WeAreMarshall Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Not despite Charlie's Angels, but because of it (the first one, anyway), I really like McG as a filmmaker. Say what you want about his undeservedly but oft-criticized nickname, but the guy has the chops – and then some – to make blockbuster spectacle look, well, spectacular. Given his existing filmography, he's only made one serious creative misstep, the disastrous Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, since the first Angels movie was an exhilarating thrill ride and 2006's We Are Marshall a heartfelt and powerful drama.

Aiming for the A-list credibility enjoyed by the likes of Christopher Nolan, McG has unleashed his muscular, bombastic creativity on Terminator Salvation, which should certainly resuscitate the franchise even if it doesn't quite distinguish the director from other fanboy punching bags like Michael Bay and Brett Ratner. As part of Cinematical's special Summer Interview Series with different directors, we sat down with McG at the film's Los Angeles press day for an exclusive chat about reimagining Terminator's beloved characters. In addition to talking about defining the director's own filmmaking style and searching through summers past to find the films that inspired him to become a director, McG drilled us a little bit about our own feelings on the film, precipitating one of the more interesting, and, well, interactive interviews we've done in a while.

I see Terminator: Salvation next week. I am really nervous about it.

It's a deplored "fanboy" habit, I know -- to whine about a geeky franchise flick before it's even released. Haven't you anything better to do than worry about a summer blockbuster? Get a life.

But the thing is that I care about movies, and the Terminator series means more to me than any other franchise that's still kicking -- more than Star Trek, more than Indiana Jones, more than any of the superhero flicks. Terminator 2 is the greatest action movie ever made, and one of the greatest films, period. The Terminator scared the crap out of me when I was a young 'un -- a "formative" film experience if ever there were one. The third film obviously had its detractors, but I thought it was a damn fine actioner that honored the story. It's true sci-fi, with a deep, interesting mythology; it even makes a genuine effort to get time paradoxes right, and gets kind of close.

But Salvation... aaaaaaaargh. McG has worked hard to make a case for himself as the right choice for the franchise, but the fact remains that he's never really made a good film. People will point to the Charlie's Angels flicks as the cause for concern, but I'd want to talk about We Are Marshall, which is about as tedious and tone-deaf as movies get. Then there's the news that the story has been written and rewritten, and not always for the best reasons -- changed endings, a bigger role for Christian Bale -- which isn't a harbinger of a confident, thought-through movie. And the trailers have not exactly inspired confidence, at least in me, though the last one was a bit more promising.

You might have thought that We Are Marshall seemed a lot like every other Inspiring Sports Drama you'd ever seen, but a pair of producers recently sought to prove in a court of law that it resembled a specific film -- one they'd made six years earlier.

That film, Ashes to Glory: The Tragedy and Triumph of Marshall Football (which IMDB has never heard of), was a documentary about the real-life events depicted in We Are Marshall. The doc's producers, Deborah Novak and John Witek, sued Warner Bros. for copyright infringement, fraud, and breach of contract, but a U.S. district court judge has ruled against them.

"Though the two works tell the story of the Nov. 14, 1970, airplane crash, that event, and the events that preceded and followed, are all matters of public record which cannot be copyrighted," the judge wrote in his decision, as reported by Variety.

Novak and Witek's claim was based on the fact that they originally negotiated with We Are Marshall's production company, Thunder Road, for rights to officially adapt their documentary into a fictional film. That deal fell through, and Thunder Road made the film anyway. The judge says that was OK, since the events were a matter of public record. So my question is, if nobody can own the rights to a historical event, why did Thunder Road bother negotiating to adapt the documentary in the first place? Just to be polite?

The judge also ruled that since Novak and Witek later tried (unsuccessfully) to sell their doc to other production companies, they obviously didn't think they had a deal with Thunder Road, so the breach of contract claim is out, too. It all seems pretty logical to me, but I'm sure the lawyers made it sound more complicated.

Ever since McG was announced as director of Terminator Salvation, he's taken on this rather endearing, apologetic, puppy-dog attitude, assuring fans that he takes the franchise seriously, and even apologizing for the absurdity of his trade name. It would have worked much better on me had I not sat through We Are Marshall, but it does make me want to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, especially given how badly I want this sequel to be good.

