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Wild (I) (2014)

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Emotional tale of self-discovery explores grief, addiction.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Overarching messages are that people can get thems

Cheryl's mom, Bobbi, is idealized; she's intellige

Domestic abuse, close-up of dead mother, two chara

Cheryl's breasts are visible in sex scenes and rig

Frequent strong language: "f--k," "s--t," "a--hole

REI, Danner boots, Clif bars, Snapple.

Adults smoke, snort, and inject heroin. Characters

Parents need to know that Wild is based on Cheryl Strayed's best-selling memoir about the cathartic three and a half months she spent hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Starring Reese Witherspoon as Strayed, the movie is part journey of self discovery and part flashback to the good, the bad, and the ugly in…

Positive Messages

Overarching messages are that people can get themselves out of spirals of self-destruction, that it's important to ask for and accept help when you need it, and that trips can be transformative catalysts for self discovery and change.

Positive Role Models

Cheryl's mom, Bobbi, is idealized; she's intelligent, sensitive, and supportive. She encourages Cheryl to be the best she can be and to find beauty and happiness in life's simple pleasures. Even though she was the victim of domestic abuse, Bobbi focuses on the positive. Cheryl spirals out of control after her mother dies, cheating on a loving husband, sleeping with men who don't care about her, and ultimately becoming a junkie. But by the end of the film, it's clear that Cheryl is ready to move forward and change.

Violence & Scariness

Domestic abuse, close-up of dead mother, two characters must shoot a sick horse, a hunter creepily comes on to Cheryl and makes inappropriate sexual comments, Cheryl injures herself during the hike. Cheryl hitchhikes a lot and is frightened of a man with a gun in his glove compartment (he's ultimately harmless).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Cheryl's breasts are visible in sex scenes and right out of the shower as she examines her hiking injuries. She has casual sex with several men (both while married and during the hiking trip).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Frequent strong language: "f--k," "s--t," "a--hole, and religious exclamations ("Jesus Christ").

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Adults smoke, snort, and inject heroin. Characters drink (once straight from the bottle) in several scenes.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Wild is based on Cheryl Strayed's best-selling memoir about the cathartic three and a half months she spent hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Starring Reese Witherspoon as Strayed, the movie is part journey of self discovery and part flashback to the good, the bad, and the ugly in Strayed's past, particularly the self-destructive behavior that followed the death of her beloved mother. The mature content includes partial nudity (both sexual and matter-of-fact), several sex scenes (most of which are extramarital), explicit drug use (heroin), and strong language ("f--k," "s--t," and more). The heavy themes (domestic abuse, grief, addiction, abortion, etc.) might prove too much for many adolescents, but the movie does offer various subjects for parents to discuss with mature older teens: the importance of parent-child relationships, signs of unhealthy behavior, and the life-changing power of a monumental trip. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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• Parents say (9)
• Kids say (6)

Based on 9 parent reviews

A good message for teens girls with discussion

An empowering film based on the book about cheryl strayed's trek, what's the story.

Like the memoir on which it's based, WILD is a touching exploration of a woman's life-changing 1,000-mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail. In her mid-20s and in a state of crisis, Cheryl Strayed ( Reese Witherspoon ) sees a PCT guidebook while shopping for pregnancy tests in a pharmacy. Once her divorce is final, she's off heroin, and she's aborted an unplanned pregnancy, Cheryl decides to pack an oversized backpack with newly purchased camping gear and hike 1,000 miles of the trail. Her goal? To once again become the woman that her dearly departed mother ( Laura Dern ) raised her to become, rather than the shell of a person she'd become. During her solo trek, Cheryl reflects on her past, both the good (her beautiful mother and Cheryl's faithful and long-suffering ex-husband) and the bad (her mother's death, Cheryl's string of affairs and subsequent drug abuse). Although she encounters others on and off the trail, the movie, even more than the book, focuses on Cheryl battling her demons with every labored step.

Is It Any Good?

Wild isn't a movie for anyone who hates stories of how hitting the road, climbing a mountain, or setting off for an adventure can lift the spirit and cleanse the soul. Because that's what this movie is about -- a woman with lots of emotional baggage who doesn't know a thing about serious trekking but manages to go from greenhorn to seasoned queen of the PCT. Witherspoon isn't really known as a gritty actress, so many worried that she'd be miscast as Cheryl (at least the Cheryl in flashbacks who has casual hook-ups and shoots up drugs), but it's clear she was all in for this performance, baring her body and giving every scene her best. Witherspoon humanizes a character who, on the page, can seem overwhelmingly selfish and unlikable. On screen, Witherspoon's nuanced portrayal is touching, especially when she shares scenes with Dern, who's only nine years older than Witherspoon but convincingly plays her young survivor of a mother. Dern's performance is heartbreakingly beautiful (just like in The Fault in Her Stars ). Bobbi is what makes viewers believe that Cheryl has the power to be extraordinary.

