Marc's Movie Blog

Review: Duplicity

2009-10-17T00:23:00.006-05:00

Tony Gilroy’s first film, Michael Clayton, was a brilliant and absorbing tale of the corporate underworld, a stunning achievement for the first-time director that netted him Oscar nominations for both writing and directing in 2008. It was one of my favorite movies not just of that year, but of the last ten, perhaps even twenty years. So my expectations for Duplicity, his second movie, were justifiably high – a sense of optimism which, unfortunately, only set me up for disappointment. Whereas Clayton was sharp, savvy, and even beautiful at moments, Duplicity is clumsy, uncomfortable, and so outlandish at times that I can’t help but wonder whether the entire film is just a botched attempt at self-parody.

Duplicity opens promisingly enough. Clive Owen and Julia Roberts are two spies who meet at a Fourth of July celebration in Dubai, spend the night together, and part on less than amicable terms. The next time we meet these characters, five years have passed. They’re now working for the CEO of a consumer product corporation (Tom Wilkinson) who’s out to destroy his rival (Paul Giamatti) once and for all. Or are they? The movie takes us back in time every few minutes to fill in the five-year gap and give us a clue (or two) as to what the two main characters are really up to. On paper it sounds like an interesting way to tell a story, and it is until about halfway through the film. That’s when the flashbacks start to get repetitive and, frankly, quite boring. In its second half, the main plot slows to a crawl as Duplicity lingers in the past for minute after tedious minute. One can only stand listening to Owen and Roberts wax poetic about their feelings and whether they can trust each other for so long before it gets hard to care if either one is ever telling the truth.

To step back for a moment, though, it’s worth noting that Gilroy’s first major misstep occurs before he even makes it back to the present for the first time. The film’s opening credit sequence, in which Wilkinson and Giamatti stand face-to-face and scream at each other in silent slow-motion, is almost embarrassing in its obviousness. It sets the stage thematically, I suppose, by setting up their rivalry before either one has even appeared in the story. But for a film that takes such pride in the complexity of its own narrative, this is a rather childish attempt at grabbing the viewer’s attention – not to mention that it makes the characters into one-dimensional caricatures from the onset. The scene grows nearly as tiresome as some of the later flashbacks after just a few seconds, and I’m still not sure whether the bewildered chuckles it drew from me were part of Gilroy’s intent or actually came at the director’s expense.

The movie falls flat stylistically as well. Gilroy’s shots are composed with immaculate symmetry – characters are rarely positioned outside the center of the frame, often in angular rooms with stark, blazing-white walls. The effect is certainly eye-catching, but more often than not it’s also mildly unsettling. Perhaps Gilroy was trying to be ironic by juxtaposing the story’s off-kilter characters with his perfectly balanced cinematography, but even if that’s the case, it just doesn’t work here. More than anything, looking at Duplicity for too long without blinking just made me feel like I was staring into a sanitarium.

In the end, neither the Owen/Roberts intrigue nor the Wilkinson/Giamatti subplot reach a particularly interesting resolution, and the flashbacks never amount to anything truly significant aside from a cheap twist in the film’s final moments. But it isn’t the plot that ultimately disappoints the most, even though it does command more than its fair share of logic-defying leaps of faith. Rather, Gilroy’s strange and unlikable characters are the film’s biggest letdown, especially after the finesse and nuance of Michael Clayton. Duplicity isn’t an outright “bad” film, per se, but in light of what it could have been given the capabilities of its cast and director, I can’t help but think the filmmakers just didn’t try that hard – and in an industry so hopelessly glutted with bland and intentionally brainless movies, such wastes of talent make for a particularly subversive brand of mediocrity.

Rating: ** (2 out of 4)

Charlie Sheen Will Be In Wall Street 2

2009-09-20T15:28:00.003-05:00

I’ll admit, I was pretty down on the idea of a sequel to Wall Street when the idea first began floating around Hollywood a few years ago. There have been so many mediocre revivals of 1980s franchises recently, from Indiana Jones to Die Hard to Rambo, that a healthy dose of skepticism is certainly warranted. However, Wall Street 2 has actually grown on me a lot in the last few weeks. Just as the “greed is good” culture of its time made the original movie a compelling and well-timed success when it came out in 1987, I think our current social and economic climate will provide an excellent subject for Oliver Stone’s patented type of directorial scrutiny.

Even if that’s true, though, the biggest fear with any sequel made so long after the original is whether the same things that made it great in the first place will come together again to make something just as good. For quite a while, all we’ve really known about the Wall Street sequel was that it would center around what happens to Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) when he’s released from prison 20 years after the events of the first movie. But there was no word on the first movie’s main character, Bud Fox, who was played by Charlie Sheen.

Until now, that is. In a bit of news I just came across earlier this month, Sheen has apparently agreed to appear in the film, although from the sound of it his role will be a fairly small one. Still, his presence lends this project that last bit of legitimacy that I was looking for. As a fan of the original, I’m quite happy to see the sequel panning out so well.

Thoughts on Disney Buying Marvel

2009-09-06T13:30:00.012-05:00

In case you haven’t heard the biggest news in the entertainment industry yet, Disney purchased Marvel a few days ago for the sum of 4 billion dollars. This move came as a complete surprise, and speculation has been running rampant over what implications this could have for both companies.

Is the deal really a cause for worry? Maybe, maybe not. Some people seem to think that it could lead to the “Disneyfication” of Marvel’s movies and/or comics – a rather absurd proposal, if you think about it. Despite its clean-cut, family-friendly image, Disney has distributed the likes of Sin City, Pulp Fiction, and plenty of other violent or otherwise “mature” media through Miramax (which it also owns), so the issue isn’t one of what level of explicitness Disney will allow its new subsidiary to “get away with.” Besides, after the financial debacle that was last year’s Punisher: War Zone, Marvel swore off making R-rated films in the future anyway.

The real issue, I think, is one of creative control over Marvel’s franchises. I’m not too concerned for Marvel Publishing, which handles the publication of Marvel’s extensive line of comic books. Since Marvel’s rebound from bankruptcy in the late 1990s, its publishing arm has maintained an unprecedented level of creative autonomy (and critical acclaim) which I seriously doubt Disney would feel any need to dismantle. (As a brief side note, though, I do wonder whether this deal could lead to Marvel absorbing Boom! Studios, another comic book company which for the last year or so has been publishing a number of well-received comics based on Disney-owned franchises, including Toy Story and the Muppets.)

To dwell on publishing for just a moment longer, I think it’s important to remember that Marvel hasn’t merged with Disney – Marvel is now simply owned by Disney, and as such it will remain a mostly self-directed institution. So for those worried that Mickey Mouse will soon be joining the X-Men by corporate mandate, you have nothing to fear (although if fan art like this piece provides any indication, it might not be so bad!).

So with Marvel’s comic book universe fairly safe, in my opinion, my main concern in is over what will now happen to Marvel Studios. This is the independent production studio, owned by Marvel, which has so far brought us Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, and which is currently producing next year’s Iron Man 2. Several more Marvel movies, including Captain America, Thor, and The Avengers, are also lined up for the studio.

I have commented before on this blog that I felt Marvel Studios’ legal and financial independence gave it a level of creative control that we are never likely to see from DC, since it is owned by Time-Warner. Forming its own production studio was a major triumph for Marvel in that regard, which makes it a bit sad to see the company essentially “selling out” when it’s proven that it can be both financially and critically successful on its own.

I’m still somewhat optimistic, on the one hand, because Disney has done such an excellent job in its handling of Pixar, which has perhaps the single greatest track record of any production studio in history. But fundamentally, this deal is still about Disney making more money, and the difference between Pixar and Marvel is that Marvel has many more long-standing franchises that have the potential to be exploited, for lack of a better word. Disney will do whatever it feels it needs to in order to protect its own financial interests – and if this means, for example, forcing Marvel Studios to crank out a third Iron Man movie without the same care that was devoted to the first two movies, I have little doubt that Disney will do so. We’ve already seen this same scenario play itself out in Sony’s mishandling of the third film in the Spider-Man franchise, and with a fourth film on the way (and, supposedly, a fifth as well), the cycle seems almost inevitable.

Of course, the true effects of this deal probably won’t be felt for at least a few years. I imagine Marvel Studios will continue to operate as it is now through the completion of its current slate of films, at which point it will either close its doors or take its work in whatever direction Disney feels best. This might not end up being a bad thing at all – it’s not as if Disney doesn’t have an eye for great filmmaking. The point is simply that Disney will have a tremendous influence on what Marvel-based movies are made in the future, for better or for worse.

In Case You Were Wondering...

2009-09-04T00:04:00.001-05:00

If you’ve visited this site recently, you may have noticed that I haven’t posted in a while. There are reasons for that – legitimate ones, in my opinion, although I’ll leave that decision up to you. The big one is that I really haven’t seen many movies this summer. My only trips to the theater in the last few months have been to see Public Enemies and Funny People on their opening weekends, and Inglourious Basterds this last weekend. I’ve only rented one movie that I can think of, and that was a few weeks ago now.

Why have I watched so few movies lately? The main reason is that I spent a large portion of this summer interning in a congressional office in Washington, D.C. It was a wonderful experience, and one that I wouldn’t trade for anything. I met a lot of wonderful people there, and I made a lot of valuable connections too. But it did take up a lot of my time and energy each day, and very rarely did I have two hours to sit through an entire movie – my free time came more often in 20 to 30 minute bursts, which I typically spent watching 30 Rock, a show I hadn’t seen before this summer (and which I highly recommend).

Since my return from the Capitol, I’ve been catching up with friends, trying to keep up with the first few days of classes, and doing a good deal of reading. (For those wondering, my graphic novel review blog is still in the works – in fact, the domain has already been created. I have a number of reviews written, but I want to make sure I have enough done in advance to prevent the same stop-and-go difficulties I’ve had with this blog.) Although I’ve watched a handful of movies since being back, my viewing time continues to be mainly concentrated on TV shows, predominantly 30 Rock and The Shield – which, now that I’ve begun watching the fourth season, has joined the ranks of The Sopranos and Lost as one of my all-time favorite shows.

As the new school semester starts, I foresee myself watching more movies than I have been in the recent past. This is thanks in part to a film class which promises to do an excellent job of filling in the gaps in my own knowledge of the history of film, especially in terms of international cinema, and also thanks to my own building desire to start writing about film on a regular basis again. However, I find my interest in new releases waning at the moment. This will probably change as we enter the last quarter of the year – typically the time when the year’s best movies are released – although I find myself irked by a few recent developments, namely the delay of Scorsese’s Shutter Island until February of next year.

My hope is that with this most recent return to the blogosphere, I’ll be able to maintain at least a semi-regular presence here. I’ve learned a lot about my own writing process and style (what works, and what needs improvement) through constructing these posts over the last few months (almost a year, actually!), and I hope to continue developing my own skills and entertaining people at the same time. There are a few things I’m really interested in trying out here, and I look forward to posting them and hearing your thoughts soon.

And Then There Were...Ten?

2009-06-24T23:14:00.007-05:00

A few months ago, I thought the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences had finally gotten its head out of the sand. Now, I’m not so sure. The Academy’s president made a rather surprising announcement today: for the first time in more than 60 years, next year’s Academy Awards will have 10 nominees for Best Picture instead of five. Here’s a bit of what he had to say:

The final outcome, of course, will be the same – one Best Picture winner – but the race to the finish line will feature 10, not just five, great movies from 2009... Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going allow Academy voters to recognise and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize.

Personally, I don’t think this makes a bit of sense. Even with five nominees, there always seems to be at least one that isn’t in the same league as the others. And with ten nominees, I don’t even want to think about how much garbage is going to be included. People will argue that there are “deserving” movies that don’t get nominated each year, but if you think about it, that’s kind of the point. If every good movie was nominated, it wouldn’t mean nearly as much to be a nominee.

Of course, I’m prepared to eat my words if this ends up working out for the best, and the Academy has proven me wrong before. But for now, I have my doubts – and if I see any Transformers posters with the words “For Your Consideration” on them come this fall, I swear there will be hell to pay.

Review: Drag Me To Hell

2009-05-31T00:02:00.010-05:00

If all you know about Drag Me to Hell is what you’ve seen in previews, then it isn’t the kind of movie you think it is. Trailers and TV spots have done their best to make Sam Raimi’s return to the horror genre look like a mere Saw or Hostel clone, but in reality it has very little in common with those movies. While Raimi is best-known by many people today as the director of the Spider-Man films, his best work is undoubtedly the Evil Dead trilogy, which mixed low-budget (but entirely believable) scares with physical comedy to create an experience that was at once hilarious and horrifying. Raimi revives his own tradition with Drag Me to Hell, which is more than worthy as a spiritual successor to the director’s previous work.

Alison Lohman plays Christine Brown, a loan officer who evicts a creepy old woman from her home in order to curry favor with her boss. The woman’s response? She puts a curse on Christine, giving her three terrorizing days to live before demons will quite literally drag her down to Hell. With the support of her loving boyfriend Clay (Justin Long) and a helpful fortune-teller (Dileep Rao), Christine sets out to stand against the forces that are after her and to avoid the fiery fate that lies ahead.

One of the movie’s biggest draws is how fully-developed these characters are. Lohman has never been a particularly notable actress, but her convincing portrayal of Christine should definitely cement her reputation among horror fans. Long’s performance is also surprisingly genuine, and you can’t help but feel for him as his character sticks with Christine despite his increasing skepticism towards her. Their relationship is the most endearing part of the film, making it tough (but still funny) to see it put through the wringer – for instance, when evil spirits sabotage Christine’s first meeting with Clay’s parents.

But the real stars of the movie are Raimi and his special effects team, who offer up plenty of sticky, oozing and frequently cartoonish frights. There’s fairly little actual blood, and it goes to show that excessive amounts of hyper-realistic gore aren’t what make a horror film worthwhile. Although Drag Me to Hell doesn’t rely on slapstick as much as Evil Dead and its sequels, it certainly pays homage to the series with its claustrophobic camera movements, creaky sound effects, and the occasional flying eyeball. The movie’s intermittent computer-generated effects aren’t nearly as convincing as Raimi’s signature low-budget techniques, but thankfully they’re not used all that often.

What I love most about Drag Me to Hell is that it’s both a breath of fresh air and a campy, nostalgic look back at what horror can and should be. There hasn’t been a horror movie quite like it since Evil Dead II, and there may not be another until after Raimi has finished with Spider-Man 4. I hope there will be, though, and that Drag Me to Hell proves popular enough among the legions of Saw and Hostel fans to warrant more films that cleverly blend horror and comedy. I’m tired of the gore-for-its-own-sake, torture-porn trash that rakes in the big money each and every Halloween – it’s time for us to return to the idea that horror can be scary, funny, and original at the same time, and Drag Me to Hell shows us that it’s possible.

Rating: ***½ (3.5 out of 4)

Good Lord, Why??

2009-05-29T18:21:00.007-05:00

Honestly...what did the human race do to deserve this kind of punishment? And is it too late to redeem ourselves??

Review: Rachel Getting Married

2009-05-21T16:27:00.013-05:00

Rachel Getting Married is a perfect example of the fact that sometimes, a movie is actually less than the sum of its parts. The story is absorbing, and some of the performances are very believable, but for me, there was just no escaping a feeling in the pit of my stomach that something about this movie was wrong.

