The movie that’s currently being marketed as TOM CRUISE: MIDGET SUPERSPY is actually a pretty clever pulp crime story from the writer of The Usual Suspects with Werner Herzog playing a bad guy. Oh, did you not know that? It’s probably because Paramount thinks you’re eight, and the movie you saw being advertised was TOM CRUISE, 50-YEAR-OLD HARDASS, BEATS PEOPLE UP BECAUSE THE MILITARY! And that’s best-case scenario, assuming you even got past EASY GAY JOKE: THE FILM.

Get it? The title sounds naughty.

“Jack Reacher” is not a title. Jack Reacher is the franchise the studio wants to build, Paramount’s marketing department like a badly written character spouting his motivations out loud instead of dialog. Raiders of the Lost Ark, First Blood, shit, even The Bourne Identity – those were titles, people calling them “Rambo” came later. More than just crappy branding and presumptuous marketing, “Jack Reacher” is symptomatic of a mindset stuck in the days when you could just put a big star like Tom Cruise’s name above the title and every Joe Sixpack and Charla Cheesesnack would rush to the multiplex from all around to throw money at you while it snowed cocaine. Only it’s not 1985 anymore. You actually have to sell what you’ve got. And what you’ve got ain’t James Bond: Musclecar Edition. And thank God. The world needs another invincible secret agent franchise like Tom Cruise needs extra large muscle tees.

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You might expect a Danish documentary about Indonesian war criminals executive produced by Werner Herzog and Errol Morris to be, you know, kind of dark. Let’s not mince words, you’d be right. Here’s the rundown for Act of Killing, which was just picked up for distribution by Drafthouse Films.

Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, the film ventures deep into the minds of former Indonesian death squad leaders who are challenged to reenact their real-life mass-killings in whichever cinematic genres they wish, including classic Hollywood crime scenarios and lavish musical numbers. A 30-market theatrical release and awards campaign for Best Documentary Feature is planned for The Act Of Killing in 2013.

Chronicling one of the most overlooked genocides in recent history, The Act Of Killing utilizes dramatization to illustrate the banal state of corruption and impunity the unrepentant, locally celebrated former executioners inhabit. The film earned early praise from master documentarians Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man, Into The Abyss) and Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog Of War), whose enthusiasm for the film lead to their role as Executive Producers. “I have not seen a film as powerful, surreal, and frightening in at least a decade,” says Herzog, “it is unprecedented in the history of cinema.” Morris adds, “like all great documentaries, The Act of Killing demands another way of looking at reality…an amazing and impressive film.”

Werner Herzog bashes chickens’ heads in with a hammer to unwind, so if he calls it frightening, the rest of us are probably going to have to watch it wearing diapers. “Za feelink of za cheecken’s bludt on mein handz, za taste uff zair flat brainz, is owerwhalemink. Eez poetry.”

No word yet on when it will be released, but here’s the trailer:

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After the jump, it’s the new, full-length trailer for Jack Reacher, directed by badass Usual Suspects screenwriter Chris McQuarrie (his first since the underrated Way of the Gun) and starring Tom Cruise. The most interesting thing about it is that Werner Herzog plays the villain, something he was born to do (“Za stoopeedity uff za common cheecken eez overwhalemink”). The least interesting thing about it is… well, pretty much everything else. I love McQuarrie (even though he most recently wrote The Tourist and Valkyrie) and I know Jack Reacher is something of a beloved pulp novel hero, but honestly, how many more badass military guys on the run from the government do we need? BE CAREFUL, TEAM, THIS MAN IS DANGEROUS. Aren’t we like six Bourne movies deep by now? And if there’s going to be a protagonist who talks sh*t to bad guys over the phone, I’d just as soon it be Liam Neeson or Mel Gibson. Tom Cruise isn’t really the type of guy who intimidates you by being some gruff, ex-military hardass. If anything, he’s the type of guy who strongarms you into some kind of painfully-direct timeshare presentation with his uncomfortable sincerity. “Fine, fine, I’ll take a free personality test, Tom, just stop looking at me like that, Jesus.”

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Robert Pattinson was on The Daily Show last night promoting David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, and while I generally adore Jon Stewart, I got through about three minutes of him eating ice cream and waiting for him to ask a goddamned question before I clicked onto something else. C’est la vie say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell. Anyway, hopefully it’ll be a better interview in a few months when Pattinson goes back to promote Queen of the Desert, a movie in which he’ll be starring, from director Werner Herzog.

Robert Pattinson has joined the cast of Werner Herzog’s indie “Queen of the Desert,” which will star Naomi Watts as English writer Gertrude Bell.
Pic will chronicle Bell’s life as a writer, archaeologist, explorer, cartographer and political attache for the British Empire. One of the first women to graduate from Oxford at the turn of the 20th century, she traveled through the Middle East, defining the borders of Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Pattinson is attached to play T.E. Lawrence, a British Army officer whose writing earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia, on whom David Lean’s classic 1962 epic is based. Lawrence was a good friend to Bell over the years, as the duo helped establish the Hashemite dynasties in Jordan and Iraq.
Cassian Elwes and Nick Raslan (Herzog’s “Rescue Dawn”) are producing the pic, which is aiming to start production in late fall.

Werner Herzog and I happen to be dear friends, so I was able to reach him for comment:

“Vhen I cast mein film, I pick za Row-bert Pattinson, because, just as I look eento za eyes uff za greezzly bear, oont see nuzzink but za cold eendeeference uff nature, so eet must be vhen Row-bert Pattinson stares eento za cold eendeeferent blankness uff za Kristen Schtewart. She bite her lip, oont ‘e see nuzzink. Zee abyss. Blackness. Za reptilian animal stupidity uff za common chicken. Eez beautiful. Eet eez vhen I sink ziss, zat I know he must understand za true poetry. Za poet must never look away.”

[banner pic via GQ, DailyShow]

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This clip comes from 2007, but I hadn’t seen it before today and probably you hadn’t either, unless you’re like, super-duper cool. It comes from a documentary called On the Ecstasy of Ski-Flying: Werner Herzog in Conversation with Karen Beckman, and the clip in question features Werner Herzog, one of the few filmmakers as legendary for his documentaries as for his fiction features, explaining how his incredible powers of perception finally led him to the conclusion that John Waters might be gay after knowing him for 30 years.

“For me a chair is a chair — and I do not reference to other possibilities … For me, a man is a man. I cannot distinguish a gay man from a straight man. I just cannot distinguish … ” he said.

“After 35 years of knowing John Waters I turn to my wife and I said to her, ‘I have the feeling that this man is gay.’”

Quote of the decade.

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