Furious on Film Movie News Report 07.02.08

Posted by Arnold Furious on 07.02.2008

Dark Knight hype, Eddie Murphy to retire?, Bonham-Carter to join T4, 300 sequel, Night at the Museum sequel, three reviews including No Country for Old Men and Sophie Okonedo joins the ranks of the Hollywood Whores!

Issue 146

Welcome ladies and gents to another wacky week of Furious on Film. You can check on my blog, by clicking my name, to read my thoughts on the conclusion of Euro 2008 including my team of the tournament. Incidentally how jazzed is everyone for the release of the Dark Knight? I've been hearing bits and pieces about it for months and months and we're finally just a few weeks away from release. Early reviews are really positive. And the viral campaign has been awesome.



Keen!

Here's some early buzz for you. Kevin Smith called it "the best comic book film ever made". Pre-sales for the debut day are EIGHT TIMES that of Spider-Man 3 with many cinema's already sold out three weeks before the movie is released. The fact I've dedicated much of my intro to the Dark Knight should tell you how much hype there is for this movie right now. It's enormous.

HERE IS THE GNUS



Eddie Murphy to retire?

Credit: ExtraTV.com

"I have close to fifty movies and it's like, why am I in the movies?" he said, adding, "I've done that part now. I'll go back to the stage and do standup."

Murphy, 47, said that while a "Beverly Hills Cop 4" flick was in the works, he didn't want to do it, because "the movie wasn't ready to be done." Murphy said he agreed to do "Cop 3" because of the large fee he was offered. "They said this is how much we're going to pay you. I said, 'let's go shoot it! I don't care if the script ain't right."



I'm still hoping for Murphy to explore serious roles later in his career because he was so surprisingly good in Dreamgirls BUT if he wants to do stand-up…go for it. He was always better at stand-up than he has been in movies. Not to the same degree as Chris Rock or Richard Pryor but Murphy's movies haven't always been the best. Yes, he's got a lot of Beverly Hills Cop's on his record including Coming to America and Life but he's also made a tonne of shit. Probably all to make him richer. Saying Beverly Hills Cop III was for money shocks NO ONE. Easily the worst of the three films by some considerable distance it looked like a paycheque movie and there's the confirmation. He doesn't want to the 4th one unless someone writes a great script for it. Hey, at last, Eddie Murphy wants to skip over something because if he does it, it'll suck.

That said look at the stuff he already has lined up! He's already wrapped on NowhereLand, is filming A Thousand Words and is in pre-production for Shrek IV. At least his Romeo & Juliet (no idea what that would have turned out like) seems shelved now along with his re-make of the Incredible Shrinking Man. Although technically IMDB has the latter is being "in production".

T4 gains another star

Credit: Hollywood Reporter.

Helena Bonham Carter could soon be joining the battle between man and cyborg.

The Oscar-nominated actress is in talks to board McG's "Terminator Salvation," the fourth instalment in the franchise kicked off by James Cameron in 1984. Roles in the new film have been kept under wraps, but insiders described the Bonham Carter role as small but pivotal.



You'll notice that's "in talks" and not signed as yet. I do love me some Helena Bonham-Carter. I've had a thing for her for years. And she's one of these wonderful actresses who keeps my interest in multiple projects over the years. Rather than be great in one or two films (like Kim Catrall or Katherine Heigl) and then start to fade away a little. Ever since I saw her in Lady Jane, which would be when I was about 12, I've had a serious crush on her and she just keeps on being awesome. I especially liked her in Fight Club and Big Fish but she's at home in almost any setting. Terminator won't be a stretch for her. With her also making reoccurring appearances in the Harry Potter flicks her stock is on the rise.

301?

Credit: Variety

Legendary Pictures has confirmed it is developing a "300" follow-up for Warner Bros. that Frank Miller is writing and Zack Snyder is intended to direct. Miller is writing the graphic novel the project will be based upon, although at this point it's not clear whether it will be a prequel or spin-off. Most of the characters, including Gerard Butler's King Leonidas, died in the original, making a follow-up tricky.

Snyder won't officially commit until after he sees Miller's take, but he's definitely interested, and the prospect of his involvement already has fanboys in a tizzy.

Legendary, which also co-financed and produced Snyder's "Watchmen" for Warners, considers the project a major priority.

