Month: February 2010

How to Watch: “Cop Out”

Step 1: Is it a Cop Out to make a throwback to the ’80s buddy cop comedy instead of doing something original? Maybe, but at least it’ll make you laugh out loud a few times.

Step 2: Tell me if you heard this one before: Two veteran NY cops, Jimmy Munroe (Bruce Willis) and Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan), who’ve been partners forever and who like to do the whole good cop/bad cop thing when they interrogate suspects, get chewed out by their boss and suspended for destroying property in a stake out/chase that goes awry. But that doesn’t stop them, oh no. They end up involved in catching a crazy, badass Mexican drug lord (Weeds‘ Guillermo Diaz) with the two other, more straight-and-narrow detectives (Kevin Pollack and Adam Brody), all while trying to recover a stolen baseball card worth thousands to Jimmy – his only means to pay for his daughter’s wedding.

Step 3: Realize it’s all too familiar – except for maybe that last part about Jimmy and his daughter’s wedding – so much so that you feel like you’ve actually gone back 25 years and stepped onto a set of Beverly Hills Cop or Lethal Weapon, with the bad ’80s techno soundtrack and everything. I’m sure this is all intentional on Kevin Smith’s part, who – for the first time in his career – is only the director for hire. Yet, even if he didn’t write it, Cop Out has Smith’s paw prints all over it, which in this case, is a good thing since Smith clearly loves the genre and pays outrageous homage to it.

Step 4: Laugh, if you want to. There are definitely some hilarious bits – many you’ve already seen in the trailer, but a few more you haven’t. The always good Willis plays it straight for the most part, while the often annoying Morgan spews his lines in a rapid fire, spittle-filled delivery. The two make an unusual pairing, without some of that deep-seated camaraderie of, say, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, but Willis and Morgan make it work as best they can. I’ve never been a huge fan of the 30 Rock star – and Cop Out doesn’t really change those sentiments – but I do give Morgan some credit for a few of the film’s laughs. I attribute most of my LOL moments, however, to Seann William Scott, who kills it as an irritating thief into Parkour. He steals every scene he is in.

Level of difficulty in watching Cop Out: Not too hard. While Cop Out certainly couldn’t be considered stellar entertainment, it also doesn’t pretend to be anything else but what it is: a sometimes riotous, mostly silly buddy cop flick.

How to Wake “Sleeping Beauty”

Here’s an interesting trailer to the documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty — about how Walt Disney Animation came back from the brink of extinction in the early 1980s, with the release of The Little Mermaid, to having huge success for the next 10 years.

I’m thinking Disney may need some other kind of miracle now since they are sort of back in the crapper again.

How to Cast: Taylor Lautner

In anything, apparently. This hotter than hot young Twilight lad has got Hollywood clamoring for him. The latest scuttlebutt from Variety is that Lionsgate has paid big bucks for Lautner’s next gig, Abduction, a thriller about a young man who discovers his own baby picture on a missing persons website. There was apparently a heated bidding war over the spec script from writer Shawn Christensen, with Lionsgate shelling out the most cash. Lautner’s recently developed production company Tailor Made Prods. (get it?) will also be co-producing. Enjoy it, Taylor and be smart. LEARN. Because it can all end if you make bad movies.

In other casting news: Seann William Scott and director/writer Kevin Smith are teaming up for Hit Somebody, Cinematical reports. It’s about a hockey player who’s better at slamming guys than playing the game (hmmm, sounds a little like Tooth Fairy). But since Smith is passionate about the sport, it could be a natural fit for him. God knows he needs more of those. There’s also talk Scott might reprise his defining role as Stifler, from the American Pie series. He told Coming Soon, “I’ve been talking to them about it and there’s a possibility. We came up with an awesome idea and I’m kind of at the point where I’m already known as that character forever anyways. As much as I want to do a part like Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds, I did American Pie three times and then versions of that in ten other movies. If it makes sense and if it makes people laugh than maybe.” Good luck with that.

Cutie Jeffery Dean Morgan of Watchmen fame is set to do a film with Sam Worthington of Avatar fame called The Fields. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Morgan will star as a detective transplanted from New York, while Worthington will portray a local investigator probing a series of unsolved murders in industrial wastelands surrounding Gulf Coast refineries, where as many as 70 bodies have turned up over the past two decades. Together they wage a war against the unknown assailants. Ahhhh, tense.

And finally, Al Pacino and Channing Tatum will go toe-to-toe in Son of No One about a young cop, who is assigned to a precinct in the working class neighborhood where he grew up, with an old secret surfacing and threatening to destroy his life and family, says the Reporter. Sounds all-too familiar to me, but I’ll see hunky Tatum in just about anything.

How to Make Cash: Go to Shutter Island

Scorsese and DiCaprio hit it again. As the movies released start getting better, we’ve got our second score in a few weeks with Shutter Island, which took the top spot from last week’s Valentine’s Day.

