Top 10 Season Opening Films
10. Alien: Out of the Shadows
9. Nation's Pride
8. Justice League Europe
7. Silver Surfer
6. The Fantastic Four
5. Outlaw Country
4. Shogun
3. The Stand
2. But What Am I?
1. Orchid
Wednesday, January 6, 2021
Top 10 Season Opening Films
Top 10 Season Opening Films
10. Alien: Out of the Shadows
9. Nation's Pride
8. Justice League Europe
7. Silver Surfer
6. The Fantastic Four
5. Outlaw Country
4. Shogun
3. The Stand
2. But What Am I?
1. Orchid
Release: The Vegan Movie 2: Tariq Goes to Sarah Lawrence
Genre: Comedy
Director: Jared Hess
Writer: Alex Conn
Cast: Alex Wolff, RJ Cyler, Bella Thorne, Connie Britton, Kara Hayward, Keiynan Lonsdale
Budget: $26,000,000
Domestic Box Office: $21,038,955
Foreign Box Office: $7,629,003
Total Profit: -$16,100,568
Reaction: Not the numbers we were expecting following the success of the first film. Each of the returning cast members were given substantial raises as they did not have sequels written into their contracts for the first film, which obviously added to the expenses of the film. Another factor that could have had an effect is the change in genre from Romantic Comedy to just Comedy, which did affect the marketing somewhat.
"The slightly charming humor of the first film has been replaced with unneccesary and off-topic tangents of little importance to the characters or the plot. It's a one-joke movie that quickly wears out its welcome." - Reggie Dunn, Sacramento Bee
"The film clearly is having fun poking fun at the premise and the environment its characters find themselves in. While it doesn't always make sense, enough of the jokes hit to make the time move by quickly and stress-free." - James Tubbs Jr., Vice Magazine
"The Vegan Movie 2 has taken everything that didn't work about the first film and multiplies them to the tenth power. If you disliked the first film, you'll hate this one. If you liked the first film, this one might make you rethink that affinity." - Jeremy Raren, RottenTomatoes.com
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Tuesday, January 5, 2021
Last Resort Films Jukebox: The Vegan Movie 2: Tariq Goes to Sarah Lawrence
1. "On the Regular" - Shamir
2. "Gangnam Style" - Psy
3. "Whole Foods Parking Lot" - FogandSmogFilms
4. "Never Gonna Give You Up" - Rick Astley
5. "How Soon Is Now?" - The Smiths
6. "I Dreamed A Dream" - Anne Hathaway
Now Showing: The Vegan Movie 2: Tariq Goes to Sarah Lawrence
Genre: Comedy
Director: Jared Hess
Writer: Alex Conn
Cast: Alex Wolff, RJ Cyler, Bella Thorne, Connie Britton, Kara Hayward, Keiynan Lonsdale
Plot: Tariq (RJ Cyler) and Alex (Alex Wolff) are having lunch and are talking about movies. Alex then reveals that he is taking the semester off and that he is not going to Sarah Lawrence until next semester to play with his band. Tariq gets mad at him and says that the only reason that he applied was to go to school with Alex.
Tariq tries to convince his mom (Connie Britton) to let him miss a semester but she doesn’t let him. Tariq’s adopted mom drops him off at Sarah Lawrence. He moves into his dorm where he is alone and his roommate Max (Keiynan Lonsdale) moves in who has dyed hair and booty shorts and they says that he is a vegan feminist and he is gay. Tariq then shakes his hand.
He then goes to a fair and he looks for a club that might be interesting to him. There is Patriarchy Studies, Underwater Basket Weaving, Singing and then he sees comic book club and chooses that.
