#LIonsgate Film

[demifiendrsa]

The Crow (2024) Official Trailer

Poster

Synopsis

Soulmates Eric Draven and Shelly Webster are brutally murdered. Given the chance to save his true love by sacrificing himself, Eric sets out to seek revenge, traversing the worlds of the living and the dead to put the wrong things right.

[knightgazes]

DEATH'S VERY EMISSARY

John Wick IV dir. Chad Stahelski

[softhenrycavill]

Some Informationen about Guy Ritchie's "In the Grey" Movie | coming out in 2025

“There’s something special that happens when you collaborate with the same partners regularly: you build a shorthand and a trust that lets everybody do their best work. Jake, Henry and Eiza are all astonishingly talented, committed, and engaging actors. This is going to be an action-packed movie that is both intellectually stimulating and physically exhilarating.”

[girlboxd]

But I’m a Cheerleader (1999) Dir. Jamie Babbit

[behindthescreamz]

lionsgate announces the next installment of the saw franchise will be released on september 27th, 2024.

[hungergameshyperfixation]

Listen I am cautiously optimistic about the SotR film (I completely understand why a lot of people aren’t though), but I will say I am worried it’s going to be “TBoSaS 2.0”

I can really appreciate tbosas for what it is as a movie, but I don’t know how I feel about getting a new Panem film with that specific…vibe.

Idk, I think I’d have to really sit down and analyze certain elements of the film in a vacuum to pinpoint exactly what it is I’m referring to. But I feel like SotR has a high likelihood of falling into the same “vibe” that tbosas is in. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I just PERSONALLY feel like it could worsen the experience. I hope SotR stands on its own.

**I’m using “vibe” as a placeholder right now. It pains me to not have a proper way of articulating what I’m thinking yet but I’m getting out of a rut rn so baby steps lmao.

Additional note: while I do think some of my bias with tbosas (film version) is with the actual story itself (a topic for another day), I am referring to the filmmaking style.

Idk this is just rough draft thoughts because I’d rather share this and see if anyone else is thinking something similar. But I do want to elaborate on this someday because I LOVE breaking down films.

[rickchung]

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (dir. Guy Ritchie).

For those who saw Inglourious Basterds and were left wondering what if the director behind Sherlock Holmes and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword made their own hyper-stylized and even more anachronistic version of a WWII suicide mission from Winston Churchill, this might be for you. It's a wild, over-the-top fictionization of the real-life Operation Postmaster caper involving James Bond creator Ian Fleming and starring Henry Cavill as the historical figure who would become the basis for the icon British super spy character.

[that-fannerd-with-the-glasses]

Bout to start making Saw XI myself if it gets delayed one more time, swear to God.

[depp-1963]

NEW: Johnny Depp and Penélope Cruz confirmed to both star in Lionsgate’s new action thriller, Day Drinker

[agentnico]

Megalopolis (2024) review

My brain is fried.

Plot: A conflict between Cesar, a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero, who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare.

Going into Megalopolis all I knew about the movie thanks to its marketing and early reception is that it’s directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Now having seen it, I still only know that this movie is directed by Francis Ford Coppola. I am power phrasing of course, but essentially this thing is us stepping into the crazy mind of Mr Coppola and getting lost in his nonsense. For nonsense is what this epic is. You can argue that there are some bold philosophical discussions within it and the theme of drawing parallels between the fall of Rome and the future of the United States is an interesting one, however at the end of the day this is an old man yapping a lot and wanting to be heard when he can’t even formulate a full sentence.

Speaking of sentences, let’s start with the script. FFC has juiced this baby up with Tommy Wiseau levels of herbs and spices, with characters spilling out lines of dialogue that are so outlandish and bizarre in both the delivery and context that for the most part you cannot help but laugh, even though I don’t believe that was Coppola’s intention. I mean really, someone needs to make a count of how many times Adam Driver says the word “time” in this movie. Then there are moments where characters are literally quoting Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius and Plutarch and other philosophers as if the movie is trying to make a statement, except that it doesn’t have anything of significance to say. We jump from one bizarre scene to other, often being given narrative plot points that are completely forgotten about and never referred to again from the next scene onwards. The whole piece feels like a massive cheesy fever dream, and without a shadow of a doubt I can say I’ve never seen another film like it before nor will I ever.

The stacked ensemble cast also does not fair too well. For one they don’t really play characters, but more so their roles, though they have names, are more so walking metaphors/ideologies, which only adds to the confusion. Adam Driver I believe essentially plays Francis Ford Coppola himself, with Driver as an architect wanting to create his own unique dream city of Megalopolis a reflection of Coppola’s filmmaking passion to direct a unique movie that he himself wants to make, and one that is entirely his vision that no studio interference can meddle with, for better or worse. Driver isn’t great, but I expect he was doing exactly what Coppola was asking him to do, even though it’s really wooden and lifeless. Nathalie Emmanuel as his girlfriend was actually atrocious, delivering each line as if she’s performing in a school play, over enunciating every single word. Giancarlo Esposito….I mean I guess he’s alright, but he’s just Gus from Breaking Bad who’s turned mayor. Jon Voight looks like a drunk Judi Dench, Laurence Fishburne is Adam Driver’s personal chauffeur who for some reason also narrates the whole darn thing even though his character has jack all to do with anything, and Dustin Hoffman walks around a lot looking really lost. We are too Dustin, we are too. The only two actors who seem to know what type of movie they are in are Aubrey Plaza and Shia LaBeouf. They are extremely over-the-top and feel like they are really self-aware of the unintentionally funny lines of the script, so they fully throw themselves into the ridiculousness of it all which results in them two actually being really entertaining to watch.

