There are two good movies lurking beneath the surface of CHiPS – an R-rated comedy and an R-rated cop drama. The problem is that they’re both chopped up and are jammed together in such a way that the result is an unhappy compromise that lets down the movie as a whole.
The drama would work if the puerile comedy wasn’t stitched in and the puerile comedy would work if that pesky drama wasn’t there.
Continue reading CHiPS – It’s All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses Their Head!
John Michael McDonagh’s third film War on Everyone – on iTunes and VOD on February 3rd – isn’t quite as sharp as his previous features, but it’s still a fast-paced bit of lunatic fun.
The film follows two corrupt detectives out to frame and blackmail every crook they can – until they encounter someone who might be more dangerous than them.
Continue reading War on Everyone: Three’s Not (Quite) The Charm!
When I first heard that Warner Bros. was turning CHiPs into an action-comedy movie I was a bit leery – but then it occurred to me that they might turn it into a 21 Jump Street kind of update.
The first trailer premiered last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live and it seems like that’s what’s happened. Now I’m not so sure it was a good idea. I laughed at the trailer, but not nearly as much as I was expecting to.
CHiPs stars Dax Shepard and Michael Peña as Officers Jon Baker and Frank “Ponch” Poncherello. It opens on March 24th. The trailer follows the jump.
Continue reading Bear In Mind This Isn’t The Red Band Trailer Trailer: CHiPs!
Mark Damon stars as astronaut Mark Watney in Ridley Scott’s adaptation of The Martian by Andy Weir. During the Ares Mission to Mars, a storm forces the crew to abort the mission and, believing Watney to be dead, leave without them.
With scant supplies, Watney has to figure out a way to contact mission control and then survive until help can arrive.
The Martian will be in theaters on October 2nd. Meet the crew of the Ares Mission following the jump – then check out the first full-length trailer!
Since no one has been able to replicate the super-soldier serum that gave Steve Rogers his enhanced abilities, Henry Pym took a different tack – he wondered if he could find a way to shrink a human being to ant size without sacrificing that person’s strength.
Imagine the force of a human-sized punch thrown by an any-sized person – all that force concentrated in a tiny impact zone. That would definitely leave a mark
A fringe benefit might be that our ‘Ant-Man’ could infiltrate the most secure locations. And what if, Pym wondered, ‘that person could communicate with ants? He’d have a ready-built army at his disposal. Ant-Man doesn’t sound so silly now, does it?
Check out the brand new trailer following the jump. Marvel’s Ant-Man premieres on July 17th.
Fury ratchets up the intensity from the opening moments and maintains it for over two hours through the introduction of characters that initially feel stock but become something else – and escalating violence and hints at the erosion of decency that war can cause.
Continue reading Fury – Ideals are Peaceful, History is Violent!