by Hunter Bush
Welcome, welcome, one and all to another installment of Everything Old Is New Again, the column where I talk about upcoming movies that are one of the following: Remakes - movies based on a previous movie; Adaptations - based on some other pre-existing work; or Long-Gap Sequels - a direct continuation from an earlier film, but after an unusual length of time (these are also called Legacy Sequels or sometimes Requels since they're usually intended to gently reboot a franchise without erasing the previous entries).
That all make sense? Good. Cuz that's all you get. I'm trying a slightly different approach to this column, with very little chit-chat up top so we can get right to the trailers I watched and what my overall impression of them is. Then, at the end, I write a little bit more in-depth about this latest crop and etc. So let's get to it, shall we?
NOTE: This is the article as it ran on Moviejawn. Since that time, several of these flicks have been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing quarantines. Okay, on to the article!
MARCH 2020
6th:
THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY - "You're not really how I imagined an art critic would look," Bernice (Elizabeth Debicki) says to James (Claes Bang) in the opening of this trailer. Clearly what she means is "attractive" and, just as clearly, she has more on her mind than might first appear. James is then invited to the estate of renowned art dealer Joseph Cassidy (Mick Jagger), who, it turns out, also has more in mind than just discussing art. But, while Bernice pretty clearly wants to literally screw James, it's not so obvious who exactly Cassidy is metaphorically screwing. He points James in the direction of reclusive artist Jerome Debney (Donald Southerland) with the understanding that, in exchange for this unrestricted access, James is to secure him one of Debney's paintings - presumably the titular Burnt Orange Heresy which has to either be one of Debney's paintings or the title of his unreleased folk-jazz-metal fusion album. Thing is, there's definitely more going on than we (and presumably James) are aware of as, in the closing moments of the trailer, Cassidy tells him "(This is) about redemption, embezzlement, forgery...". This flick, based on the book by Charles Willeford, looks pretty good and gives me kind of Talented Mr. Ripley vibes (?) in that it's about people in a supposed "higher" social strata being just as low-class as those of us who don't hobnob around the art world.
FIRST COW - From the people who brought you 1996's First Kid and 2018's First Man comes the final piece of the trilogy, Kelly Reichardt's First Cow. ...No, that's not true. None of that's true. Really, it's based on the novel by Jonathan Raymond - who also wrote the screenplay - about a cook (John Magaro) from the East Coast who travels west, ending up in a settlement with fur trappers, Chinese immigrants and the titular first cow in the region. Partnering up with one man in particular (Orion Lee) who I guess is the cow's owner (?), they start a business utilizing the cow's milk in foods for the rest of the settlers. The trailer footage is beautifully shot and there's a great bit of dialogue in there somewhere: "History isn't here yet" which gives me that nice, warm, "American Dream" feeling (back when the phrase had meaning) of people setting out to find their fortunes in an unknown land.
ESCAPE FROM PRETORIA - Based on a true story, Daniel Radcliffe & Daniel Webber star as prisoners being kept in, what I can only guess is, the titular Pretoria. Not a lot of time is spent on what they're imprisoned for (there looks to be some civil unrest, so presumably they're political rabble rousers?) and there's only the briefest glimpse of a photo of a girlfriend/wife waiting for whichever one of them, as most of the footage showcases their truly wild escape plans. These involve attempting to carve a key out of scrap wood, for a lock they have little to no access to and at one point they're trying to fit the key in the lock using some sort of pulley-system! It's bonkers and I am here for it! I love a good building/making montage (see: Ernest Goes to Camp, Monster Squad and like half the episodes of the A-Team TV show) and, while I'm not 100% sure we'll get that here, I will happily settle for something similar if a little bit more protracted.
