Wild Wild Space is an 2024 American documentary film, directed by Ross Kauffman. Inspired by the book "When Heavens Went on Sale" by Ashlee Vance, it follows the quests of three rocket and satellite companies Astra Space, Rocket Lab, and Planet Labs.
It had its world premiere at DC/DOX Film Festival on June 14, 2024, and was released on July 17, 2024, by HBO.
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 is a 2024 American epic Western film directed and produced by Kevin Costner from a screenplay he co-wrote with Jon Baird, based on an original story by the pair and Mark Kasdan. It is the first installment in the titular film series and features an ensemble cast consisting of Costner, Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, and Giovanni Ribisi, with Jena Malone, Abbey Lee, Michael Rooker, Danny Huston, Luke Wilson, Isabelle Fuhrman, Jeff Fahey, Will Patton, Tatanka Means, Owen Crow Shoe, Ella Hunt, and Jamie Campbell Bower in supporting roles.
Chapter 1 premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2024, and was theatrically released in the United States on June 28, 2024. The film received mixed reviews from critics and has grossed $32 million worldwide. It will continue with Chapter 2, scheduled to be released at an unspecified date; Chapter 3 started principal photography in May 2024, while Chapter 4 is in development.
In 1859, in the San Pedro Valley, a party of surveyors mark stakes to outline the borders of a forthcoming frontier town, Horizon. Soon after, Desmarais, a missionary, seeks out Horizon and discovers the surveying party dead at the hands of a Western Apache war band. He buries their bodies and establishes the town of Horizon.
Four years later, a flourishing Horizon is set upon by an Apache raid led by Pionsenay, killing several residents, including the husband and son of Frances Kittredge. Local boy Russell Ganz flees on horseback during the carnage to alert the Army at the nearby Camp Gallant. A detachment of Cavalry and Infantry, led by 1st Lt. Gephardt and Sgt. Major Riordan, and Neron Chavez, Chief Scout in charge of the Pima Indian Scouts, assist with the burial of the dead, the searching for the tracks of the raiding party, and the recovery efforts of the survivors. Frances and her daughter Elizabeth leave with the Army to seek sanctuary at Camp Gallant. At the same time, Russell joins a posse led by fellow survivor Elias Janney and scalp-hunter Tracker to go after the Apache. Gephardt warns the posse of indiscriminate retaliation against the Natives driven by scalping profitability. Frances and Elizabeth adjust to life at Camp Gallant. Gephardt's non-interventionist moral code regarding Indigenous land clashes with his Commanding Officer, Colonel Houghton, and his ideology of the inevitability of manifest destiny. Elizabeth befriends some of the troops at the Post and is heartbroken when they are recalled East to fight in the Civil War. Frances and Gephardt begin a romance.
Pionsenay argues with his tribal elder Tuayeseh over his raids on the settlers. Pionsenay believes that the settlers will push them out and lead them to war against other tribes, while Tuayeseh believes in co-existence and considers reprisal for Pionsenay's actions. Pionsenay and his warband, including one of Tuayeseh's sons, voluntarily leave the tribe to continue their war against the settlers.
In Montana territory, Lucy shoots James Sykes and flees south to Wyoming with her young son Sam. With Sykes wounded, the family matriarch Mrs. Sykes orders her sons to go and recapture her. Living under the name Ellen Harvey, Lucy marries businessman Walter Childs and cohabitates with Marigold, a prostitute working independently. Marigold propositions horse trader and customer Hayes Ellison, before she returns home to care for Sam while Walter and Lucy depart for one of Walter’s land sales. Walter and Lucy realize that the land buyers are the Sykes brothers, Caleb and Junior. Walter is accidentally killed by Caleb as the men kidnap Lucy. Junior, the eldest brother, sends Caleb to find Sam in town, where he encounters Hayes. They both go to Lucy's home where Hayes kills Caleb in a shootout when he realizes Caleb is going to kill Marigold. Hayes flees the town with Marigold asking him to take her and Sam. Settling in a railroad work camp, Marigold abandons Sam and Hayes for a traveling gambler who offers her a life with security. She leaves the child in the care of a Chinese worker's family.
A wagon train led by Matthew Van Weyden treks the Santa Fe Trail to Horizon. Among the group is the pretentious British couple Juliette Chesney and Hugh Proctor. It also includes the extended family of Frances' late husband. As they travel, they are watched by a pair of Pawnee warriors scouting the Wagon Train, causing them to slow their progress and prepare to defend themselves. During the night, Juliette catches two men peeping at her as she bathes in the drinking water, Van Weyden must warn the two away from the couple but neither appears to intend to listen.
