Do not expect a body horror show from A Dangerous Method. Do not expect someone grotesque mental or physical transformation. Do not expect kinky or unbelievably outlandish sex scenes. Most of all, do not pigeonhole director David Cronenberg. Whatever a “David Cronenberg film” means is a mystery now. Who would’ve thought the director behind Videodrome and (the very underrated) eXistenZ would go on to make an excellent gangster picture? Certainly not me.

Now Cronenberg has tackled a subject that is, in some ways, in his wheelhouse. A Dangerous Method is not a dry or sloggy bio pic, but an entertaining depiction about the clashing of ideals and an exploration of how we tick, as expected. Much of the film focuses on the rise and fall of a rocky relationship between a young and intellectually hungry Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and the older, wiser and sex obsessed Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortenson).

Most the script involves Jung and Freud in back and forth conversations about their ideas, which will surely turnoff many viewers. If you are not at all into psychoanalysis and were bored to tears during your sociology 101 class, then this is not a film for you. At one point Freud jokes to Jung, forgive me if I am misquoting the line, “Have you realized we’ve spoken for eight hours now?”, and some may feel those eight hours. For myself, the exchanges between a convincingly conflicted Fassbender and a surprisingly hilarious Mortenson, are funny, intellectually stimulating, and, yes, cinematic.

Having actors like Mortenson, Fassbender, a suitably over-the-top Keira Knightley, and Vincent Cassel as a devilish psychoanalyst, the charming and impulsive Otto Gross, all discussing sex, human repression, and more is woefully entertaining. When A Dangerous Method aspires to be a comical and a compelling take on the odd relationships between psychoanalysts and their patients, the film is at its best.

Where the film crumbles, most disappointingly, is in its third act. Much of the film has a basic period piece structure – with minutes representing years, etc. – and towards the end it becomes tiresome. The drama between Jung and a former and hysterical Russian patient of his, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), isn’t half as effective as the earlier, long-winded discussions between Jung and Freud. The structure doesn’t do the two fine actors’ shaky sexual relationship justice, and it becomes second-tier to Jung and Freud’s story.

As a period piece, some may find the film “stuffy” considering the film mostly takes place in rooms, but the first two acts are not at all visually suffocating or fit the run-of-the-mil period piece bill. If the film had more time, A Dangerous Method could have been another great Cronenberg film. Fortunately enough, there is still plenty to chew on and laugh with before the third act problems arise.

The Upside: Strong performances across the board; the first two acts; Cronenberg doesn’t solely let the heavy dialog inform you, but also his controlled direction; Vincent Cassel proves he’s got it in him to be a terrific character actor.

The Downside: Becomes episodic come the third act; the third act’s drama isn’t as powerful as it should be; the third act.

On The Side: The film features Cronenberg’s most boring sex scenes yet, and that’s kind of the point.

This month, the folks at Titan Books have released a book that cult film fans will be dying for, right in time for you to add it to your Christmas shopping list and satisfy the most hardcore of your movie loving loved ones. It’s called “The Hammer Vault,” promising treasures from the archives of Hammer Films, Britain’s most famous film studio and the keepers of many great cult films. We’ll have more about the book and author Marcus Hearn in an upcoming features. But for now, we’d like to present some exclusive art from the book, some of which is a little NSFW (that means it has bare breasts in it).

About the Book

Packed with sensational, never-before-collected material, The Hammer Vault is a visual romp through the archives of Britain’s most famous film studio.

For both die-hard fans, and those just discovering Hammer’s rich cinematic legacy, this remarkable book provides an unmissable journey into the history of the company, as told through previously unseen treasures from the vault. Beginning with the company’s incorporation documents from 1934, moving through the many unforgettable horror classics which cemented their reputation and made worldwide stars of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, and coming right up to date with a behind the scenes look at 2010’s Let Me In and the 2011 release The Resident, The Hammer Vault presents original correspondence, lobby cards, script pages and scores of rare and previously unpublished photographs, alongside a commentary from Hammer archive consultant Marcus Hearn, and the people who made some of the company’s greatest films.

The book also contains pages from press books and publicity manuals, letters to and from some of the company’s stars, pages from managing director Michael Carreras and Peter Cushing’s scrapbooks, pre-production artwork, trade advertisements and production designs. It is both a compelling visual history of the legendary film production company, and the greatest scrapbook of Hammer collectables ever assembled!

Did you not already get your fill of the Jack and the Beanstalk myth from this year’s Puss in Boots? Good, because Bryan Singer has his own (live-action) take on the tale, and the results look to be similarly cartoonish. Listen, you try to make magic beans look menacing while also crafting a giant goddamn beanstalk that pops up out of the ground without it looking totally bizarre and silly, okay? Oh, you did already? Oh. Oh, that looks nice!

While there was a fair bit of buzz around Singer’s Jack the Giant Killer before the film blossomed into existence (see what I did there?) mainly regarding Singer talking about the project for over two years, casting rumors as to who would be starring as the titular Jack (Aaron Johnson and Andrew Garfield were both talked about before the role went to another superhero kiddo, X-Men: First Class‘s Nicholas Hoult), and a delay that pushed the film back almost a year, news on the project has been surprisingly scarce since it started filming earlier this year. So what’s the finished result of the classic tale reimagined going to look like? Well, if you believe this trailer, a bit like a cross between Puss and Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

Check out the first trailer for Jack the Giant Killer, complete with its own big-eyed orange kitty (seriously), after the break.

The film co-stars Eleanor Tomlinson, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Warwick Davis, Ian McShane, Bill Nighy, Ewan Bremner, and Eddie Marsan, so with cast like that, I am more than willing to give this lackluster trailer the benefit of the doubt.

Jack the Giant Killer opens on June 15, 2012. The film will (of course!) also be available in 3D and IMAX 3D. Goodness knows, audiences need that giant beanstalk coming right at them. [Empire]

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises of this year’s awards circuit is just how many awards and nominations filmmaker J.C. Chandor has picked for his debut film, Margin Call. Chandor’s star-packed film debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and while that festival also featured a notable debut from Sean Durkin with his Martha Marcy May Marlene, one that seemed much more poised to rack up the awards, it has been Chandor and his tale of the Wall St. financial crisis that has earned some big accolades. Chandor has already picked up Best Debut Director from the National Board of Review, Best First Film from the New York Film Critics Circle, and Best Original Screenplay from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, along with nominations from the Boston Society of Film Critics and the Film Independent Spirit Awards, and that’s likely only the beginning for Chandor and his Margin Call.

So with so much promise and so much praise, it’s high time that Chandor unveiled his next project, one that apparently owes its own type of debt to Sundance. Chandor’s next is titled All Is Lost, and the filmmaker is looking to cast Robert Redford as its lead. Let’s hope that works out, as Chandor reportedly Chandor met Sundance founder Redford “at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, and was so taken by him that he wrote the movie around him.”

The film is described as a “man vs. nature drama that takes place on the water.” Redford is in talks for the lead role as ” a heroic character who braves the elements to survive.” And, damn if that title doesn’t sound good and bleak. The production has already started scouting filming locations for all those water shoots, including a look at Baja Film Studios in Mexico, where films like Titanic and Pearl Harbor have been shot.

With a role seemingly tailor-made for him, and production slated to start in the spring, I think it’s fair to expect that Redford will sign on the dotted line for this one quite quickly. [Deadline Holladay]

A months old interview that The Calgary Herald did with author Russell Banks is getting some new attention today, because The Playlist found a nugget of exciting movie news in it that has generally flown under everyone’s radar. Apparently Banks’ novel “Rule of the Bone” is ready to be adapted into a film, and will be directed by a name who’s recently become hot in Hollywood, Debra Granik. If you can remember back all the way to 2010, Granik directed Winter’s Bone, a Sundance film that got nominated for a lot of awards, put on a lot of year-end lists, and immediately launched the career of new it-girl actress Jennifer Lawrence. It was also my favorite film of last year, so this news of Granik’s next work has me feeling pretty jazzed.

As a strange bit of trivia, this will be Granik’s third movie in a row that has the word “bone” in the title. She proceeded last year’s Winter’s Bone, a story about Ozark Mountain meth-heads, with 2004’s Down to the Bone, which starred Vera Farmiga as a drug-addicted housewife.

