The Inquisitr » Movies

New Moon Opening Day Sales Break Box Office Records

Duncan Riley — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 01:12:59 +0000

Proving perhaps once and for all that there is no God, The Twilight Saga: New Moon’s opening day sales have broken two box office records.

New Moon broke the record for midnight ticket sales Thursday ($26.3 million), and bought home opening day sales of $72.7 million Friday, ahead of the previous record held by The Dark Knight which made $62.2 million.

Industry observers though believe that New Moon won’t break any records over the weekend based on the previous box office for the first Twilight film, which dropped 41% on the Saturday following a similar big Friday opening.

Sales for New Moon for its opening weekend are being estimated at $110-$120 million.

2012 Takes A Staggering $225 Million First Weekend

Duncan Riley — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:35:17 +0000

How long does it take to recoup the cost of a CGI porn laden movie? Roland Emmerich’s 2012 managed it in one weekend with a staggering $225 million box office.

Produced for $200 million, 2012 took an estimated $65 million at the US box office, making it the seventh biggest November opener ever. Proving the value of markets outside the United States, the international (non-US box office) for 2012 came in at a neat $160 million.

For more see our 2012 Movie Review.

2012 Movie Review: CGI Porn For The Masses

Duncan Riley — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 09:37:19 +0000

Roland Emmerich returns to the big screen with a sequel of sorts to his hit blockbusters Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. Some reviews will mention Godzilla, but given how few people saw that movie, it shouldn’t be considered because 2012 is the really the end of the trilogy that started with Independence Day.

My expectations going into the movie were mixed: on one hand, reviews said it is what it is, and it does it well, while others said it’s somewhere close to Transformers 2, but without the soft porn provided by Megan Fox.

I’m happy to report that it was the former. Unlike Transformers 2, 2012 shamelessly suffers its lack of serious plot and acting by overwhelming the senses with CGI porn; Transformers 2 looks like something my son plays in his bedroom by comparison.

John Cussack takes the role as the lead in the trilogy in the footsteps of Bill Pullman and Dennis Quaid before him, but brings a decidedly Gen X take to the role. Here’s a character in his mid to late 30s, divorced with a hot ex wife and some kids who struggles to keep up with his now ex-family.

Fortunately…or unfortunately I just described most of the 30 minutes of the movie, well throw in Woody Harelson as a grade A nutter and some global conspiracy theories for good measure. No, Ron Paul didn’t direct, but he would have been proud.

All you need to know about the first 30 minutes is the world is going to end, then the CGI porn flows from about that point, and by god it is the CGI equivalent on Heidi Klum taking it in a twosome…but even hotter.

If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ll get some of the rough idea. As a visual treat 2012 is the world ender when it comes to a disaster movie, because no other movie will ever be able to beat the CGI and story concept again: how after all can you beat the end of the world?

If I had to criticize, it’s that Emmerich softly decided only to destroy American and Christian icons, as opposed to being truly global (and unbias) in his vision of the end of the world; apparently he was worried about a jihad or something, which says soft to me.

If you love your CGI, you’ll love 2012. If you want to see a movie with a serious story line, stay well away.

3 1/2 stars.

This Is It passes $100 million at the box office, now highest grossing concert film of all time

Duncan Riley — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:25:53 +0000

Michael Jackson’s This Is It broke new records Sunday when it passed the $100 million mark globally at the box office, making it the highest grossing concert film of all time.

Based on industry estimates Sunday (so including Sunday based on an estimate) This Is It grossed $32.5 million in five-days in the United States. Its three-day weekend take was $21 million, putting it ahead of viral sensation Paranormal Activity.

Proving the increasing power on the non-US box office, the international box office for This Is It of $68.5 million bought the total box office globally to $101 million to Sunday. That figure makes This Is It the highest grossing concert film of all time, ahead of the $65 million from previous record holder (and you couldn’t have beaten a better target) Hanna Montana: Best of Both Worlds.

This Is It was originally only slated for a two week release, which may have influenced the strong immediate box office numbers. Likewise though, if This Is It ticket sales continue on their merry way, expect it to get a longer run.

Movie Review: This Is It ( *** )

AHN — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:00:48 +0000

Well, if you’re a big Michael Jackson fan, this is it.

The posthumous concert documentary, This Is It, is a self-described “glimpse” of the King of Pop preparing to perform that’s been designed, as the film announces early on, “for the fans.”

That tells you two things: that the memorable Michael Jackson standards (Billie Jean, Thriller, Beat It, Man in the Mirror, etc.) won’t be ignored or omitted, and that nothing, whether documented or not, will be included that will be upsetting to those who cherish his memory.

In other words: this isn’t journalism, it’s entertainment. And Michael Jackson remains a mystery.
Jackson’s sudden death this summer came while he was rehearsing for a series of 50 sold-out concerts set to take place this summer in England. This Is It is a behind-the-scenes look at the iconic performer as he, his collaborators, and his crew rehearse a show between March and June of this year that was set to premiere at London’s O2 Arena — this following a decade during which Jackson never toured at all.
There are at least three reasons to see MJ’s TII — as a privileged observer with a backstage pass, as a participant in a final celebration, or as a gawker with morbid curiosity. But the film offers far more to viewers in the first two categories than those in the third. If you’re in all three categories, by all means go.

