Carlos Cortez's Movie Blog

Creed 2 Release Date Confirmed.  MGM and Annapurna release today that Creed 2 will have a release date of November 21st 2018. Another important note, is that Sylvester Stallone is confirmed to be writing and directing this next installment in the Rocky franchise. Ryan Coogler won't be making a return, perhaps due to him working on Black Panther, or maybe another project, but it seems he doesn't have the time for this next movie. I am very enthusiasic about Stallone wriing and directing this film because he wrote the script for a couple of the Rocky movies and he knows the beloved character as much as a person can. I do wonder how much of a different feel Creed 2 will have with Stallone directing, since you see something like Creed and then the trailers for Black Panther and Ryan Cooglers name is all over it. I do wanna see where exactly Creed 2 will go, whether it be Adonis trying to live up to his name or perhaps deal with something new. In the last Creed movie, we saw h...

Zachary Levi Has Been Cast As Shazam. Three days ago Deadline reported that Zachary Levi has been cast as Shazam in the upcoming DC movie. David F. Sanberg (director of Lights Out and Annabelle: Creation) will direct this solo Shazam film with Zachary Levi to lead, apparently he is well known as the title character for NBC's Chuck. I personally don't know who he is which is actually a good thing in my opinion because we need to see how great this character is. I know Shazam from Kingdom Come and in that amazing comic, Shazam is a force to be reckoned with. Apparently Zachary Levi is a great comedic actor which is good because Sandberg said this Shazam movie will be light-hearted and a lot f fun. So back to Kingdom Come for a quick second, that comic does such a great job presenting Shazam as the only big threat against superman, but also the true hero he is so I highly recommend reading Kingdom Come. So since Zachary Levi isn't well known, is that something to be worr...

Possible Deathstroke Movie By Gareth Edwards. Yesterday in the movie news, Warner Bros. and DC announced that Gareth Edwards is writing and set to direct a Deathstroke movie. If you don't know Gareth Edwards, he's the director for both the Raid Redemption and the Raid 2. If you still don't know who he is, do yourself a favor and watch those two movies, they are some of the best action movies in the past decade. Deathstroke himself is one of rogues of Batman's rogue gallery (he's a bad guy) but he actually ties more into the Teen Titans story. In the Teen Titans cartoon that came out in the early 2000's, he was their main nemesis, and one cool episode was when Robin thought Deathstroke was still alive, but it was all phsycological. Deathstroke is a really cool villian for Batman too because he's a highly intelligent mercenary. So he kind of works both sides of the field, sometimes for good guys but most of the time for bad guys. In the comics, Deathstrok...

Venom Movie Starts Its Production. Two days ago the official Twitter account for the new Venom Movie tweeted out a picture of Tom Hardy on the set of Venom. The tweet just had the caption "Day 1" , so finally this movie is full steam ahead to meet the October 8th, 2018 release date. This is very exciting because there is a lot of curiosity surrounding this film because we're not entirely sure if it will tie into Spiderman, and therefore the Marvel Cinematic Universe. From my understanding, the studio said that this does take place in the same world, but that's all we will get, no tie into Spiderman. The movie is also rated-R and I'm pretty sure Marvel doesn't want to dip their toe into that water just yet. I do believe that the film will reach it's release date, but we sure won't see any trailers for quite a while. We're pretty much a full year away, so perhaps they will do something special at San Diego Comic Con, though they probably won...

Possible Justice League Embargo Lift Date. So today there are rumors running about from this one writer for IndieRevolver who posted that he got an email from Warner Bros. for the Justice League embargo. It pretty much says that the embargo will lift the day before Justice League hits theatres. Now, this hasn't been confirmed by Warner Bros. yet, so take this news with a grain of salt. If this is actually true, then it can be very worrying because putting the embargo lift right before the movie is a red flag. From many past experiences, when a movie puts the embargo pretty much twenty-four hours before it's release means the studio has little to no faith in the movie and pretty much just want to sweep it under the rug. For those of you who don't know what an embargo is, it's pretty much when movie critics are allowed to post their reviews on any form of media. So if a studio like Warner Bros. has a movie come out February 22nd, and show movie critics the film on F...

Official Runtime For Justice League Confirmed. Today several movie theatres released the runtime for one of the most anticipated films of the year. Justice League clocks in at 121 minutes, which is just one minute over two hours. It will be the shortest film in the DC universe, with Suicide Squad just past it. Tickets for the movie also go on sale this Friday so if you're into reserving your seat, that will be your first chance to do so. Now, shall we discuss whether this news is good or bad, to be honest, it's okay. Would I have liked to see a longer movie to spend more time with each character? Yes of course but the general movie audience doesn't think the same way I do. Of course you can argue that if it keeps the audience entertained for that amount of time or another, the runtime wouldn't matter. The point of the runtime being revealed is that we are in the last stretch for the premiere. Whedon as now finished looking over the movie and him and Warner Bros....

