Well, seems like I’ve been saying this a lot lately, but sorry for the late posting this week. I was out this morning and this afternoon I’ve been tired and distracted. Anyway, nothing worth burning the house down over this week.
Cyrus (trailer)
Directors: Jay Duplass & Mark Duplass (Baghead)
Personal Interest Factor: 8
Here’s a trailer I actually liked. It starts out one way, and I’m thinking, oh, another intolerable quirky indie romance. Then it veers off in a completely different direction. I can see this being good.
Metacritic: 73
Grown Ups (trailer)
Director: Dennis Dugan (Big Daddy, The Benchwarmers, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan)
Personal Interest Factor: 1
Saw this trailer in a theater recently, with a couple of twentysomething guys a few seats from me who were laughing hysterically at it. Even though they appeared to be adults, i.e., not 8-year-olds. “Oh man, that’s awesome,” one said after it was done. DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDdddouchebags.
Metacritic: 30
I Am Love (trailer)
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Personal Interest Factor: 9
Tilda Swinton stars as a Russian woman married into an aristocratic Italian family. A lot of great reviews and an appealing trailer that reminds me of The Leopard for some reason. I don’t see any reason to suspect I won’t like this.
Metacritic: 80
The Killer Inside Me (trailer)
Director: Michael Winterbottom (Code 46, 9 Songs, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, A Mighty Heart)
Personal Interest Factor: 8
Jackrabbit Slim published his review of the film a couple weeks ago already, and he summed it up by saying that “when it was over I had to wonder what the point was.” That doesn’t sound too great, but I’ve been waiting for a new Casey Affleck starring role since the one-two punch of Gone Baby Gone and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford a few years ago. Plus, I admit I’m curious about a movie that requires both Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson to actually act.
Metacritic: 52
Knight and Day (trailer)
Director: James Mangold (Cop Land, Girl, Interrupted, Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma)
Personal Interest Factor: 5? 6?
I guess this is already well on its way to tanking hard, and I have a couple of thoughts on that. First, I heard a woman in her early 40s this week remark during one of the TV spots that Tom Cruise “is definitely showing his age.” If I’m Cruise’s agent, I’m shivering at the thought of someone even thinking that. Secondly, I refuse to believe that the marketing department was really trying if this poster was the best they could do in terms of key art. That’s just pitiful.
Metacritic: 47
Sweetgrass
Personal Interest Factor: 7
This seems like an interesting documentary, perhaps. It “follows the last modern-day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into Montana’s breathtaking and often dangerous Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture.” There’s actually no director credited, as far as I can tell, with the credits listing it as being “produced by Ilisa Barbash” and “recorded by Lucien Castaing-Taylor”.
Metacritic: 73
Gone Elsewhere 
Yeah. That Knight and Day poster is pretty pitiful.
So I went to see Knight and Day this afternoon, with the full intention of coming back here to write a review. But there’s really just nothing to say. It’s exactly what you’d expect from the trailer, with some strange mutant CGI bulls thrown in during one rather embarrassing sequence. But some of it works, and it’s amusing at times, and tedious at others. You know.
Extremely tedious and so…not there…there really isn’t anything to say.
Saw ‘Knight and Day’ tonight and am pretty much in agreeance with Brian, although perhaps liked it a tad more than he did.
It’s a film you’ve probably forgotten 30 mins after seeing it but what it does, it generally does well and is reasonably entertaining. Cruise is pretty good but I thought the standout was Diaz who made what could’ve easily been an irritating character quite likable and even interesting (considering the confines of the script and plot).
Don’t know what Sarsgaard saw in his role, he was totally wasted. So was Dano to a lesser extent.
Silliest scene for mine was the early plane crash which was so nonsensical that it was hard to care too much about the film about that.
An ok time-waster, but nothing more than that.