The hour-and-three-quarters of actuality visuals has been culled from 120 hours of footage, some of it raw but most of it glossy and clear and fine, originally intended as something for the artists to watch so that they could critique and polish the upcoming show.

That mix of backstage B-roll and performed numbers renders the finished product somewhere between a concert and a documentary — but much more like the former than the latter, given all the extended musical numbers.

As we watch, we cannot take our eyes off Jackson, and we’re reminded of his performing gifts and the effect he had on fervent audiences throughout his storied on-stage career. Also of the degree of perfectionism to which he was obviously dedicated, as his micro-managing here makes clear.

But you also find yourself wondering whether anything you are watching contains insights into what was going on in his off-screen life, which was soon to end. There’s no denying that This Is It is an admiring tribute to its leading player as well as a front-row seat at a final appearance and a chance for fans to celebrate him and say goodbye. But let’s face it: our perverse curiosity about his life and his death are very much part of the targeted package here.

Still, this remains a narrow, focused portrait of the dancing-and-singing artist at work. Scour every frame to no avail: no hint of any other aspect of Jackson’s life, certainly none of the lurid offstage occurrences, comes into play in the footage selected for inclusion.

The director is ex-choreographer Kenny Ortega (Newsies, Hocus Pocus, the High School Musical trilogy), who was also the director of the stage show and a longtime Jackson collaborator, having directed several of his tours.

Ortega mixes interviews, candid backstage footage, and rehearsal performances. But it’s all there to showcase Jackson’s gift. This music’s irresistible, says the film, and Jackson is the music.

The film’s most awkward section involves scenes of Jackson shot in black-and-white and meant to be interwoven with actual footage from decades-old movies featuring the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Rita Hayworth, and Edward G. Robinson. Jackson, in costume or out, looks out of place, and the doc could and should have done without it.

But the rest of the film remains fascinating and entertaining, as was Jackson, who, for better or worse, was one of the most accomplished and celebrated performers in the history of show business.

Michael Jackson’s This Is It is a docu-concert that does a fine job with the “This” even as you decide what the “it” is.

Bill Wine – Celebrity News Service Movie Critic/ AHN

Boondock Saints 2 out Friday, watch the first 5 minutes

Kim LaCapria — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:40:41 +0000

Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day finally got its release date, and will be in limited theaters on Friday. (October 30th.)

We posted the trailer back at the beginning of September, but Film Drunk posted the first five minutes, and it looks so much delightfully worse than the first one. It’s almost sad in a way- I’m one of the people who views the internet as a great equalizer and who rejects the idea that only established establishment people can create things of worth, but it’s still hard for me to look at these two movies and not think that perhaps things like making films should be left to people like filmmakers. And I hate thinking that.

Troy Duffy still makes movies like the ones my nine year old puts on in the backyard, or so it would appear. The film starts with the McManus boys hiding out in what looks like 1860’s Ireland, a place with no indoor plumbing or electricity and clearly no SuperMac nearby either. Wearing Aran sweaters and being all unshaven with their dad Il Duce (played by Billy Connolly), an old priest friend from Boston comes to tell them (because they’re the only people in Ireland without mobile phones) that someone has murdered their favorite priest and framed the brothers for it.

So Connor and Murphy go outside and shave their craggy beards and take some ass-flashing showers, and dig up their buried treasure chest of money, guns and rosary beads. (Yay for another shower scene!) And then there’s some dialogue that sums up the Boondock Saints movies in like, two lines:

Priest, looking at Connor and Murphy all gunned up and tattooed: Exactly what do you intend to do?

Connor: Every last motherf***er that had anything to do with it.

All that said, I cannot wait to see this cinematic abortion of a film. Watch the first five minutes of Boondock Saints: All Saints Day below:

Sherlock Holmes as an action star?

Steven Hodson — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:07:30 +0000

I grew up reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and still have fond memories of seeing t he sun come up as I turned the last few pages of many of the classic tales. There has been many a movie and television rendition of Sherlock Holmes through the years but none of them – that I remember – ever depicted my childhood hero as an action star.

That could very well change with the upcoming release of of Guy Ritchie’s re-imaging of the character. While we won’t be seeing the movie until Christmas Day FirstShowing.net has the freshly minted two minute long television trailer up. Thanks to the wonders of embedding and their kindness in sharing here is your first good look at what might be in store for us and I gotta tell you I am now really looking forward to this movie.

Movie Review: Where the Wild Things Are ( ***1/2 )

AHN — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:00:44 +0000

What’s it feel like to be nine years old? Watch Where the Wild Things Are, then we’ll talk.

Where the Wild Things Are is an edgy, fleshed-out, live-action adaptation of the classic 1963 children’s storybook by Maurice Sendak. It’s unique and it’s powerful and it’s marvelous.

It may look like a children’s film and sound like a children’s film — and no one’s saying that kids cannot see it and enjoy it — but it’s not so much for nine-year-olds as for folks who were once nine and perhaps later raised little ones who became nine at some point.

Interestingly, the slight book has very little in the way of text: it’s a picture book, really, with just a handful of sentences.

Working for a committee of producers that includes Sendak and Tom Hanks, the director of WTWTA is Spike Jonze, of all auteurs. With two terrific, idiosyncratic movies — Being John Malkovich and Adaptation — on his otherwise music-video-dominated resume, he’s certainly an artistic force to be reckoned with, but his name doesn’t come immediately to mind for flicks about kids. But it was Sendak himself who offered the project to Jonze, who does a terrific, economical job in painting a portrait of family life to set up the film’s central conceit.

