Trailer Report: Atonement, No Country For Old Men, The Bucket List

Hey, it's a multiple post day, since I feel bad about being delinquent earlier this week. These are the trailers I saw last night in front of Gone Baby Gone.

Atonement



An early awards contender, and it looks good. Spot on casting of Romola Garai and Saoirse Ronan as the same character- or at least a great job on hair and makeup to get them to look exactly alike.

I'm excited, not least because I liked the Wright/Knightley combination in Pride and Prejudice. In fact, I suspect that I like that more than almost anyone, because I haven't seen the A&E version with Colin Firth.

No Country For Old Men



Dude. Yes. Sign me up. The bare-bones border lunacy of Cormac McCarthy's novel with the Coen brothers attention to detail and dark humor? How awesome can this be?

I for some reason have an impression of Javier Bardem as an amazing actor, but all I've ever seen him in are trailers (for The Sea Inside and Goya's Ghosts). But still, he looks legitimately terrifying in this.

Hopefully this will open in Milwaukee before the 21st, on which I'll be traveling for Thanksgiving.

The Bucket List



When I first read a synopsis of this, I was pretty skeptical, but it looks okay. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play themselves (a irascible coot and a wizened walking voice-over) doing all the things they want to do before dying.

Hopefully it'll be more than the episode of "Touched By an Angel" than it seems. But I did enjoy the line "Nobody cares what you think."

And for the record I was shocked, shocked, that this trailer had no Trailer Voice Guy. Kudos.

Lust, Caution Review

Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, his anticipated follow-up to Brokeback Mountain and winner of the Golden Lion in Venice, is many different things. It's an historical drama set in Japanese occupied Shanghai. It's almost three hours long (which is almost an hour too long). It's a showcase for fine performances by Tony Leung, Joan Chen, and newcomer Wei Tang.

But mostly, it's rated NC-17.

And it's a shame that it's largely defined by that, but in this country at least it's impossible for it not to be. The stigma of the "adult film" is killing it at the box office and it's the first thing mentioned about it, despite Leung and Tang's love-scenes comprising perhaps ten minutes of a hundred and sixty minute feature.

So, before I saw it, I was mostly wondering was it worth it? Are these graphic sex scenes so artistically important that it justifies the prudish MPAA's seal of doom?

The verdict? No, not really. And they certainly don't help the appeal of a film that's already plodding and sleepy.

Tang plays a young actress who embarks on a mission, first with some idealistic schoolmates and the with the official Chinese resistance movement, to assassinate Leung's treasonous government official. He's so traditionally cautious of attack (like the title, get it?) that Tang must enter into an affair with him to get him to let his guard down.

Their acrobatic lovemaking is supposed to represent both characters finding human connection in the only way they can- him after inhumanly torturing resistance members all day, and her after being treated like a pawn by both her friends and her government. But it's mostly just abusive, awkward, and out of place in a movie that is so drearily refined otherwise.

The graphicness of the scenes themselves isn't terrible, but Lust, Caution earns the rating by having them carry on way too long. And whether I agree with the NC-17 label or not (I don't), this is symptomatic of the movie as a whole: it's padded out with an unnecessary framing device, about half an hour of mahjong games, and all builds to a hasty and unsatisfying conclusion.

So in the end, the bally-hooed sex scenes are the only thing worth remarking upon in an overstuffed film. The credits of Lust, Caution informed me that it was based on a short story. I never would've guessed.

When to See It: On DVD

Movies to Watch on Halloween

Happy All Hallow's Eve, everyone. In honor of my favorite holiday, a brief list of the films I enjoy watching.

Before we begin, though: I am not a horror fan. At all. I've seen The Exorcist, and I appreciated the artistic qualities of Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, but that's about as far as it goes.

1. Shaun of the Dead

A film of many faces. A standard slacker-loses-girl, slacker-grows-up-and-gets-girl-back romantic comedy, a horror film, a parody, and really just all around clever.

My favorite aspect of the first Edgar Wright/ Simon Pegg film is that the screenplay wraps back in on itself in so many fun ways, from "you've got red on you" to the word "exacerbate." And it has a much better cast than a straight-faced zombie film normally would, inlcuding Bill Nighy and Lucy Davis (of British "The Office" fame).