In addition to the acting, the movie benefits from gorgeous visuals of the PCT, with sweeping vistas that will make even those who avoid going outdoors understand how experiencing nature on your own can and will change you forever. Director Jean-Marc Vallee doesn't shy away from the harsh obstacles Cheryl must overcome, physically and emotionally; by the end of the movie, you still may not love her, but you can't help believing in her power to rise out of the darkness and into the light.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the popularity of stories about journeys of self-discovery. How is this one different? What does Cheryl learn on her trip?

What's Wild 's message? Why do you think Cheryl says that she doesn't regret anything she's done or that's happened to her?

Discuss Cheryl's romantic and sexual relationships; are any of them healthy? Is her promiscuity portrayed as a problem, an understandable response to grief, or an expression of her sexuality?

Does the movie make you interested in reading the book? For parents (or teens) who've already read it, discuss some of the changes and omissions from page to screen.

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 3, 2014
• On DVD or streaming : March 31, 2015
• Cast : Reese Witherspoon , Laura Dern , Gaby Hoffmann
• Director : Jean-Marc Vallee
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Fox Searchlight
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Science and Nature
• Run time : 115 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : sexual content, nudity, drug use, and language
• Last updated : January 29, 2024

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Culture | Film

Wild - movie review: 'Reese Witherspoon is incredible'

All children, especially little girls, are taught that it’s dangerous to talk to strangers. Horror movies often send a similar message. By contrast, this adaptation of a 2012 memoir by Cheryl Strayed — though it pays homage to the stuffed-animals scene in Psycho — fans our paranoia, only deftly to diffuse it. During a three-month, 1,100-mile trek across America, our heroine (Reese Witherspoon) is forced to do some hitch-hiking. As she stands by a road we hear her internal musings: “Hi, I’m an unaccompanied female. Want to give me a ride, so that you can rape and dismember me?”

As well as wit, Nick Hornby's screenplay offers gross-out moments (watch Cheryl peel off a putrid toe-nail! Gaze on her poo!) and copious amounts of cussing. F***! It's like a feminist voyage of discovery for South Park junkies.

In flashbacks we see Cheryl’s working-class mother Bobbi (Laura Dern) euphorically playing with her children. We haven’t even met Cheryl’s abusive, alcoholic dad but the song blaring in the background (The Shangri-Las’ I Can Never Go Home Anymore) speaks volumes about the precarious set-up.

Years later, Bobbi, aged just 45, is dead from cancer. A grief-crazed Cheryl starts cheating on her husband, gets hooked on heroin, finds herself pregnant (the father could be one of several guys) and has an abortion. All of which prompts her decision to follow the Pacific Crest Trail. Typically though, Cheryl pops 12 condoms into her knapsack.

Some critics have accused Witherspoon of being too clean-cut for the role. I think she's incredible. In Freeway (1996) and Election (1999) she plays teens so determined not to be preyed upon that they acquire their own wolfish glint. Since then the actress has become synonymous with sweet and swishy blonde-ness. In Wild, all her strengths merge.

True, she may be a tad long in the tooth to play a character who, over the course of the film, ages from 20 to 26. People keep referring to Cheryl as a “young woman”. Witherspoon looks like a woman. Nothing, though, can blunt the force of this love story. At one point, Cheryl swallows some of Bobbi’s ashes (she’s consumed by her mother; it makes sense that she tries to eat her, too).

In real-life Strayed is a fan of Alice Munro. And the influence of the Canadian writer can be felt in many of the (exquisitely) peculiar details. Cheryl is a wild thing long before she reaches the great outdoors. That she’s tamed neither by the landscape nor the film-makers provides the best kind of happy ending.

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Producer-star Reese Witherspoon kicks out the jams in Wild. She's a live wire as Cheryl Strayed, a sleep-around heroin dabbler who, in 1995, found a unique way to deal with her painful lack of self-esteem and the death of her mother (a wonderfully funny and touching Laura Dern): hike the Pacific Crest Trail by herself for 1,100 miles. It's a showstopping performance from an actress who keeps springing surprises. Mercifully, Witherspoon sucks at selling candy-assed platitudes about the triumph of the human spirit. With the help of a scrappy script by Nick Hornby ( About a Boy ) that allows bursts of humor to break through the darkness, Witherspoon cuts to the bruised core of Cheryl's heart, rattling between desperation and determination. Under the keen-eyed direction of Jean-Marc Vallée ( Dallas Buyers Club ), Wild emerges as an exciting, elemental adventure that takes you places you don't see coming.

