Paramount Pictures unleashed a teaser trailer for its new animated Smurfs movie starring a stacked cast of Hollywood greats!
Are you feeling a little blue today? Paramount Pictures has something that could have you feeling Smurfy in no time! The studio that brought us the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise will tap into another nostalgic property this July with Smurfs, an animated adventure based on characters created by Belgian comic artist Peyo. Paramount shared a Smurfs teaser trailer today ahead of tomorrow’s trailer reveal, bringing Smurfy goodness to audiences of all ages!
Today’s Smurfs teaser trailer takes us into the heart of the Smurf Village, where a blank television awaits. As we approach the darkened screen, you hear the iconic Smurfs theme song amidst twittering animals and singing birds. When the screen comes to life, we find my first love, I mean Smurfette, smiling for the camera. She then blows a kiss as the words “Trailer Tomorrow” appear above her head. Let the hype begin! While the Smurfs teaser is thin on content, it presents a curiosity about the film’s animation style. If you look closely, Smurf Village looks like it’s hand-crafted or made out of clay or plasticine. Could the new Smurfs involve a mixed-media format? We’ll find out tomorrow when the full trailer arrives online.
Chris Miller (Puss in Boots, Shrek the Third) directs Smurfs from a screenplay by Pam Brady (Hot Rod, Team America: World Police, Lady Dynamite). The Smurfs cast is positively stacked, with Rihanna voicing Smurfette alongside Nick Offerman, JP Karliak, Daniel Levy, Amy Sedaris, Natasha Lyonne, Sandra Oh, Octavia Spencer, Nick Kroll, Hannah Waddingham, Alex Winter, Billie Lourd, Xolo Maridueña, and James Corden, with Kurt Russell and John Goodman. The film’s producers are Jay Brown, Ty Ty Smith, Robyn Rihanna Fenty, and Ryan Harris.
Previous Smurfs movies include 2011’s The Smurfs, The Smurfs 2, and Smurfs: The Lost Village. The Smurfs are a group of small blue humanoid creatures living in a mushroom village at the center of the woods. Led by Papa Smurf, the Smurfs spend their days adventuring, expanding their village home, and matching wits with a crotchety dark wizard, Gargamel, and his fiendishly clever cat, Azrael. The Smurfs were created for Belgian comics by Peyo before becoming a popular animated cartoon series in the 1980s.
Are you excited to check out tomorrow’s Smurfs trailer? Do you have a favorite Smurf? Brainy, Vanity, Handy, Clumsy, Hefty, Clumsy? My favorite Smurfs (yes, I have some favorite Smurfs, what of it) are Smurfette and Grouchy Smurf. Let us know who your favorite Smurfs are in the comments section below.
Oscar-winner Ke Huy Quan and Riverdale star Lili Reinhart will star in a unique serial killer horror film told from a dog’s perspective.
One of the more exciting projects heading to Berlin’s EFM (European Film Market) festival next week is Bad Boy, a genre-bending horror film starring Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All At Once, Love Hurts, Loki) and Lili Reinhart (Riverdale, Hustlers, Chemical Hearts). Keeping Bad Boy on a leash during the fest is the film’s producer, Dave Caplan, who produced last year’s chilling thriller Longlegs and M3GAN with Divide/Conquer’s Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath.
Bad Boy stars former Goonie and Oscar-winner Ke Huy Quan and Lili Reinhart. Jacob Chase (Come Play, The Girl in the Woods, The Four-Faced Liar) is directing the peculiar feature from a script by Travis Braun. According to Deadline‘s exclusive report, Bad Boy “charts a young woman’s fight to escape a deadly serial killer through the eyes of man’s best friend, his faithful dog.” Huh?! While Quan and Reinhart’s contracts are signed, sealed, and delivered, the production continues searching for a dog co-star, which Deadline hears will be a terrier.
Here’s the full synopsis for Bad Boy:
“Gary is a good boy who loves his new owner, Cameron (Ke Huy Quan). He gets treats and belly rubs and life is great. Gary isn’t allowed in the basement though. And even if he was, he can’t unlock doors. But there’s a girl (Lili Reinhart) in the basement. And she can’t come out to play. Gary doesn’t know it, but he’s her only chance.”
Ahhhhh, I get it now.
