In the film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Banky (Jason Lee) comments "That's what the Internet is for. Slandering others anonymously, and downloading porn." Well, in the upcoming film, The Middle Men, is the story of the guys who brought porn to the Net.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm a big fan of M. Night Shyamalan, Have been since I was totally creeped out by The Sixth Sense. Yeah, yeah I know what the haters say about the (apparent) diminishing quality of his work (and no, I didn't like Lady in the Water, either), Nor was I (unfortunately) totally thrilled by all of his films, but that never meant that I didn't look forward to any of them.
Most recently he delivered up Avatar, The Last Airbender, and in spite of what you may have read by critics who simply want to jump on the "Let's kick Shyamalan when he's down" Bandwagon, it really was a very good film (I didn't see it in 3D, which (again, apparently) most naysayers did), so I (and my son who was weaned on the Airbender cartoon), really enjoyed it.
Anyway, I just now saw a trailer for M. Night's next film, Devil, which is Due out September 17, and, well, it looks like he's back on his game. Just take a look at the trailer (after the jump) and see if you don't agree
From the Shadow of the 14th row
There are four this time around, starting with:
The Karate Kid: Rated “PG” (140 Minutes)
Starring: Jackie Chan, Jaden Smith, Taraji P. Henson
Directed by: Harald Zwart
In 1984 we met Daniel Larusso (Ralph Macchio), and his single mom, Lucille (Randee Heller) who relocated to California from the Midwest only to discover Martial Art bullies, the ever lovely Ali Mills (Elisabeth Shue) and the ever inscrutable Mr. Kesuke Miyagi (Pat Morita), well, it is just over a quarter century later and (courtesy of Will Smith’s personal fortune) this classic film has been given a new lease on life, and no, it is not yet another sequel to this flick, but a remake from the ground up.
Well, it is 26 years later, and we get to do it all over again, only this time, So instead of white-bread middle-American High-schooler heading to Cali, we have a 12-year-old African American from Detroit named Dre Parker (Smith), and his single mom (Taraji P. Henson). Now 12-year-old Dre could've been the most popular kid in Detroit, but his mother's latest career move has landed him in China. Talk about your fish out of water.
You can read the rest of this review, here.
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Killers: Rated “PG-13” (100 Minutes)
Starring: Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher, Tom Selleck, Catherine O’Hara, Katheryn Winnick
Directed by: Robert Luketic
Jen Kornfeldt (Heigl) is something of a neurotic, she is eternally beset upon by her overbearing father (Selleck) and her alcoholic mother (O’Hara). Faces with a fiancée that abandoned her, she is forced to endure a trip to Europe (on what should have been her honeymoon), she now has to but up with being in the company of these two loony birds. It is there that she meet and falls in love with the dashing, handsome Spencer Aimes (Kutcher), who just happens to be a professional killer for some unnamed U.S. governmental agency.
Three years later, she and Spencer are still newlyweds living the ideal suburban life — that is, until the morning after Spencer's 30th birthday when bullets start literally flying. It is then out Spencer never bothered to tell Jen he's also an international super-spy, and now Jen's perfect world has been turned upside down. Faced with the fact that her husband is a hit man, Jen is determined to discover what other secrets Spencer might be keeping.
You can read the rest of this review, here.
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Splice: Rated “R” (104 Minutes)
Starring: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, David Hewlett, Delphine Chanéac
Directed by: Vincenzo Natali
Clive and Elsa (Brody and Polley) are both superstar genetic engineers doing bleeding-edge work specialize in splicing DNA from different animals together in order to create incredible hybrids that can then be harvested for their incredibly high-end pharmaceutical dollar value. Now they with them right at the precipice of a new discovery, and the corporate suites breathing down their necks to come up with that new “it” drug, they risk it all and choose to utilize human DNA in a hybrid that will risk their professional careers, but could just very well revolutionize all science and medicine in the process.
You can read the rest of this review, here.
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And now the one everyone is waiting for...
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse: Rated “PG-13” (120 Minutes)
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser
Directed by: David Slade
OK, I don’t have to tell you what Twilight is the hottest film series on the planet amongst teen-aged girls and their dreamy-eyed mothers. Too bad it is also a poorly-written, badly-acted, piece of fluff that, violates it’s very own premise, that is to say, it quite simply does not take itself seriously.
