All Movie Replicas Visitor Resource Centre: Licensed movie memorabilia, movie posters, film cells, movie prop replicas, home theater decor, movie reviews & more...
Mr. Woodcock 27" x 40" Movie Poster Print - Style A. New condition. This is a reprint and not an original movie poster. Reproduction, printed on satin finish paper.
Burn After Reading is a must see. Nuff said, read the review.
All critics have their “rules,” their preferences and pet peeves. Sometimes they’re a matter of personal taste – one genre over another – and sometimes they’re a result of seeing the same approach taken too many times with the same material. But despite cinema’s inherent ability to instruct its audience upon the finer points of finding love, recognizing shortcomings, and overcoming adversity, I really, really hate it when characters learn lessons. All of which is why, at least according to my own, subjective standards, the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading may be the greatest movie ever made.
Frances McDormand (Almost Famous) plays Linda Litzke, a personal trainer who decides to blackmail former CIA operative Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) after her colleague Chad (Brad Pitt) finds a disc that contains Cox’s memoirs. Cox, however, refuses to cooperate, and soon Linda is forced to juggle her get-rich-quick scheme, her responsibilities at the gym, and a burgeoning relationship with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney) – a married man who is also carrying on an affair with Cox’s wife Katie (Tilda Swinton). Meanwhile, Cox’s former colleague (David Rasche) and superior (J.K. Simmons) at the CIA discover that Linda went to the Russians with Cox’s memoirs and monitor the situation as it continues to develop.
As suggested above, there are going to be a lot of folks disappointed by Burn After Reading if only because it follows the artistic triumph of No Country for Old Men and is by any standard a completely unimportant story bereft of dramatic substance. But longtime Coen brothers fans will observe that this material perfectly fits within the general themes of their other films, most of which make fun of stupid people by telling, yes, a completely unimportant story. From Raising Arizona to The Hudsucker Proxy to Fargo to The Big Lebowski to O Brother, Where Art Thou, the Coens regularly assemble their stories to satirize if not outright ridicule the best laid plans of men with the brains of mice. And this film is no different. While there are a few sympathetic and even intelligent characters within Burn After Reading’s ensemble, they are given enough human shortcomings (arrogance, insensitivity, obliviousness) to make them worthy of the Coens’ derision, if not also the audience’s.
Additionally, Malkovich gives a great performance as Cox, the analyst whose self-aggrandizing but by all accounts mediocre memoirs set into motion the film’s comically catastrophic turn of events, and J.K. Simmons contributes a terrific cameo as a CIA superior who supervises the events with appropriately dry disbelief. But as always, Ethan and Joel are the ones pulling the strings, and they’re the ones who most effectively create this tapestry of complicated situations and yet manage to make it all seem simultaneously significant and superfluous. Ironically, of course, there are far more movies made in Hollywood that are really about nothing, but pretend to be about something – which is also when their supposed lessons mean the absolute least. But with Burn After Reading, the Coens have successfully made a movie that both pretends to be and is in fact about nothing at all.
Click on the link below to read the entire review:
On the surface a teen stoner comedy with action sequences, you could easily roll your eyes at Pineapple Express. It’s a movie about two average guys and their love/hate relationship with marijuana. It has guns, bumbling mismatched sidekicks and slapstick. But under the surface sheen of generic conventions is a film that, like almost every Judd Apatow production before it, manages to subvert the stoner-comedy roots with a clever nod to Miami Vice-style ridiculous action and a level of self-consciousness that makes it incredibly entertaining, if a little more forgettable for the action slant.
Much of Pineapple Express’ success can be attributed to the cast of Apatow-regulars who punch out the jokes with delivery most comedians spend their lives trying to perfect. At the fore, Seth Rogen (Knocked Up, Superbad) plays Dale Denton, a Process Server (essentially, a guy who delivers court summons to people who sometimes don’t want to be found) with a teenage girlfriend and a taste for hashish. Playing opposite is James Franco (Spider-Man, Freaks and Geeks), who nails his portrayal of ineffectual but charmingly innocent weed-dealer, Saul Silver.