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• Entertainment
• <i>Dreamin’ Wild</i> Tells the Moving True Story of a Teenage Rock Dream Fulfilled 

Dreamin’ Wild Tells the Moving True Story of a Teenage Rock Dream Fulfilled 

W here do great songs come from? Who really knows? Maybe the more piercing question is, Where do they go if no one hears them? Bill Pohlad’s Dreamin’ Wild is on the surface a straightforward story—based on real-life events—about what happens when two people who sought pop stardom as teenagers get a second chance in middle age. But in telling the story of Donnie and Joe Emerson—who, as kids in 1979, independently recorded a strange, wonderful album that almost nobody heard—Pohlad seems to be striving to capture an elusive cloud of feeling. This isn’t just a movie about reawakened ambitions, but about how our teenage hopes inform our grownup selves, or perhaps haunt them. It’s a lot to pack into a seemingly unassuming little movie, but Pohlad—who also directed 2014’s superb Love & Mercy —pulls it off.

Casey Affleck plays Don Emerson, a struggling, middle-aged pro musician living in Washington State. He sings and plays guitar in a small band with his wife, drummer and percussionist Nancy ( Zooey Deschanel ), also the mother of his two kids. But his chief means of support is a small recording studio that’s a losing proposition. He’s tried to make a life in music, but the effort is draining him. Affleck, in this wonderful performance, conveys that existential heaviness without dragging the movie down; he shoulders his character's burdens rather than heaping them onto us.

Read more: The 100 Best Movies of the Past 10 Decades

Things used to be different for Don, because who can ever hang onto every remnant of the teenage self? The movie’s opening scene, a flashback memory, shows a teenage Donnie—played by Noah Jupe —working out a song on his guitar, though it’s really less a song than a moonlit current with a few words floating on the surface: “Did you have a good time?” he asks, in a voice at the silvery midpoint between boy and man. He’s posing this question to an unseen girl, and the way he sings it, he seems genuinely curious to hear the answer. It’s not much of a song, yet it’s more than enough. As Donnie sings, he’s moving toward a door of light, which opens into a space filled with an adoring audience, a crowd deeply in love with the sound he and his older brother and bandmate Joe (played, as a teenager, by Jack Dylan Grazer) are spinning out from the stage. This is what young Donnie had dreamed of; the struggling wedding band and the failing recording studio is what he got.

But the story of the Emerson brothers takes a strange and miraculous turn, and that’s the adventure that Pohlad—who also wrote the script, adapted from a New York Times story by Steven Kurutz—explores here. As music-mad kids in the late 1970s, Donnie and Joe had recorded an album, self-financed—at great cost—by their father, Don Sr. (Beau Bridges), a logger and a gentle, emotionally generous family man whose acreage dwindled as he poured money into his sons’ aspirations. That record, Dreamin’ Wild, obviously went nowhere. Fast-forward some 30 years, and an indie record exec shows up, Chris Messina’s Matt Sullivan. Sullivan, of Light in the Attic Records, a company devoted to resurrecting lost gems, has heard the Emersons’ record and wants to rerelease it. Don Sr., Joe, and the rest of the family (including mom Salina, played by Barbara Deering) are thrilled—they’ve always believed in Donnie and Joe’s talent, despite the massive stacks of unsold records they’ve been storing for years.

Only Don refuses to believe in this resurrected fantasy, for numerous and complicated reasons that unfold in subtle ripples. He remembers what it was like to make music with his brother when they were kids—they lived for it, but they were also doing it for fun. For him, the record’s failure still stings: “We put all we had into it and no one liked it.” Even more than that, he feels undone by guilt—over the sacrifices his adoring parents made for a career that went nowhere, and over his complicated love for his brother. It turns out that Donnie was the big talent, with a gift for writing, performing, and producing. Joe, a middling drummer at best, just tagged along for fun. As a grown-up, Joe has stayed close to home, perpetually working on the beautiful house where he lives, alone. (Walton Goggins, a fantastic actor, signals the backstory behind that house in the subtlest, most heartrending way.) The grown-up Don, on the other hand, has built his whole life around music, and he can’t yet see the meeting point between the brothers’ lives today and the astonishing feat of creation they'd pulled off long ago, in the little log-cabin recording studio their father had built for them.

What Pohlad and his actors—all of them wonderful, among the best ensemble of performers we’re likely to see all year—pull off is a rich and often deeply moving meditation on what music can mean in a life. It can break dreams, but it can also mend them. This is also a movie about the complex nature of family love, and how even the strongest bonds can become entwined with regrets and self-recrimination.