2. Donnie Darko

Beyond it's great high school elements, Donnie Darko also happens to be set around Halloween. And while that's no more than mild related to the story in a thematic way, it does provide for everyone to be in costumes on the day that the world ends.

And, thanks to time travel, Donnie gets to spend a month with the creepiest bunny ever.

3. The Frighteners

This pre-Rings Peter Jackson film holds a special place for me as one of the first films that I ever paid for with my own money, and bought of my own accord: a used copy for $3.99 from the bin at Randall's.

And no matter how creepy the hologram cover was, it's mostly just funny. I mean, if I could see ghosts, I would just use them for a scam too.

Also, what does Trini Alvarado do for work now that she can't coast on her amazing ability to look like Andi McDowell?

Michael Clayton Review

Tony Gilroy, screenwriter extraordinaire of the Bourne movies, opens his directorial debut with an odd sort of tension: off screen, Tom Wilkinson rambles through a manic, rapid monologue about corruption and greed, while the camera lingers on scenes from an empty office building: boardrooms, florescent lights, and blinking phone lines.

It's spare, but it's moody and atmospheric- an encapsulation of the artful tension the rest of Michael Clayton maintains so well. A few minutes after the plot proper starts, George Clooney's titular hero is driving along a wooded road when he sees something, and gets out of his car too look. He walks up a hillside to approach three horses, standing idly by the highway, for no apparent reason.

The music hums to an autumnal swell, and you wonder, briefly, if this is a movie about the power of nature to enrich our lives.

Then his car explodes.

It's a punch to the gut, and it's a great moment to involve you in a legal thriller that on paper is pretty standard: A class action lawsuit is being filed against a mega-corporation for causing health problems with some sort of pesticide (or something)- Wilkinson is the head of the defense who buckles under the strain of fighting on the side of true villainy, and Clooney the shadowy "fixer" from his firm assigned to reign him in.

Tilda Swinton delivers a strong turn as the nervously ruthless legal head of the evil corporation, who must decide how far to go to protect her company. All three performances are stellar, but Clooney especially shines as he shuts down his breezy persona to exude weariness and anger: anger at compromise, anger at his thankless job, and anger that his life might have to be in danger before he considers doing the right thing.

After a tense climactic confrontation, the film ends with a uniquely perfect credit sequence: a single, minutes long shot inside a taxicab that allows everyone to relax, finally. It isn't until everything is over that you realize you've been holding your breath the whole time.

When to See it: As Soon As Humanly Possible.

The Netflix Diaries: Banlieue 13

So for me, beyond Daniel Craig's all around badassery, the coolest part of Casino Royale was the elaborate chase at the beginning, with Craig pursuing a fast, jumping bad guy, played by Sébastien Foucan.

This reminded me of a French movie I'd heard about a couple years ago, released here as District B13- it's a film starring David Belle, the founder of "parkour." Parkour is basically the art of running around and climbing things- using an urban environment to move in the quickest, most efficient way possible in an emergency. Foucan is actually Belle's childhood friend, and founded the practice of "freerunning," which is pretty much the same as parkour but more flashy.

Anyway, I assumed that Banlieue 13 would be as fascinating to watch as the chase sequence in Casino, and parts of it were. But mostly it's just another over-stylized piece of fluff from producer/writer/French ADD sufferer Luc Besson.

Belle plays a tough guy vigilante who partners with a tough guy cop (Cyril Raffaelli) to rescue the film's titular crime ridden barrio from a gang lord who's stolen a nuke. Also he's trying to rescue his sister. That's pretty much it. Of course the nuke is on a timer, and the shady looking government dudes who conscript our heroes for the job have predictably shady intentions.

The film's biggest claim to fame is that the action sequences are all done with no nets, wires, or stunt doubles, and considering that fact they're pretty impressive. But the rapid-cut, MTV-on-crack visual style of Besson's team makes it easy to forget that anything we're seeing is real- we may as well be watching a video game.

