by Hunter Bush

Hello again good people and welcome to another installment of Everything Old is New Again, my bi-monthly column on Adaptations, Remakes and Legacy Sequels. If any of those terms are new to you, allow me to elucidate: an adaptation is a work based on any pre-existing work; a remake is when a film is made again as though it were the first time; a legacy sequel or long-gap sequel is the continuation of a franchise that has been lying dormant for some time; and while I'm at it, when I say bi-monthly, I mean "occurring every two months" not "occurring twice a month". So this EOINA will cover all the movies and such that fall into any of those categories coming to screens big and small in November and December.

I hope you all had a great spooky season, ate some creepy treats, wore some creative costumes and hopefully saw some groovy movies! We actually just had a spookytimes party of our own, which you'll be able to read about in the next installment of the Last Slice newsletter here on Moviejawn in about a week.

Something I've noticed is that a lot of the movies that get released at the end of the year are of a pretty similar assortment: a lot of biopics and other assorted Oscar™ bait material, musicals for some reason (unless they're specifically about another season, musicals always feel like a summer thing to me....) and generally any flick studios aren't confident could go up against a major tent-pole film. There's some of that going on here, but amidst the usual fare I think there's still some stuff here that might be worth watching. See what you think!

NOVEMBER 2019

1st:

TERMINATOR: DARK FATE - The Terminator franchise, beginning with James Cameron's original installment in 1984, is the story of a killer robot sent back in time to erase the man who would lead the human resistance against an uprising of killer machines. The timey wimey nature of its premise has lead the franchise to some increasingly convoluted installments. The original Terminator took place in the 80's with the titular robot (Arnold Schwarzenegger) attempting to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) followed by sequels in 1991 and 2003, each set in that era before 2009's Terminator Salvation took us fully into the ravaged future of the human/machine wars. Then in 2015, in an attempt to smooth out continuity for new viewers, Terminator Genisys did a whole timeline wipe, starting in the 80's during the events of the first film while also killing the John Connor character and breaking the timeline. During the development of Dark Fate, there were rumors that it was a full reboot, but that appears not to be the case. Iit may just be abandoning the quagmire Genisys created. Or not. Going on only what I can glean from the trailers, Dark Fate features Mackenzie Davis as a time travelling technologically augmented soldier sent to protect Natalia Reyes who I presume is the new Destined-to-Save-Humanity person. The trailers' big selling point, though, is the return of Linda Hamilton to the franchise which I understand because she's the best and here she looks like absolutely the baddest ass (she even gets to drop a so-casual-it's-legitimately-hilarious "I'll be back." before tossing explosives off of a bridge!). Beyond that, I think there's an implication of a new, hybrid Terminator unit that is a combination of the most famous previous designs - a liquid metal T-1000 riding on the metal skeleton of a T-800 - possibly some new symbiotic configuration? I'm very psyched for this because not only am I a sucker for Terminator flicks and Linda Hamilton, but director Tim Miller (the Deadpool guy) knows his way around high-concept action! My review of Dark Fate is here, check it out to see what I thought.

MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN - Based on the novel by Jonathan Lethem, Edward Norton directs, screenwrites and stars in this detective noir flick as a man with Tourette's who does street-level surveillance for a private eye (Bruce Willis). When his private dick boss is killed, it looks like he'll have to use his connections and skills to figure out why. There's some dialogue in the trailer that makes me think he might already know what happened, but not know that he knows it, which would be an interesting route to take and potentially justify the character's particular tics. In general, I'm a sucker for a detective movie plus the cast here is pretty stacked - Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Willem Dafoe, Leslie Mann, Bobby Cannavale and Michael Kenneth Williams appear among others - and the tone seems light enough to be fun despite the subject matter.

8th:

DOCTOR SLEEP - We're in the middle of a Stephen King boom. So I've been seeing the phrase "Based on the Best Selling Novel by Stephen King" in trailers A LOT. I'd kind of like someone to adapt whatever his lowest-selling book is just so the trailer could say "Based on the Worst Selling Novel by Stephen King". Heck, I'd make it (call me, Steve)! Anyway. Doctor Sleep is a sequel to King's The Shining (novel 1977, film '80) following a now grown Danny Torrance (played here by Ewan McGregor) as he discovers and befriends a young girl through their shared ability to "Shine" and then must protect her from a roving gang of monstrous energy vampires. Presumably for Reasons, this involves going back to the Overlook Hotel and Danny confronting his crazy childhood experiences there. Director Mike Flanagan has become one of my favorite directors in the past ten years and his recent efforts (The Haunting of Hill House and Gerald's Game, both for Netflix) show that he can handle adaptations in a way that honors the essence of the story without necessarily being beholden to the source material. Nevertheless, he has a lot on his plate here. I have faith in him and in Doctor Sleep and really hope this is as good as it could potentially be!

