Movies

December. It is the perfect month for movies. It is in this month where some of the best movies of the year are released (though for many, they don’t arrive until January). Below is a list of my top ten most anticipated movies of December 2007, in reverse order. These movies may be Oscar contenders, or they may just look entertaining, but they are the films I’m most excited about. Granted, some smaller release pictures may pop up that I can’t anticipate, but take it or leave it.

10. The Bucket List

The Bucket List doesn’t look particularly interesting to me, but you can never rule out the combination of Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman come December. The movie has the chance of being this year’s As Good As it Gets, as it looks to be a blend of comedy and drama. The plot probably involves at least one of the characters dying at the end, but having a blast and hitting on young girls up until that point. The feel good movie of the year? Maybe.

9. Aliens vs. Predator Requiem

I definitely didn’t think this one would ever make any top ten lists. The first Alien vs. Predator was a God-awful, laughable mess, but I have to admit that its sequel, Aliens vs Predator Requiem (what does “Requiem” indicate?), with a different director and different cast, looks a lot better. The movie appears to be a lot grittier, a little more grounded in reality (as much as it can be), and a whole lot bloodier. Unlike the first one, the studio wisely made this sequel R-rated, which means a lot more gore. Aliens, Predators and gore is enough for me… I’m sold!

8. Charlie Wilson’s War

A big Oscar contender lies in Charlie Wilson’s War, a movie starring Tom Hanks as a politician who starts his own war and relief mission. The movie is directed by Mike Nichols, who hasn’t really proven himself as an especially powerful director with a few notable exceptions (The Graduate and Closer) come to mind. More intriguing to audiences will be that the movie is written by Aaron Sorkin, best known for “The West Wing”. The cast isn’t too shabby, either… Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman and others come to mind… Overall, this has the potential to be very good, though the trailers have been a little underwhelming. While it looks good, is it good enough to be an Oscar contender? That remains to be seen…

7. Cassandra’s Dream

Fans may be tired of Woody Allen films, but Allen has proven that when he stays away from comedy, he can deliver fresh and meaningful stuff. Following Match Point, a movie I consider to be excellent, Cassandra’s Dream is about two brothers (Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor) who get hired by a relative (Tom Wilkinson) to kill some dude. The movie is a thriller/drama about decisions that can affect the rest of your life. The movie looks dark and relatively gritty, and I’m definitely looking forward to this one.

6. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Love it or hate it? Really good or really bad? This one’s going to be divisive, and is definitely one of the riskier pictures of Tim Burton’s career. Then again, are movies really risky when they look like a Burton film and star Johnny Depp as a really weird and twisted character? It’s been a while since we’ve seen Burton and Depp together, and Depp looking like something closer to his Edward Scissorhand days, and that’s refreshing. Then again, it’s a musical, and that will be a challenge for Burton. Basically, this movie could be really good or really bad, and there’s only one way to find out.

5. The Golden Compass

The movie was heavily promoted over the summer, but since then I really haven’t seen much if any advertisements for this fantasy film, but New Line is certainly looking to capitalize on a lack of fantasy kids films. New Line has to be worried as several films from the same genre have struggled this year, with exception to Harry Potter, of course. The movie looks pretty good, and is one of the few blockbuster-type films this year. Reviews may make or break this one, however.

4. I Am Legend

Will Smith. Action. Sci-fi. It’s a pretty safe bet, even when Smith is the only actor on screen most of the time. The teaser trailer was top notch and quite creepy; the later trailers have revealed the mutated humans (zombies?) to be fast-moving CGI creatures, which have dampened my excitement a little bit. The special effects aside, the movie still looks like a lot of fun, and even if it isn’t a masterpiece, Smith has proven that he can make even so-so movies entertaining (I, Robot comes to mind).

3. Juno

This movie has more Oscar buzz around it than most, and could end up being the Little Miss Sunshine of 2007. My brother has already seen it and says it’s great, and I tend to trust his judgment 95% of the time. The previews are funny and quirky, and considering that there seems to be a real lack of quality comedies right now (Lars and the Real Girl and The Savages being comparable exceptions), this may find both critical and box office success.

