First Trailer for TAKEN 3

I was not a fan of Taken 2 after it essentially felt like a film of leftovers rather than a justifiable premise for a second installment. That talks even surfaced for a third film after critics and audiences alike freely expressed their disdain for the money-grubbing sequel was surprising but here we are two years later and we have the first trailer for that threequel appropriately titled, TAK3N. If you're already laughing you may not want to hit the jump to take a look at the actual trailer as it is clear Luc Besson and his team of writers have sunk to desperate levels in order to come up with another chapter in the Brian Mills story. The problem is, no matter what he does, Liam Neeson automatically brings credibility to it and dammit if I wasn't eventually sucked into the scenario at hand here due to how intimidatingly badass Neeson is able to come off in the trailer. The third film will also feature the credible Forest Whitaker as a law enforcement agent who is after Mills after he is framed for murder, so there might be a chance of some redemption here. Still, before I get ahead of myself we have to take into consideration the fact that Taken 2 director Oliver Megaton (Colombiana, Transporter 3) is back behind the camera leading me to have to hope this isn't as completely forgettable as the second film, but might, at the very least, contain some of the excitement and thrills that made the original such a surprise. Leland Orser, Famke Janssen and Maggie Grace return with Dougray Scott and Jon Gries rounding out the cast. Tak3n moves from the October release of part two back to the early year release date of the original as we will get what Neeson says is the final chapter on January 9, 2015.

On DVD & Blu-Ray: September 30, 2014

First Trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson's INHERENT VICE

It seemed as if we would never get a trailer for the latest Paul Thomas Anderson contraption, Inherent Vice, but now that we have it seems its over two month away release date will take forever to get here. I had no idea what to expect from this adaptation of the Thomas Pynchon novel and knew little about it other than the summary of said book. Given that, I was beyond anxious to dive into the trailer and upon first glance this couldn't be a better mix of everything I hoped it would be considering the style in the stills we'd seen up to this point and an unexpected comic tone that seems in line with Anderson's natural instincts. I love the look of the trailer (Anderson re-teams with cinematographer Robert Elswit after The Master) and I assume he is again shooting on 65 mm film using the Panavision System 65 camera. It gave The Master such sweeping, epic scope and even on your computer screen you can see the depth of some of the shots here. Besides the excitement that comes along with a first glimpse at footage from a new PTA film there is also the brilliant cast he has in place here that is on full display. Joaquin Phoenix re-teams with the director for his second go- around, but this time as drug-fueled detective Larry "Doc" Sportello. The remainder of the cast features Josh Brolin (getting a nice bit in the trailer), Owen Wilson, Katherine Waterston, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Short, Jena Malone and Joanna Newsom. Inherent Vice opens in limited release on December 12th before going wide on January 9, 2015.

TUSK Review

There is instinctively something cool and edgy about a movie like Tusk. It is not that the final film is guaranteed to possess those anticipated qualities, but the prospect of the components coming together with the specific style and tone in which it has been composed allow it to exude an effortless cool factor. A factor that attracts people to become interested in it based purely on the feeling of wanting to be "in" on the conversation. There is somewhat of an exclusivity to the material because it is understood from the outset to be slightly off-kilter and a project only a certain kind of crowd or film fan will "get". With those kinds of expectations in check I walked into the latest horror/comedy mash-up from writer/director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Red State) with cautious optimism. I was excited for the material, it seemed more akin to Smith's talents of writing talkative, funny characters while meshing ridiculously with the horror genre he tried his hand at with his previous feature. While Red State was more a scary movie in the vein of gross-out violence than actual scares it had more style and directorial competency than almost anything Smith had done in the past. In Tusk, he leverages the genre he's experimenting in with the one he knows best and to that effect, he is on to something more interesting here. For the first fifty or so minutes of the film I was hooked as the beguiling premise was still allowed a shade of mystery, an air of tension as we waited to see what exactly our antagonist, Howard Howe (Michael Parks looking strangely like Bryan Cranston), planned to do with the main character of this story. It is when Smith is faced with the challenge of delivering on what the premise, trailer and spectacular poster promises that he fumbles toward the finish line. He goes weird, but not strange enough. It is gruesome, but not as detailed or disgusting as it easily could have been (especially given certain set-ups). It could be chocked up to the idea that Smith was trying to be more subtle with his allusions, but as Justin Long's Wallace Bryton likes to brag, his viewers like him real and raunchy and so he tries to be real raunchy. Smith has written by that rule his entire career and I doubt he would stop now considering he is as much in his element here as ever before.

THE EQUALIZER Review

It seems that just last week I was talking about the lengths in which Liam Neeson takes to prove his badassness, how he uses his credibility as an actor to up the quality of what would otherwise be B-movie action thrillers and how he sometimes uses his new reputation to his advantage (such as luring folks into A Walk Among the Tombstones which is more noir than pulp). In the wake of such power it seems he's started a trend. I discussed this when Kevin Costner (so desperately seeming) tried to replicate this kind of success earlier this year with 3 Days To Kill, while folks such as Tom Cruise and Guy Pearce have completed a version of these excursions in hopes of carving out their own character with a particular set of skills. All of this is to say that Denzel Washington didn't necessarily need a character of his own (much less one that he resurrected from an 80's television show) but it wouldn't hurt to try and so he did and so we have the feature film version of The Equalizer. On that note, this is a movie made in a manner that is extremely content with itself; from the marketing (those horribly plain posters) to the over-used slow motion and standard score (seriously, this soundtrack is pretty awful) and it clearly feels very little need to be more than this because it has Mr. Washington at the center of it and his presence alone garners it all the dignity and solemnity it needs to be taken more seriously than it actually is. Having said all of that, I rather enjoyed myself in the slow paced, but precise thriller that allows Washington to develop a more singular character than he has since maybe Frank Lucas. That isn't to dismiss the work he has done in between (he certainly deserved his nomination for Flight), but we all watch a Denzel Washington movie to see Denzel Washington and while he still plays that card to good effect here he also isn't the typically charismatic, well-rounded human being we are accustomed to seeing him portray. He is a man supposedly cut off from emotion or sentimentality, but who can't help but feel if he has the power to do something right, he should do it. No, The Equalizer isn't a great film, but like so many Liam Neeson and Tom Cruise features it does what it's supposed to do and it does it well enough that we'll take the sequel with open arms when it comes around.