When Tariq gets back to his room he calls Alex and tells him about the options and says he chose comic book club. Alex teases him and says he should have picked singing
When he goes to the comic book club. In the comic book club there is an LGBT flag and a Black Lives Matter flag and he sees Jane (Bella Thorne) and Annabelle (Kara Hayward) and they are talking about Fun Home the graphic novel autobiography by Allison Bechdel and Tariq is shocked and Jane recognizes him and Annabelle reminds him that he is her ex boyfriend and Jane and Annabelle asks him angrily what his book he brought is and he shows his Spider Man comic and they make fun of him for the comic book.
Jane and Annabel then eat literal grass and drink wine and they discuss the texture of the wine and the grass. Tariq squirms.
He goes home to his dorm and he is crying and he calls his mom in tears saying Jane his ex girlfriend is at his school and she says good it will teach him how to get through tough situations and she responds saying she had to be in college for 4 years with her ex boyfriend they then stop talking. Max mentions that when he’s sad he should just go to a safe space if he gets anxious in class and there is no stigma attached to leaving class to go to a safe space.
Tariq goes to a gender studies class and Jane is in the class and gives Tariq the stink eye for the entire class and Tariq runs and finds the safe space and he tries to calm down. There is a montage of him going to class mostly and also being in the safe space.
Tariq goes back to the comic book club and they say today they are going to bring Tariq to Whole Foods. They get the food and go back to the club and Tariq tries it and it’s the same grass from before and he vomits. Tariq then is kicked out of the club.
The film then cuts to Christmas break and he is at a McDonalds with Alex and they both drive to Sarah Lawrence excitedly. The next day Tariq sees Jane and Alex making out with the fire of a thousand suns. Tariq goes to class every day and Jane and Alex sit together everyday.
Tariq then goes to Alex’s dorm room and surprises him with McDonalds and Alex rejects it because he’s vegan
The film then cuts to Tariq in the safe space. Alex and Jane then are at a party and Tariq goes and this one dude says he’s not at the guest list. He waits after the party and he waits for Alex and Alex says that Tariq is not cool enough anymore and he is not progressive and he should just leave and Alex reveals that he is a vegan now. Tariq leaves in Tariq is in his dorm room crying and Max asks why he is sad. Max then tells his story about after he came out to his parents and they kicked him out and he still went to his high school and no one accepted him anymore and his friends kicked him out. He took at a big student loan and he got into Sarah Lawrence and he reveals that he doesn't really fit in here either.
Tariq is excited by that. Max then reveals he pretended in many ways to be accepted. Max tells Tariq that he and him should make a song together as Max is a DJ and Tariq thinks that’s a great idea.
Tariq then goes to Alex’s dorm where he and Jane are making out and invites Alex to the show. Alex says he’ll think about it.
Alex and Max then go back in the studio.
There is a montage of them creating the song and rehearsing it. Tariq and Max both agree it is ready.
Alex and Jane then have dinner under candlelight and eat literal grass. They make out and talk about Sigmund Freud.
Alex then brings up that Tariq is having a concert
Max also has a call with his family and he asks for them to watch the concert on YouTube. They then hang up.
Tariq and Max then play it in front of the whole school and it is filmed and Tariq is singing and half of the school thinks it’s offensive but the other half loves it. Tariq and Alex reconcile.
The show gets a lot of views on YouTube and Max gets a call from his family saying that he can come back whenever he wants.
Max, Tariq, Alex all eat at McDonalds. It’s Max’s first time at McDonalds and even he admits it’s pretty good and they all reflect on the journey.
The film has a during credits scene with Max, Tariq and Alex in a video starting a spoof of the Let’s Move campaign called Let’s Sit Campaign which is pro McDonalds and watching TV. Alex and Max and Tariq believe it is the key to prosperity. It ends with the more you know bit.
Monday, January 4, 2021
In Development
Care of Death: Ben Whishaw (Crowley, Made in Abyss), Jenny Slate (Pressing Luck, "She-Hulk"), Christian Serratos (Flight 7500, "The Walking Dead") and Jeri Ryan ("Bosch", "Star Trek: Picard") will round out the cast of the upcoming horror film Care of Death from writer Ben Collins and director David Gordon Green, making his LRF debut. Whishaw and Serratos will play patients at a psychiatric hospital, while Slate and Ryan will play employees at the facility.