“I love dogs. More than people. And I’m tired of seeing horror movies where the dog is the first one to die!” said director Chase “They’re not just pets, they’re our best friends, and I believe it’s time for a horror film where the dog is the hero. Bad Boy is about loyalty, instinct, and the incredible bond between humans and dogs. It’s going to be a highly original, grounded, deeply suspenseful fresh take on a horror thriller. And I’m thrilled to collaborate with Ke and Lili on two roles unlike anything they’ve played before.”
I, too, love dogs more than people and cats more than dogs, so…
Bad Boy could take a fresh approach to horror, and we are all about that. Let’s f**king go!
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.
Brittany O’Grady of The White Lotus and It’s What’s Inside is set to star in the horror film Monitor, which heads into production in March
Temple Hill Entertainment has announced that Brittany O’Grady of The White Lotus and It’s What’s Inside is on board to star in their high-concept horror film Monitor – and she’ll be stepping in front of the camera to bring her character to life very soon, because Monitor is scheduled to start filming on March 10th! Production will take place on location in Barcelona and the Canary Islands.
Written and directed by Matt Black and Ryan Polly, the film has the following synopsis: When a group of social media moderators refuse to publish a horrifying video, a demonic creature starts following them across every screen in their lives. Feeding off fear, the creature hunts them down one by one and attacks until it gets what it wants… to be let out beyond the screen.
This marks the feature debut for the filmmaking duo, who have been collaborating on short films for several years. In fact, they made an 8 minute short called Monitor back in 2018. That one told this story: A sleep-deprived corner store clerk wonders if he’s seeing things when a man mysteriously appears on his security camera feed – but not in the store itself.
This project is coming our way from Temple Hill and Protagonist Pictures. It’s being produced by Temple Hill’s Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, and John Fischer, the team behind the Smile films, along with Adrián Guerra for Nostromo Pictures. Protagonist’s Dave Bishop and George Hamilton serve as executive producers.
Hamilton provided the following statement: “We’re delighted to see cameras roll on this smart and twisted horror film that is sure to scare the hell out of cinemagoers worldwide. Temple Hill delivers once again with a wickedly clever film that offers a timely commentary of what we experience online.“
The Temple Hill team added, “We’re thrilled to be diving into production on Monitor. Matt and Ryan have crafted a story that is haunting and deeply relevant. With Brittany leading our cast, we’re confident that Monitor will be as gripping as it is terrifying.”
Does Monitor sound interesting to you? Share your thoughts on this Brittany O’Grady horror project by leaving a comment below.
Marvel had a rough year in 2023. Many of its properties underperformed, and they lost their big villain due to Jonathan Majors being fired. Looking forward to their upcoming slate, comic fans have been excited about some of the studio’s projects over the next few years. Will these films help Marvel regain control? The upcoming Thunderbolts (or Thunderbolts*, as we’re told to write it, asterisk and all) film has been one that fanboys have been hoping to see since the MCU started. With some recent news about the property coming up, it seems like the right time to break down what we know about the production.
Who Are The Thunderbolts?
The team first appeared in Marvel Comics in 1997 in an issue of The Incredible Hulk. They seemed to be a new group of superheroes that had arrived on the scene and gained acclaim very quickly. The reader was informed that the group was actually a group of supervillains led by Baron Zemo. They were posing as new heroes to gain the trust of other hero teams and S.H.I.E.L.D. to gain access to all their secrets. This would allow them to sell them to the highest bidder. Eventually, some team members felt they should try to become heroes, and the group would fall apart. As for the name of the team, it was said to be inspired by a Thomas Randolph poem: “Justice, like lightning, ever should appear to few men’s ruin, but to all men’s fear.” The idea was, “Our hope is that we can be that lightning — that justice.”
Other versions of the team would appear throughout the years, but the version that the MCU seems to be leaning toward was a government-funded strike team. It would be filled with reformed supervillains looking to reduce their imprisonment sentence or redeem themselves for their past crimes. This is comparable to DC’s Suicide Squad. In the past, it has been led by characters such as Norman Osborne, Black Widow, and Hawkeye, and they’ve had run-ins with Captain Marvel.
MCU Team Members
For the MCU version of the team, we have seen Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ character, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, appearing in multiple projects to recruit team members. She first appeared in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier to ask disgraced Captain America replacement John Walker to join her team. We would then see her show up in a post-credits scene in Black Widow to put Yelena Belova on Hawkeye’s trail, saying he was responsible for her sister’s death. Then, in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, she is revealed as the new head of the CIA. This puts her in the perfect position to run the team in the future.
