Anne Hathaway Catwoman

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I'm getting woefully behind with writing up proper movie reviews. Several films have come and gone before me with nary a whisper - I haven't been particularly inspired enough by any of them to force words out of myself... but I should. Force myself, that is. So I'm gonna lop out a few thoughts on several films in one go. Let's see what happens! This is so exciting!

The Devil's Double - A weirdly airless film that can't decide how far it can push the Scarface movie it wants to be without, you know, exploiting the real-world atrocities it's documenting as gangsta cred. It would've been better off going one way or the other - and I would've had it go straight off the deep end, honestly - but as is there's not much tension to be had. Good Dominic Cooper stays good and Evil Dominic Cooper stays evil, and they just kind of sit there and watch each other be respectively good and be respectively evil for two hours. All that said, this tweet contains immense truth that made the viewing experience occasionally dizzying. Good god this movie will do well in The Great Gratuities of 2011.

Cowboys & Aliens - I tweeted an echo of the tweet I just linked to in honor of the spectacle that was Daniel Craig posing in chaps, and that remains my most vivid memory of the flick here less than two days later. What else was there? I mean, besides the same goddamned boring creature design that I railed against a few weeks ago? Slapping some goopy "Benny from Total Recall" arms into their guts does not alleviate the fact that these were basically the same things we saw in District 9 and Super 8 and every damned alien movie forever now. I suppose lamenting the state of creativity in Hollywood is skull-fucking a dead horse at this point but it's especially exhausting when it comes to the monster makers. I want good monsters, people! There's a universe of insane concepts out thereand I keep getting stupid bug-men!

Otherwise C&A wasn't offensively bad - Harrison Ford actually appeared to be sober and paying attention this time! And the film took its time and had people actually talking about things to each other, which somehow seems an extraordinary accomplishment these days. But you know how Daniel Craig's jangly little bracelet would light up to warn them whenever an alien was nearby? All that made me think of was the pulsing alien detector in James Cameron's Aliens, you know the one - "They're all around us, man! Jesus!" - and oh how this movie suffered in comparison.

Crazy Stupid Love - I know I'm not the only person who came out of this movie wishing the entire thing had been about Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone's characters but good god did those two have sparks or what? Everything else going on I just kept wanting to get back to them. That island of time in the middle where Ryan's shirtless and Emma's being her goofy spazz self was a little slice of heaven. I didn't mind the storyline with the teenagers - I appreciated it's non-ballistic point of view towards teen sexuality (kids masturbate and take dirty pictures of themselves and it's not the end of the world!). But I kind of thought everything having to do with Steve Carell and Julianne Moore and Marisa Tomei was way off-key.

Sucker Punch - I was sort of mortified about halfway through Sucker Punch to realize that yup, once again I was finding myself, despite my own sanity begging me not to, mostly liking a Zach Snyder movie. There's a clarity to the way he shoots action that I deeply admire - I hear people scoffing at his patented speed-up slow-down way of shooting and focusing in on movement but I love it. Do we prefer Michael Bay throwing our eyeballs into a blender? Snyder's camera pulls way way out so you can see everything - and some of the scenes he fills the frame with here are ridiculously eye-pleasing - or it swoops through the action fascinated by the ballet of it. And I liked that it wasn't slavishly obsessed with prattling on about the rules of the fantasy world either (cough Inception cough) - it set out a couple of ridiculously basic video-game goals (find the map!) and then let the visuals rip from that, and it knew that sometimes ya just gotta throw in Gwar-outfitted orcs for good measure.

But well-shot action aside, Sucker Punch suffers an exceptional lot for its PG-13 rating. Like The Devil's Double it's afraid to go where it needs to to be the movie it needs to be. Where it needs to be has lots of blood and lots of nipples and lots of lesbian heavy-petting, in case you were wondering. It has the imagination but its balls, if not exactly cut off, have kinda shrunk up inside its body. Plus nobody on-screen is even a tenth as compelling as Carla Gugino is as the lost Russian instructor from the Suspiria dance school in a latticed bustier and spackled-on beauty mark. I vant to suck your movie out from underneath you, she cries. Just let her, Zach!

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--- Yo Joe - The little boy from the first Jurassic Park, Joseph Mazzello, has been getting quite a few little parts lately now that's he grown into a handsome young man, and he just got cast in the GI Joe sequel. And his name is Joe! That's nuts! Anyway are they even bothering with any girls this time around? Channing and Joe and The Rock and Ray Stevenson and sexy bitch Byung-hun Lee. Beefcake on top of beefcake! Which sounds about right. That's how I played with my GI Joes at least.

--- And speaking of Jurassic Park, yes Steven Spielberg confirmed the push for a fourth film at Comic Con and yes they're saying it could be in the next two years. But it's not really anymore news then we heard a couple months ago. so I'm sitting on my hands til real concrete stuffs comes out like, I dunno, the movie itself. No more yanking me around! (Riiiight, this will last.)

--- Pro Dentata - Over at The Film Experience Robert crafted a wonderful ode to the 2009 vaginal horror flick Teeth, which I need to rewatch right soon. Why hasn't Jess Weixler gotten more work off off that movie? She's so good in it! Or hey what about young buck Hale Appleman? He's so hot in that!

--- Dead Man Walking - Frank Darabont has quit his job running AMC's The Walking Dead. Sadness! According to him he wasn't quite prepared for the demands of a day-to-day TV show after being a movie-maker for so long, but there's been a lot of drama behind the scenes of that show since the start. The first season was wobbly so I dunno what this might mean, good or bad, up or down, for the second season which starts in October. Guess we'll have to wait and see (says Mr. Obvious).

