Archive for the ‘Upcoming movies’ Category

  • 02 Sep

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    Trailer: Kaufmanesque Canadian Micro-Indie YOU ARE HERE

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    This one is most definitely on my roster of TIFF selections, it was even in my Top 5. Video artist Daniel Cockburn kicks off his feature film career with this head-scratcher:

    You Are Here is a Borgesian fantasy composed of multiple worlds, circling and weaving around each other in always-unexpected ways. At the centre of this narrative labyrinth is a reclusive woman (Canadian Indie-Icon Tracy Wright in her final performance) who searches for meaning in the mysterious documents that keep appearing to her. Her investigation begins when she finds a tape recording of a man giving a bizarre lecture: calming and sinister at the same time, he instructs how to “get where you need to go”. Is this a random find, or a message to her?

    Make Sense? The trailer will not enlighten you as to what is going on, but it will entice. It is tucked under the seat.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 01 Sep

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    Trailer: The Freebie

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    A couple days behind the internets on this one, but to be frank, the gawd-awful title just let this item linger in my inbox without actually checking it out. Foolish me. The Mumblecore to Mainstream train continues to roll onward with this low key romantic drama that features an out-of-left-field dramatic turn from Dax Shepard. Will the film be a compelling look at the ebb and flow of a long term relationship or indulge in high-concept and melodrama? It’s hard to tell, but the lo-fi intimate aesthetic seems to indicate the former, not to mention that Mark Duplass is producer here and his recent foray into multiplex fair, Cyrus (Kurt’s Review) was a pleasant surprise which also took a (relatively) restrained approach to its own rather ‘so-easy-it-writes-itself’ high-concept. And while Shepard is certainly no John C. Reilly, he looks to be turning in some surprisingly good work along with his co-star and Duplass regular (actually, his real life wife) Katie Aselton. This is probably no shock or revelation, but The Freebie is about as ironic of a title possible!

    Darren (Dax Shepard) and Annie (Katie Aselton) have an enviable relationship built on love, trust and communication-they still enjoy each others company and laugh at each others jokes. Unfortunately, they can’t remember the last time they had sex. When a dinner party conversation leads to an honest discussion about the state of their love life, and when a sexy bikini photo shoot leads to crossword puzzles instead of sex, they begin to flirt with an idea for a way to spice things up. The deal: one night of freedom, no strings attached, no questions asked. Could a “freebie” be the cure for their ailing sex life? And will they go through with it?

    The trailer is tucked under the seat.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 26 Aug

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    TIFF 2010: First trailer for Maria Bello & Michael Sheen drama “Beautiful Boy”

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    Beautiful Boy Movie Still

    For his first full length feature, writer/director Shawn Ku is tackling a pretty hefty subject. Further, he’s also managed to round up an impressive cast of talent including Maria Bello, Michael Sheen, Moon Bloodgood and even a little Alan Tudyk for good measure.

    Beautiful Boy follows the aftermath of a school shooting but it does so from an angle we haven’t seen yet: the parents of the killer. It’s a good thing Bello and Sheen are both exceptionally talented actors as these are likely to be roles requiring heavy emotional lifting and the trailer suggests that both are up to the challenge. I’m definitely curious to see how this pans out.

    Beautiful Boy will screen at TIFF and if all goes well, should see some sort of distribution (gunning for Oscar I’d think) before the end of the year.

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  • 25 Aug

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    New Triptych of Posters for “Never Let Me Go”

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    Never Let Me Go from director Mark Romanek is certainly one of our most anticipated films of the year in the third row. If you know nothing, the cast alone should do the trick: Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield, Sally Hawkins, Charlotte Rampling, Nathalie Richard, and Andrea Riseborough. If that’s not enough, you can check out the first, quite handsome looking one sheet released about a month ago and the exceptional trailer that preceded it.

    Now we’ve stumbled across this nice three piece set of posters likely made up as part of the marketing involved with it being an official selection at this year’s TIFF. The film is an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s celebrated novel and was written by Alex Garland (The Beach, 28 Days Later and Sunshine) and opens to a wider audience on September 15th.

