mary mccormack Tagged Articles at Cinematical

This might seem like faint praise for a feature film, but Right at Your Door plays out almost exactly like a well-crafted episode of The Twilight Zone. It starts out with a topical premise -- a dirty bomb explodes during rush hour in L.A. -- and then uses it to set up an interesting (if implausible) moral conundrum between its two leads, a husband and wife played by Mary McCormack and Rory Cochrane. The attack happens shortly after McCormack's character leaves the couple's modest L.A. home one morning, and within minutes the news media is reporting a breakdown in basic police and hospital services due to overwhelming need, and warning residents that the smoke cloud from the explosions contains deadly toxic gas, and that anyone who was near the blast site is now a lethal carrier of said toxin. Fearing for his life, the panic-stricken husband seals up all of the doors and windows in the house, and just as he's finishing, his soot-covered wife comes staggering up to the door, demanding to be let in. Should he let her?

Not to belabor this point, but the Twilight Zone analogy is so apt, in fact -- the focus of the film is completely on two characters, there's a ticking-clock situation, and there's the moral paradox offered up for the audience to chew on -- that if a thirty-minute cut of the film were presented as the opening episode of a New, New Twilight Zone, I imagine it would get solid reviews for upholding the basic framework of the old show. As a feature film, Right at Your Door is manipulative, to be sure, but also clever enough to be fun -- and the whole thing benefits hugely from solid acting by both McCormack and Cochrane, who have to scream, cry, panic, collapse into depression and perform just about every other kind of big acting move that you can imagine. It also contains some kernels of realism, as when it correctly imagines how easily a city overwhelmed by panic could be become the province of capricious, trigger-happy soldiers and badly-thought-out plans by roving gangs of civilians.

Odds and ends from Monday:

• After scheduling conflicts forced her out, Kate Walsh has been replaced by Mary McCormack in the Stephen King adaptation, 1408. McCormack joins a cast that already includes John Cusack (What is it with this guy and scary hotel movies?) and Samuel L. Jackson. As we previously reported, pic is based on King's short story and revolves around a debunker of paranormal occurrences who finds his beliefs put to the test upon checking into room the mysterious room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel. McCormack will play Cusack's ex-wife in the flick.
• Maybe I'm nuts, but I find it so bizarre when a country unveils plans for a film, instead of, say, Rob Schneider. But hey, that's how they do things in China, right? The country announced plans today to make a massive war movie, financed by Americans, that will chronicle "the 1937 massacre of civilians in Nanjing by invading Japanese soldiers." Based on Iris Chang's best-seller, The Rape of Nanking, pic's budget will fall somewhere between $20-25 million. Investors are already aiming high, setting their sights on Zhang Zyi and Michelle Yeoh to potentially star in the film.
• Since everyone seems to be talking an Aquaman movie these days, why not ask Mark Wahlberg what his opinion of a possible real-life film is? After all, Wahlberg is an executive producer on Entourage, whose fake version of Aquaman: The Movie helped build a tremendous amount of buzz around the underwater superhero. Speaking to IESB, the actor acknowledged the rumors, but said he'd rather come onboard as a producer and not take on the role of Aqauaman himself. And who does he think should play Aquaman? None other than Adrian Grenier, whose fictional character (Vincent Chase) on Entourage stars as Aquaman in the fake film. Confused yet? I am.