrissey also directed and co-wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles, his first and only studio film, but it was a critical and commercial disappointment. Morrissey himself said it was “the only film I’m connected with that I don’t think was very good.“
Teri Garr
Teri Garr was playing various characters on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour when Gene Wilder recommended her for what would become one of her most prominent roles — Inga in Young Frankenstein. The actress had originally been hoping to land the role played by Madeline Kahn but was told to come back the next day with a German accent to audition for Inga. “At first I didn’t know there was an accent, and [when I found out] I was doing Sonny & Cher,” Garr said. “Cher’s hairdresser was German, and I just copied everything she said.“
She also went to her audition with a bra filled with socks. “People pay over $5,000 for a boob job today,” Garr wrote in her 2005 memoir. “Mine cost under $5 at Woolworths and got me the part, my biggest to date.” 1974 was a big year for Garr; in addition to Young Frankenstein, she appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation.
Garr went on to appear in movies such as Oh, God!, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Black Stallion, One from the Heart, Tootsie, The Sting II, The Black Stallion Returns, Mr. Mom, Firstborn, After Hours, The Player, Mom and Dad Save the World, Dumb and Dumber, Michael, Dick, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, Ghost World, and more.
Her first major role on television was in Star Trek for the episode Assignment Earth. It was intended to launch a spin-off series, but it never materialized. Garr also appeared in episodes of McCloud, The Bob Newhart Show, M*A*S*H, Cher, Tales from the Crypt, Duckman, Frasier, Friends, Batman Beyond, King of the Hill, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and more. Garr died on October 29th at the age of 79.
Jonathan Haze
Jonathan Haze died on November 2nd at the age of 96. He was best known for playing Seymour in Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors, which was famously shot in just a few days. “All the interior scenes in the movie were done in two days, they were like 20-hour days, and then we went out on the streets and did three nights with a second unit, with a totally different crew. It was insane,” Haze recalled in 2001. “We were shooting actually on Skid Row, using real bums as extras. We would pay them 10 cents a walk-through.“
Haze was working at a gas station when he was offered a small role in Monster from the Ocean Floor, the first movie Corman ever produced. This sparked a partnership which lasted for years, with Haze appearing in many of Corman’s productions. He appeared in movies such as The Fast and the Furious, Five Guns West, East of Eden, Apache Woman, Dementia, It Conquered the World, Not of This Earth, The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, Stakeout, Teenage Caveman, The Terror, X-The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, Blood Bath, and more.
Tony Todd
After studying theater at the Eugene O’Neill National Actors Theatre Institute, Tony Todd made the leap to the silver screen, making one of his first appearances in Oliver Stone’s Platoon as Sergeant Warren. He also played Ben in Tom Savini’s Night of the Living Dead, but he became a true horror icon after playing Daniel Robitaille in Candyman. His terrifying yet touching performance scared the hell out of a generation of movie fans, something the actor was continuously surprised by. “The genuine terror that people have towards it. I do conventions and people [wait] in line only to tell me that I scared the bejesus out of them when they were kids,” Todd told /Film in 2021. “And that used to bother me because I went back to Bernard [Rose, director of “Candyman”]. I said, “Did we make a kids’ movie?” And he says, “Tony, anybody that saw the film when they were young will remember it forever.” He reprised the role in Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh and Candyman: Day of the Dead and returned for Nia DaCosta’s Candyman movie.
Todd also appeared in movies such as Bird, The Crow, The Rock, Wishmaster, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Hatchet, Victor Crowley, and so much more. The man was prolific. He also played William Bludworth in the Final Destination franchise, a funeral director with a unique knowledge of Death. He played the role in Final Destination, Final Destination 2, and Final Destination 5. He returned for the upcoming Final Destination: Bloodlines, which will hit theaters later this year.
On the TV side, Todd was in just about everything. He played Kurn, Worf’s brother, on Star Trek: The Next Generation, later reprising the role on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He also played the adult Jake Sisko in one of DS9′s most touching episodes and appeared on Star Trek: Voyager as the Alpha Hirogen. One of my favourite performances from Todd was in an episode of The X-Files in which he played a Vietnam vet who has been unable to sleep for decades. He absolutely stole the show. Todd also appeared in episodes of 21 Jump Street, Night Court, MacGyver, Law & Order, Homicide: Life on the Street, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, Angel, Smallville, Andromeda, Boston Public, CSI: Miami, 24, Chuck, The Flash, The Orville, Scream: Resurrection, and more.
He also lent his voice to various video games, including Star Trek: Elite Force II, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Star Trek Online, and Spider-Man 2 as Venom. His final voice role will arrive in December with the release of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Todd died on November 6th at the age of 69.