The set-up is undoubtedly interesting. Kym (Anne Hathaway) has gotten out of rehab just in time to attend the wedding of her sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt), and she returns to a home now filled with dozens of strangers all getting ready for the big day. At the heart of the hustle and bustle is her dad, played by a sincere and engaging Bill Irwin. The first to defend Kym as she and Rachel clash, he’s also deeply haunted (along with the rest of the family) by the consequences of Kym’s drug-induced actions years earlier.

Tensions eventually give way to a lot of screaming and crying, and even a bit of interfamily violence for good measure. No one can truly forgive Kym for her past, least of all herself, and her attention-seeking antics as the wedding draws nearer don’t help. The constant arguments are convincing, but they all play out in roughly the same way. What’s more, it’s hard to take anyone’s side for more than a few minutes because not a single character comes out unscathed.

Alone, that wouldn’t be a tremendous problem if the movie was a lot more focused. Director Jonathan Demme spends altogether too much time on the festivities of the occasion itself, and it’s here that the story really falls flat. Between rambling congratulatory speeches by characters we never see again to seemingly unending shots of people dancing the night away, at least half an hour could have easily been cut from the picture. Rachel’s future husband is so underdeveloped that it’s clear the wedding is only a plot device, so spending such a large portion of the movie on it is just silly. This is Kym’s story, and every scene spent on something else is an utter waste of time.

In the end, Rachel Getting Married is a lot like watching your family fight – while it’s fascinating at times and certainly commands your attention, it’s just not a very pleasant experience. I won’t deny that its portrayal of a family in crisis is realistic and well-acted, though, and if that had been the primary focus I might have enjoyed it slightly more. But the movie’s near-schizophrenic nature as it bounces back and forth between meaningless revelry and a family’s despair is quite off-putting, and it makes it extremely difficult to recommend.

Rating: **½ (2.5 out of 4)

Sci-Fi Sundays #2 – The Giant Claw

2009-05-17T23:44:00.005-05:00

The Giant Claw (1957) is a bit unique among the dozens of giant monster movies that were made in the 1950s. Its subject isn’t a spider, cockroach, or some other insect; its size isn’t attributable to the wayward effects of nuclear radiation. Nope, it’s a giant buzzard from space that’s come to Earth to terrorize mankind.

But first, the set-up: a lone test pilot spots a UFO that no one on the ground picks up on radar, which convinces his superiors that he’s gone crazy. It takes the disappearances of several other aircraft to convince everyone that something strange is going on, and that the test pilot may in fact be right. Although the mysterious shape that constantly appears in the sky is clearly the silhouette of a giant bird, every single person that sees it describes it as a “flying battleship.” This even includes the governments of foreign countries, who haven’t conferred with American military forces even in the slightest. Apparently, the fear of giant flying battleships is universal.

Their misconceptions aren’t helped by the fact that no one seems to know what the term “UFO” actually means. Each time a pilot radios back to base with the exclamation that he’s seen a UFO, the response is always “What is it?” or “Can you see what it is?” or something along those lines. Of course he can’t see what it is, you dimwits, or he would have just told you rather than saying he was unable to identify the flying object that he saw.

Figuring out what the UFO really is turns out to be a simple matter of setting up a hidden camera on a high-altitude balloon. Making things easier, the bird-monster looks right into the camera for half of the pictures. Speaking of which, the space buzzard is both one of the stupidest and one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on film. I would try to describe it to you, but words really can’t do it justice…so instead, I’ve posted a picture of it above. And if you think that looks ridiculous, then let me assure you, it’s even more absurd in motion.

What’s even funnier is seeing what the bird does to its victims. It’s always careful not to outright destroy the jet fighters that attack it (to no avail) throughout the movie. That way, it’s able to eat the parachuting pilots with a uniform crunch that sounds like a clip from a Pringles commercial. The reason that no one can harm the creature at first isn’t entirely obvious – as it turns out, it’s protected by an antimatter force field that can only be destroyed by a “focused meson emitter,” whatever that is. After they hit the bird with that, it’s a fairly easy matter of shooting the thing out of the sky.

As dumb as the movie sounds, parts of it are actually somewhat cleverly written. One scene has the main character and his love interest exchanging baseball jargon in a way that’s so overtly sexual I’m not sure how it got past the censors. There are a few similarly funny scenes, and while they’re not pure comedy gold, they don’t need to be. After all, that’s what giant space buzzards are for.

Movie Rating: ** (2 out of 4)
Entertainment value: ***½ (3.5 out of 4)

The Pure Michigan Rules

2009-05-14T14:36:00.002-05:00

If you watch much television, you’ve probably seen these “Pure Michigan” advertisements that have been running for a while now. If you haven’t, they’re basically a series of commercials put together by Travel Michigan to promote tourism in their state, with narration by Tim Allen. Here’s an example:

Now, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the advertisements at all. In fact, they kind of make me want to spend some time in Michigan. I just wonder why they decided to go with the theme from The Cider House Rules – a movie that was actually set in Maine! It works surprisingly well, but it’s still a bit puzzling to me.

On a completely unrelated note, I thought some of you might be interested to know that I had two comic book reviews published on IGN this week. The first is a back-up review for Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers, and the other is the main review for Dark Reign: Young Avengers. Please leave a comment either here or on IGN, if you feel so moved!

Sci-Fi Sundays #1 – Night of the Blood Beast

2009-05-10T23:58:00.016-05:00

I love science fiction movies because even when you know the general premise of a sci-fi movie going into it, you never know exactly what you’ll get. There are common themes, sure, from robots to aliens to spaceships, but not in any other genre can you find such a wide variety of movies based on such a concentrated number of shared concepts. In each Sci-Fi Sundays post, I’ll talk about a different science fiction movie – old, new, good, or bad, but always interesting in its own way.

Night of the Blood Beast is a 1958 B-movie about what happens when the first man in space unwittingly brings an alien creature back home with him. The action begins during the opening credits, as images of a crude-looking, hand-drawn spaceship “fly” through “space.” The reason I use quotation marks is that I’m not wholly convinced the astronaut ever left Earth’s atmosphere, seeing as his ship was surrounded by clouds. Of course, never having been to outer space myself, I guess I can’t say for sure that the filmmakers are completely wrong. Maybe they have been to space, or just know something that neither I nor anyone else with a rudimentary knowledge of physics or outer space does.

It isn’t long before tragedy befalls the space vessel. From what I could gather, the astronaut, John, had digestive issues while a smoke machine malfunctioned in the background – never a good combination. Anyhow, John’s little episode sends the ship to a fiery crash (at least, I assume it was fiery, since it happens offscreen) in a mountainous region near Cape Canaveral. The filmmakers again show how much smarter they are than me, this time in terms of geography. Silly me, thinking there are no mountains in Florida!

Scientists from the nearby research base find the ship, which is still perfectly intact other than a small hole in the side (the smoke machine still seems to be on the fritz, though). Peering through the hole, the scientists see John’s body – also in one piece, surprisingly enough; John apparently took lessons from Indiana Jones on how to survive falling thousands of feet in a small metal box. Even though he shows absolutely no signs of life, the scientists take him back to base and decide to put him on a table in the lab and stand around watching his lifeless body anyway.

Unfortunately for the scientists, some guy in a cheap Halloween costume - I mean, an alien - has hitched a ride back to Earth with John and his ship. Once everyone has gone to sleep, it sneaks into the base and eats half of the lead scientist’s head. Why half? I’m not sure, to be honest; maybe he got full, or perhaps he just realized that human beings don’t taste very good. Conveniently, the other scientists only realize what has happened after the alien is gone, and shortly thereafter, John decides to stop playing possum and begins to walk and talk again. He reveals that he’s pregnant with the alien’s babies, which doesn’t seem to bother anyone else too much. In fact, the others seem relatively bored by this revelation. Perhaps John has cried wolf about this sort of thing before.

Not one for subtlety, I guess, the alien takes this opportunity to just sort of barge into the room and stand in the doorway, at which point it’s predictably shot at. Bullets have no effect on its Swamp-Thing-meets-Black-Lagoon hide, but one of the researchers scares it off by chucking a lamp at it and setting the place on fire. Luckily, pillows prove just as good as flame retardant when it comes to putting out a fire.

Apparently forgetting that the alien ate half of another guy’s head, John insists to the others that the alien means well and that everyone should just give it a chance. They eventually hunt it down to a cave, where it tells John (in the voice of the scientist it killed!) that it belongs to a dying race which needs humans to give birth to alien babies in order to continue to survive. John, finally realizing that he’s been used, stabs himself with a rock and dies while the others shoot the alien to death with flare guns.

So as you’ve likely concluded by the sarcasm throughout this synopsis, Night of the Blood Beast is both an absolutely terrible and an incredibly funny movie. I can’t imagine either of those qualities were intended by the filmmakers (including Roger Corman, who executive-produced), but regardless, credit really must be given where it’s due. My favorite part comes at the very end, when the scientists walk away from the remains of John and the alien and basically pat themselves on the back for a job well done. They seem to have forgotten that John’s alien babies are due to be born at any moment, and that an alien invasion can’t be too far behind after that. Oh, well – if John is any indication, the human race is so gullible that it might actually deserve to be wiped out of existence.

Of course, most of the film’s comedy comes from the fact that the creature the scientists are so terrified of looks like a Power Rangers villain reject. If only it had had more time on screen, this movie would have been perfect for just sitting around and ripping on with friends. Even after adjusting for inflation, my guess is that Blood Beast couldn’t have cost more than a hundred dollars to make – fifty for the alien costume, and another fifty for the actors to sort out amongst themselves in a steel cage match set against the mythical mountains of Florida. Come to think of it, that might not be such a bad idea for a sequel.

Movie Rating: ½ (0.5 out of 4)
Entertainment value: **½ (2.5 out of 4)

New Post! New Look!

2009-05-10T22:46:00.001-05:00

Sorry to take so much time off since my last update – I’ve been really, really busy. So busy, in fact, that I’ve watched a grand total of two or three movies since my last post. But with the spring school semester over, I finally have a bit of time on my hands again, and I thought I’d make the most of it by getting back onto the blog scene and making a few changes to the site:

1. As you’ve probably already noticed, the site has a slightly different background and layout. I was tired of it being practically identical to so many other blogs on the web, although I may still fiddle around with it a bit. Question to everyone reading this: do you like the current look, or would you rather see something that fills an entire widescreen monitor?

2. I won’t be doing a Movie of the Week anymore. As much as I like the idea, after a while it just became impractical for me to be able to do one every single week…kind of a self-defeating point for something called “Movie of the Week.” But don’t worry – I have more interesting things planned, which I think will eventually make this site a bit different from your average movie news/reviews blog. I hope you guys will like ‘em.

3. I’ll still be doing reviews of newer (i.e. released in the last year or so) movies that I happen to watch. I’m still working my way through a lot of 2008 releases, so you may see reviews for the ones that I get from Netflix. And as long as I’m on that topic…

4. Reviews of Star Trek and Wolverine are coming…just as soon as I see them. I’m dying to check them out, but like I said, I’ve been quite busy. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch at least one of them early this week.

5. This one’s a bit unrelated to the others – but as I’ve mentioned in some of my previous posts, I’m a big fan of not just movies, but comic books and graphic novels as well. I’ve set up another blog for reviews of graphic novels; I haven’t had the chance to post in it yet, but the first post should go up in the next day or two. I’ll try to post two or three reviews there per week, so feel free to check it out if you’re interested. It should be pretty accessible, so don’t be afraid to give it a look even if you don’t know much about comic books and graphic novels.

Well, I think that’s about it for now. Feel free to post any feedback in the comments section, and I’ll see you for another update later today!

Movie of the Week – Raging Bull

2009-03-20T17:08:00.001-05:00

Sorry for not posting this on Monday. It’s been kind of a busy week for me, but everything should be back to normal now.

As one of director Martin Scorsese’s best films, it seems surprising today that Raging Bull (1980) was initially met with mixed reviews, and that a poor marketing campaign caused it to fail at the box office. In fact, it’s taken quite a while for it to truly gain the recognition it deserves. It was nearly a decade before critics began to really view it as a modern classic, and almost two more before the American Film Institute finally named it the fourth greatest American film of all time in 2007. In many ways, Raging Bull represents the first and, to this day, most definitive realization of director Martin Scorsese’s creative potential and cinematic vision.

The story follows the life of Jake La Motta, a real-life boxer and former middleweight champion portrayed in the movie by Robert De Niro. The role earned him his second Oscar, and it’s easy to see why. His transformation from a taut, muscular boxer in La Motta’s early days to an overweight, pathetic has-been as he gets older is mesmerizing, to say the least. I can honestly say that I’ve never seen an actor in any other movie devote himself to his craft as physically as De Niro does in Raging Bull.

While the film’s boxing scenes are predictably (although not by any means uninterestingly) brutal, the most unsettling violence occurs outside of the ring. In fact, La Motta might even be more violent in his everyday life than he is as a professional fighter. His own insecurities lead to constant fights with his family, and his rages can materialize out of nowhere in less than a moment’s notice. In one scene, convinced that his steak has been overcooked, he suddenly explodes and overturns the kitchen table; in another, he smashes down his own bathroom door in order to get at his wife (Cathy Moriarty). His paranoia about her fidelity eventually alienates him from his brother (Joe Pesci) as well, bringing the strongest and most important relationship in his life to an end.

Even as he becomes more violent at home, though, La Motta begins to lose his edge in the ring. He doesn’t put up much of a fight at all in his final bout, losing the middleweight title to longtime rival Sugar Ray Robinson. La Motta’s life after boxing is mildly horrifying to watch – having gained considerable weight, he operates a sleazy nightclub and tours the country as a painfully unfunny stand-up comedian. Perhaps saddest of all, he continues to view himself as the fighter and celebrity that he once was.

All of Scorsese’s signature directing techniques are here, from his constantly, often imperceptibly, moving camera to his use of popular music in the soundtrack. Shot in black and white, though, Raging Bull is unique to much of Scorsese’s work in its wholehearted devotion to the time period in which it takes place. However, that doesn’t stop him from placing color in a few places that contribute to the film’s meaning.

The main title, for instance – as you can see in the theatrical poster above – fills the frame with bold, blood-red letters when it appears at the beginning of the movie, instantly communicating to the audience that the story about to begin is one that will be characterized by both violence and anger. And while it is both of these things, what ultimately elevates Raging Bull to a higher cinematic level is not just the interesting nature of La Motta’s story, but the exceptional nuance that Scorsese and De Niro inflect upon the character along the way.

Marvel Release Dates Pushed Back

2009-03-13T15:07:00.004-05:00

Well, this is sort of a bummer. It seems we're going to have to wait a while longer for Marvel's Thor and Avengers movies, as they've been pushed back a year each:

Not mentioned in that list is that Spider-Man 4 is also slated for May 2011. In other words, there are three Marvel movies scheduled for three consecutive months in 2011, and just one scheduled for 2010.

I guess it's probably a good thing that the movies were pushed back, seeing as we haven't heard anything definitive yet about any of them aside from Iron Man 2. I just worry that if one of the 2011 releases isn't that great, the others will get lumped in with its bad press. Still, at least Marvel is keeping their timeframe on the realistic side, and I hope the movies will turn out for the better as a result.

