GrayMatters Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Heather Graham, whose just-released flick Gray Matters was called "the worst thing to hit Manhattan since 9/11" by Cinematical's own Ryan Stewart (guess he didn't like it) is expected to fly into Belfast today to start filming what one hopes is a more successful romantic comedy: Buy, Borrow or Steal. The movie tells the story of a woman who finds out she will have an early menopause (laughing yet?) and therefore only has two weeks to conceive a child. Her boyfriend doesn't want to have a baby, so she begins searching for a man to put a bun in her oven. (Consider my hand raised!) I'm going to go out on a limb here and say hijinks ensue -- menopause-related hijinks.

There's no details available on imdb yet, but the script was written by Irish screenwriter Camilla Leslie, an in-house writer and producer at Blue Shutter Films, a production company based at Castle Leslie in Ireland. According to Blue Shutter's site, the film will be directed by Eric Styles, and co-star the lovely Mia Kirshner. Apparently, Miss Graham is of Irish descent, but here's hoping Rollergirl doesn't attempt an accent. I'm still dealing with Cameron Diaz's Lucky Charms-inspired attempt in Gangs of New York. Cam, wasn't there enough butchering going on in that movie? Hiyo!

Five wide releases this weekend, and perhaps the final frame in which we're offered little but studio holdovers and lost causes. Dig into a haunted house story, a historical drama about abolitionists, a family-friendly inspirational piece, a Jim Carrey psycho-thriller and the big-screen debut of some very silly police officers. (And don't forget about the Oscars tonight!)

The Abandoned -- 3 positive / 8 negative at RottenTomatoes.com.

Pro: "Rallies in the end and has a satisfying, fittingly unsettling conclusion." -- Staci Layne Wilson, Horror.com

Con: "A punishing dose of zombie Chekhov for lifetime Fangoria subscribers." -- Jim Ridley, L.A. Weekly

Pro: "It's the pervasive sense of fatalism and decay that saves Cerda's debut feature from being yet another poky haunted-house chiller." -- Ken Fox, TV Guide

Con: "Reflects a filmmaker so lost in the details of his creation, he's neglected his obligation to forward momentum." -- Brian Orndorf, eFilmCritic.com

Bonus! "A fairly uninteresting story told in exceedingly spotty fashion." -- Scott Weinberg, Cinematical

Amazing Grace -- 52 positive / 23 negative at RT.com.

Pro: "This biopic of abolitionist crusader William Wilberforce gains much of its own force from the supporting characters." -- Josh Larsen, Sun-Times

Con: "A movie about the slave trade with hardly an African face in sight." -- Michael Booth, Denver Post

Pro: "As a portrait of political engagement, the movie is substantial and absorbing." -- Gary Thompson, Philadelphia Daily News

Con: "It's hardly compelling viewing." -- Desson Thomson, Washington Post

The Astronaut Farmer -- 61 positive / 40 negative at RT.com.

Pro: "Shows just how much you can accomplish with $12 million and more imagination than most big-studio releases can muster these days." -- Lou Lumenick, New York Post

Con: "Should be grounded for the twisted lesson it tries to impart." -- Claudia Puig, USA Today

Pro: "Works precisely because it's bereft of modern cinema's cynicism." -- Robert Wilonsky, Village Voice

Con: "It's one of those movies that yearns for a time that never really existed and ends up a chilly museum exhibit." -- Bill Muller, Arizona Republic

Bonus! "What makes the movie special are the personal touches." -- Jeffrey M. Anderson, Cinematical

Gray Matters is the worst thing to hit Manhattan since 9/11. Allegedly a 'postcard' to the city, the film is so spectacularly wrong-headed on every level that even its postcard-moments take on an obscene strangeness. I'm thinking in particular of a scene in which two of the main characters sit on an adjacent building-top and just stare at the Empire State building, as if it's some alien monolith that landed here eons ago and requires nightly worship sessions. The innumerable music-overlaid shots of the famous landmark that appear throughout the film, combined with the main character's personality quirks, lifted whole from Meg Ryan's character in When Harry Met Sally, tell us that first-time director Sue Kramer must be a charter member of the Nora Ephron fan club. She must also have some strange, uninformed ideas about her fellow human beings, considering that she's made a non-parodic film about a mid-30s woman who discovers -- as in, hand-over-mouth, 'Oh my God I can't believe I just discovered this' -- that she is homosexual.