Earl Holliman
Earl Holliman died on November 25th at the age of 96. He was placed in an orphanage at birth and was adopted by his new parents when he was just a week old. “When [his adoptive parents] came to see me, I was sick and they took me right away to the doctor, who apparently said, ‘You don’t have a baby here, you have a funeral expense,’” he said. “They paid the midwife $7.50 for me — this was in the backwoods of Louisiana.“
Holliman is best known for starring alongside Angie Dickinson in Police Woman as Sergeant William “Bill” Crowley. “She’d get into trouble and I’d run in and save her,” Holliman said in a 2003 interview. “I would make some smart remark and she would come back at me in some sexy kind of way, and a lot of that was ad-libbed. We had a tacit kind of permission to do that.“
He went on to appear in movies such as Broken Lance, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, Forbidden Planet, Giant, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Last Train from Gun Hill, Visit to a Small Planet, and The Sons of Katie Elder. He also won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for her performance in The Rainmaker. He can be seen in episodes of Hotel de Paree, Wide Country, Bonanza, The Fugitive, Gunsmoke, Police Story, Empty Nest, Murder, She Wrote, Caroline in the City, and more. He also starred in the very first episode of The Twilight Zone.
Jim Abrahams
Jim Abrahams died on November 26th at the age of 80. Abrahams found his first success writing The Kentucky Fried Movie with childhood friends David and Jerry Zucker, but their next project would make them comedy icons.
While looking for material, the trio came across Zero Hour!, a 1957 melodrama involving a World War II pilot who had to overcome his fear of flying when the entire crew fell ill. They borrowed plot details, dialogue, and even the name of the main character, and thus, Airplane! was born. Instead of using comedians, they insisted on using actors who, up to that point, had been known for their dramatic work. “The biggest struggle was to cast straight actors as opposed to comedians,” Abrahams said in 2019. “At first, Paramount was resistant to that idea. They didn’t quite understand why we wanted to do something like that. There was something very endearing about those four actors spoofing themselves in the movie. In essence, they had had full careers, and they were kind of having a laugh at their own expense.“
After the massive success of Airplane!, Abrahams and the Zucker brothers struggled to get their next project off the ground. “We kind of figured after Airplane! that we’d be able to pop one of these babies out every year or two. We didn’t quite understand what we had with Airplane!, I don’t think,” Abrahams said. “We didn’t quite get the importance of a story. We struggled coming up with a story for a while. We came up with a lot of bad ideas.“
They turned to television instead and developed Police Squad! starring Leslie Nielsen, but the series was cancelled, with only six episodes produced. However, the concept was successful on the big screen with The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear, and Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult.
Abrahams also directed and co-wrote Top Secret!, Hot Shots!, Hot Shots! Part Deux, and Mafia!– so many exclamation points. He also directed Ruthless People, Big Business, Welcome Home, and Roxy Carmichael and co-wrote Scary Movie 4.
Art Evans
Art Evans died on December 21st at the age of 82. He’s best known for starring alongside Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2 as Leslie Barnes, the chief engineer of Dulles International Airport who helps John McClane take down the terrorists.
Evans is also known for playing PVT. James Wilkie in Norman Jewison’s A Soldier’s Story, starring alongside Howard Rollins and Adolph Caesar. He also made appearances in movies such as Death Wish, Youngbloods, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again, Christine, Fright Night, Ruthless People, School Daze, The Great White Hype, Metro, and more, as well as TV shows such as M*A*S*H, The Fall Guy, 9 to 5, Doogie Howser, M.D., Mad About You, Family Matters, City of Angel, The X-Files, Monk, and Last Man Standing.
When asked about what he’s learned from his long career in Hollywood during an interview in 2022, Evans said, “Faith equals daily life. The thing is that you should enjoy it, regardless of the stipulations. If you want to do what we do, do it and enjoy it.“
Charles Shyer
Charles Shyer died on December 27th at the age of 83. After graduating from UCLA, Shyer got a job as an assistant to Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson. “My job was basically to do their Christmas shopping, get their cars washing, shit like that,” he said. Marshall encouraged him to write, which eventually led to Shyer becoming a head writer on The Odd Couple.
He broke into feature films with a rewrite of Smokey and the Bandit. “I’m a guy from Studio City. I never heard of an 18-wheeler radio. I mean, I didn’t know what that was,” Shyer said. “But it was a chance. Burt Reynolds was a big movie star.” From there, Shyer had a hand in writing the scripts for House Calls and Goin’ South, but he hit the big time when he teamed up with Nancy Meyers to write Private Benjamin. The pair soon got married and frequently worked together. “Nancy and I just laughed at the same things,” Shyer said. “We love the same movies, we kind of educate each other on the movies that each of us loved. And Nancy really made me laugh. I think she wrote the best one-liners of anybody I know, except Neil Simon. And, and we were just always in sync — as filmmakers, we had this thing.“
Shyer made his directorial debut on Irreconcilable Differences, which he wrote with Meyers, and went on to write and direct Baby Boom, I Love Trouble, The Affair of the Necklace, Alfie, and more. He also directed Father of the Bride and Father of the Bride Part II after jumping at the chance to work with Steve Martin.
