It seems there’s a pervading opinion that children’s entertainment doesn’t have to be good. Any criticism of a work of art intended for the younger members of our society is almost immediately met with cries of “oh come on, it’s just for kids.” It’s a strange form of hypocrisy given that most parents almost always want the best for their kids, except, apparently, when it comes to films. Films seem to get a pass no matter how shitty they may be. But if your kid’s sick and needs a doctor, you want the best possible doctor to treat them. It’s an unfathomable double standard. There should be no shame in demanding better films for youngsters, and, unfortunately, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is not one of those better films.

The film centers on Journey to the Center of the Earth lead Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson), who receives a coded message that he randomly decides must be from his long lost grandfather. Despite his hatred for his mother’s new guy, The Rock, the two team up to break the code, which says that Jules Verne’s writing about a place called The Mysterious Island was fact and not fiction. The island exists and so Sean and The Rock take off for the island of Palau to find the so-called mysterious island. They team up with helicopter pilot for hire Luiz Guzman and his pretty daughter (Vanessa Hudgens), who just happens to be about Sean’s age, crash land on the island and find Sean’s grandfather (Michael Caine), who hates The Rock for no reason at all. But they soon discover that the island is a ticking time bomb and they have to find a way off it before it’s too late.

Journey 2 picks up with virtually no mention of Brendan Fraser, who I’m fairly certain was a big part of the first film. Luckily, the sequel is blessed with the presence of Michael Caine, a fantastic actor with no idea what he’s doing in this film. Caine decides to be a complete asshole to The Rock from the moment they meet. There’s some debate as to the cause of this, though it appeared to me as if Caine was a dick to The Rock because he was Sean’s stepfather. Apparently the film wants kids to know that step-parents aren’t real parents and should be hated and have their authority undermined at every turn. In fact, during one of the more mentally painful scenes of the film, Caine actually says the words “you’re not his real dad” as if biological parents are the only ones who should be obeyed. Way to go, Warner Bros., nice moral values you’re espousing for America’s youth!

The film’s near-constant use of CG is frankly terrible, giving the viewer absolutely no sense that the actors were ever riding giant bees or interacting with the graphically created world in any way. For a film that supposedly cost almost $80m to make, it should have at least halfway decent effects. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. As if the CG wasn’t bad enough, the 3D just makes it worse. 3D already separates elements on to different planes which only serves to enhance the unrealistic effectl there’s no dimensionality and having live and CG elements separated out onto different planes just makes it all the more obvious that the CG stuff isn’t real.

To illustrate how woefully inept and irrational the screenplay is, allow me to describe a scene from late in the second act. The Rock has pulled out his scientific gobbledygook to explain how the island is sinking and will be completely underwater in a few days. As the group travels across the island headed for their only means of escape, they find that the volcano that’s recently started erupting is shooting flakes of pure gold in the air. Obssessed with the idea of bringing home pure gold, Sean demands that the group head towards the volcano. The Rock explains that this detour will take them several days out of their way. Sean takes this to mean that The Rock doesn’t want him to have any fun and Michael Caine joins in arguing that Sean should be able to do what he wants. NO ONE SEEMS TO REMEMBER THAT THE ENTIRE FUCKING ISLAND WILL BE UNDERWATER AND THEY WILL ALL DIE IF THEY TAKE A TWO DAY JOURNEY TO GET GOLD FROM THE DAMN VOLCANO! It’s such a frustrating scene to watch, you just want to yell at the screen, or better yet, at the screenwriter for insulting our intelligence like that. And not just the intelligence of the adults in the audience – this is a pretty basic plot hole that the average decently intelligent 7-year-old could grasp.

This film is a pathetic mess of awful CG, ridiculously illogical plot points, and questionable morals that is frankly insulting to adults and kids alike. It manages to to stay somewhat watchable thanks to The Rock’s charisma and sheer force of will, coupled with Luiz Guzman, whose befuddled one-liners as the good-natured fool provide the only genuine laughs not caused by the amazing control The Rock has over his pectoral muscles. Sean and the girl end up together mainly because the script says they’re supposed to and not because of any character arcs or developments which give reason for them to like each other. There are plenty of films aimed at children that don’t assume the children in question are dumb and it’s not asking too much to expect a film to be good regardless of its intended audience. Journey 2 is a failure on nearly every level.

The Upside: The Rock’s charisma and pec-popping, Luiz Guzman’s goofy playfulness.

The Downside: Everything else, especially the CG and Michael Caine’s poorly constructed character.

On the Side: While Journey 2 is supposedly a sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth, the book entitled The Mysterious Island was actually a sequel to Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

If Hollywood has taught us anything about the CIA it’s that those bastards really can’t be trusted. The exception to the rule is that the lower the character is on the agency’s totem pole the more honorable and good they’ll most likely be. They’re naive idealists who have yet to be molded by the big, bad world into heartless, morally bankrupt pricks motivated by warped patriotism and self interest.

Which brings us to Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds), a low level agent stationed at the same, boring post for the last twelve months. He’s a “housekeeper” at a safe house in Cape Town, South Africa, and every day he waits for a coded call alerting him to the imminent arrival of an incoming “guest.” The call finally comes when Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) mysteriously turns himself into the local US embassy after a decade on the run as an ex-agent turned traitor and killer. He’s moved to the safe house and immediately interrogated via water-boarding and harsh language.

But when the inaccurately named safe house is attacked by a gaggle of heavily armed men Weston finds himself tasked with his guest’s safety and on the run from killers both foreign and domestic. The result is a film that offers no surprises in its story or character arcs but still manages to thrill with some stellar action sequences and two talented and charismatic leads. (That’s right. Two.)

“I like this, you and me figuring shit out. Like the Hardy Boys.”

Safe House introduces its two main characters nicely and offers a glimpse into their respective worlds before they collide, but it’s from that point forward that David Guggenheim‘s script loses much of its luster. Weston’s driven to prove himself to superiors who doubt he can handle the situation, but what are the odds he’ll succeed? Frost is trying to escape his captor and pursuers, but is he really as bad as we’ve been led to believe? And who is the real traitor(s) at the CIA? If you still don’t know more than ten minutes after Brendan Gleeson, Vera Farmiga, and Sam Shepard appear onscreen then you really need to watch more movies.

It would be worse if the story and twists were dumb and insulting, but that’s not the case here as instead they’re simply uninspired and unsurprising. There’s no effort story-wise to stand out in the genre or offer anything beyond the predictable.

Thankfully, the film has two other elements at play to make up for that lack of creativity. One is a pair of very likeable lead actors. The other is an absolutely thrilling action aesthetic.

Reynolds has found himself in a bit of a slump in recent years and unable to lock onto a role that takes advantage of both his physicality (those abs!) and comedic abilities. Most of his more memorable performances have come in smaller films like Adventureland and The Nines while attempts at action-oriented spectacle (like Green Lantern and Wolverine) have fallen flat. He proves here though that he can handle a sympathetic performance that delivers in brief dramatic scenes and humorous exchanges with Washington while at the same time being a very believable action hero.

Washington (aka “the black Dorian Gray”) meanwhile plays a role that he can almost sleepwalk through at this point. The wise, weathered, and occasionally wicked old pro who’s misunderstood and/or under-estimated by those around him…this is Washington’s most frequently visited wheelhouse. But even if the character doesn’t feel fresh the actor still shines. He can play tired and beaten down, but when he comes to life the screen can’t help but respond in kind.

While the story and character beats are lifeless and dull the action ones are frequent and pretty damn memorable. From a gunfight and car chase near the beginning to some fairly brutal hand to hand combat later on the action scenes are impressive things of beauty. Fair warning though, much of the film is shot in the Bourne or Tony Scott styles meaning lots of cuts and a good amount of shaky cam. With the exception of one early fight I found all of it to be exciting and easy to follow. The film is definitely high energy, and the down-times rarely last long before the next bullet or body is sent flying.

This is director Daniel Espinosa‘s Hollywood debut after catching international attention with his Swedish hit Snabba Cash (aka Easy Money) two years ago. Too often a hotshot director from foreign lands is wooed to America only to completely lose themselves within the Hollywood factory. Think Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (who went from The Lives of Others to The Tourist), Jean-Pierre Jeunet (from The City of Lost Children to Alien Resurrection), or Oliver Hirschbiegel (from Downfall to The Invasion). Happily for both Espinosa and audiences, he’s avoided a similar fate and has instead delivered a fun and energetic thriller.

Safe House never even tries to surprise or outwit the audience and instead offers up the exact revelations and outcomes they expect. That would be enough to sink most films, but Espinosa’s eye for action and the personalities and presence of his two leads overcome the script’s deficiencies handily. We know exactly how things are going to end, but the joy (and some seriously cool action) is in the journey.

The Upside: Washington and Reynolds are charismatic and have great chemistry together; some spectacular action scenes including a car chase, gun fights and brawls; French girlfriend is quite pleasing to the eye.

The Downside: Just about every story and character beat is predictable and obvious; one very smart and capable character makes one ridiculously stupid move.

On the Side: Say what you will about Ryan Reynolds, but the list of actors reportedly considered for the role proves it could have been far worse…think Sam Worthington, Shia LaBeouf, James McAvoy, Taylor Kitsch, Garrett Hedlund, Zac Efron, Channing Tatum, or Jake Gyllenhaal.

Leo (Channing Tatum) and Paige (Rachel McAdams), in many ways, have the ideal life. They are hopelessly in love, happily married, and living in an urban, pseudo-bohemian hipster paradise. She’s an artist, and he runs his own recording studio. One romantically snowy night, the two share a moment in a parked car…an ill-advised decision. A truck plows into them and sends Paige into a coma. When she awakes, she finds her anxiety-riddled husband sitting at her bedside. The trouble is that she can’t remember that they are married or even who he is at all. She is suffering from a severe form of retrograde amnesia in which she can only remember events up the point shortly before she moved to the big city and met Leo. Suddenly her parents, with whom she hadn’t spoken during the course of her relationship with Leo, show up, insisting to take her back home. Leo hopes against hope that his wife will regain her memory of him, their love, and their life together before it all disappears for good.

