Soon after the release of M3GAN back in January, it was announced that the team behind the film – Universal Pictures, Blumhouse Productions, and James Wan’s production company Atomic Monster – were aiming to replicate M3GAN‘s January theatrical success by setting a January 2024 release date for their supernatural thriller Night Swim. The movie reached theatres at the start of this month – and didn’t manage to go over as well or get as much attention as M3GAN did. While M3GAN earned over $180 million during its theatrical run, Night Swim (read our review HERE, check out our Night Swim interviews HERE) has only pulled in about $37 million at this point. Now the movie is heading to the small screen, as it’s getting a VOD and digital release this week, on January 23rd. If you want to watch the movie in the comfort of your own home tomorrow, it will set you back $29.99 on Amazon.
Bryce McGuire wrote and directed Night Swim, which is based on a short film he made with Rod Blackhurst back in 2014. The feature version of the story is built around the hidden source of terror found in an iconic backyard swimming pool. The film has the following logline: No running. No diving. No lifeguard on duty. No swimming after dark.
Here’s the synopsis: Ray Waller, a former major league baseball player forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness, moves into a new home with his concerned wife Eve, teenage daughter Izzy, and young son Elliot. Secretly hoping, against the odds, to return to pro ball, Ray persuades Eve that the new home’s shimmering backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for him. But a dark secret in the home’s past will unleash a malevolent force that will drag the family under, into the depths of inescapable terror.
The feature version of Night Swim stars Wyatt Russell (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin), Amélie Hoeferle (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes), and Gavin Warren (Fear the Walking Dead).
James Wan and Blumhouse founder Jason Blum are producing Night Swim while working on merging their companies. Atomic Monster’s Michael Clear and Judson Scott serve as executive producers alongside Blumhouse’s Ryan Turek. Alayna Glasthal is overseeing the project for Atomic Monster.
The 2014 short film version of the story starred Megalyn Echikunwoke (Night School 2018) and had the following synopsis: What better way to relax after a hectic day in the office than a long and cool night swim under the stars? Immersed in the aqueous element like a fetus inside the mother’s womb, the unsuspecting Eve enjoys the water in the privacy of her house; however, she is not alone. Apart from Margot, her cat, an intangible menace in the form of a shadowy night watcher observes from afar–invisible like the midnight breeze, yet very real. Is Eve in danger? Is this her last dive? It had a running time of just 4 minutes.
Will you be watching Night Swim now that it’s getting a VOD and digital release? Let us know by leaving a comment below – and if you have already seen the movie, let us know what you thought of it!
Plot: Gal Dove and Don Logan are best friends and small-town thieves living the good life in ‘90s East London. Deedee Harrison is a captivating adult film star whose ambitions to control her own personal destiny and her love affair with Gal Dove put her in danger. Teddy Bass is a treacherous, rising name in the gangster world who seduces Gal and Don into his criminal web.
Review: Of all the films I never expected to get a prequel, Sexy Beast would never have occurred to me. The 2001 crime movie, director Jonathan Glazer’s feature debut, focused on a pair of former friends whose lives have drifted apart since they were thieves working for a London crime boss. That film was barely a blip at the domestic box office but garnered critical acclaim and an Oscar nomination for Sir Ben Kingsley. Since Sexy Beast, screenwriters Louis Mellis and David Scinto reunited with stars Ray Winstone and Ian McShane for the less acclaimed film 44 Inch Chest. Two decades later, Sexy Beast is back with Mellis and Scinto aboard as executive producers for a 1990-set foray into the origin story of Gal, Don, and Teddy Bass. Sexy Beast is more than just an attempt to milk intellectual property. Instead, it is a solid crime drama with well-placed callbacks to the modern classic movie that inspired it.
Without any context for the feature film, Sexy Beast opens with little connection to the 2001 film. Right off the bat, we meet Gary “Gal” Dove, played by James McArdle, and Don Logan, played by Emun Elliott. Gal is engaged and in a rut, as he faces a life of settling down with his fiance. Gal and Don make decent money as small-time thieves, something Don’s controlling and abusive sister, Cecilia (Tamsin Greig), wants to change. Cecilia sets Gal and Don up with up-and-coming gangster Teddy Bass (Stephen Moyer), who has an intricate plan involving a local politician and a pair of criminal siblings. Teddy offers a lucrative partnership with Gal and Don, something Gal is unsure he wants to be a part of. Don, however, wants the wealth and notoriety that working for Teddy could bring, which pits the two friends at odds. This is further complicated when Gal meets DeeDee Harrison (Sarah Greene), a porn star whom Gal instantly falls in love with. In the feature film, we know that Don works for Teddy, Gal is married to DeeDee and living in Spain, and little else. Sexy Beast worked perfectly as a movie, and this series fills in those blanks despite there being no need to in the first place.
