Review: From Paris with Love
Filed under: Action, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews
When you see that crazy French filmmaker Luc Besson is involved with a movie, you know you're in for something giddy, energetic, over-the-top, completely ludicrous, crazy, and French. About 80 percent of the time -- The Fifth Element, The Transporter, District B13, etc. -- it's highly entertaining, too.
From Paris with Love falls -- nay, plummets, head first, screaming -- into that category. Besson is only credited with the story (the screenplay is by Adi Hasak, who wrote the forgotten 1997 Charlie Sheen thriller Shadow Conspiracy), but the "story" is an insane conglomeration of twists and turns from a hundred espionage pictures. The film has Besson's Euro-cheesy scent all over it: the gleefully wanton violence, the performances that are somewhere between campy and cool, the dialogue that sounds like it was written in another language and translated inexpertly into English. Besson, who is also the film's producer, is like Michael Bay, only with style and wit.
The director is Pierre Morel, who made the Besson-scripted District B13 and Taken. From Paris with Love isn't as frenetic as the former or as thrilling as the latter, but it's definitely cut from the same cloth. In Paris, a square, eager young man named Reece (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) works as an assistant to the U.S. ambassador (Richard Durden), but on the side he does low-level secret work for what I'm guessing is the CIA. He wants to graduate to special ops, and he gets his chance when he's assigned as a temporary partner to an American spy named Charlie Wax.
The Lazy, Misleading DVD Covers for 'Amelia' and 'Love Happens'
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Movie Marketing
The films Amelia and Love Happens, both of which you might remember from last fall, when you ignored them, were released on DVD this week, to be ignored by people in the comfort of their own homes. While browsing at Amazon, I noticed some coincidences about the art used on the films' DVD covers. Take a gander.
You can see the obvious similarity. Both covers use the generic "two people facing each other with their eyes closed because they're so in love" motif. It's what you use when you don't feel like thinking of anything more creative. Countless DVDs have used it before. (Amelia is from 20th Century Fox; Love Happens is Universal.)
The other thing these covers have in common is less obvious: They don't accurately reflect the content of the movies. To look at them, you'd think Amelia and Love Happens were both love stories, but that ain't the case. Amelia has the famed aviatrix married to Richard Gere, as indicated in the picture, but dallying with Ewan McGregor. She very specifically says she's not romantically inclined, nor is she interested in monogamy. Both the real Amelia Earhart and the one in the movie would probably be appalled to see such a lovey-dovey representation. (And that tagline: "A love without limits. A life without fear." The only real love Amelia expresses in the film is a love of flying.)
The 10 Sundance Films You Need to Watch For
Filed under: Independent, Deals, New Releases, Sundance, Festival Reports, Distribution
"Sure," you say as you sift through all the Sundance Film Festival coverage at Cinematical and elsewhere on the Internets. "This looks like a lot of fun for the people in Park City. But what about me? Which of these should I pay attention to? Which movies are liable to be coming to a theater near me? TELL ME WHAT TO DO!"
There's no need to yell, but we understand your frustration. Sundance screened around 120 feature films, many of which, unfortunately, you'll never hear from again. Since there isn't room in anyone's brain to keep track of all of them -- heck, we're pretty sure even the Sundance programmers didn't watch a few of the movies they scheduled -- we've narrowed it down to these 10 that we think you'll be hearing about this year.
Blue Valentine Our Kevin Kelly loved it, and he wasn't alone -- the rave reviews for Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams in this relationship drama far outnumbered the less-than-raves. The Weinstein Company, which has been looking for something to restore its prestige in the indie world, bought the film for a little over $1 million. Given TWC's recent history, this could mean Blue Valentine will never be seen again. On the other hand, if Harvey and Co. really are serious, maybe they'll aggressively push this one.
Buried Who wouldn't want to see Ryan Reynolds buried alive? We can start with the people who paid to see The Proposal. Erik Childress liked (but didn't love) Buried, which got a lot of buzz in Park City, especially after Lionsgate snatched it up for $3.2 million. It could be in theaters as soon as late spring.
Sundance Review: The Freebie
Filed under: Drama, Independent, New Releases, Sundance, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports
Katie Aselton has turned up in a few indie films in recent years, including The Puffy Chair, where she played the girlfriend of Mark Duplass. Duplass is now her husband, and a fairly significant force in the indie film world himself, but he might have some competition at home. The Freebie, Aselton's debut as a writer and director, is an honest, unadorned relationship drama that suggests a new talent on the horizon.