No critic should ever close his mind to any film simply on the principle that it resides outside of their particular tastes. However, in the interest of full disclosure, romance films (of both the r0m-com and rom-dram varieties) are far from my preferred genre. What tends to balance the scales of objectivity is that I recognize my bias and endeavor to therefore cut these films an added measure of slack as a result.  All I really ask is that the film to at least earnestly attempt to connect with me emotionally without pandering to my tear ducts. For most of its run, Michael Sucsy‘s The Vow did exactly what I asked of it. It was surprisingly heartfelt and emotionally weighty…before it slowly remembered it was a Hollywood rom-dram and reverted to the woeful tropes there contained.

Essentially what The Vow does is to take Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and run it through the studio machine in order to unburden it of much of its complexity. However, it does find a kernel of undeniable sincerity in its stripped down, slightly rearranged form. Instead of a film about two people at the end of a cancerous relationship that started off well willingly removing the memory of said relationship from their consciousness (a la Eternal Sunshine), we get the  arguably more tragic depiction of a blossoming, almost unnaturally strong relationship besieged by cruel fate. It doesn’t force you to digest the more complex questions about the nature of love and predestination, but it does present one very tragic story, based on actual events, that plays like a love-sick version of the tale of Job.

Tatum plays a man experiencing his own personal hell. He’s had the great fortune of finding a true love that completely defines and fulfills him only to have it ripped away from him. Every day he has to try to convince his own wife that she, at one time, loved him all the while existing with a woman who now sees him as a stranger and avoids his touch at every turn. He tries every trigger he can think of, recreating every previously endearing facet of their relationship, in the hopes that the haze will lift and she will be the woman he married again. He has to watch helplessly as she is emotionally manipulated by her parents who are using her amnesia as an opportunity to gloss over the incident that made her come to the city in the first place. And through all of it, he must reconcile his desperation and pain with the fact that this is not her fault and that he must be supportive.

My heart ached for this guy, and much of the credit for that emotional resonance is due to Tatum himself. I can’t say this guy has ever ranked among my favorite actors, or even among actors I particularly enjoy, but I was thoroughly impressed with him in The Vow. He occupies the role with such quiet agony and genuine passion. He manages to sell us on his everyday Joe persona, despite the numerous superfluous shots of his Ken doll abdomen, and yet he displays a disciplined actor’s understanding of goals and expectations, navigating the various levels of the role with great skill. He sits in every emotionally vital moment and fights for every inch of ground he gains with his amnesic beloved. It may just because I am also happily married, and the thought of my wife forgetting me entirely is too much for me to bear, but it crushed me to watch him clutch desperately to his feelings for her even as they ravaged him inside.

Where the movie started to lose me however, and where I feel much of its potential is squandered, is in McAdams’ character. I completely understand that someone suffering from a memory loss such as hers would be living in their own nightmarish situation, constantly confused and even frightened of the foreign people, places, and routines that used to define who they were. I get that this story is as emotionally decimating for her as it is for him. What I don’t understand is why she actively resists Tatum as if he were some sort of troll. They work into the script that she used to be an entirely different person before she met him, and before a certain event changed her perception of her family and her own identity. But until we find out what that event is, we are left with the staggering, black-and-white personality about-face which she seems all too happy to embrace. It makes us wonder how one event could have made her voluntarily leave this life in the first place and whether the car accident at the beginning of the film was the first she had survived. Her grasp of her own self-concept seems so tenuous that we wonder how long it would have been before she had simply lost interest in Leo and forgot about him even without the accident. I mean for crying out loud, she is afraid to go into her own art studio, to acknowledge that could have ever wanted to be an artist at any point in her life. She seems so disgusted by everything to which she used to be attracted as a result of only losing four years of her memory that it muddies the character.

I could have, however, forgiven this issue of character definition if that were The Vow‘s only problem. But as the film moves into its final two acts, all the popular conventions start cropping up like weeds in a garden. There is a love triangle involving Paige’s ex-fiance, there is a scene of Leo playing the guitar to show he’s sad and one of him taking in a stray cat to show that he’s lonely, and there is the pointed condemnation of the upper-class (rich guys = jerks). None of these things feel especially well-earned, in particular the “softer side of Leo” moments which only reiterated what Tatum’s performance had already clearly communicated. Not only that, but we’d also gotten a ham-fisted voice-over narration at the beginning, and again at the end, spelling out exactly how we should be feeling about what we were already seeing on screen. It’s something I really hate in movies of all genres; thanks Mr. Screenwriter, but I don’t need emotional subtitling.

***SPOILER ALERT***

But the worst contrivance is the plot device about the menus on which the couple wrote their titular vows; the reading of which finally makes Paige realize she really did love her husband once. Never mind the mountains of evidence in support of that hypothesis littering the film. The vows are written on the menu for a place called, and I shit you not, Cafe Mnemonic. Yup, as in Cafe Thing That Helps You Remember Stuff. Forget the fact that it’s a terrible, terrible name for an actual cafe, unless the owner were a die-hard Keanu Reeves fan, it’s a plot device so convenient it should be open 24/7 and offer unleaded as well as diesel.

***END SPOILER***

The Upside: All in all, The Vow is a decent rom-dram that could have been exceptional if not for its reliance on convention and weak story elements. Tatum gives one of the best performances of his career, which is not a sentence I expected to write.

The Downside: It shoots itself in the foot with overbearing super-text and uncomfortably familiar tropes.

On the Side: The woman on which this story is based never regained her memory, but remained with her husband.

Madonna’s second directorial effort W.E. has been greeted by a torrent of negativity, with critics assailing her revisionist portrait of the illicit romance between King Edward VIII and the American divorcée Wallis Simpson to the tune of a 14% on the all-powerful Tomatometer. If it’s not quite the unholy mess that the reviews have promised, there’s no question that this is a sloppy, hubristic affair. It looks pretty, with style and eloquence to spare, but it’s perilously over-directed. Apparently the Material Girl never met a random cross-cut, outsized camera movement, or other unneeded flourish that she didn’t like.

That penchant for pristine visuals at any cost is just part of what detracts from the terrific performance by Andrea Riseborough as Simpson, which could have provided the core of a great picture. The British actress has beauty and intelligence to spare, the sort of charismatic movie star screen presence that carries you through the slowest moments. You want to watch her. Unfortunately, Madonna only lets you do so for half of the movie’s rather trying two hours. The rest of the time, we’re stuck with an unnecessary 1998-set corollary to the 1930s-set main action. There, lonely American Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish) obsesses over Wallis and Edward, spending all her time at a Sotheby’s auction of their estate.

So we are treated to endless scenes in which Cornish stands still with her eyes shut tied to a tame romance between Wally and security guard Evgeni (Oscar Isaac) and a lot of stupefying ruminations on the broader meaning of the Edward-Simpson romance. The contemporary stuff is so superfluous, and does so little to enhance the meat of the picture, that one wonders if Madonna (who co-wrote the screenplay) intended it as some sort of self-reflexive portrait of her own interest in the real narrative. Otherwise, it’s just pure filler.

The story of the relationship of Edward (James D’Arcy) and Wallis, which spurred a crisis in Britain because of her divorces (among other reasons) and eventually caused Edward’s abdication from the throne, is a fascinating, multilayered one. There’s a fine movie still to be made about it. Madonna’s simply isn’t it.

Further, the filmmaker loses ample credibility by treating her protagonists as martyrs, whitewashing Edward’s almost-certain Nazi sympathizing and other less savory traits. Madonna has compared herself to Simpson, so the unabashed admiration makes sense, but let’s be honest here: Framing a woman who’s most notable for getting married three times as some sort of misunderstood feminist icon is a big stretch.

The Upside: Andrea Riseborough is great and the movie is filled with sumptuous, refined visuals.

The Downside: The 1998-set scenes are completely unnecessary and Madonna over-directs, adding a wealth of superfluous flourishes such as unneeded pans, aggressive camera movements, slow motion and more over-stylized touches. Further, the film stretches credibility in its treatment of the historical characters.

On the Side: The King’s Speech offers a more effectively crafted, honest-seeming treatment of the same events.

Writer-director Oren Moverman’s terrific feature debut, The Messenger, was about trying not to deal with grief, while his character-driven “cop” drama, Rampart, is about attempting to not deal with everything. The lead of the film, Dave Brown, rejects change in a major time of change. Despite Moverman using his latest film to track a far more morally corrupted character than he previously dealt with in Messenger, he still shows the same measure of empathy, making Rampart a fascinating character study.

The film follows Woody Harrelson‘s Dave Brown, as he confronts both a new time and a new way of life. Brown, a former soldier who sees himself as something of a man’s man, is unwilling to get with the times. With the true-life Rampart scandals serving as motivation, the LAPD is making major changes – ones that Brown won’t (or can’t) go along with. The cop is a sickly, paranoia-driven enigma who (forgive the cheesy as all hell expression) plays by his own nonexistent rules. Dave is stubborn, racist, fearful, and believes that he’s someone important enough to be spied on. He’s a real bastard.

Harrelson, in a tremendous performance, makes one feel something for this narcissistic bastard, though. The character’s pain and fears are easily grasped and understood. The only part of Brown’s life that he doesn’t think is in ruins is his family, which he couldn’t be more wrong about. Everything Dave touches turns to turmoil. He causes physical pain with his work and emotional pain with his family. Whether Dave knows he’s a terrible cop is unknown, but he doesn’t know he’s a bad father. He wants to keep his two lives separate, but they’re both in the same state. How both his family and work life got to that place of damage is left unanswered, as well are most of the questions the film poses.