"The vision of Frank Miller's universe that Zack Snyder brought to the screen in '300' is unlike anything ever seen before," said Legendary topper Thomas Tull. "We want to be certain that the story originates with Frank and be as compelling as the first."



300 was a pretty fucking good movie. Visually interesting and fantastically barbaric. Frank Miller being involved is absolutely key. Of course he wrote Robocop 3 as well but I think the studios have learned since then to trust Miller's judgement and vision. Maybe not enough to let him shoot Sin City 2 just yet but certainly enough to let him direct Will Eisner's The Spirit. Zack Snyder is also in if Miller is, which at the very least should create the same fantasy world as before.

Guest guesting on Night at the Museum sequel

Credit: Hollywood Reporter.

Christopher Guest has joined the cast as Ivan the Terrible for the comedy adventure, officially titled "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian."

Also joining the cast are Jon Bernthal (Al Capone), Bill Hader (Gen. George Armstrong Custer) and French actor Alain Chabat (Napoleon).

The film, directed by Shawn Levy, reunites lead Ben Stiller with castmates Robin Williams, Ricky Gervais and Owen Wilson.



I didn't see the first one and I have no intention of doing so. I really, really hate Ben Stiller unless he's a heel (Dodgeball). I thought someone might be interested seeing as they've got the cast back from the first one. I would say "I don't see the point" but I've seen that film's box office so I know exactly what the point is.



That's the news for this week.

What do you mean you've never seen…?

This was supposed to be Battleship Potemkin but I've not had a chance to re-watch it this week. Instead of analysis you can check out the famous Odessa Steps sequence from the film that's been imitated many times since. Three minutes of startling visuals from the 1920's.




THIS WEEK'S REVIEWS

No Country for Old Men, Evan Almighty, Sweeney Todd

No Country for Old Men (2007)



EXPECTATIONS – You may have heard of this one. Directed by the brothers Coen, No Country took most of the major Oscars at last years ceremony including best director and best picture. There's no doubt, given it's 95% freshness on RottenTomatoes and the Academy Award, that No Country is a good movie. But how does it stack up to some of the other Coen Brothers efforts? I'm personally a huge Big Lebowski fan. O Brother Where Art Thou is terrific, I also have a soft spot for the Hudsucker Proxy and both Miller's Crossing and Fargo are great. They seemed to have gone a little off the tracks with Intolerable Cruelty and the Ladykillers, the latter being their worst film by some distance, but all the ingredients were right here.

TRAILER –



PLOT – When former welder Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) happens on a drug deal gone wrong he's able to walk away from the scene with two million dollars in cash. But as soon as he's gone he's left a trail for the cops and bad guys to follow. On the side of the law is aging Sherriff Ed Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) who dreams of a more peaceful past while on the side of the bad is emotionless killing machine Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). But who can get to Moss first?

OPINION – The first thing that struck me about No Country at first viewing was how gutsy the novel was in the first place and how much of that had translated to the screen. There are some major plot decisions that are not popular things to do with a film. Not least of all the nature of how the film wraps itself up. You have a to have an enormous set of balls to even consider shooting this film. Tommy Lee Jones is a predictable casting choice as a Texas lawman and a lot of his performance echoes his own film; The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Only Jones' self contained and inward thinking in that film is only a third of this one. Josh Brolin gets a fair sized chunk of screentime as the protagonist and he's the character the audience is set up to root for. An underdog, surely, but a veteran of Vietnam (the film is set in 1980) and a capable battler. A survivor of life. However it's not Brolin who stars in this film. Nor Tommy Lee Jones although they both have considerable amounts of screen time. No, the star of No Country is Javier Bardem. Playing the outsider in his hitman character he has his own warped principles and sense of faith, destiny and connection to a moral code that only makes sense to himself. He's ruthless and reminiscent of the Terminator. The scary thing about Bardem's Anton Chigurh is that he has certain creepy real life qualities about him. The Terminator was a ruthless killing machine but that's because it was programmed to be. That's what made it scary. Chigurh kills because he enjoys it and yet he's such a cinematic badass that it's nearly impossible not to enjoy his performance in some perverse way. For example when the film begins he's in police custody. Not for any apparent reason relevant to the plot but from the book he basically allowed himself to be captured to see if he could escape. This guy is an absolute psychopath. One of the great cinematic bad guys and Bardem won best supporting actor at the Oscars with literally no competition. But it's not just a film about a badass chasing a target across the country. The film avoids genre classification entirely. I guess the closest thing you have to labelling it with would be a thriller. Although it's also a dark comedy and at times alternates between a western and noir. I've heard the film called ‘boring' by a few people but there's a big difference between boring and slow paced. Trust me on this one. The pacing of No Country is very deliberate to build tension and use scenes like the one with Anton and the gas station attendant to establish the characters beliefs and motivation for later scenes. I must admit I drifted during a few of Tommy Lee Jones' scenes but even then his accent just kinda washes over you and his offbeat humour is a great counterbalance to the thrills of the chase between Anton & Moss. It might not be a film for everyone but if you have the slightest ability to pay attention to something more complex than your average blockbuster then I implore you to see this film.