My Thoughts On Wind River. For today's blog I wanted to talk about a movie that was never really on my radar, but I heard good things about it. That movie is Wind River, starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen, the movie centers around a murder investigation on an Indian reservation. Jeremy Renner plays a Hunter on the Indian reservation who takes the murder personally and Elizabeth Olsen play an FBI agent that is sent to the reservation on her first assignment. The overall movie is a slow-burn, but it builds very high tension, has an interesting investigation, and gives watchers insight to present indian reservation life. This is actually the directors directorial debut, Taylor Sheridan, wrote the script for Hell Or High Water as well, but he wrote and directed this movie. So I guess first off, I think this is Jeremy Renner's best performance in any film, he plays more of a layer back, calm character but an intelligent hunter. He helps Elizabeth Olsen's character ...

Batman Detective Comics Rebirth.  Today I wanted to talk about probably the best DC comic out at the moment, which is the Detective Comics. I've read many of the DC Rebirth comics out right now and while Tom King's beginning run for Batman is probably the best Batman comic we've gotten in a while, but recently it's had its ups and downs. The Detective Comics have had such a good story from the beginning which is issue #934 and up to now, James Tynion IV has written the comic superbly. Basically the Detective Comics start off with Batman assembling a team of Batwoman, Spoiler, Clayface, Orphan, and Tim Drake's Robin. There's a mysterious threat that causes Batman to ask Batwoman if she can train the previous characters I just said to prepare for the threat. The best thing about the Detective Comics is that you get really good backstory for each character and their motivation to want to do good. We get so much story for each character and the threats the...

My Thoughts On The Second Black Panther Trailer.  Yesterday Marvel spontaneously dropped a new trailer for the upcoming Black Panther. The movie is set to come out early February 2018, but it's interesting that they released a trailer so close to Thor Ragnarok. Granted Thor Ragnarok doesn't come out until early November but you would think they would wait for Black Panther to be closer to release. All in all, this trailer was freaking awesome, look, many comic book movies have cool moments whether it being a team coming together, or a hero doing what they do best, but this trail is just the definition of cool. Whether it be the music that's playing throughout the trailer, or what's actually being shown, the trailer has such swagger to it. That's what Ryan Coogler brings to the table, he said at comic con that Black Panther was the first character that represented his race. Now I'm not trying to get political or anything but he pretty said that he was intro...

My Thoughts On Blade Runner 2049 (Spoilers). So today I decided to finally talk about Blade Runner 2049 since I've have time for it to sink in. Right off the bat Imma just tell you that I loved the movie and think it's a great sequel/independent film from the original. If you haven't seen it yet, which apparently a lot of people haven't since it's doing a but poorly at the box office, I highly recommend you go see it, at least give it a chance because it's a great original film. Now, when I say original film, yes, I do understand it's a sequel, but you don't necessarily have to have seen The original Blade Runner in order to watch this new one. This new movie is set in the Blade Runner world and does have characters from the original like Deckard, Gaff, and Rachel, but it does great as a standalone movie. There are so many things I want to talk about so I guess first, I'll talk about the film overall. The movie is almost three hours long and at...

Horror Heavy New Mutants Trailer. Today Fox Entertainment released their first trailer for the upcoming New Mutants movie. I did have some knowledge that Fox was going for a more horror feel for New Mutants but I just thought it would be here and there in the film. When you watch the new trailer however, it is a full on horror movie with very creepy imagery. Now, the trailer doesn't really give you a Stranger Things vibe, nor an It type of feel to it, but something of its own making. Perhaps it has more of an American Horror Story vibe to it, I myself am not a huge horror fan but when I see an interesting story, I'm in. Now, we don't get much of a story in this trailer, but it lays the foundation for the next few trailers to build off of. If it wasn't for the mention of mutants in the beginning of the trailer, most people would've thought this was just another horror movie. Some people may not have even picked that part up, but from my understanding, this stor...

Thor Ragnarok Is Getting Amazing Reviews. For the past week Marvel Studios has let many critics share their brief thoughts of Thor Ragnarok on Twitter. The actual movie embargo lifts two weeks before its release date which is very positive. Most movies have the embargo lift a couple of days before the film or maybe even a week, but two weeks means that Marvel has a lot of faith in Thor Ragnarok. When a studio doesn't have confidence in their film, they'll have the embargo lift like 24 hours before the movie which would be a red flag to everyone. Back to the reviews, everyone is saying that Thor Ragnarok is a very fun and hilarious film that revitalizes the Thor character. There is high praise for every actor and actress in the movie and the movie is entertaining through and through. Mark Ruffalo also talked to the media about the Hulk, saying that the hero will have a three story arc in the next few Marvel films. All this high praise makes me very excited for the film bec...