Even stylistically Moverman always allows the camera to reflect Dave Brown’s state of mind, albeit to varying effects. With the possible exception of one scene, the camera is never on a tripod, is always on the move, and even the color palette is as overbearing as Brown. When the camera isn’t up close and abrasive, it’s at a far distance, representing Dave’s paranoia. While Moverman was more observant with The Messenger, the director took a more aggressive and dirty approach to capturing Brown, and sometimes that style becomes too apparent. However, even when some Moverman’s camerawork doesn’t hit the mark, at least he’s always taking admirable chances.

I’ve seen Rampart three times now, and it’s a film that gets progressively richer. The first viewing made me have admiration for Moverman’s intentions, while not being all-around satisfied. But it wasn’t until my third viewing where I was completely sucked into the filmmaker’s very flawed, but powerful portrait of a seriously damaged, both internally and externally, man.

The Upside: Woody Harrelson gives a tremendous performance; Moverman doesn’t use any trite genre conventions; many questions are thankfully left answered; a memorably atmospheric score; delivers an emotional and thought-provoking punch.

The Downside: Some of the camerawork, which generally paints Dave’s view of the world perfectly, calls attention to itself once or twice.

On The Side: Dave Brown is not the most corrupt cop you’ll ever see, but he’s unquestionably one of the most human.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie and entertainment news column that brings you all the stuff you should be reading that hasn’t already been published on Film School Rejects. We admit that we’re honored to be an inspiration to every person, writer and sentient being mentioned in the links below, and would like to pay them back with a link. Also, it’s a column whose author is going on vacation for a week starting tomorrow, so you’ll be seeing some fresh faces pinch-hitting over the next week. It’s likely that they will do a much better job, but lets not tell them that. We’re already having problems with their egos, as it is.

We begin this evening with an image Tweeted by Chris Hardwick, king of the Nerdist empire. It’s a preview from his appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, in which he will assuredly be pimping his new book, hitting on Zooey Deschanel (because who wouldn’t) and talking about nerdy things with another nerdy famous person. If Questlove plays the drums with lightsabers, I’m in.

Fox has announced that the current and eighth season of House will be the show’s last. It’s a sad thing, sure. But eight seasons is a good run and as a statement from the studio shows, the timing is right: “The producers have always imagined House as an enigmatic creature; he should never be the last one to leave the party. How much better to disappear before the music stops, while there is still some promise and mystique in the air.”

We Love Cult has a great interview with Kevin Smith about his show Comic Book Men on AMC. The filmmaker turned multi-platform magnate does give good interview, I’ll tell you that, Steve Dave.

Speaking of places where both Chris Hardwick and Kevin Smith will be found, this year’s San Diego Comic-Con will open with a 136-mile Olympics-style lightsaber relay. This is a terrible idea, if only that it increases the Con’s population of large, sweaty, heaving bearded men. That’s a stereotype we should be moving away from. How about opening with a couch-sitting relay?

Vulture wants you to be prepared for the March 25th return of Mad Men. To aid you, they’ve published a step-by-step guide to catching up on Mad Men that can be completed between now and then. If you started yesterday, that is.

We focus our art-loving eyes this evening on the first poster for The Bourne Legacy, featuring Jeremy Renner about to do something very intense with a gun. It wasn’t until the recently released trailer that I realized that the cast for the Tony Gilroy directed franchise extension is incredible. Ed Norton and Rachel Weisz along with an ass-kicking Renner? Screw the traditional stigma that goes along with fourth films, this one is going to be awesome.

The folks at Popular Mechanics have published a brilliant list of 12 Ways the World Could (Really) End in 2012. Does this have anything to do with movies? Yes. It shows you how close, yet also how far off Hollywood’s interpretation of the apocalypse has been in recent years. Unless Roland Emmerich is working on a movie about Geomagnetic Reversal.

The ever-brilliant Grantland blog has an essay by Robery Mays about his Excellent Dumpuary Adventure, in which he sat in a theater for 48 hours watching everything that a Hollywood multiplex had to offer. From One for the Money to Chipwrecked to Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, it’s quite a fun read.

Rick Marshall at IFC provides us a list of five Hammer Films-produced horror movies everyone should see. Not just people who like horror movies. Not just the kind of people who like Hammer’s very distinct brand of horror movies. Not just chubby dudes in graphic tees and beards. Everyone. That includes you.

In a week, I will be talking to director Andrew Stanton about John Carter. My first question: Who’s decision was it to make 2012 the year of Taylor Kitsch? Not that it’s a bad thing. It’s just definitely a thing.

IFC’s Matt Singer — a guest on this past week’s episode of Reject Radio — writes about the rise of the film critic filmmaker. Those precious few who dare to write about film, then jump in and make films. Bless them, for they live hard lives on both sides of the tracks.

In today’s most deliciously nerdy article on the movie blogosphere, io9 gets composer Bear McCreary to reveal the physics behind your favorite science fiction theme tunes. It’s super engrossing. Dangerously so.

Marc Webb explains the work behind The Lizard in The Amazing Spider-Man: “We spent a lot of time thinking about the biology of a lizard, and how his muscles work, and there’s an entire staff of people dedicated to making him look lifelike. It is an extraordinary task, and very, very difficult. It takes a lot of time, which a lot of people in this room can attest to.”

Flavorwire presents a list of essential Tumblrs for film fans. Sadly, mine is not on there. How dare they!

Over at StarTrek.com, freelancer extraordinaire Jordan Hoffman has a wonderful essay about the doctors of Star Trek and their many idiosyncrasies. That Leonard McCoy will always be the greatest of them.

We close tonight with a trailer from the lineup of SXSW 2012. Our good friend Peter Hall at Movies.com has assembled what he believes to be the Ultimate 2012 South by Southwest Film Festival Trailers Page, bringing together every trailer currently available online. It’s quite the project, and one that I will reward with a link. Also, please indulge me in watching the trailer for Somebody Up There Likes Me, a SXSW premiere that features the acting talents of Nick Offerman, who isn’t quite Ron Swanson-esque, but he still appears to be bringing his bacon-infused A-game.

As we approach Valentine’s Day (yes, it’s just a few days away) I think it’s only fitting that the topic of romance come into play in anticipation of the day meant to celebrate all things feelings. I’m not sure about you, but I have actually never celebrated Valentine’s Day with a loved one not related to me. Instead I spend the day (or week) loading up on conversational hearts, Reese Peanut Butter cups, and a collection of melodramas so depressing I become skeptical that love can actually end in anything but death. Regardless of my tendency to eat my feelings while crying over the tragic love found in Douglas Sirk films, I do enjoy happy love stories and tend to pair the sadder movies with some of my must-have romances. In honor of the big V-Day, I’d like to share my favorite 14 romantic scenes and also open it up the floor to hear your suggestions as well.

Here are my concluding seven romantic scenes to last week’s first half of this list. Bring out the smelling salts; you might need them after all these swoons.

7. The Princess Bride

“Is this a kissing book?” Um, yes young Fred Savage, it is indeed a kissing book. Well, I mean, there is more to The Princess Bride than kissing (like action, adventure, Andre the Giant. You get the picture.), but what most people remember so vividly from The Princess Bride is the everlasting love between Buttercup (Robin Wright) and her farm boy, Westley (Carey Elwes). After the young couple finally professes their feelings, Westley chooses to head to sea to make his fortune. He promises to return to his Buttercup, but is tragically lost before he can fulfill this last wish. Years go by, Buttercup tries to make her sad heart feel again, but no amount of wishing can help her. Despite her broken heart and headstrong resistance to love, Buttercup agrees to marry Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon) to help save her tiny village from destitution. Before she sets out, however, she is kidnapped by a shady pirate determined to keep her from marrying the Prince. Turns out (as you can see above) the shady pirate is actually her long lost Wesley who has never stopped, even for one moment, loving his darling Buttercup. Just as she wished.

6. An Officer and a Gentleman

While there are so many iconic romantic moments we could have highlighted here, such as the boombox scene in Say Anything or Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) scooping up Scarlet O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) and storming up the stairs to ravage her (rape-fantasy much?) in Gone With the Wind, I find a completely different sweeping a lady off her feet scene even more sensual than anything Golden Hollywood could muster. As far as classic love images go, nothing can beat the final moments of An Officer and A Gentleman when recent Naval Officer graduate (and all-around Mayor of Charmville) Zack Mayo (Richard Gere) honors his lady love Paula (Debra Winger), the woman who helped him get through the arduous emotional drain that is Flight School, by marching into her factory, passionately kissing her, and finally picking her up in his brawny arms and determinedly walking right on out of there. You don’t even have to know anything else about the film to know that this scene perfectly wraps up the hardships both halves of the couple had to go through to get this happy ending.

5. North & South

I have a little secret for all you Downton Abbey fanatics. Stop what you are doing right now (well, first finish reading this list) and add North & South (the one with the ampersand, not the one starring Patrick Swayze) to your Instant Queue. This 2004 BBC adaptation of the Elizabeth Gaskell novel by the same name is the ultimate in dizzy-spell inducing romances. The star-crossed lovers Margaret Hale (Daniela Denby-Ashe) and John Thornton (Richard Armitage) meet-smoldery at Thornton’s factory and spend four hours battling their personal feelings and inner demons. This is some delicious period acting, my friends. I’m fanning myself just thinking about it, honestly.

Well, as you can imagine with all this smolder and emotional control it certainly comes as a surprise to Margaret (not us though, we’ve been taking bets!) when Thornton proposes marriage halfway through the film. She refuses him in the most brutal way, choosing to point out his flaws and inconsideration to the workers in his own factory. He falters, almost begging for Margaret to listen to reason, but finally takes one final look at her with sad, puppy eyes and walks away. Taking with him every viewer’s held breath. Oh Thornton, you are just too heartbreaking for your own good.

