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Terrence Malick is a director who took 20 years off from work after he finished the film Days of Heaven only to return in 1998 with the WWII epic The Thin Red Line, which was overshadowed by that other war movie Tom Hanks starred in. He then dropped The New World on us in 2005, and next year will see his new film The Tree of Life hit theaters. Three films in thirteen years? Slow down, Malick. Your '80's self is wondering who that 21st century workaholic is.
Malick's films seem to divide film fans - although even those that don't like his films still seem to respect the man and his work on some level. Some people feel his narratives are meandering and pretentious. Others, including myself, think his poetic approach to dialogue and the heady, existential earth that all of his films blossom from are, while sometimes difficult to connect with on a human plane, pretty transcendental on a spiritual level. Characters in a Terrence Malick film don't feel so much like people interacting as they do parts of the soul.
Anyway, enough of me all trying to sound smart and sensitive. The trailer for Tree of Life is up at Apple.com/trailers, and it's about as beautiful as you'd expect a Malick film to look. I've watched this sucker three times and I'm pretty much in awe. Can't quite nail down the narrative, but it obviously has something to do with the father/son bond and the beginning/end of time. The whole thing pretty much puts a lump in my throat on every viewing.
There I go, sounding all sensitive again.
The trailer is embedded below, but I strongly suggest you watch this thing of beauty in 1080p, over at Apple's site, if you can.
Well it’s that time of year again, when the billions of critic groups around the country start handing out awards and high-fives to a number of deserving films and an even larger number of undeserving ones. I honestly don’t have the patience or the time to keep up with all the board/association/press accolades being discussed - 100% of them piss off half of us, and 0% of us are ever happy with all of them.
That being said, The Golden Globes were announced today, and since they’re the 2nd biggest awards ceremony in cinema I thought I might as well throw my two cents in. Unfortunately I haven’t seen a good percentage of the films nominated (simply because they haven’t opened around me yet), and I won’t even get into the television categories, because I just don’t watch enough of it.
The Best Motion Picture category seems to make the most sense, although I’m scratching my head over the inclusion of Inceptionand not 127 Hours (which I have seen) or True Grit (which I have not). Inception is great filmmaking, but it's also bulky, oddly paced, and emotionally cold. I like Chris Nolan a lot and I’ll revisit the movie often, but it’s nowhere close to the brilliance of 127 Hours, which manages to be both masterful filmmaking and emotionally satisfying.
The next category I can’t comment on, as I’m not familiar enough with the nominees for Best Actress in a Drama, but I’ll go on to say I hope James Franco ends up acquiring a statue for 127 HoursBest Actor in a Drama category.
After those three fairly predictable groupings comes the oddest collection of Best Picture nominees I think I've ever seen. In the Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical category, the following films have been chosen: Alice in Wonderland (trash), Burlesque (supposed trash, haven't seen it), The Kids Are Alright (supposed greatness, haven't seen it), Red (supposed fun, haven't seen it), and The Tourist (absolutely wretched). Alice in Wonderland and The Tourist are not the best of anything except, maybe, at making me hate the art of filmmaking.
If those two films aren't a big flashing neon sign that blinks "WE JUST WANT TO BE LOVED AND COOL!", perhaps the fact that Johnny Depp is NOMINATED TWICE IN THE SAME CATEGORY (Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical) FOR THOSE SAME TWO MOVIES should betray the Hollywood Foreign Press' true intentions. Although The Tourist flopped, there's pretty much no bigger movie star in the world than Johnny Depp. Years ago, I wondered why he wasn't a bigger name than he was (around the ...Gilbert Grape years), and then the world caught up too late and the Depp love jumped the shark when, after almost 20 years of solid performances, he was finally nominated for an Academy Award after playing a flamboyant pirate.
And that's all I have to say about the Golden Globes at this point. I hate to be part of the inevitable backlash, but the HFPA has become increasingly nonchalant about their celebrity ass-kissing in recent years, and sooner or later the awards show itself will resemble nothing more than the MTV Movie Peoples Choice Awards.
I'm woefully ignorant when it comes to the Marvel Universe. I've never read one issue of an Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, Captain America, et al. comic book, and I just recently read my first X-Men hardcover for the first time a few months ago. The only things I know about these characters is what I see in the film adaptations of their stories, and that includes the latest Marvel superhero to get the cinematic treatment, Thor, who I know (through general knowledge) to be a Norse god that carries a huge GDF'in hammer.
