Good Domhnall Day

Hello and happy Monday, readers. Coming to you mid-afternoon this day one of the week instead of the usual morning thingamajig because I had a screening this morning that I forgot I had until last night (see what it was here!) but otherwise let's just get on with it -- I've got another Sundance review up at Pajiba today -- click on over to read my thoughts on The Incomer, a sweet little dramedy starring Domhnall Gleeson that I enjoyed. As I previously mentioned there wasn't a lot that was "light" at this year's Sundance so I think this one felt like a big needed respite from all of the bad feels. Even as it dealt with suicidal ideation and feelings of isolation. You take what smiles you can find in 2026!

Irish Eyes Be Boating

It's been two and a half years since we last heard about this project, but there's an update on Michael Fassbender's film Night Boat to Tangier, which we heard he was producing to star in back in November of 2020. Deadline is reporting that he's taking the project to Cannes next month looking for financing, and he's got himself some co-stars -- Domhnall Gleeson and Ruth Negga, no less! When I posted in 2020 about this I said I thought the story (about buddy criminals) sounded very In Bruges and imagined him co-starring with Colin Farrell -- the son of the other dude in In Bruges will do just fine, though. We love Domhnall, and this'll make for some ginger heaven. James Marsh, who directed the doc Man on Wire, is set to direct. If you haven't read the best-selling book this is based on here's the story:

"Set in Spain and Ireland, Night Boat to Tangier follows Maurice and Charlie, a colourful pair of gangsters from Ireland. Drug-smugglers, partners with a long history of violence and intertwined personal lives, they’re back in southern Spain re-visiting old haunts, old flames and dangerous local criminals, searching for Maurice’s estranged daughter, Dilly…

Two-time Oscar nominee/3x Golden Golden nominee and 4x BAFTA nominee Fassbender plays Maurice Hearne and Gleeson will portray his partner Charlie Redmond. Maurice and Charlie are an intimidating and sometimes extremely violent pair with a line in hilarious banter but Cynthia, played by Oscar/Golden Globe/BAFTA and Tony nominee Negga, is the brains behind their operation and a woman whose relationship with both men is tempestuous.

Marsh said “Kevin’s script is a beautiful piece of writing. Underneath the dazzling surface wit and propulsive storytelling, there are surprising and very moving emotional undercurrents to be discovered. The story is built around love and tenderness amidst all the macho posturing and violence and the female characters are as strong and powerful as the men. It’s an incredibly exciting prospect.”

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

About Time (2013)

Dad: I'd only give one piece of advice to anyone marrying. We're all quite similar in the end. We all get old and tell the same tales too many times. But try and marry someone kind. And this is a kind man with a good heart. I'm not particularly proud of many things in my life, but I am very proud to be the father of my son.

Y'all have seen Richard Curtis' ace 2013 tearjerker About Time by now right? If not get on it, it's only been out for nearly a decade. Anyway it's Bill Nighy's 73rd birthday today and since I can't post a quote from his upcoming movie Living yet since it's not out until Christmas I will post a quote from my second favorite performance by him. (Here is my review of Living from Sundance in case you missed it -- Nighy deserves all of the awards, and we need to bang the drum to make sure he gets 'em! Performance of the year here!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Anna Karenina (2012)

Vronsky: I love you!

Anna: Why?

Vronsky: You can't ask
"why" about love!

Happy 10 to this masterpiece!

And I don't just mean Aaron Taylor-Johnson's butt...

... although Aaron Taylor-Johnson's butt don't hurt. 
(And yes I am setting up a punchline there, obviously.)
But this is a super duper movie, innit?

Wildly underrated and under-appreciated in its time, twas.

Here's what I wrote at the time -- I appreciated it the right amount!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Frank (2014)

Jon: He said I was cherishable, 

and he picked me to join the band. 

Clara: You are fingers being told which keys to push.

Jon: I push my own keys...

Clara: Ten little bits of bone and skin.

Jon: And I'm perfectly capable of going to my

furthest corners and composing music.

Clara: Your furthest corners?

Jon: My furthest corners.

Clara: Someone needs to punch you in the face.