We are told to believe that Heather Graham's character, Gray, has gone through her adult life never having an inkling of her true sexuality, until she happens to drunkenly kiss her brother's fiancee. I suppose that, in fairness, it's possible that Gray is as clueless about her own inner self as she is about others -- her hobbies include going to a Spanish restaurant and aping the accent of the Hispanic proprietor, as if she's fascinated by something she's never heard before in her life. And what about this brother of hers? He's the kind of guy, who, upon arriving in his hotel room in Vegas (maybe it was AC) for a quickie wedding, tips the bellhop and tells him "don't spend it all on the slot machines." I'm sure he's never heard that one before, pal. Actor Thomas Cavanagh gives a noticeably bad, almost incompetent performance as Sam. It seems as though he's straining to remember his lines in every scene -- either that or his face has undergone some horrific Botox accident and is now permanently frozen in a constipated expression.

As The Shadow was fond of saying: "The weed of crime bears bitter fruit." Crime may not pay, but it often makes for compelling cinema. This week on trailer park we look at some recent trailers in which people, for one reason or another, find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Shooter
Mark Wahlberg plays a retired sharpshooter pressed back into service to prevent a Presidential assassination. His attempts to foil the hit go wrong and he ends up framed by his former employers and on the run. The story is nothing we haven't all seen before, so it all comes down to the execution (pun most definitely intended). Wahlberg has developed a formidable screen presence, and I suspect he'll be able to pull it off. The most interesting thing about seeing the rapper formerly known as Marky Mark up there on the screen, is the fact that you no longer care that it's Marky Mark. This film is not to be confused with the similarly-plotted The Shooter starring Wesley Snipes. You can read Chris Ullrich's take on this trailer here.

Smiley Face
Regardless of your views on marijuana, possession and use of it remains a crime here in the U.S. Martha Fischer first mentioned this film here on Cinematical back in March. This stoner comedy is from Gregg Araki, the director behind The Doom Generation, a nightmarishly messed up but fascinating film. Smiley Face stars Anna Faris as a young actress who really likes pot. After mistakenly eating an entire batch of cupcakes laced with the stuff, things start to get silly. Faris is probably best known for the Scary Movie series, and she does a pratfall in the trailer that will remind you of that fact. As sophomorically stupid as those films can be, I like Faris, and she's usually memorable in even small roles like the ones she played in Lost in Translation and Brokeback Mountain. I think this will be one to look out for.

Santa Barbara seems like a pretty cool place to hold a film festival; nice people, fancy cars, great weather, swanky restaurants ... and oh yeah, the movies. The Santa Barabarians are presently gearing up for their 22nd annual film festival, and I'm here to tell you what they'll be playing. Well, some of what they'll be playing. Well, the big titles anyway.

Based on what Variety tells me, the SBIFF will be offering a solid handful of world premieres, including Joel Schumacher's The Number 23 (which stars Jim Carrey and Virginia Madsen), Lake of Fire (a documentary about abortion that comes from the guy who directed American History X) and Christopher Plummer in Man in the Chair, which is a story about the last-surviving Citizen Kane crew member. Interesting.

Not premieres, but potentially quite interesting are "that Dakota Fanning movie" Hounddog, George Hickenlooper's controversial Factory Girl, Michael Apted's Amazing Grace and Sue Kramer's Gray Matters. The fest folks will also take some time from their busy screening schedule to honor filmmakers like Forest Whitaker, Bill Condon, Helen Mirren and Will Smith.

Plus a whole lot more. So if you live within, say, 40-some miles of Santa Barbara and you want to see some interesting flicks between January 25 and February 4, now you have something to do.