How does it feel to be on your own, with no direction home, a complete unknown? Timothée Chalamet knows and now we’re starting to see it as well, as the actor has been spotted in full Bob Dylan garb during the filming of A Complete Unknown.
As the images show, Chalamet is decked out in blue jeans, a green jacket, a scarf, and a hat, lugging around an acoustic guitar in an old case. This definitely puts him in the early 1960s, undoubtedly the most defining time in Bob Dylan’s life (with due respect to his Christmas album…).
More of Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan on set today!
Of note, Chalamet is currently 28, which Dylan turned in 1969. Dylan already had one hell of an arc by that point, with two of his key moments as a performer, person and legend – going electric in 1965 and his 1966 motorcycle crash – occurring prior. While no official plot for A Complete Unknown has been revealed, it’s believed that there will indeed be some focus on the former event. With that, we will likely see a scene at the Newport Folk Festival, in which Dylan plugged in and shocked the crowd. The film will feature portrayals of friends/influences Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook). And who knows, maybe Elvis will turn up…
Speaking of the Man in Black, director James Mangold – who also directed 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line – had the following to say on the setting of A Complete Unknown: “It’s such an amazing time in American culture, and the story of Bob’s — a young, 19-year-old Bob Dylan coming to New York with two dollars in his pocket and becoming a worldwide sensation within three years…First being embraced into a family of folk music in New York and of course kind of outrunning him at a certain point as his star rises so beyond belief.” Walk the Line nabbed Joaquin Phoenix an Oscar nomination, so can A Complete Unknown do the same for Chalamet?
It had previously been reported that Chalamet would do his own singing in A Complete Unknown, although we hope it doesn’t sound like a parody since Dylan’s vocals are so distinct and easily mockable.
What did you think of the first look at Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan? Are you looking forward to A Complete Unknown?
Marvel’s Blade has been dulled yet again, as star Aaron Pierre has exited the project, marking just the most recent snag in the project, which is set to be part of Phase Six in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
As Pierre confirmed to Variety, “Early on, there were conversations…As the project evolved, I’m no longer part of that — attached.” Pierre’s character in Marvel’s Blade was unknown.
There has been a lot of change throughout the development of Marvel’s revisiting of the Blade franchise, most of which relates to talent behind the camera. For starters, Watchmen’s Stacy Osei-Kuffour was hired as writer in 2021 before being replaced by Michael Starrbury (Colin in Black & White) and a handful of others, including True Detective’s Nic Pizzolatto and later Logan’s Michael Green. It’s widely believed that Aaron Pierre’s character would be dropped as subsequent drafts came in. On the directing front, Bassam Tariq (Mogul Mowgli) was on board before leaving the project, opening the spot for White Boy Rick’s Yann Demange.
As for the title role, Mahershala Ali will be playing Blade for Marvel after a campaign to play the character in a movie, landing it at least in part due to his positive relationship with the studio through his work on Luke Cage. Other actors who have been linked to the movie are Mia Goth (possibly as villain Lilith?) and Da 5 Bloods’ Delroy Lindo.
While we don’t know exactly who Pierre would have played in Marvel’s Blade, the actor remains positive about his future prospects, saying, “But there are a number of things that I’m tremendously excited about. Rebel Ridge with Jeremy Saulnier. And The Lion King prequel with Barry Jenkins. All things that are coming out this year that myself and the team are deeply excited about and can’t wait to share with the world — and have people engage with it and experience it in whatever way they feel fit.”
Blade is set for a November 7th, 2025 release, placing it between that summer’s The Fantastic Four and 2026’s next Avengers entry.
Where does Blade rank in your list of most anticipated upcoming Marvel movies?
Some habits die hard, and now Jack Black has reverted back to being a gamer, falling deep into Minecraft to prepare for his upcoming role as Steve in the animated adaption of the insanely popular game.
Jack Black recently explained to IGN, “An actor prepares so I have literally been exclusive to Minecraft for the last month and a half. All Minecraft all the time…Just Steve-in’ it up in the Minecraft universe, getting back into it – because I did play years ago because my kids were super duper into it and I wanted to speak their language. So I studied hard and I learned and I was getting really into it, building houses and tunneling around…Now I’m getting back into it and it’s pretty rad.” Now we’re wondering just how deep Black will get into the Super Mario Bros. franchise now that a sequel has been announced…
In addition to Jack Black, Minecraft has a pretty stacked cast of voice actors, with the likes of Jason Momoa, Danielle Brooks, Jennifer Coolidge, Kate McKinnon, Jermaine Clement, and Emma Myers signed on. The movie is directed by Napoleon Dynamite’s Jared Hess, whose debut animated feature Thelma the Unicorn arrives in May. But Hess isn’t the first director to have been tied to a Minecraft movie, as previous iterations found Shawn Levy, Rob McElhenney and Peter Sollett attached. At one point, Steve Carell was linked to a voice role.