Elias and Russell’s posse encounter and try to intimidate an Indigenous man at a Trading Post, but Janney and the Trader deescalate it from turning into a bloodbath. Due to the lack of results in finding Pionsenay's band, the group decides to go after any Indians wherever they can find them. They learn of a Tonto Apache village nearby and wait for the village's hunting party to depart before massacring and scalping the women, children, and elderly of the tribe to Russell's horror. The posse rides away, leaving before the hunters can return to take their revenge, with the consequences of their action soon to show across the land.
Hit Man is a 2023 American romantic comedy film produced and directed by Richard Linklater, who co-wrote the screenplay with Glen Powell. The film stars Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta, and Sanjay Rao. It follows an undercover New Orleans police contractor who poses as a reliable hitman as he tries to save a woman in need. The basic premise was based on the true story of a college professor who worked for the Houston police in the late 1980s and 1990s as a fake hitman, as described in a 2001 magazine article by Skip Hollandsworth.
Hit Man premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival on September 5, 2023. It was released in select theaters in the United States on May 24, 2024, before its streaming debut by Netflix on June 7, to critical acclaim.
Gary Johnson is a mild-mannered professor of psychology and philosophy at the University of New Orleans who also works undercover with the New Orleans Police Department to assist in undercover sting operations. When Jasper, a cop who portrays fake hitmen to solicit murder-for-hire confessions and payments from the suspects, is suspended for police brutality, Gary is unwillingly ushered into the role.
Gary quickly finds himself to be a natural in garnering solicitations, going so far as to research suspects in advance and tailor a unique hit man character for each one. He adopts a confident and charismatic persona of a man named Ron for a discontented married woman named Madison, who is trying to have her abusive husband killed. Gary quickly becomes both sympathetic and attracted to her, ultimately refusing the money and suggesting she use it to restart her life, much to the disappointment of Jasper and Gary's other coworkers, Claudette and Phil. Gary later begins a sexual relationship with Madison without revealing his true identity to her. To keep up appearances of being a hitman, Gary shows her how to use a gun, instructing her to aim for the heart.
One night after clubbing, Gary and Madison have a heated encounter with Ray, Madison's ex-husband, which ends with Gary pulling a gun to back him off. Later that night, the couple encounter Jasper, who is suspicious of them being together. A furious Ray attempts to have Madison killed, unknowingly contacting Gary. Upon recognizing Gary as Madison's boyfriend, Ray rushes out of the sting and proclaims that he will kill her himself. Gary informs Madison and attempts to move her out of her house, but she dismisses his fears, stating that Ray wouldn't have the courage to follow through. Gary is later called into work to discuss Ray's murder, and learns he was shot in the heart with bullets belonging to a gun like Madison's. Gary confronts Madison, and she admits to the murder, prompting Gary to reveal his true identity in a panic. After being kicked out by Madison, Gary returns to the police, who reveal their evidence on her is building after discovering Ray increased his life insurance policy before he died. Jasper, who knows of Gary and Madison's relationship and is jealous that Gary took his job, suggests Gary try to solicit a confession out of her using the Ron persona. Gary arrives at Madison's house with a wire and pretends to interrogate her while giving her acting cues typed in on his phone. Their charade convinces the police that she is innocent, but Jasper later comes to Madison's home, blackmailing her and Gary to pay him Madison's inherited money from Ray's life insurance policy lest he send them both to jail for Ray's murder. Madison drugs Jasper's drink, causing him to pass out, and Gary ties a plastic bag over his head and plans to stage his death as a suicide. The story jumps forward several years later, depicting Gary and Madison now happily married with two children.
If you’ve never used the word rooftop as a verb, it’s likely that you’ve not been following Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus, a pair of Moscow daredevils who’ve made a career out of scaling some of the world’s tallest buildings. Their climbs are often technically considered trespassing — and completed with minimal or nonexistent safety precautions in place. But Nikolau and Beerkus aren’t just climbing buddies — they’re also in love. Their shared passion for climbing and each other are at the heart of Skywalkers: A Love Story, a new documentary from co-directors Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina.
“There’s a danger to romance,” Zimbalist told Netflix’s Queue. “It crushes us. It breaks our hearts. It breaks our hopes. Here, that danger is material. If the love falls apart, if the trust falls apart, it’s life or death. That felt like such a potent way of taking this amorphous sense that we all have in our romance and externalizing it and making it tangible.”
Skywalkers: A Love Story combines over 200 hours of material shot across seven years and six countries, as well as Nikolau and Beerkus’ own footage of their most heart-pounding ascents. The documentary chronicles the couple as they prepare for their most challenging climb yet: breaking into Malaysia’s Merdeka 118 super-skyscraper (including its 160-meter spire). At times, the film feels like an intimate portrait of trust and teamwork. At other times, it’s a tense, cover-your-eyes thriller that leaves you guessing how a relationship survives this kind of pressure.
