Directed by Ridley Scott, The Last Duel follows a true story about France’s last sanctioned trial by combat. The story originates from Eric Jager’s book of the same title.
In 1386, Jean de Carrouges, a knight, played by Matt Damon, and Jacques Le Gris, a squire, played by Adam Driver came to blows to the death after Marguerite, the knight’s wife, played by Jodie Comer, accuses Le Gris of raping her, which he denies.
Watch the trailer, and you’ll see Affleck playing Count Pierre d’Alencon, donning blond hair.
If Marguerite’s husband dies, she ends up burning at stake for perjury. The winner of the duel ends up as divine providence.
According to the New York Times article, the movie forms into three chapters based on a video interview with the three writers of the movie version, Damon, Affleck and Nicole Holofcener: Carrouges story, Le Gris story and Marguerite story. The men, according to Damon, took fastidious notes while women did not because they had no public respect nor held any kind of power. Holofcener wrote Marguerite’s perspective, made of whole cloth, the book lacked the wife’s perspective.
Written and directed by Justin Chon, who also stars in Blue Bayou, it is a moving and timely story of a uniquely American family fighting for their future. New Orleans tattoo artist Antonio LeBlanc, played by Justin Chon, is a devoted family man looking to build a better life for pregnant wife Kathy, played by Alicia Vikander, and precocious step-daughter Jessie, played by Sydney Kowalske.
(L to R) Actor Alicia Vikander, actor Sydney Kowalske and actor/writer/director Justin Chon on the set of BLUE BAYOU, a Focus Features release. Credit: Focus Features
But for an ex-con with a checkered past, opportunity can be hard to come by, meaning money is always tight, especially with a new baby on the way. Complicating matters is Kathy’s ex Ace, played by Mark O’Brien, a Louisiana cop. He wants to play a more prominent role in Jessie’s life — despite having abandoned the girl and her mother years earlier.
When a family spat unexpectedly leads to a grocery store confrontation with Ace and his racist partner, Denny, played by Emory Cohen, Antonio is arrested and transferred into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Despite being in America since the age of three, the Korean-American adoptee — married to an American citizen — faces deportation from the only country he’s ever known as home. Trapped in a waking nightmare, Antonio and Kathy seek legal assistance to help fight the deportation order, only to discover that they have precious little hope of keeping their family together.
With Antonio facing an uncertain future, he finds an unlikely ally and source of support in a Vietnamese-American woman named Parker, played by Linh-Dan Pham, who also is at a place where she is struggling to come to terms with a difficult truth. Determined to remain near his loved ones, an increasingly desperate Antonio forces himself to confront his past, going to ever more extraordinary lengths to stay on American soil. But the painful secrets that come to light threaten to upend his relationships with Kathy and Jessie — even as Denny resolves to seal Antonio’s fate.
As Blue Bayou took shape, the character at the heart of the emotional tale became ever more apparent to Chon, as did the importance of the film’s Louisiana setting. “One thing that was very important to me as an Asian-American is how we’re portrayed in the media,” Chon says. “A big thing for me was the name, Antonio — seeing an Asian-American with that name was very peculiar. I placed it in the South because I’ve never seen Asians with Southern accents treated as just very naturally a fact of life.”
“I placed it in New Orleans specifically because there’s a huge enclave of Vietnamese people there, and one of my goals with this film was to have two adjacent Asian ethnicities in one film. This Korean adoptee Antonio learns what his culture could be like through this friendship with a Vietnamese woman. It’s his introduction into Asian culture. They’re countries that share a lot of similar war trauma.”
Although Chon had written, directed and starred in his previous films, he initially planned to cast an actor to play the pivotal role of Antonio. When it came time to cast the part, he found that the character was simply too close to his heart to be portrayed by anyone else. “The story was so important to me that I really wanted to be present to focus on the story and the filmmaking,” he says. “But I just got to a point where I’d lived with the story for so long and these people were so real to me that I started to get very nervous. I felt like if anyone was going to mess it up, I’d be the one to mess it up. I didn’t want to be in a position where if somebody didn’t quite give it the energy that I thought was necessary that I would be bummed out, you know?”
Written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, he says, “Belfast is the most personal film I have ever made. About a place and a people I love.”
