Disney Ding or Dong? + Luke Hemsworth On Making Movies with His Brothers as Kids + Movie Review: Alien: Romulus + Trailer Park: Saturday Night

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I am your host Movie Mike. There is so much going on on this episode. If you're here for the first time, Ah, you picked a good one because we are bursting out the themes. We have so much movie content coming out of our butts. On this week's episode. Have an interview coming up with Luke Helmsworth. Yes, he is a brother of Chris and Liam Hemsworth. He is in a new movie called Gunner. We'll talk to him about how he got into shape for that movie. He shares a really fun story about how he used to write and direct scenes with him and his brothers when they were growing up. We'll also talk to the director Demitri All about making that movie working with Morgan Freeman. But before that, we'll talk about everything Disney announced at the d twenty three event. All the new movies coming to Disney will play Dinger Dong movies I'm excited about, in movies I could care less about when it comes to Disney. In the movie review Alien Romulus trying to revive the Alien franchise, I'll let you know how they did with that. And in the trailer Park, we'll take a look at the Saturday Night Live movie called Well Saturday Night Again. If you're here for the first time, you picked a good one. Welcome back to the movie crew, and now let's talk movies.

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Speaker 2: In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast. A man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like a.

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Speaker 3: Walking IMTB with glasses.

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Speaker 1: From the Nashville Podcast.

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Speaker 2: Network, this is Movie Mike's movie podcast.

