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Ryan Reynolds on 'Deadpool' and 'Buried'

Colin Boyd — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:18:45 +0000

There are a couple interesting developments on the Ryan Reynolds front. Having appeared in two number one movies this summer has and will continue to lead to bigger and hopefully better things. Wolverine begat Deadpool, which we're now hearing will feature Reynolds breaking the fourth wall as The Merc with the Mouth and addressing the audience directly. Weird.

In the comic, Deadpool does the same thing, but it can hit and miss in the movies. The one element that's great in this instance is you've got the right guy talking to the audience. Reynolds has a great screen presence and personality, so while we haven't really seen this in a superhero movie, it's fitting that it's Deadpool and perhaps all the more fitting that Reynolds is the guy to pull it off.

More compelling, though, is his recently announced Buried. Via The Playlist, Reynolds told an Australian TV show that the movie will be all him. A one-man show.

Game Over: 'Asteroids' Becoming a Movie

Colin Boyd — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:15:39 +0000

Thirty years ago, Asteroids was released as a video game, helping usher in the demand for quarters that would continue unabated for about 15 years. Along with Space Invaders, Asteroids was one of the first major arcade games, and it helped put Atari on the map.

Now, it will join a diverse and risky collection of consumer products being built at Universal. The Hollywood Reporter says that da U beat three other studios to snag the film rights to Asteroids, which will be written (and to a certain degree, invented out of thin air, by Matthew Lopez). This year, Universal has signed up to develop movies based on board games (Candy Land and Battleship) as well as toys (Stretch Armstrong).

Disappointing Trailer for the Animated 'Planet 51'

Colin Boyd — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:44:11 +0000

Even though 2009 has been a banner year for animated films, there has to be a letdown eventually. Welcome, then, to Planet 51.

It's about an astronaut who travels to a distant planet only to find it's not only inhabited but entirely civilized. Except he's greeted as a hostile visitor, so he has to rely on a kid he meets on Planet 51 to return him to his ship so he can leave safely. The concept is OK, I guess, but man, was I bored by about 75% of the trailer.

Also, I'm really confused by all things Dwayne Johnson in this film. Not only does his character not really sound anything like him but he's back to being billed as Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson for the first time in a couple years. Seems like an odd project to throw the old wrestling nom de guerre back into the mix.

Week in Review: 'Informant,' Biel Rumored for 'Thor', Christian Bale

Colin Boyd — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:24:29 +0000

There's tons of stuff from this past week to discuss, including the reviews for the two Wednesday releases trying to unseat Transformers at the box office. Johnny Depp and Christian Bale star in Public Enemies , and the animated sequel Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs hopes to cash in on its name recognition.

Remakes, trailers, rumors, legit casting news, and our question of the week (involving Public Enemies star Christian Bale) are all worth a look, so here are the highlights:

What the hell happened to Christian Bale?

Jessica Biel rumored for Thor

Matt Damon in the hilarious trailer for Soderbergh's The Informant

Tony Scott's next Denzel movie in a holding pattern over money

Amy Adams joins Bale and Mark Wahlberg in The Fighter

Cloverfield director talks about his Let the Right One In remake

How was there a movie starring Gary Oldman as a dwarf that I never heard of? Watch the trailer for the 2003 DVD flick, Tiptoes

Steve Carell as Billy Mays?

Bill Nighy becomes completes Harry Potter cycle of casting every British actor

Inglourious Basterds trailer even better in French

Michael Bay and Megan Fox in Ridiculous Verbal War

Colin Boyd — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:13:57 +0000

In the red corner: Megan Fox. In the blue corner: Michael Bay. The Transformers hottie and her director are currently engaged in a public spat stemming from Fox's comments that Bay spent more time working on effects than he did collaborating with his actors. As if that's a shock.

"I mean, I can't shit on this movie because it did give me a career and open all these doors for me," Fox admitted to Entertainment Weekly. "But I don't want to blow smoke up people's ass. People are well aware that this is not a movie about acting." You could fire back, of course, that Megan Fox isn't an actress about acting and would receive very little indisputable evidence to the contrary.

Bay, unsurprisingly, had something to say in response to his star. "Well, that's Megan Fox for you," the director told The Wall Street Journal. "She says some very ridiculous things because she's 23 years old and she still has a lot of growing to do."

Movie Review - 'Moon'

Colin Boyd — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:06:28 +0000

Moon

Starring Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey
Directed by Duncan Jones
Rated R

I don't remember what they charge for admission to Graceland, but unless you're a complete Elvis fanatic, it's a ripoff. There's so much mystique about the place, but when you walk in it's much smaller than you imagined - even the Jungle Room - and you can't go upstairs to see where the real action is. As famous homes go, it's pretty disappointing.

Then you walk across about an acre of land to The King's racquetball courts. There's simply not much of a payoff. Enjoy the gift shops.

Duncan Jones' Moon is not in any sense a ripoff, but I think it's fair to say I expected one more room on of the grand tour than I was shown. Jones has given us a great story with plenty to think about, but visually, cathartically, it misses something in the end.

Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is two years eleven months and two weeks into his three-year contract with Lunar Enterprises, a firm that mines Helium-3 on the dark side of the moon. That isotope is incredibly useful in nuclear fusion, and in the real world, would be an incredibly powerful resource if it were available in large quantities, and it is generally believed that He-3 is in greater supply on the moon, so the science here is relatively sound.