(L to R) Caitriona Balfe as “Ma”, Jamie Dornan as “Pa”, Judi Dench as “Granny”, Jude Hill as “Buddy”, and Lewis McAskie as “Will” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
Branagh uses a humorous, tender and intense story from the heart of one boy’s childhood during the tumult of the late 1960s in his city’s birth. The movie is straight from his experience as a nine-year-old boy who charts a path towards adulthood through the world that has suddenly turned upside. The stable and loving community and everything he thought he understood about life changes forever, but joy, laughter, music and the formative magic of the movies remain.
Jude Hill (left) stars as “Buddy” and Jamie Dornan (right) stars as “Pa” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
Behind the camera, Branagh brings his regular collaborators as we arrive in the summer of 1969. We follow nine-year-old Buddy, played by Jude Hill. Buddy knows who he is and where he belongs. Part of the working class of North Belfast, he’s happy, loved and safe. His world is a fast and funny street life lived mainly in the heart of a community that laughs together and sticks together.
(L to R) Judi Dench as “Granny”, Jude Hill as “Buddy” and Ciarán Hinds as “Pop” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
The extended family lives on the same street, and it’s impossible to get lost because everyone in Belfast knows everyone else, or so it seems, foreboding arrives. Every spare minute, in the darkness of movie theatres and front of the television, American films and American TV transport and intoxicate Buddy’s inner life and his dreams.
Caitriona Balfe (left) stars as “Ma” and Jamie Dornan (right) stars as “Pa” in director Sir Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
Yet, August turns Buddy’s childhood dreams into a nightmare. Festering social discontent suddenly explodes in Buddy’s street and escalates fast. First, it’s a masked attack, then evolves into a riot and eventually a city-wide conflict, with religion fanning the flames further asunder. Catholics vs. Protestants, loving neighbors just a heartbeat ago, set on to be deadly foes now.
Buddy must make sense of the chaos and hysteria that prevails. The new physical lockdown of what used to be an endless landscape. People as heroes and villains, once only glimpsed on the cinema screen but now threatening to upturn everything he knows and loves as an epic struggle plays out in his backyard.
Caitriona Balfe stars as “Ma” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
His Ma, played by Caitriona Balfe, struggles to cope while his Pa, played by Jamie Dornan, works away in England, trying to make enough money to support the family. Vigilante law rules, innocent lives are threatened. Buddy knows what to expect from his heroes on the silver screen, but in real life? Can his father be the hero he needs? Can his mother sacrifice her past to protect her family’s future? How can his beloved grandparents, played by Judi Dench and Ciaran Hinds, be safe? And how can he love the girl of his dreams?
(L to R) Jamie Dornan as “Pa”, Ciarán Hinds as “Pop”, Jude Hill as “Buddy”, and Judi Dench as “Granny” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
The answers roll out in this interesting story of a funny, poignant and heartbreaking journey through riots, violence, the joy and despair of family relationships and the agony of first love, all accompanied by dancing, music and laughter that only the Irish can muster when the world turns upside down.
Jamie Dornan (left) stars as “Pa” and Caitriona Balfe (right) stars as “Ma” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
“Belfast is a city of stories,” says Branagh, “and in the late 1960s, it went through an incredibly tumultuous period of its history, very dramatic, sometimes violent, that my family and I were caught up in. It’s taken me fifty years to find the right way to write about it, to find the tone I wanted. It can take a very long time to understand just how simple things can be, and finding that perspective years on provides a great focus. The story of my childhood, which inspired the film, has become a story of the point in everyone’s life when the child crosses over into adulthood, where innocence is lost. That point of crossover in Belfast in 1969 was accelerated by the tumult happening around us all. At the beginning of the film, we experience a world in transition from a kind of idyll – neighborliness, sunshine and community – which is turned upside down by the arrival of a mob who pass through like a swarm of bees and lay waste to this peace. When they’ve gone, the street is literally ripped up by worried people who now feel they have to barricade themselves against another attack, and that is exactly how I remember it. I remember life turning on its head in one afternoon, almost in slow-motion, not understanding the sound I was hearing, and then turning around and looking at the mob at the bottom of the street, and life was never, ever, ever the same again. I felt that there was something dramatic and universal in that event because people might recognize a crossover point in their own lives, albeit not always as heightened by external events.”
