Daniel Craig is stepping off of the Broadway stage and heading back to the big screen–but not just in the role of James Bond.

Craig is moving from Pinewood Shepperton’s studio in Britain, where the James Bond films are shot, to the company’s Toronto location to star in Jim Sheridan’s psychological thriller Dream House.

In the film, Craig will be playing the role of a man whose family moves to a small town, only to find out they’ve moved into a house that’s being haunted by its previous inhabitants.

Although the Morgan Creek production is being shot at Pinewood Shepperton’s Toronto studio, the parent company in Britain will earn fees based on the revenue performance of the Toronto studios.

Dream House is scheduled to be shot from January 25th to April 9th, 2010.

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Taking on a fairly interesting duo of roles, Gwyneth Paltrow and Nicole Kidman have both signed on to star in The Danish Girl.

The film is based on the real life relationship between Danish artists Einar and Greta Wegener, but is adapted from a David Ebershoff novel dealing with the same story.

Although dealing with a relationship, the film is not your typical boy meets girl, girl meets girl, or boy meets boy tale. Einar Wegener was, in fact, the first post-operative transsexual, and the film follows his and his wife Greta on the journey Einar takes from playing around with gender roles, to finally getting a sex-change operation.

In The Danish Girl, Paltrow will play the role of Greta, a portrait painter who asks her husband Einar to step in when a female model fails to show up for a sitting. Kidman will be playing the role of Einar, who after donning women’s clothing for the portrait continues to sit for Greta as a woman, and eventually undergoes a sex-change.

Ebershoff’s novel was adapted for the screen by Lucinda Coxon, and will be directed by Thomas Alfredson. Gail Mutrux, Anne Harrison and Linda Reisman will serve as producers, along with Kidman and Per Saari.

The Danish Girl is a collaborative production between Pretty Pictures in association with Harrison Productions and Blossom Films.

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According to Sony, This Is It has raked in more than $100 million from international box offices. This far exceeds the expectation for the film, which many thought would see similar intake as 2008’s concert film Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds. Instead, This is It has brought in over twice the amount that Best of Both Worlds did.

The countries in which This Is It has seen the highest box office take were Japan, Britain, and Germany, bringing in $18.2 million, $11.1 million, and $8.9 million respectively.

Combined with the $44 million grossed in the U.S. and Canada, this takes This Is It’s profit to $144 million so far.

This is It has seen such success that Sony has extended the film’s run to go through early December in the U.S. and Canada, rather than keeping the original 2 week limited run.

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So why won’t this appeal to the masses? Very simply because of the script, which goes off the rails midway through the picture. Screenwriter Peter Straughan has some interesting ideas at work here, he just doesn’t know where to end it. Nor does he know where to take these ideas to turn them into a coherent story. Straughan likely read the book by Jon Ronson and came away so super excited over the material he decided to use it to write a script. Somewhere along the way someone forgot to tell him to go back and rewrite the film. It strives to be satirical, and many times almost gets to that point.

Director Grant Heslov doesn’t fail in making sure the movie stays entertaining at least during its brief runtime. He’s aided by a goofy-as-can-be George Clooney who acts like a kid on a roller coaster ride. It’s unclear what his Lyn Cassidy was written as, but Clooney takes him for an overconfident buffoon who feels he’s superhuman. The result is pure comedy, and a performance that guides one through the picture when it begins to get too outlandish for its own good. Clooney’s counterbalanced by a moody and glum Ewan McGregor who does a fine job as Bob Wilton, and plays off of his mustached partner elegantly. McGregor needs a film like this to get him back out there and this is a good jumping point.

Both are supported by Jeff Bridges who’s coasting by on his ‘Dude’ persona from The Big Lebowski. Obviously, that’s not a bad thing as he’s particularly great at it but he doesn’t really do anything we haven’t seen before. Kevin Spacey’s Larry Hooper is in a battle with Cassidy but not because they’re rivals like the story tells us. Spacey seems to be trying to one-up Clooney for “Goofiest Person In A Film”. While the edge might go to Spacey by the end, it never feels like Verbal Kint takes it too far. Stephen Lang also pops up, although it’s never clear why he’s there… but no matter. Lang’s always a joy to watch, as is Glenn Morshower, who’s in Transformers mode here. Again, never a bad thing.