4. You’ve Got Mail

I think almost every romance lover reading this has spent at least one weekend a month watching the edited for TV version of You’ve Got Mail, guaranteeing the 1998 romantic comedy a place on the guilty pleasure shelf. A charming time capsule to a generation when online dating was still exciting and not completely dominated by investment bankers, horny misanthropes, or creepers, the love affair between Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) and Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) blossoms naturally with the aid of email and instant messaging. Joe has kept a huge secret from Kathleen, that he is the anonymous man she’s been falling steadily in love with throughout the film, but right before they part ways for the online couple to finally meet he lets her know just how much he wishes she could love him. Joe recognizes the pain he caused her, chooses to accept blame, and now wants to share with Kathleen an imaginary world where the two of them could have been perfectly happy, leaving Kathleen much to think about as she waits in the Riverside park for her true prince’s identity to be revealed.

Let us take this time to bemoan Hollywood’s love affair with unnecessary remakes. DreamWorks and Working Title Films are reportedly set on remaking Alfred Hitchcock‘s Academy Award-winning Rebecca because, oh, who the hell knows why?

Hitchcock’s 1940 film garnered him his sole Best Picture Oscar and remains one of his finest and most beloved films. The original starred no less than Laurence Olivier as the rich Maxim de Winter, who marries the innocent Joan Fontaine, and takes her back to his mansion, where she slowly discovers the weird hold the deceased Mrs. de Winter (that’s Rebecca to you) has over the entire household. That’s just the very tip of the iceberg of Rebecca, which is twisty and twisted and smart and evocative and really a story about love.

Which is why the guy who wrote Eastern Promises (and a pair of other internationally-tinged thrillers) is going to pen a new version for the screen. Of course.

Okay, now I’ll lay off Steven Knight because there may be one interesting piece to this news. According to Variety, this new film “will go back to the original book by Daphne DuMaurier” for its plotting. Cool, right? Except Hitchcock’s version only differs from the book in one essential way (spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen Rebecca, and why haven’t you seen Rebecca?) – thanks to the demands of the Hollywood Production Code, Maxim doesn’t outright kill Rebecca in the film, she accidentally bumps her big, crazy, slutty head and dies. In the book, Maxim shoots her dead, which might potentially add a different layer of feeling to this new film. Possibly. We’ll see. Maybe.

Knight is making his feature directorial debut with Hummingbird, starring Jason Statham, which will open sometime next year.

The realm of 18th century France is a dusty one. Period dramas, especially lofty costume dramas, are so numerous that you can barely toss a powdered wig without hitting one. With Farewell, My Queen (Les Adieux à la Reine), writer/director Benoît Jacquot tears off the wig, pulls down the drapes and sets fire to both.

The wonderfully un-stuffy film stars and is told through the eyes of Sidonie Laborde (Léa Seydoux) who acts as a cipher for the manic last few days of Marie Antoinette’s (Diane Kruger) reign in the late 1700s. It’s Laborde’s story, meaning it’s the story of a voyeur who watches from doorjambs as the business of being extravagantly wealthy and powerful becomes not only meaningless, but fatal.

The vantage point is a bold angle that comes with its own set of challenges. Instead of following the leader, it makes Versailles an insular cocoon where rumors float down candle-lit hallways on sleepless nights and the people trapped by their own excess are revealed more through reaction than action. Yes, it’s a challenge, but it’s one that Jacquot and company handle with something close to greatness.

If the perspective is one reason this film bucks the period trend, its pacing and aggressive nature are real reasons to praise it. This is no dry wheeze where polite society hems and yawns through subtext and things unspoken. It’s direct. It’s nasty. Beyond forcing the main perspective and anchor into the lower class, it pivots off of a vision of perfection that is rarely seen. Opulence is hard to take seriously when it demands that dozens of loudly-dressed patrons shuffle-run down the hall in order to appear poised and proper like statues who have always stood in the place where the King and Queen are about to emerge.

It’s a desperate awkwardness born from trying to force things to appear a certain way. Instead of being played for laughs, it’s more often played for pity.

On the acting front, Seydoux makes it all look easy. She’s cunning and clever, but she’s appropriately weighed down by her station. She has the intricate task of existing not as a true main character, but as the character that’s onscreen the most. Even though she’s a constant presence, the story seems to happen around her as she observes and acts accordingly. It’s a steamy essence that she brings to everything, and her crisp slyness rings throughout.

However, even with stunted screen time, it’s Kruger that radiates the most here. She’s so strong a force that Antoinette is in every room and thought without being seen. Kruger doesn’t play her as an uncaring hammer – she creates a monarch that’s sometimes childlike and fearful behind the shrewd wielding of her influence and position.

When the two are together, there’s a strand of tension tied tightly between them, and they (and all women in the film) seem to play each conversation as if a fight or a passionate kiss is about to erupt. That subtle, semi-violent sexuality hangs on the coattails of each scene – used for both titillation, drama and insecurity.

Sadly, the movie falls off its pedestal for two reasons. For one, Jacquot (and/or his cinematographer Romain Winding) approach the camera work like a fidgeting little child tugging on his mother’s dress in church. It’s as if they received a shot-style-of-the-day calendar and just had to use it. The best segments come when the director calms down and lets the dialogue move on its own. The lack of cohesion is irritating, but why it shifts back and forth from steady to handheld is baffling. No matter the answer, it injures the overall product and gives the appearance that Jacquot had the camera move simply because he didn’t know what else to do while people were engrossed in long bouts of talking.

For two, a handful of the scenes feel staged and overly produced. There’s a false-feeling choreography to some of it that tends to value a poetic movement of people over something that would feel more natural – especially considering how organic the core of the story emerges.

The damage is there, but the movie is still a fantastic piece of period work that doesn’t follow any of the rules that make costume dramas so drab and dull. It’s innovative without being crudely rebellious, and the acting on display is formidable and incendiary. It goes without saying that the production design, make-up and costuming is strong – that’s the very least a film like this can do. What’s really magical about Farewell, My Queen is that it gives the audience something to do other than stare at the scenery. It’s thrilling. A rare example of something antique feeling genuinely brand new.

Complete Berlinale Coverage

You may have heard the song “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang (“I said a hip hop, a hippie, a hippie to the hip hop”), but what you might not know is this song helped hip hop break into the mainstream and helped a genre that, up until that point had been brushed off as a fad, start to take root in our musical history. Even though the group was changing the face (and sound) of the music industry, The Sugarhill Gang found themselves on top of the charts with barely a dime to their name. While this is not the first time we have heard stories of talent swindled by shady and greedy record executives, the story of the Sugarhill Gang is not just about losing money, it is about having their name and the true identity of the band member’s themselves stolen from them.

The Sugarhill Gang was originally made up of Wonder Mike (Michael Wright), Master Gee (Guy O’Brien), and Big Bank Hank (Henry Jackson), a trio that was put together by Sylvia Robinson who, along with her husband Joe Robinson, ran Sugar Hill Records and released the group’s first single, “Rapper’s Delight.” While the track climbed the charts and the fame and popularity of The Sugarhill Gang grew, the three members continued to find themselves broke as the Robinsons got richer.

Eventually Wonder Mike and Master Gee had enough of being stuck in a situation that was clearly making those “in charge” rich while they were left with almost nothing and left the group (and the music industry) while Jackson stayed. After the exit of O’Brien, the Robinson’s son, Joey Jr., began performing as Master Gee and not only began claiming he was the original Master Gee, he went so far as to copyright The Sugarhill Gang’s name and Wonder Mike and Master Gee’s individual names as well. I Want My Name Back follows Wright and O’Brien as they work to get back into the industry and find themselves faced with legal issues and threats that they are not who they claim to be.

Told through interviews with various legends and names in the industry, I Want My Name Back shows Wright and O’Brien as they try to not only move forward with their careers (and their names), but also attempt to right musical history. The film works in not only telling the true history of one of the industry’s most noted hip hop groups, but does so in a way that is almost baffling as it shows how blatantly some have tried to rewrite that history. While director Roger Paradiso is a bit bumpy in his documentary style, I Want My Name Back succeeds in taking viewers through the group’s first meeting and shows how everything that happened after that moment not only changed the face of hip hop, but these artist’s lives as well.

Part cautionary tale, part inspirational story, I Want My Name Back proves that talent and creativity can end up meaning very little in a business that works to sell (more than create) music, but those who create music out of their love of the art may end up being truly richer in the end.

The Upside: An interesting, frustrating and important look at the true birth of hip hop and who actually created the rhymes that brought rap to the mainstream while never losing the positive and hopeful message of the original Sugarhill Gang.

The Downside: Filmed in a slightly awkward documentary style with quick cuts between interviews and on screen information, along an almost monotone narration from former Sugar Hill Records employee Tony Rome, the style ended up being more distracting than helpful when attempting to move the story along.

On The Side: Adding insult to injury, while Wright and O’Brien each wrote their rhymes in “Rapper’s Delight,” Jackson’s verses were stolen from Grandmaster Caz (known then as Casanova Fly) as proven from his opening verse in the song stating, “I’m the C-A-S-A-N-O-V-A and the rest is F-L-Y.” Not to mention the fact that the track itself sampled (and did not originally pay credit to) “Good Times” by Chic.

Phil Morrison, the director of June Bug, has another project in the works, and it’s worth noting because it’s going to be starring my two favorite Pauls currently working in Hollywood. Lucky Dog is a comedy about a couple of French-Canadian con men who go in together on a Christmas tree selling scam, despite the fact that their friendship has recently been on the outs. The previously mentioned Pauls are Paul Giamatti and Paul Rudd, both accomplished comedic actors who also bring some dramatic chops to the table. So, the directions this one could go in are myriad.

Adding to the intrigue is the news that Sally Hawkins, an actress who has recently been impressing me in movies like Never Let Me Go and Submarine, has also signed on to join the cast. There isn’t any word on what kind of character she will be playing, but is it safe to assume that there might be some sort of love triangle going on among the former friends? Good luck with that one, Giamatti. Rudd is, like, cut. From marble. He’s gorgeous. He’s like this beautiful face and this incredible body, and I genuinely don’t care that he’s kinda lame. And I don’t even care that he cheats on me.

