/Film reader “PWH” attended an early screening for the sports drama David O. Russell’s The Fighter, and says the film will be an awards contender. The film tells the story of Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), a real life boxer-turned-trainer who rebounded after a run of drugs and crime.

Shepherded his half-brother “Irish” Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), Dicky had a Rocky-like rise to the world lightweight championship. Ward fought throughout the mid-’80s and ’90s, but he’s best remembered for three battles with Arturo Gotti, two of which went down as the greatest in the history of the sport. Amy Adams plays “a tough, gritty bartender and former college high-jumper” who ends up dating Wahlberg’s character.

The Fighter doesn’t yet have a release date (but is expected to hit theaters in late 2010), so I assume that that it is a very early cut of the film without final cuts, sound mix or score. A lot could change between now and the time of release, they might even do some reshoots. Who knows. Just wanted to add a bit of context. Read the reader test screening review after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Terminator Salvation comes to Blu-ray with an unfortunate chip on its shoulder. After director McG informed the media that the high definition version would run over 30 minutes longer and be slapped with the fan requested R-rating, Warner delivered the final specs that held up on the rating but fell about 90 percent short on the additional footage.
The fourth installment in the Terminator lexicon is as much a reboot as a continuation, shuffling the entire cast and setting the film in a post apocalyptic Judgment Day world where Skynet rules and humans scavenge for life’s necessities in order to survive. A war-grizzled John Connor (Christian Bale) is the central character, the prophesied savior of mankind whose very existence Skynet is willing to travel through time to extinguish. He is not quite the Resistance’s leader yet but makes up for any lack of authoritative control by barking commands in the familiar low gruff Batman monotone voice.

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He said he’ll be back – but who knew the best of ’80s action flicks would come with him?

“He” is Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose CGI-created face turns up on a new body in a crucial battle in “Terminator Salvation,” a fast-moving, rock ‘em-sock ‘em movie that continues the man-vs.-machines series begun 25 years ago.

Between this and “Star Trek,” popcorn-movie reboots have hit high gear.

The last entry, 2003’s “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” was the Governator’s final starring role, and it ended with reluctant messiah John Connor and his girlfriend Kate in a fallout shelter as the sentient computer Skynet launched nuclear attacks.

Fifteen years after “T3″ was set, Connor (Christian Bale) commands a network of resistance fighters battling robots that rule a post-apocalyptic world and corral people to make cyborg parts. Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Mann’s Public Enemies was test screened on Thursday night in Sherman Oaks, CA. It was a blind screening, which means that they didn’t give the name of the film when soliciting for moviegoers. A bunch of reviews have been floating around the message boards. You can read five reviews after the jump. Be warned, some of the reviews contain spoilers. Some are marked, but others are not. The review migh be long, it will be under the cut. Read the rest of this entry »

When director Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale teamed up to re-boot the Batman franchise, they apparently weren’t messing around.

Three years ago, Batman Begins wowed audiences by showing the caped crusader as a gritty, butt-kicking anti-hero — a vast departure from the cartoonish eye candy the films of the 1990s had become.
But if you thought that was a radical change, you really haven’t seen nothin ‘ yet.

The Dark Knight is essentially a gangster film that’s heavy on the theatrics and light on the camp.  I think it’s safe to assume that most everyone who sees this film won’t expect what they get — a surprisingly somber tale of violence and an inelegant look at the ugliness of crime and corruption in Gotham City’s urban infrastructure. Read the rest of this entry »

“Batman” isn’t a comic book anymore. Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” is a haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy. It creates characters we come to care about. That’s because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production. This film, and to a lesser degree “Iron Man,” redefine the possibilities of the “comic-book movie.”

“The Dark Knight” is not a simplistic tale of good and evil. Batman is good, yes, The Joker is evil, yes. But Batman poses a more complex puzzle than usual: The citizens of Gotham City are in an uproar, calling him a vigilante and blaming him for the deaths of policemen and others. And the Joker is more than a villain. He’s a Mephistopheles whose actions are fiendishly designed to pose moral dilemmas for his enemies. Read the rest of this entry »

The hero is a billionaire industrialist who likes to beat people up. The only good cop in the city employs dishonest ones. The psychotic terrorist torturing civilians and chopping up criminals
 Well, he’s just about the most charismatic character you’ll ever meet. Welcome to Gotham, where no good deed goes unpunished. And welcome to The Dark Knight, an anarchic, malevolent fury of a movie that takes a switchblade to the face of summer conformity and carves a work of twisted beauty out of it. Anticipation and escalation were the key words in the build up to, post-Indy, 2008’s most hyped and combustible blockbuster. Read the rest of this entry »

Our comic-book-movie culture is 30 years old (it kicked off in 1978, with the Christopher Reeve Superman), and in those three decades of speed and light and destruction, of well-coiffed demigods in bodysuits zipping through the air and shimmying up walls, comic-book films have yielded more than their share of spectacle and thrills yet virtually nothing in the way of mystery. Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, I’m kidding about that last one, but you get the idea: Sports fans love to debate the greatest teams of all time. And when the talk turns to All-Star “Dream Teams,” things get even more heated. Now, with “The Dark Knight” hitting theaters this Friday, isn’t it time moviegoers get in on the action?

With that in mind, and all the decades of caped-crusader interpretations behind us, here is my Batman all-star team. Put these people together, in their primes, and you’d have the ultimate depiction of the prince of Gotham City. Give it a look, and then tell us yours. Let the geek wars begin! Read the rest of this entry »

There are some cool perks to playing Batman.

For one, “I keep the cowls,” said Christian Bale, who suits up again in “The Dark Knight,” which opens Thursday.

The costume was redesigned since Bale’s first outing in “Batman Begins.” “In the way that the story has evolved, the Batsuit should evolve as well. There’s a 110 parts to this suit vs.three.” Read the rest of this entry »