 As we wrap up our coverage of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, I’m quickening the pace by lumping some of my remaining reviews together. I’ll be doing quick looks at a trio of films that underwhelmed me to some degree. I’ll be talking about ‘Lovelace’, ‘Touchy Feely’, and ‘Emanuel and the Truth about Fishes’ briefly here, but look for full reviews later this year when they hit theaters. ‘Lovelace’ is the one I think most of you are interested in, so that will get a slightly longer write up here, while the rest are just briefly touched upon.
Lovelace (**½)
The co-directors of ‘Howl’ (a personal favorite of mine a few years back) Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman have crafted a pretty standard biopic of porn star Linda Lovelace here. They do some interesting things with the way they present the story, but the real selling point here are the performances of Amanda Seyfried and Peter Sarsgaard. The latter is real good, but the former is the revelation. If the movie was slightly more engrossing I could see her making a play for a Best Actress nomination this year. It still might happen if the film is a hit, but I have my doubts.
Read more on SUNDANCE: ‘Lovelace’, ‘Touchy Feely’, and ‘Emanuel and the Truth about Fishes’…
Categories: Festivals, Film Reviews Tags: Allison Janney, Amanda Seyfried, Bobby Cannavale, Chloe Sevigny, Early Review, Ellen Page, festival round up, Frances O'Connor, James Franco, Jessica Biel, Josh Pais, Juno Temple, Kaya Scodelario, Lovelace, Lynne Shelton, Peter Sarsgaard, review round up, Robert Patrick, Ron Livingston, Rosemarie DeWitt, Scoot McNairy, sharon stone, Sundance Film Festival, Wes Bentley
 Sundance is winding down and in our second to last video, we recount the quiet day that we had. After the fiasco I had with youtube delaying yesterday’s video, we decided to keep this one short. We review the three films Joey saw (Lovelace, The Way Way Back and Emmanuel and the Truth About Fishes) and I tease some of fun interviews I had. Enjoy!
Read more on Park City Dispatch – Episode 7: Lovelace, Fun Interviews, and The Way Way Back…
Categories: Festivals Tags: Amanda Seyfried, Film, Jessica Biel, Joey Magidson, Lovelace, Miriam Cutler, Peter Sarsgaard, Sam Rockwell, Steve Carrell, Sundance Film Festival, Terence Johnson, The Way Way Back, Toni Collette
Being that this weekend kicks off with “a date which will live in infamy,” it’s fitting that FDR makes a big-screen appearance in Hyde Park on the Hudson. Toss in some romantic comedies, some foreign features, and some drama and you’ve got some options to hold you till “the big one” next week (The Hobbit, of course).
Hyde Park on the Hudson
Language: English
Rating: R
Genre: Biography/Comedy/Drama
Director: Roger Michell
Starring: Bill Murray, Laura Linney, Olivia Williams
Read more on Weekend Openings (12/7/2012)…
Categories: Weekend Openings Tags: Aline Moraes, Angie Cepeda, Bill Murray, Brazil, Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta-Jone, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Charlie Hunnam, Christmas, connie britton, cool sports gambler, Donald Rice, Edward Burns, Elizabeth McGovern, Eric Bana, Felicity Jones, Gabriele Muccino, Gerard Butler, Heleno de Freitas, Jessica Biel, José Henrique Fonseca, Kerry Bishe, King and Queen, Laura Linney, Luke Treadaway, Margaret Stuckley, Movie Release, Olivia Wilde, Olivia Williams, Queen, Rebecca Hall, Rodrigo Santoro, Roger Michell, Stefan Ruzowitzky, Stephen Frears, Sung-Hee Jo, The Pursuit of Happyness
 One of the more intriguing additions to the slate of Oscar contending films in 2012 is Hitchcock, a quasi-biopic which focuses on the legendary Alfred Hitchcock’s process in creating the most storied horror film of all time, Psycho. With truly little left to be said about Psycho, the idea of a look behind the curtain at Alfred Hitchcock, the chance to learn about what propelled his genius forward and a glimpse into the risks he took to make the film that still defines his legacy to this very day, seems like a wonderful idea for a film. If anyone deserves a cinematic tribute of sorts, it is indeed Alfred Hitchcock.
