What would happen if everyone around Nicolas Cage acted as creepily unmoored as he does in any given flop?

The answer, the practically direct to video “Trespass,” gets as close to an answer as we’re likely to see. And it ain’t pretty.

No one is shocked to see Cage line up another clunker, but how did Nicole Kidman and director Joel Schumacher get lassoed into this mess?

Cage plays Kyle, a wealthy diamond merchant living in the kind of home that screams .001 percent. He’s clearly hiding something from his beautiful wife Sarah (Nicole Kidman), but we don’t have time to dig through their neuroses before a band of invaders trick their way into Kyle’s compound.

The ruse is so obvious even Barney Fife might have blown the whistle on them, but the story has to start somewhere, right?

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“Troll 2″ is a movie so bad it’s great.  The same holds true for “Plan 9 From Outer Space” and “Showgirls.”

But 99.5 percent of terrible movies are just … terrible. That’s especially evident with the following five features, a quintet which cost millions to produce and yielded very little in return.

Dishonorable mentions include “The Change Up,” “Green Lantern,” “Larry Crowne,” “Sucker Punch” and “A Good Old Fashioned Orgy.” But these five movies went above and beyond the call of duty in draining precious hours from our lives.

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From Reuters:

(Reuters) – Quoting from “The King’s Speech,” the Oscar-winning movie about his great-grandfather, Prince William projected his royal voice to woo the Hollywood power crowd in a bid with wife Kate to promote young British talent.

He in black tie, she in a pleated lavender Alexander McQueen gown, the young newlyweds on Saturday night set a tone of classic elegance for the most high-profile event in their three-day visit to the United States.

Hollywood royalty — from actors Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman, and Barbra Streisand to studio mogul Harvey Weinstein — turned out for the couple of the moment at the $25,000 a table gala organized by British Academy for Film and Television (BAFTA), of which William is president.

“I would like to thank Colin Firth for my perfect opening line — I have a voice,” William joked with the crowd, quoting one of the most famous lines in the 2010 movie about King George VI, the father of Queen Elizabeth who overcame a stammer. (more…)

For many Americans outside the Country Music fan base, Keith Urban was not a household name when he married actress and fellow Aussie Nicole Kidman in June 2006.  When just four months after their celebrated in nuptials, Urban, a recovering substance abuser by his own admission, suffered another relapse and after an intervention of friends and family checked himself into Betty Ford, his future as an artist and that of his marriage to the already once-bitten Kidman (she was married to actor Tom Cruise for eleven years before their sudden and still detail-murky divorce) seemed to hang in the balance.  But he recovered with dignity, has thrived in both his personal and professional life, and cut two LPs since, the latest being Get Closer.

As a long-time fan, it pains me to open this article talking about Urban’s demons and but for their impact on his musical direction it would be none of my business.  It is also too bad that it was under this cloud that his name became more recognized outside his original fan base, for this is a man who has struggled harder, suffered more setbacks, and yet all along possessed more raw talent and musical virtuosity than most artists in any musical genre, let alone country music.  That he was a transplanted Aussie trying for years to break into the parochial Nashville scene beyond doing session work (for which he was renowned), and all the rejection and frustration this implies, makes his ultimate achievement of music super-stardom that much more worthy of praise.  It also explains his tortured past where drugs and alcohol were often all he could turn to during the lean, lonely years. The contrast of his years of clawing his way to the top of the music scene vis-à-vis the coronation of twenty-something American Idol insta-stars needs no comment.  I mean no disrespect to Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood among others, for they deserve their accolades.  But Keith’s success has come through the old-fashioned dues-paying route and so garners more respect in my book.

One can follow his personal journey of ups and downs through his many albums, starting in 1999 with his eponymous first solo release that contains such soul-searching tunes as Out on My Own and his first hit But for the Grace Of God.  His work is, in fact, a mirror held up to himself.  He even tackles his own battle with addiction in the haunting You’re Not My God (from his second LP, Golden Road).  Urban’s anthology also offers us happier glimpses of the bubbling optimism that exudes from his persona in Live to Love Another Day, Better Life and the wonderful God’s Been Good to Me (my favorite tune from my personal favorite 2004 album, Be Here). (more…)

#23: The Others (2001)

I’m not sure which I admire most about writer/director Alejandro Amenábar’s beautifully crafted haunted house spooker, how well he executes the ingenious concept of telling his story from the point of view of ghosts who don’t know that they’re the ones haunting the house or the mind-blowingly effective sound design that adds a subliminal layer of tension and suspense to everything, including the seemingly innocent actions of a door closing or key turning. Regardless, this is one of the rare modern horror films that earns its considerable scares with no onscreen violence of any kind. That distinctive quality, combined with pitch perfect performances and a thoroughly engrossing mystery all told in a tight 101 minutes, makes for the kind of frights the whole family can enjoy.

Set in a remote mansion on the Channel Islands just after the end of WWII, Grace (Nicole Kidman), a tightly wound woman whose husband never returned from the war, always appears to be on the verge of losing it as she attempts to hold on to a semblance of normalcy for the sake of her two sickly children, Charles and Anne. Any light brighter than a candle might kill both children and so, as she explains to her three new servants, the house must be treated like a submarine with each door locked behind you in order to compartmentalize the light and ensure the children aren’t accidentally exposed.