    For a nicer, hi-res version of the posters, simply click the image:



    Synopsis and trailer for the film can be found under the seats…
    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 25 Aug

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    Zhang Yimou’s “The Love of the Hawthorn Tree”

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    If I hadn’t been told this was a Zhang Yimou picture from someone I trust, I’d never have believed it. Sure Yimou has toned down his bombastic style as of recent with the Blood Simple remake (A Simple Noodle Story), but even that trailer showed signs of Yimou’s signature flair for color and symmetry.

    Granted this trailer spends most of its time focusing on the lead actors’ faces over and over, but I spot almost nothing that points to the usual auteur style Zhang Yimou generally represents. You might say that he’s sort of returned to his roots here, but honestly even Yimou’s earlier work has elements of his signature style that later would flood the screen in films such as Hero and Curse of the Golden Flower. So again, this seems like a complete departure for him.

    That isn’t to say this is a bad thing; simply an observation. And to be honest this trailer (sort of subtitled) doesn’t really give me much of an idea of what to expect anyway. I’ll see anything this director makes but I want to see a little more from this film as this (probably not “official”) trailer is just sort of meh.

     

     

  • 24 Aug

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    Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours” trailer

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    127 Hours

    It’s here and it’s not exactly what I had expected. Likely not what you had expected either but taking into account that we are talking about Danny Boyle here, that shouldn’t come as much as a surprise.

    127 Hours is scheduled to play at TIFF (where Slumdog Millionaire (our review) started its assent to Oscar in 2008. This time, Boyle and crew have taken on the real life story of Aron Ralston, an adventurer who is pinned under a rock and in order to survive, is forced to cut off his arm.

    If you were expecting a quiet, gruesome film about a man and a rock, you may be in for a little shock with this trailer. Mind you, it only features footage of events leading up to the fateful moment of disaster but that lead up is frantic, energetic and gorgeous. Add in James Franco as Aaron and Kate Mara in what I expect will be a short role and tada, here we have the first trailer for the film.

    I was game to see this from the first announcements and I’m still looking forward to eventually catching up with the film but I’ll freely admit that this trailer does nothing for me.

    Trailer, via /Film, under the seats.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 24 Aug

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    Trailer: Fubar II

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    Michael Dowse and those crazy Calgarians who love to Giv’R are going to open the Midnight Program at TIFF this year with (I am guessing from the above picture) their adventures in the Alberta Tar Sands. If you missed the original Canadian cult-classic faux documentary, Fubar, do yourself a favour and seek it out on DVD or Netflix. In the meantime, lock up your cars, cats and most definitely your beer. These Uber-Hosers bring their own brand petty destruction to Fort McMurray.

    The full trailer for Fubar II is tucked under the seat.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 23 Aug

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    Toronto After Dark: Heartless Review

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    Toronto After Dark

    “Beauty is the beginning of terror.” From that line of poetry/exposition, there is a bit of a promise (and a warning) of things to come in Philip Ridley‘s dark fairy tale, Heartless. Starting out as a grim London East Side drama about the inward shyness of a young man (Across The Universe’s Jim Sturgess) with heart-shaped purple splotch (a birth defect of sorts) on the side of his face. His life seems to be on hold in comparison to his family-man older brother and his screwed up gangster little brother. His mother and father are both played by Mike Leigh regulars (Ruth Sheen and Timothy Spall), so you get the grim realism and graffiti strewn environments of down the class-ladder neighborhoods often featured in that particular brand of British cinema. Then there is a roving gang of hoodie hoodlums who (Mimic style) seem to be some sort of bipedal demonic insects killing folks in the neighborhood. By the time Eddie Marsan saunters into the apartment as a larger-than-life bureaucrat/weaponsman toting a laptop, a set of ‘legal conditions’ precipitated from a pact with possibly the devil and a few weapons recommendations, the film has enough tonal-plates tossed into the air that the whole enterprise should come down in a large clatter. But, miraculously it does not. Outside of South Korean cinema (or perhaps the Coen Brothers), this sort of thing is so rarely successful and here it is a bit of a revelation.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 18 Aug

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    Trailer: The Vanishing on 7th Street

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    I do enjoy me a good Brad Anderson flick. Sure, he doesn’t work out of the United States much these days, preferring Europe, which essentially means his type of genre flick is a little lower budgeted than all the ‘horror remake’ stuff going on stateside currently. Session 9, The Machinist, Transsiberian are all solid (if occasionally workmanlike) flicks. Making its debut at the 2010 edition of TIFF is Anderson’s latest, The Vanishing on 7th Street, sort of a post-apocalyptic survival film starring Hayden Christensen, Thandie Newton, and John Leguizamo (incidentally, none of these are popular with the mainstream-genre-crowd, so casting here is a bit baffling):

    From TIFF:

    It starts with a power outage. Where once stood living beings are now piles of discarded clothes. The once sunny city is shrouded in blackness. Shadows creep across every surface and whispers echo in the empty streets. Is it some form of enemy attack or a swift judgment from the divine? Each passing day contains fewer daylight hours, and only those who cling to some other form of light can escape the encroaching darkness.