Mojang’s Minecraft is considered the best-selling video game ever and currently has more than 160 million active users. One of the major draws for the game is its endless opportunities for creativity, with its most dedicated players designing pixel-driven renditions of everything from actual cities to fictional lands like Middle Earth. Or, you know, you can just keep it simple and build yourself a little Minecraft house like Jack Black.
Minecraft comes to theaters on April 4th, 2025, and with such a massive fan base, we’re expecting to be a real “block” buster…In addition to Minecraft and presumably the Mario sequel, Jack Black is also playing Claptrap in an adaptation of Borderlands.
Do you play Minecraft? How do you think the video game will translate on the big screen? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below!
Fans of Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire are counting the days until the release of Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver, touching down on April 19, 2024. And now, just over a month before the film makes its Netflix debut, the streamer released a new one-sheet showing the movie’s heroes in action:
The movie’s full trailer is set to debut tomorrow. Earlier this week, Empire released a new image of Sofia Boutella’s Kora primed and ready for action to get people excited about the follow-up to Snyder’s Star Wars-like sci-fi action spectacle. In the new image, Kora swings into an explosive firefight with guns blazing. Behind her, there looks to be tendrils of some kind emitting a glowing blue light. Is it possible Rebel Moon 2 has some Matrix vibes to go with its sinister Star Wars motif?
“It’s a war film, 100 per cent,” Snyder told Empire about the anticipated sequel. “It’s got way more action than the first movie, very intense and crazy action.” In addition to off-the-wall action sequences, Snyder says plenty of character drama and emotional beats bring the cast closer together. “It’s absolutely an emotional rollercoaster you’re going to be on with these cats,” Snyder promises. “We discover the backstories of our heroes, and there is an interesting correlation between what’s happened to most of them to make this battle cathartic and symbolic.”
Boutella appears differently in the sequel, with a fresh haircut to keep things high and tight. Snyder says the new ‘do informs aspects of her journey and where fans can expect her to go next. “She’s shielding us from her real involvement, and there’s a bit of conflict around what she’s done,” Snyder says while feeding us breadcrumbs about the plot. “But in the end, what she offers the group, her skill set, and her desire to redeem herself makes her a powerful asset.”
While Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver is rated PG-13, an R-rated Snyder Cut of the first film arrives this summer. The Snyder Cut of Rebel Moon is an hour longer than the film’s original version. Snyder says the idea was always that there would be a second version. He maintains that this never happened on his previous director’s cuts. “All my other director’s cuts are me just reacting to the studio like getting noted and then freaking out and then running to home video to save me.”
What do you think of the new Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver poster? Are you excited for the second chapter of Zack Snyder’s sci-fi epic? Let us know in the comments section below.
The early weekend box office numbers are in, and it looks like Dune: Part Two wasn’t quite able to take the number one spot from Kung Fu Panda 4 after all. It was very close, with the animated sequel grossing $30 million to Dune’s $29.1 million. It’s so close that I’m not quite willing to admit my prediction that Dune 2 would top Panda was wrong, as Denis Villeneuve’s sequel has been overperforming at Sunday matinees the last few weeks. That said, even if it doesn’t top Panda, it still had a great weekend, with it only dropping a modest 37% in its third week. It also passed the double-century mark, with its final gross at $205 million. Will it cross $300 million? It’s possible, although it will face heavy competition over the next two weeks with Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire and Godzilla x Kong.
Meanwhile, Kung Fu Panda 4 had a strong second weekend, dipping a modest 48%. Family audiences are turning out in droves for this fourquel, which should do better domestically than the last two films in the series. However, it will be interesting to see if Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire takes a bite out of their box office, with that movie also aiming for a family audience.
Mark Wahlberg’s feel-good family film, Arthur the King, had a surprisingly soft opening, considering his co-star was an adorable dog. It only managed $7.5 million, with many critics noting it seemed like a film that would have been better off on streaming than in theaters (our critic Tyler Nichols was one of them). Blumhouse’s Imaginary collapsed (as expected) in its second weekend, earning $5.6 million. While it only fell a modest 44%, its opening was widely considered poor for a Blumhouse film, with some wondering if the studio is in a rut.
