Category Archive : FilmTV

mel gibson

No doubt Ridley Scott has given us some of the most memorable images in cinema history. We think of films like Alien, Blade Runner, The Duellists, and so many more. One that can’t possibly be left off is 2000’s Gladiator, shot by John Mathieson in their first of many pairings. And it’s actually that film that Mel Gibson comes back to as the one that left the greatest impact on his own style.

Appearing on The Joe Rogan Experience (via IndieWire), Mel Gibson did the best he could in explaining why Gladiator is a reference point for him. “I always like to reference just a shot, it’s in a Scott movie and you don’t know why it works or why it’s effective on some level, but it’s kind of a profound, effective shot. It’s that first shot in Gladiator where he’s running his hand over the wheat, with that music and stuff. Why does that work? I don’t know. You can’t explain it, but it works…He knows how to shoot, and it’s a valid pursuit I think in storytelling if you can do that. Every time he goes out there, it’s eye candy. It’s a feast for the eyes.”

As for his own big screen aspirations, Mel Gibson continued, “I’m pretty average at most things, but I’m good at a couple of things. I know how to tell a story on film, I know how to do that. That’s a weird place to be, but I think a lot can be achieved by art and image and you can convey a lot without actually having to say it. You can do things to affect people emotionally or spiritually even without being overt.”

Mel Gibson isn’t exactly the most subtle guy (on or off the screen), but his legion of fans will always come out to support. And they’ll be able to do that later this month, as his first movie since 2016’s Hacksaw Ridge, Flight Risk, hits theaters on January 24th. He, too, hopes to film the sequel to The Passion of the Christ in 2026.

What do you think is the best-shot Ridley Scott film? Give us your pick below.

The post Mel Gibson uses Ridley Scott’s Gladiator as a reference point when making movies appeared first on JoBlo.

Math has never been my strong suit. However, a TV series about numbers that don’t add up and then lead to conspiracies, action, and surprises? Sign me up! Today, Apple TV+ is excited to share a trailer for Prime Target, an eight-episode series starring SAG Award winner Leo Woodall (The White Lotus, Nomad, Citadel) and Quintessa Swindell (Black Adam, Voyagers, Master Gardner).

Premiering on Apple TV+ with a two-episode launch on January 22, Prime Target “features a brilliant young math postgraduate, Edward Brooks (played by Woodall), who is on the verge of a major breakthrough. If he succeeds in finding a pattern in prime numbers, he will hold the key to every computer in the world. Soon, he begins to realize an unseen enemy is trying to destroy his idea before it’s even born, which throws him into the orbit of Taylah Sanders, a female NSA agent (played by Swindell) who’s been tasked with watching and reporting on mathematicians’ behaviour. Together, they start to unravel the troubling conspiracy Edward is at the heart of.”

Prime Target, Apple TV+, trailer

Stephen Rea (The Crying Game), David Morrissey (The Walking Dead), Martha Plimpton (The Goonies), Sidse Babett Knudsen (Borgen), Jason Flemyng (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), Harry Lloyd (Game of Thrones), Ali Suliman (Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan), Fra Fee (Rebel Moon), and Joseph Mydell (Conclave) star alongside Woodall and Swinton.

Created by Steve Thompson (Sherlock), today’s Prime Target trailer finds Edward Brooks (Woodall) investigating prime numbers, hoping to find an answer to why they sometimes don’t add up. He suspects that numbers can lie, and others know this secret. As Brooks pulls on the thread, even though his college professor warns him to drop his research, he uncovers a conspiracy that makes him a target of shadowy government agents, high-ranking officials, and people willing to kill to keep the public in the dark. Trying to help him survive is Taylah Sanders, a quick-thinking NSA agent in over her head.

I’m not going to lie. Prime Target looks like my kind of s**t. I enjoy a solid conspiracy thriller as much as the next person, and after watching The Recruit and The Night Agent, I’m ready for more action-packed nonsense on my TV.

What do you think about today’s Prime Target trailer? Let us know in the comments section below.

The post The numbers don’t add up for Leo Woodall and Quintessa Swindell in the trailer for the Apple TV+ thriller series Prime Target appeared first on JoBlo.

Hallow Road

Back in November of 2023, we learned that Under the Shadow director Babak Anvari was in production on psychological thriller called Hallow Road, starring Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl) and Matthew Rhys (Perry Mason). We still don’t know when this movie is going to be making its way out into the world, but now a trio of first look images have been unveiled by Deadline, and you can check them out in this article.

