Box Office Synopsis

Going the DistanceGoing the Distance

One of America's sweethearts, Drew Barrymore, curses a blue streak in Going the Distance, a comedy that melds the traditional RomCom with the cheerfully profane bromantic style pioneered by Judd Apatow. American Teen director Nanette Burstein turns to narrative features with this tale of lovers trying to maintain a relationship even though they live thousands of miles apart, a confident debut imbued with the understanding that the best date movie is one even a guy could love. Likely to resonate with a generation of young people to whom When Harry Met Sally's orgasm scene seems downright quaint, this bawdy comedy is poised to go the distance at the box office.

Erin (Drew Barrymore), an aspiring journalist, and Garrett (Justin Long), a record company junior executive, meet-cute over a game of Centipede in a New York bar. He's been dumped that very night, while she will be returning to California to finish her master's degree at Stanford in just a few weeks. So their hook up is supposed to be just that, but the one-night stand evolves into something much deeper and neither is willing to break the budding romance off despite the 3,000 miles standing in their way.

The stuff of tabloids for their on-again/off-again relationship in life, Barrymore and Long are adorable together. Even with some of the more outrageous lines that screenwriter Geoff LaTulippe has sprouting from Erin and Garret's mouths there is a sweetness there that makes them easy to root for as a couple. LaTulippe's stroke of genius was to saddle them with professions that would probably be shrinking rather than expanding even in a healthier economy. Erin is already worried that she is late in starting her career and now journalism jobs are growing ever more elusive. Garrett is just as frustrated at his boss Will's (Ron Livingston) unwillingness to sign any band that doesn't have mass commercial appeal. But he knows he's lucky to have a job in music and she knows she has to go where the jobs are, even if it's not back to New York and her beloved. The long-distance affair is frustrating, but they don't really have a choice.

Surrounding the couple are her overprotective sister, Corinne (Christina Applegate), and his best buds, Dan (Charlie Day) and Box (Jason Sudekis). Applegate is a gifted comedian, but here she is stuck in that hoary cliché of a role, the long married lady with complaints about her husband and her sex life that aren't too far removed from TV sitcom humor. Day and Sudeikis fare much better, giving even people who hate RomComs reason to see the movie. The pair is on hand to add not only a welcome sprinkling of bromance, but also the biggest laughs in the movie. Day, in particular, as Garrett's roommate who delights in disturbing the couple in the next room through their paper-thin shared wall (and who makes winning use of Garrett's apparent obsession with the movie Top Gun) is as delightful as he is demented. Both actors are hilarious, stealing every scene they're in.

Some of the movie's crude humor emphasizes the crude and forgets about the humor, and it occasionally labors under the mistaken impression that characters simply sprouting profanities is funny (does that work anywhere other than South Park anymore?). Despite those occasional missteps, Going the Distance is a winner: obscene, yes, but also as enormously appealing as the couple at its center.

Distributor: Warner Bros.
Cast: Drew Barrymore, Justin Long, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Christina Applegate and Ron Livingston
Director: Nanette Burstein
Screenwriter: Geoff LaTulippe
Producers: Jennifer Gibgot, Garrett Grant and Adam Shankman
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Rating: R for sexual content including dialogue, language throughout, some drug use and brief nudity.
Running time: 103 min
Release date: September 3, 2010

by Pam Grady

Machete

Viva Machete! Thanks to the Arizona-bred immigration brouhaha, the timing couldn't be better for Robert Rodriguez to push Latino Power. But it's jocular splatter not political satire that makes his latest exploitation flick a winner. While a blunt instrument (the lines in star Danny Trejo's face are deeper than the movie), Machete provides ample end-of-summer fun. How often can you see Cheech Marin nailed to a cross or Lindsay Lohan in a threesome with Trejo and the actress playing her mother? The real rub is whether that's enough for Machete to shatter the Grindhouse ceiling or outperform more recent duds like Jonah Hex and Piranha 3D.

Prompted by the positive response to a trailer that appeared between Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof and his own Planet Terror, Rodriguez has decided to give prolific trouper Trejo his first leading role. Actually, the director traces the idea of a knife-wielding, Hispanic vigilante back to Desperado, in which Trejo's charisma in a small role attracted the most attention from locals on the Mexican set. Were it not for his hardscrabble life experiences, including substance abuse battles and stints in jail, you might say LA native Trejo--he of the unmistakably bad-ass visage and inked torso--was born to play this honorable killer.