Read more on Hitchcock (**)…
 Before it opens nationwide on December 7, catch a glimpse of Gerard Butler and Jessica Biel in their new romantic comedy, Playing for Keeps. You can download the seven new clips here. Also see the official trailer after the jump.
Read more on Watch New Clips from ‘Playing for Keeps’…
Categories: Clips Tags: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chris Gardner, Cinema of the United States, Dennis Quaid, Director, Entertainment/Culture, Gabriele Muccino, Gerard Butler, Jessica Biel, Playing for Keeps, The Pursuit of Happyness, Uma Thurman, United States
 Press junkets are a strange animal, to say the least. Sometimes they’re a lot of fun, but sometimes they can frankly be a mess. Luckily, late last week I was privy to one of the good ones, a morning in New York City spent in an upscale hotel interview just about everyone involved with the new film ‘Hitchcock’. I gave the film my thumbs up in a recent review (found here), but I freely admit that it’s not perfect, so I was interested in seeing why some of the talent made the choices that they did. The day consisted of several 1 on 1 interviews as well as a live press conference with a number of people, plus a video press conference with Anthony Hopkins. The interviews I conducted were with director Sacha Gervasi, stars James D’Arcy, Michael Stuhlbarg, Toni Collette, and Danny Huston, along with writer John McLaughlin, costume designer Julie Weiss, and production designer Judy Becker. Gervasi, D’Arcy, Stuhlbarg, Collette, and Huston were joined for the press conference by Helen Mirren and Jessica Biel, with Hopkins coming last. I didn’t get the chance to talk personally with Biel or Mirren, but I did wind up having Hopkins talk with me. That’s a funny story, and I’ll get to it momentarily, but for now sit back and enjoy the highlights of my ‘Hitchcock’ press junket coverage! I may wind up posting the entire interviews at a later date, but at the moment I’ve got a collection of the choice remarks from each individual. The time was very short with each one, but I’ll try and give a sense of what we talked about in those brief periods. Here we go.
Read more on Morning spent with the cast and crew of ‘Hitchcock’…
Categories: Article, Interview Tags: Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Hopkins, Biopic, book adaptation, Danny Huston, Helen Mirren, hitchcock, James D'Arcy, Jessica Biel, John McLaughlin, Judy Becker, Julie Weiss, Junket, late press, Michael Stuhlbarg, Oscar hopefuls, Sacha Gervasi, Toni Collette
 There’s a lot of different ways that one could approach a biopic of legendary filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock, but director Sacha Gervasi has certainly found a unique one here. ‘Hitchcock’ is a surprisingly whimsical and amusing tale of the director struggling to make ‘Psycho’ as he goes through a rough patch with his wife. That’s going to come as a surprise for a lot of viewers, and while it possibly hurts the flick in terms of its Oscar chances, it doesn’t keep the film from being enjoyable. I definitely wish that the focus had been different for ‘Hitchcock’, but a combination of good acting and solid direction keep this completely watchable. Much like ‘Hyde Park on Hudson’, this is another would be Oscar player that’s likely not going to be much of a contender and compares to ‘My Week with Marilyn’, but it’s another one that I liked a bit more than the average critic. I laughed much more than I expected, and while I’m aware of its flaws, this is still a pleasing work that will have an appeal to older viewers especially. Anthony Hopkins is amusing as Hitchcock and Helen Mirren is very good as his wife, but both, along with the entire supporting cast (which are all solid), could have been better.
