Martin McDonagh (In Bruges) is finally back with another black comedy. This one, Seven Psychopaths, is about “a struggling screenwriter (Colin Farrell) who inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his oddball friends (Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell) kidnap a gangster’s (Woody Harrelson) beloved Shih Tzu.” The premise is a little goofy, but with these three guys in the lead, how could I not be on board?
Abbie Cornish, Tom Waits, Olga Kurylenko and Zeljko Ivanek co-star in the October 12th release.
I’ve been on board with This Is 40 since its announcement, because Pete and Debbie (Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann) were the best part of Knocked Up. Its teaser trailer was pretty good, but the theatrical trailer is flat-out great — funny, warm, and smart — and it probably speaks to me a little, because I’m only a few years away from 40.
Leslie Mann, Paul Rudd, Albert Brooks, Jason Segel, Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids) and Megan Fox star in the December 21st release.
Josh Radnor is the weakest link on How I Met Your Mother’s script-transcending cast — his personality is like Wonder bread dipped in skim milk. So when his feature writing and directing debut happythankyoumoreplease got solid reviews, I cocked my left eyebrow, made a mental note of it and went on with my life.
His new film, Liberal Arts, doesn’t look like anything new plot-wise: “emotionally stunted man meets perfectly well-adjusted woman who gets him to open up” thing has started to feel like a (tired) genre unto itself. Even the twist seen here in the trailer — that this may or may not end up as a romantic connection (and probably doesn’t) — seems familiar, reminding me of the Natalie Portman subplot in Beautiful Girls or Lost in Translation.
But I’ve long said that plot is unimportant — that it’s not what you do, but how you do it — and the presence Elizabeth Olsen (as the too-young girl of his dreams), Allison Janney and Richard Jenkins made this interesting. And as it turned out, the trailer has a pitch-perfect tone, and there are just enough hints of something smart, something maybe just a little bit deep… so I’m intrigued.
Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow’s film about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden has a title — Zero Dark Thirty — as well as a teaser trailer.
There’s… really not a lot to go by, but the script (as with Hurt Locker) was by Mark Boal, the cast is pretty great (as you’d expect for the follow-up to a huge critical hit like Hurt Locker: Joel Edgerton, Jessica Chastain, Edgar Ramirez, Mark Strong, Kyle Chandler, Nash Edgerton, Jennifer Ehle, Harold Perrineau and Frank Grillo star in the December 19th release.