2. Atonement

Another film with a lot of Oscar buzz, Atonement has received some great reviews, stars Kiera Knightley (always a plus) and is directed by the guy who brought us the most recent adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which was surprisingly well done. That combination, served up with another period piece story about two lovers who are betrayed by a jealous young girl, has me intrigued to see exactly what this movie is going to be like. Thus, Atonement is high on my list.

1. There Will Be Blood

This is my personal pick for Best Picture. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but if There Will Be Blood is not worthy of a Best Picture Oscar, I will be disappointed. I realize I’m setting myself up for disappointment here. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia) and starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine), the movie looks absolutely stellar. It’s going to be dark, gritty and powerful if I have anything to do with it, and even from the previews it appears there are Oscar nominations in sight for both Day-Lewis and young Dano. At the very least, Dano’s performance could be a break-out one.

Note: Two movies that would appear on this list if not for the fact that they are released in late November, not December, are The Savages (Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman in a comedy-drama) and Awake (a B-grade thriller that happens to look pretty entertaining and star Jessica Alba).

From the guy who brought us the awesome Donnie Darko, one of my favorite films of all times, comes Southland Tales, a movie with a few similar themes but one big difference: it sucks big time. Here’s a snippet of my full movie review…

Wednesday night. Eight people. Only four survivors. The emotional toll for those who endured was almost too much to handle.

The situation: Southland Tales, the two-hour, forty-minute Richard Kelly follow-up to the classic Donnie Darko. It was a massacre if I ever saw one, where fifty percent of the audience was shot down, their lives destroyed in an instant. Only it wasn’t an instant. One man, popcorn still in hand, didn’t make an hour, and the three large young ladies who had to sit down right behind me, most likely just to annoy me by talking the entire time (though as it turns out their commentary helped get me through the rough patches), left just before the scene where one SUV humps another SUV. I’d never seen so many people walk out before, but I don’t really blame them: Southland Tales is a mess, and not the fun mess Kelly was shooting for.

I am a big fan of Donnie Darko, and in terms of theme, Southland Tales isn’t that far removed. There are wormholes, time travel and distortion of reality, but how all of that is delivered is so absurd and unruly that it’s nearly impossible to enjoy. Southland Tales is like one of those movies you see in another movie, where some low grade director is trying to make an epic, and when he sits down at the premiere he watches in horror as everyone falls asleep or gets up and walks out. The movie is an epic; it’s just an epic that doesn’t find its identify and isn’t able to engage the audience. It has a message, but without interesting characters or an entertaining plot, Southland Tales falls apart at the seams.

Read my full Southland Tales movie review.

Midnight Eagle, a Japanese import about two journalists who get caught up in a race to retrieve a nuclear bomb, opens today in New York and later in the year in Los Angeles. Overall, the movie is quite good, albeit with a few plot holes.

After an American Stealth Bomber crashes into a Japanese mountain, two journalists set out to discover exactly what happened. With a blizzard brewing, the journalists make their way up the mountain, only to find that they have walked themselves into the middle of a war between Japanese and North Korean soldiers, who want the bomber’s cargo for themselves. All but cut off from the Japanese government, the two men have to face the realization that they may not make it back alive – and that it may be up to them to save millions of Japanese civilians.

Read the full Midnight Eagle movie review…

Here’s some behind-the-scenes footage from the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight (2008). It doesn’t show much, but you get to see the Batmobile in action plus a few explosions…

Alliance Films has just posted the new movie trailer for In Bruges, starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes. Farrell plays a hit man who takes refuge in a small town, only to find that his orders to stay under the radar are more challenging than first thought when he realizes that Bruges is not exactly the most exciting town.

Watch the trailer!

I haven’t seen High School Musical 2 but I hear it’s not too bad. I have heard of Vanessa Hudgens and her nude photos however. I also say her boyfriend and costar Zac Efron on the website Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians, funny enough.