Movie of the Week - A Boy and His Dog

2009-03-09T21:35:00.006-05:00

It’s been a while since the last “Movie of the Week,” but starting this week I’ll do my best to bring back the tradition and talk about a new (old) movie each Sunday or Monday.

A Boy and His Dog (1974) is a post-apocalyptic science fiction movie based on a short story by Harlan Ellison. Future Miami Vice star Don Johnson plays Vic, an 18-year-old boy who is able to communicate telepathically with his dog, Blood (voiced by Ted McIntire). The story follows the two as they scavenge the last nuclear war-ravaged vestiges of civilization for food, drink, and (in Vic’s case) women.

Vic is a crude, immoral, and misogynistic character, and his behavior ranges from the absurd to the downright deplorable. Living as he is, in such a lawless, tenuous world, perhaps we can’t expect much better of him. Nevertheless, it’s hard to sympathize with such a base persona by himself, so we need Blood and the way he so pointedly antagonizes Vic in order to balance things out. The movie works extremely well when they’re together, with Blood as the wise yet misanthropic teacher and Vic as his ambivalent young student. Their constant verbal sparring, while quite funny at times, also drives their characters forward and establishes the truly desolate nature of the world they live in.

It’s unsurprising, then, that the movie falls apart a bit in the final act, with the two main characters separated while Vic chases an attractive woman down a hatch and into her subterranean community. Vic’s hormones blind him to the obviousness of the trap the people there have set for him – when they say they need someone to impregnate their women (their men have become sterile), Vic volunteers under the false assumption that he will get to have sex with all of them. Without Blood to play off of his impulsiveness, though, the plot languishes in scenes where Vic is held the community’s unwilling captive. It doesn’t help that director L.Q. Jones goes too far with the underground culture’s bizarre nature, unnecessarily applying all of its inhabitants with clown make-up. The people are deprave enough without this touch, and I honestly think they would have been scarier had they been more normal-looking.

Even if some parts of it are a bit off-putting, though, it really is interesting the way the movie hints at a larger universe in which these characters play only a small part. One early scene has Vic and Blood attempting to hide from the “screamers,” whose presence is indicated by an eerie green glow and a series of high-pitched, ghastly shrieks. We never actually see the screamers, but they work well as a sort of unseen horror – perhaps even better than if Jones had actually found it appropriate (or in his budget) to show them to us.

But what really makes A Boy and His Dog worth seeing, despite the weakness of part of the story, is its brilliant ending. Without giving anything away, this is the sort of ending you secretly hope for and yet don’t think is actually possible – and when it does play out that way, the payoff is perfectly fantastic. This is easily one of the best endings I have ever seen in any movie, and it bears watching if only for that reason.

Do Not Watch the Watchmen

2009-03-03T18:46:00.009-06:00

The title is a bit cliché, but I wanted something that would grab people’s attention. As you’ve probably guessed, this post is all about why you shouldn’t see the Watchmen movie that opens this week. There are a whole host of reasons why this movie never should have been made, and I’ll try to go through all of them.

First of all, just in case you have no idea what I’m talking about, Watchmen is a twelve-issue 1986-87 comic book series written by Alan Moore with art by Dave Gibbons. It’s about a group of former superheroes who are being killed off in a world where costumed vigilantism has been made illegal. It’s widely considered to be one of the best and most influential comic stories of all time, and it’s been collected into a graphic novel which has been in print for over two decades.

A movie adaptation of Watchmen, directed by Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead, 300), comes out on Friday, and for reasons that I really can’t understand, some people are just foaming at the mouth for it. I love the book, but the movie looks like a complete disaster in every way imaginable. It’s more than just that, though – the movie, in a lot of ways, represents everything I dislike about the film industry and certain segments of the movie-going public.

The fundamental difference between Watchmen and comic books like Spider-Man or Batman is that you can always tell new stories about those characters – even ones that might be a better fit for the big screen than for a comic book. But with Watchmen, there is only one story, and it’s already been told. Any retelling of that story can only dilute it, especially if it’s in a medium other than comics.

Brian K. Vaughan (the writer of such popular comic books as Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina, as well as one of the writers on TV’s Lost) puts it extremely well: “I’ll go see it [Watchmen] if it doesn’t feel like a betrayal of what Alan Moore wants. But it’s like making a stage play of Citizen Kane. I guess it could be OK, but why? The medium is the message.”

It’s an excellent point. Personally, I’m fed up with the mentality that film is the ultimate art form, and that any story told well in another medium should automatically be made into a movie. I love movies (enough to have started a whole blog about them!), but to assume that every story worth telling has to be told in audiovisual form is arrogant, presumptuous, and entirely disrespectful to the original creators of that story. Speaking of which, perhaps now would be a good time to mention that Alan Moore refuses to have anything to do with the film (and, in fact, says he has no intention of even seeing it).

Another big part of my problem with Watchmen boils down to some basic issues I have with the increasingly mainstream nature of comics. Comic books are more in vogue now than they have been probably since the 1960s, and it has a lot to do with the excellent quality of so many recent superhero movies. But while it’s nice that one of my favorite hobbies doesn’t get me as many awkward glances as it used to (I’ve been reading comics on a regular basis since I was in the seventh grade), I find myself incredibly annoyed that so many people are reading comics these days just because it’s the “cool” thing to do.

The people I’m talking about aren’t the ones who are legitimately interested in learning about the medium – people like that are always welcome – but rather the ones who say, “I’m going to read Watchmen and V for Vendetta so people will be impressed by me” and who refer to comics only as “graphic novels” because they think it makes them sound more refined. Newsflash, guy (or girl): the comic books you’re reading aren’t “niche,” they’re as mainstream as it gets. Hell, Time Magazine listed Watchmen as one of its top 100 American novels a couple of years back. It’s good that you’re reading some truly great stories, but doing so doesn’t make you “cultured” or “well-rounded.” It’s a lot like bragging about having seen Star Wars or The Godfather.

Unfortunately, these are the sort of people for whom the Watchmen movie was tailor-made. They’re the people who think film is the only legitimate art form, that Chuck Palahniuk is “deep,” and that Watchmen is the next Dark Knight. Most importantly, they’re the people who didn’t get Watchmen when they read it. Because as anyone who appreciates the comic and has done even the slightest research on the movie knows, the changes director Zack Snyder has made for the movie – specifically, in the ending – completely undermine the entire thrust of the story.

I know a lot of people reading this probably haven’t read Watchmen, so I’m not going to spoil exactly what Snyder changed. The point, though, is that a significant part of Alan Moore’s ending in the book is wild, bizarre and comes out of left field in a way that it has to in order for the plot to work. But more than that, the way Snyder has changed the ending not only creates a plot hole big enough for you to drive a truck through, it eliminates something essential to the overall tone of the story.

Many people, including Moore himself, have made the argument that the true ending of Watchmen is “unfilmable,” and that the average movie-going audience wouldn’t be very receptive to it. They’re probably right. But the solution is easier than you might think: just don’t make a movie based on Watchmen. I really can’t say it enough – just because a story is good doesn’t mean it has to be made into a movie. In the case of Watchmen, the greatness of the original story arises from things inherent to its being a comic book. Everything from Rorschach’s mask to the nature of Dr. Manhattan’s powers just works in a way that can’t be replicated, much less improved upon, in another medium.

Even if all you’re looking for is a mindless action flick, the Watchmen movie is still a failure. Every trailer and video clip that’s been released has reveled in its own slow-mo, music-video-style editing, but it’s all old hat at this point. It’s the exact same style Snyder used in 300, minus the decapitations – so if you’re really a fan of that kind of stylized action, you would do better to just rent that movie. At least in 300, the technique sort of works; it’s a movie that puts style over substance and succeeds because, honestly, its substance isn’t anything special. But in the case of Watchmen, a story that actually does have some meat to it, that kind of action can only detract from the rest of the experience. If Moore and Gibbons didn’t need slow motion action scenes to tell their story, why should we need them to enjoy the story now?

I hope by this point that I’ve gotten my point across without sounding like a raving lunatic. The fact is that even in the best-case scenario, the Watchmen movie can’t ever be more than an inferior version of the graphic novel. And why settle for inferiority when you don’t have to – especially when the more likely scenario is that the movie will just be flat-out bad? Please, for your own sake, do not see Watchmen. You’ll be wasting your time and money, and if you haven’t read the book you’ll be denying yourself a truly wonderful experience.

And just in case all of that isn’t enough to convince you, let me sweeten the pot a little. If, say, twenty people go to the comments section of this post and honestly pledge not to see the movie, I’ll choose one of them randomly and buy him or her a copy of the Watchmen book. (If you get chosen and you already have the book, I’ll get you something you don’t have.) So that’s it…comment away!

Good and Bad News for Green Lantern

2009-02-27T23:38:00.008-06:00

First, the bad news: 19 year-old Anton Yelchin (pictured above right) is rumored to be in consideration for the lead part in WB's Green Lantern movie, which is scheduled to come out in 2010. Now, I don't have anything against the kid, but the fact is that he's just that: a kid.

Yelchin is kind of on the rise right now, with major roles in both Star Trek and Terminator Salvation later this year, so I can see why the studios might be buzzing around him. I just can't understand why they would be interested in him for this movie. Hal Jordan is supposed to be a fearless test pilot, not a guy fresh out of high school. Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) is directing, though, so hopefully with his recent blockbuster success he'll have enough clout to be able to convince Warner Bros. not to force someone inappropriate for the role into the movie.

Second, the good news: today Warner Home Video officially announced the straight-to-video animated movie Green Lantern: First Flight. The quality of DC's recent animated DVD movies has been quite high, and Green Lantern is my favorite DC character after Batman, so I find this news pretty exciting. What makes First Flight even more interesting is that it's being produced by Bruce Timm (the man behind the excellent Batman: The Animated Series) and it has a great voice cast, which includes, of all people, Michael Madsen. While this may not have much effect on the production of the live-action movie, it's good to know that someone somewhere is giving Hal the treatment he deserves.

Mel Gibson Returns!

2009-02-25T22:28:00.008-06:00

Oh, how I have missed Mel Gibson. His last starring role was in Signs, which came out almost seven years ago now. He's finally returning to the big screen this year though, and he looks to be taking on the role of one of America's greatest pop icons in The Colonel. Take a look at this new trailer:

Looks pretty good, huh?

All right, so if you've watched the video then you know this trailer is just a joke. It premiered on Jimmy Kimmel's show after the Oscars on Sunday night (which explains why a lot of people haven't seen it).

I wasn't kidding about missing Mel, though. The man is one of my favorite actors and I'm really looking forward to Edge of Darkness, the police drama he'll be starring in later this year.

Thoughts on the 81st Annual Academy Awards

2009-02-24T23:47:00.001-06:00

I’ve been pretty down on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for quite a while now. I’ve even made several posts to that effect on this blog. But I have to admit, I was surprised by how well the Oscars turned out this year. The nomination/award system may not be perfect, but watching the ceremony on Sunday night made me realize that it’s not nearly as broken as I thought it was either. In fact, I’m feeling pretty good right now about the way the awards went as well as the state of the Academy Awards in general.

The show itself was definitely better than it has been in the past several years, and Hugh Jackman did a great job as host. His opening number was one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while, and set the tone for what ended up being a really good night. I could have done with one or two less song and dance performances, but putting the band on the stage and having the nominees introduced by a panel of former award winners were both excellent touches and more than made up for any of the show’s other shortcomings.

That’s not to say I wouldn’t have liked a handful of things to work out differently, though. While I can get behind Slumdog Millionaire’s win for Best Picture, I was a bit disappointed that two of my favorite movies from 2008 didn’t at least get nominated. The exclusion most obvious to a lot of people was The Dark Knight. Even if they didn’t feel it was the best movie of the year, there are a lot of people who would certainly consider it as being one of the top five.

In fact, when I originally saw the list of nominees a few months ago, I’ll admit that I was a bit annoyed. I had hoped the last two Best Picture wins, for The Departed and No Country for Old Men – two films that are a far cry from the more “traditional” movies the Academy typically likes to give the award – wouldn’t just be anomalies in the larger scheme of Oscar history, and were indicative of a more progressive mentality on the Academy’s part. With The Dark Knight not even being nominated, we can see a clear shift away from the kind of darker, edgier movies the Academy has celebrated for the last few years.

As I’ve come to realize, though, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially considering that the Best Picture award still went to a pretty nontraditional movie. If it had gone to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – a movie I really enjoyed, but one that by its very nature plays much better to a conservative audience than Slumdog – it would have marked a step backward for the Academy. The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes to me that the Oscars aren’t necessarily meant to give the Best Picture award to the most objectively good movie each year. Rather, the movie that wins is the one that best encapsulates the spirit of our society at a certain point in time. In an era of increasing hope and the real possibility of change, Slumdog Millionaire is that movie much more so than The Dark Knight.

So while TDK’s exclusion is understandable on some level, there is one film that I think really should have been included: WALL-E. I had hoped, perhaps naively, that this would be the year the Academy finally recognized that well-done animated movies aren’t just good children’s movies – they’re good movies that happen to be suitable for children to watch.

What bothers me most about its omission from the ballot is that if there were any year that an animated movie actually had a solid chance of being nominated for Best Picture, it was this year. Many people (myself included) thought Ratatouille should have been nominated last year, and with WALL-E being just as well-received by critics this year, it would have been the perfect opportunity for the Academy to change its outlook.

To its credit, Disney tried to play ball with the other studios and mounted a fairly large Best Picture campaign for WALL-E. Still, this basically underscores my main problem with the way the Academy Awards work. Over the past few years, nominee lists have been for the most part determined by which studios are able to run the most effective advertising campaigns. Film companies spend millions of dollars on “For Your Consideration” advertisements in magazines like Variety, sometimes managing to muscle their way into getting nominations for movies that aren’t really deserving of the recognition (such as Robert Downey Jr.’s nomination for Best Supporting Actor in Tropic Thunder).

Perhaps this is a minor quibble on my part, though, since all of the films that ended up being nominated for Best Picture (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, and Slumdog Millionaire) are good movies in their own right. Whereas in each of the last few years it’s always seemed as though one or two movies nominated for Best Picture weren’t really very good, I think all of this year’s nominees were deserving of recognition. The fact that we’re even able to debate what other movies should have been nominated is a good sign, because it means there were more than just five truly great movies to come out in 2008. That’s something I don’t think we’ve been able to say for a number of years now, and it makes me think that the film world is on more of an upswing than I would have thought just a few months ago.

Overall, I think this year’s Academy Awards are as good an indication as any that we’re entering into a more exciting and adventurous time for movies. Slumdog’s win is significant in that it’s a movie belonging neither to the “old school” of filmmaking the Academy has traditionally honored, nor to the “new school” of dark, gritty films along the lines of The Departed or The Dark Knight. The Academy’s choice of something so unique as its Best Picture means that we’ll likely see more risk-taking on the part of the major studios in the coming years.

In other words, executives will be more likely to give their directors a level of creative control that hasn’t been seen in quite a while, in the hopes that the final product will turn out that much better for it (and thus make more money). The result could be an era of filmmaking as fresh and creative as the 1970s, when independents like Scorsese and Coppola were given the freedom to put just about whatever they wanted on the big screen.

Of course, this is all just speculation on my part. What did you think of the Oscars? Were the awards given to the movies that were most deserving, or do you think your favorites got snubbed? Check out the list of winners HERE, and post your thoughts in the comment section!