“Steve Martin contacted us. He had seen Baby Boom and really liked it. And there was a script already written that he didn’t love,” Shyer said on the Indie Film Hustle podcast. “We loved Steve so much. And he was in New York. I had never seen the original Father of the Bride. I didn’t even know it existed. It wouldn’t be my kind of movie, necessarily. But we said, ‘Yes. Let’s go meet Steve.’ So we got on the airplane, and I hadn’t read the script yet. Right? I just knew I wanted to direct Steve. I read the script. And I wanted to jump out of the airplane.“
Shyer also co-wrote the script for The Parent Trap alongside Meyers, the last time they officially worked together before their divorce.
Olivia Hussey
Olivia Hussey died on December 27th at the age of 73. She’s best known for starring alongside Leonard Whiting in Franco Zeffirelli’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. The film was a big success, but decades later, both Hussey and Whiting filed a lawsuit against Paramount Pictures, accusing the studio of “sexually exploiting them and distributing nude images of adolescent children” due to the nude scenes in the film.
Hussey had previously defended the nude scene, telling Variety in 2018 that “Nobody my age had done that before.” She said Zeffirelli shot it tastefully as it was “needed for the film.” Hussey added, “Everyone thinks they were so young they probably didn’t realize what they were doing. But we were very aware. We both came from drama schools and when you work, you take your work very seriously.“
She’s also known for starring in Black Christmas, one of the early slasher movies which would inspire countless others, including John Carpenter’s Halloween. Hussey appeared in Death on the Nile, The Man with Bogart’s Face, Psycho IV: The Beginning, and Ice Cream Man, as well as TV shows such as Lonesome Dove: The Series, Boy Meets World, Pinky and the Brain, Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, and more. She also played Audra Phillips Denbrough in the 1990 miniseries based on Stephen King’s It and lent her voice to a few Star Wars video games, including Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Star Wars: Force Commander, and Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Other notable talents we lost include Battlestar Galactica actor Harry Johnson, Speed Racer actor Christian Oliver, The Cleaning Lady actor Adan Canto, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio co-director Mark Gustafson, Bus Stop actor Don Murray, White Christmas actress Anne Whitfield, Porky’s actor Tony Ganios, Never Say Never Again actress Pamela Salem, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid actor Charles Dierkop, The Empire Strikes Back actor Michael Culver, Return of the Jedi actor Mark Dodson, Oz actor Malachy McCourt, Benji creator Joe Camp, Land of the Lost actor Ron Harper, It Came From Outer Space actress Barbara Rush, The King’s Speech writer David Seidler, 1923 actor Cole Brings Plenty, Rob Roy actor Brian McCardie, Lethal Weapon 3 actor Alan Scarfe, Grease actress Susan Buckner, Game of Thrones actor Ian Gelder, The Godfather casting director Fred Roos, Gomer Pyle actress Elizabeth MacRae, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter actor Erich Anderson, Doctor Who actor William Russell, The French Connection actor Tony Lo Bianco, Grease actor Tony Mordente, Hawaii Five-0 actor Taylor Wily, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives actor Whitney Rydbeck, West Side Story actor Bobby Banas, Seinfeld actress Mitzi McCall, The Godfather Part II actor John Aprea, Scarface actor Ángel Salazar, Law & Order actor Ed Wheeler, The Karate Kid actor Chad McQueen, Frenzy actress Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Doctor Who actor David Graham, Tarzan actor Ron Ely, Baywatch actor Michael Newman, The Illusionist cinematographer Dick Pope, The Warriors actor David Harris, Star Wars poster artist Greg Hildebrandt, songwriter and producer Quincy Jones, One Tree Hill actor Paul Teal, The Slumber Party Massacre actor Michael Villella, The Mod Squad actor Michael Cole, Northern Exposure actress Diane Delano, Workaholics actor Waymond Lee, Alice actor Linda Lavin, and Star Wars actor Angus MacInnes.
Another year is in the books and that means that backlog season is officially upon us. We used to get several months for catching up on old stuff as the new year got off to a slow start, but now the season barely lasts a couple of weeks. January might be a good time to give your wallet a rest before the February…
Another year is in the books and that means that backlog season is officially upon us. We used to get several months for catching up on old stuff as the new year got off to a slow start, but now the season barely lasts a couple of weeks. January might be a good time to give your wallet a rest before the February…
Here it is! The second half of our mammoth preview of films we’re expecting (or hoping) to see hit festivals and cinemas in 2025. Have we missed your most anticipated films? Let us know what you’re excited about on Bluesky.