So what’s this novel that Banks wrote about? Drugs. I think I sense a pattern forming.  The book’s Amazon description introduces it like this:

“When we first meet him, Chappie is a punked-out teenager living with his mother and abusive stepfather in an upstate New York trailer park. During this time, he slips into drugs and petty crime. Rejected by his parents, out of school and in trouble with the police, he claims for himself a new identity as a permanent outsider; he gets a crossed-bones tattoo on his arm, and takes the name ‘Bone.’”

They say the word bone a lot in that description, sounds perfect for Granik. I wonder if her favorite TV show is Bones? Anyway, the subject matter sounds like a perfect fit with her eye for gritty realism as well. And gritty and real this movie should be, because it doesn’t seem like we have to worry about some Hollywood bigwig stepping in and making her cast one of Will Smith’s kids as the lead or something.

In addition to being the author of the source material, Banks is also serving as an executive producer on the film, and from some comments he made back in that Calgary Herald article, it’s clear that he’s taking a hands-on approach to putting this one together. As far as the casting of the character of Bone goes, he said, “We’re probably going to cast an unknown in the lead and then cast around him. When we get Bone cast, then we’ll work around him and have better-known actors, recognizable faces around him. We’ll be shooting it in Upstate New York and Jamaica.” All the right elements are lining up for this project to be one to watch.

Director Lasse Hallström’s newest picture, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, is about an eccentric sheik who loves fishing so much he’s willing to pay obscene amounts of money to create a permanent river in the deserts of Yemen, stocked with salmon. It then becomes up to his legal council to find a fisheries expert who can make it happen. And here we have the set-up for a really boring movie. Except, watching the trailer, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen doesn’t seem boring at all.

Most of that probably has to do with the fact that the legal council and the fisheries expert are played by Emily Blunt and Ewan McGregor, two actors with more charm in their fingernails than most people have in their whole bodies. I kind of have big crushes on both of them, so watching McGregor play nervous and proper, and Blunt playing blunt and driven, and seeing the two of them turn banter into romance…well, it all just seems to be too cute for words. Add in Kristin Scott Thomas as a sassy newspaper woman with shady motives, and this may be a movie with too much charm for its own good.

That cuteness is magnified even more, since those charming actors are helped along by an adapted screenplay (from the novel the film is based on) by Simon Beaufoy, who did such great adaptation work for Danny Boyle with Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours.

After the first twenty seconds or so of the trailer, it stops looking like this is a movie about fishing, and it starts looking much more like a character piece. The prospective couple Blunt and McGregor are playing, Thomas’ reporter, and heck, even the wacky sheik, they all seem to be well-drawn, and they look like they get properly developed over the course of the film. This thing looks like it manages to be funny, too! Or is that just my crushes on the actors really taking over? Why am I suddenly looking forward to a romance about fishing that has such a stupid-sounding title?

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen opens on March 2, 2012.[Yahoo! Movies]

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr goes rogue and infiltrates his local IMAX theater. First, he scales the wall of the plus-sized building and slides in undetected through the air vents. He slowly lowers himself into a theater seat to enjoy an early screening of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Unfortunately, he finds himself in the middle of a wild crowd of six-year-old kids for the early screening of the latest Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. To deal with the psychological damage, Kevin then stumbles into the Sherlock Holmes sequel and later finds an extra seat in Young Adult, where he can imagine that his chubby caboose could land a hottie like Charlize Theron.

Want to hear what Kevin has to say on the Fat Guys at the Movies podcast? Click here to listen as Kevin gets chip-faced with Grae Drake from CNN, Movies.com and the Popcorn Mafia.

SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS
Studio: Warner Bros.

Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and some drug material

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, Mark Strong and Eddie Marsan

Directed by: Guy Ritchie

What it’s about: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson return in this sequel to the 2009 hit. Again directed by Guy Ritchie, this film sees Holmes and Watson trying to solve a mystery that involves the notorious Dr. Moriarty trying to take over a portion of the European economy.

What makes the grade: It’s not too common to find a movie that has been made in the same tone and spirit of the original film. And while Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows doesn’t quite take itself as seriously as the first film, it pretty much delivers the same kind of movie. And the lighter tone makes it a little more fun.

Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law have fantastic chemistry, and they play around a little more with this movie. It’s thoroughly enjoyable if you like the sort of pop action delivery that Ritchie is known for. There are some fantastic action sequences, including a brisk bullet-time chase in the woods.

What fails: While all the same elements that made the first film fun are in this new movie, all of the pitfalls are as well. This includes the fact that the plot becomes needlessly convoluted at times, especially considering how simple the story really is. And, of course, fans of the original Sherlock Holmes books will still turn their noses up at the more goofy and obnoxious version in these films.

Finally, as awesome as it is to see Moriarty in this film, we don’t get the payoff as quickly as I’d like. There are a couple good tete-a-tetes with Moriarty and Holmes, but they come rather late in the game.

Who is gonna like this movie: Anyone who thoroughly enjoyed the first film.

ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: CHIPWRECKED
Studio:20the Century Fox

Rated: G

Starring: Jason Lee, David Cross, Jenny Slate, Justin Long and Matthew Gray Gubler

Directed by: Mike Mitchell

What it’s about: Dave Saville takes the Chipmunks and the Chipettes on a tropical cruise for a vacation. However, bickering and mischief cause them to fly overboard on a kite, with Dave trying to catch them in a hang glider. All of them are then stranded on a desert island which they have to escape before a volcano explodes and destroys everything above water.

What makes the grade: Anyone who knows me knows that I have a certain affinity to the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies. Sure, they’re just kids movies, but as a parent, I enjoy watching them with the family and enjoying their reactions. This sequel includes a lot of the cuteness that worked in the first two films. Plus, the chipmunked songs on the soundtrack are pretty cute.

This movie is proudly G rated, aiming for the kiddies in the audience and offering a merciful 85-minute running time for the grown ups.

What fails: Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked reeks of an excuse to have a sequel. The first act is nothing more than an unabashed advertising campaign for Carnival Cruise Lines, offering very little plot of logic. Between Chipette dance offs and Alvin trying to pick up ladies at the craps table, it’s a mess of a film.

The second act isn’t much better, featuring nonsensical plot twists and far too many Castaway jokes (which were excruciatingly old when that Super Bowl commercial aired four or five years after the movie came out). The ending of the film comes together better than the beginning, but it is too little too late.

Who is gonna like this movie: Kids who still like going to G-rated movies.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL
Studio: Paramount

Rated: PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence

Starring: Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton and Josh Holloway

Directed by: Brad Bird

What it’s about: Pixar director Brad Bird takes a stab at live-action thrills in the fourth Mission: Impossible movie. Ethan Hunt and his team are disavowed after a bombing at the Kremlin, and they must go rogue to uncover a plot to start a nuclear holocaust.

What makes the grade: Not only was Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol a surprisingly fun movie, it is easily the best action movie of 2011. Forget Fast Five and Transformers: Dark of the Moon. This movie makes more sense, has more non-stop action and features more than just fast cars and robots blowing shit up.

The story is really pretty simple, giving us a throwback to the 80s Cold War thrillers. It’s never hard to follow (unlike some of those aforementioned action films or its main competition at the box office this weekend), and the cast works well together. There’s enough humor, but it’s also riddled with amazing action moments that hit hard and fast.

This week, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is in an exclusive IMAX run, paired up with the IMAX prologue to The Dark Knight Rises. Like The Dark Knight, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol has gorgeous IMAX footage that makes it worth the extra scratch on the ticket price. If you wait until next week and see it in a standard screen, you’re missing out.

What fails: Nothing. This is a near-perfect action movie.

Who is gonna like this movie: Hopefully everyone.

YOUNG ADULT
Studio: Paramount

Rated: R for language and some sexual content

Starring: Charlize Theron, Patrick Wilson, Patton Oswalt and Elizabeth Reaser

Directed by: Jason Reitman

What it’s about: Charlize Theron stars as a writer of teen literature who decides to head back to her home town to try and land her high school sweetheart, who just had a daughter.

What makes the grade: I’ll admit that there are some laughable moments in this movie, though I would hardly call it a comedy (even if the studio and the filmmakers would). Patton Oswalt steals much of his scenes from Theron, playing the voice of reason to her insanities. The film isn’t terrible, but it didn’t leave much of an impact on me either way, really.

