Thursday, January 27, 2011

Watchin' Trailerz with Doug (Week of January 24)

Paul
Release date: March 18, 2011



On one hand, I should love this movie. It stars Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogan, Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Jane Lynch, Jo Lo Truglio, David Koechner, Jeffrey Tambor and Gilbert Gottfried (Dracula/Dice/Groucho!). It's also directed by the guy who gave us Superbad and Adventureland. On the other hand, it doesn't look very good! I hope I'm wrong! Please be good!

Scream 4
Release date: April 15, 2011



I really wanted to see Scream 4. Then I saw this trailer.

Battle: Los Angeles
Release date: March 11, 2011



I was going to include the full-length trailer for this movie (you can see it here), but the teaser trailer (above) is SO much cooler. Perhaps it's because I'm a boy trapped inside a slightly smaller boy's body, but I thought this looked way rad. I'm also a sucker for effective/obscure songs in previews, and "The Sun's Gone Dim and the Sky Turned Black," by Icelandic musician Johann Johannsson fits the bill (see also: "Creep" by Scala and Kolacny Brothers).

F These Hitman Movies

The Jason Statham remake of The Mechanic comes out this week, and I'm sure it will be to die for. Just kidding. It will be a hit. Number one with a bullet. What I mean is that I'm sure it will murder our eyes. Let's F past hitman movies.

1. The Jackal (1997) - Bruce Willis toupee parade + Richard Gere's Irish accent + rampant homophobia + Mathilda May with clothes on + armless Jack Black = you're welcome.

2. Wanted (2008) - If you were to combine The Matrix with Fight Club and a craaaazy Russian, this is the movie you might get. How much you enjoy Wanted is entirely dependent on just how stupid you want your movies to be. And how much of boring Angelina Jolie's gross, bony, boring ass you'd like to see. Very much!

3. Panic (2000) - A fantastic, barely-released hitman comedy-drama from Henry Bromell, who hadn't made a film before this and hasn't had a theatrical film since. Underseen and underrated. William H. Macy is duh great and the movie has some very dark things to say about fathers and sons. Plus, Neve Campbell makes out with a girl if you're into that sort of thing. Very much!

4. Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) - It's hard to make a movie that's genuinely cool without being self-conscious, but that's what John Cusack and his friends were able to do with this pitch-black comedy. It gives Cusack one of his best roles ever: ascerbic, cynical, dark and homicidal. Much of it feels dated now, but I love it a lot. I don't want to get into a semantic argument about it, I just want the protein.

5. Assassins (1995) - You might think that on a list of good hitman movies, a movie called Assassins might be looked at favorably. You might be wrong. You ARE wrong (this is also true of Hitman). Sylvester Stallone is boring, the script by the pre-Matrix Wachowski siblings is nonsense and Amber Waves keeps her pants on the whole time.

6. The Killer (1989) - It's impossible to picture the '90s movie landscape without John Woo's cult classic. There's a lot of what we like about John Woo on display, too, but it's been 20 years and maybe now we can admit that the movie is a tad too operatic (because John Woo) and a little overrated. We're still nerd friends, right?

7. The Professional (1994) - One of the best hitman movies since Le Samourai; it's not coincidence that both are FRENCH (add La Femme Nikita to the list and they've got the market cornered). I'll get lots of shit for saying this, but the weakest part of the movie is still Gary Oldman. In a movie that's very European in its tone and attitude, his character and performance is VERY LOUD AND AMERICAN. Not bad, just out of touch with what's around him. And a little bad. Wee Natalie Portman is great, and it might be the first/last time Jean Reno was interesting.

8. Le Samourai (1967) - Il n'y a pas de plus profonde solitude que celle de samouraï si ce n'est celle d'un tigre dans la jungle... peut-être...

9. Bangkok Dangerous (2008) - Someone please wake Nicolas Cage, please. With BEES.

10. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) - Ignoring the fact that this movie has one of the worst/best/worst titles this side of Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, Jim Jarmusch's hip-hop/gangster/samurai mash-up is actually very awesome. There is nothing about these elements that should work together. There's nothing about Forrest Whitaker that should work, either, and yet most of him does.

