Category: Cinema

Hard Knock Lives.


Following on the heels of Jim Kirk and Jay Gatsby, there’s plenty more action in the trailer bin this week. First up, Hugh Jackman’s Logan heads off to Japan in the James Mangold’s The Wolverine, with Brian Tee, Will Yun Lee, Svetlana Khodchenkova, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tao Okamoto, Rila Fukushima, and Famke Janssen.

I’ve seen about half of the first Wolverine movie twice now on two different plane trips, and wasn’t impressed. Still, Marvel’s been on a roll lately, and with Mangold in the director’s chair and a shift in scenery, this could potentially make for some quality summer air-conditioning.


Elsewhere in the comic book world, Hit-Girl et al face some Freaks & Geeks-style dilemmas in the first trailer for Kick-Ass 2. (Note: This is a red-band trailer, so NSFW — mainly because Hit-Girl still swears like a sailor.)

The first outing was a great time at the movies, so this one has my ticket even if Matthew Vaughn and Nicolas Cage have left the premises. I have high hopes for Jim Carrey, reportedly the best thing about The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, as Colonel Stars and Stripes.


And while we’re watching people play super-hero dress-up on the red band frequency, roid-raging bodybuilders Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony Mackie try to make crime pay in the red-band trailer for Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain, i.e. Michael Bay’s apparent stab at a Coen-brother crime noir. (This one’s more NSFW, for all the Bayhem reasons you’d expect.)

There’s very little chance I pay money to see this film, partly because the only Michael Bay movie I’ve ever been entertained by was The Island, and mainly because I’m getting a little sick of films trying to mainstream torture of late. Still, this is a highly likable cast, and dubious credit where due: As with Bad Boys 2, nobody brings cartoonish Grand Theft Auto: Vice City-style debauchery to life quite like Mr. Bay.


Update: I meant to post this yesterday with the others, but forgot — and that’s how much of an impression this trailer made on me. Nonetheless, Brad Pitt and Mireille Enos struggle to balance family life and the zombie apocalypse in the trailer for Marc Forster’s loose adaptation of Max Brooks’ World War Z, also with Bryan Cranston, David Morse, James Badge Dale, and Matthew Fox. Eh, maybe.

Do Green Lights Cause Lens Flare?


“My life, Old Sport, has got to be like this.” Two new TV spots hit for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, now only a little over a month away. As I’ve said before, this looks like it’s either going to be amazing or a total train wreck.

Also in the bin of late, Kirk steps up after a few anti-Federation terrorist attacks in the newest trailer for J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek: Into Darkness. Man, Benny Cumberbatch talks a lot of smack, doesn’t he? Well, if that’s what it takes to get into Smaug shape, so be it.

A Song of Ice and Flynn.


Less than a fortnight before the first half of A Storm of Swords gets its close-up, HBO releases an extended trailer for Game of Thrones Season 3. Looks solid as usual, although biting Daft Punk from the very memorable Tron: Legacy teaser is an odd choice.

Of course, if this TRON-Tyrion mash-up whetted your appetite for GRRM retro-style — Thatcher! Jazzercise! Lipgloss! — look no further than Game of Thrones‘s mid-90’s-style credits, not unlike the Firefly one making the rounds awhile back.

Get Bin Mandarin.


The Iron Man 3 bandwagon continues to roll on with the full trailer for Shane Black’s third installment of the franchise. Clearly, Kingsley’s Mandarin is going at least quarter-Bin-Laden…So will Tony have to team up with Jessica Chastain and venture back down the torture well, then?

Iron’s Bane.

Ben Kingsley lounges as Iron Man arch-nemesis The Mandarin in the spiffy character poster for Shane Black’s Iron Man 3, due out this April. The rushed-to-the-screens second installment obviously didn’t live up to the promise of the first (and worse, it wasted Sam Rockwell.) But this one could right the ship, and I’m glad to see Guy Pearce and Rebecca Hall joining the story as well.


A Star is Grown.

“Every male movie star has a different magic number—an age at which his attractiveness and ability and maturity all come together. Before that, a star may not feel fully formed; after that, if he has talent, he seems to become more assured, complicated, and real with every passing year.”

“Tom Hanks’s ideal age was about 36 — when he made Philadelphia and Forrest Gump…Clooney’s ideal age seems to have been about 45 — the Syriana–Michael Clayton period. He needed the gray hair and extra years because his whole ‘I’ve done things with women you only dream of’ vibe required some visible baggage—creases, texture, a little sag…Tom Cruise is about Clooney’s age; unfortunately, Cruise’s ideal age was about 25 — the Top Gun-Color of Money moment of maximum cocksureness.”

In GQ, Mark Harris surveys the state of the Hollywood Leading Man in 2013. “The dust clears. We survey the landscape. Channing Tatum is now a movie star. And Taylor Kitsch is not. How did this transition, not particularly predictable a year ago, happen for one of them? Why did it fail to happen for the other?”

Djettison Django?

“Basically, Django Unchained is a B movie. A damn fine B movie, but still a B movie…Despite its slavery setting, Django Unchained isn’t an exploration of the subject. It offers no critical insights into the circumstances, no nuances exploring the political realities (as Lincoln does). In the end, slavery is a prop to excite audience emotion and motivate the action.”

Continuing his recent renaissance as a cultural critic, Kareem explains why the otherwise entertaining Django shouldn’t be an Oscar contender. I agree with the take-films-seriously sentiment, but, at least as far as Oscar goes, that ship sailed decades ago (and he’s too charitable to the excellent-but-also-flawed Lincoln.)

Also making the round today, Christoph Waltz and the SNL gang’s Djesus Uncrossed. A funny idea almost redeemed by Waltz, but as with so much SNL fare the execution is less clever than it should be.

Llewyn Davis’ 115th Dream.

The Coens’ Inside Llewyn Davis, whose trailer I posted a few weeks ago, gets a domestic distributor in CBS Films. “[T]he film stars Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund, F. Murray Abraham and Justin Timberlake.” That’s Isaac — the best thing about a couple of underwhelming films so far — above, and Mulligan and JT below.