A happy 43 to Maggie Gyllenhaal today! I'm not even gonna mention her brother Jake (except, you know, that time right there) because Maggie's got plans, big plans, all her own this year -- we've been posting a ton about her directorial debut The Lost Daughter, which just finished filming a couple of weeks ago -- it stars Olivia Colman and Dakota Johnson and Peter Sarsgaard and Jessie Buckley and (our biggest reason for the multiple posts) new-BFFs Paul Mescal & Oliver Jackson-Cohen. And I don't mean to devalue her acting-wise -- she's always great, always. Maybe I should fiiiiinally watch The Kindergarten Teacher in her birthday honor? I've been meaning to for two years! What's your favorite Maggie?

The Pleasure Dom

.

If you need something to look forward to -- and who the living fuck doesn't need that right now -- I tell you that in just three days Run, the new HBO series from producer Phoebe Waller-Bridge and her right-hand woman Vicky Jones (they've worked together on basically everything) and starring Domhnall Gleeson here and the great Merritt Wever, will premiere! I shared the trailer back in January, approximately 9000 years ago -- it looks like an absolute blast.

THE ONLY THING KEEPING ME GOING IS RUN PREMIERES IN THREE DAYS https://t.co/ge6zPG8vwV

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) April 9, 2020

Anyway since that shit's clearly massaging the needy wanting happy spots in our brain tissue this afternoon I figured we'd keep the pleasure rolling with a lil' Domhnall quiz, as we do enjoy this particular ginger...

online survey

Machina Got Moves

.

I don't know about you, maybe it's just me, but whenever the dance scene in Ex Machina pops into my head I am all about Oscar Isaac. (Who by the way is celebrating his 41st birthday today -- happy birthday to our chunky bummed boo.) But there's another person there, and today for my "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series over at The Film Experience I'm talking about her. And yes, before you ask, I do indeed consider Ex Machina kind of a horror movie. Enough for this, anyway.

.

Run Not Walk

.

Have you seen the trailer for Run yet? The forthcoming HBO series, which premieres on April 12th, stars Merritt Wever (just recently seen being so fucking funny in Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story) and our second favorite ginger Domhnall Gleeson as former college sweethearts whose lives have moved on but who had some sort of pact where they'd drop everything they were living...

... if the other one texted them the word "Run" and hightail it to Grand Central to take off together on an unknown adventure. Besides starring those two stellar stars the series is executive produced by no less than Phoebe Waller-Bridge, whose touch of brilliance is currently unsurpassed. (Bonus: she's also acting on the show for a couple of episodes according to IMDB.) Our bags are packed and we are so very there. (thx Mac)

.

Good Morning, Gratuitous François Civil

.

It was fairly random how I fell down a François Civil hole yesterday -- I was looking up pictures of Domhnall Gleeson for yesterday's little post about him and I stumbled upon some photos of Dom and François living it up at the after-party for their 2014 movie Frank...

... now there's a cute damn couple worth rooting for. Anyway before you knew it I had several dozen photos of François  sitting here begging to be posted. This is overdue though, since... well look at him!

.

I mean why even make a movie if you're not gonna have François Civil smiling in it? pic.twitter.com/B3Dl7mZOJR

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) August 7, 2019

.

But that's not all -- he's been acting since he was a teenager and he's been popping up here and there in plenty of things over the years, like the aforementioned Frank (which I'm a real big fan of) and like the decent enough Paris Underground found footage horror film As Above So Below in 2014 and like that godawful TV remake of Rosemary's Baby with Zoe Saldana... eesh remember that?

Still most of his work is in his native France and most of it is in stuff that isn't making the Trans-Atlantic trek, but just judging off his list of credits on IMDb it seems as if he's doing pretty well there? I mean he did just made a movie with Juliette Binoche. Any Euro readers know the score? Well let's hope he does more work that we get to see here but until that happens let's enjoy those several dozen photos I mentioned a minute ago, right here after the jump...

Domhnall Gleeson Eight Times

.

Domhnall Gleeson is in The Kitchen? I didn't know that Domhnall Gleeson  is in The Kitchen! I was planning on seeing that movie anyway this weekend because hello did you see that shot in the trailer where Elisabeth Moss is kicking the shit out of somebody and she has blood in her hair? That's plenty. But this Domhnall news, this is an important addendum. Thankfully somebody out there is letting the world know the things that matter...

