Fancast Fall Movie Preview: September 2008

By Andy Hunsaker, Fancast Movies
*all release dates subject to change

September 5:
***
Bangkok Dangerous [watch the trailer]
In the grand tradition of The Departed and its Americanning of Infernal Affairs, Nicolas Cage is taking the Thai assassination tale Bangkok Dangerous and letting the Yanks in on the action. But the kicker is that the original writer/directors, Oxide and Danny Pang, are at the helm of this recreation of their own work, so any loss in quality should be minimized. It might even be improved. Cage stars as Joe, an assassin who isn’t entirely satisfied with the life of a professional killer, who gets too personal and winds up on the run from some angry bad men in Bangkok. Cue the stylized violence and roll with the manhunt.

Limited Release:
Everybody Wants To Be Italian [watch the trailer]
Jake (Jay Jablonski) has spent a decade trying to win back his ex-girlfriend, even though she’s now married with three kids. When his buddies set him up on a blind date with a gorgeous Italian woman from Boston named Marisa (Cerina Vincent), Jake is convinced that she wouldn’t date anyone who isn’t Italian. So he’s compelled to take a crash course on how to fake it, and in the process, learns how to move on with his love life. If you’re having trouble placing Cerina Vincent, you may remember her as the girl who got so scared of dying in Cabin Fever that she decided to just grab the guy nearest to her and sex him up. More likely, you remember her stunning performance in Not Another Teen Movie as Areola, the foreign exchange student who was all the time naked, and thus not in any clips or photos.

September 12:
***

Righeous Kill [watch the trailer]
Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are veteran cops on the trail of a vigilante killer. You should like the sound of this movie already. In fact, you shouldn’t really have to hear any more. You should want to see this already. If you need any help, it also features the always alluring Carla Gugino, the ripped and ready 50 Cent, the wiry John Leguizamo, the needs-no-adjective-other-than-his-name Brian Dennehy, and even ex-New Kid on the Block Donnie Wahlberg. Wait, you say… directed by Jon Avnet? Isn’t he the guy who made the abysmal Pacino movie 88 Minutes? Sure, but he also directed episodes of the critically-acclaimed drama Boomtown, which is likely how Wahlberg got involved in this. Sure, it’s a reason to temper hopes, but Righteous Kill could still be significantly awesome. At least it could be better than that one scene in Heat.

Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys [watch the trailer]
The prolific Tyler Perry strikes again, this time with a drama about class struggle and adultery. Wealthy Charlotte Cartwright (Kathy Bates) and not-so-wealthy Alice Pratt (the fantastic Alfre Woodard) have been friends for years, but when their children start to get involved in greedy business dealings and extramarital affairs, it all threatens to destroy their families as well as their friendships. The film also stars Sanaa Lathan as Alice’s self-serving daughter Andrea and Cole Hauser as Charlotte’s duplicitous son William, both cheating on their spouses and trying to further their own careers at the expense of their souls. The tangled mess they create prompts Charlotte and Alice to go on a cross-country road trip to get away from it all and try to figure out a way to salvage their families from these disasters.

Burn After Reading [watch the trailer]
After the dark turn of No Country for Old Men, Joel and Ethan Coen seem determined to remind us once again that they can do comedy like no one else. Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand are two dopey gym employees who come across a briefcase filled with sensitive “CIA shit” who then proceed to blackmail the owner, Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), to try and get a big-time payday, even though the secrets had been stolen by Cox’s ex-wife (Tilda Swinton), and her current beau, sex addict Harry (George Clooney), makes the mess even bigger. This is going to be a vastly different dynamic between Clooney and Swinton than they had in Michael Clayton, and after Brad Pitt’s publicized fuddy-duddyness, it’s great to see him in a hilarious role like this. As Joel describes it: “All the characters in this movie are numbskulls. Each character is dumber than the next. But they’re all lovable.”

The Women [watch the trailer]
This film will put to the test that new premise that Sex and the City proved there’s an audience for films about older women, particularly older women who work improbably great jobs in New York while being fashion mavens… wait, is this the film version of Cashmere Mafia? Anyway, they’ve included seemingly EVERY actress over 30 in this film: Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Debra Messing, Bette Midler, Kathy Griffin, Candice Bergen, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Cloris Leachman, Carrie Fisher, Ana Gasteyer, and Lynn Whitfield. Even the “younger woman,” Eva Mendes, is 34, and she’s cast as the antagonistic “perfume bitch” that breaks up Meg Ryan’s marriage and threatens her circle of friends.

