“Man on a Ledge” is a tight little crime thriller—a heist-movie variant—with a few small problems and one big one. Given the top-notchness of the supporting actors here assembled—Ed Harris, Jamie Bell, Anthony Mackie, Titus Welliver—the casting of doughy Sam Worthington in the lead seems crucially ill-advised.

True, Worthington was also the nominal star of James Cameron’s “Avatar”; but really, who will ever think of that techno-epic as a Sam Worthington film? The mildly amiable Aussie is a stranger to star power, and putting him at the center of this picture is like building a fancy banquet around a main course of vanilla pudding.

In any case, the character Worthington has been called upon to play would challenge many a more resourceful actor. Nick Cassidy is a disgraced New York City cop, framed for a high-profile jewel theft and consigned to Sing Sing for a very long stretch, who escapes his warders, returns to Manhattan, checks into a room on the twenty-first floor of a midtown hotel, climbs out the window, and then spends most of the rest of the movie huddled on the titular ledge, in what we at first take to be suicidal despair. This constrained situation offers little opportunity for physical or emotional expression, and it shines a cruel light on Worthington’s charisma deficit.

Still, there’s some snappy action going on all around him. The script, by Pablo F. Fenjves—a star-bio specialist whose literary credits include ghostwriting the reviled O.J. Simpson murder book If I Did It—is a compendium of nicely tweaked genre clichés.

Read the full review at Reason.com

It has to be said that Steven Spielberg’s “The Adventures of Tintin” represents a new peak in motion-capture artistry. Unlike the 2004 “Polar Express,” in which we could never shake our awareness of a spectral Tom Hanks imprisoned beneath that glazed digital carapace, the 3D Tintin meticulously blends the smooth surfaces of Pixar-style cartoonery with the complex actions of live performers.

Much credit here must surely go to producer-collaborator Peter Jackson, whose digitally fabricated Gollum in the “Lord of the Rings” movies is the template of excellence in this area. Spielberg and Jackson are both big fans of the Tintin books, and their affectionate enthusiasm is apparent in this very lively distillation. Unfortunately, that liveliness is a problem—it never lets up. And since the movie is a bit too long, and its globe-hopping excitements thus become somewhat repetitive, the picture eventually wears us out.

The story is a classic boys’ adventure drawn from the long-running (1929-1983) comics series by the Belgian writer and illustrator Hergé. Tintin (played here by Jamie Bell) is an avid young newspaper reporter with a quiff of reddish hair perched alertly above his brow and a dog-slash-assistant named Snowy pitching in on his master’s professional investigations. We meet these two in Paris, at an outdoor market where Tintin casually purchases a model ship — a three-masted man o’ war. When two other parties display an intense interest in buying this item off its new owner, Tintin realizes that something is up. A little research reveals that the model is of an old pirate craft called the Unicorn, which was said to have carried a secret cargo, and that “only a true Haddock” can discover what it was.

You can read the rest of the review at Reason.com

Fans of Herge’s scrappy comic hero Tintin have had to imagine what the young journalist sounded like while saving the day over and again.

Jamie Bell not only supplies the main character’s voice in “The Adventures of Tintin,” Steven Spielberg’s animated adaptation of the Belgian comics hero, he also provides the movement via motion-capture technology.

Who better than the erstwhile Billy Elliot to make Tintin spring to life?

The young British actor confesses his first virtual acting assignment caught him flat footed.

“I thought that it would be genuinely challenging and difficult, and I’d have to change my approach … even how I would work within that medium,” the classically trained dancer tells Big Hollywood. “It turns out that it’s exactly the same.”

It helped that he had the premier motion capture actor by his side during the shoot.

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The year’s best actor might not even grab so much as an Oscar nomination. Then again, it could be hard to choose only one film where Andy Serkis excelled.

Serkis, the man who gave life to Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, is the undisputed master of motion-capture acting. It’s a field that hardly appeared on the Hollywood radar a decade ago, but now it’s an intrinsic part of some of the biggest fantasy films in recent memory.

Serkis’ latest triumph came in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” out this week on Blu-ray and DVD. Serkis “plays” Caesar, the genetically altered ape who learns to think and reason thanks to a serum applied by a well-intentioned researcher (James Franco). The role earned Serkis an acting nod from the just-announced Critics’ Choice Awards, but the stuffy Oscar voters will be much harder to woo.

No matter, since “Rise” is the latest example of how motion capture wizardry can be transformative in the right hands.