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Speaker 1: Before we get into our interview with Luke Hemsworth and the director of Gunner, I want to talk about everything that went down recently at the d twenty three event. If you're not familiar with it. Essentially, it's like Comic Con but for Disney, where they get up on stages and talk about all the movies they have coming out in the next year to try to get us hype. But when getting into everything they announced, there's not a whole lot of originality here, and that kind of worries me, just because I feel like Disney was always pushing the envelope giving us news stories, and now they are really really hesitant about what they put out In theaters because they want to put out billion dollar movies like Inside Out too, and what just keeps working are their known properties. So with all these movies getting announced, it just seems like, Okay, this is all great. Me in my thirties get to relive my childhood a little bit. But they have given us some original movies in the last few years, and they just haven't been as supported and as successful as some of these other ones. So what we're gonna do is ding or dong. If it's a ding, that means I'm excited for this movie. If it's a dong, I am kind of checking myself out, don't really care about it. I'm probably still gonna see it because it's Disney, but I will not be happy about it. But let's kick off the list now with Mufassa The Lion King, which they showed a new trailer of. This movie is coming out later this year on December twentieth. It is both a prequel and a cell overall, I'm gonna give this movie a dong. I'm just not that excited for it as much as I was anticipating the twenty nineteen live action movie, And really that was only because nineteen ninety four is Lion King is the best Disney movie of all time. It's not my favorite, but pound for pound is the best Disney movie of all time. And really, with the twenty nineteen version, they just took that movie and gave it some updated computer generated graphics. It's not really live action, which is really what frustrates me the most about the Lion King reboot. So at D twenty three they did share a little bit more about the story gonna be about Mufasa, who is a orphan lion cub, and how he befriends a young prince Scar and gets adopted by his family. So I guess that kind of answers the question of why they are brothers but nothing alike, which I don't know if lions are supposed to look alike, but anyway, it answers that question. Not really high for this movie. I don't even think it's going to do as well as the twenty nineteen movie, which was a billion dollar movie. It just kind of seems like they're really scraping the barrel to get more out of the Lion King franchise. It's kind of like when you have a tube of toothpaste that you should probably throw away, but you're still so determined to get another couple brushings out of that last little thing you squeeze out of the tube. That is how I feel about Mufasa the Lion King. So that one gets a dong. Snow White. They showed the new trailer with Rachel Zeggler, who is gonna be the new snow White. Galgado is the evil Queen. It gave us the first taste of Rachel singing whistle why You Work, which is a classic song. Crazy that the original movie came out back in nineteen thirty seven, the first ever Disney animated movie, back when they would hand draw every single frame. This movie is coming out next year, March twenty twenty five. I'm just slightly more excited for this one than I am Mufasa the Lion King. But man, there's just something about even the nineteen thirty seven version that is special because it has that warmth, It has that vibrant feeling of real animation, and this is gonna make me sound so old. I just find that to be so much more magical, and I feel like this remake is going to be really lifeless. It sounds like the filmmaking process has already been chaotic, almost like Rachel Zegler doesn't even want to be in this movie, So I find that entire aspect interesting, But overall, I'm still giving this one a dog. They also showed another trailer for ma Wana two, which is coming out this year on November twenty seventh. Mowana was kind of a sleeper hit for me. When I went to go see it in theaters, I didn't really care for it that much. Watched it again when they went to streaming, I was like, Okay, I kind of get it, and now it is one of my favorite Disney movies of the twenty tens, and really the last great movie that the rock and I think if they can capture that same energy as the first one, bring us some great new songs, I think this one is gonna be a hit for them. I don't think it's gonna be as successful as what inside Out two was to Inside Out one, but I think this one could really rival it, because when you look at what makes movies really great and a hit among families, it's that soundtrack. Inside Out two doesn't really have that. That one just hits you more in the fields. But I think if this one has a really good soundtrack that can get people excited about it. It's gonna do well this one. I give a ding. They also finally announced the title to the sequel to Freaky Friday. It is called Sub Creative Freaky or Friday. Lindsay Loewen Coming Back, Jamie Lee Curtis Coming Back. The movie is set to come out in twenty twenty five. I am all for the Lindsay Lohan revival. She's put out some pretty good movies on her comeback. It was such a movie icon from nineteen ninety eight. The parent Trap really solidified her career in the mid to early two thousands with movies like Life Size, Get a Clue, Freaky Friday, Confessions of a Teenage Drama, Queen Herbie fully Loaded in two thousand and five, and then someone say that she fell off a little bit after there. Her personal life probably got a little bit chaotic. But now she is back and I am all for the Freaky Friday sequel. Now, when it comes to live action sequels from Disney that take place about twenty years after the original, I do have some hesitancy, especially with Freaky Friday, which is a perfect movie and a reflection of two thousand and three. Whenever you have such a hit that is a hit because it is a product of that time, it is hard to do a sequel too. I'm talking about movies like hocus Pocus, when that original is a classic. Watch it every single Halloween. When they did that sequel, it just really didn't hit the same because it did all the exact same things from the first movie, and it just felt so dated. I worry that that is a similar issue they are going to have with the Freaky Friday sequel. I feel if the budget isn't right and they're really cutting quarters just to crank something out to get people excited, like hey, they're back together. I'm also really hesitant now about anything Jamie Lee Curtis is in. I feel like she is in a phase of her career where she's doing things for the paycheck, which is fine. She's had such a long career made some really great movies. I am forever in debt to her because of the Halloween franchise. Even though she oddly hates any type of horror movie, she talks to trap on them all the time in interviews, and she just had a really bad bomb with Borderlands, so hopefully, hopefully this kills her streak of putting out some lower quality movies. So overall, I am all in for this movie before they show me otherwise, I give it a ding. I'm moving on now to the new Tron sequel, Tron Ares. It's coming out starring Jared Leto Evan Peters Greatily. The score will be by nine inch Nails. The movie is coming out on October tenth, twenty twenty five. I never really got into Tron. The first movie came out back in nineteen eighty two, and I feel that it lands in that category of sci fi movies that were just a little ahead of their time, movies like Tron and Dune, where the source material was there, they just didn't really have the technology available to them in the eighties to really make those movies work unless you were a kid in the eighties, which you really didn't care about that. But whenever I was exposed to Tron, I was a kid in the nineties, probably like late nineties when I first saw Tron, and it just felt so dated to me. That was always the issue I had with eighties movies is they just look so old to me, which is wild to think, because when I started watching movie that I really remember was probably the late nineties, and anything in the eighties just seemed like it was made so long ago. But if you do that comparison now in twenty twenty four, you'd be talking about movies from the twenty tens, movies like Hangover too that people would be like, Oh, that movie looks so old. I feel like it's just because technology has gotten so much better, or maybe I just don't want to believe that I'm getting older that I don't see those time jumps to be as harsh when it comes to a movie that comes out in twenty twenty four and how much older it looks compared to something that came out in twenty ten. I also believe on a movie by movie basis, sometimes some of that cgi from like two thousand and eight to twenty ten looks better than stuff coming out in twenty twenty four. But I think for that reason, never really got into Tron. Tron Legacy came out in twenty ten, and still I just don't fully understand the concept to it. It doesn't really speak to me. So for this one with Jared Leto, who recently saw him on a bird scooter in Nashville. Just seems like a really peculiar dude and somebody who has had a pretty interesting film career from Fight Club to Dallas Buyers Club. But I just don't really see him as an actor as famous as he is. I also don't really see him as a musician. I just see him as Jared Leto, the guy who is famous for kind of being weird, has been in a lot of movies. His best role ever is probably Morvious. I wanted to track him down while I saw him on that bird scooter and say, hey, when is Morbus two coming out? Man, it's Morgan time. So for Tron the sequel with Jared Leto, I gotta give this one a dong. They also showed some footage from The Mandalorian and Grogu, which will be