Scripted by William Gillies, Hallow Road was commissioned and developed by London Film & TV. The story follows two parents who enter a race against time when they receive a distressing late-night phone call from their daughter after she caused a tragic car accident.

The film is being produced by Lucan Toh of Two & Two Pictures with Ian Henry of London Film & TV and Richard Bolger of Hail Mary Pictures. Financing was provided by XYZ Films and Screen Ireland. Filming took place in Ireland and Prague.

When the project was first announced, Anvari gave the following statement to Deadline: “I treasure the opportunity to collaborate with Rosamund and Matthew, two hugely talented actors who I’ve long admired, on Hallow Road. I believe we can create something emotionally intense, and charged with uncanny terror, that nevertheless taps into something relatable to all families. I can’t wait to bring Will’s wonderful script to life with this brilliant team.“ Producer Ian Henry added: “We are overjoyed to have the opportunity to work with Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys, a prestige cast that will elevate this intense drama to new heights, alongside the visionary director, Babak Anvari. XYZ and Two & Two Pictures are building a strong portfolio of films together and we are delighted to partner with them for this psychological thriller from Will Gillies, an exciting new screenwriting voice.

Hallow Road sounds like an interesting project and it’s coming from a promising team, so I look forward to seeing how it’s going to turn out. Under the Shadow guaranteed I’d be keeping track of Anvari’s career, and while I didn’t like his movie Wounds very much, I thought his third film I Came By was a step up from that one.

Are you interested in Hallow Road? Take a look at the images, then let us know by leaving a comment below.

Hallow Road
Hallow Road
Hallow Road

The post Images preview Rosamund Pike, Matthew Rhys, Babak Anvari psychological thriller Hallow Road appeared first on JoBlo.

Jesse Armstrong, financial crisis, HBO, Succession

After delivering Succession, one of the most compelling and talked-about shows in recent memory, the show’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, is ready to tackle his next project at HBO. According to Deadline, Jesse Armstong’s next project is a film about the ongoing international financial crisis, not a television series. Based on Armstrong’s original idea, the untitled project is getting set up at HBO Films.

Jesse Armstong is writing and executive producing the film alongside Frank Rich. Plot specifics remain a mystery, though Deadline says the untitled film could revolve around four friends who meet up during the crippling events of an ongoing international financial crisis. The project is moving fast, likely to capitalize on Succession‘s popularity, which ended its final season on May 28, 2023. Wow! Has it really been that long? Dag, yo. As long as everyone’s schedules align, production could begin later this year.

Astonishingly, Succession amassed 75 Emmy nominations and 19 wins. The four-season drama stars Brian Cox, Nicholas Braun, Kieran Culkin, Peter Friedman, Matthew Macfadyen, Alan Ruck, Sarah Snook, Jeremy Strong, J. Smith-Cameron, and Scholl Nicholson. Succession focuses on the Roy family, who control the world’s biggest media and entertainment company. However, their world changes when their father steps down from the company.

Succession is often compared to the comedic sitcom Seinfeld in that it’s a show revolving around horrible people. Succession captured the public interest in a way rarely seen by today’s standards, what with everyone’s attention spans being trash. Some say the series ended prematurely, even if some actors, like Brian Cox, were ready to move on. I would not be surprised if HBO gave Jesse Armstong everything he needed to ensure his financial crisis film was a success. After all, expectations will be high.

Are you interested in Jesse Armstong’s next project? Is a film about the ongoing financial crisis the best direction for Armstrong? If the endeavor is half as intense as Succession, HBO could have another smash hit on their hands. Who would you cast in Armstrong’s next project? Do you think any actors from Succession will join the production? Let us know in the comments section below.

The post Succession creator Jesse Armstrong to tackle the ongoing international financial crisis in a new film for HBO appeared first on JoBlo.

Two and a half years have gone by since we heard that genre regular Samara Weaving (The Babysitter, Mayhem, Ash vs. Evil Dead, Ready or Not, Scream VI, etc.) was starring in the comedic thriller Borderline, which was filming in Vancouver with The Babysitter: Killer Queen and Cocaine Bear writer Jimmy Warden (who happens to be married to Weaving) at the helm, making his feature directorial debut. Now, the first poster for Borderline has made its way online and can be seen at the bottom of this article. A release date for the film hasn’t been officially announced, but some sites are claiming that it will be getting a limited theatrical release on March 14th.