51. To a Land Unknown (Mahdi Fleifel)
We were big fans of Danish-Palestinian filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel’s 2012 film A World Not Ours, so we’re very excited to see he’s back with a thrilling tale of displaced Palestinians residing in Athens attempting to secure refugee status in Germany. As hostilities still rage on the west bank, this vital cinematic offering showcases a filmmaker melding political concerns with genre thrills while doing the good work needed to keep conversations about persecution and asylum alive in 2025. David Jenkins
ETA: 14 February
52. Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater)
The memory of Michel Hazanavicius’s execrable Redoubtable (a glossy bio of Jean Luc-Godard’s early years with Louis Garrell) still lingers hard, and perhaps even taints our excitement for this new Richard Linklater film about the making of JLG’s Breathless. And yet, seeing some of the early black-and-white set photographs from the film, and the fidelity towards how that era has been documented, makes us feel that Linklater will more likely soar where Hazanavicius crashed and burned. DJ
ETA: To be announced
53. O’Dessa (Geremy Jasper)
Patti Cake$ director Geremy Jasper sticks with the musical theme with this rock opera starring Stranger Things and The Whale breakout Sadie Sink, who has a background in musical theatre and is currently starring on Broadway. She’s joined by Kelly Macdonald, Regina Hall, Murray Bartlett and Kelvin Harrison Jr. in this story of a farm girl who travels to a mysterious city in search of a family heirloom. But when she meets her true love, she’s tested even more than she ever imagined. Hannah Strong
ETA: To be announced
54. Eddington (Ari Aster)
The COVID-19 pandemic was five years ago, but like most of us, memories of that challenging time still fester in the mind of modern horror auteur Ari Aster. This has manifested in Eddington, his new horror/western/dark comedy hosting a line-up of hot topic stars such as Pedro Pascal, Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Austin Butler. Revolving around a couple stranded in a remote town during the pandemic, prepare to re-experience 2020 hysteria in the style of Hereditary, Midsommar and Beau is Afraid. Barney Nuttall
ETA: To be announced
55. Die, My Love (Lynne Ramsay)
It’s eight long years since You Were Never Really Here left us reeling, and in the interim several Ramsay projects have been rumoured but ultimately never materialised. We know from experience the Scottish legend likes to take her time, and who are we to rush genius? Luckily we know for sure that her next film is wrapped – production stills of Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson surfaced in late 2024. Her next drama (another literary adaptation) centers on a new mother who starts to lose her grip on reality after the birth of her child. HS
ETA: To be announced
56. Ella McCay (James L. Brooks)
It seems absurd that we haven’t had a James L. Brooks film since 2010’s How Do You Know, but the gods are smiling upon us and the Broadcast News director has returned with this comedy drama, starring Emma Mackey as the titular character, described as “an idealistic young politician who juggles familial issues and a challenging work life while preparing to take over the job of her mentor, the state’s longtime incumbent governor.” Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Lowden, Woody Harrelson, Rebecca Hall and Ayo Edebiri round out the cast. HS
Cate Blanchett reteams with Jim Jarmusch after last working together on Coffee and Cigarettes all the way back in 2003. Jarmusch described it as ”a funny, sad film”, which focuses on two siblings who reunite with their emotionally distant parents. It sounds very different to his 2019 offbeat zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die, which got something of a lukewarm reception back at Cannes, but Jarmusch works with Adam Driver for the third time. HS
ETA: To be announced
58. Hedda (Nia DaCosta)
After being done dirty by Disney with The Marvels, we’re glad to see Nia DaCosta reteaming with Little Woods star Tessa Thompson for an adaptation of Ibsen’s 1812 play Hedda Gebla. Thompson will play the title role, the daughter of a general trapped in a marriage and house she has no interest in. No word yet on how DaCosta will put her spin on Ibsen’s work, which has been adapted various times for the big and small screen, but knowing DaCosta it will be something special. HS
ETA: To be announced
59. The Monkey (Osgood Perkins)
After making Longlegs, marketed as the scariest film of all time, Osgood Perkins has made a sage decision to employ a killer toy monkey in his anticipated follow up. Based on a short story by Stephen King, the film sees Theo James witness a series of gruesome deaths linked to his father’s toy monkey. It may not feature Nicholas Cage dressed like a diseased Marilyn Manson, but an evil, wind-up primate is probably the next best thing. BN
ETA: 21 February
60. Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro)
On the one hand, there are lots of filmmakers who are looking back to the classic Universal Monster archive for inspiration, but on the other, when it’s people like Maggie Gyllenhaal, Leigh Whannell and Guillermo del Toro, then it’s really all good. GDT has been posting production images from the 2024 shoot in Edinburgh and has teased his version of Mary Shelley’s lodestone as being a return to the style and intentions of Crimson Peak. Sign. Us. TF. Up. DJ
ETA: To be announced
61. Hamnet (Chloé Zhao)