directed by Jon Favreau, who is one of my favorite directors. I don't really think he gets the credit that he deserves for how much he did in the MCU, with Iron Man, everything he's done with The Mandalorian. He has so many great movies, But I feel like when you talk to the typical film enthusiasts, they want to talk about Tarantino. David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, nobody really gives Jon Favreau the praise that he deserves for creating movies with huge worlds, being able to blend action and heart and just do it in a seamless way. So for that reason and the fact that The Mandalorian is my favorite Star Wars show, I kind of got into the Alkalite. I enjoyed that one enough to follow it all the way through, and not only is it the best Star Wars show, I feel out of everything they've put out, including the movies. Even though I love all the movies with Daisy Ridley, I still feel like it is the best product to come out of Star Wars in a very long time. Mandalorian is top tier for me, So I can't wait to see how that translates into a movie. Fully, it will be better than the last season of The Mandalorian, which is pretty okay. It just started to feel a little bit more to me like a Saturday morning TV show where it was kind of hokey, had more of a vibe that was appealing to kids, which again, that is kind of what Star Wars is doing in this era right now. They're trying to build new fans. They don't really care about the old krusty dude still trying to relive the days of the Empire strikes back. They are in the process of making new fans to continue the legacy, to continue being a billion dollars media franchise. So this is what I'm excited for. Even though it is in the Star Wars franchise, I feel out of everything we've been talking about so far. Technically not a sequel, technically not a reboot. So we'll take that. We'll take that. I give it a ding. All right, Moving on down the list, they announced Frozen three, which will be coming out This is Wild November twenty fourth, twenty twenty seven, three years from now Thanksgiving twenty twenty seven. This is kind of like when you go to the doctor for a checkup and then they tell you you need to make another appointment, but it's for a year out, and it's like, all right, a year from now, what worked for you, morning or afternoon? I don't know. I'm just gonna guess let's go in afternoon. Because I'm here now. I have no idea where I'm going to be in a year, much less three years, and I think this was just kind of a clickbait thing of hey, we got Frozen three coming out, which, in my opinion, Frozen two was much better than Frozen one. I feel like it had the better soundtrack, it had the better story. So is it possible for a Disney franchise to get better and better from one to two to three. It's never really happened. I'd say the closest it came to happening was probably Toy Story. Some would argue that Toy Story two is better than one. I don't think so, So I think in that case I could make an argument for that, but I still go one, three, two, and then I refuse to acknowledge four, and they're coming out with five, and I'm not happy about that. So Frozen has the ability to have a A plus one, two and three, and now I'm buying into it. I give it a ding. We'll move through a few more of these. Zutopia two, they announced that Kishu Kwan, you may remember from the Goonies, Indiana Jones back in the day, had a big revival with everything everywhere all at once. Gave one of the best Oscar speeches in the history of the Academy Awards. He will be joining Zootopia two as the creepy, highly venomous viper Gary. I just love when he gets a role because he's so excited about it. I just think he is so appreciative of his career having a revival right now. Just for his sake alone, I give this movie a ding. They did it. It's the Incredibles three with Brad Bird developing it. It took so long to get an Incredibles two, which was one of the movies that fans were actually dying to see. A sequel to that movie still feels new to me, but it came out in twenty eighteen, six years ago, so I guess it's time for a sequel to that one. I'm not really super hype on another Incredibles movie, so for that reason, right now, I'm gonna give it a dong. Mentioned it earlier, but they talked about and revealed Toy Story five. It's going to take on technology with iPads and smartphones. You have a bunch of buzz light years malfunctioning. It seems to me like they are getting away from the Andy plotline altogether, which one of my favorite fan theories on the Internet. Internet does a lot of bad things, A lot of all things are said on the Internet. But every now and then you have some fan fiction that comes out and you're like, man, they should really make that movie. And they pitched this more for Toy Story four, for it to be like Andy reconnecting with this toys, getting a back, having a really emotional ending. I don't think we're ever getting a story like that. I don't think Andy's ever gonna come back have one last time to play with this toys. I think it makes sense in a Disney movie, but when you think about that in real life, could be a little bit weird to interpret. Although I would love to see something like that, it seems like we're never going to get it, and now they are just kind of continuing fun stories with the toys that really have nothing to do with Toy Story one through three. For that reason, and as much as I love the first one, as much as I love one, two, three, I feel like this is a franchise that should be laid to rest and not be made into any more sequels. I think, if anything, they should just make the spin offs make some prequels. But I guess they tried with buzz Lightyer, and people hated it and revolted, probably too unfairly, were so heavily critical about light Year. I really enjoyed light Year, but for Toy thirty five, I'm giving it a dong A couple more to talk about Avatar Fire and Ash. It is the third movie in the Avatar franchise. I want to hate on Avatar movies so bad because it just feels like, how are these movies so successful? And I didn't get Avatar when it came out back in two thousand and nine, and it wasn't until later I gave it a second chance that I really understood the vision of James Cameron. So now I love that movie. And when I went to go see Way of the Water, it blew me away to think how engaging that movie is. Has a really good story, strong, strong action, and really submerges you in the world of Pandora unlike any other movie. And for a story to be able to keep my attention for three plus hours, it is really hard to do. So on a normal day I would probably say, ha, so many Avatar movies, but James Cameron hasn't made a bad one yet. They continue to make a lot of money. I'm all in on the Avatar franchise. I'm still gonna get that feeling in my stomach when I see the runtime of this movie and think, oh no, I'm not gonna be able to pee for three and a half hours. But I will go see it and I will love it. So I'm giving this movie a ding. And finally, the clip that everybody sent me on social media, thank you all for thinking to me when you saw this get announced Lee Lowens. Stitch, the live action adaptation is coming out next summer twenty twenty five. They showed the teaser of Stitch tearing through the poster, and I have to say, Stitch looks so much better than I was anticipating. I thought he was gonna look like this weird, uncute creature. Because you take what is an unusually cute alien that just works, you know, strictly animated, and take everything I've been saying about the live action remakes through this episode and throw it out the window. Because Leelo and Stitch is my favorite Disney movie of all time. Mentioned earlier that I believe The Lion King is the best Disney movie of all time, and I can recognize a difference between the best and my favorite. I don't think Leelo and Stitch when it comes to all the aspects of it, surrounding stories, surrounding animation style, surrounding the soundtrack, But when it comes to it being my favorite, it just always has been always identified with the story. I love Stitch. He is my favorite Disney character. So this or any other movie, like I was talking about earlier with snow White or The Lion King, I wouldn't be excited about a live action remake. But after seeing Stitch and thinking he looks much more cuter than I thought he was going to look, I think they may actually be able to pull this off. Got to give it a ding. And that is the recap of the d twenty three event and all the movies coming out in the next few years. And now let's get into our interviews talking about the movie Gunner, which is about a colonel named Lee Gunner who takes his two sons on a camping trip trying to reconnect with them, takes their uncle out, and then they discover some bad drug dealers and uncover this entire massive drug operation and Gunner spends the rest of the film trying to get his Sons back by any means possible. If you are a fan of old school action movies, then this might be right up your alley. It stars Luke Hemsworth, who you may know from Westworld. He also had a great cameo in Thor, Love and Thunder as actor Thor and is the brother of both Chris and Liam Hemsworth. We'll get into that, but first let's talk with the movies director Dmitri Logo Status, who did Kickboxer Retaliation ju Jitsu. Will talk filmmaking, we'll talk action movies right now. Let's talk to Dmitri. I just watched Gunner, and I have to say it made me feel nostalgic in a really weird way. Now, my dad is somebuddy who doesn't watch movies at all. He works, he comes home, he mows the lawn, he drinks the beer. Those are all his activities. But the kind of movies that we would bond over are movies like Gunner, where you don't have to think a whole lot. You gotta shoot him up action and those are the movies I remember in that genre that we would bond over. The only thing he would sit down and watch is something like that. What were those movies for you growing up that maybe inspired Gunner?

