Good Morning, World

I've got two count 'em two big reviews dropping today and I will link to them when they're live, but on that tip I figured I'd finally get around to sharing the trailer for the latest I Know What You Did Last Summer movie (out on Friday) since that's one of the two movies I'm reviewing and this movie is practically throbbing with hot dudes all around. Throbbing! Above is Tyriq Withers who I posted about previously when the trailer for the football horror movie Him dropped a few months ago -- after watching him on-screen I one thousand percent understand why he's about to be a big thing. His sauna scene glimpsed in the trailer and in the above gif is brief but will do for the current generation of youths what Ryan Phillippe's shower scene in the original movie did for people my age. But beyond Tyriq there's also Jonah Hauer-King with a breathstopping abs reveal, Austin Nichols playing a weirdly sleeveless pastor, Daddy Billy Campbell, and The Fisherman's first victim (not much of a spoiler since the trailer gives the entire scene away) the utterly gorgeous Joshua Orpin. This movie is horror hunkery at its finest! 

Nicholas Alexander Chavez Six Times

If the former faux Menendez brothers Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch want to out-slut each other in rival photoshoots it's certainly fine by me -- we all win in a battle to the dick-print. NAC here is doing his part via Cosmopolitan magazine before the I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot he's a part of hits theaters on July 18th. Here's that movie's trailer, which I have not watched. Is he the hot jock-boy Ryan Phillippe replacement? Will he have a locker-room scene of his own to turn an entire generation gay? Fingers crossed. For now hit the jump for this steamy little photoshoot...

Welcome to the New Araki Age

I love how many beefcake photos there are of director Gregg Araki when you go looking. But that does beg the question -- why haven't I been looking??? All these years I've been a fan, decades now, and this is the first time I've ever seen these photos from the set of Nowhere. Harumph, I say. Anyway last night broke news I have been waiting decades indeed for -- Strand Releasing will be releasing restored versions of all 3 films in Araki's "Teen Apocalypse" trilogy! The Doom Generation already played theaters earlier this year (and it's hitting blu-ray in a month!) and we'd heard (and posted about) the news that Nowhere was coming too. But this is the first confirmation I've seen of a restoration of the first film in the trilogy, 1993's Totally F***ed Up. All masterpieces, and all deeply formative for yours truly. I don't care how they release these things -- if they release each movie one by one and then drop a box-set down the road -- I will buy every filthy fucking copy I can get my grubby mitts on. And now let's start clanging the bell for Araki's other movies -- Splendor for instance! Anyway, like, hit the jump for the official press release on this legendary and spectacular news, or whatever...

Good Morning, World

I am -- you guessed it! -- still trying to sort out my computer situation from last week. So... that's what I am doing this morning. Hopefully this Ryan Phillippe video keeps you company until I can write something else. 

Receive Me Brother, With Your Faithless Kiss

A note to everybody in the business of casting and making movies -- hire Matthias Schoenaerts. His specific mixture of sweet, sad, and bulkily intimidating always brings a heap of bang for its buck, to my eye -- I have yet to see a movie that wasn't made a little to a lot better just by Matthias being in it. (Okay maybe A Little Chaos, but that was one hundred percent that terrible wig's fault.) And so it goes for Brothers By Blood,(formerly titled The Sound of Philadelphia), director Jérémie Guez's languorous dissection of crime-family dynamics, set to strike VOD and some theaters this week. (Watch the trailer here.) A textbook case in "Hire Matthias Schoenaerts" if ever there was.

Schoenaerts plays Peter, another one of the introspective boxer-types that he could play in his sleep at this point. But Matthias, bless his bulk, never sleeps, even when he's called on again to be oh-so world-weary -- he remains keenly watchable even at his most somnambulistic, monosyllabic; he resonates like a quiet little bull in the corner of the china-shop standing on its tippy-toes trying so hard to not smash the world. By now Matthias can virtuoso out the tension of that un-smashing -- he's forever the lean-back to a punch, one that doesn't always come. One that might morph into a hug, a big bear one, given the correct alignment of hugging circumstances.

Peter specifically seems to just want to box and blend into the Philadelphia night shadows, but he's unfortunately for him cousins with an erratic and mildly-deranged small-time crime-boss Michael (Joel Kinnaman, hobbling and viper-eyed), who exploits Peter's meat-packing presence to his constant advantage. When the menu calls for intimidation, Michael calls up Peter to his side. Kinnaman, leaning on a cane, somehow inverts his own hulking presence, seeming more like a rat blown up to human-size; scraggly and feral under baggy person clothes. He limps in all the senses.

