12 Years a Slave Trailer

UK Release Date: 24th January 2014

Stars: Steve McQueen (director), Chiwetel Ejiofor, Brad Pitt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano, Michael Fassbender, Scoot McNairy

Plot: In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery.

Films about slavery seem to be becoming the new Western. Every year there are now high profile stories of slavery being told on the big screen and 2014 will be no different with Steve McQueen gunning for Oscar glory. Perhaps the most noticeable thing about this trailer is in fact Brad Pitt’s beard, just for the sheer ridiculousness of how it looks… but that might just be me.

However, if you can look past Pitt’s beard what you’ll find is this really touching, almost unbelievable true story about one man’s descent into slavery and his fight against it. Chiwetel Ejiodor is not a name that everyone will be familiar with but he has starred in a huge number of films over the years and finally takes centre stage in a star studded cast.

Established stars Pitt and Fassbender, who looks like he’s playing an incredibly nasty piece of work and doing it so well, join rising star Paul Dano and the incredible Scoot McNairy who I am a big fan of!

Prisoners Trailer

UK Release Date: 4th October 2013

Stars: Denis Villeneuve (director), Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Terrence Howard, Maria Bello, Melissa Leo, Paul Dano.

Plot: A Boston man kidnaps the person he suspects is behind the disappearance of his young daughter and her best friend.

Even if you watch just the first seconds of the trailer without reading the synopsis, you can tell that Prisoners is not going to be a film that makes you cry with happiness. Watch it all and you’ll soon realise that what Prisoners is planning on doing is making you sit there pulling your hair out begging Hugh Jackman not to do everything that he does.

With coming up to seven films as Wolverine, it’s easy to forget that Jackman is an incredibly versatile actor. And with an October release date it looks as though Jackman has Oscar nominations in his sights again as Prisoners seems like a story that is going to resonate with a lot of people and the performances are going to have to be groundbreaking in order to convey such a threatening tale.

Paul Dano must feel a bit of an outcast being as though Jackman, Gyllenhaan, Davis, Howard, and Leo have all either been nominated or won an Oscar, while Bello has two Golden Globe nominations to go with that. However, he is a talented young actor who should hold his own.

Prisoners looks like a journey full of suspense. You get the feeling that there must be a twist to the story at some point. And whatever happens, it seems doubtful that Jackman’s character is going to have a happy ending.

News of the Week (10/10/12) – Bale, Thurman & Hungry Hippos

Let’s get straight into it. American Bullshit. That was the original name of the film that Christian Bale has recently signed on for. The now untitled movie originally had Bale set to lead the ensemble cast but he dropped out, and now he has jumped back into the movie. When Bale dropped out he was replaced with the frankly quite obvious replacement Jeremy Renner. It has been announced that Renner and Bale will now both be in the project so everyone’s a winner! The film also stars Amy Adams and Bradley Cooper and will be directed by David O. Russell who previously worked with Bale on The Fighter.

Paul Dano, fresh from Ruby Sparks and Looper this past month has now signed on to what should be another film that will see positive press and Dano is fast becoming into a very recognisable and reliable face in the world of movies. The latest project he has signed on for is a revenge thriller entitled Prisoners. Prisoners is about a Boston man who kidnaps the person he suspects is behind the disappearance of his young daughter and her best friend. Hugh Jackman will be playing the lead role with Jake Gyllenhaal and Oscar winner Melissa Leo in support, so not half bad casting really.

A movie currently in production that is causing quite a stir is Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac. The reason for all of the attention on this project is because it revolves around a woman beaten up and found in an alley, then cleaned up by a bachelor who finds her and along the way she recounts all the details of her sex life from when it began up until her 50s (why?). And it has been announced that Lars Von Trier wants the sex scenes to be completely real – he wants his cast to ACTUALLY have sex on film. Anyway, this week has seen Uma Thurman sign up to a cast that already includes Stellan Skarsgard, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Shia LaBeouf.

