A Little Tom Holland Treat

The first official images from Christopher Nolan's film of The Odyssey have started to land (via the new issue of Empire magazine I believe) and I figured it would be this shot of Tom Holland playing the character of Telemachus that would blow up all y'all skirts the best. This movie's not out until July 17th 2026 so we've got some time to decide whether we give a shit -- well I suppose "we" really equals "me" since I'm the biggest Nolan naysayer around. And yet! And yet I did like Oppenheimer. So maybe I'll like this one even more and Nolan will suddenly become a director I appreciate again, which hasn't really been a thing since Memento. (Okay okay I do mostly like The Dark Knight too.) With a cast that includes Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Anne Hathaway, Mia Goth, Jon Bernthal, Zendaya, Logan Marshall-Green, Lupita Nyong'o and Samantha Morton (among others) there'll certainly be somebody worth staring at most of the time... but then Nolan's always gotten big starry casts which he then usually squanders. I'm trying to be optimistic, really! How are y'all feeling about the prospects on this one? 

Good Morning, Monsters

Hello and happy Monday -- your wayward host has indeed returned and he's brought with him several gifs of a butt-naked Oscar Isaac in Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein to smooth the process along -- and while we're at it, what is it with Guillermo and hot dudes barely visible junk floating in bathtubs anyway? It's a very specific thing to have pop up in two (live-action) movies in a row, right? (I added the "live-action" because as far as I recall I don't remember Gepetto getting his gray balls out to take a soak in Pinocchio but it's possible I blocked that out.)

Anyway Frankenstein dropped on Netflix over the weekend so I assume most of you have now seen it if you weren't near one of the theaters where it was shwoing, so please -- offer me your opinions! I liked not loved it -- Jacob Elordi is terrific, it looks great, it sounds great, but there was just something missing... some spark of life, if you'll allow me that indulgence. Maybe if Mia Goth had gotten more to do I'd have been bigger on it? Anyway it's not every movie where Oscar Isaacs gets his pubes out (more like "every other" at this point, blessed man) so hit the jump for the steamy collection of gifs I assembled...

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

It's always a shame when David Corenswet has to go but we do sure like watching him walk away. Hit the jump for the rest...

A Man and His Beautiful Monster

Frankenstein stars Jacob Elordi and Oscar Isaac are on the cover of the new Variety to talk the forthcoming release of Guillermo Del Toro's reowrking of Mary Shelley's vision -- you can read the chat right here. Which I'm going to do myself right after I run and grab my lunch. Hence why I'm not mentioning what the two have to say in the interview -- I'm running out the door and haven't gotten to it yet. But I am taking a quick moment to post the photos of these beautiful men touching each other because -- if this isn't food then what is? I could probably just stare at these photos and survive for months. Hit the jump for them all (plus some video)...

Only Monsters Play God

Netflix just dropped these two teaser posters for Guillermo Del Toro's upcoming film of Frankenstein, which stars Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth, and Jacob Elordi as the Monster. (Love that the poster below centers Oscar's patented Chunky Bum, although it's a little shadowy, Guillermo. You'd best give it the spotlight treatment at some point in your movie!) We also have the official release dates -- Frankenstein is playing in "Select Theaters" on October 17th and then it hits Netflix on November 7th. This being Netflix you might want to side-eye that "select theaters" thing -- it will definitely play the Paris Theater here in NYC since that place is owned by Netflix, but beyond that? Definitely somewhere in L.A. one assumes but who knows how wide they'll go. I think most people will sadly be seeing this on a small screen. Who are the real monsters, then? They're playing God with Movies!

Pics of the Day

Although it's clearly a covered-up tease there's our first semi-look at Jacob Elordi's Frankenstein's Monster for Guillermo Del Toro's upcoming film thanks to a great big piece on the movie at Vanity Fair -- they talk to Oscar Isaac and Del Toro and also the make-up guy a lot...

... for obvious reasons. But I just wanna hear from costume designer Kate Hawley  for paragraphs because she's what's wowing me in these photos. Especially all of the spectacular outfits we see Mia Goth wearing. (I imagine Hawley also probably had fun giving Oscar his undone blouse & snug trousers and whatever tattered rags Jacob Elordi sports.) Anyway hit the jump for the photos...