The faith-based Cabrini from Angel Studios also collapsed at the box office this weekend, falling 63% to a poor $2.8 million weekend in fifth place. Clearly, this fact-based historical epic doesn’t have the same mainstream appeal as director Alejandro Monteverde’s last movie, Sound of Freedom. Even still, it did a lot better than other new movies this weekend. Rose Glass’s LGTBQ-themed Love Lies Bleeding had a difficult time hooking a mainstream audience in its wide break, only managing $2.485 million, which is a shame as it’s a bit of a gem. However, it still did way better than The American Society of Magical Negroes, which only managed a $1.25 weekend despite playing on over 1000 screens. The reviews for this one suggested it was a toothless satire, and certainly, the provocative title might have helped turn off some viewers. That one only managed to open in ninth place. It was beaten by the fact-based WW2 story One Life, starring Anthony Hopkins, which made $1.7 million in 8th place. Elsewhere on the chart, Bob Marley: One Love inched closer to a potential $100 million finish with a $1.7 million weekend and a domestic total of just over $93 million. Ordinary Angels rounded out the top 10 with $1 million and a $18 million domestic tally.
Next weekend should give the box office a much-needed cash influx, with Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire opening, although no one really knows if it will be a major hit or not. The reviews (including ours) drop Wednesday at noon ET, so stay tuned!
They say “In space no one can hear you scream.” Buuuuuuuut we’ve seen through eight Alien films that if you’re in a spaceship plenty of people can hear you scream. The Xenomorphs have no problem causing their victims a lot of pain. Even though we’ve seen them in a lot of films, fans will mostly agree that after Aliens, the franchise was never the same. But did you know that District 9 director Neill Blomkamp almost made an Aliens sequel?
In 2015, filmmaker Blomkamp announced he had been working on a new Alien project. This was even a surprise to Fox, which owned the series. Fans seemed excited by the prospect of the director taking on the project after the imaginative sci-fi films he had been releasing. Ultimately, after some starts and stops, the film would fall apart. Let’s find out exactly why here on What Happened To This Unmade Movie?
The idea of a fifth Alien was nothing new. There had been speculation for a while that a new entry could be in the works. James Cameron and Ridley Scott had both said they had ideas for another one. Cameron even went as far as starting to script out his new idea. Fox had other ideas. They decided it was finally time to bring together two of their biggest sci-fi entries. Aliens would finally fight Predators on the big screen. This had been a long-running series in comics but as of yet nothing had happened in the world of film. With the announcement of Aliens vs. Predator James Cameron soured on the idea of his new Alien film.
He likened the two creatures fighting to Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman. The studio had lost faith in both series and pitted them against each other to milk as much out of the franchises as possible. He stopped working on his new idea. Although after the Alien vs. Predator film was released Cameron said he enjoyed it and thought it was really good. I wonder if he caught that a character was watching Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman in the film? Even studios know how to throw shade.
After the 2007 release of the Alien vs.Predator sequel the Xenomorphs would rest for another five years before Ridley Scott would return to the universe with Prometheus. A few years later sci-fi director Neill Blomkamp would make an interesting post on Instagram revealing some concept art for an Alien 5 film. The artwork showed a Xenomorph Queen running through a jungle-looking setting some models for other drones and some technology that would be represented in the film. The pieces that had fans really intrigued was that of Sigourney Weaver as an older Ripley and Michael Biehn as a scarred-up Hicks. His character had been killed off at the beginning of Alien 3 which angered many fans.
After much speculation Fox would finally reveal that they were working with the director on the idea for a new film. This new take would see Ellen Ripley’s return and completely retcon the events of Alien 3 and Alien:Resurrection. With those two films off the board we would now see an alternate take on what happened to Ripley, Hicks and even Newt after the events of Aliens.
Fans are now used to studios going ahead with alternate continuity sequels like we saw with the Halloween franchise. Back in 2015 this was almost unheard of. The big question was would Sigourney Weaver be on board? She had played the character four times before but would she want to come back again? Not only would she but she was excited by the concept of ignoring the last two sequels.
She would also sign on to be in Blomkamp’s upcoming film Chappie. While on set Weaver and Blomkamp would discuss the movie. After their collaboration and discussion with Ridley Scott about his forthcoming Prometheus sequelAlien: Covenant Blomkamp changed his idea to fit it better with what everyone wanted to do with the film.
Very little is known about what the actual film would have been about but it was going under the name Alien: Xeno and later Alien: Awakenings. It would have seen an older Ripley presumably still telling bureaucrats that the lifeform was dangerous and no one believed her. Hicks would have been by her side and heavily scarred from the acid he was sprayed with at the end of Aliens. An adult Newt in her 20s would have been featured and Lance Henrickson’s Bishop would have returned.
