Lego has proven it can deliver when it comes to animated fare, but what about live-action? Deadline reports that The Lego Group is developing three live-action movies with Universal Pictures and has tapped some major directors to help. Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman), Jake Kasdan (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle), and Joe Cornish (Attack the Block) will each direct a Lego movie.
As for the plot of these three movies, they’re under wraps, but I’ll admit that I’m intrigued by what Lego has planned for these live-action projects. Jenkins will direct her project, which she also co-wrote with former DC Entertainment President Geoff Johns and will produce through her Wicious Pictures banner. As for Kasdan, he will direct from a script by Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul based on an original idea and a previous draft by Matt Mider and Kevin Burrows. He will also produce with Melvin Mar through their Detective Agency production company. Cornish will also direct and is currently rewriting the script from a draft by Heather Anne Campbell, which was based on a treatment by Simon Rich.
The Lego movies have been quite successful, starting with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s The Lego Movie in 2014. That film was followed by The Lego Batman Movie, The Lego Ninjago Movie, and The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, in addition to a handful of short films and a Unikitty! TV series.
The most recent Lego project is a little unusual: Piece by Piece tells the story of American musician Pharrell Williams’s life and career through Lego animation. Our own Chris Bumbray did enjoy the film for what it was, but found that the novelty soon wore off. “While I found Piece by Piece mostly entertaining, I did find myself wondering who exactly the film was for. Hip-hop fans will maybe be annoyed by the fact that it’s so family-friendly that many of the best songs from Pharrell’s discography, such as N.E.R.D’s ‘Lapdance,’ are way too controversial to be included in a movie animated by LEGO. Also, don’t expect to see P. Diddy show up as a talking Lego head in this – for obvious reasons,” Bumbray wrote in his review. “In the end, Piece by Piece is most suitable for younger audiences, but even if a more unvarnished music doc would have been welcome, the movie still does a good job evoking the fact that Pharrell’s had an outsized influence on modern pop music. Yet, given the animation style, it can’t help but feel a little too much like a novelty.“
Pokémon TCG Pocket arrived this week on iPhone and Android, and it’s a surprisingly crisp and streamlined version of the card game after years of really bad alternatives. Pokémon is pretty much a license to print money, but TCG Pocket does a great job of spotlighting what people love about about the game—the cards…
Pokémon TCG Pocket arrived this week on iPhone and Android, and it’s a surprisingly crisp and streamlined version of the card game after years of really bad alternatives. Pokémon is pretty much a license to print money, but TCG Pocket does a great job of spotlighting what people love about about the game—the cards…
Plot: An aging gangster attempts to reconnect with his children and rectify the mistakes in his past, but the criminal underworld won’t loosen their grip willingly.
Review: Over the last sixteen years, Liam Neeson has consistently delivered a string of variations on his 2008 hit Taken. Outside of a handful of exceptions, the Oscar-nominated actor has made movie after movie about cops and soldiers using their particular sets of skills to take down bad guys who underestimate the elderly protagonist. As those projects have begun to blur together, Neeson has had some tricks up his sleeve with voice work in The Lego Movie, comedic turns in A Million Ways To Die In The West, and the occasional big-budget offering. The ones that utilize Neeson’s gravitas and everyman demeanor have stood out from the over fifty projects he has acted on or voiced during that span. You can add Absolution to that shortlist. A powerful drama about criminals and the ramifications of aging, Absolution is easily one of Liam Neeson’s best performances and one that elevates what could have been a B-movie into something more.
Absolution stars Neeson as a nameless enforcer referred to in the credits as Thug. Thug has worked for three decades for a gangster named Charlie Connor (Ron Perlman) and is mentoring his son Kyle(Daniel Diemer) to take over the family business. Thug begins to notice memory lapses that range from forgetting his address to his son’s name. A former boxer, Thug learns his memory loss is advanced and irreversible. As he tries to reconnect with his daughter Daisy (Frankie Shaw) and his grandson Tre, Thug questions his life and the relationships he ignored in favor of dedicating his life to criminal work. He also begins a casual romance with a nameless Woman (Yolonda Ross) who accepts Thug as he is despite his line of work and his diminishing mental capacity. Thug also reflects on the impact of his work when he gets involved with a sex trafficking ring. None of it is glamorous, and all of it has repercussions.
