the wicker man Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I'm sure Peter Sarsgaard didn't intend to make a horror movie that would provoke gales of unintentional laughter. Yet in a key, emotionally-wrought scene near the end of Orphan -- out on DVD today and, perversely enough, worth a rental -- that's exactly what happens; by that point, the film's determination to take itself way too seriously has worn down the viewer, and its lunatic premise collapses upon itself. Sarsgaard bravely goes down with the ship, as does Vera Farmiga, two talented actors that were better than their material.

How do good actors end up in bad movies? The same way some of us end up in jobs we hate: (1) It sounded better than it turned out; (2) Gotta pay the bills. Sometimes they liven up the movie (The Devil's Advocate wouldn't be nearly as much fun without Al Pacino's self-parodying scenery-chewing) and sometimes they look befuddled that they ended up in such a turkey (Robert Downey, Jr. in Gothika, Zooey Deschanel in The Happening). We salute those who gave it their best shot, and ask the rest: what were you thinking?

1. Jon Voight in Anaconda
Intentionally cheesy or merely undone by cheap CGI? This tale of a film crew seeking to document a mysterious tribe of Amazonian natives is a rather tepid and poorly-executed horror adventure until Voight lends it a jolt of electricity as a jungle guide with an accent that's never been heard before. While decent actors like Eric Stoltz and Owen Wilson look like they're ready to cash their paychecks and go home, the Academy Award-winning Voight nearly saves the picture with his larger-than-life theatrics. That's entertainment!

An American remake of Death at a Funeral might be a new low. Consider: this would be a remake of an English-language film, two years after it received a considerable Stateside release. (I mean, I saw it in my local suburban multiplex at the time.) At least Nine Queens (which quickly became Criminal) and Funny Games were in a foreign language and barely saw the light of day here.

At least the remake of the quintessentially British farce may not turn out to be the anodyne Hollywood studio comedy you might otherwise expect. It'll be directed by Neil LaBute, who, with the bizarre exception of the Gwyneth Paltrow snoozer Possession, at least consistently makes interesting films. (And yes, I'll defend his Wicker Man redo if called upon.) On the other hand, I have no idea what to make of the fact that the remake is going to star Chris Rock. I can't really think of a more jarring replacement for the amiably goofy Matthew MacFadyen.

LaBute seems to have gotten back into at least some critics' good graces with last year's Lakeview Terrace, which (not for the first time) wrapped the writer-director's trademark edginess in a genre film cloak. It seems a shame to stuff a whopping hunk of subtext into something as droll as Death at a Funeral but it probably won't be boring. On the other hand, the remake will be written by Rock, not LaBute, and if Rock's previous screenplays are any indication, maybe it will be boring.

Variety reports that LaBute has also signed on to direct a rom-com called Here Comes the Sun, but we don't have any details about that one.

In 1973 a man named Robin Hardy directed a horror film called The Wicker Man. That film is now (rightly) considered one of the most effective chillers ever made. Aside from a 1986 effort called The Fantasist, Mr. Hardy never directed another movie. That is about to change.

According to Bloody-Disgusting.com, the 79-year-old Mr. Hardy is just about to begin production on this third directorial effort. Titled Cowboys for Christ, it's supposed to be a "re-imagining" of the classic Wicker Man (as Monika told us right here), but based on the plot synopsis, it sure doesn't sound like any typical sort of remake: A young Christian and her boyfriend head to Scotland to preach the gospel, only to end up hosted by a "different" sort of congregation. (OK, I guess it does sound a bit like The Wicker Man.)

Production gets underway (yes, in Scotland) next month. Cast members include Christopher Lee (of course), Joan Collins (yep, Joan Collins) and Graham McTavish. Check out BD.com for the official poster, a larger cast list, and bit more info on the flick itself. (Hey, I'm pretty impressed that I was able to make it through this whole post without making a snarky comment about Neil LaBute's ill-fated Wicker Man remake!) (Oops, I just made one.)

This was to be a casting bite, but the premise on Variety just killed me, so I wanted to write a little more about it. Believe it or not, Joan Collins is still acting, and she's signed on for a role in an upcoming film called Cowboys for Christ. Why do I love this bit? Well, get a load of this -- it's "the story of a gospel singer and her cowboy friend who set off from Texas to enlighten Scottish heathens about the ways of Christ." I know that's what I always think of when I think of Scotland -- heathen territory! Collins will play "a Scottish-landed gent's wife."

This is where things get even more interesting, and a little less strange. It's a reimagining of Robin Hardy's 1973 film, The Wicker Man -- by Robin Hardy. And yes, this is the same film that spawned the 2006 remake by Neil LaBute. Things make a bit more sense with this bit of info, since the original focused on a Scottish island where pagans might be sacrificing a missing girl. I guess after 35 years, he wonders what would happen if Christian cowboys came to visit?!

According to the IMDb summary, this new flick follows "young Christians Beth and Steve, a gospel singer and her boyfriend, [who] leave Texas to preach door-to-door in Scotland. When, after initial abuse, they are welcomed with joy and elation to Tressock, the border fiefdom of Sir Lachlan Morrison, they assume their hosts simply want to hear more about Jesus. How innocent and wrong they are." This is "Cowboys for Christ" -- talk about a misleading title!

An added treat for this flick that shoots this April in Scotland, Christopher Lee (from the original cast) will play Sir Lachlan.

Eventually every second-tier director will have his own film about Iraq. And yet I never thought someone as low on the tier as Simon West would actually get one so soon. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the guy who made Con Air (it's so bad, but oh so good), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (its so bad, but -- no but) and the remake of When a Stranger Calls (no comment) will attempt an adaptation of Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Iraq, which was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Zucchino. West will produce and direct from a script penned by Zucchino himself. The book, which was written first-hand by the Los Angeles Times correspondent, follows the U.S. military entrance, or "thunder run", into Baghdad in April 2003 and subsequent battle for the capital city. West compared the feeling he got from reading Zucchino's book to reading Black Hawk Down, which he found and developed as an executive producer.

