Tag Archives: walton goggins

Robert Kirkman’s Invincible Casts Steven Yeun, Sandra Oh, and Mark Hamill

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Invincible

Robert Kirkman‘s Invincible is picking up a hell of a voice cast. The animated Amazon series, the first for Kirkman, has added an impressive amount of talent not just behind the mic but on the screen period.

Steven Yeun, who played Glenn Rhee on Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, will topline the voice cast.

The star packed casst includes J.K. Simmons, Sandra Oh, Seth Rogen (who is attached to the feature film take on Invincible), Gillian Jacobs, Andrew Rannells, Zazie Beetz, Mark Hamill, Walton Goggins, Jason Mantzoukas, Mae Whitman, Chris Diamantopoulos, Melise, Kevin Michael Richardson, Grey Griffin, and Max Burkholder.

The series will launch with either hour long episodes. It’s based on Kirkman’s comic series of the same name which recently ended its run and launched in 2003 running 144 issues. Kirkman created the series with Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley took over on art with the eighth issue.

The story is about Mark Grayson (Yeun) whose father is the most power superhero on the planet, Omni-Man (Simmons). Mark develops powers of his own and learns his father might not be as super as it seems.

The series will launch in 2020.

(via The Hollywood Reporter)

Movie Review: Tomb Raider

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Tomb-Raider-posterIt’s a good video game movie! Will wonders never cease?!?

Don’t set your expectations too high, but Alicia Vikander fully brings to life the character of Lara Croft. Taking its cues from the recent successful game of Rise of the Tomb Raider, it suffers from some of the tropes inherent in any hero origin story and from the source games themselves. But mostly it plays out like an updated Indiana Jones with the trappings of Tomb Raider added in, which is both a good and a bad thing.

Our story follows a young Croft, orphaned when her father disappeared on a hunt for an ancient tomb of the “Death Queen” Himiko. When Lara inherits puzzles that her father left behind, she finds his research and takes up the search for herself, convinced that her father may still be alive.

It’s this grounding in humanity, grief and sorrow Lara feels that makes this so relatable to us as an audience, even if the plot is somewhat predictable.

Vikander is also joined by Walton Goggins as the story’s antagonist. Goggins always brings a gleeful sociopathic vibe to whenever he inhabits a villain, and he does this incredibly well here as well. There’s also a brief cameo from Nick Frost, who gives the film one of its funnier moments– even in a movie with lots of humor used to cut the tension.

On top of all of that, the film is action-packed. We barely go ten minutes ever without something happening. Even more impressive is Vikander’s commitment to the role and doing her own stunts, which director Roar Uthaug uses to give us crystal clear close ups of her face during some of the film’s most harrowing moments.

So, yes, it does feel like it treads a lot of the same ground as the Indiana Jones movies. But coming from a video game franchise that has been doing that for decades, that’s not entirely unpredictable — or even a bad thing. It’s sort of like complaining a band ripped off The Beatles. Yeah, so does everybody. It still sounds good.

In a genre which includes Assassin’s Creed, Super Mario Brothers, Street Fighter, Double Dragon, Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, Hitman, Warcraft, and the other two Tomb Raider movies starring Angelina Jolie, the question you always ask yourself is “Would I have rather spent those two hours playing the video game?” In literally every other video game movie, the answer is a profound yes, making them failures as films. This film made me want to go play Rise of the Tomb Raider. Congrats to everyone involved.

3.5 out of 5 stars

The Ant-Man and The Wasp Trailer is Here

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Real heroes. Not actual size. Watch the brand-new trailer for Ant-Man and the Wasp.

The film has Paul Rudd returning as Scott Lang/Ant-Man, Evangeline Lilly as Hope van Dyne/The Wasp, Michael Douglas as Dr. Hank Pym, Judy Greer as Maggie Lang, Abby Ryder Fortson as Cassie Lang, and Micheal Peña as Luis. New characters and actors include Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost, Walton Goggins as Sonny Burch, Randall Park as Jimmy Woo, and Laurence Fishburne as Dr. Bill Foster/Goliath. Peyton Reed returns to direct.

In theaters July 6th.

Maze Runner: The Death Cure – Movie Review

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maze runner death cure posterAt the end of the second Maze Runner movie, The Scorch Trials, there is a giant action sequence, a giant betrayal, and our heroes are left in an incredibly dire situation. I remember thinking, “Well, that movie wasn’t great, but I can’t wait to see the sequel.”

I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up quite so much.

The Maze Runner series has tried repeatedly to show it’s better than the ersatz generic-brand Hunger Games, and this final film in their trilogy does nothing to dispel that notion.

However, it’s not all bad. And Thomas Brodie-Sangster, always drastically underused in the last two films, gets all the due he needs in this movie. If you love Newt, get ready to love every second he’s on screen.

The rest of the film never quite takes off or coalesces into something greater than the sum of its parts. It’s also overly long and has one too many plot “twists” that are entirely too predictable.

Its supporting cast, however, are doing all they can. I already mentioned Sangster, but beyond him, Giancarlo Esposito also seems to relish his screentime, although he isn’t quite the unpredictable, resourceful scoundrel of Scorch Trials. Aiden Gillen really should’ve grown out a mustache for this role so he could twirl it with all the cartoonish villainy he is channeling here. And then Walton Goggins shows up for an all-too-brief cameo and steals every scene he’s in. It’s just not enough.

The problem, as with its predecessors, is the film is just a bit thin. Its attempts at dystopian social commentary fall flat, because there really isn’t much more to say beyond, “Yeah, having a giant corporation called WCKD (it sounds like “wicked”– we get it) control every aspect of medicine, police/military, etc during an apocalyptic plague is a bad way to run society.” When it’s not being overly blunt, it loses any sort of messaging in over the top, ridiculous action scenes.

Fans of this series will go see this conclusion and will likely be satisfied. This is definitely the best of the three Maze Runner films– but that is not saying much. With so many of the films nominated for multiple awards now being put more widely into theaters to capitalize on their nominations, you’d be much better off checking one of them out than this.

2.5 out of 5 stars