It’s that time again, a preview of the upcoming (Spring) season’s crop of films. We try and do this every season to the best of our abilities. At the top of your list of Spring films already released that you should be seeing are “Snow Angels,” “Chicago 10” and “Paranoid Park.” OK, we can pretty much dispense with the chatter, you get it. Without further ado, the Playlists picks for Spring films you should watch, take note of, or steer totally clear of. Let’s do this.
MARCH 14
Meat Loaf: In Search of Paradise (Limited: NY): At once hagiographic and revealing, backstage documentary follows the bloated theatrical rocker during Los Angeles rehearsals and an early 2007 Canadian tour in support of the third disc in the “Bat Out of Hell” franchise. Could be train-wreck awesome.
Funny Games: Brutalizing Austrian mindfuck director Michael Haneke (the incredible, but brutal “Caché,” and “The Piano Teacher,” already made this excruciating film about two psychotic boys who take a family hostage back in 1997. If you think Hollywood dollars convinced him to remake and cannibalize his own work only with American namebrand recognizable actors (Naomi Watts, Tim Roth), you’d be wrong. Haneke relished the thought of finally bringing this American violence critique to U.S. audiences. And oh yeah, it’s perversely an exact shot-by-shot remake of the original, which makes it doubly twisted. Trailer.
MARCH 21
Drillbit Taylor: Judd Apatow for kids or at least the PG-13 crowd. Two loser teenagers, (relative unknowns, Troy Gentile and Nate Hartley) hire a bodyguard who unbeknownst to them is an adult loser, Owen Wilson (Drillbit Taylor) to keep them from their high school bullies (Alex Frost and Josh Peck, both of whom strangely enough have no outwardly apparent Apatow connections). The film is directed by Steve Brill who has a small part in “Knocked-Up” and is good friend with Adam Sandler, who in turn is good friends with Apatow (see ‘Zohan’). Trailer.
Boarding Gate: Olivier Assayas transgressively erotic sexual psychodrama is a thriller, softcorn S&M porn and one of the best films this underachieving director has ever made. Starring softcore S&M pon actress Asia Argento and the batshit crazy Michael Madsen, the sexual oneupmanship of the script led to some serious life imitating art issues forcing Argento leaving the set in tears and in one, painful and extreme moment, getting bit on her punanny. The insanely masochistic Madsen often took the domination foreplay way too seriously and Argento had to persuade him to speak his submissive dialogue aloud. “There was a scene where he just couldn’t say the word ‘slave,’ so I started masturbating,” Argento said. “He was so taken off guard. It felt like the only thing I could do to make it work.” Bravo, now that’s method acting. Trailer.
Love Songs: Can three French menage a trois-ing lovers live in harmony, or will a new player change their tune? Either way they all tell their story in song as this tricky love story is a musical by New Wave heir apparent auteur Christophe Honoré and with songs composed by Alex Beaupain. Trailer.
Planet B-Boy: Jumping continents and crossing cultures, this global b-boy documentary looks at the history of breakdancing and its vibrant resurgence in urban cultures around the world. Trailer.
MARCH 28
Stop-Loss: We recently dropped some haterade on Kimberley Peirce’s very-belated follow-up to “Boys Don’t Cry,” but this Iraq War film has something going for it in music supervisor Jim Dunbar (who did “I’m Not There”). Of course testosterone-filled soldiers’ taste in music ain’t great, but this one apparently provides at least some appropriate musical moments. Other than that though, the film’s release has been very delayed which is never a good sign and Ryan Phillipe is pretty under equipped to carry a whole movie on his shoulders in our minds, but we could be wrong. Trailer.
Chapter 27: Jared Leto and Lindsay Lohan in a film about John Lennon’s death – does this have recipe for disaster written all over it or what? Playing the deranged Mark David Chapman, the nutjob that assassinated the Beatles legend, Leto gained so much weight for the role he gave himself a case of gout. Ok, despite being an uber-douche and frontman of the wretched 30 Seconds to Mars, Leto has done some solid work on screen (“Requiem For A Dream,” “Fight Club”), but it’s been a while since he’s done somethin substantial enough to erase the memory of his abject eye-liner’d day job. It’s also taken this film a shitload of time to get into theaters – it premiered at Sundance ’07 and then leaked online in March – which is never a good sign, nor is it good for business. Trailer.
APRIL 4
My Blueberry Nights: The delayed and belated debut of Starbucks-friendly songstress Norah Jones, received a mediocre reception at Cannes 2007. The interconnecting road-trip love story film has been recut, and also stars Jude Law, Natalie Portman, David Strathairn and Rachel Weisz (Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, even has a small cameo in the film where she makes out with Law). Trailer.
Leatherheads: George Clooney obviously has a fondness for pre-50s Golden Age period America and this football comedy set in the roaring ’20s of pigskin’s creation is no different. Clooney also has a softspot for screwball comedy and its timing and he seems to capture both pretty well. Also starring “The Office”s John Krasinski and squintface Renée Zellweger in the predictable love triangle. Trailer.