Denton witnesses a murder while sucking down a joint of Pineapple Express – the rarest pot in the country – and only supplied to one man: Saul. After ditching the dooby, Dale realises the pot is so rare that it’s completely traceable back to them, and the duo begin their run from a drug baron (the always talented Gary Cole), a crooked cop (Rosie Perez) and two scene-stealing hitmen (Kevin Corrigan and Craig Robinson). Danny McBride also crops up as a fair-weather friend who spends most of the film getting shot to pieces and reflecting on the meaning of friendship and the Buddhist belief system.
We have the UK review for The Dark Knight. Read on:
With The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan has rewritten the rules for making a big budget summer event movie.
Since the days of The Godfather in the early ’70s, Hollywood’s film studios have been, almost without exception, scared stiff of peppering their populist cash-cows with grandiose, weighty and thought-provoking themes, preferring instead to programme lightweight, action-packed fare for the summer and prestige, serious projects for awards season.
Yet The Dark Knight sees these sensibilities outrageously and stunningly collide; the film is an unbelievably intense, kinetic head-rush of a movie yet, simultaneously, a two-and-a-half hour meditation on the breakdown of society, the morality of vigilantism and a multi-layered rumination on good and evil.
We pick up a year after the events of Begins, with Batman, together with allies Lieutenant Gordon and crusading District Attorney Harvey Dent, apparently winning the battle against crime. The presence of Batman on Gotham’s streets has law-breakers on the run, with criminals afraid to go about their dark misdeeds with the famous Bat-Signal lighting the night sky. Things are seemingly on the up - that is until a mysterious, scar-faced psychopathic criminal mastermind called ‘The Joker’ appears, intent on unleashing chaos throughout Gotham City.
It was inevitable that thousands of column inches would be devoted to the man who plays him - with writers first pondering how Heath Ledger’s untimely death would affect the movie’s marketing and box office, and then pushing his performance for an Oscar win (he’s currently odds-on to posthumously receive a statuette) - something his simply electric turn would doubtless deserve.
We knew his portrayal would be something special from the trailers, but the full, magnetic force of Ledger’s turn as the charismatic, amoral sadist can only be truly appreciated in its full, furious glory. Every moment the actor’s on screen, it’s impossible to take your eyes off his panda-eyed post-punk anarchist. Whenever you think he’s going to slip into a comedy pastiche, Ledger shows us a glimpse of the true darkness and nihilism lurking within his character. It’s a tour-de-force and its power overshadows the raft of similarly fine performances in the film.
Indeed, despite Ledger’s showy brilliance, we think director Christopher Nolan is the real star of The Dark Knight. The canny helmer draws superlative turns from his multi-garlanded cast. Bale, Caine, Freeman, Eckhart and Oldman make for a powerhouse ensemble, imbuing their roles with an emotional depth - and the odd flash of humour - that fits marvellously with the opaque morality and bleak tone of the movie.
Click on the link below to read the second page of this indepth review
Christopher Nolan discusses his reason for upping the ante in The Dark Knight.
The famed Batmobile is back with a vengeance in The Dark Knight - but director Christopher Nolan didn’t want to stop there.
He decided that Batman and audiences needed something new and fantastic, so he went to work in his garage at home - and came up with the Bat Pod, a high- powered, massively armed two-wheeler.
Nolan wanted the Caped Crusader to have a different means of transportation - “something very exotic and powerful-looking. But it’s definitely not a motorcycle.”
The Bat Pod has monster tires, just like the Batmobile, but it also carries heavy artillery - blast cannons, 50-calibre machine guns, even grappling hooks.
And it all happened in Nolan’s garage, a place where he constantly finds inspiration.
“We did a lot of the design work for The Dark Knight in my garage at home before we got too many people on the film. It keeps it a little more intimate and let’s us kind of explore ideas without having a massive payroll of people that we have to feed drawings to . . .”