“When they get on the spires or cranes, the danger factor is
exponentially higher,” Zimbalist said, noting that the film crew (which
included cameramen Renato Serrano and Pablo Rojas) never pushed the pair
to put themselves in more dangerous situations than they would
normally, nor did they incentivize them to push their luck for the sake
of the shot. “They know each other and they can read each other’s [body]
language, but we had not practiced with them, so having cameras around
could be distracting and put them in further danger. Luckily, they’re
great photographers. They were able to get amazing coverage when they
went up without us to these heights; [it’s] just gorgeous spectacle.”
Descendants: The Rise of Red is a musical teen fantasy comedy film directed by Jennifer Phang from a screenplay by Dan Frey and Ru Sommer. Produced by Disney Channel, the film is the fourth in the Descendants franchise, being a spin-off of the previous three films and a follow-up from Descendants: The Royal Wedding. The film was released on July 12, 2024 on Disney+, and is scheduled to debut on Disney Channel on August 9, 2024.
Kylie Cantrall and Malia Baker star as Red (daughter of Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland) and Chloe Charming (daughter of Cinderella and Prince Charming from Cinderella), respectively. China Anne McClain and Melanie Paxton reprise their roles of Uma and Fairy Godmother, respectively, from previous Descendants films. Cinderella and King Charming are played by Brandy and Paolo Montalban, who previously played versions of the characters in the 1997 television adaptation of Cinderella.
With 6.7 million views in its first three days of streaming, the film broke a record in its debut on Disney+ as Disney Branded Television's most-viewed premiere ever on the streamer.Following the events of Descendants: The Royal Wedding, Uma is now the headmistress of Auradon Prep. Her first order of business is to open the border between Auradon and Wonderland by inviting Princess Red, the rebellious daughter of the tyrannical Queen of Hearts, to join the academy.
Red and her mother travel to Auradon, where the Queen and Cinderella reunite for the first time since their days at Merlin Academy, the original name of Auradon Prep. The meeting quickly turns hostile as the Queen recalls a traumatic prank she endured during their time at school. During the opening ceremony, as Uma welcomes everyone, the Queen unexpectedly launches a coup, with her magical deck of cards, and takes the other attendees hostage. When Cinderella refuses to bow to the Queen, a reluctant Red is forced to condemn her to death by beheading, delighting her mother but angering the crowd. In horror and guilt, Red tries to use the magic pocket watch to go back a few minutes in time and prevent the coup by stealing her mother's deck of cards, but is attacked by Cinderella’s perfectionist and kindhearted daughter Chloe, accidentally activating the watch and sending both girls to the past, when Auradon Prep was still called Merlin Academy. Believing they were sent for a reason, Red and Chloe begrudgingly agree to work together for the sake of their mothers.
Posing as exchange students, the girls enroll at the Academy and meet Ella and Bridget, the teenage personas of Cinderella and the Queen of Hearts, and begin to seek ways to change the "present". They are shocked at their mothers' personalities, with Bridget being nice and Ella not wanting to join the royalty. They all hang out in the courtyard when they meet the younger versions of the villains and Uliana, Ursula's young sister. After purposely eating too many of Bridget's enchanted cupcakes, Uliana turns into a flamingo. When she does turn back into herself, she decides to take revenge on Bridget.
They decide to talk to Ella to find out more, and find out that Uliana hangs out at the Black Lagoon. Red and Chloe overhear the plan to give Bridget a cupcake that will turn her into a monster during the dance, using a sorcerer's cookbook. The girls find the cookbook in Merlin's study, and after struggling with the defenses Merlin has put in place, they are successful. However, the villain gang is able to take it from them, but because the book should not fall "into the wrong hands," they are magically frozen, and Merlin discovers them and gives them detention. Red is able to hide the cookbook and the two of them head back to the present.
They return to the time Uma was giving her speech, and Queen gives the same lines she gave as the original timeline. Red is initially scared that nothing changed, but is relieved to see that her mom is wearing a lighter gown and creates a series of heart bubbles for the celebration. Uma narrates that this is a happy ending, but hints that messing with the fabric of time can have dangerous consequences, telling the audience that the story is not over yet.