Mischievous nine-year-old Max (Max Records), a kid with an absentee dad and a distracted older sister, has a longing for intimacy and his share of anger and frustration issues. One day he acts rudely to his struggling single mother (Catherine Keener), who’s at home with her boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo), then storms out of the house.

He hops in a sailboat, and sails away to a mythical, enchanted island, a desolate wilderness inhabited by towering, fearsome, untamed horned monsters, who soon elect him king. His first proclamation to his new family of untamed creatures, who are socially and psychologically on his level: “Let the wild rumpus start.”

But however easy it is to run around in a white wolf suit, it’s no easy thing being king. There are all kinds of unresolved tensions among these Wild Things — which, when you come right down to it, aren’t really all that wild — and Max has to mediate whenever these creatures, serving as metaphors for Max’s turbulent emotions, act like children by squabblng and demonstrating some of the same petty problems that Max has seen among the real grownups in his life.

Among the effective puppet-monster voice cast are James Gandolfini, Forest Whitaker, Lauren Ambrose, Catherine O’Hara, Chris Cooper, and Paul Dano, who comprise a true vocal ensemble while others parade around in the goofy suits.

Just about everything that occurs on the island has a parallel back in the real world, including all the major mood swings. But Jonze doesn’t push it. The parallels register, but not in an obvious way.

There have been previous animated versions of WTWTA. But Jonze wanted to appeal to a different — that is, older — audience than the book’s target readers. And he makes the bold choice of live action, which pays off.

The director stays true to the spirit of the book by depicting the fantasy world without resorting to much in the way of computer-generated effects. Puppetry, with costumes courtesy of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, is employed with canny animatronic enhancement and digital animation used to fill out movement and fill in the creatures’ facial expressions.

The screenplay, co-written by Jonze and novelist Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), embellishes Max’s adventures and offers both poignancy and emotional resonance as it examines this child’s simultaneous desire for security and freedom.

The film has a naturalistic rawness to it, an edge, that’s unusual for a movie about children. Perhaps it’s too dark for the real young ones. But it never talks down to its audience as it explores childhood and the way depressing reality intrudes on the fun that seems to be nearby but is still out of reach.

That’s a heavy load for what is essentially a puppet show. But the balance of imagination and emotion makes for a startling, admirable, and cathartic experience.

Newcomer Records is terrific, a real natural. And Gandolfini, the heart of the film, is just amazing as he reminds us that Tony Soprano is not the only trick in his bag by turning in a voice performance that combines controlled rage and sensitivity and succeeds in bringing his astonishing character to emotionally complex life.

The PG-rated Where the Wild Thnings Are is a dark, melancholic, whimsically imaginative, but heartfelt fantasy about a child’s struggle with reality. It won’t be any child’s favorite movie, but adults will find the child’s play remarkably revealing.

Bill Wine – Celebrity News Service Movie Critic/ AHN

Movie Review: Law Abiding Citizen ( *1/2 )

AHN — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 05:00:09 +0000

With Gerard Butler’s vigilante going Charles Bronson one or two better, Law Abiding Citizen wants to be a Death Wish for the new century.

Well, it manages that, all right. This exploitative revenge thriller has a sadistic streak that puts a sour taste in your mouth in its very opening scene that stays there until the final credits roll. By the time the central character has started auditioning for the next Saw sequel, we’re squarely in torture-porn territory.

Law Abiding Citizen makes believe that it’s interested in questioning the justice system. But nobody in charge means a word of this. Distinctions between right and wrong, between heroes and villains, between testing boundaries and stampeding over them, are secondary to the film’s main concern: setting up its violent set pieces for maximum slobber value.

Gerard Butler plays Clyde Shelton, an involved family man whose wife and daughter are brutally murdered in front of him during a home invasion.

Jamie Foxx plays Nick Rice, the Philadelphia assistant district attorney who orchestrates the plea bargain that allows the killers of Clyde’s family to go free. The prosecutor’s boss forces him to offer one of the two suspects a light sentence — just a few years in jail — in exchange for testifying against the other, who ends up executed via lethal injection.

A decade later, Clyde does some orchestrating of his own. Not only does the guy who got away with murder turn up dead, but Clyde admits that it was he who committed the vengeful execution.

Clyde has not only exacted vengeance, he’s decided to bring the system of jurisprudence to its knees by becoming a one-man terrorist cell. His threat to Nick: either fix the corrupted system of justice that has failed to honor the memory of his family, or key official participants in the trial will die.

And, improbably but ineluctably — even from a prison cell — he follows through on his seemingly fantastical threat. His series of assassinations, which the authorities are apparently powerless to stop, panics Philadelphia’s population.

Only Nick, who also has a suddenly vulnerable wife and daughter, is in a position to get through to Clyde.

Director F. Gary Gray (Be Cool, The Italian Job, The Negotiator) seems to have been strongly influenced by Seven, especially in his staging of the crime scenes.

And he would appear to be so proud of one shocking moment of murderous violence — playing to the audience’s lowest-common-denominator base instincts — that he loses all touch with whatever this vigilante-vengeance volcano is supposed to actually be about.