Somehow this very good drama stars Dax Shepard. I don't think anyone saw that coming. He and Aselton play Darren and Annie, a married couple whose seven-year relationship is still full of love but lacking in lust. They adore spending every minute of every day with one another; they just can't remember the last time they had sex. Neither partner feels frustrated by this, though -- and the fact that they're OK with near-celibacy is what starts to alarm them.
They wonder if one solution might be to have a "freebie," a night where they each get to sleep with someone else, one time only, no questions asked, and let us never speak of it again. Perhaps this would reignite the spark in their own relationship. Annie's sister (Leonora Gershman) tells her this is a terrible idea (which hardly needs saying), but the two proceed with the plan anyway.
Sundance Review: Please Give
Filed under: Comedy, Independent, New Releases, Sundance, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports
By the looks of things, Nicole Holofcener's muse must be Catherine Keener. The tart-tongued, throaty-voiced actress has appeared in all four of her feature films, Walking and Talking, Lovely & Amazing, Friends with Money, and the new Please Give. Keener, one of the most reliably entertaining actresses currently working, specializes in sardonic, flawed characters -- a perfect fit for Holofcener's image of the modern American woman.
Please Give has Keener playing Kate, a New Yorker who owns an antique-furniture shop with her husband, Alex (Oliver Platt). Kate is plagued with the guilt of the well-to-do. She'll give $20 to a homeless man but won't give her teenage daughter, Abby (Sarah Steele), the money to buy a pair of jeans. She looks for volunteer opportunities in the community, but everything just makes her feel sadder and guiltier.
Adding to Kate's guilt is the way she and Alex stock their store: They buy furniture from the next of kin of recently deceased people. The grieving relatives are usually in a hurry to get rid of Mom's old stuff, and they tend not to know whether it's worth anything. Kate and Alex have taken this line of thinking into their personal lives, too, buying the apartment next to theirs, to take effect upon the death of the current tenant. They hope she will die soon so they can knock down the wall and combine the units. It's every New Yorker's dream.
Sundance Review: Cyrus
Filed under: New Releases, Sundance, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports
The Duplass brothers, Jay and Mark, helped establish the mumblecore sub-genre of independent film with The Puffy Chair, a low-key comedy that amused Sundance audiences in 2005. Their next joint effort, Baghead, cleverly satirized the very genre it was part of, demonstrating great self-awareness on the Duplasses' part. Their third feature, Cyrus, shows even more growth, a warm, hilarious story that's as smartly executed as anything I've seen in a while.
At first glance, you might think the Duplass boys had gone Hollywood. Instead of casting themselves or their indie friends as actors, they got bona fide celebrities: John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, Jonah Hill, and Catherine Keener. Another pair of director brothers, Ridley and Tony Scott, served as producers. Gone are the charmingly low-budget production values and the hand-held cameras.
But do not fear! The Duplasses have adapted extremely well, their sensibilities intact despite the Hollywood influences. Cyrus takes a broad comedic premise, gets laughs out of it, then somehow manages to treat it realistically, too. What could have been a silly farce is instead a down-to-earth, highly enjoyable film.
Sundance Review: Enter the Void
Filed under: Independent, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports
Thanks to Irreversible, the notoriously graphic film that stirred up Cannes and Sundance audiences a few years ago, Gaspar Noé is already well known as a pusher of buttons and a churner of stomachs. His latest, Enter the Void, is certainly not a departure from that, but it is quite a bit more palatable, not to mention more thematically mature. From a technical standpoint, it is a marvel. From every other standpoint, it is totally jacked up. But I mean that in a good way. I think.
Noé revels in trying the viewer's patience, and Enter the Void commences its assault in the opening credits, which are set to pounding techno music and bright flashing lights, and sped up so fast they're impossible to read. It's Noé's little joke, rushing hilariously through the credits in order to leave more time for the film itself ... which is 161 minutes long and is frequently, shall we say, unhurried.
The story is about a young American man named Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) who lives in Tokyo and spends his time taking drugs. (He is able to support this habit by also selling them.) His sister, Linda (Paz de la Huerta), works at a sex club. Orphaned as young children, Oscar and Linda have had to stick together, finding surrogates to fill the emotional and other needs normally filled by parents. Oscar and Linda have a lot of issues.
Oscar's issues are complicated slightly by his death. This occurs early in the film and is foreshadowed by a conversation with a friend, Alex (Cyril Roy), about the Tibetan Book of the Dead. But death is not the end for Oscar. His spirit -- or soul, or consciousness, or ghost -- rises from his body and floats over the rest of the film, drifting from place to place, an omniscient observer of the aftermath of his death.
