Snap Judgments Review: 'God's Pocket' Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman

John Slattery (Mad Men) makes his directorial debut with God's Pocket, a small-town crime drama based on Pete Dexter's novel. In one of his final performances, Philip Seymour Hoffman stars a Mickey, an outsider in the gritty blue-collar neighborhood known as "God's Pocket", who gets in over his head when his wife's son dies in a mysterious workplace incident. The cops are no help, his friends are no help, and things get even worse when a local journalist starts investigating the crime. The film co-stars Christina Hendricks, John Turturro, Caleb Landry Jones, Richard Jenkins, and Eddie Marsan.

Check out my Snap Judgments review of God's Pocket below.

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Philip Seymour Hoffman Buries the Truth in Trailer for 'God's Pocket'

This past Sundance was a welcome gift for fans of Philip Seymour Hoffman, with the actor starring in two high-profile films at the festival. One was Anton Corbijn's A Most Wanted Man, which just debuted a trailer last week; and the other was God's Pocket, directed by Mad Men's John Slattery. Two projects by Hoffman are always to be celebrated, until suddenly we realized they would be the final two starring roles for the late actor. Now as a new trailer for God's Pocket has been released, it comes with the weight of sadness attached.

Based on the Pete Dexter novel, the film takes place in the titular hard-scrabble South Philly neighborhood, where Mickey (Hoffman) is attempting to hide the accidental death of his stepson who nobody liked. But as a reporter and the boy's mother (Christina Hendricks) start sniffing around for the truth, things go from bad to worse. Reviews weren't especially kind for the film after its premiere, but that was mainly aimed at Slattery's direction which, as seen in this trailer, seems to be going for a Coen Brothers vibe.

Also starring John Turturro and Richard Jenkins, God's Pocket opens May 9th.

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New Trailer and Poster for John Turturro's 'Fading Gigolo' Co-Starring Woody Allen

As we've seen with Woody Allen lifting the veil early on his next film, Magic in the Moonlight, the veteran director is doing things a little bit differently. For instance, he'll be co-starring in John Turturro's indie comedy Fading Gigolo, marking his first time acting in a film directed by another in more than a decade.

The latest trailer is thick with Allen and Turturro's neuroses, which makes them a combination that should gel perfectly. Allen plays a book dealer who starts pimping out Turturro in an effort to get out of a financial bind. Sofia Vergara plays the woman who helps kick off this lucrative business venture in the world's oldest profession by hiring Turturro to be a part of a threesome. It's silly stuff, and Turturro, who directs and co-wrote the script, is clearly following in Allen's stylistic footprints.

Co-starring Liev Schreiber and Sharon Stone, Fading Gigolo opens April 18th.


"Fading Gigolo" Trailer starring John Turturro, Woody Allen, Sofía Vergara, and Sharon Stone by thesevensees

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Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, Aaron Paul, and John Turturro Join Ridley Scott's 'Exodus'

It's never easy to predict where Ben Kingsley will turn up next or what role he'll undertake. He's such a chameleon that he could do pretty much anything. Already this year he's played a supervillain in Iron Man 3 and a terrorist in the festival award-winning drama A Common Man, and soon he'll be a futuristic war hero in Ender's Game. But for his next role he's going to get downright Biblical in Ridley Scott's Exodus, and he's bringing along a few friends.

Kingsley, Sigourney Weaver, John Turturro and Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul will join the Biblical epic, which has Christian Bale as Moses and Joel Edgerton as Egyptian pharaoh Ramses. Steve Zaillian wrote the most recent script, which is said to explore the sibling-like relationship between the two, which got worse once Moses began leading the Israelites out of Egypt. Weaver, getting a chance to reteam with her Aliens director, will play Ramses' mother, while Tuturro is his father. Kingsley is a Hebrew scholar and, interestingly, Paul will be Joshua, the slave who leads the people into the promised land of Canaan after Moses' death.

So yeah, that casting is pretty much coming out of left field. Exodus hits theaters on December 12th 2014.

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Woody Allen Pimps Out John Turturro in First 'Fading Gigolo' Trailer

It takes a lot to get Woody Allen to appear on screen, much less in somebody else's film. After more than a decade since his last appearance in the work of another, perhaps Allen has recognized a kindred spirit in John Turturro, who appeared in Hannah and her Sisters and worked with him albeit briefly on Company Man. The two screen neurotics are pairing up on Turturro's next directorial feature, Fading Gigolo, and the first trailer suggests it's a teaming that should have happened long ago.