Director Kenneth Branagh (left) and actor Jude Hill (right) on the set of BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
Through the eyes of Buddy, the story unfolds, similar to Hope and Glory and Empire of the Sun. Branagh says, “We found a boy (Hill) whose talent was ready to blossom but who was still enjoying himself as an ordinary kid. Playing football was as important to him as making the film, and that’s what we wanted. At the same time, he was always very serious about the work, very prepared and very open.”
“Caitriona Balfe, who plays Ma, is from Ireland but grew up near the border and has an understanding of the vernacular and of the Irish extended family life,” he says. “Jamie Dornan, who plays Pa, is a real Belfast boy from just outside Belfast. Ciarán Hinds, who plays Buddy’s grandfather, Pop, was brought up about a mile from where I lived in Belfast.
Judi Dench has Irish blood – her mother was from Dublin – and is anyway an acting thoroughbred whose research is meticulous and who can do anything. And this group of actors also had a sense of front-footed energy that I liked, an outgoing quality that meant they became a real family very quickly.”
The film set in Belfast also provided excellent Northern Irish actors like Colin Morgan, Turlough Convery and Conor McNeill.
Directed by the master of planetary disaster, Roland Emmerich brings us Moonfall. The perfect escapism we need today. A mysterious force knocks the Earth’s Moon from its orbit around and sends it hurtling on a collision course with us as we know it.
The main characters in the movie tell us that the world is on the brink of destruction, with mere weeks of impact.
Patrick Wilson portrays astronaut “Brian Harper” surrounded by a mysterious force in the sci-fi epic MOONFALL.
Halle Berry portrays former astronaut and NASA Deputy Director “Jacinda Fowler” conducting an emergency shuttle launch to save the world in the sci-fi epic MOONFALL.
Along comes NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler, played by Halle Berry. She’s convinced that she has the key to saving us all. Still, only one astronaut from her past, Brian Harper, played by Patrick Wilson, and a conspiracy theorist, K.C. Houseman, played by John Bradley, believe her.
John Bradley portrays Moon conspiracy theorist “K.C. Houseman” peering out the window of the Endeavour Space Shuttle in the sci-fi epic MOONFALL.
The cast impressed me, including Michael Peña, Charlie Plummer, Kelly Yu, Eme Ikwuakor, Carolina Bartczak and Donald Sutherland.
These unlikely heroes will mount an impossible last-ditch mission into space, leaving behind everyone they love, only to discover that our Moon is not what we think it is.
Directed by Sean Penn, Flag Day follows Jennifer Vogel, played by Dylan Penn, who comes to terms with her larger-than-life father. As a child, Jennifer marveled at his magnetizing energy and ability to make life feel like a grand adventure.
Yes. Dylan is Sean’s real-life daughter, which makes the production intriguing. She is a celebrity model whose international talent is huge.
Jennifer’s father taught her much about love and joy, but he also was the most notorious counterfeiter in US history. Based on a true story, Flag Day is an intimate family portrait of a young woman who struggles to rise above the wreckage of her past. At the same time, she reconciles the inescapable bond between a daughter and her father.
At the heart of the movie is a love story between a father and daughter. Sean Penn describes it, “a complicated one.” It is a story of one woman’s pursuit to find truth in her life after growing up in the shadow of her father’s criminality. We see the bonds of family ebb and flow with each truthful revelation and each destructive lie. This father-daughter story serves as a metaphor for a country that often cannot live up to its highest ideals.
A country that doesn’t follow through on its promises. Stoic imagery of flags waving and fireworks give way to darkened windows, disguises and eventually handcuffs and jail cells. Ultimately, it is a story of perseverance, of truth, and learning who you are in the shadow of someone else. It is a story of uncovering memories and examining those memories from a raw and vulnerable place.
The movie includes an impressive cast Josh Brolin, Norbert Leo Butz, Dale Dickey, Eddie Marsan, Bailey Noble, Hopper Jack Penn and Katheryn Winnick.
Written and directed by Paul Schrader, The Card Counter follows William Tell, played by Oscar Isaac. He’s a gambler and former serviceman who sets out to reform a young man seeking revenge on a mutual enemy from their past.
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Oscar Isaac stars as William Tell and Tiffany Haddish as La Linda in THE CARD COUNTER, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features
Tell just wants to play cards, and his spartan existence on the casino trail shatters when he is Cirk, played by Tye Sheridan, approaches him. Cirk is a vulnerable and angry young man seeking help to execute his plan for revenge on a military colonel.