Sundance Review: Frozen
Filed under: Horror, Thrillers, Sundance, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports
You can picture Adam Green, the writer and director of Frozen, sitting on a ski lift one day, idly thinking, "What if I fell off? How high above the ground am I? No! What if the lift stopped moving and they couldn't get it started? What if I was trapped here!" We all have our moments of morbid fantasizing, but what separates Adam Green from me and you is that he turns his dark "what if?" scenarios into movies. His Hatchet had tourists terrorized in the swamps of Louisiana; Frozen pits the heroes against Mother Nature herself, that wanton trollop.
The setting is a ski resort in New England, where three college students are trying to talk their way onto the lift without buying tickets. Dan (Kevin Zegers) and Joe (Shawn Ashmore), best friends since grade school, come skiing here regularly, but today Joe is miffed because Dan has brought along his girlfriend, Parker (Emma Bell), in a flagrant violation of the Bros Before Hoes policy.
No one likes being the third wheel; it doesn't help that Joe and Parker don't really get along, each jealous of the other's relationship with Dan. It's the same old story: "We haven't seen you at Fezziwig's for dollar pitcher night all semester!" Joe complains. What, Dan would rather spend time with his beautiful girlfriend than drink cheap beer? It's like Joe doesn't even know him anymore.
Marc Webb to Direct New 'Spider-Man' Film!
A lot of people hate January, but Marc Webb probably thinks it's a great month. Last January, his feature debut, 500 Days of Summer, premiered to great acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival. And now, a year later (almost to the day), he's signed a deal with Columbia Pictures to direct the new Spider-Man film, as was rumored last week. What's more, while the press release from Columbia only mentions one film, New York Magazine's Vulture column says Webb's actually been contracted to do a whole new trilogy. Given that the studio wants the Spidey reboot to focus on Peter Parker's high school days, Webb is a good choice. (That's him in the picture, if you wondered what he looks like.) The Golden Globe-nominated 500 Days has a funny take on young angst, at once romantic, realistic, and fantastical -- all necessary elements in a good Spider-Man tale. 500 Days was his first feature film, but he's done award-winning music videos for such youth-friendly bands as Green Day, Weezer, My Chemical Romance, and All-American Rejects.
The press release (which you can read here) doesn't give a title for the film, which has been written by James Vanderbilt, nor does it mention whether it will be in 3D, as has been rumored. All we have is a release date, sort of: summer 2012. Production will start later this year.
What do you think? If you've seen 500 Days, do you think Webb will be a good fit? How many Spider-Man/Webb puns can you come up with?
Weekend Box Office: The Apocalypse Is No Match for 'Avatar'
Filed under: Box Office
I'm filling in for Eugene Novikov, who usually does the Weekend Box Office report, so forgive me if I don't get it exactly right. Having perused the reports from the last few weeks, I get the impression that this Avatar thing is something of a big deal, and that its mighty box-office haul is a thing of extraordinary magnitude. James Cameron's azure juggernaut broke more records over the four-day holiday weekend. Its $54.6 million gross (that's Friday through Monday, not Friday through Sunday) is the best ever for any film over MLK Weekend. Its Friday-Sunday gross of $42.8 million is a new record for best fifth weekend, easily beating the $30 million that Titanic made its fifth time out. This was Avatar's fifth time in the No. 1 spot, too, making it the first film to accomplish that feat since The Sixth Sense in 1999. Oh, and it cracked the $500 million mark on its 32nd day of release, beating The Dark Knight's record of 45 days. At this point less than $100 million stands between Avatar and the all-time domestic box-office record.
Surprisingly, there were other films in theaters this weekend too. One of them was The Book of Eli, a new release starring Denzel Washington, which opened to a robust $38 million for the four-day weekend. Among Washington films, only American Gangster had a better opening. Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, going into wide release after a few weeks on just a handful of screens, landed in third place with $20.5 million over four days. And The Spy Next Door, in which Jackie Chan signifies that he's done being a respected movie star and would like to be a depressing embarrassment now, opened in fifth place with $13 million.
Oh, and while nobody was paying attention, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel grossed almost $200 million. This is a record for a film with the word "squeakquel" in the title.
The top 10 after the jump.
Tom Cruise and J.J. Abrams Reunite for 'Mission Impossible 4'
'Big Top Pee-Wee': The Original Benicio Del Toro Wolfman
Spin-ematical: New on DVD and Blu-ray for 2/9
Watch This: Brilliant Oscar-Nominated Short 'Logorama'
Chris Nolan to Lead 'Superman' Reboot!?
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