Read more on Hitchcock (***)…
Categories: Film Reviews Tags: Anthony Hopkins, book adaptation, Danny Huston, Early Review, Helen Mirren, hitchcock, James D'Arcy, Jessica Biel, John J. McLaughlin, Kurtwood Smith, Michael Stuhlbarg, Oscar hopeful, Ralph Macchio, Sacha Gervasi, Scarlett Johansson, Toni Collette
 Sacha Gervasi’s Hitchcock is a curious creation. Adapted from Stephen Rebello’s biographical novel, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, this biopic of “The Master of Suspense” unravels the director’s complex nature through the discourse of popcorn-munching entertainment. Whether Hitchcock sends you into fits of laughter (guilty!) or glues you in by reliving some of Psycho’s most viscerally memorable moments from a unique, behind-the-scenes perspective, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a dull or lifeless moment in the film. In fact, the consistently high output of energy surrounding the narrative makes revisiting Psycho a new experience altogether, with equal measures of suspense, drama, horror, comedy and romantic intrigue – just as Hitch would have wanted! Most biopics often stick to the same banal formula: “larger-than-life” presentation of the subject, pretentious dialogue that tries to be clever but ends up painfully drab, and an elongation of the film’s running time because “there’s just so much to tell” about the figure of importance. Read more on Hitchcock (***½)…
Categories: Film Reviews Tags: Alfred Hitchcock, Alma Reville, Anthony Hopkins, Anthony Perkins, Danny Huston, Helen Mirren, hitchcock, Hitchcock Oscar, Hitchcock Review, Janet Leigh, Jessica Biel, John McLaughlin, Michael Stulbarg, North by Northwest, Paramount Pictures Corp, Psycho, Sacha Gervasi, Scarlett Johansson, Stephen Rebello, Vera Miles
 The Oscar race is beginning to formulate itself. As it stands the Academy Awards have positioned themselves to be the wildest of wild cards of the Oscar season. Since Oscar ballots are due January 3rd, the nominations will be one of many awards ceremonies coming down like wildfire.
The Screen Actors Guild Awards announce their nominee choices first beginning on December 10th. The Broadcast Film Critics Association will name their best of the year with the Critics Choice Movie Awards being announced the next day on December 11th. The Hollywood Foreign Press will follow-suit with their Golden Globe nominations on December 13th. Mark my words; those four days will likely be the most important and telling aspects of the awards season. If you start hearing the usual suspects, back-to-back and over and over, Oscar will be referring to these groups for citations for their own nominees when they’re announced on January 10th. Read more on Oscar Circuit: “10 Weeks to Go”…
Categories: Article, Editor, Oscar Circuit, Oscar Predictions Tags: ang lee, Anne Hathaway, Broadcast Film Critics Association, Cinema of the United States, Denzel Washington, Director, Entertainment/Culture, Golden Globe, Gus Van Sant, Helen Mirren, Hugh Jackman, Jessica Biel, Jessica Chastain, John Goodman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Strong, Matt Damon, Michael Stuhlbarg, oscar predictions, Peter Jackson, Robert Zemeckis, Sally Field, Scarlett Johansson, Screen Actors Guild, Steven Spielberg, The Academy Awards, The Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Critics Choice Movie Awards, the New York Film Festival, The Screen Actors Guild Awards, Tommy Lee Jones, Toni Collette, Training Day
 I’m hardly someone who puts the original ‘Total Recall’ from 1990 up on a pedestal or considers it to be a classic (a cult classic maybe), though compared to the new remake that’s hitting theaters this Friday, it comes close. 2012′s edition of ‘Total Recall’ is completely uninspired and manages to commit a cardinal sin when it comes to remaking movies…it manages to make all the changes to the original changes for the worse. Worse still, the remake then decides to follow the same yet now watered down plot. Paul Verhoeven’s original had its tongue firmly planted in cheek and dove into excess at every turn, but Len Wiseman’s new take just goes through the motions. There’s no humor, no sense of fun, and no Mars. Wiseman actually doesn’t do anything especially terrible behind the camera, but the script by Mark Bomback and Kurt Wimmer is pretty sub par, so the trend of Wiseman working with less than ideal screenplays continue. Colin Farrell is adequate in the lead role, but he’s about as far from Arnold Schwarzenegger as it gets. Every which way that you turn, there’s something mediocre or even disappointing to feast your eyes on. Perhaps the only thing the flick succeeds at is showing off some strong visuals, but that’s a hollow victory for the film. Consider this Early Review a warning…
Read more on Total Recall (**)…
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