Justin Lin announced he’s directing a crime thriller, Stakehorse, about a horse veterinarian who patches us criminals.

Justin Lin is ready to announce his next project, Stakehorse. Is it about a horse made of wooden stakes? Doubtful. Sources say the forthcoming crime thriller is like Ben Affleck’s 2010 banger The Town. The screenplay hails from Justin Piasecki (Expend4bles, Collecting Canada), with a plot revolving around a horse veterinarian who has a side hustle patching up criminals who need medical attention under the table.

After shooting several chapters of the Fast and Furious saga and more, Lin is a clever and creative director with a sleek style all his own. In addition to directing Stakehorse, Lin will produce through his Perfect Storm Entertainment studio with Todd Lieberman and Alex Young of Hidden Pictures. Perfect Storm’s Andrew Schneider and Sal Gatdula will exec produce.

Lin, a champion of the Fast and Furious franchise, directed The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Fast & Furious, Fast Five (still the best one), Fast & Furious 6, and F9: The Fast Saga. He almost directed Fast X, but complications on the set led to Lin exiting the project partway through and handing the reins to Louis Leterrier.

Lin has several projects in various stages of production, including a producer credit on the TV series Seven Wonders. The series follows Dr. Nate Grady, a brilliant botanist-adventurer, and Sloane Seydoux on a race to solve an ancient mystery tied to the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Lin’s next directorial effort, Last Days, is a passion project rolling cameras in Thailand later this month.

Justin Lin is also attached to the Apple thriller Two for the Money, starring Charlize Theron and Daniel Craig. Then there’s Lin’s adaptation of the mega-popular manga and anime One Punch Man. In One Punch Man, Saitama is a hero who does it just for fun and can defeat his enemies with a single punch. Bored with winning one battle after the next, Saitama searches the globe, looking for a worthy opponent to cure his boredom.

Are you excited about Justin Lin venturing into the crime thriller drama? Do you know any horse veterinarians? Did you know a trainer used to tap Mr. Ed’s hoof to make him talk? What? Didn’t you know this is also an introduction to my TED Talk about Useless Horse Facts? It’s too late. You’re in it now. Pay me.

About the Author

Born and raised in New York, then immigrated to Canada, Steve Seigh has been a JoBlo.com editor, columnist, and critic since 2012. He started with Ink & Pixel, a column celebrating the magic and evolution of animation, before launching the companion YouTube series Animation Movies Revisited. He’s also the host of the Talking Comics Podcast, a personality-driven audio show focusing on comic books, film, music, and more. You’ll rarely catch him without headphones on his head and pancakes on his breath.

For a limited time, Gutter Garbs is selling a Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter shirt, celebrating the film’s 40th anniversary

2024 marks the 40th anniversary of one of my favorite entries in my favorite franchise: the Friday the 13th sequel Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter – and to mark the occasion, the folks at Gutter Garbs are selling a very cool Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter T-shirt! An image of the shirt can be seen at the bottom of this article, and it’s available for pre-order at THIS LINK. Shirts are expected to ship out around May 5th. They’ll only be selling it for a limited time, so if you want it, get your order in.

Directed by Joseph Zito from a screenplay by Barney Cohen (with Bruce Hidemi Sakow receiving story credit), Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter has the following synopsis: The body count continues in this vivid thriller, the fourth — and final? — story in the widely successful Friday the 13th series. Jason, Crystal Lake’s least popular citizen, returns to wreak further havoc in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. After his revival in a hospital morgue, the hockey-masked murderer fixes his vengeful attention on the Jarvis family and a group of hitherto carefree teenagers. Young Tommy Jarvis is an aficionado of horror films with a special talent for masks and make-up. Has the diabolical Jason finally met his match?

The film stars Corey Feldman, Kimberly Beck, E. Erich Anderson, Crispin Glover, Alan Hayes, Barbara Howard, Joan Freeman, Peter Barton, Judie Aronson, Camila More, Carey More, Lawrence Monoson, Bruce Mahler, Lisa Freeman, and Bonnie Hellman, with Ted White as Jason Voorhees. Sadly, Ted White passed away in 2022 at the age of 96.

Legendary special effects artist Tom Savini provided the bloodshed for this one, as he did for the first movie.

Are you a fan of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, and will you be adding the Gutter Garbs shirt to your wardrobe? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

If you want to see exactly where this movie lands in my personal F13 rankings, check out this list I put together a while back. It’s up there toward the top of the list.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has been renewed for season 4, but unfortunately, Star Trek: Lower Decks will be come an an end with season 5.

