Superstar comedian Chris Rock, fresh off his highly publicized altercation with Will Smith at the Academy Awards, is extending his "Ego Death World Tour." It now will include a stop in San Antonio this fall.
The tour, which is currently ongoing, is scheduled for venues across the United States, Canada, and Australia. Rock will perform at the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio on November 10. Prior to the San Antonio date, he'll stop at the Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in Irving on November 3 and the Smart Financial Centre in Sugar Land on November 5.
One of the strongest comedic voices working today, Rock has a career that has spanned more than three decades, enjoying success in both film, television, and stage as a comedian, actor, writer, producer, and director. Though he got his break on Saturday Night Live, his career has gone on to include plenty of dramatic roles, including in the FX series Fargo, in the horror film Spiral, and in the upcoming biopic Rustin.
Of course, comedy has always been Rock's primary way of entertaining the masses, whether as a stand-up comedian, acting in Adam Sandler movies, or directing his own projects like 2014's Top Five.
It was his comedy that earned the wrath of Smith at the Oscars on March 27, with the soon-to-be Best Actor slapping Rock in one of the most shocking moments in Oscar history (an incident which now has its own Wikipedia page). Rock has said he won't talk about the incident until he "gets paid."
San Antonio tickets go on sale Wednesday, April 13 at 10 am via Majestic Theatre.
Monster movies can take on all sorts of different flavors, from all-out mayhem to quieter ones where the monster can sometimes be the protagonist. The new South Korean film Hopesplits the difference to a degree, delivering action-packed sequences while also attempting to understand the non-humans in a way.
The story starts in medias res, with an unseen creature having already done great damage to a huge bull and laying waste to much of a small Korean town. The local sheriff, Beom Seok (Hwang Jung-Min), tries to take control of the situation in the town, while a group of hunters led by Sung Ki (Zo In-Sung) travel into the nearby woods to see what they can find there.
Thus starts a nearly nonstop, 160-minute epic of each side trying (and mostly failing) to defend themselves against gigantic creatures who seem hellbent on destroying everything in their path. It’s not until 40 minutes into the film that the audience is shown one of the monsters in detail, and the less said the better about what it actually looks like, as the mystery behind it keeps the intrigue going.
That initial section of the film is the best, as Beom Seok — eventually joined by deputy Sung Ae (Hoyeon) — goes on a frantic hunt around the town, always just far enough behind the monster to keep from seeing it. The utter destruction he witnesses and his interactions with various locals are intense and oddly funny, with the hectic conversations he has laced with fear and incredulity over how different people choose to act.
Writer-director Na Hong-jin bounces back and forth between the people in the town and the group in the forest, doing his best to maintain the momentum of the first section. This approach works for a while as each group makes their own discoveries about the creatures and has run-ins with them that more often than not are ill-fated. Using a mixture of relatively good CGI, great production design, and an abundance of gore, the filmmaker shows he knows how to make an effective blockbuster-style film.
The trouble is, he doesn’t know when to stop. Somewhere around the two-hour mark of the movie, the story starts to become repetitive and Hong-jin introduces elements that don’t mesh well with what has come before. For some reason, he decides that some of the creatures should speak, a move that is baffling on several fronts. The biggest one is that they are voiced by English-speaking actors like Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Taylor Russell, but each speaks a non-human language, rendering their performances moot.
Jung-min puts in a fantastic lead performance, one that requires him to vacillate between abject terror and in-control leadership. In-Sung is almost as good, although his character requires him to play one note over and over again. Hoyeon, who some may recognize from Squid Game, delivers an extra shot of energy when she enters the film, something she keeps going despite her character being forced to say some bad lines.
If Hong-jin had kept the focus Hope a little tighter, the sci-fi thriller might have ended up toward the top of this year’s films. But by choosing to extend the story into territories that don’t add much to the plot or make much sense, the filmmaker puts a damper on what was a fun and brutal monster movie.
