It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Julia Roberts was one of the dominant Hollywood stars for a good twenty-year period. From her breakout role in 1988’s Mystic Pizza, Roberts skyrocketed to the top of the A-list when she starred opposite Richard Gere in Garry Marshall’s Pretty Woman. An unlikely Cinderella story about an escort that falls in love with a high-powered executive, it’s a movie that is definitely a Hollywood fairytale, but one that a lot of people loved in 1990, with it being one o...
May 03, 2024•22 min
While Marvel fans got an incredible send-off for Hugh Jackman's Wolverine in James Mangold's Logan, another Wolverine movie was planned a few years earlier that would've taken the character in an edgier direction. Indeed, Darren Aronofsky was all set to reunite with his The Fountain star Hugh Jackman for the second spin-off sequel for the character, The Wolverine. In the end, Aronofsky left the project, with James Mangold taking over. While the finished film wasn't particularly well-loved by fan...
Apr 29, 2024•12 min
Released 16 years after the original, this sequel feels like too little too late, or too much too late? It's hard to tell here because it's kind of both. Through a lot of twists and turns, most of them either nonsensical or uninteresting, we get to meet a gang of werewolves hosting parties for victims, a stepfather who searched for a cure, a tenuous connection to the first one, and ultimately, the last third that is just so 1990s, it almost hurts. So, what happened here? Let's find out WTF Happe...
Apr 26, 2024•12 min
Robert Zemeckis was one of the most prominent directors of the eighties and nineties. His string of hits is almost unmatched. Think about it - Romancing the Stone, the Back to the Future Trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, Cast Away, What Lies Beneath, etc. This is why it’s so bizarre that a live-action Disney Pinocchio movie directed by Zemeckis and starring his best favorite leading man, Tom Hanks, was essentially dumped to streaming. It came and went without much fanfare, while it...
Apr 22, 2024•22 min
If you weren’t alive in the nineties, it’s hard to do justice to just how popular Beavis & Butt-Head were. Their MTV show was cutting-edge stuff, notably, because the two Mike Judges creations often mocked the very same artists the network had only years earlier played to great success (just ask Kip Winger). In the show, Beavis and Butt-Head’s adventures were intermingled with them providing commentary on music videos, something which would eventually be phased out as the brand grew in popul...
Apr 19, 2024•17 min
Today, we focus on one master of horror in particular and one of his final movies in his incredible filmography. Try to count how many cross-dissolve shots are in this thing as we dig into John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars and find out What Happened To This Horror Movie?
Apr 15, 2024•11 min
Billy Bob Thornton is an unlikely but enduring movie star. He blasted onto the scene as a character actor in movies like One False Move and Tombstone before his 1996 passion project, Sling Blade, earned him a best screenplay Academy Award while also netting him a Best Actor nomination. Made for just over $1 million, it was a solid box office hit, grossing 30 times its budget, and from there, Thornton’s career went into high gear. While his directorial career went on the back-burner after Harvey ...
Apr 12, 2024•22 min
When it comes to the all-time craziest and most unbelievable true stories ever committed to celluloid, Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon (starring Al Pacino and the late, great John Cazale) tops the list. Ripped right from the headlines, the stranger-than-fiction true-crime story about three men attempting to rob a bank during broad daylight in the dead of summer in New York - only to become a grueling 14-hour hostage situation and high-profile media circus - will forever live in infamy due to ho...
Apr 08, 2024•18 min
Zombies have been all the rage for decades at this point. Just when you think they're going to fade, there's another movie that comes along that revitalizes the sub-genre. But back before the days of The Walking Dead, zombies were considerably less popular. With 28 Days Later and the Dawn of the Dead remake came fast zombies and a renewed interest in zombies. This meant the Godfather of Zombie himself could finally make another film in his Dead series. So we're diving into it all as we figure ou...
Apr 05, 2024•13 min
There was a time that Ozzy Osbourne was considered the most wildly unpredictable, dangerous man in heavy metal. This was the guy that bit the head off a live bat during a concert in 1982, drank Vince Neil’s urine and snorted a line of ants like cocaine amid a bender. The former Black Sabbath front-man was a legend, to the point that many of us, as kids, weren’t allowed to listen to his music or - God Forbid - watch his music videos. But here’s the thing - Ozzy mellowed. First, in the late eighti...