Monday, January 24, 2011

F This Movie! - Garden State

Patrick and Doug's podcast will change your life. I swear.



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Also discussed this episode: Howl (2010), Step Up 3 (2010), Black Belt Jones (1974), Diggers (2006), Snatch (2000)

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Erika's Top 12 of 2010

Sure, it's almost the end of January, but we're just now finishing up our Top 10 lists for last year. The final entry comes from Erika, who couldn't settle on just 10 movies and instead made a Top 12. We're married, so it's allowed:

12. The Tillman Story

11. The King's Speech

10. Get Low

9. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

8. The Fighter

7. Please Give

6. Winter's Bone

5. Blue Valentine

4. Inside Job

3. The Social Network

2. True Grit

1. Inception

Friday, January 21, 2011

Watchin' Trailerz with Doug (Week of January 17)

True story: last night, my lovely wife prepared a delicious dinner (pollo and beans!) for me, as I sat on my butt and watched The Daily Show. After we ate, she even did the dishes (jealous?). As she finished, she said, "Dishes are done, man," which immediately made me CRACK the F UP. Why do I know that expression? What shared memory did we just experience? Did she just rewrite our vows? The next few minutes were spent on the 'puter as we searched the quote, and [re]discovered it was from Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead. Here's the link for all you F Heads Trailerphiles out there.

Ah, movies!

Thor
Release date: May 6, 2011


Big ups to F Head "Josh" for requesting the underwhelming Thor trailer! This Kenneth Branagh-directed comic book adaptation (and by adaptation, I mean abortion) features an Australian hunk of meat with a pube beard. Also, two thoughts re: Natalie Portman: 1.) stop acting in EVERY movie, and 2.) start focusing on your body. I saw you at the Golden Globes, and you look fat.

A Little Bit of Heaven
Release date: Q1 2011



I'm not a big Kate Hudson fan. She was great in Almost Famous, but I personally find her grating (great/grating). Also, she's pregnant with Muse frontman Matthew Bellamy's baby. This will be her second child, the first of which was with Chris Robinson, frontman for The Black Crowes. Patrick thinks she's creating her own supergroup: Vagina Starship. That's all I have to say about A Little Bit of Heaven.

Rubber
Release date: On Demand Feb. 25, 2011; In theaters April 1, 2011



This trailer has gotten a lot of buzz this week, and I can see why. I mean, it looks really interesting! A rubber tire named Robert goes around killing people with telekinetic powers. This isn't a joke! It's an hour-and-a-half long movie! Whuuu? Receiving largely negative reviews after its Cannes premiere, this French film is now gaining traction (see what I did there?) among movie hipsters.

Monday, January 17, 2011

F Weird Casting in Comic Book Movies

The Green Hornet is the number one movie in America right now, which I don't think any of us expected from a superhero movie starring Seth Rogen. Speaking of actors who might be miscast as superheroes, let's F some of the weirdest/most terrible casting decisions in comic book movie history.

1. Michael Keaton, Batman (1989) - The original WTFuck casting of a comic book movie. I get what Tim Burton was going for in casting Michael Keaton -- he wanted a guy who was odd and a little off and who might believably dress up as a bat and fight people. Unfortunately, he let that one casting decision do all the heavy lifting character-wise and spent no further time on developing Bruce Wayne or Batman. I did like when Batman made grilled cheese with an iron. You're doing it wrong, Batman!

2. Halle Berry, X-Men (2000) - Because Angela Bassett isn't a person who acts in movies.

3. Jessica Alba, The Fantastic Four (2005) - Yes, anyone whose name doesn't rhyme with "Rhis Revans" is horribly miscast in Tim Story's terrible Fantastic Four movie (even you, the Commish), but Jessica Alba's casting is particularly egregious. Maybe because she's playing a scientist. Mostly because she's playing a human. She's the worst.

4. Warren Beatty, Dick Tracy (1990) - Square-jawed, do-gooding supercop? We've got just the mumbling, incoherent sack of leather for the job.

5. Matthew Goode, Watchmen (2009) - It's almost impossible to watch Matthew Goode's fey, quasi-European, Schumacher Ozymandias in Zack Snyder's Watchmen after learning that at one point the part was being considered by Tom Cruise. That would have been some brilliant casting, and would have helped solve one of the few big problems that movie has.