Louis-Dreyfus told Entertainment Weekly, “This movie’s a real opportunity for me to really explore the Val character. You really get to know what she’s made of, and even a lot of her backstory. She’s in it to win it. You’re going to see her entire plan unfold. It has a lot of mystery to it and there’s some twists and turns that you don’t see coming, which are the best kind. There’s a lot of suspense, which is very groovy.” She added that her character is “about four steps ahead all the time, or at least she thinks she is until she’s not. All of these characters have worked for her under certain circumstances, so she would fancy herself as a bit of a puppet master, and she’s very power-hungry. She’s a user of anti-heroes. She definitely sees herself as the leader, the organizer of this group, but I’m not sure they see her as such. Her intentions aren’t necessarily pure. You’ve got hero, you’ve got anti-hero, you have villain…is there such a thing as an anti-villain?“
So, who will we see on the team? As mentioned, John Walker (Wyatt Russell) and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) have already been recruited to the team. Some other familiar faces will be joining them. Red Guardian (David Harbour) and Task Master (Olga Kurylenko) from the Black Widow film will be showing up alongside Yelena. I’m sure she has some issues with her fake father that she would like to work out. Then, Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) from Ant-Man and the Wasp will be joining the group. With her phasing abilities, it should add some fun to the team. In a team leader role, we may see Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), The Winter Soldier, returning from Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Ant-Man, Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. The team dynamics should be interesting. The talk is that the Thunderbolts will be brought together to take on the powerful character The Sentry.
Who Is The Sentry?
Back in 2000, then publisher for Marvel Joe Quesada announced that they had discovered a long-lost Marvel character that the company had completely forgotten about. He pre-dated Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four. Stan Lee was interviewed and said he remembered the character being created by a couple of writers, but they never did anything with the character. Marvel said they were bringing him back into their current continuity and pushed him almost as Marvel’s version of Superman. He could fly, had super strength, and had a giant S on his belt. When his first miniseries concluded, fans discovered the whole thing had been a lie. Part of the character’s story was that this hero had disappeared, and no one in Marvel continuity remembered him. This whole thing had been a marketing ploy to introduce this new character.
On the surface, he seemed like a wholesome character like Superman, but it was revealed he was mentally unstable and threatened to destroy the entire Marvel Universe. The story was well received, and the character was believed to have a short shelf life. However, he was brought back for numerous Avengers storylines and became a compelling character in Marvel comics.
In the upcoming film, Steven Yeun was cast as the character. He had been very vocal about how excited he was to play the character and has been a fan of the MCU since it started. When the strikes happened over the summer of 2023, it was revealed that film production would have to be pushed back until they were over. Once those ended, it was put back on the schedule, which now caused issues with Yeun’s schedule. He had to drop out but hopes to return as another character at some point in the MCU. The role has been recast, with Lewis Pullman being linked with the part.
The Bear breakout star Ayo Edebiri also had to leave her role due to scheduling conflicts. Geraldine Viswanathan of Drive Away Dolls will now be taking her place in the unidentified role, which is said to be the “right hand woman” to Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.
Rumored Plot
Industry scooper Daniel Richtman hears this is the plot synopsis: “Yelena, US Agent, Ghost, and Taskmaster are sent by Val to kill someone in a vault. They realize they’ve been set up and were meant to die on this mission. So they team up against their boss to take her down.” The teaser trailer seems to match that description.
By the way, if you’re wondering if Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, previously played by William Hurt, has anything to do with this team, that doesn’t seem to be the case, despite his nickname matching the team’s name. Harrison Ford is playing Ross in Captain America: Brave New World, but if he makes an appearance in Thunderbolts, we don’t know about it yet. That said, Thunderbolt Ross (in Red Hulk form) has led a version of the team in the comics, so he could have a future with the Thunderbolts… depending on how things for him in the Captain America movie.