What fails: The wretchedness of Theron’s character is point of this movie, and I’m okay with wretched characters. However, there has to be something for me to connect with emotionally. Theron’s character isn’t the only awful person in the mix. This film is populated with horrible people, or at the very least stupid people who make horrible decisions.

There are several points in this film where it could have really gone dark, but it pulls its punches. And there’s no growth in the character… only acceptance of her own wretchedness. I didn’t hate Young Adult, but I couldn’t connect with it, no matter how hard I tried. It was the quintessential “meh” movie for me, and that’s worse than being a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad film.

Who is gonna like this movie: People who like to see wretched characters making awful decisions.

CARNAGE
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics

Rated: R for language

Starring: Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly

Directed by: Roman Polanski

What it’s about: Two married couples meet to reconcile a fight between their sons, which left one of them seriously injured. As they try to remain civil, tempers flare, and more fighting results.

What makes the grade: As a parent in the modern age, I am constantly faced with people who try to be overly civilized. There is a time for mediation and calm approaches, but the pop psychology garbage of talking everything out can be a little silly sometimes.

Carnage shows, albeit in a somewhat contrived fashion, where civility can break down when honesty comes into play. It’s also a very funny movie, presenting some hilariously real reactions among the parents in the room. Add the fact that the actors doing this little dance of crumbling civility are top-notch and deliver at every level.

What fails: This is based on a play, and like most films that are based strictly from one-room plays, the dialogue can seem rather stilted. It also tries to bite off more than it can chew trying to justify its already scant 79-minute running time. I suppose were this a 40-minute movie, it would have been absolutely brilliant.

Who is gonna like this movie: People who like dark comedy and get annoyed with the over-intellectualization of parenting.

“Guys like me are born to like girls like you.”

If you’re one of those guys – someone who finds unrelenting asshole women irresistible – Young Adult will leave you with a new crush. If you’re a socially normal human being who knows how destructive an asshole can be, Young Adult will leave you with a new on-screen enemy.

I fall in the middle.

Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) could not be further from likable and sympathetic, and that’s the whole point. The young adult writer, not the most subtle character trait, is never glorified as being a “cool smokin’ bitch,” something that she only starts off as. As the film progresses, the beautiful womanchild is stripped down to something so ugly, unappealing, hopeless, and, in some uncomfortable ways, a little relatable.

Throughout the film, it’s hinted that Mavis is not only stunted in age – with her still living life like the high school girl we all knew – but also in emotions. This is someone who cannot connect with people on nearly any level. Perhaps she once did, though. This isn’t someone who’s always been a socially destructive monster or a big alcoholic. A simple photo of Mavis at her wedding shows she was perhaps once a happy person, who she probably ruined, or her husband destroyed, possibly causing her to enter the emotionally and socially destructive state she’s in.

It’s ideas such as these that solidify this as Diablo Cody‘s most subtle and accomplished work. She’s a writer with her own voice, something that can overtake the film itself, as shown more than a few times in Jennifer’s Body. Here, Cody’s voice, while present, is at its most invisible. When a character says something witty, it’s the character saying something witty, not the person who wrote it down.

With Young Adult, Cody and director Jason Reitman have made the anti-cliche asshole character study. This is not a film about a character returning home and finding her long lost heart. The greatest discovery Mavis makes is losing her obliviousness, and even that change is up for interpretation. Her horrible actions take a toll on her, and her solitary life threatens to become a permanent condition. When Mavis stares at her beat up Mini Cooper midway through the film, she’s really seeing herself…or she’s just thinking, “I should fix my car.”

When the protagonist’s biggest goal in life is stealing her ex-boyfriend, played by Patrick Wilson, away from his new family, it’s obvious Mavis is not someone with high or respectable life goals. Reitman and Cody never glorify her actions, and they make her acts slowly and effectively go from funny to downright sad.

It’s no real surprise Young Adult didn’t go on the festival circuit – it’s not a film for everyone. This is somewhat of a love-it-or-hate-it film. More than a few people will be violently turned off by Mavis – and in turn will hate the movie for its character – so kudos to Reitman, Cody, and Theron for crafting such a great bastard-ess, who you’ll either feel empathy, like myself, or uncontrollable hatred for.

The Upside: Theron makes a chaotic narcissist empathetic; Patton Oswalt adds real heart and relatable sadness to the film; Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman’s most accomplished work; uncomfortable when it needs to be; doesn’t glorify assholes; Mavis never goes through a major cathartic transformation; despite me mostly discussing the drama of the film, it’s pretty hilarious as well.

The Downside: Again, Mavis being a “young adult” writer is a little obvious, but that barely goes beyond being a simple nitpick.

On the Side: Please don’t leave a comment saying “Juno blows” or “Diablo Cody? What type of name is that?”

Welcome back to Junkfood Cinema; home of the fried food advent calendar. As December marches on, here at JFC it’s beginning to look a lot like Type-II diabetes.  We are back yet again to roast a particularly horrible cinematic chestnut on the open fire of relentless mockery as you struggle to keep the terrifying Jack Frost from trying to bite pieces of your face off; seriously, how scary is that song? But then, I will sugarcoat that same chestnut (plum? bag of mixed metaphors?) with genuine adoration until you are confronted with the unconquerable desire to take me off your Christmas card list and add me to the one enigmatically marked “People to Letter Bomb.” To make your season especially bright, in much the same fashion that nuclear blasts are quite luminous, I will then pair the film with a festively tasty, disgustingly decadent snack food item.

Today’s figgy pudding of shame: Elves.

What Makes It Bad?

What do we know about elves? Traditionally, these minuscule denizens of the North Pole have defined their entire existence laboring in Santa’s workshop; being bred into a bizarre form of indentured servitude. They suffer daily the oppressive whip of a bearded, rotund Über-capitalist with no outlet for their seething, but impotent rage. Like many of you, I have spent literally hours lying awake thinking about these beleaguered minions of the jolly old overlord, fearing the day that they would inevitably rise up and take their revenge upon the human race who refused to come to their aid. Enter 1989′s Elves…exit sanity.

In this film, elves are not cutesy, pointy-eared cherubs. Nor are these elves tall, silver-haired Adonises who know their way around a bow and arrow and cause very difficult-to-process urges in purportedly straight film bloggers who are totally not me. Point of fact this film does not feature elves at all, because that would imply some sort of multitude. Instead we have just one gaped-mouthed hand puppet who bears a horrifyingly striking resemblance to a shaved and genetically-altered chimpanzee. Part of me wants to laugh derisively at this cast of cardboard human likenesses in terrible attire, but part of me is genuinely moved by their plight of being chased hither and thither by half a wax stuffed animal attached to the lens of a camera to obscure both its diminutive size and lack of mobility. I also love that as the elf is following our heroine–or more accurately our named dishcloth–through the department store, not one person notices a bipedal naked mole rat saunter down the aisles or fleeing out of the store after it repeatedly crotch-stabs Santa Claus.  And so begins running joke of this article: having to insert very few actual jokes because, believe it or else, most of these things happen exactly as I describe them.

The real “star” of the “movie” is Dan Haggerty, better known as Grizzly Adams; currently best known as “Who The Hell Is Grizzly Adams?” At one point in my life, I thought City of the Living Dead‘s/Day of the Animals‘ Christopher George was cinema’s most apathetic hero. I thought to myself, “gee self, I don’t think any actor could possibly put less effort into headlining a film if they tried…which they wouldn’t because they don’t care.” Dan Haggerty–and his lush, untamed face carpet–hath once again made fools of us all. Haggerty plays a former detective thrown off the force for his drinking, or so the painfully overstated exposition would have us believe…that we were too stupid to figure out ourselves. He cares so little about this film that the pendulum actually swings the other way to the point where he’s pissed off he has to do the movie and actively, though his inactivity, seeks to further derail it. He sleepwalks through each and every scene, mumbling his lines with learned incoherence, and–I shit you not–dangling a lit cigarette from his lips during even the most supposedly exciting scenes. It’s as if they were crafting an early, reverse version of Speed wherein if Haggerty gives more than one shit in any given scene, his gut will explode. It’s hard to believe this sack of man lumps is legitimately interested in saving the heroine when he can’t park his Camel Ultra Light for five minutes in order to stop the Nazis from shooting her.

