Ben Affleck has proven himself very adept as a director and on the evidence of this trailer, he may have another success on his hands with Argo. Based on true events, the thriller Argo chronicles the life-or-death covert operation to rescue six Americans, which unfolded behind the scenes of the Iran hostage crisis–the truth of which was unknown by the public for decades. It involved going to Iran saying they were location scouting for a fake sci-fi flick in order to smuggle the hostages out. It’s out October 12th.
Killer Joe Trailer – Matthew McConaughey turns contract killer
Who’d have thought trying to kill your mum would cause suc trouble? When 22-year-old Chris (Emile Hirsch) finds himself in debt to a drug lord, he hires a hit man to dispatch his mother, whose $50,000 life insurance policy benefits his sister Dottie (Juno Temple). Chris finds Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a creepy, crazy Dallas cop who moonlights as a contract killer. When Chris cant pay Joe upfront, Joe sets his sight on Dottie as collateral for the job. The contract killer and his hostage develop an unusual bond. Like from a modern-day, twisted fairy tale, “Killer Joe Cooper becomes the prince to Dotties Cinderella. Based on the play by Pulitzer and Tony Award winner Tracy Letts, “Killer Joe is a garish, proactive black comedy from Academy Award-winning director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection) and stars Emile Hirsch, Matthew McConaughey, Juno Temple, Thomas Hayden Church, and Gina Gershon. The film’s out June 29th.
Brave – The Joy Of Kilts – The Pixar movie promotes man-skirts
Brave hits cinema of August 13th, but now a new promo has arrived, asking us whether we’re brave enough to wear a kilt! the film is ‘A grand adventure full of heart, memorable characters and signature Pixar humor, “Brave uncovers a new tale in the mysterious Highlands of Scotland where the impetuous Merida (voice of Kelly Macdonald) defies an age-old custom and inadvertently unleashes chaos, forcing her to discover the meaning of true bravery before its too late.’
A Good Old Fashioned Orgy (DVD) – Jason Sudeikis fancies a bit of group sex
How many people watched episode after episode of Friends and thought, “Why don’t they all just get it on already?! Probably not that many, but if you count yourself among that slightly pervy group then you’re probably going to get a kick out of A Good Old Fashioned Orgy. Despite bearing an 18 certificate and a title that’ll see it accidentally lumped into the rhythm-movie section at many HMV stores, Orgy is actually pretty good wholesome fun…with a bucketload of tits thrown in for good measure.
In upstate New York’s swanky Hamptons, Eric’s (Jason Sudeikis) parties are the stuff of legend among his group of friends and the community. However with some of his buddies settling down and his father deciding to sell the venue, Eric realises that his reign as party king is nearing its end and he’s going to have to grow up. Aiming to go out with a bang rather than a whimper, Eric throws up the suggestion for everyone to have a lovely spot of group sex to mark the end of the era. Things go slightly awry though when he begins to fall for the estate agent and some of the gang seem less keen than others.
If you’re looking for disgustingly crude humour then, somewhat surprisingly, A Good Old Fashioned Orgy is probably not your cup of sex. For the most part, it’s actually pretty sweet, standard rom-com fare. Sure, there are gross-out bits here and there but it settles into being a film as offensive and yet sentimental as, say, American Pie. Unfortunately, it’s not quite the laugh-a-minute riot that the subject matter should suggest. However, the cast of up-and-coming comic actors do their bit with aplomb – managing to raise enough dirty chuckles to keep the entertainment balance comfortably in the black.
In all it’s a decent, frequently amusing rom-com. A little disappointing that they didn’t push the envelope and serve up some more risqué gags, but nothing to stop this from being a good old fashioned bit of fun and not a complete clusterf**k.
Overall Verdict: Jason Sudeikis continues to head up comedies without cranking out a stinker. A Good Old Fashioned Orgy isn’t as daring as its title suggests, but it’s definitely worth a look.
Reviewer: Jordan Brown
Jeff, Who Lives At Home – Jason Segel fails to launch but is looking for signs
A film starring Jason Segel and Ed Helms should be hilarious, right? Plus it’s directed by Jay and Mark Duplass, the brothers who had indie success with the likes of The Puffy Chair and Baghead, and are now making their first properly mainstream movie (the underwhelming Cyrus doesn’t really count). Sadly the results are less than the sum of the parts, with the movie being infuriating in parts and only sporadically entertaining.
As the title suggests, Jeff (Jason Segel) lives at home. He’s in his mid-thirties, has no job, doesn’t leave his basement all that often and spends most of his time trying to work out the signs’ he feels are all around him, which will tell him what his destiny is if only he can interpret them properly. His mother (Susan Sarandon) asks him to go out and get some wood glue, however when he receives a wrong phone call for somebody called Kevin, he sees this as a sign, which leads him to get distracted from his task and ends up following someone with the word Kevin’ on his basketball vest.