.

People need to know that Domhnall Gleeson is the sexiest thing ever in THE KITCHEN -- and freakin' Common is in the movie!

— Jenelle Riley (@jenelleriley) July 31, 2019

.
You're a saint and a hero and I wish you everlasting love and life, Jenelle. Anyway these photos are from Esquire UK in 2015 (via) but I kind of think I never posted them then, but even if I did they're worth posting again, and again, the ginger beard and suit and blue room all makes for a full throated tornado of swoon. Hit the jump for the rest...

Pic of the Day

.

The new Vanity Fair is all Star Wars, with a huge gallery of The Rise of Skywalker photos from the set -- click here to see them all. The shot of Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley fighting in the snow (I think it's snow) is really lovely but of course I have to highlight the shot of Oscar Isaac once again doing his best Captain Tightpants impersonation, because hey you know where you are. You know what we do. The Rise of Skywalker is out on December 20th.

I Wanna Run To Dom

.

I only recently caught up with Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge's comedy series (streaming now on Amazon) that stars herself fucking through (and up) London -- twas the promise of Olivia Colman that did it, but I'm glad I did catch up even Colman-aside because it's a brilliant little jewel that I flew through over the course of about three days in absolute delight.

.

Don’t worry everybody, everything is better now — I finally started FLEABAG after ages of meaning to and I’m crying tears of laughter just five minutes in pic.twitter.com/4TSsYg6xw1

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 24, 2019

.

And hip hip hurray for news that the second season is coming on May 17th! I'm sad I'm not seeing PWB doing Fleabag live on stage here in NYC right this minute actually, but alas I am a poor person.

Anyway everything is coming up Phoebe right now -- besides the second season of Killing Eve she has just announced yet another show called Run (thx Mac) and it will star Merritt Wever alongside our favorite working ginger Domhnall Gleeson (the "working" was added to avoid making Michael Fassbender sad faced). Run is described thusly:

"Run centers on Ruby (Wever), a woman living a humdrum existence who one day gets a text inviting her to fulfill a youthful pact, promising true love and self-reinvention, by stepping out of her life to take a journey with her oldest flame (Gleeson)."

.

Pantys 2018: My 10 Favorite Scary Movies

.

Before I dive head-long into my Top 20 films of 2018 for our "Golden Trousers" awards (although you can see 10 runners-up we posted last week right here) I wanted to spotlight the best of my favorite movie genre -- what scared us in 2018? Well I think y'all know the answer to that. Its a big blobby wailing monster whose skin and hair is just about the same color as those pants to the left. So we took refuge from the real world's frights in movies that were almost to a tee about finding one's self in a world gone wrong, where the things you thought you could count on were upended, poisoned, curdled bad. Relationships, whether romantic or familial, were not to be trusted, while the world out of doors is enthusiastically sharpening its knives. You know. That ol' spooky junk. Been there, crapped my pants, bought the t-shirt. So here's my big ten boos, with a bonus favorite bit to chew on each...

10. What Keeps You Alive

(dir. Colin Minihan)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare: The upstairs fight scene

9. The Ritual

(dir. David Bruckner)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare: The creature knocks

8. Revenge

(dir. Coralie Fargeat)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare: Glass removal

7. 7. The Clovehitch Killer

(dir. Duncan Skiles)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare:
Watching dad from under the bed

6. The Night Eats the World

(dir. Dominique Rocher)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare: Drum breakdown

5. The House That Jack Built

(dir. Lars von Trier)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare: Simple

4. Cam

(dir. Daniel Goldhaber)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare: "Lola"'s gunplay

3. Good Manners

(dir. Marco Dutra & Juliana Rojas)

Best Moment / Scare: Cat Hunting

2. Hereditary

(dir. Ari Aster)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare: Telephone Pole

1. Suspiria

(dir. Luca Guadagnino)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare: Anke Comes Home

----------------------

Runners-up: Empathy Inc., The Little Stranger, 

Blue My Mind, Mandy, Cargo,
Strangers: Prey at Night, Unfriended: Dark Web

.

Five Fast Reviews

.

