The Good, The Bad and the Ugly Films

Posts Tagged ‘Ashton Kutcher’

Ross hosts this episode of the GBUF Podcast, an all reviews show. Today, we review the new releases of: Valentine’s Day, Legion, Edge of Darkness, and The New Daughter.

What did we think these movies did right? What did they get wrong? Why didn’t one of the lead actors in Valentine’s Day wave a shotgun or a handgun around? Get the answers to almost all of these burning questions by listening to the podcast.

Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day follows the lives of several couples in this light-hearted comedy. Their ups and downs in the game of love. All of the stories are inter-connected in a bit of a ham-fisted way, but it still works as a good date movie. The cast is populated with many stars, including: Ashton Kutcher, Bradley Cooper, Julia Roberts, Jamie Foxx, Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Taylor Lautner, Topher Grace, Queen Latifah, Hector Elizondo, Patrick Dempsey and Jennifer Garner.

John: BAD Mark: GOOD (after I finished) Ross: N/A

Legion

Legion takes place in a diner on the outskirts of Las Vegas. The angel Michael comes down from heaven to protect a pregnant woman and her unborn child, who, no surprise here, is going to be the next saviour of mankind. The other angels don’t like this idea so much, feeling that the time of man is coming to a close and try to speed up the apocalypse by killing the woman and anyone trying to help her. This stars Paul Bettany, Dennis Quaid, Lucas Black, Charles S Dutton, Tyrese Gibson and Kevin Durand.

John: BAD Mark: BAD Ross: UGLY

Edge of Darkness

Mel Gibson stars as Thomas Craven, a homicide detective that loses his daughter to an unknown assailant at his house. Working under the impression that he was the intended target, he is set straight by Jedburgh, a corporate “fixer” played by Ray Winstone. His investigation into his daughter’s life leads him to darker and darker places in his search for justice and revenge.

John: BAD Mark: BAD Ross: BAD

The New Daughter

Kevin Costner plays a father with two children whose wife has recently left him for another man. He and the kids move to an idyllic town in South Carolina. The daughter, played by Pan’s Labyrinth’s Ivana Baquero, starts acting even stranger than a regular teen girl acts, which leads the dad to start investigating the strange mound on his property. This movie went directly to DVD/Blu-Ray.

John: UGLY Mark: UGLY Ross: UGLY

If you’ve seen any of these movies and would like to add your comments, then please feel free to do so right here on the article, or email us at podcast@goodbaduglyfilms.com. You can also leave us a voice mail via Skype. You never know… we might just play your message on one of the podcasts.

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Good

According to the Kino Lorber Blog, the newly restored version of Metropolis that premiered in February at the Berlin Film Festival (and that we were talking about way back in July of 2009), will finally be getting some screenings here in North America starting THIS MONTH. It’ll first show at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on April 25 as part of the TCM Classic Film Festival. In May, it’ll start making its way to select theatres in both the US and Canada.

Being billed as the Complete Metropolis, the restored film now clocks in at 147 minutes, a full 25 minutes longer than previous versions. It’ll play with the original Gottfried Huppertz score too. This is probably going to be as close as we’re ever going to get to the 153 minute (estimated) version that first premiered in 1927.

That’s not all… It’ll be available on DVD and Blu Ray by November. No word yet on what special features, if any, will be on the discs, but I know what I’d like: a featurette on the the restoration process, previous releases of the film, and maybe a documentary about Fritz Lang and any comments he might have made about Metropolis and, to his knowledge at the time, the loss of so much of the film’s original material.

Bad

Take a look at the poster for Killers, the new movie starring Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl. Could they have made it any more bland?

Which crowd are they appealing to here? Just the ones that like pretty people? According to the IMDb page for the movie, it’s supposed to be an Action / Comedy / Thriller. I’m not getting action or thriller from the poster. All I get is a sick feeling that despite all the shortcomings, this movie is still going to do well enough that it’ll spawn a sequel. Blah.

When you compare it to a similar poster, like the one for the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie remake of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which is also an action comedy thriller (with  a bit of romance added), the differences are glaring.

There’s some action in their posing with their knees bent and the fact that Brad’s gun is cocked. The hidden gun in the garter on Angelina’s thigh with that very high cut dress convey the thrills and danger. OK, there’s not a lot of comedy in this one, but it does make you want to see the film more than the maybe-I’ll-rent-it-one-day Killers one does.

Ugly

Universal Studios is really showing which side of the fence it comes down on with two announcements. The first being that it is halting pre-production on the Josh Brolin drug movie, Cartel. It was supposed to go into full production within the next five weeks in Mexico.

The studio confirmed the move and released this statement: “Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment ceased pre-production of Cartel today. As much as we had hoped to begin filming this spring in Mexico City, the studio and its producing partners did not feel it was creatively ready to move forward under the timetable and budget we had established. We thank all of the filmmakers, cast and crew for their work during pre-production.”

-Deadline

What did Universal decide to greenlight instead? That brings us to the second announcement… The terrifically unfunny Johnny English, starring Rowan Atkinson of Mr. Bean fame, is getting a sequel. Yay. I’d much rather be spoon fed a bowl of tasteless slop than actually have to use my brain and engage with adult themes. -Mark

The Good

Ok, again the lead is not exactly movie related, but kicks ass none-the-less! Google has made available every back issue of Spin Magazine! Yes, the magazine is music based, but there are movie reviews! ¦¬)

The Bad

Bad News for Ivan Reitman. According to Vulture, Columbia is looking to drop the director  from his franchise and find a younger director to helm Ghostbusters III.

The studio’s strategy is to revitalize the franchise for next year by having the original ‘busters train a dramatically younger crew in Ghostbusters III, while a correspondingly younger director handles things behind the camera… at 63, Reitman (whose last movie was the bomb My Super Ex-Girlfriend) is precisely what the studio isn’t looking for: While the second draft of the script for Ghostbusters III — penned by The Office writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky — won’t be handed in until May, insiders say that by introducing a group of twentysomething ‘busters, Columbia’s brass hopes to do with the franchise what it’s doing with Spider-Man by hiring on (500) Days of Summer director Marc Webb.

-from Vulture

To be fair, given Reitman’s last few outings as director, Columbia can’t be blamed as the director has not been up to the standards he created himself. Even still, I can not help feeling bad for the guy, especially after the really nice things he said about his son at the Oscars – his humility made him quite endearing. Reitman has been signed on to direct Friends With Benefits with Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher, and maintains a lot of creative control on GBIII, so it is not like he has been completely put out to pasture.

The Ugly

A director with a much better recent track record is PT Anderson, whose last film There Will Be Blood ran neck to neck with the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men in the 2007 Oscar race, has seen his most recent project given a pass by Universal. The Master, which is the story of the founding of a Scientology-esque faith-based organization has Philip Seymour Hoffman attached and Jeremy Renner in talks, but was rejected by Universal because of it’s $35 million budget. Bear in mind that Universal just spent $150 million of The Wolfman, and that was such a wise investment! There is little doubt that the film will move ahead somewhere else; Anderson could always make his characters blue, set it on a Utopian planet and sell it to Fox for 10 times the current budget!

Speaking of which… yesterday i made a call to arms over Fox’s premeditated double-dipping of Avatar. Turns out, that was not completely right – there is a triple dip planned, the third of which will be a 3D version compatible for new 3D-TVs.