Whatever is going on in this movie, David Harbour has hinted that it will have a major impact on the MCU. He told ComicBook.com, “There is a bomb drop thing we add to the universe, which will be very exciting for the movie to do at the end of this particular phase that we’re ending. … Our characters are going to interact with something that we don’t really understand, and it fundamentally changes the course of the way things expand.“
Teaser Trailer
A trailer for Thunderbolts was shown at the 2024 San Diego Comic-Con, and we have a description of what appeared on the screen: “The Thunderbolts trailer opens with Yelena coming to find Red Guardian, who is a mess and thinks she works for DoorDash. She recruits him – and like everyone else on the team, they drift without purpose. You can tell Yelena is still a killer. The trailer moves to her at odds with the U.S. Agent and the others, but they unite to find out who is trying to kill them. Scored by The Pixies “Where is My Mind,” the Comic-Con crowd is going nuts. “The are bad guys and worse guys.” It appears as if Julia Louis Dreyfus’s Valentina Allegra de Fontaine is the villain.”
The trailer includes a moment where Yelena is shown jumping off a tall building, and as it turns out, that was the second tallest building in the world and Florence Pugh apparently performed the stunt herself.
The teaser trailer has made its way online, along with a poster:
Trailer
An extended trailer was unveiled at the first-ever edition of D23 in Brazil:
When Can We See It?
Well, we will be waiting a while before we get to see the team in action. The film has been shooting (in IMAX format) throughout 2024 – and in late June, David Harbour (who has been working on the final season of Stranger Things simultaneously) took to social media to confirm that his work on Thunderbolts has wrapped:
The official release date has been set for May 2, 2025. It will be preceded by Captain America: Brave New World, which comes out on Valentine’s Day.
Are you excited for Thunderbolts? What do you think of the direction of the MCU? Let us know in the comments.
At 74, Bill Murray admits he has probably gotten a little too “lazy” when it comes to acquiring movies to star in.
Last Updated on January 30, 2025
Bill Murray is notoriously hard to reach. For starters, he doesn’t have an agent. Add to that that he uses an 800 number that you can only leave a message on and the man may as well be on another planet if you’re trying to cast him. We have to respect how limited he chooses to be, but Bill Murraty himself may have some new insights on how he approaches which movies he signs on for.
After making a surprise appearance at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Bill Murray sat down with critic Elvis Mitchell to admit that his approach to secrecy has made him the sort of enigma that has distanced him from movie studios. “I’ve been lazy. I don’t have an agent anymore, so I’m not the first person people think of to be in studio movies…Only in this last year, doing these [indie movies], has reawakened me about searching for material. I’ve lived the life of a bass… waiting for something to come down at me. If something lands in my mouth, I’ll eat it.”
Bill Murray has been selective throughout his career, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been in a wealth of movies, even in his 70s. And despite what he said about major studios being far from interested in wasting their time tracking him down, he has expanded his role as Peter Venkman for Columbia and even joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe through Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
And while the indies have been loyal to him and he to them (mostly…), Bill Murray has no doubt missed out on some major projects. But hopefully this new viewpoint will push him and the major studios to consider just what they both have sitting right there – even if he can be a difficult one to pin down.
This Gunnar Hansen Doc manages to be a beautiful tribute to the actor and the impact he had on those within the horror genre.
Last Updated on January 30, 2025
PLOT: Friends, colleagues, filmmakers, and fellow actors share personal stories and discuss the dichotomy between the maniacal chainsaw-wielding character he played on-screen and the very intelligent, creative, soft-spoken man he actually was in real life.
REVIEW: Documentary retrospectives are a great way to honor someone who made an impact on others through film. Whether it’s Dario Argento Panico or even David Lynch: Life of Art, any kind of insight is a gift to fans. And while most horror film fans know Gunnar Hansen as Leatherface from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, he was so much more than that. With insight from Bruce Campbell, Barbara Crampton, Kane Hodder, and many other horror greats, Dinner with Leatherface sets out to show how he was never defined by the character and shine a light on his creative pursuits which may be unknown to many.
What you get out of Dinner with Leatherface is really dependent on your own history with horror. Because outside of a few select big titles, Gunnar resided in a decidedly low-budget side of the horror genre. Given my own appreciation for this style of film, it was great to see Gunnar getting such a highlight. His performances really stood out from the other hammy acting going on in them and it’s a shame we didn’t get him in bigger fare. The narrative of the doc moves all over the place, never too constrained by chronology and more focused on telling an interesting story. So while discussing the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, they’re not afraid to get into the newer Gun Media video game.