Apr 01, 2024•22 min
I know what you’re thinking - WTF Happened to The Avengers? Nothing, it was one of the biggest hits ever. Not so fast - we’re not talking about the Marvel superhero team-up that shot the MCU into the stratosphere. Instead, we’re talking about 1998’s misbegotten remake of the classic British spy series, The Avengers. On paper, this should have been a great movie. The Avengers was a classic British TV series starring Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg as super spy agents John Steed and Emma Peel. Their...
Mar 29, 2024•13 min
Most of us know Cursed as the terrible Wes Craven Werewolf movie, right? This film's troubled production dragged out for years and resulted in an entirely different movie in the end. But what about that first cut? The one that featured Skeet Ulrich, Robert Forster, and Mandy Moore. So join us as we take a look at the original cut of 2005's Cursed.
Mar 25, 2024•11 min
The sequences of a Final Destination film will play through your head over and over long after the film ends. They're visceral and have a certain quality that really allows you to put yourself in the situation. So by the time the third entry came along, they had to up the ante to really shock audiences. Heck, the second outing had a legendary highway sequence. How could they possibly top that? We'll see if they managed it as we cover the rollercoaster mayhem of Final Destination 3.
Mar 22, 2024•11 min
They say, "In space, no one can hear you scream." But we've seen through eight Alien films that plenty of people can hear you scream if you're in a spaceship. The Xenomorphs have no problem causing their victims a lot of pain. Even though we've seen them in many films, fans will mostly agree that after Aliens, the franchise was never the same. In 2015, filmmaker Neill Blomkamp announced he had been working on a new Alien project. This was even a surprise to Fox, which owned the series. Fans seem...
Mar 19, 2024•10 min
Megan Fox was the “It Girl” of the second half of the 2000s. When she showed up as the love interest in Michael Bay’s Transformers, she quickly became one of the most desired women on the planet, but Hollywood didn’t quite seem sure what to do with her for the longest time. While Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was a hit, she was famously written out of the third film. Her roles in movies like Jonah Hex fell flat, while her big star vehicle, Jennifer’s Body, was a flop - albeit one that’s be...
Mar 15, 2024•14 min
Yo ho mateys! One of the most unlikely franchises to become a multi-billion dollar grossing juggernaut was indeed Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean series. Led by Johnny Depp’s iconic Jack Sparrow, the series has run five instalments (to date) and grossed an estimated 4.5 billion dollars worldwide. This is pretty incredible considering that, in 2003, the first film was seen as a huge gamble. Pirate-based swashbucklers hadn’t been popular since the days of Errol Flynn, and modern attempts to revi...
Mar 11, 2024•20 min
When director Sean S. Cunningham set out to make the original FRIDAY THE 13TH, he was trying to craft a cinematic rollercoaster ride. His little independent production was such a crowd-pleasing thrill ride it became one of the biggest hits of 1980. And spawned a franchise that is still going on to this day. So let’s celebrate FRIDAY THE 13TH by looking back and figuring out WTF Happened To This Horror Movie?
Mar 08, 2024•16 min
Now, I know what you’re thinkin’ punk; what’s the deal with making an episode about WTF Happened to this Celebrity about Clint Eastwood? Nothing happened to him. He’s still making movies at ninety-two. Indeed, you would be correct - but we here at JoBlo are such massive fans of Eastwood that we couldn’t help but whip together an awesome WTF episode exploring his life and legacy. The fact is, it’s unlikely any other actor has ever had the impact that ol’ Clint did. Sure, others were maybe better ...
Mar 04, 2024•28 min
It’s not a stretch to say that James Cameron’s The Terminator might be one of the most influential movies of all time. Produced on a shoestring budget, The Terminator introduced the world to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 and Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor, mother of the human resistance. In this original classic, Arnie’s T-800 is a terrifying figure, much different from the heroic character we’d come to love in the sequels. Here, he’s sent back to kill Sarah Connor before she can give birth to he...
Mar 01, 2024•16 min
John Carpenter’s The Thing didn’t go over well when it was released in 1982. Ignored by movie-goers, it was a box office failure. Reviled by critics, it even saw Carpenter labeled a pornographer of violence by some reviewers. It was such a disappointment for the studio they took another project away from Carpenter as punishment. But it gradually found its audience, building up a cult following. And soon, a legion of fans and critics alike began calling it one of the greatest horror movies ever m...