00:22:24
Speaker 4: First of all, with Gunner, you know, you have you know, it's a Gary Scott Thompson's screenplay, and so Gary Scott wrote the Fast and Furious, the first two Fast and Furious, and so he really develops wonderful characters, and I think you have to have that character. You have to have that that heart where the character actually cares about his family and his children. And remember, the thing that inspires him to move through all this action is that he needs to retrieve his children. They've been kidnapped. And so I think you have to start there. So for me, you know, growing up, I mean I watched Clint Eastwood. I watched all of his stuff with Dirty Harry and there was always a morality to that. I watched Burt Reynolds, who was extremely entertaining. You know. Sharky's Machine was one of my favorite films of all time. So, you know, I really aspire to bring those characters to the screen where you know, they're not based on a comic book, they're not based on a ton of visual effects. They're based on heart. And I think the character has got to be driven by that so, and I think you know, your father and yourself and everybody else wants to aspire to be that person when it comes to family and protecting your family. You want to be able to do whatever you need to do to do that, and sometimes that involves punching somebody in the face.

00:23:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, you brought us something there that I want to talk to you about. And if you could see from the background here, I'm obviously a huge fan of comic books, huge fan of comics by the way, Yeah, and I feel like I love them so much. But I also realize the effect they've had on the movie industry is now a lot of people will go watch a movie and they expect to see something that's one hundred million dollars two hundred and fifty million dollars to make. For you, how do you approach that making a movie with a smaller budget, knowing that you know audiences are kind of used to seeing something on the level of the MCU.

00:24:20
Speaker 4: Well, so what I try to do is, again, I try to look at the page. I try to look at the story. I try to get into the character, and I think we start there. If I can create a character that you like and care about as an independent filmmaker. I think number one, I win, okay, and if I can win your attention in your heart, that's a second win. So anything that our leading character does when it comes to retrieving his family at that point, you're going to accept. And I think you know the expectations now. Hopefully you'll be sitting there as a young man, older man, woman, et cetera, thinking to yourself, Wow, if that happened to me, I guess I'd have to do the same thing. I guess I'd have to do whatever it takes. You know, I can't be waiting on everybody else to try to figure out how to bring my kids back to me. So that's what I try to do. I try to stay focused on the heart of the story.

00:25:13
Speaker 1: There were so many just scenes that I just had really a lot of fun watching. I think from the opening scene the first bar fight was just like, like, that's what I came here to see for you. What was the scene that was like, Okay, that is exactly how I invisted it. It came out perfect. I'm so proud of that moment.

00:25:28
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, I'm glad you picked the first bar fight. I thought that was a really good one. I'm not going to talk about the end because I'd like people to watch it, but I will tell you there's a really wonderful sequence that takes place around the fort when you see the gun going slow motion and stuff like that. And that's a very complicated sequence that we pulled off with twenty some odd stunt people. So we had to really rehearse that and get that down, and when we pulled it off, I was amazed and very happy.

00:25:57
Speaker 1: The other one that looked a little bit complex that probably nailed down was the first encounter, which well, again won't spoil anything here, but it involves a lot of blades, Like how does that? How is that whole scene orchestrated of? Like, okay, this is going to be crazy.

00:26:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well again, you know, I rehearsed these things with my stunt team months in advance. So they're in Thailand, and this is a mutai based martial art, and so it's all mutai and it's very showy. As you can tell, it's very cinematic, and so I work that out way in advance, and then we have a lot of safety involved because of the fact that we work out the dance, so you have to be very careful not to hurt anybody, and I think again, it shows and we pulled it off very well.

00:26:43
Speaker 1: I can only imagine how cool it is to work with somebody as iconic as Morgan Freeman, not just his presence visually, but just hearing his voice. I imagine it's like, oh my gosh, it's Morgan Freeman and you being there having them in your movie. How did that come about of getting Morgan Freeman?

00:27:01
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, first of all, I wanted a really likable bad guy, and he can't do better than God. So Morgan Freeman was terrific at that.

00:27:13
Speaker 3: It was.

00:27:15
Speaker 4: My pleasure to work with Morgan. He's a professional, he takes it seriously, he really believes in the art of acting, and he's a lot of fun on set. He likes to joke around and have a good time. So I was very, very pleasantly surprised and lucky to be able to get him for Gunner.

00:27:36
Speaker 1: I just imagine he has like still a crazy work schedule, super in demand. How many days do you get Morgan Freeman?

00:27:45
Speaker 4: Well, normally in this particular character, you know you've got to be able to shoot him out in less than a couple of weeks because he's throughout the film, and so we usually schedule a film around him so that we can get him out and make sure that we don't get him hurt.

00:28:02
Speaker 1: Going back to talking about some movies that I bonded with with my dad early on, movies like Predator, blood Sport, Kickboxer, which you know you worked on some sequels there for you. If you had to put together a Mount Rushmore of those type of action movies, what would be on your Mount Rushmore? Your four movies?

00:28:18
Speaker 4: My god, brother, I mean, I don't know, you just mentioned a lot of them, but you know the theme that you have in all of those pictures is again they're underdogs and they have to take on a challenge that is climbing Mount Rushmore, as you said, And so every single one of those characters is terrific from I think I mentioned it before, going all the way back to the Dirty Harry characters, the Clint Eastwood characters in the Westerns that he did, the Sergio Leone characters that Sergio created. God, I was thinking about an other wonderful film, The Red Sun that was that was with Alan DeLong. Okay, so you know, all these characters are just the characters I grew up with.

00:29:13
Speaker 1: For everybody watching and listening, what do you hope they take away after watching Gunner?

00:29:18
Speaker 4: I hope you have I hope you take the morality away, and I hope you it instills in you the values that it comes to be a father. I hope you have fun, and I hope I get you to relax for about an hour and a half and just lose yourself in cinema, which is the goal entirely.

00:29:42
Speaker 1: Well, I really appreciate the time. Hope everybody checks it out. Thanks for talking.

00:29:45
Speaker 4: Thank you. I appreciate it too.

00:29:47
Speaker 1: Now let's get into our interview with Luke Hemsworth, who will next be seen in a series called Darkwolf. It is an Amazon spin off from The Terminal List. He played Ashley Stubbs in Westworld if you watch that on HBO. He's also been on TV shows like Young Rock, Got to Start in Australia and even played his brother Chris Hemsworth in thor Love and Thunder. Let's talk to Luke Hamsworth.

00:30:09
Speaker 3: Can do it man, what's happening.

00:30:10
Speaker 1: I'm doing great. I just watched Gunner and I had to say I loved your performance in this movie, and after just seeing all the physical things you went through, I have to imagine it is tough to get in shape for a movie like this. What is the first step you take of? Like, Okay, got a movie coming up, how do I get ready?