New Movie Trailers!

2009-02-21T03:04:00.020-06:00

I know it's been a while since my last update, but I was hoping you would forgive me if I posted some cool new movie trailers.

Edit: Strangely enough, these videos don't seem to want to play in their correct aspect ratios on this page. I would recommend just clicking directly on the video and watching it in a different window, at least until I can figure out a way to make them display correctly.

Inglourious Basterds is Quentin Tarantino's new WWII film coming out later this year. As a huge Tarantino fan myself, I think this movie has the serious potential to return him to the level of greatness he entertained early in his career. Take a look for yourself, and be on the lookout for B.J. Novak of The Office as well as the notorious Eli Roth, best known as the director of the Hostel movies.

Funny People is the third movie by director Judd Apatow, and this trailer was just released on Friday. I thought his second movie, Knocked Up, was a big step back from The 40 Year Old Virgin, although it still had its great comedic moments. Funny People, on the other hand, looks like it could be the perfect blend of comedy and seriousness. I'm especially looking forward to seeing Sandler in a role less mindlessly goofy than the ones we've seen him in recently, and closer to his dramatic work in Punch Drunk Love and Reign Over Me (both great movies you should seek out if you haven't seen them).

The first Night at the Museum was a surprisingly fun and well-made movie, with a universal appeal not too far removed from the National Treasure series. With seemingly the entire cast of the first movie returning for the sequel, along with a few new interesting cast members thrown into the mix, I think Battle of the Smithsonian could be just as good. I'll admit that the amount of computer animation in this trailer seems a bit excessive, but as long as it's all in good fun I doubt it'll be too much of a problem.

Well, that's all for right now, but check back soon for my thoughts on the Oscars before they're handed out on Sunday night. Enjoy the weekend!

August Rush Review

2009-01-19T15:22:00.001-06:00

Perhaps better known as “that movie the Academy nominated last year for Best Song that wasn’t Once or Enchanted,” August Rush actually had a lot of people talking about it in the weeks before its release last year. By the time it came out, though, it had all but completely disappeared from everyone’s radar, and it was only recently that I remembered it had even come out at all. It was with a fair amount of skepticism that I finally sat down to watch it.

The movie follows an orphan named Evan (Freddie Highmore) who, convinced that his parents are still alive, runs away from his stifling orphanage to New York City to find them. The sounds of everyday life are music to him – literally – which he takes as a sign that his parents are trying to find him as well. The reality, as we see in scenes featuring Evan’s mother and father (played by Keri Russell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers), is that neither one knows of Evan’s existence. If that seems a little hard to believe, then let me assure you that it’s actually explained pretty well.

Long story short, mom and dad have gone on to lead very different lives from the music-oriented ones of their youth (mom was a concert cellist, and dad was in a rock band). The movie does an effective job of associating this departure from their dreams with the emotional burdens they both carry. Their scenes are laden with the regret and nostalgia that comes with the feeling that true love has slipped away forever, but they stop short of ever becoming too sentimental.

Robin Williams plays “Wizard,” a strange man who runs a sort of commune for child street performers and who, after finding Evan, takes the boy under his wing. Despite a lack of musical training, Evan is able to pick up and play the guitar like a pro. People flock to see him perform, and Wizard (in a Mrs. Doubtfire-inspired moment) gives him a unique stage name: August Rush. But while the music itself is exciting, this part of the movie introduces the story’s most problematic aspect.

Evan’s near-instantaneous ability to play and understand music is nothing short of ridiculous, and his proficiency with all things musical only gets more unrealistic as the story goes on. At one point, still without any formal training, he reads and writes pages upon pages of sheet music without a hitch. August Rush tries to explain itself by portraying Evan as a musical prodigy in the story’s latter half (even going so far as to have the boy enroll in Juilliard), but it never quite dispels the feeling that something about Evan’s talents is a bit off.

As for the song that got the Academy’s notice, it’s good but I actually enjoyed many of the other songs in August Rush a lot more. The music that closes the film is particularly moving, and I imagine its instrumental nature is what kept it from garnering as much attention.

The movie sort of beats the audience over the head with its message – music is the universal language that brings people together – and in doing so it casts a number of smaller plot points by the wayside. I was particularly disappointed that a subplot involving Terrence Howard’s character, a well-intentioned man from Child Services looking for Evan, was never fully resolved. The movie also never explains how Evan manages to attend such a prestigious school without revealing his true identity or even being recognized by anyone (the Howard character places “Missing” posters with Evan’s face on them all over the city).

But August Rush doesn’t do these things intentionally, and in the end the movie feels more like a labor of love than a two-hour cliché manufactured by the studio system. It comes off as over-earnest rather than overbearing, and as a result the flaws in its story can be at least partially forgiven. At the same time, though, I can’t help but wish its makers had applied that extra layer of polish to make it into something truly great. As it stands, August Rush is good, wholesome entertainment that does just enough right to make up for its shortcomings. While it probably won’t be remembered for much more than having a great soundtrack, it does tug at the heartstrings enough to make watching it a worthwhile experience.

Rating: ***

Jackie Chan Just Ruined My Day

2009-01-18T23:12:00.008-06:00

This news is about a week old, but somehow it's slipped past me until today. Back in November I made a post about a remake of The Karate Kid, which had been retooled as a vehicle for Jaden Smith (Will Smith's son) called The Kung Fu Kid. At the end of that post I wondered who would play Mr. Miyagi in the new film, and today I got my (unfortunate) answer, courtesy of EW.com:

Jaden Smith has found himself a mentor. Jackie Chan will take on Pat Morita's Mr. Miyagi role in Sony Pictures' remake of The Karate Kid. The movie stars 10-year old Smith (The Pursuit of Happyness), who is the son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, and will be directed by Harold Zwart (The Pink Panther 2).

Talk about a one-two punch. Not only is Jackie Chan set to defile the legendary Pat Morita, but this movie is being made by the director of the sequel to the poster child for remakes gone horribly wrong? When I first heard about it I was prepared to approach The Kung Fu Kid with cautious optimism, but now all I can feel is a vague sort of disgust.

Circuit City Is No More

2009-01-16T23:43:00.005-06:00

As most everyone knows by now, Circuit City has come out unsuccessful in a long financial struggle brought about by the country's economic downturn. The chain will be liquidating its assets (stores, merchandise, etc.) starting immediately. Its website has already been shut down, and 34,000 employees will soon be left out in the cold.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that adding such a significant number of people to the ranks of America's unemployed isn't a good thing. In terms of the state of America's economy, Circuit City's closing is just one more tragedy in the ongoing catastrophe that is this country's economy. But I think it's also worth taking a look at the situation as it relates to the home entertainment business, as well as to the electronics business in general – in other words, how it relates to us, the customers.

To start off, some people will see prices lowered at their local Circuit City stores. Don't expect anything major, though. Federal law mandates that Circuit City give its employees 60 days notice of their termination, which they just did today, so they can't sell off all of their merchandise immediately. For that reason, I doubt prices will be slashed very much. Of course, that's up to the individual liquidator for each store, so every store will probably be a little different.

But what I find a lot more interesting than what's happening at Circuit City stores until the end of March is what will happen to everyone else once CC is gone. My prediction is that in the short term, we're going to see higher prices at Best Buy and other electronics retailers (like Target and Walmart). That's not to say that Best Buy will raise its prices – it's just going to be less likely to discount its merchandise from MSRP for a while. And why shouldn't it? With its biggest competitor gone, there's little reason to cater the particularly discriminating customer.

But while the death of Circuit City may seem like a victory for the likes of Best Buy, I don't think it will take long for brick and mortar electronics stores to finally realize that their true competition has never been with each other – it's been with the Internet. For months now, Amazon.com has routinely matched (and often beaten) Best Buy's weekly advertised prices and there is no way that Best Buy can continue selling cheaper electronics like DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and video games for MSRP once it's recognized Amazon as its main competition. So in the long run, this could actually turn out well, with Best Buy lowering its prices from time to time in order to compete with online retailers.

I'm not an economist in the least, but as someone who has followed the business of these two companies (and watched their advertisements each week) for years now, I've come to be able to notice the ebb and flow of prices in the home entertainment market. The past few weeks have been devoid of any deep discounts from Best Buy, Circuit City, and even Amazon, which is actually a bit uncharacteristic of retailers immediately after holidays. I guess the bubble was bound to burst sooner or later. Without any reason to spend more at Circuit City than the value of any soon-to-be-useless gift cards one might have lying around, there just hasn't been a compelling reason to shop there...and unfortunately, there won't ever be one again at this point. That's how business works, though, and we can only trust that Best Buy and other retailers will try to learn some important lessons from this situation. Here's hoping that in the long term, they'll amount to something both profitable and sustainable.

Worst Box Art Ever?

2009-01-04T18:33:00.009-06:00

I find so many interesting things just browsing through new DVD releases each week. Today I found what may very well be the worst box art for a movie that I've ever seen. Take a look (click on the image to make it bigger)...

I'd never even heard of My Best Friend's Girl before I saw this box art, so I can't say anything about the quality of the movie itself, but I'll be damned if that's not one ugly-looking picture. When will the studios learn that you can't just photoshop the actors' heads onto their bodies and call it a day?

This seriously looks like something a 10-year old would do as a practical joke on his friends. And not just any practical joke, but a practical joke that isn't even very funny. "Hey guys look, I just pasted your heads onto people doing silly things, LOLZ!" See? Not funny. Not funny at all.

...Okay, so maybe it's a little funny.

New Year's Update

2009-01-03T09:25:00.004-06:00

I just got back last night from a week-long trip to Florida with my family, which was a lot of fun. Spending New Year's in Disney World was a really neat experience, and I'd love to do it again someday when I have kids of my own.

So although I don't have much in the way of movie-related material to post at the moment, I just wanted to pop in and let everyone know that I'm still alive and that I haven't forgotten about this blog. In fact, I was able to watch a ton of movies before I left on vacation, and I plan to post reviews of all of them soon.

My posts will probably become less sparse when I return to school next week, since I'll be separated from the 46" HDTV and Blu-ray player that my parents have at home. It's getting harder and harder to imagine going back to the small SDTV I have in my apartment, so I may have to get an HDTV for myself before too long. I already have about a dozen Blu-ray discs, so a BD player should follow not too long after that.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a great holiday season and is looking forward to 2009 as much as I am. Come back soon!

Delgo Has the Worst Opening in Box Office History

2008-12-15T23:43:00.000-06:00

Remember a few posts ago when I said that I couldn't imagine anyone looking forward to Delgo? Well, apparently I was right, because according to Yahoo News it just had the worst opening ever for a movie in wide release. The article says:

"Delgo" earned a measly $511,920 this weekend on 2,160 screens, not even breaking the top ten. That's an average of $237 per screen for the three days. If you figure there were five screenings a day, and assume ticket prices are about $8, that comes out to two people in the theater per showing.

That's pretty rough. But here's the line from the article that really gets me:

By comparison, the Golden Globe-nominated drama "Doubt" earned roughly the same amount of money, but it was only in 15 theaters.

Ouch. I almost feel bad considering the story behind the making of Delgo (see the link), but then I remember how painful the trailer was and I have to wonder how anyone ever thought this movie was a good idea.

Good Trailer

2008-12-14T22:18:00.001-06:00

No, I don't mean "Good Trailer" as in this trailer looks good (although it does). The movie is actually called "Good," and it stars Viggo Mortensen as a college professor in Nazi Germany.

I'm always a little skeptical of movies where the characters speak English in places that very obviously don't speak English in real life, but I think this one could turn out all right. It opens in limited release on December 31.

The Academy Changed Its Mind

2008-12-12T02:34:00.007-06:00

About a month ago, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences disqualified The Dark Knight's score from eligibility for its Best Original Score award. However, it seems they have now decided to reverse that decision. Here's what Yahoo News has to say:

The executive committee of the academy's music branch initially ruled November 10 that there were too many composers involved in the score; the Academy generally considers only scores that are the work of one or at most two composers.

But after reviewing the submission, it concluded that Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard were the main composers and deemed the duo's work for Warner Bros.' Batman blockbuster as eligible.

Gee, do you think? As I said in a previous post on this topic, Zimmer and Howard had already been acknowledged by their collaborators as the score's primary composers well before any of this controversy ever took place.

I'd like to say this move has restored my faith in the Academy, but it's going to take a lot more than their correcting of one mistake for that to happen. Besides, my guess is that Warner Bros. basically strongarmed the Academy into this decision, so it's hard to give the Academy all the credit.

That said, though, this does make me hopeful that the Academy could finally be turning things around this year. There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to have movie awards that actually mean something again, and this is a step in the right direction.

The 5 Worst-Looking Movies of the End of 2008

2008-12-01T16:44:00.004-06:00

First of all, my sincere apologies for the lack of updates over the last week. I had meant to get this post up last weekend, but schoolwork and then Thanksgiving plans interfered and I had to put it off. But here it is now, just in time (I hope!) for you to check out these trailers and save yourself from spending any money on the worst-looking movies coming out before 2009. I’ve ranked them from best to worst, but rest assured – none of them look good at all, so it doesn’t really matter all that much.

5. The Tale of Despereaux

The first of two computer-animated movies to make this list, the only reason The Tale of Despereaux is rated better is because its animation looks significantly prettier. But unfortunately for Despereaux, looks aren’t everything, and this movie just seems like a boring Dumbo rip-off. Others may find something to like here, but I certainly won’t be going out of my way to see it.

4. Punisher: War Zone

Punisher: War Zone has had a long and troubled history, which actually makes me a bit sorry to say that I think it will end up being terrible. Thomas Jane, the star of the 2004 Punisher movie (which had its flaws, but was still enjoyable), was incredibly excited to make this sequel. He was probably more dedicated to the movie than anyone, and he spent hours working out each day for months to make his portrayal of the character even better this time around. But when he found out what direction the filmmakers intended to go with the project, he dropped out, and very publicly at that.

Since then everything related to War Zone has only contributed to its downward spiral, from its casting of Ray Stevenson as the main character to the the abysmal trailer above (complete with spinning-in-circles-upside-down machine gun firing). I’ll honestly be sad to see what could have been a great franchise crash and burn this holiday season.

3. Four Christmases

The problem with a lot of comedies is that they give away their best jokes in the trailer. However, the problem with Four Christmases is slightly different. The jokes in the trailer are not the least bit funny, and the fact that it’s reduced to showing us a puking baby in a last-ditch effort to make us laugh is really pretty pathetic. Vince Vaughn has proven he can do better, so there’s no reason why he should still be making movies like this.

2. Delgo

I watched this trailer three times in an effort to determine what Delgo is about, and I still have no idea. I might have given it a fourth shot too, if not for the fear that seeing it one more time would induce me to jump off a tall building. Delgo honestly looks so bad that I can’t imagine anyone at all is looking forward to seeing it. I say that not only because the plot is absolutely incoherent – it’s also just an ugly film to look at. And if the trailer itself isn’t bad enough, just take a look at voice “talent” listed at the end. Seriously, Burt Reynolds and Kelly Ripa? Boy, I can’t wait.

