Lionsgate Films »

The Twilight and Harry Potter franchises might be winding down, but that doesn't mean audiences will be bereft of young-adult oriented fantasy fare. First published two years ago, Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, quickly became a hit with both teen and post-teen readers. A cross between Battle Royale and The Running Man, The Hunger Games is set in a dystopian future where teens are forced by a dictatorial government to fight in deadly gladiatorial contests on broadcast TV.

Lionsgate picked up the film rights with Collins getting a first past at the screenplay, but unsurprisingly hired experienced screenwriter Billy Ray (State of Play, Breach, Flightplan) to handle the rewrite. Now that the rewrite's in, Lionsgate wants to press forward with the big-screen adaptation. According to Deadline, Lionsgate executives have narrowed the pool of potential directors to Gary Ross (Seabiscuit, Pleasantville), David Slade (The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, 30 Days of Night), and Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes (Road to Perdition, American Beauty).

Until a month or so ago, I didn't realize that Tyler Perry's next film, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, was based on an acclaimed play. No, even with a cast that included Thandie Newton, Whoopi Goldberg, Kerry Washington, Loretta Devine, Macy Gray and Janet Jackson among others, I had just assumed that we were looking at another tone-deaf gospel-laced melodrama. (To date, I've seen all but one of his feature films, so believe me when I say that they're identical in both content and execution.)

Colored Girls might be something to contend with, though. Left with little to push for awards this fall beyond maybe Ryan Reynolds in Buried (if they're feeling frisky, and I hope that they are), Lionsgate has moved the film's release up by two months, from January '11 to November 5 -- a vote of confidence if ever I saw one.

Then again, nobody's seen the thing yet, but maybe, just maybe, Perry leveled his direction out this time. If so, let's just hope that he doesn't let Madea accept any awards on his behalf...

[via Blu-ray.com]

A couple of weeks ago, I put forth The Last Exorcism as a likely candidate to become a late-summer sleeper hit. At the end of its first weekend in theaters, the box office returns look good, and the critical consensus does too -- with the exception of the ending, which took a drumming from everyone and their mother. MaryAnn Johanson writes that the movie is "absolutely worth seeing... if only for the intriguing debate to be had afterward, if it wouldn't be an even stronger film were the last five minutes or so to be chopped off." The A.V. Club's Keith Phipps laments that "the finale abandons the [movie's] carefully constructed ambiguity." Owen Gleiberman: "For a while, the movie shrewdly exploits our voyeurism, all built around the teasing question of whether there's actually anything supernatural going on. The payoff, however, simply isn't scary enough. The movie is like The Exorcist without a spine-tingling catharsis." And so forth.

I'm of two minds about the direction Daniel Stamm's film takes in the final minutes. On one hand, I appreciate the way the movie toys with us before full-tilt careening toward the supernatural, and my fondness for pseudo-biblical horror films ensured that I'd get at least a small kick from the final twist. I also thought that the ending, and specifically the sudden callback of a piece of information dispensed earlier, recalled -- in a positive way -- the bone-chilling final shots of The Blair Witch Project.

If there's one thing that binds the best exorcism films, it's that the really good ones all offer some great acting. The major players in The Exorcist give amazing performances, The Exorcism of Emily Rose is believable through the work of its solid ensemble, and, now, The Last Exorcism delivers a potentially star-making performance from Patrick Fabian. What seems to be a "me too" attempt at creating another Paranormal Activity is actually a fascinating, uncomfortable, character-driven look at matters of faith and fear.

I expected the typical thrills of a demon possession flick, and while The Last Exorcism delivers, beat-for-beat, almost every creepy trope of the genre, its mature focus on characterization really sets the film apart. This is a welcome approach -- a horror film about people and not just kills and thrills -- but because the scares take a back seat to the characters, it also never quite reaches the fever pitch of terror that it also seems to be working toward. It's engaging, but is it scary? I can't quite say that it is, which is a peculiar criticism of a movie that still stands as one of the best horror films of 2010.

Teen queen Miley Cyrus, who has made a fortune with her Disney show Hannah Montana and countless tie-ins, including a 3D movie of a Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus concert tour, is going to show us she's not just another pop star from the Mouse House. After her turn in the soggy Nicholas Sparks movie The Last Song, she's since gone on to release a "racy" music video for her single "Can't Be Tamed," which features a woman with a bird cage on her head as a hat and Cyrus as a winged sexpot being held in a cage who breaks out and wreaks havoc in a museum.