12th:

THE MANDALORIAN - Expanding on the Star Wars franchise, The Mandalorian is a series coming to Disney+ that's trading on the popularity of the bounty hunter character Boba Fett who first appeared in 1980's The Empire Strikes Back, but is not gonna be him (probably) for many reasons. Jon Favreau is directing and I generally like his output and think he handles spectacle well (that first Iron Man movie still largely kicks ass) and he's said that he's going for more of a "western" vibe here, which could be fun. This takes place sometime between when Jedi ends and when Force Awakens starts while the galaxy is in upheaval. The trailer footage doesn't give away too much plot, but let me take a swing: the titular bounty hunter will take a bounty that has larger repercussions and ties into the ride of the First Order (the bad guys in the new trilogy). There's still some Empire forces around (the all-black Death Troopers, not seen since Rogue One, are about) but they're not universally loved or feared (there's a bunch of Stormtrooper helmets on spikes in one village) and whomever this wily bounty hunter is, they'll have to do some sneaking and perhaps some double and maybe even triple crossing to survive! Am I close? So this actually looks cool and I am legit a bit disappointed that I won't see it cuz I'm not getting Disney+ because fuck that. It's got a really fun cast (Carl Weathers, Ming-Na Wen, Nick Nolte, Gina Carano, Taika Waititi and *checks notes*... Werner Herzog?!?!?) and has the potential to flesh out lesser-seen corners of the Star Wars universe showcasing cool planets, aliens, animals and milk of all colors. But y'know what would be really sweet? If, regardless of who played The Manda' in the first season, if that helmet comes off in the season finale to reveal... a lady. Wild, I know, but Metroid did it and then also Game of Thrones and it ruled every time.

LADY AND THE TRAMP - They at it again, folks. The House of Mouse is remaking the 1955 animated classic with real people and less-real dogs (meaning some of the dog footage is definitely CG augmented) because... ? I will say this as long as it needs saying: I. Do. Not. Get. It. This looks exactly the same as the animated one, essentially just.. again. So what's the appeal here? The voices of your favorite actors? I can't imagine anyone could pick Justin Theroux's (the Tramp's) voice out of a lineup; it's as generic as his face! If you're just such a Tessa Thompson (Lady) "stan" that you're considering seeing this, she's done an audiobook of Chekhov's Three Sisters which I can only imagine is at least as good a performance as whatever she could squeeze out of this corpse of a concept. Y'know what a good way to introduce new audiences to Disney classics is? Just introduce them to the classics. To quote every dog in this flick: Woof. Good news is: It's a Disney+ exclusive, so I'll never see it!

15th:

EARTHQUAKE BIRD - Based on the Susanna Jones novel, this Netflix production stars Alicia Vikander and Riley Keough as a pair of expat girls who become friends in Japan only for Keogh's character to go missing after a love triangle begins to develop between the two friends over Naoki Kobayashi's handsome photographer. This looks great! The trailer has me thoroughly intrigued. It seems a little too obvious that Keogh came between Vikander and Kobayashi so I can only assume there's more we're not seeing and that prospect has me very excited! Plus, to a lesser extent, I'm curious about that title.

CHARLIE'S ANGELS - This reboot of the ABC TV series (that aired from 1976 - '81) turned McG-helmed film almost-franchise (the 2000s) comes to us from director (!) Elizabeth Banks, who also wrote the screenplay based on a story by Evan Spiliotopoulos and David Auburn. It's pretty much what you might expect: bad guys steal a bleeding-edge device designed to solve the world's assorted energy crises because it could just as easily be used as a weapon - how exactly isn't specified - and only the Townsend Agency, a "covert group of exceptional women" can stop them. Those women? Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinksa! This looks fun! I really enjoyed last year's The Spy Who Dumped Me (a similarly female lead, welcome-to-espionage comedy) though the Angels gals seem more qualified for the spy game than Kunis and McKinnon and will have access to more gadgets and things as well. Most fun for me is Elizabeth Banks and Sir Patrick Stewart BOTH play Bosley (the character acting on unseen Charlie's behalf), so presumably she's his daughter, or perhaps it's a codename for the position, the way they keep refusing to let "James Bond" be. I have a feeling this will be a really fun time and I'm interested to see what Banks brings behind the camera, but have zero interest in the Pitch Perfect series (she directed the 2nd one).