Turturro pulls triple duty on this one, writing, directing, and starring as a guy employed in the world's oldest profession, with Allen as his best friend, a book seller who turns pimp to help him out of a financial bind. If the idea of Allen pimping anybody isn't enough to float your boat, then there are also a couple of choice looks at co-stars Sofia Vergara and Sharon Stone.

Fading Gigolo will premiere at TIFF in just a few weeks, where it will hopefully find distribution.

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Rob Corddry joins Michael Bay's 'Pain and Gain'; John Turturro circling a role?

Because the first thing I think of when I see Rob Corddry(Hot Tub Time Machine) is an "ex-bodybuilder". The prolific funnyman behind the delightfully demented Children's Hospital,  is looking to add one more high profile gig to an already jam packed 2012, as Variety reports he'll be a part of Michael Bay's small budget crime caper, Pain and Gain.

Joining Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson in the crime comedy(which reportedly has no action), Corddry will play John Mese, a former bodybuilder who now runs the gym where Wahlberg's character is a personal trainer. Due to his accounting skills, he becomes an unwilling participant in Wahlberg and Johnson's kidnapping scheme which goes awry. Actually, it turns up quite a bit worse than that, as the guy they kidnap and leave for dead, Marc Schiller, survived the assault and comes back looking for some serious revenge. Latino Review is reporting that John Turturro, who knows Bay well after appearing in all three of his Transformers movies, may be taking on the Schiller role. Apparently, Albert Brooks had been up for the role before but the deal fell through for unknown reasons.

Bay has been talking up the film a little bit, and claims to be inspired by such crime classics as Fargo and Pulp Fiction. He couldn't have picked two better ones to draw inspiration from, and if Pain and Gain is even a fraction as good as those, we may finally have reason to shut up about Bay being a one trick pony. With Corddry and possibly Turturro coming aboard, it certainly sounds like there will be more laughs than explosions.

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Crazy cast of Gods Behaving Badly includes Christopher Walken, Sharon Stone, Alicia Silverstone

The first thing I thought of when digging the wacky cast line-up and premise for Gods Behaving Badly was an old comedy skit where the Justice League lived together in a house ala The Real World. Only here it's the Greek gods of Olympus sharing a brownstone in New York and struggling to make ends meet like regular joes. So what do earthbound deities do when they get bored? They start mucking around with the lives of humans, that's what.

Certainly a far cry from the other godly flicks on the horizon, but that's nothing. Check out this seriously random casting....

Sharon Stone as Aphrodite, Oliver Platt as Apollo, Edie Falco as Artemis, Phylicia Rashad as Demeter, Nelsan Ellis as Dionysus, Gideon Glick as Eros, JohnTurturro is Hades, Henry Zebrowski as Hermes, Christopher Walken as Zeus, and Rosie Perez as Persephone.

Are you kidding me???? Its like the casting agent threw darts at a bunch of headshots. Alicia Silverstone and Evon Moss-Bachrach will play the couple who see their relationship tested by the meddlesome immortals.

The film is based on Marie Phillips' best selling 2007 novel, with Josh Goldfaden and Marc Turtletaub adapting for the screen. Turtletaub will be handling directing chores as well. Shooting begins later this month in NYC.

This has the smell of a classic all over it. Or a train wreck! [Movieline]





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

There are times when Michael Bay knows exactly how to hit the right buttons. At times, Transformers sends me back to a time when I was a kid playing with my Soundwave action figure, having him duke it out with Ultra Magnus on my front porch. The times when, even then, I wondered what a live action Transformers film would look like; how cool it could be; how they could just bring the phenomenal Transformers: The Movie into the real world and it'd be awesome. But then, Bay flips to the other side of the coin, and does all the same things wrong that would've annoyed me as a child and still annoy me to this day. There's no middle ground. You're either exhilerated by a few amazing action sequences, or bored to tears by a mind boggling plot and stilted conversation about shards and matrixes. >yawn<

It's two years after Megatron's defeat, and now the Autobots have fully incorporated themselves into the country's military as a part of NEST, a special human/Autobot strike force designed to take out Decepticon threats. But the government now is starting to get a little weary of the fighting, and the logical assumption is made that the Autobots are what's drawing the Decepticons to earth. Without a human voice to support them, the good guys quickly become persona non grata, and turn to Sam Witwicky(Shia Labouf) to help them. Unfortunately Sam is on his way to college, a segment of the film best left undiscussed, as it quickly devolves into lame sitcom humor involving his well meaning but goofy parents. Sam and his too hot for him girlfriend Mikaela(Megan Fox) prepare for a life of phone sex and web cam chats.

