Trailers posts

Fingers crossed. Keaton looks good, it's got John Carroll Lynch and Nick Offerman as the McDonald brothers, and it's written by the guy who wrote “The Wrestler.” More worrisome, it's directected by John Lee Hancock, who gave us “The Blind Side,” “Saving Mr. Banks,” and the 2004 version of “The Alamo.” Not a great track record. But a great American story. Fingers crossed. 

I'm there for this, despite the presence of #2bercular. Looks interesting. Good choice for narrator, too. Due in theaters March 25 but probably available online shortly around then. 

Jeff Wells has a nice short post here about going to batting cages with his son and not being able to hit 50- and 60-MPH pitches. It's amost a confession. Of course, he was in his, what, 50s then? In my 30s I used to go to the batting cages quite a bit, ostensibly to get ready for softball, but we'd always take a couple of rounds in the fastball cage. I could do 60s for a while but that was about it.

I‘ve also done the opposite—those carnival-like speed pitch booths, where they time how fast you’re throwing. Again, best I ever did, and this was about 20 years ago, was low 60s. That's not even a Jamie Moyer changeup. Professional baseball pitchers can't even throw that slow; I don't think they know how. And that's me practically throwing my arm out. 

Again, looking forward to this.

Here's a scene from the upcoming film, “The Big Short,” based upon the book by Michael Lewis, and directed by Adam McKay, who has mostly directed comedies: “Anchorman,” “Talledega Nights,” “Step Brothers,” and “The Other Guys”:

Things to love about this scene:

• Steve Carrell's impatient, “OK,” after Gosling's opening salvo: “What do you smell?/I smell money.” It's the polite version of, “Get on with it, ClownFace.”
• “Layers of tranches” leading to an on-screen explanation of “tranches.”
• “Somewhere along the line, these Bs and Double Bs went from a little risky to dogshit. Where's the trash.”

Plus the fact that they‘re trying to explain why the world works as it does.

Michael Lewis has a nice piece in the latest Vanity Fair on Hollywood turning his books into movies. His take is the antithesis of almost every take I’ve read on Hollywood. To most people, Hollywood is a place full of rapacious, rude, lowest-common-denominator crapmakers. To Lewis, the people in Hollywood are polite, charming, sadly inefficient, but when they get around to it they do a great job making movies from his books, including “Moneyball” and “The Blind Side.” But he never thought anyone would make a movie out of “The Big Short.” Too complicated. Here's the money shot:

High finance touches—ruins—the lives of ordinary people in a way that, say, baseball does not, unless you are a Cubs fan. And yet, ordinary people, even those who have been most violated, are never left with a clear sense of how they‘ve been touched or by whom. Wall Street, like a clever pervert, is often suspected but seldom understood and never convicted.

It is my hope that Adam McKay’s The Big Short might actually help change this situation.

Opens December 23. 

I‘ve got a bad feeling about this.

These lines:

Superman: She with you?
Batman: I thought she was with you.

Ha ha. Although, what, eight city blocks have just been scorched? Because Batman and Superman couldn’t see fit to compromise, allowing Lex Luthor to, I guess, create a monster out of the corpse of Gen. Zod?

Both men seem to have narrow visions here. They‘re like two clods on opposite sides of “Crossfire.” Superman, you ignorant slut. Plus Batman’s carrying a gun? C‘mon. 

Eisenberg’s Luthor looks good but I still think I'm right about Affleck. 

When I first heard the title, I thought it was also a take on Dan Rather's brief but dopey closing line—his attempt, post-Cronkite, to come up with his own “And that's the way it is.” But then I remembered that line was “Courage” not “Truth.”

Either way, I'm looking forward to this. It's one of two movies about journalism opening in October. (The other, “Spotlight,” about The Boston Globe's investigation into the Catholic Church molestation scandal, got a greater reception at the Toronto International Film Festival.)

Redford has now played the extremes in journalism, hasn't he? From Bob Woodward bringing down Pres. Nixon in “All the President's Men” to Dan Rather bringing down himself here. 

“Truth” is written and directed by James Vanderbilt, who wrote, among others, “Zodiac,” “White House Down” and the two “Amazing Spider-Man” movies. Fingers crossed. 

Please be good. Please. If “The Big Short” can make more people see what went wrong with the world economy in the 2000s, this will be the most important movie of the year:

Christian Bale's character is the key. Steve Carrell's reaction shot at the end is wonderful, as is his line reading of “You're wrong.” 

