The Personal History of David Copperfield has finally made it over here to the U.S. It opened in the UK back in January and its release here in the States has been continually delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally, it was supposed to open in May. Then it got moved back to August 14th and then it was moved back another two weeks to August 28th.
Personally, I’m really looking forward to seeing the film. Apparently, there was some controversy over the casting of the lead role but I personally think that casting the terrifically talented Dev Patel as David Copperfield is a way to bring some new life to an old story. The film was directed by Armando Iannucci, who, along with creating Thick of It and Veep, also directed The Death of Stalin, one of the best films of the past ten years.
This featurette about the film was released today and here it is:
When I first heard that there was a documentary coming out about the final days of Robin Williams, I feared for the worst. I worried that it would be one of those exploitative programs that featured reenactments and tabloid reporters sharing every sordid rumor that they had ever heard about the man.
However, the trailer for Robin’s Wish seems to indicate that the film is actually meant to be both a tribute to Williams and an educational tool about Lewy body dementia, the disease that is believed to have led to him ending his life. Let’s hope that it is.
On the Rocks is the latest film from Sofia Coppola. Featuring Bill Murray, Rashida Jones, and Marlon Wayans, it’s a film about a daughter who teams up with her impulsive father to discover whether or not her husband is cheating on her.
In other words, it’s a Sofia Coppola film.
And I can’t wait to see it!
On The Rocks will be released at some point in October. Here’s the trailer:
Kenneth Branagh is back with another Agatha Christie adaptation and, again, he’s brought along an all-star cast. I will definitely see Death on the Nile because seriously, how can you go wrong with a murder mystery featuring Gal Gabot, Armie Hammer, and Russell Brand? It should be fun if nothing else.
The movie comes out on October 23rd and here’s the trailer:
A group of old friend who call themselves the Uptowners’ Club (yes, really) want to go on a picnic on top of a remote mountain. The only problem is that they have to ride a cable car up to the mountain and there are reports of potentially bad weather. It’s not safe to ride in a cable car during a thunderstorm. Drunken ne’er-do-well Alan (Bert Convy) doesn’t care and, since his family owns both the mountain and the tramway, his demands that he and his friends be allowed to ride the cable car are met. One lightning strike later and the members of the Uptowners’ Club are stranded in a cable car that is perilously suspended, by only a frayed wire, over treacherous mountain valley.
With no place to go, there’s not much left for the members of the Uptowners’ Club to do but bicker amongst themselves and have lengthy flashbacks that reveal every detail of their own sordid history. Paul (Sam Groom) is angry with Alan because Alan is now engaged to his ex-wife (Donna Mills). Sue Grainger (Patty Duke) is angry with everyone else because they don’t want to admit how their old friend Bobby Graham (Doug Llewellyn) actually died. The other members of the Uptowners’ Club are angry because there’s not much for them to do other than watch Duke and Convy chew on the scenery. Because of the supposedly fierce winds, someone is going to have to climb out on top of the cable car and repair it themselves. Will it be Paul or will it be cowardly drunk Alan? On top of everything else, Paul is set to enter the witness protection program and has got hitmen who want to kill him.
This made-for-TV disaster movie was produced by Irwin Allen. Are you surprised? It’s also three hours long and amazingly, Leslie Nielsen is not in it. It’s hard to understand how anyone could have produced a cable car disaster film and not given a role to Leslie Nielsen. Cameron Mitchell’s in the film but he’s not actually in the cable car so it’s a missed opportunity. Any film that features Patty Duke detailing how her friends got so drunk that they ended up killing the future host of The People’s Court is going to at least have some curiosity value but, for the most part, Hanging By A Thread gets bogged down by its own excessive runtime and lack of convincing effects. Hanging By A Thread came out at the tail end of the 70s disaster boom and it shows why the boom didn’t continue into the 80s.
