Our own Oliver Lyttleton saw “Killer Joe” last year in Venice and was impressed enough to award the film with a B+ rating. After its U.K. release last weekend this writer was able to catch the film and was similarly impressed, so it’s with a great deal of enthusiasm that we are able to write about another clip for the film debuting online ahead of its limited U.S. release on July 27th.
The new clip debuted over at Slashfilm and features Matthew McConaughey and Juno Temple (who in this writer's opinion deliver two of the film’s finest performances) in a scene from fairly early on in the movie. McConaughey’s eponymous Killer Joe tells a fairly disturbing — but equally darkly amusing — story to Temple’s Dottie in a sequence which gets the general tone of William Friedkin’s movie across well. If you think this is a tough watch, then you ain’t seen nothing yet. But we would definitely urge you to track this down, because the film is arguably among the best of 2012 thus far.
A film that we were less impressed by when it hit TIFF and opened the LFF last year was Fernando Meirelles’ “360.” Penned by Peter Morgan (“The Queen”) and starring Jude Law and Rachel Weisz, the “City of God” and “The Constant Gardener” director’s latest took a bit of a kicking from critics at the time, but almost a year on it’s about to roll out in most major international territories. Ahead of its August 3rd U.S. release another clip (via Hollywood) has been released, this time featuring Anthony Hopkins.
His character tells a story as well, but we wouldn’t advise watching it back to back with the “Killer Joe” clip or you’ll be in danger of falling asleep watching the latter. It’s not that it’s not any good, but Hopkins' tale of his daughter’s possible death is told in such a laid back manner that it’s a tough sell straight after McConaughey — and who thought someone of Hopkins stature would ever be in McConaughey’s shadow? We’d probably recommend watching them the other way round, and if “360” really takes your fancy then you can currently find it On Demand and through iTunes.