But besides their violent business relationship Peter and Michael are more than just cousins -- when the movie starts they do seem like friends, semi-confidantes, and at that maybe even the brothers of blood referenced in the title; that final note even moreso as the film metes out their family story in scattered flashback. The boys' crime-history, sordid and sad, becomes their crime-present with overlapping lines of betrayal, all tied and twisted into a crime-future of who knows. No good though. That's for certain in these sorts of stories. Hugs be damned.   

Meanwhile there's also Paul Schneider playing their in-over-his-head old friend, and Maika Monroe as his sister visiting town who quickly becomes The Girl caught in between the cousin-brothers. And in flashback we have a whiskey-faced Ryan Phillippe playing Peter's father, distraught with grief and plotting stupid revenge that will probably cause the whole house, multiple houses even, to crumble. Every past has its moments, some more than most.

But side-characters aside it's mainly the Schoenaerts & Kinnaman Show. And while Brothers By Blood might not be something I've never seen before -- even if Guez does have a great eye for wet city shadows and sad plastered walls, giving this place the sort of dilapidated sense you can smell -- those two actors do manage to make something often worth watching out of some pretty familiar scraps. Are they totally believable as Irish-Americans? That, my friends, is a stretch best forgetting. But they're both immensely watchable all the same, and Schoenaerts in particular, man, the dude just bear-hugs out wonders time and again with whatever you hand him. He fills the screen on his own.

With Brothers Like This...

Oh the hits are coming hard and fast this afternoon -- now I've got the first trailer for Brothers By Blood (which used to be called The Sound of Philadelphia, which it's weirdly still listed as on IMDb) starring Matthias Schoenaerts and Joel Kinnaman! Naturally, as it stars Matthias Schoenaerts and Joel Kinnaman, I have been all over this movie like beard hairs on Matthias' pillow since the moment I first heard about it a couple years back -- it has Matthias playing a guy who's trying to get out of his criminal family just as his close cousin (Kinnaman) becomes more involved with the bad shit. 

Not a plot we've never heard before, for sure -- heck even Matthias has starred in a couple of movies already that sound just like it! -- but I really liked director Jérémie Guez's last film (the post-apocalyptic Zombies-take-Paris flick The Night That Eats the World, reviewed here) and... well you know the "and." It stars Matthias and Joel, for god's sake! It also, for that matter, co-stars Paul Schneider, Maika Monroe, and Ryan Phillippe. Here's the trailer:

Brothers By Blood hits Theaters + VOD on January 22nd.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

You Can Count On Me (2000)

Terry: Put on your seat belt.

Rudy: It pushes on my neck.

Terry: What?

Rudy: It pushes on my neck, it's uncomfortable.

Terry: Well when someone slams into us and

you go sailing through the windshield, that's liable

to be uncomfortable, too. Now, put on a seat belt.

A happy 20 to this lovely film from writer-director-genius Kenneth Lonergan that I nevertheless haven't seen in 20 years. Did you know of Mark Ruffalo before this? There are two things he was in before it that I might have noticed him in -- Ang Lee's Ride With the Devil and the movie 54 as one of Ryan Phillippe's dweeby friends who couldn't get into the club...

... but I don't recall him making much of an impression at the time. We all knew him after You Can Count on Me though. Laura Linney on the other hand we all knew from way back, since we all went and saw Congo one thousand times in the theater. Right? Right...? Ahem. No but seriously twas  her work on Tales of the City and then Primal Fear and then her show-stopping stuff in Truman Show in 1998 which I'm sorry even against YCCOM might remain my favorite Laura Linney performance -- love it so. "Meryl" Forever!

In summation... I should probably re-watch You Can Count on Me, I have just finally been convinced by stumbling upon this photo of Mark Ruffalo and Josh Lucas wrestling with one another in it:

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

Did any of you remember Ryan Phillippe's death scene in this movie before I just showed it to you? I had absolutely no recollection of this scene, and I've seen this movie several times. I actually went and looked at the cast of this movie's 1998 sequel -- which you might know as I Still Know What You Did Last Summer -- in order to make sure his character actually got killed, because who even remembers this lame scene? I remember his shower scene...

... far better than I remember his death scene. I know I'm not alone on that count, but I suppose that says as much about me slash us as it says about Ryan Phillippe's skills as an actor. (On that, uhh, note -- a real happy birthday to Ryan today!) But still, this is the Fate no one truly wants -- a totally forgettable death scene. At least Sarah Michelle Gellar acts the hell out of it. On that note, and to Phillippe's defense, I think most of the violence in this film is totally forgettable except all the stuff SMG's involved in -- she's way better in this movie then this movie deserved. Sigh. Now I miss SMG. 