What I noticed immediately in the first episode of Sexy Beast was the physical similarity that James McArdle shares with Ray Winstone. With bleached blonde locks and a scruffy beard, both actors could convincingly play the same role decades apart. They share line delivery, mannerisms, and an opening shot of them in very different pools. On the other hand, Emun Elliott is much different than Sir Ben Kingsley’s take on Don Logan. This series wastes no time in showing us that Don has a screw loose and could snap at any minute, but the younger Don is not the sociopath his older self is in the movie. Here, Don struggles under his older sister, Cecilia, who delivers lines through the eight-episode series that are direct quotes from the feature film. The dynamic between Cecilia and Don is reminiscent of Norma and Norman from the seriesBates Motel, and that twisted relationship led to dark places. Equally, Ian McShane’s chillingly psychopathic take on Teddy Bass is given more depth here by Stephen Moyer. However, I found the added back story for the gangster to detract from the mysteriousness McShane lent his performance.
As much as Sexy Beast is a story about a heist and criminal enterprise, the series is heavily focused on the romance between Gal and DeeDee. The movie positions the pair as star-crossed lovers, and the series wastes little time getting the sparks going between the two. A solid amount of time is spent on DeeDee dealing with issues within the porn industry as well as the challenge of Gal already being engaged to be married. Sarah Greene does some of the best work here as she delves into the fairly underdeveloped character in the feature film. The rest of Gal’s family, who factor into his personal life and how it clashes with his career as a criminal, are not nearly as endearing as they are intended to be and offer some of the weakest elements of the series’ narrative. Gal’s clash with his younger sister throughout the series takes up much screen time and ends up as filler compared to the much more interesting arcs for Don, Teddy, and more. Even within this prequel series, we get flashes even further back to the childhood days of some characters, which adds depth and some sympathetic elements for characters I did not want to feel anything for, like Don and Teddy.
Michael Caleo, whose prior credits include writing for The Sopranos and Rescue Me, wrote more than half of the episodes of Sexy Beast and directed the first three. Co-writers include Jennifer Cacicio, Lee Patterson, Ollie Masters, and Juliet Lashinsky-Revene, while David Caffrey, Alex Eslam, and co-star Stephen Moyer helmed the remaining episodes. Moyer directed the finale after previously helming episodes of True Blood and the series Flack, starring his wife Anna Paquin. The series is rooted in London during the early 1990s. Still, aside from the music that factors heavily into every episode, the era is a requirement in preceding the feature film’s narrative. The eight-episode season works as the start of an ongoing series as it ends in a place still a long way from where the movie started. Still, it also feels like it has used much of its strongest material, leaving a second season in the difficult position of transitioning the story to where Jonathan Glazer’s film takes over.
Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast remains among the most impressive directorial debuts of the last twenty-five years. This prequel series arrives just as the filmmaker is back in the limelight with his acclaimed film The Zone of Interest. While Glazer has zero involvement with this series, it is respectful of the movie and does not do anything to detract from its standing as one of the best British films in recent history. As a series, Sexy Beast is a standalone crime drama with intriguing characters and a plot worth investing in. However, I garnered more enjoyment out of the show because of the connections I found with the feature film. I would love to see if a second season of Sexy Beast can improve upon the first, but I hope audiences will discover this show and seek out the brilliant movie that inspired it even more.
Sexy Beast premieres on January 25th on Paramount+.
As Kingpin once said, “The people need to be reminded that the city belongs to me.” And apparently all of the Kingpin reading material belongs to Vincent D’Onofrio, who has consumed just about every piece he can get his hands on.
Speaking with ComicBook.com, D’Onofrio said, “I’ve seen everything that involved [Wilson] Fisk that’s up to this point. I mean, there’s some of the new runs, the Kingpin runs that I haven’t looked at yet, but as far as everything, any canon that connects Fisk I’ve read.” We sense a little slacking from D’Onofrio, but then again, considering just how much Kingpin material is out there, we can’t entirely fault him for falling behind.
As far as which Kingpin works have grabbed his attention the most, D’Onofrio pointed to the legendary Frank Miller, who wrote Daredevil’s Born Again storyline in 1986. “The [Frank Miller] runs were always very exciting for me. And I found early on before I met David [Mack, creator of Marvel’s Echo], I found some of his stuff and the first couple of paintings that he did of Fisk were really, really truly inspiring. I didn’t get to tell him that for a while, but eventually, I did get to tell him, and then he was just super helpful with turning me onto maybe stuff that I didn’t have or anything that he offered his help.”
Kingpin first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #50 in 1967 when D’Onofrio was just eight years old. The actor first took on playing the character (aka Wilson Fisk) in Netflix’s Daredevil series, reprising him on Hawkeye and most recently on Echo. He is set to return once again for Daredevil: Born Again, currently set for 2025. Prior to D’Onofrio, Kingpin was most notably played by Michael Clarke Duncan in the 2003 Daredevil movie, although he had been featured in Marvel media properties since the ‘60s, having first been voiced by Tom Harvey on Spider-Man.