SPENSER CONFIDENTIAL - Director Peter Berg once again teams with his apparent muse Mark Wahlberg for this adaptation of the novel by Ace Atkins & Robert B. Parker. Seriously, Berg & Wahlberg have done a half dozen movies together since 2013! That's really something. This time around, Wahlberg is the titular Spenser who is released after a 5-year stint in prison only to find that he's gotta pal around with some stranger named Hawk (Winston Duke). Oh, and also apparently everyone wants to kill him, as he is attacked with a machete while catching up with a friend at the counter of a restaurant. Turns out Spenser used to be a cop who was trying to take down some corrupt cops who were involved with a drug cartel and some also corrupt politicians before being framed and sent to the big house. Now he's gonna, I guess, clear his name in the most Wahl/bergian ways possible. To be honest, this looks pretty fun in a Big Dumb Action Movie way and Winston Duke can do no wrong (he has the best line in the trailer: "Hawk is a guy with a shotgun. Spenser does your taxes." which only succeeds as well as it does because of his delivery) but this still doesn't demand you rush to a theater to see it. Luckily, you don't have to: Spenser Confidential will be coming to you via Netflix.
13th:
BLOODSHOT - Based on a comic book I have never had any real interest in, this stars Vin Diesel as the title character who - if I recall correctly - was a soldier who had died and was resurrected by some nefarious corporation for the usual unkillable-soldiers-are-cheaper-than-killable-ones reasoning (don't quote me on that) and was a huge chalk-white dude with a big red spot on his chest the size of a personal pan pizza. He was also functionally immortal thanks to nano-whatsits in his blood and had memory issues. This movie has retained most of that stuff, paleness aside. Once the resurrected Vinbot gets clued into what's going on, he seems hell bent for leather to get revenge on the man he vaguely remembers killing his girlfriend/wife (and maybe also him, I was unclear). The twist, however, which is just as clearly stated in the trailer, is that the nefarious corporation is manipulating his memories to get him to wipe out whomever they want. For instance, if they were involved in the Spenser Confidential conspiracy, they could digitally put Marky Mark's head on the gunman's body in Vinbot's memories and Bob's-your-uncle, Vinbot would wipe that skunkofabitch off the Earth in a hail of gunfire! The trailer shows Vinbot beginning to realize this fact, so presumably he'll get his revenge. But the question still stands: Why reveal *so much* of the plot in your trailer? Maybe there's more going on than it initially seems? I guess we'll see.
THE HUNT - This is one of those times, dear reader, when I break my own rules for what exactly fits in this column, or at least bend them. See, The Hunt isn't based on anything in particular (it has some thematic similarities to other works but that's neither here nor there) but in a weird way The Hunt is ...it's own Legacy Sequel? How does that work, you may ask. Well: last year, for seriously NO REASON, certain corners of the internet got up-in-arms about The Hunt, saying that it was ...I dunno, unfairly political? Leaned too far to one side of the aisle or the other? It was The Internet, so y'know: Same Nonsense, Different Day. Anyway, someone at Universal decided to shelve it indefinitely. Now, not even 6 months later, it's being released to like NO negative backlash and with a great poster! What was the supposed controversy? I think it was because the plot is about the rich hunting people for sport. Yup. The Most Dangerous Game (1932), Hard Target (1993), Surviving the Game (1994) and even The Pest (1997) among countless other works of fiction have all tackled this subject matter and yet I guess THIS time was the straw that broke the camel's back. Really, it was the presumption that the hunters would be depicted as 1%-ers while the hunted would be poor. But like, of course they are. Back to the trailer: nothing in this seemed especially out there, conceptually. You have a lot of rich people in the kinds of rooms rich people seem to congregate in and a bunch of presumably less-rich people out amongst the nature getting hunted, but I didn't catch anything that alluded to any especially different locations or notable action sequences (no Ferris wheels, no speed boats, etc). I actually reviewed this flick for Moviejawn since this column dropped, so check that out here!
THE INFORMER - I covered this way back in the July / August 2019 EOINA, so you can read all about it there (originally it was supposed to drop on August 16th).