Little do they know that the Decepticons are actually in search of something in particular. An ancient Decepticon known as The Fallen has returned, and seeks the location of a Sun Harvester, a device used to create energon by destroying stars. The only known location of the machine is hidden in Sam's mind, since he's now one with the All Spark. There's also something involving the Matrix of Leadership, but honestly it's all too convoluted for a Transformers movie. It feels like they took these cool elements of the cartoon continuity, threw them into a blender and hit puree. None of it makes a lot of sense. Anyway, The Fallen, Megatron, and the rest of the Decepticons head off to capture Sam, soak up his knowledge and use it to find the Harvester.

There's a definite initiative in this film to bring the Autobots more into the real world, which was something I thought was seriously lacking in the previous. The Transformers are now a part of the world at large, which is somewhat more in line with the cartoon and comics. I like the way the government begins to look at all of the aliens with suspicion, which felt like a natural course considering they've brought nothing but war and death since arriving. It's something I hope they capitalize on for the next film because it genuinely works for awhile, up until the promising subplot is used as comedy fodder later on. Then again virtually every promising aspect of the story is thrown away at some point, but that's because The Fallen is a lame ass character to center a film around. He's suddenly the true leader of the Decepticons, but Megatron fails to mention him last time around? Whatever. Not to mention that he doesn't seem to be any different than any other Transformer other than that he looks vaguely Egyptian, but at least he ain't rockin' a gold tooth or a walking stick(more on that later).

Whatever. Nobody cares about the plot anyway. This thing is about giant robots pounding metal fists into eachother's grills, right? Compared to the previous film, this Transformers is a bit easier on the eyes during the fights sequences. There's a sense that they actually tried to choreograph each battle, rather than just hurling masses of metal at eachother and having them roll around the screen for awhile. Some of the battles are almost operatic in nature, as Optimus dances among four Decepticons in a pitched battle that ultimately ends in his defeat. There's something about watching Optimus Prime fall in battle that is always gut wrenching, and this from a guy with a Decepticon tattoo on his arm. Then again I got that same feeling everytime I saw my beloved Soundwave used as a glorified DirecTV satellite up in space. Whatta waste. But I digress....the point being that the battles are more open, more thrilling than before. The explosions are bigger, the guns are more ratta-tat-tatty, and there are more than two Decepticons this time and not just a bunch of bland drones.

The Autobots again are the recipients of all the robotic personality, as we get a host of new boyscouts for Hasbro to make toys out of. We get a version of the only female Autobot, Arcee, now a trio of lovely fem-bots. We're also introduced to Jetfire, an ancient Decepticon who has been stuck in a museum as an old biplane for decades. Explain this to me: Why would an old robot who's been in a museum for years transform into an old man with a walking stick? Does he eat energon oatmeal and wear Cybertronian Depends™, too? It's just stupid beyond belief, but atleast he's not offensive.

There's been a ton of talk about two particular characters, Mudflap and Skids. People have been complaining that the two represent a poor stereotype of African-Americans being as that they have gold teeth, speak in a amped up version of hip hop slang, and basically act ignorant for 90% of the film. It doesn't help that they openly claim to "not do much readin'" or something like that. Personally, I found that to be more annoying than offensive. I remember the original autobot Jazz back in the 80's was CLEARLY a black dude. So was Blaster. They would break dance, talk in jive, and I never really cared. Still don't. I see these two as an extension of that, and I honestly believe nobody would give a damn if they weren't so prominent. They dominate every scene they're in because they are so friggin' annoying. Remember how you'd groan if Jar Jar Binks did so much as walk on screen for two seconds? That's how these two are. Aggravating. But racist? I think that's a bit much.

There's no reason in the world that a Transformers film should be 2 1/2 hours long. Period. None. That alone tells you that there is way too much filler here, and that is the biggest problem this movie suffers. When they aren't fighting, it's a slow plodding bore, compounded by it's snooze inducing length. If you're seeing Tyrese Gibson or one of Sam's unfortunate parents, you're probably snoozing. Or wondering how many toes you'll crush on your way to the bathroom. The military might as well be the words "Mr. Irrelevant" stamped on their foreheads. They serve no purpose other than to provide Bay a chance to blow up an aircraft carrier.

If Transformers continues without Bay at the helm I honestly believe it will be a worse film for it. Sure, his films require only the bare minimum of acting which is why I didn't even comment on it in this entire review(except for Glenn Morshower who is DA MAN!), but Bay does bring the vision and scale that a film like this demands. I only wish the script(which ain't his fault) was up to par. Sadly, it just lags and drags too much for what is essentially a film about giant robots. The last thing in the world it should EVER be is dull at any point. Maybe they'll hit the nail on the head the next time around.

6/10

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