The actor recently went to work to settle any fan concern of the behind-the-scenes troubles surrounding Daredevil: Born Again, saying in part, “Every cool project I’ve been involved with has evolved constantly during pre-production, production and post. It’s just reported on these days as if it’s big news. It’s not. It’s simple a bunch of creatives doing their best to get it right. It’s a constant in this business. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Frankly I’d be worried if we were settling for less.”
How do you think Vincent D’Onofrio has done as Kingpin? Does he deserve a standalone movie?
When Mad Max: Fury Road was released by Warner Bros. back in 2015, Mad Max saga mastermind George Miller already had ideas for more Max Rockatansky stories and a prequel that would focus on the Furiosa character. Unfortunately, before he could move forward with any of them, his production company had to take WB to court over unpaid Fury Road earnings, an issue that slowed things down for years. The problem was finally resolved and now, nine years after Fury Road, the prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has made its way through production and is set to reach theatres on May 24th. In anticipation of the film’s release, we have compiled a list of everything we know about this one – and you can check it out right here:
STORY
Directed by Miller from a screenplay he wrote with his Fury Road co-writer Nico Lathouris, Furiosa has the following official synopsis: As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus. Sweeping through the Wasteland they come across the Citadel presided over by the Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home.
Miller and Lathouris wrote the script long ago; in fact, Miller has said that it was “virtually complete” even before Mad Max: Fury Road started filming in 2012. The story begins 15 years before the events of Fury Road and spans across those 15 years, leading directly into the previous film. As for why this story is being told, Miller has said, “When we wrote Mad Max, the task was to tell a story that was always on the run and to see how much the audience could pick up in passing. That was one of the tricks of Mad Max: Fury Road, that there would be references to things of where she’s from, why they’re doing things, but it was always on the run. There were very few moments of quiet. We never explained how she lost her arm. We never explain what the actual Green Place Of Many Mothers was. We never explained the workings of the Citadel. So we had the screenplay virtually complete before we shot Fury Road, and we did it because it arose out of wanting to explain to everybody who Furiosa was—to Charlize Theron when she took on the role, and to all the actors and the designers and everybody else working on the Citadel and so on. The feeling was, gee, this is a pretty good screenplay, and then I kept saying to myself, ‘if Fury Road works, I’d really like to tell this story.’ So it came about, I’m not going to say accidentally, but it came out of a need to explain [Fury Road’s] world which essentially happened over three days and two nights. It’s really trying to explain how that world came to be.“
There’s a chance that parts of this story may be familiar to Mad Max fans, as some of the prequel elements Miller had put together were published as comic books around the time of Fury Road‘s release.
ANYA TAYLOR-JOY AND CHARLIZE THERON
When he was first planning Furiosa, Miller thought he would be able to bring Fury Road‘s Charlize Theron back to play the younger version of the character and they would just do some CG de-aging on her. But, “despite the valiant attempts on Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman“, he came to the decision that CG de-aging just hadn’t been perfected yet, there’s still an uncanny valley effect when watching people who have been de-aged. So the character had to be recast. While it was rumored that Killing Eve actress Jodie Comer might be in the running to play Furiosa, the role ended up going to Anya Taylor-Joy of The Witch, who Miller first saw in Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho. Although Taylor-Joy doesn’t have a drivers license, she did perform her own stunt driving in the film.
When she learned she wouldn’t be starring in Furiosa, Theron told The Hollywood Reporter, “It’s a tough one to swallow. Listen, I fully respect George, if not more so in the aftermath of making that film with him. He’s a master, and I wish him nothing but the best. Yeah, it’s a little heartbreaking, for sure. I really love that character, and I’m so grateful that I had a small part in creating her. She will forever be someone I think of and reflect on fondly. Obviously, I would love to see that story continue, and if he feels like he has to go about it this way, then I trust him in that manner. We get so hung up on the smaller details that we forget the thing that we emotionally tap into has nothing to do with that minute thing that we’re focusing on.”
Theron and Taylor-Joy didn’t discuss their shared role until after production ended. Taylor-Joy told People, “Charlize was sweet enough — I think both of us ended up in a situation where we were both so respectful of each other that we didn’t want to reach out prior [to filming]. The second it’s over, we’re having dinner and we’re going to swap war stories for sure.“
CAST
Beyond Taylor-Joy, the cast also includes Chris Hemsworth (Thor) as the biker warlord Dementus, with Tom Burke (C.B. Strike) and Quaden Bayles (Three Thousand Years of Longing) in unspecified roles. Alyla Browne (The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart) appears as a younger Furiosa, and Nathan Jones and Angus Sampson are said to reprise their Fury Road roles of Rictus Erectus and The Organic Mechanic. IMDb has a list of characters with names like Smeg, Pissboy, War Boy, Treadmill Rat, Blackfinger, Fang, The Wretched, Corpse Minder, Mr. Harley, and Mortiflyer.
