On the Fall Radar…

Seriously? Tim Curry and Dolly Parton in one week? Have we not been suffering enough? We couldn’t have some time to mourn our beloved country music icon who devoted her life and wealth to making the world a better place before getting hit with the passing of our favorite childhood villain/hambone delight?

I just cannot even… let’s try to set aside our collective grief for at least a few minutes…

RESIDENT EVIL – In Theaters September 18

Directed by Zach Cregger

Starring Austin Abrams, with Paul Walter Hauser and Kali Reis

What is it about? A second reboot of the long-running film series based on the popular video games series about a corporate-designed mutagenic virus that spreads around the world and turns living organisms into flesh-eating zombies.

How am I feelin’ about this one? I liked Weapons quite a bit. It wasn’t perfect, but was definitely a blast; that it also showcased my favorite performance in a horror movie from last year was a major point in its favor. As someone who had no real use for Barbarian, I suddenly found myself eagerly awaiting Zach Cregger’s next directorial effort. Or, at least, I was, until I found out it is a second attempt at rebooting the Resident Evil movie franchise (I guess Welcome to Racoon City didn’t take off?), which is itself based on the video game series by Capcom. Oh. I mean, sure, whatever…

Okay, so I am not inherently against the idea of Resident Evil as a film franchise. I haven’t played all of the games, but I’ve played enough to know that they certainly lend themselves to cinematic reinterpretations better than most other popular video game franchises. But can we just be honest with ourselves and admit one of the reasons the games are so fun is because they’re all pretty… silly? Like, no one is arguing that these things can be held up as serious art like Silent Hill, right? I know fans of the games were miffed at the Paul W.S. Anderson movies for not adhering to the series canon, but let’s be honest, tonally and visually… he nailed it.

Before any fans attempt to argue with me, this is one of the most iconic scenes from the fourth sequel in the mainline series:

So when I watch this very somber, intense teaser trailer for the newest attempt to reboot the franchise, I cannot help but raise an obvious question: “Why is this even attached to the Resident Evil IP at all?” Don’t get me wrong, it looks really good! I plan to see it! I just don’t see the point of calling this “Resident Evil” if there are no boulder-punching scenes, “Jill Sandwich” and “Master of Unlocking” one-liners, plant monsters, bullet-dodging supervillains who sport sunglasses in the middle of the night, or protagonists who do ridiculous motorcycle kung-fu stunts. If Cregger wanted to make a serious survival thriller set in a zombie-infested city, surely he could have pointed to the box office success of his last effort to get a studio to trust him with $80 million for an original high-concept horror wide release, no? Or maybe he couldn’t. Maybe this was his only way to keep scaling up his particular directorial ambitions. That would be sad. That possibility truly saddens me. Or maybe he really is a genuine fan of the games and is planning to hit us with some absurd nonsense when this hits theaters later this month. In which case… okay, I’m down!

Not sure how general audiences will react, but whatever!

Content Warning: Discussions of self-harm and attempted child abuse in the following section. Feel free to skip ahead to Digger if you are not in the headspace for those subjects right now.

PRIMETIME – In Theaters September 25

Directed by Lance Oppenheim

Starring Robert Pattinson, with Merritt Wever and Skyler Gisondo

What is it about? Ambitious journalist Chris Hansen sets out to make television history as the host of Dateline NBC’s To Catch a Predator.

How am I feelin’ about this one? Looks like we have quite a movie night planned! Why don’t you have a seat? Just have a seat, right over there…

So we’re about to get a feature-length film about To Catch a Predator? A show that went off the air almost twenty years ago? So what was your plan with this movie? What’s this compulsion? This drive to go back and explore one of the most popular and controversial TV shows of the Bush Administration? Who am I? I’ll get to that in a minute, but right now I have a few more questions about what you were doing and what was going on in your mind with this movie. The show seems ripe for a good story, doesn’t it? People who were too young to remember its original run, and far too young for you to be chatting with online, still can recognize references to it and are at least familiar with the general setup — TV journalist Chris Hansen works with a vigilante organization called “Perverted Justice” and, later, local law enforcement, to set up sting operations targeting men trying to hook up with teenagers through the internet. At the sting location, Hansen confronts them with questions and quotes from their chat conversations to publicly humiliate them before they’re arrested in dramatic fashion by the police.

