This week I’m going to start with the little guys first, because they need the love.
Peaceful Warrior is based on the book The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. Even though I’ve read the book, Peaceful Warrior isn’t easy to sum up without making it sound like hooey, so I’ll let the PR people do the talking. “In the film, Scott Mechlowicz plays Dan, a talented-yet-arrogant college gymnast with Olympic dreams and a golden future. The athlete thinks he has it all: bookcases of trophies, endless friends, fast rides and disposable relationships. But all that is about to change. One day, Dan’s world is turned upside down after a chance meeting with a mysterious stranger he comes to know as Socrates (Nick Nolte)—a man who holds the power to tap into new worlds of strength and understanding. After he suffers a debilitating injury, with the mystical help of Socrates and an elusive young woman named Joy (Amy Smart), Dan will grow to realize that strength of spirit is what leads a man to his true greatness.” I had pictured someone more peaceful than Nick Nolte (he of the scraggly mug shot) as Socrates, but he’ll do. The book was quite interesting and the trailer makes the movie look even better. RENT IT. (Official site)
Live Free Or Die (not to be confused with the next Die Hard sequel, Live Free or Die Hard) is the latest addition in the bumbling criminal genre. John “Rugged” Rudgate is a criminal legend in his own mind. When Rugged and his friends get the chance to commit a real crime, of course everything goes awry and hijinks ensue. Michael Rapaport and Zooey Deschanel co-star. The trailer is pretty funny, so I say RENT IT. (Official site)
After The Wedding was nominated for Best Foreign Film this year, with the tagline of “Champagne is poured, and secrets are spilled.” Based on the title, I was expecting a bit of a chick flick, but the trailer is all sex, lies, and intrigue. Mads Mikkelsen acts in his native language, proving he can be more than just Bond’s nemesis in Casino Royale. RENT IT. (Official site)
The Lookout was written and directed by Scott Frank, who also wrote Out of Sight. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays an injured former athlete who gets conned into participating in a bank robbery. The Lookout could go one of two ways: forgettable heist movie or dark, twisting crime drama. Isla Fisher (Wedding Crashers) and Jeff Daniels co-star. RENT IT. (Official site)
Blades of Glory: Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard of Will Ferrell’s lampoon on the world of figure skating. Jon Heder, Craig T. Nelson, Jenna Fischer, William Fichtner, Amy Poehler, and Will Arnett co-star. SEE IT, not that you need prodding. (Official site)
It is impossible to talk about Waitress without discussing its sad backstory. Waitress was written and directed by Adrienne Shelly, an independent film actress who began making her own films in 1994. Last November, Shelly was found dead in her Manhattan apartment in what was presumed to be a suicide. A few days later, a housepainter that Shelly had hired confessed to the murder. When she died, Shelly had already finished Waitress and was waiting to hear whether the movie had been accepted into the Sundance Film Festival. The Sundance committee had already selected Waitress before Shelly died, and in January the film played to capacity crowds at Sundance and shortly sold to Fox Searchlight for $5 million.
After watching the trailer, I’m not surprised that Waitress was one of Sundance’s bigger sales. Although it is undoubtedly aimed at women, Waitress is not your typical chick flick and looks far superior to most films of that genre. (We’re talking about you, Georgia Rule.) Keri Russell plays a Jenna, Southern waitress who is pregnant, unhappily married, and feeling trapped by her own life. By day, Jenna works at a diner with waitresses played by Curb Your Enthusiasm‘s Cheryl Hines and by Shelly herself, behind big black glasses. By night, she pours her heart into unique pies and writes letters to her unborn baby. Jeremy Sisto plays Jenna’s husband and the one and only Andy Griffith plays one of Jenna’s regular customers.
In short, Waitress looks to be a poignant comedy about what happens when life doesn’t turn out just as you’d hoped it would. I definitely want to SEE IT when Waitress opens in limited release on May 2. (Official Site)
The weekend box office will probably once again be dominated by 300, but there are some new entrants in the race.