And finally, after all of that casting news there is some absolutely ridiculous news coming out this week that after the unsuccessful Battleships film, Hollwood execs are now planning to turn several other games into big blockbusters. Along with a Monopoly film, which has been in the works for some time now, an Action Man movie is being planned (which should lend itself to the medium more easily than others, perhaps). But the weirdest news is that a Hungry Hippos movie is being planned. It’ll be interesting to see how that one turns out.

Science Fiction at it’s Very Best! Looper Review

“Time travel has not yet been invented. But thirty years from now, it will have been” says Joe, who is himself living in the year 2044 it is worth noting. Joe is a ‘looper’ which means he works for a mafia in Kansas City and the man running the city is from the future. Loopers are people who are hired by the mafia of the future to kill targets sent back in time and dispose of the bodies. There is but one rule: never let your target get away, even if your target is you. So only bad things can come from Joe’s newest target being the future version of himself.

If you get that then you have the very basic knowledge needed to sit down and watch what is most certainly a thinker of a movie. As two of the characters mention throughout the film ‘time travel fries your brain like an egg’ so it is probably best that with already so much going on Looper doesn’t give us a whole definition of time travel for us to get our heads around in one go; instead, information is sort of dripped out to the audience as we go along and it all starts to make sense (providing you don’t go into this with rules about time travel already set in stone in your mind because of other films as time travel does not exist). The way time travel is handled here is very clever.

Anyway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is Joe from 2044 and playing Old Joe is Bruce Willis. It is clear that Joseph Gordon-Levitt put a lot of effort into his performance and did a lot of research on previous Bruce Willis films to be able to act more like his on screen future self. This research combined with the remarkable prosthetics placed on his face make it very easy for the audience to see how the young Joe becomes Old Joe. Joseph Gordon-Levitt doesn’t disappoint and puts in one of his best performances to date, once again showing his versatility while Bruce Willis certainly looks and feels at home once he gets a hand on a machine gun. Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, Jeff Daniels and Noah Segen all provide excellent back up to the main stars. But Looper is stolen by one actor in particular: Pierce Gagnon. At just ten years old Gagnon is absolutely terrific and shows that without a doubt he is one for the future. It is so incredible to see such a young boy put in such an emotional performance; at times harrowing and so often adorable. It is not a performance you will forget any time soon.

The world of Looper is a very different one to the world we live in at the minute and we are given a brilliant introduction to the world via narration provided by Joe. This is a very simple and easy way to place the audience in the centre of the action and be able to comprehend what is happening. Looper is full of thrills, the action is great to watch, the character development is obvious, the character’s themselves are incredibly well created, the special effects are outstanding… everything about Looper is just stand out perfection of the highest order.

Looper, if there is any justice, will become a staple in film history. It is without a doubt one of the greatest science fiction films I have ever seen, the best time travel movie ever made and one of the best films of this year!

My Rating: 10/10.

Ruby Sparks Trailer – Most Exciting Comedy for a Long Time!

UK Release Date: 12th October 2012.

Stars: Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris (directors), Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, Annette Bening, Elliott Gould, Antonio Banderas, Steve Coogan, Chris Messina.

Plot: A novelist struggling with writer’s block finds romance in a most unusual way: by creating a female character he thinks will love him, then willing her into existence.

This trailer had me excited from the very beginning as it features someone who I am very keen to see more of and that is Paul Dano, a very under rated part of the tripod from The Girl Next Door. Ruby Sparks sees him remain in the romantic comedy world and it looks as though this will have just as much fun as The Girl Next Door and could even, dare I say it, be better.

I just think that even in the trailer Ruby Sparks looks funny, it has some real comedy moments and parts that made me laugh out loud: a good sign for a trailer. Hopefully the full length feature will include even more of these moments!

The story is very creative and inventive with a lot of potential for character growth and comedy moments. With a cast that includes several big names and a soundtrack that combines Vampire Weekend and Kaiser Chiefs you have to believe that this is going to be a hit with teenagers and young adults on both sides of the Atlantic. I certainly hope so, I can’t put into words how much I like the trailer, it seems almost perfect! Hopefully you’ll see what I mean when you watch it for yourself.

