New Releases for the Week of December 18, 2015

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS

(Disney) Daisy Ridley, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver, Max von Sydow, John Boyega, Simon Pegg, Lupita Nyong’o. Directed by J.J. Abrams

The wait is finally over as the most eagerly anticipated movie in maybe a decade finally debuts in theaters and everyone is going gaga over it. I’d give a plot summary here but does it really matter? The reviews have been strong, word of mouth is as usual critical from the fanboys and aging fans are reliving their youth all over the globe, and that can’t be a bad thing. Merry Christmas, Disney accountants!

See the trailer, promos, interviews and featurettes here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard, 3D, IMAX 3D
Genre: Science Fiction
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for sci-fi action violence)

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Road Chip

(20^th Century Fox) Jason Lee, Justin Long (voice), Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Matthew Gray Gubler (voice). The chipmunks and Dave take their act on the road. Just as long as it takes them away from wherever I am.

See the trailer, clips and interviews here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Family Comedy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for some thematic elements and brief suggestive material)

The Assassin

(Well Go USA) Qi Shu, Chen Chang, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Dahong Ni. A young woman, abducted as a child from her home by a general of the army, trained into adulthood to be an assassin, is ordered to kill the man she is betrothed to. She must discover why she was chosen for this job and in doing so confront her past before she makes the choice to leave the only life she’s ever known or murder the only man she’s ever loved.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Martial Arts
Now Playing: Enzian Theater
Rating: NR

Bajirao Mastani

(Eros International) Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, Mahesh Manjrekar. In ancient India, a cunning general and his second wife are fated to be caught in events that are sweeping through the sub-continent. This true story has the production values of an epic and may be one of the most sumptuously filmed movies to ever come out of that country.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Romance Adventure
Now Playing: AMC Loew’s Universal Citiplex, Touchstar Southchase
Rating: NR

Dilwale

(Red Chillies) Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, Kriri Sanon, Varun Dhawan. A little bit like Romeo and Juliet, two families that compete in business, in politics and in just about everything else are separated when one family moves away. Fifteen years afterwards, the children meet again and sparks fly – as well as romantic ones.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Romance
Now Playing: Touchstar Southchase
Rating: NR

Hitchcock/Truffaut

(Cohen) Alfred Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut, Matthieu Amalric (voice), Martin Scorsese. One of the most influential books in the history of filmmaking is the interview between French New Wave director Truffaut and the Master of Suspense Hitchcock. Two of the all-time best in the business (many say Hitchcock was the best) talk about directing with a candidness that they might never have given during a mainstream interview. The book made from the interview has influenced many of the greatest directors of this generation; excerpts from the original interviews and commentary on what the book meant to their careers are included.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Documentary
Now Playing: Enzian Theater
Rating: PG-13 (for suggestive material and violent images)

Sisters

(Universal) Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, John Cena, Maya Rudolph. Two very different sisters – one a divorced mouse, the other a single party animal, come home to discover their parents are putting their childhood home up for sale. Distraught, they decide to relive their glory years one last time with a blow-out party that will perhaps provide the catharsis they need and the laughs that we need.

See the trailer, clips, a promo, a featurette and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for crude sexual content and language throughout, and for drug use)

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New Releases for the Week of August 24, 2012

PREMIUM RUSH

(Columbia) Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Shannon, Dania Ramirez, Jamie Chung, Kymberly Perfetto, Aasif Mandvi, Lauren Ashley Carter. Directed by David Koepp

New York’s bike messengers are a seriously fearless lot, risking life and limb every time they take their special fixie bikes (single gear bikes with lightweight frames and no brakes). Premium rush parcels are a way of life for them, but the last delivery of one messenger’s day is going to send him into circumstances he never could have imagined.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Action

Rating: PG-13 (for some violence, intense action sequences and language)

The Apparition

(Warner Brothers) Ashley Greene, Sebastian Stan, Tom Felton, Julianna Guill. A young couple experience some terrifying events in their home. They discover that they are being haunted by a presence that a university experiment on the nature of poltergeists accidentally unleashed. The creature feeds on their fear but can only harm them if they believe it’s real. They enlist the help of an expert on the supernatural but they may be beyond any earthly help at all. Where’s Harry Potter when you really need him? Expecto Patronus!

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Supernatural Horror

Rating: PG-13 (for terror/frightening images and some sensuality)

Cosmopolis

(EntertainmentOne) Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Paul Giamatti, Mathieu Amalric. While being driven across Manhattan in a state-of-the-art stretch limo, a financial whiz kid watches helplessly as his fortune evaporates. Visited by a parade of eccentric individuals and erotic encounters, he quickly realize that someone is trying to not only ruin him financially but to kill him as well. Based on the novel by Don DeLillo, this is the latest from visionary director David Cronenberg.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Thriller

Rating: R (for some strong sexual content including graphic nudity, violence and language)

Hit and Run

(Open Road) Dax Shepard, Kristen Bell, Bradley Cooper, Tom Arnold. A nice guy who used to be the getaway driver for bank robbers leaves the witness protection program to drive his fiancée – who knows nothing of his checkered past – to an audition in Los Angeles. Chased by the feds, things get complicated when his old gang shows up wondering where the money they stole is. It’s always in the last place you look.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Action Comedy

Rating: R (for pervasive language including sexual references, graphic nudity, some violence and drug content)

Killer Joe

(LD Distribution) Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Gina Gershon. When a young drug dealer’s stash is stolen by his mom (and you thought your mom was too nosy), he has to come up with $6K or else his supplier will have him killed. Finding out his mom’s insurance policy is worth fifty grand, he hires a hit man to whack his mom. The hit man usually requires cash up front, but in this case is willing to talk about the drug dealer’s sister…

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Drama

Rating: NC-17 (for graphic abberant content involving violence and sexuality, and a scene of brutality)

Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi

(Eros) Kavin Dave, Kurush Deboo, Boman Irani, Daisy Irani. A middle aged underwear salesman who seems destined to never find himself a bride, finally finds one. Unbeknownst to him however, the object of his desires is the sworn enemy of his domineering mother.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Bollywood

Rating: NR

Quantum of Solace

Bond's morning after is always so much more interesting than everybody's elses.

