The Hitlist Movies Blog

Set Visit: 'Battleship' Aims Guns on Summer 2012

We visit the set of the sci-fi/action extravaganza and talk to director Peter Berg and actors Taylor Kitsch & Alexander Skarsgård about turning a board game into a blockbuster

By Dave McCoy Aug 8, 2011 10:55AM

Laugh all you want in regards to "Battleship" the movie. Yes, it's based on that Hasbro game Battleship, as in "Hey, you sank my battleship!" (if you are younger than 30 years-old, ask your parents). I was laughing too when Universal asked me to travel to Hawaii for a two-day set visit in September 2010. Really, I thought, they're making movies from board games now? I mean, I guess I understand "Clue" but "Battleship"? That was before I saw the set.

An all-star cast tries to recommend an under-the-radar film

By Kate Erbland Aug 7, 2011 5:10PM

Sometimes even a cast packed with Oscar winners and nominees won't guarantee that a film gets the buzz it should surely seem poised to get, and such may be the case with John Doyle's "Main Street." An impressive ensemble cast seems to signal that the film should be getting much more notice than it has garnered, but the film's strange trailer may show why the film doesn't seem to be on anyone's mind.

The film stars Oscar winner Colin Firth, Orlando Bloom, Oscar nominee Patricia Clarkson, Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn, and Andrew McCarthy. Firth's character arrives in a Southern town, promising to turn around the local economy with his big business. But what Firth may deliver may not be what's best, even if economically it all makes sense. The rest of the cast play members of the community, who all seem to be entangled with each other, even if some of those connections seem tenuous at best. The trailer starts off with some dramatic touches, before switching to a more light-hearted tone, before zooming back to the heavy stuff. In between economic chatter, there seem to be a number of messy romantic situations that overwhelm the film's story. Firth and Bloom both bust out heavy Southern accents that are distracting at best. In short, it's an inscrutable bit of movie marketing that does not clarify the tone or the plot of the film.

Hopefully, the trailer is not a true interpretation of the film, especially considering how many talented actors and actresses populate it.

"Main Street" opens on September 9. Check out the film's trailer, thanks to Apple, after the break.

Is the box office winner worth the hype?

By Kate Erbland Aug 7, 2011 4:29PM

After the relatively unexpected box office massacre of Jon Favreau's "Cowboys & Aliens" last weekend at the hand of a bunch of little blue men, this weekend's returns seemed bound to cause chatter no matter which film prevailed. What an nice surprise that the winner ended up being a somewhat unexpected choice, Rupert Wyatt's "Rise of the Planet of the Apes."

MSN Movies' own Glenn Kenny gave the film a stellar, four-star review (check out his full review here). In his review, Kenny comments on the "diminished expectations" of the summer blockbuster movie-going public, and he's certainly correct to address the concerns connected to such a film, a sort of "premake" riff on the popular series from the '70s. But, for all the potential for disaster, Kenny's review gets to the heart of the film, as he weighs in that its his "pleasure to report that not only does "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" not suck, but is in fact very nearly close to completely awesome, and is the best sci-fi blockbuster of the summer, in a walk, even."

The film serves as an origin story (of sorts), telling an alternate story of just how the world's apes came to the higher intelligence that, ostensibly, led to their ultimate superiority in the not-so-distant future. If it's taken as a new spin on "Apes" canon, it erases the third, fourth, and fifth films in the franchise's original series, imagining Caesar the ape as a creation thanks to modified human medicine, not the child of two smart apes sent back to the past (a complicated conceit as is, one that puts Earth and all of its history and inhabitants in a never-ending and warped circle of time where cause and effect blend to the point of being unrecognizable).

In Wyatt's "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," James Franco's Will Rodman comes into possession of tiny baby Caesar, the child of an ape that Will's company was testing meds on that promise to repair broken neural pathways. But in the case of Caesar and his mother, having no broken pathways to mend only leads to the strengthening of old paths - and the creation of new ones. The results are unexpected to the film's human characters, despite being no-brainers to anyone who has ever seen a previous "Apes" film.

Early reports have “The Change-Up” suffering at the hands of marauding chimps

By DannyMiller Aug 6, 2011 5:49PM

Hollywood is one crazy place. In the old days, films were given time to develop an audience and for word-of-mouth to increase interest. Now a film’s “success” or “failure” is determined within a few hours of its release. Deadline reports that “The Rise of the Planet of the Apes” is exceeding expectations with a very healthy $19.7M box office take on Friday. The Twentieth Century Fox film is now being projected to take in at least $50M this weekend, way higher than last week’s much-anticipated “Cowboys & Aliens.” By contrast, yesterday's other big studio release, Universal’s “The Change-Up,” only took in $4.7M on Friday and weekend projections have been drastically lowered to $13.4M. Universal executives are wringing their hands. “It’s disappointing,” one exec told Deadline this morning. “We’re kind of confounded by it. The movie tested unbelievably well and played like the best R-rated comedies we have.”