6. Shaquille O'Neal, Steel (1997) - Great idea, people in charge of movies!

7. Keanu Reeves, Constantine (2005) - I'm not sure anyone who read Hellblazer pictured Johnny Utah as the chain smoking, very British badass John Constantine. Shane Falco isn't bad in a movie that's somewhat underrated, but I'm not sure you can call it a real adaptation of Hellblazer. Someone should have told them about Clive Owen.

8. Tommy Lee Jones, Batman Forever (1995) - The fact that Two-Face is one of the villains in Batman Forever at all is a mistake, but I get it that Warner Bros. had already burned through most of the well-known villains by the third movie in the franchise. I get the feeling they cast Harvey Dent more than Two-Face, and Tommy Lee Jones is an aging white man, which makes him convincing as a lawyer. No one could have predicted how fantastically shitty he would be in the part. In a movie filled with badness, he is the badnessest.

9. Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight (2008) - Speaking of Batman villains. I was bummed out when I learned that Heath Ledger would be playing the Joker in Christopher Nolan's second Batman movie -- partly because I didn't feel like the Joker needed to be revisited (wrong) and partly because I thought Heath Ledger was way too young for the part. It takes a big man to admit when he is wrong, and I'm fucking huge. Heath Ledger killed the part (the part returned the favor), walking away with the movie and owning the role of the Joker for the rest of time. I was wrong about Heath Ledger, too. He rules.

10. Nicolas Cage, Superman Lives (Never Happened) - I'll admit that I was excited to learn that Nicolas Cage was going to be playing the Man of Steel in Tim Burton's unproduced Superman movie, even though I recognize it's the worst possible casting choice. I just happen to love Nicolas Cage, and suspected that he was going to play the superhero like an alien freak who feels cut off from humanity, and that intrigued me. I was way less excited about the possibility of a Tim Burton Superman, because there's nothing about his aesthetic that suggests he's the right director for that job and I thought he had already said everything he needed to say about the comic book genre with his two Batman movies. This was nearly 15 years ago, before we learned that Tim Burton had already said everything he needed to say about movies. Period. Nic Cage still got paid $20 million for not making the movie. Badass. Also, wasteful and terrible.

Alex's Top 10 Movies of 2010

Still wrapping up the Best of 2010 lists with the F This Movie! crew. Today's submission comes from Alex, whose list is filled with fightin' words:

I'd like to submit this list with a thorough defense of 2010: The Year in MovieFilms. While I respect and revere the opinions of my fellow F'ers, I think their contention that the repeated presence of several films across several Top 10 lists is indicative of a weak year at the multiplex is a little flawed. First of all, I think this happens in most years. You would have been hard pressed to find a 2009 list that didn't contain some mixture of Up, Inglorious Basterds, The Hurt Locker and Up in the Air.

Apart from that, I think this shows us that the good films this year were really good. Even if you're of the opinion that 2010 was a down year for movies, you'd have to admit that it was a very top-heavy year, so to speak.

Finally, I think 2010 was a fine year for movies. When I took a step back to pare down the year's cinematic adventures to just 10, I found myself having to make some very tough cuts. There are more than a few movies that I hold in pretty high regard (Black Swan, Somewhere, 127 Hours, The King's Speech, Winter's Bone, Rabbit Hole, Exit Through the Gift Shop, How to Train Your Dragon, Shutter Fucking Island among them) that simply got edged out. Have a drink, 2010, You're okay in my book.

10. Blue Valentine - I never thought watching people fall out of love would be so unflinchingly compelling.

9. The Fighter - Hits all the right beats for the conventional sports movie, bolstered by game-changing performances.

8. Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer - In a good (though not great) year for docs, I thought this one had the most to say.

7. True Grit - I have some mild third act issues, but it's just really terrific.

6. Get Low - This one is not on nearly enough Top 10 lists and I do not understand why.

5. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - Might be the most rewatchable of all these. I'll love it even more in five years.