Visually Megalopolis stupefies me. On one side the world building is beautiful with so much unusual and special imagery that really pops, but at the same time it’s also extremely ugly and unappealing to look at. It feels like the special effects are super cheap and could have been done by a toddler, but also it’s a look that’s so different and out there that it’s also fantastical.

The movie is a bloated mess. It’s truly mad, pretentious and up its creator’s own arse. But at the same time I find it hard not to respect the heck out of Francis Ford Coppola’s ambition. The guy literally sold part of his winery business to fund this film, he has worked on it for 40 fricking years, gone through endless production issues and delays, then had issues finding a distributor and getting mixed to negative reviews at the Cannes film festival premiere, to then the botched marketing campaign from Lionsgate as well as that weird controversy about him kissing random women on set of Megalopolis and other inappropriate behaviour…. This movie’s behind the scenes shenanigans would make for a fascinating documentary which I’m certain a streamer such as Netflix will for sure bring to life some time down the road. But again, if there’s anything to take out of Megalopolis is that FFC is a massive cinematic pioneer with his own distinct vision and someone who’s strives to break the norms of filmmaking. In fact I only recently discovered through the Criterion Collection the 1980 samurai war epic Kagemusha by Akira Kurosawa, and the interesting aspect to that film (besides it being an absolute blast) is that it was partly funded by George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, both of whom wanted to support filmmakers who had something special and different to say, like Kurosawa. So Coppola is no stranger to big cinematic aspirations and has, throughout his entire career, been a leading figure in the evolvement of the film movement, and for good reason is considered as one of the greatest directors of all time. For that reason alone Megalopolis is worth going to see.

Again, I want to emphasise - Megalopolis is not a good movie. But in the current superhero saturated Hollywood climate it’s a different kind of cinematic event, so a perfect palette cleanser for true cinephiles. Even though, let’s be honest. Francis Ford Coppola really did just unload his load all over us and then some!

Overall score: 4/10

[live-and-die-in-la]

You’ll never guess who they shoved into Boy Kills World during post.

Great fan art via @jtorresartist on X/Twitter.

Check out Boy Kills World official trailer

[demifiendrsa]

First look at The Crow (2024 movie).

The film is slated to hit theaters on June 7, 2024.

[knightgazes]

NEW IDEAS. NEW RULES. NEW MANAGEMENT.

Bill Skarsgård as the Marquis de Gramont in John Wick IV

[softhenrycavill]

Chad Stahelski talks 'Highlander' with The Direct.

[cinematicendevaourz]

As far comic book films go, there isn't many where you'll get curb stomping violence and the gripping of thong covered mulatto cheeks by caucazoid hands set to a soundtrack that has Depeche Mode in the tracklist.

Nah, usually to achieve that I'd have to read a Crow comic book, throw on a Depeche Mode album and watch Team Skeet after a re-viewing of "American History X" to achieve such gravitas.

That's all in a day's work. James O' Barr was able to achieve that in one script that Rupert Sanders has captured in the gritty dankness of the 2024 iteration of "The Crow".

Yet again FKA Twigs portrays a bedwench, but at least she gets a larger role than her efforts in Shia La Beouf's "Honey Boy".

She's sexy here, but then those teeth? A UK thing at best.

Danny Huston is a familiarly villainous face in cinema and delivers as the sniveling, elitist villain, Roeg.

Watching Skarsgard's Eric get vengeance on him was a joy, and that leaves me with Skarsgard who plays the relatable love-stricken Romeo who would do anything to save his lover.

It all checks out here : girl falls for bad boy, girl has a checkered past, they get killed over it. Boy comes back from the dead and trades his soul to become immortal and resurrect his dead lover after killing their would-be murderers.

Worked for me.

Fairly simple plot with sexy scenes from jump starting with Twigs and Isabella Wei in torso-bearing crop tops to Twigs having a bag put over her head and getting asphyxiated to death, all the way to the end with Twigs being resuciated with her nipples visible under her dress in the river.

So no, the film's sexiness doesn't just serve teenage girls into six pack abs and gang tattoos.

But that's there too, and with the majority of the film being a love story, this is the best romance movie of 2024.

Perfect cannon fodder for those still attending the movie theater for date night. And yes, that still happens, I've seen it - though less of it now as the U.S. economy continues to worsen.

What better film than "The Crow" to mirror what hell the Westernized world has turned the idea of romantic love into?

I like how Skarsgard was able to follow up his performance in "Boy Kills World" by turning up the angst with every painful bullet he took in "The Crow".

Skarsgard could give Hugh Jackman a run for his money with displaying the pain of being immortal, and Jackman has made a silver screen career out of that with silver claws.

Twigs is still sexy, Huston is still devious, and Lionsgate still makes comic book movies better than Disney can. Not every comic book film needs to break the mold, but breaking faces and breaking hearts can go a long way in entertaining cinema.

-

C.V.R. The Bard

25th/Aug. 2k24

[yojabari]

Poster for Small Things Like These