The Class (trailer)
Director: Laurent Cantet (Human Resources, Time Out, Heading South)
The 2008 Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, and also an Oscar nominee for Foreign Film. Hopefully I’ll see it this weekend, and have my 2008 Best Of up later in the week.
Metacritic: 94
Coraline (trailer)
Director: Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Monkeybone)
Damn, James and the Giant Peach is nearly 13 years old already; I remember working at the theater when that came out. Anyhow, I’d actually like to see this but I’m really afraid the 3-D will completely ruin the experience (my eyes are aligned funny and the 3-D glasses never work right for me, so I just end up with a headache).
Metacritic: 80
Fanboys (trailer)
Director: Kyle Newman
This has been on the Weinstein calendar in some form or another since … I don’t even know when. A couple of years, at least. But how can they be questioned? What better time to capitalize on the Star Wars craze than right here, right now!
Metacritic: 46
He’s Just Not That Into You (trailer)
Director: Ken Kwapis (Sesame Street Presents: Follow that Bird, Dunston Checks In, The Beautician and the Beast, License to Wed)
I’m having difficulty explaining how much I hate the very existence of this movie. I’ve seen Greg Behrendt on TV a few times, and he’s always come across as a total fraud. And the trailer looks suspiciously like it’s a dating movie made by people who haven’t actually been in the dating world since about 1995 (Studio head: ‘”Just say MySpace a few times so the kids will go”). AND FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST do we really need another movie about why the guy won’t call and should the girl call or would that just look needy?
Metacritic: 46
The Pink Panther 2 (trailer)
Director: Harald Zwart (One Night at McCool’s, Agent Cody Banks)
I suppose the best I can say about this is that Steve Martin’s appearance on SNL last weekend wasn’t nearly as bad as his appearance during his first Pink Panther promotional tour.
Metacritic: 36
Push (trailer)
Director: Paul McGuigan (The Reckoning, Wicker Park, Lucky Number Slevin)
I didn’t think Jumper was good enough to inspire such an obvious knockoff, but hey, shows what I know, right? Also, am I the only person who was temporarily puzzled when this started winning prizes at Sundance, or just the only one who will admit it?
Metacritic: 40
Gone Elsewhere 
A couple of things: I think Coraline may have a non-3D version in release.
Topic for discussion: Steve Martin’s film career is one of the biggest wastes of talent in cinema history.
I agree with that. Beyond the obvious dreck, Shopgirl was one of the more painful sits I’ve had this decade.
At least Shopgirl was an attempt by Martin to be something other than a guy simply cupping his hands to catch all the money. I’d appreciate more attempts like that, rather than cashing in with stupid slapstick.
I didn’t think Shopgirl was that bad.
But I’ve never been a Martin fan. I don’t know his stand-up, so my exposure to him has been primarily through movies. Looking at his filmography, I’m seeing The Spanish Prisoner, Bowfinger … and a bunch of stuff that’s nothing special (or much worse). And I’m afraid Untitled Nancy Meyers Project doesn’t sound promising, either.
It seemed a little too pretentious to me. Granted, I think it’s probably the closest we’ve come to seeing the actual Steve Martin on film (or at least: an idealized version of himself) but that doesn’t make it interesting.
The last film Martin appeared in that I genuinely enjoyed was probably Bowfinger. Prior to that, The Spanish Prisoner. Before that…lord knows. Maybe Housesitter?
I’m not a major Steve Martin either (like Brian, never seen his standup work), but even so it’s been depressing the dreck that he’s dished out in the past decade. I happened to stumble across ‘Cheaper by the Dozen’ on TV and couldn’t get through five minutes of it before getting a headache due to its idiocy.
But while I’m not a major fan, I’ve enjoyed a few of his films from previous decades. I haven’t seen it for many, many years, but ‘The Man with Two Brains’ was wild and inspired. ‘The Lonely Guy’ has a bad rep, but I found it genuinely funny at times.
‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ is a terrific film, although Michael Caine is the real standout on that. ‘LA Story’ lost momentum a bit towards the end, but was great fun for the most part.
As for ‘Bowfinger’, was good fun and clever although it didn’t really hit my funny bone that much. Interesting to note though that three stars of that film (Martin, Eddie Murphy, Heather Graham) probably haven’t done as good a film in the decade since.
Also, another film that hasn’t got a great rep, ‘Three Amigos’, is a bit of a favourite of mine.
Actually, considering I haven’t seen a few of his more highly-regarded films from the 1980s/1990s, his record during this period is better than I thought. Which of course makes his decline in the last 10 years all the more depressing.
I’ve got ‘Grand Canyon’ on my DVD hard drive but haven’t got around to watching it. Has anyone here seen it?
In light of Marco’s post, I should clarify this sentence to indicate that there are many of his early-period movies that I haven’t seen.
I saw Grand Canyon…not bad. I really liked Bowfinger.
I was a teenager when Martin was a huge stand-up act (he sold out places like Madison Square Garden) and was on SNL doing “Wild and Crazy Guys.” He’s also a gifted writer of short comic pieces, like Woody Allen. But while Allen went off into lofty directions early in his career and made some great films, Martin has always seemed to opt for the easy bucks. Some of the Carl Reiner films, like The Jerk and Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, are not bad. But the Sgt. Bilkos, Cheaper by the Dozen, and Pink Panther films are a huge fecal stain on his legacy.
I did like Bowfinger. I wish he’d do more like that.
I saw ‘Fanboys’ the other day and while it occasionally promised something interesting, overall it was mediocre stuff with the cliches of what passes for humour in modern comedy abounding (comic scene based on central characters consuming marijuana, gay-panic jokes, etc…).
It’s best idea was the concept of a hatred and contempt between Star Trek and Star Wars fans. This led to some funny moments and Seth Rogen (for once not playing his typical slacker character) was quite amusing as the leader of the Star Trek clan.
The other thing that stood out was how technically shoddy it was. It was a much-delayed film with numerous production problems and it shows in the final product. Technically and narratively it was consistently ordinary – particularly with the subplot about one of the main characters having months to live through terminal cancer, yet for most of the film he seemed in a perfectly healthy state.
Rating: C