Good news for Captain Christoper Pike (Anson Mount) and the crew of the USS Enterprise as Variety reports that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has been renewed for season 4. Unfortunately, the crew of the USS Cerritos aren’t quite so lucky as it was also announced that Star Trek: Lower Decks will conclude with its upcoming fifth season.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is currently in production on its third season, which will premiere on Paramount+ in 2025. “On behalf of the cast and crew of ‘Strange New Worlds,’ we are thrilled and grateful to continue our voyages together,” said executive producers and showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers and executive producer Alex Kurtzman. “We can’t wait for you to join us and the crew of the Enterprise on another season of exploration and adventure.” Strange New Worlds has been a big success for Paramount+, quickly becoming a fan favourite series and making Nielsen’s top 10 most-watching streaming originals multiple weeks in a row.

Over the course of the last four seasons, Star Trek: Lower Decks has developed into not only a fun animated comedy but a great Star Trek series as well. Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) and Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid) even make the leap to live-action in a crossover episode with Strange New Worlds. The fifth season will debut this fall, but Kurtzman and showrunner Mike McMahon are hopeful that we haven’t seen the last of the Cerritos crew. “We remain hopeful that even beyond Season 5, Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, Rutherford and the whole Cerritos crew will live on with new adventures,” Kurtzman and McMahon said in a statement. “While five seasons of any series these days seems like a miracle, it’s no exaggeration to say that every second we’ve spent making this show has been a dream come true.“

With Star Trek: Discovery coming to an end with season five (currently airing) and now Lower Decks, could a five-season run be the new standard for modern-day Trek shows? However, there are more than a few Star Trek projects waiting to fill the gaps, including the Star Trek: Section 31 movie and the new Star Trek: Starfleet Academy series, which will begin shooting later this year.

Alex Garland’s Civil War dares to show us a hell of our own making in an attempt to keep it from ever happening.

PLOT: In the United States, amid a brutal civil war, a team of journalists drive from New York to Washington D.C, where they’ve been promised an interview with the president. 

REVIEW: A24 is the only movie studio I know of that’s picked up a cult following of its own. Their brand has become one of the most trusted among discerning film fans, delivering a slew of interesting, provocative movies that fit all genres. In some ways, they are a throwback to an older kind of filmmaking in that they’ve never focused on chasing franchises and have always been filmmaker-focused. They’ve always taken risks, and it’s paid off more than it hasn’t. However, their latest film, Civil War, is arguably their riskiest movie, sporting their biggest budget (north of $50 million) and subject matter that could be seen as a bit of a political powder keg.

For me, it marks Alex Garland’s most ambitious and perhaps his best work as a director. Civil War, while a war film, is likely scarier than anything you’ll see in a movie theater this year. Indeed, Garland’s depiction of a fractured America half destroyed by war is unsettling in a way that hits too close to home. While many have taken issue with the idea that it would center around Texas and California joining forces to take on the rest of the country (which is led by a fascist president played by Nick Offerman), there’s a reason for this. Garland strategically pairs a notoriously red state with a notoriously blue one in that his war isn’t painted as one party against another. If anything, the film is a desperate plea that we have to find some common ground, and the war is presented as a tragedy rife with atrocities on both sides, with neither side being racially homogenous. 

Garland’s film cost a reported $50 million, but it looks like it cost at least twice that, with Civil War jampacked with visceral action sequences that look especially impressive on an IMAX screen. The story is told through a group of embedded journalists, none of whom are presented with any explicit bias. Many of the battle sequences are shot in a way that makes it confusing which side is which, serving the movie’s ultimate purpose, which is to depict the tragedy of a civil war that finds fellow citizens killing their own.

Kirsten Dunst has possibly her best role as Lee, a burnt-out photographer who’s dulled herself to the chaos she sees around her so much that none of it registers as much more than an opportunity to take a photo. Her humanity is somewhat rekindled when her Reuters colleague Joel (Wagner Moura), a hot-shot addicted to the adrenalin rush of the job, invites a young photographer to join them on the road. Cailee Spaeny’s Jessie is shown to be reckless and green, with no survival instinct at all, leading Lee to take her under her wing. The three are joined by Stephen McKinley Henderson’s Sammy, who is dead set on covering the war until its end despite his age and mobility issues. 

Most of the film centres around their violent cross-country odyssey. Each town they visit puts them in the line of fire as they encounter vigilantes, reckless journalists, war deniers, and a dangerously unhinged soldier in the movie’s standout scene (played by a terrific Jesse Plemons in a small, potent role). 

