Latest news with #Expendables
Fox News
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
‘Rocky' star Dolph Lundgren, wife Emma Krokdal soak up Miami sun after actor's years-long health battle
"Rocky" star Dolph Lundgren and wife Emma Krokdal were spotted soaking up the sun in Miami Beach after the actor's lengthy health battle. Lundgren, 67, and Krokdal, 29, were photographed enjoying a day at the beach during a stay at the luxury Faena Hotel. The action star, who revealed in November he was cancer-free after nine years of treatment and surgery, showed off his fit physique as he went shirtless in a pair of blue and white swim trunks. Lundgren sported a black watch and a silver chain. The "Expendables" star wore what appeared to be black kinesiology tape wrapped around his ankles. Krokdal put her trim figure on full display in a lavender-colored string bikini. The personal trainer accessorized with a pair of large tortoiseshell sunglasses, a belly button ring, beaded bracelets and gold hoop earrings. The pair carried white towels as they strolled along the shoreline before lying down to sunbathe. Lundgren was seen rearranging a lounge chair under a red and white umbrella while his wife relaxed in the chair next to him. The actor later wore a white polo shirt before the couple walked back to the hotel where they were seen beaming as they caught more rays. Lundgren and Krokdal, who announced their engagement in June 2020, tied the knot at their villa in Mykonos, Greece, in July 2023. The actor was previously married to jewelry designer Anette Qviberg, from 1994 to 2011. The former couple share daughters Ida, 28, and Greta, 23. In an Instagram post Lundgren posted Thursday, he shared that the couple had traveled to Miami to attend an event supporting the charitable organization Childhelp. "Their mission to prevent child abuse, is a cause very close to my heart and something I've experienced personally," he wrote of the nonprofit in the caption. "Every 10 seconds there's a report of child abused in the United States. Appreciate your help," Lundgren added, sharing a link to Childhelp's website. "Protect our children — our future," he added, tagging Childhelp's Instagram account. Lundgren has previously spoken out about being physically abused by his father while growing up in Sweden. The "Creed II" star's post included a trio of photos taken during their trip. In one image, Lundgren posed in a brown suit with a white dress shirt and white sneakers in the lobby of the Faena. Krokdal, who was wearing a white floral blouse with a sheer white layered skirt, joined him in another snap. The third photo featured Lundgren on stage as he received an award at Chidhelp's "Miracles in Miami" fundraiser. The pair's trip comes after Lundgren announced he had beaten the odds after being given two years to live at one point during his battle with cancer. In a November Instagram post shared from his hospital bed, Lundgren announced he was "finally cancer free with gratefulness and excitement for a bright future." In the video he posted, Lundgren said, "Here I am at UCLA. I'm about to go in and get rid of that last tumor. Since there are no cancer cells in my body anymore, I guess I'll be cancer-free, so I'm looking forward to this procedure." He explained he was undergoing lung ablation, a minimally invasive procedure that uses heating or cooling mechanisms to destroy tumor tissue, according to the Mayo Clinic. "It's been a rough ride and really taught me how to live in the moment and enjoy every moment of life. I mean, it's the only way to go," Lundgren said before heading into surgery. Lundgren was first diagnosed with cancer in 2015, when doctors found a tumor in his kidney. The doctors were able to remove the tumor, and he remained cancer-free for five years. During an interview on "In Depth With Graham Bensinger," he revealed doctors found a "few more tumors around the area" in 2020 and removed six additional tumors, but one had grown into the "size of a lemon" in his liver, and doctors were unable to remove it. "It wasn't looking good," he told Fox News Digital in January 2024. "I mean, there was a doctor in London who basically told me you should stop working and spend more time with your family. Then I realized it was serious." However, the "Universal Solider" star later learned his doctors were "giving me the wrong treatments because they hadn't really checked on all the biopsies." "I got a second opinion from a UCLA doctor, and she went back and looked at all the biopsies, and she said, 'Well, you know, this is a different mutation than what they said,'" Lundgren recalled. "They hadn't checked it. They just assumed. As soon as I got the new medication, I started getting better. And that was all [2022]. "And then last year, I removed all those tumors," Lundgren recalled. "They freeze them out or use radiation. And then, you know, now I'm living a normal life, I would say. Except I gotta go and do a scan every three months. But everything else is kind of back to normal. So, it was scary and magical at the same time."
