Director: Nora Ephron
Cast:Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell
Release: June 24, 2005
Synopsis: An all-star cast led by Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell cast their spell on the movie version of one of TV’s most memorable and guiling shows, “Bewitched”. Will Ferrell plays an actor taking on the role of Darren in a new version of the classic television show, while Nicole plays the actress hired to play Samantha in the show…except that she’s really a witch!

Sans the coconut macaroon part.

I’m not seeing exactly why I would want to see this movie, even after Nicole Kidman’s entrance into the movie’s trailer. Ferrell is looking at all kinds of unknown actresses for this new show of his, focusing on the nose wiggle of course, and it’s only when Will sees Kidman wiggle it inside a bookstore that his senses are overwhelmed and thrown off kilter, taking a pratfall over stacks of books. Ahh, good ol’ Will.

What’s odd about the scene immediately following this is when Will tells Nicole she would be great as an actress, assuring her that if he can act surely she could to which a waitress quips, “Amen.” Ha-ha, very amusing. I get it, Will’s a terrible actor. What’s genuinely funny, though, and what makes that lame ass line better is Will’s follow-up that includes the word “humus” that’s sharply annunciated and works to great comedic effect, pedestrian as it is.

From here we get Kidman’s display of power. She likes her broom, although she drives a VW bug, and how appropriate it is that the incarnation of pagan evil drives a machine that was fully realized by German Nazis, and she even tosses out comedic quips with the speed of your average sitcom actress. Michael Caine seems awfully reticent in his role here, and probably with good reason, but things progress just the way something like this should. I’m not saying that’s bad but there is an understanding by all involved as to what this movie is and it’s perfectly executed. Even the music’s harmless.

Ferrell ends up having so much success from the show he announces to the world that the show is going to be “retooled” to focus only on him. So, a witch scored fights back. It’s all very WITCHES OF EASTWICK but without the pasty belly of Jack Nicholson or the horse-ish cranium of Cher getting in the way as Nicole takes her “revenge.”

So, keeping with this theme, much like the Steve Carrell news reading scene made so infamous in BRUCE ALMIGHTY, one my father would have the world believe was comic genius, Will has a spell cast upon him which makes him speak Shakespearian, Valley Girl, and then back to a high brow monologue, about a dog while at a dinner party. It’s good. I mean, there’s not much more you can do with something like this besides playing it for up for scary screams but that’s obviously not what you’re going to get here.

And then, near the end of the trailer, we see that Will realizes that Nicole is a witch and tries to get everyone to believe him which doesn’t work and, of course, makes him look crazy. He even goes on a paranoid rant about the old Darren/Dick replacement that I am sure some segment of the population will find amusing.

I don’t know what I could honestly expect out of a movie like this but it’s clear that this one isn’t going to tear the roof off people’s expectations. Instead, it looks like it’s going to play right into them.

Director:Nimród Antal
Cast: Sándor Csányi, Zoltán Mucsi, Csaba Pindroch
Release: April 1, 2005 (Limited)
Synopsis: A tale about a strange young man, Bulcsú, his fellow inspectors, who are all without exception likeable characters, a rival ticket inspection team, and racing along the tracks… And a tale about love.

If you see the description of the film then, great, you have an idea of whether or not you would pay to see this movie but I dare you, in true CHRISTMAS STORY fashion, to watch this trailer and tell me what is going on in this movie.

I have no idea.

What I do know is that there seems to be a wonderful blending of noir and genuinely affective emotional connections between some downtrodden and forgotten people but let’s see if I can’t describe this trailer with some insight in to what’s being communicated in this piece of advertising.

A techno beat slowly drives beneath the action as we get our protagonist, sleeping on a subway station floor. Is he homeless? Hung-over from a night of wild debauchery and whoring? Dunno, but an owl lives down there with him. Huh?

Next, we are reassured, and thankfully so, that this movie won some awards at the Cannes Film Festival and the Chicago Int’l Film Festival. This establishes some credibility right away. It’s perfectly placed and, in hindsight, helps to reassure me.

Next, we get some blonde bimbo with a bouffant haircut, a cigarette teetering on her lips, who decides to single-handedly pop open a bottle of well shook champagne. What is doing and why is she there? Exactly, kids, I don’t know.

Our protagonist chases some thug through the subway, some more awards this movie has received are flashed in front of us, and then, in a really show stopping moment, we seem to have a WARRIORS moment as dudes with matching face paint square off against some other dudes who aren’t so…facially…painted. Seeing how this is a foreign flick I think I can almost assume this has less to do with gang violence than it does with soccer hooligan fanaticism. People over there love to paint their face in obnoxious ways just as the Raider Nation’s uncivilized ilk think it’s cool to have skulls hanging on their shoulders, wearing helmets with spikes drilled on them and acting like barbarians. I get it.

A more upbeat song starts spinning as we get a cavalcade of people. There is a chick dressed up from head-to-toe in a pink fuzzy bear outfit, some dude strikes a kung-fu attack position, the same pink bear lady leads someone somewhere using a road flare (huh?), there’s the owl again (symbol alert!), and we get a plethora of domestic critics from the States who, again, assure us that this is a movie that is supposed to rock everyone’s world. For reals.