BEST BIT – Practically every scene Javier Bardem is in.

RATING - *****. I think the Coen's could have made a few scenes just a touch clearer but this isn't your average cinematic treat. It's far more than that. Despite how much I love the Big Lebowski, and I certainly do that, this is probably the best Coen Brothers film. And arguably the best film of 2007. I'll have to take another look at There Will Be Blood before deciding one way or the other. It's like Chinatown meets the Terminator.

Evan Almighty (2007)



EXPECTATIONS – After watching No Country I really needed to step back and watch something really lightweight. I saw Bruce Almighty when it was released and it was ok. Nothing special. Certainly didn't merit a sequel. Steve Carell was pretty forgettable in the first film and he's promoted to star this time around. Jim Carrey passed on this one. So did Jennifer Aniston.

TRAILER –



PLOT – Evan Baxter (Steve Carell) is leading TV because he's been elected to Congress. However shortly after arriving he's contacted by God (Morgan Freeman) who asks him to build an Ark.

OPINION – Evan Almighty starts out quite well, although never really comes close to Bruce Almighty in terms of laughs, before slowly sinking like Captain Jack Sparrow's pathetic boat at the beginning of Curse of the Black Pearl. Steve Carell can't rescue a dire script that is both sluggish and unfunny before the film just runs aground on the shores of shitty CGI. The last 15-20 minutes of the film are shocking in their lack of quality. The flood sequence makes no sense whatsoever (where's all that water coming from???), has zero continuity and carries with a not only a total disregard for the laws of psychics but also has no good jokes in it. Molly Shannon is totally wasted in a bit part. Morgan Freeman is affable but has very little to work with. Steve Carell tries his best, bless him, but is forced to avoid jokes in favour of doing a little dance every five minutes (which is nowhere near as funny as the producers seem to think). Yes, it is entertaining for a while, the film not the dancing, but Evan Almighty outstays it's welcome. John Goodman is terrible and Wanda Sykes is beyond irritating. I now have a new theory based on this, and other movies. If a Jim Carrey movie gets a sequel he has to be in it for it to be good. This is the third failed sequel/prequel to a Carrey movie after Son of Mask and Dumb and Dumberer. Evan Almighty has the dubious honour of being the best of the three. Carell is just about good enough and likeable enough in his delivery of some very average dialogue to make Evan Almighty passable. Bruce Almighty wasn't great but at least the script had enough gags in for Carrey to get it over with the audience. Plus it didn't have a horrific ending. I can't stress enough how truly, truly awful the ending is for Evan Almighty. It looks dreadful and it cost…$175M to make this. A little comedy does not cost $175M. Frankly the studio would have been better off just pissing the money up a wall. Or buying a lot of hookers and coke. Yanno, the Don Simpson school of filmmaking.

BEST BIT – Morgan Freeman's explanation of how he answers prayers. Comes with free chicken in the basket.

RATING - **. I didn't hate the film but the ending is so awful and anytime I see that much money wasted it makes me mad. Steve Carell can afford to take a hit this early in his starring career as it still topped $100M at the box office. Jim Carrey didn't need this and was very smart to pass on it. But surely everyone's clue it was headed nowhere was when Jennifer Aniston passed on it. Come on, Jennifer Aniston!

