Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” premieres this weekend, and the film is getting a ton of buzz. It’s also generating a ton of controversy around the torture scenes. Does the movie endorse torture in the context of the killing of Osama bin Laden, or does it instead reveal the horror of torture and the mistakes we made in reaction to 9/11?
Andrew Sullivan is one of the writers taking this issue on, and you can follow his blog for other reactions from around the web.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, the critics and fans both agree that “Argo” is an excellent film. Ben Affleck is pretty proud of the film, as he should be. It’s also very timely with Iran being in the news so much.
Check out the new trailer for “The First Time” starring Dylan O’Brien (MTV’s “Teen Wolf”), Britt Robertson (CW’s “The Secret Circle”) and Victoria Justice, with Craig Roberts (“Submarine”) James Frenchville, LaMarcus Tinker (“Glee”), Christine Taylor and Joshua Malina in supporting roles. The film is written and directed by Jonathan Kasdan.
For much of the past year, Fincher has been filming The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, his roughly $100 million adaptation of the macabre Swedish mystery that centers on a punk-hacker heroine with distinctive skin art. On one of the first nights of shooting, Fincher and his crew were in Sweden, filming a murder scene that takes place alongside a gloomy dock. But after a night’s work, Fincher didn’t have the shot he wanted, and the film’s ultratight schedule meant he wouldn’t be able to return for months.
When Fincher began planning the reshoot, he learned that the property had been sold to one of the guys in ABBA. Apparently, the new owner—either Benny or Björn, it’s not really clear—wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of having his evening stroll interrupted by a simulated drowning, and he refused to let the crew come back. Rather than find a new location or make do with the footage he had, Fincher decided to build his own Swedish dock.
Which is why, on a late-summer afternoon, we’re standing on a Los Angeles soundstage, examining a replica of a rural-Scandinavia mise-en-scène: mossy rocks, foliage-fat trees, and—perched high above the docks, turtlenecking out of the woods—a squat, deceptively cozy faux cottage. Like most sets, it looks a bit weird naked. But once the lights hit and the smoke drifts in, we are suddenly in the land of stunted summers and moderately high suicide rates.
I guess his approach is a bit different than that taken by Clint Eastwood, who loves going with the first take when he feels it’s good enough.
The reviews are pretty mixed for “Anonymous,” the new drama that tells a story of how Shakespeare wasn’t the guy writing all those plays you had to read in high school. The critics on Rotten Tomatoes only give it a 43% positive rating as of today, though the readers liked it more.
Bullz-Eye’s David Medsker liked it and gave it 3 stars out of 5:
On the surface, “Anonymous” appears to be a radical departure for director Roland Emmerich, who has made his bones destroying the world by way of natural disaster and alien invasion. Look closer, though, and you’ll see that “Anonymous” boasts many of the same qualities of his action-driven work. It’s bombastic, needlessly complex, and about as historically accurate as “2012” or “The Day After Tomorrow” are scientifically accurate (which is to say, not very). As a work of historical fiction, though, it’s quite entertaining, and Emmerich coaxes some remarkable performances from his cast. It’s all a bit ridiculous, yes, but one should never let facts get in the way of a good story.
I have to admit that I wasn’t too excited about “Real Steel” when I saw the trailer. Sure, the special effects look great, and Hugh Jackman is an excellent actor. Also, the “Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots” storyline had some appeal. But it looked like another typical crowd pleaser put together just because we now have CGI. It just wasn’t one of the new films of 2011 that I wanted to see.
But the movie delivers. It gives you exactly what you would expect, and it does it fairly well. That’s what we really want from movies, except for those rare instances where we don’t mind being surprised by a great film. Audiences are naturally responding, thus the success at the box office. Go see it at a good theater like the Leicester Square cinema.
The film adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s beloved children’s book, “Where the Wild Things Are,” has endured a difficult road on the way to the big screen, including reshoots and even rumors that Warner Bros. would be replacing Spike Jonze as director. Now that the movie has a firm release date, however, it looks as if we’ll finally get to see it after all. The first trailer made it’s debut on “Ellen” earlier today, and well, I think it speaks for itself. Check out the preview below and let us know what you think.