In the case of the Bat Pod, Nolan and production designer Nathan Crowley retreated to the garage to figure out what they wanted it to be like.
“We thought - what if you took an anti-aircraft gun and put it on wheels? That was the sort of design jumping-off point. And we built small models and then, still in my garage, we actually put out a full-size mock-up to show to the special effects guys.”
The special effects guys initially freaked out when they saw what the filmmakers had in mind: Crowley recently described the encounter as “the usual clash of design versus engineering.”
After recovering from their first sight of the Bat Pod, the special effects people turned to Nolan and Crowley and bluntly said: “You guys don’t know anything about motorbikes do you?”
“We had to admit that was true,” Nolan remembers. “But then we said, ‘But it looks great! Can’t you find a way that it could work?’ And they did. They built this thing for real and it really runs. But, in terms of full disclosure, there is only one person in the world who can ride it because it is extraordinarily difficult to ride and to steer and so forth.”
And that person, of course, is Christian Bale, the most essential ingredient in the new movie if Nolan was to come back and direct it.
By the time he unveiled Batman Begins three years ago, Nolan knew he wanted to add further instalments to the saga. Having established the traumatic origins of millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, aka Batman, the 37-year-old British filmmaker felt that it was time to up the ante, throw in the sociopathic figure of The Joker (Heath Ledger) and also introduce one of the most complex villains in the Batman mythology, Harvey “Two-Face” Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and let things rip.
Nolan says he became intrigued by the idea of “escalation” in the Batman universe - “the idea that, having established Batman as this heroic figure in Gotham who’s going to take Gotham back for the good people of the city, there was going to be an incredible criminal response to that . . . so what were the criminals going to come back with? That really manifests itself in the person of The Joker. That was really my interest - taking this story forward and seeing it expand out so that Batman’s internal struggle from the first film really takes on a city-wide aspect now.
Click on the lnm below to read the entire article:
Brendan Fraser is explaining the art of acting in special- effects movies, and he grabs the nearest thing at hand - a plastic water bottle - to illustrate his point about pretending.
“It may be a misbehaving cartoon duck,” he says, holding the water bottle to his face and squinting as it squirts an imaginary jet of water into his eye. “Or it may be something that’s trying to take your head off,” he adds, shrinking back as the water bottle moves in threateningly.
What we are watching looks like outtakes from Looney Toons: Back in Action, and The Mummy, two of the special-effects films that comprise half of Fraser’s career. More than most actors, Fraser jumps between genres; he’s George of the Jungle one day, looking goofy and lost, and then he’s the hunky pool boy to Ian McKellen’s gay director in Gods and Monsters, or the angry husband of Sandra Bullock in Crash. Both kinds of movies have one thing in common.
“You’ve got to absolutely buy into it,” he says, putting down the water bottle. “And in a way it’s collaborative. It’s collaborative, and you may not know it.”
He gives the example of The Mummy Returns, where he is fighting with a mummy on top of a double-decker bus - Fraser likes to do what he calls “the fighty- punchy stuff” without stuntmen - and he was inspired to use a Three Stooges move and stick his fingers into the mummy’s eyes. This being another special effects extravaganza, there was no mummy actually there (it’s computerized into the film later), so Fraser mimed what might happen.
“There’d be mummy goo on your finger. Gross,” he says, shaking off the imaginary yuckiness. The filmmakers thought the improvisation was hilarious, and it stayed in the movie. “There’s a sense of spontaneity that you can bring to the work, whether you know it or not,” he says.
Click on the link below to read the entire article:
Another excellent review for the upcoming The Dark Knight movie. Read on:
Having memorably explored the Caped Crusader’s origins in “Batman Begins,” director Christopher Nolan puts all of Gotham City under a microscope in “The Dark Knight,” the enthralling second installment of his bold, bracing and altogether heroic reinvention of the iconic franchise. An ambitious, full-bodied crime epic of gratifying scope and moral complexity, this is seriously brainy pop entertainment that satisfies every expectation raised by its hit predecessor and then some. That should also hold true at the box office, with Heath Ledger’s justly anticipated turn as the Joker adding to the must-see excitement surrounding the Warner Bros. release.