00:30:27
Speaker 3: I was lucky I'd come up. Well, so it's lucky, and I'm lucky I'd come off another film, a military film. So the military stuff was in the bank that was ready to go. We did Worcom with commandos, lots of lots of gun trying and lots of you know, Adam being cools, so lots of close quarters combat stuff well, you know, like the really fun stuff that you want to do as an actor. And then finished. And I was on holiday and Freji and I was playing basketball in this this this little basketball court and I rolled my ankle off the edge of the slab and broke my ankle my tibia and quiet surgery. And we're about six weeks, six weeks away from shooting at that storage, and so I went to I went to a great surgeon who does a lot of the rugby players here, and she's like, now we have we have guys who are you know, two hundred and fifty pounds that we got running in six weeks, we'll be fine. And I was dubious, but I just then it just became about rehabit. It became about it became about doing low impacts. Uff did a lot of the bike, you know, not a lot of running. Surprisingly, I've just lost my light. Sorry, I got there, you know, A credit to her as a as a as a surgeon. And I think having the date locked in my mind, I was like, I have to do everything in my power to my child. I'm able to move promptly, and by the time we got to shooting, I was I was pretty good. And there's still complains going on and carefully curated movements and running in the right places and jumping in the right places. But I did everything, you know, that's all me. There's there's no there's no stunt double there. So I'm pretty I'm pretty stoked to be able to get to that point. But it's a it's an ongoing thing, you know. It never you just never stopped. You always have to have to keep working on it.

00:32:31
Speaker 1: The movie hooked me in from the very beginning, that very first fight scene, and I have to imagine that was probably a lot of fun to shoot for you, what was the most just fun action sequence out of the movie.

00:32:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a fun one. That's a good one. I love the scene there's there's one in the steel works, which I thought was was the most fun. I sort of get my ass kicked down the hallway trying to trying to kick some asses back and it's pretty pretty evenly matched for most of that. That was the great that I really love that. Just a really cool environment all the you know, these massive rusting pots everywhere, and you know, the things are on fire and sparking, and that was that was that kind of TERMINI at the moment for me, like, yeah, I.

00:33:22
Speaker 1: Gotta imagine as an actor, doing an American accent is probably hard. What word would you say in the English language? An American accent is like the hardest to get down where it's like, oh, that kind of gives it away then I'm Australian. There's a few.

00:33:36
Speaker 3: There's a few. Yeah, and very early on in your career that people who are quite uh you know, quite liberally telling you that when your accent is bad and what where.

00:33:46
Speaker 1: Is it pumping out?

00:33:47
Speaker 3: One of them for me is is is we said being in Australia. Where have you been? B w N, where's the American side been? Where you've been? That's a dead giveaways is when you're doing your accent and then those kinds of words in But I actually I got uh, I got lot let go of a job very early. And it starts because my accident wasn't good enough, and so I spent I spent a lot of time and effort amerking sure that it's it's as good as good as they can be, hopefully, hopefully I put all those things to bread. It's it's kind of been graying now and people who live here in Astralia like, why does your accident sound weird? Because there's just americanisms that I've a part of the way that I speak now.

00:34:27
Speaker 1: I was talking to Dmitri about the movie and how it was kind of nostalgic for me of reminding me of movies that I used to watch with my dad, because not really in the movies at all, but if you put on an action movie where it's people beating each other up, he's all in on it. And for you, who are those action stars that maybe you watch as a kid of like, oh, someday I want to be an actor like them in a movie.

00:34:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I love I love Van dam I love yeah, everything that he did. You know, I remember watching Kickboxing and quoting every word from blood Sport, and I think I think I still do with a couple of my buddies that we used to watch You're with Saloon, Uh, you know Schwarzenegger. I think, you know, I think Terminator two and Terminatory Terminator one and two or two of the gross movies ever Aliens. Yeah, I I those those action films of that that era were so fundamental. I think in my career that were that were a big part of me wanting to you wanted to just play as a human bringing too. You know, you're you're out there emulating these these men who are who are man who are getting the job done? Yeah, and doing it with wonderful one liners out the side of their mouth. Yeah.

00:35:40
Speaker 1: Bruce Lee too.

00:35:40
Speaker 3: I really loved Bruce Lee.

00:35:43
Speaker 1: Growing up, I wanted to be a rock star and my brother and I started a punk band when I was like thirteen years old. I played guitar, he played drums, and that was like always a passion of mine and it was because you know it with me and my brother doing something. You and your brothers are all actors. Was that like a thing like you all wanted to be actors? Or did somebody get the acting bug first? How did that all just unfold?

00:36:04
Speaker 3: I think we just all loved playing. And you know, like you said you formed the punk band, I mean we we would just we would role play. We would make wooden swords and wooden guns. And my mom would hide the TV to literally carry the TV downstairs and put it in the in the wardrobe and we would have no TV and so we were forced to forced to, you know, write our own strips. And we had slug guns and all sorts of stuff. And would you I would dress my brothers up and you know, tell them to run because it will hurt more the closer you are, you know, Like I think, I think that's a big part of it. I think a big part of it is neither none of us who are any good at anything else. But I went to university, you know, I went and studied that. Maybe I started it, but I think three years of the contemporary arts, imagined in drama, and then went on too, you know, austraying shop operas and straining film and television from there and then finally to the US. But yeah, I don't know.

00:37:11
Speaker 2: What it is.

00:37:11
Speaker 3: I don't know their answer to that other than that, other than we all like to just we look to have fun. But you know, I also think I also think it's excuse my language, you know, acting is acting is very, very difficult, and I think that's an attractive part for all of us as well, is that it mixes both the ability to have a good time with something that's incredibly precise and an inventive and very hard to do it, how to do well.

00:37:39
Speaker 1: So somewhere out there there's a script that you wrote with all your brothers. Did you guys ever film any of that? Is there like a video, like a like a Tesk movie out there? One day?

00:37:48
Speaker 3: I hopes one day, one day that's the dream. There'll be no action in it will just be three of us.

