BeyondAReasonableDoubt Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Surrogates
Bruce Willis stars in this futuristic science fiction flick based on a graphic novel. Surrogates are remotely controlled robots through which everyone lives there lives. Regardless of what damage is inflicted on the surrogate, the operator remains safe in his or her home. At least that has been the case, but now it seems someone is actually killing people through their surrogates and Willis plays the police detective on the case. Looking forward to this one when it hits on September 25.

Sherlock Holmes
I've never had much more than a passing interest Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous character, but this trailer has got me on the bandwagon. Robert Downey Jr as Holmes? Way cool. Jude Law as Watson? Awesome. Am I reading too much into it or are they trying to make it look like there's some kind of sexual tension between the two? Either way, this looks film will be director Guy Ritchie's Christmas present to the world when it releases on December 25.

9
Not to be confused with another forthcoming film called Nine, this is the second trailer for an amazing looking animated feature about small man-made creatures apparently made of burlap fighting off killer robots in a post apocalyptic world. It comes out on September 9.

Bruno
There's a new trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen's followup to Borat. Bruno is a flamboyantly gay fashionista and as with Borat this film documents his adventures with people who don't realize Cohen is playing a character. This looks really funny and it will be out on July 10.

So a few months ago I'm enjoying a stupid cigarette outside of my Park City (Sundance, woo) hotel, and I see my old friend Chris Hyams walking my way. Chris is one of the founders and wizards behind Bside.com, an outfit that does everything from mega-nifty festival schedules to full-bore film distribution. So because I am loud (and also a pathetic movie nerd), I say "Hey Chris! Wouldn't it be cool if your Dad was PETER Hyams?"

Chris smiled and said "It sure would be. And he is my dad!" After about four minutes of Chris trying to convince me he was telling the truth, we quickly got rambling about the awesomeness of Outland, which is a film his dad made way back in 1981, and is still the finest "High Noon in space" movie that Sean Connery ever starred in. During my conversation with Chris, my brain kept screaming "Don't mention The Musketeer! You HATED that movie!" So I didn't.

But then Chris was off to see a movie and I was left thinking "I'm a moron. Been a Hyams fan since I was a kid and Outland is all I could come up with?" So in an effort to rectify my idiocy, I offer this (rather eclectic) list of Peter Hyams flicks that I sorta, really, or very much dig.

Capricorn One (1978) -- Elliot Gould and James Brolin star in this dated-yet-interesting sci-fi tale of a FAKED Mars landing. As he would later do (several times) in his career, Mr. Hyams wrote, directed, AND shot the movie.

Hanover Street (1979) -- Follow a sci-fi film with a wartime romantic drama? With Harrison Ford? Sure, why not?

Outland (1981) -- If you're going to do an unofficial semi-remake, you could at least do it with half the cleverness found here. It really IS High Noon in Space, and it works surprisingly well. Even holds up well today. Solid brawls, a nice percolation of tension, great character ensemble and a great performance by Frances Sternhagen.

I've got to wonder... If there is an afterlife, can those who have died see what's happening on earth? Variety has just reported that Peter Hyams is going to helm a remake of Fritz Lang's last American film -- Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. What would Lang say if he heard this his film was going to be remade by the man who brought us Running Scared, Timecop, The Relic, and End of Days? That's not to say that the man can't do it, or that great directors can't fail (as Gus Van Sant's Psycho taught us), but his track record doesn't instill much confidence.

The classic, which focuses on an ill-advised scheme to point out the flimsiness of circumstantial evidence, will get "a true 21st century spin for a new generation of cinema-goers," according to Foresight head Mark Damon. Yet again, I ask why it couldn't have just been "inspired by." The original plot: A publisher wants to make a point about how crappy circumstantial evidence is, so he talks his would-be son-in-law into planting clues suggesting he was behind a recent murder. At the last moment, they could bring out the truth and reveal the flaws in the system and death penalty. However, the guy holding that all-too-important information dies and mucks up the plan.

Anyhow, it's got an, um, interesting cast to boot -- Michael Douglas, Amber Tamblyn, and Jesse Metcalfe. They've certainly younged it up a bit -- the main players in the original, names like Dana Andrews and Joan Fontaine, were all at least in their mid-thirties. Whatever the case, we've got the King of California, plus a girl with a kick-arse 3D glasses-wearing dad and some traveling pants, and John Tucker all spun together for this century. I like most of the cast, and I still can't help but think: Why bother?

Say it with me, cinephiles: arrgh. Another classic film that needs no remake is getting just that, with director Franc. Reyes (the period there is not a typo) getting hired to helm an update on Fritz Lang's Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Lang, best known in this country for the silent classic Metropolis, made Doubt in 1947; it originally starred Dana Andrews, Sidney Blackmer, and Joan Fontaine. Reyes, meanwhile, made his mark with the crime drama Empire, starring John Leguizamo, Peter Sarsgaard and Isabella Rossellini. The original film concerned a journalist who frames himself for a murder he didn't commit, in order to take down an aggro DA and prove various things about the justice system. He's got one friend who can exonerate him - but when that friend gets mysteriously killed, it all goes downhill.