Cinematical staff
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Review: Everybody's Fine
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews
By: Todd Gilchrist, reprinted from AFI Fest
Several months ago while Quentin Tarantino promoted Inglourious Basterds, he mentioned that he might only make a few more films before he retires because, as he said, he didn't want to make "old man" movies. If anyone is unclear as to precisely what an "old man" movie is, they need look no further than Everybody's Fine, Robert De Niro's latest film, about a father trying to reconnect with his adult children after the death of his wife.
De Niro, once an indisputable fount of actorly integrity and hard work, has in recent years played a series of characters that either demanded little of his oft-discussed commitment, or exploited his persona as an intimidating figure both on and off screen. And while the character he plays here indicates a return to the kind of character work that made him a screen icon, there's no denying that the film itself is the cinematic equivalent of career achievement award, which is why Everybody's Fine is well-done and effective but too treacly to be truly powerful.
A Look at Sundance's Impressive Midnight Lineup
Filed under: Horror, Sundance, Fandom
By: Alison Nastasi
Utah isn't just for lovers--It's also for the Sundance Film Festival. Every year the fest rolls around I am jealous of those who get to attend the premiere of some of the most talked about independent films. This is the largest indie film festival in the U.S. and this year's lineup for the Park City at Midnight category looks like good stuff. The festival runs January 21 - 31 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. Many popular horror films got their start at the festival, including Saw. I wonder if Weinberg was there... After the jump you can get up close and personal with the lineup for Sundance's Midnight movie series. Keep your eyes here for more info on the films as we get it. I also gave you my picks. Tell me yours?
So far I'm pretty psyched for Splice, directed by the stylish Vincenzo Natali (Cube), starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley as two scientists who splice human and animal DNA to create a beautiful but deadly creature. The film was getting buried for a while because of budget issues, so it's nice to see this one finally come around. Some initial reviews of the film were positive and I look forward to hearing what others have to say.
Also on my watch list is The Violent Kind by The Butcher Brothers (The Hamiltons) starring Taylor Cole, Christina Prousalis, Tiffany Shepis (Night of the Demons remake), David Fine and Joseph McKelheer. A secluded farmhouse, bikers, boobies, blood, ghostly Rockabillies and possession? Sold! Bloody-Disgusting has some more images for you to peek at and the official Facebook page launched yesterday.
Read the rest over at Horror Squad
Just How Often Does the NBR Predict Oscar Winners?
Filed under: Awards, Oscar Watch
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By: Erik Childress
It's sad that every year the awards season is kicked off with the National Board of Review (see our post from yesterday for the complete list of winners). As unknown as the members of the MPAA or the Hollywood Foreign Press – and about as credible as serious-minded critics of film – we nevertheless entrust their choices to help steer our curiosity towards the eventual Oscar nominees. Christening this flying wasp yesterday with the announcement that Up In The Air has taken their prize for Best Picture of 2009, they can now await their RSVP from George Clooney, amongst others to their annual party. Which is what it's really all about for them. But if the Academy Awards have taught us anything, it's to respect the trends and traditions in place. Plus a few people who have seen only about a quarter of the films released this year could use a tip in the right direction.
Coming up tops is indeed Jason Reitman's Up In The Air, widely considered to be a frontrunner for this year's Best Picture honors at the Oscars. The film certainly has a leg up for a nomination with this win as 9 of the last 10 NBR winners have gone on to a nod. Quills was the lone holdout in 2000. But only three of their choices in that time (American Beauty, No Country for Old Men and Slumdog Millionaire) have jetted on to winning the big prize.
Review: Up in the Air
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews
By: Eugene Novikov, reprinted from the Toronto Film Festival '09
Sometimes it seems like one of Hollywood's main goals is to make people without spouses and children feel really bad about themselves. If that sort of thing bothers you, I would recommend passing on Up in the Air, which is as strident about the notion that a life without a family is worthless as any movie I've ever seen. Fortunately, it is also brisk, funny, and not enslaved to genre conventions. Parts of the film, in fact, approach comic brilliance. The reason that the film's message-mongering doesn't grate, I think, is that we really do feel sorry for the protagonist – an obsessive frequent flier who begins to realize that his life is an empty, lonely shell of rationalizations and self-delusions.
