Tag Archives: Jake Gyllenhaal

“Road House” Trailer, Image and Posters

Anthony Bagarozzi wrote the screenplay for Road House, an action movie directed by Doug Liman.

The film is a remake of the 1989 film starring the late Patrick Swayze.

An ex-UF middleweight fighter played by Jake Gyllenhall ends up in the Florida Keys working at a rowdy bar. He soon finds out things are not as they appear.

Daniella Melchior, Conor McGregor, Lukas Gage and Billy Magnussen also star in the film.

Films Liman directed:

Edge of Tomorrow

The Bourne Identity

The Bourne Supremacy

The Bourne Ultimatum

Swingers

American Made

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Chao Walking

Swingers

“The Covenant” Trailer, Featurettes, Clip, Images and Poster

Set in war-torn Afghanistan in 2018, Guy Richie directs The Covenant. The film follows U.S. Army Special Forces Sergeant John Kinley, played by Gyllenhaal. Kinley leads an elite unit tasked with finding Taliban munitions. “He has been deployed numerous times and has a tremendous amount of experience. He has relied on many different Afghan interpreters and has found himself in many different situations,” says Gyllenhaal. “His unit is constantly under threat and in very dangerous situations, and at the beginning of the movie, he seems to be striking out over and over. He’s going through a lot of red tape and is struggling to find any munition sites.”

Dar Salim (left) as Ahmed and Jake Gyllenhaal (right) as Sgt. John Kinley in THE COVENANT, directed by Guy Ritchie, a Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. Credit: Christopher Raphael / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures © 2023 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.

On a mission with a new interpreter, Ahmed, Dar Salim, after an I.E.D. kills his regular interpreter. Kinley’s unit is all but wiped out by Taliban fighters when they raid an abandoned mine to house explosives.

Only Kinley and Ahmed manage to escape the attack, the pair stranded in Taliban territory with dozens of armed men after them. Ahmed carried John, who had been shot and seriously wounded, to safety through the desert and over a mountain.

But that’s only half the battle.

The Taliban forced Ahmed and his family into hiding, putting a heavy price on his head as Kinley returned home to the U.S.

Feeling an overwhelming sense of obligation to get Ahmed the visas the U.S. government promised his family, Kinley finds himself mired in bureaucracy and red tape. With his wife’s blessing, he returns to Afghanistan to find Ahmed and his family and bring them back to the U.S.

Guy Ritchie also directed Sherlock Holmes and its sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, the live-action adaptation of Disney’s Aladdin, had always wanted to make a war film. “It’s probably my favorite genre of movies, but we couldn’t find a story that appealed for a long time,” he says.  

Ironically, while developing another war movie, Ritchie watched several documentaries about the conflict, and one about interpreters and what they go through struck a chord. “I’d heard various anecdotes about Afghanistan that all sounded, in equal measure, horrifying and inspiring,” says Ritchie. “That was the genesis of the idea that you could see humanity in this traumatized environment, and it still managed to express itself. And this was an amalgam of the different stories, documentaries, anecdotes that I was aware of. And, obviously, the story of one man’s selflessness for another was what I found inspiring about the premise.”

(L to R) Dar Salim as Ahmed, Jason Wong as Joshua “JJ Jung”, Jake Gyllenhaal as Sgt. John Kinley, Christian Ochoa as Eduardo “Chow Chow” Lopez, and Rhys Yates as Tom “Tom Cat” Hancock, a Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. Credit: Christopher Raphael / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures © 2023 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.

“He thought it was an important story to tell and thought he could tell it through his lens,” says producer John Friedberg, “so he came up with this idea.” Gyllenhaal’s character in  The Covenant is on his last tour of duty, trying to make a difference in Afghanistan but also desperate to get home to his wife and family in Santa Clarita, CA. “He represents the boots on the ground, the practical reality of the disparity between how we think things work at an administrative level and how they work at a practical level,” says Ritchie. “He is a good, old-fashioned classical, decent, brave soldier who’s loyal to his country and loyal to his men.” 

“What I loved about John Kinley is he’s a good man,” says Gyllenhaal. “Over the past number of years, I’ve tended to move towards characters people would define as ‘complex’ in how they walk the line between good and bad. I don’t know if I fully believe in that. I think we are all very complex, very fascinating human beings put in many different trying circumstances. To me, John Kinley is a character who, through those trials, pulls out morality and humanity, despite himself.”

“Ambulance” Astonishingly Speeds and Flips

Directed by Michael Bay, Ambulance takes place in Los Angeles within a single day. A husband and father, played by Abdul-Mateen II, tells his war buddy, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, he’s desperate because his wife has a severe illness that costs $231K. To solve the problem of getting enough money for her surgery, Jake’s character suggests they rob a bank.

The bank heist doesn’t go as planned, and they hijack an ambulance driven by a paramedic, played by Eiza Gonzalez, that’s transporting a police officer in critical condition.

Bay helms this movie as a remake of the Danish film of the same name directed by Laurits Munch-Petersen in 2005. The project passed several directors’ hands with the original script of having the two bank robbers brothers. The story changed when Mateen came on board, and the two brothers became fellow soldiers.

Garret Dillahunt, Keir O’Donnell, A Martinez and Moses Ingram also star in the movie.

Indie Wire helped with this information.

Colorful “Spirit Untamed” Horse Rides Again

Directed by Elaine Bogan and co-directed by Ennio Torresan, Spirit Untamed follows a headstrong girl longing for a place to belong. She discovers a kindred spirit when her life intersects with a wild horse as the sequel to the beloved story of Spirit from DreamWorks Animation. 

Lucky Prescott, voiced by Isabela Merced, never really knew her late mother, Milagro Navarro, voiced by Eiza González, a fearless horse-riding stunt performer from Miradero, a small town on the edge of the wide-open frontier. 

