Chris Cooper Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Embedded above is the trailer for New York, I Love You, an anthology of shorts from the producers of the similar Paris, Je T'aime, and going off this taste alone, I'd be willing to say that this might turn out to be just as winsome as that film was.

Several directors -- among them: Mira Nair, Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman, and, um, Brett Ratner -- and even more actors -- including Bradley Cooper, Chris Cooper, Julie Christie, John Hurt, Ethan Hawke, Orlando Bloom, Shia LaBeouf, Kevin Bacon, Maggie Q, and again, Portman -- come together with tales of love and life in the various neighborhoods of NYC.

The film is scheduled to make its world premiere at the fast approaching Toronto International Film Festival next month, and if IMDb is to be believed, it'll open in the States next February and eventually be followed by the likes of Shanghai...

The nice folks from Sony Picture Classics have just sent us the new trailer for Married Life, starring Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, Pierce Brosnan and Rachel McAdams. You can watch the trailer above, and here's a taste of the plot from the film's synopsis: "After decades of marital contentment, Harry (Chris Cooper) concludes that he must kill his wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson) because he loves her too much to let her suffer when he leaves her. Harry has fallen hard for the young and lovely Kay (Rachel McAdams), but his best friend Richard (Pierce Brosnan) wants to win Kay for himself."

I'm a pretty big Chris Cooper fan, and if you haven't yet seem him in Breach, do yourself a favor and check it out (the flick is currently on cable) -- I watched it for a second time last night and he's so friggin' good. Not for nothing, but the entire cast of Married Life is full of exceptional actors (though I'm still a little iffy on McAdams), so I'm sure we'll get something meaty. The film played both the Toronto Film Festival and the New York Film Festival, and it's due to arrive in theaters (in limited release) on March 7. Let us know what you think.

A world within a world comes crashing down in the opening sequence of The Kingdom, the new film from director (and uncredited actor) Peter Berg. An American compound inside Saudi Arabia, where ballgames and barbecues are the norm and uncovered female faces mock the law that applies outside the gates, is attacked by men with machine guns and bombs. The details are thoroughly convincing in this scene -- as machine gun fire sends the Americans fleeing in a panic, one of the terrorists, wearing the uniform of a Saudi policeman, falsely beckons some of them his way before setting off a vest of explosives. Later that night, after first-responders have quarantined the crime-scene and set up their own camp, a second-wave attack hits, destroying the entire area and creating a media event that has to be dealt with one way or the other by the American political machinery. This is a decent set-up for a movie, and it's as well-executed as you'd want a set-up to be, but it gives birth to an oddly-schizophrenic film.

You could almost call The Kingdom a double-feature, although it seems blithely unaware of its bifurcated status. To explain: the first half of the film -- actually, closer to two-thirds -- is professorial and serious, going so far as to offer the audience a tedious lecture on Saudi Arabia's history and political situation, balancing Western-style realpolitik with the needs of a population that seems to prefer living by religious teachings. As the aftermath of the compound bombing seeps back to Washington, an FBI team led by steely-eyed Jamie Foxx and comprised of Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman, seeks an entry point to the situation; they want to go investigate the bombing, but the State Department prefers to recognize the Saudi government's 'no boots on the ground' mandate, lest they come off as looking like puppets. Much screentime is given over to a scheme by Foxx to blackmail a Saudi diplomat in order to get his team access, and everything up to this point is deliberately structured as a political thriller. That's why the second part of the film is so surprising.

The upcoming futuristic thriller Franklyn will offer something for the fellas (the gorgeous Eva Green) and something for the ladies (the man-gorgeous Ryan Phillippe). The film will be set simultaneously in both contemporary London and a faith-dominated future metropolis without separation of church and state. According to Variety, the film will tell the story of "four lost souls divided by two parallel worlds on course for an explosive collision when a single bullet will decide all their fates." It's Sliding Doors meets The Matrix! Sounds mighty confusing, but I'm intrigued. The film will co-star Sam Riley, who plays Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis in Control (read James' positive review here).

First-time director Gerald McMorrow wrote the screenplay and will direct the film. According to IMDb, John Hurt is in the Franklyn cast as well, but since that's not part of the Variety announcement, take that with a grain of salt for now. The movie has undergone a lot of casting changes, it seems. Last we heard about the project, Ewan McGregor was attached to star, but it appears that is no longer the case. Paul Bettany was attached to the Riley role at one point. I don't know much about Riley, but I do know getting Phillippe for McGregor is something of a step down. Phillippe is improving, though, I must give him props for holding his own against an incredible Chris Cooper performance in the too little-seen Breach. Green is probably best known as Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale, but holds a special place in my pants heart for her almost entirely nude performance in The Dreamers. Dreamy.

Peter Berg's military-actioner The Kingdom was supposed to come out this past spring, and got pushed to fall for reasons that escape me at the moment. Anyway, a new trailer for the film has just come online, and there's one thing I really liked about it -- it's scored to US2's "Bullet the Blue Sky" from The Joshua Tree. Aside from that, it strikes me as a sort of an unexpectional mish-mash of the Harrison Ford Jack Ryan movies, where American military professionals are trying to stride through a hostile Middle Eastern country and get shot at, and an Edward Zwick political action movie, with a lot of sympathetic reaction shots of locals trying to tell the Americans what's-what and so on. Also, I regret to say that, based on this trailer, it looks like Jamie Foxx has no intention of broadening his range, ever. Co-starring in the film with Foxx is Jennifer Garner, and I couldn't help but notice that she doesn't have a single word of dialogue in this entire trailer, which runs a good three or four minutes. What's that all about?

The flim's plot revolves around an elite team of FBI agents who are sent into Saudi Arabia to investigate the bombing of an American military base that killed an FBI agent and many other Americans. Somewhere along the way, they decide to enlist the help of a local Saudi and pretty soon they are picking up the trail of the terrorist bomber. Jason Bateman and Chris Cooper also have roles in the film and it's interesting to note that, although from what I understand, a few days of location shooting were done in the Middle East, the film was mostly shot in Arizona. I guess desert is desert, right? The Kingdom is set for release on September 28.