In some respects, Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) approaches caricature: not only is he wifeless, childless and practically homeless – he has a barren studio in Omaha and spends 320 days a year on the road – but he fires people for a living and occasionally gives motivational speeches urging people to "empty their backpacks" and rid themselves of commitment. But there's a kernel of truth to him, in the sense that there is something compelling, almost romantic about transience. His world of luxury hotels and airline perks – and a hot frequent flier girlfriend (Vera Farmiga) with whom he sleeps with when their paths cross but who asks for nothing more – actually seems kind of cool.
Is This the Next 'District 9'?
Filed under: Deals, Fandom, Newsstand
By: Zachary HermannCount Sam Raimi among the people who saw District 9 and thought, "Gee, why can't more studios put out budget-conscious gems like this?" The Spider-Man director will be playing Peter Jackson to his own Neill Blomkamp of sorts, a Uruguayan director by the name of Federico Alvarez. After the buzz around Alvarez's alien invasion short (posted below for your viewing pleasure) Panic Attack! had him making rounds in Los Angeles, Raimi's production shop Ghost House Pictures signed the director for what will be Alvarez's feature film debut.
The reports have been translated from Uruguayan newspaper El Paris, but here's what everyone seems to agree on -- the feature, like District 9, will be budgeted in the $30-40 million neighborhood and Raimi will take on a mentor role, thus saving Alvarez from the ugly, business part of things. The picture will shoot in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Montevideo, Uruguay and will likely involve giant robots, which play a big part in Panic Attack! What is unclear is if this feature-length will be based on Panic Attack! at all.
Read the rest and watch the original short over at SciFi Squad
The Best Non-Dysfunctional Movie Families ... in Honor of Thanksgiving
In honor of Thanksgiving, we're recalling one of our favorite turkey day-themed posts from last year.
By: Jette Kernion
By: Jette Kernion
A few years ago, I wrote a Cinematical Seven on my favorite dysfunctional families in films. Everyone has a crazy messed-up movie family they love, whether it's the Hoovers in Little Miss Sunshine or the Bullocks in My Man Godfrey or the Corleones in the Godfather saga. I thought that this year, it would be fun to make a list of families that got along, worked together, and supported one another. You know, happy families ... but not dull, one-dimensional bundles of endless cheer.
It's a lot more difficult to find seven movies with happy-but-not-sappy families than it is to find the screwed-up kind, especially if you are looking for something more interesting than the Cleavers. Since I'm visiting my relatives for the Thanksgiving holidays, I asked them for suggestions. They were all very helpful, and I'm sorry I couldn't include all the suggestions, which ranged from The Thin Man to The Sound of Music to The Hills Have Eyes. Let me know what else we missed in the comments.
The Parrs in The Incredibles (suggested by my husband)
The Parrs aren't perfect. After all, Bob (aka Mr. Incredible) sneaks around behind his family's back to use his superhero powers again, after they've all decided to live a life as ordinary non-powerful folks. And Violet is rather sulky, but that's what teenagers do. But when someone is in trouble, everyone rushes to help. I was torn between The Incredibles and another movie about a family full of action heroes (or potential heroes), Spy Kids. Both feature strong families, but are never boring.
Review: The Road
Filed under: Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews
By: Eugene Novikov, reprinted from the Telluride Film Festival '09
Just before the kid was born, the world burned. We don't know why, and the characters don't talk about it -- perhaps they don't quite know themselves, or maybe they've decided that it no longer matters. The Boy's universe is grey, full of ash, dust, and the ruins of a civilization he never saw. This is all he knows. His mother, seeing no point in going on, killed herself shortly after his birth. She was not alone. Many of those who didn't take their own lives were soon murdered by the desperate and hungry.
Skip ahead nine or ten years. The kid and his father wander the barren roadways heading south toward the coast for no clear reason other than that it gives them a tangible goal toward which to strive. (And there's always the hope that the ocean will be something other than gray.) Every day is a knock-down, drag-out fight for survival. They run, hide, starve, and fight off attackers who want their food, or their clothes, or, at one point, their flesh.