History will be kind to Chloé Zhao’s Eternals, her eccentric Marvel movie which prized ideas and aesthetics over the usual CG nonsense. Yet it’s still heartening to see that, for her next film, she’s adapting Maggie O’Farrell wildly popular and critically acclaimed historical fiction novel ‘Hamnet’ for her next feature. The story tells of William Shakespeare’s son, who died aged 11, and how the grief experienced by the boy’s parents (played by Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley) ended up being subtly channeled into the work. DJ
ETA: To be announced
62. Highest 2 Lowest (Spike Lee)
Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 kidnap thriller, High and Low, is one of those films that you watch with jaw firmly affixed to the floor. In its storytelling, acting and the way it’s shot, it’s weirdly perfect. Spike Lee doesn’t have great form when it comes to remaking south-east Asian cinema (cf 2013’s Old Boy), but he on a great run at the moment, so we’re fascinated to see what he delivers, especially with Denzel Washington in the role that Toshiro Mifune played so brilliantly in the original. DJ
ETA: To be announced
63. In the Grey (Guy Ritchie)
There’s no place like home, and home for Guy Ritchie is macho action films featuring hard nosed criminals. Henry Cavill and Jake Gyllenhaal are on call as two extraction specialists working to get a senior negotiator to safety, both beefcakes having appeared in recent Ritchie projects. Filmed in the pinnacle locale of the British budget holiday, Tenerife, In the Grey will be all bullets, brawn, and brawling in a fast-paced explosion of epic combat, typical of the cockney gun nut’s style. BN
ETA: To be announced
64. Havoc (Gareth Evans)
It seems only natural that action men like Gareth Evans and Tom Hardy would find each other eventually, and they do so with this grim thriller co-starring Timothy Olyphant and Forest Whitaker. Per the logline, Hardy’s bruised detective must fight his way through the seedy criminal underworld of his city to rescue a politician’s son, uncovering a web of corruption in the process. There will almost certainly be blood. Lots of it. HS
ETA: To be announced
65. In Your Dreams (Alexander Woo, Erik Benson)
Pixar alumni Alexander Wood Erik Benson branch off into their fantastical tale in In Your Dreams, a family-friendly adventure following two children’s search for the mythical Sandman, who they hope will save their parent’s failing marriage. Get your tissues ready, as this tender animation will undoubtedly be a tear-jerker. Craig Robinson, Simu Liu, and breakout star of The Penguin Christin Milioti contribute to this magical adventure born from some of animation’s biggest talents. BN
ETA: To be announced
66. I Want Your Sex (Gregg Araki)
If brat earned a spot in your Spotify Wrapped list this year, here’s some trivia for you: Charli xcx’s iconic, incessantly memed album artwork was actually inspired by the title credits of Gregg Araki’s 2007 stoner comedy, Smiley Face. It’s a lovely full circle moment of sorts, then, that the pop star is starring in Araki’s upcoming film: an erotic, art world-set thriller in which a young man (Cooper Hoffman, whose screen debut in PTA’s Licorice Pizza wowed us back in 2022) becomes a famous artist’s (Olivia Wilde) sexual muse. It’s also been a whole decade since Araki’s last feature, so it’s safe to say that the anticipation levels for this one are pretty high. Marina Ashoti
ETA: To be announced
67. The Penguin Lessons (Peter Cattaneo)
Aha! Our very own Alan Partridge (well, Steve Coogan really) is teaming up with a penguin, contributing to the obscure subgenre of men and penguin films. Oscar nominated Full Monty director Peter Cattaneo returns after his domestic choir drama Military Wives with a poignant dramedy about a man’s self discovery in Argentina. Also there’s a penguin. Jonathan Pryce is on hand for an added dose of homeliness while Coogan goes all Dolittle. This is one for the die-hard Mr Popper’s Penguins fans. BN
ETA: 18 April
68. Jay Kelly (Title T.B.C.) (Noah Baumbach)
After co-writing Barbie with his other half Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach has collaborated with Emily Mortimer on his next project, shot in London with a mega cast including George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Eve Hewson, Laura Dern and Jim Broadbent. Plot details are thin on the ground, but considering how great the last Sandler-Baumbach team-up was, we’re keen to see what the next one looks like. HS
ETA: To be announced
69. Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin)
One of the soldiers of cinema as a tactile medium, Cornish legend Mark Jenkin quietly shot his follow-up to Enys Men in the summer of 2024, and he brought George McKay along with him for the ride. Little is known about the film at this point, but we will say that we’ve really come around on McKay as a performer, particularly when it comes to his anything-goes attitude and the fact he clearly has a nose for exciting directorial talent. DJ
ETA: To be announced
70. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein)
Mary Bronstein’s lo-fi directorial debut, Yeast, featured a pre-stardom Greta Gerwig – but that was some 17 years ago, so we’re quite excited to see her next film, which stars Rose Byrne as a woman whose life comes crashing down around her as she contends with her child’s mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person, and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist. The supporting cast is particularly intriguing, with Conan O’Brien, Daniel Zolghadri, Ivy Wolk and A$ap Rocky listed. HS
ETA: To be announced
71. Pillion (Harry Lighton)