An ex-Federale whose wife and daughter are executed by drug lord Torrez (Steven Seagal) in the prologue, Machete gets his shot (er, slice) at revenge three years later. Lying low as a day laborer in Texas, he's hired by a shady gent (Jeff Fahey) to assassinate a virulently anti-immigration State Senator played by Robert De Niro. Naturally, he's double-crossed. What the scumbags behind the right-wing conspiracy he exposes don't realize is that Machete is virtually impossible to kill (or sideline for more than a few frames). Felling opponents with anything sharp--a corkscrew, shards of glass, gardening shears, weed whackers and, of course, machetes--Machete does right by his people and B-movie dynamics at the same time.

The action constitutes a virtual cornucopia of impalings, severed appendages and decapitations, along with the requisite spurting of blood. Yet the camera doesn't dawdle over the gore. In fact, Rodriguez could have made more of the terrifically grotesque sequence in which Machete fashions an escape rope out of a henchman's intestines. And watching Marin's gun-toting Padre crucified in his own sanctuary is wince-worthy without being graphic or disturbingly sacrilegious. The only major disappointment is Machete's showdown with a sword-wielding Torrez. This too-swift encounter happens during a climactic rumble between the Mexican dishwashers, gardeners and low-riders Machete empowers and the vicious, border-protecting rednecks led by Don Johnson's character, Von.

The emphasis is on accessible humor in the form of double entendres, sight gags, mock TV commercials and dialogue peppered with Spanish slang. It's stuff that any 18 year old guy will get, although arguably the funniest line constitutes a salvo in the intergenerational (and cross-cultural) technology wars: "Machete don't text," delivered by Trejo in menacingly hilarious deadpan. The movie's championing of illegal immigrants and America's Chicano underclass is pertinent without being substantive.

The ensemble is a huge plus. De Niro salutes his Heat co-star, Trejo, with his best-ever slumming stint and maybe his best performance of any kind in years. And, of course, lady magnet Machete gets to juggle two comely Latinas: sympathetic immigration agent Sartana, played by Jessica Alba, and revolutionary burrito-slinger Luz, embodied by Michelle Rodriguez. Finally, Lohan may have found showbiz salvation in the role of the drug-addled daughter of Fahey's gringo villain, a sullied maiden with incestuous ties to both her parents who gets to exact her own revenge while wearing a nun's habit.

Rodriguez shares directing credit with protégé Ethan Maniquis. The division of labor isn't known but, while the production has its moments, no one will point to Machete as a sterling example of retro visual aesthetics. Technical considerations, like politics, are a mere means to the end called "entertainment." The picture concludes by briefly touting two sequels, Machete Kills and Machete Kills Again. As good a time as Machete offers, it's not likely to spawn a sequel starring Trejo. Given the target demographic's desire to watch Michelle Rodriguez's washboard abs and Alba's willingness to be photographed naked in the shower, there's a better chance Luz or Sartana will get a spinoff.

Distributor: Fox
Cast: Danny Trejo, Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Steven Seagal, Michelle Rodriguez, Jeff Fahey, Cheech Marin, Don Johnson and Lindsay Lohan
Directors: Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis
Screenwriters: Robert Rodriguez and Álvaro Rodríguez
Producers: Robert Rodriguez, Elizabeth Avellan, Aaron Kaufman, Quentin Tarantino and Rick Schwartz
Genre: Crime/Action/Drama; English- and Spanish-language, subtitled
Rating: R for strong bloody violence throughout, language, some sexual content and nudity.
Running time: 105 min
Release date: September 3, 2010

Piranha 3D

Are you a breast man? An ass man? Or a fish man? Either way, there's plenty of all three in this bloody spree by French director Alexandre Aja. The script is ridiculous, the bodies are great and the film skates so long on the line between knowingly bad and bad that by the time the body count hits 100 and the booby count hits 1000, we've lost track of the difference. The post-production 3D lacks depth, but at least unlike Clash of the Titans, the shots were always meant to be a converted; it's a cheap way out, sure, but fan boys blown away by a shot of 3D DD jiggling underwater have other priorities. Piranha will take a bite out of the next two weekends' box office and quickly go extinct, but will linger on in its target audience's fantasies.

Sunny, scenic Lake Victoria is under attack from invaders. Not man-eating fish (yet), but 20,000 spandexed Spring Breakers, all in various degrees of intoxication and undress. Deputies Ving Rhames and Elisabeth Shue (playing a mom of three) are entrusted to keep order when into their harbor swims an oily predator: Jerry O'Connell, the producer of Wild Wild Girls trolling for fresh flesh. Model Kelly Brook lures Shue's 17 year old son, Steven R. McQueen, and his crush, Jessica Szohr, into O'Connell's net--or really, his luxury yacht--and they set sail for a day of soft core porn shoots just as scientist Adam Scott realizes a fissure underneath the lake has unleashed prehistoric piranhas. "There's thousands of them--and they're pissed!" he yelps.