1. Will Eisner’s The Spirit

If you’ve seen the trailer, I don’t think the sheer awfulness of The Spirit requires any explanation on my part. But my main problem with this movie isn’t just that it looks bad, it’s that they tacked Will Eisner’s name onto the front of it (they didn't do it in this trailer, but it's in virtually every other trailer or advertisement for the movie).

Will Eisner was the main pioneer of serialized comic stories in the 1940s and 1950s, and in many ways Eisner is to comic books as Walt Disney is to animated movies. However, the Spirit character in this movie has nothing to do with the classic character created by Eisner (save for his appearance). Instead, director Frank Miller has opted to make a pseudo-sequel to Sin City starring a guy with a mask and a red tie. Please, whatever you do, say no to stupidity and avoid this movie at all costs.

And with that, we've reached the end of what I think are the five worst-looking movies coming out in the last month or so of 2008. If by some freak occurrence any of them turn out to not be utter trash, I’ll be more than happy to acknowledge that when I’ve seen them for myself. From what I’ve seen, though, I really doubt that is going to happen.

So what do you think? Do these movies look bad, or am I being overly critical? And, more to the overall point of this post – are there any movies coming out this year that you think look worse?

Clint Eastwood Retires From Acting

2008-11-23T14:17:00.006-06:00

My fears have now been confirmed by Britain's Sunday Express: Gran Torino will be the last time we see Clint Eastwood on the big screen. Here's what the article has to say.

Clint, 78, says he has no plans to appear in films again after starring in Gran Torino, a drama about a racist veteran of the Korean War.

"That will probably do it for me as far as acting is concerned," said Clint, whose iconic roles include Dirty Harry, the cop with .44 Magnum revolver, the most powerful handgun in the world.

"You always want to quit while you are ahead. You don’t want to be like a fighter who stays too long in the ring until you’re not performing at your best."

This isn't entirely surprising, but it's still somewhat saddening. At least Eastwood will continue to direct, though, so it's not as if we're losing his cinematic voice completely. If anything, this just makes me that much more excited to see his performance in Gran Torino.

The 5 Best-Looking Movies of the End of 2008

2008-11-21T23:45:00.009-06:00

The year itself may be winding down, but there are still a handful of good-looking movies coming out before January 1, 2009. Here are my picks for the best-looking films that haven’t come out yet – so, in other words, they all still have the potential to turn out really well or really poorly. I’ve included the theatrical trailers for all of them so you can see for yourself whether they look interesting. Enjoy!

5. Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road reunites Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet for the first time since the highly overrated Titanic, but unlike that movie I think RR stands a chance at being a really good drama. Both Winslet and DiCaprio have grown significantly as actors since their last outing together, and having a story with real character drama rather than straight-up sappiness will hopefully help this movie to stand out.

4. Milk

Movies about people struggling for their rights are almost a dime a dozen these days, but Milk seems like it will rise above the crowd. By focusing on a different community than the ones we usually see in these types of movies, as well as by having an excellent cast, I think Milk is bound to make waves, win some awards, and hopefully, find itself a decent audience.

3. Defiance

Defiance was almost pushed back to 2009, but at the last minute the studio decided to put it on track for a December 31 release. I’m glad they did, because this movie looks great. Daniel Craig’s accent is perfect, and I don’t think I’ll have any problem buying into his character – unlike the protagonists in other WWII-themed movies coming out this year (read: Valkyrie). The film’s subject matter may be serious, but there is one thing I find rather funny about it: Craig has about as much dialogue in the trailer as he does in the entirety of Quantum of Solace.

2. The Wrestler

This movie has come seemingly out of nowhere and impressed a whole lot of people, myself included. A few days ago, who would have thought that Mickey Rourke, of all people, would be on the verge of staging a major career comeback? Whether or not you’re a fan of professional wrestling (I, for one, am not), this movie looks like it could be something truly great.

1. Gran Torino

I’ve posted this trailer before, but it’s so good that I think it bears watching again. It’s hard for me to pin down exactly what has me so fired up about this movie, but I think it has mostly to do with Clint Eastwood’s character, who is gruff and temperamental but somehow still seems endearing. There’s also something to be said for the fact that I haven’t seen Eastwood in a movie I’ve enjoyed in a really long time, and I’d like to see him in at least one more good role before he retires from filmmaking.

Well, those are my top five, but there are still other movies that look worthwhile as well. Honorable mentions for the list include Doubt, Last Chance Harvey, and Seven Pounds (click the titles to watch their respective trailers). So what movies are you looking forward to seeing before the year ends? Are they the movies in this list, or are there other ones you think will be worth your time and money?

Leave a comment below, and don’t forget to come back later this weekend, when I’ll have my picks for the worst-looking movies for the rest of this year!

Hold On There, Disney

2008-11-18T22:41:00.017-06:00

I was just browsing a list of upcoming DVD releases to see what would be coming out soon, and stumbled across this - a box set collecting the "Little Mermaid trilogy." Puzzled, since I only remembered there ever being one Little Mermaid movie, my confusion turned to extreme annoyance when I read the following:

Includes:
The Little Mermaid (1989)
Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (2000), MPAA Rating: G
The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning (2008), MPAA Rating: G

Now for years, I've sat by and said relatively little as Disney has defiled some of its most beloved movies time and time again by releasing these cheap direct-to-video cash-ins. But never before has it bothered me quite like this. At least before, I could always sort of pretend that these awful sequels never happened. I was content with the fact that most people would realize that the sequels were garbage and they would leave them well enough alone.

But this is a different story. I can understand the desire to make quick, easy money when the opportunity presents itself, and to tell you the truth, if a film company wants to run its franchise into the ground with one poorly made sequel after another, I really couldn't care less. The only time there's ever a problem is when a sequel somehow diminishes what made the original a great movie in the first place. So in that sense, to package two cash-in sequels with the original and imply they're on the same level of cinematic quality by calling it a trilogy? Come on, Disney, that's low, even for you.

New Star Trek Trailer

2008-11-17T20:35:00.006-06:00

Sorry for having so little in the way of updates over the last week, but I've been really, really busy. Posts may continue to be a little sporadic over the next week or so, but I'm hoping to get back to at least one a day as soon as possible. Hopefully Movie of the Week will be back next week as well.

Anyway, the biggest movie news today is that the trailer for the new Star Trek movie has been released online. You can watch it below:

I saw this trailer before Quantum of Solace last week, and to be honest, I wasn't all that impressed by it. It just looks to me like a bunch of stuff blowing up in outer space, which reminds me of Star Wars Episode III and what a disappointment that movie was. The whole "Kirk driving a hot rod" part was kind of lame too. I'll certainly give the trailer this, though: the special effects look very well done.

As I've said before, I have never been a big Star Trek fan. But still, that doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to look forward to this movie along with all the other non-Trekkies of the world. A franchise reboot should be all about bringing in new viewers, not just catering to the already-converted.

So what do all of you think? Does this trailer get you excited for the movie, or are you as indifferent as I am?

Quantum of Solace Review

2008-11-14T23:50:00.004-06:00

If Casino Royale was two steps forward for the James Bond franchise, Quantum of Solace is one step back. While it tries desperately to reach the same level of quality that its predecessor did two years ago, it falls short in a number of respects.

But first, the good. Quantum of Solace may have problems, but Daniel Craig is certainly not one of them. He proves once again that he is perfect in the role of 007, even if screenwriters Paul Haggis and Neal Purvis don’t give him nearly enough to say. (In fact, I’m quite confident that he has the least lines of any of the main characters in the film.) Even in silence, Craig’s ferocity hints at an emotional turmoil more painful than Bond can admit, even to himself. Try as he might, he simply can’t escape the events of Casino Royale and how deeply they have affected him. The only way he can express himself is through violence, whether it comes coldly and decisively or in the form of unthinking, bone-breaking brutality.

The entire cast does a good job, actually, especially Judi Dench as M, in what is surely her most prominent role in a Bond film to date. Ukrainian model/actress Olga Kurylenko is surprisingly convincing as Camille, Bond’s main ally in Quantum of Solace. I call her an “ally” rather than a “Bond girl” because, unlike virtually every woman in every other James Bond movie, she is not an object of desire for Bond. In fact, through the lens of vengeance, Bond comes to see her as something of an equal. Her quest for revenge (against the man who murdered her family) mirrors Bond’s, and makes her character all the more effective as a physical manifestation of Bond’s unspoken rage.

However, such simple, primal emotions tend to make a story’s inconsistencies that much more noticeable, and this is undoubtedly the case with Quantum of Solace. A scene in which Bond seduces a fellow MI6 agent comes off as especially disruptive to the movie’s serious tone, as well as the general arc of Bond’s brooding pathos throughout the film. The point, I think, is to show Bond’s willingness to use his charm not merely to gain personal pleasure (as he would have in the Sean Connery and Roger Moore eras), but as a means to a greater end. This idea is hinted at in an exchange between Bond and M, but ultimately it goes nowhere. Unfortunately, the entire subplot culminates in a heavy-handed (even downright stupid) “homage” to the classic Bond movie Goldfinger, eliminating any inclination I might have had to take the scene in question seriously.

Plot hiccups like this one are almost irrelevant in the face of Quantum of Solace’s larger issues, though. Whereas Casino Royale was a truly engaging experience, the cinematic seams are visible in Quantum of Solace – the movie reminds us, again and again, that what we are seeing is indeed only a movie. One of the main problems is that director Marc Forster clearly does not get action. Every single action scene – whether it’s a rooftop chase, a car chase, a boat chase, or an airplane chase (are you noticing a pattern?) – is composed of enough quick cuts and changes in camera angle to almost completely eliminate any sense of continuity between shots.

Part of the blame can be laid at the feet of second unit director Dan Bradley, who worked on the second and third Bourne films, and who brings a similar style to the action sequences in Quantum of Solace. However, most of the responsibility lies with Forster, who doesn’t seem to have the sense to just let the movie’s action be. Twice in Quantum of Solace he intercuts heavy action sequences with completely unrelated (and uninteresting) events: a horse race and an opera. The effect is disorienting and uncomfortable, and only serves to confuse the audience in the end. Even the movie’s more traditional action sequences suffer from poor editing and a general lack of fluidity. Halfway through the movie’s big boat chase, I literally had no idea who was chasing who or in what direction anyone was going.

Above all, the movie’s biggest problem is that in many ways it represents a return to convention for the series. While Casino Royale broke new ground in terms of changing our perceptions of what a Bond movie could be, Quantum of Solace settles for far less and seems content to do so. I’ve already mentioned the movie’s absurd reference to Goldfinger, as well as Bond’s ill-fitting (albeit brief) return to his pre-Casino womanizing ways. But more generally, Quantum of Solace promotes action over plot and style over substance in a way that reminds me all too much of the direction the franchise was headed before Casino Royale came along.

Overall, Quantum of Solace works best as a companion piece to Casino Royale – but, to be honest, Casino Royale works much better as a standalone film. It doesn’t need Quantum, and neither do we. But as it is with so many things that we don’t necessarily need, it’s hard to say no to James Bond – especially this James Bond. Daniel Craig’s performance alone will justify the price of admission for most, and viewers can for the most part expect a fun, if not entirely comprehensible, experience. My only hope is that next time around, we’ll be in for a much smoother ride.

Rating: *** (out of ****)

Dark Knight Score Disqualified From the Academy Awards

2008-11-13T11:28:00.014-06:00

According to Variety, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has disqualified the score of The Dark Knight from consideration in the Academy Awards. Here's why:

Sources inside the committee said that the big issue was the fact that five names were listed as composers on the music cue sheet, the official studio document that specifies every piece of music (along with its duration and copyright owner) in the film.

This is absolutely infuriating. It was bad enough when they disqualified the score of There Will Be Blood last year for using eight minutes of preexisting material (thirty-five minutes were original). But this isn't even a matter of whether or not the music is original – The Dark Knight's score is being disqualified because the Academy thinks too many people are credited for it.

Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, who collaborated on the score, gave credit to the three other people as "a way of financially rewarding parts of the music team who helped make the overall work successful" (as Zimmer stated in a recent interview). These people were the music editor, ambient music designer and ambient music composer. All three of them signed an affidavit saying that Howard and Zimmer were the primary composers.

I don't see what the Academy's problem is here. Thinking back to The Dark Knight, it's almost impossible to imagine how completely different the movie would have been without the work of those three individuals. There is no way to argue that their contributions weren't integral to the effectiveness of the score, and the fact that the Academy refuses to acknowledge credit where credit is due is absurd.

The Academy has been hanging from my high opinion by a loose thread for the last few years, and this certainly doesn't help its case. It's about time for the Academy to get off its high horse and start addressing some of the ridiculous hypocrisies and double standards that have been bringing it down for so long.

Jaden Smith is the Kung Fu Kid

2008-11-12T12:36:00.008-06:00

Now here’s a remake that actually doesn’t sound like a complete disaster. About a year ago, a rumor went around that Will Smith would be directing a remake of The Karate Kid, except that he would be retooling it as The Kung Fu Kid. One year later, the movie seems to have its star – Smith’s son Jaden. ComingSoon has this to say:

Columbia Pictures has refashioned its new version of the 1984 hit The Karate Kid as a star vehicle for Jaden Smith, reports Variety. The film will be produced by Jerry Weintraub (who launched the original franchise) and Overbrook Entertainment's James Lassiter, Jaden's father Will Smith and Ken Stovitz.

The announcement doesn’t say whether Will Smith is still attached to direct, but I think we can assume that to be the case. If The Pursuit of Happyness is any indication, he and Jaden seem to have a real synergy when it comes to working together, so I’m interested to see how this turns out.

I think the fact that they’re not essentially trying to “redo” the original Karate Kid movie is a good thing, and will ultimately work in its favor. Casting a younger actor as the star and changing up the martial arts style actually seem to make this a spiritual sequel more than anything else.

So now, the only real question is: who will play Mr. Miyagi?

Marvel News > DC News

2008-11-10T22:56:00.006-06:00

The big comic book movie news today is that Joe Johnston will be directing the Captain America movie, which comes out in 2011. Johnston’s career has been relatively hit (The Rocketeer, October Sky) or miss (Jurassic Park III, Hidalgo), but I’m fairly happy with this news.

To be honest, I was worried Marvel would pick someone absolutely terrible to helm this movie, and the fact that they picked someone with a 50/50 track record gives me at least some hope. Besides, what’s really going to make or break this movie is who they pick to play Captain America. Personally, I’m hoping for Matt Damon. No, seriously.

So DC must have had some pretty good news today to counter this announcement, right? Sure, if you consider the fact that Beyoncé wants to play Wonder Woman to be “good.” But wait, that’s not all! IESB is also reporting that McG is interested in directing said Wonder Woman project.

You know, it never ceases to amaze me how poorly Warner Bros. has managed to handle all of DC’s comic book franchises, other than the last two Batman movies. Marvel has the right idea: introduce several major characters in their own movies, and then bring them together in one big movie (Avengers). For years, DC’s plan has been to start with a team movie, Justice League, and then spin each character off into his or her own franchise from there. That plan has obviously gone nowhere, and the Justice League movie itself was actually cancelled just a few months ago.

It’s a shame, really. DC’s characters could be just as viable as Marvel’s if WB put some effort behind it, the way they did with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. But really – Beyoncé and McG? There is no way that’s the best they can do.