Heslov does deserve credit for keeping all of these elements reigned in. He’s daunted with the task of trying to tell a coherent story amongst all the chaos, and he just goes with it. Heslov doesn’t hold anything back and doesn’t let any of his actors feel restrained by their roles. Instead of taking the “how can I save this?” attitude that directors sometimes  leave on their pictures, Heslov’s attitude toward this material is laid-back and fun. He’s perfectly aware things have gone up in smoke once the third act has arrived and does nothing to stop it from doing so. Maybe he’s smiling and laughing along with Cassidy and Hooper as they run rampant through an outpost.

This is what The Men Who Stare At Goats asks you to do. It cares if you like it, but at the same time it’s not afraid to just gleefully throw everything it can at you. Truth is, you’re either with this film from the opening frame, and just accept it in spite of itself when the later acts come, or you’re weary and far gone by the time said acts arrive. With that said, this film is tough to recommend to those on the fence. People interested should definitely give it a try, but the film isn’t for everyone and knows it. And sometimes, we need films like this that play by their own rules and offer up mildly entertaining exploits.

 ★★★☆☆ 

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That’s about as far as the creators of The Fourth Kind are really willing to go in confirming the ‘truth’ behind their new film. Ultimately, that’s probably as far as they should go considering all of the events and ‘footage’ presented in this 90-minute treatise on alien abduction and extraterrestrial paranoia. Despite assertions from star Milla Jovovich and director Olatunde Osunsanmi that the film includes actual footage, there’s a surprising lack of supportive evidence found anywhere outside of The Fourth Kind.  I personally couldn’t uncover anything that substantiates that there is an actual Abigail Tyler or even any significant reports of UFO phenomena in the area.

Still, The Fourth Kind sets it all up in the same fashion that a TV documentary might; introducing the real Abigail Tyler, a haunted and frail looking woman, and then switching over to Jovovich as the hottie shrink version of Tyler who is trying to uncover the truth behind her husband’s death. In a move that flies in the face of most paranormal docu-dramas, the film switches to split screen and shows the video footage for the most harrowing and disturbing moments. Faces contort, people levitate, several end up speaking in ancient Sumerian, and all describe visitations by a grey owl. Some of it is creepy and effective, some of it is tedious, but almost all of it suffers from the burden of ‘based on a true story’.

What Osunsanmi conjures by adding the layer of potential truth to the movie is a glimpse into the mindset and philosophy of those who do believe they have been abducted or have experienced significant paranormal phenomenon. The film makes it easy to sympathize with Jovovich’s performance and be chilled by the Tyler we see the in the footage, but we are taken out of the film every time we glimpse a clearly fx-enhanced sequence that purports to be real. The continued insistence that what we are seeing is something beyond cinematic fantasy is hard to take.

Benefiting the film is the lead performance by Milla Jovovich who is surprisingly resilient to the haphazard plot twists and one-note ‘woman in peril’ construction of the character. She’s come a long way since The Fifth Element’s Leeloo and this role marks her graduation from one-note action warrior to a stronger dramatic actress. Everyone else, from the perfectly calibrated Elias Koteas (once notorious for playing nutjobs) to the caffeine-fueled Will Patton (he’s never looked more unstable) give the dramatization portions of the movie some credibility.

And what of the ‘real people’ in the footage? I have no doubt personally that they are actors and they do what they have been assigned to do: stretch that perception of the world in the film as reality. Particularly, I must give credit to the casting choice for Dr. Tyler. She looks like a woman who has faced the dark under the bed and come out worse for the wear. The Fourth Kind is very canny and wise when it comes to understanding our expectations of Hollywood and its presentation of real-world events. By casting the quite pretty Jovovich, and then giving us a disheveled and disoriented ‘real’ Tyler, it challenges the audience’s skepticism. She and the other victims aren’t pretty or glamorous. This means they have to be genuine, right?

