This second trailer for the Paul Greengrass thriller shows more of the story and it looks intense. It's been selected to be the opening film of the New York Film Festival and the London Film Festival, so it looks like there's quite a bit of confidence in it. In theaters Oct 11th.
Variety reports that Zhang Yimou is in talks to direct Quasimodo for Warner Bros., with Josh Brolin attached to star. Yimou is one of the great Chinese directors, having made Raise the Red Lantern, Hero and House of Flying Daggers. I can't wait to see what he does with this story, filmed many times of course. My favorite is the 1939 version with Charles Laughton as the hunchback and Maureen O'Hara as Esmeralda.
Check out the great "Sanctuary" scene from the 1939 film below. Laughton was an amazing Quasimodo:
The latest from director Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation), coming out Nov 20th. Look pretty great- I'll bet Joaquin Phoenix is in contention for Best Actor again for this one.
Finally, the real trailer for Ridley Scott's The Counselor drops. With a screenplay written by Cormac McCarthy, set to come out Oct 25th.
Not sure if this sequel will be any good, but at least this is a better trailer than the first one. Out Nov 8th.
Well, looks like the cry babies are out in force for this one. With Disney set to lose $190 million from the movie's failure, Johnny Depp, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and even Armie Hammer are laying the blame squarely at the feet of the critics' bad reviews.
"I think the reviews were written seven to eight months before we released the film. I think the reviews were written when they heard Gore (Verbinski) and Jerry (Bruckheimer) and me were going to do 'The Lone Ranger.'" (Depp)
"I think they were reviewing the budget, not reviewing the movie. The audience doesn't care what the budget is- they pay the same amount if it costs a dollar or 20 million dollars...they'll review it in a few years and see that they made a mistake." (Bruckheimer)
"This is the thing with American critics: they've been gunning for our movie since it was shut down the first time. That's when most of the critics wrote their initial reviews. They tried to do the same thing with 'World War Z'- it didn't work, the movie was successful. Instead they decided to slit the jugular of our movie." (Hammer)
Sounds like a lot of whining to me. Crowds don't pay attention to reviews, for the most part, especially for blockbusters. If they did, would Grown-Ups 2 have just passed $100 million? And I don't know what Hammer's talking about, but the reviews for World War Z weren't nearly as dismal as the ones for The Lone Ranger (which sits at 28% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes versus WWZ's 67%). If they hated it because of its production problems, wouldn't they have slaughtered that movie in the same way? When a movie gets horrible reviews AND it bombs at the box office (clearly word of mouth didn't save it)- don't you have to conclude that the reason might be because you made a shitty movie? Man up, guys.
Fruitvale Station is a highly impressive debut from 26-year-old writer-director Ryan Coogler. It's made with skill and confidence, evoking sensitive performances from everyone involved, even as it treads controversial ground, especially in light of the recent Trayvon Martin ruling in which George Zimmerman, accused of killing an unarmed black teenager, got off scot free. The way Coogler tackles this similar material is not to make a politically charged statement about what happened to Oscar Grant, but to depict the last day of this 22-year-old's life by using a highly personal, intimate, and small scale docudrama approach, which has the effect of gutting the audience emotionally and thereby leaving the most powerful impact of all.
We have one day to get to know Oscar Grant, the young man from Oakland who was shot and killed by a white police officer in the early morning hours of New Year's Day, 2009. That may seem like not enough time to get involved with who he is, his problems and his feelings, but the small slice of life we are provided with is infused with so much detail, a vivid evocation of time and place, and three great performances that bring a sense of real energy and authenticity to the story. Michael B. Jordan is the lead, and in what should be a star-making performance, he manages to convey the charisma that makes Oscar so popular with his friends and family, as well his hotheadedness and reckless behavior that has already landed him a couple of convictions for drug-dealing in the past. Oscar isn't whitewashed or made into a saint- he's a nice kid with potential, who's nevertheless troubled and saddled with a girlfriend and a 5 year old child at a young age, struggling to make it in a working class life that hasn't offered him many opportunities.
Octavia Spencer is terrific as his mother, who loves Oscar unconditionally but is exasperated and worried about his choices. She manages to convey so much emotion and underlying concern with just her eyes in this film- there's a scene where she subtly but firmly convinces her son to take the train rather than drive if he's going to be drinking, and she comes across as a mother who has accepted Oscar the way he is but is still trying in a kind of mama bear type way to protect him in any way she can. The last great performance in this movie is Melonie Diaz as Sophina, Oscar's girlfriend and the mother of his child. She's incredibly natural, girlish and unpretentious in the part, as we see her at times alternately annoyed, charmed by and devoted to him, even as we see his tendency to fool around on her revealed in his flirtations with other women and her anger at past indiscretions.