Don’t expect to see Nicholas Hoult show up as his Fury Road character Nux. As Hoult told ComicBook.com, “Going into Fury Road, I knew all of Nux’s life up until the moment we meet him in that film. And obviously as (Furiosa is) a prequel, it’s earlier. Nux would’ve maybe just about been born and I don’t think I could play a six-month-old or a year old. It would be a stretch for me.“
Hemsworth has said that working on Furiosa was “by far the best experience of my career, and something I feel the most proud of.” He came into the film exhausted, wondering how he was going to get through it, but as soon as rehearsals started it reignited his creative energy. “It made me think, the work isn’t what’s exhausting, it’s what kind of work it is, and how invested I am in it and if it is challenging in the right way.”
FURY ROAD REUNION
Miller, Lathouris, Jones, and Sampson aren’t the only Fury Road holdovers on Furiosa. The films also share editor Margaret Sixel, production designer Colin Gibson, sound mixer Ben Osmo, makeup designer Lesley Vanderwalt, costume designer Jenny Beavan, and composer Junkie XL.
BIGGEST AUSTRALIAN PRODUCTION
Furiosa was the biggest production ever for Australia, surpassing the $150 million production of Baz Luhrmann’s Australia (which was recently reworked into a mini-series called Faraway Downs). It created 850 jobs and brought $350 million AUD (around $230 million USD) to the local economy. Miller is producing the film with Doug Mitchell.
MORE MAX STORIES
While it seems clear that he’s not a major character, Miller has never said whether or not Max Rockatansky will be making an appearance in Furiosa, but he did say, “Max is lurking around somewhere in this story.” If you’re more interested in seeing Max than you are in seeing Furiosa, don’t worry: Miller has said that he has two more Max stories in mind, one of them being the Mad Max: The Wasteland movie he was already mentioning by name back in 2015.
Are you looking forward to Furiosa? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Air Force One – which found president Harrison Ford telling that darn Korshunov to “Get off my plane!” – was a massive hit at the box office, taking in $173 million domestically and another $142 million in the international market to be one of Wolfgang Petersen’s biggest hits. And so, with the influx of sequels in the ‘90s, it’s a bit surprising that Air Force One never had a follow-up. Come on, the vice president literally flies on Air Force Two!
Getting a sequel to Air Force One off the ground was in consideration for a while but as screenwriter Andrew W. Marlowe told SYFY WIRE, it was the repetitive nature of franchises like Die Hard that kept another installment from ever happening, saying, “…every time John McClane goes on vacation or goes anywhere, the terrorists take over.” As such, he and some execs at Beacon Pictures could never come up with a passable idea. It seems the farthest they ever got was having “Harrison as president goes someplace, he’s on an Air Force carrier, it’s attacked, he’s in the middle of an unstable geopolitical situation. And so, there are things he can and can’t do, because you don’t want to inflame it. He’s got to navigate it and he’s the person at the heart of it.”
While we may never see Harrison Ford reprise President James Marshall for an Air Force One sequel, it’s nice to know it at least has less to do with age – a president in their 80s isn’t exactly unfathomable… – than it does a suitable plot. Still, there is always the possibility for a reboot, provided there is a real purpose. “We don’t want to do something that’s just exploitative storytelling, we want to do something that feels like it has a purpose in the world. And when we were doing it, the presidency and that position was not as politically charged as it is today. And so, I think that there are specific challenges about doing it in the contemporary climate that we would have to figure out. But believe me, people keep talking about it.”
Do you think an Air Force One sequel or reboot could work? What could you see the main character tackling? Give us your thoughts below.
January is generally a quiet time at the box office as studios give their big Holiday hits some breathing room while also avoiding the massive draw that is the NFL playoffs. Last year at this time, the record breaking Avatar: The Way of Water was still riding high with a $20.1 million take in its sixth week while Puss in Boots: The Last Wish continued its epic run from a $12 million opening to a $186 million domestic finish. We even had a surprise horror hit with M3GAN entering her third week with just under $10 million while the Tom Hanks starring A Man Called Otto continued to see solid numbers for a drama aimed at adults.
This year sees this third weekend of January hit a bit of a snag with the remake/ Broadway adaptation Mean Girls landing in first place for a second week in a row with $11.7 million. That number represents a 59% drop off, proving that its 65% audience score and B cinemascore are keeping some audiences away. Of course this second week drop off isn’t horrible news for the film because the budget was just $36 million and with $50 million already in domestic grosses, Mean Girls will see a solid profit for the studio. Even though I wasn’t the biggest fan of this movie (it recycled too much from the original), I would love to see a sequel that combined the casts from the two movies to create some sort of meta mash-up comedy masterpiece.
