As far as criminals go, everyone seems to like drug smugglers.  It’s essentially a victimless crime, and more importantly, they give you drugs.  Who better to play such a lovable ne’er-do-well than Rhys Ifans?  A charming Welsh actor who’s normally stuck in movies that might generously be described as “piles of ox twat.”  This time around, Ifans stars in Mr. Nice, based on the memoir of British drug smuggler Howard Marks.  Says Marks’ own website:

During the mid 1980s, Howard Marks had 43 aliases, 89 phone lines, and 25 companies trading throughout the world. Bars, recording studios, offshore banks: all were money-laundering vehicles serving the core activity: dope dealing. Marks began to deal during a postgraduate philosophy course at Oxford [*dismissive wank*] and was soon moving large quantities of hashish into Europe and America in the equipment of touring rock bands.

At the height of his career, he was smuggling consignments of up to 30 tons from Pakistan and Thailand to America and Canada and had contact with organizations as diverse as the CIA, MI6, the IRA, and the Mafia. After many years and a world-wide operation by the DEA, he was busted and sentenced to 25 years in prison at the United States Federal Penitentiary, Terre Haute, Indiana, the site of America’s only Federal Death Row. He was released on parole in April 1995 after serving seven years of his sentence.

“So… you were taking a prestigious academic course when, after touring with famous rock bands, you decided to become a mysterious secret agent?  But how did you find time to pearl dive with the Dalai Lama and start that shelter for injured kittens?”  Mr. Nice, more like Mr. Humble.  This guy makes Tucker Max look like Woody Allen.  I can’t wait for the next autobiographical biopic they make, I’m Awesome, by Professor Metallica von HugeC*ck, MD.

[trailer via IGN, pic via /Film]

This is the trailer for Greenberg, from writer/director Noah Baumbach, starring Ben Stiller.  I feel very unqualified to talk about it, since Noah Baumbach is that guy who I always hear good things about but I’m not that familiar with, and the trailer has a song from one of those bands that everyone says is cool that I never got around to listening to probably because I’m not that cool. ;-(

A New Yorker moves to Los Angeles in order to figure out his life while he housesits for his brother, and he soon sparks with his brother’s assistant.

Based on the trailer, it appears Ben Stiller is a mopey, depressed loser, until one day he meets a girl who’s desperate and depressed and lonely enough herself to put with his crap. Then she won’t bone him at first because she already boned everyone else and she wants this to be different. Then his dog gets cancer and they fall in love, a story as old as time.  I dunno, I might see this.  Or I might just eat easy cheeze straight from the can and zone out on the couch watching Maury.  Either way, man, I don’t even care anymore.

Also in HD at Apple

This is the trailer for Mr. Nobody, from Belgian director Jaco van Dormael.  It stars Jared Leto and looks like your basic old-guy-reminisces-about-his-life-in-a-futuristic-pseudo-reality flick.

Mr. Nemo Nobody is 35 years old and lives an ordinary life with his wife and three kids but, somehow, he one day wakes up in the swimming pool of an opulent mansion in the year 2092. Not only is he the oldest man in the entire world, at 120, he’s also the only mortal man – nobody else is ever going to die. He tries to work out what is real, and if his real life is the one he should have lived. [/Film]

So yeah, looks pretty trippy.   Anyway, if you’re ever wondering whether your real life is the one you should’ve lived, here’s a handy checklist:

• Am I in a huge f*cking house?
• Are my clothes expensive as f*ck?
• Can I watch TV in my pool?
• Are my underwear made of animal skin?
• Do I smell like a flower store queefed?
• Do I wash my asshole with whale caviar?

If you answered yes to any of these, you’re on the right track. Oh right, like you had something relevant to say about the movie.