Adapted from Adam Mars-Jones’ ‘Box Hill’, Harry Lighton’s debut drama made headlines when it was announced A24 had picked up the US distribution rights. Harry Melling stars as a meek young man who embarks on a BDSM relationship with the charismatic, dangerous leader of a biker gang (played by Alexander Skarsgård) who introduces him to the world of kink. Sign us up! HS
ETA: To be announced
72. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier)
After wrapping up his Oslo trilogy with The Worst Person in the World in 2021, Joachim Trier has teamed up with Renate Reinsve again for his English language debut. Co-written with his creative partner Eskil Vogt, the story concerns two sisters who must deal with their estranged father after the death of their mother. The rest of the cast isn’t too shabby either: Cory Michael Smith, Elle Fanning and Stellan Skarsgård as the difficult dad in question. HS
73. Peter Hujar’s Day (Ira Sachs)
In the 2022 book Peter Hujar’s Day, author Linda Rosenkrantz asked her pal, the photographer Peter Hujar, to write down everything he did in a single day, and now Ira Sachs has adapted that fascinating conceit into a movie. He collaborates once more with Ben Whishaw, who was so, so great in 2023’s Passages, yet this is less a film that’s “quiet: genius at work” and more a study of the ties between art and capital, and the fact that the vast majority of artists in 1960s and ’70s America were living in a state of near-penurary. The film is set to premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, and will go on to play in Berlin after that. DJ
ETA: To be announced
74. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)
No-one has mentally recovered from the brilliant Decision to Leave, but Park Chan-wook, in an expectedly brutal fashion, is delivering another thriller to twist viewer’s mind. South Korean cinema stalwart Lee Byung-hun features in this social satire where, in a bid to break through the impossibly competitive employment market, a man devises a plan to eliminate his competition. It’s safe to assume his methods won’t be pleasant. Watching a Park Chan-wook film is always bruising and totally captivating; this approach to the infamously impenetrable South Korean job pool will no doubt be both of those things. BN
ETA: To be announced
75. Out of This World (Albert Serra)
Spain’s Albert Serra quietly made one of 2024’s greatest films with his bullfighting documentary Afternoons of Solitude, but due to its violent content, it seems unlikely that it’ll show up in UK cinemas. He’s back on grander fictional terrain with Kristen Stewart on hand to tell a story about the political tensions between the US and Russia and how they’ve evolved since the bombardment of Ukraine. As this is the man who made 2022’s Pacifiction, it seems unlikely this’ll be a cut-and-dried spy thriller in the John le Carré mould. DJ
ETA: To be announced
76. Mickey 17 (Bong Joon-ho)
It’s been a long, strange journey for Bong Joon-ho’s much-anticipated Parasite follow-up to make it to release, during which time we’ve heard all sorts of rumours. Studio power struggles, final cut quibbles – it seems absurd that the toast of 2019 has had to wait five years for his next film to see the light of day, but fingers crossed there isn’t another delay this time. The first trailer had supreme Snowpiercer energy, which is a huge plus for me. Robert Pattinson clones causing chaos in space? Who doesn’t want to see this?! HS
ETA: 18 April
77. Resurrection (Bi Gan)
With his first two films, Kaili Blues and Long Day’s Journey into Night, we’re fully on board and have a lifetime pass to the Bi Gan train. (Plus the fact he always seems to namecheck Kung Fu Panda in interviews). This new one has been billed as a “sci-fi drama about woman whose consciousness falls into eternal time”, and we can only say we’re excited and intrigued by what is a very open-ended prospect. His last film was in 3D, so expect some added 4DX action with this one. DJ
ETA: To be announced
78. Return to Silent Hill (Christophe Gans)
There has just been a remake/remaster of the classic game, Silent Hill 2, released to plaudits on the Playstation 5, so this feels like good timing for genre journeyman Christoph Gans deliver a sequel to his 2006 Silent Hill. While the game is considered to be the gold standard of horror games, Gans is definitely not a director who has done much of note in his time, so we’re coming to this one with, at best, cautious optimism. DJ
ETA: To be announced
79. The Smashing Machine (Benny Safdie)
The Safdie Brothers struck gold when they saw a character actor in Adam Sandler, casting him in their adrenaline hurricane Uncut Gems. Now Benny Safdie has his eyes set on Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, morphing him into aggro UFC champion Mark Kerr in this biopic. Like Sandler in Uncut Gems, all eyes will be on how Johnson’s performance compliments Safdie’s kinetic filmmaking. Biopics are generally regarded as bland nowadays, but this strange pairing of action star and indie auteur could elevate this nonfiction narrative above the rest. BN
ETA: To be announced
80. Moonglow (Isabel Sandoval)
As readers of Little White Lies will know, we’re massive fans of the Filipino filmmaker who burst into the public eye with her bold, sensual drama, Lingua Franca, in 2019 (even if it did take a while to make it to UK shores!). She has been tinkering with a quixotic dream project called Tropical Gothic for years, but as the parts for that come together, Sandoval has return to the Philippines to make a noir romance where she plays against type as an industrious, opaquely-motivated detective who develops a relationship with a colleague while trying to solve a case of local corruption. With post-production underway now, we have fingers and toes crossed for a Cannes premiere. DJ
ETA: To be announced