A few years back, I got a bunch of shit on Twitter for telling a newbie comic critic who said “I’m really not comfortable talking much about art yet” that they had no business reviewing works in this medium until they were. Now, granted, this individual was likely mostly — if not entirely — trying their hand at reviewing “Big Two” stuff, but even still : if all you’re talking about is the writing, then you’re giving short shrift to the person who spends more time than anyone else working on the latest issue of Justice League or The Avengers or whatever. And you wouldn’t have the capacity to review an extraordinary work like Aidan Koch’s House Of Ruin, Volume II at all. The question is — do I?
This new small paperback from Koch is, you see, a collection of drawings and nothing else — but it certainly…
Man’s Action was published for 20 years, from 1957 — 1977. You can probably guess from the title who the targeted audience was and, if they title didn’t give it away, the covers definitely would. Man’s Action was all about men going on adventures, meeting beautiful women, and defeating America’s enemies.
Here are a few of the absurdly manly covers of Man’s Action:
It seems like whenever there’s any sort of disaster, people are advised to seek shelter. Often, if the disaster is national news, people are told to take shelter in their basement, as if everyone in the world has a basement. This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine because I live in North Texas, where the land is completely flat and no one has a basement, a cellar, or any other sort of underground shelter. (We also don’t have mud rooms and, in fact, I’m not even sure what a mud room is.)
That said, there’s a part of me that’s glad that it would be impossible for me to take shelter because, from what I’ve seen in the movies, it appears that spending months in a shelter can actually be worse than dying in a disaster.
Take the 2011 film, The Divide, for instance.
The Divide opens with several people watching while a mushroom cloud blooms over New York City. Eight of those people all end up taking shelter in the same basement. While that means that they don’t get incinerated by the nuclear blast, it also means that they now have to figure out how to live together. That’s not going to be easy because it doesn’t take long to realize that none of these people should be anywhere near each other.
For instance, there’s Mickey (Michael Biehn). Mickey’s the one who built the shelter. He says that he specifically built it so that, in case of a nuclear war or a terrorist attack, he could safely sit underground and laugh at everyone dying above him. That’s not a nice sentiment but Mickey is played by Michael Biehn so he’s still one of the more likable characters in the film.
There’s Josh (Milo Ventimiglia) and his brother Adrien (Ashton Holmes) and their friend Bobby (Michael Eklund), three idiots who are clearly destined to end up going crazy before the ordeal is over.
There’s Eva (Lauren German) and her boyfriend, Sam (Ivan Gonzalez), who are both obviously destined to be the voices of reason to which no one is going to listen.
And then there’s Marilyn (Rosanna Arquette) and her daughter (Abby Thickson), who are there because it’s not a shelter-movie without a child being put in jeopardy.
Lastly, there’s Devlin (Courtney B. Vance), who is there to be the older authority figure who ultimately fails to exercise much authority.
After an effectively chilling scene where the basement is briefly invaded by some mysterious men in Hazmat suits, The Divide settles down to be a fairly predictable and, to be honest, rather unpleasant examination of a group people going crazy from the stress of being trapped together. It may seem odd to complain that a film about the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse was unpleasant and I guess it is. But The Divide runs a little over two hours and it’s so relentlessly bleak and everyone is ultimately so nasty that it becomes a bit of a chore to sit through. By the time the torture scenes begin, The Divide has slipped into Hostel territory and it’s hard not to feel that the film is being grotesque simply for the sake of being grotesque.
That said, the film does have its strength. The shelter is an effectively claustrophobic location and Michael Biehn does what he can with the role of Mickey. When some of the characters end up getting radiation sickness, it creates some effectively scary visuals. I mean, if you ever thought it would be cool to poison yourself with radiation, this film will change your mind. That’s a good thing, I suppose.
The Divide is a very long movie about some very unpleasant people in an even more unpleasant situation. It’s well-made but not particularly entertaining to watch. In the end, it’s easy to feel that everyone would have been better off just staying above ground and getting it over with.
Through the Shattered Lens 