Movie of the Week - Casino Royale

2008-11-08T23:52:00.002-06:00

With a new James Bond movie opening in the US this week, could there really be a better time to take a look back at what made its spiritual predecessor so great? It’s been two years now since Casino Royale injected new life into the Bond franchise – both in terms of casting, with Daniel Craig stepping into the role, and in terms of overall cinematic quality. It’s almost hard now to remember all of the anxiety that surrounded the film before its release. Many fans were convinced that Craig would be the worst Bond ever and, consequently, that Casino Royale would mark a new low for the series. Today, it’s quite obvious how that dilemma played out: the pessimists were wrong.

My own interest in the James Bond character dates back to elementary school. By the sixth grade I had seen every Bond film made up to that point (there were nearly twenty), and I could have easily recited the entire list in chronological order. My personal favorites have changed a number of times over the years, but as I became able to recognize the objective quality (or lack thereof) of each film, my top picks have become basically stabilized. I was more hopeful than most in the days and weeks before Casino Royale came out, but I did not expect it to crack the top five, much less the top two. As of today, I consider the title of “Best Bond Film” a toss-up between Casino Royale and From Russia with Love (the second movie, which came out in 1963).

In the summer before Casino Royale’s release, I decided to read the 1953 novel by Ian Fleming – the first one in the series, and James Bond’s first appearance to the world. I was happy to find that the Bond in Casino Royale was the version I enjoyed most in the films. Bond was distant, cruel, uncompromising, and violent, just as a secret agent with a “license to kill” should be. His sense of humor was pitch-black, but at the same time he was sympathetic and human.

Not having seen Daniel Craig’s performance as Bond at that point, I tried to hit upon which Bond actor I would use to visualize the character in the novel. After a few pages, though, I could tell that something wasn’t working – Fleming’s Bond was not quite like any of the Bond actors. He wasn’t bumbling, flippant or snarky like Roger Moore, nor was he the emotional wreck George Lazenby had made Bond out to be. In the end, I settled on alternating my visualization of Bond between Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights and Pierce Brosnan in Goldeneye. But even then, the match wasn’t quite perfect.

Anyhow, I loved the novel. When I finally saw Casino Royale at the movie theater, it not only met the high expectations I had formed after reading the book – it exceeded them. It kept everything that was great about the novel intact (particularly its portrayal of the character) and expanded the story’s scope, modernizing it. Daniel Craig brought an intensity to the role that elevated him above every actor who had come before him. Yes, even Sean Connery. Craig wasn’t an actor playing James Bond. He was James Bond.

Casino Royale also succeeds in that it tells a story that, unlike many other Bond movies, actually makes sense. And I don’t mean that simply on the level of “the story is understandable,” although there are certainly several Bond movies where that isn’t entirely the case. What I mean is that it makes sense emotionally, which is a first for the franchise. The James Bond of Casino Royale is not just a tough-guy ladies’ man who puts a few bullets in the bad guy and calls it a day. If anything, Bond is too emotionally invested, and it comes back to hurt him in the end.

I could belabor the issue further, but I think I’ve made my point. Casino Royale stands as one of the best James Bond movies because it is essentially different from the twenty that preceded it. That isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with the old movies, of course, because they can be a lot of fun. But in the end, Casino Royale is the only one that can resonate with us emotionally because it is the only one in which Bond is truly human. His struggles, for once, are not self-obsessed, chauvinistic, or incomprehensible – instead, they are ours.

Remembering Bernie Mac

2008-11-07T22:24:00.008-06:00

Yahoo has posted a video interview with several of the people who worked with Benie Mac on his new movie Soul Men, which opened today. Some of the interviewees include Samuel L. Jackon (Mac's costar in the movie) as well as the film's director, Malcolm D. Lee. It's definitely worth a watch and made made me much more interested in seeing the movie as well. You can check it out below.

James Bond vs. Vampires

2008-11-07T17:08:00.018-06:00

USA Today is reporting that the teen vampire movie Twilight is absolutely dominating the competition in terms of online ticket sales, including the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. Here's what the article has to say:

According to online movie ticket seller Fandango, Twilight is accounting for nearly two-thirds of ticket sales, and more than 100 shows have sold out for the movie's Nov. 21 premiere. Solace, meanwhile, is accounting for only 6%, even though the movie comes out in eight days.
That doesn't mean Solace won't still win the box office battle when all is said and done, but those are the kinds of numbers that can leave even steel-nerved spies a little shaken and stirred.

My guess (and my sincere hope) is that Quantum of Solace will destroy Twilight at the box office regardless. Twilight looks awful, and there's no way it will attract many viewers from outside of its already-established fanbase, the way the Harry Potter movies have. Most people hadn't even heard of Twilight two months ago, and I imagine bad reviews will kill the interest of everyone other than the most rabid fans of the series. So you can rest easy, Mr. Bond – you have nothing to fear.

The Three Stooges Are Getting a Remake

2008-11-06T11:22:00.024-06:00

I've done my best so far on this blog to make sure that my opinion on remakes is clear: in general, I don't like them. They turn out well sometimes, but for the most part, remakes these days are cheap cash-ins on the original. The people who make these movies never seem to realize that a good remake is almost always the result of some combination of luck, talent, and most importantly, reverence for the source material.

This brings me to the news which led me to bring all of this up in the first place: according to ComingSoon.net, the Farrelly Brothers are remaking The Three Stooges. The movie has been fast-tracked for release in 2009, and will be an origin story for Larry, Curly, and Moe, set in the modern day.

Now, there are certain things that I've always considered "untouchable" when it comes to being remade. Star Wars, The Godfather, and Casablanca come to mind as some of the first and foremost examples, but another one for me has always been The Three Stooges. For all of the examples that I mentioned, though, there is just something about the specific way in which these stories were originally told that, in my mind, has always made them unique and unreplicable. The form, the style, and the historical moment they were made in are absolutely integral to our understanding of their stories and subject matter.

But to discuss The Three Stooges more specifically, I think it would be a real disservice to the memories of the original actors and filmmakers to bring the Stooges back. What's worse is that most young and even middle-aged people who watch movies these days have never seen The Three Stooges, and this new movie will be their first (and possibly only) exposure to them.

Furthermore, The Three Stooges was never based in some sort of continuity, nor should it be. We need an "origin" story for the Stooges as much as we need a movie about Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck meeting for the first time. There's just no point, especially when you consider the fact that Larry, Curly, and Moe were never real characters – they were caricatures. They were larger-than-life goofballs who poked, slapped, and kicked one another to slapstick effect, often while parodying real-life events. Many of their WWII-era short films, for example, were brilliant parodies of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Turning Larry, Curly, and Moe into "real" people by having them meet one another for the first time changes what they are about and takes away everything that made them fun in the first place.

So now I'll open it up to you. Is this news as appalling to you as it is to me, or am I just overreacting? (And if you're interested in watching The Three Stooges but have never seen them before, I would recommend the 1940 short "You Nazty Spy" as a good starting point. You can watch it here.)

Michael Crichton Dies

2008-11-05T19:29:00.007-06:00

CNN is reporting that best-selling author Michael Crichton has died at the age of 66. Crichton was best known as the author of Jurassic Park and the creator of ER, although he also directed a number of films. Several of his other novels, including The Andromeda Strain, Congo, and Sphere were made into movies at one point or another as well. The cause was cancer.

The only book of Crichton's I ever read was Jurassic Park (it was better than the movie, although I like both), but I have seen a fair number of films based on his works. I would attempt to explain what appealed to me about his stories, but I think Steven Spielberg does him better justice than I could in this quote from CNN:

"Michael's talent out-scaled even his own dinosaurs of 'Jurassic Park,' " said Spielberg, a friend of Crichton's for 40 years, according to The Associated Press.
"He was the greatest at blending science with big theatrical concepts, which is what gave credibility to dinosaurs again walking the Earth. ... Michael was a gentle soul who reserved his flamboyant side for his novels. There is no one in the wings that will ever take his place."

He will be missed. Rest in peace, Michael.

Obama Wins

2008-11-04T22:05:00.003-06:00

Congratulations to President Elect Barack Obama! Thanks to Cinematical for both of today's pictures.

Election Day

2008-11-04T01:22:00.005-06:00

Go on, vote already! The Internet will still be here when you get back.

Why Terrence Howard Was Dumped From Iron Man 2

2008-11-03T18:51:00.004-06:00

Entertainment Weekly has finally spilled the beans on why Terrence Howard lost the role of Jim Rhodes to Don Cheadle for the Iron Man sequel. One of the main reasons is that Howard was the highest-paid actor in the movie. Yes, that’s right – he was paid more than Robert Downey Jr., even though his part was much smaller. Marvel was apparently not sure how bankable Downey would be when they initially signed him, and they were counting on Howard’s star power more than anyone else’s.

On top of that, it seems that Iron Man director Jon Favreau felt working with Howard was a bad experience. The Entertainment Weekly article says that Howard was difficult on the set and Favreau was unhappy with his performance overall – so much so that he spent a good deal of time cutting and reshooting Howard’s scenes.

I didn’t think Terrence Howard did a bad job in the first Iron Man movie, but if the director felt that way and thinks he would be able to make a better sequel without Howard, then the casting change was probably for the best. I would have to agree, in addition to that, that Howard being the highest-paid actor in Iron Man is ridiculous. The supporting cast certainly added to the film’s success, but I think everyone can agree that Downey is the one who truly carried the movie.

So unless new information comes out refuting what Entertainment Weekly said, you’ve heard me complain about Howard losing the role for the last time. It sounds like the sequel will be all the better for it, and having Don Cheadle in the role instead certainly can’t be a bad thing.

The Oscars Are Up For Grabs

2008-11-01T23:19:00.021-05:00

I’ve tried to think of a nicer way of saying this, but there really isn’t one: 2008 hasn’t been the best year for movies. The end of the year is traditionally the time when the movies that get nominated for Oscars are released, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that the movies of late 2008 are not living up to expectations. Films like Body of Lies, Changeling, The Duchess, and Synecdoche, New York in particular were billed as major Oscar contenders, but they all opened to mixed reviews.

To be honest, I can’t say that upcoming movies like Milk, Australia, or Frost/Nixon look like they’re going to curb the trend either. And it is a trend – there’s an almost indescribable blandness that seems to permeate the marketing campaigns for all of these films. They all seem to be mining the same “surefire Oscar” well, and the effect is that they all run together and become lost in the crowd.

On top of that, some of the movies that were assumed to be the biggest Oscar contenders this year, including The Soloist and The Road, were pushed back to 2009. What we’re left with for the remainder of the year are a very small handful of potentially great films. But if these movies continue to fall short of our expectations, we’ll be left without any end-of-the-year movies that are truly Oscar-worthy.

So what does this mean? It means that, for better or for worse, we could be looking at a potential Dark Knight Oscar sweep – best picture, director, the whole works. After all, the last time a movie made as much money as The Dark Knight did (Titanic in 1997) it swept the Oscars quite handily. But while there’s no question that The Dark Knight was a great movie, I can’t help but feel that there’s something a little off about the whole situation. Had TDK come out last year, it would have had no business winning more than one or two awards aside from the “craft” awards – editing, sound, sound editing, and visual effects. You could have made a case for the movie being nominated for best picture (over the highly overrated Atonement), perhaps best cinematography, and maybe a handful of other awards, but it wouldn’t have deserved to win any of them.

My point here is that one of the most satisfying things about seeing a movie you love win an award is the sense of competition that justifies having awards in the first place. Without any real competitors, though, I think I would find a TDK best picture win to be pretty hollow.

On the other hand, if the Academy isn’t enthusiastic about handing The Dark Knight every award it’s eligible for, the current cinematic vacuum could give way to a free-for-all the likes of which haven’t been seen in four or five years. I think this is a more likely scenario than the TDK sweep – the Academy has shown over the last few years that, much like the Golden Globes, they’ve become overly fond of distributing the awards to as many films as possible. It’s also the best scenario, because while TDK was a good movie, it wasn’t so good that it put every other movie this year to shame.

If the Oscars go this route, the winners will be next to impossible to predict. The Academy will put all its focus into the nominations, making sure all of the movies that were hyped up before they came out get their recognition, deserved or not. Brad Pitt will get an acting nomination for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Nicole Kidman will get a best actress nomination for Australia. Charlie Kaufman will get a screenplay nomination for Synecdoche, New York. You don’t even have to have seen any of the movies in question to know who will get nominated. When there aren’t a plethora of truly outstanding movies to choose from, the Academy will “spread the wealth” to the same people it’s recognized countless times before.

Even the studios have recognized the cinematic void of 2008’s fourth quarter, and they’re doing all they can to push for Oscars in places that wouldn’t get a second glance in any other year. Paramount is currently promoting Robert Downey Jr. as best supporting actor for his role in Tropic Thunder. Marvel Enterprises is considering an Oscar push for Iron Man, which could lead to a best actor nomination for Downey as well. The extent to which the Oscars are beginning to mirror the MTV Awards is frightening. The only studio effort that I can really get behind is Disney’s push for WALL-E to get a nomination for best picture. As the best-reviewed movie of 2007, Ratatouille was absolutely robbed of a nomination last year and it’s high time for the Academy to recognize animated films as being worthy of more than just their own award subcategory.

Unfortunately, the real casualties in this whole situation are the good movies. The Dark Knight, as I mentioned before, could be robbed of a real victory by the fact that it has so little competition. Clint Eastwood will almost surely win an Oscar for his acting in Gran Torino, which looks fantastic, but the Academy won’t choose him for the reasons they should. They’ll do it because Eastwood has yet to receive an Oscar for his acting and the Academy has been trying to give him one for years. Is an award even still meaningful when it’s given away like that? Since it’s never entirely possible to explain exactly why people in a group vote one way or another, I guess it’s up for debate.

I’ve taken the long road in getting to this point, but here it is: the Oscars are completely up for grabs at this point. You might as well start making your predictions now, because I doubt it will get any easier in the next few months.

Movie of the Week - Halloween

2008-10-31T18:05:00.005-05:00

Thirty years after its original release, John Carpenter’s Halloween still stands, in my opinion, as the pinnacle of cinematic horror. From slow-building, heart-pounding tension to sheer, open-mouthed terror, the movie plays on the emotions central to the genre in a way that shapes every aspect of horror into razor-sharp perfection.

Most people are familiar with the plot, in which the psychotic Michael Myers escapes from a mental institution and embarks on a killing spree in small-town America. His victims: a group of helpless, unlucky teenagers, led by Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, in her first major role). Meanwhile, Myers’ psychiatrist Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) works desperately throughout the night to find Myers and put an end to his rampage. Loomis acts as an earnest but ultimately flawed compass when it comes to our understanding of Myers, who acts as a force that Loomis refers to as “purely and simply…evil.”

All of the devices that would become known as the conventions of modern horror are here. The teenagers are killed off, one by one, with the most promiscuous being the first to go; first-person camera shots from Myers’ point of view heighten the sense of the teens’ vulnerability; and a character is killed after speaking that most infamous of horror movie lines: “I’ll be back.” But somehow, these elements don’t seem the least bit cliché. Perhaps it’s because of the relative purity of these tropes in the late 1970s – Halloween was the first film to ever use them in the way that it did.