For an evening of cheap and cheeky thrills, The Fourth Kind will do the trick. But like Paranormal Activity, it doesn’t offer anything, true or otherwise, that can satiate our imagination for more than a single sitting.

 ★★½☆☆ 

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Kelly’s The Box opens in 1976 with the button device being delivered mysteriously to the doorstep of Norma(Cameron Diaz) and Arthur Lewis (James Marsden). Later that day, the box’s creator, Arlington Steward, shows up and pitches to Norma the aforementioned proposal regarding the rules of the button. Steward warns Norma of two other stipulations of the deal; he cannot reveal the identity of his employers and neither she nor her husband may tell anyone else about the arrangement, the box or Steward’s visit. He leaves the box in their care and says that he will return in 24 hours to pick it back up. They have until then to push — or not push — the button.

The Lewises are a caring and tight-knit family unit; no strangers to selflessness and sacrifice for those they love. Arthur works at NASA and his career goal is to eventually become an astronaut on the Mars Mission, while Norma is a high school English teacher. On the same day that Steward visits them, Norma is denied tuition reimbursement and Arthur learns of his rejection from the space program. Financially strapped, and faced with compromises to their future plans, one of them predictably pushes the button. They get the money, the box is taken away, and they are left with the consequences of their actions.

Up until that point, Kelly’s movie is firing on all cylinders. The costume and set designs that resurrect the kitschy nightmare of 1970s fashions and the fresh mystique of the NASA space program are without blame and create a curious texture that works for this film in the same way that the 80’s setting worked for Kelly’s Donnie Darko. Henry Mancini-esque score is a strange and archaic piece that evokes with precision The Twilight Zone qualities and pedigree of The Box, which is based on a Matheson short story that also appeared as an episode in that classic series.

The acting is surprisingly strong, especially from Diaz who really embodies Norma as a caring and compassionate woman who has made an uncharacteristically monstrous decision in a moment of weakness. She internalizes the central moral dilemma of the box in a way that the rest of the film fails to do. Marsden, so often the nice guy in the background, gets the opportunity to play that role front and center here and his mannered approach keeps everything from flying completely off the rails, at least until the film’s off-the-wall third act. As Arlington Steward, Langella is the most effective and imposing member of the cast. His presence, including his fearsome, fire-ravaged visage, is appropriately sinister and unnerving.

However, once the film moves beyond the confines of that original concept — even as a 30-minute Zone episode it was stretched to its narrative limits — I began to lose interest and investment in the characters and their ordeal. Much like Kelly’s previous features, the splendid Darko and the bafflingly awful Southland Tales, The Box introduces more ideas, characters and plot points than can be easily resolved or even satisfyingly explored within its running time.

After they push the button, the Lewises encounter strange, dead-eyed people wandering around their house and inexplicable nosebleeds in trusted friends and acquaintances.The NSA has set up shop at Arthur’s work and the movie begins creating a startlingly convoluted connection between Steward’s behavior, the philosophies of Jean Paul Sartre and the possibilities of life on the Martian surface. To add extra confusion, those strange sentient water structures from Darko show-up here, visualizing Sartre’s views on human nature and reflective consciousness. Kelly draws us back to the original set-up in a downbeat but powerful final sequence, but he never justifies or explains all the oddball science fiction that clogs up the film’s center sections.

So, is The Box successful as an entertainment? It certainly is bold and it strives for originality and thoughtfulness. As a suspense picture, it works well enough in the early going. However, it would be dishonest of me to suggest that it pulls all of its pieces together in a way that drives home its moral suppositions. They just aren’t supported by the plot or its delivery. Strangely, this will matter more to some than others. I fully expect to hear a negative reaction from the majority of filmgoers, but there may be those who embrace The Box because it is ambitious and they will latch on to all that the film gets right.

