She Is Ann Lee, Hear Her Roar

One of last year's most slept on upon great movies was Mona Fastvold's The Testament of Ann Lee, a rapturous musical  starring Amanda Seyfried as the Shaker founder -- the film was weird and unexpected and in the words of Anya Jenkins "never going to become a breakaway pop hit." Still it made my top ten of the year and what are we doing here if we're not believing what I say??? But since the movie didn't do well at the box office or the awards bodies it seemed as if getting a physical media release of the thing was D.O.A. -- I still don't know if we'll ever get a blu-ray (there were headlines when it hit VOD that it indeed wouldn't be getting this) but thankfully one barrier's now been smashed down as Milan Records has announced the soundtrack from the great Daniel Blumberg IS getting a vinyl release, and you can pre-order it right here. Hooray! This score is absolutely gorgeous -- being a non-musical person this is exactly what I want from my "musicals" honestly. Real music! That lands in September -- and hey maybe if the thing sells well they'll give us a goddamned blu-ray of the movie itself. Sorry, Ann Lee -- a "gosh-darned" blu-ray, I meant to say. Anyway I guess THE MAN Daniel Blumberg has enough sway to get his shit released, as HE did with THE MAN Brady Corbet's The Brutalist -- THE WOMAN writer-director and WIFE of Brady Corbet Mona Fastvold should try being more of a MAN I guess. (Sexism comes in all forms, y'all.)

Christopher Abbott One Time

Wrap Me in Reynor

Florence Pugh (because she is very good, mind you!) has a tendency to swallow up her male co-stars' deserved attention. We saw it with Lady Macbeth and how long it took the world to cotton to her co-star in that, Cosmo Jarvis. And it seems to've happened again with Jack Reynor, Pugh's Midsommar leading man -- he ran around with his willy out (as did Cosmo actually) and for what? Bupkis for years, while she's off starring in Avengers movies. Feminism run amok! In all seriousness I think Jarvis and Reynor stood every bit her equal in those movies so I was very happy when Cosmo started getting attention thanks to Shogun, as I am very happy now to see that Reynor's booked a big leading man gig -- he is going to star in a new version of The Mummy for Evil Dead Rise director Lee Cronin. I don't think I mentioned it on here but I finally got around to seeing Wolf Man, the Christopher Abbott reboot of that Universal Monster, and I liked it way more than its reputation suggested? I loved its single night structure and I found the dissolving relationship of the family unit surprisingly moving! That movie got a bum rap. (Anyway it's on blu-ray now so you should give it a chance if you missed it.) And Cronin is maybe an even better director than Leigh Whannell -- Cronin's 2019 horror flick The Hole in the Ground is tremendously fine (here is my review). So I'm curious to see what they do with the Mummy mythology and I think Jack will look good covered in sand -- count me in! And since we're here I unearthed something of my own -- an attractive Jack Reynor photoshoot from 2022 that I apparently never posted. So hit the jump for it... 

Ye Olde Wolfe Movie

Even though I said I was going to get off the couch this past weekend and force myself to go see Wolf Man in theaters I did not -- I am the lyingest liar who ever lied and I hope Christopher Abbott shows up at my door and slaps me. (With what I'll leave up to him.) Anyway obviously that makes it my fault that the film flopped, but I did think about the movie some -- that's the same, right? What I thought about was my god, will anyone make a werewolf movie that works again? I mean this is admittedly an insulting thing to think about a movie I haven't seen yet, but the general consensus appears to be that Leigh Whannell's movie doesn't work and it got me thinking -- what was the last werewolf movie that really did work? That was truly great? I saw and liked last year's Werewolves recently but it's not a "good" movie -- it just knows how dumb it is, it has really fun practical effects, and it leaves us on a high note:

Thank you #Werewolves for ending on a high note
(this shot of Frank Grillo) pic.twitter.com/3OiOIKlvql

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) December 29, 2024

2021's Werewolves Within is a lot of fun too but I don't know that I can quite call it an iconic success -- maybe if it hadn't been released in the depths of the pandemic and had grabbed hold of the cultural imagination, but I do think the movie is a little wobbly on its own outside of just being fun. It's certainly not scary, and I want a scary fucking werewolf movie already! Anyway to finally get to the point -- on the heels of Nosferatu's tremendous box office success (huzzah!) our lord and devilish savior Robert Eggers has announced his next movie and it's going to be a scary fucking werewolf movie! (And we know he won't shy away from some blessed werewolf transformation nudity either!) 