Piranha 3D isn't Jaws. Steven Spielberg himself couldn't get this script an Oscar. But even a mocking comparison is good enough for Aja, who swipes the line, "Do you think a propeller could have done this," and enlists Richard Dreyfuss to play the opening scene chum. (With 3D, we go inside Dreyfuss' mauled spleen.) And for good measure, Aja's also enlisted Christopher Lloyd to resurrect Doc Brown in his hilarious, over-excited cameo as a local ichthyologist. ("These fish have been dead for 200 million years!," he warbles in Doc's sing-song science.)

What's terrible about a piranha kill is that they don't have a Great White's tell-tale fin. And worse, their victims are nibbled to death. When pulled out of the water, the flesh hangs off their bones like red, ropey algae. The piranhas themselves look like bullets with beer bellies and teeth. They're as ugly on the outside as their prey is on the inside. The bros and bimbos served up as jerk tartare are so repellent we're almost on the side of the fish. On Lake Victoria, wearing a Pixies shirt will get you called an "asswipe," and there's an ever-expanding lexicon for "boobs." My faves were "coconuts," "weapons of mass-turbation" and Eli Roth's gift for drawling "titties" across eight syllables. Even Shue's two young kids are sexist, the daughter asking grownups about their cup size and the youngest son telling her to "be a girl and just sunbathe or something."

Ruthless and ridiculous, Aja's horror comedy has a purity of vision. Even when a babe is sliced in half, first her bikini top falls off for a booby shot. And why not? It's August, vacation time is almost over, and if you haven't yet hit your bikini quota, buy a ticket and get a summer's worth in 90 minutes. When the blood starts gushing, wet t-shirt contests get a whole new meaning. Go, fish, go!

Distributor: Weinstein Co.
Cast: Elisabeth Shue, Adam Scott, Ving Rhames, Dina Meyer, Richard Dreyfuss, Jessica Szohr and Jerry O'Connell
Director: Alexandre Aja
Screenwriters: Peter Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg
Producers: Alexandre Aja, Mark Canton, Grégory Levasseur and Marc Toberoff
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Rating: R for sequences of strong bloody horror violence and gore, graphic nudity, sexual content, language and some drug use.
Running time: 89 min
Release date: August 27, 2010

The Last Exorcism

Part Cannibal Holocaust, part The Apostle, Daniel Stamm's The Last Exorcism is interested in poking holes in false prophets, and the first faker in line for exorcism is fake documentary. This found-footage mock-doc is a perfect late summer horror and will hopefully provide for Lionsgate a bit of the Blair Witch black magic Artisan scored in 1999, if to a smaller degree. It's scary fun and packed with comic bits that skate between sad and absurd like the best of reality TV. At my tent revival, I'll pray The Last Exorcism goes platinum.

Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) was ushered into testament and evangelism very young. A performer at heart, Cotton grasps the show more immediately than he grasps the purpose, which is perhaps why he gels so quickly with his camera crew. "I could preach to them my grandmother's banana bread recipe," he boasts, and when he goes inside and the camera shows churchgoers entering rapture on his bum testament, we know who the villain is. But Cotton aims to reform...somewhat. Cotton's son was born premature and when he realized the threat of losing a child and saw that a boy in a neighboring state had been suffocated during an exorcism, he decided the process needed debunking en masse; hence the presence of the camera. The family he chooses for his "final exorcism" resides in a part of Louisiana that feels like legit Americana, but it's precisely the part of the country in which we expect to see tent revivals and snake oil salesman. Ironically the closest we get to shaman or charlatan is our protagonist, who swiftly becomes our voice of reason when faced with local superstition. Driving in he tells the crew this territory has existed under six different flags, contains many languages and just as much illiteracy, so lore and demons are par for the course. Cotton isn't just disingenuous, he simply doesn't believe in spirits and when he meets this sweet girl named Nell (Ashley Bell), whose fundamentalist father decided to homeschool her after he found their local Pastor teaching "more than just church songs," everyone takes an immediate liking to her and decides the father is the real demon in the house. Regardless if the cause of the "disturbance" is spiritual, psychological or plain psychotic, the trouble is real and Cotton learns quickly that years of knowingly laughing at the confusedly possessed has left him with an inability to do The Lord's Work in the face of genuine need. It's stunning to see what this life of disingenuousness and cynicism reaps for Cotton, and the climax and comeuppance of the characters on either side of the line of good and evil are epic, which is only right, we're talking about the war between honesty and deceit, sincerity and cynicism: battle lines should be drawn dark. What we aren't precisely talking about is the war between God and Satan, but that's okay because in this movie God's messenger preaches banana bread.