05856_FP_CARDCOUNTER Oscar Isaac stars as William Tell in THE CARD COUNTER, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features
Tell sees a chance at redemption through his relationship with Cirk. He tries to gain backing from mysterious gambling financier La Linda, played by Tiffany Haddish.
“La Linda’s game is like pimping without the sex; she has a lot of personality and her job is to make money for her investors,” says Haddish. “I felt as a comedian — since my job is to tickle people’s souls and convince them to go on a journey with me as I tell them a story — that I could bring the necessary charisma and personality to get audiences aboard for this ride.”
“La Linda is vibrant, she has vitality, and she has a life of purpose. William sees all this and finds himself drawn to this strange little trio, including Cirk,” says Isaac. “They become a lifeline or surrogate family for him.”
Tell takes Cirk with him on the road, going from casino to casino until the unlikely trio set their sights on winning the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. But keeping Cirk on the straight-and-narrow proves impossible, dragging Tell back into the darkness of his past.
“My aim is to create a crack in the viewer’s skull, opening up a rift between what they desire and expect of my characters and what they feel after spending time with them,” says Schrader. “How they make that adjustment is up to them, but to get the viewer engaged in this kind of conflict is what every artist seeks. It’s not so important what my viewers think, but that they do think.”
Directed by veteran Soprano’s director, Alan Taylor, The Many Saints of Newark is not about saints. The meaning centers on Dickie Moltisanti, Christopher Moltisanti’s father. In English, Molti Santi translates as “many saints,” according to IMDB trivia.
The trailer pretty much says it all. Rumors it’s a look at the formative years of New Jersey gangster Tony Soprano. Written by Lawrence Konner and David Chase, Chase created the storyline and characters for the famous series.
Also, according to IMDB, Michael Gandolfini will play a young Tony Soprano. His late father, James Gandolfini, played the original Tony Soprano. Another tidbit from the same source, Ray Liotta appears in the movie. He was the first actor approached to play Tony Soprano before they cast James Gandolfini for the popular series that change how we view cable TV.
Co-written and co-directed by Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein, How It Ends follows freewheeling Liza, played by Zoe Lister-Jones. She scores an invitation to one last wild party before the world ends.
The catch is she takes her younger self, played by Cailee Spaeny, with her. This is a feel-good apocalyptic comedy, and making it to the party won’t be easy after her car gets stolen, and the clock is ticking on her plan to tie up loose ends with friends and family. Liza embarks on a hilarious journey across Los Angeles, running into an eclectic cast of characters.
The sizeable stellar cast includes Whitney Cummings, Tawny Newsome, Finn Wolfard, Nick Kroll, Logan Marshall Green, Bobby Lee, Fred Armisen, Glenn Howerton, Bradley Whitford, Ayo Edebiri, Sharon Van Etten, Olivia Wilde, Paul W. Downs, Raymond Cham Jr., Lamorne Morris, Angelique Cabral, Rob Huebel, Paul Scheer, Helen Hunt, Colin Hanks, Charlie Day, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Pauly Shore.
Written and directed by Jonathan Hensleigh, The Ice Road is intense as you watch the film clips. The Netflix trailer is available on the streaming channel. Still, these two clips are nerve-wracking as they attempt their rescue mission.
When a remote diamond mine collapses in the far northern regions of Canada, an ice driver, played by Liam Neeson, orchestrates a rescue mission. The catch is they have to drive their 18-wheelers over a frozen ocean to save the miner’s lives. The waters were thawing, and they confronted threats they didn’t see coming.
Also starring are Marcus Thomas, Laurence Fishburne, Benjamin Walker, and Amber Midthunder.
Directed by Michael Showalter, The Eyes of Tammy Faye takes an intimate look at the extraordinary rise, fall and redemption of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, played by Jessica Chastain.
In the 1970s and 80s, Tammy Faye and her husband, Jim Bakker, played by Andrew Garfield, rose from humble beginnings to create the world’s largest religious broadcasting network and theme park. The public revered their message of love, acceptance and prosperity.
Tammy Faye was legendary for her indelible eyelashes, her idiosyncratic singing, and her eagerness to embrace people from all walks of life. However, it wasn’t long before financial improprieties, scheming rivals, and scandal toppled their carefully constructed empire.
With these two powerhouse actors, we are going to see some fine acting, but we already know the storyline.