Express Tribune
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Dying for a living
Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) wakes up as a "meat popsicle". Frozen stiff, vacuum-sealed, and utterly disposable, he's not even the first version of himself to see this bleak fate. This opening image of Mickey 17 sets the tone for Bong Joon-ho's latest: part grim existential crisis, part sadistic comedy, all wrapped in sleek sci-fi packaging. Corporate exploitation, class struggle, and the insanity of unfettered capitalism: the film takes Bong's favourite themes and runs them through a cloning machine, just to see how many times it can kill its protagonist before he finally snaps. And oh, does Mickey die. He dies a lot. To add to the already twisted reality of the film, the narrative isn't unfolding in real time. Most of what we see is already past tense, narrated by Mickey himself in a dry, reflective voiceover. It's a clever way to keep us locked in his head, which is a battlefield in which the pursuit of identity is a bigger problem than plain, old survival. If you get replaced every time you die, are you still you? Or just a slightly worse photocopy of the original? Bong Joon-ho's lab frog Early on, Mickey refers to himself as a "lab frog," a nod to the countless creatures sacrificed in the name of human progress. If you've seen Okja, you know Bong isn't subtle about corporate cruelty, and Mickey 17 takes that to new heights. Here, the "lab frogs" are people; to be specific, they are "Expendables" like Mickey, whose entire job is to die so others don't have to. Poisonous gas? Send Mickey. Unstable terrain? Send Mickey. Experimental vaccine? You get the idea. "Get used to dying," he's told. Mickey, ever the unlucky optimist, tries. Carrying their earthly nastiness to a whole other planet, the colony's bureaucrats treat Expendables like cheap, reusable batteries; inanimate things with no unions, no benefits, no real protection. Mickey, weighed down by threats from gangsters on earth, signs up for this horrific, experimental program without reading the fine print. In one of the film's sharpest exchanges, Mickey is asked to "prove he has faith in the system" right before being accepted as an Expendable. The system, of course, only works for those who never have to die for it. Meanwhile, the colony's leadership, led by coloniser Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) in full smarmy-overlord mode, preaches efficiency and sacrifice while living comfortably at the top. His wife, played by Toni Collette, is even more ruthless, manipulating everyone around her while barely lifting a finger. In typical Bong style, their vision for the new-world colony is eerily similar to a coloniser's imagination of a land and its people here on earth: a "planet of purity" where everything is neatly controlled, including the people. Sex, control, and revolution Speaking of control, one of the colony's strangest (and most telling) rules is the ban on sex. Framed as an energy-saving measure, the tactic runs much deeper than just conserving calories. When you sever intimacy, you sever rebellion because connection, in any form, is dangerous. It breeds loyalty outside the system, makes people care about each other, and caring is the first step toward resistance. Naturally, Mickey and his girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie, fierce and funny) don't care much for the rules. Their relationship is built upon the matters of the heart instead of the body, grounding Mickey in a way his countless resurrections can't. But when another worker, Kai (Anamaria Vartolomei), starts showing interest in him too, things get complicated. Even more so when Mickey well, multiplies. The real chaos kicks in when Mickey 17 is presumed dead, only for Mickey 18 to be printed in his place. Suddenly, there are two of him; one slightly more reckless, one slightly more paranoid. Pattinson, who has spent the last decade gleefully shedding his Twilight past with weirder, riskier roles, plays both Mickeys with a perfect mix of existential dread and smarmy charm. Mickey 17 is a people-pleaser, eager to keep the peace. Mickey 18? Not so much. Their interactions are both hilarious and eerie, as if the film itself is asking the age-old philosophical question: If all of a ship's paraphernalia is changed along its voyage, then, by the end of its journey, is it the same ship? Is it the same Mickey? Flawed but brutal Visually, Mickey 17 is stunning in a cold, calculated way. The icy planet of Niflheim is more mood than setting where everything is stark, industrial, and unforgiving. Fiona Crombie's production design makes the colony feel like a steel trap, while Darius Khondji's cinematography uses the 16:9 frame masterfully, pulling us in close for moments of tension and zooming out for jaw-dropping wide shots of the frozen wasteland. The blood and gore, when it comes, is artful and minimal because as always Bong does not have to rely on shock to build intrigue so he never wastes a drop. Even the insanely otherworldly "creepers" seem like they could climb out from under our beds if the weather was cold enough, that's how unflinchingly real Bong's suspension of disbelief is. No unnecessary violence fills the screen space, not even from abominable creatures from icy planets. In a film like this, the humour can only be dark and sadistic. Anyone who thinks otherwise requires serious help. Mickey's deaths are played for laughs as often as they are for horror. A brutal accident, followed by an unceremonious body dump. A gruesome malfunction, shrugged off by his superiors. Each death becomes an absurd corporate expense, just another number in the budget. Mickey 17 isn't as tightly constructed as Parasite or Snowpiercer. It's messier, more chaotic, sometimes losing focus under the weight of its own ideas. But it's also ambitious, weird, and thoroughly entertaining. Pattinson carries it with ease, and Bong's signature mix of sharp satire and high-concept sci-fi mostly works, even when it stumbles. Perhaps the film's greatest contention is its ending. Without spoiling anything, let's just say it leans hard into ambiguity. Some will call it brilliant. Others will leave the theatre muttering, "Wait, what?" Either way, Bong has done it again: taken a wild, high-concept premise and turned it into a biting critique of power, identity, and the disposable nature of labour. It's not his best work. But like Mickey himself, it gets back up, dusts itself off, and keeps you watching. Would I recommend it? Sure. Just don't get too attached to the first version of it you see.