I set the stage like this not to horrify you or to gross you out, but to give you a sense of the relentless, pervasive grimness of The Road -- and then to turn around and say that The Road may be the most profoundly optimistic and life-affirming film you will see this year. Those who have read Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name won't be surprised by this. John Hillcoat's faithful, near-perfect adaptation beautifully captures McCarthy's synthesis of all-encompassing darkness and enduring hope.
Review: Ninja Assassin
Filed under: Action, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews
By: William Goss, reprinted from Fantastic Fest '09
One can't ask too much of a film called Ninja Assassin -- that's a given -- but James McTeigue's proper directorial follow-up to V for Vendetta does its damnedest to take that insta-pulp title and weave around it a worn-out tale of forbidden love, family betrayal, and government conspiracy. Complete with some hard-to-see fight scenes and some harder-to-hear dialogue, all delivered with a poker-straight face and capped off with some super-splattery kills, it's like a graphic novel adaptation with comic book punctuation, a film so flagrant in its fakery that it almost forgets to have any fun.
Raizo (Korean pop star Rain, of Speed Racer and "Colbert Report" fame) was once an orphan, raised by a secretive clan to, um, assassinate as, well, a ninja would. One forbidden fling and one shamed father later, and our pariah protagonist is off to Berlin in order to save Europol* agent Mika Coretti (Naomie Harris) from the grisly fate that her criminal investigations have inevitably drawn.
Is 'Paranormal Entity' a Sequel to 'Paranormal Activity'?
Filed under: Horror, Fandom, Home Entertainment
From Horror SquadI love Paranormal Activity. It's one of my favorite horror films (for a variety of reasons), yet its absolutely insane success has proven to be a double-edged sword for horror fans. On the one hand, it gives a level of legitimacy not often seen within the horror genre outside of the throngs of fans who live for it. Conversely, it gives The Asylum an opportunity to make another movie.
In the wake of the film Walking Distance changing its name to Experimental Activity, which much like the very existence of The Asylum is nothing more than a shameless attempt to capitalize on the success of others, it would seem the company behind stellar films such as The Day the Earth Stopped and Transmorphers (which may or may not be better than the film it's emulating) has decided to make their own adaptation of Oren Peli's smash hit, known simply as Paranormal Entity.
Those wonderful folks over at Quiet Earth even got a look at the poster and revealed a brief synopsis for the "mockbustermentary" (my word, not theirs):
"Actual found videotape footage of the 2008 "murders" of the Finley family."
Short and sweet. The film will pollute video stores on December 29th of this year.
By: Brad McHargue
'Thor' Sends Kat Dennings to Asgard?
Filed under: Casting, Fandom, Comic/Superhero/Geek
By: Zachary Hermann
We can all thank Natalie Portman for letting slip this bit of casting news for the upcoming Thor movie. While plugging the American remake of Brothers (hitting theaters Dec. 4), Portman told MTV News she is "really excited" to work with her friend Kat Dennings on Thor. It just feels like cast announcements have been pouring in for the upcoming Marvel adaptation -- Dennings will join Portman (love interest Jane Foster), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Anthony Hopkins (Odin), Stellan Skarsgård, Colm Feore, Tom Hiddleston (Loki) and just about everyone else under the sun for what is shaping up to be a very interesting stab at the Norse superhero. Kenneth Branagh will be directing from the script by Mark Protosevich (with Zack Stentz and Ashley Miller).
Of course the burning question here is who will Dennings be playing? MTV's Splash Page and /film both mention the possibility of Enchantress, which seems to make a lot of sense given Dennings's physical likeness to the character. Also, the character's ties to Iron Man and the Avengers could be crucial for connecting Thor to the more reality-based Iron Man movies and the larger Avengers universe.
Read the rest over at SciFi Squad
Is Taylor Lautner Our Next Superhero?
100 Greatest Films Beyond the Canon
'Entourage' Movie in the Works?
Spielberg Backs Out of 'Harvey'
Discuss: Should Gay Actors Stay in the Closet?
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