Dunst’s portrayal is believable, with her fitting the portrait of a former hot shot, celebrity journalist worn down by the job to a tee. Looking believably tired and worn, she always holds your sympathy and makes for an ideal companion on this cinematic journey into the inferno. The movie seems heavily inspired by Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool, with her performance similar in some ways to Robert Forster’s in that film in that she’s become so indifferent to the chaos around her that nothing registers anymore. Spaeny is tasked with playing the opposite role. She’s a live wire that feels everything, constantly putting her in danger. Meanwhile, Henderson’s Sammy is the voice of reason, while Moura’s hot shot Joel is the reckless one who, at one point, admits that a firefight happening near them is making him “hard.”

Garland shoots the film in a way that presents some graphic imagery, like a man being set on fire, in a shockingly matter-of-fact way. It’ll be an experience many will find hard to shake, with Rob Hardy’s IMAX visuals helping make this one of the most visceral and immersive films in recent years. It’s all complimented by a terrific soundtrack by composers Ben Salisbury and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow. It contains some unique and powerful needle drops, including an ironic use of De La Soul and two songs by the punk band Suicide.

It’ll be interesting to see how general audiences react to Civil War, as it’s controversial by design. It asks us to take a long, hard look at what’s happening around us and demands that we look beyond politics and recognize what we have in common rather than what we don’t. It’s a plea for peace in that, like other movies of this nature, notably the apocalyptic drama The Day After, it dares to show us hell in the hope of keeping it from ever happening.

9

–

Viewer Ratings (0 reviews)

After rumours of Spider-Man 4 reuniting Sam Raimi and the original cast, Kirsten Dunst wonders whether the world really needs the movie.

Once upon a time, Sam Raimi was set to direct Spider-Man 4 with Toby Maguire and Kirsten Dunst both returning to star. However, the project wasn’t coming together quickly enough for Sony’s liking and the studio elected to reboot the entire franchise with The Amazing Spider-Man. Thanks to Maguire reprising the role of Peter Parker in Spider-Man: No Way Home, there’s been an interest in returning to the original franchise, but could Spider-Man 4 actually happen?

While speaking with IndieWire, Kirsten Dunst was asked if she would even want to do Spider-Man 4, which left the actress wondering whether we really needed the sequel. “It would depend. I don’t know,” Dunst said. “Honestly, do we need it?“

Dunst continued: “I don’t think we need that. I don’t know. It was so long ago. I just don’t know how they would, what the story would be. I don’t know. It seems like … I don’t know! It would really depend on the script, and also, I don’t know, you’re really putting yourself out there in a way that … let’s maybe leave things when they were good. You know what I mean?“

Sam Raimi has expressed an interest in returning for Spider-Man 4 when the time is right but downplayed the rumors earlier this month. “I did read that [rumor], but I’m not actually working on it yet,” Raimi explained. “Marvel and Columbia are so successful with current Spider-Man [movies], and the track there, and I don’t know that they’re going to go back to me, and say, ‘Well, folks, we can also tell that story!’” As fun as it might be to see the original cast return for Spider-Man 4, I feel like I agree with Kirsten Dunst at this point; is it really needed when we have so many other successful Spider-Man projects?

Kirsten Dunst can currently be seen starring in Alex Garland’s Civil War. Our own Chris Bumbray loved the movie, but is curious how general audiences will react to the potentially controversial movie. “It asks us to take a long, hard look at what’s happening around us and demands that we look beyond politics and recognize what we have in common rather than what we don’t,” Bumbray wrote. “It’s a plea for peace in that, like other movies of this nature, notably the apocalyptic drama The Day After, it dares to show us hell in the hope of keeping it from ever happening.” You can check out the rest of Bumbray’s review right here.

Would you like to see Spider-Man 4?

Ryan Gosling initially didn’t want to perform I’m Just Ken at the Academy Awards, saying, “There’s a lot of ways that can go wrong.”

Ryan Gosling singing “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie at the Oscars was a definite highlight of the ceremony, but the actor originally turned down the Academy when he was first asked to perform it.