4. Inception - I mean, I saw it six times in the theater.

3. Toy Story 3 - Whatever, you guys, it's great. Not good...GREAT.

2. The Social Network - The purest amalgam of direction, screenwriting and acting I've seen since Adaptation.

1. Never Let Me Go - Much like Get Low, I don't understand why this is absent from so many lists. I swear on the F This Movie! charter that I'm not putting this here to be "hip" or "different" or "a hipster doofus." It gets the top spot because its respect for the audience to gradually piece together what's happening on screen is so rare these days (even Inception had Ellen Page), and because Carey Mulligan made me feel feelings I didn't know were within me. I have not stopped thinking about this movie since I saw it. And to think it came from the guy who gave us One Hour Photo. 2010, everyone!

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Watchin' Trailerz with Doug (Week of January 10)

Today kicks off a new regular feature at F This Movie!: "Watchin' Trailerz with Doug," in which Doug seeks out a few noteworthy movie trailers every week and then says things about them. In a world! Record scratch.

As far as I can tell, trailers aren't released on a specific day* (unlike, for example, DVDs, which typically come out on Tuesdays). Instead, they trickle out from their respective studios in different incarnations on an open-ended cycle: teasers, TV spots, and subtle variations of basically the same original source. Frustrating, right? Moreover, some websites out there have exclusivity deals with certain studios, which mean some trailers are only "officially" released through them (I'm looking at you, iTunes).

In the spirit of accessibility and convenience, we here at F This Movie! will only be linking to YouTube clips, the video streaming gold standard (also, Socialism [see: Obama's America]). Therefore, some of the quality may not be perfect. But you didn't come here for perfection, you came here for CONVENIENCE (otherwise, you'd just -- DUH -- go to iTunes [please don't!]).

Without further ado, here are a few new trailers that came on my radar this week.

Drive Angry 3D
Release date: Feb. 25, 2011



Nicolas Cage! NICOLAS CAGE! Is this a batshit "fun" performance, or a batshit "crazy" performance? Or both? Who cares! NOT THE BEES! Narrated, seemingly, by the same guy who voiced Machete, this movie looks like fun, and it features our new favorite lesbian, Amber Heard. Also muscle cars, and guns, and bad CGI, and AMBER HEARD. Google "The Informers," will you?

The Other Woman
Release date: Feb. 4, 2011



Apparently, this thing has been sitting on the shelf for a while, and it was originally titled Love and Other Impossible Pursuits (really, very good title, guys). The trailer features a grownup yelling, "Shut up!" at a child, and Phoebe from Friends, so I'm in. Unfortunately,
Natalie Portman's character's name is Emilia Greenleaf (more like Emili-BARF Green-UGH, amIright?). Rated R for sexual content, which is promising.

Cedar Rapids
Release date: Feb. 11, 2011



MAEBY! This trailer looks funny, and it has a few good bits of dialogue (survey: is the reference to The Wire endearing or douchy?). I love The 'Nard Dog (who doesn't?), and John C. Reilly is why I got into gaining belly weight. For your health! It's also directed by the same dude who gave us Chuck & Buck and Youth in Revolt. Now I'm just listing facts. See it in February!

*If any of you F Heads out there know more information about trailers, or if you know of any cool looking trailers coming up, please let me know by email at fthismoviepodcast[at]gmail.com.

Mike's Top 10 of 2010

Here's Mike's list of his 10 favorite movies of 2010. Once again, the titles are almost all the same (because 10 good movies), but the order is different!

10. Please Give

9. Toy Story 3

8. Shutter Island

7. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

6. How to Train Your Dragon

5. True Grit

4. Exit Through the Gift Shop

3. Black Swan

2. The Social Network

1. Inception

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Mark Ahn's Top 10 of 2010

Here's regular F This Movie! co-host Mark Ahn's Top 10 movies of 2010. It looks a lot like the rest of our lists. Also, Machete!

10. The American

9. Hot Tub Time Machine

8. Machete

7. The Town

6. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

5. Kick-Ass

4. Shutter Island

3. True Grit

2. Black Swan

1. Inception

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

F This Movie! - F The Overrated, The Underrated and the Ugly Movies of 2010

Patrick and JB sit down to talk about which movies from 2010 deserved more attention, which ones got too much attention and which ones need to f off. The Book of Eli phenomenon is in full effect.


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