The silliest element of Kurt Wimmer’s phony-baloney screenplay is the impossibly resourceful and manipulative mastermind pulling the sociopathic strings from a maximum-security prison. When you render your pivotal character several steps ahead of everybody and everything, you take a chance of him becoming an easy-to-dismiss cartoon character and his exploits becoming not daunting or disturbing but laughable.

And that’s exactly what happens here.

Yet even that is not as offensive as the truly ridiclous wrap-up. And no late plot twist can erase the stench that’s been loosed on an audience for the previous hour.

Rooting interest? Forget it. Despite as much underserved misfortune as any movie character could possibly have garnered coming out of the gate, Butler’s character proceeds to become off-the-charts unsympathetic. And bored-to-tears Foxx, playing the only major character left to identify with or care about, doesn’t help by turning in a distracted, empty performance, phoning it in without leaving the room.

But the biggest crime (among many) of Law Abiding Citizen is its sickening disregard for human life, compounded exponentially by its hypocritical pretentiousness as a beacon of progressive societal values and a force of rightreous indignation.

Puh-leeeze.

Hateful and unintentionally hilarious, Law Abiding Citizen is a ridiculous retribution thriller that’s difficult if not impossible to abide.

Bill Wine – Celebrity News Service Movie Critic/ AHN

Movie Review: New York, I Love You ( ** )

AHN — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:00:35 +0000

New York, I Love You is a grab bag that never really grabs us.

A compendium of vignettes, 2007’s Paris Je T’Aime was a cinematic love letter to Paris. Oh, it would have benefited from comprising fewer segments of longer duration, but it was nonetheless a winningly entertaining anthology about the City of Light and Love.

New York, I Love You, meant to be a love letter to the Big Apple, is the second in a proposed series of celebrations of major cities (”Cities of Love”) conceived by producer Emmanual Benbihy that’s modeled on its immediate predecessor.

But what rendered Paris Je T’Aime good instead of terrific renders New York, I Love You flat instead of sparkly.

While the former was charming, the latter is mostly annoying, as it tries to be a combination of Paris Je T’aime and Love Actually, with each of the eleven mini-movies a love story of one sort or another.

But this hit-or-miss affair has at least as many misses as hits.

It’s so disjointed, it’s the kind of anthology that has you longing for a developed linear narrative not only early on but throughout. Like the title metropolis, it sometimes seems one crowded, chaotic traffic snarl.

Some of the stories and characters overlap — it seems halfheartedly designed as an interconnected narrative held together by a storyline involving a videographer — but none of the individual entries in the story ensemble has much of a spark, even those with O. Henry-like reversals.

And there’s precious little cumulative impact.

The big, familiar cast — including Shia LeBeouf, Natalie Portman, Ethan Hawke, Robin Wright Penn, Chris Cooper, John Hurt, James Caan, Julie Christie, Andy Garcia, Christina Ricci, Bradley Cooper, Orlando Bloom, Rachel Bilson, Hayden Christensen, Eli Wallach, and Cloris Leachman — keeps the movie watchable. But that’s about all that can be said.

The group of eleven directors — including Allen Hughes, Mira Nair, Shekhar Kapur, Brett Ratner, and Natalie Portman — were each given two days to shoot and one week to edit, and had to focus on a particular neighborhood and edit the finished product to come in at under eight minutes of running time.

Given all that — and the film’s title — perhaps the strangest and most disappointing element to report is that the film lacks a strong sense of place. You eventually realize that most of what transpires could be happening almost anywhere.

This leads one to wonder, if this had been the first installment rather than the second, whether the series now underway (features devoted to Shanghai, Rio, and Jerusalem to come) would have been greenlighted. We certainly exit with a much sketchier sense of New York than what the delightful first entry sent us away with about Paris.

This fairly forgettable omnibus is a collage about connection that doesn’t really connect.

New York, I Love You, I barely even like you.

Bill Wine – Celebrity News Service Movie Critic/ AHN

Movie Review: The Boys Are Back ( **1/2 )

AHN — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 20:00:58 +0000

Actors don’t come much edgier than Clive Owen.

In Croupier, Sin City, Inside Man, Children of Men, The International, Duplicity, and especially The Closer — for which he was Oscar-nominated — Owen’s edge was front and center. That’s part of the reason he was in the running as the new James Bond.

In The Boys Are Back, he tucks the edge away without entirely abandoning it, showing a somewhat softer and more outwardly charming side. But his brooding countenance remains on display.

TBAB is a family comedy-drama inspired by a true story. Its opening image, a dad driving along the beach at top speed as his young son perches dangerously on the hood of the car, proves to be a metaphor for the whole film — and we react to it as we will to what follows.

Owen plays a grieving widower trying in his own way to steer himself and his family back on track with what might be called “free-range fatherhood.”

He plays Joe Warr, a grief-stricken British sportswriter who moved to Australia with his second wife (Laura Fraser), but lost her to cancer. Her tragic death continues to devastate him and he frequently communes with her ghost.

His parenting style with his two sons — the six-year-old son (Nicholas McAnulty) of his late wife and a rebellious teenager (George MacKay) from a previous marriage who has come from England to live here for the summer — is now hands-on but Laissez-faire in the extreme: this is his way of filling the hole his late wife left behind and bringing joy back into their deeply saddened lives.