Oh, did I mention there were Nazis in this film? Because there are totally Nazis in this film. I feel their storyline was a concerted effort to allow Elves to stand apart from all the other Dan Haggerty evil Christmas elf movies. So you remember how Raiders of the Lost Ark informed us that the Nazis were obsessed with the occult and using mystical and religious powers to take over the world? DOCUMENTARY BY COMPARISON TO ELVES. The Third Grade Reich described in this film decided that elves were the supreme power in the supernatural world and constructed two potential schemes for exploiting them. The first was to use elves as assassins because of their size, strength, and killing prowess. This carefully conceived plan was apparently thwarted when they ultimately realized there were no such things as elves. That is not a joke, a professor of “history” within the film tells us of this. So they wasted what I’m sure were years of research and millions of ill-gotten dollars only to discover imaginary things are imaginary, the Nazis sought to fulfill an ancient prophecy in which a pure blood virgin descendant would get boinked by an elf and give birth to a race of supermen…Elf+Pure Blood Virgin=SuperMEN? The thing is, this backup plan still relies heavily on the existence of imaginary elves! They make up some crap about an ancient rune that, along with the virgin’s blood, can conjure one elf who can then fill her with Elf/Superman babies. This movie is actually the story of how composer Danny Elfman was conceived.

What you would expect by this point is that our heroine, who lives with her mom and Nazi grandfather, is the pure blood virgin. It’s predicable, but operates within the measures of the film’s logic…until we find out why she’s the pure blood. Apparently, in a stunning twist befitting of Sir Jerry of Springer, her grandfather IS ALSO her father. He knocked up the girl’s mother, who is also his own daughter, in order to birth his grand-daughter daughter. If you aren’t feeling desperately in need of a shower right now, then you are filthy and desperately in need of a shower right now. It’s as if the screen”writer” decided that the one thing missing from this Christmas killer elf movie with Grizzly Adams and Nazis was incest. The elf therefore spends the rest of the movie killing everyone around Incest Baby Protagonist in order to hump Incest Baby Protagonist and bring about the end of the world. The writer of this film would himself later go on to…be exorcised out of the body of a poor, innocent girl he was possessing…in my mind.

Why I Love It?

I’m a sucker for bad Christmas horror. They are so deliciously mean-spirited in their marring and warping what is supposed to be an untouchable, joyous time of year. When a film like Elves goes the extra mile to mar and warp something that is marring and warping something good and pure, it’s an exponentially more bizarre experience. Elves is easily the worst Christmas horror film I’ve ever seen, it’s position however admittedly precarious given the existence of Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 and The Christmas Shoes. Watch The Christmas Shoes again and tell me I’m NOT supposed to be terrified. The only thing that could have possibly sullied the holiday more than seeing Santa get his pelvic stocking sliced up or an elf brandishing the carcass of a dead cat who was drowned in a toilet by an evil bitch (also actually happens) would be…cripes, I’ve got nothing. I can literally think of no comically outrageous image that would be worse than the verifiable content of this film. You cannot understand how to effectively quantify the boundaries of terrible cinema unless you constantly redefine for yourself where those boundaries are. In that way, and I must stress solely in that way, Elves is a pioneering film.

Elves is not available on DVD and it’s dubious that it was ever shown on movie screens besides those made of stone in the solitary confinement cells of certain mental asylums for the criminally insane. We therefore had to watch Elves on VHS which was then projected onto the screen at the Alamo Drafthouse in a room full of what can only be described as…former inmates of certain mental asylums for the criminally insane. This night exemplified everything I love about VHS. Without a lunatic-like refusal to abandon this obviously dead format, films like Elves would be lost to the ages and the breadth of its incompetence would go uncelebrated, unmocked, and unlaughed at. It is a film that demands to be seen with a room full of, hopefully, imbibing masochists who ultimately see their own lack of cinematic taste as a form of gluttony and seek to punish themselves for their mortal sin. Elves is basically ocular flagellation and we are all better people for having subjected ourselves to it.

Junkfood Pairing: E.L. Fudge

A few of Santa’s elves did manage to escape with the assistance of nefarious criminals known as “Cookie Coyotes,” who promised them freedom and a better life. But sadly they were sold into the Nabisco white slave trade wherein the laziest among them were killed, stacked, and then separated by a layer of delicious fudge. I would urge you not to support this debased practice…if the end result weren’t so damn tasty. Grab a bag of E.L. Fudge cookies, dust off the VCR, and fire up the movie that celebrates the true meaning of Christmas: Nazi incest.

Stop wondering what Spanish cookies have to do with Elves, and go read more Junkfood Cinema

After all of the hype from the fall television premieres has died down, we are now in for the second wave of excitement that happens midseason. If all of the shows that begin airing in September are dinner, then the ones that come in the winter are dessert – of course, that dessert can be horrible, you know, maybe taste a little like Sons of Tucson. This metaphor is wearing thin, so before I start talking about oatmeal raisin cookies and non-fat yogurt, here’s a list of the midseason series premieres that I have my eye on.

Napoleon Dynamite

Though the film no longer stirs up the kind of powerful emotions it once did – I seldom draw ligers in the margins of my notebook paper these days – I’m intrigued by this animated series based on the 2004 cult hit. Launching on January 15 as part of Fox’s animation domination line-up, Napoleon Dynamite will no doubt give us some insight into everything left unanswered by the film. Does Deb’s mom really go to college? Exactly how deep does Kip’s love for technology run? What’s life like under the Pedro administration? We’ve passed the point of Napoleon Dynamite oversaturation (the incessant quoting has stopped, Hot Topic has removed their Nessie shirts from the shelves), so this is probably the ideal time for this show to air – we can be nostalgic about these characters at this point (well, sort of). Husband-and-wife filmmakers Jared and Jerusha Hess haven’t had much critical success since their Sundance debut, but their brand of oddball humor is perfectly suited for animation.

Key & Peele

Since Chappelle’s Show’s odd, abrupt end in 2006, Comedy Central has been unable to find another sketch show as audacious or beloved – the astoundingly unfunny Mind of Mencia was their earliest, most feeble, and totally transparent attempt to replicate the success they’d had with Dave Chappelle. But Key & Peele, set to start January 31, may just turn things around. MADtv alums Keegan-Michael Key and Jordon Peele, both trained at the Second City, obviously know how to work and thrive within this format. Whenever I think about the possibilities here, my mind immediately flashes to this great MADtv sketch where Peele angrily picks apart a little kid’s YouTube video for its inaccurate description of the Star Wars saga. After watching that sketch, all I could say to myself was, “Yes! Someone finally has the guts to take 6-year-olds to task on all of their B.S.” It’s going to be fun to see what the two comedians produce given the freedom that comes with having their own show.

Smash

What impresses me most when it comes to this series about makin’ it on Broadway is that a five-minute preview clip featuring former American Idol contestant Katherine McPhee belting out Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” nearly brought me to tears (damn you, Aguilera and the unholy grasp that that inspirational song has on my heart). Originally touted as “Glee for adults,” the only thing this series appears to have in common with that increasingly boring Fox comedy is that there’s music in both of them – though, even in that regard the two shows differ, as Smash will include original songs by the Tony and Grammy Award-winning composers of Hairspray. The series, which begins airing on NBC starting February 12, chronicles the creation of a musical about Marilyn Monroe. McPhee and Broadway actress Megan Hilty play the two young actresses vying for the lead role. I’m a fierce musical theater fan and am obviously excited about this show on that level but I’m an even fiercer Anjelica Huston fan – she plays one of the Marilyn musical’s producers. Huston could star in a Mind of Mencia reboot and I’d watch it.

Angry Boys

Many people would be quick to compare Australian comedian Chris Lilley to Christopher Guest since both men (a) have the same first name, and (b) are pathologically devoted to the improvisational mockumentary. But the most impressive aspect of Lilley’s previous work has been his incredible knack for playing multiple roles in the same series – each character exaggerated yet believably human- and so I’ve always felt that he has more in common with the great Peter Sellers. We Can Be Heroes and Summer Heights High both demonstrated that Lilley is a brilliant, bold satirist and, since hearing about Angry Boys back in May when it aired in Australia, I’ve been anxiously awaiting its arrival stateside. Premiering on HBO January 1, Lilley’s latest mockumentary finds the comedian playing an African-American rapper from Los Angeles and an overbearing Japanese mother, among other characters. Will the social critique be strong enough to justify blackface? I don’t know, but I’m more than willing to find out.

