The FilmJabber Movie Blog

Ah, the good old B-grade horror movie. Sort of. In Sorority Row, a boyfriend cheats on a sorority girl. To get back at him, the sorority pulls a major prank on him – by tricking him into thinking that he’s killed one of the girls. Unfortunately, when they go to dispose of “the body,” he decides to take his aggression out by stabbing her – this time killing her for real. The sorority girls, realizing that they are complicit to murder, have to deal with the guilt… and a cloaked figure who runs around killing them one by one.

The movie looks like fun, but it also looks pretty stupid. The trailer doesn’t make it clear why the boyfriend decides to stab the girl after he thinks she’s already dead – that’s not usual behavior. Basically, if Sorority Row goes for an R-rating, it will work (sorority girls + R-rating + murderer = good movie); if not, it may be more like Prom Night, and no one wants that.

Watch the Sorority Row movie trailer and let me know what you think:

The hit James Bond action flick Quantum of Solace speeds its way onto DVD and Blu-Ray this coming Tuesday, March 24, 2009 in a two-disc special edition. The follow-up to the immensely popular reboot Casino Royale finds us with a new director, an angrier Bond and of course a new set of Bond girls, and the combination is a bit of a disappointment.

While perfectly fine as a non-stop action movie, Quantum lacks the craftsmanship and character development of its predecessor, which was honed by the direction of Martin Campbell. Marc Forster, having never directed such an action film before, was an odd choice to helm the follow-up, and his style is largely a poor knock-off of Campbell’s direction. Funnily enough, in one of the special features on the DVD, Forster explains that his approach is to just “throw everything on the screen,” which explains the lack of deleted scenes – and the senseless barrage of action in the movie.

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Check out these new video clips from the upcoming thriller Sin Nombre, which comes to select theaters this Friday, March 20, 2009. Watch them now:

Sin Nombre Clip: I’m Going With You

Sin Nombre Clip: Ever Been On One Of Those

A movie trailer for the new Michael Keaton movie,The Merry Gentleman, is now online, and it looks… meh. It’s good to see Keaton back at it, but the trailer reveals little as to what kind of movie this is going to be. A hit man film? I doubt it. A drama? Maybe, but not a very dramatic one. A comedy? I didn’t laugh.

See for yourself:

The Merry Gentleman tells the story of Kate Frazier, a young woman running away from a troubled marriage in the hopes to find anonymity with a new home and a new job in Chicago. When Kate meets Frank Logan, the two discover unexpected satisfaction in their mutual shared silence.  Haunted by the troubling choices he has made, Frank finds a kindred spirit in the younger Kate, and, for a moment, the two seem destined to redeem and remake each other.  As the holidays and New Year pass against an urban landscape that seems both breathtakingly beautiful and starkly quiet, Kate and Frank’s friendship becomes one of necessity and survival. But, neither lonely soul can escape the lives they have left behind. As events unfold and the painful truth slowly emerges, Frank is forced to face the man he truly is, while Kate struggles to become the woman she needs to be.

Watch the funny new movie trailer for Away We Go, from director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road). The film is a notable change from Mendes’ other bodies of work as it is, in fact, a comedy and presumably doesn’t include one of the main characters dying at the end.

Watch the Away We Go movie trailer now:

For more information, go to the Away We Go details page.

As expected, Watchmen took a nosedive in its second weekend – taking in an estimated $18 million, 67% than last week. After ten days, it has made $85 million against a budget of $130-150 million, which means that it isn’t going to make back its production budget in theaters. Considering all the money that went into marketing and its so-so worldwide grosses thus far – and the profit-sharing deal Warner Brothers was forced to work out with 20th Century Fox – Watchmen is not going to be a box office success.

2009 has been a strong year at the box office thus far, with lots of films that weren’t expected to do much raking in major dough (Paul Blart, Taken and the expansion of Slumdog Millionaire to name a few). This weekend sort of brought things done to earth, as the first big blockbuster of the year crashed and burned in its second weekend and the potential Disney franchise-starter Race to Witch Mountain, starring The Rock, only took in $25 million. While this isn’t a horrible amount, Disney, who has been struggling throughout the year, had to have been expecting more. It might have strong legs, but the upcoming Monsters vs. Aliens will demolish it in a couple weeks.

