21 September 2012

This week we get films directed by the acclaimed Oliver Stone (Platoon, Natural Born Killers) and Andrew Dominik (Chopper, Assassination of Jesse James…) as well as one by the writer of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Can’t win them all but there will be worst weeks, that I can reluctantly promise you. Click the images to link to the trailers.

Dakota Fanning has terminal cancer as a plot device for her to live life to the fullest whilst also adding additional pathos to every moment for stereotypical women to well up to everywhere. I am happy that she found the time to do a course in ‘Quirky Indie Movie Writing’ though.

Jennifer Lawrence stars in a horror flick that completed filming in 2010 and has sat in post-production ever since waiting silently to pounce on her first sign of success and make people question why she followed up Hunger Games with this generic toss. I’ll probably still give it a poke.

A good old British period romp, this movie uses the common practice of the time in doctors providing women with orgasms as a way of dealing with a range of symptoms lumped together and called ‘female hysteria’. This has that same, naughty-but-not-really-at-all feel of the Full Monty but with additional costumes to make it even more ‘British’.

Now this is where I get excited. The director that brought us The Assasination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford brings us a film that cuts seven words from it’s title and sixty-three minutes from it’s run time and yet maintains just as many star actors and award buzz as his US debut. The trailer reminds me a little of Killer Joe and I’m expecting far less weirdness but just as much awesome.

It’s been some year for Taylor Kitsch and people have already written off the guy, especially in the UK where fewer people ever saw his drunken, arse-turned-white-knight performance as Riggins in Friday Night Lights. However, when you consider that he had three films this year and they allowed him to work with Pixar golden boy Andrew Stanton, Friday Night Lights creator Peter Berg and, with this week’s Savages, the legendary Oliver Stone, you can understand why he might have trusted these projects (even if one was Battleship!). This movie, unlike the others, may allow him to put in a performance and, at worst, slip under the radar without heaping more shit on him, but reviews have been the epitome of mixed (50% exactly on RT currently). I will never not love the guy though and Blake Lively is nice to look at.

Untouchable is the biggest grossing French film ever. While The Artist silently swept the world’s film awards into a sack and made off with them last year, Untouchable has already made $230m more than that film did in it’s entire run without even being released in every market yet. I was lucky enough to see the movie a couple of weeks back and it’s a touching but obvious story of a wealthy quadriplegic who hires an unemployed ex-convict as his full-time carer and the way that their differences help change one another’s lives for the better. A story for the whole family (as long as the kids are unlikely to question recreational drug use, exotic masseuses and can read the subtitles of course).

My Pick: Killing Them Softly

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