He's calling it Werwulf because of course our favorite history nerd is leaning into Ye Olde English -- the script was co-written with his Northman writer and is apparently stuffed with annotations due to its use of Olde English lol. I love this dork so much. The only other info we have is it's set in the 13th Century and Eggers was going to shoot it in black and white but now he is not doing that. Oh and Focus Features has already dated the movie for Christmas Day 2026 because they are counting their great big checks from the holiday counterprogramming of Nosferatu and saying "Gimme more of that shit please!" If we start getting Robert Eggers horror movies every other Christmas I will be a very very happy boy y'all. Long may our dark prince reign!

GIVE US THE WEREWOLF SEX WE DEMAND!!!

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— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) January 22, 2025 at 1:46 PM

The Saddest Weekend of the Year

That is a photo fo Jonathan Bailey that I have posted before but I need a pick-me-up here on the day after David Lynch died so don't judge. I've mostly spent today reading Lynch tributes, hence the relative quiet -- although I also have a review that'll be hitting Pajiba at some point today or this weekend so stay tuned for that. See -- I haven't been completely sidelined! I am trying to hold Lynch's cheery workmanship attitude at the forefront of my mind -- he would want us to keep writing, to keep making, with every fiber of our being. Anyway the review I wrote was not of Wolf Man -- I mentioned at the beginning of this week I was seeing a screening of that but subway troubles got in the way and I missed that screening, so I haven't seen that one yet! I'm hoping to get to it this weekend even though the reviews do seem pretty limp. But unlike most weekends as of late I do actually plan on leaving the house on Sunday...

... since they're screening a new restoration of Pink Narcissus at MoMA! I cannot miss that! And since I'll be off the couch anyway why not try to be something like a human person and do some other stuff? Imagine that. I think more of that will be imperative to not collapse into total existential despair about the state of everything. Getting off the couch is a good start! (Who even am I and what I have I done with me? Spreading such statements. Filth!) Anyway each and every one of you have a great weekend. Even if it's generally stated that the third weekend of January is always the year's most depressing time. What do they know? Just go buy some of my shit off of eBay since I need to pay for the twenty David Lynch related things I bought in the past 24 hours and that will cheer you up. Oh and definitely do watch something by Lynch this weekend. If I find the time (couch-evading be damned) I'm going to try to watch his shortlived 1992 series On The Air, which has been fully uploaded onto Archive.org right here. It's one of the very few remaining Lynch works I have never seen! Actually now that I think about it that's what I'm doing tonight. Come, join me!

Furry Full Moons & The Men Who Love Them

Heads-up and yoo hoo, I've got a half-day today here on this hellscape called The Internet (except for our little corner of horny safe space natch) -- I've got a pair of screenings to attend to, and yes one of them stars the fine fellow seen above. My expectations for I'll just come out and say it Wolf Man have taken a hit given the bad buzz so I did something I never do -- I watched a clip they released! Ever since David Naughton's werewolf transformation awoke something beastly in my own loins I cannot resist one, so I had to watch...

... the video of Mr. Abbott's turn in the hair-sprouting pants-shredding spotlight, and... well yeah, my expectations for this movie unfortunately remain basement-adjacent. Fingers crossed I am incorrect, or they at least see fit give us some good butt like that Kit Harington wolfman movie did. At least give us that to chew on! But in summation here is that bit of tranformation clip to keep you if not "entertained" at least distracted until I'm back tomorrow:

Chris & Barry Go Down

My memory of the headlines from TIFF was that Bring Them Down, the movie starring Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan, was sort of indifferently received (I didn't go to TIFF last year and haven't seen the movie yet myself) -- but checking its score on Rotten Tomatoes just now I see it sits at 93% so I guess my memory was faulty. Not the first time that's happened! Anyway the movie got a trailer this week because it's hitting theaters on February 7th, and that's what I am here for. That's what we all are here for. That plus that photo above of Chris & Barry being touchy-feely natch. 

