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    Hollywood Actors Are Leaping Into Video Games

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    Onscreen stars have increasingly been going virtual. Jodie Comer and David Harbour are making their video game debuts in a remake of the 1992 horror game Alone in the Dark.A stream of actors who built their careers in Hollywood are making their digital presence felt in video games, a once stigmatized medium that is increasingly seen as a unique storytelling platform with the ability to reach large audiences.Some are voice acting, transferring skills they may have honed in animated movies or TV shows, while others are contributing their likenesses through advanced motion-capture technology that can replicate furrowed brows and crinkled cheeks.Last year, Cameron Monaghan led Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Megan Fox portrayed a character in Mortal Kombat 1, and Idris Elba and Keanu Reeves provided the backbone of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty.In this month’s remake of the 1992 horror game Alone in the Dark, both Jodie Comer, who won an Emmy for “Killing Eve” and a Tony for “Prima Facie,” and David Harbour, known for his work on “Stranger Things,” are making their video game debuts. They are among the group of actors meeting younger generations where they already are.“I hope that people are still watching two-hour movies decades from now, but I know they will be playing video games,” Harbour said in an email.In a behind-the-scenes video by the game’s publisher, Comer said that working on the movie “Free Guy,” set in a fictionalized video game, gave her a newfound appreciation of the industry. “It’s so incredible to be able to kind of step out of what you usually do and explore something new, and kind of challenge yourself,” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Big Gold Brick’ Review: Sad Sack Makes Good

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      Shaggy and dull, this film follows a slovenly writer who’s taken in by the man who hit him with a car.Samuel, a nice failed writer and slob, turns his life around one day by stepping in front of a car in “Big Gold Brick.” But success — a best-selling memoir — doesn’t happen overnight. First the wealthy driver, Floyd (Andy Garcia), takes in Samuel (Emory Cohen) as his in-house biographer, and a movie’s worth of mostly domestic misadventures follow that are shaggy and dull.Addled from the collision, Samuel bumbles his way around Floyd’s family: a coldly flirtatious wife (Megan Fox) who might as well be introduced with the “Oh Yeah” song, a sweet grown daughter (Lucy Hale) devoid of personality, and a sociopathic son, Eddie (Leonidas Castrounis). Garcia’s Floyd, who claims to have a secret past, ambles through a two-hour-plus movie that nearly forgets to give this crew any story to speak of.The writer-director, Brian Petsos, misses the timing or verve shown in his short films, which have been a lovely outlet for freak-outs by Oscar Isaac. The star goofs off in a brief turn as a nefarious tycoon, hidden behind half-opaque glasses, a fey warble and a riot of facial hair. This and other touches keep suggesting half-remembered bits and bobs from indie crime capers and sketch shows of the late 1990s and early 2000s.While it’s not clear whether anyone could, Cohen doesn’t carry this movie, but he does wear an amusingly aerodynamic ponytail during the glimpses of Samuel’s future book tour. The title of this perfectly well-appointed production is apt: “Big Gold Brick” looks all right but it truly just sits there.Big Gold BrickNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 12 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Midnight in the Switchgrass’ Review: Sordid and Derivative

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      Megan Fox, Emile Hirsch and Bruce Willis track down a killer in a film that feels familiar.“Midnight in the Switchgrass” is the first feature directed by Randall Emmett, whose trademark as a producer — according to a sprawling career overview in New York magazine earlier this year — has been a rash of low-budget movies starring misleadingly top-billed actors like Bruce Willis. “Switchgrass” is superior to those Emmett productions (“Reprisal,” “Survive the Night”), but that bar is on the ground, or even beneath it — buried under the switchgrass, if you will.A second-billed Willis appears here in a barely roused state as an F.B.I. agent, who along with his partner, Rebecca (Megan Fox), is trying to catch a man who has been hunting underage girls in the Florida panhandle. Flouting protocol, Rebecca teams up with a Florida state officer, Byron (Emile Hirsch), who is tracking a serial killer who preys on prostitutes. The victims’ profession means his superiors don’t care about the case. Byron deduces that he and Rebecca are after the same guy.The murderer’s identity isn’t a mystery to us: Ripping off “The Silence of the Lambs” (down to a climactic fake out in which Emmett misleads viewers about which character is on which doorstep), the movie crosscuts between the investigation and the killer (Lukas Haas), a trucker and family man leading a double life, to follow him as he kidnaps a 16-year-old (Caitlin Carmichael). The atmosphere is thoroughly sleazy without being distinctive, and everything about the movie — the emotionless line readings, the half-baked back stories — exudes a terse functionality. Clearly, no one even bothered to proofread the onscreen text. But “Midnight in the Switchgrass” achieves its apparent sole goal: being a movie that exists.Midnight in the SwitchgrassRated R. Violence and disturbing themes. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on FandangoNow, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Till Death’ Review: My Relationship is Dragging Me Down

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      Megan Fox leads this straightforward, but gleefully chaotic thriller about a woman handcuffed to the corpse of her husband.In “Till Death,” Megan Fox plays Emma, a glamorous woman who got hitched at an age when she simply didn’t know any better. That’s partly why she’s been having an affair, though she breaks it off in an attempt to make things right.Tough luck with that creepy hubbie of hers, Mark (Eoin Macken), an unnervingly intense figure whose romantic gestures contain an air of menace; like when he blindfolds Emma and drives her to their off-the-grid vacation home for a night of sexual bliss. The next morning, however, Emma wakes up to find herself handcuffed to Mark. And in the first of the film’s many gleefully chaotic rug-pulls, he shoots himself dead.Sure, Emma could crush Mark’s hand and wriggle it out of the cuff, but these kinds of over-the-top horror-thrillers are best served with a heavy helping of suspended disbelief.With a blood-splattered visage, Emma is forced to lug around her husband’s corpse as she tries to escape, which becomes all the more urgent when a hulking assassin — the same one that assaulted her years earlier — comes on the scene. Naturally, this oaf is no match for the tough-girl cool of Fox, who emerges from each bloody tussle and snowy brawl with her makeup perfectly intact: such is her legend.In his feature directing debut, S.K. Dale orchestrates a tense cat-and-mouse game that, refreshingly, doesn’t take itself too seriously. There are no profound psychological struggles, high-concept theatrics; no groundbreaking subversions of formula. Instead, this straightforward romp focuses its attention on its cunning and no-nonsense scream queen. And what Fox lacks in dramatic prowess, she makes up for in pure, wicked magnetism.Till DeathRated R. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More