password: sprig
Po
must train a new warrior when he's chosen to become the spiritual
leader of the Valley of Peace. However, when a powerful shape-shifting
sorceress sets her eyes on his Staff of Wisdom, he suddenly realizes
he's going to need some help. Teaming up with a quick-witted corsac fox,
Po soon discovers that heroes can be found in the most unexpected
places.Kung Fu Panda 4 is a 2024 American animated martial arts comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Universal Pictures. It is the fourth installment in the Kung Fu Panda franchise and the sequel to Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016). The film was directed by Mike Mitchell, co-directed by Stephanie Ma Stine (in her feature directorial debut), written by Darren Lemke and the writing team of Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, and produced by Rebecca Huntley. It features Jack Black, Ian McShane, Dustin Hoffman, James Hong, and Bryan Cranston reprising their roles from the previous films, with Awkwafina, Ke Huy Quan, Ronny Chieng, Lori Tan Chinn, and Viola Davis joining the cast as new characters. In the film, Po (Black), who must find and train his successor as the new Dragon Warrior, teams up with fox bandit Zhen (Awkwafina) to defeat evil sorceress The Chameleon (Davis), before she steals the kung-fu abilities of all masters in China.
Directors Jennifer Yuh Nelson and Alessandro Carloni were asked about the possibility of a fourth Kung Fu Panda film before the release of the third film in January 2016, with Nelson later saying in August 2018 that she was open to a fourth installment. DreamWorks officially announced the fourth film in August 2022, with Mitchell, Ma Stine, and Huntley attached as director, co-director, and producer, respectively, by April 2023. Most of the main voice cast, along with the return of Aibel and Berger as writers and co-producers, was announced in December 2023, following Awkwafina's casting in May of that year. Lemke's involvement was confirmed in February 2024. Composer Hans Zimmer, who had scored for the previous three installments, the first two with John Powell and the third alone, returned as composer alongside frequent collaborator Steve Mazzaro. Some additional production assets were borrowed from Jellyfish Pictures.
Kung Fu Panda 4 premiered at the AMC 14 Theater at The Grove in Los Angeles on March 3, 2024, and was theatrically released in the United States on March 8. The film received generally positive reviews from critics and was a box-office success, grossing over $546 million worldwide, making it the fifth highest-grossing film of 2024.
In the Valley of Peace, Po helps his fathers Li Shan and Mr. Ping open their new restaurant. Master Shifu then tells Po that he must advance and become a spiritual leader, which means Po can no longer be the Dragon Warrior and must find a suitable successor to take his place. Po struggles to choose the right candidate as he does not want to lose his status, and he stumbles upon a corsac fox bandit named Zhen trying to steal ancient weapons from the Jade Palace. Po is able to outsmart Zhen and send her to prison, but a group of mine workers tell him that Tai Lung has returned and destroyed an entire quarry. Zhen reveals that Tai Lung's return was masqueraded by a sorceress known as The Chameleon, who can shape-shift into any animal she wants as well as copying various kung fu skills simply by touching them.
With Zhen's assistance, Po heads to Juniper City to take down The Chameleon, little knowing that his fathers, worried that Po won’t stand a chance against her, are following them. After encountering a shifty tavern and fighting off the inhabitants, they soon arrive at Juniper City and are almost arrested, but escape to the Den of Thieves, where they receive aid from the den's leader Han, who is also a close friend of Zhen. From there, Po and Zhen head to The Chameleon's lair until Po is captured. It is then revealed that Zhen has been acting as a double agent for The Chameleon, and was tasked to acquire Po's Staff of Wisdom[a], which has the power to access the Spirit Realm. Po almost manages to escape, but The Chameleon, taking Zhen's form, fools him and throws him off a cliff, to Zhen's horror. He nearly falls to his death, but is rescued by his fathers, who convince him that sometimes change can be good.
Using the staff, The Chameleon summons every deceased kung fu master and steals their skills, including Lord Shen, General Kai, and Tai Lung. After escaping for good, Zhen reunites with Po, but he refuses to back down from facing The Chameleon, so she, Mr. Ping and Li head back to the Den of Thieves to convince them to help them save Po. As they battle The Chameleon's army of Komodo dragons, Po tries but fails to reason with The Chameleon, although she does give the staff back to him as she no longer needs it. They battle, but when Zhen intervenes, The Chameleon turns into a Chimera of several kung fu masters. After the battle, she then shifts into a copycat of Po, fights him, and soon traps him in a cage before reverting back to her original form. Putting his trust in Zhen, Po gives her the staff, with which she bests The Chameleon. Po, who was only pretending to be trapped, defeats The Chameleon using the staff and returns all of the stolen kung fu to their owners, who show respect to Po and return to the Spirit Realm, with Tai Lung taking The Chameleon with him.
While returning to the Valley of Peace, Po chooses Zhen as his successor, much to Shifu's annoyance. Confident with his choice, Po and the Furious Five help train Zhen to become the next Dragon Warrior.
Indian
migrant worker Najeeb Muhammed goes to Saudi Arabia to earn money to
send back home, but he finds himself living a slave-like existence
herding goats in the middle of the desert.