Extra credit: other scattered posts from the Global Financial Meltdown. 

Rocky's back! And this time he's black! Kinda sorta:

A few scattered thoughts:

• Is this Stallone's payback for all those years of being the Great White Hope? Getting white people/Italians all pumped up per Eddie Murphy? 
• Is Rocky Mickey now? (Trainer, see “Rocky”)
• Is Rocky Adrian now? (Sick before big fight, see “Rocky II”)
• Paulie's dead, eh? Like Mickey (“Rocky III”) Apollo (“Rocky IV”), and Adrian (“Rocky Balboa”). Wither Gazzo?
• Mrs. Cosby is Mrs. Creed, eh? Lavelle Roby too busy?
• Wallace again? When is Bodie going to get some respect?
• Surely those damned star-spangled boxing trunks are a little rank.

Nov. 25. Ding. 

I‘ll go see this. I hope it doesn’t skirt the fact that Dalton Trumbo was a member of the American Communist Party from 1943 to 1948. I hope it deals with the nuances of the times and situations. Doesn't appear to. But it looks fun. Directed by Jay Roach, mostly known for comedies such as Austin Powers and Meet the Parents. Starring Bryan Cranston, of course, with Helen Mirren as Hedda Hopper, with cameos from John Wayne, Kirk Douglas and Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg): 

I still think a good movie, maybe a better movie, could be made about Edward G. Robinson, who was a solid liberal and anti-Nazi during the 1930s when most studios still weren't making anti-Nazi movies (it wasn't being fair to Hitler), and who paid the price in the 1950s by being blacklisted and then forced to beg for work again. It's may be less feel-good than Trumbo's story but more poignant. Robinson was a bigger star and had farther to fall.

In the meantime, I think I‘ll revisit Peter Askin’s/Christopher Trumbo's 2007 documentary, also called “Trumbo,” which I remember being vaguely disappointing. 

OK, I'm looking forward to this:

Starring Leo and Tom Hardy. Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (“Birdman”). Via Hollywood Elsewhere. Jeff Wells is obviously on board. 

The trailer says a December release while IMDb says December 25 (limited) and January 2016 wide. (Or wider.) Box Office Mojo says Fox will distribute, which is a bit odd. The last presitge picture they distributed was “Gone Girl,” if you even count that. Before that, “The Book Thief” in 2013. Before that, “Life of Pi.”

Here's what I wrote in June 2013 at the end of my review of “Man of Steel”:

“Man of Steel” raises interesting questions only to abandon them to spectacle. ... One can hope, in the next movie, it’s not business as usual in Metropolis, that there are people still freaked by what happened, and that, even as some view Superman as a god-like figure, others blame him for bringing near destruction to the planet, for bringing the Kryptonian warriors here in the first place, and search for ways to destroy him or control him. There should be a vocal element again him. The more decent he is, the more vocal they should become. He should be perplexed by this. He should always look at us and wonder whether we’re worth saving.

It looks like I get my wish:

In this trailer, we finally get a sense of why the Batman animus toward Superman. One of those tall buildings that crumbled in Superman's battle with Zod in “Man of Steel” belonged to Wayne Enterprises, and people died, his people, and that's why Batman is pissed; that's why he comes back; that's why he fights Superman.

Better, the world is still freaked. Powerful forces (Holly Hunter, Lex Luthor, et al.) still want to control what they can't control. Those in need view Superman as a Godlike figure.

I still have causes for concern: 1) Why is Wonder Woman in this? 2) Zack Snyder, auteur for the doofus generation, is still directing it. 

But this trailer gives me hope. You know: hope. 

FOX News watchers protest the Man of Steel.

Superman's good deeds, about to go punished. 

Looking forward to this. Appears to be getting a limited release in New York and LA at the end of July. Apparently, too, it just played at SIFF but somehow I missed it. 

Here's Michiko Kakutani a few years ago reviewing the Brando biography, “Somebody”:

He was hailed as the “Byron from Brooklyn” (though he was from Nebraska, not New York), a “genius hunk,” “the Valentino of the bop generation” and the essence of “the primitive modern male.” John Huston said he was “like a furnace door opening” — so powerful was the heat he gave off. Eva Marie Saint said he had the ability “to see through you” and make you feel “like glass.” Jack Nicholson said he had a gift that “was enormous and flawless, like Picasso”: he “was the beginning and end of his own revolution.”