Limited Release:
Towelhead [watch the trailer]
Directed by Alan Ball, who created Six Feet Under and wrote American Beauty, this is the story of a 13-year-old girl named Jasira (Summer Bishil) who is sent by her self-centered mother (Maria Bello) to live with her strict Lebanese father Rifat (Peter Macdissi) in suburbia. She has to deal with neighbors like the lascivious reservist Vuoso (Aaron Eckhart) and the meddling and obnoxious Melina (Toni Collette)… and yet, when she falls for a young black teen in the neighborhood named Thomas (Eugene Jones), her father is the one who vehemently condemns her for it.

September 19:
***

Ghost Town [watch the trailer]
Ricky Gervais is one of the funniest men around, and all of you fans of The Office should thank your lucky stars for his creative genius. In keeping true to form, he’s playing Bertram Pincus, a bit of a wanker who seems to like being a wanker to other people, and he’s a dentist, so double trouble there. Until he goes into the hospital for a colonoscopy and winds up dying for seven minutes. Turns out this is long enough for him to start seeing ghosts like Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear), who then proceed to badger him into being their metaphysical errand boy. In this case, Bertram has to woo Frank’s widow Gwen (Tea Leoni) away from the jerk she’s about to marry, and in the process, he realizes he’s a bit of a wanker who has no idea how to be good to people when he should. This all sounds like a fine premise for an amusing comedy, but it also feels as though it may suffer from poor Tea Leoni’s curse of being funny and talented in projects that don’t get enough people watching them as they should.

My Best Friend’s Girl [watch the trailer]
Dane Cook is apparently going to be playing a guy named Tank. Not only is his name Tank, but Tank is also in the rather unique business of scoring dates with women who have recently dumped his clients and then behaving like an ass-clown so they run back to the dumpees. So when Tank’s best friend Dusty (Jason Biggs) starts to smother his girlfriend Alexis (Kate Hudson), he hires Tank, to work his Evil Tank Magic on her. Guess what, folks? She likes Tank. So what is Tank to do? Does Tank back off out of loyalty to Tank’s friend Dusty, or does Tank get all up in this girl who can call Tank’s bluff? Tank not know! Tank in trouble!

Lakeview Terrace [watch the trailer]
If you move into a suburb next door to a cop, you’re supposed to feel safer, even if you’re likely not going to be able to throw loud parties or partake of the reefer, etc. But when that cop is Samuel L. Jackson, neighborhood watchdog, and he takes a special kind of disliking to an interracial marriage (Patrick Wilson, Kerry Washington), then you know things are going to get ugly. What do you do when the person harassing you is also the cop you would call on him? This is a Neil LaBute film, who’s noted for his notoriously cruel and dark films like In The Company of Men and Your Friends & Neighbors, and it seems he’s still seriously concerned about the quality of the people who live next door.

Igor [watch the trailer]
You always hear about the evil mad scientist with his diabolical doomsday device of devastating design. You never hear about the poor suffering toadies without whom the mad scientists would have to pull their own switches, lug their own nuts and do all the gruntwork themselves. In fact, you hear so little about these folks that they all go by the name of the position’s originator - Igor. They’re all igors, and therefore second-class citizens. That’s not enough for one igor (John Cusack), though. Every year, he’s gone to the Evil Science Fair in Malaria as a lowly subordinate to the nefarious Dr. Glickenstein (John Cleese), because no one will look beyond his unfortunate hunchback and recognize his own scientific genius. But when Dr. Glickenstein dies two weeks before the Fair, this particular Igor recognizes the opportunity and seizes his shot at glory. With the help of an angry brain-in-a-jar and a zombie rabbit, Igor will cover up Glickenstein’s death and unveil his stunning creation - a powerful creature he’s named “Eva” (Molly Shannon) who wants to be an actress.

Limited Release:
September 17: Appaloosa [watch the trailer]
Ed Harris hasn’t directed anything since his debut with Pollock back in 2000, which got him nominated for Best Actor (and won Best Supporting Actress for Marcia Gay Harden). So when Harris is in the director’s chair, people stand up and take notice. It may be surprising that he’d move from abstract art to a gritty western, but we’ve all seen Unforgiven - we know what the genre is capable of delivering in the right hands, and it’s hard to believe that Harris’ hands could be wrong. In Appaloosa, he plays Virgil Cole, who blows into town with his partner Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) to find that the place is run by a bastard rancher by the name of Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), who has just left the town marshal and his deputy for dead. This conveniently leave a pair of openings for Cole and Hitch to step into. Being the wily gunmen they are, Appaloosa soon hosts a battle of wits and wills between the cavalier twosome and the ruthless rabble-rouser. Trouble is that they know that feelings get you killed, but Cole finds himself getting closer to Allie (Renee Zellweger) anyway. When Bragg starts playing on their emotions, things start to get heavy.

