The hit UK sci-fi comedy Attack the Block has had a few preview screenings around the States, but it’s finally hitting theaters for realsies on July 29th (in limited release, anyway).
Writer-director Joe Cornish’s film stars a bunch of kids I’ve never heard of and Nick Frost (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) — and Basement Jaxx provides the sure-to-be-great score. Attack the Block has been getting stellar reviews from the festival circuit (and the UK, where it’s been out for a few weeks already), so you’ll want to keep this one on your radar.
A trailer for Jesse Peretz’s Our Idiot Brother has hit the interwebs. Paul Rudd stars the dumbass brother of Emily Mortimer, Elizabeth Banks, and Zooey Deschanel. Add Steve Coogan and Rashida Jones into the mix, and you’ve got a cast that pretty much guarantees I’ll watch your movie sooner or later.
While the trailer doesn’t feel like anything too special, I did get one good laugh out of this, as well as a handful of well-earned smiles, maybe this will turn out to be something more than just another gentle, cute, forgettable indie comedy. Brother is out in theaters on August 26th (probably in limited release).
John Michael McDonagh has been quiet since 2003’s Ned Kelly, but he’s back now, with The Guard, starring Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, Liam Cunningham and Mark Strong.
Gleeson starred alongside Colin Farrell in the brilliant 2008 black comedy In Bruges (written and directed by Martin McDonagh, John Michael’s brother), and he’s in fine form here, too, as “an unorthodox Irish policeman with a confrontational personality [who is] teamed up with an uptight FBI agent (Cheadle) to investigate an international drug-smuggling ring.”
There’s a similarly, but slightly more upbeat tone to In Bruges, which is fine by me. The Guard features a score by the indie rock (or alt country, if you insist) band Calexico and premiered at Sundance back in January, so you can find some of the film’s enthusiastic early reviews online if you want to. It’s out next month in the UK. There is no US release set.
Seth Gordon first got Hollywood’s attention with the incredibly true, hilarious documentary, King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. His next film, the Vince Vaughn/Reese Witherspoon stinker Four Christmases, did alright at the box office, but Gordon spent a few years of directing episodes for some of the best sitcoms on TV (Community, The Office, Parks & Recreation, and Modern Family) and a contribution to the documentary anthology Freakonomics before he could make another feature. (I guess he also co-created and directed a few episodes of Breaking In, the Christian Slater Leverage knock-off somewhere in there, too.)
Anyway, Horrible Bosses benefits from a great comedic cast (Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day, Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell, Jennifer Aniston, and Jamie Foxx) and a goofy premise (three dumbasses conspire to kill their three horrible bosses), to be sure, but the trailer packs enough laughs in that it might be worth checking out on July 8. Or maybe on DVD, at least.
Is it just me, or does Jennifer Aniston look like she’s trying to channel Sandra Bullock in this? Or maybe it’s her hair-and-make-up crew.