81. The Chronology of Water (Kristen Stewart)
The track record for young superstar actors turning their hand to directing is patchy to say the least, but if – like Kristen Stewart – you’ve worked with the likes of Kelly Reichardt and Olivier Assayas, then at least you’ll have gleaned some technique from the best. Stewart has dabbled in music videos from behind the camera, but this is her full feature debut, comprising an adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir, The Chronology of Water. This could go either way, but we’re very excited to see that the great Thora Birch is one of the main cast members. DJ
ETA: To be announced
82. The Drama (Kristoffer Borgli)
I’m a little bit flummoxed at the speed of Kristoffer Borgli’s ascent considering how little I enjoyed his breakout film Sick of Myself, but it seems enough people liked that and his English-language debut Dream Scenario that he’s scored a super-starry leading couple in Zendaya and Robert Pattinson for his next film. They star as a couple days away from matrimony, whose plans are derailed by sudden revelations that change how they see each other. HS
ETA: To be announced
83. Flow (Gints Zilbalodis)
Latvian animation director Gints Zilbalodis works with a stripped back digital palette to tell mostly-silent adventure tales bursting at the seams with allegorical richness. Flow takes as its hero a little black cat who, due to a random global catastrophe, must team up with his animal brethren and concoct simple survival methods as the planet is consumed by the elements. We’ve seen it, it’s rousing and ingenious, so definitely one to mark down as a must-see. DJ
ETA: 21 March (UK)
84. The Governesses (Joe Talbot)
Starring Lily-Rose Depp, Renate Reinsve and Squid Game star, Hoyeon, this erotically-tinged adaptation of Anne Serre’s 2018 novel from Joe Talbot (maker of the impressive The Last Black Man in San Francisco) has been a little up in the air since its original announcement in 2023. But all signs point to it eventually seeing the light of day in 2025, so look out at a festival near you. DJ
ETA: To be announced
85. The History of Sound (Oliver Hermanus)
This one is going to send legions of fangirls into a tailspin: Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor star as two American sound recordists during World War One who set out to document the stories of their countrymen and find themselves falling in love in the process. Adapted from a Ben Shattuck novella and directed by the excellent Oliver Hermanus, we foresee a glitzy festival debut ahead. HS
ETA: To be announced
86. After The Hunt (Luca Guadagnino)
One of the busiest men in filmmaking continues to deliver the goods – after a bumper 2024 we can expect to see his next drama soon, starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield and Ayo Adibiri, plus Guadagnino alumni Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloë Sevigny. Shot last summer in North London, it focuses on a college professor whose own secretive past comes to the fore after a colleague deals with a serious accusation. As Luca himself giddily relaid to me this very autumn, there’s “no sex, no desire” in this one. We’ll see about that… HS
ETA: To be announced
87. Mother Mary (David Lowry)
David Lowry has an eclectic back catalogue, with his most evocative feature being the dark fantasy The Green Knight which featured intricately crafted costumes. To then see that his next pursuit is a costume drama with Anne Hathaway and breakout Euphoria cast member Hunter Schafer draws the eye. This drama about a relationship between a musician and fashion designer does nothing to narrow Lowry’s varied back catalogue, instead reiterating his exciting genre-hopping ability. BN
ETA: To be announced
88. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
Kelly Reichardt and Josh O’Connor seem like a match made in heaven. Add in the words “heist movie set during the Vietnam war co-starring Alana Haim and John Magaro” and we could not be more seated. Other details are thin on the ground, but we know our friends at Mubi are producing and distributing this one, and we’re hoping it turns up on the 2025 festival circuit with a bigger fanfare than her underrated 2022 dramedy Showing Up. HS
ETA: To be announced
89. The Way of the Wind (Terence Malick)
It’s become an annual tradition to put Terence Malick’s Jesus biopic on our annual preview list and we will keep doing so until it turns up. The title has changed from The Way of the Wind, Hungarian actor Géza Röhrig is playing the big JC himself, and Mark Rylance has mentioned he’s playing various versions of Satan. All of Jesus’s disciples are expected to feature, including Matthias Schoenarts as Saint Peter and Aiden Turner as Saint Andrew. Ben Kingsley, Douglas Booth and Franz Rogowski are on the rumoured cast list too, but it’s important to remember anyone can end up missing the final cut when it comes to Malick. Just as long as he didn’t can this guy. We now have some more plot details courtesy of Röhrig, as detailed by The Film Stage, who report that the film concerns “Peter wanting Jesus to become politically involved in stopping Roman oppression and Jesus not believing he should.” HS
ETA: To be announced
90. La Cocina (Alonso Ruizpalacios)
Since season three of The Bear was a bit of a damp squib, audiences’ hunger for a culinary pot-boiler remains unsated. Alonso Ruizpalacios’ appears to serve the desired hot plate of stress in La Cocina, a drama set in a chaotic Times Square kitchen with Raúl Briones and Rooney Mara. Shot in monochrome, there’s more than just adrenaline on offer as we see the kitchen staff strive for that ol’ chestnut The American Dream. It certainly pleased festival juries, taking an armful of awards last year. BN