Tops on my agenda is Reign Over Me, starring Adam Sandler as a man destroyed by the loss of his family on 9/11, and Don Cheadle as his former college roommate who helps him attempt to deal with the pain. Sandler blew me away in the trailer, and I daresay that he could generate some award buzz. According to IMDb, Reign Over Me was slated for a December 1 release, but Sony bumped it in favor of The Holiday, costing Sandler a potential Oscar nod. (Perhaps the studio thought Sandler’s Oscar chances would be better this year, without Forest Whitaker dominating the category.) Don Cheadle is always amazing, but I can’t wait to SEE IT for Adam Sandler’s performance. (Official Site)
Shooter is Mark Wahlberg’s first outing since his Oscar nominated performance in The Departed. Wahlberg plays a secret service agent who is framed for an assassination attempt and then (dum, dum, dum!) wants vengeance on his enemy. Shooter is directed by Antoine Fuqua, who has hasn’t had a hit since Training Day in 2001. I doubt that Shooter has as good as a script as Training Day, so I’m going to SKIP IT. (Official Site)
Pride has quite possibly the lamest movie poster that I’ve seen in quite some time. Seriously. I walk by the poster every morning on the way to the subway, and it just makes the movie look so horribly cheesy. Terrence Howard and Bernie Mac star in this story of an underdog, all-black swim team in the 1970s, though the poster made me think it was about boxers. Terrence Howard has had his pick of scripts since Crash and Hustle & Flow, but I can’t give him the benefit of the doubt on this one. SKIP IT. (Official Site)
Color Me Kubrick is the mildly intriguing story of a con man who poses as Stanley Kubrick during the filming of Eyes Wide Shut. John Malkovich plays “Mr. Kubrick” and the trailer may give away the film’s funniest moment. When starstruck fans ask who “Kubrick” has in mind for his next film, he answers “John Malkovich,” to which they all reply, “who?” If you’re a big Kubrick fan, you may want to RENT IT. (Official Site)
Also opening this weekend are TMNT, the animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, and slasher sequel The Hills Have Eyes 2. SKIP IT and SKIP IT.
I’m just biased. I want Reign Over Me to reign at the box office.
The new film Georgia Rule has already gotten tons of free publicity, all at the expense of its star Lindsay Lohan. Last summer La Linds partied hardy, and called in sick with “dehydration” one too many times. The CEO of Morgan Creek, which produced Georgia Rule, sent Lilo a scathing letter saying she “acted like a spoiled child” and called her “discourteous, irresponsible, and unprofessional.” Snap! The letter was also sent to Lindsay’s eight handlers, so of course it was all over the internet within 36 hours. (Read the letter–it’s classic.)
The trailer for Georgia Rule just landed on the internet, and I must say I am underwhelmed. All that fuss for this? Really? In this run-of-the-mill chick flick, Lohan plays an out of control, hard-drinking teenager (gee, that must have been a stretch) alongside Felicity Huffman and Jane Fonda. Huffman and Fonda play Lohan’s mother and grandmother, respectively, and they all end up in the same house when Huffman’s character has run out of answers. Fonda runs her household with a million “Georgia Rules,” and by the end of the trailer I was really tired of her saying “Georgia Rule!”
Still I’m going to RENT IT because I love Felicity Huffman and I want to see what all Lilo’s controversy was about. Georgia Rule is rated R (which eliminates much of Lilo’s fan base) and opens on May 11. (Official Site)
It’s St. Patty’s Day weekend, so will people really be going to the movies? It doesn’t look good for these new releases.