I have some catching up to do! I've allowed a ton of movies to slip through my fingers that deserve a word or two or a couple hundred times that. And what with the New York Film Festival screenings starting in about a week and a half it's best I pound these small quick thoughts out before time and space and all the things that make up the very fabric of our reality turn against me. Wouldn't want that! So here we are. Quick thoughts on five movies I've seen recently.

Support the Girls -- An open-hearted, hysterically funny wee little marvel - hands down one of the great films of the year, and one that will be remembered with great love and affectionate devotion for as long as people still appreciate the movies. I couldn't adore it more. I wanna hold it tight to my chest and just squeeze and squeeze. Like all the best cinematic surprises it shows us a world we didn't think we'd have much interest spending our time in - in this case sweating it out among the buxom waitresses of a southern so-called "Breastaurant" a la Hooters - and shows us people, delightful and real-sized people, just doing their best, and then it makes us want the best for them in return.

I fell in love with every single damn character. Haley Lu Richardson's peppy Maci, all cheerleader smiles and hard-earned millennial life lessons, Shayna McHayle's drop-shouldered Danyelle, whose fall-dead-to-the-floor-funny smart-assed remarks get to the point way quicker than her "get there when she gets there" attitude ever will. And holding them all together in an ever tighter and sweatier grip is Regina Hall's Lisa, whose day we watch crumble around her and who never feels even the slightest bit indecent or cruel, who somehow radiates the best a person can be even among the chicken bone littered pavement of a strip mall seventh hell. I am going to hold these girls tight forever.

Papillon-- I can't judge this remake against the original Steve McQueen film because I never got around to seeing the original Steve McQueen film like I meant to - I say that as if the door's closed on that ever happening now, as if the remake has murdered the original film dead, aka the thing most people seem to fear whenever remakes are announced. It's okay, lovers of Steve McQueen, the original Papillon is not dead! There's no need to find Charlie Hunnam and slap him silly. (No reasons besides the usual perverse sexual ones anyway.) 

Anyway this here remake, on its own divorced from the original, is perfectly adequate. I don't regret the two hours I spent with it on a blistering hot August afternoon for free with the probable last gasp of my Moviepass card. Charlie Hunnam looks like a god, even when he's wizened down to his starvation weight - he pulls it off with more panache than Christian Bale did, that's for sure - and he and Rami Malek have a nice easy chemistry that carries the film across the finish line. Am I going to remember the film a year from now? Hell I hardly remember much here two weeks out from having seen it. But it's no disaster. Steve McQueen can stop his rolling.

Summer of '84 -- Sometimes nasty is its own reward and Summer of 84' proves itself shockingly mean-spirited in its last act - long after the adequately pleasant drafts of the Papillon remake have drifted off I'll still get woozy nightmare flashes of some of what this flick ends up having up its velour sleeves. That said it's mostly familiar stuff until then - it's Stranger Things if Stranger Things turned genuinely indecent after watching a Faces of Death video-tape instead of just nodding towards some Speilbergian show-offery.

In the true demerit column it did mark the first time I've groaned at the currently ubiquitous John Carpenter riffing electronic score that every Eighties ode gloms onto - it's just too too obvious a choice now for this movie, this movie right here; it needed to shake things up in some departments and that's the worst obvious offender. But I gotta say this thing, with its genuine sense of impossible stranger danger, felt more true to its time period than Stranger Things ever has - coming from a kid who mother made him watch the true-crime kidnapping classic Adam more than once to brand that feeling in that's not empty platituding either.

Let the Corpses Tan -- French writer-director duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani have made themselves a nice little career out of dosing Vintage Eurotrash with buckets of LSD and tossing it in the Tie-Dyed Spin Cycle - their previous two movies Amer and The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears were technicolor riffs on 70s sleaze and giallo, and Let the Corpses Tan still contains some of that vibe, just now with a hefty batch of Spaghetti Western to boot.

These movies are what they are - I find their soulless style slightly exhausting to be honest, but I'm glad I finally got to see one on a big screen because visually they're always magnificent; some of the most dynamic image-making being done today. I wish they could maybe find a way of putting something approximating human beings in their movies, instead of just posturing genre mannequins, but I don't know if that's actually possible while also achieving the nigh experimental highs they do reach, carving reality up into fragmented chunks of pretty pretty artifice like this. There's no room for even the spiky humanity of Tarantino dialogue here. There's no room for human. But man, it glitters.