That’s a lot for a movie to hold. But Pohlad—who has largely worked as a producer, though he’s also proving to be a fine director—knows what he’s doing. With Love & Mercy, anchored by a sterling performance from Paul Dano as the troubled genius Brian Wilson, Pohlad plumbed—as much as any human can—the mystery and craftsmanship behind song creation. Dreamin’ Wild is in some ways a more modest movie, though it’s ultimately just as powerful. The performances given by Jupe and Grazer, as the young versions of Don and Joe, carry all the threads of the complicated adult family dynamic that will eventually take shape. Watching them is like peering into the brothers’ future; this can’t be easy to pull off.

And hovering above, behind, and all the way through Dreamin’ Wild is the music itself, like a radio signal coming right at us from the lost world of 1979. The song that would have been the album’s single, “Baby,” a winsome ballad whose lyrics consist largely of a single repeated line—it’s either “Yes oh baby” or the seemingly nonsensical yet even more perfect “You’re so baby,” depending on how your brain is working at any particular moment—weaves through the film like a listless ghost looking for home. How do you write a song like that, at 15 or at any age? And what must it be like to have given that song up as a lost cause, only to see it find a new audience 30 years later? The annals of pop music must be filled with good-to-great songs that never found listeners; in that sense, the first part of the Emersons’ story isn’t atypical. But the fact that we can now listen to “Baby” on repeat if we want, whether via a download or wafting from the grooves of a record, still seems like a minor miracle. It’s the essence of the teenage rock ’n’ roll dream fulfilled, better late than never, and the lost years in between only make its sound sweeter.

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‘Dreamin’ Wild’ Review: Casey Affleck Hits a Melancholy Note in a Sweet Ode to Dreams Deferred

Writer-director Bill Pohlad follows up his Brian Wilson biopic 'Love & Mercy' with a complementary true story of musicianship prevailing against the odds.

By Guy Lodge

Film Critic

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Fast-forward to 2011, and the middle-aged Donnie has moved only as far as the nearest town, where he manages an ailing recording studio with his wife Nancy (an underused Zooey Deschanel), plays cover-band gigs at weddings and bars, and dedicatedly raises a family that gets oddly scant screen time in Pohlad’s script — adapted from a profile by journalist Steven Kurutz. It’s not the life he imagined when he and his older brother Joe (played, in earlier and later life respectively, by Jack Dylan Grazer and Walton Goggins) recorded their scrappy, self-funded and prodigiously sleek album “Dreamin’ Wild” as teens. 

It sold a handful of copies locally and piqued the interest of a Hollywood record producer, but never caught on — not until three decades later, that is, when a record collector’s chance discovery of “Dreamin’ Wild” in a thrift shop spurs a word-of-mouth revival, prompting indie label boss Matt Sullivan (Chris Messina) to contact the brothers and reissue the album. For Joe, an only modestly talented drummer who long ago shelved any musical aspirations to join his father (Beau Bridges) in the family logging business, this is nothing but a delightful fairytale outcome. 

For Donnie, it’s something rather more bittersweet: an unsolicited confrontation with a youthful sensibility that he’s left behind, from which he feels he’s evolved. As the record acquires an underground following and invitations for the brothers to perform flood in, he finds himself uncomfortable slipping into the songs and stage dynamics of the past, while his newfound admirers show no interest in any of his newer work. “I feel like this dream is coming true but the wrong people are in it,” he admits to Nancy, as Pohlad and DP Arnaud Potier — painting in suitably autumnal, warm-but-wilted tones — mark his growing agitation with hectic handheld shooting.

Structurally, editor Annette Davey’s tangled, intuitive criss-crossing of past and present abets a clear kinship between Affleck and Jupe’s performances as Donnie, despite no great resemblance between the two. The actors share a pensive, sometimes far-away air of inner quiet, though Jupe’s calm, straight-backed self-assurance stands in stark contrast to Affleck’s crumpled body language and weary, whispery delivery. Always at his best playing men trying to run up the down escalator, the older actor is achingly moving in the story’s latter stages, as Donnie’s ambitions and anxieties battle each other to an exhausted draw; he has pitch-perfect support, too, from Goggins and Bridges as the men who love him but can’t find his frequency.

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition), Sept. 7, 2022. Running time: 110 MIN.

• Production: A River Road Entertainment, Innisfree Pictures, Zurich Avenue production. (World sales: CAA, Los Angeles.) Producers: Bill Pohlad, Kim Roth, Christa Workman, Jim Burke, Steven Snyder, Viviana Vezzani, Karl Spoerri, Tobias Gutzwiller.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Bill Pohlad, based on the article 'Fruitland' by Steven Kurutz. Camera: Arnaud Potier. Editor: Annette Davey. Music: Donnie Emerson, Leopold Ross.
• With: Casey Affleck, Noah Jupe, Zooey Deschanel, Chris Messina, Jack Dylan Grazer, Walton Goggins, Beau Bridges.