Sounds like the premise of a hagiography, right? Being the Good Samaritan, here? But the problem… is that I have the receipts of all the damaging ways the show played into comforting stereotypes of what a “sexual predator” is, stoked moral panics that did nothing to actually protect children from exploitation, prioritized entertainment and advertising over actual justice, and in many instances, actually stymied meaningful efforts to hold predators accountable while motivating reckless clout-chasing vigilantes in the years since. So… it would probably be best for us… to… start telling the truth about this period in television history. Based on the trailer, it appears that Lance Oppenheim does not hold warm feelings toward his subject. He is a documentary filmmaker making his narrative feature debut with Primetime. First time making this kind of movie, apparently. Which is interesting, because I hear that a lot. And I’m guessing not all of them are telling the truth…

It’s also pretty obvious to me that the primary focus of this movie will be the Bill Conradt situation, where the show kinda sorta drove a man to kill himself which launched a lawsuit that revealed the show arguably took tactical control of the raid that ended with the Dallas-Forth Worth assistant district attorney’s suicide. Oh, but the show ended shortly after this event because “the show had run its course,” Chris? That’s your story? And you’re stickin’ to it? Do you see why… I would find that hard to believe? See, it just doesn’t wash. Playing the eponymous predator-hunting journalist is Robert Pattinson, who clearly relished reciting the show’s most iconic lines while doing A Voice. Quite a few members of the cast appear to be playing composite characters; Merritt Wever appears to be portraying a producer and Skyler Gisondo is playing one of the show’s many decoys, but not a specific one. One of the named characters is former NBC producer Jeff Zucker, played here by… Jeff Zucker?! You’re telling me the producer who served as President of NBC’s Entertainment, News & Cable Group during the time To Catch a Predator was on the air is portraying himself in this movie that portrays the show and its host in a negative light? Is that why the trailer includes him reciting the suspiciously exonerative “I don’t really like your show” line? Lines are lines but showing up is showing up!

You see how this looks, right?

DIGGER – In Theaters October 2

Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Starring Tom Cruise, with John Goodman and Sandra Hüller

What is it about? The most powerful man in the world embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything.

How am I feelin’ about this one? I have been wanting to see Tom Cruise in a movie like this for well over a decade. For the entirety of the 2010s, with the sole exception of that one jukebox musical where he sings into a woman’s ass, he has appeared in nothing but action movies. There is an entire generation of moviegoers who have no living memory of him as one of the hardest working and most ambitious movie stars in the world. Despite solidifying his status as a matinée idol by his early twenties, Cruise frequently turned down guaranteed four-quadrant blockbusters in favor of tougher auteur projects… and would turn those into box office hits! Within a fifteen-year span, he worked with the likes of Oliver Stone, Rob Reiner, Sydney Pollack, Neil Jordan, Brian De Palma, Cameron Crowe, Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Mann, Steven Spielberg, and Stanley-freakin’-Kubrick. And then, in the mid-aughts, he became what the kids these days would call a “lolcow.” And I think the public mockery of his couch-jumping antics not only turned him into a Hollywood pariah for a while, it got to him, personally. So it makes sense that he would retreat into being a boundary-pushing action star for the last fifteen years because… I mean… how can you mock someone who hangs off of planes and climbs skyscrapers?