Warden’s Borderline script, which was once featured on the Black List, centers on a helplessly romantic sociopath who escapes from a mental institution and invades the home of a ’90s pop superstar. He just wants to be loved; she just wants to survive.

Weaving is joined in the cast by Eric Dane (Euphoria), Ray Nicholson (Something from Tiffany’s), Alba Baptista (Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris), and Jimmie Fails (The Last Black Man in San Francisco).

Borderline was financed by Productivity Media, Inc. The film’s producers are The Babysitter writer Brian Duffield, Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara of LuckyChap Entertainment, and Hadeel Reda of Red A Entertainment. Productivity Media’s William G. Santor, Andrew Chang-Sang, and John Hills serve as executive producers alongside Colleen Camp, Brightlight Pictures’ Shawn Williamson and Jameson Parker, and Radiant Films International’s Mimi Steinbauer. Denise Loren and LuckyChap’s Bronte Payne co-produced.

When the project was first announced, Steinbauer said that “Samara, Dane and Ray are the perfect cast to lead Jimmy’s whip-smart, edge-of-your-seat comedic-thriller through all its twists and turns.

I am a fan of Samara Weaving’s work and Borderline sounds interesting to me, especially since the writers of both Babysitter movies are involved, so I will definitely be checking this movie out when the time comes.

Are you interested in Borderline? Take a look at the poster, which invites viewers to “a violently romantic comedy,” then let us know by leaving a comment below.

Borderline

The post Borderline: comedic thriller starring Samara Weaving as a ’90s pop superstar unveils a poster appeared first on JoBlo.

The Oscars, The Academy, delay

As destruction, uncertainty, and devastation engulf parts of California during the L.A. wildfires, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is postponing vital parts of the upcoming Oscar 2025 season. After extending the voting period by two days, the Academy will extend the window again to end at 5:00 p.m. PT on Friday, January 17. The nominations announcement is also getting moved from Sunday, January 19 (initially planned for this Friday) to Thursday, January 23, at 5:30 a.m. PT. AMPAS is also pushing the February 18 Scientific And Technical Awards ceremony to an unspecified date. Furthermore, the Oscar Nominees luncheon, initially scheduled for February 10, is canceled. Meanwhile, the Oscar ceremony is still scheduled for March 2, 2025.

Here is the official AMPAS statement from CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang:

We are all devastated by the impact of the fires and the profound losses experienced by so many in our community. The Academy has always been a unifying force within the film industry, and we are committed to standing together in the face of hardship. 

Due to the still-active fires in the Los Angeles area, we feel it is necessary to extend our voting period and move the date of our nominations announcement to allow additional time for our members.

Additionally, as we want to be sensitive to the infrastructure and lodging needs of the region in these next few weeks, it is imperative that we make some changes to our schedule of events, which we believe will have the support of our industry.

Our members always share how important it is for us to come together as a community, and we are determined to use this opportunity to celebrate our resilient and compassionate industry. We also look forward to honoring our frontline workers who have aided with the fires, recognizing those impacted, and encouraging people to join the Academy in supporting the relief efforts. 

We will get through this together and bring a sense of healing to our global film community.

The ongoing fallout from the L.A. wildfires is nothing short of catastrophic. Many people and countless animals have lost their homes, and rebuilding the area will take time, cooperation, and patience. We at JoBlo extend our best wishes to all affected by this monumental tragedy. While we continue to look forward to the Oscars 2025 ceremony, the safety and health of the L.A. area is far more critical.

The post The Academy extends the Oscars 2025 voting period, delays nominations again as the Nominees Luncheon is canceled appeared first on JoBlo.

PLOT: While covering the 1972 Munich Olympics, the team at ABC Sports find themselves covering the horrifying Munich Massacre in real-time.

REVIEW: September 5 isn’t the first movie about the Munich Massacre. Steven Spielberg brilliantly depicted the events and their aftermath in Munich (perhaps his last truly great film). However, this movie takes a different approach in how it covers the events unravelling in real time from the studios at ABC Sports in Germany. We follow a team of sleep-deprived journalists who are supposed to be there covering the Olympics and find themselves chronicling events that they know can only end in tragedy and will have global consequences, the repercussions of which are still felt today. 