 

Why I Love… The Girl Next Door

Obviously, I mean the film… I am not about to randomly profess my love on the internet for some girl who lives on my street, that would be stupid. But The Girl Next Door is one of my favourite films and has been ever since the first time I saw it back in 2004. The Girl Next Door is a romantic comedy aimed at a male teenage audience and that genre of film doesn’t usually go down well with the target audience so it has to be something that will make them watch it so what’s the plot? Pretty much every stereotypical teenage boy’s fantasy: a high school boy starts dating a girl only to find out that she is, in fact, a porn star. Brilliant!

All the characters are really well thought out (if not a little stereotypical) but all of them seem to have layers and layers of character if you look for it in the right place. The casting really does go a long way in this film as well because you can’t imagine anyone else in any of the roles. Let’s start with the three high school friends: Matthew Kidman (Emile Hirsch), Eli (Chris Marquette) and Klitz ‘with a k’ (Paul Dano). These three characters encapsulate different three different parts of a teenage boy’s personality. Matthew is the one who is awkwardly and hopelessly romantic who falls in love, but he is also lost in his life and feels that he needs to really find out who he is; Eli is the one who just seems incredibly horny every second of every day and is obsessed with women and pornography; Klitz is the shy, reserved, quiet one who just sort of goes along with the ride rather begrudgingly and together their friendship is absolutely fantastic!

Elisha Cuthbert is Danielle the pornstar and as well as being really attractive Cuthbert really plays on the innocence of her character and her longing to be something more, whilst Timothy Olyphant as Kelly is probably one of my favourite movie villains of all time, he is hilarious! I like the fact his character’s name is Kelly; Kelly’s a girl’s name!

The Girl Next Door is one of the funniest films I have ever seen and I have watched it plenty of times (maybe more than any other film now that I think about it) but it still manages to make me laugh with every joke. There is great verbal humour and physical and Timothy Olyphant’s aggressiveness to the jocks is really funny. There are some absolutely fantastic lines, mainly from Eli, including “take her to a motel and bang her like a beast!”, “I just wanna bang hot chicks!” and the outrageous “I just gotta f**k something!”.  Eli’s phone conversation with Matthew whilst Matthew (rather really pervertedly) watches Danielle get undressed is top comedy too, as well as Matthew’s reaction.

The romantic element to the story holds it’s own against the comedy and it is really wonderful to watch the relationship grown between Matthew and Danielle. They are so perfect for each other; Danielle will push Matthew to be the person he wants to be and Matthew is her escape to the real world and a better life, keeping her on the right track. You can really feel for their relationship as they go through the ups and the downs together.

The end is particularly satisfying. I am a big fan of character development and I think that the majority of characters have completed a full arc in the entirety of the film: Matthew goes off to DC, taking Danielle with him, Eli has become a famous director thanks to the sex education video the group made, Klitz is pretty much the biggest thing in town (that’s a little pun you’ll get if you remember the end of the film) and I really like Kelly’s ending. Kelly on set making the porn movies he loves to receive a box of cigars from Matthew with the famous quote from the film “the juice was worth the squeeze”.

I love The Girl Next Door and everybody else should too!

‘Looper’ Trailer Finally Arrives

UK Release Date: 28th September 2012.

Looper has the potential to be one of the greatest sci-fi films of recent years and after a teaser for the trailer was shown a few days ago we now have the full trailer in all its glory.

The story is thus: Joe is a ‘looper’, an assassin in the present day who works for the mob of the future. In the future, the mob have access to time travel and send people back in time to Joe so that he can kill them in the future. However, things get complicated when Joe’s latest target turns out to be the future version of himself.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis share the lead roles in the film, playing the younger and older versions of Joe respectively. Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels and Paul Dano make up part of the supporting cast, so really not that bad.

The trailer is pretty difficult to get a grasp of at times but should build up excitement for Looper. We get an opening narration from Gordon-Levitt basically outlining the plot for us so that the remainder of the trailer can show us a lot of action, and that is exactly what we are given. There are plenty of action shots in the trailer which is put together rather artistically with all these angled shots and what not, there is certainly enough to wet the appetites of the fan community that are chomping at the bit for Looper‘s arrival.