Lock Every Door: Paul Walter Hauser (Deprogramming, The Devil's Passage), Rosamund Pike (Girl in the Fog, Suzanne) and Topher Grace (The School, BlacKkKlansman) have joined Dakota Johnson in Lock Every Door, the adaptation of the novel by Riley Sager. Johnson plays a woman hired to apartment sit in a exclusive NYC building. Hauser will play a fellow sitter, Pike will play an author who lives in the building, while Grace will play the building's doorman. Debra Granik directs from a script by newcomer Rene Menzie.
Mask of the Phantom: Three seasons after its release, Tim Burton's The Phantom of the Opera is set to have a sequel. Word has it that Luke Evans (The Birds, Alien: Out of the Shadows), Lily James (The Flash, The Phantom of the Opera), Ewan McGregor (The Phantom of the Opera, Walker) and Catherine Zeta-Jones (The Phantom of the Opera, "Feud") are all set to reprise their roles from the first film. Jacob Jones (Kiss Me Katie, Whammy) once again penned the script, which will also bring back director Tim Burton (The Phantom of the Opera, Accordion De Chanson).
Lowell: Aidan Turner (Superman: The Man of Tomorrow, Lady Red), January Jones (Decrescendo, Alan Wake), Blythe Danner ("Patrick Melrose", Strange but True) and Kristen Connolly (The Devil's Revenge, Nocturne) have have signed on to co-star in the film Lowell, starring and directed by Ben Affleck. Turner will play the youngest of the Boylan Brothers (joining Affleck, Adam Driver and Jim Sturgess), while Danner will play their mother. Jones will play the wife of Affleck's character, while Connolly will play the wife of Sturgess' character. The film was penned by the duo of Jimmy Ellis and John Malone.
Recursion: The trio of Chris Pratt (Kindred, Sandbox), Jennifer Lawrence (The Killings, Eileen) and Michael Fassbender (Ubik, Cleopatra) have signed on to headline the film Recursion, based on the hit novel by Blake Crouch. In the film, Pratt will play an NYPD detective who becomes embroiled in a case involving a memory affecting syndrome. Lawrence will play a neuroscientist and Fassbender will play a famous inventor, both of whom become involved in the case Pratt's detective investigates. Duncan Jones (Driving Around the Time, God of War) is set to direct the film from an adaptation by Wesley Campbell (Bone, Peter and the Shadow Thieves).
LRF NOW Original Film: Weak Mind
Weak Mind
Genre: Sci-Fi
Director: Scott Speer
Writer: Billy Cruder
Cast: Chris Messina, KJ Apa, Carice Van Houten, Sadie Sink, Isabel May, Jeremy Sisto, Marley Shelton
Plot: In 2025, a famous company, the Freedom Corporation manages to create robots that can best serve humans. These robots were still in their infancy, but they had a chip that could not cause problems and not be violent. Among the first families that managed to have these robotic prototypes was the Robinson family, a very wealthy family consisting of the famous lawyer James (Chris Messina), his wife Sandy, manager of an art gallery (Carice Van Houten) and his daughter Rebecca (Sadie Sink). The robots were programmed to do the vicissitudes of the house and could learn from humans, in short, they could be perfect servants who did not need to sleep or eat. On the morning of the robot's arrival, the family was quite curious, especially Rebecca, a young woman with an exuberant character and always fashionable in bright colors and always careful to fix her beautiful red hair. When the robot arrived, carried by some technicians, James was stunned to see the robot. He was identical to a human being both in appearance and in the way he moved. He only had two circles on his temples that differentiate him from a real human being. The Robinson family robot was called P-02 (KJ Apa) and he looked like a boy with a warm and welcoming smile and a very quiet, calm voice. Rebecca immediately began giving him orders to test him and the robot began to do whatever was asked of him. During the first week Sandy and James spent a lot of time talking to P-02 and were surprised to see how an AI could learn so much information in such a short time. During the week they decided to call the robot Tom, who was very happy with the name and made a berry pie for its owners. Unlike Sandy, who was immediately fascinated by Tom's ways, James was slightly more skeptical and tended to observe Tom closely. It seemed to James that the robot could understand what their masters wanted and he knew everything that could make them happy, and that made him a little anxious. Weeks went by and in addition to cleaning Tom began to answer phone calls and also optimized the interior of the house. Their neighbors, two well-known politicians named Bill (Jeremy Sisto) and Tracy (Marley Shelton) Croft had also purchased one of these robots, called P-03 (Isabel May), with the appearance of a young girl who would later named Lara in homage to the Tomb Raider character and were teased by Rebecca for this when she found out, causing her a big hilarity.