There are people partying, some hot chicks are seen here and there, some old lady screams at a pack of our characters in German with no subtitles to see what she’s saying (probably, “Don’t see that Bewitched movie that has that woman driving a Nazi approved mode of transport! Eich bin ein Berliner!”), some more quotes from the press, there’s a Chun-Li BLOODSPORT moment where a woman blows some white powder into a dude’s face, and there is a lot of sliding on the subway floor. Crazy Germans.

Director: Steven Soderbergh, Wong Kar-Wai, Michelangelo Antonioni
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Alan Arkin, Ele Yeats, Gong Li, Chang Chen, Christoph Buchholz, Regina Nemni, Luisa Ranieri
Release: April 8, 2005
Synopsis: EROS is a three-part anthology film about eroticism and desire by a trio of world cinema’s outstanding directors, Wong Kar Wai, Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni. The film also serves as an homage by two younger directors, Wong and Soderbergh, to Antonioni who has informed and inspired their work. The Italian master has extensively examined this terrain in such classics as L’AVVENTURA, BLOWUP and THE PASSENGER.

THE DANGEROUS THREAD OF THINGS: The story of a ménage-a-trois between a couple and a young woman on the coast of Tuscany. Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni (Co-written by Tonino Guerra.

View Trailer:
* Medium (QuickTime)

Prognosis: Negative. Michelangelo Antonioni?

Never heard of him, but I sure have heard of Steven Soderbergh and Wong Kar Wei and that would pretty much seal any deal for me.

The idea of this film being directed by three guys appeals to me right from the word go because when you have a common premise and it’s being looked at through the lens, pun intended, of three different people you have a Rashomon-like story and I am always in the mood for something like this.

I know that FOUR ROOMS doesn’t get a lot of the love out there but it should. You had multiple narratives swirling around one main one and I thought it was a delight. Well, I could’ve done without Madonna’s little witch bit in the beginning, thus the reason why it probably isn’t as referenced as much as it could’ve been, but something like this gets me excited.

One of the more interesting things about these three short vignettes that wrap around the theme of love and sex is that the English portion of the program only stars Alan Arkin and Robert Downey Jr. Other than that, that’s about as American as you’re gonna get. The rest of the movie is set in other parts of our global village.

I like, first of all, the red restricted trailer banner. Seeing it only puts me on the offensive, and gets me eager, to find what it is about this trailer that’s so offensive to the MPAA. I don’t get a very good hint with Arkin and Downey talking in the opening seconds of this thing. It’s, in fact, very muted and very quiet. They’re just talking.

After Downey says his piece we get everyone else’s name in this project, blocking my view of all the stocking-pulling-upping going on in this thing, along with the very slow walks that some nice legs are doing across the screen, I get a little more whetted for our other participants to start showing what they have to offer. The background music is a mellow techno beat which actually fits in perfectly with the accompanying scene of our man Antonioni’s part of the film that stars a woman with swollen mammaries. I swear I wasn’t looking to be a perv but when you have a giddy brunette in a tank top, galloping down a flight of stairs, who obviously doesn’t have a predilection for an under wire, that’s just like trying to keep a dog from devouring a Milk Bone that’s been accidentally dropped on the floor.

We come back to Downey, who we understand is obviously a patient of Arkin’s in a psychological therapist capacity, quickly killing the femme buzz I was gettin’ on, as he tells us what he sees when he has “the dream.” This prompt sends cut scenes at me at too fast a rate to even try and pin down. From what I can see there are lot of people running away from one another, dudes and chicks are throwing out their “O” face, many more are rolling around in bed like it’s a steamrolling championship, and, get this, the last image we’re left with is a shot of a woman’s bust in a dress. No head, no legs, just full on bust action.

Now, I like to be tempted in my advertising if it’s done slutty enough but this trailer leaves me confused, doubtful and only the slightest bit interested in what’s going on in this film. All I know about it is that Downey has a recurring dream and that there’s a woman who wears a tight tank top; not the best way to leave someone who is trying to figure out whether to spend an hour’s wages on your little art film.

Director: Wes Craven
Cast: Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy
Release: August 5, 2005
Synopsis: Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams) hates to fly, but the terror that awaits her on the night flight to Miami has nothing to do with a fear of flying. Moments after takeoff, Lisa’s seatmate, Jackson (Cillian Murphy), menacingly reveals the real reason he’s on board: He is an operative in a plot to kill a rich and powerful businessman…and Lisa is the key to its success. If she refuses to cooperate, her own father will be killed by an assassin awaiting a call from Jackson. Trapped within the confines of a jet at 30,000 feet, Lisa has nowhere to run and no way to summon help without endangering her father, her fellow passengers and her own life. As the miles tick by, Lisa knows she is running out of time as she desperately looks for a way to thwart her ruthless captor and stop a terrible murder.