The filmmaker's newest gambit: showing us just how seriously he takes the Terminator franchise. Just how seriously? So seriously, he says, that he distributed copies of Cormac McCarthy's arty, ultra-depressing The Road to his cast, hoping that the novel would help the actors understand the "existential detachment" that comes with living in a post-apocalyptic environment. MTV has a bit more from the director.

I wrote a column on The Road a while back; it's a powerful, upsetting novel, pretty un-Terminator-like in its depiction of an empty, decidedly cyborg-free post-apocalypse. It's hard to take seriously the notion that an entry in the Terminator franchise -- a PG-13 entry at that -- could really draw much inspiration from that book (which is, of course, getting its own bona-fide adaptation later this year), but again: it's endearing, and a bit heartening, to see McG trying so hard.

As much as I would love to see the Judd Hirsch sitcom turned into a movie, New Line's Dear John is not based on a television show. As you can see from the headline, the movie is an adaptation of the Nicolas Sparks novel. And as we told you a few months ago, it's about a doomed long-distance romance between a college student and a U.S. soldier. The actress playing the student hasn't yet been revealed, but the soldier will be played by Channing Tatum, an actor who I'd like to see become more recognized and celebrated (if you haven't seen him in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, do yourself a favor and queue the film up). As far as Sparks adaptations go, I hope Dear John is Tatum's Notebook instead of his Walk to Remember, because the former helped shoot Ryan Gosling to stardom while the latter did nothing for Shane West's career.

Dear John doesn't have a director, but producers Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey (The Nativity Story) have just hired a screenwriter: Jamie Linden, who penned We Are Marshall and an upcoming adaptation of Carolyn Parkhurst's novel The Dogs of Babel, which is about a man attempting to teach his dog to talk. All three stories deal with loss, although as far as I know Dear John doesn't deal with a tragedy like those dealt with in both Marshall and Dogs. It does center around 9/11, however, so I guess it doesn't need any more deaths. Of course, I do imagine the weepy irony of Sparks' novel to be that Tatum's character dies in the end, just as the student decides to retract her 'Dear John' letter. If this is what happens, don't spoil it for us. We can go into the theater prepared to cry, but that doesn't mean we want to know why we're going to cry.

Granted, McG doesn't have the best track record in holding on to projects, so until everyone signs on the dotted line we will have to chalk this up to idle chatter for now. According to Bloody-Disgusting.com McG will be taking over directing duties for the fantasy film Me and My Monster, which is about, "A young boy [who] has a friendship with a bizarre creature that changes the course of his life as he becomes an adult." This instantly brings to my mind the Phoebe Cates film Drop Dead Fred, but I tend of have a film memory that is ruled by tangents. The script for Monster was written by Matthew Huffman and Robot Chicken writer Dan Milano and originally, Jake Gyllenhaal was attached to the project as the lead, but there has been no update on that recently.

The last film we had from McG was the male weepy We Are Marshall and there had been some talk that he had been chosen to replace Peter Berg on the big-screen version of The Losers -- a DC/Vertigo series that was based on obscure DC title. But now, that project has been taken over by Tim Story. There is still the chance that McG will be producing a live-action film about Hot Wheels, but it's almost been a year and there seems to be no movement on that one. The current studio climate seems to favor nostalgia, so it could still happen -- that is if he doesn't drop out or get replaced first.

The World War II movie Days of Glory opens today on 3 screens. That's not to be confused with another movie called Days of Glory, from 1944, or the other one from 1945. Nor is it to be confused with Hope and Glory, Paths of Glory, What Price Glory, Bound for Glory, Days of Heaven, Days of Thunder, or just plain Glory.

In the past, war movies used to be about something. By the titles alone, you could go to a movie expecting to see Attacks, Battles, Bridges, Boats, The Big Red One, Bullets, Dawn Patrols, Dirty Dozens, Fighting Sullivans, Fixed Bayonets, Flying Leathernecks, Great Escapes, Guns of Navarone, Merrill's Marauders, and even Full Metal Jackets. Titles like these make you want to roar and holler and tear around the woods, ripping right through enemy cover with thunder and trumpets driving you on.

Happy Holidays to all and to all a ... few good movies. I've been asked to step in and semi-resurrect our regular old Review Roundup feature, which works out pretty well considering I usually spend most Fridays (and some Wednesdays) poring through all my favorite critics, agreeing with some and questioning the basic sanity of others. But since the release date schedules get extra jumbly during the year-end holiday season, I figured I'd spend my first column covering, well, everything. Let's start with the ones that actually opened yesterday ...