By the time the climactic showdown on the train station rolls around, we are enwrapped in Oscar's life and feel that we know him, his problems and his friends- the final scenes of police abuse and the shot that ended his life are filmed in a chaotic manner, with the train passengers capturing every moment with their cell phones. These scenes are made more powerful by the film's opening shot of the real video that captured the actions taken by those police officers. As Oscar dies after we have gotten to know him, there's a sense of tremendous waste having taken place. Look, would he have gone on to become President? Almost certainly not. Would have ended up back in jail? Possibly, but maybe not. The point is that whatever life he was going to carve out for himself, belonged to him and was only just beginning- and the pointless action by which that life was taken away is a tragedy and a crime that, as we now know, befalls more young black men for no reason at all in this country, and is still an issue that has not progressed the way that our civil rights battles of the past would have you believe. By making this film and giving audiences white and black a personal connection to the life of one of those young men, Coogler brings the best kind of activist awareness to the world that any one filmmaker can. It's an important movie that needs to be seen.
* * * *
The Max Ophuls classic from 1953 is out this week with some very cool cover art. You should check it out- it's a stylish, fanciful and dreamlike period piece.
The new Muppets movie is coming! Out in Spring 2014. Looks like they got some great cameos too.
The full length trailer for Oliver Hirschbiegel's Diana is finally out. Naomi Watts is usually good but I have to admit, it does look kinda Lifetime.
It's a one man show with the great Robert Redford, sort of a Cast Away redux, from the looks if it. From Margin Call's J.C. Chandor, this is another Oscar buzz movie set to show up in the film festivals starting later this month. Set for release Oct. 25th
Terence Malick's To the Wonder is a pure visual experience, and if you go into it with that mindset, there's a chance you will appreciate the beautiful imagery and long wordless sequences, in the style of a silent film, perhaps. It's meant to evoke feeling, and tell the story through pure emotion, the kind that varies over the course of a relationship when two people fall in love. For some, especially Malick fans, this kind of storytelling will work on you, for others it's bound to be a frustrating experience.
To the Wonder wants to tell the story of a relationship, and evoke the many ebbs and flows of love- you experience the joy, passion, sadness and rapid changing of emotion that occurs as a romance plays out between Olga Kurylenko and Ben Affleck. The movie belongs to Kurylenko though, as she holds the screen with a captivating magnetism- she has all the otherworldly airiness of the best Malick heroines, joining Sissy Spacek, Q'orianka Kilcher and Jessica Chastain before her. Whenever she's in front the camera she compels your attention like nothing else, and poor Ben Affleck gets left by the wayside. He has barely three lines in the movie, often filmed from the back of his head or the side- he's obviously a stand-in for Malick and we're meant to be seeing her through his eyes, but the refusal to give him any kind of a character to play prevents us from fully investing in this relationship. We only ever see her conflicted emotions, attitudes, and internal struggles- and while that makes her character fascinating and intriguing, the other half of this story is lost in the experience.
It also has the unfortunate effect of conveying Affleck's bewilderment in the role. I think he was trying, but completely at a loss as to how to play this part or what he was supposed to be acting. Given that occurrence, it may have been more effective to have even less of him than what we do see, even though he's top billed (and his part was already heavily gutted, I'm sure). In the middle of the film when he embarks on a rebound romance with Rachel McAdams (another limited actress), following a split from Kurylenko, both actors seem utterly befuddled on the screen, and there's a scene where both are staring at an open field that nearly took me out of the film, as I was wondered if either one knew what they were supposed to be doing in this moment.
Luckily, the vast majority of the movie focuses on Kurylenko, who does seem to have a perspective on her character, and the same goes for Javier Bardem in a small but significant role as a priest experiencing a crisis of faith. In his limited screentime he commands our attention and his existential crisis feels authentic and immediate. Malick's trademark narration applies in this film both to Kurylenko and Bardem, but rarely Affleck, which is probably another obstacle holding us at length from his character.
This film was extremely polarizing among critics when released back in April, and that's understandable, as there is no attempt at conventional narrative whatsoever, and as such, it's bound to be limited in its appeal. But Malick fans in particular will be primed to be more open to the idea of storytelling by mood evocation, and the performance of Kurylenko carries you through it, along with the gorgeous cinematography- no one else can make Texas look so good, or feel so vivid and real; Jack Fisk's production design alone is like another character in the film. So there's more than enough to recommend here to a certain audience, and there are moments of ecstatic feeling and wondrous beauty that would be familiar to many Malick lovers, and shouldn't be missed in any case.
* *
The Movie Seasons
Use this site for movie and television recommendations throughout the year- we have picks for the changing seasons, holidays, and moods, along with new releases and recaps of the best shows on TV
