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This first Straight Outta Compton trailer, which dramatizes the rise of the rap group N.W.A, comes complete with a long intro featuring founding members Ice Cube and Dr. Dre.

In the film, Cube’s son O’Shea Jackson Jr. plays his father, while Corey Hawkins and Jason Mitchell are Dr. Dre, and Eazy-E respectively. The film follows the late-’80s rise of the group, set against the conservative climate that was freaked out by the vivid portrayal of urban life, and goes at least up to the 1992 riots that were sparked by the beating of Rodney King. This Straight Outta Compton trailer is a full-on red-band edit, with some nudity and the hint of violence, but all the language necessary to represent N.W.A in their prime. It’s a great trailer, watch below. 

F. Gary Gray directs, and Paul Giamatti plays manager Jerry Heller, who helped bring N.W.A to the masses before the heavy attention he gave to Eazy-E soured his relationship with the group.

(It’s my understanding that the intro to this trailer is what was being filmed when Suge Knight got into an argument with a couple guys, leading to the hit and run incident that killed one man and injured another, and for which he’s now facing life in prison. )

Straight Outta Compton opens on August 14, 2015. Trailer via Universal.

In the mid-1980s, the streets of Compton, California, were some of the most dangerous in the country. When five young men translated their experiences growing up into brutally honest music that rebelled against abusive authority, they gave an explosive voice to a silenced generation. Following the meteoric rise and fall of N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton tells the astonishing story of how these youngsters revolutionized music and pop culture forever the moment they told the world the truth about life in the hood and ignited a cultural war.

Starring O’Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins and Jason Mitchell as Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and Eazy-E, Straight Outta Compton is directed by F. Gary Gray (Friday, Set It Off, The Italian Job). The drama is produced by original N.W.A. members Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, who are joined by fellow producers Matt Alvarez and Tomica Woods-Wright. Will Packer serves as executive producer of the film alongside Gray.

The post ‘Straight Outta Compton’ Red-Band Trailer: “It’s Non-Violent Protest” appeared first on /Film.

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Terrence Malick‘s new film Knight of Cups, starring Christian Bale, Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchett, and Antonio Banderas, premiered last night in Berlin, and as you might expect from a new Malick movie, reactions are fairly divided.

That didn’t stop distributors from showing interest, however, and Broad Green Pictures — the relatively new outfit backed by hedge fund manager Gabriel Hammond and his younger brother Daniel Hammond — picked up US rights to both Knight of Cups and the currently untitled Austin-set film which will be Malick’s next release. Along with that news comes a lovely new international poster for Knight of Cups and a bevy of reviews covering the spectrum of opinion on the movie. Check it all out after the break.

First up, here’s the poster. Click to enlarge.

Reviews seem very much split along the already well established lines between the “if you like Malick you’ll be on solid ground here” camp and those who don’t care for his current output at all.

The THR review starts out with a suspect line that makes me question the whole thing (“Having swung so far out of orbit on To the Wonder to have been sucked into a creative black hole”) but does say,

A resolutely poetic and impressionist film about creative paralysis, indecision, father and sons, female muses and life slipping away as surely as water down a river, the seventh feature from this takes-his-time writer-director is far more partial to free association and stream-of-consciousness notations than to conventional storytelling. The upshot is a certain tedium and repetitiveness along with the rhythmic niceties and imaginative riffs. But whereas his last work of real weight, The Tree of Life, achieved rarified moments of emotional and lyrical expressiveness, this one mostly operates on a more dramatically mundane, private and even narcissistic level.

The Playlist gets into questions of interpretation, saying,

There will be arguments about “Knight of Cups” similar to those there were over “To The Wonder,” and probably even more pointless. Because in this brimful film, provided you haven’t rejected it outright as overly pretentious and self-indulgent, you can find an image, or a line of voiceover to suit any thesis you care to make. In fact, a kind of referential mania overcomes you when you try to figure out the symbolism of clear water vs cloudy water, open doors and closed doors, mother and father, pilgrim and pearl. But there is no decoder ring provided, no single key to unlocking any single meaning. In fact, the Tarot reference may be more appropriate than we know, and “Knight of Cups”may be designed to be a deck of cards from which everyone makes their own hand. For me, I took this line from the palimpsestic voiceover, “You think when you reach a certain age, things will start making sense, but that’s what damnation is, all these pieces of your life just splashed about.”