From the concept art we can determine that we would have seen the Xenomorphs in a jungle setting. This would be a great change of pace from what we had seen previously in the franchise. We’re used to seeing them in clunky ships and mining structures. How would they use camouflage to their advantage in a green and leafy environment? Also it looked like Blomkamp was interested in playing with the idea about the biology of the xenomorph and how the host genetics determine the different forms it would take. We would also see what looks like new versions of the face-huggers we have come to know.
Some reports indicate that this film would have served as a send-off for both Ellen Ripley and Sigourney Weaver while positioning the adult Newt as the new heroine to take over for the series. Would fans rally around an adult Newt for more sequels? Maybe. There hasn’t been much to hold onto in the series since Ripley’s clone made her appearance in Alien: Resurrection.
Fox held off giving the film the greenlight until Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant was released. The film ended up underperforming at the box office which made them cancel any upcoming Alien projects. Blomkamp took the decision pretty hard and he left the Hollywood system. He took the time to re-evaluate what he wanted to do with his career. Instead of being a for-hire director he founded Oats Studios to develop his own ideas.
The Alien cancellation still seems to affect him. While he was doing the publicity rounds for GranTurismo during an interview with Uproxx he was asked about his time developing the film. He responded that he couldn’t care less about what happened to his Alien movie and wanted to move on with the interview. It ended pretty quickly after this.
Sigourney Weaver herself has decided to step away from the franchise entirely. During an interview with Total Film Magazine in 2023 she said that the ship has sailed on the idea of playing Ripley again. She stated she really wanted to do the Blomkamp film but after that was canceled she had no interest in returning to the character.
When Ridley Scott was asked about the film he said it never really got any movement outside of a 10-page treatment. A script hadn’t been written and nothing really progressed after the initial discussions with Blomkamp. After the poor performance of Alien: Covenant Fox shelved any ideas and it sat collecting dust.
Since all this Disney has purchased 20th Century Studios and moved forward on several Alien projects. A newfilm titled Alien: Romulusis scheduled to hit screens on August 16th of this year from director Fede Alvarez. The film is said to take place between Alien and Aliens once again moving around in the franchise’s timeline.
In addition to that Noah Hawley is working on an Alien TV series. With both projects going it would be interesting to see if the new owners of Fox would be interested in returning to Blomkamp’s idea. If not could Marvel at least give us a comic book series showing what could have happened? If there’s money to made I’m sure Disney would be happy to.
Fans never got to see Ripley suit up again to take on the ferocious Xenomorphs and sadly it looks like we never will. Would Blomkamp’s film have rebooted interest in the franchise?
Maybe. Of course after the failure of the last Ridley Scott film perhaps the time just wasn’t right. We’ll never know. After Alien: Romulus is released maybe there will once again be an interest in the property and we can see if we can get Sigourney Weaver to go back on her decision to retire from the Alien killing business. We can only hope.
March 17, 1951 was a great day in history, because that the day Kurt Russell entered the world. And while he would go on to become one of the biggest icons of the eighties and nineties, many folks don’t know that Russell started as a child star for Disney, even acting opposite his future life partner Goldie Hawn in The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968). From the sixties into the seventies, he starred in Disney flicks like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), but as the studio’s movies started to flop and Russell got older, a change of pace was needed. Arguably, Russell’s career took off when he began working with director John Carpenter, with the first movie being 1979’s TV movie Elvis, but what are Kurt Russell’s best movies? To celebrate his 73rd birthday, let’s dig into them here.
Honorable Mention: Captain Ron (1992)
A few weeks ago, I name-checked Captain Ron in an article I was writing about the history of Touchstone Pictures, and folks went nuts in the comments, mentioning how it was a movie they grew up watching. Indeed, it shows Russell’s flair for comedy, with his one-eyed boat captain kind of a fun take-off on Snake Plissken. The great Martin Short ably supports him.
This was the movie that made Kurt Russell an icon. As the one-eyed Snake Plissken, Russell was brilliantly cast against type in John Carpenter’s dystopian action flick. This is a pretty iconic film if you can get over the hilarious depiction of New York circa 1997 being a hellish maximum security prison city. Carpenter’s musical score is perfect here. That said, I don’t care for the sequel, Escape from L.A.
The Thing (1982)
John Carpenter’s The Thing is my choice for the greatest remake ever. A massive flop in 1982, it’s now considered one of the greatest horror flicks of all time. The effects by Rob Bottin are great, and Russell is iconic as the heavily bearded MacReady. The score by Ennio Morricone (and let’s face it – John Carpenter) ain’t bad either.
Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
Kurt Russell’s Jack Burton is one of the most iconic action heroes of all time, which is hilarious when you realize that he actually doesn’t do a heck of a lot in the movie. All the heroics come via his “sidekick,” Dennis Dun’s Wang Chi. Carpenter’s score is excellent, the fight choreography is a million times better than anything else happening in American movies at the time, and Kim Cattrall is gorgeous as the love interest. Plus, there’s the great James Hong as Lo Pan!
Tango & Cash (1989)
This was the movie that made Russell a legitimate action star. It has Russell’s mullet at its most featured, and his chemistry with Sylvester Stallone is on point. Plus, there’s a young Teri Hatcher as his love interest. It’s not art, but it’s damn fun.
Unlawful Entry (1992)
This is a favorite of ours here at JoBlo. It’s a top-shelf thriller, with Russell cast against type as a yuppie who becomes stalked by a cop obsessed with his wife, played by Madeleine Stowe. As good as Russell is, though, the late Ray Liotta walks away with this one.
Tombstone (1993)
Everyone assumed Russell’s Wyatt Earp passion project would flop, as it came out just a few months before Kevin Costner’s epic take on the legendary lawman. This one is way better, although once again, Russell has the movie stolen from him by Val Kilmer, who’s cast to perfection as Doc Holliday. Russell has always said he ghost-directed this one.
Stargate (1994)
This probably should have jumpstarted a movie franchise centred around Kurt Russell as the tortured Colonel Jack O’Neil. Sadly, Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin got busy with Independence Day. This one has an iconic score by David Arnold and a fantastic one-liner by Russell: “Give my regards to King Tut a**hole.”
Executive Decision (1996)
The fact that Steven Seagal plays the second banana to Kurt Russell in this slick terrorist flick says it all. Russell’s star was on the rise in 1996, and this is a slick thriller that lets him play an everyman hero who, when the chips are down, can rise to the occasion.
Breakdown (1997)
Russell is back in thriller mode, with him a hapless motorist whose wife (Kathleen Quinlan) is abducted by a charismatic truck driver, played by the late, great J.T. Walsh. This thriller was so tense it directly led to director Jonathan Mostow being given the reins to Terminator: Rise of the Machines.
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
This late-career classic from Russell pairs him with S. Craig Zahler, one of the best new directors, who, as far as I’m concerned, has been inactive too long. With horror movie-level violence, a great supporting turn by Richard Jenkins and tons of atmosphere, this one is a real gem.
Other great Kurt Russell flicks include the underrated cop movie Dark Blue (2002), Ron Howard’s Backdraft (1991, although it’s William Baldwin’s movie) and, of course, his work with Quentin Tarantino in Death Proof (2007), The Hateful Eight (2015) and OnceUpon a Time in Hollywood (2019). However, in those, he’s strictly part of an ensemble, so I left them off the list.
What do you think are Kurt Russell’s best movies? Would you have included Used Cars (1980) or Tequila Sunrise (1988) on the list? Let us know in the comments.
You would think that as technology advances, visual art forms such as film – including home media – would see a definite improvement in quality. But here we are yet again, getting bummed out over how studios have taken cleaning up transfers too far, polishing iconic movies into a “pristine” oblivion. And yes, they may have once more botched another James Cameron 4K Blu-ray. Game over, man!
The latest example comes via the 4K release of James Cameron’s Aliens, which came out on March 12th. As HD Report noted via a side-by-side comparison, even the high-definition transfer released 14 years ago is more respectable than the 4K one out just last week: “When comparing the two, the old Blu-ray is a better representation of celluloid at a time when filmmakers are trying to make images look less digital.” Hell, you can even see how Newt feels about it in the second image!
Here are two projection screen photos that may encapsulate the #Aliens 4k remaster debate. On the left, Blu-ray (2010) retains grain structure. On the right, the 4k Blu-ray (2024) is sharper but the grain is polished (not in a good way). “When comparing the two, the old Blu-ray… pic.twitter.com/eVZphP82JH
Look, we won’t necessarily say that these James Cameron 4K Blu-rays look terrible – they don’t and to a lot of people they’ll be great additions to their home video collection, something we’ll forever champion. But considering these releases were some of the most anticipated of the year, they are disappointing in how much they have been scrubbed of their authenticity.
Last week we took a look at Cameron’s True Lies, which, like these other 4K releases, has fallen victim to artificial intelligence being used to digitally “enhance” the video quality. Surely there are good intentions behind this move – and most reviews reflect this – but by doing so, there is an ultimate disregard for just what these films are meant to look like. As The Digital Bits put it in their breakdown of the Aliens disc, the film “looks very good in physical 4K, improving upon the 4K Digital presentation, but it’s been given modern remastering that belies the look of a 38-year-old film.”
