Pages tagged “charlize theron”

You have to hand it to Nicole Kidman. In her career, the Aussie actress has juxtaposed standard Hollywood fare (often box-office disasters) with challenging, non-traditional roles in independent films with little to no commercial appeal. For every Cold Mountain, there's a Birth, where she played a woman convinced her dead husband had been reincarnated into the body of a 10-year-old boy; or a Dogville, the Lars Von Trier's three-hour melodrama on human nature at its worst; or a Fur, an "imaginary portrait" of famed photographer Diane Arbus that saw her lover, Robert Downey Jr., covered head-to-toe in hair. Even her Oscar-winning role as Virginia Woolf in The Hours was a bit of a gamble.

Release Date: Sept. 19
Director/Writer: Stuart Townsend
Cinematographer: Barry Ackroyd
Starring: Michelle Rodriguez, Woody Harrelson, Martin Henderson, Charlize Theron

Studio/Run Time: Redwood Palms, 100 mins.

Flimsy examination of a famous protest

A film that recreates the volatile environment of the 1999 World Trade Organization conference in Seattle might not seem to have much in common with the melodramatic disaster movies of the 1970s, but boiled down to its minerals, Battle in Seattle feels a lot more like The Poseidon Adventure (1972) than a thorough examination of the moment.

Release Date: July 2
Director: Peter Berg
Writers: Vy Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan
Cinematographer: Tobias Schliessler
Starring: Will Smith, Jason Bateman, Charlize Theron
Studio/Run Time: Columbia Pictures, 92 mins.

Perhaps the oddest take on superheroes that film has offered yet, Hancock (Will Smith) is a drunken crime fighter with publicity issues stemming from his tendency to constantly cause collateral damge. But after saving the life of Ray (Jason Bateman), he ends up back in the world’s good graces. Where it would be easy to take this premise and turn the film into a superhero version of Pursuit of Happyness, instead, Hancock manages to riff on its genre with both humor and truly unexpected, if somewhat bizarre, plot twists. While the film never quite reaches an Alan Moore-level deconstruction of the superhero mythos, it has a fun time offering up all the joy of a big-budget action movie without taking things too seriously. Hancock’s execution ultimately falls short of what it attempts, but the movie’s overall charm and willingness to stick to its guns makes it more than just a blockbuster cash-in.

Watch the trailer for Hancock:

Please look at the image above. Have you taken a good look? It is clearly the most-awesome photo of all time, because it features the following elements:

- Woody Harrelson
- The SWAT team
- Harrelson's menacing grimace
- Seattle