Secluded super assassins. Getting high with Danny McBride. The best
OK moviegoers this is the sort of weekend we’ve been waiting for — even beyond the Calgary Underground Film Festival. You want stoner comedies? We’re getting two. You want an inspirational movie about a young athlete overcoming adversity and inspiring her peers? You’re in luck. You want more movies about young girls spending their entire lives secluded from civilization and training to be super assassins? Yep there’s one of those too.
Now there are people out there who hate the supposed schlock that Hollywood crams into theatres every summer. Maybe a lifetime spent watching Terrence Mallick films has made their taste in the cinematic arts that much more refined. Or maybe they’re just assholes.
But if you’re like me and you still get excited about the communal experience of sitting in a dark theatre with a group of strangers watching big fun Hollywood entertainment then this is the sort of weekend you’re going to want to celebrate.
First up is Your Highness maybe the most unlikely movie hitting theatres this year. It’s a stoner flick by way of cheap ’80s fantasy film starring two of this year’s most buzzed about Oscar nominees. Think about that for a minute. What a wonderful world we live in.
James Franco’s time as pop culture “it” boy may be up but Danny McBride is riding a hot streak right now and this movie’s promise of bongs boobs and beasts from beyond looks like a winner. And even if it’s not its mere existence means that somehow we’ve all won.
If I got a vote — and I definitely don’t — I’d say that Eric Bana is the most underrated actor working today. I’m guessing this stems from a combination of his rugged hotness and his starring role in Ang Lee’s best forgotten Hulk . But that movie’s astounding crappiness had more to do with the cartoonish CGI and long contemplative scenes in the desert than it did with Bana’s performance. Since then he was the second best thing about Munich but has otherwise been cast mostly in romantic leads.
But he’s so much more than your typical sexy leading man. His best role was playing the titular character in the little seen Australian crime movie Chopper . There he played a psychopath vigilante who may or may not have killed a whole bunch of career criminals. He was fat intense dangerous and genuinely terrifying.
And this weekend Hanna finally brings Bana back to badass territory. He plays a father who raises his daughter to be an unstoppable killer in a remote Arctic cabin. Everything about this movie is encouraging. From the Chemical Brothers’ score to the direction of Joe Wright — his first try directing an action movie after previously honing Atonement and Pride & Prejudice — it has all the makings of a small intense action thriller.
Elsewhere Arthur could be a career-defining role for Russell Brand. It’s a risky choice for Brand as Dudley Moore’s take on the character in the film on which it’s based is the stuff of legend. Brand’s superstar status in the U.K. has opened doors for him in Hollywood but this could very well be his Alfie the film that proved once and for all that Jude Law was very pretty but had a distractingly large forehead that you only noticed if you were forced to watch him on a massive screen for 90 minutes. With Brand it probably won’t be his forehead that turns people off. It will be the fact that he just sucks.
Soul Surfer is about a teenage surfer who loses her arm in a shark attack but against all odds gets back on her board and keeps on surfing. While Sucker Punch argued that it was a story about female empowerment it still featured girls in bondage gear. So it’s probably a good thing that young teens have a movie about a girl their age who persevered through what was obviously a horrible experience. It’s not made for me but I’m OK with that.
Hop dominated the box office last weekend. Easter used to be about Jesus. This year it’s about rabbits that poop jellybeans. Source Code opened well and while the ending is a massive letdown that’s still a good thing for people who like smarter-than-normal adult Hollywood thrillers.
