Good Morning, World

I have developed such a crush on the big-donged 6'5" tall Alpha rage-zombie -- properly known as the actor Chi Lewis-Parry -- from the 28 Years Later movie, ever since 1) I really really loved The Bone Temple and 2) he came out as one of us, one of us, on his Instagram...

Ohhhhhh shit we got the big donged zombie

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— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) February 7, 2026 at 1:20 PM

Anyway he shared the top photo today to celebrate that The Bone Temple is now on VOD -- if you haven't seen it yet go rent it immediately! As I said in my review I consider this the best of the franchise and yes I am including the first film that kicked the entire thing off, and I'm now emotionally invested in there being a third movie. Since this one disappointed at the box office we need to show the people in charge that there's interest in contiinuing...

The Best Bone's Ahead

I know I will be accused of hyperbole but having seen 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple two times now I really mean it when I say that director Nia Dacosta has delivered with this, the fourth movie in the franchise, the best of the bunch. Yes I do indeed make that claim in my review which just dropped over at Pajiba, read it in full here. And I stand by it. Because, first off, as transformative as Danny Boyle's original film was and remains to the horror genre -- and I don't dispute that! -- I think we've all just accepted that it sorta somewhat falls apart in its last act. And then as for Boyle's film last year, well I wasn't a fan. (Read my review of that one here.) But this new one? Spectacular. Strange. Funny. Terrifying. Gorgeous to look at. Emotionally stirring. Kinda gay. It's got a Radiohead song in it for fuck's sake! I wrote a fuck-ton of words on the movie in my review (it's one of my longer ones) and I didn't even mention it has a Radiohead song in it! So yeah. I said what I said. And I meant it.

Rage Against the Hype Machine

It is starting to feel as if I'm destined to be a curmudgeon about the horror movies people are digging this year, but really it's only actually been two at this point -- there was Dangerous Animals a couple of weeks ago and now there's Danny Boyle's long awaited zombie catch-up 28 Years Later, which hits theaters this weekend and which most other critics seem to be loving. Unfortunately I cannot in good conscience agree! Here is my review at Pajiba. I think the movie looks great and I think Ralph Fiennes is having fun and that's really almost all that worked for me? The kid's fine, I guess. My issues aren't to do with him. I just don't understand any of the people calling it "scary" or even "tense" as I found it to be neither of those things. But even more brains-boggling to me are the people thinking there's genuine emotion or any kind of profundity in this thing -- it's no deeper than a hollowed out eye-socket. I cannot fathom the people I heard around me sniffling emotionally during its last act -- I don't consider myself dead inside. I cry real easy most of the time! But not here. These are shallow unrealized duds of characters being moved around willy-nilly without a single thing of purpose to say -- I am good and truly baffled by some of the reviews I'm reading. You can only give something so much credit for trying something different when it thoroughly fails at what it's trying. Oh well! I'm a fan of the first two movies and generally Boyle as a filmmaker so here's to hoping the next one is better. At least Cillian Murphy will supposedly be back.

Jack's What's For Dinner

The cast for Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later film -- the third in the 28 Days Later not-zombie universe and supposedly the start of an entirely new trilogy -- has just gotten a wee-laddy hotter with Jack O'Connell joining the already scorching cast. That means dude-wise we're going to be staring at Jack, Charlie Hunnam, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes, and (supposedly) Cillian Murphy -- and we're supposed to be rooting against the not-zombies? because I am finding their desire to bite into this cast tremendously relatable!  

Who Wants To Take A Bite Outta Aaron?