This eventually leads him to bump into his loud-mouth brother, Pat (Ed Helms), who’s about as different to Jeff as it’s possible to be. Pat’s marriage isn’t going well, and together the brothers end up on an inadvertent quest, following Pat’s wife (Judy Greer) who may be having an affair, while Jeff continues to search for the perfect moment when all the signs and hints come together to tell him what he needs to do to fulfil his destiny.
There’s nothing wrong with making films about people who aren’t 100% likable, but I found it difficult to empathise with either Jeff or Pat. I presume we’re meant to see Jeff as a lovable loser whose naïve but sweet view of life is somehow endearing, but I found it difficult not to see him as a feckless twit whose failure to launch is less sweet than irresponsible. With Pat I’m assuming we’re meant to believe he’s a bit of a pompous ass, but sympathise with the fact his life hasn’t gone the way he hoped it would and that he’s blind to the effect his actions have. Actually though he’s an asshole who has destroyed his own marriage by being selfish and arrogant. Do I really want to spend 85 minutes in the company of people like that? Not really, especially if they’re no laugh out loud funny.
It would be okay if we felt they really learned something through the movie, but the film actively cheats on this score. There’s a scene where both brothers admit they covet the other’s life and then say that actually their existent isn’t as great as it looks to the other, but they’d have to be absolutely blind to want the other’s life, as they’re both blatantly flailing.
Towards the end it looks like the film might actually be going somewhere, but the ending is a giant exercise in smoke and mirrors, so that it looks like things have changed, but nothing’s actually been resolved and everything’s been sorted out utterly artificially. Admittedly there’s always going to be something a tad contrived about a film that fits into the Signs and Magnolia school of everything being connected, but here it feels like it’s mainly a cheat.
The only part of the film that works really well is the subplot involving Susan Sarandon, who has a secret admirer at her work. She doesn’t know who it is, but paper airplanes soar into her cubicle and someone is IM’ing her computer. It’s a sweet story that goes in an interesting direction and by about halfway through I was wishing the Duplass’ had just made a film about her and left Jeff at home.
Overall Verdict: Jason Segel and Ed Helms are great talents, but Jeff Who Lives At Home is too muddled, doesn’t know what to do with their characters and cheats the ending.
Reviewer: Tim Isaac
ID:A (DVD) – Amnesiac thrillers go Scandinavian
Thanks to the likes of The Killing and Borgen, Scandinavian thrillers are the in thing at the moment. However these bursts in popularity for particular bits of world entertainment mean an awful lot of stuff gets released hoping to cash-in on the phenomenon, whether it’s top quality stuff or not. ID:A definitely feels like it come from the second rank of Scandinavian thrillers, despite the presence of Oscar winning director Christian E. Christiansen and Lars Von Trier’s Zentropa producing.
The movie opens with a woman waking up in a French river, with a scar on her stomach but no memory of who she is or how she got there. Adopting the name Aliena, she tries to work out who she is and soon becomes aware that mysterious heavies are looking for someone with her description. When she works out she could be Danish, she heads north, finding a clue on the way when she recognises the voice of famous opera cinema Just Ore.
This realisation sets off a chain of increasingly dark events where Aliena discovers the truth of who she is, as well as the murder, brutality and fear that led to her ending up in the river in the first place.
It’s very difficult to make an amnesia thriller that doesn’t seem hackneyed. The Bourne films managed it by making the character’s memory loss essentially a sideshow to the conspiracy theories and the balls-to-the-walls action. Here it’s all about the amnesia, which is okay but does start feeling slightly cheap when you realise that it’s more a plot device than anything absolutely essential. Indeed its main job is to make the thriller seem more interesting and innovative than it actually is, as without it much of the story would seem rather silly.
That’s not to say it’s all bad though, as the film moves along at a fair clip and the amnesia storyline does keep you watching to find out who the woman is and what happened to her. The story gets ever darker and things become increasingly deadly when we go into extended flashback to find out the violence and abuse that resulted in Aliena’ falling into the river. The film has fun playing with our ideas of who characters are, but it starts feeling a little tired and the characters end up making less and less sense, eventually resorting to using increasingly grisly violence in place of a plot that actually seems to have grown organically.
ID:A does have one very rare and welcome thing, a gay character whose sexuality is relevant but who could quite as easily have been straight. It’s largely presented as something that just is and nobody has much to say about it, which is surprisingly rare, especially in the thriller genre.
It’s an okay movie, but anyone hoping for the filmic equivalent of The Killing will be disappointed. In fact it has more in common with Hollywood product than the slick Scandinavian dramas BBC3 has been drooling over.
Overall Verdict: Amnesia is a surprisingly difficult thing to make work on film, with ID:A showing that without care and an extremely tight, strong plot around it, it can seem a tad cheesy.
Special Features:
Trailer
Reviewer: Tim Isaac
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