the 941

Anna Kendrick and George Clooney in Up in the Air

Hard to believe, but the holiday season is in full swing at the multiplex. The last few weeks have already seen the release of some big blockbusters (2012, A Christmas Carol) and at least one surefire Oscar contender (Precious, which had a smash limited release last weekend but has not yet opened in Tampa Bay), and Hollywood promises that the best is yet to come. With six weeks until the end of the year, here are 12 must-see titles to close out the decade.

Friday, November 20
What’s hot: The Twilight Saga: New Moon
They’re hot, moody and in love. Only problem: He’s a vampire who’s gotta get a move on, driving her into the arms of a group of vampire-hating werewolves. The buzz on the latest Twilight film is out of control, led by recent revelations that stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart are necking in real life. The franchise is becoming more cultural touchstone than mere film series, and New Moon looks poised to propel the “Saga” into the upper echelon of high-grossing film series like Harry Potter and Star Wars. Believe it.
Counter-programming: An Education
If all that Twilight hokum sounds a bit childish, the Tampa Theatre will be opening director Lone Scherfig’s An Education in direct competition with the vampires. Starring Carey Mulligan as a 17-year-old student who falls in love with a much older man (Peter Sarsgaard) only to get an early lesson in heartbreak, An Education made film-fest waves earlier in the year after the film picked up an Audience Choice Award at Sundance. Also of note: British novelist Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy) co-wrote the screenplay.

(more…)

Bookmark to:

Pirate Radio
Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Tom Sturridge and Kenneth Branagh. Directed by Richard Curtis. Rated R. Opens Friday at area theaters.

When you strip away all the pomp and circumstance from rock ’n’ roll — the fashion and politics and drugs and groupies and stardom and burnout — what’s usually left are a few simple chords and a tune you can hum. In the 50-plus years since Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc. created an art form, rock ’n’ roll music has morphed from a powerful expression of freedom and rebellion into a multi-billion-dollar commodity to be packaged and sold by record company soul-suckers that view artists as cattle and the audience as an ignorant rabble worthy only of being led around by the nose or dragged to court. It didn’t used to be this way.

(more…)

Bookmark to:

Mike Judge’s Extract is an annoying movie instead of a funny one. Pitched as a return by the director to the workplace comedy of Office Space, Extract instead suffers from the same faults as Judge’s last film, the Luke Wilson flop Idiocracy. Both flicks have appealing casts and hint at good movies that could be made from the same material, but they are ultimately ruined by silly plot devices and lame characterizations. In the 10 years since Office Space, Judge has regressed as a film maker.

(more…)

Bookmark to:

District 9
Directed by Neill Blomkamp. Starring Sharlto Copley. Rated R. Opens Friday at area theaters.

Somewhere near the middle of Neill Blomkamp’s District 9, corporate bureaucrat Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley) and his alien friend Christopher Johnson blast their way into the headquarters of an evil multinational corporation known as MNU in search of the only trace of fuel left on the planet that can get Johnson home. The pair turns wave after wave of MNU security goons to jelly using an assortment of alien weapons before locating the precious gas and making an explosive getaway with an army of MNU’s finest in land-and-air pursuit. District 9 isn’t a video game adaptation, but watching the movie I kept thinking that it might as well be.

(more…)

Bookmark to:

I’ve never been smacked in the face with a dick, but I imagine the experience is a lot like watching Brüno. The first 15 minutes of the movie is a penis shock-and-awe campaign, with a pink bunny-costume dick, a dick on the end of a stick and a talking dick that shouts “Brüno!” out of its peehole. That’s in addition to the many items — dicks, dildos, champagne bottles, etc. — going in and out of assholes obscured only by a little black dot. If there is one word to describe Brüno, it’s Cocktastic.

(more…)

Bookmark to:

Two months ago, we guided you through the first 60 days of the summer blockbuster season, with prescient comments on everything from Star Trek (“the re-booted Trek franchise should live long and prosper at the multiplex”) to Transformers (“whatever speck of joy the first film contained will have been thoroughly stamped out”).

This week, we’re following Hollywood’s lead, and presenting a sequel, getting you caught up on what’s hitting the Hollywood 20 every week till fall comes. The lineup features heavyweights like Quentin Tarantino and Brad Pitt, Judd Apatow and Adam Sandler. Can they improve on what we’ve already seen this summer? We’ll see…

JULY 10
Box Office Gold: Brüno
Worth seeing? For his last big-screen outing, 2006’s Borat, British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen laid waste to George W. Bush’s America — hilariously ruining rodeos, business conferences and a Pam Anderson book signing in the process. Cohen has gone back to the Ali G Show wellspring from which Borat emerged to find his next character, flaming gay Austrian fashionista Brüno. Early buzz has Cohen replicating his Borat schtick, sending Brüno to interact with unsuspecting bystanders who aren’t in on the joke. This time around, that means talking Sex and the City and tent-snuggling with homophobic rednecks, crashing the catwalk at actual runway shows and even dropping trou in front of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. If it’s all half as funny as Borat, the producers will laugh all the way to the bank.

