Our regular survey of what the AllMovie staff has been watching features a typically eclectic list of projects that includes classic ’80s television, Uwe Boll madness, politics, and Jack the Ripper. As always, let us know what you’ve had on your screens.

Read the rest of this entry »

This isn’t particularly timely — since the trailer was released about a year ago and the movie doesn’t come out ’till Christmas — but just I can’t hold it in: the Valkyrie trailer is hilarious. I’m serious, I know Tom Cruise’s historical thriller about the real-life assassination plot that some of Hitler’s own officers staged against him is supposed to be an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride, but trust me, this trailer is comic gold. Here’s a breakdown.

00:34: Interesting. In a movie full of Nazis, every actor is obeying the “Continental Europeans in American movies all have British accents” rule EXCEPT for Tom Cruise, who not only refuses to feign even a vague Mid-Atlantic effect, but is in full-on, super Midwestern, slightly congested signature style. Classic.

00:57: The premise for the plot is presented with such bombastic zeal that it sounds like preposterous revisionist fiction, (the fact that Cruise is prone to revising facts and involving Nazis only helps to give this impression), or a Family Guy spoof trailer — except this actually happened. You’d never know.

1:34: Eddie Izzard’s wonderfully familiar voice creeps in before his face is revealed at the 1:36 mark, and while you might otherwise miss him disguised in those horn-rimmed glasses, back it up and rewatch him deliver that histrionic line again. If you’ve ever seen Izzard’s stand-up, or even his work on the Riches, you’ll probably know him well enough to notice how he speaks this line with such delightfully sanctimonious boredom, you know he was phoning it in while he was half cracking a smile, trying not to laugh at all those overcooked hams in the room.

2:20: Ah yes, Tom puts the cherry on this keeper by shooting us in the face with a kick-ass action-star one-liner, proving unequivocally that no matter how hard he tries to convince us that he’s committed to a gritty, self-serious wartime historical drama, in his heart of hearts, he’s always playing Maverick Mitchell.

If Lloyd Kaufman were to get a lobotomy and decide to make a satire skewering post-9/11 politics, the result would probably be pretty close in tone and execution to notorious schlockmeister Uwe Boll’s fifth video game-to-film adaptation – the only difference being that the imaginary Troma version of Postal might actually be worth watching.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes it just isn’t clear what particular witty wordplay the studio had in mind when they dreamed up a movie title. So in the grand tradition of Marmaduke Explained, allow us to provide a verbose, literal translation of this week’s releases.

Made of Honor: A nonsensical play on words in which the conventional name for a bride’s traditionally female special guest — the “maid of honor” — is arbitrarily switched to an alternate meaning and spelling for the same phonetic word because the character playing the usually female role in this case is male. The meaning of the replacement word, however, carries no value or meaning at all.

Postal: A title based on the name of the main character. The character’s name is, in turn, based on the name of the character in the video game that the film is based on, which is, in turn, based on the act of “going postal” — a term coined by a late 90’s smattering of incidents in which postal workers inexplicably became unhinged and shot up their workplaces. These incidents originally had no connection to Uwe Boll.

What Happens in Vegas: A name taken from the popular slogan coined by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority in 2006, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” This phrase isn’t to be confused with the Reno Tourist Board’s similar catchphrase “Make the biggest little mistake of your life in Reno.” Coincidentally, this tagline was used by many theaters to advertise What Happens in Vegas.

Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?: A take on the 1990’s children’s quiz show Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, except instead of searching for a fictional secret agent, the film posits a search for the world’s most wanted terrorist, and instead of celebrating the elementary school students’ love for geography, it celebrates Morgan Spurlock’s love for himself.

Also on DVD this week: August, Chicago 10, and Redbelt.

If tattooed counterculture icon Fred Durst (of Limp Bizkit fame) is aggressively attempting to rework his image with a secondary career as a movie director, The Longshots marks a commendable starting point. This uncommonly gentle, finely-observed slice-of-life drama takes an unusually mature and thoughtful approach to its subject matter, courtesy of a decent script by Nick Santora (The Punisher: War Zone). Pop Warner football may ostensibly be the subject here, but what could have regressed into an insufferably clichéd, inspirational sports drama instead puts character development center-stage and shifts its thematic focus to the maturation and loss-of-innocence of a young girl. As a result, football begins to feel almost incidental to the central story.

Read the rest of this entry »

Witless and headache inducing, Paul W.S. Anderson’s Death Race is a torturous big screen boxing glove of a flick that punishes all who dare come near. As an adaptation of Roger Corman’s thoroughly outrageous cult film forefather, Death Race 2000, this annoying reimagining is a colossal failure that seems unable to comprehend what was so special about the original’s mix of colorful characters, wild production design and scathing social satire. Even based on its own merits, Death Race is still a mess. Embracing much of the genre’s filmmaking gaffs was the production’s first mistake. Filmed with what seems like a camera mounted to a bobble head, the hyped-up peddle-to-the-meddle flick disorients its audience at every dizzying turn. The film also forgoes any thought put into distinguishing its racers thanks to poorly sketched out characters and some drearily similar car designs. Packed with videogame logic (buttons on the racetrack to trigger weapons) and paced to the speed of a snail when it’s not sending out seizure-inducing images, this is one macho turd that, like another franchise it so desperately wants to be, will likely be fast and furiously forgotten about long before the checkered flag is waived.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Apatow Revolution in comedy has been pretty cool; it’s been refreshing to see movies taking their cues from the hilariously foul-mouthed young guys in this comedic cadre, where half the dialogue is improvised – an easy task when the actors are all playing somebody we all seem to already know a version of in our real lives. The only problem is that between the Apatow crowd and its compatriot group the Frat Pack, the late 2000’s don’t provide much room in comedy for anything else. It’s a shame, because it means that an awesomely crazy movie like Hamlet 2 could slip through the cracks.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been said before, but it bears repeating – Peter Watkins may be the most under-appreciated important filmmaker of his generation, an artist and thinker whose challenging approach to both global politics and the formal structure of cinema has resulted in a body of work that’s had a powerful effect on the few who’ve been lucky enough to see it. However provocative Watkins critiques of the balance of political power and influence may be, they haven’t endeared him to the mainstream film industry, and the fact most of his movies have been produced outside the studio system – for television or independent concerns, and in some cases with the support of academic institutions as part of advanced film classes — hasn’t helped them gain the visibility they deserve. But it’s significant that the one feature Watkins produced for a major studio has been nearly as hard to see as any of his other pictures. In 1967, after Watkins had briefly become an international cause celebre thanks to the controversy over his award-winning look at the aftermath of a nuclear attack on England, The War Game, he became one of a handful of maverick talents who were signed to make low-budget films for the UK branch of Universal Pictures. At a budget of $700,000, Watkins’ Privilege was among the least expensive of the lot, though it remains the most lavish project of Watkins’ career. Despite receiving some excellent reviews in the United States, Privilege didn’t fare well at the box office and enjoyed only a brief run in cinemas; it reached its largest audience when it was included in a package of movies Universal syndicated to local television stations in the 70’s, and by the end of that decade, the film had all but vanished. Fortunately, Project X Distribution in Canada and New Yorker Films in the United States have been making a growing number of Watkins films available on DVD, many for the first time, and this month they’ve teamed up to give Privilege its first authorized home video release ever.

Read the rest of this entry »