Tag Archives: movies

Battleship: the Movie

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They’re really, seriously making “Battleship: The Movie“. And you thought comic book movies were bad?

(On the other hand, Funny or Die has a great “What other movies could they make?” post, which happens to include Clue(do):

When your family is more prolific than the Kennedys’ and more secretive than the Knights Templar, reunions can be a tedious affair. Especially when the mysterious, estranged patriarch is discovered dead before dinner can be served. Now in two days the Von Clu family must try to find a killer without murdering each other first. (Will be a quirky reboot of the storied Clue franchise)

Starring Bill Murray as Colonel Mustard, Meryl Streep as Ms. White, Angelica Houston as Mrs. Peacock, Luke Wilson as Rev. Green, Christina Ricci as Miss Scarlett and Jason Schwartzman as Professor Plum. Written and directed by Wes Anderson. That joke is an elevator pitch worth $25 million right there.

Movie Trailer Interlude 2

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  • Extract is a new comedy from the creator of Office Space, starring Jason Bateman (Arrested Development, Juno) and Ben Affleck (almost unrecognisable). Could be a little feel-good, but seems like anything with Jason Bateman is gotta be worth a few laughs.
  • The Men Who Stare at Goats is… well, hard to define. Syriana on a drug trip, maybe. Looks blissfully un-self-conscious about putting George Clooney as a man who thinks he is a Jedi in with Ewan McGregor as a journalist trying to investigate “psychic troops”. Ostensibly a true story – and the only reason I can believe that is that it would be just the kind of thing Bush ordered at some point.
  • The Blind Side is actually based on a true story, that of “Big Mike” Oher, a black kid who really was about as abandoned as you can be, only to be taken in by a school and a family, and given the opportunity to shine. And shine he does, in a way that you’d only credit in America, through his abilities playing American Football. I originally read this story on Kottke, and found it a piercing then – I think if you set aside cynicism about the feel-good salvation-through-dedication stories all too common in fiction and movies especially, this one looks particularly good. At least Sandra Bullock isn’t doing one of her standard-issue rom-com performances.
  • The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard. Two words: Jeremy Piven. If you’re at all familiar with Entourage, you should know why that cannot be anything but made of awesome.
  • Tron Legacy looks simply stunning. I haven’t seen the original Tron, but now I’m wondering where I can get my hands on a copy.
  • Sherlock Holmes takes the Iron Man theory of letting Robert Downey Jr. do whatever he wants and applies it to Victorian Britain. Or something. Look, it’s Downey Jr, Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, Mark Strong (Rocknrolla, Body of Lies) all directed by Guy Ritchie in a period setting based on the classic stories of Sherlock Holmes, released on Christmas. How will you avoid seeing this film?
  • Whip It is all about me indulging my Ellen Page crush. (also Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut.)
  • Late addition: Youth in Revolt is Fight Club: The High School Years. Michael Cera is Jack.

Movie Review: Quickie Edition XI

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What Happens in Vegas: Look, I know this is the kind of movie you’re supposed to hate if you’re any sort of movie buff, but I didn’t totally hate this. The plot: Kutcher and Diaz meet in Vegas, get hitched, win $3 million, are forced to wait 6 months for a divorce to split the winnings. They attempt to devise ways to drive each other nuts, only to (spoiler!) fall in love (no wait, that’s no spoiler – that’s a duh). Despite the hackneyed, predictable plot, it maintains a fluffiness that makes it a great popcorn movie. ★★★

Watching the Detectives: It’s little wonder this movie went straight to DVD – I’m not quite sure what I saw in the trailer that made me want to watch it, but I regret it now. It’s ostensibly a rom-com, but it really is neither. Cillian Murphy (of Scarecrow in Batman Begins fame) is a video store owner (shades of High Fidelity here) who falls head-over heels for a girl who wanders into his shop, Lucy Liu. She defines the term “psycho girlfriend”. This movie is trash, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that I didn’t pay for it, I’d be asking for my money back. ☆

Duplicity: Clive Owen, Julia Roberts pair up in a movie that’s kinda hard to shoe-horn into a genre. Is it comedy? Not enough laughs and slapstick. It’s not a romance by any means, and nor is it a drama or a spy thriller. Is it a heist movie? Not quite, but that’s fairly close to the mark, I guess. The film also doesn’t know what genre it is, as it tries to cover too many bases and inevitably ends up covering none. For all the plot machinations, it left me somewhat unsatisfied. ★★☆

Easy Virtue: Period piece set in the inter-war period starring Colin Firth and Jessica Biel – mostly Biel – about an American who marries into an upper class English family. Inevitably, the newcomer clashes with the stiff-upper-lip establishment and arguments ensue, as she tries to drag the family into the cold light of reality. Based on a play by Noel Coward, this reimagining does a great job at keeping a good pace and tight focus, albeit all too short. A few laughs, a few touching moments, and Biel in a smokin’ hot dress. ★★★

Star Trek: At risk of indulging in some 20/20 hindsight, Star Trek was a series I always wanted to see from the start, if only to find out what it is about this series that exerts such a hold on its fanatical followers and has had a significant cultural impact. However, there was something about picking up a cheesy sci-fi series from the 60s that embodied the image of “nerd” that was a little… off-putting, shall we say. It was a relief to find then that Star Trek was being re-booted by J. J. Abrams, he of Lost and Cloverfield fame (though the second did give me pause).
Turns out, it’s not all that bad – or at least in this imagining, it’s been given a jolt of credibility, along much the same lines that Batman Begins and Spiderman did. The new Star Trek tells the origin story of the crew of the Enterprise, particularly Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto, of Heroes fame), and really those two are the focus of the movie far more than the bad guy (Eric Bana, under a lot of make-up and flat dialogue). The support characters are mostly one or two dimensional, and some of the plot points are mere McGuffins to keep the story moving (A liquid which creates an instant black hole? The rings of Saturn having a detector-blocking-but-teleport-allowing magnetic field? Yeesh), but then this is a blockbuster, and you didn’t come to think too hard. ★★★★, despite all its flaws.

Movie Trailer Interval

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All of the following are linked to Japan in one way or another, and look damn good – can’t wait.

The most obvious one is Okuribito, or Departures – this is the Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film this year, and looks gorgeous. It will probably be as slow as any Japanese drama is, but I guess that’s the genre conventions.

The next is Shinjuku Incident, Jackie Chan’s new film about a clash of triads and yakuza in Tokyo. This looks like your more standard action fare, and obviously it’s Jackie. How could that not be awesome?

The third is Blood – The Last Vampire, another one of the current trend to remake anime in Hollywood (Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Dragonball, and Astroboy are all scheduled or coming out this year). Blood is probably the most visceral of the lot so far, and is probably the one I would’ve picked for a movie conversion first.

Finally, we have a tenuous connection of a Japanese actor (Rinko Kikuchi, of Babel fame) in The Brothers Bloom, which looks hilarious and awesome. Directed by the same guy who did Brick, starring Adrian Brody and Rachel Wiesz, this looks like possibly a sleeper hit or unexpected blockbuster, depending on how much it’s pushed by the studio.