Liam Neeson has often played over-the-hill characters, but none are quite like Thug. There is a rueful and sad quality as we see Neeson putter around his half-empty home, hitting himself in the head for not remembering things. He has a notepad full of addresses and names he keeps forgetting, most of which have not happened in the line of duty. Thug visits a doctor, a priest, and his family as he thinks about what to do next. Absolution captures the depression of losing your mind in several somber moments but goes a bit too on-the-nose when Thug dreams of himself in a boat with his dead father, pondering his fate. There is a mix of voice-over, poignant monologues, and emotionally brutal honesty mixed in with a couple of moments of violence. Absolution avoids the action movie tropes in favor of more dramatic ones, but the few bursts of violence are intense without trying to emulate prior Neeson vehicles. Neeson spends more time gruffly questioning himself rather than kicking ass.
What is most striking about Absolution is the balance between the criminal elements and the personal impacts on Thug’s life. Liam Neeson has to vacillate between being a hard customer who can kill with abandon while trying to reconcile with his daughter before he loses control of himself. Neeson is soft when talking to Frankie Shaw, and she pushes back on the absentee father in her life. As much as Yolonda Ross’ character tries to forge a relationship with Neeson’s Thug, he cannot bring himself to open up to someone, knowing it has an unknown end date. There are some uneven elements, such as Thug’s mental state leading to a rift in his personal life and, in turn, generating the key part of the conflict that serves as the film’s closing act. This segue allows Thug to tie up loose ends but at the cost of leaving some tangents and subplots built over the preceding acts off-screen. It is a minor issue that could have used a stronger conclusion.
Writer Tony Gayton has some solid credits, including the underappreciated The Salton Sea starring Val Kilmer and AMC’s western series Hell on Wheels. Gayton knows how to write criminals and their world well with solid dialogue and monologues that never sound rote or out of place. Absolution marks the second collaboration between Liam Neeson and director Hans Petter Moland. The duo’s 2019 action movie Cold Pursuit is firmly ensconced in the formula of a Neeson Season feature. Cold Pursuit does stand out from some of Neeson’s other action projects as more fun and entertaining than most but is starkly different than the elegiac tone of Absolution. Moland’s Norwegian films share more in common with this movie, notably his dark comedy A Somewhat Gentle Man starring Stellan Skarsgard, which deals with an older protagonist dealing with the hurdles of aging. Neeson and Moland have a solid working relationship that crosses genres, and I would like to see what they do next.
Absolution will not please fans of Liam Neeson’s action-heavy projects but does earn a spot alongside the actor’s better recent films, including In The Land of Saints and Sinners. Neeson’s film Memory treads some similar territory but with a different tone and style. Memory and Absolution make an interesting double feature, with one being a decidedly by-the-numbers action vehicle and the other a dramatic crime film with an emotional center. Absolution surprised me as the trailers do not do it justice. It does show that no matter how many similar movies he makes each year, Liam Neeson is still a masterful actor when given the right material. It also shows how the lead actor can single-handedly elevate a decent movie to a very good one.
Deadline reports that Sweet Tooth showrunner Jim Mickle has been tapped to write and direct the live-action adaptation of Gundam, which is being co-developed by Legendary and Bandai Namco Filmworks.
Created by Yoshiyuki Tomino and Sunrise, Gundam has been described as a space opera depicting a battle waged between massive mechs and armies of space colonies fighting for independence from Earth. The Gundam franchise has grown into a juggernaut over the decades, with dozens of TV shows, video games, manga, and much more.
Now, you may recall that this isn’t the first time Hollywood has attempted to get a live-action Gundam movie off the ground. It was announced in 2021 that Jordan Vogt-Roberts (Kong: Skull Island) was working on a Gundam movie for Netflix and he seemed quite pumped about the project. Some concept art was even released showcasing one of the giant mechs, but Deadline’s report states that Vogt-Roberts and Netflix are no longer involved in the project.
In addition to Sweet Tooth, Mickle is also known for Stake Land, the post-apocalyptic vampire movie which has become a cult favourite. Mickle also helmed We Are What We Are, Cold in July, and In the Shadow of the Moon. He also developed the Hap and Leonard TV series, which was sadly cancelled after three seasons.