Their all-male household is like a chaotic fraternity house where disarray is the decorating style, playtime is anytime, the female influence of a house mother is nowhere to be found, and this permissive caregiver’s domestic philosophy is spelled out on the refrigerator with alphabet magnets: “Just Say Yes.”

It’s as if, because in their judgment the worst thing imaginable has already happened to this family, there’s no longer any reason to worry about consequences — an interesting viewpoint with which most parents would probably, in general, disagree.

The amount of freedom Joe gives his boys can look a lot like irresponsibility or recklessness to others in the community, such as the single-mom (Emma Booth) whom he starts dating and his mother-in-law (Julia Blake) — and, it should be noted, to us in the audience as well.

It’s certainly viewed in that light when, reluctantly, Joe leaves the boys home alone and goes off to cover the Australian Open. We know there will be repercussions and, indeed, there are.

Veteran director Scott Hicks (Shine, Snow Falling on Cedars, Hearts in Atlantis, No Reservations), working from an Allan Cubitt screenplay loosely based on Aussie journalist Simon Carr’s 2001 memoir, tells his story without resorting to too much in the way of heart-tugging.

But, as eminently watchable as leading man Owen is, as he shows us his character’s faults and weaknesses without squandering our rooting interest in him, our ambivalence about his character’s parenting style keeps us from giving ourselves over wholeheartedly to an otherwise admirable film about a family dealing with loss.

The Boys Are Back is a poignant fatherhood dramedy. Like Owen’s protagonist, it’s flawed. But, also like him, it’s compelling and worthwhile.

Bill Wine – Celebrity News Service Movie Critic/ AHN

104 minutes

In theaters October 9, 2009

Rating: PG-13, Drama

Movie Review: Couples Retreat ( *1/2 )

AHN — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:00:53 +0000

The slogan that belongs on any T-shirt connected with Couples Retreat should read: “My cast and crew went to paradise and all they brought me back was this terrible comedy.”

Sitting through this dashed-off destination date-flick romp, it’s we who want to retreat.

Couples Retreat kicks off with marrieds Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell announcing to their friends that they are headed for divorce after eight seemingly happy years together. Their inability to have children has been a critical issue for them, so they’ve decided to go to the luxurious Eden Resort, on a tropical island in the South Pacific, to take advantage of the therapy sessions available there in an attempt to save their marriage.

Bateman guilt-trips his suburban Chicago buddies into accompanying him along with their significant others so they can get a reduced price. But it turns out that the couples therapy sessions offered as part of the group-rate vacation package are not optional, so all four couples have to participate. This comes as a blow because the others have come along assuming they’d just be swimming and water-skiing and snorkeling and dining and relaxing.

Not exactly. They’re booked into Eden West, which is exclusively for committed couples. As opposed to Eden East, which is for swinging singles, and which some of them watch longingly across the water.

That’s when three of the four couples at this seemingly paradiasical Bora getaway want to retreat. Too late. The New Age “couples whisperer” played by Jean Reno already has them in his clutches.

Vince Vaughn and Malin Ackerman are Dave and Ronnie, the central married couple and the busy parents of two young sons. Jon Favreau and Kristin Davis are Joey and Lucy, a married couple not so much estranged as alienated. And Faison Love and Kali Hawk are Shane and Trudy, he a recent divorcee, she a much younger woman he has just met and invited along.

The choppy and sloppy screenplay by producer Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, and Dana Fox takes forever to unfurl its convoluted premise, and then keeps introducing subplots and character back-stories that it has no intention of exploring in any way.

There’s room for raunch, slapstick, and raunchy slapstick within a PG-13-rated context, but legitimate laughs are in very short supply. That’s because everything is half-baked, as if the writers just ran with the first ideas that popped into their heads.

Nothing feels authentic, logical, or credible: not the marriages, not the therapy sessions, not the idiotic PowerPoint presentation that reels them all in, not even the leisurely resort activities.

Debuting director Peter Billingsley (whom you might remember as a child actor, playing protagonist Ralphie in the popular 1983 holiday perennial, A Christmas Story, and who has been a producer in recent years) doesn’t have much of a story to tell. So his film goes nowhere fast.

But he makes things worse by getting nothing from his cast, several of whom (Davis, Bell, Hawk) are embarrassingly inept in making an impression or creating a three-dimensional character. Even accomplished performers Vaughn, Bateman, and Reno come off badly. Of course, the atrocious screenplay doesn’t do them any favors.

Vaughn, wearing several behind-the-scenes hats, plays a more grown-up version of his signature character and does manage to get a few chuckles with his on-screen specialty: the machine-gun-dialogue tirade. But there’s not much else here that will reward your patience.

The disappointing doodle, Couples Retreat, is no vacation, vicarious or otherwise.

Bill Wine – Celebrity News Service Movie Critic/ AHN

107 minutes

In theaters October 9, 2009

Rating: PG-13, Comedy

Chris Rock Hit With $5 Million Lawsuit Over “Hair” Documentary

AHN — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:45:36 +0000

Chris Rock has been hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit over his upcoming comedy documentary film “Good Hair.” Independent filmmaker Regina Kimbell claims the funnyman stole ideas from her own “My Nappy Roots” film.

In the lawsuit she filed at Los Angeles’ District Court this week, she claims Rock’s inspiration behind his film came from the documentary she made in 2005, which she showed to him on the set of his sitcom “Everybody Hates Chris” in 2007.