00:37:56
Speaker 1: Thanks for talking with me, Cheers, Mane, Thanks very much. Let's get into it now. A spoiler free movie review of Alien Romulus. I had pretty low expectations going into this movie. As a whole. I wouldn't call myself a fan of the Alien franchise. There are some hardcore, dedicated fans of Alien, and I think for me is because it's always described to me as a horror franchise, and I love Space, I love Aliens, I love space exploration movies, but I never really saw Alien as a horror icon. In my opinion, there are some great moments from the original movie that I feel transcend that genre, but I just don't really go into these movies thinking, oh, I'm gonna go in and be really scared, And I think that has to do with how I was introduced to the horror genre movies like Halloween Night, maren elm Street, Friday the Thirteenth. I didn't really look at Alien the same way I looked at those movies. I just wanted to see how this movie stood on its own. Because it's supposed to be rebooting the franchise. The only thing you really need to know is where this movie takes place. So Alien came out in nineteen seventy nine, that sequel came out called Aliens in nineteen eighty six. Alien Romulus takes place twenty years after the original Alien and in between Aliens from nineteen eighty six, so it is both a sequel and a prequel to the sequel to Aliens. So even if you had to watch them all, maybe you would get confused on that timeline. So it is a more direct sequel to the original one from nineteen seventy nine than it is just an extension of the franchise. So they do a pretty good job at letting you know that. At the beginning of the movie, they say it takes place twenty years after, and they show you some of the imagery that became so iconic from the original Alien movie. But what Alien Romulus is about. You have Kaylee Spaney's character, who is working on this planet where he has to earn a certain amount of credits to be able to be reassigned to a different planet. She has an android brother, so he looks human, but he is not. He has all these electronics in him. He has this little slot in the back of his ear that contains all of his coating. But you'll learn more exactly why she calls him her brother. And they are trying to get to this new planet where you can see the sun. You're supposed to have a better life there, but it looks like because this company that they are working for is so horrendous, they are not going to be able to leave so they meet this other group of people who have this idea. They've discovered this space station that is just roaming and aboard. That space station has five pods on it, and those five pods they can use to put themselves into hypersleep. It takes I believe, eight years to get to this planet they're trying to get to. They get in those pods, they go to sleep, and they wake up on a better planet. Sounds easy as that. They need her brother because he is an android. He will be able to get on the ship and get clearance to where they need to go. So they decide to go with them on this to this space station. But what are they encounter on that space station? Or what are all these movies about aliens who want to kill you? You have the face huggers returning. Those are those aliens that get on your face, They sit on your face and then invade your body, which is just a great visual. They use that a lot in the marketing. That's really all they needed to show in the poster, which I love the poster of just that black and red poster with the face hugger over the character's face. That's what you need to know about alien you also have the iconic big alien that has like the little mouth that comes out. But this movie is not directed by the original director Ridley Scott. It is directed by Fede Alvarez. Will also did movies like Don't Breathe and the reboot to Evil Dead, and I have to say he did a fantastic job with this movie. Again, I went into it with pretty low expectations and I was surprised that how quickly this movie moved along. What I was telling you about earlier is probably the first twenty minutes of the movie, and then you get right into the story, goes right into them discovering the aliens on the ship and all of the chaos that ensues. And with a movie that is right under two hours, I think I clocked at at about an hour and fifty one minutes. I thought that was crucial to it. And the visuals themselves just look so much better than I was expecting. I love the rings around the planet that they were inching closer to all the scenes on the ship just really made me feel like the production value was there. The other unexpected thing that really made me kind of feed into the vibe of this movie was the score just kind of chugging there underneath it all. It almost made it feel magical at times, like I was watching a Harry Potter movie. Maybe Harry Potter would in two where I was thinking, this is supposed to be a horror movie, but it's kind of giving me that Christmas movie vibe where it just has like this warm feeling to it. But then you throw an alien on screen and you're like, oh wait, it's just made to make those moments feel a little bit more tense, almost like it softens the blow a little bit. But again, I love it when a movie has a good score because that tells me there's been attention to detail. It didn't really feel to me, which is often the problem I have with movies inside of big franchises that they're just using that alien name to sell a generic movie. Not the case here. I really feel like they are trying to reboot this franchise in a really important way. There were a lot of things that were odes to the original. It followed a lot of the beats of the original movie, but then it added its own flare to it, and they have to do that in order to make a seventh film in this franchise. I did love David Johnson's character. He plays the Ai brother. I feel like he really did his homework on the franchise, but also did a really good job at kind of switching gears in in a way, playing two different characters and change personalities and then become a lead figure in the film. Thought he did a really good job at that. But hands down, Kaylee Spainey was my favorite. You might remember her if you watch Civil War or if you saw Priscilla. She was Priscilla in that movie, and after watching her in Alien Rombulus, it showed me that she has what it takes to be a great lead. She has an aura about her that draws you into her character really helped invest me in the story. I really bought her as an action lead, and she made the character her own. Even though it is similar to Sigourney Weaver's character in the original film, she definitely could have played it the exact same way, but instead gave us a different look. So it is really making me think that she is going to be around in Hollywood as a lead for a long time. And even though I enjoyed it, I still don't really consider it to be a horror movie at no point was I scared in any way. And I'm not trying to say this as like nothing scares me. I'm all good, I'm tough. No, I wanted to be scared. My favorite experience at a movie sitting in the middle row during a horror movie and allowing myself to take in all of the senses, the sites, the smells, well hopefully not the smells, but the sound, and allow myself open myself up to being scared. But I didn't really think that this movie tried to scare the viewer. I don't really think that is the intention of the Alien franchise. I think it kind of has to have that label on it because it's not quite just what you go into expecting from a space movie. It doesn't quite fall in that genre. But really, to me, it doesn't really fall in the horror genre either, because yes, it's creepy to have these killer aliens, and yes there's blood and guts and acid and all of that, but it doesn't really have that same tension that I look for in a horror movie. They don't really rely on jump scares, which is great. I often feel like jump scares are just kind of cheap and put in there to really dupe the viewer into thinking that it's a scary movie. So I'm glad that they don't rely on those same cliche things that would make it just another horror movie. But people love putting things into a genre, love being able to categorize something, so it kind of falls into that horror sci fi genre. I just think it is a fun, exciting summer movie to close out the summer blockbuster season for Alien Romulus. I give it a four out of five Space Stations. It's time to head down to Movie Mike Trailer Hall. The year was nineteen seventy five. This crew has ninety minutes to get their crap together talking about Saturday Night Live. The movie is called Saturday Night. It is about the creation of the show, but more specifically the ninety minutes leading up to its very first episode, first time going on the air live hour and a half show at the time revolutionary to take a bunch of twenty year olds were relatively unknown, put them online TV in a non traditional format sketch show. Is it gonna work? A couple of reasons I like this movie. One kind of feels like a student film. After watching this trailer, the overall quality is very raw and just kind of chaotic. But I think that is the vibe they are trying to give off in this trailer in this story the chaotic nature of live television. Second thing is ninety minutes Oh I Love Me in ninety minute comedy. And this doesn't seem like it's going to be a full on ha comedy, biographical bit of dark humor. They're describing it a little bit as a thriller comedy, which I think is interesting, and I think that's probably attributing more to the chaotic nature of the live show. But I think that is going to work really well. So I don't think it's supposed to look polished. It's supposed to feel like it's all over the place because it's supposed to induce that anxiety that working in live TV has. I work in live radio. I know the feeling. Once you're live, there is no messing up, there are no retakes. You hit that live on the air boom you are in. It probably more chaotic back in the seventies on television, but this movie is taking place at eleven thirty pm October eleventh, nineteen seventy five. Looks like it's gonna be centered around Lorne Michaels, who is the creator of Saturday Night Live, very first season, very first cast. You're talking Dan Aykroyd, Belushi, Andy Kaufman, all of the great people have been saying Saturday Night Live hasn't been good since the seventies. I think it's had several different iterations that I have enjoyed. So before I get into more what I think about this movie, the really impressive cast, the director that I have a lot of trust in, here's just a little bit of the Saturday Night trailer. Look, my name is Lorne, Michael's on the Crucier Saturday Night.

