Valkyrie, United Artists, 2008
2008
Starring: Tom Cruise, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Carice Van Houton, Terence Stamp, Eddie Izzard, Jamie Parker, Kenneth Branagh, Christian Berkel
Director: Bryan Singer
Runtime: 120 Minutes
Distributor: United Artists
Rating: R
Ever since the debacle of MI:3, a project which saw Tom Cruise to put it politely “released” from his obligations to Paramount, Cruise has had more ups and downs than the stock market. Bouncing straight back after he was prestigiously appointed to head up United Artists, he first big action was the somber, snooze inducing political drama Lions for Lambs. Then out of nowhere a self-deprecating turn under some seriously unflattering make-up as the foul-mouthed, ball-busting studio mogul behind Tropic Thunder made him credible again.
Now after a long and bloody PR campaign that saw the world’s biggest film star taking to the TV spots explaining why you should go see his movie, Cruise arrives just in time to cement himself in a year that has really been all about comebacks. And what better way to comeback than to go so against type – The Cruise flashing those pearly whites against the clammy grey of the Third Reich, Surely not? Though in all honesty this detailed reconstruction of Col. Claus Von Stauffenberg and the plot to assassinate Hitler is a deck so stacked in his favor it wouldn’t look out of place being shuffled by Danny Ocean.
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2008
Starring: Will Smith, Rosario Dawson, Woody Harrelson, Michael Ealy, Barry Pepper, Joe Nunez
Director: Gabriele Muccino
Runtime: 120 Minutes
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Rating: PG-13
In what just might be the most depressing film of 2008, which is an impressive feat in and of itself when you pick over the festive line-up of assassination pictures and holocaust dramas, Will smith reunites with his Pursuit of Happyness director Gabriele Muccino. While Happyness exists in the same realm of a somber tug in the heartstrings the two pictures are a world apart, and in fact Seven Pounds has more in common with Smith’s post-apocalyptic savior from I am Legend.
Like Robert Neville eking out a meager existence in self-imposed exile on Manhattan, as IRS agent Ben Thomas Smith again delivers another earnest portrayal of a tortured soul desperate to atone. A former aeronautical engineer consumed by guilt over a dark secret from his past Ben sleepwalks through his life inviting punishment. Whether berating a neglectful administrator in a nursing home or caustically mocking a blind, mild-mannered telesales operative (Woody Harrelson making the most of a small but meaty role) over his condition, Ben challenges people to judge him.
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2008
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates, Jaden Smith, John Cleese, James Hong, Jon Hamm
Director: Scott Derrickson
Runtime: 100 Minutes
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Rating: PG-13
One of the most seminal films to be born out of science fiction’s golden era, Robert Wise’s cautionary tale of a benevolent alien sent to warn mankind of its impending destruction becomes the latest classic to be rolled out for a big budget digital makeover – this time at the hands of The Exorcism of Emily Rose director Scott Derrickson. Keanu Reeves steps into the role of Klaatu, the austere interstellar messenger sent by a coalition of alien worlds to determine if we’re capable of altering our destructive ways and render judgment in the form of extermination if we’re not.
But for a film about the end of the world, it’s hard to conceive a film with less ambition. Anybody expecting The Day After Tomorrow type destruction will do well to just stay home. Anybody worried they might have to sit through some thinly veiled sermon soaked in hippie ideals and kum-by-ya politics can relax because the film doesn’t even bother to do that.
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Starring: Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench, Gemma Arterton, Jeffery Wright, Giancarlo Giannini
Director: Marc Forster
Runtime: 106 Minutes
Distributor: MGM
Rating: PG-13
After the meaty origin story that was Casino Royale was greeted with almost universal acclaim for its back to basics bravado it would seem the honeymoon really is over for this latest incarnation of cinema’s longest running franchise. Looking to build on the goodwill accrued refining the bloated Bond into something efficient enough to shed the anachronistic shackles, first time Bond director Marc Foster and scripter Paul Haggis have trimmed so much off the top as to render the series virtually emaciated and delivered a film as confounding as its nonsensical title.