I didn't have a new photo of Aaron Taylor-Johnson to share so I figured it'd be nice to stare at this legendary snap from his 2015 Flaunt magazine photoshoot -- it's been awhile! It's always a treat! As is casting news when Aaron is involved. And no it's not James Bond. Yet. But it's even more exciting if you ask me -- he's been cast in Danny Boyle's upcoming zombie sequel 28 Years Later! Okay okay yes we all know, nerd -- they're not technically zombies. Also it's more than just a sequel -- it's an entire new trilogy of movies, apparently. But Boyle is (as of right now) only attached to the first one. Candyman director Nia DaCosta is supposed to do the second one; no word on the capper yet. Anyway Aaron is not the only person cast -- we already know that Cillian Murphy is returning to the role he played in Boyle's first film, and I told you two weeks back that Charlie Hunnam is also set to be in it. 

Aaron and Charlie in a movie together again! I very well might start foaming at the mouth. You may recall (as pictured above) they co-starred in Aaron's wife's adaptation of A Million Little Pieces. Or not. The only thing most people remember from that movie was Aaron swinging his great big dick around a bunch and I can't say that I blame them. Wait what was I talking about? oh right the zombie not-zombie thing. Also cast today besides Aaron was Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes -- and I know if you're Danny Boyle you can pretty much get whoever the hell you want for a movie nowadays, especially a sequel to one of his greatest. But this cast is really something isn't it? Cheers to Danny. 

28 Hunnams Later

I don't know how reliable this source is (I've never heard of them before) but since it allows me the opportunity to share a photo of Charlie Hunnam I don't care -- take it with a grain of salt until some place more legit reports it but there are rumors (via, thx Mac) that our boy Charlie is in talks to co-star in Danny Boyle's forthcoming 28 Days Later trilogy-capper 28 Years Later. Also in talks (supposedly) -- Ralph Fiennes and Jodie Comer. They would join the already confirmed Cillian Murphy, who is returning to the zombie franchise after not being a part of the second (and itself terrific) movie. I'm down with all of these names so let's hope this holds up. I'm surprised that Charlie's never been in a Danny Boyle movie before this honestly -- he seems a natural fit. It's easy to picture him having been in Sunshine or popping up in the Trainspotting sequel. 

Good Morning, Cillian

Even though I had some mixed feelings on Oppenheimer -- specifically its third act and Robert Downey Jr.'s ham-tastic performance -- I liked it far more than I have any Chris Nolan movie in a long time and I'm not feeling as terrible about the possibility (probability) of it winning a bunch of Oscars as I would''ve been had it continued my usual "uggggh" towards Nolan. I don't know what exact percentage of that you can chalk up to Cillian Murphy getting the lead and him being per usual great, but it's not a small one, and so I've very much been feeling the Cillian lately. Especially after a recent 28 Days Later re-watch...

I'm re-watching 28 DAYS LATER for the first time in a very long time and I was saying something to my bf when Cillian Murphy's shaved face was revealed and I one hundred percent lost every single thought I had in my head pic.twitter.com/JMFhU60P17

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 13, 2024

Anyway he's looking absolutely stunning in these photos for GQ UK, which he's covering this month -- you can read the interview right here. With me, since I haven't read it yet. I do hope he wins the Oscar because 1) he's excellent, he's always excellent, and he's earned it, 2) Paul Giamatti is also generally deserving of a career Oscar but I really do not like The Holdovers and I don't particularly like Giamatti's performance in it, and 3) anybody but Bradley Cooper. Please. If Colman Domingo had a chance I'd be happy about that but Rustin is too mediocre a movie. And Jeffrey Wright -- same feelings as Giamatti. Great actor giving a mediocre performance in a movie I don't like. I'm putting it all on Cillian then! And speaking of wanting to put something on Cillian, these photos got me feeling that way. Hit the jump for the whole shoot...

Pink Fantasia Ahoy

The weekend of the cinematic summer has arrived, as Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer movie -- the great Barbenheiming, as foretold in the old books -- stand imminent. My review of Barbie will be popping up at Pajiba tomorrow I believe, and I will update this post with a link when it has. As for Oppenheimer I have seen it but I haven't figured out what or where or if I am saying something. But stay tuned! I might! And won't that be a thrill for everybody? Until then, as I foretold y'all last week, tomorrow I am leaving for the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, aka the maple syrupy land of Xavier Dolan and, like, mimes? I don't know. Follow me on my socials (probably especially my Instagram) if you want to keep stalkerish track of my every move -- I might post stuff while I'm away since it's technically a "work" trip, but I also might not since I am a lazy piece of shit. I mean I will have several reviews from Fantasia going up over the next couple of weeks, but we'll get to that once we're there. For now y'all just go see some movies this weekend, and support the fine artists who have worked hard to entertain and terrify you. And I will be officially back here in a week!

