This week brings one of the best films of last year (from the Criterion Collection, no less) some of the bigger disappointments of of 2012 so far, one of the best TV shows going today, and a collection of the Lethal Weapon films. Not a bad week for DVD and Blu-ray. Check it out…

New:

• Certified Copy: I went into this movie knowing very little about it, and fell completely in love. Abbas Kiarostami’s film follows an author (William Schimell) who goes out for the afternoon with a woman (Juliette Binoche), and as their conversation continues, a mystery is created. Do these people know each other from before? Saying any more would spoil the fun, but this was my favorite film of 2011.
• Red Tails: George Lucas spent twenty years talking about this film, and the results were similar to his prequel films. CGI’d to all get out and filled with corny dialogue meant to be a throwback to a different era. Perhaps the film will find its audience at home.
• The Secret World of Arrietty: Hayao Miyazaki is justly revered as one of the greatest artists of animation. Though he didn’t direct the film per se, his stamp is all over the film, and it’s a charming and gentle piece of work. Maybe not one of his best, but some of those are also hitting DVD and Blu-ray this week.
• Sherlock: Season Two: If you haven’t been watching this version of Sherlock, you may not understand why there’s such a nerd boner for Benedict Cumberbatch right now. If you do watch this, not only will you see four and a half hours of the best television going these days, you will get Cumberbatch completely. He makes Sherlock Holmes his own.
• This Means War: McG directed this spy rom-com. It pretty much sucks. Reese Witherspoon, Tom Hardy and Chris Pine do their best with material that feels like a pilot for a show that no one would like.
• The Woman in Black: Daniel Radcliffe scored a surprising success with this post-Potter entry. Based on the hit play, this was a big hit for both Radcliffe and Hammer Horror studios, who are still kicking in the 21^st century.

Classics:

• A Bullet for the General: Most people know the spaghetti western through Sergio Leone – and there’s nothing wrong with that – but the genre was vast and had a number of great entries that weren’t helmed by Leone. This is one of the best.
• Castle in the Sky, Whisper of the Heart: Remember those great Miyazaki’s I was talking about? Castle in the Sky is one of them.
• Lethal Weapon Collection: A series that got progressively worse as it went (4 might be a slight improvement over 3, but only so much), the first film was a classic of 80’s action, and the sequel was a lot of fun. And sometimes it’s good to own a couple films you don’t like for the supplements that only come in a box set.
• Too Late Blues: This was an early John Cassavettes film that never got the Criterion treatment, and has not been as vaulted as some of his classics. I’ve never seen it, as it wasn’t put out on home video. So for that I can’t wait.

What are you picking up this week?

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Theoretically, McG‘s This Means War is a perfect twist on the romantic comedy. You’ve often got possible lovers fighting over one person, so why not have them be people who can actually fight? Reese Witherspoon [interview] stars as the girl stuck between two deep cover operatives (Tom Hardy, Chris Pine) in this surprisingly unpleasant riff on the cinematic romantic triangle.

The Players:

• Director: McG
• Writers: Timothy Dowling, Simon Kinberg
• Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, Tom Hardy, Chelsea Handler, Til Schweiger, Angela Bassett
• Music: Christophe Beck
• Cinematography: Russell Carpenter

The Plot:

FDR (Pine) and Tuck (Hardy) are two operatives for the government on the tail of Heinrich (Schweiger) when their attempted bust goes bad. They kill Heinrich’s brother but lose Heinrich. Forced to work their desks and find Heinrich, FDR convinces Tuck to join an online dating site. Tuck was once married (and has a kid), but he could never tell his ex that he was an agent, while FDR is simply a player who cycles through women. Enter Lauren (Witherspoon), a kitchen product safety tester and demonstrator, who – when she sees an ex with his new fiancee – worries she’s not in the game. Her best friend Trish (Handler) signs her up to an online dating site, and she and Tuck go out. But Tuck is worried that she’ll be weird, so FDR is supposed to spy on her, only to bump into her at a video store. And once the two men start dating her, they find out that they’re interested in the same woman and use all their government tricks to find out about her, even while Heinrich has sworn to kill them both.

The Good:

• Attractive Leads: There’s no getting around that the three leads are attractive and interesting faces on screen, each with different appeals. Hardy is something of an oddball, but he plays well in the mainstream, and it’s nice to see him do something that’s against type. Pine plays the playboy, and he does it well, riffing on the “jerkish but actually cares” type he played well in Star Trek, while Witherspoon grounds the film with her turn as the cute girl surprised to be overwhelmed with options.
• Playful: Though the film doesn’t always work, it does try to make itself into a fun romantic comedy, and there are moments when you buy that these people are on a date having fun. From time to time.

