I never knew how movies could make your imagination soar until I saw "Star Wars," I never realized how inspiring they could be until I saw "Rocky," and I never truly appreciated film until I saw "Goodfellas." Film has been a central part of my life as long as I can remember and it continues to mold who I am. My " movies to watch" list is miles longer than my "movies I have watched" list. My only regret is not having enough time to watch them all.
In its best moments, Broken City is a halfway decent film with a shoddy script brought to life by a cast it doesn’t deserve. Not once is there a moment of genuine surprise, the slightest trace of suspense, or even an ounce of ingenuity. Even for a January release, Broken City has very little of value to offer.
It’s been my pleasure as one of the new additions to the Next Projection staff to format a healthy amount of the trailer posts on the site. Here are what I believe to be the ten best trailers of the year. As always, we welcome your thoughts. Here’s to another year of great trailers!
Last December, Brad Bird’s Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol reaffirmed Tom Cruise’s status as an action star, and the exciting fourth entry in the franchise brought Paramount Studios nearly $700 million in worldwide box office sales. This year, Paramount is hoping to repeat their success with Jack Reacher, a crime thriller that has been curiously advertised as a no-holds-barred action movie.
How far would you go to set your widowed mother up with another man? Would you drive her across the country under the impression you wanted to bring her on your business trip just to set her up on a date with an ex-boyfriend? This is the ridiculous set-up for The Guilt Trip, a road trip movie so bland it makes you wonder why it was released in theaters instead of going straight to DVD.
The Sessions isn’t really a bad movie, but there’s nothing about it that makes it a great one. Yes, the performances are some of the year’s best, and the movie has its share of comedic moments. It handles its sex scenes with a level of frankness not often seen in movies, instilling them with a palpable sense of passionate intimacy. However, by the time writer-director Ben Lewin’s film comes to a close, the characters we have spent the last 95 minutes with remain oddly distant. Lewin’s story could have been told a lot better, and his characters could have been more rounded.
Never in all my movie-going days have I seen a horror movie so clichéd and undeniably awful as House at the End of the Street. I’m slowly losing patience with modern mainstream horror movies, and this one really tested my strength.
It is an unwritten law of cinema that if you’re a successful businessman you are most likely a corrupt millionaire who swindles people out of their money, plays around with the company’s financial records, and carries out numerous extra-marital affairs without even blinking an eye. Take, for example, Robert Miller, brilliantly played by Richard Gere in Nicholas Jarecki’s financial thriller, Arbitrage.