Josh Hartnett Two Times

Even though Christopher Nolan had already cast my beloved Florence Pugh, one of my favorite actors, in his next movie Oppenheimer (about the scientist who came up with the grand ol' atom bomb), I had successfully avoided talking about it because, well, because I'm basically done with Nolan at this point. I haven't liked anything since The Dark Knight, and that only somewhat -- I love Memento but that's about where the relationship between me and Chris ends. But he got me today because he went and cast Josh Hartnett in Oppenheimer (news via, thx Mac), and I got no fight on that front -- you put Josh in your movie, I see your movie. Dammit all to fuck -- this is a low-blow, Nolan! Also in the cast so far -- Robert Downey Jr, Benny Safdie, Rami Malek, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, and Cillian Murphy in the titular role. BOOM! (That's the sound of an atom bomb going off, PS, in case you didn't get it)

A Quiet Place: Part II in 150 Words or Less

Lowest common denominator crap half as effective as the already ineffective first film, A Quieter Place makes me long to be sent to The Quietest Place called the grave just to escape its banal CG-barf bullshit. These monsters, with their jittery daisy-petal heads and beanstalk arms just do not frighten me, moving as weightlessly through their world as skiffs of wind -- they have no presence or personality, they're screeching ciphers with sharp elbows, strangers on a crowded summer subway train where something stinks to high heaven and you can't wait to just get home. There are good actors on-screen and they are asked to quiver and tremble their lips ten thousand times, ad infinitum, until the ceiling caves in. I longed to smother myself with all the little bits of pillow within reach by its witless conclusion. God I hate these movies.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Red Eye (2005)

Lisa: My grandmother died.
Jackson: Oh.
Lisa: It's ok. She was ninety-one.
Jackson: Ninety-one?
Lisa: Yea.
Jackson: That's respectable. What was her secret?
Lisa: Grapenuts. And a guy named Duke.
Jackson: Excuse me?
Lisa: Yea, uh, she said the Grapenuts kept her
arteries clean and... Duke helped with the rest.

I don't know how many times I have prefaced one of these anniversary posts with the words "I haven't seen this movie in ages" but it's a lot, and I'm not good at my job -- I have the fact that today is the 15th anniversary of the release of Wes Craven's film Red Eye ion my calendar, I have had it in there all year, coming up, and yet I do nothing to go watch the movie so I can post something interesting or insightful about it. I always end up doing the re-watch a couple of weeks later, because I feel guilty then, that I didn't get around to it beforehand. So goes my life. Anyway happy 15 to Red Eye or whatever. It's good I think, from what I remember, ages ago. Here is my review from the time. Anybody watched it recently?

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Good Afternoon, Gratuitous Cillian Murphy

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Do you watch Peaky Blinders? I do not watch Peaky Blinders but sometimes I think I should. My boyfriend likes it, and everybody looks like they wear tweed and suspenders while having hot haircuts on it, and I miss looking at Cillian Murphy. Those are all good reasons, right? Taboo with Tom Hardy scratched some of those itches but that show is taking forever to come back so my itches, they're unscratched for too long, too long. 

Anyway the trailer for the latest season o' Peaky dropped today and I already had Cillian on my mind thanks to a random photo of him plus Hardy plus JGL circa Inception that I stumbled upon and tweeted yesterday, so here after the jump are a couple dozen photos via several Cillian shoots of recent years that I've never posted, for a late afternoon delight...