Pic of the Day

A new photo from Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein (via) dropped today that showcases Oscar Isaac as the not-so-good doctor -- specifically his suspenders, heaving cleavage, and muttonchops, all of which I look forward to muchly. The movie, which also stars Jacob Elordi (as the monster!) and Mia Goth is out in November, presumably Thanksgiving just because this very much feels like a Thanksgiving release. Possibly critically important but definitely pulpy enough for the whole fam! But I hope Del Toro pervs it out the way any Frankenstein should be perved out, we know he's capable of it (hello to his fish-fucking Best Picture winner). But reading how GDT is making this story about Fatherhood (and how he just lost his father) instead of it being about a man sneaking down to the basement every night to build himself his very own man (one that looks like Jacob Elordi no less) while ignoring his fiancee upstairs, well I worry the Whale-esque (and Rocky Horror) perviness might get waylaid. Do by this queer monster story right, Guillermo!

Cosmo Jarvis Three Times

Big day for Cosmo-stans as not only was he featured in that Warfare clip I shared earlier but we've also got news of his next project, and it's a biggun -- he's just joined the vast cast of Chris Nolan's upcoming epic take on The Odyssey (thx Mac). No idea who he's playing in it but he's got a face for skirts and he joins the already announced (the movie is actually already filming) cast of (deep breath) Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson, John Leguizamo, Benny Safdie, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, Mia Goth, Shiloh Fernandez, Himesh Patel, Elliott Page, Bill Irwin, Samantha Morton, Jesse Garcia, Will Yun Lee and Corey Hawkins. We have of course been in the Cosmo-corner ever since we first saw him opposite Florence Pugh in Lady Macbeth -- it took Shōgun for the rest of the world to catch up but that's fine because Shōgun is ace. And I know I should know better than to expect anything homosexual from Nolan but my god with this cast of actors and Ancient Greece as your setting... I mean we all know what Achilles and Patroclus were getting up to dammit!

Today's Mood

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Pearl (2022)

Pearl: Is it legal?

The Projectionist: Doing it, yeah. Filming it, no.

A happy 31 to David Corenswet, who can be seen in Twisters next week (holla) and who'll be offering up a whole different flying sensation next year when James Gunn's fresh new Superman movie comes out -- it was pretty much predestined the first minute we saw David in Ryan Murphy's Netflix series Hollywood that he was manufactured in a factory to play Superman, and I'm happy that turned out better for him than it did for Matt Bomer. (Not that I feel bad in any way for Matt Bomer -- he is Matt Bomer.) I suppose I should hedge my bets and not be so pre-enthusiastic about his casting a full year-plus out -- this movie very well could suck -- but I like to be positive. Especially where beautiful men are involved. (See all of our previous David Corenswet posts here if you need a lot of cold hard proof re: that fact.)

Anyway it's also timely to look back at Pearl today obviously since the third film in Ti West's trilogy MaXXXine came out over this past weekend -- and read my very disappointed thoughts on that film here if you missed them. As I did mention there I did see the movie a second time over the weekend and sad to say it only underlined my issues with the film, which is handily the weakest of the trilogy -- there's just no sustained tension, no emotional development. It's just a bunch of stuff happening while Mia Goth remains cool as shit. I did add a couple extraneous positive thoughts to a Twitter thread I have going -- basically the movie is kind of interesting on a subtextual level because it feels like a movie about being trapped in the horror genre and wanting to break free. But I might just be galaxy-braining all that, looking for some way to make sense of the slop heap they released.

MaXXXine, You Forgot To Put On The Red Light

I thought George Miller's Furiosa was going to be my greatest disappointment of 2024, but here comes Ti West's MaXXXine to kick Furiosa outta the way with one high-heeled boot and snatch that feeble crown. Both subsequent films in franchises that are named after their leading ladies -- does this mean that I hate Strong Female Characters? Or maybe I just hate shitty movies? Y'all decide -- I'm too spent from drowning in disappointment this whole damned summer.

As a fairly rabid fan of both X and Pearl -- I've never been able to choose a favorite between the two as they hit very different joy buttons making it depend on my mood -- it brings me absolutely nothing but pain to share that MaXXXine did next to nothing for me. The giddiness I felt for the first half an hour or so here watching Mia Goth klick ass -- and even though this movie has very little idea what to do with her Mia Goth never stops kicking ass -- speeded out of me like air fizzling from a gently pricked balloon.