The actors all practice what I like to call the David Carusso style of acting, that is to say, they don’t deliver their lines, they done emote or act them (Hell, it is pretty clear that they don’t even believe their lines), what they do is strike a pose, and pontificate them. Needless to say, they are simply not as interesting to watch, or as multi-faceted as Carusso. Hence, they are merely cardboard cutouts, not worthy of our attention.
Having said all of that, this film actually is better than its two predecessors, because in this film, the primary characters are actually given some (albeit shallow) depths of character, some thin sliver of background onto which they can pin their performance, and our potential suspension of belief. Also working for this film are a number of better action sequences with wolves vampires and, well, bad vampires who have come to town stalking Bella (what with teen vampires and werewolves pining over this girl, and “bad” vampires looking to kill her you have to wonder what all the hubbub is, as she is hardly more than a cipher on-screen). Needless to say, as this reviewer’s son commented, calling this film “better” is sort of like saying Darfur isn’t quite as bad as the Holocaust.
From the Shadow of the 14th row
The A-Team: Rated “PG-13” (117 Minutes)
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Jessica Biel, Liam Neeson, Sharlto Copley, Patrick Wilson
Directed by: John Singleton
Here we go again!
OK, I’m willing to admit that my initial impression was that the film A-Team was going to suck bigtime. I was wrong (and I’m big enough to admit it). However, after viewing this film, I‘m prepared to say that not only was this film quite good, but that it was actually better than both The Losers, and the original A-Team TV show.
Yeah, that’s right, I said it. It’s better than the original A-Team TV show. I say that because, well, the TV show was full of all the ‘80s excess that could be shoe-horned into a one-hour TV show. As you recall, the show followed the daring exploits of a colorful team of former Special Forces soldiers who were set up for a crime they didn’t commit. Going “rogue” they utilize their unique talents to try and clear their names and find the true culprit behind the crime that they were accused of having committed.
The rest of which can be read here:
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Sex and the City 2: Rated “R” (147 Minutes)
Starring: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, Chris Noth
Directed by: Michael Patrick King
There’s an old joke about a women’s store where they could go and buy the man of their dreams. It was five floors, each with an increasing level of desirable man. However, the rule was that you could always go higher, to “pick a better man” as it were, gut you couldn’t return to a lower floor. The first floor had guys who were good-looking, but can’t commit, the second floor has good-looking guys who commit, but can’t keep a job. Floor three has good-looking guys who commit, but can’t hold a job. The fourth floor has good-looking guys who commit, and are financially well-off. Women who went to the store would get to the fourth floor, and figure that the men on floor #5 were even better, only when they got there they found a sign stating that there were no men on Floor Five, and that floor was just there to prove that women were never satisfied.
Interestingly enough nowhere is this bit of irony more painful evident than in Sex and the City 2, a movie that is so staggeringly out of tune with contemporary morays and standards than this over-blown throwback to a time that only existed on TV it appears as if assembled in some self-indulgent, myopic alternate universe. Truthfully, this reviewer never saw the TV show; we did however watch the first film and felt that that it was also an overblown travesty that had no basis in any form of reality.
The rest of which can be read here:
When I get to the others, I'll let you know.
The Perfessor
No, this isn't a Lawrence Welk riff, but my review of the new A Team Flick...
The A-Team: Rated “PG-13” (117 Minutes)
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Jessica Biel, Liam Neeson, Sharlto Copley, Patrick Wilson
Directed by: John Singleton
Here we go again!
OK, I’m willing to admit that my initial impression was that the film A-Team was going to suck bigtime. I was wrong (and I’m big enough to admit it). However, after viewing this film, I‘m prepared to say that not only was this film quite good, but that it was actually better than both The Losers, and the original A-Team TV show.
Yeah, that’s right, I said it. It’s better than the original A-Team TV show. I say that because, well, the TV show was full of all the ‘80s excess that could be shoe-horned into a one-hour TV show. As you recall, the show followed the daring exploits of a colorful team of former Special Forces soldiers who were set up for a crime they didn’t commit. Going “rogue” they utilize their unique talents to try and clear their names and find the true culprit behind the crime that they were accused of having committed.
The rest of which can be read here...
From the Shadow of the 14th row
Still, So long as it stays up, I'll keep posting there.
