A parallel fantasy universe movie bubbles through from a parallel universe every couple of years. (Remember Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel? No? Different universe.) This year opens with John Dies at the End and is evidently a thought experiment abstracted into a slacker buddy comedy. Has the Magnet Releasing seal of approval, so you know you're in good hands.
In a world where grownups are genuinely horrified at the idea that a chap who directed a Star Trek movie will now direct a Star Wars movie, it is no surprise to find that children's bedtimes stories are considered adult entertainment. Judging by this trailer, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is a series of digital creations hacked and slashed by an attractive couple spouting the occasional deadpan zinger. Yet again, Famke Janssen channels Angelica Houston, and does anyone really give a damn about the fictional torture scenes in ZDT?
Under the pen name Richard Stark, Donald Westlake wrote a series of crime novels about an amoral thief named Parker. Every now and again there's an attempt to make a movie of one of them. This latest, imaginatively named Parker, looks like a higher order of Jason Statham vehicle, but its most significant function is to make you read a Parker novel, and for that it should be thanked.
Reconcile the logline "The Inside Story of Korea's Most Privileged Family" with the movie title The Taste of Money, and you might well envision Asian tough guys in black suits gliding through monochrome office buildings, a fearsome-looking matriarch, and fragments of dialogue along the lines of "Money makes it all better" and "I was addicted to money." The trailer delivers precisely that and is only marginally undermined by a preposterously portentous score.
There is a great movie to be made about a gang of stoner slackers who play Call of Duty together, and while there are a couple of head-nodding moments in this trailer, Noobs is definitely not it.
When Werner Herzog makes a film called Happy People, how many smiles do you suppose are in the trailer? That's right, none. On the other hand, this portrait of life among the Bakhtia people living in the Siberia forests at the top of the planet will be the most uplifting film you will see all week, at least according to the trailer.
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