I’ve been making more of an effort to keep up with movies lately and even managed the rare feat of seeing one in an actual movie theater. I saw Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which stars Henry Cavill, Alan Ritchson, Alex Pettyfer, Elza González, Babs Olusanmokun, and others in what I interpreted as a goofy spaghetti western / spy / heist film.
I suppose it’s also a war movie, being based (very loosely) on a true story about a collection of unstoppable guys set on an unsanctioned secret mission to destroy a German U-boat resupply ship during World War II. It doesn’t try to ruminate on the weight of the mission, which was to clear the way for American ships to cross the Atlantic and join the war effort. Ministry is all vibes and style. You know, a Guy Ritchie movie.
It’s also the sort of mostly mindless fun I expect from the biggest movie that got a new trailer last week: Deadpool & Wolverine.
I don’t have to sell the trailer for the Deadpool & Wolverine movie to you. Between Hugh Jackman (Logan) finally wearing the yellow and blue Wolverine suit, Leslie Uggams (Deadpool 2) inviting Ryan Reynolds (Spirited) to do cocaine by making a Frozen reference, and Madonna’s Like a Prayer, you already know if you want to watch this. Besides Reynolds, Jackman, and Uggams, it also stars Morena Baccarin (Fast Charlie) and Emma Corrin (The Crown). It’s out on July 26th.
This year’s Russell Crowe exorcism movie, called The Exorcism, is not a sequel to last year’s The Pope’s Exorcist. I looked it up. It’s about an actor shooting an exorcism movie who thinks he’s backsliding into addiction, but it turns out he’s probably actually possessed? The movie also stars Sam Worthington (Avatar: The Way of Water), Ryan Simpkins (Please Baby Please), Adam Goldberg (Running with the Devil), and David Hyde Pierce (The Perfect Host) — a not-shabby cast, all told! It’s out on June 7th.
In the black comedy / thriller Blink Twice, Channing Tatum stars as a probably-evil tech billionaire named Slater King who whisks a group of women to his private island to party. But of course, if it’s a party, then it’s the creepy murder kind with some maybe spooky supernatural stuff going on. First-time director Zoë Kravitz (The Batman) nabbed quite a cast for this movie: Besides Tatum, it stars Naomi Ackie (Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody), Christian Slater (Freelance), Geena Davis (Fairyland), Haley Joel Osment (Drug Store June), Alia Shawkat (Drift), and Kyle MacLachlan (Miranda’s Victim). It’ll be in theaters on August 23rd.