Tag Archives: John Woo

HollywoodNews.com: Here’s a rundown of what’s clicking at the Venice Film Festival as potential award season contenders.
The Black Swan directed by Darren Aronofsky
Most critics and bloggers are intrigued by this film. Variety’s Justin Chang pointedly exclaims on Twitter: “In the battle of opening-night films: Venice 1, Cannes 0.”
Guy Lodge who is covering the festival for In Contention gives his guess for “Swan’s” odds:
Anne Thompson and I agreed at lunch today that the film has its work cut out for it in the top races — wild psychodrama not being the Academy’s strong point, particularly if critical opinion turns out to be split — and the extent to which voters (and audiences) warm to her vehicle will be a determining factor for Portman, given how deep the Best Actress field already looks.

Meek’s Cutoff directed by Kelly Reichardt
Guy Lodge is very excited about this film giving it four stars. The 19th century Western follows three families and two bookend characters on the Oregon Trail, “miles from a home that doesn’t exist.” Lodge is wowed by Michelle Williams. Williams matches the director’s “contained integrity” and opens out to a broader audience. It’s a film that Terrence Malick and John Steinbeck would savor. “Adventurous, ambiguous and truthful, ‘Meek’s Cutoff’ may be a marvel in itself, but it only sets up greater expectations for the future.”
Reign of Assassins directed by Su Chao-Pin and John Woo
In Contention gives this chopsocky film three stars, however, the film from their review doesn’t sound like an awards-worthy title.
“It does boast a goofy sense of humor, as well as a certain elasticity of genre as endearing as it is initially bewildering: this is the rare fighting film that takes sideways strolls into supernatural video-game territory and meet-cute rom-com,” says Lodge.
“Assassins” follows Michelle Yeoh as a killer who falls for an average laborer. Turns out the guy is more connected to her than she imagined. Along the way, she fends off others who have their sights on the mystical remains of a Buddhist monk.
Silent Souls by Aleksei Fedorchenko.
Hollywood Reporter is calling the film a ringer for the Golden Lion, the festival’s top prize. Drama is about a factory worker’s poetic and folkloric farewell to his dead wife.
The magazine further reports:
It was “Ovsyanki” (“Silent Souls”) that created the most buzz Saturday, immediately sparking speculation that it could be an early favorite for [...]

By Anthony D’Alessandro
HollywoodNews.com: FILM REVIEW — If there was a classroom full of action directors, such as Michael Bay, Gore Verbinski and McG, Robert Rodriguez would be that rascal who would take them hostage, rap their knuckles with a ruler and stick their noses in a corner.
What would Rodriguez inculcate? How to make an efficient, hyper-kinetic edited, voluptuous action film, employing the most zealous dramatic ensemble.
To fault Rodriguez for his campy, snuff-inspired shoot-em ups would be like shortchanging John Woo’s talents for executing chopsocky ballet or Martin Scorsese’s overindulgence in Italian-Catholic symbolism.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE “MACHETE” SLIDESHOW
Much like those guys whose cinema is beholden to their heritage, Rodriguez’s actioners, like a rich Sopaipilla drowned in honey, are drenched in sexy melodrama, exploitative action and South of the Border mythos.
So comes his Mexican Rambo film “Machete,” which he co-directed with his rhythmic editor Ethan Maniquis from “Grindhouse.” And while “Machete” is arguably the best action film of the summer, sniping “Salt” in its twists and kicking Adam McKay’s “The Other Guys” in the cajones with its comedy, the film wears its pro-Mexican Immigration message heavily on its sleeve — a bold agenda that is apt to divide action aficionados at the box office: Red state testosterones are apt to walk out while blue state arthouse crowds will savor the ride.
While the knife-wielding ex-Mexican Federale “Machete” is more or less a cinematic cousin to Rodriguez’s “Mariachi” and “Desperado” protag assassins (in fact Rodriguez originally conceived the character during the shoot of the latter film, not the “Grindhouse” faux trailer), it’s the film’s overt political soap box which makes “Machete” a more intelligible ride than its steel barrel predecessors. Sylvester Stallone’s pro-America speech at the end of “Rambo” seems mousy next to the social message which Rodriguez and Maniquis drum about U.S.-Mexico border corruption. The duo play out the drama effectively down to the final moment when Machete (the fierce, somber Danny Trejo) is pulled over by Jessica Alba’s ICE agent Sartana: Instead of handing her his papers, Sartana gives Machete a set of his own.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE “MACHETE” SLIDESHOW
After watching his wife get beheaded by the drug lord Torrez (a hammy Steven Seagal) in an ambush sting, master of knives Machete retreats to Austin, Texas where he gets by as a day laborer. He is befriended [...]

By Anthony D’Alessandro
HollywoodNews.com: Quite quickly over the last seven years, Michael Cera has become the iconic millennial’s straight man, and to his strength, is continually surrounded by acerbic, off-kilter fools onscreen. With an angelic face, Cera’s hysterical alter egos puff their lines with circumspect and struggle to keep up with life’s crazy tide. Often times, Cera archetypes must go out of their way to get the girl of their dreams, i.e. enduring work at a beachside frozen banana stand (Fox’s blessed sitcom series “Arrested Development), hoarding beer into the wrong party (“Superbad”) and transforming into an evil, hip French personality (This year’s underrated “Youth in Revolt”).
In director Edgar Wright’s charming feature adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” Cera, as the ad spots exclaim, must defeat the seven evil ex-boyfriends of Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the girl whose hand he so desires.
Like Charles Grodin, Bill Murray, Fred Willard and Ray Romano, Cera can satirically knock at the everyman without knocking him completely down. Cera’s performances are infectious and well beyond his twentysomething years in timing and nuance. Many burgeoning actors at his age continue to search for their sense of character, or vie to exhibit multiple emotional levels; but Cera is completely in tune to his undertone strengths and he is the grease which spins the comedic wheels in “Scott Pilgrim.”
In the Cera canon, Scott is an evolution from the high school squares the actor has portrayed. Pilgrim, a slacker and bass guitarist for the wannabe Toronto apartment grunge band Sex-Bob-Omb, doesn’t have to worry about getting girls; he’s broken plenty of hearts which is a decent score considering Envy Adams (Brie Larson), his ex-girlfriend and established glam rocker, “kicked his heart in the ass.” As one character calls Scott, he’s “a total lady killer and wannabe jerky jerk.”
Scott takes gleeful solace in Knives Chau (vivacious newcomer Ellen Wong), a Catholic high schooler much younger than him. The two are like peas in a pod, playing ninja videogames in perfect choreographed unison. Scott is an impressionable force on Knives, and in return she becomes the band’s number one groupie. But Knives, given her innocence, is an easy fetch for Scott.
Scott lives his wrinkled life with his gay, suave roommate Wallace Wells (a wonderfully blunt Kieran Culkin), a dude [...]