The first act of The Last Exoricism establishes context like the best ethnographic films, which means we're learning about a reality that can't be judged on face value by way of an educational model that we've vested with authority to reveal truth. The casualness of the camerawork also underlies the "foundness" of the footage we're watching, as if the image is somehow allowed to be less pliable if the information in it is stumbled-upon and not delivered. How the footage comes to be available to us now, after the tragedies implied by the film, is unclear; this is a useful bit of logic because it keeps us guessing but it also reminds us that the entire edifice is false. The film, in a hundred ways, plays upon falsehood, in fact the only seemingly authentic thing in it is a ritual that happens half a football field away from us and we lack any real access to even that. (Lest I mention here that rituals, by nature, revolve around actions performed. It's another conundrum.) Everyone and everything else in the film is just reaching towards a reliable reality and only stabbing at it (pun intended) in oblique ways. On the level of thriller, The Last Exorcism does more than its job with scares and creeping tension and knock-knock-boos, but the deeper scare it leaves you with is the sinking distrust you can't believe even the travesty before you. There aren't demons that can get under your skin deeper than that.

Distributor: Lionsgate
Cast: Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell, Iris Bahr, Casey Landry Jones and Louis Herthum
Director: Daniel Stamm
Screenwriters: Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland
Producers: Marc Abraham, Thomas A. Bliss, Eric Newman and Eli Roth
Genre: Horror
Rating: PG-13 for disturbing violent content and terror, some sexual references and thematic material.
Running time: 87 min
Release date: August 27, 2010

The American

At 49, George Clooney has a body most 25 year olds would envy. The American underlines that with scenes of him shirtless, toning those fab abs and tight biceps. That scenery, as well as the beauty of Castel del Monte in the Abruzzo region of Italy (where much of the film was shot) are the chief reasons to see this limp thriller. This story of a hit man who wants out after performing this one last job is so threadbare, trite and predictable that not the star's formidable charisma nor the considerable talent of director Anton Corbijn can come close to erasing its deficiencies. A half-naked Clooney will generate some heat at the box office, but that is a flame that will quickly die out.

The medieval Italian hamlet becomes a hideout for Jack (Clooney) while Pavel (Johan Leysen), his handler in Rome, sorts out who has apparently put a hit out on the American hit man. To occupy his time while he's lying low, Pavel puts him in touch with Mathilde (Thekla Reuten) who wants him to build her a gun. Jack agrees, but he tells Pavel, after this, he's done. Mostly, he spends his time by himself, befriending only Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli), the hamlet's priest, and Clara (Violante Placido), a prostitute. Even in this sleepy setting, he can't relax. People are coming for him and he can't trust anyone.

There is not a single surprising moment in the film. A 5 year old could work out how it will all end within the tale's first minutes. That might be a minor deficiency if there was more to Jack, but the character is barely a sketch. He reads up on butterflies, has a butterfly tattoo between his shoulder blades and recognizes rare and endangered butterflies when he sees them; Mathilde and Clara both call him "Mr. Butterfly," and that is about the extent of his character development. That, and his insistence the he's not good with machines, even as he repairs a truck and handcrafts an assassin's rife.

Clara also says Jack is "a good man," a preposterous statement, but one meant to be taken at face value. Acknowledging that the guy is a vicious killer facing the same kind of miscarriage of justice that he has spent his professional life meting out is to remove any rooting interest in Jack or what happens to him, and there is precious little of that from the start. So, we are to believe Clara just as we are to believe that she is a hooker with a heart of gold and that she would naturally fall head over heels for her john, because he is that good. (Well, he is George Clooney.)

Clooney's built a movie career making far better choices than this, but apparently the lure of Abruzzo was too much for him. For him, this is but a blip in a long career. The real pity here is for director Corbijn; this is only his second feature after the Ian Curtis biopic Control. Aided by Herbert Grönemeyer's evocative score and Martin Ruhe's exquisite cinematography, the filmmaker has constructed an elegant film that might have been an Oscar contender had Rowan Joffe's screenplay (and A Very Private Gentleman, the Martin Booth novel he adapted) been something stronger. Instead, Focus Features is sneaking the film into theaters in the traditionally weak month of September. There is a reason they call these the dog days.