Though eclipsed by her phenomenal success on television, Lucy's film roles are worth a look

By DannyMiller Aug 6, 2011 3:35PM

Everyone loves Lucy, the legendary redhead who would have turned 100 years old today. Lucille Ball is best known as the woman who’s had the biggest impact on the television industry, both because of her success as a sitcom star as well as her ground-breaking role as the first female head of a studio. In addition to her own wildly popular “I Love Lucy,” Ball was responsible for green-lighting shows such as “Star Trek,” “The Untouchables,” and “Mission: Impossible.”

Fewer people are aware of Lucille Ball’s movie career. Beginning as a Goldwyn Girl in the early 30s, Lucy became known as the Queen of the B’s at RKO. But she also made some excellent films that withstand the test of time, and it’s fascinating to see her exquisite comedy chops in their early stages.

Hey! Where's everybody going?

By William Goss Aug 6, 2011 12:41AM

Richard Ayoade is the creator of some brilliantly daft TV shows ("Garth Marenghi's Darkplace"), a director on episodes of other brilliant TV shows ("Community"), a star on other daft TV shows ("The IT Crowd") and now responsible for one charming coming-of-age feature ("Submarine"). So it feels only right that his particular brand of proudly awkward humor may attract the likes of Jesse Eisenberg, an actor known for his recent streak of dry, neurotic roles.

Vulture reports that the duo will be collaborating on a modern adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyefsky's "The Double," about (well, at least initially) a government clerk who becomes increasingly fascinated by his own doppelganger joining the workplace. By most accounts, it reads more like a nightmare than a laugh riot, but the story could feasibly lend itself to a deadpan interpretation.

The pairing of Eisenberg and Ayoade is inspired in and of itself; their tapping into (one presumes) the comedic potential of a classic Russian novella is a gambit that will only keep them both on my radar for some time to come.

Next Cronenberg Project Sounds Nuts, Of Course

A love triangle between a man, a woman and a black hole -- no, a literal black hole, not like 'Twilight'

By William Goss Aug 6, 2011 12:21AM

Oh, David Cronenberg. According to The Playlist, the Canadian auteur notoriously fond of psychological dysfunction and body horror in his work has lined up a fitting project with which to follow up this year's Jung-Freud drama, "A Dangerous Method," and next year's Don DeLillo adaptation, "Cosmopolis" -- a film based on Jonathan Lethem's 1997 novel, "As She Climbed Across the Table."

The novel concerns a particle physicist who falls for the black hole that she and her colleagues have artifically created and the anthropologist who grows jealous of their relationship. It sounds like one loopy-as-hell love triangle, I know, but it also sounds like a project more in the tradition of "Dead Ringers" and "The Fly" than Cronenberg has done in years, with maybe a welcome comic levity to the inherently abstract proceedings.

Jonah Hill's Potty-Mouthed Babysitter Gets a Red-Band Trailer

David Gordon Green's 'The Sitter' due out this December

By William Goss Aug 5, 2011 11:49PM

First off, allow me to issue a mea culpa. When I read about David Gordon Green doing an "Adventures in Babysitting" riff starring Jonah Hill, I'd assumed that Green was cashing in after his remarkable indie streak ("All the Real Girls," "Snow Angels") and his double-edged big-budget efforts (yay for "Pineapple Express," not so much for "Your Highness") with something family-friendly and mainstream. It appears that I was wrong, namely because a film doesn't merit a red-band trailer unless it's going to earn an R rating; points to Green for consistency.

Now, whether or not the appeal of "The Sitter" is going to extend beyond Hill cursing at and/or around children remains to be seen. It's odd that Fox is giving this a December 9th bow, considering how foul-mouthed fare rarely does well among the carefree holiday moviegoing audience. "Bad Santa" happened to hit the sweet spot eight years ago, but 2006's "Van Wilder" spin-off and 2009's "Transylmania" were greeted by far fewer attendees. (In all fairness, though, those also happened to be two wholly wretched films.)

We'll see if Green, the once-tubby Hill and the reliably awesome Sam Rockwell can gave us a worthy wintertime romp rather than a lump of comedy coal. You see what I did there?

I see what I did there... and I apologize for it.