LOST GIRLS - Another direct-to-Netflix offering, this adaptation turducken (based on a book inspired by true events) follows Amy Ryan as the mother of a missing sex worker who takes action when the police won't, leading to the discovery of the bodies of more missing sex workers. The angle here seems to be the concept of "the Less Dead"; those unfortunate souls whose disappearances don't raise as many alarms as others - sex workers, runaways, those in low-income or POC communities, etc - as well as how the media spins things (at one point Amy Ryan's Mari has a line about how they're describing the victims as "prostitutes" and not "mothers" or "daughters" or etc.) I hope this does justice to those concepts.
I STILL BELIEVE - The trailer tells me this is based on an "inspiring true story" of Christian musician Jeremy Camp. Camp (played by K.J. Apa; Archie from Riverdale!) marries his sweetheart Melissa (Britt Robertson) while she is battling what turns out to be ovarian cancer. I'm guessing she dies because the logline for this flick describes his story as being about "love and loss" and I'm further guessing the song playing in the trailer is called "I Still Believe" AND was written about her death and his asking that old question Why does Gawd let bad things happen to good people? and... well that's about it. I've been listening to the very good Boys Bible Study podcast recently because Christian films are not something I'm super familiar with by and large, and I can't wait to hear what they have to say (if they ever cover this).
15th:
WESTWORLD: SEASON 3 - HBO's series based on Michael Crichton's 1973 film has always had solid trailers (all of their prestige series do) but S.3's are W-I-L-D. First, they firmly establish an alternate timeline which includes assorted major events in their history/our possible future, with the largest activity spike being in 2058 (which I'm guessing will be when S.3 takes place). A decent amount of the footage seems to take place outside of the buildings that house the assorted resort Worlds and I get some very Blade Runner-ish vibes from some of it - I mean, it looks like we're hunting robots that look like humans in a futuristic Los Angeles, so I'm not exactly stretching to make the connection or anything. Most interesting to me are the amount of more obvious robots we see (one that's humanoid, and looks to have an array of camera-eyes ringing its head is being shot down by human police; another, more massive, military-looking piece of robotic hardware has "RIOT CONTROL" stenciled down its flank). We also see what I would have to guess is a new simulation: a WWII themed World. I love world building, so I'm extremely excited to see what's to be seen when this returns to screens.
17th:
I AM PATRICK - This retelling of the origins of St. Patrick as presented by Fathom Events has a *LOT* of text in its trailer. "Led by God", "A miraculous escape" and "Only to be called back" reads one barrage while later "Witness the journey" and "From man to saint" fade in and out and then finally "Slave", "Bishop" and "Rebel". For what it's worth, the trailer is also terribly edited, which isn't necessarily indicative of the films itself though it's definitely not a great sign.
18th:
LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE - This 8 episode miniseries, based on Celeste Ng's novel, comes to Hulu starring Kerry Washington as a single mom who needs a place for her and her daughter to stay and Reese Witherspoon as the matriarch of a family who invites them into her home. The trailer implies that the story will end with the Witherspoon household going up in flames and there's dialogue about Washington having "secrets" but I feel like this is all a misdirect intended to make us think Washington or her daughter will burn the house down. My guess is that she has a dangerous and scary ex who she's dodging and maybe they're the one who starts the fire. Either way, this seems like the kind of overly dramatic yet super fun pseudo-Lifetime Channel flick that is always entertaining.
20th:
SELF MADE: INSPIRED BY THE LIFE OF MADAM C.J. WALKER - Ma herself, Octavia Spencer stars in this direct-to-Netflix biopic of the first female African American hair care entrepreneur millionaire. To be honest with you, this trailer was throwing a LOT of raw info at its viewers in a relatively short span of time, but this looks to cover a full rags-to-riches story in just four episodes. It helps to have an excellent cast including Carmen Ejogo, Garrett Morris, Tiffany Haddish and Blair Underwood among others!