I wouldn't expect much touchy-feely in the movie itself though, since it's apparently a dark dramatic thriller about feuding Irish shepherds, but who knows? Maybe it's shepherds fueding with sexy results like in God's Own Country. Fingers crossed.

Kraven the Hunter in 450 Words or Less

You know that scene in the fourth Indiana Jones movie where Indiana finds himself inside the fake small town in the middle of the desert and realizes all of the families therein are mannequins and the fruit is plastic and it's really just a staged world that the military has set up in order to drop a nuke on? Sometimes I wonder if we sneaked past the security guards and got into the offices of Sony Pictures if it might not be just like that. Nothing but cardboard walls and doors that open onto bricks. Because it boggles the mind that there could actually be human beings behind the decisions they keep making for their superhero movies. They feel like the "monkeys with typewriters" scenario brought to life, or perhaps a league of Coneheads pretending to be Earth people but getting each step just a hair off, one after another, until a smorgasboard of gibberish spills out its ass-end. This is textbook Bad Movie behavior.

But that doesn't mean there's not a good helping of true WTF fun to be had out of Kraven the Hunter anyway. Yes, Sony's latest and opposite-of-greatest stab at the genre somehow manages to make the glory days of Madame Web feel fonder. But none of these actors are to blame. This troupe of thesps know what they're up against and dammit they keep fighting the fight, one camp whisper to another, winding through the marauding CG mayhem. Leading man slash abdominal billboard Aaron Taylor-Johnson is ultimately done in by the movie's frankensteined incoherence, but our boy tries his damndest to yank it together with every one of those big beautiful muscles of his. He does not succeed! But he's having fun most of the time, and he manages to get some of that across whenever the movie lumbers out of his way for a split second. 

But best of all -- Alessandro Nivola as the ridiculous baddie is legit great, lifting the movie unto absurdist heaven whenever he appears. (And not for nothing he looks as hot as he's ever looked on-screen, his tight white dress shirt and strappy little backpack doing the lord's work.) Nivola is a real riot, chewing every dumb line of dialogue right up, and when he does this silent scream thing about halfway into the movie it instantaneously paid for my ticket in full. (Well okay I didn't pay for a ticket thankfully, but this moment would have had I.) None of this is enough to save the movie from itself, but I wasn't angry when I left the theater. Just deeply suspicious about those Sony offices filled with outer space mannequins, is all...

Pics of the Day

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I attended the premiere of Sony's latest stab at superhero dominance Kraven the Hunter last night here in NYC and above are a few photos I snapped of the film's cast introducing the film -- that includes MNPP faves Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Alessandro Nivola, and Fred Hechinger. (If only Christopher Abbott had shown and given me a full quartet of crushes.) Not the greatest quality snaps since I was in the balcony but better than they have any right being -- the latest iPhone camera really is a wonder of modern technology. Anyway Kraven is finally out on Friday, and I suppose I'll have some words to share on the movie itself before the week is out so stay tuned...

It's Tearing Christopher Abbott Apart

I forgot that this was happening, but actress and writer Zoe Kazan is taking a page from her esteemed Hollywood heritage and writing the script for a new limited-series adaptation for Netflix of John Steinbeck's classic novel East of Eden, which her Grandpa Elia himself turned into a legendary star-making vehicle for one Mr. James Dean back in 1955. Florence Pugh's been attached for some time but the reason I'm reminded of this project's existence is this week's news that one Christopher Abbott will be tackling the role of Adam Trask in the series. Which is not the role that James Dean played, by the way... 

... but the role played by Raymond Massey, aka Jimmy Dean's character's father. The 1955 film only adapted the last part of the epic book, the part about Adam and Cathy's children Cal (Dean) and Aron (Richard Davalos), so yes this is a pretty smart idea for a limited series adaptation -- there's an entire three-quarters of the book laying there to be told! Although I do know there was also a 1981 three-part miniseries that starred, amongst others, the ridiculously handsome Hart Bochner...

... and that I would love to see. Anybody seen that? 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Black Bear (2020)

Allison: I figured if I never learn how to cook

then I would never become a housewife.

