With Valkyrie (trailer, review), The Reader, Adam Resurrected (“the story of a man who once was a dog who meets a dog who once was a boy.”), Defiance, Good, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas all hitting theaters and making headlines around the same time, it’s hard to know just which holocaust movie to see when you really need to masturbate never forget important historical epochs.  Luckily, NY Mag has put together this handy flow chart.  Click here for the answers.  I’m a little disappointed they didn’t mention Defiance‘s ridiculous Dracula accents.  I mean, I hate Nazis as much as the next guy, but don’t make me choose between them and vampires.

Marley & Me remained “top dog” at the box office and came in “best in show” with $21 million over the weekend.  Bedtime Stories number two even though everyone agrees how much it sucks, Curious Case of Benjamin Button number three, nothing new came out this weekend, blah blah blah who cares (full top ten after the jump).

In a season loaded with wartime stories, two more Nazi-themed films opened in limited release.  Paramount Vantage’s “Defiance” debuted with $121,000 in two theaters for a whopping average of $60,500 a cinema.
ThinkFilm’s “Good” opened with $9,300 in two theaters, averaging $4,650. The film casts Viggo Mortensen as an upright German academic gradually seduced into the Nazi fold as World War II approaches.

Meanwhile Valkyrie has been out for two weeks and The Reader opens in a week.  It reminds me of that book my mom used to read to me when I was a little kid, The Day of Too Many Nazis! On that note, I don’t know where these pictures came from, but I love them. If you have any pictures I can use in lieu of having anything intelligent to contribute to boring stories, feel free to send them on over.

Read the rest of this entry »

^{Valkyrie: A serious review}

Valkyrie (watch the trailer) is beautifully shot by Bryan Singer and full of solid acting all around (except for Tom Cruise, who isn’t horrible but is still Tom Cruise), but it never comes close to solving that one little problem.  You know, the whole protagonist-getting-executed-by-Nazis-at-the-end thing.

The film tells the story of Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg, the man who set the bomb in the final attempt to assassinate Hitler in 1944.  We open a year earlier on the North African front, where Stauffenberg tries to convince a general to defy Hitler’s orders and abandon a doomed campaign.  Just as he succeeds, Allied fighters strafe their camp, killing the general and blowing up the Jeep in which Stauffenberg sits.  Singer directs the battle scene brilliantly, striking that perfect balance between realism and actually being able to see what the f-ck’s going on that’s so rare nowadays.  Sadly, the action only lasts a few minutes.

Read the rest of this entry »

As much as I like to make fun of Tom Cruise for being the leader of a retard cult who’s been “acting” for almost 30 years yet can’t even do a British accent, Valkyrie does still come from Bryan Singer and Chris McQuarrie, and they’re two of the best at what they do.

After about a billion delays, Valkyrie is finally opening December 26th, and UA has just released the final trailer.  Cruise plays Klaus Von Stauffenberg, a guy who tried to kill Hitler.  He’s a hero in Germany because he lets Germans say, “See?  We weren’t all bad, there was that one guy!”  Then you ask what happened to him and they get all quiet, “Well, uh, well you see, um, what happened was…”  Sorry?  You trailed off a little there.  “Yeah.  We, uh, executed him by firing squad.  …Oh, and uh, after we buried him? Hehe, this is a funny story… We, um, well, we dug up his body, took off his medals, and had him cremated.  …That dude was f-ckin cool though.”

Read the rest of this entry »

After the jump, I’ve got the new, full-length trailer for Valkyrie.  That’s the one from Bryan Singer and Chris McQuarrie, the same director/writer pair behind The Usual Suspects, and which stars Tom Cruise as Klaus von Stauffenberg, the guy who tried to kill Hitler.  It opens December 26th.

You may notice Cruise is the only one speaking with an American accent.  The story’s set in Germany, so as far as realism’s concerned, it doesn’t matter what accent they use. But would it have been so hard for all the actors to be on the same page?  And if you’re a guy like Tom Cruise who always gets bashed for being a bad actor, wouldn’t you want to make it look like you’re at least trying?  The only thing about him that ever changes is his costume and makeup.  It’s like he showed up to the party dressed like a pirate but refuses to do the voice.  F-ck you, bro, you’re no fun.
Read the rest of this entry »