It’s here! It’s finally here!
Looper, the time travel action film from Brick director Rian Johnson starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis, finally has its first trailer. From the footage on show it looks like Johnson hasn’t lost the visual flair that made Brick such a memorable debut.
Prepare for me to talk about this film for the rest of the year. Apologies in advance.
Rian Johnson (director of the stylish Brick and the stylish but flawed Brothers Bloom) is soon to be back in cinemas with his third film Looper. In Looper Joseph Gordon-Levitt is an assassin tasked with killing targets sent back from the future – the logic being that if you kill them in the past there’s no victim to be found. One day Gordon-Levitt recognises one of his targets as the future version of himself (as played by Bruce Willis) and plenty of running and jumping ensues.
With Rian Johnson at the helm Looper is sure to have plenty of visual flair and who can resist some time travel based fun? The first trailer will be with us in a few days and over the weekend the first images of Joseph Gordon-Levitt have appeared. Interestingly, he’s wearing prosthetics to make him look more like a younger Bruce Willis. A wise move or a crime against his face?
Click the images below to enlarge.
Looper is out in the UK on 28th September 2012 and had better be amazing or I’ll cry.
With so many people rediscovering our teaser dissection for The Dark Knight Rises, I thought it only fair to provide a dissection of the full trailer, and give people something slightly more worth their time. It is Christmas after all. And as the only comment on the previous dissection was “This isn’t much of a dissection”, I am going to take this way too far and show every single shot from the trailer regardless of interest or sanity.
If you haven’t seen the trailer yet it is embedded below:
Now onto the dissection… Read more »
With awards season truly hotting up we are treated with the nominations for the 2012 Golden Globe Awards. They’re an interesting bunch, a lot of the more challenging and/or smaller films have been passed by. The Los Angles Times has it spot on when they say that the nominations seem to recognise those works featuring the A-list actors, more accessible films and less dark dramas. No Tyrannosaur or Like Crazy to be found below.
What you will find is my gut reaction and my opinions for each category (apart from Best Original Song and Best Original Score as that is not my strong suit) whether you want it or not. Read more »
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is Adam, a man in his later twenties who is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer with a 50% survival rate. 50/50 follows Adam as he undergoes treatment and struggles to maintain relationships with his best friend (Seth Rogan), girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard), his mother (Anjelica Huston) and his therapist (Anna Kendrick).
Will Reiser had a tricky task in writing a cancer comedy, the drama and comedy have to be carefully balanced to avoid either trivialising the disease or smothering the humour. Luckily Reiser trod this line well and has written a film that had me both laughing out loud and fighting back the tears.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is responsible for the majority of the drama, forced to carry the weight of the film as he portrays a man facing potential death and struggling through debilitating treatment while not believing he is receiving the necessary support from his loved ones. Adam is not completely devoid of comedy but is certainly where the drama is centred.
To keep the film from edging into too bleak a territory, Seth Rogan, Anna Kendrick and Anjelica Huston use their supporting roles to bring in the laughs, while each sharing a touching moment with Adam along the way; with a two-handed genre no cast member is left as just the comic relief. This is a great cast with solid material to perform so there is nowhere for the film to go wrong.
Some may find the shifts in tone a little hard to swallow but for me director Jonathan Levine has done a good job at seamlessly blending the genres. Levine gets bonus points for a few visual flares courtesy of two clever uses of shifting focus, which is just what you’re looking for in a comedy, I’m sure.
In short, a moving and hilarious film about living with cancer. Who knew a Seth Rogan project would almost make me cry?
50/50 is on general release on 25th November 2011.