Picking up right where Royale left off, Quantum opens hard and fast with Daniel Craig as Bond weaving his bullet riddled Aston Martin in an out of traffic on a winding Sienna cliff road duly dispatching the customary bad guys in hot pursuit to deliver Mr. White for interrogation. It’s an interrogation that’s short-lived as an assassin is only to happy to illustrate just what White means when he says “we have people everywhere.”
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Starring: Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, Jason Mewes, Jeff Anderson, Justin Long, Katie Morgan, Craig Robinson
Director: Kevin Smith
Runtime: 102 Minutes
Distributor: The Weinstein Company
Rating: R
When last Kevin Smith tried to do something different than the familiar shtick the result, Jersey Girl, was world responded with little more than a collective shrug and a spatter of “seen worse” mutterings. It wasn’t his entire fault mind. The now defunct “Bennifer” factor hung round the film’s neck like an anchor, there was a cutsey moppet angle, and Affleck’s critical appeal was itself in the toilet. Still the awkward mishmash of some quite downbeat plotlines (mother dies in childbirth) with the typically frank Smith chitchat about masturbation and the like just didn’t gel and the entire affair was just wholly alien to what fans had come to expect.
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2008
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Tom Noonan, Diane Weist, Emily Watson
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Runtime: 124 Minutes
Distributor: Sony Picture Classics
Rating: R
As anyone familiar with the work of mad genius screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine, Being John Malkovich) can attest, the key to truly appreciating the wealth of this man’s literary, metaphysical ravings is surrendering yourself to where he wants to take you. As is typical with Charlie Kaufman stories, Synecdoche, New York isn’t a film – it’s an experience. With that in mind this is an epic opus about love and mortality that once more plays fast and loose with conventional narrative structure, transporting us to a place where the laws of time, space, and reality simply do not apply. This is ‘life is what happens while you’re making other plans’ Kaufman style.
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Starring: Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, Ellen Burstyn, James Cromwell, Richard Dreyfuss, Thandi Newton, Scott Glenn, Ioan Gruffudd
Director: Oliver Stone
Runtime: 131 Minutes
Distributor: Lionsgate
Rating: PG-13
One of America’s most celebrated and seminal filmmakers, Oliver Stone has long been fascinated with the nation’s highest office. He has previously pondered the likes of Nixon and J.F.K. Typically boasting such tell-tale characteristics as exhaustive research and detailed characterization, a Stone picture is often regarded as a funhouse like reflection held up to the cultural mindset of both an era and a nation (Wall Street in the eighties, Natural Born Killers in the nineties).
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Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges, Ludacris, Chris O’Donnell, Olga Kurylenko
Director: John Moore
Runtime: 100 Minutes
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Rating: PG-13
Despite delivering nothing but painful, torturous drivel from as far back as 1993 when Bob Hoskins brought us Super Mario Brothers complete with that God awful Roxette theme tune, Hollywood continues to spit out movies based on video games in hope that someday one of them might be slightly more appealing to sit through than a root canal.
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2008
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, Mark Strong, Golshifteh Farahani, Ali Suliman, Alon Abutbul
Director: Ridley Scott
Runtime: 118 Minutes
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Rating: R
It’s a fair assessment to say that the more complicated a subject is, the more infuriatingly oversimplified and dumbed down the Hollywood studio machine will render it – hackers cracking national defense grids with laptops, dinosaur DNA courtesy of a mosquito and the eternal mysteries of the heart mastered by a gazillion blubbery speeches in airport departure lounges everywhere. So when you hear Warner Brothers announce a film that dares to tackle the geo-political instability in the Middle East and the global War on Terror, you would be forgiven for not being exactly brimming with confidence.
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2008
Starring: Gerrard Butler, Idris Elba, Toby Kebbell, Ludacris, Thandi Newton, Jeremy Piven, Mark Strong, Tom Wilkenson
Director: Guy Ritchie
Runtime: 114 Minutes
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Rating: R
After the critically panned swing and miss that was Revolver and the quick detour down the often traveled road to disaster that is directing one’s spouse in the truly awful Swept Away, people seemed to be well and truly over Guy Ritchie. Indeed the man credited for single-handedly breathing new life into the dead and buried British gangster film now regularly suffers the indignity of being referred to in the press as simply “Madonna’s husband.”
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