A happy 40th birthday to Aubrey Plaza today! I don't remember much about Black Bear except I liked it and Christopher Abbott was (per usual) sexy in it -- I should give it another watch. It is one of those movies that got lost in the pandemic (it premiered at Sundance in January of 2020, and then... well you know what "and then") and didn't get much attention after that. Anyway we love Aubrey, of course we do, but let's be real -- the real reason we're going out of our way to wish her a happy birthday today is so we can scream about John Waters' currently-in-the-air return to filmmaking -- he wants her to star in his adaptation of his book Liarmouth, and she wants to do it, but nobody's yet given them the budget to make it. This would be a killer birthday present for Aubrey! And for me too -- my birthday is in just a couple of weeks and this is also what I want!

NETFLIX GAVE JERRY SEINFELD SEVENTY FUCKING MILLION DOLLARS TO MAKE A FUCKING POP TARTS MOVIE https://t.co/tzsLvBgugR

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) May 27, 2024

Christopher Abbott Nine Times

You know that it's a good and important photoshoot when I can't decide which photo to top (heh) the post with -- I could've gone with any of these photos of Christopher Abbott for Cero magazine honestly! Isn't there a joke about how bisexual people don't know how to sit in chairs correctly? Well then this photoshoot is nine photos of Chris being the most bisexual man on earth and I am here for it. Hit the jump for them...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from

Possessor (2020)

Colin: Just think, one day your wife is cleaning the cat litter and she gets a worm in her, and that worm ends up in her brain. The next thing that happens is she gets an idea in there, too. And it's hard to say whether that idea is really hers or it's just the worm. And it makes her do certain things. Predator things. Eventually, you realize that she isn't the same person anymore. She's not the person that she used to be. It's gotta make you wonder, whether you're really married to her... or married to the worm.

A happy 44th birthday to director Brandon Cronenberg!

Rank his three movies in the comments if you've seen them.

My ranking is present to past - Infinity Pool, this, Antiviral.

Now That Is A Wolf Man

I have nothing against Ryan Gosling but I gotta admit I'm pleased as punch with today's news that he's no longer starring in the upcoming The Wolf Man movie from Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell -- he's being replaced by Chris Abbott, and y'all know I love me some Chris Abbott. And Abbott just, you know, looks more like a wolf man? A blond wolfman was always kind of weird and I said as much when Gosling got originally cast. Also, and I say this with a seriousness the subject might not demand, Chris has proven far more willing to bare skin...

... and if we're getting a Wolf Man in 2024 it should have at least as much nudity as David Naughton did in 1981 for god's sake. You better come through, Whannell! Anyway this kind of dulls the sting of how hard I've been trying to win the lottery for cheap tickets to see Abbott on stage with Aubrey Plaza in the play Danny and the Deep Blue Sea -- every day another loser notification for weeks on end dammit. Can't believe I'm going to miss this:

Christopher Abbott Nine Times

Okay I was feeling a little down earlier, and then these photos of Christopher Abbott photographed by Ryan McGinley for Interview Magazine appeared (thx Mac) and -- nothing about me is down no more. Up up up and away, baby. The chat is with his On the Count of Three and Poor Things friend and co-star (and fortunate homosexual) Jerrod Carmichael and I'm only a little ways through it -- my main priority was as ever to get these photos to you people as quickly as possible. If the chat contains anything delicious we'll come back and discuss it. For now hit the jump as this photo-shoot is nothing but non-stop deliciousness...

Keep Coming Kraven

Because one post on how hot Aaron Taylor-Johnson appears to be in his Kraven the Hunter movie isn't nearly enough, I have now done two, two posts, in as many days. Well I suppose if you count this post right here it's three? And we should since I am including the above new photo of Aaron that his wife Sam posted on Insta. Anyway first I posted the poster and the trailer for Kraven here on the site yesterday -- see that here. But that wasn't nearly enough, so I spent several hundred more words on the subject over at Mashable today -- click here for that. I could keep going. I know you know I could keep going. This movie isn't out until October y'all. Expect me to keep going!