About “On the Waterfront,” Roger Ebert once wrote: “Brando cut through decades of screen mannerisms and provided a fresh, alert, quirky acting style that was not realism so much as a kind of heightened riff on reality.” Elia Kazan went further: “If there is a better performance by a man in the history of film in America, I don't know what it is.”

I saw this yesterday at the Seattle International Film Festival and recommend it highly:

It's recent Cambodian history—from independence in 1953, to constitutional monarchy under King Norodom Sihanouk, to the 1970 coup by Gen. Lon Nol, to the bloody takeover by the Khmer Rouge in 1975—as seen through popular music. The history is tragic, the music energetic. Interestingly, Cambodia was initially more influenced by European rock and roll stars such as Johnny Hallyday and Cliff Richard rather than the American progenitors: Elvis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly. U.S. rock became more prevalent once U.S. armed forces arrived in South Vietnam and the radio began playing Wilson Pickett and James Brown.  

A key line in the doc (and in the trailer: 2:05) is about life under the Khmer Rouge:

If you want to eliminate values from past societies, you have to elminate the artists. 

It's a line that resonates beyond its tragic meaning in Cambodia. You wonder, in fact, if we‘ve done something similar in the U.S. but via the free market. What’s popular now isn't generally artistic and what's artistic isn't generally popular.

Wednesday's showing was its last at SIFF but look for it in the usual places. Saturday, for those interested, I‘ll be seeing a documentary on Cambodia’s Dr. Haing S. Noir who won an Academy Award in “The Killing Fields” and who was murdered under mysterious circumstances in 1996.

I saw “Theeb” last night at the Harvard Exit and it's the best movie I‘ve seen so far at SIFF 2015. Unfortunately, that was its last showing at the festival, but be on the lookout for it. Maybe it’ll get a limited release in this country. Maybe. If we‘re smart. Otherwise, the usual suspects: Netflix, Fandor, et al. 

Here’s the trailer:

My review will be up soon. 

It's a rare beast: an arthouse film that is also a great adventure story.

Welcome back, Johnny Depp. Your third go-round as a gangster looks like a winner:

Further Reading:

• Movie review: “Whitey: United States of America v. James G. Bulger”
• MSNBC article: Johnny Depp: American Original 
• The Johny Depp posts

I was away on business last week and didn't see the “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” trailer until today:

Here's what I like about it: They‘re following the original line of thought David S. Goyer had when he came up with the concept for “Man of Steel”: If a super-powered alien actually came to Earth, people would freak. 

Here are some of the things we hear from people in the beginning of the trailer. It’s a lot of back-and-forth, in which, in the end, the detractors drown out more reasoned arguments:

• Charlie Rose: Is it really surprising that the most powerful man in the world should be a figure of controversy?
• We as a population on this planet have been looking for a savior.
• Neil DeGrasse Tyson: We‘re talking about a being whose very existence challenges our own sense of priorities in the universe. (Background: They’re not telling us the truth.) (Chant: Our planet!)
• Lex Luthor: Human beings have a horrible track record of following people with great power.
• Power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. 
• Maybe he's just a guy trying to do the right thing. (Background: We know better now, don't we?)
• Lex Luthor: Devils don't come from hell ... They come from the sky.
• Chant: Go home! Go home! Go home!

All of which leads to a confrontation between Superman, floating, and Batman, armored up, with Batman saying, “Tell me: Do you bleed?” And then, “You will.”

That confrontation is very “The Dark Knight Returns,” but the reasoning behind it has been updated. Frank Miller portrayed Superman as a tool of Big Government while this movie, or at least this trailer, portrays Batman as a dupe of a Fox-News-like propaganda campaign against Superman. In a way, Superman is like Pres. Obama here. He's doing good and being called the anti-Christ for it. I wouldn't be surprised if someone asks for Supes' birth certificate.

The thing is still in the hands of Zack Snyder, though, so most likely it‘ll be dumbed down by the time it arrives in theaters. Which, oddly, is next March. March? Isn’t that a month for lesser films? And why does Batman get top billing? I'm also amused by the use of “v” for “vs” or “versus.” It's as if they‘re suing each other in court.  

Savior: In the real world, this can’t end well.