And they wonder why movie attendance is falling…The above represents the movie reviews for this week’s films. … Read on
What a film producer does
In Time Movie Review
Real Steel Movie Review
Brace yourself readers, because now director Robert Altman sits in the big directors chair in the sky, our television schedules will be inundated with his movies.
He’d probably object to calling them movies, rather they are films. No… moving image installations. The man loved celluloid, not audiences.
10Â Items Or Less (trailer)
An ageing Hollywood actor (played by ageing Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman) visits an LA grocery store to research his next role. When his driver doesn’t come back for him, Freeman strikes up a friendship with a quirky checkout girl Paz Vega (the talented version of Penelope Cruz) and they do a road trip and share their perspectives on the world.
“Spanglish” meets “Clerks” in colour.
3 Needles (trailer)
The AIDS pandemic from three perspectives. Lucy Liu, Shawn Ashmore and Chloe Sevigny deal with AIDS (either their’s or someone else’s) in China, Canada and South Africa respectively. Just as “The Nativity Story” is released to co-incide with Christmas, so this film is released on World AIDS day, only for less cynical reasons.
A bit like: “Philadelphia” meets “Traffic”
The Nativity Story (trailer)
Mary (little Keisha Castle-Hughes from “Whale Rider”) and Joseph leave Nazareth and travel 100 miles to Bethlehem, where she gives birth to a little guy who went on to be quite famous. When we did this as a school play we used a plastic baby for little Jesus, but Catherine Hardwicke probably had a slightly bigger budget. Hard to tell if it’s any good (update: first reviews are in, and they could be better) but “The Passion Of The Christ” was rubbish and still made a fortune.
A bit like: “The Passion Of The Christ”, without all the gory bits
Premiere magazine have announced their 20 Most Overrated Films Of All Time. In alphabetical order, here they are:
Difficult to disagree with some of those choices. You ever tried to watch “American Beauty” a second time? It’s so pretentious. Less said about “A Beautiful Mind” the better. And surely “Chicago” didn’t deserve six oscars?
But I won’t have anyone rag on “Jules and Jim”, or “Gone With The Wind” or even “Clerks” for that matter. Anyone else see something they don’t think belongs on that list?
You read that right. Eddie Murphy will be donning Axel Foley’s sneakers and sunglasses one more time for Beverly Hills Cop IV. It’s been 12 years since the third installment of the maverick Detroit cop’s adventures in L.A., and Murphy hasn’t been getting any younger. Will Foley still be chasing bad guys down the street and rolling over car bonnets? And does anyone still have Judge Reinhold’s (right) number?
Murphy had been settling into family friendly fluff like “Dr. Dolittle” and “Daddy Day Care” in recent years, as well as giving Donkey a voice in “Shrek”. So maybe he’s thinking one last action movie before it’s too late.
I’m not sure how excited people are going to get for Beverly Hills Cop IV (no one got that excited for Beverly Hills Cop III if I remember rightly) but this is good news if only because we’ll be hearing that theme tune one more time.
Something has gone very wrong here, because Christopher Guest mockumentaries are supposed to be funny. It’s more or less guaranteed. “Best In Show”, “Waiting For Guffman”, “A Mighty Wind”, these are funny movies. “Spinal Tap” (which Rob Reiner directed, but Guest masterminded) was genius, so Guest and his troupe poking fun at Hollywood in “For Your Consideration” should be like shooting fish in a barrel.
And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe it was just too easy, because “FYC” doesn’t take sly digs at Hollywood, it takes violent stabs. Maybe they all just really hate their jobs (and why not? everybody else does) but this movie feels like one big long complaint about movies.
Ever wondered what Kevin Smith has on his iPod? Me neither, but if he’s willing to share then I’m willing to read. The “Clerks” director originally submitted his ultimate tracklisting to Apple as part of iTunes Celebrity Playlist, but they turned it away because he’d gone into too much detail. They asked him to trim it down, he said no, and the thing went unpublished.
But now Smith has posted the list on his Silent Bob Speaks website, and turns out he’s my new favourite music critic. Read the full article here or read on for the playlist…
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.ifilm.com/efp" width="448" height="365" fvars="flvbaseclip=2783985"/]The theatrical trailer for Spidey’s third outing is currently the hottest property on iFilm.The webslinger isn’t looking too shabby, though the CGI scenes still resemble excerpts from a video game.
Thomas Haden Church has recovered from his Sideways hangover, to play the villain Sandman, who apparently killed poor old Uncle Ben. This makes Tobey Maguire mad enough to take on a very literal dark side, something which happens to every superhero sooner or later.
Fair play to Sam Raimi though. He’s stuck by this franchise for an entire trilogy instead of jumping ship just when things were getting interesting (I’m looking at you Bryan Singer).
The Spiderman 3 release date is set for May 4th 2007 in the US and the UK, so it’s some way off. But at least you don’t live in Bulgaria, where for some reason they have to wait until May 11th.
Dancing penguins continued to tap dance their way to the top of the box office. “Happy Feet” was the winner of the Thanksgiving festivities, paying back its $100 million production budget in just two weeks, according to Box Office Mojo. The penguin’s chief competitor, the penguin-suited James Bond, still trailed just moments behind “Happy Feet” with a $31 million gross putting it at $94 million. While the super-spy has a little bit longer way to go to breaking its $150 million production budget, there’s little doubt Daniel Craig’s first outing was a critical success.
Tony Scott’s “Deja Vu” was a distant memory to the top two, however, at just over $20 million. And with the exception of the snow in “Happy Feet”, audiences seem unwilling to choke down the holiday season just yet – at least in the comedy department, with “Deck the Halls” opening with $12 million. Even further back, Darren Aronofsky’s long-awaited opened with $5.4 million next to Jack Black’s “Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny”, with $3.1 million.
The bottom rounded out with the mockumentary “For Your Consideration”, which just $2 million.
Next week sees the “The Nativity Story” opening alongside the Reynold-less “Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj” (okay, he makes a cameo) and the horror-thriller “Turistas”.
“Boston Legal” debuted last night after a several week hiatus, and personally, I can’t say I blame ABC for keeping “Boston Legal” for an extra couple of weeks or so, or at least, I can’t blame them too much.
“Hands” is once again in the plot, and at this point, I find myself questioning why they don’t just make Christian Clemenson a lead in the show. He already won an Emmy for his performance as Jerry “Hands” Espenson – it seems only natural to make him a part of the show, as currently Alan Shore is spending too much time backtracking to Jerry and not enough time engaging the rest of the cast. And yes, I know Jerry held a knife to Shirley’s throat last season, but c’mon, are you telling me there’s anyone crazier in this place than Denny Crane?
All ranting aside, the episode finds Alan and Jerry defending a mentally imbalanced woman suspected of hanging her ex-lover. Denny Crane not finds out Bethany is not her daughter, but that her mother is every bit as determined in pursing him as he is to Bethany. Denise is still reeling from Daniel Post’s death, and might just take Alan Shore on a pretty explicit offer. And of course, Brad and Jeff come to blows in the bathroom.
The ending, however, is the most dynamite addition – one which explains just why ABC held on to this morsel of “Boston Legal” for so long, as murdering pervert Lincoln kidnaps Shirley.