For me, the film had particular resonance. Before I started working for JoBlo, I worked in radio as an “op”, which basically meant I handled the audio boards, screened the calls, and ran the operations side of live radio broadcasts. Whenever big event happened, everyone working that day went into overdrive, and no movie has ever captured what it’s actually like to be in the thick of things in a newsroom as well as September 5 has. The thing people don’t get about these events is that you’re running on adrenaline, and you have to make real-time calls on what you should or should cover without the benefit of context. I vividly remember working the board during a horrifying school shooting here in Montreal and the whole crew having to make snap decisions about what information should and shouldn’t be conveyed on air. 

September 5 review

While this no doubt sounds grim – and it was – your adrenaline goes into overdrive, and you don’t really pause to think about how tragic things are – that comes later. September 5 brilliantly depicts that vibe, as John Magaro’s Geoffrey Mason, a new associate producer, shows up to work thinking he’s going to be covering sports and winds up helping literally write history as it unfolds. 

Running a taut ninety minutes, the propulsive editing and pace makes us feel like the journalists themselves must have felt, with them alternatively energized and repulsed as they plough ahead with the coverage. All of the journalists are shown to rise to the occasion, with Peter Sarsgaard’s Roone Arledge, the head of sports, fighting to keep the ABC News team from taking over, instead entrusting his team, which includes a young Peter Jennings (played by Benjamin Walker), and a lot of rookies who are untested in covering event of this magnitude. Standouts include Leonie Benesch as the crew’s German translator, who becomes invaluable as the day goes on, while Ben Chaplin’s Marvin Bader fights to keep the journalists in-check. With so much conflicting information coming in, he shows us how hard it was to figure out what should be reported and, most importantly – what shouldn’t, as the terrorists themselves were reportedly watching ABC News coverage the whole day. John Magaro, who’s quickly rising as one of the best of a new generation of character actors, is superb as the plucky, creative, but occasionally hard-headed and impulsive Mason, who, like everyone else, isn’t immune from getting things wrong in a situation where there’s little margin for error.

Director Tim Fehlbaum has crafted an invaluable historical document that resists the temptation to sentimentalize or sensationalize events. The soundtrack is sparse, and the camera never leaves the news studio, with the efforts of sports journalists Jim McKay and Howard Cosell documented through archive footage. The only problem with September 5 is that everyone in the cast is so uniformly excellent that no one ever gets the chance to dominate (uniquely. – Paramount has chosen not to campaign anyone from the cast in the leading actor category). That might keep the film from earning the awards attention it deserves, as it’s so impeccably crafted and unshowy (for lack of a better term) that it comes off as effortless, even if it’s anything but. It certainly deserves its place in the pantheon alongside All the President’s Men and Broadcast News as far as great films about journalism go. 

September 5 opens this Friday in wide release!


September 5 Review: A fact based account of a chilling tragedy

AMAZING

9

The post September 5 Review: A fact based account of a chilling tragedy appeared first on JoBlo.

The Substance, Demi Moore

Over the weekend, my wife and I watched Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same. Fargeat’s unnerving body-horror thriller goes to the extreme, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I hid behind a pile of pillows for 40% of the film. What? Fingernail and teeth “stuff” is my horror movie kryptonite, and The Substance gives audiences no quarter with its approach to gross-out scenes and unforgiving self-reflection. Luckily, I watched the movie in the comfort of my home, but now those brave enough to watch The Substance in public can do so at the cinema when the film returns to US theaters on January 17, 2025.

In The Substance, a fading celebrity called Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) takes a black-market drug: a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself. When Elisabeth’s other self, Sue (Margaret Qualley), disobeys the rules of the transformation, the give-and-take of the effects of the drug begin wreaking havoc on Elisabeth’s body, the struggle to maintain dominance between the two goes out of control.

Here’s the official synopsis for The Substance:

“It generates another you. A new, younger, more beautiful, more perfect you. And there’s only one rule: You share time. One week for you. One week for the new you. Seven days each. A perfect balance. Easy. Right? If you respect the balance… what could possibly go wrong?”

The Substance is a fascinating, unconventional, and unapologetic downward spiral of self-image, paranoia, and body dysmorphia. As I’d said, I spent some of the film hiding from my screen. Fargeat’s movie makes aspects of David Cronenberg’s work feel like child’s play, giving the thriller genre a new queen as Fargeat promises to make bold, surprising, and original films.

