Robert De Niro costars in a sort of “Flowers for Algernon”/”Charly” in reverse.
I’m yet to fully sold on Bradley Cooper as a movie star, but he seems to be getting more interesting. As for the movie, it’s directed by, but apparently not written by, Neil Burger of “The Illusionist.” Might be okay.
H/t Den of Geek.
Writer-director Joe Carnahan is proud of his latest film, a beyond tongue-in-cheek 2010 remounting of the 1980’s TV favorite, “The A-Team.” Available on a brand new, extras-laden DVD and Blu-Ray edition, the actioner stars Liam Neeson as A-Team leader Hannibal Smith, with backing by Bradley Cooper as the suave “Faceman” Peck, Sharlto Copley as the mildly insane H.M. Murdock and mixed martial artist Quinton “Rampage” Jackson as the Mohawk-wearing B.A. Baracus.
Jessica Biel is also along for the ride as DCIS Sosa, Faceman’s by-the-book military investigator ex-girlfriend. The story, such as it is, is fully eclipsed by a mix of preposterous stunts and CGI heavy effects and a jackhammer sensibility that is, like it or not, proudly over the top and unashamedly silly.
A former maker of promotional films and videos for a Sacramento TV station, Carnahan’s first feature was 1998’s “Blood, Guts, Bullets, and Octane,” a crime-suspense black comedy that co-starred Carnahan as a desperate used car dealer getting in way over his head with some extremely dangerous characters. The film, low on finesse but big on Mamet-esque macho verbal energy, was notable enough to break through the enormous Tarantino-Guy-Ritchie fatigue that made making almost any kind of independent crime film a questionable proposition throughout the 1990s.
Carnahan’s 2002 studio debut was the grimly serious “Narc,” starring Jason Patric and Ray Liotta. Big on style and terribly unsubtle, the dark procedural nevertheless earned lots of good reviews. That was followed in 2007 by the all-star action black comedy, “Smokin’ Aces.” The grosses were higher, but the Rotten Tomatoes rating was much lower.
Joe Carnahan’s bombastic ways as a filmmaker are matched at times by what reads as a rather pugilistic verbal style when it comes to critics who dislike his style and reporters who harp on less than enormous grosses. As someone who is yet to be won over by any of his films — though “Blood, Guts” has its share of low-fi charms — I was a little concerned about meeting him.
Watching Carnahan introduce a number of clips from the Blu-Ray special features for “The A-Team,” however, he came across as much more of more a teddy bear than a grizzly. In our interview, he won me over with news about some long incubating projects, a bit of sincere sounding film geekiness, his clear interest in branching out creatively and, most importantly, the fact that he’s my only interview subject so far to admit to visiting our sister site Bullz-Eye — which, I’m sure, he looks at only for our thoughtful prose.
“I’m on the Internet far too much,” he admitted, adding cheerfully, “just looking through academic articles!”
Never let it be said that Joe Carnahan is lacking in manly virtues and/or vices.
Premium Hollywood: Speaking of manliness, there’s a line in “The A-Team”: “Overkill is underrated.”
Joe Carnahan: Yes.
PH: This seems like a pretty good watchword for your career and your approach to making movies.
JC: Right. I think I’ve been perhaps unduly typecast as a guy who likes to hyper-edit and so on. I certainly have a style, but this kind of thing will always cancel out [other things]. There was a five minute tracking shot in “Narc” that was nothing but Ray Liotta talking, but nobody ever mentions that stuff. Listen, it was certainly the call to arms for this movie, “Overkill is underrated.” I did it as a thesis, as a joke. It’s the aside to the audience that says that we know it’s a lot, we know it’s overblown and overinflated, that’s the point of this little bon-mot here, this little movie.
Tonight’s box office preview has been moved to tomorrow because of a couple of a films news items that just can’t quite wait. The first can be dispensed with in a second. Casting has been announced on “The Hobbit,” short, snub-nosed and talented Martin Freeman will face his inevitable hobbity destiny as Bilbo Baggins, as Peter Jackson again casts a bunch of people I’ve mostly never heard of in smaller roles who’ll probably all be great.
And then there’s this news of Mel Gibson being let go from “The Hangover 2 just a day after it was announced he’d been hired to play a supporting role. Oy.
So, I guess when vampire movies actually have a strong story and believable characters played by terrific young actors, they suddenly become box office poison, easily beaten by a movie about an unlikable computer geek. That’s encouraging.