THE LETTER FOR THE KING - Another Netflix direct miniseries, this time based on a 1962 Dutch story (De brief voor de Koning). Honestly, this is an awful trailer. It starts with a paragraph of exposition simultaneously delivered in voiceover over top of footage of medieval battle: "For thousands of years the northern kingdoms of Unauwen and Dagonaut have waged war on the land to the south. The land known only as Eviellan. For thousands of years, Eviellan has resisted. Until now." before switching solely to VO and continuing on (but I didn't type that all up because Who Could Care) which talks about how they're looking for a hero before ending with "But of that hero there is no sign" and then a kid sits up in bed. That's it. Is this a comedy? Is that kid era appropriate or is he perhaps in the modern day? Who could say? Again, who could care? There's just so much you have to know before you even get into the plot? This feels like homework. That being said, the medieval stuff looked pretty solid, so if that's your jam maybe this will be too.
27th:
MULAN - Here, finally, is an instance of Disney remaking one of their animated films but the big difference here is: remaking it actually makes sense. First, they're doing it differently (no songs apparently, an all-Asian cast and no Eddie Murphy-voiced dragon companion) and secondly ...no, that's it: they're making well-conceived, meaningful changes! What a novel idea. Also, I should note that while there appears to be no dragon, as mentioned, there may be instances of a CGI phoenix.
APRIL 2020
3rd:
NEW MUTANTS - Based on the comic book series begun in 1982 (itself a spin off of the X-Men comics), this could actually be good? I dunno. This has been getting shuffled and reshuffled almost as long as I've been writing this column and I'm not entirely sure why. Presumably, the Marvel/Disney merger and subsequent other corporate acquisitions had something to do with it, but I can only guess at that. Anyway, this stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams and Charlie Heaton (among others) as a group of mutants (read: those born with special abilities that manifest during young adulthood) being kept in some spooky institute that is all but guaranteed not to be on the level. The special effects look to be of decent quality and there are some truly creepy surgeon-things lurking around, and overall I think this could be pretty fun, but the biggest takeaway is that a major studio took a chance on a branch of the X-Men franchise and let it be a horror movie! That's awesome!
PETER RABBIT 2: THE RUNAWAY - Based on the Beatrix Potter series of books and characters, this sequel to 2018's animated Peter Rabbit is yet ANOTHER kids movie about having kids. Just like action movies about getting older, this is another reflection of the filmmaker's lives creeping into cinemas in a very specific way. My distaste for the inevitablization of having children aside, I think this looks fine, if disposable. The McGregors (Domhnall Gleeson and Rose Byrne) are gearing up to have a lil McGregor, leaving Peter (James Corden) and the other assorted animals feeling on the verge of being left out, so they decide to run away to a Farmer's Market. Some of them get captured and must be rescued by Peter and the McGregors, a scenario that seems to involve skydiving, paragliding into a sports car and also a car chase? What is this franchise? That's gotta be a fantasy sequence, right?
10th:
007: NO TIME TO DIE - Based on the character created in 1953 by Ian Fleming, this latest Bond flick is playing its cards close to the chest. "We all have our secrets," Bond (Daniel Craig) says early in this trailer "We just haven't gotten to yours yet." I believe he's talking to Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) but that might just be misleading trailer-editing (I wouldn't put it past 'em). There seems to be a through-line, at least in the trailer, about secrets and how "her" secrets could destroy Bond (again, probably Swann). This has some very nice cinematography, a scenic snowy forest, some car-chase action and bridge stunts (in short, everything you'd expect from a Bond flick). Christoph Waltz returns as Blofeld (from 2015's Spectre) in spy-jail, but the main baddie seems to be Rami Malek's burn-scarred something-or-other (spy perhaps? He IS wearing winter tactical gear and a broken blank mask to cover his face at one point). And for what it's worth, I think the Billie Eilish song is pretty good and may grow on me, but I don't love the performance. I kept expecting it to kick into high gear and it just didn't.
15th:
WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS: SEASON 2 - Unfortunately, there's no trailer for the second season of Hulu's docu-farce based on Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi's 2014 vampire comedy. But this is when it's supposed to rematerialize.