Anyway, High School Musical 2 arrives on DVD and Blu-ray December 11th, and these pictures are from the Extended DVD premiere on November 19th. Normally I don’t do premiere pics, but hey, there’s some cuties (albeit rather young cuties)…

The High School Musical 2 cast plus some dude with a dog.

A few of the cast members

Vanessa Hudgens

Vanessa Hudgens again

Zac Efron

Ashley Tisdale

Hey everyone, check out the new Cloverfield movie poster. The marketing campaign has kicked into full gear as we’ve seen the trailer, a ton of new revealing photos and an official title all in the last week – the only thing yet to be seen is the monster (or monsters) itself. Frankly, I hope they keep the movie under wraps until the film releases on 1-18-08.

Now, the studio has released the new Cloverfield movie poster, which is exactly like the old one only with a different aspect ratio and the official title.

Without that extra space at the top, doesn’t it look a bit squished?

OK, so Kiera Knightley may not exactly be in a bikini in the upcoming movie Atonement, but she still looks pretty damn good. Check out these new photos from my Atonement Image Gallery (click on the link to view even more photos):

If you like barely legal girls, Bratz is for you. Unfortunately, you have to sit through an hour and a half of the most unoriginal high school girl comedy ever. And it’s rated PG. And it has no suggestion of sex, nudity or much in the way of romance. Yes, Bratz is a teenage movie made for preteen girls, and it shows.

That being said, Bratz has its moments, and is not the complete and utter waste I was expecting it to be. It’s just so unoriginal, so cheesy and so counterproductive to what little girls should be watching that it’s impossible to really like it. Oh, and the lack of sex and nudity sort of kills it, too.

Read my full, less distasteful movie review here.

Skinwalkers is a werewolf movie from Lionsgate, and holding firm with the consistency of Lionsgate’s horror films, the movie is a complete disaster. It appears as though the director went out of his way to make a horror movie that lacks all suspense, horror and entertainment. The werewolves are barely in it (at least in their hairy forms), they resort to shooting guns more than biting people, and to cap things off, the plot is about two sides of werewolves (the good and the bad) duking it out over a little boy. That hasn’t been done before!

Read my full Skinwalkers movie review here.

Has it been a whole year since The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause hit theaters? The movie is just coming to DVD, wisely right in front of the holiday season. After all, it is about our favorite overweight gift giver.

Of course, no one really cares about The Santa Clause 3, because the franchise has never been that good to begin with. Number One was okay, but the sequel was stunningly bad. And by bad, I mean even my mom hated it. Thankfully, The Santa Clause 3 is a little more entertaining, though it is clear that not that much effort (or more accurately, that much budget) was put into this effort.

Read my full Santa Clause 3 movie review.

Has it really been ten years since Titanic hit theaters? Oh yeah, no one was counting. I thought Titanic was great when it came out, but now I realize just how overblown this film was. It’s still a good movie, but an Oscar powerhouse, I think not. Titanic is just a bit too mainstream for its own good, and any movie that can’t get an Oscar-worthy performance out of Leonardo DiCaprio has a few issues. That being said, no one can fault James Cameron for making one of the most critically and financially successful films of all time.

But that’s not what this article is about. Titanic: 10th Anniversary Edition is coming to DVD on Tuesday, November 20, 2007, and I have a copy of the two-disc collector’s set. For those of you who don’t own Titanic, the Best Picture winner is certainly worth owning, but what about all of you who already own it? Is it worth buying a new version, especially when the DVD format is going to be obsolete in a year?

The answer is a clear no. The movie is split across two discs, which is annoying enough, and it’s probably split across two discs because the movie has three different commentaries (one by James Cameron, another by Kate Winslet, Gloria Stuart, Lewis Abernathy, Jon Landau and Rae Sanchini, and a third, historical commentary by Don Lynch and Ken Marschall, whoever those people are) and behind-the-scenes featurettes built into the flow. Unfortunately, I’m not much of a commentary guy (and I would probably only listen if Leonardo DiCaprio was involved), and I am definitely not a big fan of special features that I can only access when I actually watch the movie. If I’m watching the movie, I want to watch the movie; if I want to watch special features, I want to watch special features… I don’t want to do one to do the other, and vice versa.