The film stars Chris Hemsworth (who played the father of James T. Kirk in the Star Trek reboot) as the titular character with daddy issues, after being cast down out of Asgard and down to Earth by his pops Odin (a cycloptic Anthony Hopkins). I know very little of what to expect when this is released next summer except that I'm sure it will be bombastic, as it's directed by Kenneth Branagh. I've generally been a fan of Branagh's directorial work throughout the years - I'm probably one of six fans worldwide of his 1994 adaptation Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. That movie is so gloriously insane that I can't help but kind of love it. If Branagh brings that same over-the-top and demented glee and injects it into Thor (and it looks like he did), then it's going to be a blast. Dumb and bloated, sure. But a blast nonetheless.
The film also stars my girlfriend Natalie Portman and the future godfather of our children Idris Elba. Thor opens May 2011.
Fun fact: I stood next to Clark Gregg (who plays Agent Coulson, the shady dude interviewing Thor at the beginning of the trailer) in a bathroom when I attended San Diego Comic-Con last July. That was right before I almost got run down by Jason Schwartzman and his posse when they rounded a corner and didn't see me standing in the hallway. Those are my two pathetic brushes with celebrity. I don't count the time my brother and I stared Amy Adams right out of a movie theater lobby.
With less than 3 1/2 weeks until the end of the year, December is looking to be anemic when it comes to quality films at your local theater. The nauseating trailer for Yogi Bear is almost enough to keep me more than 100 feet away from a theatrical release from now until 2012. On top of that there's Ben Stiller and Robert DeNiro trying to milk the one note joke that started with Meet the Parents, The Chronicles of Narnia brings us another boring epic with The Dawn Treader, and Jack Black makes goofy faces all the way to the bank with Gulliver's Travels, squirting that last bit of goodwill he had worked up with Tropic Thunder down the toilet.
Of course there are a few films that look interesting enough - Tron: Legacy certainly seems to be a feast for the eyes, and The Fighter brings together the three egos of David O. Russell, Christian Bale, and Mark Wahlberg, which should make for some uncomfortable behind-the-scenes YouTube videos.
As much as I'm looking forward to those two films, their trailers just haven't excited me as much as the next two have. You've most likely been exposed to at least one of these movie previews, as they're both more than a few months old, but I think they're not only both well worth watching over again, but the movies themselves will live up to the promise of their trailers.
The first trailer is for the upcoming movie from Joel and Ethan Coen: True Grit. Not only do I think the Coen brothers are the best and most important American filmmakers living today, but they also happen to be my favorite directors as well. Their films define the word unique, even when they're adaptations of pre-existing material (No Country For Old Men). True Grit is their second adaptation in four films, and it looks to be another win for the brothers. This is also their second collaboration with Jeff Bridges, their first birthing one of the great slacker characters of cinema, Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski in The Big Lebowski. From interviews, Ethan and Joel have stated that their version of True Grit clings closer to Charles Porti's 1969 novel than the John Wayne starring film of the same name. I haven't had the pleasure of viewing the original film, and I most likely won't bother until after the Coen's version. Watch the trailer below or, for a downloadable version, check it out at Apple Trailers here.
The next film comes from another very important American filmmaker, Darren Aronofsky. Aronofsky blew minds with his late 90's independent film Pi, and then continued to release innovative and critically acclaimed films such as Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, and The Wrestler. His new film, Black Swan, appears to be a Dario Argento inspired look into the world of ballet, where the pressure of competition can transform the innocent into monsters. The film is in limited release right now (and making some hefty coin at the box office, averaging $80,212 per screen last weekend at 18 screens throughout the US), and most likely I will drive to the closest theater playing the film (Amherst, Massachusetts on December 17) to see it. The Black Swan trailer is below, and head on over to Apple Trailers for a music video and a behind the scenes featurette.
This trailer is a few weeks old, but I thought I'd post it anyway, because it's a great example of how a song can enhance a set of visual images edited together to create a creepy and almost awe-inspiring movie preview. Battle: Los Angeles has the look and feel of a District 9/Transformers mash-up, although I certainly hope it's more like the former. As incredible as the trailer is, I'm tempering my expectations for the film as the director, Jonathan Liebeman, was responsible for the truly horrendous and despicable Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, which was without a doubt one of the worst films of last decade.
Feast your eyes (and ears) on the trailer, embedded below, just don't get any ideas that the final film is going to be anywhere near as beautiful.
The plot to the Jodi Foster directed The Beaver pretty much describes star Mel Gibson's current predicament succinctly: formerly loved (and lovable) man has a fall from grace and is, in turn, loathed and kicked to the dirt by those closest to him and pretty much everyone else who knows him as well. Man then finds a beaver puppet which he wears at all times as a therapeutic device to win back the hearts of those he lost.