With the Bruce Wayne/Batman backstory firmly established, “The Dark Knight” fans out to take a broader perspective on Gotham City — portrayed as a seething cauldron of interlocking power structures and criminal factions in the densely layered but remarkably fleet screenplay by helmer Nolan and brother Jonathan (stepping in for “Batman Begins’” David S. Goyer, who gets a story credit).
Using five strongly developed characters to anchor a drama with life-or-death implications for the entire metropolis, the Nolans have taken Bob Kane’s comicbook template and crafted an anguished, eloquent meditation on ideas of justice and power, corruption and anarchy, and, of course, the need for heroes like Batman — a question never in doubt for the viewer, but one posed rather often by the citizens of Gotham.
Indeed, with trusty Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman, superbly restrained) and golden-boy District Attorney Harvey Dent (a cocksure Aaron Eckhart) successfully spearheading the city’s crackdown on the mob, even Wayne himself (Christian Bale) figures his nights moonlighting as a leather-clad vigilante are numbered. The young billionaire hopes to hang up the Batsuit for good and renew his relationship with assistant D.A. Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, an immediate improvement over Katie Holmes), who has taken up with Dent in the meantime.
But Batman’s stature as a radical symbol of good has invited a more sinister criminal presence to Gotham City — and, as seen in the crackerjack bank-robbery sequence that opens the pic, one who operates in terrifyingly unpredictable ways. Utterly indifferent to simple criminal motivations like greed, Ledger’s maniacally murderous Joker is as pure an embodiment of irrational evil as any in modern movies. He’s a pitiless psychopath who revels in chaos and fears neither pain nor death, a demonic prankster for whom all the world’s a punchline.
After Ledger’s death in January, his penultimate performance (with Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” still to come) will be viewed with both tremendous excitement and unavoidable sadness. It’s a tribute to Ledger’s indelible work that he makes the viewer entirely forget the actor behind the cracked white makeup and blood-red rictus grin, so complete and frightening is his immersion in the role. With all due respect to the enjoyable camp buffoonery of past Jokers like Cesar Romero and Jack Nicholson, Ledger makes them look like — well, clowns.
Pic shrewdly positions the Joker as the superhero-movie equivalent of a modern terrorist (one of several post-9/11 signifiers), who threatens to target Gotham civilians until Batman reveals his identity. Batman, Gordon and Dent uneasily join forces, but the Joker seems to have the upper hand at every step, even from a jail cell; the city, turning against the hero it once looked to for hope, seems more fractious, vulnerable and dangerous than ever.
Though more linear than “Memento” and “The Prestige” (two fiendishly intricate thrillers also co-scripted by the Nolans), “The Dark Knight” pivots with similar ingenuity on a breathless series of twists and turns, culminating in a dramatic shift for Eckhart’s Dent. While this subplot reps the film’s weakest link, packing too much psychological motivation into too little screen time to be entirely credible, Eckhart vividly inhabits the character’s sad trajectory, underscoring the film’s point that even symbols of good can be all too easily tarnished.
From Wayne’s playful debates with faithful butler Alfred (Michael Caine) about the public perception of Batman to the Joker’s borderline-poetic musings on his own bottomless sadism, the characters almost seem to be carrying on a debate about the complicated realities of good vs. evil, and the heavy burden shouldered by those fighting for good. One of the few action filmmakers who’s capable of satisfying audiences beyond the fanboy set, Nolan honors his serious themes to the end; he bravely closes the story with both Gotham City and the narrative in tatters, making this the rare sequel that genuinely deserves another.
Viewers who found “Batman Begins” too existentially weighty for its own good will be refreshed to know that “The Dark Knight” hits the ground running and rarely lets up over its swift 2½-hour running time. Nolan directs the action more confidently than he did the first time out, orchestrating all manner of vertiginous mid-air escapes and virtuosic highway setpieces (and unleashing Batman’s latest ooh-ah contraption, the monster-truck-tire-equipped Bat-Pod). In a fresh innovation, six sequences were shot using Imax cameras, and will presumably look smashing in the giant-screen format (pic was reviewed from a 35mm print).