Distributor: Focus Features
Cast: George Clooney, Johan Leysen, Paolo Bonacelli, Thekla Reuten and Violante Placido
Director: Anton Corbijn
Screenwriter: Rowan Joffe
Producers: Anne Carey, George Clooney, Jill Green, Grant Heslov, Ann Wingate
Genres: Thriller; English- and Italian-languages, subtitled
Rating: R for violence, sexual content and nudity.
Running time: 103 min
Release date: September 1, 2010

Pathology

Some say that Pathology is a window to God.

As doctors, they see the perversion and corruption of the flesh by all means unnatural...by violence...by toxin...by madness...to determine the cause of death.

On April 18th, No Body Is Safe.

Visit the Official Website

Release Date: April 18, 2008
Genre: Drama and Thriller
Running Time:
Distributor(s): MGM Distribution Company
Tagline: Every body has a secret.
MPAA Rating: R for violence, gruesome images, strong sexual content, nudity, drug use and language.

Director(s):
Marc Schoelermann

Writer(s):
Brian Taylor - Screenplay
Mark Neveldine - Screenplay

Producer(s):
Barrett Stuart - Executive Producer
Yan Fisher Romanovsky - Executive Producer
Tom Rosenberg - Producer
Gary Lucchesi - Producer
Mark Neveldine - Producer
Brian Taylor - Producer
Skip Williamson - Producer
Gary Gilbert - Producer

Movie Casts:
Milo Ventimiglia - Ted Gray
Michael Weston - Jake
Lauren Lee Smith - Juliette Bath
Dan Callahan - Chip Bentwood
Johnny Whitworth - Griffin
Mei Melançon - Catherine Ivy
Alyssa Milano - Gwen
Keir O'Donnell - Ben Stravinsky
John de Lancie - Dr. Morris
Seth Baird - Student
Courtney Buckley - Medical student
Gary Buckner - Motherfucker
Eurydice Davis - Hooker
Larry Drake - Fat Bastard
Jarvis W. George - ICU Doctor
Anne Girard - Donna
Mary Grace - Caucasian Hooker
Eric Kaldor - Bum
Buddy Lewis
Kate Mulligan - Woman on Bus
Deborah Pollack - Mrs. Williamson
Lawrence J. Russo - Doctor
Don Smith - Man on Bus
Sam Witwer - Disco Boy

Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

HAROLD AND KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY marks the triumphant return of these two hilarious, slacker anti-heroes. The movie stars John Cho (STAR TREK, AMERICAN PIE) as Harold and Kal Penn (THE NAMESAKE, HOUSE, VAN WILDER) as Kumar, two stoners who can't seem to get a break. Their last adventure found them traveling across the country to find a White Castle hamburger in order to satisfy a weed-induced case of "the munchies." This time, the boys get themselves in trouble trying to sneak a bong on board a flight to Amsterdam. Now, being suspected of terrorism, they are forced to run from law and try to find a way to prove their innocence. What follows is an irreverent and epic journey of deep thoughts, deeper inhaling and a wild trip around the world that is as "un-PC" as it gets.

Visit the Official Website

Release Date: April 25, 2008
Genre: Comedy and Sequel
Running Time: 102 min.
Distributor(s): Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution
Tagline: This time they're running from the joint.
MPAA Rating:

Director(s):
Jon Hurwitz - Director
Hayden Schlossberg - Director

Writer(s):
Jon Hurwitz - Screenplay
Hayden Schlossberg - Screenplay

Producer(s):
Carsten Lorenz - Executive Producer
Joe Drake - Executive Producer
Toby Emmerich - Executive Producer
Richard Brener - Executive Producer
Greg Shapiro - Producer
Nathan Kahane - Producer
Nicole Brown - Co-Producer
Kelli Konop - Co-Producer
Michael Disco - Co-Producer
Samuel J. Brown - Co-Producer
Jon Hurwitz - Co-Producer
Hayden Schlossberg - Co-Producer

Movie Casts:
John Cho - Harold Lee
Kal Penn - Kumar Patel
Roger Bart - Dr. Beecher
Richard Christy - Kenny
Jack Conley - Deputy Frye
Rob Corddry - Ron Fox
Brad Dison - Wedding Priest
Juli Erickson - Old White Woman
Tamara Feldman - Chloe
Ted Ferguson - Wedding Greensman
Wilbur Fitzgerald - Colton's Father
Paula Garcés - Maria
Danneel Harris - Vanessa
Neil Patrick Harris - Neil Patrick Harris
Ed Helms - Interpreter