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SXSW Review: Free Fire

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Free Fire

Director, Ben Wheatley has yet to let me down. Since his film Down Terrace he has put out consistently challenging stuff. His latest film Free Fire is easily the best of these and that speaks volumes to how amazing this one is. Wheatley, also compounds the fact that he is one of the most interesting directors working today.

The setup is an easy one, some folks meet up in the middle of the night at an abandoned umbrella warehouse. The plan is to hand off some cash in return for guns. Simple, right? Well, not with this group, with the exception of Justine (Brie Larson) who looks to be the only sane one in the group, but more on that later. When confrontation is sparked between the two groups one gunshot is met with several gunshots echoing throughout the rest of the film.

Since the isolated gun fight lasts about an hour and ten minutes and the film is only an hour and thirty minutes, every bit of choreography is carefully conducted like a white-knuckle ballet for brutes. I’m a huge fan of single locations films, and this one sets the bar on how to go about making one. The filmmaking is an island onto itself in terms of both, ingenuity and fun.

The cast is tip-top and perfectly pitched, with a subtly underrated performance from Sam Riley as the a scuzzy, druggie who triggers the gunfight. All the characters are dressed in hyper-realistic wardrobe that allows the viewer to take in the stylized action in as a spectator watching a Roadrunner cartoon. Characters are wounded to big laughs, instead of heavy drama, or overdramatized death. Instead, a character is shot and screams “What was that? You fucking shot me!?” before returning fire, by the central point no one is left unscathed.

The laughs come as fast as the bullets fly. Surround sound goes a long way to give us some pretty hilarious moments where an off-camera character shouts obscenities at another. As the two groups of gussie-gunmen (and woman) crawl, shoot and dive their way around the warehouse, the sound design lends a hand in knowing where geographically each character is positioned. The brutality is constantly amped up leading from superficially getting winged to the more serious headshots or getting set on fire, the glistening violence is a perfect pairing for the stakes being raised through each moment of the film. With a case of money at the center of the room, these armed cage mice will become increasingly aggressive in order to reach the cheese.

This is a rare, perfect film. The way the action is treated is fantastic and a method we don’t see put to use enough. Since these are all bad guys it is fair to pick your favorite and hope they manage to be the one to get out of the building but in any case, you are in for a hell of a film. The amount of times, I was laughing out loud almost mirrored the number of bullets fired in the film and with a movie titled Free Fire one can only assume that is a ton of laughs. Free Fire holds itself high on my list of pulp crime films, it now takes its place among Reservoir dogs, Snatch and Pulp Fiction. Wheatley and crew have created a one of a kind experience that I can truly say is worth the time and money in order to experience it with a sold-out, loud theater.

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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