Some of cinemas most satisfying experiences can be found in small, quiet movies. The kind that don’t bowl you over with strength of their story, but rather the subtle unwrapping of their soul. Films whose strengths expand on the accessibility of its characters thanks in large part to actors who lose themselves in their roles. Crazy Heart is one of those films and Jeff Bridges is one of those actors. If you’ve seen the trailer for Crazy Heart, you’ve sampled …
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James Cameron must have a direct line to God or something, because the naysayers (including me) guffawed at the ballooned budget of 1997’s Titanic and predicted it would bomb at the box office. Instead, as we all know, Titanic became the worldwide and domestic box office champ, a record that’s held until today when, ironically, another big budget Cameron epic booted the iceberg-doomed ocean liner from number one to number two. And yes, I will admit, back on December 17, …
Damn this 3D frenzy. Dammitall! Warner Brothers recently held a screening to test how the 2D filmed Clash of the Titans would play with a trendy new 3D upgrade. Apparently, the test worked like peanut butter and ladies. Warner has just announced they’ll release the rockin’ monster-heavy Grecian revival in both old-school/nerdy 2D and new-school/the hotness 3D. Thanks for ruining everything, Avatar! So depending on which side of the 3D camp you’re living on, there’s good and bad news. First, …
I just can’t fathom why The Losers would position itself for an April 9, 2010 release when the inevitable bulldozing from Kick-Ass comes the following week. Honestly, The Losers seems more like an August release, something to keep the fires of summer burning but not quite shiny enough to see the light of day in the April to July cash cow window. Also, other than Zoe Saldana (Avatar) and Chris Evans (Push), there really aren’t any standout names in the …
You’ve got to hand it to a filmmaker so tenacious, focused and crazy that after Sundance ’09 rejects him, he shows up anyway and drags the strip shouting “See my movie!”… which ends up selling in spite of it all. Meet James Nguyen, an ultra-low-budget auteur who, over the course of four long years, wrote, directed, shot and… well, everything’d Birdemic. Like Alfred Hitcock’s The Birds, but infinitely crappier “awesomer”, Birdemic is best described by the film’s official synopsis: A …
Judge’s Note: There was some controversy this morning as a result of Dan Vinton selecting Colin Firth as a nominee for actor in a leading role, but labeling him as being in “A Single Man.” Because Colin Firth did not star in both films, it was clear to the judge, upon a second review of the results, what Dan Vinton meant. It is no more fair to let someone lose on a small mistake like that than to let someone …
Wall Street was the cinematic exclamation point to the slick “Me,me,me” greed of the ’80s. An Oliver Stone film that’s as accessibly mainstream as they come, Wall Street famously introduced “Greed is Good” to the American lexicon. It also gave us a Michael Douglas performance (as the charming douchebag Gordon Gecko) that didn’t show flabby ass cheeks or the Douglas O-face. 20+ years later, Wall Street lands a sequel courtesy of Oliver Stone– one that perfectly coincides with greed’s 2008-2010 …
When in Rome is an absolute travesty of a movie and so painful and upsetting that a night of reveling in latex and sadomasochistic groin clobbering would be a preferred alternative to the sheer misery of this so-called romantic comedy starring Kristen Bell (Couples Retreat) and Josh Duhamel (Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen). 29 days into 2010, it is now cemented as the worst movie of the year thus far and easily the crappiest thing to come to multiplexes …