Remaining in second place is the Jason Statham/ David Ayer/ Phylicia Rashad (names I’m sure we all thought would one day share a marquee) film The Beekeeper, with an additional $8.4 million added to its domestic total of $31.1 million. With just a $40 million budget (relatively cheap for an action film in today’s $300 million marketplace), this tale of revenge should see a decent return on investment once international numbers are figured in. You can check out Tyler Nichols’ 7/10 review here.
Third place goes to the holiday heavyweight that is Wonka with an additional $6.4 million added to its stellar $187.1 million domestic total. With over half a billion dollars collected worldwide, this musical prequel has emerged as a genuine hit for the studio. By the end of Monday, Wonka will likely become star Timothée Chalamet’s highest-grossing domestic release ever, as it passes Interstellar’s $188 million (Wonka has a bit of a climb to go if it wants to pass that films $731 million worldwide total.) (For those who may not remember, Chalamet played a young Casey Affleck in the Christopher Nolan film.)
Coming in fourth is Anyone But You which is continuing to draw on its tremendous word of mouth for another $5.4 million added to its solid $64.2 million domestic total. With a budget of just $25 million and a worldwide total nearing the $100 million mark, this movie has been the true surprise of the past month. Personally, I am glad this movie is finding success as I found it to be a solid old school R-rated comedy that knew what it wanted to do and did it.
Rounding out the top five and making our predictions from Thursday spot on is Migration, with another $5.3 million added to its domestic total of $94.6 million. This one is following the model set forth by last year’s Puss in Boots as families continue to flock to it, giving it tremendous legs at the box office. The good news is that it still has a solid runway as the next animated family film to release is Kung Fu Panda 4,which doesn’t drop until March 8.
Sixth place belongs to Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom with $3.6 million, while the Ariana DeBose-fronted I.S.S sees a dismal seventh place opening with just $3 million. This is no laughing matter for the studio, which spent around $14 million on the film before marketing costs and will likely fail to recoup even that as the film has a horrible C- CinemaScore while not enough people saw it to give it an audience score yet! I did actually catch this one last week and thought it was okay. The first half was a decent claustrophobic thriller with an intriguing premise, while the second half just ran out of steam, resorting to space thriller cliches.
Rounding out the top ten is Night Swim with $2.7 million, followed by the George Clooney-directed true story The Boys in the Boat with $2.5 million. Seeing a bit of an awards season bump is the Emma Stone starring Poor Things which actually gained 14% this weekend with around $2 million in receipts. Hopefully, the more people that see the movie will help propel Stone onto that stage come Oscar Sunday, as I think her performance is one of the best we have seen in a while and blows the competition out of the water.
Did you make it to theaters this weekend? If so, let us know what you saw, and don’t forget to take our weekly poll where this week we take a trip to the past and ask: What is your Favorite Movie from 1994?
PLOT: A gym manager, Lou (Kristen Stewart), falls head-over-heels in love with a female bodybuilder, Jackie (Katy O’Brian). But, their bliss is short-lived, as the two end up getting tangled up with Lou’s criminal father (Ed Harris).
REVIEW: Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding is a dark, stylized, ultra-mean-spirited neo-noir. It skates on the edge of perhaps being a little too self-aware for its good in the surreal finale, but it’s still a very entertaining and twisty thriller.
Kristen Stewart is perfectly cast as the laconic noir anti-hero who hooks up now and then with a girl (Anna Baryshnikov), she can’t stand but otherwise leads a lonely life with her cat. Being set in 1989, the constantly smoking Lou is trying to quit with books on tape that have little to no effect, only for her life to be blown up when she sets her eyes on Katy O’Brian’s impressively muscled bodybuilder.
Gender-swapping, the typical noir protagonist, is an intriguing choice, with Stewart playing it in a rough-and-tumble fashion. She’s mostly excellent, outside of a moment or two when she leans too heavily into the anti-hero tropes, allowing the film to border on parody. This includes a moment where Lou smokes a cigarette while trying to seduce Jackie after a fight that felt a bit like she was trying to satirize the kinds of alpha-male roles Mickey Rourke played back in the era this is set in, making it border on becoming a spoof rather than a homage. It feels out of touch with the rest of the film, which is pretty classically styled, outside of a controversial, surreal climax open to interpretation.
Katy O’Brian, who’s a rising star with roles in The Mandalorian and the upcoming Twisters, is impressive as the femme fatale bodybuilder. Both characters are prone to be abusive to each other at times, making this a darker love story than you might think. Glass isn’t interested in creating a fairy tale, with Stewart showing off a cruel streak several times in the movie that I imagine a lot of other actresses wouldn’t dare play. She’s always been brave with her choice of roles, and this is undoubtedly one of her roughest.
Stewart and O’Brian are well-supported by the great Ed Harris, who shows up sporting a Kim Mitchell-tyle skullet as Lou’s gun-dealing papa, with many bodies buried he doesn’t want people digging into. While psychotic, one thing the movie doesn’t do is make him homophobic, with him openly approving of Lou’s sexuality, even if in every other way he’s a nightmare. Dave Franco plays against type as Lou’s wife-beating brother-in-law, although the depiction of Jena Malone as his oft-hit wife is pretty one-note.