The Bad:

• Chelsea Handler: As the comic relief, Handler is supposed to be the off-color friend, but so much of what she says is more offensive than interesting. Others have noted that the role would normally be played by a gay man, but here it’s like watching Carlos Mencia in The Heartbreak Kid, or a number of other high profile comic turns where there’s no real comedy from the supposed comedian.
• Abuse of Government Powers: Much of the middle section of the film is dedicated to the two spies spying on Reese Witherspoon’s character. This is one of the central conceits of the film, and though it may be bad enough that the characters have to lie to her about their jobs, the idea that they are abusing the Patriot act to get to know the woman they’re dating is grotesque – especially since the film seems to imply that they are ignoring a terrorist threat to do so. Romantic comedies often feature behavior that might be consider creepy and stalker-ish in real life, but this is a situation that if the main characters were honest about what they did, the female lead should press charges.
• Crap Writing: At the beginning, Witherspoon’s assistant mentions she wants to leave early to be with her boyfriend. Witherspoon then notes that she doesn’t have anyone. Then she runs into her ex-boyfriend and lies about having someone, and then runs into him at the sushi place she was going to. The latter part could be seen as a pay-off, but that’s three scenes in a row that tell you the exact same thing. Then Witherspoon has to have a conversation about this with Handler’s character. And in terms of who will eventually end up with who, the film gives itself a very easy out for one of the characters, so there’s no real tension in the triangle, and no sense of Witherspoon favoring one over the other until the reveal. It’s just a narrative hook, like Schweiger’s plot-point convenient terrorist.
• Nitpick: Pine and Witherspoon meet in a video story (in 2012?), over a copy of the terrible remake of The Vanishing – which she was going to rent – and then Pine tells her to rent The Lady Vanishes, which is then critiqued as not being as good as Hitchcock’s later run (with a timeline that includes such films as Topaz and Family Plot). This isn’t a real complaint, but since none of the films they’re talking about comment on the plot, it just convinces me that these people have bad taste in films.

Overall:

Harmless, for sure, and bad in standard romantic comedy ways, so on that curve it’s not the worst thing. If the film thought about what it was saying or doing, it might be embarrassed. As it stands, star charisma only carries the film so far.

Rating: 5/10

This Means War hits theaters February 17.

 Photos:

Trailer:

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In This Means War, Chris Pine and Tom Hardy fight over Reese Witherspoon. But for their big interview, it appears that Tom Hardy won, as Pine was called to the set of Star Trek 2. In his absence we had two of the three leads, comic relief Chelsea Handler, and the always eager to please director McG to talk about the film. Check it out…

To set the stage for the interview, it’s worth summarizing what happened before it began, in which Tom Hardy – wearing a jacket from the movie – comes and joins in on the conversation a couple of journalists are having about The Woman in Black. Hardy said “I’d eat through Daniel Radcliffe to have been in that” and spent the next five minutes eating snacks and just shooting the proverbial crap with everyone. That Hardy spent much of his “real” interview rubbing his face on his microphone like a cat and gave snarky answers became a charming affectation.

We heard stories about the movie fighting an R Rating. They had to drop some of Chelsea’s joke to get it to PG-13. First, do you feel censored as a comedian and what were the jokes?

McG: We got an NC-17 because of the World According to Chelsea Handler. If you ask her about men, you ask her about sex, you ask her about dating, she has a strong take.

Chelsea Handler: Yeah, a strong take that I don’t want them to happen with you.

McG: It’s the aggravation that creates the pearl.

Chelsea Handler: We have a very volatile relationship. But no, I don’t feel like I’m being censored. I’m a trouble maker, everybody knows it. So it was bound to happen, he egged me on. He had me say some very, very dirty things that even I thought were dirty. So I wasn’t surprised that they were taken out.

McG: But they’ll be on the DVD.

What was one of the things that were cut?

McG: Just, you know. One of the things that made it strange was – And it’s funny because it’s the prudish, uptight MPAA that’s fine with the violent components but anything that has to do with sexuality. She said “You need to be a bigger liar. Say your boyfriend’s penis is so big that he’s getting a penile reduction because every time it lands on your urethra it’s like a poltergeist.” First of all, who thinks that way? Chelsea’s out of her mind and that that’s why we love her. The MPAA was trying to take out all that stuff, and we had to take out a few things, but we retained the authentic comedic stylings of Chelsea Handler.

What was the paintball scene like?

Reese Witherspoon: It was fun to shoot. Although it was as our first day of shooting. I didn’t know Tom very well, and I had to shoot him in the crotch, which is a good ice breaker, it turns out.

Reese, in your other films you portray this girl next door, but in this one you’re being a little sexier.