I guess I should be jumping for joy that a movie — almost any movie — from the provocatively counterintuitive team of Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher is primed to head things up at the box office. Sony’s “The Social Network” has been getting mightily hyped, generating some of the year’s very best reviews and just a bit of controversy over its accuracy. It all spells awards-season hit with the added bonus of a youth-friendly cast and topic — the creation of Facebook, though it’s a big mistake to think only young people use Facebook. In any case, the $25 million or over weekend suggested by both Jolly Carl DiOrio and Ben Fritz seems reasonable.
Here’s the thing: I’ve seen “Let Me In” and while I agree with our David Medsker that it doesn’t do a huge amount cinematically to justify its own existence apart from the outstanding original Swedish film, it benefits from the same creepily heart-string tugging story as the original, which will be totally new to most viewers. Moreover, the one area where the film is an improvement over the original is in its performances, Kodi Smit-McFee and Chloe Moretz are just breathtakingly good and I can’t imagine most viewers not being drawn into the very moving and very creepy twice-told tale.
One obvious problem is that this is a film a lot of older kids will definitely want to see, but it’s rated R and, I have to say, not entirely inappropriately. It’s no gorefest, but it’s violent and bloody enough and it tricks us into sympathizing with some pretty immoral actions by very young people, which is not a bad thing but really kind of the point. In other words, you need a certain level of moral maturity to get what the film is really about. I nevertheless think parents should consider taking more mature tweens who are interested to see it, even if director Matt Reeves juices up the blood and violence just a hair from the original film. It’s still a highly intelligent and thought-provoking tale that definitely de-romanticizes the vampire myth while also being a wonderful metaphor that explains why parents might worry about the kinds of friends their kids make.
More infuriating than the fact that this relatively excellent film being expected to make significantly less than $10 million this weekend, is the fact that it might be beaten by the lame looking, poorly reviewed more adult skewing horror flick from Paramount/Vantage, “Case 39” with Renee Zellweger and Bradley Cooper. We need armies of cinema counselors out this weekend, folks, steering filmgoers desirous of chills away from this and towards “Let Me In” — whose with me? Okay, fine.
There is some action on the limited release front. Yet another R-rated horror film from a company I’ve never heard of called New Films Cinema (aren’t “Films” and “Cinema” the same thing?), “Chain Letter,” is going out unreviewed and all but undiscussed into 401 theaters this weekend according to Box Office Mojo.
We also have a major expansion of the highly buzzed documentary “Catfish” and the highly touted documentary spin-off of a very popular non-fiction tome from Magnolia, “Freakonomics.” My own very mildly positive reaction to it is just a hair better than the overall critical reaction, but there’ll no keeping fans of the book away from it, even if the movie is mainly eliciting a bit of a shrug.
I’m severely limited for time — and more than a bit tired after a busy and reasonably productive day — so this may be one of my shortest box office preview posts.
This week’s two major new releases are reboots of properties remembered fondly by many children of the 1980s, “The A-Team” and “The Karate Kid.” Both movies have been supplied with some well known names, Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan for the former and Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, and Jessica Biel for the latter.
Jolly Carl DiOrio doesn’t go so far as to predict which film will emerge on top, with both having some fairly obvious broad appeal. I’ll say that my personal hunch is that Sony’s “Kid” will take the lead because, with a PG rating, it’s definitely more of a family film than the more violent and adult-oriented PG-13 “A-Team” from Fox. The martial arts flick also would seem to have more appeal for female audience members for similar reasons. It certainly seems extremely likely, in any case, that “Kid” will be the more profitable film by far, as we’re led to believe it cost $40 million, while the Joe Carnahan directed “Team” cost something more like $95 million. Both movies got mixed-to-meh reviews at “Rotten Tomatoes.”
Will these action flicks rescue Hollywood from the box office blahs? All I know is that I have no strong desire to see either of them and I’m not sure Hollywood deserves any better than its getting. In fact, without having seen these new movies, I feel safe in assuring anyone reading this that, if you’re at all open to them, you’ll be vastly more entertained by renting almost any of Jackie Chan’s amazing eighties and nineties Hong Kong films. I know I’d really like to see “Project A, Part II” — an ingenious slapstick comedy adventure — or any of the “Supercop” movies again soon. Like, right now.
© 2023 Premium Hollywood
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