Glass has undoubtedly made a beautiful film in Love Lies Bleeding, opting for a pulpy aesthetic that suits the film. The score by Clint Mansel is terrific, as are the eighties new wave needle drops. It’s an interesting second film for Glass, a mash-up of classic neo-noir in the vein of John Dahl’s Red Rock West and the Coen Bros’ Blood Simple, with a synth wave undertone and horror movie-style graphic violence. It’s not perfect, and it won’t be for everyone. But it’s a wild, entertaining ride.
It is hard to believe (for people of a certain age), but the year 1994 was 30 years ago! For this week’s poll, we wanted to step back into the time machine and reminisce about what could possibly be considered one of the best years in cinema history. If, like me, you are in your thirties, 1994 holds a nostalgic place due to movies such as Blank Check, D2: The Mighty Ducks, Major League 2, Clifford, The Flintstones, Getting Even With Dad, Little Big League, Angels in the Outfield, The Little Rascals, Camp Nowhere, Richie Rich and Little Giants. The year also represented the huge breakout of comedy legend Jim Carrey as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber were all released during that single calendar year.
But it wasn’t just movies aimed at a child’s heart that were released in 1994. The year also saw some genuine masterpieces that have gone on to be heralded as some of the best films ever made. Whether it was the eventual Best Picture winner Forrest Gump or the film currently sitting at number one on the IMDB top movies of all time list: The Shawshank Redemption. 1994 would also be Quentin Tarantino’s true breakout year with his Oscar-winning film Pulp Fiction, while we would also be introduced to a new indie filmmaker named Kevin Smith with his film Clerks.
We would get two now classic Christmas films, The Santa Clause and Miracle on 34th Street,while also getting two films that have been labeled by some as the worst movies ever made with North and Exit To Eden.
1999 often gets hailed as the greatest year for movies ever, but after compiling this list, I’d say 1994 gives it a run for its money. Even though we did compile an exhaustive list of some of the best films from 1994, if you don’t see your favorite listed, click the “Other” button and let us know in the comments.
For us 90s kids, Dick Tracy was an interesting monster of a movie. It seemed to take a lot of cues from Tim Burton’s Batman, which was released the previous summer, but it definitely had a distinct voice of its own. Dick Tracy was another classic pulp adaptation of an urban enforcer that had very dynamic visuals and an over-the-top rogues gallery. It even sported a score by Danny Elfman, which would have his signature atmospheric sound. The movie would introduce a generation of young audiences to the 1930’s film noir/ detective movie genre. Additionally, the movie brought back Warren Beatty after a three-year absence when his last film, 1987’s Ishtar, was a big flop. Having a star like Beatty in a big-budget franchise like this was an enormous asset for the re-budding intellectual property. And the star power wouldn’t even stop there.
Grab your Tommy guns. It’s Dick Tracy on this episode of Revisited.
The big-budget adaptation of the Chester Gould comic strip that originated in the 30s actually started life as a John Landis movie. Landis sought a meeting in the early 80s with writers Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr., the duo who would eventually pen movies like Top Gun, Legal Eagles, The Secret of My Success, and Turner & Hooch. Landis liked an early script they wrote called Whereabouts and enlisted the two to come up with a Dick Tracy for a new generation.
Before then, Tracy was a film serial in the 30s and 40s. They adapted the character into a cartoon in the 60s with The Dick Tracy Show, where, for some reason, Tracy delegated his detective work to a cast of new police characters, some of which have aged very poorly. Then, the property tried to follow in Batman’s footsteps in 1967, when William Dozier, producer of Adam West’s Batman TV series, tried to recapture that success with a similar show for Tracy. The theme song is not quite as catchy.
Landis’ attachment to the project would end when he faced legal trouble for the unfortunate accident that had befallen his segment in Twilight Zone: The Movie. Then, 48 Hrs. director Walter Hill would step in to be the helm the project. Hill actually met with Beatty to discuss working on the film, but the two clashed when Beatty wanted slightly more control than Hill was willing to give him. When both men fell out with each other, the project was dropped by its former studio, Paramount. However, Beatty would end up buying the rights to the Dick Tracy property entirely. He would take the rights over to Disney and decided it would be easier to direct it himself rather than trying to find someone else.
Beatty is synonymous with prohibition-era crime thanks to his role in the acclaimed Bonnie and Clyde, so his putting on the fedora and wielding a Tommy gun as the lead was an exciting aspect. This project became filled to the brim with notable names. Aside from Beatty, you have Al Pacino, Paul Sorvino, Dustin Hoffman, James Caan, Dick Van Dyke, Mandy Patinkin, Henry Silva, William Forsythe, and of course, Madonna. You even have blink, and you’ll miss it appearances by Kathy Bates and Catherine O’Hara.