Though not as obsessively detailed as “Batman Begins,” “The Dark Knight” shares with that film a robust physicality and a commitment to taking violence seriously; a brief shot of bruises and scrapes on Bale’s torso conveys as much impact as any of the film’s brutal confrontations. Bale himself is less central figure than ensemble player, but the commandingly charismatic thesp continues to put his definitive stamp on the role, and also has devilish fun playing up Wayne’s playboy persona.
Tech work is at the first entry’s high standard, with many artists reprising their contributions here — from Nathan Crowley’s imposing production design, shown to flattering effect in Wally Pfister’s gleaming widescreen compositions, to the propulsively moody score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. Perhaps most impressive is Lee Smith’s editing, confidently handling multiple lines of action and cutting for maximum impact.
Exteriors were lensed in Chicago aside from an early scenic detour to Hong Kong, which marks the first time a Batman film has ventured outside Gotham City.
Click on the link below to rad thje entire review:
“Dark Knight is a great work of art”, says Todd Gilchrist (IGN). This is a well executed masterpiece.
It isn’t an overstatement to call The Dark Knight the most sophisticated and ambitious work of its kind. Superior to all three Spider-Man installments and even its amazing predecessor in terms of conceptualization, writing, acting, and direction, Nolan’s follow-up to Batman Begins is a dark, complex and disturbing film, not the least of which because it grafts its heroics onto the blueprint of actual reality rather than that of spandex-clad supermen. And while such a distinction may make little difference to those already eagerly anticipating the return of the caped crusader, suffice it to say that The Dark Knight qualifies as the first official comic book adaptation that truly succeeds in being a great artistic achievement in its own right.
Christian Bale returns as Bruce Wayne, the billionaire playboy who moonlights as Batman. Having eased more comfortably into a lifestyle of excess, Wayne lurks on the fringes of his family’s corporation as CEO Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) runs the boardroom. But when an ambitious district attorney named Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) comes forward to challenge Gotham City’s villainy through proper legal channels, the man also known as Batman sees an opportunity to replace his vigilante persona with a figure of virtue who will truly inspire the best in the citizenry.
Unfortunately, Batman’s success as a crime fighter has generated new problems for Gotham, including a consolidation of the crime lords who once controlled the city independently. Meanwhile, a new adversary named The Joker (Heath Ledger) proves particularly dangerous because he seeks not only to advance the cause of Gotham’s underworld, but obliterate the foundations of liberty and order that Batman protects. Torn between championing Dent and meting out justice as a masked vigilante, Wayne soon finds himself at a crossroads between being the hero that Gotham needs and the one it deserves.
Click on the link below to read the entire two page, indepth review:
Wall. E is a “tender, thoughtful and terrific looking animated film.”
WALL•E is the kind of movie that you spend months anticipating and then have nothing to say about it when you finally see it. A masterpiece on par with Pixar’s very best films, Andrew Stanton’s overdue follow-up to Finding Nemo is everything one could possibly want from a film about a robot finding love, and even more. But the problem is that its substance is all so visible and understandable that it demands, and needs, no further analysis. All of which is why the best that should be said about it is it’s wonderful, and you should see it as soon as possible.
The film follows WALL•E, a cleaning robot who is left behind to straighten up the planet after humankind left Earth on gigantic spaceships. During the intervening centuries between humanity’s departure, WALL•E develops a personality and spends his days discovering small treasures among the trash, including a well-worn copy of Hello, Dolly! When a ship arrives from space, WALL•E is naturally intrigued, but after it drops off a sleek probe named Eve, he’s in love. Following a tenuous introduction (she almost vaporizes him), the two begin to bond. When the ship returns to retrieve Eve, however, WALL•E finds himself on an epic journey not only to explore the (literal) universe beyond Earth, but to find love and help humankind reconnect with the planet they abandoned so many years ago.