Feb 26, 2024•19 min
Every kid of a certain age grew up wanting to be Jackie Chan. A legend in Hong Kong and most of the world from the late-seventies on, Jackie Chan also, at long last, became a superstar in North America after the release of his 1996 classic Rumble in the Bronx. Supercop, First Strike and more dubbed versions of his Hong Kong movies would follow, but it was 1998’s Rush Hour, which paired him with Chris Tucker, that made him a phenomenon in the United States. It was as if, at long last, the United ...
Feb 23, 2024•21 min
Jupiter Ascending was a movie sci-fi fans were really looking forward to. It would mark the long-awaited return of the Wachowskis to the sci-fi action genre, something they left behind when Speed Racer flopped theatrically. This promised to be a large-scale fantasy epic that fans hoped would be the new Matrix. Alas, things didn’t work out that way, with critics savaging the film when it came out and audiences staying away in droves. Complaints included a muddled sci-fi universe, a bizarre choice...
Feb 19, 2024•16 min
If one were to list the greatest rock n’ roll frontmen of all time, Van Halen’s David Lee Roth would be near the top. With a swagger and look that seemed tailor-made for the MTV era, Roth was riding high in the eighties and, for a while, was among the biggest rock stars on the planet. From 1974 to 1985, he was Van Halen’s lead singer, but after the release of 1984, their biggest album, Roth departed from the band. He would reunite with them for brief stints in 1996 and 2001, before a mostly perm...
Feb 16, 2024•19 min
Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder memorably satirized both the Hollywood war film and the often ridiculous lengths actors will go to in order to "capture" the characters they're playing. While the notion that Robert Downey Jr's Kirk Lazarus would dye his skin to play an African-American might be hard to swallow, it wasn't entirely out there fourteen years ago. Hollywood's self-seriousness was arguably at its zenith at this moment in time, and Stiller's film brilliantly satirizes some of the more infa...
Feb 12, 2024•14 min
While there have been plenty of horror remakes over the years, there's only one directed by Martin Scorsese. And while that should be enough to garner limitless interest, add in Robert De Niro and Jessica Lange and you've got a recipe for something spectacular. So join us as we dive into the maniacal world of Max Cady in Cape Fear.
Feb 09, 2024•13 min
A long time ago in a movie theater not too far away . . . a series of films came out that captured the imagination of movie fans everywhere. The Star Wars franchise has been a giant among the most loved movies ever made. The original trilogy has been held up as sacred. When it came time for the Prequels, original fans were let down, but young fans embraced them. They have finally aged into their place in Star Wars canon. When Lucasfilm was sold to Disney for a staggering $4.5 billion fans knew i...
Feb 05, 2024•10 min
The last two years have not been good for Armie Hammer, and things will likely only worsen. With Discovery’s docuseries - House of Hammer - on the way, we look back at how exactly one of Hollywood’s most promising young stars ended up an industry pariah. Before he went off the deep end, Hammer was considered a top-notch leading man. After making heads turn in David Fincher’s The Social Network, where he famously played Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss in a dual role, Hollywood was keen to make him t...
Feb 02, 2024•16 min
Aeon Flux is often forgotten when discussing Charlize Theron's action roles. Before Mad Max: Fury Road turned her into a legitimate genre icon, a status re-affirmed by Atomic Blonde and The Old Guard, her first attempt at headlining an action flick, 2005's Aeon Flux, had been largely forgotten. At the time, Theron was mostly known for prestige drama. She had won an Oscar in 2004 for his role as Aileen Wuornos in Patty Jenkins' Monster. She chose to follow this up by trying her luck at leading an...
Jan 29, 2024•16 min
Pitting two titans of cinema against each other has been in the public consciousness since Frankenstein, and The Wolfman met up in 1943. And in the years since, we've seen many different iconic figures do battle: Batman vs Superman, Godzilla vs Kong, and even Freddy vs Jason. Yet there was one film that brought together two of the greatest sci-fi monsters ever, and so today, we're looking into the making of 2004's AVP: Alien vs. Predator!
Jan 26, 2024•12 min
If you grew up in the nineties, you undoubtedly grew up a massive fan of The Sandlot. A coming-of-age story centering around a group of baseball-loving kids who hang out every day in a Sandlot, the movie didn’t make much of a peep in theatres back in 1993. However, the box office didn’t tell the whole story, with the movie becoming a cult film on VHS, cable and later DVD, with writer-director David Mickey Evans eventually returning to make a DTV spin-off, The Sandlot 2, while a prequel is still ...
Jan 22, 2024•16 min
