In the ’70s, Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken starred in the seminal Vietnam War film The Deer Hunter. It ranks among the more harrowing entries in an already brutal genre, unflinchingly depicting the conditions of abject inhumanity in the war zone and then bringing the trauma home to spiritually gut a declining Pennsylvania industry town. A lot has taken place since then, however. We’re now living in a post-Dirty Grandpa world. The news of another collaboration between De Niro and Walken no longer heralds an intense drama with awards potential in its very DNA. They’re now the twin titans of Grandpa Cinema, and their latest project has to reflect that.
Everyone knows that The Jungle Book, based on the classic Rudyard Kipling stories, is about a little boy living alone in the jungle with a bunch of animals. But did you know that Jon Favreau, director of this year’s live-action version of The Jungle Book, wanted his film to reflect man’s changing attitude toward nature? In Kipling’s time, Favreau said in an interview, “nature was something to be overcome. Now, nature is something to be protected.” That’s just one of the facts featured in the last episode of You Think You Know Movies!
Tickled may very well be the craziest documentary we see this year, but Nine Lives is already gunning for the title of Most WTF Film of 2016 — it may even outdo Gods of Egypt in the bafflingly bonkers department. To wit: Here’s a new clip from the upcoming film, in which Kevin Spacey is stuck in the body of a cat and Christopher Walken is the only one who can communicate with him because he’s a cat whisperer. Yes, really.