Chupa
I’m surprised Jonás Cuarón didn’t just rehire Jeffrey Dean Morgan to reprise his role for the villain here, it’s basically the same guy, but I guess I’ll settle for Christian Slater. Jokes aside, I did quite enjoy Desierto, it as a solid debut, simple but visceral. I’ve been curious to see what the younger Cuarón would do next. I was intrigued by this cyberpunk Zorro pitch that’s apparently been floating around, but I guess that never went through. But an 80s Amblin riff with the chupacabra? Sure, sounds like a fun time. This looks pretty charming.
Chupa hits Netflix on April 7th.
The Portable Door
That this is going straight to streaming here is criminal, this looks really cool and interesting and imaginative. I haven’t heard of the novel this is based on, nor the filmmaker behind it (it appears he’s mostly known for soaps, other TV stuff, and was an actor at some point). But the cast is pretty aces, it looks very well made, and I can see them exploring some potentially heady ideas about fate, choice, and life in a way that is engaging and visually compelling. Will for sure keep my eye out for this one.
The Portable Door premieres exclusively on MGM+ on April 8th.
The Little Mermaid
You know movies projected in 3D are a bit dimmer than regular movies, it’s like someone applied that dim filter on this whole movie. Especially the underwater scenes, why are they so dark? I mean, I get it, not a ton of natural light sources, but…it’s a movie…please, do something interesting. But that has proven to be an impossible task for Disney with their live action remakes. Just based on this, I don’t see how this could either be any better, or really any worse than the ones we’ve gotten already. I’m curious what “problematic element of the original” they will try to fix, as that has been a fairly common thread with a lot of these movies, trying to “fix” things that may not have aged the best, though they’ve ultimately made worse movies out of those choices. The actors look solid, I’ll give it that, Halle Bailey’s got hella talent with those vocals, but…yeah, I’m not expecting much out of this, but I’d love to be proven wrong.
The Little Mermaid opens in theaters on May 26th.
BlackBerry
Matt Johnson…now that is a name I have not heard in a while. Been curious to see what he’s been up to, and this looks like quite the project for him. Lots of big names here, mostly comedic names, but the tone isn’t as overtly comedic as I would expect. It’s selling this wild story, but I don’t really see anything about this that is inherently unbelievable or super out there. Maybe there’s more to it, I don’t the history of this phone, so I’m definitely going to check this out to see what the fuss is about, and there’s a bunch of guys here I enjoy seeing, so I’m hoping for a good time.
BlackBerry will be released in select theaters on May 12th.
To Catch A Killer
Generic as hell title, but this looks really cool. I’m sorry, I know we’re all supposed to hate “copaganda,” but yeah, this stuff is fun to me. I haven’t seen anything from Damián Szifron aside from Wild Tales, but I do remember really enjoying that film, and I’m surprised this is being distributed from Vertical Entertainment, it seems like there’s a pretty decent amount of money put into this, and the visual style is terrific. Plus, I feel like it’s been a hot minute since I’ve seen Shailene Woodley in something, I’m happy to see her again.
To Catch A Killer opens in select theaters on April 21st.
The Unheard
I remember The Beach House being a fairly simple, yet solid genre film. It hasn’t stuck with me too much, but I don’t think I had anything really bad to say about it. This does have an interesting hook, though I can’t help but think of that Jessica Alba film, The Eye, which is a somewhat similar premise, but relating to the eye instead of hearing. Not to say it looks bad because of the similarities, just an observation. Looks pretty solid.
The Unheard premieres on Shudder starting March 31st.
Thoughts on any of the trailers? Feel free to discuss in the comments!