Angelina Jolie has found her niche: a face-punching, trigger-pulling, boot-in-the-pruney heroin”e” who could use a few calories. As the title character of Evelyn Salt in next year’s Salt— a spy thriller about a CIA agent who may or may not be a Russian spy with an agenda to permanently shorten a US President’s term– Jolie shouldn’t disappoint. The real draw here, however, isn’t Jolie– it’s the return of director Phillip Noyce to the political/espionage/action game. If the name Phillip Noyce …
Category: Trailer Tuesday
Dan will have a review of Disney’s A Christmas Carol later this week, so I don’t want to spoil his thoughts or give any details away, but I will say this: Despite all it’s lavishness, it’s missing one key element – heart. In fact, to better illustrate and to introduce my pick for Trailer Tuesday, I will say DreamWorks Animation’s forthcoming How to Train Your Dragon has more heart in two and half minutes than Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol …
The year was 1982, affectionately called “The Spielberg Summer” by the media (because E.T. and Poltergeist were barnstorming the box office), and MGM was facing bankruptcy. It bet the house on Poltergeist, directed by Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and produced by Steven Spielberg, and claimed victory as the supernatural thriller grossed $76 million domestically, literally saving the studio from filing Chapter 11. 27 years later, Poltergeist is unbelievably dated, campy and generally silly from beginning to end, but …
Aside from watching chestnuts roasting on an open fire and Jack Frost nipping at my nether-regions, I think I’ll be snacking on some popcorn and sipping a frosty Diet Coke at the theater and watching Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. A second trailer US trailer was released today and, even though not really showing us anything that new, it merely confirms to me that which I already assume: This movie is pure win. How can it not be? Guy Ritchie’s style …
You know how you can tell summer has officially bought the farm? Trailer Tuesday. Bombastic musical beats and explosions are gone. Angst-filled yelling and tears and dramatics are the new hotness in pursuit of accolades and the palm logos adorned with “Winner of”. Take Andy’s Precious pick for example: harsh and bleak with a touch of hope. Or Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans*. Harsh and bleak… with a touch of CRAZY. A sequel/remake (but don’t call …
One of my favorite films of all time is Monster’s Ball. It’s full of bleak, despairing truth, as well as hope and life. It’s heartbreaking and heartwarming all at once. It’s no surprise to me that Precious, a film about an illiterate, obese teenager living in Harlem in the late 1980s, is directed by Lee Daniels, as he was one of the producers of Monster’s Ball. In fact, the novelist behind Precious (the novel is actually called Push), a woman …
John Woo. JOHN WOO! Yeah. Used to be a time when the name John Woo meant something: Glorious action, slow motion symphonies of leaping, shooting and fiery explosion, doves (he’s a Christian, you know) and over-the-freakin’-top John Travolta. But that was then. Now, it’s 2009 and America’s love affair with John Woo–a brief fling that launched with Broken Arrow, culminated in Mission Impossible: II then quickly hit the skids with Windtalkers— is on the backburner. Woo’s done some producing and …
The Crazies, a remake of George A. Romero’s (Night of The Living Dead) 1973 cult classic of the same name, hits theaters on February 26, 2010 and is directed by Breck Eisner, whose last film was 2005’s dreadful Sahara. Romero’s original pooped out at the box-office and something tells me Eisner’s version, starring Timothy Olyphant (A Perfect Getaway) and Radha Mitchell (Surrogates), won’t turn heads or produce cartwheels either. But that’s okay, because for now we can enjoy this succulent …
I don’t know what 80s horror movie fetish Michael Bay has going on, but he’s at it again, producing the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, coming to theaters this April. Despite a great casting choice with Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen) as Freddy Kruger, I have no doubt this movie will make some coin and then fade into the Hall of Suck with the rest of Bay’s scary remakes. Yeah, in case you’ve forgotten, he’s remade The Amityville Horror, …
For the most part, I don’t hate holidays. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Memorial Day and their brethren are all good. They mean days off from work, sleeping in and general de-stressing from the daily grind. In fact, if we really want to shift the morale of the United States citizenry from crap to springtime, we should add more time-off-from-work holidays to the calendar. Still, I won’t lie, I do hate Valentine’s Day. Probably because you don’t get the day off, and …