Anyway's, recent films on my site (Suspension of Belief), include Robin Hood, MacGruber, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and Get Him to the Greek (among others).
Robin Hood: Rated “PG-13” (140 Minutes)
Starring: Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, William Hurt, Mark Strong, Mark Addy
Directed by: Ridley Scott
If I told you that I was going to tell you a story that you never heard about the life and times of a well-known and “documented” mythical/historical figure such as Robin Hood, you would probably laugh at me, and yet, that is precisely what Ridley Scott’s latest outing which chronicles the early (and apparently previously unknown) life of an expert archer, and former soldier in the army of King Richard the Lionheart named Robin Longstride (Crowe).
Previously only interested in self-preservation, and gambling, but intensely loyal to those men in his group, Longstride, when asked a question by the King makes the mistake of answering him truthfully, and finds himself in irons. Fortunately for Longstride, King Richard is struck a fatal blow while sacking French castles on his way back from his 10 long years fighting the Crusades. Upon Richard’s death, Robin and his not yet merry men make good their escape and – after crossing paths with the King’s personal guard, and promising a dying Knight to bring his father’s sword home -- travel to Nottingham, an English town that is suffering from the corruption of its despotic sheriff, crippling taxation, and a petty, usurper King.
read the rest here...
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MacGruber: Rated ““R” (88 Minutes)
Starring: Val Kilmer, Ryan Phillipe, Kristen Wiig, Will Forte, Powers Boothe
Directed by: Jorma Taccone
Every once in a while I remember watching the 20th anniversary broadcast of Saturday Night Live, hosted by Chris Rock. For the event, they chose to have basically every cast member and as many of the big stars who passed through the show appear either in the show itself or in the celebrity audience.
What truly made this moment memorable for me was Rock standing there and saying that he was completely awed by being in the presence of so much stellar talent, followed by him observing that it was amazing that so many talented people could have turned out so many truly awful movies.
It is true. In fact it is so true that it is probably safe to say that more bad movies have been spun out of SNL than out of any other single concept ever in the history of motion pictures (and I’m not even counting bad films that were made by former SNL players that weren’t based on SNL sketches). On some level, I'm truly stunned that they even allow any more SNL sketches to be developed in to feature-length films. I mean, has no one yet realized that virtually anything can be funny for five minutes, but if you try stretching it out for 90 minutes or so, it tends to lose the funny around minute six.
read the rest here...
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Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: Rated “PG-13” (115 Minutes)
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Kingsley, Gemma Arterton, Alfred Molina
Directed by: Mike Newell
Well, we seemed to have entered a new era in film making, the film based on games. Yeah, yeah, I realize that we have had film based on games since Clue, hit the big screen back in ’85. Since then we’ve even seen at least one film based on a book about a board game (Jumanji), with more board game films in the offing. Needless to say, we’ve clearly moved beyond the games of our parents and grand parents, and are now experiencing movies based on videogames (Mario Brothers, Lara Croft, Hitman, others).
Well, with the way video/computer games are now akin to movies, it is probably fair turnabout that films are getting to look more and more like videogames. So now, from the team that brought us the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy (a theme park ride-cum-videogame-movie), Walt Disney Pictures and Jerry Bruckheimer Films (talk about films looking like videogames) just delivered to us Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which is an epic action-adventure set in the mystical lands of Persia.
read the rest here...
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Get Him to the Greek: Rated “R” (109 Minutes)
Starring: Jonah Hill, Russell Brand, Elisabeth Moss, Rose Byrne, Colm Meaney
Directed by: Nicholas Stoller
If you are up for a film that combines the best elements from The Hangover and This is Spinal Tap meets, Superbad, then this is the uproariously entertaining flick for you. The premise is simplicity itself; music geek, and all-round nebbish, Aaron Greenberg (Hill) is married to a woman whom he loves and adores, and is working at his wet-dream job, a music promoter for a happening LA record label. Now he has been handed a career-making assignment:
He has been instructed to fly to London in order to escort a rock god to L.A.’s Greek Theatre for the first-stop on a $100-million tour. The only problem, the rock-god in question — Aldous Snow (Brand) is years past his prime, and his last album — African Child — was universally panned and was a crashing disaster that virtually ended his (up to then) rather brilliant career. Still, Aaron is a huge fan of Aldous, and is willing to make a go at it, just to bring his musical hero back into the limelight.