Miss March failed to perform with a tenth place finish.

A horror “movie” that really does deserve to be remade is in fact being remade, says The Hollywood Reporter. Stephen King’s “It,” which was originally adapted as a television mini-series, is getting an upgrade thanks to Warner Brothers.

While the mini-series feels a bit dated now, I was pretty young when I first saw it… and it gave me nightmares. Clowns are frightening enough, but evil clowns can scare the shit out of anyone. As long as the director, who has yet to be announced, doesn’t turn this movie into a montage of cheap scares, the remake of It could be quite effective.

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Keira Knightley continues to impress me. Not only does she continue to challenge herself as an actress, but she has said “no” to the planned Pirates of the Caribbean 4, which will bring back Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. The original Pirates put Keira on the map as the sexy love interest in a corsette, and resulted in major success for the actress.

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Summit Entertainment is going the Harry Potter route by selecting a different director for every sequel to their hit movie Twilight. This is a risky but necessary move considering that Summit is taking an oddly aggressive approach to distributing these films: New Moon comes out only a year after the original, and Eclipse only eight months after that.

Eclipse, by far the best book of the four-part series, will be directed by Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona. Who the f**k is Bayona, you ask? Well, he directed the shockingly scary horror picture The Orphanage and is set to helm Hater for Universal Pictures. Bayona is, apparently, a protege of Guillermo Del Toro, who as everyone knows is directing the upcoming Hobbit films.

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Check out these video clips from I Love You, Man, the upcoming comedy starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel about a soon-to-be-married man who must start man-dating to find a best man:

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According to The Associated Press, the Batman villain The Joker was shot and killed by police in Shenandoah National Park. Reported just a few hours ago, an FBI affidavit explains that a soldier “dressed and wearing face-paint like… The Joker” was killed when he pointed a loaded shotgun at police following a chase.

Army Spc. Christopher Lanum was a suspect in the stabbing Spc. Mitchell Stone at Fort Eustis. Stone says that Lanum, who idolized the character of The Joker, stabbed him and used a taser gun on him before fleeing.

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Real-life couple Scarlett Johansson and Mickey Rourke have signed onto star in Iron Man 2, the tentpole release set for 2010. Johansson will play Black Widow and Rourke will don the role of Whiplash.

Johansson and Rourke, who are by no means a couple, fill out an already impressive cast that now includes six Oscar winners or nominees and a Golden Globe nominee. In fact, practically everyone in the cast has been recognized for their acting talent at some point or another.

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I like depressing movies. I really like depressing movies. So when I saw the preview for Happy-Go-Lucky, a movie about an overly bubbly woman who goes around being – well – bubbly, I balked. The movie looked annoying, stupid and boring.

But, I can be wrong sometimes. It’s a rare occurrence, but I can be wrong. And I was wrong about Happy-Go-Lucky. Sally Hawkins, who was nominated for Best Actress, turns in a star-turning performance, and writer/director Mike Leigh makes that performance possible with an entertaining, surprisingly layered story.

Read my full Happy-Go-Lucky movie review.

Nazi movies were popular among filmmakers in the latter half of 2008, but several flew in under the radar. One such film was The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a movie that is not a biopic about Michael Jackson but about two young boys who become friends, despite one being the son of a soldier and the other an imprisoned Jew. As can be expected, it’s a cheerful movie with a happy ending.

The movie, directed by Mark Herman, follows Bruno (Asa Butterfield), an innocent kid who has moved into a new home with his soldier father (David Thewlis). As he soon discovers, they are located near a concentration camp, though his naïve sensitivities haven’t taught him the meaning of such things. He soon befriends a young boy named Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a prisoner at the camp. As their relationship develops, tensions grow within the family as the truth and consequences of Bruno’s father’s work become apparent.

Read my full The Boy in the Striped Pajamas movie review.