As expected, Texas Chainsaw has a major presence in the doc but I was impressed with how much it doesn’t feel overbearing. It clearly was a massive part of Gunnar’s life but this mostly serves to show how much of a family the cast and crew had become in the years since. Conventions really seemed to draw them even closer. This can be said of many on the convention circuit at the time, as Gunnar formed a friendship with many of them, and they get in a word on the man himself.
I was happy to see the severely underrated Brutal Comedy get a shoutout in the film. I’ve always felt it was one of Gunnar’s best roles so it’s nice to see it get proper praise. Like much of Gunnar’s underseen work, I can’t recommend it enough. It also serves as a nice transition into who Gunnar was as, according to those he worked with, his character in the film is more like the real Gunnar than any of the psycho’s he played.
One element I really wasn’t expecting from Dinner with Leatherface is that it feels like it was made over a decade ago. Whether it’s the interview subjects or the footage being shown, they manage to recreate the mid-2010s horror documentary feel. But this aesthetic has its drawbacks, with plenty of digitally blown-up images that could have used a bit of polishing or some awkward lower thirds pop-outs. I appreciated the simplicity. The interview footage being utilized spans a pretty wide amount of time, making me wonder when they initially filmed for this project. Gunnar appears via archive footage and he lights up the screen every time he’s around. For someone who’s considered so scary on screen, the man really was just a giant teddy bear. It was fascinating to see all the non-film work that Hansen got up to in his life. Having just known him as an actor, it was inspiring to see his efforts as a historian or poet. His writing spanned from a book on the making of Chainsaw to poetry all the way to a historical look at the Barrier Islands.
One of the saddest parts of the doc is when all of his contemporaries go over the projects in the works at the time of his death. He sadly passed away at just 68 years old and left a lot on the table. The reaction to his death shows just how great of a person Gunnar was, as everyone had such praise for the man. And it’s all such genuine adoration, with plenty of tears and personal anecdotes about how he positively affected their life. I really enjoyed Dinner with Leatherface and, like any good documentary, introduced me to a layered human being that was more than just his role on the big screen. It doesn’t feel like they’re trying to sell me on anything other than the wonderful human being that he was. Gunnar Hansen was clearly a special person and someone worth striving to be. In the words of the man himself: “Gunnar Hansen: He had his own action figure.”
DINNER WITH LEATHERFACE RELEASES ON BLURAY/DVD/DIGITAL ON FEBRUARY 25TH, 2025.
Opus features John Malkovich at his absolute best, but goes off the rails in the last thirty minutes.
Last Updated on January 30, 2025
PLOT: A group of journalists are invited to a remote compound where a reclusive pop star (John Malkovich) plans to unveil his first album in thirty years. However, when they arrive, they realize the artist has built himself a cult, which may or may not mean harm to the assembled journalists.
REVIEW: You can tell that Opus’s writer-director, Mark Anthony Green, is a former entertainment journalist (he spent years working at GQ). Having participated in my share of junkets and set visits as part of my work with JoBlo, I certainly find it surreal to be taken into an entertainer’s orbit. It’s an exhilarating experience, and Green, who’s clearly experienced this many times himself, mines it beautifully in the film’s first half, where a young writer at a music magazine, Ariel (Ayo Edebiri), unexpectedly gets invited to singer Alfred Moretti’s (John Malkovich) compound as he unveils what’s supposed to be a musical masterpiece.
The first hour of the film, which is light on the horror aspects being teased by A24, works well as a kind of satire on modern entertainment journalists and their relationships with the entertainers they write about. Malkovich is at his best in an atypical piece of casting. Who would ever imagine him as the world’s greatest pop star? Yet, Malkovich, who actually cut several tracks with Nile Rogers (of CHIC) and The Dream, pulls it off, with him looking like he’s having the time of his life playing a kind of New Wave version of Vincent Price.
Everyone seems in on the joke, with the performances fairly broad, with Murray Bartlett a veteran entertainment journalist (and Ariel’s boss) who’s an old hand at rock star debauchery. At the same time, Juliette Lewis plays a gossip columnist who has a history with Moretti.
This first part of the film is a ton of fun, but for me, it starts to go off the rails when the horror aspect kicks in. As the trailer reveals, Moretti’s the head of a kind of New Age cult, and soon, the journalists realize they’ve been lured to the retreat for sinister reasons. However, we’ve seen many cult movies over the years, from Midsommar to The Sacrement, and both did the horror part better. When they kick in, the genre parts almost feel like an afterthought, like Green shoehorned his rather fun satire into a horror film, and the mix is uneven. It’s better when it plays as a kind of music-driven version of The White Lotus.