The fun of the Dick Tracy comic strips is how it took the popular tradition of gangsters adopting monikers, such as famous ones like “Scarface,” ”Pretty Boy,” “Baby face,” “The Owl,” “Mugsy” etc., except, in the Dick Tracy comic, their names would also serve as their literal physical description. So, you get villains like Flattop, Pruneface, The Brow, Mumbles, and Little Face.
While Beatty got to keep his handsome mug for Tracy’s appearance, make-up artists John Caglione Jr. and Doug Drexler hit the mother load of bringing these caricature drawings to life and amazingly remained faithful to the comics. It’s pretty incredible that the movie assembled a huge cast of name actors but buried them under make-up, rendering them unrecognizable. Caglione Jr. and Drexler would do an outstanding job taking some of the most exaggerated characteristics and making them look like they could exist in a live-action world.
The population of characters may look like they walked straight out of the comics, but Beatty’s hiring of Richard Sylbert really brought out a unique look to the world. As with Batman’s Gotham City, Dick Tracy’s City, which had gone unnamed, has a distinctly comic look. Every shot is very dreamlike. The film combined real elements with paintings to give us a hyper-realistic version of a Chicago-type metropolis. The paintings used are true works of art as you can take any frame and hang it up on a wall. Sylbert would ingeniously stay true to the original comic by emphasizing only 6 main colors for the compositions – black, white, red, green, blue, and yellow. While the vibrancy of these designs can look cartoony, they all work together since there’s no real-world juxtaposition, and it stays grounded enough to where it doesn’t look like a Sin City or Toon Town from Roger Rabbit.
The plot for Dick Tracy is surprisingly basic. Especially when you become more aware of 30s and 40s gangster movie tropes. You’ve got the straight-laced, long arm of the law with Tracy. The big criminal in charge chews scenery like a buffet with Big Boy Caprice. The sultry lounge singer who goes after the man she wants, with the impeccably named Breathless Mahoney. Big Boy makes a power play to take over the Club Ritz and kidnaps the owner, Lips Manlis, in order to do it, so he makes him sign the deed over to him, kills him, and takes his girl. Did I mention this is a Disney movie?
The story is a chess game as Tracy becomes obsessed with taking down Big Boy after he moves in on Lips Manlis’ territory and unites the city’s crime syndicates. Meanwhile, in Tracy’s personal life, he’s got a great dame in Tess Trueheart, played by Glenne Headly from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. She’s the lady in his life that he’s getting serious about, but can’t quite muster up enough confidence to propose to her yet. While he loves her, his work always gets in the way of spending time with her as Big Boy and his cronies run rampant in the city.
If the romantic tension between Tracy and Tess wasn’t enough, they happened upon a homeless boy whom both had taken temporary custody of. The nameless boy known only as Kid is played by Charlie Korsmo, who will be seen throughout the 90s in movies like Hook, What About Bob? And Can’t Hardly Wait. Get ready to feel hungry during the montage of him catching up on some meals.
And if the forced family tension wasn’t enough for Tracy, Tess, and the Kid, Tracy is faced with good ol’ fashioned temptation when Madonna works her seductive magic all over Warren Beatty’s face whenever she gets the chance. Madonna was at the height of her powers at the time she co-starred in this movie. In fact, she used her Blonde Ambition Tour as a way of promoting the film. Her scenes with Beatty definitely help pushed limits to where Disney felt the need to release this under their Touchstone Pictures banner rather than under the true Walt Disney Pictures banner. Additionally, if you have Madonna in your movie and going for commercial appeal, you gotta have her sing some songs. The film’s music department had the strength of musical legend Stephen Sondheim writing Madonna’s swinging songs and ballads. He even earned an Oscar nomination for the original song “Sooner or Later.”
As Beatty slips into the Elliot Ness-type role so well, Al Pacino would also play the gangster kingpin, Big Boy Caprice, with great ease. Pacino recently bounced back into popularity with the erotic thriller Sea of Love after much of his 80s releases, including Scarface, underperformed at the box office. Pacino rallied his comeback with Dick Tracy, then later the same year, he would return to his most famous role as Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part III. Of the two releases in 1990, Pacino would actually be nominated for an Oscar for his role in Dick Tracy! Dick. Tracy.
Before Pacino went on to seal his signature manic style after Scent of a Woman, Heat and The Devil’s Advocate, Al made a three-course meal of every moment in Dick Tracy. There is seldom a scene where he isn’t yelling. Al may have become famous for his over-the-top intensity, but at this point, it would only break out every now and then. He’s turned up to 11 throughout his entire time in this movie, and his personality is as exaggerated as his make-up. And Big Boy, for how confident and aggressive he is, Pacino hilariously plays him as a kind of simple-minded character whose emotions are all over the place.