I'm saddened by how butchered the new James Cameron 4K releases are, particularly Aliens as that is one of my favorite movies. So it looks like I will be sticking with the Alien Anthology disc for that. Honestly fine by me. It's a beautiful disc from an AMAZING box set. pic.twitter.com/C4rR2XBQGX
There is a right way and a wrong way to do 4K releases and it’s truly unfortunate that, by and large, these James Cameron discs fall in the latter camp. No doubt these have been hot items (some reports say the discs were selling out online) and we wouldn’t want to tell you not to pick up any copy of your favorite movie, but there should be more uproar on how classics are being handled on home video. Also out last Tuesday was the 4K release of James Cameron’s The Abyss.
Have you picked up a 4K copy of James Cameron’s Aliens or do these transfers make you want to just stick with a previous release? Share your thoughts with us below.
Top of the mornin’ to you on this St. Patrick’s Day! To celebrate, we here at Arrow in the Head decided to mark the occasion by going back over the Leprechaun movies and ranking them from worst to first. The Leprechaun Movies Ranked list can be seen below – check it out and let us know how you would rank the movies!
LEPRECHAUN: ORIGINS (2014)
This is appalling. Director Zach Lipovsky, writer Harris Wilkinson, and WWE Studios were given the chance to make a new Leprechaun movie, they cast a professional wrestler (Dylan “Hornswoggle” Postl) as the title character, and then they just churned out a dull monster movie. I don’t know how anyone involved thought this was a good idea (“You know what we should do? Take everything people liked about Leprechaun and remove it!”) or how Leprechaun:Origins made it through production. The story follows Americans backpacking through Ireland and running across a leprechaun, who is just a hideous creature with no personality. It’s not even fun to watch this thing pick people off. There’s nothing interesting to be found in this movie, although there is some curiosity factor in seeing one of the most wrongheaded reboots ever made. Unfortunately, you have to sacrifice some of your time to do so. (Good thing the 90 minute running time is padded out with 12 minutes of end credits.)
LEPRECHAUN IN THE HOOD (2000)
Around 2000, there was a surge of low-budget horror movies set “in the hood”. Full Moon was in on it, and the Leprechaun franchise joined the trend as well. Directed by Rob Spera, who got help from four other writers in crafting the story and script, Leprechaun in the Hood has its charms. You get Ice-T as a record producer who gained success with the help of a flute he stole from the leprechaun. You get the leprechaun smoking weed, rapping, and mesmerizing a trio of “fly girls”. And of course, you get him killing people while trying to get his flute back from the rap group that has stolen it from Ice-T’s character. (Called Mack Daddy O’Nassas because he was a pimp who “owned asses”.) This one ranks lower just because it doesn’t feel as fun as some of the other entries, despite the weed and the rapping.
LEPRECHAUN BACK 2 THA HOOD (2003)
Writer/director Steven Ayromlooi wanted to make a Spring Break Leprechaun movie, but Lionsgate wanted to send the character Back 2 Tha Hood. Well, at least this repetition is more tolerable than going Back 2 Space would be. This sequel has better production value than the previous Hood entry, some cool action moments, and fun elements like bullets laced with clover and a magic battle between the leprechaun and a fortune teller. On the downside, the characters aren’t very interesting, so it bogs down whenever we have to watch them interaction. We get the leprechaun hitting a bong, but he doesn’t give us another rap sequence… which I’m sure was disappointing to fans of the first Hood film. This may be the last time we’ll ever see Warwick Davis starring in a Leprechaun movie, which is a shame. He seemed to have a lot more Lep left in him, but they let the franchise go dormant for too long.
LEPRECHAUN 4 (1996)
Leprechaun 3 director Brian Trenchard-Smith returned to direct Leprechaun 4, which is not on the level of his previous contribution to the series. The fact that it’s set in space isn’t the problem, it’s fitting that the Leprechaun movies helped start one of the most amusing franchise trends. The problem is, it feels like Dennis Pratt just wrote it as a generic Aliens knock-off and then replaced the alien with the leprechaun. He lives on a random planet and is referred to as an alien. At least he’s still obsessed with wealth and power. This movie does get incredibly strange as the leprechaun wipes out a bunch of soldiers and the medical staff on a spaceship, so it has that going for it. This seems to be a love it or hate it entry: it gets too ridiculous for some viewers, while others enjoy that it’s packed with jaw-dropping nonsense.