Ayo Edebiri, who’s incredible on The Bear, does her best with what amounts to a fairly two-dimensional “final girl” role, with her as the only journalist at the compound who finds the fact that this nineties pop star has a cult of personality built up around him unusual. Despite being our protagonist, she’s also a frustratingly passive heroine, even once Moretti’s retreat becomes deadly. The one who’s really having fun in this one is definitely Malkovich.
Another problem with Opus’s detour into horror, other than the lack of originality, is the fact that it’s not scary. Nothing here happens that you haven’t seen before, and once the carnage gets going, it becomes predictable, with very little in the way of inspired chaos. It also has a very anticlimactic ending that tries to explain away the motivations behind the entire plot, but this doesn’t amount to much, ending the film on a sour note.
Considering the talent involved, Opus turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. It’s still a decent first film for Green, who certainly has a promising voice as a director, but the fact is that the last forty minutes of the film don’t live up to the promise of the film’s first hour, which is a ton of fun. As such, Opus is a letdown, but it is still worth watching, especially for A24 fans, of whom there certainly are many. If you go in expecting more of a satire, you’ll probably like this more than if you were to go in expecting anything scary.
The cast of Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle comes together in a show of support for Demi Moore’s first Academy Award nomination.
Last Updated on January 30, 2025
The Charlie’s Angels cast has pulled their forces together again. The last time they encountered Demi Moore in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, they tried to stop her. Now, they are throwing their full support behind her as Moore gets her first Academy Award nomination for The Substance. Variety reports that Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore have reunited with Moore for a video on Vanity Fair where the actresses reconnect and champion the Best Actress nomination that Moore has received for her role in the body horror film.
This video would be the first time the cast of the Charlie’s Angels sequel has come together since Liu received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame back in 2019. In the Vanity Fair video, Liu tells Moore, “I think I can speak for all of us—we are so proud of you. This performance, you’ve always had it in you and in all of the work that you’ve done. There’s so much vulnerability in the strength that you are able to put on camera.” She continues, “That moment of you taking the makeup off, to reveal the psychological toll of this kind of unattainable pressure from society of what beauty is and what aging is or what is commercial. It was done in a way where you really captured that rawness: that feeling of being insecure but also comfortable with yourself, but then realizing that other people aren’t comfortable with yourself.”
Diaz would contribute her accolades on Moore, saying, “All women, we are conditioned to be objectified—period. Whether we are movie stars [or not], it’s just every woman. Obviously it’s more extreme in our circumstances, because we’re projected onto a screen and literally objectified. We’ve had dolls made out of us. It’s just so innate. It’s so ingrained in us. We bow down to that. We serve that objectification. We try to meet its request in so many ways.” Diaz would continue to say, “In watching you give this performance, you don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. It’s as if there was a constitution written in the film industry that laid out what the film industry was, and everybody has been abiding by it for the last however many decades. Y’all went in and just shredded it to pieces and said, I do not agree with this constitution. We are rewriting this. And not only that, but we’re going to in the most audacious, violent, crazy way that you could possibly do it.”
About the Author
E.J. is a News Editor at JoBlo, as well as a Video Editor, Writer, and Narrator for some of the movie retrospectives on our JoBlo Originals YouTube channel, including Reel Action, Revisited and some of the Top 10 lists. He is a graduate of the film program at Missouri Western State University with concentrations in performance, writing, editing and directing.
A grim exploration of being a parent, which makes motherhood seem like a horror movie.
Last Updated on February 2, 2025
PLOT: With her husband away for work, a working mother (Rose Byrne) whose daughter suffers from a chronic illness finds her sanity hanging by a thread.
REVIEW: While it’s not a horror movie, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is the scariest movie playing at Sundance this year. A depiction of how motherhood can occasionally seem oppressive, this is the pitch-black nightmare version of the ultimately reassuring Nightbitch. Written and directed by Mary Bronstein, this intense, grim, but also darkly humorous film will likely be a controversial release for A24, with it playing out like a descent into madness that offers no reassuring moments of catharsis.