She also cites several similarities of the two films, including both having celebrities tell their own hair stories, the business of Black hair care, interview of hair care pioneers, and socially and politically conscious themes.

Kimbell is seeking $5 million in damages, according to RadarOnline.com.

Meanwhile, Rock is set to star in a new film about a white man’s hilarious attempts to befriend an African American.

“Will You Be My Black Friend?” will be produced by Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films and will be distributed by Lionsgate.

Michael Bay Announces 2011 Release Date For Transformers 3. Calls Out Megan Fox

James Allen Johnson — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:56:07 +0000

Michael Bay, the director of the Transformer movies announced on his website that the newest installment, Transformers 3, will hit theaters on July 1st 2011, well ahead of the expected 2012 date.

Bay also responded to claims by his leading lady Megan Fox that “working with Michael Bay is not about an acting experience” and that her and costar Shia LaBeouf “almost die when we make a ‘Transformers’ movie… He has you do some really insane things that insurance would never let you do.”

In response to her comments Bay had this to say:

“Megan Fox, welcome back. I promise no alien robots will harm you in any way during the production of this motion picture.” He goes on to say, “Please consult your Physician when working under my direction because some side effects can occur, such as mild dizziness, intense nausea, suicidal tendencies, depression, minor chest hair growth, random internal hemorrhaging and inability to sleep. As some directors may be hazardous to your health, please consult your Doctor to determine if this is right for you.”

On a side note, apparently the director of Jennifer’s Body also asked Megan to not act in any convincing type of manner, perhaps she should look for better scripts or just learn how to act.

Movie Review: The Invention of Lying ( ** )

AHN — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:00:59 +0000

What the inventors of The Invention of Lying forgot to invent was a third act. Or maybe even a second. Which is why the movie that emerges from this promising concept starts off strong and then just lies there.

Remember the Jim Carrey comedy, Liar Liar? Well, The Invention of Lying could easily have been called Liar. Or Pants on Fire. The truth of the matter is that, while it’s certainly not unpleasant, TIOL is ultimately disappointing.

The premise: Suppose no one had ever discovered that members of our species were allowed to make things up that weren’t necessarily true. Suppose honesty wasn’t just the best policy, but the only policy. Suppose nonfiction was the only kind of fiction.

Ricky Gervais’s latest comedy is a droll alternate-reality romp in which everyone tells the truth. Always. There’s no word for “truth” and no word for “lie.” There’s only what is and what isn’t. And anything that can’t actually be seen for what it is, that cannot be factually demonstrated, has no place in this universe.

Then one down-on-his-luck screenwriter of historical epics (seemingly the only kind of movies there are in this world) named Mark Bellison, played by Gervais, somehow develops the ability to prevaricate — he’s the only one on the planet who can and does — and realizes that the untruth will set him free.

Mark lies and lies, but everything he says to anybody is taken at face value, so he can now carve out his own particular path, which is to say: any path.

The one person he cannot bring himself to lie to is Anna, played by Jennifer Garner, the woman he has long loved but who has not returned his affection and indeed already rejected him. That’s why he has settled for the platonic friendship he now has with her.

The people in this world also have no concept of God until Mark, in perhaps the film’s most imaginative and audacious sequence, as he talks to his ailing mother in the hospital, introduces the idea of the “Man in the Sky,” and does no less than invent the concepts of religion and heaven. Consequently, he’s seen as a prophet.

Ricky Gervais makes his feature directorial debut in this fanciful parable-like comedy, which he also wrote, along with his writing partner, Matthew Robinson, who also served as his co-director. But perhaps Gervais’s television background (The Office, Extras) does him a disservice here in that his movie seems to house only about as much content as that required of a TV series episode.

What Gervais and Robinson have concocted is in essence a comedic Twilight Zone episode. And for about the first half-hour, the device of characters blurting out whatever they are thinking at the time and no one feeling any embarrassment no matter what gets said to or about them is a strongly beguiling wrinkle, giving the film a bracing satirical kick.

But the thin central conceit isn’t developed enough to keep up that level of amusement over the course of a feature, and the strain eventually shows, with the pacing dipping precipitously by the midway point. And the stabs at extreme sentimentality in the late going seem like acts of desperation and fail to save the day.

Tina Fey as Mark’s snippy secretary, Rob Lowe as his arrogant rival, Jonah Hill as his downbeat neighbor, Fionnula Flanagan as his sickly mother, and a slew of cameoing guest stars help, but Gervais and Garner do not generate close to enough romantic chemistry to sell that aspect of the proceedings.

Initially thought-provoking but ultimately slack and unsatisfying, The Invention of Lying is in need of a more ambitious script and a surer directorial hand. No lie.

Bill Wine – Celebrity News Service Movie Critic/ AHN

100 minutes

In theaters October 2, 2009

Rating: PG-13, Comedy

Movie Review: Whip It ( *** )

AHN — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 11:05:40 +0000

She brought the family acting gene with her when she started working on movie sets at age five and began taking direction from the likes of Steven Spielberg. But apparently she paid attention too.

Because Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut is a winner, a heartfelt, energetic, audience-friendly comedy set in the world of roller derby competition.

Whip It is a coming-of-age tale, a mother-daughter story, a female bonding dramedy, and a sports flick about an underdog on an underdog team. With a screenplay by roller-derby athlete Shauna Cross — based on her own novel, Derby Girl — it’s the first mainstream movie about the sport since 1972’s Kansas City Bomber with Raquel Welch.

