I’m Still Here — “that Joaquin Phoenix movie” — capitalizes on an anxiety that’s very of-the-moment, uniting pop cultural phenomena as seemingly disparate as the too-stupid/good-to-be-true Jersey Shore characters, James Franco’s baffling side careers as a professional student and soap opera stud, and pretty much every thing having to do…
In 1993, inspired by his second cousin Danny Trejo’s work in Desperado, Robert Rodriguez wrote a screenplay around the character of Machete — a stringy-haired, leather-faced, ex-federale turned down-and-dirty hitman turned violent crusader on behalf of his fellow illegal immigrants. While Trejo played a different character named Machete in Rodriguez’s…
The Switch is a loose adaptation of a Jeffrey Eugenides story called “Baster,” published in The New Yorker in 1996 and deemed fit for inclusion in the 2001 best-of anthology Wonderful Town. Last week, when asked by the New Yorker’s book blog about the film — which stars Jennifer Aniston…
Salt, famously the Spy Flick Rewritten for Angelina Jolie After Tom Cruise Dropped Out, has been publicized as the cinematic equivalent of the 19th Amendment: finally, a level playing field for female action stars! This is mostly bullshit, of course —Jolie’s Evelyn Salt is not the first action hero to…
MacGruber (Will Forte), a highly decorated soldier of fortune known for “making life-saving inventions out of household materials,” faked his death and went into hiding after his fiancée (Maya Rudolph) was killed at their wedding, likely by MacGruber’s arch enemy, wealthy industrialist Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer). Years later, when…
Is it an accident that Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood plays like a rousing love letter to the Tea Party movement? It’s certainly something of a surprise. When the movie was announced in 2007 with the title Nottingham, reports suggested that it would sympathize with the normally vilified Sheriff of Nottingham…
Kick-Ass, the Matthew Vaughn-directed adaptation of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.’s graphic novel, sets itself up as an unadulterated exposé of the teenage mind. Tired of being mugged by high school thugs in a Manhattan that’s notably scummier than the real thing, our hero Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson, a…
“We are not these people! We are a boring couple from New Jersey!” complains Claire Foster (Tina Fey) to her husband, Phil (Steve Carell), about halfway through Date Night, the latest high-gloss, middle-to-low-brow would-be blockbuster from director Shawn Levy (Cheaper by the Dozen, Just Married). Phil and Claire are middle-class,…
The tagline for the recently concluded 2010 South by Southwest Film Festival was “Tomorrow Happens Here,” slick marketing shorthand for the event’s reputation as a test tube for new cinematic trends and a breeding ground for incestuous indie collaborations (most of the filmmakers now associated with mumblecore first met each…
Noah Baumbach talks about his new film, Greenberg, the DIY ethos, and learning to drive. Noah Baumbach is 40 years old. He just learned how to drive. A native New Yorker, the writer/director started spending time in Los Angeles when dating his current wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh, but for years…
There’s an obvious stunt element to the casting of The Runaways: a punked-up, barely legal Kristen Stewart and a still-underage, barely dressed Dakota Fanning begging for street cred by playing dress-up as, respectively, Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, front girls of the oversexed ’70s-era teen proto-punk sensation The Runaways. Watch…
Cop Out establishes its movie lineage right away, with a slow-motion toe-to-head tilt up, set to the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn,” of black cop/white cop buddies Jimmy and Paul swaggering stone-faced toward the camera. Director/editor Kevin Smith (who notably didn’t write the Cop Out script; this is the…
In Pretty Woman, director Garry Marshall’s personal cinematic high score, the opening credits close (and the closing credits open) with the voice of a street freak, barely noticeable in wide shot, chanting an absurd mantra —”Welcome to Hollywood, land of dreams!” Twenty years later, Marshall dips into the same well…