    A small group of survivors congregate in an old bar powered by a gas generator. Luke (Hayden Christensen) is a slick TV anchor forced to live by his wits. Paul (John Leguizamo) is a lonely projectionist working in a multiplex theatre. Rosemary (Thandie Newton) is a distraught mother whose baby is missing, and James (Jacob Latimore) is a shotgun-toting kid waiting for his mother to return. With their light sources slowly dying, they must find alternative illumination and a way out of the city. Overcome with paranoia and fear, the group struggles to understand the events that have brought them together.

    Nevertheless, the idea with the slowly shrinking span of daylight is a keeper, and Anderson doesn’t scrimp on character development, so here is hoping.

    The full trailer is tucked under the seat.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 18 Aug

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    Trailer: Black Swan

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    After much speculation and curiosity regarding Darren Aronofsky’s latest, we finally get a substantial peek by way of its first trailer, which hit the Apple site yesterday. And boy, does it give you a fair bit to chew on. It seems as though Aronofsky is plunging back into the mental breakdown territory that poked through in the later half of Requiem for a Dream, with more than a little of The Red Shoes thrown in. Plus, on top of the Portman-Kunis rivalry that (I’m guessing) makes up the bulk of the movie, I’m really looking forward to seeing what Vincent Cassel does in this flick. I’m certainly intrigued, and it looks like Black Swan may very well make Aronofsky five for five.

    Check out the trailer at Apple here, then leave your thoughts below!

  • 16 Aug

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    Paul Haggis takes on Pittsburgh prisons.

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    While Erie is my home, Pittsburgh is my city – and it is great to see how much attention Hollywood has been paying it as of late (thanks to a pretty delicious incentive of studios receiving a 25% tax credit when they spend at least 60% of their production budget in Pennsylvania). In 2010 alone, there are numerous high profile films coming out that were filmed in the city and surrounding area – among them, Denzel Washington’s Unstoppable, the Edward Zwick romantic comedy Love and Other Drugs, and the John Singleton directed Abduction (other recent Pittsburgh-filmed films include The Road, Adventureland, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and My Bloody Valentine 3D).

    The latest high profile flick to showcase the city looks to be a dud though, despite a pretty stellar cast that includes Russell Crowe, Liam Neeson, and Elizabeth Banks. Directed by the heavy-handed Paul Haggis (Crash, In the Valley of Elah), The Next Three Days is a remake of 2007 French film Anything for Her, which follows the story of a man who decides to break his wife out of prison after she is imprisoned for murder. And while it is great to see the city that I love and its many bridges abounding with gunplay and car chases, the trailer for the film did absolutely nothing for me.

    Oh yeah… and Paul Haggis sucks.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 14 Aug

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    Edward Zwick directs a romantic comedy.

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    When I think of Edward Zwick, I think of melodramatic war movies, slow motion, and dialogue along the lines of: “Tell me how he died” [dramatic pause] “I’ll tell you how he lived.” I certainly don’t think of romance. Which is why I was slightly befuddled to see his named attached to the trailer for Love and Other Drugs, a romantic comedy starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway. Based on the novel Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman, it follows a pharmaceutical salesmen who crosses paths with a feisty free spirited woman and yada yada romantic comedy conventions, sex, something, something, fall in love, blah blah.

    Whatever. Even if it is something new for Zwick, I am sure it will be rather cookie cutter like the rest of his movies. For the record though, even with all his ridiculousness, I don’t hate Zwick. His films are generally very visually appealing, he can film a great action scene, and I even grew up loving Glory and Legends of the Fall. I’m even fond of Blood Diamond, although probably mostly because of Djimon Hounsou and my man crush.

    What are your thoughts on Zwick taking on such a movie?

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