Unfortunately, the slasher movies that began to rise from the wake of Halloween’s success in the 1980s mistook these aspects of the movie for substance rather than style. Even Halloween’s sequels (there have been seven so far, as well as a remake – none of which were directed by John Carpenter) have fallen trap to this error, replacing the suspense and terror of the original movie with increasing amounts of violence and gore. The first film is not overly violent in comparison, though, relying instead on the viewer’s ability to sympathize with the teens’ desperation. Halloween may have created a formula for later horror movies to follow, but it did so unwittingly and in a way that has yet to be replicated to better effect.

Most importantly, and in stark contrast to nearly every horror movie that has been released since, Halloween reaches back to a time before popular culture ruled our lives – to a time when folklore and urban legend constituted the heart of the small community. The movie’s structure and plot even parallel the themes of a number of oft-repeated urban myths, making the experience at once familiar and frightening. Halloween reminds us of a time, perhaps even a real time that we experienced when we were younger, when good and evil were palpable entities and when terror seemed to lurk around every unknown corner.

Unlike most modern horror movies, there is no guilt to be found in being frightened by Halloween. It earns its scares by reincorporating folk culture into something new and terrifying, by becoming something more than the sum of its parts – and due to its familiarity with and mastery over our own subconscious, we have little choice but to follow it into the darkness of our own fears. For fans of the genre there are few films that can compete with Halloween’s particular brand of horror, and even less that can lay similar claim to being one of the best horror movies ever made.

Happy Halloween!

Revenge of the Remakes

2008-10-30T17:04:00.011-05:00

Sometimes it seems like every other movie that comes out these days is a remake. That’s not a trend that’s about to die out anytime soon, unfortunately, as there’s been an incredible amount of news concerning remakes over the last few days – none of it very good. So in honor of that, I’ve assembled the five most appalling pieces of recent remake news and ranked them from bad to absolute worst. Prepare to cringe.

5. George Clooney may be making an appearance in the upcoming remake of The Birds. Now, it’s not the George Clooney part that I think makes this bad news. In fact, I’ll see pretty much anything with his name on it – probably even this movie, unfortunately. But does the world really need a remake of The Birds? People have tried remaking the movies of Alfred Hitchcock before, and it never goes well for them (case in point: Psycho). And here’s the worst part – what if this movie ends up being successful? Will we get a Vertigo remake then? A new version of North by Northwest, perhaps? The very thought makes me shudder.

4. Sam Raimi is developing an ongoing TV show for Starz based on Spartacus. This may not actually be a movie, but I think since it’s based on one it should still be eligible for this list. I just can’t see this being a good idea. Remember when they turned Spartacus into a miniseries a few years ago? More importantly, remember how bad it was? I think this is just one of those cases where the original is such a classic that it will never be outdone, no matter how hard people try. I suppose this series could turn out all right, considering Starz generally has pretty good programming, but for now I’m not sold. I have a lot of respect for Sam Raimi as a filmmaker, but I think he should stick to what he does best – superheroes and campy horror movies.

3. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is getting a remake. According to MTV the new movie will “stay true” to the original, but I think that’s really missing the point. When it comes to movies that have a strong cult following, especially movies as funny as this one, it’s impossible for remakes to live up to the original. What often ends up happening in these situations (for example, with the recent remakes Death Race, The Invasion, Halloween, and The Wicker Man) is the new movie ends up being catered to an audience completely different from the people who liked the original. The result: unhappy fans and an indifferent general audience. Could you see The Rocky Horror Picture Show being remade? Or Blazing Saddles? I didn’t think so. This just sounds like a bad idea from the start.

2. The Star Trek remake is still happening. There’s no real concrete news to discuss concerning Star Trek, but it seems like new stills from the movie are released on an almost daily basis. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the pictures were in any way interesting, but the truth is that they’re downright boring. Who cares about a bunch of people standing around in Enterprise uniforms?

But there’s a bigger issue that I have with the Star Trek remake: I have no idea who the target audience is for this movie. Personally, I have never seen any of the Star Trek movies or even a full episode of any of the TV shows. From the standpoint of someone with no prior interest in the franchise, nothing I’ve seen or heard about the new movie excites me. It isn’t that I’m not open to liking or being interested in it, it’s just that everything released so far has been incredibly bland, to the point of being forgettable.

But while it may not be targeted toward people who are new to Stark Trek, the movie doesn’t seem to be aimed directly at hardcore Trekkies, either. The plot seems to revolve around one of the characters from the original series going back in time and changing something, which then leads to the events of this new movie happening. As a result of this change, all of the previously-made movies and TV shows technically “never happened” within the context of Star Trek canon. I’m not sure whether this is a good or bad thing, but regardless, it has a lot of older Star Trek fans upset. Maybe I’ll eat my words if the movie ends up being a success, but I’m just not feeling it right now.

1. Paramount has fast-tracked a Footloose remake starring High School Musical’s Zac Efron. This terrible information comes courtesy of IESB. Honestly, there’s not a whole lot I can say about this one to make it sound worse than it is. Instead, just imagine the entire cast of HSM performing an “exciting” new version of “Let’s Hear It for the Boy.” Then, have fun trying to expel that horrible image from your mind.

Joaquin Phoenix Retires From Acting

2008-10-29T11:16:00.002-05:00

Bad news: Joaquin Phoenix has told E! that he's retiring from acting in order to pursue a career in music. The interviewer seems to think he’s joking at first, but I think he sounds pretty serious. Plus, Phoenix has never really been the joking type and this seems like a pretty dumb thing to joke about anyway. You can watch the brief interview below.

This would be an absolute disaster for the world of film if it turns out to be true. Phoenix is a wonderful actor and his onscreen presence would surely be missed. Let's hope he has a change of heart.

More Iron Man and Doctor Strange News

2008-10-28T23:15:00.017-05:00

In an announcement that should come as no surprise to anyone, Robert Downey Jr. and Don Cheadle have both been officially confirmed as being in Iron Man 2, with Downey also confirmed for Marvel’s upcoming superhero team-up movie, The Avengers.

Marvel also said that Iron Man director Jon Favreau would be back for Iron Man 2, and that he’ll be an executive producer on The Avengers. That still leaves the director’s chair for the movie up in the air, though. I had hoped they would go with Favreau, to be honest, so Marvel will really have to impress me with its choice if it’s going to be someone else.

On the rumor side of things, remember that Doctor Strange movie I mentioned last week? Well, according to Livenews, it sounds like Marvel has its eyes on Christian Bale for the role:

A source said: "Christian is hot property right now, courtesy of Batman.“Doctor Strange is a very different kind of hero to Batman and it’s felt Christian is the sort of actor who can make the part work on screen.“It is understood a deal could be struck in the coming weeks."
I can’t even begin to express how much I want this rumor to be true. Doctor Strange and Christian Bale…it just sounds like a match made in heaven. There are a few problems I can foresee with that casting, though.

One is that Bale is already identified with one major superhero – and he happens to belong to Marvel’s primary competition. Warner Bros. (which owns DC Comics) distributed both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and will be distributing the upcoming Terminator Salvation (also starring Bale). With Bale being such a hot commodity for them these days, I doubt the company would be willing to let him get away anytime in the near future.

If anything, talks with Marvel Studios would probably only accelerate WB getting to work on another Batman sequel, since Bale has expressed interest in doing a third movie. So, if you think about it...this Doctor Strange business could be a win no matter which way it goes.

What do you think – would you like to see Christian Bale play Doctor Strange, or is one superhero role enough for him?

Pumpkinfest!

2008-10-28T18:27:00.013-05:00

Sorry for the brief hiatus, folks. I've been trying to post at least once a day but yesterday I just didn't get around to it. To make up for it here are a few pictures of some cool movie-themed pumpkins, courtesy of Walyou and Slashfilm. I was originally going to post all Star Wars pumpkins, but I just couldn't resist that last one.

Two New Trailers

2008-10-26T16:44:00.004-05:00

Below is the first trailer for Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino:

After seeing the trailer, I think Gran Torino will be an Oscar contender this year for sure. This has become my most anticipated movie of the year, right after Quantum of Solace.

A new trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was also released today:

I find it interesting that the trailer says the movie is coming out “this year.” It’s obvious that this trailer was either intended to come out next year, since the movie was pushed back to 2009, or it was made before the delay became official.

I gave up on the Harry Potter film franchise after Goblet of Fire, which was also the last book I read in the series. If I hear the new movie has returned the series to its Prisoner of Azkaban glory, it might rekindle my interest, but I won’t be holding out too much hope. The only other significant film credit director David Yates has is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which I never saw, but I heard it wasn’t anything exceptional.

Harry Potter fans, what do you think of the new trailer? How do you think Half-Blood Prince will stack up to the other movies in the series?

Movie of the Week - Young Frankenstein

2008-10-25T23:02:00.001-05:00

More than thirty years after its original release, Young Frankenstein is still one of the greatest, if not the best, horror movie spoofs ever made. Shot in black and white, the film weaves a tale that parallels the classic Frankenstein movies of the 1930s while adding an almost constant stream of twists and gags to the formula.

Gene Wilder plays Frederick Frankenstein, the grandson of the original mad scientist. Frederick is a surgeon who inherits his predecessor’s Transylvanian castle, where he meets his servant Igor (Marty Feldman) and beautiful lab assistant Inga (Teri Garr). It isn’t long before, after finding his ancestor’s private journal, Frankenstein becomes similarly obsessed with re-animating the dead.

Frankenstein’s eccentricities are bizarre and yet strangely endearing. “It’s pronounced Fronkensteen,” he insists over and over in his first meeting with Igor. When Frankenstein finally says Igor’s name, the hunchback is quick to reply: “No, it’s pronounced Eye-gor.” The way Wilder and Feldman quip and bicker at one another throughout the movie is a constant source of entertainment. Even their facial expressions as they bumble about their experiments are comedy gold.

Inevitably, Frankenstein bestows life to the Monster (Peter Boyle) when he digs up an enormous body in a graveyard and places in it a stolen brain. Things go wrong, of course, and writer/director Mel Brooks goes on to parody several scenes from the original Boris Karloff Frankenstein movie perfectly. Gene Hackman is particularly funny as a blind, bumbling priest the Monster meets as he roams the countryside.

What makes the humor in Young Frankenstein so enduring, though, is that Brooks and the actors play it straight rather than trying too hard to amuse. It doesn’t hurt that there’s barely a throwaway line in the entire film – the jokes are frequent, funny, and memorable. If you’re looking for a movie in the Halloween spirit that’s comic rather than scary, Young Frankenstein is sure to please.

Jack Ryan Returns?

2008-10-25T12:15:00.005-05:00

The latest movie in Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan series has been in development hell for years now, but it seems Paramount is finally making some progress. According to Moviehole, the studio has hired two producers for the franchise and given them a mandate “to come up with a Jack Ryan original ASAP.” No director and no star are attached yet.

Moviehole adds that there's “a possibility that the film may feature an 'older' Ryan, as opposed to a younger version.” The last Jack Ryan movie, The Sum of All Fears, featured a younger version of the character (played by Ben Affleck), and it ended up being a pretty big fumble on the parts of everyone involved. I think an older Jack Ryan might be what the series needs to get back on track at this point, and it certainly wouldn’t hurt to bring Harrison Ford back into the fold.

It’s my understanding that Ryan eventually becomes president of the United States in Clancy’s novels, which sounds like it could be an interesting way to progress the film series as well. With so many reemerging franchises today starring older characters, from Indiana Jones to Rocky to Die Hard, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.

In Defense of Roger Ebert

2008-10-24T01:17:00.010-05:00

A lot of people are making a fuss today over Roger Ebert’s review of the movie Tru Loved, which he wrote having seen only the film’s first eight minutes. From IMDb:

In the Los Angeles Times, media columnist Patrick Goldstein writes today (Thursday): "If there were ever an act that indelibly painted critics as elitist snobs, it would be America's best-known critic reviewing a movie after only bothering to watch for eight minutes."

Orlando Sentinel critic Roger Moore says that writing a review of a movie based on its first eight minutes is "not cricket." He then concludes, "If we're going to start writing reviews of movies we haven't suffered all the way, or at least most of the way through, the way most people who shell out $10-12 do after they've spent the cash, we're all doomed."

There are more comments, from movie critics and readers alike, in the remainder of IMDb’s article as well as on Roger Ebert’s blog. In response, Ebert has posted a review of the entirety of the movie and voiced his regret over writing the eight-minute review. Both versions of the review can be read on Ebert’s website.

If you ask me, though, Ebert has nothing to apologize for. First of all, it’s not as if he pretended he had seen the entire movie in his original review. He very clearly states that he walked out after the first eight minutes.

As for whether or not a person can determine a movie’s quality in that short an amount of time – well, it’s hard to say. But if anyone can do it, then I have no doubt that Roger Ebert is that person. He’s been in the business longer than some critics today have been alive, and I think he of all people knows what he’s doing.

I’ve always had a great deal of respect for Ebert and his reviews, and this doesn’t affect my opinion of him in the least. I don’t see why it should affect anyone else’s either.

New Gran Torino Poster

2008-10-23T19:27:00.009-05:00

Today Warner Bros. released this poster for the upcoming movie Gran Torino, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood.

It’s a bit humbling when you realize that even after all these years, Clint Eastwood has still got it. The man’s 78 years old, but he’s still scarier than a grizzly bear. This is a great poster, and it's really sparked my interest in the movie. I actually hadn’t heard of it before the poster came out, so I decided to find out a little about the plot. Here's what IMDb has to say:

Disgruntled Korean War vet Walt Kowalski (Eastwood) sets out to reform his neighbor, a young Hmong teenager, who tried to steal Kowalski's prized possesion: his 1972 Gran Torino.

Sounds pretty cool to me. Gran Torino comes out on December 17, and USA Today has an excellent first look at it, which includes an interview with Eastwood. Could we be on the cusp of Hollywood’s greatest actor-turned-director nabbing yet another Oscar? Here’s hoping.

Judge Says We Are Marshall Is Not a Ripoff

2008-10-22T23:43:00.008-05:00

This is one of the most ridiculous pieces of movie news I have seen in a long time. Apparently, the makers of a documentary about the 1970 plane crash that killed Marshall University’s football team decided to sue Warner Bros. for making We Are Marshall, a 2006 movie based on the same events. WB won the case yesterday, and the judge had this to say (from Variety):

"Though the two works tell the story of the Nov. 14, 1970, airplane crash, that event, and the events that preceded and followed, are all matters of public record which cannot be copyrighted."

Is it just me, or is this a no-brainer? Of course a movie based on real-life events is going to have something in common with a documentary on the same subject. The documentary-makers didn’t invent the story, so there’s no “copying” involved here. The judge must have had a good laugh at this case.

On the other hand, though, it might not have been such a bad thing if the makers of We Are Marshall had lost. At least then those of us who suffered through that awful movie might have been able to feel a sense of just compensation.

Hulk Will Return…But Not In a Sequel

2008-10-22T00:06:00.010-05:00

If it seems like there’s been a lot of comic book movie news recently…well, that’s because there has been. The latest is that Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige has confirmed that Hulk will be back. From Feige's interview with MTV News:

"The truth is that Hulk has had two films in the past five years, and it's time to give some of the other guys a turn," Feige said of why there was no scheduled "Hulk 2." "But certainly what we are doing is suggesting and cross-pollinating the characters between films, and like reading a comic, I'd like to set that expectation that anything can happen — and anyone can pop up — in anybody else's story.
"I would expect that people may see the Hulk again soon before he is again carrying his own film," he concluded, shouting out "The Avengers" as a possibility.