--- Royale With Cheese - Astonishing Stacie Ponder wrote up some thoughts on a bunch of Asian horror flicks the other day, including her first time with Battle Royale and Audition! Now that's a kick-ass two-fer.

--- Skin Tagged - Also via Twitch is the full trailer for Pedro Almodovar's The Skin I Live In, which I would set fire to the Statue of Liberty in order to see right a screening of this second.

--- Damme Hot - I know he's a crazy weirdo, but Jean Clauda Van Damme's gotten himself all beefed up for The Expendables sequel as you can see there (via) and I can't help but gawk again. I know there won't be, they never even got Always-Shirtless Jason Statham out of his top for the first one, but I'd kill for one more look at JCVD's greatest asset.

--- Speaking of Statham, Crank 3 will supposedly be made with or without him in it, says Efren Ramirez who was in both of the earlier films too. I can't imagine Statham not making the third film. God I love these movies. They're so ridiculous.

--- Let's Go Leviathan - Robert Zemeckis has finally decided to step the hell away from those dead-eyed monsters he'd been forcing us to stare at movie after movie and making something with real human beings, plus sea monsters! I guess the massive flop heard round the galaxy, Mars Needs Moms, drove the point home finally. The new project is called Here There Be Monsters and it may or may not be a project he does in the near future, but it sounds cool on paper. I've been jonesing for a giant monster movie renaissance for some time!

--- One Lopsided Triangle - Emma Stone might be re-teaming with her Zombieland director for Gangster Squad, which would make her the moll caught between her Crazy Stupid Love co-star Ryan Gosling and Sean Penn, which eww. Is there even a whiff of a choice there? I mean really.

--- Re Masked - Have you guys gone over to the Facebook page for Before the Mask, the prequel to the wonderful slasher flick Behind the Mask, yet? They're raising funds from fans in all sorts of neat-o ways, including offering up - for a price, natch - the opportunity to be killed on-screen! How rad is that? it's beyond my meager budget unfortunately, but man that is cool. You can also win a telephone call from the slasher himself, Nathan Baesel, who was so good in the first film. But they don't say if it can be a phone sex call or not. I'll just assume that's a yes. The director Scott Glosserman talks about this and more over at STYD.

--- Inn July - Twitch posted a couple of reviews worth checking out today. I loved their take on Miranda July's The Future. I had so much fun writing my review but it was vague in a lot of ways. On purpose, but still. So I don't think I made it clear how much darker this movie is than her first film Me and You and Everyone We Know. And despite is rep MAYAEWK was no walk in the park. Anyway I love this movie more and more the further I get from it. It's out this weekend in limited release! See it!

And secondly they've got a review of Ti West's follow-up to The House of the Devil, the haunted house (make that inn) story The Innkeepers, which I would set fire to the Statue of Liberty a second time in order to see a screening of right this second.

--- And finally, my bud Sean wrote a Spider-Man comic! That is so cool! Conrgats, Sean!

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I'd like to see this in Apple HD immediately, thank you whoever's listening and can do that, but here's the less-than-HD teaser trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man. (via)

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That POV shot at the end is absolutely killer - it's the sort of thing that makes you want to be sitting in a theater seeing the movie right this second. Without getting into my review of Captain America just yet, it's the sort of imaginative knock-your-socks-off haven't-seen-that-before film-making that we need to see more of in these superhero movies. Also in that vein is Andrew Garfield in a tank-top.

Peter Parker is a Rear Window fan!

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--- Here & Back Again - EW has our first look at The Hobbit, y'all! Three pictures, including Tim I mean Martin Freeman as Young Bilbo. I wish some friendly lady hobbit down the way was being played by Lucy Davis, I must say. Tim and Dawn forever!

--- And speaking of Office-flavored things, as well as small-sized folk, the teaser trailer for Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's new BBC2 series called Life's Too Short - about the "life" of Warwick Davis, famed little person - can be seen over at Twitch! The show's only begun filming and won't air til next year, but this tide us over til then I suppose.

--- Roll In The Hay - I just want to take this opportunity to thank Entertainment Weekly with all my "heart" for using this week's trilogy of covers to gift me with the fantasy of Joe Manganiello as a rugged, dumb farmhand wearing nothing but loose overalls. This will come in handy several times in the future, of this I have no doubt.

--- Crazy States - Glenn's review of Ken Russell's Altered States over at Stale Popcorn is quite possibly the most spot-on, "Yup, that about sums it all up!" review of Altered States ever written. God I love that movie.

--- Bush Whackers - BD has a few more details on the third flick from Oren Peli, director of Paranormal Activity, which is about Nature getting its revenge in the wake of a radioactive disaster. Or something. Sounds kind Long Weekend-y to me?

--- The Owls Are Not What They Seem - If you heard about that JK Rowling website Pottermore the other day and are curious still what the hell it is, watch this video at PopWrap where Rowling comes clean. Sounds fun, says the nerd!

--- New Statham Joint - A trailer for a Jason Statham movie without a shot of a shirtless Jason Statham in it is like a unicorn with its legs sawed off bleating for the bullet to end its pathetic life. Just sad! That said, in the trailer for his latest movie called Killer Elite (so 1994 straight-to-video) that murky underwater shot seen there to the left could be Jason, I suppose, the trailer implies it to be him, so we'll give it a pass until we inevitably watch the movie while folding laundry one future Saturday afternoon and find out if so. But what we will never forgive is the fact that Statham and Clive Owen are in a movie together and it's not a love story full of sweaty torrid liaisons.

--- Stone's Pride - Rumors abound that Emma Stone might be taking the lead in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which for a long while was a role that lay in Natalie Portman's delicate fingertips. I like it, but then I like the idea of Emma Stone taking any part. Every part! (Well except Mrs. Andrew Garfield. Lay off, lady! He's mine!)

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