Reese Witherspoon: It’s all McG’s fault. His cajoling, his constant texting.

McG: Listen. Do we all understand that Reese Witherspoon is a capable, intelligent woman? Devoted mother, we know all these things. And I don’t think that any woman who’s beautiful should apologize for being so beautiful. And it’s clear that she’s so good, her goodness precedes her and she’s talented, she has a golden statue to back that up. And I find her to be so sexy and so foxy, that it was a thrill to work with Russell Carpenter, who you know shot Titanic, he shot some beautiful girls in his time, and he knew how to shoot her in a way and we created a platform of comfort and I defer to the crowd, you guys think Reese looks sexy in the picture. Tom, what do you think? I want to hear about Tom’s paintball experience.

Tom Hardy: I think she looks sexy without the picture, you know? Just thought she was sexy. But paintball in the nuts hurts.

What kind of artistic stretch do you have to make to be a single girl in the movie?

Reese Witherspoon: Well, I was a single girl when I made the movie. It wasn’t much of a stretch. This wasn’t a hard job to make. It was made very easy but McG’s enthusiasm by having two amazing men in this movie who are very talented actors, very funny in their own right, and obviously being with Chelsea who is -

Chelsea Handler: – A horrible influence on everyone.

Reese Witherspoon: (Laughs) Uncontrollable and genius.

What’s your standard in the types of roles you pick? And do you have a decision guru?

Reese Witherspoon: Do I have a decision guru? Well, I consult Chelsea on most of the decisions in my life.

Chelsea Handler: I’m always there for her.

Does the movie parallel to your real life? 

Reese Witherspoon: Sure. Yeah.

Chelsea Handler: It’s kind of the opposite. Because in real life, she has children, she’s a mother and she’s married. And I’m single, so it was kind of fun playing opposite roles.

Reese Witherspoon: Yeah, we’re reversed.

Chelsea Handler: I’m single and I sleep with a lot of men, so it’s perfect.

Tom, in the movie, you have a friend that sticks by through a lot of tough stuff. For you personally, what could a friend do to you that would be the last straw?

Tom Hardy: I don’t have any friends. I don’t keep them or entertain them for any of that kind of problem. So I like to keep myself. I have a dog and a son. A dog couldn’t do anything to upset me, you know, and neither could my son.

Reese, what’s your take on online dating and would you ever date two at one time? Do you recommend that for a guy?

Reese Witherspoon: For a guy? I wouldn’t have any recommendations for a guy. But for a girl, I mean I think a lot of people Internet date. That’s what the commercials say, right? One in 5 people meet each other online or something?

McG: Where are you supposed to meet someone?

Reese Witherspoon: Online.

McG: I know, the least you can say is, “hey I’m really into going to bed at 9 o’clock and I like zebras and you know, role playing.” And then you can get after it in that regard and you can narrow it down to some degree.

Tom Hardy: I think it’s an apparent, I think the whole thing is apparent. I think online dating is a way of procuring people, you know what I mean? Like Facebook, Myspace. It’s a way that people to connect out. And procure small children and sometimes you know, dodgy relationships. I don’t think it’s very healthy. Online dating is cool, but I think Facebook and Myspace is a little off key.

You had good chemistry with the other actors. Was that there from the very beginning or was it something you worked on rehearsal?

Tom Hardy: No, that was just acting. I’m quite alpha, and he was the actor of the film so I did my best to accommodate that. No, I was playing with him. It was just acting, he’s a good guy. It was fun.

McG: Listen, I think put simply, there’s a great old Robert Altman adage that the best thing to do as a director is to cast the film properly. And if you have Reese and you have Tom and you have Chris, driving that triangle and you have Chelsea to come in and steal scenes, it makes everything very, very simple and it flows from there. And we talked about “oh the picture’s so pretty,” and the costuming or the sounds or the explosions are fun, that’s all easy. We can handle that, but I cannot fabricate chemistry. And the chemistry that these two girls have from a place of buddy dynamics, I would just listen to them walking back to video village and go let’s cherry pick that and use it as a scene because that’s incredible. And as far as the chemistry that Tom and Chris had, they are indeed both very alpha and they respect each other but one would never acquiesce to one another and it was a healthy competitive spirit that I think is in the service of the picture.

Tom Hardy: Just teasing. It was good fun to play with. I wouldn’t want to work with him again. But for the period that we were working together, that was good.

Can you speak about casting with diversity in mind? I mean, you have four main actors who have blue eyes.

McG: Listen that’s a huge concern for me, you know? And I can answer that in good faith because I put Lucy Liu in “Charlie’s Angels.” I don’t like Lily white movies with Lily white people bouncing around but you also just got to do what you got to do. In the spirit of Benetton Ad Rainbow Correlation, you know, the most empower character in the film is indeed a black woman, I enjoy the most powerful person in Hollywood is indeed a black woman – Oprah Winfrey. And I’m hoping to just transcend beyond that but I love ethnic diversity all over the place but I just felt like Chelsea was the right one. I had a singular vision for Tom Hardy, I chased him all the way over to London. And you’re right, because I’m doing the color correction and I’m like, Jesus, everybody’s eyes are popping off the screen, these interior-lit blue mongrels. And it’s a bit of a concern but you just got to do what’s right.

Chelsea Handler: We ate Chinese food throughout the whole filming.

McG: So it was important to me, but it wasn’t the most ethnically diverse picture, which is on my mind.

Did you rehearse a lot to make that chemistry flow or did you drink together after work?

Chelsea Handler: We rehearsed after the movie was done. (laughs) Then we started drinking together.

Reese Witherspoon: Then we started drinking a lot.

When did you two first meet?

Reese Witherspoon: Probably like two years ago.

McG: Just one more thing in regards to that last question and I don’t want to step on it, but the reason why Chelsea gets away with everything is because she has a giant heart, Chelsea is a good person. And that’s why you have Reese attracted to that and letting her in and that’s where the chemistry lies. And they felt comfortable and we just tried to create an environment where they could do what they wanted to do and be off hook and succeed wildly and fail on occasionally.

Reese Witherspoon: I think what really endears you to Chelsea’s character is in the first scene that you really see her talk to me. I say, “Oh I think I going to move away, I feel really bad” and she say, “But I would miss you.” And it was so sweet and tender and you said it on the day and it’s like that’s how she is, she’s just a very loyal friend.

McG: She is a loyal friend.

Reese, out of all the dates your character goes through, which was the most fun to shoot and why?

Reese Witherspoon: I think Tom would agree, the trapeze scene. (laughs) He practiced for at least a month ahead of time.

Tom Hardy: I did.

Reese Witherspoon: He did, he rehearsed and he would sometimes wake up super early in the morning and he would just – he had a trapeze installed in his hotel room.

Tom Hardy: Yeah, you know it poured out because I got a little finger which was a bit broken from a problem I had as a kid. I got it caught. And actually I had a chain trapeze at the time and I got it caught in the links, and I lost my grip and I fell and it pulled me. And it took a lot of guts for me to get back on the trapeze, so thank you.

Reese Witherspoon: And a bit of hypnosis. And he did a great job.

Tom Hardy: I also have McG to thank for that.

Was it something you wanted to do more or did you tell yourself that you’ll never do it again?

Reese Witherspoon: No, it was fun. I wished I could have done more. I kept saying to McG, “Give me the gun. Think of a scene where I could do the guns.”

McG: Yeah, but she was in a harness, raise 50 feet up off the ground, hanging from a wire, you (Tom) ripped your finger wide open. You went for it; she’s fearless and did her thing. You know, and the film had a lot to do with everybody – to some degree- being gracious to the other one. And it’s no doubt that Reese is a very gracious actress and she sets up Chelsea to steal our scenes. That’s wonderful. And Tom is in the service of Chris, and Chris is in the service of Tom. From an action place, the boys are very proficient in that regard and they took Reese with her but from a place of leadership, Reese as I said earlier, she was the sun of which the whole production orbits around her leadership. She’s on her mark, and very professional and ready to go and that’s how to get away with Chelsea style, which I know she says I don’t prep, I don’t do this, that and the other – but from the bottom of my heart, I wouldn’t want it any other way. We hired Chelsea for a reason, I don’t think she’s done that character in a film yet, I think a lot of people are going to chase her now to do it and I’m delighted that you made your big debut in that capacity and I’m looking down there at Tom, and he’s a good sport to play along in a decidedly Americana pop film. The guy’s a monster; we know what he can do with his acting ability. We’ve all seen Bronson, We’ve all seen Warrior, we know he’s going to be Mad Max, here come’s Bane, this, that and the other. But I turned onto the Tom with the handsome Bob character with the particular from discussing filmmaking with you and just knowing you’re a very brilliant guy and we could show the world a side of you they haven’t seen before.

Reese, was there anything he wanted you to do that you didn’t care to do?

Tom Hardy: Pine.

Reese Witherspoon: No, not really.

McG: She’s fearless. She’s given birth twice, she can do anything.

In this movie, there’s about five different ways you could have ended this triangle. Did you give yourself some wiggle room to choose that ending?