Juno’s Ellen Page stars as Bliss Cavendar, a 17-year-old waitress in the small town of Bodeen, Texas, going through the motions of entering Little Miss Sunshine-like beauty pageants while wishing she could find her bliss somewhere other than on the pageant circuit.

But, obedient daughter that she is, she cooperates with her highly motivated, mail-carrier mother, played by Marcia Gay Harden, while her dad, Daniel Stern, notices her lack of interest in the pageants but keeps his observation to himself.

Bliss thinks she just might have found her path when she accidentally discovers the spectator sport of female roller derbying in nearby Austin.

The local team that she comes to know is the worst team in the league, the Hurl Scouts, coached by Andrew Wilson (older brother of Owen and Luke). Intrigued, Bliss brushes up on her skating, lies about her age, and tries out for the team.

The coach is impressed that she’s so naturally fast, even though the sport would appear to be far too violent for her small stature and ladylike demeanor. But she makes the team because she’s small and speedy, two useful attributes given derby strategy, and she takes the name, “Babe Ruthless.”

That means living a double life for the rest of the season, as she somehow manages to keep her switch from runway to roller rink a secret from her parents.

Simultaneoulsy, the newly liberated Bliss embarks on a new romance with a local musician, an indie rocker played by Landon Pigg.

Director Barrymore (she also served as an executive producer) gets solid performances from not only principals Page and Harden, who are splendid, but Kristen Wigg as a teammate, Juliette Lewis as a rival, Alai Shawkat as Bliss’s best friend, and improvising Jimmy Fallon as the derby announcer. And the presence of Stern, also fine, brings to mind another delightful movie that this one resembles structurally and sometimes tonally, 1979’s Breaking Away, the bicycle racing movie in which Stern made his movie acting debut the year before Barrymore made hers.

Barrymore doesn’t make Bliss’s immediately demonstrated skill in the rink all that persuasive, and doesn’t really try to convey the effect of all the game violence on the players. But her coverage of the game action is fine, she nicely captures the teammate camaraderie, she renders Austin a virtual character without overdoing the tourist shots, and her celebration of female empowerment registers without preachiness.

Moreover, the echoes of her own wunderkind story, her relationship with her own mother, and her high-profile coming of age lend the film a ripe resonance.

Is Drew Barrymore just dabbling behind the camera? Too early to tell, but it would seem not: she just may be a real director.

This charming, breezy, and unpretentious winning entertainment has been knowingly whipped together and lovingly crafted. Drew and her crew make quite a debut: Whip It is with it and worth it.

Bill Wine – Celebrity News Service Movie Critic/ AHN

111 minutes

In theaters October 2, 2009

Rating: PG-13, Comedy

Movie Review: Zombieland ( *** )

AHN — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 11:31:23 +0000

Can the undead be fun dead? Sure. Take a look at Zombieland.

A horror comedy set in a post-zompocalypse world, Zombieland posits that a plague has turned nearly all humans into zombies.

What kind of zombies are we talking about?, you ask. Well, the kind of flesh eaters that run real fast (that’s right, fast), drool real often, bleed real profusely, and collapse real dramatically, especially right after they’ve been slammed in the head with, say, a shovel.

Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg are Tallahassee and Columbus, respectively, an odd couple embarking on a cross-country road trip. Our two heroes are named for the cities they’re from and the destinations where they’re headed, as are nearly all the human characters who turn up.

Tallahassee is a Twinkie-loving cowboy survivalist, Columbus our coming-of-age teen narrator who’s more than willing to share the rules he lives by, the ones that allow him to go on breathing even though hungry, bloodthirsty zombies pop up around just about every other corner. But while most remaining humans run from the ubiquitous zombies, Tallahassee seeks them out, the better to put them out of — or is it into? — their misery.

Tallahassee and Columbus meet a pair of sisters, Wichita and Little Rock, played by Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin, who have turned themselves into clever con artists as their way of making it through the day and coping with the bleak, zombie-infested landscape.

Hoping to find a place to which the zombie infection hasn’t spread, the four resourceful survivors make their way toward a seaside amusement park in California called Pacific Playland, rumored to be zombie-free. But they detour to Hollywood and sneak into the house of movie star Bill Murray, whom they presume has become a zombie. When the actor playing Bill Murray finally appears — an appropriately deadpan fella by the name of Bill Murray — you will be witness to what has to go in the books as one of the funniest cameo appearances in the history of movies.

Director Ruben Fleischer, working from a screenplay by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, posts graphics detailing the crucial but amusing rules that zombie-evading protagonist Columbus lives by, and they gain the film a few chuckles right out of the gate. But it’s the film’s several truly hilarious comic highlights, some of them moments of inspired slapstick and others perfectly judged verbal asides, that bring down the house and give this zombie flick its knee-slapping memorability.

Zombieland doesn’t have quite the polish, surprise, or cohesive structure of the zombie comedy, Shaun of the Dead, to some degree just because its running time is so modest. But it’s just as funny.

And although everyone pitches in effectively to keep the tongue-in-cheek tone as cheeky as possible, it’s Harrelson who gets the most laughs with his off-kilter line readings of expertly tossed-off one-liners.

Know that this R-rated comedy has a dose of gross and gore galore. But it’s played for yocks — boffo yocks — and its cartoon violence should bother only the most sensitive viewers.