Growing up watching NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET I was convinced of Craven’s abilities as a superb horror storyteller. I was freaked out of my mind watching the original NIGHTMARE when I was a wee lad, the perfect Friday night movie after a hard week in middle school, but then I started to grow up and saw the proverbial Icarus flying too high to the sun.

I don’t know if it was UVA or the UVB that damaged the man’s cerebral cortex and allowed him to make THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS, VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN (what in the hell was that one all about? He has yet to formally apologize for that hideous entry.), and the SCREAM trilogy. The latter I am taking him to recent task for because of their pitch to America in the advertising that they were somehow real “horror” movies. They weren’t. You know that, I know that, but their obvious fiscal success proves us all wrong. They were disappointing because it wasn’t really horror but essentially a teen thriller. Horror is reserved for wanton destruction of life, really good blood squibs that pop and burst on cue, and, at the very least, something that makes you worry about the fate for the protagonist if for only a moment.

This new film could be a step in the right direction if nothing else but, unfortunately, it’s got nothing to do with body transformations or mass mutilation.

Cillian Murphy, who really did a bang-up job in 28 DAYS LATER, is back as a smooth talking ladies man evidenced by the opening montage of this trailer.

At first I think of this movie’s title “RED EYE” and its main set, an airplane. Without hesitation I think of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE where that freakish gremlin beast starts to rip out parts of the wing while it’s up in the air. I seriously still have issues with staring outside my window on any flight that’s in the air after dark and I credit that to the way the story was told, shot and executed.

Unfortunately for me, Cillian is just trying to chat up a young lovely in the airport terminal. If you had no clue this was a Wes Craven picture you would think you were watching a new romantic comedy. Everything points to it. Their chance encounter, the way they share drinks in the airport bar and even the way it seems like kismet when they have their seats next to each other on the plane. Then, it becomes all the more clearer.

“Sometimes fate isn’t what it seems…”

Now, these two talk a little more on the plane and as soon as our woman asks Cillian what he does professionally, his eyes get red (Just like the title of the movie! Woo!), and we know this isn’t going to go according to formula. I like the mystery it throws up for us to ponder. I, too, wonder what the hell is going down and before I actually read the synopsis of the film after having seen the trailer, I would’ve never guessed that’s what this film’s all about. I was expecting some sort of transmutation of some sort or even some sort of growth in the man’s canines but the desperate hand scratching at the side window of the plane is a really nice touch.

I’m finally able to say I’m actually interested in one of Wes’ productions. This is, perhaps, the first time I have been in many years so I hope this one actually delivers on the promise of thrills this film may have.

It’s not horror, but it is a start.

Director: Robert Brinkmann
Cast: Stephen Tobolowsky
Release: February, 2005 (SWSX Film Festival)
Synopsis: In Stephen Tobolowsky’s Birthday Party filmmakers Robert Brinkmann and Andrew Putschoegl follow Stephen on his birthday and document a performance he gives for the cameras and a group of friends, during which he tells stories about his experiences in Hollywood. Instead of his regular role as a supporting actor, Stephen takes the stage in Birthday Party and shows that he has the charisma to hold the audience’s attention without the help of a script.

One of the things I am always amazed at is how well movies can come together when you have exactly the right kinds of people in them to accentuate the performances of others. Without a man like Stephen Tobolowsky, the guy who plays some of the most key parts in films without you even being aware of it, you just have other nameless, faceless people taking up the space that should be filled by guys like this. Sure, others like Clint Howard, Leon Rippy, and others like them don’t receive the kind of appreciation they deserve but this movie looks like a comedic delight.

Things start off on the right foot as well with the trailer.

“Once in a generation comes an actor…Who has been in more movies than Tom Cruise…Is linked to more movie stars than Kevin Bacon…And is taller than Danny Devito and Verne Troyer…combined.”

Immediately you know two things: one, this movie isn’t taking itself too seriously and two, the man in question, Stephen Tobolowsky, has been in a lot of damn flicks.

When we first get the opening scenes of this documentary you see Stephen, clad in a classic coonskin cap, in someplace that’s obviously very cold and snowy. He’s talking to people on the street, holding a real old school Bob Barker style silver microphone, and is asking them if they’ve ever heard of the man they’re talking to. I would like to think if I was one of the people asked I could at least call him out as Ned Ryerson and have a good giggle as I bear hug the guy, lifting him off the ground.

He’s been in a lot of movies I haven’t seen but no one knows who the guy is when they’re asked point blank with him standing right in front of them.

What’s even funnier is when he says, “If you had to take a guess of who he is…”

The responses come as varied as some say a politician, launcher of a new magazine, playwright, chocolate maker, serial killer and even a porn star. He appreciates the latter one.

Once someone finally fingers him as the man asking the questions the screen goes black and a fury of the original graphics for the movies he’s been in go flashing by one after another.

“If you celebrate only one birthday this year make sure it’s Stephen Tobolowsky’s.”

I am enthralled with the premise of this film and really cannot imagine why anyone thought to make this movie but I am glad they did as Stephen deserves a little credit.

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