McG: Yeah, the film only works if you’re rooting for both of the guys. I really like Pine, I really like Hardy, and they’re both very interesting for different reasons. So we wanted to have flexibility. We even talked about having two endings and releasing it – if it were on 3,000 screens, 1,500 would have this one, and 1,500 would have that one and just not say anything. But it felt a little gimmicky at the end because I think the films very clean in the absence of that. So we went with what you guys have seen but there’s even an ending where the two boys end up in each other’s arms.

Tom Hardy: That should have been the ending.

McG: A homoerotic finish.

Tom Hardy: It would have been a really ground-breaking ending to me. You should have gone for it. I mean, really gone for it, McG.

McG: I know. I posted out on the ending of “Terminator 4″ so I should have gone with the dark ending for that one, so may I’ll do the dark ending with this one.

Tell us if you had any injuries during the fight scenes and how well you handled it.

Tom Hardy: There were two fight scenes. One in the restaurant and the rest of it was just hanging onto the car. And the beginning – ah, the beginning, the helicopter.  But it wasn’t a fight scene.

McG: I think she means when you fought him.

Tom Hardy: Oh, it was good fun, yeah, it was good fun. Chris is a good fighter, you know. He has this kind of jazz-hands style, which is kind of scary if you’re going up against something from West Side Story. You got to keep your eyes well-peeled because they can come at any angle, especially when you have that much of the dancer naturally in you. So, to work with that kind of skill set – because I’m used to a different kind of form of boxing, Muay Thai. I had to look out for myself because he has fast hands. But it was safe.

McG: Yeah, but there was a fun moment where – Listen, again, Tom’s very gracious, you know, from the fight scene at the end and you say, “where you going?” and you smack the hell out of Chris’s character.

Tom Hardy: I smacked him on the face.

McG: And that was a big moment, because you can’t hurt Tom. You can throw him off a truck, and he’ll kind of tumble along and he’ll bend the other finger.

Tom Hardy: That’s not true. It hurts, but I won’t show it.

McG: And you know, we had to create a world in which everybody was comfortable with moving forward with that, smacking each other up a little bit and falling off second tiers and smashing into tables and doing everything he went through. But he’s a fighter by trade.

Tom Hardy: But Chris is better with a weapon than I am. If you look at him technically in the film, he’s actually great with pistol work and weapons, truth be told and he’s a lot tougher than he looks, if that even matters. Which it does.

This Means War Opens February 17. Check it out.

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Ryan Reynolds and Reese Witherspoon are now attached to star in Big Eyes, the story of the Keanes and their infamous art. The film will be produced by Tim Burton, and written and directed by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, best known for creating the Problem Child franchise, and writing such bio-pics as Ed Wood and The People Versus Larry Flynt. The film has a Spring start date.

Though obviously both leads have a comic background, the story of Margaret and Walter Keane is no straight comedy. Walter became famous for his big eyed art but a divorce revealed that Margaret had done all the work herself. Going by Alexander and Karaszewski’s background, it looks to be a black comedy, and probably Oscar contender.

Alexander and Karaszewski released a statement and said this about their stars:

“Walter is a larger-than-life antihero — charming, funny, dangerous, and a little crazy. Ryan will knock it out of the park. As for Reese, she will be perfect as Margaret — soulful, decent, transforming from vulnerability to learning to fight for herself.”

So it’s something of a female empowerment film. Like many writers before them, the duo have knocked many of the films based on their screenplays, including the Problem Child films and Screwed. Of late the two worked on 1408, and wrote a version of the Percy Jackson sequel, but haven’t had much credited work for a while. As it goes with many high profile writers, that doesn’t mean they haven’t been working.

Are you familiar with the Keanes?

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It’s been an interesting road for Reese Witherspoon post-Oscar. The award tends to suggest importance, but Witherspoon is best known for her light comic performances, and she’s appeared in an number that haven’t found their audience. Perhaps it’s best that she start making more serious dramas, so it’s smart she’s signed on for Atom Egoyan’s Devil’s Knot, which looks to dramatize the events of the West Memphis 3, according to Variety.

The West Memphis Three have been in the news a lot lately because they were just released from jail after having their appeals funded by filmmaker Peter Jackson. Their case was first taken up by documentarians Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky in the film Paradise Lost – which has had two sequels – detailing the triple homicide that sent three heavy-metal-loving boys to jail for eighteen years.

In the film – and it’s sequels – there is a case made that Terry Hobbs was the actual murderer, and Witherspoon’s role would be as his wife. That’s a juicy, juicy part, and it sounds like the fulcrum of the film as she changes her mind on who the killer or killers are. Director Egoyan spent much of the 1990′s as an indie darling, with the Canadian filmmaker receiving awards and praise for films like Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter. He has fallen out of favor in recent years, though his film Chloe – with Amanda Seyfried and Julianne Moore – got a theatrical release and some curiousity for its well-publicized nudity.