(MGM) Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Gemma Arterton, Giancarlo Giannini, Jeffrey Wright, Jesper Christensen, Joaquin Cosio, David Harbour. Directed by Marc Forster

After Casino Royale, fans of the James Bond franchise were over the moon. Despite early misgivings, Daniel Craig had turned out to be a magnificent 007 – maybe the best since Sean Connery. A gripping storyline that adds more detail and background to the Bond mythology than any single movie ever has whetted the appetite of fans for more, but did the follow-up deliver?

Following the events of Casino Royale, the new one picks up literally minutes after the last one left off. Bond, who has captured Mr. White (Christensen), is being chased on the mountain roads of Italy by a cadre of thugs in black cars who can’t shoot straight. Bond eludes them and manages to deliver the banker to M (Dench) in Portofino, I think – it might be Siena. Somewhere in Italy, anyway.

It turns out that the organization that Mr. White works for (identified later in the film as Quantum, although nobody explains what this stands for – at least SPECTRE and SMERSH actually were acronyms that stood for something) has agents everywhere, including in that very room. A shoot-out ensues followed by a chase across Italian rooftops, ending up in a church undergoing refurbishment.

M is understandably shaken and pissed off. How could there be an organization so well-financed, so large with fingers in so many pies but MI6 doesn’t even have a clue about who they are? She sends Bond to go get some answers.

I won’t give a lot of the plot away because it really is unnecessary to. Nobody goes and sees a Bond film because of the plot. People want the same elements from their Bond movies – great action, beautiful women, clever gadgets and exotic locations. That’s it. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to keep Bond fans happy, but they’ve gone and done that anyway.

Some of the changes are definitely for the better. The relationship between Bond and M becomes the most important relationship in the story. That’s a new twist for the series and one which I quite like. Dame Judi Dench need play a second banana to nobody, and she makes a fine foil for Craig. The chemistry between them exceeds that between Bond and Kurylenko as Camille, this edition’s Bond girl. Trust becomes a central theme to the film, which is bloody revolutionary for a spy film.

I also like that Daniel Craig’s Bond is cold, vicious and driven by the events at the climax of Casino Royale. First of all, a little continuity between movies isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Secondly, it lends a new edge to James Bond and while he does toss a quip out every now and again, he is all business. That has its pros and cons, but I don’t mind that we take Bond a little more seriously with Craig than we did with, say, Roger Moore.

Some of the changes, however, leave something to be desired. The action sequences should have an element of the unbelievable to them, a sense of scale; these are action sequences that are straight out of the Bourne movies (which is, I admit, a bit of an unfair comparison but it does make a useful reference point) and they are a bit rough, the shaky hand-cam which works in other action franchises just seems out of place here. The James Bonds of yesterday always seemed to get into brawls without so much as messing up their impeccably tailored tuxedo or immaculately coiffed hair, but this is a James Bond that gets dusty, bloody, filthy…he survives a plane crash and looks it. I kind of want my James Bond to step out of the wreckage, arch an eyebrow and loose a devastating witticism that gives you the comfort of knowing that Bond is going to save the day in about 20 minutes, and that the megalomaniac of the moment is going to get his comeuppance in a gruesome and deserving manner.

In short, I want to have fun with my James Bond movie and to be honest, I didn’t here. Despite the work of Daniel Craig who is as perfect a Bond for this era as Connery was for his, I didn’t feel exhilarated after watching Quantum of Solace as I usually do for other Bond movies. I felt I’d endured it, survived it but not enjoyed it.

That’s not to say that this is a movie totally without merit. I like some of the changes, as I said and I hope they continue to explore them. I might have liked a more vicious villain than Amalric as Dominic Greene, and a more urgent plot than to – horrors! – steal Bolivia’s water supply.

Unlike other critics, I don’t think that the franchise needs to be burned to the ground and rebooted again but some tweaking is definitely in order. Less grim, more fun I say. Now, I’m going to namedrop a little – I went to college with Bond executive producer Barbara Broccoli and actually shared several classes with her (we shared the same major) although we weren’t ever close. In fact, the odds that she reads my blog are about a hundred trillion to one, but I kind of hope she does. Not that I’m any sort of cinematic genius or anything, but if I had one word of advice to pass along to my fellow alumni of Loyola Marymount, it would be to ratchet up the fun quotient.

That’s the key. At the end of the day, I want to live vicariously through James Bond. I don’t want to see him shot, bloodied, beaten or bruised. If I wanted to be those things, I’d pick a fight with a NASCAR fan. I want to be pampered with the very best luxuries that the taxpayers of Great Britain can afford. I want to be with the most beautiful, seductive women on earth. I want to look great in a tux, use my license to kill and save the day. In short, I want to be stirred, not shaken.

WHY RENT THIS: It is James Bond, after all – the action sequences are second-to-none.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The reboot of Bond is moving a little too far from the original concept for comfort.  

FAMILY VALUES: There’s violence and sexuality but no more than any other Bond movie.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: For the first time, Felix Leiter is played by the same actor in two consecutive films.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: For a 100-minute movie, there are a ton of locations and a feature called “Bond on Location” discusses the logistics of all of them, as well as living up to the expectations raised in Casino Royale.

FINAL RATING: 5.5/10

TOMORROW: Iron Man 2