THE GOOD LIAR - Based on the Nicholas Searle novel, Ian McKellan plays a lifelong conman who begins to court widow Helen Mirren in an attempt to swindle her out of her money but finds himself falling for her and (I think) telling her all about himself? There's also a hidden door in the floor and McKellan pushing a man to his death onto subway tracks. So I think things get nasty but, let's be honest, McKellan and Mirren are the main draw for me. I love them both and adding a slightly unsettling undertone to a romance between them seems like it'll make for a great flick!

22nd:

FROZEN 2 - Great title, y'all. This is another instance of me being on the fence about including a film here in EOINA because it's only been 6 years since you were unable to get your niece to stop playing "Let It Go" on repeat so you ended up taking her out of your will (just me?) and in the grand scheme of things, 6 years isn't so long. But in an era when we have multiple films in the same franchise dropping in the same year sometimes now, it's simultaneously an eternity? Plus, Frozen was a phenomenon! If nothing else, this 6 year gap tells me that Disney didn't expect the sensation Frozen would become and were left holding the bag (the bag, in this instance, has a huge green cash symbol on the side). So here we are: Elsa and Anna are back and everything's cool (no pun intended {ice witch}) until Elsa starts hearing a voice calling her to some enchanted forest where, long ago, something "went wrong" and now "no one can go". Turns out it's more real than just the bedtime story the girls' father told them when they were kids and that the forest is surrounded by some kind of impenetrable wall of mist that, somehow, Elsa can part using her ice witchy powers. Inside, there's mystical pink fire (Oooo...), giant rock creatures (Ahhh...) and what may be a kelpie - a kind of water spirit horse - (Oh...) so that's all cool (again, no pun intended) and the voice cast features Evan Rachel Wood, Martha Plimpton and Alfred Molina among others alongside the returning voices of Idina Menzel and my girl Kristen Bell as Elsa and Anna respectively and (Why, Satan? Why?) Josh Gad as that obnoxious sentient snowman. I won't be rushing out to see this but I'm a sucker for fantasy settings, nice animation, catchy songs and Kristen Bell so I'm sure I'll watch it at some point.

DARK WATERS - Based on a magazine article by Nathaniel Rich, The Hulk stars as a corporate defense attorney who begins an investigation into the Dupont Chemical company, exposing their long history of dumping hazardous chemical waste into the water near a small farming community. Isn't this the plot of Erin Brockovich? The cast here is pretty stacked, with (deep breath) Anne Hathaway, William Jackson Harper, Bill Pullman, Tim Robbins, Bill Camp, Victor Garber and Mare Winningham all appearing alongside Erin Hulkovich, but I just do not see me wanting to watch this. These kinds of movies, while they do shine light on things that would otherwise go unnoticed, just end up depressing me because These Things Still Happen. Laziness and greed still take precedent over the sanctity of human life for some people and that will always be a struggle no matter how good a performance we get from Mark Ruffalo (see? I know his real name).

DECEMBER 2019

6th:

PLAYMOBIL: THE MOVIE - Didn't I cover this already? Yeah, I did.

A MILLION LITTLE PIECES - Remember when James Fray told everyone that this was a true story and Oprah got so in her feels that she gave it her Book Club seal of approval (thereby decreeing it mandatory reading for a HUGE swath of people) and then it turned out the book was just a well-written story and everyone wanted to burn Frey at the stake? This is that, but as a movie now starring the kid from Kick-Ass as an aspiring writer with substance abuse problems going through rehab and learning that his life has value beyond his demons. This is another great cast with Billy Bob Thornton, Giovanni Ribisi, Charlie Hunnam and the queen Juliette Lewis appearing, among others. I won't be seeing this myself as my greatest interest in this story is that Oprah aftermath I mentioned, which should have been some kind of wake up call for people not to believe everything they read or hear or whatever but instead just ended with Fray and his publisher being publicly humiliated. Imagine if people did that over The Blair Witch Project? We'd laugh them right out of town. Unless one of them was Oprah I guess.