Were you following the West Memphis Three case?

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The premise of This Means War is stupidly irresistable. Chris Pine and Tom Hardy play secret agents. Both end up dating Reese Witherspoon. She seems to be a normal girl, but their interest gets so heightened that they use their spy tools on each other. Director McG may have a real winner on his hands. Check out the trailer…

This is high-concept filmmaking at its most psuedo-Jerry Bruckheimer. Fifteen ago Tony Scott would have directed it with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. Now we get the slightly cheaper version, but I’ll say this for the trailer: it’s got the scale it needs.

the biggest question this film raises is that Hollywood is not entirely sure what constitutes a starlet any more. I can’t imagine this picture with Katherine Heigl (who’s entered into a genre ghetto at this point), but Witherspoon strikes as being older than the normal casting in a picture like this, and looks to have a couple years on her co-stars. In and of itself that’s a good thing, it’s nice to see Hollywood isn’t afraid of a leading lady who isn’t fresh out of college, but it also suggests there’s no new Reese Witherspoon. Who is her younger equal in terms of comediennes? This Means War opens February 17, 2012.

Seriously, who is the new Reese Witherspoon?

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Look—I, like any healthy-minded adult human being, hate all of Reese Witherspoon’s post-Election films (ok, ok, Walk the Line was OK), but that doesn’t mean I advocate vehicular manslaughter to prevent her from making whichever new interchangeable romantic comedy Kate Hudson decided not to star in.  Turns out, an 84 year old motorist in Los Angeles felt differently, and decided to take Witherspoon out with her car and spare us all from Four Christmases Part 2: Four Harder.

Oh, I’m just kidding.  It was just a bad driver who wasn’t paying attention (which had nothing to do, I’m sure, with the driver being 84 years old.  Nope.  Nothing at all.  Nothing.  At.  All)  Via the Los Angeles Times:

Witherspoon, 35, is recovering at home after receiving treatment for minor injuries.

Police say the driver was an 84-year-old woman from Santa Monica.

She was cited for failing to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk and released.

Witherspoon was “jogging around 11 a.m. near 20th Street and Georgina Avenue when she was struck,” at which point, somewhere in Hollywood, a film exec snapped his fingers and exclaimed, “I’ve got it!  Reese Witherspoon plays a plucky magazine writer in L.A., totally unlucky in love.  Old lady hits her with a car.  She and the old lady switch bodies, and Reese learns several life lessons, and eventually returns to her body a changed and better woman.  Let’s get that one much less attractive comedienne to play her wisecracking and cynical best friend, and Vince Vaughn will play the voice of the car, let’s call him Vroom-Vroom, and only Reese’s love will make him human again.  $60 million budget, the thing sells itself.”  Cue boardroom applause.

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• Water for Elephants: Movie Review (2)

Water for Elephants hits theaters this weekend with a whimper… Though the film stars the almost always successful box office champ Reese Witherspoon, the most powerful heartthrob of the moment Robert Pattinson, and one the most lovable baddies of the last decade Christoph Waltz, the film falls short because it never really focuses on it’s true star, Rosie the Elephant — the one we all came to see.

The Players:

• Director: Francis Lawrence
• Writers: Richard LaGravenese (screenplay) and Sara Gruen (novel)
• Actors: Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson, Christoph Waltz, Paul Schneider, Jim Norton, Hal Holbrook
• Original Music by: James Newton Howard
• Cinematography by: Rodrigo Prieto

Plot:

After a young veterinary student loses his parents in a car accident, he abandons his life and joins a traveling circus as their vet. At first everything appears to be a dream come true, until the realities of a working for a ruthless employer during the depression. Unfortunately the more he wants to get out, the more things he has pulling them in, including the bosses wife. Will he be able to win the girl and make his dreams come true before it’s too late?

The Good:

• The Visuals: The lighting, cinematography, set design and costume design are all completely over the top and wonderfully done in this film. They all managed to embody the idea of a grandiose circus performance, while at the same time maintaining the rough edges of life on a train as a circus employee. There are numerous shots in this film that you could easily turn into artwork on your walls. They did such a great job with the train I wish they would have spent more time on it to really help us get that claustrophobic vibe that the people in the film kept talking about. But if this film has anything going for it, it’s the look.
• The Ending: Though the build up is minimal and they don’t give the star enough time on screen, Rosie the Elephant’s final moment makes this film almost worth seeing! She will fill your heart with joy and is definitely the highlight of the film. If only they would have made the film more about her story, we would have been set because she’s the true heart of it and the one we’re really siding with.