But I want him to come back to applying that same borderline-unhealthy dedication to his characters. I want him to show Gen Z what he is capable of as a capital-a Actor. And with the success of Top Gun: Maverick turning him into the “Savior of Cinema,” it looks like he finally feels comfortable doing that again. The auteur with the honor of directing Tom Cruise The Actor again is Alejandro G. Iñárritu, which also means Tom Cruise wants an Academy Award (a competitive one, not just the Honorary Oscar he received earlier this year). If you are a performer who wants Academy recognition, it is hard to find a director who will help you more than Iñárritu — five of his seven films received Academy Award nominations for acting, and all of his English-language features have received multiple acting nominations. Leonardo DiCaprio had been gunning for a Best Lead Actor Oscar for years, and he finally got one thanks to Iñárritu.

So what is the vehicle for Cruise’s play for a competitive Oscar? A big-budget high concept comedy called Digger, which already pleases me immensely. I really wish Hollywood invested in more comedies that also felt like Real Movies™, instead of the indifferently-shot, shapeless, riff-heavy disposables we’ve been inundated with through most of this century. This one looks like a dark political satire, too! I’m all for ambitious comedies that want to touch on elite hubris, government overreach, and manufactured consent, which the trailer seems to promise… along with hints that this will aggravate me as much as most of Iñárritu’s work. Clearly the Academy disagrees with me, but I find his filmmaking sensibilities overwrought, overbearing, and ultimately pretty shallow relative to the ambitious concepts he starts off with. I feel like I have a sizable cohort of cinephiles who agree with me regarding his heavier dramas, but I would lay this criticism at the feet of his “lighter” fare as well. I’m sorry to anyone who remains a fan of this movie, and there are things I still genuinely enjoy about it, but for the most part, Birdman or (The Expected Virtue of Ignorance) has aged very poorly over the years. Just look at this scene that critics were doing cartwheels over in 2014:

Cringe. There’s no other word for it. This makes me cringe. It’s embarrassing. That right there is the kind of tin-eared dialogue that could only be written by a group of aging, out-of-touch Gen X’ers. Considering all but one of the screenwriters for Birdman worked on the script for Digger, I am concerned.

VERITY – In Theaters October 2

Directed by Michael Showalter

Starring Dakota Johnson, with Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett

What is it about? An adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s smash hit novel about a struggling writer hired to ghostwrite the remainder of an incomplete manuscript for a bestselling author unable to finish it after a mysterious accident incapacitates her.

How am I feelin’ about this one? Colleen Hoover, even more so than Freida McFadden, has effectively “cracked the code” on how to be successful as a fiction writer in today’s attention economy. In an era when trust in institutions (including book publishers) is collapsing, recreational literacy is plummeting, and we are surrounded by communication devices blasting advertisements and propaganda at us 24/7, it is harder than ever to make a living as an author despite the barrier to get your work seen and published being arguably easier than it has ever been. It is insanely difficult to get the general public to know your books even exist, let alone buy them. So how did Hoover become a millionaire writing romance novels? By writing her books in a way that made a substantial portion of readers hate her work and feel the need to tell everyone how much they hate her work on the internet. I am not being sarcastic; that is literally the key to being a successful novelist these days. If I searched #BookTok for reviews on the latest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, I might get a dozen or so hits. If I searched for hot takes on literally anything written by Colleen Hoover, I will get fifty times as many hits. Most of them negative takes, but who cares? You think she’s going to be upset if someone pays money to “hate-read” her latest novel? Less than 10% of published authors are able to fully financially support themselves solely through their writing. Hoover is in the < 3% who have been able to make a damned good living as an author, and the divisiveness of her work is a huge reason, maybe even the number one reason why.