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)



EXPECTATIONS – I don't classify myself as a particularly big Tim Burton fan and yet I've seen almost all his movies. I'm not sure how that works. I have the rather controversial opinion that he's only made 3 good movies. I've also been rather scathing in the past of some of his films including the Planet of the Apes re-make and Sleepy Hollow. Last two Tim Burton movies have been pretty poor. Especially Corpse Bride, which was thoroughly lazy and uninspired. That said Burton can be among the most creative directors working in Hollywood. I specifically choose to watch this because Johnny Depp was Oscar nominated. I normally don't care much for musicals.

TRAILER –



PLOT – Sweeney Todd (Johnny Depp) is a barber on Fleet Street operating above Mrs Lovett's (Helena Bonham-Carter) meat pie shop. He was once banished from London by Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) who stole his wife & child so he swore revenge and changed his name from Benjamin Barker to Sweeney Todd. His murderous return sees him pursue his daughter and the head of Judge Turpin.

OPINION – Who am I suppose to root for here, I wonder? A murderer? A woman who cooks corpses? Various other scoundrels? There is no well defined hero in this tragic tale. The usually sympathetic Johnny Depp turns to the dark side, not just in his modus operandi, but also the dreaded musical. And let's get this out of the way before the rest of the review; being a musical may have seemed like a good idea on paper but in practice it's a disaster and doesn't work at all. There's not one memorable moment of song and everytime someone is singing it gets in the way of the plot moving forward. And the singing kicks in at alarming intervals. The opening 25 minutes or so has almost no dialogue in it at all, which is a pain in the arse when you're looking to tell a story. Despite the efforts of Burton to do something weird and offbeat both Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter are perfect in their roles. But the creative decisions take away so much of their power as actors. It takes over an hour for Sweeney Todd to actually find it's feet. The overplaying of the musical aspect effectively kills the film until the characters are knee deep in blood, paranoia and betrayal. As the musical numbers sharply decrease towards the films conclusion they become strangely more effective and the actors gain from the freedom. Depp and especially Bonham-Carter have their best moments in the last 20-30 minutes. It's only when the actors aren't limited by silly musical numbers that they become actively gripping and are able to draw the viewer in. Visually Burton has gone for something that is part gothic fantasy world channelling German expressionism and part splatterfest horror movie. It's certainly an interesting combination and had Burton stopped and not gone full hog on the gimmick involving the music then this really could have been one of his best films. As it stands there are just too many experiments going on. It's certainly not lazy like Corpse Bride but it doesn't make the best use of it's star players like Burton's best work. Both Depp and Bonham-Carter are really good but how much of that is down to Burton's direction and how much to their desire to play the roles? This, believe it or not, is significantly better than some of the god-awful musicals of recent years (like the ridiculously over-rated Chicago or Dreamgirls) but that has nothing to do with the music. It's almost worth seeing for Depp's demented central turn that continues to prove his outstanding abilities as an actor but for me, once again, Burton disappoints.

BEST BIT – "The years, no doubt, have changed me, sir. But then I suppose the face of a barber, the face of a prisoner in the dock, is not particularly memorable." – Sweeney Todd muses on how the little people don't impact on the important.

RATING - **1/2. It's certainly interesting and if Burton had only given up on the musical aspect and shot it straight up it could have been great. As it stands it's merely an interesting failure. Another in an increasing line of them from the once great director. Big Fish, in retrospect, looks like a fluke than a return to form. Still, there are few directors who can fail in such spectacular fashion. One hell of a show, sir.

HOLLYWOOD WHORES

Sophie Okonedo. Dirty Pretty Things.



I reviewed Dirty Pretty Things for 411 way back in Furious on Film #37. It's pretty hit and miss but Sophie Okonedo, who you might know better from Hotel Rwanda (below), is really very good as a London whore.



Sophie doesn't get much of a hard time of being a whore in Dirty Pretty Things. Sure, she's used but she doesn't seem to mind. She doesn't get degraded on film and isn't injured in an unpleasant fashion.



I personally like Sophie as an actress. She's half Nigerian and born in London. She fitted the immigrant stereotypes at work behind Dirty Pretty Things. You should know her from Hotel Rwanda but she also made an appearance in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (she was the Wachati Princess that Ace defiled). Hotel Rwanda didn't quite give her a big breakthrough but she has played in Stormbreaker and Martian Child since.




Sophie Okonedo, ladies and gentlemen.



You stay classy…Planet Earth.