Good Morning, Apocalypse

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Cillian Murphy's eyeballs oughta be insured like Mary Hart's legs or J-Lo's ass -- they're how we first met him, eyeball first, in 28 Days Later, and we've never (wait for it) looked back. (God I'm clever.) 

Anyway you'd be forgiven for thinking we met him penis-first, since this shot of his eye smash-cuts to, you guessed it, Cillian full-frontally naked tip to toe laying on his hospital bed (I'm gonna put those NSFW images after the jump, by the way) -- I've always been so weirded out by that fact, by the way. Like who is laid out naked like that in the hospital? I suppose that's how Danny Boyle tells us something ain't right from second one -- the absence of a hospital gown leaving him as exposed as exposed can be -- but it always made me wonder what those doctors and/or nurses were doing to him before the zombies came.

Anyway I told you earlier this week when we did "Beauty vs Beast" for Cillian that his 40th birthday was coming up - well it's here! He turns 40 today and so if you haven't voted on that poll click on over to The Film Experience, while the rest of us will hit the jump for those naked pictures I promised above...

I Am Link

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--- Dance With The Devil - My month of Broadway has pretty much come to an end (okay I am seeing Gillian Anderson do Streetcar a second time tomorrow because as I said before it's the greatest thing I have ever seen and the thought of never being able to see it ever again filled my heart with unspeakable panic) and having seen the American Psycho musical twice I can heartily agree with our pal Nathaniel's rave for the show over at The Film Experience last night. Honestly I'm really glad that Psycho is scheduled to run all Summer because there's no way I won't be going back at some point.

--- Gods & Women - I definitely haven't been doing these link round-ups often enough lately because I go through the list of things I want to talk about each time and there's always something where I'm like, "Wait I haven't mentioned that yet?" Like the fact that I haven't mentioned the news that Marvel finally officially announced the Supporting Cast for the third Thor movie and it includes Cate Blanchett as the big bad Hela, Jeff Goldblum as The Grandmaster, Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie, and Karl Urban as Skurge. My goodness.

--- Trilogy Of Terror - At Cannes, when he wasn't busy getting booed or beefing with Lars Von Trier, Nicolas Winding Refn announced he is producing remakes of three count 'em three great old horror films - he's setting up remakes of Maniac Cop (which will have a daunting task matching the hotness of Young Bruce Campbell lemme tell ya what) and Witchfinder General (which will have a daunting task re-casting a role once played by Vincent Price lemme tell ya what) and then he's remaking the 1972 giallo What Have You Done To Solange?, which, well... yeah. I hope he casts Solange Knowles? Oh and here's a new interview with Refn that I haven't read yet, perhaps there's something fun.

--- And Speaking of things I haven't read yet here's a long talk with Pedro Almodovar for Variety -- I guess it's mostly about his new movie Julieta, which I believe is out in Spain now. I mean that's what it should be about I suppose, since it's out. He tells them that the film was once meant to be his English-language debut and it was going to star Meryl Streep! So many gay people just exploded.

---  War Mongers - Christopher Nolan probably isn't too worried about my opinion, but let me just tell him anyway - because if I personally stopped caring about my opinion I don't know what I'd do - that he needs to win me back after the several heapings of crap he's served recently. And I hope he can with Dunkirk, his new WWII movie, because it's got a helluva cast - Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh, and Mark Rylance for starters. Anyway all of that we already knew but the movie has begun shooting and if you click here you can see some promising shots from the set; it looks pretty epic.

--- Girl Powered - It struck me a few days ago that Joss Whedon's all but vanished from the world, and I thought to myself that maybe he'd just pop up with a new Shaekspeare movie one of these days a la the glorious surprise that was Much Ado About Nothing, but before I could entertain that thought for too long a new interview with him appeared and it sounds like he has been working on a fresh script, about, and I quote, "a girl who goes through some unbelievable shit." That's all he offers, and that's basically the log-line of everything he's ever made, so I am going to pretend it's a big-screen Buffy movie is what I am gonna do. 