I have never read any of her novels, and I have only seen one of the four adaptations of her books. It did not leave a positive impression on me. Setting aside the idiotic controversy that has dogged it ever since its theatrical release, It Ends With Us is a lousy movie, gifting our beleaguered protagonist financial independence, a supportive network of friends, a hunky paramour reassuring her there are definitely men out there willing to treat her right, and an abuser who sees the error of his ways upon being asked a single question and promises an amicable divorce… and I am supposed to believe this is some unflinching depiction of intimate partner violence. Oh, and also, she’s a florist named Lily Blossom Bloom. So I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to cover a future adaptation of any Colleen Hoover novel in an On the Radar… article at all. But I opted to discuss this upcoming release for a few reasons. For one, this is apparently the only straight-up thriller she has ever written. It is a notable break from her torrid romance novels with graphic sex scenes, instead being reportedly more of a psychologically dark mystery with graphic sex scenes. This unique outlier among her oeuvre makes it an interesting prospect for adaptation. Clearly, it was interesting enough to attract arguably the most stacked cast of any movie based on one of her books, including the extremely busy Anne Hathaway. Verity is also possibly the most divisive of her novels, with a cursory look at #BookTok reviews being a whiplash-inducing ride of effusive praise for an exciting page-turner and condemnatory takedowns of one of the worst novels ever written. I would not be surprised if this also translates to one of the most polarizing movies of the year. At the very least, The Discourse™ will be interesting. Worked for Wuthering Heights (eventually) at the box office, right?

There are aspects of this production that give me pause, though. Michael Showalter, for example, is not exactly the most inspired or consistent director out there; his most recent outing was the holiday comedy Oh. What. Fun. and, well, I’ll let you just read Maxance Vincent’s review to get an idea of how worthwhile it was. The script is written by Nick Antosca, who was, until now, exclusively a television/streaming guy mostly writing biographical crime dramas and one of the most unhinged shows ever produced. Based on the premise of this book, he… has his work cut out for him. From what I can gather, it seems like Dakota Johnson’s protagonist spends quite a substantial amount of the narrative learning about her eponymous, comatose client through reading her unfinished manuscripts and diary entries. Which is fine for a novel, but having your main character sit and read about other characters proactively doing things makes for pretty boring cinema.

No matter how this turns out, I do feel confident predicting that it will pull at least three times what Supergirl made at the box office.

THE SOCIAL RECKONING – In Theaters October 9

Directed by Aaron Sorkin

Starring Mikey Madison, with Jeremy Strong and Jeremy Allen White

What is it about? Frances Haugen, a young Facebook engineer, enlists the help of a Wall Street Journal reporter to blow the whistle on the social network’s most guarded secrets.

How am I feelin’ about this one? “Oh my gawd, Robert, they did it! They made the ‘brutally honest sequel’ to The Social Network that you begged Hollywood to produce back in 2022! This is great news!”

Sure, I guess. But…

“Wait, you’re not stoked for this movie? It’s going to dramatize a single critical moment in the history of the company and its founder’s risible stewardship of it instead of a mere ‘Greatest Hits’ catalogue of everything that’s happened after the conclusion of the last movie, which we know you’re a big fan of!”

Yes, but…

“And this one centers the exact kind of humble ‘Everyday Heroes’ we desperately need in an era when American pop culture seems hell-bent on perpetuating harmful Great Man myths!”

I mean, yeah, but…

“And it stars a trio of really strong actors you’ve praised in the past! Academy Award winner Mikey Madison! Academy Award nominee Jeremy Strong! Joey Award winner Jeremy Allen White!”

And I love that they’re getting plumb roles in a high-profile Hollywood production. But…

“But what??? What could possibly be keeping you from declaring this one of your most hotly-anticipated releases of not just the season, but the entire year?!”

Honestly? It’s Aaron Sorkin. He shouldn’t be directing this. His gifts are on the page; he is excellent at writing a particular kind of high-wire, stress-fueled procedural narrative driven by big egos that make the depiction of seemingly mundane challenges – from going through a military court-martial to running White House affairs (in the Before Times, of course) to starting up a social media business to managing a professional baseball team – feel breezy and entertaining. But those projects were helmed by directors who knew how to fit his brand of witty banter and problem-solving narratives into something that still worked cinematically. Whenever Sorkin dual-hats himself as both writer and director, he puts out movies that feel leaden, heavy-handed… heck, downright sepulchral in their insistence on po-faced seriousness that drag down all of the fun potential in his writing. It is abundantly clear, watching his three previous directorial efforts, that he does not possess the same level of care in developing the mise-en-scène of his films the way David Fincher and Bennett Miller do, nor does he extend any guidance to his composers and cinematographers other than “just light and score it like a typical Oscar-baiting prestige drama.” But worst of all is how he directs his actors, having them perform even his snappiest dialogue in a kind of doleful recitation that insists upon itself.