Alright, that last part is where Foster's film and Gibson's life divorce plot-wise, obviously. But it's hard not to watch the trailer for The Beaver and see a reflection of the mega-star's personal life.
It's also hard not to watch it and not be overwhelmed by the sugary, feel-goodness of it all. When I first heard of The Beaver, I imagined some black comedy about a truly troubled individual. The guy wear's a beaver puppet on his hand that he talks to, for the love of God. But it appears the actual film is striving for a more inspiring, James L. Brooks affair.
The trailer is fairly terrible, complete with banal voice-over and all the important lessons the film teaches thrown at us in the last thirty seconds. We won't know if the movie will rehabilitate Gibson's image with the public until it's release, but from what I'm seeing here it certainly won't rehabilitate his career, which was dealt a hefty blow with the truly awful Edge of Darkness, the second worst film this year.
Starring Dwayne Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton, Carla Gugino
Faster, the new film in which Dwayne Johnson tries once again to be crowned King Action Hero, begins promisingly enough. After being released from prison, Johnson's character - dubbed only "Driver" by on-screen text - walks to the local impound, jumps in a '70 Chevy Chevelle SS, and proceeds to execute the first poor sucker in a group of men who betrayed and killed his brother after a bank robbery.
With the determination of a spurned Jersey housewife, Johnson is most effective in the film when the script calls for him to grit his teeth, squint, and generally look like he's about to throw a tree through someone's face. The former professional wrestler has the build of a Panzer tank, but hurtles through the first half hour of the movie like the runaway train from Tony Scott's Unstoppable. If Faster had kept it simple for the rest of the film and followed Driver on the hunt for each and every kill, it would have been a sweet, violent blast of adrenaline. Unfortunately, since Faster is a movie and movie's need stories, it doesn't, and the story it concocts is as disjointed as it is bulky.
Billy Bob Thornton is Cop, a - you got it - police detective on the hunt Driver. Cop gets a nice little introduction where we learn he's addicted to heroin. Not only is he a drug-addicted sleaze, he's also a joke on the force. His partner, Cicero (Carla Gugino) can't stand him, and neither can his estranged wife Marina (Moon Bloodgood). In a sub-plot that seems to come straight from another movie, Cop fights to be back in the lives of his wife and child, while telling Marina he'll kick the heroin habit for good. It's trite, melodramatic stuff, and it doesn't belong in a film that's introduced as one man's vengeance against those who wronged him.
Neither does another plot involving Killer (Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Jake Gyllenhaal's doppelganger), a New Age assassin with more insecurity issues than weapons to kill people with. While on missions he's also on the phone with his therapist. When not on missions he's trying to convince his girlfriend (Maggie Grace) that he's going to give up the assassination game once and for all. Soon. He promises. Just after this last job. While Killer is actually an interesting character and he's played with sexy danger by Jackson-Cohen, his story, like Cop's, appears grafted on from a completely different screenplay. At points, especially during Killer's wedding, I felt as if a movie from the next theater over had accidentally been projected onto our screen.
And therein lies the problem with Faster. It's never consistent, and it felt like the filmmakers wanted the film to be more important than it actually is. It also changes gears from a revenge flick to a Who Done It?, as Driver uncovers secrets about his brother's killing that may or may not involve his father, mother, and corrupt police officials. It's a shame that Faster becomes bogged down with unnecessary story complications and subplots.
It's also a shame that Faster doesn't live up to its potential as an ultraviolent action piece, and one that could finally elevate Dwayne Johnson to the action star status he's always strived attain. While the action in Faster is decent at best, it's surprisingly slow in parts, and doesn't take full advantage of its star's physical ability. In one scene, Driver comes to a fight involving sharp hand weapons with a hulking beast of a man, but the fight is over soon after the first punch is thrown. While it may be a more realistic portrayal of what a hand-to-knife-to-ice-pick fight would be like, it's disappointing that director George Tillman Jr. didn't choreograph a UFC style rumble that perhaps could have been the centerpiece of the film and a scene that could have been a reference point for Johnson's action star abilities.
While not a complete waste of film, Faster is most certainly disappointing, and its not going to do any favors for Mr. Johnson. If the movie had cut out all of the fat and accepted its role as a lean, mean, vengeance machine, Faster could have been one of the best action films of the year. Instead it's only a mildly entertaining, with only a few rousing kills and a likeable ant-hero we just don't get to spend enough time with. Better luck next time, Dwayne.