The Good Shepherd

Pro: "It's not a tub-thumping anti-CIA screed, but at the same time it's not a gung-ho patriotic extravaganza about the moral certainty of our side." -- Stephen Hunter, Washington Post

Con: "This is featherweight entertainment, sans visual elation and moral consequence-like Munich for Beginners." -- Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine

Pro: "The bottom line is that The Good Shepherd is engaging cinema. The length is a drawback, but not a big one since the movie earns the majority of its 165-minute running time." -- James Berardinelli, ReelViews.net

Con: "De Niro's vision seems unfocused and ill-executed. It seems as though he had a thousand good ideas about what a spy film should be that didn't quite coalesce into a singular product, but he crammed 'em all in there regardless and tossed the editing shears into the garbage." -- Phil Villareal, Arizona Daily Star

BONUS: "A truncated American tragedy, noticeably half-finished and undercooked, but often tantalizing for the promise that clearly lay buried in the material, like unbroken codes." -- Ryan Stewart, Cinematical

Night at the Museum

Pro: "Trying to get kids to go to a museum over their holiday vacations might be a little easier after seeing Night at the Museum, a family-friendly comedy that tries to entertain while educating - and often succeeds, at least with the former." -- Mack Bates, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Con: "A volley of contented cackles greeted the final third of Night at the Museum, a pea-brained fantasy-comedy with a riot of kid-pleasing special effects." -- Jan Stuart, Newsday Magazine

Pro: "What do you know, not only is this a delightful popcorn movie, Ben Stiller is actually really good in it." -- Kevin LaForest, Montreal Film Journal

Con: "The possibilities for building an intriguing and original story around this concept -- the Museum of freakin' Natural History comes alive every night! -- are endless, and they chose this. That is downright criminal." -- MaryAnn Johanson, The Flick Filosopher

BONUS: "Lots of pure imagination, with an extra helping of the most fun you might have at the theater all year." -- Erik Davis, Cinematical

We Are Marshall

Pro: "Warm and big-hearted, We Are Marshall succeeds as a tribute because it respects its subjects. It succeeds as a movie because it doesn't confuse respect with lifelessness." -- Jessica Reaves, Chicago Tribune

Con: "Director McG, known for the whiz-bang acrobatics of his Charlie's Angels movies, applies a warm, shiny veneer to everything here which prevents any emotion from getting through." -- Christy Lemire, San Francisco Gate

Pro: "The film is injected with a refreshing energy whenever McConaughey is on-screen, balancing some of the inherent sadness of the story." -- Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times

Con: "No matter how earnest the intentions are, however, the harsh truth is that We Are Marshall is shockingly empty, one-dimensionally written, and finally unconvincing." -- Dustin Putnam, TheMovieBoy.com

BONUS: "A film that walks a tightrope with tricky subject matter, and somehow makes it to the other side." -- Ryan Stewart, Cinematical

Now let's skip back over the past week or so and see how the other holiday break also-rans fared with the critics...

Apologies for the lateness of this post -- I'm working out of the L.A. office (where I was introduced to Mr. Moviefone himself, very exciting) for the holidays, and there's this funny little thing called a "time difference." So, no time for extraneous chit-chat! And away we go:

Rocky Balboa: Rock-Y! Rock-Y! Sylvester Stallone returns as the Italian Stallion, and if you thought he was too old to fight, my friends, you are mistaken. The man's in decent shape for 60 years old, even if the sight of all those veins popping off his chest gave me nightmares for a week. While there isn't much to the storyline -- Rocky comes out of retirement to fight the current heavyweight champ -- it's got the usual thrilling climactic bout, and it's nice to see Burt Young as Paulie again, though Talia Shire's Adrian has fallen victim to the cancer known as Asking for Too Much Money. In terms of franchise, 'Rocky Balboa' is better than 'Rocky V,' but not as good as I-IV. Prediction? The old boy's got some life in him yet.

Night at the Museum: Ben Stiller plays a security guard working the graveyard shift at the natural history museum. He's new on the job, you see, so when the exhibits come to life, he's not sure whether it's just a joke they play on all the newbies -- like, that enraged Roman gladiator coming for his head is actually just Joe, the janitor. Anyway, 'Museum' has a ton of things going for it: It's the only comedy opening wide this weekend, it's the only family movie opening wide this week, and it'll be showing on a whopping 3,685 screens. And, of course, it stars Stiller and perennial yukkster Robin Williams (as Teddy Roosevelt, natch). Christmas falls on a Monday, too late to make the weekend box office returns, but families with kids are going to have a whole lot of time on their hands this weekend. Nothing says Christmas weekend like a dinosaur on the loose.