ETA: 28 March (UK)
91. The Wedding Banquet (Andrew Ahn)
Keep your eyes on Sundance 2025 if you want to see the early word on this remake of Ang Lee’s scintillating 1993 film of the same name, though we must say that director Andrew Ahn has a mountain to climb if he wants to trump the classic original. The story, about a young Chinese man coming out to his parents at his green card wedding, stars Bowen Yang in the lead and has the great Lily Gladstone on hand for supporting detail. DJ
ETA: To be announced
92. Wake Up Dead Man (Rian Johnson)
This may be the only franchise which deserves countless iterations. While Glass Onion saw Rian Johnson take Daniel Craig’s Kentucky-fried detective Benoit Blanc to a sunny Greek island, this time the master sleuth will be in a darker, gothic locale. The cast is stacked as per, including but not limited to Cailee Spaeny, Josh Brolin, Andrew Scott, Josh O’Connor and Glenn Close, and Blanc has been given a rugged makeover befitting the film’s creepier vibe. The characters are in place, traps are set, and audiences are eager to unpack another murderous mystery. BN
ETA: To be announced
93. Wildwood (Travis Knight)
There was a brief sneak peek at Laika’s next project during their recent BFI exhibition, but the animation studio are famously tight-lipped about what they’re working on. Nevertheless, a new Laika film is definitely worth getting excited about, especially when it’s got a cast including Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Awkafina and Tom Waits. Youngster Peyton Elizabeth Lee plays the main character Prue McKeel, who sets off on a perilous journey into the forests outside Portland in search of her kidnapped brother. HS
ETA: To be announced
94. Materialists (Celine Song)
Cinematic discourse is usually dominated by brash action blockbusters or scream-inducing horror films. So when a tender romance about the fragility of relationships and life makes a lot of noise, you know you have something special. Celine Song’s Oscar nominated debut feature Past Lives made waves upon release, so the pressure is on for her second film. But with Hollywood heavyweights Pedro Pascal, Chris Evans and Dakota Johnson on set, Song looks prepared to deliver another heartbreaking exploration of love and loss. We are seated and buckled in. BN
ETA: To be announced
95. If Love Shuld Die (Mia Hansen-Løve)
We’ve left this one to the end, but in terms of excitement levels, this is one that Team LWLies are going to place all the chips on. Mia Hansen-Løve is one of the best in the business, and though her stock in trade is sensitive, philosophical, quietly radical French character studies, she’s turning her camera towards renowned English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft for the upcoming If Love Should Die. It has been classed in the trade papers as a “biopic”, but we’re sure Hansen-Løve will do something exciting with that moribund form. DJ
ETA: To be announced
96. Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)
The Safdie Bros might have parted creative ways after Uncut Gems, but they’ve certainly not stopped working. While Benny has The Smashing Machine coming up, older brother Josh has the much-hyped Marty Supreme, which sees him work with Safdie fanboy Timothée Chalamet from a script co-written by Safdie and long-time collaborator Ronald Bronstein. It’s a period piece about a 1950s table tennis pro, but a Josh Safdie period piece is hardly likely to be a Merchant Ivory Affair. Gwyneth Paltrow, Tyler the Creator and Odessa A’zion co-star. HS
ETA: To be announced
97. Magic Farm (Amalia Ulman)
Amalia Ulman’s debut feature El Planeta was a highlight of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, so it’s exciting to learn her sophomore feature is on the way, with a cast including Chloë Sevigny, Simon Rex, Alex Wolff and Amalia herself. Per Sundance, where the film will premiere, “A media crew mistakenly ends up in the wrong country while trying to profile a musician. As they collaborate with locals to create a viral trend, relationships form amid an unfolding health crisis.” HS
ETA: To be announced
98. Caught Stealing (Darren Aronofsky)
How’s this for a cast: Austin Butler, Zoë Kravitz, Regina King, Matt Smith, Griffin Dunne and Bad Bunny star in Darren Aronofsky’s crime thriller, based on the book of the same name by Charlie Huston. Butler plays a former baseball player who finds himself wrapped up in New York’s criminal underbelly in the 1990s. It’s a big year for Butler, who is also set to star in Luca Guadagnino’s “readaptation” of American Psycho, filling Christian Bale’s considerable shoes. HS
ETA: To be announced
99. Hurry Up Tomorrow (Trey Edward Shultz)
It feels like a lifetime since Trey Edward Shultz made waves with Waves, but he’ll be back this year with a pretty starry collaboration with The Weeknd, described as “an extension of the anticipated album of the same title which stands alongside the film’s score by The Weeknd and Daniel Lopatin.” The musician stars alongside Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan. HS
ETA: To be announced
100. Echo Valley (Michael Pearce)
We were big fans of Michael Pearce’s eerie debut Beast, which also brought Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn into the mainstream. His sophomore film, Encounter was a bit of a disappointment, but he’s assembled a very exciting cast for film number three: Julianne Moore plays a horse trainer living in Pennsylvania’s Echo Valley, whose daughter returns home one day covered in someone else’s blood. The underrated Domhnall Gleeson provides an air of menace as a local thug with an axe to grind. Fuck us up, Michael! HS