I'm seeing it a second time next week and I am fervently hoping that I'll be less down on it after that, but as it stands now on a single watch MaXXXine just feels like whiff after whiff -- it sets up what oughta be homerun after homerun and then just spins its wheels around them, unsure where to go or what to say or do. Nothing feels very propulsive, or meaningful -- ideas are introduced only to suffocate from lack of oxygen.

Stylistically it's sometimes fun, but only on a surface-level -- yes okay you're using the Brian De Palma split-screens, but where is any sense of De Palma's sleaze and perversion? Nowhere, that's where. It's a heap of red herrings lit up by neon signs. There's no urgency, no danger -- Maxine herself is such a force we never fear for her, and she remains so singlemindedly antisocial that the "friends" she's made, the ones who are in danger, never register enough for us to care when their times to bleed come.

I know there's been some retroactive appreciation for Scream 3 over the past several years -- mostly due to Parker Posey's hilarious turn in it -- but all I could think of watching MaXXXine was Scream 3 and not in a good way. There are half-baked meta allusions about the brutality of behind-the-scenes Hollywood yadda yadda but neither film makes them amount to much. And MaXXXine doesn't even have a Parker Posey to rescue it. It's Scream 3 without Parker Posey! Imagine!

Of course Goth is never bad and she gives it her all, but there's just nowhere for Maxine the character as written to go -- not as this movie shows it anyway. The pieces of the mystery that she finds herself in click into their expected place with a complete lack of surprise, or oomph -- MaXXXine feels like everybody cashed their checks and was halfway out the door before the first clapboard could slap Action. This was so fucking depressing.

Great Moments In Movie Staches

Since MaXXXine is out in a couple of days (more on that in a bit) and I keep seeing pictures of David Corenswet shooting the new Superman movie on my social media timelines (have you seen the photo of his Clark Kent yet?) it seemed a nice moment to glance back at David's bestached period fuckboi look in Pearl -- we had it so fine then! So, so fine.

46 Days

There is the official poster for Ti West's MaXXXine (via), the third film is what A24 is calling his "X Trilogy" but which I prefer to call the "Triple X Trilogy." It just has a better ring to me and it isn't just named after the first film. It broadens the scope. Anyway MaXXXine is out on July 5th, aka 46 days from today, hence this post's title. I have still managed to avoid watching the film's trailer -- we'll see if I can make it that whole way. Although hopefully I can weasel my way into a press screening well before that. Tomorrow would be good! I would vbe happy with seeing the movie tomorrow, A24!

The Kings of Kindness

That there is the first official poster for Yorgos Lanthimos' Kinds of Kindness, designed by the great Vasilis Marmatakis who's done most of Yorgos' previous posters -- and like with all the other ones I'm gonna end up buying this beauty too! Anyway along with that they dropped a new teaser for the movie, you can watch it down below. I have not watched it myself -- I watched the first teaser about five thousand times and now I am done watching things until I am watching the movie on June 21st. In similar news no I haven't watched the trailer for Ti West's MaXXXine yet and I don't think I shall! I decided I will watch it after I watch the movie in full. I don't need trailers for these movies -- I just need these movies dammit! 

What a Monster Jacob Elordi Is

In case you missed the news yesterday (thx Mac) Andrew Garfield has left Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein movie and Jacob Elordi has stepped in to replace him -- all six foot five inches of him. And before I hear a single person say that Jacob is too pretty to play Frankenstein (specifically Frankenstein's Monster, that is) I am going to need you to google Boris Karloff because Boris was an extremely handsome man. And Frankenstein being super-tall makes a world of sense. Still on board the project are Oscar Isaac as the good Doctor and Mia Goth as... do we know who Mia's playing?

I've seen people say she's playing The Bride but the sources I've dug around in don't seem 100% on that. There's also the role of the Doctor's Wife, at least in the original version, but I can't imagine Del Toro wouldn't spice that boring role up here in 2024. Especially with Mia Goth playing it. Perhaps those two characters will become one? Also onboard is Christoph Waltz, probably as a bad guy because Christoph Waltz. Anyway since Frankenstein has always been a deeply queer text I hope GDT leans hard into that -- Oscar Isaac is defying god to build himself a pretty pretty man, after all!

