The List! 2/26/10

I wrote this column last week, didn't I? Good gravy this has been the longest work week evah! It's like somebody took time, drenched it in cairo syrup and flash froze it. Or, that just could be my perception of time slowing down now that I'm inching closer to seniority. My AARP card will be arriving in the mail before I know it.

This was a good week for comedies, with the surprising Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan film Cop Out hitting theatres today. Not to mention we got an early look at She's Out of My League, which is due out in a couple of weeks.  Keep an eye on this site today, as we'll be giving away free screener passes to a showing of the film to all our readers in the Nation's Capital!

Psycological horrors are all the rage lately, it seems, and The Crazies hopes to slice off a piece of the pie. A remake of the 1973 film, The Crazies features Punch Drunk favorite Timothy Olyphant(A Perfect Getaway, Deadwood) as a sheriff trying to survive in a town where the inhabitants have all suddenly gone insane. If the film is half as creepy as the trailer, which features the haunting melody of "Mad World" playing in the background, this could be a sleeper hit.

Let's be honest, Roman Polanski's legal troubles have done nothing but push this film further into the public consciousness, which is a good thing. We don't get enough smart, political thrillers on this side of the pond. Ewan McGregor stars as a ghost writer, hired to pen the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister, played by Pierce Brosnan who admits to patterning the character after Tony Blair. The mystery comes as McGregor's character discovers that his predecessor on the job died under very suspicious circumstances. After a lukewarm reception to his 2005 remake of Oliver Twist, Polanski appears to be coming back into the same form that produced The Pianist back in 2002. Let's hope so.

You can check out my review here, but Kevin Smith's first for-hire directorial effort feels as if it were ripped straight from the 80s. Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan star as a pair of cops(one bad ass, one lame ass) on the search for a missing baseball card. Doesn't exactly sound like a plot worthy of acclaim, does it? But it is right up Smith's alley. Let's not forget this is a guy who sights Fletch as one of his all-time faves. The success of this one lies flat on the backs of Willis and Morgan, who's oil & water relationship makes for some hilarious moments.

In my mind, people who scale mountains are out of their friggin' gords. I have nothing but respect for them, but if they take a tumble they aren't getting any sympathy from me. However, if they do fall, it's probably gonna make a great movie. North Face is about Andreas Hinterstoisser and Toni Kurz's attempt to scale the Eiger north face, one of the 6 faces of the Alps back in 1936. A winner of multiple German film awards, the hook for me is that it co-stars Johanna Wokalek, who caught my attention in last year's The Baader-Meinhof Complex.

If there's time....

Think of it as the Danish Hot Fuzz. A cop who screws up royally is sent off to a sleepy town in Copenhagen to cool off and get some therapy. He finds that the little village he's in isn't nearly as quiet as he thought. Looks interesting, and as if it takes some seriously dark turns. If time allows I'll definitely try to check it out.