Sam collects the harvested He-3 and sends it back to Earth where it is used as the solution to the world's energy crisis. It's monotonous work, and outside of his onboard computer called GERTY (Kevin Spacey), Sam interacts with no one. He sees messages from his wife, which makes him all the more anxious to end his contract.

On one outing to collect the supercharged helium, Sam is distracted, crashing his moon buggy into the giant moon rock harvester. When he awakes, he has no memory of his previous mission, but knows GERTY and knows he's Sam Bell. But something's not right. There's another Sam Bell. Is it a clone, is it the invention of a lunatic stuck on the moon too long? Is it a machine? Or is Sam even alive?

Movie Review - 'Whatever Works'

Colin Boyd — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:56:12 +0000

Whatever Works

Starring Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, and Patricia Clarkson
Directed by Woody Allen
Rated PG-13

Everyone has a boss or an uncle that revels in telling the same story over and over again. It was really funny the first time you heard it, and it was fine to hear it again when the boss or uncle told it to somebody else. You even tolerated it when he told the same story twice in one day, just because somebody new walked into the room and an uncomfortable silence was in the air.

But now it’s the eighth time that story somehow squeezed its way into a conversation, and you know every twist and the punchline word for word.

If you’ve never seen a Woody Allen comedy, Whatever Works is pretty funny. But if you’ve navigated your way to this point through Annie Hall and Manhattan or even his less stellar 1990s period including Everyone Says I Love You and Deconstructing Harry, you have heard Allen or his on-screen surrogates discuss relationships, religion, society, and the opposite sex in pretty much the same way every time. For you, Whatever Works probably won’t work.

In his latest film, Allen hitches his specific and unaltered worldview to Boris Yellnikoff (Larry David), a physicist who was once "considered" for the Nobel Prize. Neuroses got the better of him, and soon after hitting his professional zenith, Boris fell off dramatically, symbolized by his attempted suicide, a running jump out of his penthouse window that ended on the canopy below.

Now instead of leaving the world he can't abide, Boris walks through it with a limp. He is simply overwhelmed by society and the “cretins” in it. His best rants about the idiocy that he faces on a daily basis involve calling people he thinks are beneath him inchworms or earthworms. We hear one or the other about every three minutes.

Festival Movie Review - 'Man Overboard'

Colin Boyd — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:25:46 +0000

Man Overboard

Starring Matthew Kaminsky, Mel Fair, Floyd Van Buskirk, and Jeffry Stein
Directed by Oliver Robins
Not Rated

Man Overboard is a comedy seemingly about a lot of things – family, business, money, friends, and questioning all of them – but ultimately, when you step away from the film, it’s one idea that sticks with you: There’s a reward in doing the right thing when the wrong thing might be the easier option.

It is a comedy with a moral, and sometimes those movies fall on their faces. A comedy is supposed to make you laugh, first and foremost, and if it fails to do that, it doesn’t much matter what else the movie has going for it.

Where a lot of movies in this genre make their biggest mistake is in focusing on just the jokes. When these jokes can’t be strung together by substance, not only aren’t people laughing because the humor is so forced, but they also aren’t enjoying anything else about tonight’s feature presentation.

In the case of Man Overboard, writers Ashley Scott Meyers and Nathan Ives have clearly based their movie about the circumstances of believable characters. That takes the pressure off getting a laugh every minute or two and developing a real story, and any laugh is better in context.

We meet C.J. Mason (Matthew Kamisnky), who runs his own used boat dealership. He does well enough to provide for his family, but he’d obviously like to give them more. C.J. feels the sing of sluggish business and the expectations of his father-in-law, who constantly pushes C.J.’s buttons.

Uh...What? Oldman the Dwarf in 'Tiptoes'?

Colin Boyd — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:20:29 +0000

I had the hardest time believing this was real. But as it turns out, there was a romantic comedy about six years ago called Tiptoes. It starred Matthew McConaughey, Kate Beckinsale, Gary Oldman, Patricia Arquette, and Peter Dinklage. I never heard of it until earlier this afternoon.

It was never released in the U.S. theatrically, popping up on DVD in August 2004, but I'm still surprised the subject of Tiptoes never came up. You see, not only does it look for all the world like one of the worst movies ever made...it's about dwarves. And Gary Oldman is one of the little people.

I'll leave it at that. Watch the trailer and chart your emotions:

Box Office - 'Ice Age' Tames 'Transformers'

Colin Boyd — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:01:51 +0000

The official stranglehold Transformers has on the box office is over, at least for one day. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs opened with $13.8 million on Wednesday, good enough to take down what will prove to be the biggest film of the year.

As I said in my Fearless Forecast yesterday, I don't expect Ice Age to win the whole weekend, but by the time Friday gets here, this film should have $25 million in the bank or thereabouts. Because it's not a giant event movie the way Transformers is, I don't think it will see the benefit of two opening days, in essence, the Wednesday can't-wait-to-see-it crowd and the usual Friday audience. It will still do well tomorrow, but with families leaving for quick vacations because most businesses have Friday off, I think we can look at a combination of Wednesday and Thursday to really see what kind of opening this will have.

Transformers can now officially stop being compared in any way to The Dark Knight, which was the number one movie for 19 days straight, while the Bayhem could only manage seven. It will be back on top, if not Thursday then on Friday. The holiday doesn't affect the Transformers audience nearly as much, and it's still going to be the hottest ticket in town.