Alcatraz

With better-than-ever Fringe inching closer and closer to cancellation, it’s comforting to know that another J.J. Abrams-produced drama will be premiering on Fox this January. Alcatraz, starring Sam Neill and Lost’s Jorge Garcia, gives the history of America’s most infamous prison a supernatural rewrite. The show’s premise: inmates thought to have been transferred from the prison when it closed actually vanished mysteriously and have now, just as mysteriously, returned almost 50 years later. Alcatraz looks promising and not only because of Abrams’ involvement. The pilot episode (which I saw at San Diego Comic-Con this past July) is elusive enough to keep viewers interested and invested in the story but also makes it seem as though satisfying chunks of the overarching puzzle will be answered each week. Sure, Alcatraz is similar to Fringe – both have a tough, blonde female lead (in this case, Sarah Jones) and both are crime procedural-sci-fi hybrids – but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. (You can look at the two shows in the same way that you look at the catalogue of ’90s Swedish pop group Ace of Base – every one of the group’s songs may sound identical but every one of their songs is also awesome.) Hopefully though, unlike Fringe, this show garners the kind of solid ratings that will keep it off the chopping block.

Peel your eyes away from the idiot box for a moment, and check out our Channel Guide archive.

Opinions vary slightly on Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible franchise, but they generally go like this: Brian DePalma’s film is fantastic, John Woo’s follow-up is an epic abomination, and JJ Abrams’ third entry is an interesting but otherwise pedestrian effort. That’s the general consensus seemingly held by the majority of folks online.

But that consensus is missing the point.

The series has actually gotten more entertaining with each new installment. No, seriously. The dramatic quality of each is arguable and the levels of stupidity have fluctuated (although they peaked with Woo’s film), but for sheer entertainment value each successive film has been bigger, more thrilling, and more technically impressive than the last.

And happily, that trend has continued with Brad Bird’s slightly goofy, deliriously fun and exciting as hell Ghost Protocol. It’s the best summer movie of the year… even if it did just open two weeks into December.

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) sits in a Russian prison for a handful of unsanctioned murders, but it’s not long before he’s busted out by ex-IMF teammate Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and newcomer Jane Carter (Paula Patton). His escape is followed by an infiltration at the Kremlin itself, but when the building is bombed a high-ranking US government official informs Hunt that the IMF has been disavowed and that he’s a wanted man.

Hunt and his rescuers are forced to work alone in order to search for the bomber, cleanse the agency’s reputation and save the world from nuclear annihilation. It’s truly an impossible mission for just three agents, but luckily they’re also graced with the presence of an analyst named William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) who brings their number to four. Together they’ll race from Moscow to Mumbai with a stop in Dubai for one of the best-looking set-pieces to grace theaters in years, and the audience can’t help but go along with the ride wearing ear to ear smiles.

The scene that’s already garnered the most advance buzz is Hunt’s scaling of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, and the praise is extremely well deserved. Hunt, and by extension Cruise who performs these stunts himself, dangles outside and climbs the exterior of the building thousands of feet high, and the visuals are simply breathtaking to behold on the big screen. Other sequences of note include a foot/car chase through a sand storm and an extended fight in a high tech parking garage. Bird captures the kinetics with a fine balance between spectacle and intimacy always ensuring the action is visible and not confused by rapid-fire editing.

Cruise has been counted down and out more times than probably any other actor, but he comes roaring back to life here with a strong performance that carries the heart of the film while still allowing the others to shine. Pegg gets most of the film’s best lines, and newcomer Renner proves himself more than capable as an action star (which bodes well for the upcoming Bourne film), but the real eye-opener here is Patton. Yes, yes, she’s a beauty, but she’s also a fine actress in scenes both dramatic and action oriented. Unlike Zoe Saldana or Angelina Jolie, Patton is a believable ass-kicker who I would gladly watch again and again. In slow motion.

All is not perfect with Bird’s first foray into live action though. He stretches the reach of physics almost as much as he did in The Incredibles, which of course was animated, but that’s to be expected in this and other big, summer action films. The real issues are due to the script by Josh Applebaum and André Nemec. The action beats and character work are mostly solid, but it completely fizzles with its villain. Michael Nyqvist seems capable of imbuing his genius madman with real menace and appeal, but he’s barely given anything to really do and even less to say. And his last onscreen act is simply nonsensical in the extreme.

The team’s status as a rogue group left flapping in the wind is driven home a bit too frequently with dialogue, but they never truly feel like they’re wanting for much. They easily get everywhere they need to go with changes of perfectly tailored clothes, money and more, and while we do see their equipment break down it becomes a running joke of sorts more than a legitimate hardship. On the narrative front, the film lacks the emotional punch present in M:I3. There Hunt was fighting for his life and his love (Michelle Monaghan)… here he’s looking for a really important briefcase.

It’s these issues and more, including some terribly cheesy CGI during the Kremlin explosion and a weakly written epilogue, that should mark the film with a B letter grade, except, and I say this as a (semi) professional… I’ll be goddamned if Ghost Protocol isn’t a shit-ton of fun to watch from beginning to end.

It’s worth noting that the film is in IMAX theaters now and opens in traditional theaters next Friday. Unlike the choice between 3D and 2D this is really a no-brainer… if at all possible go see this in IMAX. The Dubai tower scene alone is worth the price of admission, but you also get the added bonus of a cleavage battle between Patton and an assassin played by Lea Seydoux that erupts into an old-school brawl between the two.

Whatever you decide you can’t go wrong with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. The action scenes are massively enjoyable and will leave you breathless and spent, the banter is lively and fun, and Cruise proves once again why he’s the last real movie star left standing. Laugh at his off-screen antics if you must, but the guy puts in 100% as both performer and producer here, and it’s the audience that benefits. You’ll exit the theater having already chosen to accept the next Mission: Impossible.

The Upside: Stunning action sequences, most notably the Dubai tower scene; Paula Patton and Lea Seydoux cleavage; Tom Cruise makes Ethan Hunt believable action hero; Paula Patton and Lea Seydoux cat fight; supporting cast of characters adds charisma and feels important enough to prevent this from being a one-man show

The Downside: Some gaps in logic and intelligence as expected with the series; dodgy CGI in Kremlin explosion; incredibly weak villain; story lacks emotional punch thanks in part to epilogue; opening credits; too much time spent essentially chasing a briefcase

On the Side: Michael Nyqvist’s co-star from the original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Noomi Rapace, is also making her Hollywood debut this week with Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Tomas Alfredson‘s directorial follow-up to the beloved Let the Right One In is, on the outside, appears to be a drastically different film. Taken at face value, Let the Right One In is about a boy following in love with a vampire and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is about the search for a high-powered government mole. Digging deeper, both films are startlingly, but beautifully similar. They’re stories about repressed loners, even down to the smallest of characters and the most intimate of moments.

At the center of the lonely bunch is George Smiley, played by Gary Oldman, in an all internal and “it’s-in-the-eyes” performance. Very few spies are as emasculated, cold, and unsuave as Smiley & Co. Unlike the Bonds and Bournes of the spy world, by the end of this film, no one will wish they were these characters of the Circus.

A few weeks ago I had a chance to sit down with both Alfredson and Oldman for a quick interview where we discussed the paranoia-causing structure of the film, the gray enigma of George Smiley, and how much politer British spies are.

Warning: This interview contains spoilers.

I’ve actually seen the film three times now.

TA: Are you still confused? [Laughs]

[Laughs] I was a little shaky on the first viewing, but I think you find a lot of great little details that help on second and third viewing.

TA: Oh, good.

Did you always intended for it to be a film like that, one that takes a few viewings to soak in?

TA: It was not the intention to make it as difficult as possible to understand, no. The piece of the charm of this genre and John le Carré‘s work is that it is complicated and almost like you get paranoid yourself — you yourself become an investigator, with the material. I think our struggle was to make as much images as possible out of the actions referred to in the flashbacks and the present story. It’s very inspiring to hear how different people have seen the film. I think it’s fantastic to hear what people actually see in it.

GO: There was a guy the other night at the Q&A who was talking about the color red. I mean, there’s the nicotine-y kind of brown, the oranges, and things. Like you said [referring to Alfredson], you have an almost neutral palette. The guy was seeing red in every frame, and he asked if it was the threat of Communism and Russia, and whether it was a subliminal kind of thing you wanted to do.

TA: Yeah, yeah. [Laughs]

GO: But he saw that, so that’s not wrong.