My Thoughts On The Last Jedi Trailer. Yesterday during halftime for the Chicago Bears vs. Minnesota Vikings, Lucasfilm unveiled the new trailer for The Last Jedi. Look, it's obvious that the trailer was amazing, all Star Wars trailers are, so I wanted to discuss some things that stood out to me. First and foremost, of course this trailer has an Empire Strikes Back feel to it, it's much darker and deals with more serious themes. When we see Luke and hear him talk, it isn't the Luke that we knew before, something has changed him and he wants nothing to do with Rey. There is one line that he says that I truly love, and it's "This isn't going to go the way you think it will." , now of course I'm paraphrasing a bit but that is pretty much what he said. The reason why I like this, is because it's completely true, not everything is black and white and whoever he's talking to might think it is. Luke has been through a lot of stuff leading up to t...

New Justice League Trailer And Possibly Final. Yesterday Warner Bros. gave us probably the last full look at Justice League before the movie comes out. I'm sure we'll get a bunch of television promotions but it'll most likely start during Thor Ragnarok's opening weekend. The trailer was just simply amazing, but, I do have one big gripe with it, and it's the song. To me it didn't fit the trailer at all, I actually prefer to the previous trailer because it gave us a taste of the score for the actual movie and it sounded awesome. I do like everything is see though, it looks like they are starting to finish up the special effects and we get more of a feel for each Justice League member. We also see a much lighter tone with some comedy, but the comedy seems genuine for each character, they don't all make similar jokes. The overall palette also seems brighter with brighter reds and blues which is probably due to Whedon bringing his own style to the film. I a...

Pacific Rim 2 Trailer Thoughts. Today the trailer for Pacific Rim 2 was released during their panel at New York Comic Con. I've seen the first one and Imma be honest, I wasn't the biggest fan. I really liked the Jaeger fights and I always support Charlie Hunnam because he's my favorite character from Sons of Anarchy. The through line story though was kind of boring in my opinion, too much nonsense, and yes, I understand this is a movie about giant fighting robots. Now for this trailer, it looks pretty damn awesome, with the song and all the colorful action that is shown, along with John Boyega giving a speech just like Idris Elba's in the first movie. I'm still going to be cautious because it is just a trailer and they perhaps grabbed all the best stuff from the movie. Though I'm not by any means looking for the next Oscar contender, I just wanna watch an entertaining, fun film. It's just if there's not a good story through and through, then it won...

New Justice League Trailer Sunday.  Yesterday on the official Justice League Twitter, new character posters were revealed along with news of an upcoming trailer. The character posters were somewhat cool, but nothing was really standing out in any of them, they were all just against black backgrounds. Of course Wonder Woman's was awesome, and I like the red accent on Batman's cape as if to hint Superman, but they don't standout. Now, for the upcoming trailer, I've liked the last two trailers along with the Comic Con footage but now we are a bit over a month away from release. Therefore, whatever we see in this new trailer Sunday, it will most likely have Joss Whedon's stamp of approval on it. No more messing with the colors of the film, or scenes that may not be in the movie anymore, whatever we get will be the finished product. Now like I said the movie is still a little over a month out, who knows if it will meet the release date. From my understanding th...

Tom Cruise Is Officialy Back On Set For Mission: Impossible 6. For those of you who might not be deep into movie news and media, Tom Cruise hurt himself back in August doing a stunt for the new Mission Impossible movie. He was trying to perform a stunt where he jumps from one building rooftop to another but didn't jump far enough and he hit the side of the building, causing him to break his ankle. The Daily Mail Celebrity tweeted images of Tom Cruise back on the set of Mission Impossible and it looks like he is back to doing his own stunts. He believes that him doing his own stunts really makes audiences more entertain by the film he is in, and for me, I'm always interested in Tom Cruise movies. Christopher McQuarrie also posted the first set pick for Mission Impossible since August so it seems they are full-steam ahead to finish the movie. Back in August McQuarrie confirmed himself that Tom Cruise did indeed break his ankle but that the film will work around it. He said th...

Geoff Johns Reassures DC Fans That The Universe Is Still Intact. Today Geoff Johns talked on Twitter about how each film in the DC Universe adds to the overall story. The reason for his new statement is because last week he also tweeted that Aquaman isn't concerned about tieing into each film before it. From that many DC fans began worrying about whether or not this DC Universe will stay intact, or if it's all falling apart. It's important that we fans understand that he means each film will try to be the best standalone film, but still acknowledges what happened before it. For example, Wonder Woman was set in World War I, but at the beginning of the film it ties into Batman v. Superman with the old picture of her in World War I. Small tie-ins like that are very important when continuing a whole universe becasue then it raises questions on who was where during certain events. Marvel is starting to tie-in their films better with explaining that Thor was dealing with Ra...