The Little Stranger -- Old-fashioned in the best of ways, Lenny Abrahamson's ghost story gives up even less than the formidable stalwarts of its genre - it wasn't until I was sitting on the subway headed back to my house that I finally began piecing together the luxuriously hushed puzzle of this trusty spooker. Don't g into The Little Stranger expecting much in the way of snapping fangs or even Jessica Chastain's bloody cleavage a la Crimson Peak - this movie's as interiorized as it gets; The Haunting for the medicated age.

I don't want to dive too hard into details then, lest I give up the, what's it called, oh right the ghost, but everybody's very good (special shout-out to Ruth Wilson's repressed lesbian frump and then of course Domhnall's mustache) and even better on the same page - nobody over-does it, everybody keeps even keel, lest they tip this very fragile thing over and smash its tone in the process. It remains itself whole hog, and I fore-see it having a long shelf-life once its mysteries worm their way into our subconsciousness for serious.

.

Oscars For Everybody

.

Well it's my last long weekend of the summer y'all, but it's a real long one - I'm off tomorrow til Tuesday. After that it's back to the usual schedule - no more Summer Fridays, or Summer Thursdays even as has been the last few weeks surprisingly generous routine. So prepare yourselves to stop wanting more of me and being real sick of me real quick. Anyway I can't really tell you if any of the movies out this weekend are any good since I haven't seen any of them - will Oscar Isaac's Nazi-hunting bum live up to all the possibility it holds within itself for Operation Finale? 

Or will Oscar's former Ex-Machina and current Star Wars co-star Domhnall Gleeson get them ghosts in The Little Stranger? Who knows? But I do like the fact that these two have the big movies out this weekend - Ex Machina forever! Anyway I can say that there are several movies already in theaters worth seeing - go see Glenn Close kick ass as The Wife. Go get Crazy with those Rich Asians. Or most importantly indulge your inner beasts with year-best We the Animals. And we'll see you back here Tuesday. As a parting gift here after the jump a few bonus shots of Oscar...

Domhnall Gleeson Three Times

.

I showed y'all the trailer for the upcoming spooky ghost movie The Little Stranger back at the start of June and I did so with genuine horror, as there's a scene in the trailer where a library catches fire, which is like too too much for me to handle. Too much! Anyway the film stars Domhnall Gleeson (seen here in the new GQ, thanks Mac) and Ruth Wilson and Charlotte effing Rampling and it was directed by Lenny Abrahamson, the dude who gave us Frank (also starring Domhnall alongside Michael Fassbender) and Room. So serious folks behind this little fright flick!

Alongside these lovely photos of his delicate gingerness in GQ there's a nice little chat with Dom too, in which he gives the easiest path I've yet seen to pronouncing his name correctly on the first try (I know how it goes but I always have to do some mental gymnastics in my head before I speak it), and he also sells me hard on looking forward to this movie. I was looking forward to it, but he makes a fine case, making it sound like it sits apart. Swell by me!

The Little Stranger is out on August 31st.

.

The Scariest Movie Ever Made in 2018

.

Hereditary came out this past weekend and I hope 'all saw it and liked it as much as I did but one thing it lacked, one thing that this here new horror film called The Little Stranger has in its favor in the "most high horrifying scares" department, is shown in the just-released trailer...

... a library fire! The horror! I don't know if I can see this movie now - it might be too much for my shelf-loving self to handle. Murder all the children and dogs you want to on-screen but don't come for my bookshelves! Anything but that! Take my mother instead!

In all seriousness there are several factors that are making The Little Stranger stand out from the pack of gothic hauntings brimming at the multiplex these days - one, it is based on a book by Sarah Waters, who also wrote the book that Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden was based on. Two it's directed by Lenny Abrahamson, whose last movie was Room with Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay. That was a good movie. 

And three Domhnall Gleeson has a mustache. Excuse me - a Ginger-stache! The specificity of the "ginger" is vital. But the cast is great -- besides Domhnall and his ginger-stache there's Ruth Wilson and Charlotte Rampling and Will Poulter lurking about, burning books the bastard. Watch:

.

.

The Little Stranger is out August 31st. (thx Mac)

.