Here is the top five at the box office this weekend:

1. NEW! Shutter Island (Paramount) - $40.2 mil; 2,991 theaters; $13,440 PT
2. Valentine’s Day (Warner Bros.) - $17.1 mil; 3,665 theaters; $4,682 PT; $87.4 cume
3. Avatar (Fox) - $16 mil; 2,581 theaters; $6,238 PT; $687.8 mil cume
4. Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (Fox) - $15.3 mil; 3,396 theaters; $4,505 PT $58.7 mil cume
5. The Wolfman (Universal) - $9.8 mil; 3,223 theaters; $3,055 PT; $50.3 mil cume

Slowly but surely the movies are getting better and bigger. I think holding Shutter Island‘s release date until now (it was supposed to open last October) may have been a smart move since the movie gained some anticipation in those months. Could it have been an Oscar contender? Perhaps. The acting is certainly good enough and the film’s aesthetics are top-notch, so it could have had a chance at snagging some nods. But it seems like the studio didn’t have enough faith and wanted to open it with less competition — and obviously, it paid off.

This upcoming weekend isn’t AS strong, but movie-going peeps might be into a buddy cop flick with Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan in Cop Out. OR they might be into zombie movies with the horror film The Crazies. Either way, it’s all just gearing up for the Mar. 5 release of Alice in Wonderland, which should open huge. How huge, though? Anyone want to take a guess? I’m going to say between $70-$80 million. That’s high, I know, but I think audiences are ready for a tentpole movie.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with the trailer for The Crazies, cause that’s just the kind zombie-lovin’ gal I am:

How to Watch: “Shutter Island”

Step 1: Creep you out. Like it or not, director Martin Scorsese uses his Shutter Island to mess with your brain – on all levels – and mostly succeeds in his endeavor.

Step 2: Create a creepy environ. Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island zeroes in on Federal Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio), who – when the film opens – is on his way to Boston’s Ashecliffe Hospital, a facility for the criminally insane, located on a remote island off the New England coastline. A patient has gone missing, so Daniels and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are sent in to investigate. Except when they get there, everything immediately seems wonky – from the harsh terrain to the mysterious doctors to the hard-ass guards to the creepy crazies skulking around. Trying to put the pieces together, Daniels soon believes the facility may somehow be involved in a government conspiracy, all while being haunted himself by horrible walking nightmares from his tragic past. He’d better solve this thing fast, so he can get off this god-forsaken rock – or suffer the consequences.

Step 3: Add some creepy characters. Scorsese once again guides his muse DiCaprio in another excellent performance, as the beleaguered Marshal, trying to solve a case while being chased by his own horrifying demons. The character has had some tough times, and DiCaprio expertly carries all the heartache on his shoulders. Daniels is really such a sad man. The rest of the cast also supports him beautifully, including: Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow, as the hospital’s good doctor/bad doctor duo; Ruffalo as the almost too-understanding partner; Michelle Williams as Daniels’ lost wife; and brief but memorable appearances from Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Hayley and Ted Levine.

Step 4: Stir up all the creepy elements. Of course, Shutter Island‘s real draw is Scorsese’s skillful direction. His choices are mostly masterful but sometimes slightly annoying. For example, the director has a thing for playing up the soundtrack in scenes, to enhance the psychological tension and drama, I suppose – something he also did with Cape Fear – but it’s more distracting than anything else. Shutter Island also drags a little in its pacing, but once Scorsese twists the screws and peels the layers back, you’re completely engrossed and horrified by the proceedings. It also has a lot to do with Lehane’s original narrative. Like his other similar themed books Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island deals with violence against children in a deep-seated, personal way. One has to wonder what the hell happened to Lehane when he was a kid to make him keep writing about it.

Level of difficulty in watching Shutter Island: only hard because of the subject matter. Shutter Island will still stick with you long after its ended.

How Edward Norton Plays Twins

He should have done this AGES ago, but the talented actor finally plays twins in what looks to be a pretty hilarious crime dramedy Leaves of Grass. Check it:

Directed by actor Tim Blake Nelson, this little gem made the festival circuit last year and finally nabbed a U.S. release date April 2. Definitely on the list.

How Locke Is “Lost”

LOST! God, I really do love this show — and last night’s episode “The Man with the Plan” was a doozy — focusing on the dead John Locke (who finally got his final resting place six feet under), the Smokey Monster/Fake Locke (who has to be the Cain in the Cain and Abel story), and what EW’s Jeff Jensen calls the “Sideways” Locke, or the Locke living in that alternate reality in which he’s with Helen, he gets fired, gets a break from self-assured Hurley and ends up substitute teaching and meeting, of all people, a nerdy Ben! Read Jensen’s complete recap here.

I think there’s a definite good vs. evil thing going on, a la Stephen King’s The Stand. We already know Lost creators Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof love, LOVE King (and he returns the favor), so it makes sense they are setting something similar up. I’m just wondering how and when the Sideways world and the Lostie world will collide.