00:48:32
Speaker 2: The whole night, Yeah, the whole night, Chevy Chase, skilled a Rader, Dan, I God, how the fuck do you pronounce this?

00:48:40
Speaker 3: Dack? Really, NBC is lucky to have something as relevant as a show one they don't even.

00:48:45
Speaker 1: Want sad logicals think that's why they're paying.

00:48:47
Speaker 3: Us all to be here.

00:48:48
Speaker 1: I mean more than ninety minutes of live television.

00:48:50
Speaker 2: Michael, who's twenty year olds who've never.

00:48:52
Speaker 3: Made any we ever stopped in Longerwise, they said, yes.

00:48:57
Speaker 1: They want you to fail, and you can kind of hear it in that trailer that ticking that as the speed of their voice gets more and more rapid, that is the chaotic nature of live television. This movie is gonna cover the humor, the chaos, and the magic of the revolution that almost wasn't. I think it's interesting to make a movie about Saturday Night Live at this point in time because Lorne Michaels is still alive, a lot of these cast members are still alive. But I really only know about the creation of the story by hearsay, by legends, and now we're gonna fully get to see it in a movie. And it looks crazy, It looks chaotic. You have Jim Henson in there, which I didn't even know was associated with Saturday Night Live. But in that trailer he talks about some of the cast members tying up Big Bird by his neck, So I assume Jim Henson was working in the same building in New York as Saturday Night Live. That sounds fun. Some of the cast here, it's pretty impressive. You have Gabriel LaBelle as the lead role of Lorden Michaels. I primarily know him from The Fable, where he played a young Steven Spielberg. Rachel Sennett who I know from bottom. She is hilarious. She is playing Rosie Schuster. Corey Michael Smith will play Chevy Chase. Dylan O'Brien as dan Aykroyd. I never looked at Dylan O'Brien and thought you look like dan Ackroid, But seeing him in this trailer with the seventies wardrobe, the singular mustache, he does look and bear a striking resemblance to dan Aykroyd, even has his mannerisms down. I really associate Dylan O'Brien with one of my favorite movies of twenty twenty, back when only a handful of movies came out. But he was in a movie called Love and Monsters, And anytime I see a poster or a trailer or something about that movie, it instantly takes me back to twenty twenty. It was a good movie. I feel didn't really get a lot of attention because it came out at a time where we're only streaming movies at home. But I remember, in a weird year, with so much uncertainty on my end and a lot of people's in a lot of sadness, that movie brought me a lot of There will always be a special place in my internal movie Show for Love and Monsters, and I thought Dylan O'Brien was really great in that, and I'm hoping him as dan Aykroyd delivers in this. You have Matt Wood as John Belushi, Nicholas Braun as Andy Kaufman, and Jim Henson. Which one of my favorite things about the first ever episode of Saturday Night Live is Andy Kaufman, which I've seen in other iterations of his story, whether it be the Netflix documentary Man on the Moon, but he did his famous Mighty Mouse sketch on the first episode of SNL wherever he's up there playing the record and all he does is said the line here I come to save the day, Love Andy Kaufman. But I don't think they're gonna get to the actual episode in this movie. It seems to be the ninety minutes leading up to it. I imagine it gets more and more chaotic as it goes along. You see people fighting, you see people throwing things, you see people writing on cameras. So I have to imagine the very last scene of this movie is going to be right when it hits Live on the air, and then the movie is gonna hit the credits, because it doesn't seem like that is going to be the story. It seems the story is the reason Louren Michaels was put in this situation was to fail. And also it's directed and co written by Jason Rightman, who is the dad of Ivan Rightman Rip, but he is responsible for Ghostbusters one, Two, Twins, Kindergarten, Cop Meatballs, so Ivan's's dad Jason is directing this movie. I love a nepo baby again. Don't really have a problem with nepotism when it comes to Hollywood, because I think about it. If somebody accused me of being a nepo baby, saying my dad's a truck driver. If I went on to be a truck driver, nobody would be like, ah, you nepo baby taking over the family business. That's just what happens. You're around it as a kid, obviously gonna be drawn to it. So I don't really have a problem with nepo babies as long as they own up to it when they get real deaf and are like no, like no, just own up to it. It'd be the same way I would own up to it. If my dad had his own trucking business, an I were to take over it, of course other people would have been there a while would be like, of course the bus the son is getting the job. But I have no problem with it with Jason Rightman, the son who was directing this movie. He also did Ghostbusters Afterlife, one of a couple of my favorite movies from the two thousands, Up in the Air and Juno, so I feel like we are in the right director's hands for this movie to get it right. Also, rounding out the cast, you have Matthew Reese as George Carlin, who was the first host of Saturday Night Live. Willem Dafoe is playing an NBC head executive. You also have JK. Simmons as Milton Burrell. A lot of people think that Saturday Night Live isn't funny anymore. I still make it a point to watch every single week when it is in season. My favorite episode in the last year has to be when Ryan Gosling hosted the Beavis and butt Head sketch is still one of my favorite and I can't even remember my last favorite sketch of Saturday Night Live. For me, I think my favorite era for the show was the twenty tens, and I don't think they had one specific star during that time that I would say that was the Asen Hole that was the best SNL cast member at that time. Maybe a Kristen Wig, but I think it was a collection of that entire cast. It's almost like what happens in the movie Moneyball. They lose their star player and they have to build a winning team by strategically putting together all these players who don't cost a whole lot, but by finding players who do maybe a couple things, well maybe only one thing, will they can all add up to replace that superstar that you were missing. That is how I felt about the twenty tens. They didn't have that one person who was just killing all the time who was the one star, but all together with Bill Hayt or Jason Sidekis even Jenny Slayton there who I loved, Andy Samberg, Fred Armison, Bob moynihan, Jay Farrell, Seth Myers, Tarren kill him. I'll even throw Amy Poehler in there. That entire era. A Saturday Night Live was my favorite because I kind of got in on the tail end of everybody from the nineties. And while those cast members do make my top five SNL cast members of all time. It was more through watching clips. I remember, I love getting the SNL DVDs that was the best of certain cast members. That is how I took in a lot of their work and also a lot of the cast members from the two thousand. So if I had a top five SNL cast members of all time, at number five, I would put Keenan Thompson, primarily because he's been there.