TA: It’s not wrong, it’s what he saw.

That’s a good reading of it. The film actually reminded me of Let the Right One In. Underneath the genre stappings, it’s sort of this dark ensemble love story about loners, even with minor characters. Did you both approach the material that way?

GO: I think that’s how we both responded to the material and the book, and I think that’s why it’s had longevity. John le Carré doesn’t always get into the whole philosophical kind of polemic, it’s not overloaded with that. It’s about very lonely, fractured, and sometimes desperate people. It’s an emotional story.

Throughout the film there’s always this quiet determination to Smiley. When we first see him, he’s very emasculated, with losing his wife and his job. By searching for the mole, is he trying to prove something to himself or to others?

TA: My reading would be to others. I think he’s a 100% loyal in working for Queen and country. He’s from a generation that experienced the war. It’s nothing of the self-obsessed generation of today who goes to shrinks, complains, or, like you said, your mother never complains, so she must be from that generation. I think George is exactly like that. It’s the Queen, the country, his wife, and his friends. What he is about to see is what his friend has done not only to his wife, but to the country.

GO: The empire, yeah.

TA: As the mole says, at the end of the film, “You knew it was me all along, didn’t you?” I think that’s right, I think the mole is right. George did know who it was, and it’s one of the toughest things for him to accept.

GO: Again, you can interpret it. We believe George knows who it is before he lets the audience know who it is before the reveal. Here’s the thing, people say, “You’re very quiet and very still, but there’s a lot going on.” When we meet him, he’s been forced into retirement and he’s got the wife who’s another chip away at the stone, and God knows how many times he’s been through that. When he really keys and zeros in on Bill Haydon, before we know he really has, then he’s carrying that around. Yeah, there is a sadness and melancholy to him.

You get a sense, even with that brokenness to George and everyone else in the Circus, they’re very capable violence, despite never using it.

GO: Yeah, they would’ve been trained.

TA: Yeah, in an old fashioned way, if George would confront someone, it would be like this [note: Alfredson and Oldman quickly reenact this scene]. [Laughs] He would do it like a gentlemen, but he would be able to do it. He knows how to use a revolver, but he also knows how effective he could talk people into stuff. In a broader sense, a gun is something you wouldn’t use very often. I asked John le Carré if he would ever use torture, who said, “No, never. Why would we? You don’t do that to people, you have to be nice and proper. Secondly, the information you would retrieve through torture would be useless.”

GO: And it’s very British. If you just take the fact Germany started the war, it was their fault, and they invaded Poland, then that was the beginning of it. We countered and joined the war against them, fascism, and the whole thing. In turn, we bombed the hell out of them. And then we went, gave them money, and helped build their society up. It’s a very sort of British thing, “We won the war, so now we’ll help you out.”

TA: ”Come on, can I help you?” [Laughs]

GO: I think George shows his colors. Also, Haydon’s sex is obviously ambiguous. Well, he’s obviously a bisexual, probably leaning more to homosexual. [Pause] I lost my train of thought…

TA: You’re maybe aiming for the ending scene? Where Bill says, “There’s a girl and a boy, can you help me?” They’re two polite gentlemen. Here Smiley is in front of the mole, and they’re speaking very politely to each other.

GO: In a way, it’s like Haydon is empty in that end scene. He’s crying, but is he really crying? Maybe they caressed him a bit, but he says he doesn’t mind the tears, just the excitement. Look at what Smiley’s feeling, who isn’t crying, despite what he’s carrying. At the end of it, to top it off, he turns and says, “Is there anything you want me to tell Ann?” He cares about Ann, but it’s so bloody British. Nowadays we’d wanna do a fistfight [Laughs]. I love the fact he asks if there’s anything in the particurally he wants to tell Ann.

That final scene where you see George get Ann back and sits at the head of the Circus table is kind of a funny scene, with how it’s a bit of a hollow victory. By the end, does George really win anything?

TA: Order has been reinstored. There is some –

I should clarify and say if he achieves anything on an emotional level.

TA: Right. I’m not sure that seat he enters, in the end, is for him.

GO: No, no, he takes over temporarily, just to sort of tidy things up.

TA: There are needles on that chair, when he sits down. In that way, it’s not a happy ending.

GO: And Ann’s back, for now.

At one point Rickie Tarr says, “I don’t wanna end up like you bunch.” Despite knowing what their lives are, is he still destined to end up like George, Bill, and Jim?

GO: Yeah, I think he means it. I know Tomas screened the film at MI6, for the real guys, and, on a scale of one to ten, that line was an eleven.

TA: They all understood it.

GO: They all understood exactly what he said. I mean, the personal sacrifices must be, you know, very tough to think about.

I think that ties in well with this line Jim has, where he says to the boy, “Loners are the best watchers.”

TA: Yeah, that is what Jim Prideaux says to that kid, who he knows is the type of person who would be drawn into that world.

GO: Yeah, good spy material.

TA: When he says to the kid, “Go out and play with the others,” he’s rescuing him.

—

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is now in theaters.

Yeah, Chipmunks. How do you like it when we change your words?

Another week of movies. Another week of slight disappointments. Sherlock came out on top, but both Game of Shadows and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked came in under expectations. Neither were major letdowns but noticeable enough. Chipwrecked debuted at half of what The Squeakquel brought, while Game of Shadows made about 2/3 of what Sherlock Holmes did. This could be a good indication of the law of believed diminishing returns on the sequels, not believing they’ll get their money’s worth. In the case of Chipwrecked, it could just mean kids are getting movied out. The past few weeks have been inundated with new family features.

That gap between the two Sherlock Holmes openings is interesting, though. Is the Robert Downey Jr. shine polishing off? Doubtful. Downey’s films haven’t hit grand slams every time, and A Game of Shadows did well enough to sustain anyone involved. Longevity will be the key to the film’s ultimate success, and without a ton of competition to come in the weeks ahead, Sherlock Holmes will have a slightly open field to run.

One of the movies it’ll be running into dipped its toes in the water this weekend. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, opening on only 400 IMAX screens with a wide expansion to come this Wednesday, pulled a $30,588 per screen average for an impressive $13m weekend take. That’s just a bit South of expectations, but its still something for Paramount to be proud of. Part of this weekend’s success could be partial thanks to Warner Brothers, though. The Dark Knight Rises prologue that ran before around 40 or so IMAX prints of Ghost Protocol was surely a factor in Mission: Impossible‘s success. Probably not a lot. With growing ticket prices, people tend to shy away from buying one just to see a trailer.

The awards season is officially in full bloom with Young Adult, the latest pairing between Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody, jumping to nearly 1000 screens and pulling in $3.6m for its efforts. More expansions like this are sure to come all through January with more and more Oscar contenders hitting the field. Ritman’s films have never been fast starters, always inching into expansion and pulling very impressive numbers. However, Juno‘s $143.4m domestic take might be a bit out of Young Adult’s grasp. It will still end up doing well for itself from repeat customers.

Here’s how the weekend broke down:

1. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows – $40m NEW
2. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked – $23.5m NEW
3. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol – $13m NEW
4. New Year’s Eve – $7.4m (-43%) $24.8m total
5. The Sitter – $4.4m (-55.3%) $17.7m total
6. Breaking Dawn Part 1 – $4.3m (-45%) $266.4m total
7. Young Adult – $3.6m (+1076.4m) $4m total
8. Hugo – $3.6m (-40.1%) $39m total
9. Arthur Christmas – $3.6m (-44.7%) $38.5m total
10. The Muppets – $3.4m (-50.5%) $70.9m total

$106.8m isn’t a huge downturn from the comparable weekend this time last year. At that time, Tron Legacy led the charge to $124.5m. Still, with the current crop as well as the high end movies yet to come in 2011, the box office is sure to be just fine despite a few dips here and there.

Next weekend, otherwise known as Christmas weekend, sees a huge batch of films vying for box office dollars. The Adventures of Tintin and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo hitting on Wednesday, the 21st. We Bought a Zoo follows with a 3000-screen release on Friday. Then, on Christmas day, The Darkest Hour and Steven Spielberg’s other film this week, War Horse, drop into the mix. It’s going to be an interesting Christmas week of movies.

We’ll be back on Tuesday to see how the Christmas weekend is shaping up.

Why Watch? It’s your two-minute vacation to Panama.