Hit the jump for links to all of the Ways Not To Die...

Pics of the Day

It's been so long since we've heard anything about The Sound of Philadelphia -- the Philly Mafia movie from French writer-director Jérémie Guez (he wrote the very fine zombie-apocalypse movie The Night That Eats the World a couple of years back) that stars Matthias Schoenaerts and Joel Kinnaman -- that I'd somewhat forget it was happening. So I'm happy to be reminded it's not only happening, but imminent, with the film opening up an Insta account on the verge of its premiere at the Deauville Film Fest happening... well right about now, I think? Other hot pieces in the movie -- Ryan Phillippe, Maika Monroe, and Paul Schneider. See all my previous posts here -- hope this is something special, and we get it over here in the States sooner rather than not sooner.

I Am Link

.

--- Romantic Plots - Photog Autumn de Wilde is making a new movie version of Emma, the Jane Austen tome, which well even besides the perfectly fun Gwyneth Paltrow version will never get a better movie than Clueless made from it; I don't know why they try. Anyway I only bring this up because they have cast Anya Taylor-Joy in the lead which is very fine work, but even better they have cast Callum Turner, perennially underrated hot piece, as well as the great Josh O'Connor from God's Own Country and Rupert "Scudder" Graves to boot! It's a good damn cast they have.

.
--- Wicked Means - Colin Trevorrow gets a lot of shit for being a straight white dude who made a for-nothing indie and immediately graduated to blockbuster movies without proving himself, but we really should save some of that same shit for Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who went from The Kings of Summer straight to Kong: Skull Island, which is just as bad a movie as the Jurassic Worlds are, plus he also has the douchiest hipster beard. Anyway that aside I'm fairly interested in his maybe next movie, which might be an original monster movie set in Detroit and starring Michael B. Jordan. I'm always down for monster movies, my curse and a blessing.
.

--- Bad Vibes Ahoy - Mark your calendars with a great big red slash and make sure you've got a bottle of Pepto Bismal waiting for you at home that week, The Babadook director Jennifer Kent's next film, the already wildly controversial The Nightingale, has been set for release on August 2nd. We recently posted a clip from the film right here, which stars The Fall's Aisling Franciosi and Sam Claflin in a dark turn that will supposedly wipe all our bad Finnick memories right away.
.
--- The New Avenger - I constantly get the actor Macon Blair mixed up with his most frequent collaborator, director Jeremy Saulnier -- they made Blue Ruin and Green Room together -- and so when I read the news that Macon Blair is directing the Toxic Avenger reboot I thought the director of Green Room was directing the Toxic Avenger reboot and I was stopped in my tracks for a second. But all that is unfair to Blair, who did actually prove himself a director worth paying attention when he made a movie starring the goddess Melanie Lynskey. He knows what's up! Bring on the Toxie, then.
.

--- Cruel Bummer - I forgot to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Cruel Intentions earlier this month but you know what, I've commemorated the only moment in that movie that really matters so many times over the years that my work here is done. Still if you missed it EW did an oral history of the film speaking to all the folks involved and they got this choice bit of quote from Ryan Phillippe, owner of said "only moment in that movie that really matters," himself:

"I felt okay with [showing] my butt. Everybody has a butt, it’s really not that graphic. [Laughs] So many guys on Twitter are like, 'That’s the moment I knew I was gay.'"

.
--- Music Woman - When I reviewed Gloria Bell the other week I talked a lot about its soundtrack, which is a vital piece of what makes it work so well (as it is with all of Lelio's films) -- when I wrote all that I was hoping that one of our pal Chris Feil's "Soundtracking" pieces at The Film Experience would be forthcoming and I didn't have to wait long, click here to read Chris's typically gorgeous take.
.