While speaking with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, Gosling revealed that he initially wasn’t down to perform the hit song at the Academy Awards. “One hundred percent no,” Gosling said. “There’s a lot of ways that can go wrong.“

When Gosling finally agreed to do it, he was able to bring his daughters to the rehearsals. “It was their interest in Barbie and their disinterest in Ken that sort of started all of this,” Gosling said. “It’s really been a team effort, and they were on the film and they came to set when I filmed the number, but a lot of this has no context for them. It’s just like a lot of fake tan stains around the house. So I wanted them to come to the dress rehearsal just to give it some kind of context for what had been going on.” He said that his daughters actually helped him get the choreography down. “They know all the choreography than I do, and the songs,” he said. “Oh my god. They’re backstage kind of showing me the moves.“

Ryan Gosling was also up for the Best Supporting Actor award for his performance as Ken, but lost to Robert Downey Jr. Given the enormous success of Barbie, it’s only natural that the studio would want a sequel, but Gosling’s co-star Margot Robbie remains skeptical. “Its funny, that knee-jerk reaction in this day and age for everyone to immediately ask about a sequel,” Robbie said earlier this year. “I don’t think it was like that 20 years ago. This wasn’t designed to be a trilogy.” Not all movies need sequels, but the chance of another billion-dollar payday will be hard for the studio to resist.

Gosling will next be seen in The Fall Guy, which our own Chris Bumbray absolutely loved. “The Fall Guy really is a terrific summer action movie and a throwback to a different (better) time in genre movie-making,” Bumbray wrote. “More than anything, it’s a tribute to the stunt industry and a demand that it gets the recognition it deserves, with the point made over and over that CGI action is lame and can’t hold a candle to the old ways. I’m inclined to agree.” You can check out the rest of Bumbray’s review right here. The Fall Guy will hit theaters on May 3rd.

In previous articles, we have taken a look at stars of the past we would like to see make a comeback – and there are a lot of them! It was too hard to narrow it down to just a few, so now we’ve put together another list of 80s stars we want back, including a couple of Freddy victims, some 1980s beauties we miss, and a lady we’ve only seen twice on our screens.  

Michael Beck

It’s a sad tale of a promising career being kneecapped by bad luck… actually, by a bad movie. Playing the character Swan in the 1979 classic The Warriors, Michael Beck proved he had what it took to be a badass leading man. It looked like his career would be soaring onward and upward from there. But his momentum came to a screeching halt the following year when he had the misfortune of starring in the famously bad box office disappointment Xanadu. Who knew signing on to make a musical fantasy film with Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly could be such a tragic mistake? Beck has continued to act as the decades have gone by, working on titles like Battletruck, Megaforce, The Last Ninja, Chiller, Blackout, Houston Knights, and more, including episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger and Murder, She Wrote. His output has slowed down since the turn of the century, but he never received the career-reviving role he deserved, which would be something on the level of John Travolta getting cast in Pulp Fiction.

Mia Sara 

Mia Sara may have started her career on All My Children in 1983, what most folks remember her for is her first feature film role as the ethereal Lili in Legend in 1985. She followed this with a huge film, playing Sloane Peterson in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in 1986. She was quite busy through the 1980s and 1990s, only slowing down in the 2000s, and having her last credit in 2013. Simply put, we miss her, and we are certain we’re not the only ones. Her career has had a ton of variety from fantasy films to comedies to science fiction films to dramas, on the big and the small screen. From what can be found online, it looks like she’s been busy having a family and enjoying life. It looks like she’s in semi-retirement. As her youngest is an adult now, perhaps she may have a bit more time on her hands to get back to acting and come back to her fans. However, semi-retirement sounds great to be honest, especially if she’s enjoying it, so maybe we can keep hoping, but perhaps we should just return to her older films and enjoy them on repeat.  

Miko Hughes 

A mainstay of the convention circuit in the US, Miko Hughes is a favorite child actor of horror fans who started with Pet Sematary in 1989, so he’s only on the cusp of being a 1980s actor, but we’ll count him anyways. His horror film career launched him to stardom early on in a part that was both adorable and tragic. Later, he came back to horror Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, playing Heather Langenkamp’s son in the meta reality of the film. His part was quite central to Heather’s plight in the story, having some powerful scenes with Freddy as well. Between those two films, Hughes appeared in everything from Kindergarten Cop, Beverly Hills, 90210, Jack the Bear, and The Nanny to name but a few. Following New Nightmare, he kept busy with Full House, Apollo 13, Spawn, Mercury Rising, and plenty more. His career slowed down in the 2010s and he seemed only to go for the rare parts after 2007. He does have a few upcoming credits, but only one short film is in post-production. Everything else seems to be in pre-production or in development, with one film showing as in production as of now, but not much is available about it. This kid was everywhere and seemed to disappear for the most part, leaving behind a fairly big following, something clear from his popularity at conventions. 