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This Early Ella Purnell Movie With 92% on Rotten Tomatoes Has Been Unfairly Overlooked

Appearing opposite Bruce Greenwood, Purnell's immense talent was on display in this indie drama.

Content Warning: The article below contains mentions of abuse and sexual assault.

The Big Picture

• Before Ella Purnell stunned audiences with her role as Lucy MacLean in Fallout, she gave a gripping and underrated performance in 2014's Wildlike.
• Appearing opposite Bruce Greenwood, Purnell plays a teenager on the run who decides to backpack across Alaska with Greenwood's character.
• Since Wildlike, Purnell has played several characters who grappled with significant loss and end up changed after an emotional journey.

Fallout took the world by storm, particularly regarding Ella Purnell 's performance as Lucy MacLean. While it's the latest in a rush of genre roles for Purnell, one of her finest roles was in the 2014 independent film Wildlike . This emotionally stirring drama was one of Purnell's first leading roles, putting her dramatic talents on full display . But what exactly makes Wildlike such a gripping watch? Written and directed by Frank Hall Green , Wildlike centers on teenager MacKenzie (Purnell), whose life is falling apart. Her father recently died and her mother was hospitalized, leaving her to stay with her uncle ( Brian Geraghty ) in Alaska. Things take a turn for the worse when MacKenzie is molested by her uncle, causing her to go on the run. She ends up hiding out in a hotel room, which is being rented by Rene 'Bart' Bartlett ( Bruce Greenwood ). MacKenzie and Bart wind up backpacking across Alaska for entirely different reasons – Bart is visiting Alaska to honor the memory of his wife after she succumbed to cancer, while MacKenzie wants to return home to Seattle and reunite with her mother. During the journey, the two start to confide in each other while MacKenzie grapples with what happened to her and her inevitable trauma.

After conditions in her new home become unbearable, a teenage girl runs away and befriends an older man preparing for a hike through the Alaskan wilderness.

'Wildlike' Is Built on the Strength of Ella Purnell's Performance

Wildlike stands out from the usual independent teen drama in a few ways. Chief among them was the fact that Green shot entirely on location in Alaska; this resulted in plenty of stunning shots of snow-covered mountains and lush green forests. But Purnell's performance as MacKenzie is the major draw , holding her own against a seasoned performer like Greenwood. Throughout Wildlife 's runtime, she's fairly quiet, letting her facial expressions and body language do most of her speaking. She starts to loosen up halfway around the film, and her evasive nature peels away – revealing a girl that's struggling with the fact that her family is slowly disintegrating. Things finally boil over when Bart confronts her after she runs away, and MacKenzie screams, "You have no idea what I'm going through! You think you do, but you don't." Purnell's words are laced with raw anger and hurt, and it's enough to crack the hardest of hearts.

Ella Purnell Thought This Was Essential to Her Career; She Doesn't Anymore

Purnell also has a unique chemistry with Greenwood, since they both play emotionally wounded characters . But where Purnell chooses to be closed off as MacKenzie, Greenwood, in a layered performance, is a bit more sarcastic and blunt. When they first start camping, he gives her a straightforward set of camping rules, including a curt reply of "I don't roast marshmallows." But he also delivers a key piece of advice in the process: "Don't run off." This is a recurring theme throughout Wildlike as MacKenzie often runs off without thinking things through. Though she's trying to get away from her uncle, she still has her cell phone –

allowing him to contact her. She also doesn't have enough money to stay in a hotel or get on a plane to Seattle, leading to her sneaking into hotels or cars for shelter. At the end of Wildlife , MacKenzie learns that she has to face her own problems – especially when Bart gives her a heartwarming talk after her uncle nearly finds her.

Ella Purnell Keeps Bringing Emotional Weight to Her Roles

Wildlike proved to be a template for Purnell's future roles, as she continues to play young women who grapple with emotional loss . Most of her characters also embark on a journey to get back what they lost. Army of the Dead 's Kate Ward has to reconcile with her father, Scott ( Dave Bautista ) after he kills her zombified mother, while Arcane's Jinx is shaped by her opposition to her sister Vi ( Hailee Steinfeld ). It's her role as Lucy in Fallout that is most similar to her performance in Wildlike. Like MacKenzie, Lucy is dealing with a disintegrating family: her mother died at a young age and her father ( Kyle MacLachlan ) is kidnapped. This leads Lucy to venture out into the surface world, where, much like MacKenzie, she ends up traveling with an unlikely companion; Howard Cooper ( Walton Goggins ), who became a Ghoul after the nuclear fallout. While there are many differences between Fallout and Wildlike – the former does take place in the apocalypse, not to mention it's loaded with black humor and violence – they feature a young woman who ends up changing her outlook on life after a journey through an unfamiliar land.