Wait…what was I saying? Anyway, Lucky Dog was written by Melissa James Gibson and it’s set to start filming next month in New York. [Deadline Camp Firewood]

Thérèse Raquin, the period drama that Elizabeth Olsen and Glenn Close are teaming up for, has got some new casting news. In case you don’t remember, Thérèse Raquin is an adaptation of an Émile Zola story penned and set to be directed by Charlie Stratton. It tells the story of a Parisian girl in 1867 who is forced into a loveless marriage with her sniveling, weakling cousin at the behest of her domineering aunt. Eventually the girl, Thérèse, becomes enamored of one of her husband’s friends, and then murder and infidelity ensue. Olsen, of course, it set to play the young girl, and Close the aunt. But what of the two male characters?

Originally I tried to spread the false rumor that Giovanni Ribisi would be playing the sickly husband, but thankfully nobody pays attention to what I say and the rumor didn’t spread. Now the role actually is in the process of being cast and the good news is that the actor who’s negotiating is probably the only person who has just as much experience at being sniveling and weird as Ribisi. Who better to play a sickly, annoying little turd than Draco Malfoy? That’s right, Daniel Radcliffe’s sneering nemesis from the last decade or so, Tom Felton, is looking likely to join the cast.

Now that the role of the husband has been filled, our eyes naturally turn to the role of the new boyfriend and murder co-conspirator. Who will work well playing a nemesis of Felton? Originally I theorized that we’d be seeing one of the kids getting ready to star in The Hunger Games, but now that Felton is in the husband role I’m going to change my guess to…nah, too easy. Let’s say John Hawkes playing his cult leader character again. [Deadline West Horsley]

Listen, everybody knows that eventually a world-beating threat is going to come out of its hiding place on the dark side of the moon and try to take over Earth. That’s just obvious. What the upcoming SXSW midnight movie Iron Sky does is present our eventual moon-birthed doom with an interesting twist. It asks the question, what if the hulking space armada that eventually threatens the well-being of free folk everywhere is actually the Nazis regrouped and back for a second go-around at world domination? Crap, why didn’t I think of this before? Of course this is what the Nazis have been up to!

Energia Productions have been teasing this movie for quite a while now, but now that it’s ready to hit the festival circuit, they’ve hit us with a full-length trailer that, more than any thing else, proves how far you can stretch a $10m budget if you’re absolutely, batshit crazy. This movie seems to have all sorts of spaceship stuff, all sorts of battle sequences, myriad cities being destroyed; and it’s all presented alongside that patented, iconic production design that only the Nazis can pull off.

Give the new Iron Sky trailer a look to see just how warped in the head our Nazi overlords are, and what sort of over-the-top tech they’ll be using to blow us all to smithereens. It doesn’t hurt to be prepared, right?

I mean really, is there anybody who has ever made evil look as good as the Nazis? Their soldiers are all shiny black leather and death. Their giant moon base is in the shape of a swastika. That’s attention to detail that even Steve Jobs would have been impressed by. You know, if Steve Jobs was a mass murderer instead of a guy who made gadgets.

Iron Sky will have its North American premiere at next month’s SXSW Film Festival.

Never let it be said that director Alex Proyas didn’t have a tremendous vision for his big screen adaptation of John Milton’s epic poem of the same name, but that same ambition appears to be what has sunk Paradise Lost for good. Reports are now coming in from various outlets that the project, with a huge budget that already exceeded $120m and a vision that included technology that, as Variety’s Jeff Sneider puts it, “wasn’t there,” has been killed by Legendary Pictures.

Proyas was hired for the gig back in September of 2010 and, since then, had gathered an impressive and up-and-coming cast for the epic tale of angelic battles, including Bradley Cooper, Benjamin Walker, Casey Affleck, Djimon Hounsou, Diego González Boneta, and Camilla Belle. The film’s shooting schedule was already moved from January to early this summer, but that’s all moot now that the film has been scrapped entirely.

Legendary was reportedly trying to get the film’s huge budget down to the $120m range, after already spending somewhere in the “low eight figures” on the production already. But budget woes, coupled with Proyas’ technologically ambitious plan to use post-production CG to augment much of the film, including at least three giant-scale battle scenes across Heaven, Earth, and Hell, have ultimately killed the production for now. Deadline Hell reports that “this was all about visual effects, unfortunately.” [Deadline Hell and Variety, via /Film]

You know, I know, we all know Steven Soderbergh doesn’t do anything by the book. Say what you will about his film making prowess, he’s always looking at a different way of getting a shot, laying out a scene, or structuring an entire feature film. Why should it be any less abnormal when Soderbergh lays down a commentary track. Such is the case with this commentary for The Limey.

Knowing full well before actually hearing it that this commentary track is little more than director Soderbergh and screenwriter Lem Dobbs going at each other about film making as a whole and how this collaboration worked out, I’m not expecting cute anecdotes from the set or a play-by-play of the events transpiring on screen. How cute can Terence Stamp really be anyway? Instead, what is expected is a 90-minute barrage of verbal jousting and back-and-forth between a director and an apparently malcontent screenwriter. Sounds like a right robin time, innit?

The Limey (1999)

Commentators: Steven Soderbergh (director), Lem Dobbs (writer), a general sense of aggravation:

• Like the introduction to Peter Fonda’s character, Jerry Valentine, the first 60 seconds of The Limey‘s commentary track is a preview of what we’re going to get over the course of the next 90 minutes. The first thing we hear is an engineer saying, “We are rolling.” followed by what can only be described as a montage of anger from Steven Soderbergh and Lem Dobbs. Dobbs notes he made sure his screenplay only had “one instance of Cockney, rhyming slang”, Soderbergh says something “grounded the movie to a halt”, and Dobbs is heard being particularly angry with someone at Variety. The recording shuts off and starts back up. The engineer says, “We are rolling.” a second time, and the commentary begins.
• Dobbs refers to screenwriting as a “hopeless profession”. He says both Robert Town and Alain Robbe-Grillet were each disappointed with Chinatown and Last Year at Marienbad, respectively and how the directors on each those films ruined their screenplays. “If the screenwriters on Last Year at Marienbad and Chinatown can complain about what directors did, then what do you expect?”
• Soderbergh mentions he thinks “this one turned out better than the first one”. He’s referring to collaborations with Dobbs, who had previously written Kafka, which Soderbergh directed. Dobbs jokes that about the third time being the charm and that he’d give Soderbergh another chance. That third chance would, in 2011, end up being Haywire. You be the judge if that was, in fact, “the charm”.
• At 1:45, Soderbergh asks the engineer how they’re doing. The engineer says, “Perfect. We’re gonna pick up from there. We’ll punch back in.” The recording then shuts off followed by a third “We are rolling”.
• Dobbs tells how any screenplay could have been picked up and done completely different by another director. He mentions he had tried to get The Limey made a few years prior. He had given an earlier draft of the screenplay – what Dobbs calls “the original, naive, adolescent version” – to Robert Aldrich’s secretary to pass on to the aging director. “I still think to this day if one thing had led to another and he had read it and liked it and called me and somehow the movie had gotten made it would have added years to his life. It would have resurrected his critical reputation,” says the screenwriter. Aldrich never got back to him and, instead, made what Dobbs considers “horrible movies”. He thinks Aldrich would have taken a more straightforward, B-movie approach to the film.
• Every time Soderbergh showed a version of his film to Dobbs, the screenwriter told the director he wasn’t going far enough with the “fragmented” way Soderbergh chose to tell the straightforward story. Dobbs understands why Soderbergh did it this way. While the screenwriter notes some feel The Limey is derived from 1967′s Point Blank, he thinks it takes notes from many films of the ’60s as well as certain experimental films. Soderbergh notes he was looking for a way to make the delivery of information to the audience less traditional. Dobbs believes the fragmented nature to be more a literary device than cinematically stylish.
• “I’ve always thought one of the great cliches of film making that you hear people say constantly that I don’t think is true is that, unlike novels, in films you can’t show thinking, which I think is a total lie.” Dobbs says this before mentioning he wanted Soderbergh to get more shots of Terence Stamp being “meditative”. He notes this reflective nature he wanted the director to capture more of is one of the upsides in casting an experienced actor like Stamp.
• The scene where Stamp gets the gun was originally set at a gun show. Dobbs notes they tried to get this scene in the film, but the production was turned down from filming at any gun show they tried to get into. Dobbs feels the way it plays out now, with Stamp’s Wilson buying a gun from some kids at a school, plays on Wilson’s reactions to American society and how available gun are in our country.
• Soderbergh points out how distinctive Stamp’s gait is, how the actor kind of lopes along. Dobbs mentions driving in L.A. one day recently and seeing someone with white hair walking in front of a sun-lit wall. He could tell from the person’s walk that it was Stamp.
• Soderbergh points out how noticeably brighter it is outside than it is inside in the early scene at the warehouse. He notes some directors or cinematographers wouldn’t like this, that they’d attempt to balance it and make it seem more natural. Luckily his cinematographer, Ed Lachman, had been raised on New Wave films and understood what Soderbergh was going for. “I think it’s an aesthetic. If it’s organic to the material, it has an energy that you can’t get when everything is sort of polished and set.”
• Dobbs talks of the newspapers that printed images of British boxer Henry Cooper the day after he fought Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali. Cooper was shown beaten and bloodied. Dobbs thinks that Wilson represents this same type of English gentleman who isn’t afraid to get bloody if need be. “There’s this kind of feeling of blood mingled with a kind of nice guy who you’d probably leave in charge of your kids. If you didn’t have a babysitter, I think you’d entrust your children to the Terence Stamp character in The Limey.”
• It was scripted for the camera to stay outside the warehouse when Wilson goes back in with his gun. Soderbergh brings this up, to which Dobbs gets angered noting how much credit the director got particularly for this choice. It’s here where Dobbs brings up “that motherfucker from Variety”. Dobbs does then thank Soderbergh for directing it exactly like it was scripted.
• 14:25 – Dobbs says something about the image of a ’60s icon, I’m assuming Peter Fonda. The word “icon” echoes as Dobbs and Soderbergh begin talking about Fonda. This section on the commentary track is crazy. The audio gets doubled off and on, it speeds up, snippets are edited back and forth and sometimes repeated. It’s only for a minute, as Fonda’s Terry Valentine is being introduced, but it takes a few passes through to get the gist of what’s being said.
• Early in the production, Soderbergh told Barry Newman, who plays Valentine’s security consultant, Avery, that his character is sort of an ex-wife to Valentine who still hangs around. This brings out a sense of jealousy from the Avery character and explains why he picks at Valentine off and on.
• Soderbergh brings up the French and British New Wave films of the ’60s and early ’70s. He likes the freedom those films give the film makers, how they weren’t confined by traditional stories or traditional ways of telling stories. He thinks this sense of freedom is still present in film making today, mostly because of the independent wave of American films that came in the ’90s, but admires how mainstream it was in the ’60s and ’70s. Soderbergh notes how the most interesting films 25 years ago were also the most financially successful, but that doesn’t seem to be the case any more.
• Dobbs asks Soderbergh about casting. The writer remembers talking with the director about actors they liked from the ’60s who they hadn’t seen much of recently. He pulls out a scrap of paper that includes a list of actresses he and Soderbergh talked about for the role of Elaine, which is played in the film by Lesley Ann Warren. Some of the names on the list are Lauren Hutton, Sally Field, and Goldie Hawn. “I think it’s always fun to see if there’s someone out there who you haven’t been exposed to in a while,” says Soderbergh. He does add it works if you do it in a way that’s not too self conscious. That may or may not be a dig at Quentin Tarantino. You be the judge.
• Soderbergh always appreciated non-linear storytelling. He remembers being introduced to it as a teenager with the New Wave films from France and the UK, and, up to that point, he only understood movies to tell a story from beginning to middle to end. “Even though Citizen Kane is one of the more non-linear movies that you can think of, it doesn’t feel like it, but it is.”
• One of the subtexts Dobbs was going for with The Limey was the working class going up against capitalism. The American Express billboard and Luis Guzman’s character’s Che Guevara t-shirt are instances of this that were originally in Dobbs’ screenplay. “Oh, it was a political movie?” asks Soderbergh. Dobbs says it was more so than it is now. Evidently Soderbergh cut a lot of this out including Wilson speaking about his “employer” in London and how Fonda’s character is sort of an “employer” in America. Wilson would speak about his boss as sort of a father figure. Soderbergh felt the movie worked better leaving Wilson’s London life in the dark.
• The lack of detail for many of the characters is Dobbs’ main bone of contention with what Soderbergh did with his script. “When I read reviews that say ‘style over substance’ I blame you. I can’t actually say they’re wrong,” says Dobbs. He does mention there are luckily few reviews that say this about The Limey. He does say the reviews that make him angry are those that blame him for the film being “underwritten”. He then asks Soderbergh if he’d like to discuss his problem with human relationships. “Yeah, this is a great time and place,” responds Soderbergh. The director explains how he sees The Limey as a genre film, how the “spine of the film” was about Wilson and his daughter, and how he didn’t want to detour much away from that.
• “This is an example of screenwriting and what happens to screenwriters,” says Dobbs before noting a specific moment in the film he doesn’t like. Dobbs imagined Jenny’s picture in Valentine’s house as one picture in a group of them, probably down a long hallway. Soderbergh has it as the only picture at the top of the stairs. Dobbs sees the picture by itself, almost something Valentine keeps where it is as guilt, as the difference between what screenwriters feel is real and what production designers and directors think looks good. He also sees it as “how, as Lawrence Kasdan, I think, once said and as every screenwriter has said, a screenplay can be filmed sometimes word-for-word the way you write it and still be completely not what you have in mind”. Soderbergh casually mentions it wasn’t a location in which a long hallway of pictures would work.
• Soderbergh wasn’t completely sold on Peter Fonda the first time Dobbs mentioned him for the Valentine part. As Soderbergh remembers, he didn’t think “two stoics would work”. The director only knew Fonda from his screen persona. After having lunch with Fonda, Soderbergh realized how charismatic he was and acquiesced to the decision.
•  ”It’s your fetishistic nature, and you want it to be very clear that there’s a side street, but you don’t want any back-story for the human relationships or characters, but, Goddammit, people are gonna know there’s a second way down that hill,” says Dobbs during the scene where Avery is chasing Wilson and Luis Guzman’s Eduardo. Soderbergh responds, “Yeah, I like knowing where people are. I don’t care who they are. I just want to know where they are.”
• Valentine’s line “I learned how to skate when I was a little boy” was an ad-lib from Fonda. Right after the take Fonda explained to Soderbergh that his parents hired Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie to train him how to ice skate. Evidently the training was a complete failure.
• “Now why didn’t Amelia Heinle notice that big gap at the top of the stairs with the missing picture?” asks Dobbs, referring back to the picture of Jenny, which is now gone. “She was looking at her feet,” responds Soderbergh, “like I told her to.”
• Again Dobbs digs into something Soderbergh cut from the screenplay that would have given character back story. The two hitmen played by Joe Dellesandro and Nicky Katt are uncle and nephew. A scene at the sister/mother’s house was cut at the script stage. Dobbs also notes later how he and Soderbergh talked about the film having a theme of family, something Soderbergh backed away from during production. “Now we know why the writer’s guild is always going on strike,” quips Soderbergh to the clearly aggravated Dobbs. The director also mentions later how he does still feel The Limey still hits that theme of family.
• Soderbergh is not bothered by bad reviews. He says as much after Dobbs mentions his films have certain problems that, if addressed, could win over some of the bad reviews. Soderbergh also notes he’d rather have a character be underwritten than one who is overly explained. He notes he tends to “err on the side of less”. Dobbs agrees that less is more, but that Soderbergh’s execution is wanting.
• The exchange between Soderbergh and Dobbs over the Cockney rhyming is priceless. Dobbs notes he only had one instance of this in the screenplay but feels Soderbergh and Stamp both fell in love with it and added more moments of it in the film. “There are two more,” responds Soderbergh. “There are three in the entire 90 minutes.” “It’s too much,” says Dobbs. Soderbergh just lets out a “Jesus”. Dobbs says, “David Lean used to say, ‘Never pop out of the same hole twice.’.” Soderbergh responds, “Yeah, he was noted for his short films.”
• Soderbergh asks Dobbs when he is going to direct a film. Dobbs says that if Soderbergh would get it right, he wouldn’t have to.
• Soderbergh feels he cut the film to play to its strengths, how that’s all a director can do once they get the shot footage into the editing room. He was most interested in Wilson’s character and notes that the longer he spent with the relationship between Wilson and his daughter, the stronger it got in the film. When he would cut away from that relationship, he felt it became diluted and cut into its strength.
• Terence Stamp’s character name in Poor Cow was Dave, not Dave Wilson as many critics and even the production notes on The Limey have stated. Wilson was a name Dobbs devised for the film. “It proves an old Hollywood adage, which is ‘Whatever you put out in the production notes, you’ll read back in the reviews.’,” he says. Dobbs and Soderbergh disagree on whether or not Stamp’s character in The Limey is, in fact, the same character he plays in Poor Cow. Dobbs does mention he imagined Wilson’s first name as Henry in the early stages of the screenplay, named after Henry Cooper. See item #12 above.
• Dobbs and Soderbergh agree mistakes in films can work. A single shot of Peter Fonda that zooms out and quickly pans left is what Soderbergh refers to as “the mistake”. Dobbs mentions how cinematographer Conrad Hall said in an interview that he finds mistakes in his films – lens flares in Cool Hand Luke is the one example given – beautiful. Dobbs also notes how he thinks one of the greatest shots in cinema, John Wayne’s introduction in Stagecoach, is out of focus. Soderbergh states that he’s become less interested in correcting mistakes as his film making years go by.
• The story Valentine tells his girlfriend, Adhara, about hitting a deer is a true story in Peter Fonda’s book. The scene was shot two different ways, once with Fonda’s story and the other with him telling the story Dobbs had written. Soderbergh notes how Fonda seems much more energetic in the take with his own story. “Yeah, I’ve always said that there’s nothing more boring than being trapped in a room with a well-known raconteur,” says Dobbs. “This is the danger, though. If you do these audio tracks you turn into one of those people,” responds Soderbergh.
•  ”For all the complaining I’ve done thus far, it’s nothing compared to the complaining I’m about to do,” warns Dobbs before discussing the cut scene where Ann-Margret plays Valentine’s ex-wife, who delivers a monologue of a tirade against Valentine. Dobbs understands why Soderbergh cut it. Evidently nothing was right about it. Dobbs mentions how the “movie Gods” were against the production of that scene, but he feels it was a very important scene to the overall film, that she served as the “audience identification” character. He also liked how it was Valentine retreating to the past to get away from someone who is coming after him for something he did in the past. Soderbergh felt it grounded the movie to a halt. “But that was your direction of it,” responds Dobbs. “Uh, no. I don’t think so,” says Soderbergh. “I directed the hell out of it.”
• Dobbs notes how much he hates the little scene between Valentine’s men where they’re talking about the sliding scale. He feels it’s more Tarantino or Barry Levinson and doesn’t fit into The Limey. “But, see, I’m trying to develop character here,” says Soderbergh. Dobbs makes sure we all know he didn’t write that scene.
• “When you have somebody like Terence it really does help, because you fill in a lot. He just has this certain kind of face and he is a certain age now that, when he looks a certain way, you fill in a back story,” says Soderbergh explaining how Stamp’s performance helps build any back story that might have been cut from the screenplay.
• Dobbs discusses indie film and how it seems like the industry’s attempt at doing something artistic. He doesn’t see that there is any room for low budget films that still tell straightforward movies. He doesn’t know why there aren’t any good B movies any more or why everything that goes straight to DVD is horrible. “Why isn’t there a Kiss Me Deadly that’s been a straight to video movie?”
• Soderbergh and Dobbs agree – thank God – on how much they like that The Limey is mostly about older characters. Soderbergh notes that it was an “uphill battle” with Artisan, since most of the characters were over 50. Both the director and the screenwriter agree that they miss that aspect in film. Dobbs likes how “tired” some of the characters are in The Limey and how that feels like some of the Westerns of old.
• Soderbergh mentions his desire to find the right structuring of a film during editing. He believes it’s in his interest in film grammar that causes him to do it. It’s while Soderbergh is saying this that his voice begins to loop in and out, doubling over itself, and laying on top of something else he’s saying about layers and puzzles. Some of Soderbergh’s commentary from earlier in the track comes in here, as well. It’s all about grammar, particularly non-linear storytelling. Dobbs comes in on this a bit, as well.
• Over the end credits, Dobbs notes how he is surprised that the entire song from Poor Cow, “Colours”, isn’t on The Limey‘s soundtrack. Soderbergh notes that, because it was a complete piece of film rather than an actual recording, they couldn’t afford the rights. Soderbergh mentions that if someone came to him in 20 years and asked to use footage from Sex, Lies, and Videotape, he’s not sure what he would say.
• Soderbergh mentions how quickly the production on The Limey was, nine months from initial meetings at Artisan to delivering the finished product. Dobbs notes that that’s how movies get made. If the right director comes along to make the right screenplay, then things move quickly. “You were hot that week,” he says to Soderbergh. Soderbergh laughs. At least they leave it on an upbeat note.