Shine A Light: The geriatric Rolling Stones are wheeled out and dusted off for one more concert, but this time it’s shot for a film and directed by none other than Oscar-winning rock enthusiast Marty Scorsese. It features guest Christina Aguilera, The White Stripes’ Jack White and at the very least should look fucking amazing as it was shot by some of the greatest cinematographers in the world right now. Trailer.
APRIL 11
Body of War: Directed by former talk show host Phil Donahue and partner Ellen Spiro, the doc is about a injured American veteran, twenty-six-year-old Tomas Young, returning home from the Iraq war. Eddie Vedder appears and yodels along for a couple songs. Trailer.
Smart People: Wooo! Another indie Sundance-like film with Ellen Page. We bet you can’t fucking wait. But hatorz should put down their ax (at least momentarily), there’s no Diablo Cody in this one. Into the life of a widowed professor (Dennis Quaid) comes a new love and an unexpected visit from his adopted brother (that TV hack Thomas Haden Church that somehow fooled people into thinking he could act because of “Sideways” ). Page plays the daughter. Trailer.
APRIL 18
Forgetting Sarah Marshall: The film for Judd Apatow utility player Jason Segel to finally shine. Directed by Nicholas Stoller, who helmed a few episodes of “Undeclared” and co-wrote”Fun With Dick and Jane” with Apatow, the plot of ‘Marshall’ revolves around a jilted ex (Segel) who tries to forget his famous celebrity ex and heartbreak by escaping to Hawaii only to find this ex gf, Sarah Marshall (played by “Veronica Mars”‘ Kristen Bell) there as well with her new boyfriend to boot (British comedian and TV personality Russell Brand). Trailer.
The Rocker: We’re sorry, but Rainn Wilson is a wretched one-trick pony and his schtick is insufferably unfunny (remember he delivers some of the most contemptible “Juno” dialogue). There’s probably not one recent comedian in recent memory that we dislike more. This chuckleheaded conceit centers on a failed, over-the-hill drummer (Wilson) who, 20 years after getting booted out of his now uber-famous band, gets a second chance at fame with a new act, a high school garage band headed by his nephew (Josh Gad). It also stars name brand actress Christian Applegate. Best of luck to you all. Trailer.
APRIL 25
Standard Operating Procedure: The first documentary ever shown in competition at the Berlin film festival, Errol Morris’ (“Gates of Heaven,” “The Thin Blue Line”) latest documentary won the Silver Bear Jury Grand Prize. Not a bad start for the sure-to-be controversial film about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that came to light in 2004. Deleted scene.
Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay: The perfect antidote to what surely will be Morris’ heavy intellectualized and possibly overwrought examination of prison torture, Harold & Kumar will provide the funny side of detanee abuse! But seriously, if you’ve seen the trailer, you know this film should provide all sort of stupid funny and amazingly racially insensitive lol’s (Rob Cordroy watching a captured Harold and Kumar behind two-way glass: “North Korea and Al qaeda working together, I knew it!”). Trailer.
Redbelt: Playwright David Mamet learned jiu-jitsu so now he can cockpunch you both literally and figuratively if he so chooses. Set in the L.A. scumbag fight world – the film stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as a moralistic, samarai-coded-like Jiu-Jitsu master/ defense instructor, who through a series of fateful events is introduced to sleazeball promoters (Rick Jay and Joe Mantegna) and is eventually forced to dumb down his principles to step into the circus of professional fighting in order to pay off debts and regain his honor. Trailer.
Repo The Genetic Opera – This futuristic musical thriller (is a genre born?), directed by zero-times Oscar nominated, “Saw” director Darren Lynn Bousman, is about an epidemic of organ failure that essentially leads to the purchase of body parts and thus default procedures, including repossession at the hand of the notorious organ repo men (remember this is somehow a “musical”). Sounds abominably terrible and it features Paris Hilton too. However, could this become an ironic camp classic? God, let’s hope not. Trailer.
Deception: With apologies to good taste and Heath Ledger’s ghost,we’d go see a movie of Michelle Williams watching paint dry. Ok, not quite, but you get the picture, she’s just too adorable for words. Ewan McGregor stars as a naive accountant who ventures into the under-world of New York sex clubs under the guidance of a devilish co-worker (Hugh Jackman) and a mysterious lover (Michelle Williams). We smell widow boobies [ed. wow, so wrong].
MAY 2
Mister Lonely: Directed by indie wunderkind Harmony Korine, the wonderfully absurdist, but earnest “Mister Lonely” stars Diego Luna as a Michael Jackson impersonator who meets Marilyn Monroe impersonator Samantha Morton in Paris and the two travel to a “magical land” that acts as a home to Charlie Chaplin, James Dean and many other impersonators by actors unknown and well-known (the latter includes the great Anita Pallenberg and James Fox – somone’s been watching “Performance“). The film also includes appearances by Korine’s pal, German director Werner Herzog , ghey magician David Blane and a soundtrack by Spiritualized and the Sun City Girls. Trailer.
