Meet Bill Tagged Articles at Cinematical

As the season marches on, 'for your consideration' ads litter the trades and various awards analysis websites. However, there aren't nearly enough campaigns for the year's worst performances.

You have your obnoxious kids (Jaden Smith in The Day The Earth Stood Still, Logan Lerman in Meet Bill). You have your touched individuals who straddle the line between functional and, ahem, 'full retard' (Sophie Okonedo in The Secret Life of Bees, Omar Benson Miller in Miracle at St. Anna, David Morse in Hounddog). You've got your guys that give 'insane' a bad name (Jason Butler Harner in Changeling, Donny Osmond in College Road Trip), and you've got your girls that give English a bad name (Ahney Her in Gran Torino, Natalya Rudakova in Transporter 3).

Oh, and then there's just about the entire cast of The Happening. (If I had to pick just one person, though, I'd go with the gardener who babbles on about hot dogs. The man's priceless.)

So, unless we're about to let Witless Protection sweep the Razzies, what were some of your least favorite performances of the year?

The Bank Job
It sounds like your run of the mill caper movie. It stars Jason Statham, which means that it could go either way. Yet this flick fell safely on the positive scale -- nabbing itself a 78% fresh rating. Our Jeffrey M. Anderson said of the film: "The Bank Job doesn't add anything new to the genre, but it delivers everything we loved about it in the first place."

Statham plays a hustler in debt named Terry who is trying to even the playing field and go on with life in 1971. One day, an old friend and model (Saffron Burrows) pops by with a tasty, albeit illegal, proposition -- there's a bank that is getting its alarms changed, leaving it open for a nice case of robbery. However, instead of taking the monetary goods, they'll hit the safe deposit boxes. Terry does it, but ends up coming across a lot of dirty secrets that reach from the mob to the British government. Oh yes, and it's a true-ish story.

On the 2-disc DVD, you can sift through a commentary with director Roger Donaldson, Saffron Burrows, and composer J. Peter Robinson, plus deleted/extended scenes, and a few featurettes -- "Inside The Bank Job" and "The Baker Street Bank Raid." The first tackles details about the film, while the other tackles the real crime for those curiosu about historical particulars.

Check out Jeffrey's Review | Buy the DVD

Deja vu time once again. Today's gaggle of trailers all, for varying reasons, have a ring of familiarity to them. All together now: Once more with feeling.

Wanted
I've seen this before, haven't I? Not exactly. This is a brand spanking new trailer for the Angelina Jolie film based on the graphic novel by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones. A young man with the rare gift of being able fire a bullet along a curved trajectory is asked to join a secret society of good guy assassins ("kill one so a thousand can survive"). Morgan Freeman plays, well, Morgan Freeman with a slightly gruffer edge to his usual fatherly demeanor. Jolie is hot to the point of being incendiary here (nice tats, and no that isn't a typo), but the "I'm cooler than God" shtick gets pretty annoying. The new trailer gives a better feel for the film than the teaser that's been out for awhile, and it looks like it might be a fun ride if you're in the mood for over-the-top action. Here's Elisabeth's take.

100 Feet
This one definitely looks familiar. Didn't this used to be called Disturbia, and it looks like Shia Labeouf has had a sex change. Oh wait, that's Famke Janssen. She's playing a woman sentenced to three years of house arrest, nifty ankle bracelet included, for killing her abusive cop husband. Christopher Campbell first posted about this one a little over a year ago. I'm no lawyer, but doesn't it seem odd to place someone on house arrest for that long? Prison starts to look pretty good, though, when the ghost of her dead S.O.B. husband starts looking for some payback. In addition to the echoes of Disturbia, the scene where Janssen screams "What do you want?" to the unseen entity reminded me a lot of George C. Scott in The Changeling, and the house arrest for killing a cop part recalls a decent little indie flick called Cherish. Still, this looks like it might be good for a few scares.