We Are Marshall: I'm a sucker for sports movies. They don't even have to be any good for me to buy every emotional hook, line and sinker. So it works out nicely that 'We Are Marshall' is actually a pretty good sports movie, and the fact that it's based on a true story makes it even more resonant. Matthew McConaughey is his charismatic self as Jack Lengyel, who coaches the Marshall football team after its players and coaches are killed in a plane crash, and Matthew Fox, fresh off his 'Lost' success (though he'll always be Charlie from 'Party of Five' to me) is an assistant coach who sticks around, despite his grief, to help. Remember last week, when 'Pursuit of Happyness' got the top spot and I said people like to cry around Christmas? Let's keep that in mind. Of course, everyone in the mood for a good sob might head to 'Happyness' instead. So much crying, so little time.

The Good Shepherd: Not to be confused with 'The Good German' -- that one's about Nazis, this one's about the CIA -- the 'Good Shepherd' stars Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, as a CIA founder and his wife, and was helmed by Robert De Niro in only his second directorial effort. It's a serious adult film somewhat along the lines of 'The Departed' (which also, coincidentally enough, stars Damon and Alec Baldwin), albeit not quite as bloody or intense; and reviews have mostly been decent, with some Oscar talk for the film and its actors. It may be a little heavy for this holiday weekend, though, and at 2 hours and 40 minutes, you'd have to have a LOT more Angelina Jolie in there to get big crowds to come out for it.

That's all I've got for you today, my peeps. I was going to move the prediction deadline up to Saturday at noon, but since I'm posting this so late, we'll stick with Saturday at midnight -- but do stick to it, or I'll have to sic a T-Rex skeleton on you. And another tip: If you're an alumnus from our old blog platform, please be sure to post as your old screen name, so that we know who you are. Makes the math much easier.

And with that, I wish you all a merry Christmas, happy Chanukah, cool Kwanzaa, festive Festivus and all those other great holidays. Don't eat too much. Oh, go ahead and eat too much.

1. Night at the Museum
2. Rocky Balboa
3. The Pursuit of Happyness
4. Eragon
5. We Are Marshall

POST: What's your weekend top five prediction?

POST: What do you think of these movies?

Night at the Museum: Showtimes, tix & more | Exclusive clips | Photos

Rocky Balboa: Showtimes, tix & more | Exclusive clip | Photos

We Are Marshall: Showtimes, tix & more | McConaughey & Fox Unscripted | Photos

The Good Shepherd: Showtimes, tix & more | Exclusive clip | Photos

I'm going to say some nice things about We Are Marshall, maybe more than it deserves, so a little explanation may be in order. I think the reason I'm so eager to give the film a passing grade is my shock at seeing a moderately well-directed film from McG, the director of Charlie's Angels infamy with the moniker so bland and compact it sounds like the DGA replacement for Alan Smithee. Sitting down to watch this film, I fully prepared myself for football scenes where players would defy the laws of gravity by running up the sides of the goal posts and drop-kicking each other after stopping in midair to do a crouching tiger pose. But that's not the case. This is a real movie, and a rare one, in that it shows football intersecting with reality. Most football movies tend to recreate the insular, world-within-a-world nature of the game itself; everything always comes down to a blowhard coach doing his best to convince his bulky and undisciplined players that victory on the gridiron will somehow endow them with honor, integrity, or transferable life lessons.

If you're immune to that kind of silly talk, then football isn't for you. We Are Marshall has its share of pep-talk baloney, but thankfully it's not the heart of the film. This is a story that begins with the main event -- a 1970 plane crash in West Virginia that takes out 37 members of Marshall University's football team, along with various coaches, assistants and twenty-two boosters, effectively ending the school's program in one terrible moment. Although most of the parents and school administrators are happy to let Marshall football rest in peace after such a catastrophe, a few dissenting voices begin to whisper about re-starting the program from scratch. Needless to say, success will depend on an angelic coach who appears out of nowhere and says exactly the right things to motivate the survivors to go along with his quest to resurrect the team. (Remember, I said the film was decent, not original or inventive) The balance that must be struck, between honoring so many dead and getting on with life, is a difficult one.