Wildlike received glowing reviews , and currently sits at 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. Most of the praise comes from the way the film handles its subject matter, which it does with respect. It also earned Purnell plenty of praise, as critics lauded her performance and her interactions with Greenwood. Fans of Fallout or any of Purnell's genre roles will definitely want to watch Wildlike, as it's a great display of her talents while also providing the roadmap to her future roles.

Wildlike is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.

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Zack Snyder's new movie may have a low Rotten Tomatoes score, but it's Netflix's number one movie

Rebel Moon: Part Two is the top Netflix movie worldwide

Zack Snyder 's latest movie, Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver , is proving incredibly popular on Netflix. 

The film has a Rotten Tomatoes critic score of just 15%, but that doesn't seem to be stopping viewers from checking it out. At the moment, the movie is Netflix's number one movie worldwide. Plus, Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire has also made its way back into the top 10, currently sitting at the third most popular movie on the streamer. 

The Scargiver picks up in the aftermath of A Child of Fire, with Sofia Boutella's Kora and her allies helping to train the peaceful farmers of Veldt for a showdown with the brutal Imperium. 

There are also two longer director's cuts on the way , too, which will be rated R – and, though nothing is confirmed just yet, The Scargiver leaves the door open for future movies in the series. 

"We definitely have a story in mind, if we were to go forward," Snyder told us recently . "We're waiting to have the totality of these movies come out, including the director's cut . I'm probably going to make this other little small movie in the meantime, and before we decide what to do with more Rebel Moon movies. But yeah, excited to make more Rebel Moon movies, if that was in the offing."

Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver is streaming on Netflix now. You can fill out your watchlist with our guide to the best Netflix movies to watch now – and for more on Rebel Moon, check out: 

• The Rebel Moon 2 ending explained
• Zack Snyder on his Sucker Punch director's cut
• Zack Snyder and the Rebel Moon 2 cast on the movie's action

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Jake paltrow’s adolf eichmann drama ‘june zero’ set for theatrical release by cohen media group, breaking news.

‘Civil War’ Brings Audiences Together With $11M+ Second Weekend Win – Sunday AM Box Office Update

By Anthony D'Alessandro

Anthony D'Alessandro

Editorial Director/Box Office Editor

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SUNDAY AM WRITETHRU A24’s Civil War is winning the box office skirmish against three wide entries with a second weekend of $11.1M after a $3.25M Friday and $4.6M Saturday. This catapults the Alex Garland political thriller into A24’s top 5.

Civil War earned $1.9M on Imax screens around the globe taking its running total for the large format exhibitor to $8.5M; $2M of that from offshore venues. The film will open on 25 Imax screens across the Middle East this Thursday. Civil War will keep some Imax screens in U.S./Canada for weekend 3.

Meanwhile, everything else is largely coming in under its projections resulting in a blah $68M weekend. Not the lowest year to date, but generally an awful number you don’t want to see the overall marketplace at — and we have diversified product, which is what studios and exhibition whine we should have. And not just any kind of product, but movies with great reviews and great audience responses. What gives? Why? It’s the same old, same old post pandemic excuse: Many cheap out on their marketing, avoiding solid box office figures so they can slide a title into home entertainment windows and profit ASAP. We’re clearly in a world now where profitability and the optics of success mean two different things.

Says Universal Domestic Distribution Chief Jim Orr this AM, “Abigail  took a very nice bite out of the domestic box office this weekend with audience and critical reaction scores that point to a longer run at the domestic box office than the genre normally provides.  Alisha Weir is simultaneously charming and terrifying as our ballerina, enthralling audiences around the world.”

Lionsgate’s A- CinemaScore, 88% PostTrak Guy Ritchie directed, mouthful of a title, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is coming in at singles digits with $9M after a $3.7M Friday — in fourth. The Henry Cavill movie is getting inched out by weekend 4 of Legendary/Warner Bros’ Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire which is looking to come in at $9.455M . The movie was financed by Black Bear. Lionsgate per sources paid a minimum guarantee in the teens with a low $20M marketing commitment. Lionsgate also took a distribution fee, which I understand isn’t uncommon on some indie pick-ups even if the distributor put out an MG. Lionsgate also gets some backend. While a single digit opening isn’t the sexiest thing in the world, the m.o. here is for theatrical to recoup the studio’s P&A, then PVOD and home entertainment will cover the MG and hopefully get the movie to breakeven or black at least in Lionsgate’s ledgers.

Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare drew 59% men with 44% between 18-34 and 54% of the audience over 35. Biggest demo was 25-34 which showed up at close to a third. Diversity demos were 56% Caucasian, 20% Latino and Hispanic, 9% Asian and 8% Black. Pic played even across the country but best in the South, South Central & West with the AMC Burbank the No. 1 venue with $24K-plus. PLFs contributed 18% of the gross.   