Sweet Tooth came to an end this summer after three seasons on Netflix. Based on the comic series created by Jeff Lemire, Sweet Tooth follows a loveable boy who’s part human and part deer who searches for family and home with a gruff protector on an epic adventure across a post-apocalyptic world. Our own Steve Seigh was a big fan of the final season. “Sweet Tooth series creator Jim Mickle had mountains to climb while adapting Jeff Lemire’s bizarre fairytale for live-action. As a diehard fan of the source material, I would have been among the first to call the Netflix show out for misrepresentation or failed messaging,” Seigh wrote in his review. “Thankfully, Netflix’s Sweet Tooth honors the original story and puts some more meat on the bone. Don’t let the adorable hybrids fool you; Sweet Tooth is a brutal bit of fiction with valuable lessons to teach us all. I never could have imagined this level of care and quality going into a live-action adaptation of Sweet Tooth, and here I stand, gobsmacked and tipping my hat.“
What do you think of Jim Mickle taking over as director of the live-action Gundam movie?
I’m really averse to trading card games. Despite loving me some Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh as a kid and tween, I’ve largely kept my distance from them in the time since. I’ve played a few hands of Hearthstone, I never touched Artifact, and I am straight-up dogshit at any card game baked into an RPG, except for Queen’s Blood…
I’m really averse to trading card games. Despite loving me some Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh as a kid and tween, I’ve largely kept my distance from them in the time since. I’ve played a few hands of Hearthstone, I never touched Artifact, and I am straight-up dogshit at any card game baked into an RPG, except for Queen’s Blood…
After the crowning achievement that is Alan Wake 2, you’d think developer Remedy Entertainment would take a break. Yet in the subsequent expansions to the 2023 survival horror game, the studio has poked and prodded further at the base game’s thesis, teasing out even more fascinating aspects of its world. The Lake House
After the crowning achievement that is Alan Wake 2, you’d think developer Remedy Entertainment would take a break. Yet in the subsequent expansions to the 2023 survival horror game, the studio has poked and prodded further at the base game’s thesis, teasing out even more fascinating aspects of its world. The Lake House
Francis Ford Coppola’s projects may be few and far between nowadays and his most recent film, passion project Megalopolis was a flop with audiences and critics (our own Chris Bumbray gave it a 5/10), but the guy still has a staggering presence and remains one of the most respected and influential filmmakers of his generation. As such, the industry is prepared to honor Coppola with the AFI Life Achievement Award next year.
In a statement, chair of the AFI Board of Trustees and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, said, “Francis Ford Coppola is a peerless artist – one who has created seminal works in the canon of American film, and has also inspired generations of filmmakers who now embody his artistry and his independent spirit. AFI is honored to present him with the 50th AFI Life Achievement Award.”
Like so many, Francis Ford Coppola came up through the Roger Corman system, delivering low-budget horror flick Dementia 13 in 1963. Establishing his reputation through the ‘60s, Coppola went on a tear throughout the ‘70s, directing classic after classic that already too much has been said about: the first two Godfathers, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now. The ‘80s brought experimentations with S.E. Hinton adaptations, infamous flops and movies that by and large never matched their ambitions (two of these factors struck Megalopolis like a bolt of lightning). Not surprisingly, Francis Ford Coppola would have plenty of trouble securing financing, with too-few projects from the ‘90s on being worthwhile, with perhaps Bram Stoker’s Dracula and The Godfather Part III being the sole exceptions.
At 86, Francis Ford Coppola will be the second-oldest person to ever receive the AFI Life Achievement Award, bested only by legendary silent film actress Lilian Gish, who was 90 when she was received it in 1984. That was bestowed on Gish by Douglas Fairbanks Jr., which leaves the question: Who will award it to Francis Ford Coppola? The odds would no doubt lean in favor of Martin Scorsese or George Lucas (1997 and 2005 recipients, respectively), but it could be equally sweet to see daughter Sofia deliver the honor.
The AFI ceremony honoring Francis Ford Coppola will take place on April 26th, 2025.
What do you think is Francis Ford Coppola’s crowning achievement in his 60+-year career? Who should give Coppola his AFI Life Achievement Award?