--- The Dandy Man Can - We should've mentioned this news yesterday when we posted that photo-shoot of Finn Wittrock but we spaced - he's got a new role! One not on American Horror Story! He's going to co-star in Jenny Slate's new movie (thanks Mac) directed by her Obvious Child collaborator Gillian Robespierre - it's called Landline and it will also star Edie Falco, Jay Duplass, John Turturro and Abby Quinn, and it sounds like it (unsurprisingly) will focus on the female members of that cast with the men-folk playing second fiddles. And yes it's been difficult for me to make it through this paragraph without mentioning the fact that Jenny Slate is dating Chris Evans and goddamn her! Ahem.

--- Myers Oh Myers - The first headline I saw about this story last night was terribly misleading and made it sound as if John Carpenter was going to direct the next Halloween movie, but that is not the case - he is merely executive-producing, which is a job title that translates in my ears to "slapping his name on so the movie feels more justified and then he pockets a bunch of cash in return." I mean I always read the title "Executive Producer" that way, it's not personal to Mr. Carpenter, but I have very little belief he'll be all that much involved with the project.
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I Spy With My Red Eye

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Cillian Murphy is turning 40 in a couple of days, so we're using this week's "Beauty vs Beast" to celebrate one of our favorite performances of his, the airplane psychopath of Wes Craven's Red Eye -- click on over to The Film Experience to vote! A separate but related  question - do any of you watch Peaky Blinders? I keep feeling as if I really should be watching it (for reasons) but I haven't started it yet, and I'd like to know whether I should try...
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I thought this (from the new #PeakyBlinders trailer) was David Kross but I guess it's someone named Joe Cole? S'hot! pic.twitter.com/PPaiKBSwns

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) May 19, 2016

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Quote of the Day

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“Just look at my face. Do these features look like they’re built for romantic comedy? Which is fine because they’re not really my thing. I know many other actors have turned their hand to it later in life, like De Niro, so who knows? Maybe it could happen. But it would feel very alien to me. I don’t think I’m genetically built for a ‘boy meets girl, laughter ensues’, but we’ll see.”

That's Cillian Murphy in a new interview. He's right of course, but he really should go on to say that rom-coms are a half-dead genre because of how routine and close-minded they've become, without enough imagination to cast interesting people over dull ones. I mean how long have I been screaming into the void for my "Udo Kier and Grace Zabriskie meet cute" movie?

Do Dump or Marry: Bring It To A Steady Boyle

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Happy birthday, Danny Boyle! The Brit director of more modern classics than you can shake a stick at is turning 59 today as he heads into the Oscar season with Steve Jobs, his best film in, well, a couple of years (I mean Trance was super weird but not especially horrible or anything) -- here's my review of Jobs from the NYFF in case you missed it. Anyway I got to thinking about all the super-skinny white boy anti-heroes Danny's gifted us with and an edition of "Do Dump or Marry" occurred to me...

Today's threesome is Jim (Cillian Murphy) in 28 Days Later, Renton (Ewan McGregor) in Trainspotting, and Steve (Michael Fassbender) in Steve Jobs. PS you are picking and choosing and tossing away the characters here, not the actors. 

Have at it in the comments!

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Cillian Murphy Five Times

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I'm not the only one who found Cillian's starving bedraggled look in 28 Days Later to be his hottest moment, right? So these shots of him bearded and looking kinda sickly with haunted hungry eyes are totally working for me. (Yes I will talk to my therapist about this.)

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Who Wore It Best?

Apocalypse chic?

Viggo Mortensen, trim and hipsterly-bearded, a patina of trendy filth accessorized by a muted color palette and swooping hood that brings out his hungry eyes in The Road, or Cillian Murphy, also rocking a slim frame, fashionably gaunt you might say, with a punk-rockish half-shaven 'do over loosely-styled anti-authoritarian scrubs in 28 Days Later? 

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poll by twiigs.com

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Just Say Yes To Cillian Murphy

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