Best in Commentary

“I think in terms of The Limey maybe the definition of memory is that it’s a form of regret or a kind of questioning of your entire life. Memory is the path not taken.” – Dobbs

“I tell people, they say to me, ‘Do you like this movie,’ and I have to say, ‘As a completely disinterested, objective film goer, I think it’s a good movie.’ I think if I knew nothing more about it and had nothing to do with it, as a film goer, I would say, ‘That’s a good movie. I’d recommend it to my friends.’ As the screenwriter, I do think it’s crippled.” – Dobbs

“Yeah, but, see, the first one is the only one that matters.” – Soderbergh

Final Thoughts

It’s difficult to make a list of things learned from a commentary track when every sentence spoken by the commentators involved is a gem. The Soderbergh/Dobbs commentary for The Limey is the kind of track where you find yourself writing everything they say verbatim. There’s a lot of verbal sparring throughout. Soderbergh feels he made the best film he could and never has a negative word to say about Dobbs’ screenplay. Dobbs, on the other hand, clearly has issues with the way Soderbergh handled his script. They aren’t wrong issues. They are just his opinion, one of a screenwriter who saw his work being messed with. Dobbs is clearly a screenwriter who is proud of the work he does. So too is Soderbergh on the directing side.

It’s a brilliant, 90-minute piece of audio when two men as intelligent as these two have an equally intelligent debate over a work of art as great as The Limey. It’s so good, in fact, that no article about it can do the actual commentary justice. It needs to be experienced for yourself.

Get More Commentary. If you can handle it.

Echoing throughout the concrete of the subway between Stadtmitte and Potsdamer Platz is a young man slamming out a guitar chord like it owes him money and singing out “I want to see the movies of my dreams.” His droning twang sounds more like it was unearthed from the soil of North Carolina, but the Euro coins in his case and the writing on the wall prove he’s in Berlin.

His sentiment is a powerful and timely one as the red signs everywhere shout out the presence of the Berlin International Film Festival. Just a dozen feet above that young man’s head is the shuffle of mud-covered feet swishing through snow as more of it falls on the ground. An ice cream parlor is inexplicably still open and doing good business nearby.

It’s 21 degrees outside, but it feels like 8, and that creates a kind of energy. People are moving quickly to both to keep up with the lazy first day rush and to keep their bits from freezing off. Maybe that will make getting into a darkened (and heated) theater all the sweeter. At least that’s the hope on the largely movie-less, paper work-heavy start to the Berlinale.

Beyond the scattered preparations and disparate schedules cluttering the mental nodes and notebooks, there’s the spirit of the place. As the night and the temperatures fall together, it breathes hard and heavy with the anticipation of the opening film – a  period piece from Benoit Jacquot called Farewell, My Queen where Diane Kruger wants everyone to eat cake. Outside now, there’s a red carpet filled with women who haven’t even seen cake in years, all stuffed into dresses with sizes as low as the Celsius temperature. That they’re baring their arms and cleavage in such frigidity is a testament to the kind of noble stupidity that only keeping up appearances can inspire, and the bearded men they use for warmth waltz them from huddle to huddle of cameramen and forest to forest of black microphones. They’re waving and smiling as the odd mixture of black sludge that comes when dirt marries snow drops from their heels and clings to the carpet-covered ground. It collects there, turning the red more and brown, but the cameras don’t shift their gaze.

On a large screen, I’m watching celebrities I don’t recognize. It’s a jarring feeling. Everyone is clamoring for enough of their attention to get a good flash bulb broken, but I can’t place a face or a name.

I don’t know the people that everyone else knows.

There’s something both alarming and freeing about that. Alarming because I’m a stranger in a familiar land and freeing because it makes it just that much easier to find a darkened corner in a fancy hotel to contemplate and reflect on what I’ve just seen. My movie, the same movie, will start an hour after theirs a handful of subway stops away without any muddy red carpets or dancing bears. There will be no pomp or circumstance welcome, and that’s probably the way it should be. It will just be the movie, naked as it came, waiting to be loved, loathed, or something not as dramatic.

For me, it will be the first of many opportunities to see greatness. Like any film festival, Berlin is more casino than kino. In a hotel three blocks north of the Potsdamer Platz subway exit there are half a dozen movies playing every two hours hoping to get a distributor or an invitation to the next festival. An equal distance south, there’s an entire building of projects trying to secure the last bit of funding or impress a buyer. Tonight, I’ll take Marie Antoinette by the hand and walk into the next days where filmmakers trying to make a mark either grab audiences by the ears or fail to grab them at all.

Like any film festival, it’s the hope of the first day that will resonate like a foreign folk song off of underground German concrete walls. With any luck, the energy of Berlin will come from more than just the cold. There’s potential floating in the air, and just like that scruffy busker, I want to see the movies of my dreams.

Berlinale, let’s see what you’ve got.

It looks like Naomi Watts is slowly turning into the go-to girl to play tragic female figures with sunshiny locks. Watts has long been attached to play Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik’s adaptation of author Joyce Carol Oates’ fictional take on the star in Blonde, though that project has been chattered about for so long with no firm details on shooting or production that it’s not shocking that Watts has now padded her schedule with another biopic.

This one is titled Caught in Flight, and it will chronicle the last two years of Princess Diana’s life. Jessica Chastain was first attached to play the role of Diana, during that mad rush to sign the up-and-comer to just about every film that would have her, but she’s now out (possibly due to, shock of all shocks, a too-full schedule), and Watts is in.

The film will be directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall) and comes from a screenplay by Stephen Jeffreys (an award-winning playwright whose only film credit includes his adaptation of his own play, The Libertine, back in 2004). The film will focus “on the last two years of the Princess’ life and charts how finding true personal happiness for the first time allowed her to evolve into a major international campaigner and humanitarian.”

While Chastain is a very talented actress, she did seem a bit too young and green for the role, while Watts suits the role much better, both appearance and experience-wise. [Variety, via HeyUGuys]

One of 2010′s most wicked independent horror films is getting an American remake, thanks to a pair of up-and-coming filmmakers. Director Jim Mickle and his screenwriter partner Nick Damici are now set to remake Jorge Michel Grau‘s We Are What We Are, the best little Mexican horror flick about a family of cannibals you’ve likely never seen. As our pal Peter S. Hall points out, with Mickle signed on for the remake, that means that a film from 2010′s Fantastic Fest is getting remade by a director who also had a film at that same FF. Synergy!

Mickle and Damici’s Stake Land played at FF, as well as at Toronto as part of their Midnight Madness sidebar (where it won the People’s Choice Award). The film followed a set of survivors attempting to scrape by in a post-apocalyptic wasteland ruled by vampires. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of the film, Mickle and Damici infused their characters with believable and likable qualities, and then set them against an appropriately gritty and terrifying background. And Grau seems to agree, saying “I feel fortunate to have someone with the vision and talent Jim has to re-interpret my work. It is extraordinary to have a team of filmmakers so respectful of the spirit of a film and take such good care of its essence. I’m so proud to know We Are What We Are will be reworked under that kind of intelligent frame of mind. Very happy that Jim will construct a new universe over the bases of mine.”

But it’s precisely that “new universe” that turns me off from this project. I am a big fan of Grau’s original film (in fact, it was my 31 Days of Horror entry this past October), and though I am excited that his story will now reach a wider audience (in a fashion), Mickle and Damici’s reworking seems poised to take away one of the very best and most effective parts of Grau’s film – the location

Mickle and Damici’s new film will reportedly take place in “a poor part of the Catskills region in New York State,” a very different location than the film’s original setting – bustling Mexico City. Though I’ve never attempted to raise a cannibalistic family, I’m willing to bet it’s a whole hell of a lot easier to hunt, kill, and eat people in a more rural area like the Catskills (weird point of reference: Dirty Dancing was meant to take place in the Catskills) than it is in a huge city like Mexico City.

One of the best parts about We Are What We Are is the implication that anyone could be a cannibal – including your next door neighbors. Weirdly enough, the city setting allowed a greater distance between people, one that seems almost too obvious and easy in a locale like the Catskills. It’s a change that I bristle at, but I certainly hope that Mickle and Damici pull it off and bring a wider audience to Grau’s vision and film. [Screen Daily, via Fangoria]

About a year ago, I saw Ben Wheatley‘s Kill List at SXSW. I walked in to the theater unfamiliar with what the film was about and what exactly I was in for with my viewing experience. Wheatley’s dark, unpleasant, and funny hit man story was my favorite viewing experience of last year, and explaining why has been a real chore.

