Oh my, has the season of films such as Wanted and the Mummy come to a close for another year? Will we at last be able to watch some films made for adults, and children who don’t feel like being insulted or pandered to?
I hope so – here’s some of the films I’m [looking forward to / we'll be reviewing] in the coming months:
House of Adam (Gay closeted cops – and ghosts!)
Ping Pong Playa (alliteration is always powerful)
Able Danger (the film is being directed under the pseudonym ‘Paul Krik’ – why? I don’t know but as I’m writing this as ‘Jett Loe’ I have a soft spot for the folks who made this)
Burn After Reading (Please not another Man Who Wasn’t There or Ladykillers)
Flow (Water Wars? Mad Max and Waterworld were right!)
Little Red Truck (Documentary about a traveling children theater – how could this not be gold?)
Moving Midway (After my recent experience in Alabama – am looking forward to this documentary about slave owners – hopefully it will help illuminate the strange place I now live)
Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys (hey, who doesn’t love Tyler Perry – and his name is in the title)
Amexicano (sequal to Meximerica?)
Appaloosa (I’m a sucker for Westerns)
Allah Made Me Funny (note to director: please don’t cut to the audience too much for needed cut-aways = learn from Jonathan Demme)
Righteous Kill (Al Pacino and Robert De Niro as police detectives working together to capture a serial killer. Really? Working together to capture a serial killer. Is this the best they could do? Will be the equivalent of watching someone pawn their family heirlooms to pay the rent)
Ashes of Time Redux (if only for the title – sounds like part of a video game franchise for a discontinued game platform)
The Women (you couldn’t pay me to see this)
Towelhead (you know, in retrospect American Beauty was just an awards grab – but I’ll give you another chance Alan Ball)
The Duchess (Keira Knightley as the 18th century aristocrat Lady Georgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire – Dear Listener, if you feel the need to see this feel free to do so and email me to let me know how it was – you can reach me at: Jett Loe, care-of A Good Movie)
Ghost Town (Ricky Gervais plays a jerk dentist who can see dead people – this has the potential to be one of the unfunniest films ever made. Oh, and it has Tea Leoni in it)
Hounddog (Dakota Fanning growing up in rural Alabama – it’s always rural Alabama in films isn’t it?
Lakeview Terrace (This looks like another great portrayal of evil by Samuel L. Jackson – and directed by Neil LaBute!)
Quilombo Country (Slaves escaping and forming their own villages? Why can’t we rise up like this here in the U.S.A.?)
Blindness (Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, in some sort of vaguely sci-fi dystopia – why do I feel like I’ve seen this already – several times?)
Choke (Sam Rockwell as a lovable loser. In others Sam Rockwell in the Sam Rockwell role)
Eagle Eye (zzzzzz…..(oh and I bet the ‘mysterious woman’ in the trailers running everything is emergent sentient A.I.)
Miracle at St. Anna (C’mon Spike Lee! You can do it! Make at least one great film! ((am not counting ‘Do the Right Thing’ as that should be labeled as co-directed with Ernest Dickerson)
Nights in Rodanthe (not only could you not pay me to see this – I will pay YOU not to see this)
Obscene (They won’t allow you to publish? F**k ‘em)
Right, that’s it for now.
Cinema!
It lives still.
21 responses so far.
1 Phil // Sep 9, 2008 at 10:17 am
I cannot for the life of me understand the whole “Tyler Perry” phenomena here in the States. I have never met or heard of anyone who actually likes his work – “hey, you know what movie you have to see? That 'Tyler Perry' movie…” His comedy makes me think of him as the african-american version of some 'Jim Varney/Vicki Lawrence” combo (i.e., “Madea/Ernest Goes To Jail”/”Mama's Family”).
And yet he has built his own studio here in Atlanta.
2 TimHeaney // Sep 9, 2008 at 10:36 am
Tyler who?
3 Phil // Sep 9, 2008 at 10:40 am
Exactly.
He has about as much money as the Queen of England, however.
4 jettloe // Sep 9, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Tyler Perry
5 Phil // Sep 9, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Ummmm……nevermind.
Yeah, I'd love to hear your review of one of his movies — I've never seen one…they just look god-awful – he also has a TV show “House of Payne”, which what little I've seen of it hasn't been very favorable either.
But I agree, he's an amazing business man apparently.
6 Joe // Sep 9, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Yeah, never asked you about your name. Is the name you had in high school your given name, or will that always remain a mystery to us plebians?
7 kiley // Sep 11, 2008 at 6:42 am
personally, i'm being throttled by my own excitement for “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” ….truly it is a new age of cinema…
8 Phil // Sep 11, 2008 at 8:07 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKGPvul8FXc&feat...
9 jettloe // Sep 11, 2008 at 11:37 am
Upcoming films!
10 Phil // Sep 12, 2008 at 9:30 am
Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys…”not pre-screened for review”….
uh-oh…
11 jettloe // Sep 12, 2008 at 10:04 am
Tyler Perry and Sarah Palin
12 Phil // Sep 12, 2008 at 10:43 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKGPvul8FXc&feat...
13 jettloe // Sep 12, 2008 at 10:52 am
??