Fargeat says there will not be a sequel to The Substance. Speaking with Variety, she addressed her next steps as a filmmaker, saying, “For now I’m not discussing anything. I’m just enjoying the moment and taking some time as I really want to write my next project. It’s slowly starting to be put in motion in the back of my brain and when things calm down I’ll take it from there.” That next project is “going to be totally different but with a lot of similarities (to The Substance). I love to make bold and surprising films with things that you don’t expect, so definitely that’s what I want to do. And I love the freedom that I gave myself for this film and that’s certainly something I want to keep doing. That was the greatest thing for me on The Substance.”

The Substance returns to US theaters on January 17, 2025.

The post The Substance returns to theaters on January 17 to add more nightmare fuel to the new year appeared first on JoBlo.

The Substance, Demi Moore

Over the weekend, my wife and I watched Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same. Fargeat’s unnerving body-horror thriller goes to the extreme, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I hid behind a pile of pillows for 40% of the film. What? Fingernail and teeth “stuff” is my horror movie kryptonite, and The Substance gives audiences no quarter with its approach to gross-out scenes and unforgiving self-reflection. Luckily, I watched the movie in the comfort of my home, but now those brave enough to watch The Substance in public can do so at the cinema when the film returns to US theaters on January 17, 2025.

In The Substance, a fading celebrity called Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) takes a black-market drug: a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself. When Elisabeth’s other self, Sue (Margaret Qualley), disobeys the rules of the transformation, the give-and-take of the effects of the drug begin wreaking havoc on Elisabeth’s body, the struggle to maintain dominance between the two goes out of control.

Here’s the official synopsis for The Substance:

“It generates another you. A new, younger, more beautiful, more perfect you. And there’s only one rule: You share time. One week for you. One week for the new you. Seven days each. A perfect balance. Easy. Right? If you respect the balance… what could possibly go wrong?”

The Substance is a fascinating, unconventional, and unapologetic downward spiral of self-image, paranoia, and body dysmorphia. As I’d said, I spent some of the film hiding from my screen. Fargeat’s movie makes aspects of David Cronenberg’s work feel like child’s play, giving the thriller genre a new queen as Fargeat promises to make bold, surprising, and original films.

Fargeat says there will not be a sequel to The Substance. Speaking with Variety, she addressed her next steps as a filmmaker, saying, “For now I’m not discussing anything. I’m just enjoying the moment and taking some time as I really want to write my next project. It’s slowly starting to be put in motion in the back of my brain and when things calm down I’ll take it from there.” That next project is “going to be totally different but with a lot of similarities (to The Substance). I love to make bold and surprising films with things that you don’t expect, so definitely that’s what I want to do. And I love the freedom that I gave myself for this film and that’s certainly something I want to keep doing. That was the greatest thing for me on The Substance.”

The Substance returns to US theaters on January 17, 2025.

The post The Substance returns to theaters on January 17 to add more nightmare fuel to the new year appeared first on JoBlo.

At the start of 2024, JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray got to check out the Sundance Film Festival premiere of director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp’s ghost story Presence, and in his 7/10 review (which you can read HERE), he described the film as “a supernatural tale that’s light on horror but heavy on heart.” A wider audience will have the chance to see the movie now that we have switched over to our 2025 calendars, as Neon is planning to give Presence a limited theatrical release on January 24th – and with that date swiftly approaching, the film’s final trailer has now dropped online. You can check it out in the embed above.

The story of Presence gets rolling when a family moves into a suburban house and becomes convinced they are not alone. A supernatural force has infiltrated the house, and taken a specific interest in the couple’s daughter.

The film stars Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Julia Fox, Eddy Maday, and West Mulholland.

It hasn’t been revealed how much Neon is paid for Presence, but it is known that they came out the winner of a bidding war between “about 10” different interested distributors. So they’re probably forking over “a healthy sum.” Deadline points out that it was “shot entirely in a single location, which creates the haunting mood sought by the filmmakers.” Bumbray’s review informed us that “Soderbergh’s camera is always from the perspective of the presence itself (no one uses the term ghost here), making it an interesting visual exercise. The family is observed from an arm’s length, with us eventually realizing that the presence itself isn’t necessarily malignant, nor is it even aware of why it’s in their home in the first place.”

Julie M. Anderson and Ken Meyer produced Presence, with Koepp serving as an executive producer alongside Corey Bayes. H.H. Cooper co-produced and Gus Gustafson, Samara Levenstein, and Claire Kenny are associate producers.

What did you think of the final trailer for Presence? Will you be catching this movie on the big screen? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

The post Final trailer released for Steven Soderbergh, David Koepp ghost story Presence appeared first on JoBlo.