After the jump, you can watch the just-released trailer for Martha Marcy May Marlene, starring John Hawkes and Elizabeth Olsen (The Olsen Twins’ little sister! The Bonus Olsen!), which premiered to rave reviews at Sundance earlier this year (I didn’t get to see it).  It opens in theaters October 17th.  If you’ve seen Winter’s Bone, I don’t have to tell you how righteous John Hawkes is, but if you haven’t seen Winter’s Bone, I promise you, John Hawkes is totally f*cking righteous.  He’s amazing at playing the wiry, terrifying meth head who looks like he just wants to pummel you to a bloody pulp and spit.  I came here to beat my wife and wear Oakley glasses, and my cousin stole my Oakley glasses.  This time around, he plays a cult leader who haunts Elizabeth Olsen’s memories. The film looks pretty solid, but it’s destined to fail at the box office.  No way the target audience is remembering that title. I can only imagine my mom trying to tell me we should go see that Marsha Marty Mandrake Marlboro Man movie two or three times before she just says f*ck it and zones out on Paxil.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m reposting the review of Cedar Rapids I originally wrote at Sundance, now that it’s in theaters (at least in these cities). When I wrote it, I worried all the festival spectacle would keep me from being able to write a fair review. But my girlfriend dragged me to it again over the weekend, and if anything, it was better than I remembered. John C. Reilly is a God.

Cedar Rapids: Another Miguel Arteta comedy stupid people won’t get

Before I start my review of Cedar Rapids, I thought, in the interests of diversity, I’d share the review I overheard from the two old guys standing next to me on the bus coming back from the theater.

OLD GUY 1: That black guy was hysterical!  When he was doing those jokes about The Wire?

OLD GUY 2:  The black guy was in The Wire?

OLD GUY 1:  Yeah!  He was like the second biggest cop on The Wire!

OLD GUY 2: Oh yeah, he was great.  And you know Anne Hetch’s character, she reminded me of that Vera Fegamo, when she played the traveling salesman in that one movie?  Aw Christ, what was it called…

(No one says anything.  “…Up in the Air?” I offer.)

OLD GUY 2:  Yeah! Up in the Air!  She reminded me of Vera Fegamo in that.

Long story short, they liked it.

And so did I.  Despite direction by Miguel Arteta, whose last film, Youth In Revolt made my 2010 top 10 list, I didn’t know if I would.  The trailer makes it look like a sort of slapsticky, desperately quirky romp in the vein of Dinner for Schmucks, with Ed Helms playing the Steve Carell role of schmucky rube.  It isn’t that. Quirky, sure, but it takes pains to make the characters real people and not retarded cartoons. Yes, Cedar Rapids is a mainstream comedy.  But it’s a mainstream comedy in the original sense of the description, before “mainstream comedy” meant “pandering drivel for idiots,” when having a sweet message and a character who says “buttf*ck” weren’t mutually exclusive.
Read the rest of this entry »

One of the shadiest things you can do as a journalist is ask someone their opinion about someone, then, when they answer candidly, take their answer out of context to make it sound like they’re starting a beef and manufacture a controversy around it.  That being said, controversy = pageviews, pageviews = money, and daddy’s feet = in need of a new pair of shoes. So…

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! (*flicks lights on and off, claps cats together*)

[CinemaBlend's Katey Rich, on interviewing James Marsh, director of 2008's Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire, and this year's much-buzzed Project Nim.] I talked to Marsh in an excellent 20-minute conversation this afternoon.  Apparently as caught up in all the Sundance gossip as the rest of us, Marsh took some time– totally unprompted by me– to criticize the filmmaker for striking back against critics and audiences after so many years of success.

Here’s what Marsh said:

“You can’t try to control response to your film, nor should you. …Unless you’re Kevin Smith, I guess. Whole other story.

What’s his problem, anyway?  Why [does he have a chip on his shoulder]?  He’s had such a great run.  You know, he’s not Orson Welles.

And, I mean he gets his films made, he’s rich… he’s got money… Now he turns around and says suddenly, “I’m so hard done?”  What’s his f*cking problem?”

Read the rest of this entry »

The film that began as Nova Scotian Jason Eisener’s entry into a make-your-own Grindhouse trailer competition back in 2007 was expanded into a feature last year, and is set to hit theaters this spring.  Movies based on silly trailers have a bit of a dubious track record, which I think we were all willing to cautiously overlook on account of this one being called “Hobo with a Shotgun.”  It’s up there with Hot Tub Time Machine and Snakes on a Plane on my list of Names That Make Ya Go LOLWUT?  But does the finished product live up to its potential?  COME WITH ME TO FIND OUT, ON A MAGICAL JOURNEY THROUGH WORDS AND TEXT!

Ouch, you guys, my soul hurts.  I guess that’s just what happens when you watch a naked whore writhe in fresh corpse blood, a guy try to saw off a hooker’s head with a hacksaw, a man gingerly fondle his shotgun-blasted balls, and a pack of hyenas cut off a wildebeest’s penis and then make him eat it piece by piece while they rape his wife.  I’m not sure that last one was even in the movie, or if I just imagined it because my mind is now so warped.  I know the violence in Hobo with a Shotgun wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, but at times it wasn’t so much clever or gleeful, just brutal, and borderline disturbing.  But shouldn’t depictions of violence be disturbing, you might be asking, especially if you’re some kind of overeducated, close-reading psychobabbler?  I suppose it should, if you’re trying to make a comment on violence, but in a comical faux-exploitation film it doesn’t quite play.  If the sex and violence and swearing in these Grindhousey movies feels so good because it’s so wrong, like a dead-baby joke, or your sister’s tittie, it’s still easier to enjoy when it doesn’t make you feel like a sadist.  The gore was a little excessive in Hobo with a Shotgun.  Not enough to make or break the movie for me, but I dread the inevitable Pollyannical, conflatulent screed from Armond White, on the topic of this generation’s despicable delectation for endless decapitation.  He won’t be right, but the ammo’s there.

[Warning, next sentence unintentionally humorous when viewed without context]
Where Hobo with a Shotgun really won me over was in the quiet moments.

Read the rest of this entry »

(the player below takes a second to load. here’s a direct link to the file.)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

FROTCASTARDS: So here’s the deal: I’ve got a bunch of audio from Sundance and I don’t 100% know what to do with it.  For this week’s Frotcast, I put the audio from Ed Helms at the Cedar Rapids roundtable at the end. (It starts at 01:16:00). If you want me to keep including this, let me know.

THIS WEEK ON THE FROTCAST: We try out our new intro music, we read user emails, I play a few clips from Sundance (Rutger Hauer tells me to shut up, etc.), our Oscar correspondent, Brendan’s mom, weighs in on Inception, and we play our new game, Paul Blart Presents, where we throw out a category and come up with Paul Blart remakes.  This week’s category was baseball movies, and I think our best Paul Blart Presents baseball movie was The Flatural. We play the Kevin Smith “and sh*t” video and it almost kills Brendan (31 minutes).

CONTEST: Next week’s Paul Blart Presents category is sci-fi (explained at 01:12:00).  Send us your best Paul Blarts Presents sci-fi title and brief synopsis, and I’ll award our favorite a FilmDrunk shirt. (And if you don’t want a shirt, I can offer free Riley Steele porn).

DOWNLOAD IT HERE. SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES. NOW AVAILABLE ON ZUNE MARKETPLACE.