Jessica Chastain does meticulous preparation and research when developing characters, and becoming Tammy Faye was no different. She studied Tammy Faye Bakker for seven years, memorizing all of her mannerisms and vocal inflections from the hours of tape she watched.
Impressed, Michael Showalter says, “Her bar is very high, her level of dedication, perfectionism and preparedness. The level of the performance, the depths that she’s willing to go to. It’s amazing to work with an actor like that because they give so much.”
Building a character based on a well-known public figure is always a challenge, but Chastain’s biggest hurdle was overcoming how other people perceived Tammy Faye. “I spent years looking at footage of her and never once saw mascara running down her face,” said Chastain. “Tammy Faye was nothing like the caricature the media fed off of. She was the ordained minister Jim wasn’t. She preached acceptance and compassion and meant it, and that’s what we wanted people to see in this film. When everyone turned their backs on people with HIV and AIDS, she invited a high-profile gay pastor who had AIDS to be on her show. She also hosted Praise The Lord network shows all day long, wrote four books and released twenty-four albums. She never got paid for any of it. She gave her money back to the church.”
Chastain had been in close touch with Tammy Faye’s children before and during production. Tammy Faye’s daughter, Tammy Sue, and her two children traveled to set for the pivotal interview scene with HIV/AIDS activist Steve Pieters, played by actor Randy Havens, a gay minister who candidly spoke with Tammy about his illness, coming out and losing his partner. By the end of the shoot, family members were in tears, stunned and moved by the emotion the scene evoked. Bailey and Barbato also recognized the significance of her contribution to the LGBTQIA community, saying, “Homosexuality has often been demonized by the Christian community. At a time when people shrank from HIV and AIDS, Tammy was having none of it. She didn’t believe in labeling people. She understood the power of the camera to look into the eyes of people far and wide and share the truth.”
Playing a singer was another test for Chastain, whose previous musical experience only included college experience. Drawing inspiration from Tammy Faye, she dove right into an area outside of her comfort zone. “She was never embarrassed,” the actress added. “People were drawn to her because she was unique. She used her platform to advocate for a celebration of our differences and knowing that made it easier for me to perform.” It inspired Andrew Garfield in his role as Jim as well. “Tammy is so rooted into Jessica’s heart, and that’s an amazing place to come from. You follow her into the fray because of that; because she’s so passionate and devoted.”
“I won’t go forward looking in the rearview mirror of my life.” – Tammy Faye Bakker
Chastain and Garfield connected before shooting and began sending each other articles and videos about the Bakkers, but their commitment to building the characters’ relationship didn’t stop there. “Once we got to Charlotte, North Carolina, we would go to church every Sunday at Heritage USA,” Chastain recalled. “It became a weekly thing. We saw people that we recognized from watching the documentaries who had worked with Jim and Tammy. They were generous in giving us their insight. It was an incredible and inspiring way to start the work week.”
Being from the UK, Garfield wasn’t initially familiar with Bakker’s story, so he had a fresh perspective on the couple. “I knew that Tammy Faye was an icon in the LGBTQ community, but I didn’t know anything else,” said Garfield. “It’s a very American story, even the evangelical movement is a very American movement.”
Spirituality had always captivated Garfield and how ego and money can bastardize nearly every spiritual movement. Jim initially met Tammy Faye at North Central Bible College after leaving behind a “sinful” life as a rock’n’roll-loving DJ and devoted himself to serving Christ. Later on, when he and Tammy Faye founded Praise The Lord (PTL), the world’s largest religious broadcasting network, their success and wealth twisted Jim’s perception of his own faith. While researching Jim’s decline, it struck Garfield how many preachers equated God’s love with material wealth instead of redemption in the afterlife.
“Jim’s actually a very complicated person,” says Garfield. “I found it easy to fall in love with him. What he and Tammy did was really radical. They created a wild alternative to other Christian broadcasting of the time. They had a longing to heal people. Instead of waiting for joy in heaven, they advocated for happiness in the here and now. His downfall was that he lost sight of all of that, and I found his fallibility fascinating.”
Showalter also recognized the importance of portraying Jim Bakker in a more nuanced way. “Andrew really found humanity to Jim Bakker and… really forced us all to see Jim, not just as a two-dimensional character… we could have gone down that path, and I’m so glad we didn’t. Andrew has created this incredibly complicated, deeply flawed but also compelling character in Jim.”