Rose Byrne gives a tour-de-force performance as Linda. Despite working as a therapist, her sanity is hanging by a thread, with her husband (Christian Slater) in the Navy and away for an eight-week deployment, which has left her juggling a myriad of weighty responsibilities. Her daughter, who is unnamed and unseen throughout the film (except for her constant off-screen whining), is needy and also suffering from a chronic illness that has her hooked up to a feeding tube. The fact that she’s unable to gain enough weight to get off the tube is treated by her medical staff as a kind of mortal failing of Linda’s, whose abilities as a mother they constantly question. To make things worse, the ceiling of her apartment has collapsed, forcing her to relocate her daughter to a sleezebag motel. At the same time, she also has a patient (Danielle Macdonald) who’s vanished, leaving behind her baby.
Struggling to juggle her responsibilities, she turns to a fellow therapist (Conan O’Brien, who’s impressive in a rare acting role), who seems as unable to help her as she is to help her own patients. Byrne’s performance carries the entire film, with her never better than she is as the complicated Linda. Despite her many questionable choices, including her habit of leaving her ill daughter alone while she gets drunk on convenience store wine, you feel a lot of sympathy for her. Her life starts to feel like a horror movie, as no matter what she does, everyone around her views her as a failure.
While it sounds grim (and it is), If I Had Legs I’d Kick You also has some blackly humourous set pieces, such as a bit where Linda gives in and buys her daughter the hamster she’s been begging for, with grotesque results. Conan O’Brien is excellent as her therapist, who treats her with a frustratingly professional reserve, even as she looks to him for the validation and love he knows it’s not his responsibility to provide. Rapper ASAP Rocky also pops up and steals some scenes as the superintendent of Linda’s motel, with whom she starts an unlikely friendship centred mainly around weed and surfing the dark web for drugs.
Produced by Josh Safdie, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You has the same kind of stressful, nightmarish energy evident in Uncut Gems and Good Time. Linda’s descent is extreme and never lets up. Parents might find themselves cringing throughout, while folks thinking of starting a family might want to avoid this one, as it’s not the most glowing endorsement for parenthood I’ve ever seen. The movie makes it seem like a nightmare, but I’m sure it can sometimes feel that way for some people, leaving this as a movie that should strike a chord for many. It’s not a film I’d call enjoyable, as it’s a harrowing journey to go along on, but it’s challenging, immersive, and well worth checking out.
The second trailer for the Ryan Coogler-Michael B. Jordan movie is due to hit today, but you can get a look at the new one-sheet for the film.
Last Updated on January 30, 2025
Last year, a secret genre project was in development from Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan. The project had the studios in Hollywood excited to bid against each other and Warner Bros. would come out on top. The second trailer is due to hit later today. But before then, Warner Bros. has released a new poster of the film featuring Michael B. Jordan with some ominous-looking figures.
Coogler has written the script for this project, which has been described as both a genre picture and a period piece. The project is set up at Warner Bros., has a budget of around $90 million, and is scheduled for a theatrical release on April 18, 2025 (having moved back from a previously announced March release date). Over the holidays, a new teaser (which still has the old release date) was unveiled, as embedded at the top of the article.
Directed by Coogler with Jordan playing dual roles, Sinners has the following official synopsis: Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers (Jordan) return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back. “You keep dancing with the devil, one day he’s gonna follow you home.” This project is being kept so tightly under wraps that when it was looking for a studio to call home, “executives and buyers were forced to make the pilgrimage to the Beverly Hills offices of WME, the agency that represents Coogler and Jordan, in order to take a gander on the script and get details.”
Coogler (who is also developing a reboot of the TV series The X-Files) is producing the film with Proximity Media partners Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian. Rebecca Cho serves as executive producer alongside Will Greenfield and two-time Oscar-winning composer Ludwig Goransson (who won his first Oscar for his work on Coogler’s Black Panther and his second for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer).
Jordan is joined in the cast by Jack O’Connell (Unbroken), Delroy Lindo (Get Shorty), Wunmi Mosaku (Loki), Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit), Omar Benson Miller (CSI: Miami), Jayme Lawson (The Batman), Lola Kirke (Mozart in the Jungle), and Li Jun Li (The Exorcist TV series).
About the Author
E.J. is a News Editor at JoBlo, as well as a Video Editor, Writer, and Narrator for some of the movie retrospectives on our JoBlo Originals YouTube channel, including Reel Action, Revisited and some of the Top 10 lists. He is a graduate of the film program at Missouri Western State University with concentrations in performance, writing, editing and directing.