LEPRECHAUN RETURNS (2018)
The leprechaun is a different character in every Leprechaun movie, they all just happened to be played by Warwick Davis. Until Leprechaun Returns, which brings back the leprechaun from the original. Ironically, the first direct sequel is also the first sequel Davis opted not to come back for. So this returning leprechaun is played by Linden Porco, who does a good job, it’s just difficult for anyone to come close to what Davis did. Directed by Steven Kostanski, Leprechaun Returns is an entertaining sequel with an amusing, clever script by Suzanne Keilly – who recently wrote a fun Slumber Party Massacre movie as well. The story finds the leprechaun accidentally being unleashed by a group of sorority girls and proceeding to kill them and their friends one-by-one. Nice and simple. Mark Holton reprises the role of Ozzie from the original film, and the heroine is the daughter of Jennifer Aniston’s character.
LEPRECHAUN (1993)
Some horror franchises start out dead serious and slide into silliness. That’s not the case with Leprechaun. Future entries would definitely be sillier, but this concept was ridiculous from the start. Written and directed by Mark Jones, Leprechaun is about a single father and his daughter moving into a fixer-upper home in North Dakota… and quickly realizing there was a leprechaun trapped in the basement and a pot of gold the previous owner brought back from Ireland (after stealing it from the leprechaun) stashed nearby. The leprechaun wants his gold back, and is willing to kill people in nasty ways to retrieve it. Jones tries to make moments genuinely unnerving, but while Warwick Davis turns in a hell of a performance and the leprechaun is hideous, he’s still wearing a funny outfit, tossing out one-liners, and getting distracted because he’s compelled to polish shoes. He’s also up against some goofball characters, including a rather annoying heroine played by pre-FriendsJennifer Aniston.
LEPRECHAUN 3 (1995)
The idea behind Leprechaun 3, which was directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith from a script by David DuBos, was a really smart one. You have a horror villain who’s obsessed with collecting riches, so what better setting could there be for one of his sequels than Las Vegas? Of course, the movie only had to budget to film in Vegas for one day (the interiors were shot in Los Angeles), but Trenchard-Smith made the most of it. While the leprechaun causes trouble for people who work at a casino, including a terrible magician and a croupier played by genre regular Caroline Williams, we also learn that leprechaunism is an infectious disease when the lead (played by future screenwriter John Gatins) starts to turn into a leprechaun himself. This was one of the better, most well-crafted entries in the franchise. And you get to see what a handful of leprechaun poop looks like.
LEPRECHAUN 2 (1994)
Every one thousand years, a leprechaun can claim a human bride, and in Leprechaun 2 an evil leprechaun has his mind set on a young woman named Bridget (Shevonne Durkin). With the help of his drunken uncle Morty (Sandy Baron), Bridget’s boyfriend Cody (Charlie Heath) desperately tries to save his love from life with a leprechaun. Directed by Rodman Flender and written by Turi Meyer and Al Septién, this sequel is a step up from its predecessor. It’s quick and fun, with a good sense of humor and very entertaining performance from Baron. It also brings a welcome new addition to the Leprechaun mythology, saying a captured leprechaun has to grant its captor three wishes. Of course, those wishes don’t always work out for the person making them. Warwick Davis was given better material to work with, including a great sequence in which he and Morty have a drinking contest. This one also earns points for being set on St. Patrick’s Day.
THE STORY: A corrupt American cop (Michael Douglas) and his partner (Andy Garcia) wind-up in Japan after a prisoner exchange gone awry. With their former captive cutting a swath through the local Yakuza in an attempt to establish himself as the new Tokyo boss, the cops are forced into an uneasy alliance with a by-the-book local police inspector (Ken Takakura).
THE PLAYERS: Starring: Michael Douglas, Andy García, Ken Takakura, Kate Capshaw and Yusaku Matsuda. Directed by Ridley Scott. Music by Hans Zimmer.
THE HISTORY: Michael Douglas was riding high in 1989. Following his Oscar-win for Wall Street, and Fatal Attraction’s boffo box office, his was considered one of the most bankable actors in Hollywood. Opting for a rare action role, grittier and more hard-edged than his turns in Romancing the Stone and The Jewel of the Nile, Douglas, with his Fatal Attraction producers Stanley Jaffe and Sherry Lansing (who would soon run Paramount Pictures), hired Ridley Scott, then on a career downswing following Legend and Someone to Watch Over Me, to helm this stylish East-meets-West thriller, which would shoot on-location in Japan.
I remember when Ridley showed us the first cut of the movie it was about two hours and forty minutes, and it was extraordinary… But, this was his first cut, and so we all new that he was going to go in and make the film under two hours. I mean, the texture of the movie, the performances, the visuals, the sound, we were thrilled. Then, Ridley called us back, I dunno, four weeks later and showed us a movie that was an hour and fifty minutes long. We looked at him and asked, “what did you do,” and he said, what do you mean “what did I do?” “You took out all the good stuff, why did you make it this?” He said, “but I had to,” and he DID have to, to make it under two hours he had to take out some of the texture and some of the finest scenes in the movie. So, we said, “just make it the right length, it doesn’t have to be under two hours, just make it the right length.” (note- the final cut runs 125 minutes) – Sherry Lansing (BLACK RAIN DVD).