Much has already been made of the film’s environmental messages and supposed anti-corporate commentary (no small irony given Pixar’s partnership with Disney, much less their massive marketing push), but its most incisive observations are in regards to humanity’s increasing — and increasingly debilitating — reliance on technology. While the film does feature some actual humans, most notably Fred Willard as corporate mouthpiece Shelby Forthright, the characters that interact with WALL•E and his fellow robots are doughy, overweight CGI blobs that represent 700-plus years of laziness. Aboard the space cruisers, humans are literally waited on hand and foot, consuming the maximum possible calorie intake through the easiest and quickest possible ways, and essentially destroying anything resembling muscle mass, much less the motivation to do much of anything for themselves.
According to the Wanted UK review, Wanted is “quite the best time to be had in a cinema thus far this summer.” “People, the summer starts here.” Well, we’ll see.
Wesley Gibson doesn’t have a lot going for him. Working in a dead-end job, he spends his days being bullied by his overbearing boss, while back home his best bud is busy banging his ballbuster of a girlfriend. Wesley is a loser with a capital ‘L’, until the day he meets Fox, a mysterious beauty with a big gun, a fast car, and an offer Wes can’t possibly refuse.
So begins Wanted - quite the best time to be had in a cinema thus far this summer. For it turns out Wes’s long-lost father was a member of the Fraternity - a centuries old league of assassins carrying out the orders of fate - and it’s now the prodigal son’s time to follow his destiny, ‘grow a pair’, and become the superhuman soldier he was always meant to be.
Click on the link below to read the entire review:
The Incredible Hulk gets rave reviews from the folks at IGN. “It delivers and delivers well.” A must see this weekend (June 13).
“Hulk smash!” It’s incredibly (pardon the pun) important to remember that when going in to see the Marvel Studios requel of The Incredible Hulk. Sure, there’s angst — the story’s hero is cursed with a monstrous alter ego that only appears when he gets “excited” (in both good and bad ways). Sure, there’s tension — the story’s hero is constantly on the run from “Big Brother-like” forces looking to capture and exploit his beast within. But ultimately the film, much like the comic book from which it’s based, is about destruction.
Think a smaller scale Cloverfield and you’re in the right ballpark. To further hammer the point home: An introspective tale focusing on father-son issues this is not (sorry, Ang Lee).
To that end, The Incredible Hulk delivers and it delivers well. The film starts off with Dr. Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) desperately searching for a cure to the gamma radiation which has poisoned his cells and unleashed a primal force of rage within him known as The Hulk. Living in the shadows and cut off from a life with the woman he loves, Dr. Betty Ross (Liv Tyler), Bruce knows that a military machine led by General “Thunderbolt” Ross (William Hurt) is seeking to capture and brutally exploit his power. As all three grapple with the secrets that led to The Hulk’s creation (indeed, they all played a role), they are confronted with a vicious new enemy known as The Abomination — a monstrosity whose destructive strength exceeds even that of The Hulk’s. To defeat this nemesis, the film’s hero must make an agonizing choice: accept a peaceful life as Bruce Banner or find heroism in the creature he holds inside.
Much has been made about director Louis Leterrier’s decision to focus his film back on themes established in the popular 1970s live-action TV series, and that is clearly the case. In fact, the film’s opening credit sequence revisits The Hulk’s origin story mirroring the starting point established in the show — Bruce falls victim to a gamma experiment gone wrong, an attempt to tap into man’s adrenaline induced super-strength. The director even goes so far as to include cameos from former Hulk, Lou Ferrigno, and former Bruce, Bill Bixby (in a clever and cute way). But how this new approach truly benefits the film is by upping the story’s tension, not only putting its human hero constantly on the run from a determined General Ross but by also increasing the stakes surrounding each “Hulk out.” Bruce quite literally has to restart his life each time he transforms, finding himself in a strange new location (the Hulk will often leap into neighboring states or countries), in need of new clothes, and in need of a new lab to once again begin his search for a cure.
Click on the link below to read the entire review:
