Tag: Stanley Tucci

The Mad and the Sinful.

A few other trailers that popped up via Comic-Con ’14…


Reborn as Tom Hardy, Australia’s most notable post-apocalyptic survivor looks to need a hand or three from Charlize Theron in the first trailer for George Miller’s long-anticipated Mad Max: Fury Road, also with Nicholas Hoult, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and Zoe Kravitz. Eh, ok…looks like The Road Warrior with better production values.


Meanwhile, the survivors of the enjoyable first film look to go all Smokin’ Aces on Powers Boothe in a new red-band trailer for Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, with Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Bruce Willis, Jaime King, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Eva Green, Dennis Haysbert, Martin Csoskas, Christopher Lloyd, Ray Liotta, Juno Temple, Stacy Keach, Christopher Meloni, Jeremy Piven, and Lady Gaga. Not particularly inclined to throw any more money at Frank Miller, but the first one was good fun.


Update: One more: Julianne Moore and the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman briefly discuss the political ramifications of one Katniss Everdeen in the most recent teaser for Francis Lawrence’s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Pt. I, with Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Donald Sutherland, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Sam Claflin, Elizabeth Banks, Jeffrey Wright, Stanley Tucci, Toby Jones, Gwendoline Christie, and Natalie Dormer. Alrighty then – Not bad, but I thought the two recent addresses by President Snow were savvier (and creepier) marketing.

Smorgasbord of Vengeance.

Lots of scores to settle and cold dishes served in the trailer bin of late…

Antebellum musician Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) finds himself way down on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon line in our first look at Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, also with Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Michael Fassbender, Paul Giamatti, Lupita Nyong’o, Sarah Paulson, Brad Pitt, and Alfre Woodard.

Some strange musical cues here, including the themes from Pearl Harbor and The Wolfman (the latter used to better effect in the original, still-creepy Tinker Tailor teaser). In any case, I liked Hunger and Shame less than most, but I’d be up to give this a go.

Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em: Josh Brolin discovers to his dismay that he can check in but never leave in the red-band trailer for Spike Lee’s remake of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, also with Elizabeth Olsen, Sharlto Copley, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Imperioli, Lance Reddick, and James Ransone. I’m still trying to un-watch the original — some things involving octopi and tongues I wish I never saw in that there film.

One good remake deserves another: Deserve’s still got nothing to do with it as Ken Watanabe fills Clint Eastwood’s shoes for Sang-il Lee’s Yurusarezaru mono, the Japanese remake of Unforgiven, also with Akira Emoto, Koichi Sato, and Yuya Yagira. From The Seven Samurai to The Magnificent Seven, there’s a long and fertile history for this sort of cultural exchange, so I’d watch it.

What I likely won’t be watching is Sergei Bodrov’s fantasy epic Seventh Son, based on a series I haven’t heard of called The Wardstone Chronicles, even if it does have Jeff and Maude Lebowski operating on opposite sides of the ball. (Between this and R.I.P.D., Bridges seems to be in full “paying for an extension to my house” mode these days.)

I thought at first this might be based on Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising, but then I remembered they already made a lousy adaptation of that a few years ago. In any case, also along for the ride: Ben Barnes, Kit Harington, Alicia Vikander, Djimon Hounsou, Jason Scott Lee, and Antje Traue.

When bad things happen to his brother (Casey Affleck), Christian Bale goes vigilante to take down the local ne’er-do-well (Woody Harrelson) in the first trailer for Scott Cooper’s Out of the Furnace, also with Zoe Saldana, Willem Dafoe, Forrest Whitaker, and Sam Shepard. (TL;DR: Bale meets Death Wish meets Winter’s Bone.) Alrighty then.

When bad things happen to his brother (Matt Barnes), Ryan Gosling goes vigilante to take down the local ne’er-do-well (Vithaya Pansringarm) in the newest trailer for Nicholas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives.

Along with presumably another hyper-catchy soundtrack like Refn and Gosling’s Drive, this also has the added benefit of Kristin Scott Thomas apparently doing her “Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast/Ralph Fiennes in In Bruges” turn. As with Oldboy, I expect this to be hyper-violent, tho’.

And finally Wong Kar-Wai, Yuen Woo Ping, Tony Leung, and Zhang Ziyi band together to tell the story of Ip Man (again) in the newest trailer for The Grandmaster. This still looks to me like an unnecessary remake of the third Matrix movie, but you can’t fault the pedigree involved.

Update: One more down the pike today: Benedict Cumberbatch channels Julian Assange, and has some Social Network-style angst with his partner Daniel Bruhl, in the first trailer for Bill Condon’s The Fifth Estate, with Anthony Mackie, David Thewlis, Alicia Vikander, Peter Capaldi, Carice van Houten, Dan Stevens, Stanley Tucci and Laura Linney. Linney’s smarmy “truth, justice, and the American way” line is wince-inducing, but otherwise this could be promising.

Update 2: Blanchett, meet Blanche DuBois? After Madoff-y husband Alec Baldwin becomes only the second person in America to be prosecuted for misdealings during the financial crisis, Cate Blanchett learns how the other half lives in the first trailer for Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, with Sally Hawkins, Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Dice Clay(?), Michael Stuhlbarg, and (hopefully) the Woodster’s new best friend, Louis C.K.

Can’t Start a Fire Without a Spark.


Katniss and Peeta discover winning isn’t everything in the first teaser for Francis Lawrence’s Catching Fire, with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sam Claflin, Jena Malone, Jeffrey Wright, and Amanda Plummer joining Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Banks, Liam Hemsworth, Stanley Tucci, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Paula Malcomson, Willow Shields, and Toby Jones.

I thought the first film was an admirable attempt at recreating the book that was mostly hamstrung by the fact that we were no longer privy to Katniss’s interior monologue. And the second volume, with its straining for a reason to get back in the arena, is probably the weakest of the trilogy. Still, this is a very promising teaser – It’s fun to watch Sutherland and Hoffman, two pros of different generations, adding heft to the proceedings.

The Con Is On.

It’s not exactly a new Coen Brothers movie — that would be the forthcoming Inside Llewyn Davis, with Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, Garret Hedlund, F. Murray Abraham, and, of, course John Goodman. But it is the next best thing — a Coen-scripted movie. Three character posters emerge for Michael Hoffman’s remake of Gambit, with Colin Firth, Alan Rickman, Cameron Diaz, Sir Tom Courtenay, Stanley Tucci and Cloris Leachman. “Gambit centers on Harry Deane (Firth), a London art curator who enlists a Texas Rodeo Queen (Diaz) in a scheme to con the richest man in England.” The 1966 original, FWIW, starred Michael Caine, Shirley MacLaine, and Herbert Lom.

We Need a Hero.


When Hal Jordan took a bullet for Steve Rogers by being the inevitable middling comic book movie of the season, the path was open for Marvel to go three-for-three this year. And, hey, they pulled it off! Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class is still the most fun and self-assured of this year’s comic book crop, but Joe Johnston’s Captain America: The First Avenger is another solidly entertaining summer outing, and as good a Cap movie as Thor was a Thor movie. In the end, I probably preferred this film of the latter two, both for its four-color propaganda poster flavor and because I just prefer Cap to the Asgardian — but it’s really a toss-up.

If anything, The First Avenger is more faithful to its titular character, since Johnston, unlike Branagh in Thor, plays this period piece straight, without the likes of Kat Dennings and Clark Gregg providing a security blanket of 21st century irony. Speaking of which, Chris Evans has already shown he exudes star presence in movies like Sunshine and Scott Pilgrim, and he was easily the best thing about otherwise bland comic-book flicks like Fantastic Four and The Losers. But, in the past, he’s always skated by on his snark, and I was worried Steve Rogers might be turned into a self-aware, wisecracking Spiderman sort to accommodate that. But, no, Captain America here is noble, earnest, and maybe a tiny bit dull — exactly as he should be.

In this incarnation as in the original comic, Steve Rogers is a puny kid from Brooklyn whose spirit is willing and flesh is weak: Even as his best friend James “Bucky” Barnes (Sebastian Stans), and seemingly every other able-bodied American male in the borough, head off to fight Hitler and Japan in the Big W-W-I-I, Rogers is rejected from one recruiting office after another for being a tiny, wimpy asthmatic. That is, until a German emigre named Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) overhears Rogers again trying to serve his country for the umpteenth time. Perhaps, Erskine decides, this brave little man might be the perfect candidate for America’s top-secret Super Soldier program, conveniently headquartered in New York City. (Not to be confused with the Manhattan Project.)

It had better work, since Nazi Germany already has a Super Soldier of its own. That would be Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving), a.k.a. The Red Skull, head of Hitler’s deep-science division HYDRA. And, while Hitler wastes time “digging around in the desert” (heh), Schmidt has located the all-powerful Cosmic Cube in Eastern Europe, where it had been under guard by Mr Filch/Walder Frey. Now, with his right-hand man Arnim Zola (Toby Jones), Schmidt threatens to use this powerful device to (wait for it, wait for it) take over the entire world. Can anyone stop his dastardly plan? Anyone, anyone? Rogers?

So, ya, pretty standard set-up, of course. Along the hero’s journey, Captain America suffers through boot camp (led by Tommy Lee Jones, who’s phoning it in but who at least isn’t doing his Two-Face schtick.) He gains a costume, a shield, a squad (the Howling Commandoes), and the attentions of a plucky and beautiful British agent, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell of Cassandra’s Dream.) And he learns, more than once, that war isn’t a USO show, and that with great power comes great sacrifice…but let’s save those spoilers for The Avengers.

Speaking of that forthcoming super-team, there’s plenty of chum in the water in The First Avenger for Marvel fans, from Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper here, not Roger Sterling) to the aforementioned Cosmic Cube to a great first shot of Jones’ Zola, which pays homage to his four-color incarnation. When it comes to real, not comic-book, history, however, The First Avenger is obviously a bit fast and loose with the era. Several years before Truman desegregates, the Howling Commandoes are a multiracial brigade, and in fact the entire US Army seems integrated. And while Peggy has to put up with some macho bravado, she still seems unencumbered by the sexism of the period.

Still, given that this is a movie about a guy wrapped in Old Glory who continually punches Hitler in the face, the rose-tinted ahistoricism didn’t bother me all that much. Captain America is a propaganda vehicle by design — arguably the best section in the movie has him being taken on a Flags of our Fathers-style USO tour. And like Superman’s commitment to truth, justice, and the American Way, Cappy has always been more about who we as a nation should be than who we actually are, so I found myself more willing than usual to forgive the film some well-intentioned anachronisms. If anything, I’m glad The First Avenger didn’t choose to make Cap an overly militaristic hero. Instead, he’s a unassuming kid from Brooklyn, given great power, whose patriotism mainly consists of just trying to do the right thing.

Agent With Shield.


Among the trailers I’ve missed in recent weeks is this — arguably the most promising-looking comic book film in the summer of Thor, Green Lantern, and X-Men: First Class — the teaser trailer for Joe Johnston’s Captain America: The First Avenger, with Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci, Sebastian Stans, Toby Jones, and, above, Hugo Weaving looking pitch-perfect as the Red Skull. Granted, Johnston’s The Wolfman was terribad, but I’m holding out hope for this one (and to be fair, Johnston was basically a hired gun on Wolfman, coming in four weeks before shooting to replace Mark Romanek.)

The Sweet Hereafter.

That other “vaguely religious-themed movie” I mentioned I saw between The Book of Eli and Legion? That would be Peter Jackson’s well-meaning, meandering adaptation of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. And in all honesty, given the atrocious reviews it received, The Lovely Bones was better and more enjoyable than I had feared going in. Still, it works better as What Dreams May Come-style eye candy than as a movie on its own terms.

Put simply, the main problem here is the source material. Even more than John Hillcoat’s take on The Road, which I thought was an admirable adaptation of a so-so tome, The Lovely Bones the movie is, imho, about a good a film as you could make from such a lousy and overrated book. Now, I understand Sebold’s novel has spoken to a lot of people. But I am not one of those people. I found it to be ghastly, overwritten. Oprahesque nonsense, and finishing the durned thing felt like a chore. And even with PJ at the helm, sadly, The Lovely Bones remains several hours of mostly needless despair-pr0n.

If you haven’t read the book, the gist is this: It’s early December, 1973, and our 14-year-old narrator, Susie Salmon (here, a very good Saiorse Ronan, formerly of Atonement), one day makes the mistake of following her creepy neighbor (Stanley Tucci) into his newly-constructed evil underground lair. There, she is raped and murdered. (This grisly event takes us to about page 20, iirc.) Susie goes to Heaven — or a Heaven-like Limbo, in any event — while her family grieves and gnashes and laments and wails for 300 pages. Oh, and eventually there’s some ghost sex. Yes, really.

Fair enough, but how do they gnash and wail? Well, Ma Salmon (Rachel Weisz) refuses to deal with the loss and its consequences — She turns Susie’s room into an untouched tomb, has an escapist affair with the detective on the case (Michael Imperioli), and eventually runs off to pick grapes somewhere. Pa Salmon (Mark Wahlberg) handles it even worse — The murder upsets his primal sense of order about the universe, and he obsessively tracks down the killer on his own for years to come. Grandma (Susan Sarandon) moves in to try to fill the void left by the distant parents, when she’s sober. And Susie’s siblings, Lindsey (Rose McIver) and Buckley (Christian Thomas Ashdale), grow up and live their lives, although Lindsey has some sneaking suspicions about the creep next door…

Peter Jackson and his LotR writing team (Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens) have made a few changes here and there. Most notably (and very thankfully), Susie’s rape is now only vaguely implied rather than shown. (To those who question this change, I’m with Ronan: What in blue blazes is wrong with you?) Here, Susie’s murder is quite gracefully handled, although I could’ve done with less spider-toying-with-the-fly type stuff before the horrible deed is committed. And Ma Salmon’s romance with the detective is gone — now it’s just occasional long looks. Otherwise, they follow what I remember of the book pretty closely here.

Which is a lot of the problem. Like the book, The Lovely Bones is mostly inchoate and shapeless. As in the novel, there’s no real through-line or sense of momentum in the story. It moves without purpose — Time passes, stuff happens. Look, Susie is playing in her beautiful heaven…oh wait, she’s sad…hey, let’s have a grandma montage…ok, Tucci is still creepy…hey, look, more heaven….oooh, Marky Mark is on the warpath…and so on. I suspect folks who complain about the last thirty minutes of Return of the King will not have much fun with this one — the whole movie has that languid, meandering, “oh and another thing” feel to it.

That being said, The Lovely Bones is quite pretty to look at. (Thanks, Team WETA!) Despite the awfulness of the subject matter, Bones has a very crisp and colorful presentation that soothes the eye even as the story bogs down. And the performances are all pretty good here — especially Ronan — with one minor exception. His Oscar nod aside, Stanley Tucci is probably the weak link here. Like Peter Sarsgaard in An Education, he’s way too much of an off-putting mouth-breather to take seriously. Playing the killer as more sociable and self-assured — like Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu in the original version of The Vanishing — would’ve added a lot more menace to this thankless character.

So, given what he had to work with here, I thought Peter Jackson et al actually turned in a pretty quality product. (The real problem was trying to adapt Sebold’s book in the first place.) So, no harm, no foul, so to speak: The Lovely Bones is by no means a bad movie — It just sorta is. If you really want to see Peter Jackson tackle a story involving fantastical visions, teenage girls, and unspeakable acts of murder, I’d recommend his earlier classic, Heavenly Creatures. As for Bones, my thoughts on it are pretty much akin to my sneaking suspicions about a film I haven’t yet seen, Lee Daniels’ Precious. In this world, sadly, really horrible things happen to good and innocent people every single day…but that doesn’t mean we have to wallow in the fact.

Heavenly Creature.

A murdered Saiorse Ronan settles into her own personal Heaven — as her family languishes in purgatory — in the long-awaited trailer for Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, also with Mark Wahlberg (not Ryan Gosling), Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Rose McIver, Amanda Michalka, and Michael Imperioli. I wasn’t a fan of the Alice Sebold novel, to be honest, but I’m very curious to see what PJ & Fran (& Brian Eno) have come up with here.

Being There.

In the trailer bin, Geoffrey Rush channels Inspector Clouseau, Dr. Strangelove, and countless others in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, also featuring Charlize Theron (Britt Ekland), John Lithgow (Blake Edwards), Stanley Tucci (Kubrick), and Emily Watson (Long-Suffering Wife.) Well, it looks like more fun than Shine.