Using distinctive camera angles, this brief journey takes colorful shards of life and cements them together to create a vibrating stained glass postcard that doesn’t require a passport. You’re about to have a whole lot of fun (and maybe find some poetry).

What does it cost? Just 2 minutes of your time.

Check out Panama + City for yourself:

PANAMA + CITY (2011)

Trust us. You have time for more short films.

The holidays are a time for families, gift-giving, and general peace on Earth. Unfortunately, it’s also a time of high crime rates, robberies, and evil-doers who take advantage of the innocent. With all the money being spent at the malls, and how often people leave their own homes during the holidays, these safe havens are often a target for prowlers. Just ask the Wet Bandits, who ran a mostly-successful crime spree in Chicago in the early 1990s, before they were thwarted by eight-year-old Kevin McCallister.

However, times are tough, and the economy still isn’t what it should be. Not everyone can afford a new-fangled security system…or even an old-fangled security system that the McCallisters should have had on their home in 1990. There are still plenty of ways to protect your home from prowlers this year, using found items, and a dose of cleverness.

1. Take precautions

Just because someone shows up at your house wearing a policeman’s uniform does not mean that guy is a real policeman. So much can be prevented by not disclosing your entire vacation schedule and home security system to this potential robber…especially if your plan to protect your home is to keep the lights on a timer and simply lock the doors. Oh, and be extra-cautious if the cop has a gold tooth because Hollywood teaches us that only bad guys and pirates have those.

2. Exercise your second amendment right

Even if you live in a town where firearms are forbidden, it always helps to keep a pump-action BB gun lying around as your first line of defense against robbers, action figures and spatulas.

3. Stock up on firecrackers and old gangster films

If the BB gun fails, bring out the big guns…or at least the appearance of big guns. Get your grubby paws on an old copy of the classic gangster film Angels with Filthy Souls and play the assassination sequences on a loop. Add a dose of realism to the event by setting off firecrackers in a soup pan so would-be intruders will think they’re actually being shot at.

4. Fight fire with fire…and ice

Any military expert will tell you the best way to protect a fortress is to establish a perimeter and defend it. Prevent crooks from breaching your perimeter by icing the stairs and heating the doorknobs. If they manage to get past these, a well-placed blowtorch aimed at head-level should send them running…if they’re smart.

5. Lay traps with sharp objects

The average suburban home is an arsenal of dangerous objects. You don’t need knives, blades, and saws (though those can help in a pinch as well). Simple things like glass Christmas ornaments under the window or heavy-duty nails poking out of the stairs will do the trick. Of course, this only works if you can convince the intruders to take off their shoes first, so coat the first four or five stairs in your cellar with tar. This will cause both shoes and socks to stick fast, leaving the intruder barefoot and vulnerable.

6. Deploy heavy objects

If the intruders manage to breach your perimeter and make it into the house, it’s time to bring the blunt pain. Heavy objects like steam irons and paint cans make ideal projectiles to crack a few skulls.

7. Utilize nature

Some folks keep a family dog as both a pet and a security system, and that will work. But if you don’t want to deal with midnight walks and puddles on the carpet, invest in some creepy crawly creatures to tap into the phobias of your enemy. Kevin McCallister used a tarantula, but snakes, rats. and Madagascar hissing cockroaches are always other options.

8. Engage in psychological warfare

No military objective is entirely successful without undermining the morale of your enemy. Psychological warfare is an essential element in battle, and it can be employed in the protection of your house during the holidays. Whether this involves tarring and feathering any intruders or laying out some toy cars so they fall on their asses, you can reduce them to a deep state of emotional distress.

9. Always have an exit strategy

Any good horror movie demonstrates what a terrible idea it is to always run upstairs for safety. As advantageous as the higher ground can be on a battlefield, it can leave you trapped and exposed in a house or other building. So, if you retreat to the attic or the roof, always have an escape route planned, such as a zip line made of braided rope and old bicycle handlebars. This is particularly effective because once you escape, you can scorch the route by cutting the line, preferably when your enemy is trying to use it to catch you.

Gird your loins and learn more violent holiday tactics with the rest of the entries in our 2011 Holiday Survival Guide.

Roger Corman’s career in show business spans nearly 60 years, so audiences may initially wonder what might be left to say in a documentary about the exploitation master. Yet Alex Stapleton’s Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel offers a comprehensive, enlightening portrait of this most influential filmmaker-mogul. The doc offers a well-rounded treatise on Corman’s indelible influence, benefiting from a strong cast of talking head contributors and the ease with which Stapleton parallels his subject’s career with larger historical currents within the industry.

The movie employs a straightforward linear approach in charting Corman’s filmmaking life, which began when the Stanford engineering grad found work in 20th Century Fox’s mailroom, advanced to the position of story reader, and eventually quit to begin making pictures himself during the ’50s. It charts the highlights of Corman’s various periods, including the American International Pictures and New World Pictures eras, and offers a wealth of testimony from Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, and others of the premier cinematic talents who got their starts with the B-movie maestro.

That Corman impacted so many famous careers is not a new revelation, but the spectacle of so much A-list talent (add Jonathan Demme and John Sayles to the ranks, among others) testifying to his pervasive influence drives the point home forcefully. When Nicholson chokes up talking about what Corman’s meant to his professional life, or Howard breaks into a childlike grin while he recalls directing Grand Theft Auto, the message comes alive in a unique, valuable way.

At the same time, the picture hinges on the compelling surprise revelation that Corman’s not the heady, mad-barking huckster one might have expected, but a kindly, conservative-dressing, old-fashioned elderly man. He waxes eloquently and speaks with such a strong, refined self-assuredness that you almost can’t believe that he helped dream up something like Night Call Nurses.

To the engaging mix, Stapleton adds period footage, choice clips from Corman’s highlights (among them House of Usher and Little Shop of Horrors), and lowlights and a strong sense of the ways this innovator revamped Hollywood filmmaking and its target audience before the studios caught on and outspent him.

The documentary meanders at times, as would any flick of this structurally cut-and-dry mold. There aren’t any meaty behind-the-scenes stories or tales of drug-fueled blow-ups, the stuff that really grabs one’s attention when it comes to these sorts of insider-driven enterprises. Corman’s World is the simply told story of a complex man or wildly contrasting tastes and images, who launched a multitude of amazing careers and changed his industry forever. And that’s more than sufficient.

The Upside: This is an insightful, engaging look at a cinematic legend.

The Downside: The film employs a cut-and-dry, straightforward structure that limits its effectiveness.

On the Side: Roger Corman is still going strong now, producing movies some 57 years after he started in the business. That’s amazing.

Dear reader, I come to you bearing the gravest of news. Hollywood is not making enough money. Tragic, I know, but there is something we can do. Something we must do. We must get out our checkbooks and donate to the big studios. We must shower them with money. For, hide the children, movie viewership is down to a 16 year low. For crying out loud, only 1.2 billion movie tickets were sold in America!

How have we as a country let this happen? Where have we gone wrong? Reuters, The Daily Mail, they’re all reporting the lackluster year Hollywood has had. This is serious, people. This is big news. Studio executives everywhere are “battling” against a soft audience and struggling to match the numbers of previous years.

Let me find my tiny violin, will you?

Who feels bad for Hollywood? Not me. I mean, first of all, 1.2 billion movie tickets were sold. That’s a lot of tickets. We’re only looking at a decline of around 12% and with an average U.S. ticket price of $7.89, that gives us ticket receipts in the neighborhood of $9,500,000,000. That’s around 9.5 billion dollars. I have trouble feeling sympathy when the industry as a whole is selling that many tickets because we’re not counting rentals, home video sales, and all the other stuff that bring cash into the system.

Making movies is a business, and it’s a big business, but let’s be careful where we assign the blame. It’s not like audiences are to blame for not going to the movies more often. You can say the economy is down, but clearly that’s not a huge factor since the drop in sales isn’t all that much. Look at the popular movies this year – they’re still amazingly profitable. A movie like Transformers 3 still pulled in a ton of dough to the tune of more than $350m. The news agency points to the relatively disappointing opening of Sherlock Holmes, but what they’re forgetting to take into account is that the first film is lackluster. Who came out of that movie loving it? Not many people I know. Sure, it was serviceable, but not one that made me want to rush out and see the next one. Same story on the soft opening of that shitty Chipmunks sequel.