--- Wolff's Pack - While I tend to focus on his Hereditary co-star Toni Collette more we should all be paying attention to what Alex Wolff is up to as well, seeing as how he was also top-tier in that movie -- well here's what's what: he's just lined up a thriller called The Line which has him starring opposite John Malkovich, Scott "Scoot!" McNairy, Jessica Barden (we lovvve Jessica Barden) and the adorkable Lewis Pullman. It is about "the wild excitement of being young and the dangers of living without fear of consequences," so they say.
.
--- And Finally it looks like Blumhouse is rebooting The Craft! Well "reboot" is a premature word to use - they might be giving us a sequel of sorts, set in the same world as the 1996 film, we don't know yet. (That link does have some plot details and uses the word "reboot" but... well we'll see.) Anyway even more important is that Blumhouse has actually hired a female director to direct the thing -- who knew there were female directors, right Jason Blum? Zoe Lister-Jones, mainly known as a TV actress (she was on Whitney and New Girl) is writing the thing and directing it. All I know is Fairuza better show or else...
.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Gosford Park (2001)

Lady Sylvia: Mr Weissman.
Morris Weissman: Yes?
Lady Sylvia: Tell us about the film you're going to make.
Morris Weissman: Oh, sure. It's called Charlie Chan
In London. It's a detective story.
Mabel Nesbitt: Set in London?
Morris Weissman: Well, not really. Most of it takes place
at a shooting party in a country house. Sort of like this one,
actually. Murder in the middle of the night, a lot of guests for
the weekend, everyone's a suspect. You know, that sort of thing.
Constance: How horrid. And who turns out to have done it?
Morris Weissman: Oh, I couldn't tell you that.
It would spoil it for you.
Constance: Oh, but none of us will see it.

I was thinking about Ivor Novello a few days ago and as always that thought process leads me to Jeremy Northam playing the homosexual movie star in Robert Altman's Gosford Park -- it has been far far too long since I've sat down and watched Altman's down-up masterpiece and so I was pleased as liquor punch to see that our beloved Arrow Video was putting out a beautiful brand new blu-ray this week stuffed to the stiff collar with brand new extras, from a new restoration of the film on down. Have you seen Gosford Park lately? I do wonder how it plays in a post-Downton world. Anyway if you'd like to see the full list of Special Features on the blu-ray hit the jump...

Good Morning, 54

.

Good morning and Happy 20 to the movie called 54 starring Ryan Phillippe - a movie which turned at least twelve people that I know gay as the hills. The film, when released on August 28th 1998, was mostly met with mehs, on all but one front anyway - in particular nobody could much dispute "Ryan Phillippe, Sex God." Those of us who'd been paying attention with I Know What You Did Last Summer and Cruel Intentions certainly knew it but 54 cemented his status as the Platonic Twink. The movie didn't really deserve success though, since they infamously butchered 99% of the gay content - a movie about Studio 54 as straight as the bridge-and-tunnels? No thanks, movie. That said I still haven't gotten around the watching the Director's Cut that's supposed to right some of these wrongs - should I? It's only ten bucks on Amazon...

The Moment I Fell For... James Marsden

.

The teen horror film Disturbing Behavior starring Jimmy and Katie Holmes (and a great little turn from Nick Stahl) was released 20 years ago today and I'm sure I saw it opening weekend in college because I saw all the horror films opening weekend in college right then. In fact they often held preview screenings for us privileged kids - I know I saw Scream 2 and I Know What You Did Last Summer that way so it's possible the same happened for DB. 

Anyway I'm trying to recall if I knew who Marsden was before this movie - he'd done a bunch of TV like The Nanny and Party of Five and Blossom, so it's possible I'd seen him one of those places. He had also done some modeling...

... that I very well might have been aware of, ahem. But I certainly knew who he was after this movie, and apparently so did Bryan Singer because just two years later Marsden got cast as Cyclops in the X-Men movies and we've been blessed with Jimmy ever since.

Any fans of Disturbing Behavior? I honestly haven't seen it since it came out so you'll have to tell me if it holds up - I remember thinking it was decent at the time, but clearly not enough to re-watch it dozens of times like some of its contemporaries, aka the Scream movies and the Ryan Phillippe shower scene in I Know What You Did Last Summer. Speaking of...

... while researching this post I read that Marsden apparently turned down Phillippe's role in 54, which came out this same summer (exactly a month later actually) and I wonder what that story is. It's easy to project some career-based homophobia onto that - Ryan had already played gay stuff at that point in his career but Marsden took a few more years; tell me if I'm wrong but I don't think he did anything gay-ish until 2004's The 24th Day with Scott Speedman?

James hasn't shied away since though, giving same-sex a spin in movies like The Heights and The D Train, so he's forgiven. And I like watching Ryan Phillippe in 54 anyway so that turned out okay. So next up for Jimmy, between Westworld seasons anyway...

... is the Sonic the Hedgehog movie (man I don't know, don't look at me), which funny enough he was just spotted on that set today - see more pictures over here. He is playing a police officer, it seems, and... not a Hedgehog. That's probably for the best.
.