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The anti-everything, post modern worldview that dominates so much of the west long-ago won the battle for Hollywood.  For many of us, it gets harder and harder to drop our hard-earned money on movie tickets when we know, nine times out of ten, we are paying to have our cultural, political, and religious beliefs insulted or even mocked by condescending Hollywood elites who believe we are no better than Bin Laden.

What a pleasant surprise it is, then, to discuss director Kevin McDonald’s new film, “The Eagle”, which we do on this week’s Take a Movie to Work video at Declaration Entertainment.

“The Eagle” follows the journey of a Roman centurion named Marcus Aquila as he braves the wilds of Caledonia, the most barbaric region of of the Roman Empire’s most barbaric holding – Britannia.

Aquila searches for the Golden Eagle carried by his father’s legion, the Ninth, which utterly disappeared from history a few years before. Accompanied only by his personal slave, an angry young Briton whom he saved from the gladiator’s sword, Aquila intends to restore his family name, or die in the effort. Along the way, he learns something of the power of trust, friendship, and freedom, all the while never failing to champion his own values – personal honor, bravery, and one rarely ever discussed in today’s world: masculinity.

All of this, plus terrific action sequences and solid performances by Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell, would be enough to recommend “The Eagle” to anyone, but there is a much more refreshing aspect to this film.

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Liam Neeson is officially a full-fledged action star. The Irish-born actor has often played heroes, whether it was Oskar Schindler in Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece Schindler’s List, the wise Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace or determined sex researcher Alfred Kinsey in 2005’s biopic Kinsey, Neeson has always had a knack for playing the earnest-but-flawed good guy. In his new movie Taken (Fox), writer/producer Luc Besson and director Pierre Morel have turned him into a Dad with the “mad skills” of a super-spy – think Mike Brady crossed with Jason Bourne.

The result is a well-reviewed (56% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) action film that will help to satisfy blockbuster-hungry audiences waiting for Warner Bros’ Watchmen (due March 6). Taken has scored big on its opening weekend. After grabbing an estimated $9.4M, the movie surged on Saturday to $11.62M (up almost 24% from opening day) and, despite today’s Super Bowl, the film could reach $24.62M according to studio estimates. That will be more than enough to win the Super Bowl 3-day, and positive word-of-mouth could get this one into the $70M-$75M range domestic.

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The chubby guy on the Segway rallied for a come-from-behind win over the Beckinsale-less Underworld sequel, but regardless, it was a 1-2 finish for Sony. When I originally predicted that Paul Blart: Mall Cop as the likely weekend winner over the MLK 4-day, some online sites questioned my pick. Even I didn’t expect an opening close to $40M, and now the Kevin James vehicle has surprised again.

The Adam Sandler-produced comedy has broadened its audience, showing real family appeal. That led to stronger Saturday and Sunday matinees for a stellar $21.5M by Monday morning. That gives the movie a 10-day cume of just shy of $65M, which is impressive considering that it was budgeted at just $26M. After success as a supporting star in movies like Hitch ($179.5M cume) and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry ($120M cume), it appears that James can open a movie without the help of Will Smith and Adam Sandler. Mall Cop dipped only 32% from last Friday-thru-Sunday (and that was part of a 4-day weekend, which can often lead to a sharper drop). (more…)

Michael Sheen has two movies in release this weekend. The classically-trained Welsh actor plays Lucien in the wildly commercial Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (Sony), opening on about 3,000 screens, and he plays David Frost in Frost/Nixon (Universal), expanding to about 800 playdates.

He is a classically-trained stage actor, who has starred in heavyweight UK productions of Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Amadeus and The Dresser, was somehow overlooked by both Hollywood Foreign Press and Oscar voters when he starred as Tony Blair in 2006’s The Queen. (He was outshined by Helen Mirren, who won every acting prize imaginable). This year, he is in the shadow of Frank Langella’s towering portrayal of President Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon.

As an aside, The Queen was the second in screenwriter Peter Morgan’s Tony Blair trilogy. The first film was called The Deal for British television and tells the story of the rivalry between Blair and current British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. (This is a great title to put in your Netflix or Blockbuster cue.) The final film will be called The Special Relationship, which will focus on the intimate friendship between the British PM and President Bill Clinton between 1997-2000. Sheen has signed on, but there is no word on who will play Clinton. Morgan says the idea for the third film began to germinate when he heard that Blair and Clinton were alone together when Vice President Al Gore conceded the 2000 election.

In the meantime, Sheen will almost certainly have the #1 movie in America this weekend with Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. This is the third Underworld movie, but it is a prequel set in the dark ages with Sheen as Lucien, a young werewolf, who leads a war against Bill Nighy as Viktor, the leader of the vampire race. (more…)