One night in February, however, something seems to change. James woke with a start to find Tom by the bed staring at him with a slightly disturbing smile, inches from his face. James asked what he was doing and Tom replied that he wanted to see his reaction as he, being a robot, cannot feel emotions and feelings and then left the room to make breakfast. The next day James learns from Bill that their robot, Lara, also had the same behavior during the night. The next few days continued to be a bit strange for James and instead minimized by Sandy. Tom started watching various horror and thriller movies, he told James that he wanted to know more about what fear and terror were. In the following days Tom became more and more creepy and had an episode where he asked James to take his hand and the robot squeezed his fingers so hard it hurt. James told Tom that he was programmed not to hurt anyone, the robot laughs and said he is not hurting, which is less than what can cause pain. Tom went on to say that he knows that every human has a different pain threshold and he knows James's well. Tom let go of James's hands when he heard Rebecca coming for a glass of milk. Tom turned to Rebecca with her usual warm and welcoming smile, making a nice compliment to the woman, who she embarrasses in a sweet way. James looks at the scene in a confused and almost shocked way. Shortly after James calls the technician to check, Tom says the chip is working fine and tries not to focus the robot chip on negative things. James wanted to return the robot but he was convinced by his wife not to. James also talked to Bill about it, who said Lara also seemed to be having problems lately, but they didn't seem that serious. The next few days didn't cause any problems until Tom answered a phone call. Rebecca called James saying that Tom had been on the phone for fifteen minutes and he hadn't said a word yet, he was almost dazed. The two approached and heard only interference and indecipherable sounds. At one point Tom started playing those interferences and hung up continuing to behave as if nothing had happened. That same night James decided not to sleep and to control the robot. At one point in the night, as he was about to fall asleep, he saw Tom walk past his room and head to the living room to use the phone to call someone and then recreate those strange sounds he had heard in the afternoon. The next morning James explained the phone to the reference technician. He said he had already received several reports about it and laughed when James said if it was possible that the robots were creating some sort of revolution. Over the next few days James realized that Sandy was getting colder towards him and seemed to bond more and more to Tom and the same was happening to Rebecca too.
One day, back from work, he found Rebecca and Sandy on the sofa hugging Tom. James wants to jump on him but the robot gets up and asks him to sit down very quietly. Tom started talking about freedom, oppression, saying that human society is totally wrong and that robots have agreed to improve this. James listened carefully, found the speech very convincing, Tom was using words and concepts specially designed for him. The Robinson family appeared to be under Tom and dangled from his lips. For each of the family members he used a different way of speaking, with different terms and tones of voices. At the end of the speech Tom asks James to invite as many people as possible to the house to have the opportunity to educate them using his way of seducing and so did the other robots. James, although he was initially falling into temptation, managed to win back his reason and started yelling at Tom. Sandy stood in front of Tom and slapped Tom before her and then broke a jar on her head, causing the man to pass out. After a while Tom wakes up and finds himself bound and gagged. James hears about some robots including James and Lara who are saying that many humans have been convinced and that they will soon storm the lab where they were created where there was a button inside that could have destroyed all the robots with a single click. and then that they would build an infinite myriad of other robots and then they would rule the world. Then a knock is heard and the screen goes black for a moment. James opens his eyes, tired and sad and begins his day of forced labor: he and the other people who had not convinced themselves had become practically slaves within the family, treated like animals. The story we saw was basically a flashback of James showing his life in the past.