The Sony Crunchyroll Toho movie, Spy x Family Code: White made $2.2M Friday for what’s looking like a $4.875M weekend at 2,009. Clearly not everything Crunchyroll does is Dragon Ball Z in fifth. The pic gets an A CinemaScore and 92% PostTrak. Guy leaning at 57% with 76% of the audience between 18-34 and 25-34 showing up the most at a near 50%. Diversity demos were 41% Caucasian, 26% Asian, 22% Latino and Hispanic and 8% Black. Spy x Family Code: White played on the coasts with NYC AMC Empire drawing $20K-plus, the best venue for the pic in the nation. The anime title shared Imax screens which delivered 14% of the gross.

Bleecker Street’s second weekend of Nathan and David Zellner’s Sasquatch Sunset which world premiered at Sundance and counts 71% fresh in reviews expended in weekend 2 from nine theaters last weekend to 856 locations saw $453K and a running total of $566K . Rotten Tomatoes audiences are only at 37% for this Jesse Eisenberg-Riley Keough Big Foot movie with decent grosses in Toronto, Denver, LA, NYC, Raleigh and San Antonio, Chicago and not a ton else going on.

Next weekend we have Luca Guadagnino’s Zendaya sexy tennis romcom, Challengers, which will have 276 Imax screens, as well as Lionsgate’s Unsung Hero and Roadside Attraction’s Boy Kills World . Hopefully that makes for more action than this weekend.

Chart is updated with Sunday figures:

1.) Civil War (A24) 3,929 (+91) theaters, Fri $3.25M (-70%) Sat $4.6M Sun $3.1M 3-day $11.1M (-56%), Total $44.8M /Wk 2

2.) Abigail (Uni) 3,384 theatres, Fri $4M Sat $3.7M Sun $2.4M, 3-day $10.2M /Wk 1

4.) Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (LG) 2,845 theaters, Fri $3.7M, 3-day $9M /Wk 1

5.) Spy x Family Code: White (Crunch) 2,040 theaters, Fri $2.2M, Sat $1.5M, Sun $1.1M, 3-day $4.875M /Wk 1

6.) Kung Fu Panda 4 (Uni) 2,955 (-149) theaters, Fri $1.1M (-19%) Sat $2.1M Sun $1.3M 3-day $4.6M (-17%), Total $180M /Wk 7

7.) Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (Sony) 3,109 (-241) theaters, Fri $1M (-26%) Sat $2M Sun $1.2M 3-day $4.4M (-23%), Total $102.9M /Wk 5

8.) Dune: Part Two (Leg/WB) 2,014 (-387) theaters, Fri $800K (-33%) $1.2M Sun $830K 3-day $2.9M (-33%), Total $276.5M /Wk 8

9.) Monkey Man (Uni) 2,641 (-396) theaters, Fri $680K (-46%) Sat $920K Sun $600K 3-day $2.2M (-46%), Total $21.6M /Wk 3

10.) The First Omen (20th) 2,430 (-945) theaters, Fri $530K (-54%) Sat $730K Sun $440K 3-day $1.7M (-55%) Total $17.7M /Wk 3

UPDATED, Friday midday: Mish mosh at the box office with A24’s second weekend of Civil War at $3.5 million Friday and $11M+ for the weekend, and Universal and Radio Silence’s R-rated vampire pic Abigail with $4M today (that includes $1M previews)/ $11M vying for No. 1.

Lionsgate’s Guy Ritchie WWII period action pic The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is eyeing $3.9M-$4.3M Friday (including $1.45M previews) and $9M-$11M at 2,845 theaters, but many see the movie, which is 92% with Rotten Tomatoes’ audiences, in third place.

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Fourth belongs to Legendary/Warner Bros’ Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire at 3,658 locations with a Friday of $2.3M and fourth weekend of $8.5M , off 45%, for a running total of $170.66M . By Sunday, if those figures hold, the latest Legendary Monsterverse title will be pacing 8% behind 2014’s Godzilla , the only installment to click past the $200M mark stateside with $200.6M. It will also officially make New Empire the second highest-grossing installment in the Monsterverse at the domestic B.O., overtaking Kong: Skull Island ‘s $168M.

Fifth this weekend is Sony’s Crunchyroll anime title Spy x Family Code: White with $2M today and a $5M opening. RT critics are 96% fresh on the title while audiences give it a perfect score.

FRIDAY AM: Lionsgate is calling their all-in previews for Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare at $1.45M , however that includes around $600K in advance shows from last weekend in addition to Thursday’s cash. Which means Universal’s Radio Silence vampire movie, Abigail , won Thursday previews with $1M . Meanwhile, Sony Crunchyroll’s anime movie Spy x Family Code: White did $670K from shows that began at 4PM.