The important thing to remember, though, is that West didn't end up directing Black Hawk Down. The great Ridley Scott did, and it ended up a flawed but ultimately well-made film. Show me somebody in Hollywood who honestly thinks West is capable of the same work, and I'll eat this blog. And I mean this person would have to take a lie detector test and prove to me that he or she really, really thinks this is going to be good enough to garner West his own Oscar nomination (as Scott received for BHD) and not just an easy-money attempt at the current trend of Iraq War-based movies. The latter is more likely the case for the six producers besides West, which includes Randall Emmett and George Furla (both of the Wicker Man remake), and five executive producers, which includes BHD's writer Ken Nolan. There has yet to be a dramatic feature about the war that's as good as the many docs on the subject, and I can definitely promise this will not be the movie to achieve that status. At least it probably won't be as bad as West's proposed Dalí biopic would be.

It was a good year for much of Hollywood, but a bad year for A Good Year. The Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe team-up only grossed $7 million domestically, and has been labeled a flop. Variety has listed the major box office disappointments for 2006, and interestingly enough, a few of them have to do with water. The appropriately bad way to describe their fate, then, is to say that they drowned. Flushed Away, The Lady in the Water, Poseidon and The Fountain (okay, I didn't see it, but I don't think there's an actual water-type fountain), just couldn't swim. Here's some more bad puns: Sharon Stone didn't have the Basic Instict 2 stay away from a dumb sequel; Producer Dean Devin said, "Flyboys," to his new movie but it crashed and burned; All the King's Men stayed away from this remake, and so did everyone else; Audiences let their Freedomland in other activities besides seeing a movie starring Julianne Moore and Samuel L. Jackson. There's no pun needed for The Wicker Man; it just sucked.

Unlike the biggest flops of all time, none of these movies from 2006 broke a studio or likely ended a career. Ridley Scott and Wolfgang Petersen (director of Poseidon) have had flops before, but they can be forgiven for "flukes" every once in awhile since they usually turn out successful work. Plus, their films did okay business overseas. International box office saves more flops these days than back in the times of the really big bombs. Most of the other filmmakers represented are also probable to bounce back, or at least fall back on their other talents. Joe Roth (Freedomland) has already returned to producing. Steve Zaillian (All the King's Men) is back to writing. Tony Bill (Flyboys) may continue acting. Michael Caton-Jones (Basic Instinct 2) will eventually make another crappy film. M. Night Shyamalan (Lady in the Water) might need to be forced to work on somebody else's script for once, but he isn't going to disappear anytime soon, unfortunately.

After Disney and Mark Wahlberg ran off with the top numbers at the box office last weekend, Invincible managed to snag the top spot yet again, taking in an estimated $15.2 million -- lifting the film to an 11-day total of $37.8 million. Jason Statham's adrenalin-fueled Crank managed to out-duel Nic Cage's remake of The Wicker Man by sliding into the weekend's second spot with $13 million, while the latter picked up $11.7 million to round out the top three.

Little Miss Sunshine continued to live up to its name as "the little summer indie that could" by finishing fourth with $9.7 million, bringing its total to $35.8 million. However, Talladega Nights:The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (last week's number two film) ran smack into a slew of Labor Day traffic, forcing the Will Ferrell laffer to fall way down into the sixth spot with $7.7 million. Crossover ($4.5 million) and Outcast's Idlewild ($2.9 million) failed to find an audience this weekend, as well as a comfy spot in the top ten. Oh, and those damn snakes have officially left the building. Thank God.

Full numbers after the jump.

Haunted by a death he couldn't prevent, policeman Edward Malus (Nicolas Cage) is having a bad time of it: Off the job, taking pills so he can sleep without dreams, shaking hands and shaken spirit. And then he receives a letter from his ex-fiancee Willow (Kate Beahan); they haven't spoken for years, since she went back to her childhood home on an agrarian commune on a small island in Puget Sound. Now, she's reaching out to Edward because her daughter Rowan (Erika-Shaye Gair) is missing. She needs him. And with the pull of memory and the necessity of finding Rowan propelling him, Edward makes way to Summersisle, the isolated island Willow calls home, to try and unravel the mystery of Rowan's disappearance. And it is not the only mystery he will find.

A remake of a lesser-known but well-loved 1973 British horror film, The Wicker Man returns to the big screen as a project of writer-director Neil LaBute. With a track record of short, sharp, shocking plays and indie dramas to his credit (In the Company of Men, The Shape of Things), LaBute doesn't seem like a typical choice to helm a horror remake; then again, The Wicker Man isn't your typical horror film. My memories of the original are thin at best -- I viewed it a long time ago, and all I recall is Edward 'The Equalizer' Woodward using his shouty voice, and some truly interminable musical numbers -- and, of course, the climax, which we won't discuss. The Wicker Man was first written for the screen by Anthony Shaffer -- like LaBute, a filmmaker who started in the theater. And The Wicker Man -- which wasn't even screened for critics until 10pm the day before it opened -- is actually a compelling and disquieting film, especially after Cage's Malus gets to the island to help his old love look for her daughter. Summersisle, it turns out, is private -- in more ways than one. It's owned by Sister Summersisle (Ellen Burstyn), a bright-eyed natural leader who's made a peaceful, agrarian community where people live simple lives and worship as they choose. At first, Edward's annoyed but accepting of the islander's ways -- Hey, that's why we have a First Amendment, right? -- but gradually we notice that the ways of Summersisle go far beyond the limits of reason ... even if Edward doesn't.