Like her mother, Lucky isn’t a fan of rules and restrictions, which has caused her Aunt Cora, voiced by Julianne Moore, no small amount of worry. Lucky has grown up in an East Coast city under Cora’s watchful eye, but Lucky presses her luck with one too many risky escapades. Cora picks up stakes and moves them back with Lucky’s father, Jim, voiced by Jake Gyllenhaal, in Miradero.

Lucky is decidedly unimpressed with the sleepy little town. She reconsiders when she meets Spirit, a wild Mustang who shares her independent streak and befriends two local horseback riders, Abigail Stone, voiced by Mckenna Grace, and Pru Granger, voiced by Marsai Martin. Pru’s father, the stable owner Al Granger, voiced by Andre Braugher, is the best friend of Lucky’s father. 

A heartless horse wrangler, voiced by Walton Goggins, and his team set a plan to capture Spirit and his herd and auction them off to a life of captivity and hard labor. Lucky enlists her new friends and bravely embarks on the adventure of a lifetime to rescue the horse who has given her freedom and a sense of purpose and has helped Lucky discover a connection to her mother’s Mexican legacy — a heritage she never expected. 

My daughter and I watched the original Spirit movie at least ten years ago, and it was a favorite that she watched repeatedly. We still have the DVD in our collection. 

“Spider-man: Far From Home” Trailer, Clips, Featurette, and Posters

Directed by Jon Watts, Peter Parker, played by Tom Holland, returns in yet another chapter, Spiderman: Far From Home.

Screenplay by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers; this time, Spiderman decides to join his best friends Ned, played by Jacob Batalon, MJ, played by Zendaya, and the rest of the gang on a European vacation.

However, Peter’s plan to leave superheroics behind for a few weeks is quickly scrapped when he begrudgingly agrees to help Nick Fury, played by Samuel L. Jackson, uncover the mystery of several elemental creature attacks, creating havoc across the continent.

Jon Favreau, who directed and had a minor role in the Iron Man movies, plays the love interest of Mary Parker, played by Marisa Tomei.

Another superhero arrives in the Disney and Marvel movies. Mysterio, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. You get to see him at the tail-end of the movie trailer. Don’t blink because you might miss him.

The three posters show different aspects of the movie and how it rolls out for the moviegoers. Spiderman is traveling with his classmates. Each poster represents a location in Europe. In the first one, we see Spiderman in Berlin.

The second poster shows him in London on the London Eye, also known as a giant Ferris wheel.

The next one is Spiderman in Venice, hanging out with the gondolas.

The following trailer offers spoilers for the recently released Avengers Endgame movie. With that, it is up to you to decide whether you want to watch this trailer.

The following clips show us what to expect when seeing the next Spiderman movie. Be careful if you have not seen the last Avengers movie because there are spoilers.

The Spiderman suits are a big deal in the movie. From this feature, it looks like he has two of them. I like the black one because he can do so much more wearing it. The red and black one is gorgeous.

“The Sisters Brothers” Trailers, Featurettes, Movie Clips and Posters

Directed by Jacque Audiard,  who won the Venice Film Festival Award for Best Director 2018 for The Sisters Brothers. Based on Patrick Dewitt’s novel of the same name, the story takes place in Oregon in 1851 and follows two brothers, played by John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix, Eli and Charlie Sisters.

The brothers are hired to kill a prospector who has stolen from their boss. The movie is a dark comedy with unique comedic elements. Audiard is best known for his Palme d’Or Winning Dheepan, which premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

Another poster arrives.  The images of both brothers is an awesome visual with “Brothers By Blood, Sisters By Name” at the top.

The sarcasm in the “Wanted” featurette is so thick and bitting. I wonder if the movie flows the same way.

The “Story” featurette tells about the movie and the relationship between the two brothers. The more I see of the movie the more I want to see it.

The “Meeting Mayfield” movie clip shows the talented acting as well as the skillful camera work with snappy dialogue.

Here is the final trailer, and I like the style. The trailer tells us the movie is a true western about two brothers on a journey of retribution and redemption.

Each poster is quite different from the others. I like the one with the skull as a dust trail. The first one is too simple with just bold lettering. Event the different colored lettering doesn’t help because the stark poster says nothing about the movie.

Stronger Trailer and Clips

Directed by David Gordon Green, Stronger is a true story following Jeff Bauman, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. Jeff is a 27-year-old working-class Boston man who was at the marathon to try and win back his ex-girlfriend Erin, played by Tatiana Maslany.

Waiting for her at the finish line when the blast occurs, he loses both his legs in the attack. After regaining consciousness in the hospital, Jeff is able to help law enforcement identify one of the bombers, but his own battle has just begun.

Watching the trailer, the story unfolds. We see Jeff tackling physical and emotional rehabilitation with Erin and his family. The trailer is filled with raw emotion.  Stronger also stars Miranda Richardson and Clancy Brown.

David Gordon Green’s signature movie is Pineapple Express. Quite different from this true story based on 2013 Boston Marathon tragedy.

“Life” Trailers, Super Bowl Ad, and Clips

Life tells the story of the International Space Station’s six-member crew is at the groundbreaking of one of the most important discoveries in human history. They discover the first evidence of extraterrestrial life on Mars. As the crew conducts research, their methods end up having unplanned consequences, and the life form proves more intelligent than anyone ever expected.

Directed by Swedish filmmaker Daniel Espinosa and written by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, the movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, Hiroyuki Sanada, Ariyon Bakare, and Olga Dihovichnaya.

This clip is intense. It will get your blood boiling.

Here is the Super Bowl Ad.

Here are some more trailers.