14 Phil // Sep 12, 2008 at 10:59 am
the chihuahua is a supporter of Sarah Palin.
15 jettloe // Sep 12, 2008 at 11:09 am
More Palin Action
16 Phil // Sep 12, 2008 at 11:16 am
I make it a point to avoid discussion of politics…but this chihuahua, opinionated as it is, was not pleased (though it may have some conflicts with the conservative views on immigration).
And I prefer more movie talk, less politics (unless it is talk of political films? – not Michael Moore type stuff, however)….I'd vote for you, though.
17 jettloe // Sep 12, 2008 at 11:21 am
Glad to know I can count on your vote! ;)
18 Tom // Sep 12, 2008 at 3:31 pm
What! You mean my T-Shirt won't be 'hand made by Jett'? Come on, you know that those are the ones that'll be worth a fortune in years to come.
19 jettloe // Sep 12, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Limited Edition T Shirts
20 Phil // Sep 16, 2008 at 1:38 pm
You'll be pleased to hear this:
I just got a call (I won't say from who) regarding a need for space to shoot a re-make of…Peter Pan.
Even the person working for the production company making the movie seemed baffled as to why.
21 American Combatant // Sep 18, 2008 at 5:58 am
Able Danger – Critics
“Paul Krik’s stylish, darkly comic conspiracy thriller takes its title from a classified military program alleged to have identified four 9/11 hijackers prior to the terrorist attacks, and borrows its gleaming B&W look from THE MALTESE FALCON. The film is gorgeously photographed, briskly paced and strikingly handsome despite an indie-sized budget.”
Ken Fox
TV GUIDE
http://movies.tvguide.com/able-danger/review/29...
“Surprisingly entertaining zero-budget film noir that effectively mixes pseudo- Hitchcockian theatrics with a hefty doseof contemporary lefty paranoia.”
NEW YORK MAGAZINE
*Critic’s Pick*
Sara Cardace
http://nymag.com/listings/movie/able-danger/
“NOIR ON ACID. A paranoid fantasy of geek superheroics. Like-minded theorists may ascend from their basements to rally.”
Jeannette Catsoulis
NY TIMES
http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/movies/11a...
“Krik uses flashes of dark comedy, an affection for the film noir genre and the perfect eyebrow-half-cocked attitude towards his subject matter to create a fast-paced and entertaining story… With its black-and-white cinematography and visual imagination (the film mixes in color dream sequences and text-overwritten surveillance footage)… Krik’s low-fi riff on the conspiracy thriller has a charm all its own”
Scott Macaulay
FILMMAKER MAGAZINE
http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/blog/2008/02/r...
“Knocks along with the steady heartbeat pace of a thriller and is painted in the languid, low contrast shadows of a noir.”
Michele Orange
VILLAGE VOICE
http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-09-10/film/abl...
“Able Danger is a slick debut feature…. An update of The Parallax View… A cinematic x-ray of paranoid mindset… In the long shadow of noir pastiche, complete with a femme-fatale turn by Elina Löwensohn”
FILM COMMENT MAGAZINE
“Krik references film noir, rustling up some heavies and hardboiled patter here and there. Ironically, the connection is intriguing, given the wartime stew of anxieties that originally fostered the movies that came to be known as noir; Krik¹s two main riffstones come from either end of the lineage, The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Kiss Me Deadly (1955).”
Nicolas Rapoid
THE L MAGAZINE
http://thelmagazine.com/print.cfm?content_id=4462
“Mildly surreal, mostly black-and-white homage to film noir, set in the built-in ironic enclave of hipster Brooklyn. Able Danger is a smart and all-too- conceivable conspiracy thriller that raises serious questions in less-than-serious ways. Do we really think we know the entire truth behind 9/11? If so, the movie shows a bridge it might want to sell you”
Frank Lovece
THE FILM JOURNAL
http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/reviews/...
nt_id=1003849095
“Paul Krik¹s low-budget indie thriller Able Danger is nicely shot in tinted b&w hi-def video, slickly mixed, scored and edited almost to the point of being indistinguishable from this or that Bruckheimer TV show. And Krik is a keen film student: Many of the film¹s images recall Welles, Lang, Fuller, Mann, Kubrick, Frankenheimer you name it.”
Steven Boone
SPOUT
http://blog.spout.com/2008/09/12/911-conspiracy...
“Shot in a high contrast black-and-white that milks maximum atmospheric effect out of its wide, busy compositions and chiaroscuro lighting…”
Brandon Harris
HAMMER TO NAIL
http://www.hammertonail.com/?p=363
“Shot in black and white and reminiscent of classic ’30s noir films, Able Danger tracks a Brooklyn bookstore owner (based on the owner of Vox Pop) and a European femme fatal over bridges and on bikes in the dangerous search for 9/11 truth.”
Robyn Hillman-Harrigan
FLAVORPILL
http://flavorpill.com/newyork/events/2008/9/11/...
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