The makers of Texas Chainsaw — or Texas Chainsaw 3D, as it's being widely advertised — would like to you forget all about nearly 40 years' worth of sequels, prequels, remakes and reboots, and pretend that only a couple of decades or so have passed since the events depicted way back in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Helmer John Luessenhop (Takers) and a small army of scripters go back to the bloody roots of the long-running franchise to concoct a better-than-average horror-thriller that relies more on potent suspense than graphic savagery or stereoscopic tricks. Don't be surprised if it scores a B.O. killing. more »
Scoring more than $160 million in three weeks to become China's highest-grossing domestic film ever, Lost in Thailand is a boisterous, joyously hokey comedy that connects with auds through its explicit desire to please. Helmed by lead actor Xu Zheng, the $2.2 million-budgeted follow-up to 2010's modest hit Lost on Journey is unexpectedly well honed for a debut feature. Peppering this feel-good road movie with the perkier thrills of a cat-and-mouse chase, Xu draws sparks from a talented comic trio cast as three Beijingers on an accident-prone journey to Chiangmai. Boffo B.O. should stoke offshore ancillary interest. more »
Music not only serves as the subject but informs the very fabric of Not Fade Away, David Chase's savvy '60s-set feature film debut. Aided immeasurably by his keen ear for dialogue, Chase filters a suddenly tumultuous, transformative decade through the restrictive prism of conservative suburbia in this story of a New Jersey boy's coming of age, as political instability, class awareness and rock 'n' roll break in waves over the still-inchoate consciousness of several friends trying to form a band. Though starless, save for James Gandolfini's knockout supporting perf, this dynamic pic should resonate with auds countrywide upon its Dec. 21 release. more »
The "D" is silent, though the name of Django Unchained's eponymous gunslinger sounds like a retaliatory whip across the face of white slaveholders, offering an immensely satisfying taste of antebellum empowerment packaged as spaghetti-Western homage. more »
As a faithful rendering of a justly beloved musical, Les Misérables will more than satisfy the show's legions of fans. Even so, director Tom Hooper and the producers have taken a number of artistic liberties with this lavish bigscreen interpretation. more »
Strictly for auds who enjoy the grisly Grand Guignol spectacle of the Saw franchise but could do without the moral lectures and melodramatic mythology, The Collection is an energetic but utterly weightless exercise in slice-and-dice cinema. more »
Not so much a traditional sequel as a hallucinogenic riff on an entire franchise, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning plays like the fevered fantasy of a die-hard genre fan who requires only the haziest sort of dream logic to connect extended sequences of hand-to-hand, foot-to-ass, machete-to-arm and bullet-to-head combat. more »
Running a dense two hours thirty, before credits, Zero Dark Thirty reunites director Kathryn Bigelow with reporter-turned-scenarist Mark Boal in re-creating the hunt for Osama bin Laden, rejecting nearly every cliche one might expect from a Hollywood treatment of the subject. Far more ambitious than The Hurt Locker, yet nowhere near so tripwire-tense, this procedure-driven, decade-spanning docudrama nevertheless rivets for most of its running time by focusing on how one female CIA agent with a far-out hunch was instrumental in bringing down America's most wanted fugitive. Spinning the pic as a thriller, Sony could beat the 9/11-movie curse when the Dec. 19 limited release goes wide in January. more »
Given the off-the-charts camp factor in the tantalizing prospect of Lindsay Lohan playing Elizabeth Taylor, Lifetime might prize descriptions of Liz & Dick as "trashy" or "awful." So the network might harbor mixed emotions in reading that the movie about Taylor and her tumultuous romance with Richard Burton is actually pretty good, all things considered, despite an inevitably episodic nature and one glaringly unnecessary device. Such fact-based TV movies are rare these days, but this post-Thanksgiving telecast is just hammy enough to generate numbers rivaling the hordes of paparazzi that dogged the not-always-happy couple. more »
Movieline is proud to kick off what we anticipate will be a fruitful relationship with our sister publication Variety: Beginning this week, we'll be hand-picking film reviews by the show business bible's respected critics and presenting them for our readers' enjoyment. And what better way to get this party started than with a movie starring Charlie Sheen: Roman Coppola's A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, which debuted at the Rome Film Festival.— Frank DiGiacomo more »
Variety, the old-media show-business trade publication founded in 1905, has been acquired by Movieline's new-media parent company, Penske Media Corp. (PMC) The deal was announced today by PMC Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jay Penske and Variety's seller, Reed Information, a division of Reed Elsevier. For some insight into what the deal will mean, check out this report by Deadline's Mike Fleming, who spent 20 years at Variety before joining PMC. The announcement of the sale can be found after the jump. more »
It's not quite Willy Wonka's suit, and it should probably belong to the young actor who wore it onscreen, but it's a good cause, so hey: "Focus Features is donating an original costume from its acclaimed new movie Moonrise Kingdom, directed by Wes Anderson, to Variety the Children’s Charity of New York for Variety New York’s online auction." Read on for more from Focus's announcement and the auction site CharityBuzz.
more »