If Hollywood wants to bring more people into the theaters or increase revenue, there are a couple of things they could try. Like first, making better movies. Put a little effort into what you’re pumping out, eh? Second, spend less money making movies. When you blow upwards of $100m on a shitty film, yeah, you’re going to have trouble making that money back. Third, negotiate new deals with the theater chains. Cut the ticket price down a bit, so money is less of a factor.

Let’s not pretend for one second that when people want to see a movie, that they won’t see it. I guarantee you The Dark Knight Rises is going to make money hand over batfist. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol made some solid money from its early opening, showing a good pace. People will pay to see movies if you make it worth it.

So cry all you want, Hollywood, but you will be crying alone and I don’t even have a violin to play for you. Ticket sales are down, sort of. Some months weren’t, some films do well, that’s the nature of capitalism. Remember, this is a business – make a better product and more people will buy it. But I’ve got no sympathy any time I see a boo-hoo box office is down news article and I go a little bit past my boiling point.

Dry your tears and read more Boiling Point

Wow.

Wow is all there is.

With all eyes on Christopher Nolan to find a fitting ending for the massive phenomenon that he’s turned into an even more massive phenomenon, the director and everyone involved seems to have pointed beyond the bleachers and out into the parking lot with this full length trailer for The Dark Knight Rises. It’s got Christian Bale getting existential as Batman, Tom Hardy as Bane looking ominous with a bomb and Anne Hathaway representing the unwashed masses as a masked Selina Kyle.

In fact, it’s got enough red meat to make any old fan happy – and to prove that Nolan and company are not shying away from the greatness of their challenge.

Watch the full trailer for The Dark Knight Rises:

Check it out for yourself over in High Definition at Apple.com and revel in the glorious splendor.

The main question with the marketing, and with this trailer specifically, is whether Batman will die by the end of this one. And why shouldn’t he? Nolan doesn’t have anything to lose here. Neither does Warners. He and his team can do just about anything creatively, and the money is still going to be dumped out on their doorstep.

So why not shoot for the moon? Why not aim for those bleachers? Why not blow up a football field while Hines Ward runs away without realizing the ground is shaking?

But seriously, this thing looks so damned good.When the legend ends, I have a feeling the movie’s own saga will just be beginning.

Agree?

Here’s a fun way to release some movie news or marketing on a day when no one will care about it – drop a trailer onto Apple within the very hour that they premiere the first official trailer for The Dark Knight Rises. Death wish, right? Either that, or the team over at Warner Bros. wants to push stuff out before the holiday or (more likely), their brand-new Wrath of the Titans trailer was always slated to premiere today, but WB had to jump the gun when that horrific cell-phone video bootleg of the TDKR trailer hit the web and was spread across the Internet as if copyrights laws never existed.

Whatever the reason is, now also have the first theatrical trailer for Wrath of the Titans, the sequel to Clash of the Titans or That Time Warner Bros. Launched a Truly Terrible Post-Production 3D Conversion Job and Everyone Still Went to Go See It. While we can’t judge the 3D from this trailer, one thing is for sure – this next entry into the ostensible …of the Titans franchise is super-wrathy.

If you’ve already watched today’s trailer for The Dark Knight Rises enough, check out the trailer for Wrath of the Titans after the break.

I’m not entirely sure what the hell that all was – but, at the very least, Jonathan Liebsman‘s film appears to come crammed with enough fearsome mythical monsters and terrible Sam Worthington hairstyling choices to keep the masses (and maybe even me too) entertained.

Let’s go to the official synopsis for more:

A decade after his heroic defeat of the monstrous Kraken, Perseus (Worthington) – the demigod son of Zeus (Neeson) – is attempting to live a quieter life as a village fisherman and the sole parent to his 10-year old son, Helius. Meanwhile, a struggle for supremacy rages between the gods and the Titans. Dangerously weakened by humanity’s lack of devotion, the gods are losing control of the imprisoned Titans and their ferocious leader, Kronos, father of the long-ruling brothers Zeus, Hades (Fiennes) and Poseidon (Danny Huston). The triumvirate had overthrown their powerful father long ago, leaving him to rot in the gloomy abyss of Tartarus, a dungeon that lies deep within the cavernous underworld. Perseus cannot ignore his true calling when Hades, along with Zeus’ godly son, Ares (Edgar Ramirez), switch loyalties and make a deal with Kronos to capture Zeus. The Titans’ strength grows stronger as Zeus’ remaining godly powers are siphoned, and hell is unleashed on earth. Enlisting the help of the warrior Queen Andromeda (Rosamund Pike), Poseidon’s demigod son, Argenor (Toby Kebbell), and fallen god Hephaestus (Bill Nighy), Perseus bravely embarks on a treacherous quest into the underworld to rescue Zeus, overthrow the Titans and save mankind.

Nope, still no clue what the hell this is about. Isn’t this what Immortals covered? Whatever! Wrath! Fire! Many things with two heads! Sexy people!

Wrath of the Titans marches angrily and purposely into theaters on March 30, 2012. [Apple, /Film]

With the 2012 Sundance Film Festival kicking off in, oh my, God, is that right? just one month, it’s time that the fest announce its straggler titles – four more picks joining the already-phenomenal line-up of films that, for whatever reason, weren’t quite ready to be announced when the listing of 117 other feature-length films were released. These four titles join three different sections – there’s one Premiere, two Spotlights (films that have shown at other festivals that the Sundance crew can’t help but share come January), and one Park City at Midnight title. At least one of these films made me stand up and cheer upon reading of its addition.

I won’t tease you – it’s John Dies at the End. Don Coscarelli‘s take on David Wong‘s novel will have its World Premiere at the festival, and I cannot even remotely wait. Also joining the fest? Philip Dorling and Ron Nyswaner‘s Predisposed, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Melissa Leo, and Tracy Morgan, along with the North American premiere of Sean Penn fright wig drama This Must Be the Place and Norway’s own Oslo, August 31st.

Check out the full listing details of all four additions after the break.

PREMIERES
Predisposed / U.S.A. (Directors & Screenwriters: Philip Dorling, Ron Nyswaner) — Eli Smith, a piano prodigy, is dealing with his troubled mother and enlisting help from a hapless drug dealer on the day he has an audition for a prestigious music program. Events spiral comically out of control as this gang of misfits faces the mistakes of the past, the challenges of the future, and the possibilities of love. Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Melissa Leo, Tracy Morgan, Sarah Ramos, Isiah Whitlock Jr. World Premiere.

SPOTLIGHT
Oslo, August 31st / Norway (Director: Joachim Trier, Screenwriters: Eskil Vogt & Joachim Trier based on a novel by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle) — One man, one city, 24 hours. Oslo, August 31st is a portrait of contemporary Oslo. A visually striking and quietly shattering drama about a man in deep existential crisis. Cast: Anders Danielsen Lie, Hans Olav Brenner, Ingrid Olava, Tone B. Mostraum.

This Must Be The Place / Italy, France, Ireland (Director: Paolo Sorrentino, Screenwriter: Umberto Contarello, Paolo Sorrentino) — A bored, retired rock star sets out to find his father’s executioner, an ex-Nazi war criminal who is a refugee in the U.S. Cast: Sean Penn, Frances McDormand, Judd Hirsch. North American Premiere.

PARK CITY AT MIDNIGHT
JOHN DIES AT THE END / U.S.A. (Director: Don Coscarelli, Screenwriter: Don Coscarelli, based on a novel by David Wong) — On the street they call it Soy Sauce – a drug that allows users to drift across time and dimensions. But some who come back are no longer human. Can John and David stop the oncoming horror? No. They can’t. Cast: Chase Williamson, Rob Mayes, Paul Giamatti, Clancy Brown, Glynn Turman. World Premiere.
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If you’re in need of a refresher course on everything that’s hitting sleepy old Park City, Utah in just a month’s time, check out the list of films in-competition; the Spotlight, Next, Midnights, and New Frontiers picks; and the full run of premieres and documentary premieres.

FSR’S own Allison Loring and, well, FSR’s own me have booked our plane tickets (prop plane both ways, naturally) and our sleeping accommodations (a charming log cabin in the woods – just kidding, it’s a condo that sleeps about twelve, all bloggers) for this year’s festival, so if anything on the Sundance line-up is striking your fancy in a big way and you want (nay – demand) a patented Film School Rejects Sundance Review of it, why don’t you let us know in the comments?

This year’s festival runs from January 19 through 29 in Park City, Utah.