The historical commentary might be interesting.

The only real interesting part of the DVD set is an alternate ending that looks more at the modern day cast and wraps their stories up a bit more. Since no one cared about Bill Paxton’s character or anyone outside the scope of the narrative, it’s no surprise that a lot of this stuff got cut. In addition, the actual ending and the way the old woman (Rose) tosses the diamond over the side of the ship is a lot cheesier here, as she does so in the presence of most of the other characters. Paxton goes off his rocker in a rather goofy way, and the fat comic relief guy takes away any dramatic impact of the scene.

While I was never a fan of any of the modern day sections in Titanic, the version that actually appeared in the theatrical release is much better. Still, it’s interesting to see what might have been.

Overall, if you really like feature commentaries, Titanic: 10-Year Anniversary Edition might be for you, but otherwise, it will be a complete waste of money. In reality, the DVD doesn’t have many special features whatsoever.

How is J-Lo so popular? She has rarely done a good movie, and her music isn’t very good, either. Yet here she is in yet another role, trying to prove that she can do gritty when she clearly cannot. In El Cantante, she plays the struggling girlfriend/wife of Latino singer Hector Lavoe (played by Marc Anthony, another guy who probably shouldn’t be acting). El Cantante is okay, except it’s not, because not only is it boring, uninformative and… boring… it is the exact same story we see in just about every singer’s story from the 1970′s (read: drugs, depression, AIDS or some combination of the three).

Read my full El Cantante movie review. El Cantante is now out on DVD.

Thanks to Black Book, 12 new images for the upcoming J.J. Abrams monster movie Cloverfield are now online. None of the images show pictures of the monsters, but there is definitely some kind of contagion aspect to the movie, as there are several pics of a woman vomiting, quarantine efforts and so on and so forth.

Without further ado, here are the images:

For the other images, view the Cloverfield image gallery.

I’m not a classic movie kind of guy. It’s not that I don’t appreciate or like the classics; it’s just that I spend so much time watching modern day films that I rarely have a chance to sit down and watch the ageless ones. Such is the case with It’s a Wonderful Life, a movie that has been around for over 60 years, a movie I had never seen. It’s a travesty, I know.

Now out on a 2-Disc Collector’s Set, It’s a Wonderful Life includes both the original black and white version, the colored version, a making-of documentary and a “special tribute to Frank Capra, narrated by his son, Frank Capra Jr.” You never know with these classics if they’ll be able to stand the test of time – some greats fifty years ago just don’t hold up well these days. Thankfully, It’s a Wonderful Life stands up beautifully; it’s captivating, entertaining, funny and depressing all at once, and is a true masterpiece.

James Stewart stars as George Bailey, a man who has always dreamed of being someone and going somewhere. Though he has had his mild successes and is well respected within the community, every time he tries to go somewhere else, he finds himself drawn back in to his town for one reason or another, whether it is to help his dying father or his struggling neighbors. He lives a life of pure selflessness, but he wants to live for himself. It’s not until an angel shows him what life would be like had he never existed that he truly realizes just how important he is.

Stewart is terrific in the lead, delivering a heartwarming, down-to-earth character who can make us laugh and cry interchangeably. Of course, I didn’t actually cry, but Stewart’s performance, coupled with a terrific screenplay Capra’s direction, touches a chord that few films do these days. The movie can be somber and depressing without shoving it down our throats, and at times leaves you desperate waiting for the next scene in hopes that things get better. Just when things are looking up, something happens to bring us back down to earth, and the reality that all good things come to an end – but it doesn’t mean that more good things can’t follow.

There’s not much else to say. It’s a Wonderful Life is a great film the whole family can enjoy. Touching and enthralling, It’s a Wonderful Life is truly a timeless classic.