Thompson on Hollywood

Elizabeth Olsen-Starrer Silent House To Open March 9; Impeccably Choreographed but Underwhelming

Open Road and Liddell Entertainment wisely waited for Fox Searchlight to spend their marketing and PR energy to promote Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy May Marlene before scheduling the opening of their own Sundance Olsen-starrer, Silent House, for March 9. Directors Chris Kentis and Laura Lau (Open Water) shot the horror thriller--which places a young woman locked inside her family's isolated lake house with no contact to the outside world-- in one seamless 79-minute shot. (How they did that is another story.)

By Anne Thompson
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October 24, 2011 10:45 AM
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Now and Then Sees Double: Margin Call/Wall Street and Weekend/Before Sunset

With a couple of superb new indies making well-deserved waves, Matt Brennan’s “Now and Then” column pulls extra duty this week by taking on two double features for the price of one: Margin Call vs. Wall Street, and Weekend vs. Before Sunset. Trailers below:

By Matt Brennan
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October 24, 2011 3:53 AM
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Daniel Radcliffe's Woman in Black Looks Like Standard Period Scare Fare

The Woman in Black, Daniel Radcliffe's film foray into leading man status sans Harry Potter, has released a teaser and poster.

By Sophia Savage
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October 19, 2011 5:33 AM
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Strike Back Episode 9 – Fear is Beautiful (Spoilers)

David Chute finds surprising beauty in television's best action drama.Director Daniel Percival has no need for 3-D. He can define a space with the parallax of a brief dolly shot. His staging of an incursion into a mammoth bunker complex under a forest in Chechnya adds a sweep of operatic grandeur to the penultimate ninth episode of Strike Back, the twisty action and drama series recently renewed by Cinemax. After a blast cuts off their escape, Section 20 comrades Scott and Stonebridge are forced go deeper and deeper into the earth, through claustrophobically narrowing staircases and oozing tunnels, until the complex opens out into a series of eerie vaulted caverns. The huge spaces have a menacing grandeur that’s appropriate to the way the stakes have been ramped up for the show’s two-part finale -- and to the scale of the biological horror plotted by global super-terrorist Latif (Jimi Mistry), as illustrated by the spreading circles of devastation on a computerized damage-estimate diagram.

By David Chute
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October 15, 2011 11:16 AM
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Branch by Branch: Debating Oscars for Moneyball, Girl with Dragon Tattoo, TOH vs. Awards Daily

Every so often New Yorker Thelma Adams (ex-critic of Us Magazine now at AMC's filmcritic.com) invites me to debate various Oscar topics with her and D.C.-based Susan Wloszczyna (USA Today), LA Oscar blogger Sasha Stone (Awards Daily) and Seattle's Kim Voynar (MovieCityNews). We toss things around--our latest debate over best picture yielded this reaction from me: In Hollywood, Moneyball is seen as an art movie that somehow made it through the studio system. The writers will go for Zaillian and Sorkin. The actors will go for Pitt and Hill. The directors will go for Bennett Miller. Wally Pfister–Chris Nolan’s DP–very respected. And so on. Trust me, it’s in the mix. How does a movie get to be a best picture contender? One branch at a time.

By Anne Thompson
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October 14, 2011 7:43 AM
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Weekend Preview: Almodovar's The Skin I Live In is Best Bet of Disappointing Openings

While it may not be his greatest film, The Skin I Live In is still essential viewing for any Pedro Almodovar fan. Just gazing at stars Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya and the gorgeous sets within this beyond-twisted melodrama is worth the ticket price. Given the star power spread across the other films on offer, you'd think there was much to look forward to, but critics are grasping at straws trying to say positive things about the likes of Fireflies in The Garden (Julia Roberts, Ryan Reynolds, Willem Dafoe), Trespass (Nicole Kidman, Nicholas Cage), Universal's remake of The Thing (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Eric Christian Olsen, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Joel Edgerton) and The Big Year (Jack Black, Steve Martin, Owen Wilson). Ami Canaan Mann's (Michael Mann's daughter) gritty debut Texas Killing Fields, inspired by actual events, is boosted by a strong cast (Sam Worthington, Jessica Chastain, Chloe Moretz). But it's a wasted opportunity; promising moments are weakened by an uninspired script and clumsy construction. Believe it or not, the Footloose remake is making critics tap their feet.

By Sophia Savage
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October 13, 2011 5:43 AM
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Behind The Scenes on AMC's The Walking Dead, Season 2: Zombies, Blood and Gore

Check out photographer David Strick's behind-the-scenes photos from the Atlanta set of AMC's The Walking Dead Season 2, which debuts October 16. Don't be put off by the zombies--as adapted for cable by Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) season one of The Walking Dead was one of the best-written and mounted cable series of the year. It remains to be seen if producer Gale Ann Hurd (Comic-Con interview here) and the rest of the team will be able to maintain that quality without Darabont, who was fired from the series.

By Anne Thompson
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October 12, 2011 5:40 AM
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Trailer Watch: The Raven Lands on Anniversary of Poe's Death; Film Claims Edginess, But Is It?

Fittingly, Relativity Media is debuting the first trailer (below) for The Raven (March 9, 2012) on October 7, the 162nd anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s mysterious death. Relativity celebrates the date--and their upcoming film--with rare facts about Poe facts (a sampling is below).

By Sophia Savage
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October 7, 2011 5:44 AM
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Kaufman's Meta Frank or Francis, Craig and Mara Pose in Empire

- Check out Empire's spread of Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig, as they continue to build hype for David Fincher's The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo. More details on the issue and why Lisbeth Salander is "not a superhero" here.

By Sophia Savage
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October 3, 2011 8:06 AM
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Weekend Box Office: Dolphin Tale Overtakes Moneyball in Second Inning

While it looked like Moneyball would assert its dominance over the weekend box office, another second weekender took the prize: Dolphin Tale. Again, the family movie pulled a bigger niche audience than too many competitors aimed at males and adults. Anthony D'Alessandro reports:Another flood of wide entries fragmented Fall moviegoers this weekend. Warner Bros./Alcon's heart-tugging crowd-pleaser Dolphin Tale yipped up $14.2 million in its second session, overtaking Sony's well-reviewed Moneyball, which fielded $12.5 million. Both films generated warm buzz throughout the week, especially on Rosh Hashanah last Thursday when some schools were off.