The low-budget British aliens-invade-the-hood thriller “Attack the Block” reminded me of Rick’s famous line in “Casablanca,” his reply when Major Strasser asks about how he’ll feel with the Nazis are in New York.
“Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.”
And there are certain sections of London that maybe the aliens should think twice about before plunging in and devouring the locals.
“The Art of Getting By” is a screen romance that echoes its title. It gets by. Barely.
The 38 year old “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” franchise will duel “Django Unchained,” “Les Miserables” and “The Hobbit” for the top spot at the box office this weekend.
And Box Office Mojo figures the only horror movie, only NEW movie in theaters, has a shot. But that it’ll come in second. I saw “Chainsaw 3D” last night, and the theater was pretty full, even late at night. Add in 3D prices and it could do over $15.
Box office Guru figures it’ll be “Django” and “Hobbit” and “Les Miz” locked at about $16-17.
“Promised Land” and “The Impossible” go into wider release and could reach $4-7 million this weekend as well.
There’s something gloriously twee about “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.”
Maybe it’s the very conceit of the thing, that a mad — some would say “visionary– Anglofile sheikh could want to fling his millions at a water project in his homeland that will include a provision to transplant his favorite sport — fly fishing — from the Highlands to the High Desert.
“Pusher” is a straight, no chaser thriller set on the bottom rung of the drug trade ladder. A remake of a 1996 Danish thriller, it’s a pulsating, propulsive and nerve-wracking film that breathes new life into a genre whose tropes wore out long ago.
The writer-director of “In Bruges,” the playwright turned filmmaker Martin McDonagh, sells out and makes his first Hollywood film,” Seven Psychopaths” a commentary on selling out. Well, that and Hollywood’s obsession with psychopaths. And his own.
True to title, it’s about seven psychopaths and a screenwriter named Martin writing a movie about them.
Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” plays like the “Alien” franchise’s greatest hits. Scott, revisiting the 1979 sci-fi classic that made him famous, samples “Alien,” James Cameron’s “Aliens” and the later films in the series for this state-of-the-art prequel, using plot points, situations, versions of characters and themes from those films to back-engineer his way into the day humans first ran into the ultimate alien killing machine.
It’s good-looking film with a first-rate cast. But “Prometheus” is to “Alien” what “2010” was to “2001: A Space Odyssey.” It’s the difference between a masterpiece and a merely watchable revision of that masterpiece.
Project X” is the movie equivalent of that good-looking, well-off teenage boy your gut tells you to keep away from your teenage daughter. He may turn on the charm, come from what we assume is a “good family” (as if money were a determiner). But something sets off the warning bells — that he has lost his mind to his hormones, that he objectifies women in the worst way, that he’s too-casual with the homophobic slurs.
If you only see ONE demonic possession/Jewish exorcism movie this year, make it “The Possession.”
Michael Shannon plays a villain with “impulse control issues” in the bike courier thriller “Premium Rush.” Shannon fans will salivate at the thought of that. Nobody can turn on the scary like Michael Shannon.