Her next stop on the "Screw You, I'm a Grown-Up!" tour is the movie LOL (Laughing Out Loud), which is based on a French movie of the same name. Both movies were directed by Lisa Azuelos, who wrote the screenplay for the French version and co-wrote the screenplay for this adaptation. I haven't seen the original, so I don't know if it's any good. Have you?

I've never been a big reader, but in the last few years picked up the hobby of reading books being adapted to film. Even after plowing through dozens, I still never understood the people who would willingly sit all day, flipping pages until they finished an entire book. You know, like the Harry Potter fans. I enjoyed reading, but never felt desperate to see what happens next in exchange for food, sleep or just time to zone out - until I picked up The Hunger Games.

Suzanne Collin's book is hands down, the most fantastic piece I've ever read. Not only did I read obsessively only stopping to get some work done, but I actually was compelled to read it again, a first for me, and then go on to do the same with the sequel, Catching Fire. You'll be hooked from the very first page of the soon-to-be three-book series, when you meet the story's hero, Katniss Everdeen. She lives in Panem, the country formed after the destruction of North America. It consists of the wealthy Capitol and 12 districts, the last of which Katniss calls home. Once every year, each district must select two residents, one boy and one girl both between the ages of 12 and 18, and send them to the Captiol to compete in the Hunger Games, a televised battle to the death.

The story has some serious big screen potential and a massive diehard fan base to go with it. Lionsgate is in charge of this one and back in May, word got out that the studio planned to have a director by the summer and be ready for a January 2011 start. Clearly the first part never happened and perhaps the second won't either, but with the stellar amount of buzz surrounding the effort, it's likely Lionsgate will make this venture a priority and that means people are already talking casting and getting pretty heated about the topic, too.

The Cine staff had been taking a week-long look at the action films of Sylvester Stallone, skipping his comedies (out of respect), and we've twice reviewed his latest outing. It only seemed fitting to properly include it among these ranks...

Title: The Expendables

Setting: Americas North and Latin, present day

Our hero: Barney Ross (Stallone), leader of many manly mercenaries

Our villain/s: Would-be dictator General Garza (David Zayas); rogue CIA agent James Munroe (Eric Roberts); his aptly-named henchman, Paine (Steve Austin)

The stakes: The life of the dictator's daughter, Sandra (Giselle Itie); the freedom of her townsfolk; millions of dollars in drug trade for the bad guys; millions of dollars in compensation for the good guys

My friend and comrade Katey Rich received some absolutely ri-dick-ulous comments on her thoughtful review of The Expendables over at Rotten Tomatoes. Her review probably took more time to write than the entire script of The Expendables, and was certainly a more insightful look at the action genre than the movie itself deserved. She's not the only person who gave The Expendables a bad review; she just happens to be a woman who did so. This got the manpanties of the commenters in a ferocious wad, and they showered her with hateful, misogynist bulls*t. Some are just childish and stupid, although this one used some big boy words and even name-dropped a David Lynch movie:

"I don't mean this to be as misogynistic as it's going to sound -- but women aren't qualified to review testosterone-fueled action movies.

It's like having a two-year-old child review Mulholland Drive."

In response, Scott Weinberg threw down the gauntlet to any of the female Cinematical staffers to take a crack at The Expendables. I took him up on that offer because I am a masochist. And I like it when things blow up.

Just so you know, I am writing this review with my vagina. Literally. I can't tell you how because I'm getting the technique patented, but since The Expendables is being called man-tastic, covered in man-sauce, man-a-licious, and so manly you'll grow extra chest hair, I thought that turnabout was fair play.

In a summer full of proudly digitized sound and fury, it's understandable why moviegoers might welcome the bulging biceps and collective crows' feet of Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Eric Roberts and Steve Austin (not to mention fleeting appearances by Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger). On paper, The Expendables sounds like a throwback to their kick-ass heyday, and on screen, it pretty much fits the bill -- maybe not directed with any particular verve or wit by Stallone himself, but still satisfactory of the lowest common denominators and the highest possible decibel levels.