Bride of Frankenstein is Gay Canon and only a gay director should be allowed to touch it https://t.co/r7h9hSMrxq

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) November 14, 2023

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Suspiria (2018)

Sara: You're making some kind of deal with them. 

Susie: I don't know what you're talking about. 

Sara: The matrons. 

Susie: Whatever you have in your head,

Sara, nothing is wrong.

Sara: How can you know what 

they'll ask of you in return? 

Susie: Nothing's wrong. 

Sara: You just haven't seen the bill yet.

A happy coincidence today in that it is the 30th birthday of the great Mia Goth while tomorrow is the 5th anniversary of the release of Luca Guadagnino's masterul Suspiria remake!  Mia has gone on to become a horror icon in those five years thanks to her turns in Ti West's films X and Pearl (with a side helping of Inifinity Pool) but those of us in the know could see that she swanned away with her every scene in Suspiria -- and I say that as no insult to the people she was sharing scenes with obviously, since I'm of the mind that Dakota Johnson and Tilda "Tilda" Swinton were mad genius in the movie. But whenever Mia shows up you are watching Mia... 

... and Mia alone. Anyway I think most people have come around to this being one of the great horror remakes, right? I might even say that it's the finest example of taking a known property and doing something totally fresh and weird and new with it -- the other great horror remakes like the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and John Carpenter's The Thing are all pretty close to the movies they're remaking. But Luca's Suspiria feels incredibly different from Argento's, not just in its muted colorscape but also in tone and purpose. It's a political screed, for god's sake! One that only got timelier as the years passed. "It's all a mess. The one out there. The one in here. The one that's coming. Why is everyone so ready to think the worst is over?” Indeed.

Jamesy!!!

Random but worth being random for -- the photographer David Lukacs has a great big pile of photos from the set of Brandon Cronenberg's film Infinity Pool on his website that I have never seen before, including these two notable photos of our boy Alexander Skarsgard. There are many many more -- including some spoilery ones so don't click over if you haven't seen the movie. And if you haven't seen the movie -- what the hell are you waiting for? It's one of the best of the year. Here is my review. Great movie!

Pic of the Day

If more pop up in a bit I'll post them but for now here is our first image from MaXXXine, the third movie in Ti West's trilogy following X and Pearl -- that's Mia Goth there taking her X character Maxine to the 1980s (duh) alongside the singer Halsey, perhaps playing "Skinny Marie" the dead prostitute from the beginning of Pretty Woman. I am keeping my nonsense Skinny Marie movie dreams alive til the very end. Anyway still no exact release date on this but my guess is probably fall. (via)

Pic of the Day

(click to embiggen) On his Insta today actor and photographer Thomas Kretschmann shared this image he took on the set of a movie called Last Sentinel -- well actually he shared it with Rolling Stone Germany and they put it in their magazine and then he reposted that. The people in the photo are his fellow co-stars Martin McCann (who I thought was tremendously good in the 2015 film The Survivalist, which you need to see if you haven't - it also stars Mia Goth!) and, in the standing position, Emily in Paris actor and extreme hottie Lucien Laviscount. Obviously everything about everything I just wrote, in the context of that photo, delights me. Anyway for some reason the photo is accompanied by the lyrics to 10cc's classic tune "I'm Not in Love" ("It's just a silly phase I'm going through...") so I'm going to put that song here and y'all can listen to it and stare at that photo, the way Thomas Kretschmann truly intended, bless him. 

This Cast is Rated X For Exxxtremely Awesome

As you can see at the bottom of this post A24 put out a new little teaser for Ti West's MaXXXine today -- that would be the third film in trilogy that's so far gifted us with X and Pearl, as originally teased at the end credits of the latter -- and really all it lets us know is the cast. But the cast! THE CAST!!! Besides Mia Goth -- which let's be clear, Mia is enough on her own to buy a ticket -- this one will co-star Elizabeth f'ing Debicki, the musicians Moses Sumney and Halsey, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Lily Collins, Giancarlo Espisito, and Kevin f'ing Bacon as the Friday the 13th Slasher-O.G. in residence. We're still only getting a "Coming Soon" when it comes to dating this hunka burnin love but let's hope it's sooner rather than never. Debicki! 

Hollywood, here she comes. #MaXXXine pic.twitter.com/EURttoG5hM

— A24 (@A24) April 5, 2023