When I was asked last night after the screening, I responded that the film didn’t quite work for me. After spending some time chewing it over, and discussing the central question at its heart with others, I realize that in some small ways the film does its job and maybe it just got under my skin. It is possible then that, flaws and all, it may also get under yours.

 ★★★☆☆ 

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I sit in my seat and look about to see my surroundings; I start to hear clicking sounds getting louder and louder. I start to fly around the city of London, looking around I see people having snowball fights with each other, singing Christmas songs. This might sound like the Star Tours “The Christmas Carol Edition” that would be at Disneyland. You might think wow that sounds kind of cool, well in this film it played out to be too much of something can be a bad thing. It sounds strange that Zemeckis could not pull off a simple adaptation. The last animated film we saw from Zemeckis was “Beowulf” which I found to be an excellent adaptation; it carried strong writing as well as excellent use of 3D effects.

“A Christmas Carol” was written by Charles Dickens, it tells the tale of a decrepit old man named Ebenezer Scrooge whom despises Christmas and anything or anyone to do with the holiday. So on Christmas night as Scrooge arrives home, he is visited by his old business partner Jacob Marley, who died many years ago, whom has come to warn him that three spirits will come to visit him to counsel him about the error of his ways.

Zemeckis adapted the writing from the book to film very well, he stuck relatively close to it but also put in a few things of his own as an attempt to mix up some originality to it. One part of it in particular was how the spirits were made use of, all of them were different from the many film adaptations, not only characteristically but also visually.

Jim Carrey portrayed the title role of Ebenezer Scrooge, he performs it in a story book manner to the point of how I imagined him to be. That has been Carrey’s strengths as a character actor. He usually does very well with other films such as “Man on the Moon” and “Eternal Sunshine of the spotless Mind” but when it’s a role like Ebenezer scrooge or even The Grinch, I feel its like his primary weapon in his arsenal and it shows in the film.

There were problems with the film and they varied, the film had a lot of what I call Zemeckis moments: in which there are tons of flying shots or just moments blown out of proportion. Where we follow scrooge flying around the city or we have overview fly bys of London itself, it felt like the 3D was very reliant on this factor. It felt like it was used about eighty percent of the film and that can cause many problems for people who would like to see it at a non 3D show. Those Zemeckis moments became very obnoxious and boring, I thought to myself “Jeez enough already!” and we all know Zemeckis has the creativity but it seemed like he was just relying strictly on the 3D and nothing else. That’s one of the big problems with the film, we have so many Zemeckis moments that it begins to bury the messages that the story is trying to tell.

Now with any vital thing to a film it comes to the marketing of it, from the posters and many of the trailers or spots I see that “A Christmas Carol” looks like a family fun Christmas movie. But don’t let this fool you, there is a lot of dark themed messages and spine chilling moments in a kids advertised film, that might spook younger audiences. I thought there was going to be much more humor to it and that’s what it lacked a lot of it to make it friendlier to kids. Yes to a point the Story in it self is serious, if you don’t change the error of your ways them bad things are going to happen to you. But you would expect with Zemeckis and holiday movies but its not, some parents might be rubbed the wrong way with it.

The story of “A Christmas Carol” is a simple one and a classic but overdoing effects and relying on it to carry the film actually brought it down for me, despite the strong acting and good writing. The effects became obnoxious and distracted from the story that was being attempted. But hey if people are into over done effects and Star Tour rides instead of a good film then that’s cool. I think the film should have been live action versus animated but well see if Zemeckis returns to it. But if he decides to then I got the perfect idea, partner up with the Wachowski’s and tell the tale of the three little pigs, over do the effects and combine some “Matrix” shoot outs and “Beowulf” acting like maybe Ray Winestone as the wolf. Throw in some dark themes, then we might have a movie on our hands. Oh and don’t forget the 3D as well, anyways hopefully the next Zemeckis product will be better and I know it can be done.

 ★★★☆☆ 

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