The Bad:

So many things…

• The Script: It was filled with lines like “You’re beautiful, you deserve a beautiful life.” Because if you’re not beautiful, you deserve a crappy life filled with no presents and no love. WHAT?! Put that aside and you have a somewhat sweet story that never really gets dark enough unless it’s dealing with animal abuse in which is goes too far. The characters have far more depth than they’re allowed to show on screen and it feels like the best parts were cut out to make this a PG-13 instead of being more honest and representing the true dark sides of all these characters in an R-rated film.
• Animal Abuse: While they didn’t go in depth with some of the characters, they made of point of having extremely drawn out animal abuse scenes which felt unnecessary. If you’re going to “go there” it needs to pay off, and despite the ending, the abuse never felt fully justified. Abusing an animal just to make the ending more powerful is not a good enough reason, it needs to mean something or tell a story.
• Length: This is NOT the epic it wants to be. If you’re going to make people sit down and give you their attention for 122 minutes, you better be more than just a romantic drama, you better be something life changing, something that teaches people something they didn’t know, or change cinema as we know it! This film has NONE of that.
• Pacing: They spend so much time setting up for the final act and yet once we are there they race through it and you hardly know what’s going on. Suddenly you’re left with a happy ending that doesn’t even highlight the star of the film (Rosie the elephant) but rather an inconvenient love story that really is the co-star to the real heart of the film, the circus!
• Facts: For a person who got on a train with absolutely nothing, Pattinson’s character sure acquires a lot of stuff including as amazingly expensive leather jacket — where did it all come from? The world may never know! As a person who has had horses for 20 years, there are certain things that just don’t add up. First of all “he’s going to founder” — no the horse has already foundered and is foundering as they speak — nerdy I know, but you have to get your facts right. Also, you’d never shoot a horse in a tiny space because how the hell would you get it out?

Overall:

The couples love story would have played much stronger if they would have let the animal’s story be the real star of the show. The romance between the two leads felt so forced, especially when there were far more interesting stories going on around them. Despite the beautiful craftsmanship put into this film, it’s not worth your time or money.

Rating: 3/10

Water for Elephants is in theaters April 22nd.

Photo Gallery:

Trailer:

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A couple of major star vehicles hitting DVD this week, and two that you probably don’t remember. Seriously, close your eyes and try to envision what movie How Do You Know? was. Got it yet? No? Yeah, didn’t think so – it was the rom-com featuring Reese Witherspoon and Paul Rudd. Okay, you still don’t know what it is, just trust me, it exists and you can get it on DVD this week.

It’s joined by the controversial Golden Globe choice The Tourist and perhaps the biggest star of them all, as Yogi Bear makes his DVD debut. All that, plus you can now follow me around on Twitter @paynehumor and get all my snark 140 characters at a time.

Check it out below…

Feature Films

How Do You Know? and The Tourist

It’s been said before, but allow me to throw one more shovel-full of dirt on the grave that is the idea that movie stars help a film succeed at the box office.

Exhibit A: The Tourist

By all measures, Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp are the top female and male box office stars, respectively. She’s on the cover of every magazine, routinely makes hit films, and is given the keys as the sole headliner of many high-profile vehicles. Depp, meanwhile hit a $1 Billion worldwide with Alice in Wonderland right after headlining the very successful Pirates trilogy with one more on the way.

Throw them together in a sexy thriller and you’ve got easy box office gold, right? Well that is if you consider $67 Million against a $100 Million budget to be something that Kind Midas would enjoy.

Exhibit B: How Do You Know?

My impression of a film executive trying to tell himself that this movie is nothing to worry about:

“Okay, so we’ve spent $120 Million on a romantic comedy from the guy who last gave us Spanglish.

“But it’s okay because we have Reese Witherspoon. She’s probably the most bankable female movie star out there, especially when it comes to rom-coms. Plus, we have Paul Rudd. All his movies make money!

“Not only that, but we have Owen Wilson – he was in Wedding Crashers, that movie was huge! And Jack Nicholson to boot. Everybody loves Jack!”

Well, that theory didn’t quite work out. Didn’t work out to the tune of making only $30 million against that staggering budget. So how did it even get that high? Probably because when you have a nice roster of movie stars headlining, you can get a blank check. Of course, being James L. Brooks doesn’t hurt either.

So what does this show us? That it didn’t matter who was in these movies. They looked bad, the trailers stunk, and they bombed. Absolutely bombed.

As little as ten years ago, these films would have been massive hits with these stars. All you needed to do in decades past, was list your stars and people would flock to the theater regardless of the trailer. Now we see the movie stars all over TMZ and the Internet whenever we want, and we need a good movie as an excuse to pay to see them, not the other way around.

So why do they continue to shell out big bucks to the stars? Beats me. Unless you consider the fact that The Tourist made almost $200 Million abroad. Perhaps the stars still draw overseas.