Add in what's either a very clunky script or a very clunky translation, and it adds up to a pretty underwhelming experience. In the right hands, a unique form of physical stuntwork can really add something to an action movie (like the aforementioned Casino Royale), but in the middle of a shoddy film it's wasted.

There is an interesting subtext to the film: it was released in a Paris less than a year before the riots of the impoverished youth in real-life ghettos. But Banlieue 13's particular vision of urban Paris of the future is surprisingly white-washed, between the two leads, which leads me to think that the filmmakers didn't really have the majority of the Arab and black Paris ghettos in mind.

30 Days of Night Review

(editor's note: The first post from my friend Dave! Enjoy.)

30 Days of Night is the latest entry into the storied vampire sub-genre. Adapted from a graphic novel, the film tries to establish its own edginess by re-imaging the vampire figure, a la Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later zombies, and putting a new restriction on the characters the vampires terrorize in the film: this haunted house is hundreds of miles wide, with no hope for escape.

In Barrow, Alaska, vampires eagerly descend when the sun sets for 30 days, as happens in the Arctic Circle. It’s up to a team of locals to fend off the slaughter until the sun’s rays can come to the rescue.

David Slade, the latest music video director turned Hollywood film director, makes his feature debut with 30 Days of Night, and brings a deft visual touch. He creates a dark, stylish and oddly claustrophobic environment, and he saturates the screen with a muted color panel- allowing the viewer to feel the cold.

Josh Harnett, playing the town’s heroic sheriff (Interesting Fact: Alaska does not have sheriffs: they have state troopers. This is also inaccurate in the graphic novel and really bothers me for some unusual reason), is blasé and his estranged wife, played by relative newcomer Melissa George, offers very little as well. The two real stars are Ben Foster in a cameo role and Danny Huston as the head vampire. Huston, who has made a career out of playing off-the-wall supporting roles, is legitimately menacing- the audience in the theatre actually screamed at him during appropriate moments.

The technical aspects of the film are where the money and work seemed to go. The cinematography, make up and special effects are very finely crafted. The music is unobtrusive and dissonant, a must for horror films.

But there are noticeable problems: The dialogue is not terribly crisp and leaves the viewers incapable of completely identifying with the townspeople. The script, written by Steve Niles and Stuart Beattie (Who has achieved a lifetime free pass in my book because of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and Collateral), also creates more questions in the plot than it answers. And the film’s final scene will incite laughter from many people in the theatre, no matter what arresting visuals preceded it.

A valiant effort from Slade, who tries to emulate David Fincher to a varying degree of success, in crafting 30 Days of Night for the big screen. It’s just a shame that the film’s villainous undead have more life than Hartnett’s usual blank-eyed stare.

When to See it: On DVD

Trailer Report: Lars and the Real Girl, The Kite Runner, Juno

The trailers in front of The Darjeeling Limited: a mixed bag.

Lars and the Real Girl



Meh. I was most interested to see how often the crowd laughed at this one- there was a chuckle when the doll first appears, another one at "she loves kids," and that was it: the joke gets old before the trailer is over.

Add in the unrealistic behavior of the townspeople, the not as poignant as they think it is dialogue with the brother, and it all looks very beige to me.

The Kite Runner



Haven't read the book, but I have this theory: reading an English novel about foreign cultures is all right, because words on a page don't take you out of anything. But a movie about a foreign culture where everyone speaks English all the time is distracting: they can be middling like Memoirs of a Geisha, or terrible like K-19: The Widowmaker.

And with all the slow fades, sweeping shots, gratuitous slow-mo, and music swells in this trailer, it really looks like they've Frank Capra-ized Khaled Hosseini's novel. And that title graphic looks like a Hallmark Original movie title.

Juno



The final entry in the trilogy of pregnancy movies about progressively younger people: first the late twenties country pregnancy Waitress, then the early/mid-twenties LA pregnancy Knocked Up, and finally the teenage pregnancy Juno.

And this looks good. The trailer does anyway, because it relies on the film itself to do the talking, not the Voice Guy or music. The only way to justify the feel-good montage at the end of the trailer is to make us care about the characters in the minute and a half that comes first, and they nail it.

Also, "shenanigans" is a funny word.