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Film Friday: Billy Zane Was in a Film Called Invincible, You Know.
Well, you know, it can’t all be exciting glamorous press conferences for internationally famous film festivals where they reveal huge megastars are going to be attending, can it? Yeah, sometimes we have to cover the films that are coming out in cinemas now. And some weeks they’re all really boring.
Invincible, for example. If we follow the ‘Snakes on a Plane’ style of naming, this would be called “Mark Wahlberg is an Unlikely Hero in the Seventies” – which would be the third in a series, then (following Boogie Nights and Rockstar.) Now Magazine’s Glenn Sumi sums it up as “a pretty formulaic pic about overcoming obstacles and believing in oneself.”
YAWN
Beerfest. Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar and from the team behind Super Troopers and Club Dread, Chandrasekhar should drop those chumps, honestly. He’s charismatic on screen and can direct a mean episode of Arrested Development, so why is he creating films where “the humour is lazy and sloppy even by the lax standards of the lowbrow” (Jason Anderson, Eye Weekly)?
BO-RING
Shadowboxer, yet another mis-step for Cuba Gooding Jr. (“Shadowboxer rivals Lady in the Water as the year’s most uncompromised film: it’s awful on its own terms.” – Adam Nayman, Eye Weekly) and kids gross-out flick How to Eat Fried Worms. Um, the book was good?
SNORE
Half Nelson. Ontario’s Ryan Gosling plays a idealistic teacher struggling with not only an unruly inner-city classroom but his own crack addiction. Glenn Sumi actually goes as far as saying “it probably won’t lose much on DVD.” So it gets a
WHATEVER
But wait! What is this burning through the ozone, trying to let the sun in to melt the thick ice of ambivalence we’re feeling this week? Is it the Bloor Cinema? We think it is! Giving as hard as it can, not only with some showings of The War Tapes, Deborah Scranton’s filmed-by-soldiers doc, but the Young Cuts Film Festival tomorrow (August 26th) featuring 23 of the top 50 short films from undiscovered talent. Discover them! The Bloor is at 506 Bloor W, but you should know where it is.