Blindness [watch the trailer]
Blindness is a terrifying affliction for one to have, but it would be made exponentially more frightening if no one else could see, either. This is what makes the latest film from Fernando Meirelles of The Constant Gardener fame, such a compelling concept. The fact that the characters have no names, but are rather billed as “Doctor” (Mark Ruffalo), “Doctor’s Wife” (Julianne Moore), “Minister of Health” (Sandra Oh) “Bartender” (Gael Garcia Bernal) and “Old Man With The Black Eye Patch” (Danny Glover), just adds to the disquieting tone that the trailers strike as they show us a world where the afflicted are quarantined and left to die, causing a general chaos among them as they slowly realize the depths of their situation. “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” - Desiderius Erasmus

Battle in Seattle [watch the trailer]
Stuart Townsend has made a film based on the five riotous days of the World Trade Organization’s convention in the Pacific Northwest, intertwining stories of several people caught up in it all, from riot cop Woody Harrelson and his pregnant wife Charlize Theron to conflicting protestors Martin Henderson and Channing Tatum to Ray Liotta as the beleaguered mayor. It was a surreal experience that made Seattle feel like a war zone, yet proved that Americans are not always apathetic about their democracy.

The Duchess [watch the trailer]
Keira Knightley once again takes on the role of a woman whose true passions are denied her by circumstance, propriety and conspiracy in an elegant period drama. She stars as Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who is given away by her mother (Charlotte Rampling) to become wedded to the Duke (Ralph Fiennes) at an early age. Yet, she soon discovers her own social awakening - with the help of an earnest young politician by the name of Earl Grey (Dominic Cooper). What ensues is a tangled web of intrigue and betrayal.

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers [watch the trailer]
The Joy Luck Club’s Wayne Wang returns with a quiet tale about a retired widower in Beijing named Shi (Henry O), who travels to America to try and be of some help to his only daughter Yilan (Faye Yu), a suburbanite suffering through a divorce. In the process of struggling to find a way to help that she doesn’t retreat from, he begins to explore his new surroundings in hopes of bridging the emotional gulf between them. It’s not going to work out exactly the way he hoped.

September 26:
***

Miracle At St. Anna [watch the trailer]
This may be considered Spike Lee’s last major salvo in his war of words with Clint Eastwood about the depiction of black soldiers in World War II. Lee’s film tells the story of four black soldiers - Derek Luke, Omar Benson Miller, Michael Ealy and Laz Alonso - who get separated from their unit when they dare to rescue a young Italian boy. They find solace in a small Tuscan village, but events then unfold that will form the basis of a murder mystery nearly 40 years later.

Eagle Eye [watch the trailer in HD!]
Shia LaBeouf’s career is certainly skyrocketing, thanks to Transformers and Indiana Jones, with George Lucas was even talking about making him the star of a fifth Indy movie. He takes the lead in this thriller from the same guy who directed LaBeouf in Disturbia, D.J. Caruso. Jerry Shaw (LaBeouf) and a single mother (Michelle Monaghan) are framed as terrorists in order to put them both on the run from the law and force them into the service of a sleeper cell attempting to carry out a high-profile assassination.

Nights in Rodanthe [watch the trailer]
Richard Gere must have needed to get some of his leading man cred back after playing a man cuckolded by Diane Lane in Unfaithful. So much so that he’s now starring as Lane’s ‘other man’ in this story about two people from broken marriages finding a new lease on life with each other at an inn in North Carolina. It’s familiar territory for Lane, if you recall Under the Tuscan Sun, but hey - you go with what works for you. A romancey tear-jerker drama, to be sure, also starring James Franco as Gere’s estranged son and Christopher Meloni as Lane’s estranged husband.

The Lucky Ones [watch the trailer]
Movies focusing on the Iraq War, be they in the thick of things or dealing with the fallout have not been drawing audiences, but they do need to be made. In this case, we follow the events of an impromptu road trip where three soldiers share a ride across the country. Michael Pena is a hardened sergeant on a one-month leave to see his family after suffering a troubling injury, Tim Robbins is an old soldier who just wants to get to his wife in St. Louis, and Rachel McAdams is a private trying to return a guitar to the family of the soldier who owned it. Home isn’t exactly the idyllic place they remember after all that time at war, and the aftermath is something they’ll all have to learn to deal with, as they owe it to those who died. They are the lucky ones, after all.

Limited Release:
Choke [watch the trailer]
Sam Rockwell should be enough to sell anybody on his movies, but for some reason, he’s not yet as famous as his talent mandates that he eventually will be. The fact that he’s playing a colonial theme-park attendant/con artist/sex addict who falls hard for the great Kelly MacDonald, who’s playing the doctor for his ailing mother (Anjelica Huston), should be a highly compelling premise as well. The kicker is that it’s based on a Chuck Palahniuk’s novel - and you may remember this guy as the man who wrote Fight Club. Now you have no excuse.