Moonrise Kingdom
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward
Wes Anderson’s latest looks like business as usual, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The quirk, the sepia tones and the bourgeois setting are out in full force, but it looks to be working rather well here. Utilising an outstanding cast, Moonrise Kingdom looks like a lot of fun and I’m eager to see it after watching this trailer. Detractors of Anderson should stay well clear though as this looks to be so extremely ‘Andersonian’ (?!) it’s almost a parody of his style.
The Lady
Director: Luc Besson
Cast: Michelle Yeoh, David Thewlis, Jonathan Raggett
Without wanting to sound really shallow, I was quite disappointed when I found out what this film was about. Initially I saw Luc Besson directs Michelle Yeoh and I envisaged some sort of awesome stylish action extravaganza. When the trailer started and we see Aung San Suu Kyi (Yeoh) held at gunpoint as a child I thought ‘awesome, an action-packed tale of vengeance!’. But actually this is the dramatic true story of a woman who is at the core of Burma’s democracy movement. So no slow-motion kung-fu I’m afraid. On a serious note though, it’s good to see Yeoh get a decent dramatic role and I’m always a David Thewlis fan, so I’m intrigued although from the trailer the film does look a little ‘worthy’. I’m not entirely convinced it’ll all that great, but I’m not going to push it aside yet.
Detachment
Director: Tony Kaye
Cast: Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden, Christina Hendricks, William Petersen, Bryan Cranston, Tim Blake Nelson, Betty Kaye, Sami Gayle, Lucy Liu, Blythe Danner, James Caan
The elusive and controversial Tony Kaye (American History X, Lake of Fire) makes a long awaited return to mainstream filmmaking with Detachment, a drama about a school teacher (Adrien Brody) with a troubled past who keeps emotionally detached from his students and peers to avoid returning to it. At first, from the trailer it looked a little too much like a sanitised version of Half Nelson, but as the trailer went on there was more emphasis given to the large and very intriguing cast as well as a few powerful visuals. There were some bad trailer cliches with the swelling Sigur Ros meets U2 soundtrack as Brody throws tables around as well as a couple of corny lines, but there were enough hints of quality here to suggest that in feature form this should be one to watch.
American Reunion
Director: Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg
Cast: Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Chris Klein, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Tara Reid, Seann William Scott, Mena Suvari, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Jennifer Coolidge, Eugene Levy, Natasha Lyonne, Shannon Elizabeth
With most of their careers never quite lifting off, it was only a matter of time before we got this, an unnecessary American Pie cast reunion movie. Pretty much all the original faces are back (as far as I can tell) and there are no surprises in store by the looks of things. Now I’m actually quite a fan of the original American Pie and believe that beyond the bad taste gags and terrible key performance from Chris Klein, it’s quite an honest portrayal of teenage relationships and was good fun to boot. The second film was lazy fluff though, I avoided the third one and the straight to DVD follow-ups all look awful. This actually looks like it could be better than those sequels as the trailer did raise a smile or two, but that’s not saying much. The set-ups here are way too obvious and the gags have zero wit, so my money is on this being a desperate cash-in (although are people really looking for another American Pie film these days?).
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