Counter-programming: Mountains of man-ass and potty jokes a turn off? Instead, see I Love You, Beth Cooper. The latest from director Chris Columbus (the first few Harry Potter flicks), Cooper stars Paul Rust as a nerdy kid who declares his love for the hottest girl in school (Hayden Panettiere) during his valedictory speech. The speech works, and hottie Beth soon decides to show her dorky suitor the night of his life. Ah, fantasy.

JULY 15

Box Office Gold: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Worth seeing? It doesn’t matter. At this point you’ve spent so much time reading the books and seeing the other movies that not catching Half-Blood Prince is akin to letting yourself down. This entry into the Potter series (the sixth of seven) was originally slated for a November 2008 release by Warner Bros., but after the studio hit the jackpot with The Dark Knight, the bean-counters decided to push the lucrative boy wizard onto 2009’s balance sheet. Fans of the series can expect a mostly faithful adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s book, though they apparently mucked with the ending a bit. The Internet is abuzz with reports that about 25 minutes of the film will be in 3D IMAX, though at press time that was unconfirmed. No matter. They could have shot Half-Blood Prince in 1D and it would still be the favorite to claim the summer box-office crown.

Counter-programming: The wizard Harry is so powerful that no other film dare challenge him.

JULY 24
Box Office Gold: The Ugly Truth
(more…)

Bookmark to:

You have to hand it to the producers of Public Enemies; their timing is impeccable. After months of watching the banks loot the nation’s treasury of billions under the guise of the TARP bailout, the public is bound to be receptive to heartthrob Johnny Depp as charismatic bank robber John Dillinger. It helps that Depp is stellar here, his Dillinger a smooth cat who’s quick to give a lady his coat or his word. As directed by Michael Mann (The Insider, Heat), Public Enemies is a gripping gangster flick that works both as a Depression-era period piece and a throwback to the films of that era.

When we first meet Dillinger, he’s orchestrating the jailbreak of some associates, including his mentor Walter Dietrich. The prison break goes wrong, gunfire breaks out and Walter is fatally wounded — the first of Dillinger’s associates to die in his presence. After a stop at a safe house, Dillinger and the remaining men head for Chicago to make some money and hide in plain sight among the teeming masses that love the charismatic Johnny.

Dillinger is a folk hero, exacting a little poetic revenge on the banks that had plunged the nation into the Great Depression. Dillinger and his crew are professionals, knocking over banks in a minute-forty and charming the patrons on the way out the door. In the days before surveillance cameras, dye packs and helicopter patrols, law enforcement is simply overmatched. Or as Dillinger explains, the cops have to guard all the banks all of the time, he’s just got to hit one.
(more…)

Bookmark to:

This weekend, Hollywood will ask moviegoers to spend their disposable income on the latest whiz-bang summer blockbuster, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It’s a given that the movie will own the top spot at the box office (early tracking indicates huge fan interest), but does it have to be a record-breaking opening weekend? Ladies and gentlemen, I implore you: DO NOT GO SEE THIS MOVIE! It’s not too late! You don’t have to line up with the lemmings. If you want to see a movie, check out Away We Go, which gets its Bay area premiere this weekend.

But you’re not going to heed my advice. Maybe you liked the first movie. Maybe you’ve got a thing for giant robots or Megan Fox. Or both. In that case, please read on: (more…)

Bookmark to:

Ah… the bachelor party. The “last night of freedom” is a well-established rite of passage for dudes trading singledom for the restrictive bonds of marriage, and has long been fodder for the movies.

In the 1980s, Tom Hanks was the groom-to-be in Bachelor Party. In the ’90s, Jon Favreau, Christian Slater and Cameron Diaz turned in a decidedly darker take with Very Bad Things. This summer, Hollywood grants us The Hangover, and it turns out to be a clever take on a very clichéd subject.

The Hangover stars Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis as three friends who manage to lose their groom-to-be (Justin Bartha) during a long night of debauchery in Las Vegas. The twist to The Hangover is that the movie takes place the day after the party, and no one can quite remember what the hell happened. The evidence is everywhere: The hotel suite is heroically trashed (chickens roam freely through mountains of trash and a hungry tiger lurks in the bathroom), Ed Helms’ character is missing a front tooth, and when they boys turn in their parking stub the valet brings around a stolen cop car. The gang must retrace their steps, find the groom and get him back to L.A. before the wedding starts — in about 24 hours.

(more…)

Bookmark to:

Ever get that e-mail that asks you to spot the difference in two seemingly identical pictures? You sit there staring intently when the pic suddenly changes to a scary old witch, the speakers pound out a loud shock chord and you make a deposit at the bank of BVD. I was reminded of this prank while watching Drag Me to Hell, a back-to-basics horror movie from Spider-Man director Sam Raimi. Time and again the camera moves in on Christine, a corporate-ladder-climbing bank rep ably played by Alison Lohman, as she stares off into the distance trying to spot the devil that haunts her. Wind rustles through a tree, shadows dance across the floor, and then — wham! — the specter appears and scares the bejezzus out of her.

(more…)

Bookmark to: