Full disclosure: I have not seen any of the films from The Conjuring universe and it doesn’t matter, because Annabelle: Creation is, in terms of the series’ mythology, is the origin story that kicks off the events of all the others.
That said, Annabelle takes some stock ideas, dresses them up with carefully modulated pacing, light and sound – and a very game cast – and kicks out the jams!
‘When you’re alone as a kid, the monsters see you as weaker. You don’t even know they’re getting closer.’
The first trailer for New Line Cinema’s IT – based on the Stephen King bestseller – builds an atmosphere of grim foreboding.
IT will premiere on September 8th.
The first trailer for Stephen King’s IT has arrived and it’s really, really creepy (yay scary clowns!).
The story of four boys who have to take on Pennywise – a clown who has been killing centuries – is pretty compelling stuff (to be watched between one’s fingers – preferably during the daylight hours.
Directed by Andy Muschietti (Mama), It opens on September 8th.
When parents Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler discover they can’t afford to send their daughter to the college she just got into, they come up with the obvious financial solution: underground casino!
The House opens on June 30th.
Continue reading Papa Needs His Daughter’s Tuition Trailer: The House!
In 1993, a high school production of a play called The Gallows failed to finish its premiere performance when the male lead was accidentally hanged on the stage gallows. Now, the same high school is about to try to perform the play again.
Recipe for disaster? Damn skippy!
Continue reading The Gallows – Paint-By-Numbers Horror Non-Thriller!
Warner Bros. disaster flick, San Andreas, has a very scary new trailer. Even star Dwayne Johnson – as a rescue helicopter pilot named Ray – looks tiny in comparison to The Big One.
See for yourself after the jump. San Andreas opens on May 29th.
What if a massive earthquake happened along the San Andreas Fault?
That’s the premise of the epic Dwayne Johnson disaster flick San Andreas, which finds Ray (Johnson) and his estranged wife, Emma (Carla Gugino), trying to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco to find their daughter, Blake (Alexandra Daddario).
San Andreas opens on May 29, 2015. Check out the first trailer for San Andreas after the jump.
You think I’d learn. Every time I check out a movie based on a videogame, I’m let down – sometimes to an extreme [like with Max Payne, DOOM and the original Street Fighter movie]; sometimes by the tiniest of margins. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is one of the latter.
Here’s a movie that features some of the wittier martial arts choreography to be filmed in the last few years, and there’s a clever – even wistful – parallel father/daughter arc that shows Chun-Li [Kristin Kreuk] to be treasured by her father [Edmund Chen], and Bison’s [Neal McDonough] daughter used solely as a repository for the last of the goodness in his soul.
Unfortunately, the film falls into the usual origin story knee-deep exposition and too little actual martial arts sequences. Performance-wise, the cast is pretty good. Kristin Kreuk is at least adequate as Chun-Li; Robin Shou gives Gen [her mentor] a combination of gravity and humor that works really well; Neal McDonough is suitably psycho as Bison, and the sly chemistry between Interpol agent Nash [Chris Klein] and Bangkok cop Maya [Moon Bloodgood]definitely adds to the mix. Only Michael Clarke Duncan [Balrog, Bison’s number one enforcer] doesn’t fit – more because of the script than Duncan.
Andrzej Bartkowiak’s direction is crisp enough but he simply has too much material to cram into the film’s ninety-six minutes. The result is a movie that does entertain on a basic level, but is missing the kind of pure excitement that it needs to reach the next level.
Final Grade: C+
New Line’s Journey to the Center of the Earth is a flimsy plot – loosely based on Jules Verne’s novel of the same name – used to set up a string of wild [and at times gross and/or grotesque] 3D effects. The good news is that the combination of cast and CG effects make it – literally – a great ride.
Trevor Anderson’s [Brendan Fraser] work on seismic effects is threatened by a lack of results. When his nephew, Sean [Josh Hutcherson], comes to visit, a comment on his dad’s favorite book [guess…] leads to the discovery that seismic shifts lead to an unexpected location – and the figures match, precisely, those from the time when Trevor’s brother, Max, disappeared. The figures lead Trevor and Sean to Iceland and a mountain guide, Hannah Ásgeirsson [Anita Briem], whose father was a colleague of Max’s. Before you know it, the three are at the center of the planet!
Outside of encounters with luminescent birds, extinct dinosaurs, piranha the size of Great Danes and other odd occurrences, that’s all there is to it. What makes it work is that Fraser, Hutcherson and Briem give themselves over to the thrill ride completely. The screenplay, by Michael Weiss, Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin, gives our heroes plenty of exciting situations to deal with – and a number of good [if not terribly memorable] lines to keep us the edges of our seats. Eric Brevig’s direction is frenetic enough that, even with a few pauses for breath and a bit of emotional interplay, the film zips by in a compact ninety-three minutes – without feeling too short. The 3D is generally very good, though there are a few places where it is outstanding. My personal favorite [which is to say, the one that made me jump the highest] involves a piranha – and I guarantee you won’t see it coming [sorry…].
It’s a pity that Journey to the Center of the Earth opens the same weekend as Hellboy II and the new Eddie Murphy movie [which is likely not half as much fun]. It would be a shame to see it get lost in the box office shuffle. It’s far too much pure fun for that.
Final Grade: B
It’s an odd thing to realize that you’re one of three straight men in a theater auditorium. It’s another thing entirely to realize that, properly presented, women will laugh at a poop joke as heartily as any man – and laugh just as hard when the incident is referred to later in the movie. Sex and the City: The Movie brings the fab four, Carrie Bradshaw [Sarah Jessica Parker], Charlotte York [Kristin Davis], Miranda Hobbes [Cynthia Nixon] and Samantha Jones [Kim Cattrall] back is style [well a lot of styles – all more interesting [or horrific, depending on one’s point of view] than the last.
As in the series, there are break-ups and make-ups; sexy clothes, sexy foods and sexy sex. None of these things come as a surprise. The surprise is that, as the film opens, Samantha has been in a genuinely monogamous relationship for five years – with an actor, Jerry “Smith” Jarrod [Jason Lewis], whose career she is also managing. There’s a perfectly reasonable proposal between Big [Chris North] and Carrie that’s mature and, again, reasonable – but not magical – which is probably the biggest reason they break up for [if you believe her friends] the sixteenth time. Relationship woes also plague Miranda and Steve [David Fienberg] – which leads to a fateful conversation between her and Big at the rehearsal dinner.
The Big/Carrie break-up leads to one of the brightest spots in the film. Following an unhoneymoon with the four, Carrie hires an assistant to help get her life back on track. She hires Louise, from St. Louis [Jennifer Hudson], who turns her onto rented fashions. Hudson’s natural brightness takes what could have been a stereotypical servant role and elevates into a real friendship.
While Sex and the City: The Movie hits all the best beats from the series – and thus is not the most surprising of movies – it does a great job of presenting the unique friendship that exists between the four lead characters and, hey! Poop jokes! Who knew?
The film was written and directed by one of the series’ most consistently good writers, Michael Patrick King, and you can tell. There’s no groundbreaking cinematography; no raising of the stakes beyond what we’ve seen before. Just a smart [and trust me, even the poop joke is smart], witty film that celebrates one of the most entertaining quartets of characters we’ve ever met. If you’re looking for angst or profundity, this is not that movie. What it is, is fun – enough fun that guys who are dragged to the theater to see it will probably enjoy it almost as much as their significant others. Works for me.
Final Grade: B