However, if you still dig on movie stars, you can buy The Tourist on DVD. Or, you can buy How Do You Know? on DVD.

Also:

• Skyline – Buy Now
• Yogi Bear – Buy Now

And Just So You Know, This DVD Exists…

No, it’s not Battle: Los Angeles, but it does have Kel Mitchell!

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Amazon.com debuts trailers now? Is this old news and are we just catching on? The super site has premiered a new trailer for the Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson drama Water for Elephants. The film takes place during the Great Depression and features all the things we love: romance, betrayal, poverty, and who even the circus! Check out the new trailer…

Water for Elephants is an adaptation of the novel of the same name. The feature is directed by Francis Lawrence and stars Pattinson as a poor drifter named Jacob, who finds family and love at a circus. He becomes involved with the main attraction, Marlena, who happens to be married to the ruthless ringmaster August (Christoph Waltz). Despite the danger surrounding their relationship Jacob and Marlena continue to fight for each other and their love.

Even though we’re happy to see Pattinson outside of the Twilight universe, why does he always have such crappy relationships with women in all his movies? We understand problems keep things interesting, but jeez! How many times does he have to get his butt beat for a girl?

Water for Elephants opens in theaters on April 22.

What do you think of the latest trailer for Water for Elephants? Are you interested in seeing the movie?

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A new trailer has been released for the period drama, Water for Elephants that stars Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson. It’s an international version that showcases the sultry duo as they maneuver a love triangle that includes Oscar winner Christoph Waltz. Will he play the villain in everything? Check out the international trailer below…

Unlike most people, we don’t want to pigeon-hold Pattinson in his Edward Cullen role. He’s obviously trying to branch out and do more serious films that don’t leech off his teen heartthrob persona, unfortunately his acting in this trailer doesn’t help him. All the sulking, all the stares, all the sighs, it’s so — emo.

Official Synopsis:

Based on the acclaimed bestseller, WATER FOR ELEPHANTS presents an unexpected romance in a uniquely compelling setting. Veterinary school student Jacob meets and falls in love with Marlena, a star performer in a circus of a bygone era. They discover beauty amidst the world of the Big Top, and come together through their compassion for a special elephant. Against all odds — including the wrath of Marlena’s charismatic but dangerous husband, August — Jacob and Marlena find lifelong love.

Water for Elephants opens in theaters on April 22, 2011.

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Kindly ignore the deceptive array of billboards posted around Los Angeles presenting quotes like “Reese Witherspoon At Her BEST!” and “Funniest Film Of The Holiday Season!” Writer/director James L. Brooks teams up with the usually charming Reese Witherspoon along with Jack Nicholson, Owen Wilson, and Paul Rudd for one of poorest displays of cinema I’ve seen since I Love You, Philliip Morris. Be sure to dodge How Do You Know at all costs – it opens in theaters this weekend…

The Players:

• Writer/Director/Producer: James L. Brooks
• Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Jack Nicholson, Owen Wilson

The Plot:

Lisa (Witherspoon) gets cut from her pro softball team. Bummer. Later that afternoon she accepts an invitation for a blind date with George (Rudd), who is having an equally tragic day, given that he may or may not be headed to jail for a financial crime. Lisa’s convinced the date was an epic bore while George is convinced she’s the woman of his dreams. Lisa decides it’d be far more fun to date pro baseball player, Matty (Wilson), who has the I.Q. of a lemon. Is George willing to fight for love? You’ll sure find out!

The Bad:

• Structure: Whomever is responsible for green-lighting this project should be hiding under a rock in the Philippines. The central issue, which ultimately sprouts many, is the film’s structure. Brooks attempts to pull the randomly correlated story-line bit  (which has proven successful for several rom-com’s like Love Actually, He’s Just Not That Into You, etc)  and fails.
• Reese Witherspoon: If it were possible for the Academy to revoke awards, Ms. Witherspoon would be walking on thin ice. This is by far the worst performance of her career. Presumably aware that her 5’5, petite blonde swag doesn’t exactly line up with that of a softball star, Witherspoon made astronomical efforts to drop her voice four octaves and walk/slouch/gesticulate like a “dude.” Her performance was also strikingly devoid of comedic timing – a rarity for Witherspoon
• Characters: There is nothing particularly appealing or relatable about the four featured characters, which leaves the audience detached from/uninterested in their respective stories.
• Jack Nicholson: Had no part in this film.

The Good:

• Owen Wilson: Never, ever fails to humor an audience. His character was both a womanizer and imbecile – and I loved every minute of it. Thank you, sir, for contributing the only redeeming aspect of this film.

Overall:

Do not see this film.

Rating: 1/10

The film opens nationwide December 17.

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