Cravin' That Kraven

Looks like this will be Kraven the Hunter week as the first poster has just been dropped -- here are all of our previous posts on this movie but the gist is it's a superhero thing and Aaron Taylor-Johnson wears a slutty man-beast costume, the end. That's all I need to know! (Okay also that it co-stars Alessandro Nivola and Chris Abbott -- also important!) Anyway they totally recreated a famous Kraven image with the poster...

... and as well they should. That image was my go-to when posting about the character. It's where the excitement lay! Supposedly the first trailer is officially coming tomorrow, but if you do a quick search on Twitter you'll find that it's already leaked. And speaking of leaking, the following images from the trailer's got me...

ETA okay I guess Sony saw the leak and decided to

drop the trailer themselves, official-like! Here it is:

And good that means I can share this other gif I made:

This is Not a Safe Space

It's Friday and that means there are movies out! Yes, movies are still a thing! Crazy, right? We're all just sitting here twiddling our thumbs waiting for cock-sucking holograms and they're still making movies. Well as long as we've got to do this movie thing, bahhh, at least there are some ones worth seeing -- like today there's a movie called Sanctuary out that stars Chris Abbott seen above alongside Andie-Macdowell-spawn Margaret Qualley (seen nowhere here) as a dom and her rich boy sub and it's actually pretty decent? I wrote my thoughts out on it at Mashable, click here to read 'em. I know some people don't like Abbott but as our archives attest to I am not one of those people, and this is one of his best turns to date. Here is the trailer for Sanctuary if you missed it. Now stay tuned, I have more reviews coming! It is Friday after all!

Pics of the Day

Maybe I lucked out and you haven't been on the internet today before this very second, and you happened to open your browser and MNPP was already there because you'd fallen asleep looking at those hot half-naked pictures of Jason Momoa yesterday. (Hey I get it, no judgement.) In which case we'll be the first place to show you these images from Yorgos Lanthomos' new movie Poor Things, which have been all over the web since this morning. That'd be neat! I like being first. To be honest I'm fine with sloppy seconds. Or dirty thirds even. I am not picky. Point being golly I am excited about this movie! 

I first told you about it last March when Willem Dafoe got cast (and yes that's him all scarred up in the above image) -- it's him and Emma Stone and Ramy Youssef (seen in the other photos released today) and Mark Ruffalo and Christopher Abbott (let's hope those two make out some) and Margaret Qualley (god is she in everything?) and Jerrod Carmichael, and it's based on the book by Alistair Gray, which I own but have still not read. Anyway Searchlight is releasing this on September 8th and here is their official plot description:

"From filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and producer Emma Stone comes the incredible tale and fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter (Stone), a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn. Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation."

Christopher Abbott is My Safe Word

I know you know what Christopher Abbott fans we are here at MNPP -- I never would've guessed it when he was on Girls, where I hated him, but then I never would've guessed I'd be so hot for Jon Bernthal when he was stinking up The Walking Dead either. Took some time to glom onto their particular charms, but Abbott's proven himself an extremely risky fella, taking interesting and daring projects on time and time again. And here he comes again!

Sanctuary premiered at TIFF but only in person so I didn't get to watch it then (I covered TIFF virtually), so I've spent the last six or so months salivating with want -- thankfully it's out on May 19th and I've already RSPV'd for my press screening, thank you very much. That said it's kinda weird how very very similar this one seems to a movie Chris already made -- I speak of Nicolas Pesce's 2018 film Piercing of course, which was about Abbott meeting up with a prostitute (Mia Wasikowska) in a hotel room and the power dynamics shifting wildly from moment to moment between them. (Piercing was one of my favorite movies that year -- seek it out if you haven't seen it!)

This new one stars Abbott as a masochist who meets up in a hotel room with a dominatrix (Margaret Qualley) and, uhh, the power dynamics shift wildly from moment to moment between them. This is a kind of odd niche to carve out for one's self!

But I do think we've probably got ourselves a killer double-feature in the future. I'm admittedly a bigger fan of Wasikowska than I am Qualley, but she looks great here. Anyway see for yourselves -- Neon's gone done and dropped the trailer for Sanctuary today!

Sanctuary is out on May 19th.
What do you think?