I Think I Love My Wife: aka, Chris Rock has the seven-year-itch and tooth caps that have gotten out of control. Rock plays a man who has grown tired of his family life in the ‘burbs and he starts hanging out with a hoochified Kerry Washington. (That’s right, I said hoochified.) Louie C.K. (of the late Lucky Louie) wrote the script along with Rock, who also directs. I’m not sold on this, so I may RENT IT. (Official Site)
Premonition: Sandra Bullock plays a woman who thinks she’s losing her marbles. One day her husband has died; the next day he is alive. Rinse and repeat. Jen saysRENT IT, but only to see yummy Julian McMahon of Nip/Tuck. (Official Site)
Dead Silence: Donnie Wahlberg and Amber Valetta are stuck in a horror film about a ventriloquist’s doll. Yawn. SKIP IT. (Official Site)
I’ll admit it, I was dragged to go see Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby last summer, mostly because I am not interested in NASCAR. But thanks to Will Ferrell’s sheer comedic lunacy, I found myself laughing hysterically. After Talladega Nights, I’ll go see any comedy Will Ferrell is in, especially when it looks as funny as Blades of Glory.
Blades of Glory is a concept that really only Will Ferrell can get away with. He and Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite himself) play divas of men’s figure skating who get into a fistfight on the podium and are then ousted from singles competition. They find a loophole that allows them to compete as the first mens’ team in pairs skating, much to the annoyance of pairs skaters (and real-life pair) Will Arnett and Amy Poehler. In an inspired bit, Craig T. Nelson’s character is only called “Coach.” Jenna Fischer from my favorite TV show, The Office, and William Fichtner, that guy who is in every movie but whose name you don’t quite know, round out the cast.
The world of competitive figure skating is overdue for the Will Ferrell treatment. Blades of Glory is Talladega Nights meets The Cutting Edge, and I can’t wait to SEE IT when it opens on March 30. (Official site)
It’s Tuesday, and you know what that means–new DVDs! Today is the DVD release date for one of my favorite movies of 2006, Stranger Than Fiction. In Stranger Than Fiction, Will Ferrell did something completely out of the ordinary for him–he played a normal, nondescript guy. Specifically, he portrayed Howard Crick, an analytical tax man who starts hearing a voice in his head. The voice is narrating Howard’s life, and it tells him his days are numbered.
Stranger Than Fiction is an ingenious, thought-provoking, original comedy. The strength of the film comes from Ferrell’s performance and Zach Helm’s script, which was nominated for a Writer’s Guild Award. Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, and Queen Latifah round out the cast in an unusual combination that works. Put it on your Netflix queue immediately.
Also out this week are Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny, Alexander – The Final Cut, and Don’t Look Back, a film of Bob Dylan’s 1965 tour of England. Check out DVD Talk for the full list.
The Best Picture race is unusually tight this year, and movies are looking for any advantage they can get. Which Best Picture nominee has the best trailer? You be the judge. Here they are, in alphabetical order.
What you’re about to see is the funniest trailer since Borat. Knocked Up is the new film from Judd Apatow, the writer and director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin. And if you didn’t like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, there’s something wrong with you.
The trailer for Knocked Up is rated R (ever see one of those?), or 18 and over for our international friends, and is definitely not safe to watch at work (and not allowed to watch if you’re under 18 yrs old). Editors at New York Magazine placed the trailer in the most Lowbrow, most Brilliant point of this week’s Approval Matrix, and they hit the nail on the head.
I’m not going to say too much more about the trailer because I don’t want to ruin it for you. Just watch it several times; it gets funnier each time you watch it. Needless to say, Knocked Up is going to be a huge summer blockbuster. SEE IT.
Knocked Up is rated R (duh) and opens June 1. (Official site)
Nicolas Cage, I like you. I really do. Moonstruck is one of my all-time favorite movies. And who (besides Sean Penn) didn’t love Face/Off? I’ve never sat down to watch Leaving Las Vegas, but you won an Oscar for it, so you must have been good. So why, oh why, are you signing up for drivel like Ghost Rider?
I bet your agent called and said, “Nic, have I got a script for you. You’ll be playing a man who has sold his soul to the devil, and at night, you turn into a flaming skeleton on a motorcycle!”
Obviously I’m going to say SKIP IT to Ghost Rider. Wake me when Nicolas Cage gets back to making good movies.