Hey, if today’s readers are ready for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, maybe viewers are ready to visit Zombieland, not for a moment to be confused with Disneyland.

The zippy zom-com, Zombieland, is a bloody romp about the walking dead that’s very much alive and loaded with loud, loopy laughs.

Bill Wine – Celebrity News Service Movie Critic/ AHN

85 minutes

In theaters October 2, 2009

Rating: R, Comedy

Michael Moore screening Capitalism: A Love Story free tonight in ten cities

Kim LaCapria — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:59:59 +0000

Are you one of the many people affected by the economic downturn?

Michael Moore, who you may know for his films Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling For Columbine or current film Capitalism: A Love Story, wants to take you out tonight. Moore is screening Capitalism: A Love Story tonight in ten cities with the highest unemployment rates and highest foreclosure rates nationally, free for people who have been affected by the crisis. There’s no proof required (Moore says it’s the honor system) so you can just go on and show up if you’re interested.

You can find a list of the participating venues here, and below is the e-mail invite sent by Moore:

Free Screenings Tonight of “Capitalism” for the Jobless and Homeless in America’s Hardest Hit Cities (plus local benefit premieres all across the country)

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Friends,

We’re just one day away from the widest opening I’ve ever had for any of my movies. Tomorrow, Friday, October 2nd, “Capitalism: A Love Story” opens on over a thousand screens across the United States, a record for an independent documentary.

This follows last weekend’s limited opening in New York and L.A. where “Capitalism” set the box office record for the highest per screen average of ANY movie released so far this year. Not just any documentary — any MOVIE! It was, as the studio said, a good indicator of just how well the movie may do when it goes wide this weekend. I sincerely hope they’re right because I believe deeply in this film.

To kick off the national release of “Capitalism: A Love Story,” I’ve asked the studio to offer a number of screenings in the nation’s hardest hit cities — the ones with the highest unemployment rates and highest foreclosure rates — where those who’ve lost their jobs or who are in foreclosure (or have already been evicted) may attend my film free of charge. They’ve agreed, and so tonight (Thursday), the night before our opening day, ten cities will grant you free admission if you have fallen on hard times. The list of theaters and cities is below. You don’t need to bring any “proof” of your situation — just show up — it’s the honor system, no questions asked.

Of course, a free movie ain’t much when what you really need is a job or a place to live. And that’s not going to change until the party that controls both the Congress and the White House wakes up and realizes the American people put them in charge to fix the mess created by the previous administration. For that to happen requires the active involvement of each of us. And, as I show in this movie, it’s going to also require us to challenge some fundamental assumptions about an economic system that currently allows the wealthiest ONE PERCENT in this country to have more financial wealth than the bottom 95% combined. That concentration of money and power in the hands of so few people is, I believe, at the core of so many of our problems.

So, if you’re going through tough times and you live in one of the areas below, please be my guest tonight, on the eve of my new film’s opening. Seating will be on a first come, first served basis.

Also, in another five cities tonight, I have made the film available to local groups to hold benefit screenings to raise money for their local organizations — organizations which are working toward a day when a filmmaker doesn’t have to offer free screenings to people who’ve been put through the wringer. If you live in any of these areas (see below for the list of benefit premieres tonight), please come out and support the good work of these grassroots groups.

So, until tomorrow, thanks for your support, and I’ll see ya at the movies!

Yours,
Michael Moore

MichaelMoore.com
Twitter.com/MMFlint
Facebook.com/MMFlint
MySpace.com/MMFlint

Tickets For Michael Jackson’s “This Is It” Film Sold Out In 2 Hours

AHN — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:45:16 +0000

Tickets for the Michael Jackson film “This Is It” have sold out in just two hours. Fans have lined up for three days to get advance tickets to the King of Pop tribute film in Los Angeles on Sunday.

Fans who want to see their idol as he prepared and rehearsed for his now-abandoned “This Is It” 50-show residency in London have patiently waited in line for three days to make sure they get one of the 3,000 tickets to the film, says the BBC.

The movie is a documentary of the late singer as he prepped up for his shows. It features his dance rehearsals before his death in June. “High School Musical” director Kenny Ortega, the musical director of the tour, compiled the film from over 100 hours of behind-the-scenes footage of Jackson’s rehearsals.

The “This Is It” film is due to have 25 premieres across the globe at the end of October and will last for a limited two-week run. The L.A. premiere will be held at 6 p.m. on October 27.

Friends: The Movie in the works

Duncan Riley — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:58:10 +0000

The success of the Sex and the City movie is driving a new TV show reunion for the big screen: Friends: The Movie.

James Michael Tyler, who played Gunther in the series, spilled the beans, saying that David Schwimmer, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, and Matthew Perry are all returning.

“Friends: The Movie is definitely on. I still keep in touch with a lot of the cast and they say that they are really keen. I am definitely on board to do the film. I really loved my time on the show and I am looking forward to meeting up with the old gang again. I just hope we can do justice to the show in a film.”

Original series writers David Crane and Marta Kauffman have been signed to write the movie, according to News of the World.

“Everyone knew the story had to be right and well written. Getting the creators on board was a massive step forward for the project. The show did lose a lot of its shine in the last few seasons, but with the actors all in the forties it would be a real interest to see how their characters have developed.”

Friends: The Movie is scheduled for release mid 2011.