The action in Dick Tracy is a mixed bag of cartoony action and some surprisingly edgy gunfights. There aren’t necessarily any big adventure set pieces, but we get spurts of action integrated into the crime story. The coolest sequence comes at the end when a New Year’s party at the Club Ritz is interrupted when the police surround the place, and all of Big Boy’s men attempt to make a run when they escape through a hornets’ nest of cops. The whole sequence is set to a soundtrack of automatic gunfire. The shower of bullets can easily be compared to Beatty’s famous demise in Bonnie and Clyde. This is definitely a scene that was too much for Disney to release under their normal banner.
Despite its relative disappearance into obscurity nowadays, Dick Tracy was actually a huge hit. The movie grossed $162 million worldwide on a $47 million dollar budget. For 1990, that’s quite the blockbuster. Still, unfortunately, Disney wanted to chase the kind of numbers that Tim Burton’s Batman brought in a year before – which totaled $411 million, plus much more in merchandising since it was a huge pop culture staple. While Dick Tracy was the ninth-highest-grossing film of 1990, Disney decided not to pursue a sequel since it couldn’t match up to Batman.
Warren Beatty retains the rights to the property to this day, and while he had somewhat retired from acting, he hasn’t signed off on any sequel or reboot of any kind. The only time he’s followed up with the franchise was when he would make appearances in character when meeting with movie critic Leonard Maltin for an interview on Turner Classic Movies. Early in 2023, Beatty appeared again on TCM for a Leonard Maltin interview, except this time, he appeared via Zoom as both Dick Tracy and himself. The special event featured Tracy speaking to Beatty in a fourth-wall-breaking conversation where Tracy got to confront Beatty about his portrayal of him. It’s like when Sylvester Stallone finally got to meet Rocky.
It’s safe to say that Dick Tracy has a lot of fans out there. It’s not quite a cult following since the movie was such a success, but the vocal supporters are dedicated to ensuring it doesn’t go overlooked or forgotten. Now seems like an ideal time to strike for some sort of resurgence, but even if it doesn’t, this movie is still an entertaining exploration of the property. Unfortunately, Disney hasn’t added it to Disney+ as of now, but thankfully, the movie isn’t a lost film either.
PLOT: A group of college friends reunite for a weekend-long party. When one of the gang shows up with a mysterious suitcase in tow; the group gets to know each other in an unusual – and perhaps even terrifying – way.
REVIEW: It’s What’s Inside presents anyone reviewing it with a problem. Something that happens early in the film is so unexpected that spoiling it would be a crime. Yet, the problem is that this potential spoiler is the instigating event. How do you discuss the rest of the movie if you can’t even really dig into what it’s about? Indeed, the company repping the film begged us in a follow-up email to our screening not to spoil the premise. As such, this review is going to be vague.
I can say that of all the genre films I’ve seen at Sundance this year; it seems the most likely to land a huge distribution deal and become a hit. It seems an easy fit for A24 or Neon, with it a terrific audience movie and an energetic blast from start to finish. However, while it may be marketed as horror, that’s not the genre, as it’s essentially a character-based supernatural thriller with heavy doses of comedy mixed in. It’s similar to Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, in that you won’t sympathize with any of the horrible characters on-screen, so when misfortune sets in on them, you can’t help but enjoy it. It’s THAT kind of movie.
The directorial debut of writer-director Greg Jardin, the film sports a remarkably photogenic cast of young up-and-comers. Brittany O’Grady, from the first season of The White Lotus, plays the closest thing to a lead, with her character, the insecure Shelby, looking to reignite her failing relationship with her college boyfriend, Cyrus (the Virus – in a nice Con Air nod), played by James Morosini. They get the thrill they wanted when they reunite at the palatial estate belonging to their friend Reuben (Devon Terrell), who’s getting married. Other guests include an insufferable influencer named Nikki (played by producer Colman Domingo’s Fear the Walking Dead co-star Alycia Debnam-Carey), a trust-fund bro, Dennis (Gavin Leatherwood), the stoned Brooke (Reina Hardesty) and the bohemian Maya (Nina Bloomgarden).
Their plan gets shaken when a former friend, Forbes (David Thompson), with a grudge against at least two group members, shows up with a game they all find themselves enthralled by when they start experimenting. As the film continues, it transitions from comedy to something darker before going all-out towards the conclusion. But, again, I can’t tell you about any of that.
Needless to say, It’s What’s Inside seems destined for some cult renown. Older genre fans may be turned off by how vacuous the characters are, but that’s the point. Jardin is satirizing the self-absorbed, wealthy zennial. While I wish I could reveal why the instigating accident makes it such an impressive showpiece for the talented cast, I’m gagged by the producer’s fairly reasonable demand. As such, put this one on your radar of movies to see, but do yourself a favour and try not to read too much about it before it comes out. I have my fingers crossed that the trailer doesn’t reveal the big twist.
