Movie Muse

“The Promotion” is not a great or memorable comedy, but it’s a brave one. Brave in that it doesn’t give you what you expect from a comedy about Sean William Scott and John C. Reilly vying for the same promotion in a supermarket chain. The expectation is physical humor, gross-out shenanigans and general mayhem. What you get is a much more understated comedy that’s built upon that foundation but ends completely different. Some will find this violation of expectations refreshing — others will end up let down and bored. Read the rest of this entry »

After two years of pre-production and no set start date, Guillermo Del Toro has stepped down as director of The Hobbit. The fantasy director/producer extraordinaire broke the news to Lord of the Rings fan site theonering.net, stating that he simply did not have the extra time due to conflicting schedules, that the film needed. Read the rest of this entry »

The Holocaust has been revisited in film so many times that I imagine the first thing German-born film actors ask themselves upon meeting is “which film(s) were you a Nazi in?” The crimes of the Nazi Party and the German soldiers carrying out its mission to revive Germany through the mass killing of Jews and other “invalids” are so unfathomable and powerful that filmmakers and storytellers can’t help but find so many ways to tell complex stories of morality and human survival.”The Counterfeiters” is another one of these films, but lack of originality is absolutely the only knock against it. Read the rest of this entry »

Hollywood lost another of its stars this weekend. Two-time Academy Award nominee Dennis Hopper (“Hoosiers,” “Blue Velvet,” “Speed,” “True Romance”) has passed away after an eight-year battle with prostate cancer — he was 74. Read the rest of this entry »

Former child star and famously short actor Gary Coleman has passed away at age 42. Coleman was admitted to a Utah hospital after suffering a brain hemorrhage that left him in critical condition Wednesday. He was taken off life support today after his condition only became more severe, according to a statement from his manager. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer, how do you go about finding your next “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise? Well, you start by keeping the whole cast in long hair and eyeliner only you relocate them to the desert. “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” is a familiar swashbuckling adventure only transplanted to the Middle East and outfitted with turbans, swords with even bigger curves, snakes and lots and lots of sand. Read the rest of this entry »

Matthew Vaughn’s recently green-lit prequel “X-Men: First Class” has its first cast member: James McAvoy. The 31-year-old Scot, star of Mark Millar comic adaptation “Wanted,” will play a younger Charles Xavier aka Professor X, the role originated by Patrick Stewart in the first three X-Men films. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re in summer movie denial (which I can never, ever imagine having), it’s Memorial Day weekend, so get out and smell the fresh air! Two potentially big movies along with the earlier May hits will all go after everyone’s money on the holiday weekend, hoping the extra weekend night and day will maximize their profits. Read the rest of this entry »

Walt Disney Pictures is taking a big risk this weekend. Well, actually, the risk was taken awhile back and now it’s time to see if “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” can pay off.

When Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer realized it would be quite some time before another Pirates of the Caribbean film would be able to come together, they began looking for solutions. Interestingly enough, they zeroed in on a video game, “Prince of Persia,” a title that’s been around since 1989, managing to find life on the 3-D gaming platform, first on Sega Dreamcast and then on Play Station 2 and 3 thanks to Ubisoft.

Seeing as video game adaptations have been cursed for ages as nothing more than cult hits for a segment of the male population, the risk by Disney of all people to bring the first fantasy/adventure game (one not involving sci-fi, fighting or guns) is tremendous. Read the rest of this entry »

Victoria’s Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley will be the next girl to inherit the honored role of wearing a low-cut shirt while running away from explosions in the next Transformers film. Huntington-Whiteley replaces Megan Fox, who supposedly left the franchise on her own terms after a feud of words with director Michael Bay. Read the rest of this entry »

More animated super-villainry and long-distance relationships come to us this Wednesday. First up is Will Ferrell in DreamWorks’ “Megamind” and second is the late-summer romantic comedy “Going the Distance” with Justin Long and Drew Barrymore. Also, I’ve now embedded the clips from YouTube right here on Movie Muse for the first time, so that should make this much easier for you. Read the rest of this entry »

Despite disappointing at the box office by comparison to its predecessors, “Shrek Forever After” did manage to set records this weekend: 3-D IMAX tickets for the film in some parts of the country cost as much as $20 for a single adult ticket.

The Wall Street Journal reported just prior to this weekend that at least four AMC theaters in the New York City area would be charging those kind of prices for 3-D IMAX showings and the breaking of the $20 threshold has avid moviegoers in arms. Earlier this year in March, 3-D and IMAX prices were hiked for the last DreamWorks film, “How to Train Your Dragon,” with tickets going up more than 25 percent in some parts of the country. Read the rest of this entry »

Everything about “Whip It” screams sports movie clichés. Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) lives in small-town Texas and lies to her parents, namely her mother who has stuck her in beauty pageants her whole life, and sneaks off at night to Austin where she’s becoming a roller derby phenom. She even meets a cute boy during her rule-breaking excursions and she may well betray her best friend in the process. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone’s favorite ogre with a brogue was back this weekend, but finished with just $70 million, still an accomplishment, but $30-40 million less than “Shrek the Third” and “Shrek 2.” It seems enough people were tired of the franchise because this also includes receipts from 3-D and IMAX showings. Read the rest of this entry »

“The Thin Red Line” is a war story told with images. There is a difference between that and a movie. It is a bold piece of film-making, especially for a war film, yet it makes all the same statements only without the stereotypes. If the creators of those dumb spoofs made “War Movie,” it would be hard to make fun of this one. It’s not the most engaging of films, but once again, it’s more art through images and narration than a film. Read the rest of this entry »