17th:
TROLLS WORLD TOUR - I ...have so many questions. First, these Trolls movies are definitely inspired by the Troll Dolls right? I only ask because all the characters in this are candy-colored and very cutesy while the Troll dolls I remember were a tan shade and definitely fell into the "ugly-cute" category. Also: What fucking year is this? Because this movie's plot reeks of 10 years ago: I'm unfamiliar with the first film but, apparently, all Trolls are subdivided by what kind of music they like? This kind of "(Blank) is better than (Blank)" music divisivism seems extremely early-2000s. So some rock trolls (cute pun) menace some EDM/club trolls (listening to "One More Time" by Daft Punk, you know, that extremely current hit song?) and steal one of the Six Strings in an effort to unite them all and erase all music *except* rock. Isn't this the plot of some wannabe Guitar Hero game? Did someone find this script in a time capsule buried under a middle school? Are the Six Strings from the first Trolls movie? Is that James Cordon doing a voice in this AND Peter Rabbit? Does Hollywoo know there are other people with British accents? Why is there a Kenny fucking G joke (seen above) in a kids movie released in this, the year of our unholy lord, 2020? See what I mean; questions.
THE SECRET: DARE TO DREAM - I love melodramatic nonsense and this adaptation of the best-selling 2006 self help book looks full-to-bursting with it! Katie Holmes (recently of Brahms: The Boy 2) stars as a single mom to two kids who rear-ends a man's car. Luckily, not only is he handsome-ish actor Josh Lucas, AND extremely cool with it, he's ALSO looking for her to deliver an important-seeming manila envelope with a red wax seal! Fortuitous! Or maybe it's... The Secret! Ooooo! Anyway, there's a scene with Lucas explaining The Secret to Holmes' kids using magnets, almost immediately followed by the implication that Holmes' negative thinking causes a hurricane to damage her home! Katie Holmes makes a hurricane mess her house up old school with naught but the power of her mind!
THE SECRET GARDEN - Based on the oft-adapted 1911 novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, this trailer includes text that reads "a timeless best selling novel" but if it's so timeless, why are all these adaptations set in roughly the same era? Once again, a young girl named Mary (whose real name is the truly wildly spelled Dixie Egerickx) ends up at the stuffy estate of an uncle (Colin Firth) after being orphaned and finds a hidden (and magical!) garden. Seriously, I haven't seen so many CGI plants since What Dreams May Come. I doubt they'd expunge the tragic, cholera-based backstory but I didn't see any of it here. Really, I wish they'd have just combined these two similarly-named flicks into The Secret: Dare to Garden and have Katie Holmes' Debbie Downer-ness summon a hurricane that uncovered the hidden garden, like something from a Legend of Zelda game.
MARTIN EDEN - Unlike that other Jack London adaptation, this one seems to be entirely devoid of silly CGI dogs! So that's a plus! This Italian flick seems to follow the same plot as London's novel, published in 1909: a young dock worker decides he wants to be a writer and is encouraged to write about the poor and downtrodden. There's a He's Poor, She's Rich dynamic between Martin (Luca Marinelli) and his lady friend (Jessica Cressy) which could be interesting. Beyond that, my understanding of the novel is that it was London's attempt to rectify some of his political beliefs through, if not quite satire then, commentary and I'm not sure that is enough skeleton to support a whole film.