Carrie Henn 

Better known as Rebecca, or Newt, the little girl found on LV-426 by the crew in Aliens, Henn has only done one more film in 2020, called Thunder Island. Why do we want her back? She has a ton of potential and a great personality. Her recent public appearances show that she still seems to be showbiz-minded, so why not get her back in front of the camera. She has said that she would love to be in a Quentin Tarantino film, something that could lead to a fun part for her and for the public. As she has been attending conventions for a few years now, she clearly has not been in hiding or shunning the spotlight, so why not bring her back for a feature film, something fun, maybe a science-fiction story, or something completely different.  

Gene Davis

Gene Davis racked up 31 screen acting credits over a period of 33 years, but he didn’t get many opportunities to shine in a prominent role. He was in the 1986 classic The Hitcher, but only stands out for the moment where he gets accidentally kicked in the head by C. Thomas Howell. He’s in the Van Damme / Lundgren mash-up Universal Soldier, but didn’t even get a character name. Just a rank: Lieutenant. It’s the 1983 Charles Bronson film 10 to Midnight where Davis had the chance to show his full potential, delivering an unforgettable performance as serial killer Warren Stacey. We needed to see Davis in more Stacey level roles over the years. He hasn’t been on screen since the 2010 TV movie After the Fall, but he he’s not entirely out of the industry, as he runs Rocking Horse Productions and executive produced the TV movie Enchanted Christmas in 2017. Maybe he’ll decide to make a comeback one of these days and give himself a role that lives up to the greatness of Warren Stacey.

Jsu Garcia 

Another face associated with the A Nightmare on Elm Street series, Garcia has had a solid career between 1982, when he first showed up the Fame television series, and 2011. Since then, he appeared in two Christmas movies and has 1 film pending post-production. Looking at his credits, the man had a varied career with lots of good parts of varying size in films such as Slaves of New York, Predator 2, Vampire in Brooklyn, Traffic, Collateral Damage, and Along Came Polly. His television career has seen him on The Facts of Life, Miami Vice, Babylon 5, JAG, CSI Miami, etc. The man has been all over the place, proving he is a solid choice for just about any part and then he was gone. Yes, he has one film coming soon, but that is nothing compared to his early career, and it would be great fun to get him back in films and television series. His biography details that can be found online are interesting to say the least, something that could probably be brought into parts of many kinds. 

Deborah Foreman 

THE Valley Girl, Foreman was a whole mood in this movie as well as in April Fool’s Day. She was everywhere for a while and then she vanished. Or so it seemed. Foreman’s career started in 1981 on The Grady Nutt Show, and she followed this with parts on Family Ties, MacGyver, The Marshal, and a few other television appearances. Her film career started with I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can, and included a bit of everything including Real Genius, Destroyer, Waxwork, Lobster Man from Mars, Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat, Lunatics: A Love Story, and a whole lot more. She seemed to go “poof” in 1995, only resurfacing in Beautiful Loser in 2008, a quick part in the Valley Girl remake in 2020, and a role in a recent film called The Demons Within. There hasn’t been all that much for Foreman in the last few years to say the least. This may have been by choice; we don’t really know. All we know is, we miss her and would love to see more of her.  

Deborah Goodrich

Speaking of Deborahs who were in April Fool’s Day, we would love to see Deborah Goodrich return to the screen. Making her screen debut as a dancer in the 1980s film Those Lips, Those Eyes, Goodrich racked up several credits throughout the 80s and into the early 90s, from appearances on TV shows like All My Children, The Edge of Night, The New Mike Hammer, Three’s a Crowd, Hotel, The A-Team, St. Elsewhere, 21 Jump Street, Alien Nation, and Beverly Hills 90210, to roles in the feature films Just One of the Guys, Survival Game, and Remote Control. Sadly, she hasn’t earned a single acting credit since the 1992 movie Out on a Limb, which is a shame because she had a great screen presence and a distinct voice we wish we could hear in more movies. In the years since she retired from the screen, Goodrich has worked behind-the-scenes in script development and restored and reopened the Avon Theater Film Center, an independent cinema in Stamford, Connecticut.

There are so many folks we would love to see back on our televisions and theater screens, there are so many opportunities these days with all the streaming platforms producing their own content at an unexpected speed that there has to be room to bring back more beloved stars, some more obvious than others, and to revive careers while also playing the nostalgia strings.