00:55:39
Speaker 2: For so long.

00:55:40
Speaker 1: Keenan Thompson will not go away from SNL. He has been there for twenty seasons from two thousand and three to twenty twenty four. I just think the volume of work that he has put in. I look at all the famous sketches in the last twenty years and he is probably in one of them. I also love what Up with That? Or whenever they do family Feud, and he'd Steve Harvey. Keenan Thompson has been just in show business since he was a kid from Heavyweights, all that Keenan and Kel, so I would put him at number five. At number four, I would put Tina Fay, who was there for nine seasons from nineteen ninety seven to two thousand and six. I put her in my top five because I think she was the best at Weekend Update, and there are a lot of great people who did Weekend Update. Chevy Chase, obviously, Norm McDonald I would put on the list, even though I don't really feel like people fully appreciated what he did on Weekend Update. Even now, Colin Jost and Michael Chay are my favorite thing consistently about Saturday Night Live, but I still think Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were the best to do it, So she's at number four. At number three, I would put Will Ferrell. I think he is in the most iconic sketches of the two thousands and as somebody who used that fame to translate into a stellar movie career. But he went way beyond SNL. But I would put Will Ferrell at number three. From nineteen nine to two thousand and two. At number two, was only there five seasons, but was so impressionable. Adam Sandler, he was there from nineteen ninety one to nineteen ninety five. I think what I remember more than all of his characters from SNL were the songs, my favorite being lunch Lady Land Adam Sandler with the guitar on SNL. It's great at number one for five seasons from nineteen ninety to nineteen ninety five. Though one and only Chris Farley, he was never in a bad sketch. Down by the River his hands down the greatest sketch to ever air on Saturday Night Live. Second place to that would probably be whenever he did the Columbian Coffee Crystals where he flipped out. Also his Chippendale Sketch. I love whenever he would interview famous celebrities. It'd be really awkward talking to Paul McCartney. Hey, you remember when you were in the Beatles? You remember that? That was awesome. They are making a movie about his life, starring Paul Walter Housa, directed by Josh Gadd, who you may know well, I guess primarily from the Book of Mormon. I also remember him from The Rocker, which was a movie about a rock band that he did with Rain Wilson. But I guess what most people would probably know him for is Frozen. Not me. I remember him from The Rocker, So yeah, I hope that movie's good. I hope Saturday Night is good. It is coming out on October eleventh, Live from New York.

00:58:20
Speaker 2: It's Saturday Night at that for was this week's edition of movie Li Framer.

00:58:25
Speaker 1: Par and that is going to do it for another episode here of the podcast, but before I go, I got to give my listeners shout out of the week. This week we are going over to the YouTube channel if you don't know, I post my full spoiler free reviews over there, so if you don't want to just listen to it, you can go watch it. I tried adding a whole new angle, which I think looks pretty slick, but again, it's just me doing the editing over here, so it takes me a little bit longer, so I would appreciate it if you go check out that word. But this week's listener shout out goes to Nick Castillo, who commented on my review of m Night Shyamalan's Trap and said, not that it helps the overall logic of the movie, but there is a brief line when Cooper's daughter says she's so glad that Lady Raven added a third show when the Night Show sold out. Love the podcast listen every single week. I have to say I think I missed that line, but hearing that being described sounds so forced in there. I feel like that line was put in to cover for the reason that it was taking place during the day. Oh, it's really great that she added a third show during the day. That makes it easier to make this motion picture. I feel like that was a bit of a cop out, but thanks Nick for catching that and for commenting and watching over on YouTube, and for that you are this week's listener shout out of the week. Thank you movie crew, And until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later.