ANTLERS - Based on the Nick Antosca short story The Quiet Boy, this trailer is pretty creepy. There's the prerequisite quiet boy, Lucas (Jeremy T. Thomas) who we see throwing a slab of meat to someone (they seem fairly human) in a locked room. Later, that room is definitely no longer holding who-or-whatever was in there, but by that time, Lucas's teacher (Keri Russell) and a local sheriff (Jesse Plemons) are on the case. There's also talk about the local cops finding "half a guy" in the woods and "the other half" in the mine outside of their (I'll guess) Pacific Northwestern town. We get some time with a favorite character actor of mine, Graham Greene, saying that a malicious spirit was kept in the mine, so presumably this spirit was freed either accidentally or purposefully by Lucas' parent/sibling/caretaker and it is slowly consuming their soul and corrupting their body(?). That's my guess. I also definitely caught the word "wendigo" in some VO chanting at one point and if you're unfamiliar with the concept, a wendigo is a concept derived from First Nations/Native American beliefs and is typically associated with starvation, madness and cannibalism. At one point in the trailer, responding to Plemons saying "That's a myth," Greene says "For you," which I always love as a concept. Antlers is produced by Guillermo del Toro, so that's kind of all the stamp of approval I need.
THE PAINTED BIRD - Based on the novel by Jerzy Kosiński, this looks absolutely, staggeringly gorgeous but is also definitely a bummer. The beautiful black and white photography follows a young Jewish boy (Petr Kotlár, I believe) wandering through a nightmarish, WWII-era countryside seeking sanctuary, but seeming to only encounter character actors behaving strangely. A lot of the dialogue is about suffering, specifically Jesus Christ's suffering on humanity's behalf so, again: probably a bummer. BUT the cast does feature Harvey Keitel, Barry Pepper, Stellan Skarsgård, Julian Sands and Udo Kier and, I can't state this enough, absolutely gorgeous cinematography.
24th:
TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG - Based upon Peter Carey's fictional account of the Kelly Gang's history (they being a group of 1870s outlaws lead by Ned Kelly who evaded the Australian authorities for two years before a final, climactic gunfight with police during which the gang wore homemade bulletproof armor. Yes, really.) this flick looks just as wild as the Gang's reported history. The Kelly Gang, and Ned Kelly's life (which seems to be the film's focus) already falls in the If It Weren't True You Wouldn't Believe It category without really any embellishment, but the embellishment looks to make things even more fun. There's an avant garde quality to the visuals in the trailer, as well as quite a bit of male nudity, a cast including Essie Davis, Charlie Hunnam, Nicholas Hoult & Russell Crowe, AND scuzzy guitar rock. It's a seemingly odd mixture that somehow really works together. Fiona Underhill has a review of this for us coming up in April.
So there we have it, for now at least. The studios have a tendency to change release dates (as with The Informer), or announce new flicks that would fit into an EOINA column at the last minute, so if I missed something I apologize. On that topic: it's extremely difficult to find a reliable source on upcoming streaming releases, especially series and especially on services that aren't Netlfix or Hulu. So if any of you reading this has a suggestion for a really reliable site, please let me know.
One thing that has come to my attention recently is the flick Grizzly II, which began production in 1983 before stalling out when the funding - as well as the producer who procured it - went AWOL. Yadda yadda yadda, the film has apparently now been completed and even had a screening in LA recently with a rumored wider release coming. That's definitely something that, though unusual, still fits the EOINA criteria. Oh, and did I mention, it features early appearances from Laura Dern, George Clooney & Charlie Sheen? That’s right! If and when I know more, I'll pass it along.
So, did anything above strike your fancy? Personally, I'm pretty excited for a lot of the flicks covered here, Escape From Pretoria, Burnt Orange Heresy, Antlers and that Kelly Gang flick are high on my To Watch list, as are Little Fires Everywhere and The Secret because I just love that kind of high melodrama. I grew up watching a lot of Lifetime movies (which I believe I mentioned above) and it's just ingrained in my DNA now, I guess. New Mutants and The Hunt look promising, but release delays always make me wonder what, if anything got changed. Again, check out my review of The Hunt.
As always, thank you for reading Everything Old Is New Again and visiting Moviejawn. Please feel free to check out all the other writers and pieces floating around the site and, if you're so inclined, listen to me chat with my co-host Allison Yakulis and guests on our podcast Hate Watch Great Watch. The new episode is on 1980's The Jazz Singer starring Neil Diamond! Long Live the Movies!
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