13th:

JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL - The sequel to 2017's update of the 1995 film (itself based on the 1981 illustrated kid's book by Chris Van Allsburg), The Next Level actually threw me a surprise. See, in 2017's Welcome to the Jungle, Jumanji isn't a boardgame anymore because boardgames aren't "lit" "fam", so it's now a videogame and when you play it, you are transported into the world of the game, into one of four playable characters: a big strong Rock "The Dwayne" Johnson, a very smart Jack Black, an ass kicking Karen Gillan or a good-at-carrying-stuff Kevin Hart. Now, in The Next Level, when the kids go back into the game to find their missing friend, their player selections have been shaken up. Plus, the missing kid's grandpa (Danny DeVito) and the grandpa's... pal (?) Danny Glover end up joining them. All this characterization musical chairs ends up with The Dwayne doing a DeVito impression and Hart doing Glover, with Jack Black now being "controlled" by a confident high school football star. I legitimately didn't see any of that coming. So where are the missing kids/their souls or whatever? Who knows! The bulk of the trailer is spent explaining the body-swap gimmick with everything else relegated to a montage. Rhys Darby and Nick Jonas have returned though, and there's some kind of action scene involving a ludicrous number of free-swinging rope bridges and possibly more screeching monkeys, and that's kind of all that jumped out at me. The Dwayne is an absolute gem in everything, but beyond him I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by that previous Jumanji and am actually low-key looking forward to this one.

BLACK CHRISTMAS - Having never actually seen the 1974 original, I have no idea how much this Black Christmas stays true to that one, but I've gotta say: I like what I see. When one of their friends goes missing around the holiday break, some college kids start to get worried. Then they start to get picked off, one after another, by someone in all black. A simple enough premise, but it's those holiday details that really sell me. In a single trailer, there was - as Joe Bob Briggs would say - icicle fu, ham fork fu and x-mas light strangulation fu, plus you've got Cary Elwes as a member of some kind of collegiate cult with the implication of supernatural goings-on? I'm there! Not to mention that most of Moviejawn are pretty big fans of co-writer April Wolfe! Honestly, the only thing that didn't really work for me was that this has the same tick-tocky score as the Us trailer (also from Blumhouse; a fact that is name-checked in the trailer) and that just seems uncreative.

RICHARD JEWELL - Based on a magazine article by Marie Brenner, this Eastwood-helmed project is a look into the life of the titular security guard who, in 1996, discovered a bomb planted at the Centennial Olympic Park during the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. Though he was never officially charged, Jewell's reputation was dragged through the mud during the painful formative years of our country's 24 hour news cycle. I can't remember the last Clint movie I really, truly enjoyed but this looks solid and I'm kind of fascinated with this era in American true crime. Though, that tagline - "The world will know his name and the truth" (yikes) - is absolutely atrocious.

A SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE: FARMAGEDDON - The character of Shaun the sheep originated in the Wallace and Gromit franchise (which started in 1989, though I honestly can't recall which short first featured Shaun) and in 2007, the silent sheep spun off into his own series. In 2015 the first Shaun the Sheep Movie (called Shaun the Sheep Movie) hit theaters. This time around, the plot centers on an alien thingy (it's kinda tentacle-y but in a cute way?) named Lu-La that ends up stuck on Shaun's farm. The farm animals decide they have to help Lu-La get back home and instigate a plan to build a rocket (no doubt from scraps) in an attempt to do so. As with all the Aardman flicks, there's a lot of silly gags on display here, including one were Lu-La severs the top foot of a woman's enormous beehive hairdo with a frozen pizza (remember kids: #PeaceNotPizza). These movies are always extremely solid, funny and cute. So if you're looking for an evening's light entertainment, this would be the best place to look.

20th:

STAR WARS: EPISODE IX: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER - Continuing the main storyline of the Star Wars saga - though they're claiming this is the end - begun in 1977, the first trailer for Rise of Skywalker left me... pretty cold. That's a risk of writing this column bi-monthly: sometimes the studio doesn't put out a good trailer until after EOINA has been submitted. Luckily, I suppose, that didn't quite happen here. The more recent, "final" trailer actually has momentum and more than just the vague implication of what the movie will be about. Between the two trailers, I'm actually getting somewhat excited! Besides the obvious climactic, conclusory confrontation between Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) - which is atop the wreckage of the 2nd Death Star! - and just a silly amount of space ships, it looks like we'll also be getting some of Kylo's backstory, specifically around the formation of the Knights of Ren. That's legitimately exciting! There's also a lot of attention paid to the idea that "even though someone is dead doesn't mean they're gone", which seems unnecessary in a universe known for Force Ghosts. Speaking of, the voice-only cameo from the long-dead Emperor Palpatine has some interesting connotations for the Star Wars universe. We've only ever seen Force Ghosts appear as a sort of Guardian Angel, looking on as characters live their lives. The implication that Palpatine is somehow not simply observing, but waiting is a spooky one that I'm thoroughly psyched to see play out. It would be great if that downed and destroyed Death Star began to function as a haunted house. It *is* something we've toyed with in Star Wars (Luke's confrontation with a spirit in the tree on Dagobah in Return of the Jedi and Rey's trippy navel-gazing session in The Last Jedi) but it would be rad to get a legitimately evil spirit added to the science fiction space magic world that's been built. If you'd asked me a week prior, I'd say I was skipping this but now...

CATS - Based on the Andrew Lloyd Webber/T.S. Eliot joint, a 1980's musical by the former based on the 1939 poetry of the latter, this movie looks absolutely bananas! Which is as it should be. Have you actually listened to CATS? It's some deep-in-the-trees weirdness to start with, and that's before the nightmarish motion-capture "fur technology" special effects come into play! I almost don't want to discuss the plot because it's a journey you should all take individually, but in short it's about how cats as a species choose which of them gets to reincarnate into a new one of their nine lives. And about half of the musical's run time is exposition that has nothing to do with the plot. So I'm really curious what, if any, changes will happen here. Listen y'all, I unabashedly LOVE musicals (and cats but that's besides the point) and while I think the neon nightmare color palette is a little bit much, I'm 100% on board for how crazy this looks and will definitely try to catch it in theaters!

25th:

LITTLE WOMEN - Louisa May Alcott's 1868 and '69 (nice) story of the March sisters, their dreams and aspirations, their trials and tribulations is apparently very fertile ground for adaptation, and in fact as recently as September of last year, another adaptation was made. But that one didn't have Greta Gerwig behind the wheel or Saoirse Ronan, Meryl Streep or Laura Dern appearing (among others), so this one is... better? I dunno. I like a lot of the bts talent here but my favorite version of Little Women was made in 1994 and it's gonna take quite a flick to make me change my mind! Having said that, I am seeing a lot of positive word of mouth for this, so we just might have a contender!

JUST MERCY - I actually saw this trailer in the wild (as in, I didn't only look it up for inclusion in this column) and it took my breath away. Based on the memoir of attorney Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy is the story of how Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) takes the case of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), a black man wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of a white woman. The trailer is plenty moving, and I was kind of already hooked even before reading Jaime's review. This will likely be a real heartstring-tugger. So be warned.

THE SONG OF NAMES - Finally we have this adaptation of the novel by Norman Lebrecht. Starring Tim Roth, this is a story that spans a lifetime. When they were children, Martin's father adopted the extremely talented Dovidl so that he could continue to study at a good school. Though they started off as rivals for Martin's dad's affection, they eventually grew closer. As young men, Dovidl became a violin phenom but at the height of his fame he disappeared. Now, like 50 years later (?) an aging Martin (Roth) decides to try to find his long-missing brother. There's some dialogue in the trailer as far as "why now?" with Martin's (I guess) son asking him, but the response isn't really a satisfying answer. I wonder if the movie itself will be more so. Clive Owen - three years younger than Roth irl - is credited as Dovidl, so presumably Roth will find him in the end. Fun fact, this movie about a violinist is from François Girard, director of The Red Violin, so.... I guess dude loves violins?

In addition to all that above, there are a bunch of biopics coming that aren't based on any particular source including ones on King Henry V of England, Harriet Tubman, Mister Rogers and Jean Seberg, all of which seem varying degrees of interesting.

Since this is the final Everything Old is New Again of the year, allow me a slight indulgence; I want to thank all of you reading this. Whether you're a regular reader or this was your first time reading EOINA, I appreciate it.

Have a safe and happy holiday season and I hope to see you again in the new year! Until then you can listen to Hate Watch Great Watch - the podcast I co-host - and if you end up seeing any of the flick mentioned above, drop a comment below and let's talk about it. Share a link and tell your friends about Moviejawn, cuz everyone here are just the best and nicest folks you'd ever care to meet, and as always, Long Live the Movies!