However, it isn’t a problem for Ben Wheatley, who was open to discussing the big spoiler topics, in particular the final minutes of the film. Much of my chat with the writer/director dealt with the ending, and the many theories it has spawned.

Here’s what Ben Wheatley had to say about seeking out interpretations, the wonky logic behind Minority Report, and tedious exposition in our [SPOILER] conversation:

Have you been hearing some interesting theories about the film?

You know, I’ve gotten to thinking about this a bit recently. I know I shouldn’t, but I look online at everything that’s written about it, which is the power of the Google alert, sadly. I think the theories that are popping up are mostly right. I haven’t seen one that made me think, “Oh God, they’re insane.” There’s a few details people quibble over, like who’s involved in the cult and whether Gal or Shel’s involved, and she’s not. The rest of the stuff seems pretty spot on, and I’m really happy about that. People are reading it [well], so it’s clear what we’re saying [with the film]. There’s not loads of people making up stuff. [Laughs]

[Laughs] I plan on doing that after this interview.

[Laughs] What you need is a piece of paper and write down one to six different words, and then just roll the dice and see where you go.

[Laughs] How about calling it an allegory for the Iraq war?

Yeah, that’s good, you can have that. [Laughs] That’s absolutely fine.

[Laughs] Good. You mentioned the theory about Shel being involved, but I don’t really see that, since she clearly loves him.

Yeah, I don’t think she’s involved. There’s a confusion over the laugh at the end, which makes people think she’s involved. I always read that as she’s going, “Oh God, you fucking idiot!” I saw someone Twittering the other day, “God, I can’t believe she couldn’t recognize her own husband without his clothes on!” [Laughs] Yeah, the last time I had my kid strapped on my back as a hunchback with a mask I couldn’t recognize my wife, either.

It happens.

[Laughs] It’s a common problem!

[Laughs] When it comes to Shel’s laugh, it’s like, how could she see something this insane happening?

Yeah, that’s exactly it — it’s an ironic laugh. It’s caused a whole matter of trouble of, “Oh, she’s involved!” She’s really a poor ‘ol gal and is innocent in all this.

Even though you don’t think that’s a logical takeaway, you must enjoy that people are digging this deep into the movie.

I love that people are interested enough to think about it, and that’s the biggest compliment of all. They’re taking time trying to unravel it, and that’s great. You know, there’s many films you see that you can barely remember as you’re leaving the cinema.

Definitely. So far the tag for the film has been a “hitman horror movie,” but what about a “love story”? It’s a bit of a love triangle between Jay, his wife, and Gal.

[Laughs] Yeah, an awkward love triangle. On the commentary we had to sum it up, and we described it as the trials of a failing business and a nasty man who wins a hat [Laughs].

[Laughs] That’s perfect. With that love story, though, it paints these guys as very human, and not just as killers.

Yeah, totally. It’s the same approach we had with Down Terrace, where it’s pouring a load of social-realist stuff into genre. Like, who are these people and what do they do when they’re not doing their genre stuff? They’re real people who live, love, and have these lives. If they have all that stuff, you feel a lot more awful when things happen to them, rather than just going, “Oh, this is an interchangeable character with a thousand different hitmen. He can be any fucker. If he gets killed, you don’t care.” I think that’s what we were looking to do: make the audience identify with them as much as they could.

Obviously you see Jay commit horrible acts so was it a challenge finding an actor who could find that level of humanity?

The whole thing for this film was the parts were all written for the actors. You know, I was always going to use Neil Maskell. There was no casting involved with this film. I was always going to use Michael Smiley, MyAnna Buring and Emma Fryer, and they were in the front of my mind when I wrote the parts. I always knew Neil could do that stuff. I knew he was very versatile.

How long ago did you start writing the script?

Around the Christmas of 2009. We had the green-light around March of 2010.

That’s pretty fast. Do you write fairly quick?

Yeah, yeah. There was a couple of drafts after that, but we moved very fast after Down Terrace.

Were there a lot of changes made along the way?

There was a bit more to it. The stuff that came out was for pacing, really. There was another layer. Like, [there was] a fixer character before the client. It was all just points. You want to strip it right down. The first cut of the film was two hours, so there was a load of scenes that came out, which were mostly Jay and Gal mooching about, going to hotels, and stuff. We pulled it right back to the barest essentials.

The film’s especially lean in exposition, which, if I recall right, there’s not a whole lot of in the film.

Yeah, there’s a couple of tiny little investigation scenes into the cult, which involves Jay drinking whiskey and looking at a couple of photographs [Laughs]. That was about as far as we got towards traditional exposition.

Do you find exposition tough to write?

I just find it dull, you know? I think the only good exposition I can think of is Kyle Reese describing terminators to Sarah in the car chase, which is a crazy idea but he delivers it insanely well while in the middle of a car chase. Beyond that, I find exposition pretty tedious.

You usually get the worst of it in sci-fi.

Yeah, it’s like, “Who cares?” [Laughs]

I think a great recent example is Minority Report. The first twenty minutes sets up everything during an action scene.

Yeah, you gotta be moving fast while explaining stuff, otherwise it doesn’t work. If they’re sitting across from each other, it just falls out of their mouths. What I wanna know about Minority Report is the ins-and-outs between the distance of the precogs and where you could commit the crime, and if you could step over the line [Laughs].

[Laughs] Do they say how far they can see? I remember it only being for DC.

No, they don’t [Laughs]. They go to the pond and show the murder, and it’s just on the edge of a lake. What does the line look like? Can you jump across? [Laughs] Who knew the future had an actual physical boundary? It’s crazy. What kind of shape is this precog distance?  You can commit crimes in the desert, but you can’t commit crimes in a town!

[Laughs] In terms of explaining things, do you have an answer, for yourself, when it comes to the ending?

Yeah, for sure. We know exactly what it’s about, and all the evidence is definitely there for it. It’s not even that the answers aren’t there, the only thing missing is someone doing a summing up. I was going to say there’s no Scooby-Doo scene, but they all take their masks off at the end! [Laughs] There’s no summary of, “As you can see, the cult had been planning this all along.” You know, I don’t think anyone would thank me for that.

The way I see it is that the character’s so violent, that violence will always overrun his life.

Yeah, totally. He was totally open to all this shit. He wants to be alone, and he gets what he wants. In the end, he gets rid of everybody he loves. He’s just left there seething with anger with a bunch of maniacs. It’s kind of a “be careful what you wish for” [story].

Kill List is now in limited release and available on VOD.

Whether purposely sending a helicopter into the eye of a tornado or believing you are a real life fairy tale character, it seems that no matter what films oriented towards the younger generation may be about (or who my star in them), the music featured in these films is not only well done, it is also (maybe more surprisingly) impressive. This fact is proven most handily in animated films like How To Train Your Dragon (with a score composed by John Powell) and Rango (composed by Hans Zimmer) which had the kind of full-bodied, moving sound you would expect to hear in an Academy Award winning film rather than a movie aimed at kids. That’s probably why Powell got his first Oscar nomination for Dragon.

Granted Powell and Zimmer are accomplished composers in their own right and regardless of the genre they work in, their music is sure to be impressive, but lesser known composers working on these types of films also seem to create music that stands out.

This question has come up several times, as each kid-oriented film would be entertaining enough, but the music would always stand out the most. This question came to the forefront of again while I was watching Journey 2: The Mysterious Island this past week and could not deny that even though The Rock was riding a giant bee with Luis Guzmán holding on for dear life behind him, the music driving the action was decidedly impressive. Composer Andrew Lockington was the man behind the baton for this film (having also composed the score for Journey to the Center of the Earth) and even in these more outlandish and ridiculous scenes, Lockington’s music was anything but.

Actors can sometimes get accused of “phoning it in” or simply collecting a paycheck when they sign on to movies like these (poor Brendan Fraser seems to be making a career of it), but the music in these films seems to consistently rise to the occasion and end up as one of the film’s standout features.

And there may be something to this.

Each year the Academy nominates at least one song from a family oriented film for their Best Song category (granted it is looking more than a little thin this year) and it is hard to claim that the songs that make it to the big show do not deserve to be there (although the track from Rio may be pushing it a bit). Looking at the nominations from the past five years alone, the kid genre has gotten a nomination almost every year for songs from films like Cars, Enchanted, WALL-E, The Princess and the Frog, Toy Story 3 and Tangled with Toy Story 3 taking home the prize last year. Perhaps when it comes to music, letting go and not taking things so seriously works to a musician’s advantage and results in memorable work (rather than cringe worthy pec-popping scenes).

While the majority of these movies are animated or films that incorporate music into the story already (Enchanted and most recently, The Muppets), live action movies like Soul Surfer (Marco Beltrami), Spy Kids 4D: All the Time in the World (Carl Thiel and Robert Rodriguez) and Dolphin Tale (Mark Isham) also turned in scores that were not only impressive, but also helped to elevate each film’s plot. It seems the more genuine a score sounds, the better it plays within the context of a fun or madcap story that may not be taking itself too seriously. Granted the stories tackled in Soul Surfer and Dolphin Tale are nothing to scoff at (with each being a true story to boot), since these films are aimed at kids the overall tone is a bit more light-hearted, but the music never took that as an opportunity to play down to its audience.

It is hard to claim that watching kids take down evil spy villains or two teenagers navigate a mystical island while fighting off giant birds is not goofy, but it is just as hard to deny that the music playing along with these scenes is anything but sincere. Kids are probably not interested in watching films that tackle racism during the Civil Rights era or the seemingly incomprehensible meaning of life, but it is refreshing to see and hear that the music created for these more “serious” films is just as striking as the music created for the slightly less serious, more kid appropriate fare.

Tend to your Aural Fixation