The Reel World

I'm a Minnesota Vikings football fan. Yes, I accept the condolences. However, I didn't say that to get sympathy, and I'm not yet in need of the services of the suicide hotline. After two games, I will keep the number on speed dial, just in case. A thousand years ago we had a star player who made the by now infamous statement that he plays when he wants to play. For a young athlete with an already troubled past, it didn't go over too well. But, over the last decade or so Clint Eastwood appears to be in that same mindset. He acts when he wants to. He's only appeared in three films in the last ten years. The difference is that Clint has earned the right to be picky

If it were possible to buy stock in any Under-25 actress today, I’d pick Jennifer Lawrence first, Emma Stone would be a close second, and Kristen Stewart would be last. Lawrence has a pair of blockbuster movie franchises in her back pocket (The Hunger Games, X-Men), is a past Oscar nominee and is generating buzz for the upcoming Silver Linings Playbook. So if a studio were to have a Jennifer Lawrence film on its bench, September 2012 would probably look like some prime real estate.

I know what you’re thinking, and I was also incredibly disappointed to learn this film was not a biopic of Xena: Warrior Princess actress Lucy Lawless. (This hypothetical film would obviously star the ageless Kiwi because the actress still looks incredible.) Fortunately, Lawless makes up for its startling lack of Lawless by being one of the better films I’ve seen this year.

For the most part writer/director David Koepp has seen only moderate success when in the director’s chair with the films Stir of Echoes and Secret Window.  I mention this simply because he is one of the most prolific writers of our time, and most movie goers have no idea who he is or even what a screenwriter actually does.  A quick glance at his writing resume some titles that jump out are Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible, Panic Room and Spider-man.  Koepp is pretty much your go to guy when a blockbuster film is in need of a writer. 

It did not surprise me at all to hear Dax Shepard admit in a recent interview that he loved Smokey And The Bandit. While there have been plenty of bad imitations, including a couple of misguided sequels, no one has really captured that special something that made Smokey And The Bandit comic gold. Now that's not to say that Hit And Run is a rip-off of Smokey And The Bandit. They are actually very different films. But there is an obvious homage element throughout that can't be ignored. The truth is, if you liked one, you're probably going to enjoy the other.

"Meet Norman. His parents don't get him. His sister doesn't like him. And the kids at school always pick on him. But he does have some friends. It's just that most of them aren't exactly alive."

The magic of stop-motion animation has been with us since pretty much filmmaking began. From the great master work of Willis O'Brien to the icon Ray Harryhausen, the process has brought some of the most imaginative films in history to life.

"War has rules, mud wrestling has rules - politics has no rules" - Ross Perot

When a political comedy starts out with a Ross Perot quote, you might start asking yourself if the comedy can be anywhere near as funny as the real thing. Of course, politics isn't very funny these days. You'd have to go back the 19th century to find a time when America was more divided or when the stakes were this serious. And we sure don't have Ross Perot to laugh at anymore.

Going into this film, I considered the Bourne movies to be an extremely rare breed among film franchises: each sequel was better than the movie it followed. The fantastic Bourne Ultimatum even wrapped up the Matt Damon trilogy with an ending that dovetailed perfectly with the first shot of the series. So when I heard they wanted to make another Bourne film (uh-oh) without director Paul Greengrass (uh-oh!) or star Matt Damon (UH-OH!!!), I was, to put it mildly, skeptical. After all, how can you make a Bourne movie without Jason Bourne?

"This is going to be hard for you to believe. Whatever you think you remember, it's not real. This person you think you are now, it's all a lie."

Philip Dick's original stories We Can Remember It For You Wholesale and Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep made the pulp-age science fiction writer a household name in the 1980's. The later title became Ridley Scott's breakout cult classic Bladerunner, while the former title became the troubled Total Recall. I say troubled because the film went through 40 actual script rewrites, three lead actors, and several directors before it finally made it to the big screen in 1990

With August just around the corner and the summer movie season coming to a close, this is usually the time when studios dump off the rest of their bigger-budget films before they head into the fall and begin prepping for the award season.  Occasionally we’ve been given a few gems, but for the most part there is nothing really to get too excited over.  It’s also not to favorable when a movie attempts to be released the week following an enormous blockbuster like Dark Knight Rises, but it seems The Watch has stepped up to see what monetary crumbs it can muster up from the moviegoers this weekend.