I have little doubt that this is going to be a handsomely-produced and important mainstream movie that should hopefully continue to solidify the mass perception of Facebo-oh, I beg your fucking pardon, Mr. Zuckerberg, I meant Meta, as an odious cancer on the world. But with Sorkin in charge of directing it, I cannot imagine this sequel coming even close to being as exhilarating as its predecessor. So while my wish did kinda come true, I can’t help but anticipate this upcoming release as a bit of a monkey’s paw situation…

CLAYFACE – In Theaters October 23

Directed by James Watkins

Starring Tom Rhys Harries, with Naomi Ackie and Max Minghella

What is it about? After getting his face disfigured by a gangster, a desperate actor turns to a scientist who transforms his body into clay.

How am I feelin’ about this one? Joey, you finally got your wish. Your favorite Batman villain is not only making his live action cinematic debut, but he will be the star of a solo horror movie. This should not have come as a huge surprise, necessarily; after Joker became an expected monster hit and an unexpected Oscar darling, and after Joker: Folie à Deux obliterated the future of the Arthur Fleck cinematic universe and salted the Earth so nothing could grow in its place ever again, it was only a matter of time until Warner Bros. Pictures looked to the rest of Batman’s extensive rogues gallery for other potential solo films. And there are almost no other comic book superheroes who have as many compelling villains as the Caped Crusader himself (the Spider-Man and maybe the X-Men rogues galleries are the only ones that could possibly put up a serious challenge for that distinction).

For Clayface, Joey was hardly the only person championing his potential as the star of a solo film. Carrie showrunner Mike Flanagan, in fact, pitched an idea for a standalone Clayface movie to Warner Bros. executives years ago but said the meeting “kind of went nowhere.” He was still game for a Clayface film for a long time, though, and only declined to direct this movie (at least according to him) due to scheduling conflicts with projects he was committed to by the time it finally got off the ground under the new creative leadership of James Gunn and Peter Safran. Gunn originally had no interest in such a project, but was reportedly so won over by Flanagan’s pitch that he fast-tracked production.

Personally, I am most excited about two things regarding Clayface: one, this movie boasts a modest budget of only $40 million. Mainstream superhero/sci-fi-fantasy films need to be more comfortable with lower budgets, because one of the reasons many of them “bomb” is because they set obscenely high box office revenue targets to make up for unjustifiably high price tags. Secondly, this does look like it will be (mostly) disconnected from the wider cinematic universe being mapped out by DC Films, which I think is great. I would have no problem if this version of Clayface shows up as the main villain of one of the Matt Reeves Batman movies a few years down the road (although, considering the development hell The Batman: Part II finds itself in now, who knows if that’s even a realistic thing to look forward to?) or a sequel of his own. But I am so relieved I won’t have to keep up with the latest DC Universe “lore” or look forward to some superfluous subplot stopping the main narrative dead in its tracks to set up some spinoff movie in the same canon. No, this is going to be mostly self-contained. And I really appreciate that.

The only thing that worries me are the small indicators in the second trailer that this movie will make the same mistake as the Sony Spider-Man villain spinoffs that are thankfully no more, which is they might try to remake Matt Hagen into some kind of sympathetic anti-hero out of fear that a global audience will refuse to watch a movie starring a protagonist they won’t “like.” This is an absurdly misguided assumption that keeps backfiring because the reason why these villainous characters are popular is because they are villains! We don’t need some kind of retcon recasting them as poor misunderstood good guys! It didn’t work for Black Adam, it didn’t work for Kraven the Hunter, and it won’t work here! That is, of course, if they go that route. Which I hope they don’t.

What better way to close out this article than with one of the catchiest songs ever written for a movie?