Writer-producer Luc Besson gives us a parody of his earliest hits “La Femme Nikita” and “The Professional” with “Colombiana,” a lady assassin star vehicle for “Avatar’s” blue angel, Zoe Saldana.
See Zoe kill. See Zoe strip. Many times. See Zoe shower — a PG-13 shower. See Zoe dance seductively all by herself. See Zoe slip into a cat suit to carry out a hit from inside a jailhouse. See Zoe go for a swim. With sharks. In a sexy swimsuit.
Before he won his Oscar, before he starting studying infamous murder cases, before taking on Robert McNamara and the whole justification for the Vietnam War, documentary filmmaker Errol Morris was known for finding America’s most colorful eccentrics and putting their eccentricity on film.
“Our Idiot Brother” has a menage a trois, nudity, pot use and profanity. But the unfailing sweetness of Paul Rudd’s lead performance makes what could have been another raunchy and rude R-rated farce a bracing change of pace in a summer of aggressive comedies about aggressive people, from “Bad Teachers” to “Horrible Bosses.”
Since childhood, Corinne has been searching for something. She might have found it in a book, if the local librarian hadn’t yanked “Lord of the Flies” out of her hands. She might have found it in music, if mom (Broadway great Donna Murphy) hadn’t dismissed her interest in learning it.
And she might have found answers in vacation Bible school.
“She got saved today,” pushy Pastor Bud (Bill Irwin) tells mom.
“Saved from what?”
Religion eventually becomes Corinne’s permanent quest in “Higher Ground,” Vera Farmiga’s challenging film based on Carolyn Briggs memoir.
Let us go amongst the Sports Crazed for a few minutes of convincing them to get up off the sofa and head to the movies this weekend.
Chatting with Mike “Bulldog” Bianchi and Brian “Fritzie” Fritz about the new releases — “Zero Dark Thirty” goes wide today. “Gangster Squad” brings a little Old West/New West gunplay our way.
And we’ll talk about horror and the ongoing fascinating with pictures like “Texas Chainsaw 3D.”
That’s at 745 AM on 740 AM/The Game.
The Old West died hard in the City of Angels. And in the years after World War II, battle-hardened veterans came home to a town “under enemy occupation,” when the only way to fight off The Mob was with a sixgun, your two fists and the right hat.
“Gangster Squad” is a gang war drama built on Western conventions, a rootin’ tootin’, Camel-smokin’, whiskey swillin’ shoot’em up about a lawless period in L.A.’s history when a small cadre of cops, working outside the law, took on mob boss Mickey Cohen in a fight for “the soul of Los Angeles.”
Here they come.
Seth and Emma will do all the talking. ABC will do something unseemly, stretching out the experience (NBC is WORSE with the Golden Globes, so there’s that). And we’ll know when we know.
You know the drill — 830 AM Eastern you tune in to your local ABC affiliate — Good Morning America. And the announcements follow shortly.
Reactions here, there, and everywhere to follow.
I first noticed Joe Manganiello during his scene-stealing turns in “How I Met Your Mother.” A recurring character, the towering Joe M. would walk into a scene, nail a big laugh, and get out.
He’s like the Patrick Warburton in this “Seinfeld,” with that Warburton/Brad Garrett deadpan.
He’s one of the stars of “True Blood,” but the funny stuff is what stands out. He shows up in “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” as the stud all the old-married guys idolize. He gets laughs.
“Much of my career, pre-‘True Blood’, was comedy. Theater and sitcoms.
‘True Blood’ put me on the map. It came at a time when I thought drama wasn’t going to happen for me.”
But happen it has. As one of the many ripped and randy Southern folk who are secretly vampires and werewolves, Manganiello, 35, has gotten used to doing a lot of acting with his clothes off.
The fact that he’s “quite a specimen,” as Channing Tatum put it, had a lot to do with Joe landing one of the key supporting roles in Tatum’s male stripper dramedy, “Magic Mike.”
A solitary figure, clad in gray, stumbles and weeps across a rainswept moor.
Yes, it’s “Jane Eyre” time again. One of the most frequently-film period pieces from the golden age of the corset is back, with Mia “Alice in Wonderland” Wasikowska in the title role.
The Jane served up by Wasikowska and director Cary Fukunaga (“Sin Nombre”) is a fiery, spirited woman in what amounts to open revolt against a woman’s lot in life in early 19th century Britain. She longs to travel, keep good company and not be enslaved to a man or a class. And she’s willing to go running off in the rain to get it.
Nick Swardson is the latest comic reclamation project to come out of Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison production company. He’s been given a star vehicle, “Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star,” a comedy about a farm country dimwit who discovers his parents were once porn stars, and takes the bus to Los Angeles to follow in their, um, footsteps.
Two things about that. First, the concept, and the movie that comes from it aren’t funny. And second, Swardson wasn’t any more born to be a star than his character.