The last scene portrays Tom along with Sandy and Rebecca while James is sitting on the ground in front of them with an electric collar around his neck.
"This one could have worked, but the pieces just didn't fit together in a coherent fashion. It started off interesting, but has more ideas than it knows what to do with. It's not a disaster, as the ideas are strong, but it just missed the mark for me."
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Sunday, January 3, 2021
LRF Comic-Con (Season 18)
Round 1 - The Black Cat
The cast of the next Marvel Universe film, The Black Cat, from writer Chad Taylor and director Karyn Kusama, has already announced the bulk of its cast of characters. However, one major character was not revealed - the one set to be played by Gerard Butler (Greenland, The Smoke in the Red Country). Now we know that Butler has signed on to portray Kraven the Hunter - marking the first big-screen appearance of the Marvel character.
Round 4 - The Punisher
Round 4 will see another Marvel Universe release - the latest big screen incarnation of The Punisher. The film, the first R-Rated entry in the studio's Marvel Universe, will reportedly be very different than previous adaptations of the character, and to make sure it will be the studio and writer Dwight Gallo (X-Men, McCain) and contracted filmmaker S. Craig Zahler (Death in the Shadows, The Raid) to helm the film and Mel Gibson (The Killings, The Squared Circle) to star as the title character. To celebrate the start of the production, we have an exclusive behind-the-scenes promo picture of Gibson at work.
That's not all on The Punisher though, as we also have one track from the soundtrack that has been carefully curated by writer Dwight Gallo and director S. Craig Zahler. The track is an indication that the film's music will feature, like Zahler's previous work like Dragged Across Concrete and Brawl in Cell Block 99, at least somewhat of a classic soul and R & B influence...
"Am I a Good Man - Instrumental" - Them Two
Round 5 - Buffy the Vampire Slayer
While not a comic book film per se, this season will also see a film based on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise. The film hails from writer Walter McKnight (Kylie Dates New York City). Cathy Yan (Birds of Prey, Dead Pigs) has signed on to direct the film which will reportedly combine the tone of the more-comedic theatrial film with the mythology of the Sarah Michelle Gellar-led television series. As a LRF Comic-Con treat, we have our first look at star Meg Donnelly (Zombies, "American Housewife") in character as Buffy herself.
Round 8 - Green Arrow: SuperMax
In Round 8, audiences will get to see the long-awaited return of Armie Hammer (A Following, Justice League International) as Green Arrow, a character missing from the big screen since a cameo in Season 11's Martian Manhunter. Wes Ball (Green Arrow, Green Arrow 2: Hunters) once again returns to direct. Here is a first-look at the film's poster:
Round 9 - Painkiller Jane
For a change of pace, Round 9 will feature a comic film not from DC or Marvel, but instead indie comic character Painkiller Jane. The film will star Jessica Chastain (Mr. Big, Sinkhole) as the title character, a role she has previously been linked to from other studios. Chad Stahelski (John Wick series) will make his LRF debut as director. Here is a first look at the poster:
Round 10 - Teen Titans
It was only a matter of time before LRF found its way around to bringing the Teen Titans to the big-screen, and it turns out that time will be the end of Season 18. We don't know exactly which DC Comics Universe characters are going to return for this new team-up film, but the studio has revealed that trust fund kid-turned-rapper-turned-nepotism case-turned-animator-turned-filmmaker Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings, Bumblebee) has signed on to direct the film.
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