Despite critical acclaim and Douglas’s star-power, Black Rain was only a modest hit upon its release in the fall of 1989. It grossed $46 million, decent enough numbers for the era, but it wound-up grossing far less than comparable action movies of the time, although worldwide it was a solid hit, grossing an additional $88 million, while it also became a hot rental on the VHS market.
Nowadays, Black Rain remains popular among aficionados of eighties action cinema, with it remaining Michael Douglas’s one real attempt to make an action-movie on par with what Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger were doing at the time. Sandwiched between Douglas’s more well-known vehicles, with Basic Instinct another giant hit just a few years later, and coming along at a fallow time in Ridley Scott’s career, it remains a movie rarely discussed in examinations of either’s career.
WHY IT’S GREAT: Black Rain is an eighties gem for many reasons. For one thing, Michael Douglas aces his anti-hero part. While introducing him by staging a motorcycle race is maybe trying a bit too hard to establish him as a sexy rebel, it’s notable that his character, Nick Conklin, is allowed to be sleazy and imperfect. He’s under investigation for being on-the-take, and while, with another actor in the lead, he’d eventually be vindicated, we learn early-on that Nick is in-fact guilty. He’s also shown to be a racist, making derogatory comments about the Japanese, and often screwing up his own investigation with a mixture of ego and fool-headedness, all of which eventually gets his partner, played by the great Andy Garcia, killed.
I remember when the picture first came out, there was a very influential critics who called it a racist film because of how it depicted the Japanese. This really bothered me, so I called him up and asked him, “have you ever been to Japan?” Silence..”no.” “Then what do you think you’re talking about?” Then a few weeks later, it gets nominated for best foreign film in Japan. A very respected critic said, “well, this is the best Japanese film I’ve seen this year,” so it was a real compliment to Ridley. – Michael Douglas (BLACK RAIN DVD)
Lest you think he’s unlikable, Douglas makes Nick three-dimensional, to the point that even if we know he’s not too far removed from the baddies he chases, he’s essentially a good man, and his evolution is convincing. His relationship with Ken Takakura’s more honorable Japanese cop, himself a victim of the rigid class system in Japan, is touching. Douglas initially treats him like a joke, but he comes to realize Takakura (who’s one of the biggest stars in Japanese history – on the level of someone like Chow Yun-Fat in Hong Kong) is truly on his side, and an honorable man.
Meanwhile, Yusaku Matsuda’s bad guy is among the scarier ones of the eighties, sporting a crazed look and sense of sadism. Matsuda was, unbeknownst to the filmmakers and Douglas, terminally ill at the time. He apparently knew it would be his last role, and he put everything he had into it. Likewise, Ridley Scott, who one might assume would phone-in what, to him, might seem like a routine assignment, infuses Black Rain with oodles of style. His vision of Tokyo seems almost as futuristic as the Los Angeles of Black Rain, and his eye, matched with Jan De Bont’s cinematography and Hans Zimmer’s amazing, hard-edged score, makes this one of the most impeccably made action films of the era.
BEST SCENE: In cop movies, the younger, more inexperienced partner is always going to die. Even as a child watching Black Rain, I had seen enough of these movies to know Andy Garcia was doomed. As an action-junkie you almost look forward to the partner dying, because it’ll kick the hero into high gear. But, Garcia is so damn likable and charismatic, singing Ray Charles with Takakura (who apparently loved Garcia off-screen) and busting Douglas’s balls that you want him to pull through. All of this makes his eventual death all the more hard-hitting, with it being, in the annals of action movie murder, one of the most sadistic.
SEE IT:Black Rain is easily available on DVD/Blu-ray (I actually have it on HD-DVD), streaming, iTunes, Amazon and more.
You know, people always ask me in my career, what’s your favorite movie. And I have to say, Black Rain is right up there for the unique qualities of the movie, the execution across the board… – Michael Douglas (BLACK RAIN DVD)
PARTING SHOT:Black Rain is another entry into this column that many of you may remember having seen when it came out. If it’s been awhile, I urge you to check it out again, as it holds up really well. And to those younger readers who may have never heard of it, do you like Ridley Scott and Hans Zimmer? If yes, boy oh boy will you love this.
credits to the photographers #acompleteunknown pic.twitter.com/xI4JAT51Pn