Chicago Tribune
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘Mickey 17,' with Robert Pattinson (and clone) tackling the worst job in the universe
Set 29 years from now, writer-director Bong Joon Ho's 'Mickey 17' imagines a world beyond ours because Earth isn't worth the trouble anymore. Failed politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), taking a page from the Elon Musk interstellar-ambitions handbook, gains a new lease on his career by leading a cultlike space colonization mission to the icy planet Niflheim. And there they are: Niflheim mysterious, oversized, toothy bugs, the native life forms of indeterminate hostility, nicknamed 'creepers' by the visiting humans. The human at the center of 'Mickey 17' is Mickey Barnes, a genial sad-sack who has volunteered for the mission because loan sharks are trying to kill him on Earth, along with his dubious friend Berto (Steven Yeun). As an Expendable, Mickey takes the single lowest rung on the job ladder. He's a human guinea pig on a 'Groundhog Day' sort of work schedule: In the interest of science, Expendables are exposed to various lethal threats, poison gas or radiation, etc. Mickey dies many times, and then is reborn. A new body, just like Mickey's old one, comes out of a reprinting machine, with all his memories and features intact. The technology making this possible, along with some unauthorized cloning, has caused some fuss on Earth, but off-Earth? No problem. No federal oversight to worry about. The equipment on the spaceship may be a little wonky — in one of the film's better running gags, the human reprinter machine clearly needs some oiling, and makes noises like a 2003-era Hewlett Packard paper printer — but for Mickey, it's a living. Dying, but a living. Where 'Mickey 17' takes these ideas takes us, in turn, through a crazily uneven movie only a first-rate filmmaker could've made. It's full of lovely little visual touches and some occasionally funny jabs at the excesses of capitalism and the limits of AI and cloning technology. It's also a bit of a chore. Bong, the South Korean visionary whose previous film was the class-warfare masterwork 'Parasite' (2019), struggles to compact the source material. The movie comes from Edward Ashton's 2022 novel 'Mickey 7,' which traveled to different worlds, and had more time to interweave the conflicts arising from two Mickeys competing for dominance. Pattinson manages a fine and witty character delineation between good-hearted, passive #17 and steely, brutal #18. This ticklish situation at first entices Mickey's lover, the ace security agent Nasha (Naomi Ackie, reliably terrific and a true movie star), who sees her sexual options as having improved 100%. But 'Mickey 17' darts away from this 'Design for Living' ménage à trois prospect, because there are more conventional story chunks to address. The limitations and frustrations of 'Mickey 17' are partly to do with narrative and partly tone. Bong retains a daring and, I think, misjudged amount of authorial voiceover, delivered by Pattinson sounding a little like Steve Buscemi. While the film's visual design is sharp throughout, blanketed by cinematographer Darius Khondji's peerless eye for warmth amid chilly thematic circumstances, the satire's a mite ham-handed. Actors as skillful as Ruffalo and Toni Collette, the craven leader Marshall's imperious wife, come off pretty pushy here. You just never know about tone, and how any project mixing sci-fi with political allegory and a fair amount of bleccchy viscera will turn out. Not that many movies try that mixture, but Bong has made at least three, including the superior 'Snowpiercer' (2013) and the animal rights and giant pig fantasy 'Okja' (2017). These two relate strongly to the themes in 'Mickey 17.' I was with Bong's latest about half the time. The other half? Even a first-rate director can get a little lost in the tone management and narrative streamlining process. 'Mickey 17' — 2.5 stars (out of 4)