Personally, I’m fine with having to wait a while for another Hulk movie. I thought The Incredible Hulk was a pretty solid effort by all parties involved, and I would hate for them to burn themselves out by releasing a sequel too soon. And if the Hulk’s going to show up somewhere else first, then so much the better. (Would it be too much to hope for an appearance in Iron Man 2?) My only request is that they keep Edward Norton on board, since he did such a great job with the Bruce Banner aspect of the character.

Quantum of Solace Footage, Anyone?

2008-10-21T17:06:00.007-05:00

Movieweb has been kind enough to post several clips from Quantum of Solace, as well as a couple of featurettes about the movie. I’ve posted my favorite ones below. Head over to Movieweb to see the rest!

I'm anticipating this movie even more after seeing these clips. I found the one with Mathis especially interesting. I had already seen him in several trailers for the movie, and I was wondering how they were going to reincorporate him into the story after his seeming betrayal in Casino Royale. Now it seems we have a couple of clues.

Also, you might have noticed that I didn't post any of the clips involving the movie's theme song, by Jack White and Alicia Keys. That's because I think it's complete and utter garbage. If you really must see it, though, you can find the music video at the link above.

So what do you think? Based on these clips, will Quantum of Solace live up to the bar set by Casino Royale? Personally, I'm going with yes.

Doctor Strange: Coming Soon to a Theater Near You?

2008-10-21T12:56:00.012-05:00

The president of Marvel Studios told MTV today that Doctor Strange is very likely to be the next Marvel character receiving the film treatment, right after they finish up with Avengers. People who are unfamiliar with the character may not think this is all too exciting, but trust me when I say that he is one of Marvel’s best characters that has so far gone untapped in the movie world (other than a straight-to-DVD animated movie released last year). Unlike some of the more "realistic" or technology-based superheroes we've seen in film lately, Doctor Strange is a magic-based character who I think would make for a very different kind of movie (in a good way). I will definitely be looking forward to more announcements about this movie.

In other comic book movie news, it seems there will be more Nick Fury in Iron Man 2, and that Daniel Craig turned down the role of Thor. I think we can all agree that both of those things are good news. Craig may be a good Bond, but a flying, helmeted, hammer-toting god of thunder he is not.

Being Left Out of Iron Man 2 is a Mystery to Terrence Howard

2008-10-20T18:53:00.014-05:00

I was sad when I heard the initial rumors of Terrence Howard being replaced by Don Cheadle in the next Iron Man movie. I think Cheadle is the better actor of the two, but Howard is still great and I enjoyed his performance in the first Iron Man. It was basically assumed that Howard got axed because he couldn’t reach a financial agreement with the studio, but apparently that isn’t the case.

In an interview with NPR, Howard said that he has no idea why he was dropped from Iron Man 2. Chud provides a transcript of part of the interview:

"It was the surprise of a lifetime. There was no explanation. [The contract] just...up and vanished. I read something in the trades implicating that it was about money or something, but apparently the contracts that we write and sign aren't worth the paper that they're printed on, sometimes. Promises aren't kept, and good faith negotiations aren't always held up."

This is really disappointing. I’m never a fan of actors getting replaced in a film series, unless the original actor was just wrong for the part, but that’s not the case here at all. Maybe I shouldn’t complain, since Cheadle is one of my favorite actors – after all, this recasting could have gone much, much worse. But with possible casting changes in other upcoming sequels, including rumblings of Ed Norton being out of the Incredible Hulk follow-up, you have to wonder: would it hurt the people who cast these movies to just make a decision and stick with it?

W. Review

2008-10-19T14:09:00.015-05:00

While it doesn’t quite live up to the controversy surrounding it, Oliver Stone’s W. is still a fairly good film. It marks a departure from much of Stone’s previous historically based movies, in that it’s a mostly accurate depiction of events that really did happen. The film alternates in perspective between George W. Bush’s formative years, starting when he’s in college, and his first term in office as president. Stone, whose other presidential films JFK and Nixon were rather long-winded (both clock in at over three hours), shows considerably more restraint in W. by only focusing on specific moments of emotional upheaval for the young Bush.

Stone’s portrayal of Bush is surprisingly sympathetic. Bush has real, human motivations in this movie, and they’re not quite what the more cynical among us might expect. Josh Brolin plays the part extremely well, and you can’t help but like the character even when he’s acting out of utter ignorance. This may be the first time ever that someone has actually played the part of Bush, rather than simply playing a caricature of him.

Although Stone tries to boil down Bush’s life into a quest for the approval of his father (James Cromwell) a few times too many, he makes it clear that Bush (or, at least, his version of Bush) truly does believe in the ideology he claims to stand for. This can be seen no better than in a gripping war room scene – my favorite scene in the film, actually – in which the president and his cabinet discuss their plans for Iraq. While Vice President Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss, in a brilliant performance) rambles on about needing to gain control of the Middle East’s oil reserves, Bush is concerned only with “freedom” and the spread of democracy. W.’s supporting cast really shines in this scene, with the rivalry between Cheney and Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright) being especially interesting to watch.

In fact, most of the cast give excellent performances throughout the entire movie, and I would not be surprised to see Cromwell, Wright, and especially Dreyfuss receive award nominations next year. It’s not all perfect, though. Thandie Newton’s grating portrayal of Condoleezza Rice is easily the worst part of the movie, and most of the time it seems as though she’s just walked out of a bad SNL skit. She doesn’t have many lines, thankfully, but she’s terrible enough that her presence in and of itself was enough to damage my overall opinion of the movie.

W. functions well overall, though, partly because Stone doesn’t gum up the works with a bunch of far-out, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories – in fact, most of the events in the movie are pretty well documented in real life. Some have complained that the movie glosses over such notable events as the 2000 presidential election and the specifics of Bush’s conversion to evangelical Christianity, but the fact is that they’re largely unimportant to the story being told. Stone’s sympathetic representation of Bush makes it clear that W. isn’t meant to be just a historical chronicle of Bush’s life; it’s Stone’s attempt at rationalizing what has happened to America in the last eight years.

In this light, the claims of some critics that the film was made “too early” or even “too late” seem ridiculous. W. relies on its audience being of the time when it takes place – the present – for its rhetorical message to function most effectively. It’s hard to tell whether W. will stand the test of time, as it seems doubtful that it will elicit the same emotional response from audiences viewing it ten or twenty years from now. For now, however, it is a fitting answer to nearly eight years’ worth of war, economic failure, and wasted frustration with what will surely go down in history as one of the worst American presidencies ever.

Rating: ***

About Reviews

2008-10-19T14:05:00.005-05:00

My first review is going up in a few minutes, so I thought I would take a minute to explain the four-star rating scale I’m using. It breaks down like this:

**** = excellent, if not brilliant. A must-see by any standard.
***½ = great, though it may have some flaws.
*** = good, worth watching.
**½ = fair to mildly good.
** = mediocre at best.
*½ = not very good at all.
* = painfully bad, with little to no redeeming value.
½ = so horrible, you can’t help but wonder if it’s intentional.
0 stars = so excruciatingly awful, it can barely even be considered a movie.

One thing to keep in mind is that review scores are relative. So, for example, the rating for a movie like Wedding Crashers would be relative to other, similar comedies, not to things like The Godfather or Saving Private Ryan. Since movies are so diverse in terms of their content, it only makes sense that they can be worth seeing for different reasons, and I think this rating system is the best way to reflect that.

Blu-ray Players Will Be More Affordable…Soon

2008-10-18T15:16:00.005-05:00

I just came across an article on Gizmodo which says that we’ll be seeing Blu-ray players go on sale for as little as $149 on Black Friday (November 28th). This is great news, considering I was already planning to upgrade to Blu-ray this holiday season.

The particular Samsung model the article talks about is actually fairly cheap right now – it’s just over $200 on Amazon.com and comes with the Ultimate Matrix Blu-ray collection for free. So if you’re a Matrix fan who’s looking to go Blu, there’s really no reason not to upgrade now. I’m personally not interested in owning the whole trilogy, though, so I’ll be waiting until later in the year. Hopefully November will see a lot of first-generation Blu-ray discs go on sale as well so I can start out with a nice, beefy collection.

Is Daniel Craig Done With Bond?

2008-10-17T21:32:00.013-05:00

According to monsters & critics, it seems Daniel Craig may be having second thoughts about returning as James Bond after Quantum of Solace (which comes out next month):

The actor - who reprises his role as the British spy in upcoming movie 'Quantum of Solace' - says despite signing a contract for another two movies in the franchise, he doesn't know whether he will return to the character.

He said: "I did sign on for four so a piece of paper says there are two more to do. But let's see how this one goes. In the film business, everything doesn't always go according to plan. We'll wait and see. If it goes wrong, we'll have to rethink things."

I thought Craig did an excellent job in Casino Royale, and I would hate to see him leave the role so soon. His words are pretty cryptic, though, so it’s hard to tell whether there’s really any cause for alarm. On the one hand, this could be part of an attempt by Craig to convince the studio that they should renegotiate the terms of his contract. I think this is the most likely scenario, and that he’s probably just looking for more money for his third and fourth Bond movies.

The only other way I can interpret his comment is that he’s disappointed with how Quantum of Solace turned out for some reason. The way he phrased it just gives me the same vibe as the infamous “don’t get your hopes too high” comments that George Lucas made right before Indy 4 came out. QOS is looking great from everything I’ve seen so far, though, so for now I’m really hoping that this is all just a lot of smoke.

Movie of the Week - The Fugitive (1993)

2008-10-17T17:48:00.010-05:00

There are some actors who I think are absolutely fascinating to watch, even if the rest of the movie is beyond horrible. Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones both fall into that category. But fortunately for us, The Fugitive is not a bad movie at all. In fact, it’s a really, really good one, and the fact that Ford and Jones are in it makes it that much better.

Ford plays Richard Kimble, a doctor who’s been falsely convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of his wife. When his fellow prisoners stage an escape from their police bus, Kimble goes on the run in an effort to prove his innocence. Jones plays Samuel Gerard, the U.S. Marshal hell-bent on bringing Kimble in.

What makes this movie so interesting is that while the two main characters have entirely opposing goals, they’re both essentially doing the right thing. As the audience we root for Kimble to solve the puzzle of his wife’s death, but at the same time it’s hard not to sympathize with Gerard for wanting to stop him.

Of course, the movie’s breakneck pace and well-done action setpieces don’t hurt its appeal either. While you may have to mildly suspend your disbelief when, early in the movie, Ford leaps from the side of an overturned bus just as a speeding train crashes into it, The Fugitive is entertaining throughout and never descends into the outright absurdity that’s present in so many action movies these days.

Jones and Ford are helped by a great supporting cast, which includes Julianne Moore and the always-amusing, multi-faceted Joe Pantoliano. The movie’s other characters go a long way toward adding a sense of realism to the story, making it more than just a game of cat and mouse between two larger-than-life figures. As an action movie, and even just as a movie in general, The Fugitive hits all the right beats and makes for a very satisfying two hours.

Yahoo Names the Ten Most Biographically Inaccurate Movies

2008-10-16T23:39:00.006-05:00

In honor of Oliver Stone’s W. releasing this weekend, Yahoo Movies has put together a list of what they consider to be the ten most biographically inaccurate movies of all time. You can check out the list (with pictures!) right here.

For those who don’t want to click through the entire article, here’s the list, along with the real-life person being portrayed in each movie:

10. A Beautiful Mind (John Nash)
9. Ray (Ray Charles)
8. Houdini (Harry Houdini)
7. The Hurricane (Rubin “Hurricane” Carter)
6. Amadeus (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
5. Mongol (Genghis Khan)
4. Young Mr. Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln)
3. The Doors (The Doors – specifically, Jim Morrison)
2. Night and Day (Cole Porter)
1. Young Einstein (Albert Einstein)

I’m actually surprised that more of Oliver Stone’s films didn’t make the list. JFK misrepresented the life of Jim Garrison pretty badly (although it was still a good movie), and Nixon was chock-full of Stone’s signature revisionist history as well. I have yet to see W., but I’m curious to see how it stacks up to his other movies when it comes to historical accuracy. Some other movies I’d place on the list are Catch Me If You Can and American Gangster, although again, I did think they were good movies. Also, I really have to see Young Einstein now – that movie sounds like a riot.

So what movies do you think should have made the list? Feel free to leave a comment below!

Welcome!

2008-10-16T20:02:00.000-05:00

Hi there, and welcome to my movie blog! This being the first post, I should probably say a few things about myself and why I’ve decided to start this blog. If you’re looking for actual movie-related content, then you can look forward to the blog proper starting either later today or tomorrow. But for everyone who doesn’t mind indulging me for a few moments, feel free to keep reading.

It’s been quite a while now since I first considered starting a blog about movies. I love movies – I love reading, writing, and talking about them. And, of course, I love watching them. My friends were encouraging when I mentioned the idea, and I decided that I would follow through with it. But, time and time again, I put off getting started.

More than anything else, the problem was getting off the ground. I’ve always thought the hardest part of doing most things is getting started, and that it gets a lot easier once you have momentum on your side. So here’s hoping that momentum is with me this time around, and that it can stay with this blog for a good long time.

So why even start a movie blog, anyway? Well, one thing that I’ve found especially encouraging as a fan of the movies over the last few years is how much more “aware” the mainstream public is when it comes to the world of film. Just a few years ago, the movies that made it to the major awards shows were easily dismissed by a lot of viewers. Oftentimes, people hadn’t even heard of the movies that had been nominated for the most prominent awards. Today, however, these types of movies are much more widely recognized and, as a result, they are much more successful. This has put a pressure on the entire movie-making world to produce higher-quality movies throughout the entire year, not just during the so-called “awards season.” If you’re doubtful, just look at the high caliber of America’s summer blockbusters over the last few years. Overall, right now is a great time to be a movie fan.

I have to give most of the credit for this shift to the Internet – to news sites and blogs devoted to informing us and expanding our enjoyment of film in one way or another. They make the world of film more accessible, more social, and more exciting, and they provide the casual fan and the hardened movie aficionado alike with a place where they can feel at home. I can only hope that my own little blog lives up to the precedent established by so many others before me.

At this point, I hope I’ve made it clear that this blog isn’t about just me. Conversation is one of the most exciting things we can do when it comes to movies, and I encourage you, whether you agree or disagree with what I have to say, to leave comments expressing your own opinions. Heck, why not leave a comment on this post when you’ve finished reading?

As for the specific direction of this blog, I don’t plan for it to be a “movie news” blog. I also don’t plan for it to be a “reviews-only” blog. Instead, I think it should be a little bit of both. We don’t compartmentalize our thoughts about movies in such a rigid, fact/opinion way, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to write about them in that way either.

That said, I’ll be sure to comment on movie news that I find interesting or significant. And when I do review movies, I’ll do my best to keep the movies I review relevant in some way. In most cases they will either be fairly recent (to theaters or DVD), part of a special theme I’m talking about, or part of a “Movie of the Week” feature that I plan on doing. So, hopefully, that leaves a bit of something for everyone.

Anyhow, I figure that’s enough for one post. Welcome again, and whether you were one of the people who encouraged me to start this blog in the first place or you’ve just stumbled across it from some distant corner of the net, I hope you stick around.

-Marc