The Guardian, in a review that professes admiration for To the Wonder, really takes Malick’s latest to task,

With his latest film Knight of Cups, however, Malick has frankly declined. There are moments of visual brilliance here, moments of reverence and even grandeur. He is always distinctive, and anything he does must be of interest. But his style is stagnating into mannerism, cliche and self-parody. Where once he used his transcendant visual language to evoke heartland America, these tropes are now exposed in being applied to tiresome tinseltown LA, where a screenwriter played by Christian Bale undergoes what has to be the least interesting spiritual crisis in history.

And IndieWire wrestles with the disparate elements,

There’s a sense of freshness to watching Malick’s dreamlike storytelling take root in a fully modern setting for the first time: Strip clubs, drab highways and even the Warner Bros. backlot take on a poetic quality that reflects Rick’s sense of dislocation. As always with Malick, individual moments hold substantial intrigue: An early sequence finds Rick feeling the ground outside his apartment in the aftermath of an earthquake as he seeks to become one with the natural world beyond the grasp of his superficial surroundings. But Malick’s free-wheeling approach means that the movie never lingers on its compelling images or philosophical conceits too long. A tone poem on the vapidity of fame, “Knight of Cups” rarely sits still, and its restlessness eventually grow tedious.

While Time Out London sums things up nicely,

This new film feels very much like part of the same project as ‘The Tree of Life’ and ‘To the Wonder’. All three films strive to make sense of a dislocated man reaching into his past. All three reach for the stars (there’s even a shot of Earth from space in ‘Knight of Cups’) and grasp for answers out of our everyday reach. All of them, too, feel like waking dreams that only their maker could truly explain or maybe even appreciate, meaning they’re as infuriating and impenetrable as they’re magical and open.

Twitter was the home of many positive reactions.

KNIGHT OF CUPS: Flirtations w/ narrative, fragments of a life, and a portrait of Los Angeles that outdoes all others. A masterwork.

— Filmbrain (Andrew G) (@Filmbrain) February 8, 2015

KNIGHT OF CUPS: Well, at least I know what film we’ll be arguing about for the rest of 2015. #teamkoc

— Filmbrain (Andrew G) (@Filmbrain) February 8, 2015

Malick continues to circle around Tree of Life’s huge themes (death, longing, faith) with KNIGHT OF CUPS. Glad to say it works. #berlinale

— Jutta Sarhimaa (@JuttaSarhimaa) February 8, 2015

KNIGHT OF CUPS feels like another branch off of TREE OF LIFE, just as TO THE WONDER did. And it’s spectacular.

— David Cox (@david_t_cox_) February 8, 2015

Knight of Cups: Terrence Malick’s latest is a captivating critique of Hollywood hedonism. America’s response to The Great Beauty #Berlinale

— Peter Yeung (@peteryeung_) February 8, 2015

KNIGHT OF CUPS is Malick at his most explorative—TTW was an awkward step toward what he’s arrived at here…Great? Maybe. Astonishing? Yes.

— Adam Cook (@AdamCook) February 8, 2015

Still a bit shaken after KNIGHT OF CUPS – Malick’s best since THIN RED LINE, surely. TO THE WONDER essentially an elaborate sketch for this.

— Neil Young (@JigsawLounge) February 8, 2015

Knight of Cups – Malick is BACK & better than ever! Stunning. Mesmerizing trip thru life of an actor, pretending to be anyone but himself.

— Alex Billington (@firstshowing) February 8, 2015

Finally, for a good laugh, here’s footage of two “journalists” addressing questions to Terrence Malick at the Knight of Cups press conference… despite the fact that he wasn’t there.

The post Early Buzz: Terrence Malick’s ‘Knight of Cups’ Provokes Divided Reactions in Berlin appeared first on /Film.