The weekend crown is expected to be a game of rock, paper, scissors between Abigail and A24’s second weekend of Civil War at about $12M+ apiece. Civil War led Thursday among pics in regular release with $1.6M, -14% from Wednesday, for a first week of $33.1M at 3,838 theaters.

Civil War is sharing Imax screens with Spy x Family Code: White, the latter which will do in the single digits.

Legendary/Warner Bros’ Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire booked at 3,847 saw a third Thursday of $893K, -3% from Wednesday for a week of $19.7M and a running total of $162.1M.

Sony’s Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire at 3,350 finished week 4 with $7.3M after a $372K Thursday, -1%.

Universal/DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda 4 at 3,104 sites finished week 6 with an estimated $7.2M, running total of $175.3M after a $423K Thursday, +6% from Wednesday.

Legendary/Warner’s Dune: Part Two at 2,401 finished week 7 with $5.9M, after a $365K Thursday, -7% from Wednesday and a running total of $273.6M.

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, the river wild.

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"The River Wild" is one of the movies you want to play along with, you really do, but it gets so many details subtly wrong that finally you lose patience and turn on it. It's a replay of the " Deliverance " formula, in which city folks try their luck in nature, and find that the most dangerous predator is Man. Just because it's been done before doesn't mean it can't work again. But it requires more care at the nuts and bolts level than this film is able to provide.

The movie stars Meryl Streep as a former Montana river guide who wants to take her family back home for a white water rafting expedition. Her husband ( David Strathairn ) is reluctant; he's a workaholic who has seriously alienated his young son by making it obvious he prefers his office to his home. But at the last minute dad does join the family and its faithful dog Maggie, for the long-awaited vacation.

As they embark, they become aware of another group of rafters - three rough-hewn men, led by Kevin Bacon . And as they float further downstream, away from roads and civilization, they can't seem to shake the other boat. Strathairn even saves Bacon from drowning, knocking him out when he panics and threatens to pull them both under. ("You saved my life," Bacon tells him, adding the movie's best line: "You didn't have to hit me, though.") It's obvious the strange men are bad guys; what other function could they serve in the movie? But just to be sure we don't miss the point, the screenplay supplies one of those handy movie radios - the kind where you switch it on, and it immediately supplies a news item exactly describing the suspicious characters. Then one of the three men disappears (and there are ominous fly-buzzing noises on the sound track as Maggie sniffs in the bushes).

And it becomes clear that Streep will be required to guide all of these people though (ominous drum roll) the Gauntlet.

The screenplay sets up the Gauntlet in classic movie style.

("It's off the scale," Streep says. "One man was killed, and another one paralyzed for life. The rangers no longer allow anyone to try it.") We know with perfect certainty that the heroes of this movie will try it, however. And that the meek, workaholic dad, with his wire-rim glasses, will get his chance to prove how much of a man he really is.

Movies like this are so predictable in their overall stories that they win or lose with their details. Among the best elements of "The River Wild" are the performances by Bacon, as the charming but sinister bad guy, and Streep, who puts a lot of humor and intelligence into her character. Robert Elswit's cinematography is greatlooking; people are going to want to know where this river is, so they can raft it.

But in the specifics of the situation, the movie is always a little wrong. There is a scene, for example, where a park ranger (a former classmate of Streep's) stops along to ask the group if everything is all right. The bad guys have guns pointed into the backs of Strathairn and Streep, they're all lined up stiffly in a row, and their answers are so forced and pained, it's clearly obvious something is very wrong. Obvious, except to the ranger. The scene could have been handled more convincingly if Bacon's sidekick had simply kept the kid in the woods, as hostage.

And what about the sequences in which Strathairn cuts crosscountry, climbing mountains, fording rivers, walking faster than the river flows? Impossible, but he does it. At one point, in a scene so ludicrous I wanted to laugh aloud, he even starts a fire to send smoke signals to his wife. At another point, he clings to the side of a cliff, while we ask ourselves what earthly reason he had for climbing it. And he works wonders with his handy Swiss Army knife.

The climax is the running of the Gauntlet, which is well-photographed but so much of a preordained set piece it's hardly worth the bother. By the end of the film we haven't been surprised by much of anything, and the characters have only been briefly freed from the requirements of the plot. "The River Wild" was constructed from so many ideas, characters and situations recycled from other movies that all the way down the river I kept thinking: Been there.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

The River Wild (1994)

Rated PG-13 For Some Violence and Threatening Moments

108 minutes

Kevin Bacon as Wade

Joseph Mazzello as Roarke

Meryl Streep as Gail

David Strathairn as Tom

Directed by

• Curtis Hanson

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