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Aspiring actors, disillusioned suburbanites, and little plastic men figure in today’s edition of Sequel Bits. After the jump:

• The Fight Club comic book sequel launches in May
• China and France will get to see Taken 3 in 3D
• Pirates of the Caribbean 5 adds a few more mates
• Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has a new poster
• Martin Starr says a Party Down movie is “unlikely”
• The Lego Movie 2 will introduce Emmet’s sister

Mark your calendars for Chuck Palahniuk‘s return to Fight Club. Dark Horse Comics has announced that the comic book sequel Fight Club 2 will launch this summer, with the first of ten issues hitting May 27.

If that’s not soon enough for you, there’ll be a couple of other offerings between now and then to tide you over. May 26 sees the publication of Palahniuk’s Make Something Up. The anthology features, among other things, a brand new short story about Tyler Durden.

And if you’re still feeling impatient, swing by your local store on Free Comic Book Day (May 2). Dark Horse will be offering a comic book that revisits the ending of Palahniuk’s Fight Club (which differs a bit from the ending of David Fincher’s Fight Club). Check out the cover below:

[Bleeding Cool]

Bryan Mills is badass enough in two dimensions, but Chinese and French audiences will get to see him in three. EuropaCorp has announced that Taken 3 will open in IMAX 3D in China. It’ll also play in 3D in France, after its 2D debut last month.

The company made the decision after Luc Besson’s Lucy hit IMAX and 3D in China and became the most successful Chinese debut ever for a French film. “We are very careful with 3D,” said EuropaCorp CEO Christophe Lambert. “Lucy‘s 3D version was praised by industry professionals and the audience wherever it was screened. And so will Taken 3.” [THR]

Three more have boarded Pirates of the Caribbean 5. Adam Brown (Ori from The Hobbit), Danny Kirrane (Autómata), and Delroy Atkinson, are set to star in the Disney sequel, alongside Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Kaya Scodelario, and Brenton Thwaites. Character details have not been given.

Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg (Kon-Tiki) are directing, with pre-production already underway in Australia. Pirates of the Caribbean 5 sails into theaters July 7, 2017. [Variety]

Maybe The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel isn’t the most unlikely franchise-starter of all time, but it’s probably up there. Like most good franchises, though, it’s bringing some fresh faces for the sequel — specifically Richard Gere, David Strathairn, and Tamsin Grieg. Based on the new poster, Maggie Smith does not approve of these developments.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel opens its doors on March 6. Director John Madden returns, along with Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton, Dev Patel, Ronald Pickup, and Celia Imrie. [EW]

At various points over the past few years, a Party Down movie sequel has looked somewhat plausible; at various other points, it’s sounded more akin to a pipe dream. Sadly, to hear Martin Starr tell it, the pendulum may have swung back to the latter side. On the bright side, though, it could return in a different form.

Said Starr:

I wish, man. […] I’m always in hopes of that. But it does seem rather unlikely. I mean, I think it would take a lot to get everyone’s schedules aligned. But it all starts with the writing, which I still think has yet to be figured out between those guys. So if ever a script gets finished, hopefully it’ll be easier.

But I know they’ve also talked about other avenues, one being to kind of reboot the series and do five episodes or something, or find a home for it if it’s not on Starz. If it is, cool, but if it’s not, then finding another home for it and putting it out. But whether it’s five new episodes or two extra-long episodes or some way to reignite that flame, we’d all love to do it.

Hey, a return to TV worked for Arrested Development. Kind of. Actually, that fourth season was kind of meh. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if we just let sleeping cater-waiters lie. [AV Club]

It sounds like everything will decidedly not be awesome for Emmet in his next big screen appearance. The Lego Movie directors and The Lego Movie 2 writer/producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller have revealed that the upcoming sequel will unfold in a “weird, dystopian version of Bricksburg.” As previously reported, the story will pick up four years after the events of the first film.

Fortunately, it sounds like Emmet will also have some new friends to help deal with his problems. The Lego Movie 2 will introduce Emmet’s sister. No word yet on whether she’ll hail from the Planet Duplo.

The Lego Movie 2 will probably land sometime after the Lego Batman spinoff, which is expected out in 2017. The other Lego Movie spinoff, Ninjago, premieres September 23, 2016. [AICN]

The post Sequel Bits: ‘Lego Movie 2′, ‘Party Down’, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean 5′, ‘Fight Club 2′ appeared first on /Film.

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