With the arrival of these servants – who may or may not be part of the problem – comes a series of inexplicable and unsettling occurrences. Anne swears there’s someone else in the house, spirits in the form of a boy named Victor and his family who want the place for themselves. When a thorough search turns up nothing and no one, Grace is not only faced with the possibility that Anne might be right, but also a crisis of her devout Catholic faith. Eventually this will all lead to a number of troubling revelations, the least among them being that our protagonists are the spirits, not Victor and company. (more…)

A great musical can make an audience’s spirit soar and get their feet tapping right in the theater, creating fantastical memories that can last a lifetime. With no effort at all, most people can conjure up memories of Gene Kelly dancing with an umbrella in “Singing in the Rain,” of Julie Andrews running through mountain fields at the beginning of “The Sound of Music,” or Frank Sinatra and Kelly literally bringing New York City traffic to a halt while dancing in the streets for “On the Town.”

Sadly, the new musical “Nine” – despite having a stellar cast of multiple Oscar winners including Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz and Nicole Kidman – won’t be burning itself into film fans’ collective memory. Despite an $80 million budget, spectacular Italian scenery and zestily performed choreography (including an unbelievably sexy number by Cruz – ok, that one might stick in the brain), the film is packed with characters, situations and song topics that are unrelatable to most people and often downright unlikable. (more…)

Halloween is a time of fright and fear. It’s a favorite time of year for many kids. Of course the candy helps, but that’s not all of it. It’s really about the feeling. The leaves are falling, the skies are darker, the weather is getting colder and there’s still more cold to come. It’s a time for spookiness, mystery and the unknown. So, as I write this, on a dark and stormy night, well, actually,  it’s the afternoon, but it is very dark and very stormy outside. My mind turns to this season, to Halloween, to fear.

There are a lot of films that scared us as kids, and still scare us. Many of the films today are far too graphic for my tastes. Heck, most of television is, too, for that matter. So, I should say right at the outset that I’m not a fan of gore, not in any way shape or form. I know some folks out there are big on the stuff, but not me. Sure, I’ve seen some, the classic Herschell Gordon Lewis, Romero and Savini works, but none of the modern multi-sequel films that grace our theaters with single word titles. I don’t mind being scared. As most would agree, we all need a good scare every now and then. It’s good for you. It’s thrilling. But gore isn’t thrilling for me. It’s sickening. I like to be thrilled, I don’t wish to be sick. Besides, I’ve seen enough of the footage and descriptions of films like “Saw” and “Hostel,” which I rebel against, regardless of how “intelligent” or “clever” they are reported to be. (more…)

Nicole Kidman is a fine actress. I’ve enjoyed her work over the years, and heartily congratulate her for her long and storied career. I also congratulate her for getting out of her marriage to Tom Cruise, but that’s another story.

Now Kidman, like many Hollywood stars who want to prove that they’re more than just pretty faces, is involved in A Cause. Like Meryl Streep’s concern about healthy produce and Heather Graham for ObamaCare, Kidman wants to Save Something. To that end, she is the goodwill ambassador for the UN Development Fund for Women, known as UNIFEM and in that capacity, recently testified before Congress to plead for more support for the program (read: cold, hard cash).

The big story that came out of that appearance was Kidman’s concession that the film industry might play a role in violence toward women by portraying them as weak. That may be true, but it’s a topic for another day.

 Kidman’s desire to help women in need is admirable. But she might want to consider an outlet other than the UN to do this good work. (more…)

The vocal, sanctimonious Free-Polanski uproar is merely a symptom of an entertainment culture infected with a moral cancer – a culture that regularly practices up on the screen what we’ve heard them preach this last week on behalf of a confessed child rapist.

Last year Miramax released “Doubt,” a high-profile piece of Oscar-bait starring Academy Award winners’ Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Streep plays a puritanical nun on a moral crusade to expose a Priest (Hoffman) who she believes is sexually abusing a 12 year-old boy. Both characters are portrayed as unsympathetic (especially Streep’s) but in just a couple scenes the boy’s working-class mother (Mrs. Miller, played by Viola Davis) is established as the moral center of the film – the only one truly interested in the welfare of her child. When Mrs. Miller’s informed that her son’s being molested, the Moral Center Of The Film responds that her 12 year-old boy is gay, a social outcast, and beaten regularly by his homophobic father … so maybe the best option for him is a sexual relationship with a forty-something child predator.

Starring Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, and written and directed by Oscar-winner Alan Ball, last year’s “Towelhead” is a film Roman Polanski might have seen many, many times while wearing a rain coat. The protagonist is 13 year-old Jasira (played by the then barely eighteen Summer Bishil) and the story surrounds her sexual abuse at the hands of a number of men, including Eckhart’s Gulf War Vet. Rather than the repeated abuse damaging the young girl, the filmmaker portrays the rapes and molestations as a healthy and sexually liberating experience. More than once the audience is “treated” to lingering shots of Jasira’s bare legs as she discovers the joys of the orgasm while masturbating to photographs of naked women.

Kate Winslet won last year’s Best Actress Oscar for her role in “The Reader,” in which she plays a “sympathetic” Nazi guilty of mass murder who seduces and then engages in a steamy sexual affair with a 15 year-old boy. The sex scenes between this mature woman and a child lean heavily on the erotic, as opposed to the creepy. (The “sympathetic Nazi” issue we’ll save for another post.) (more…)

Being a celebrity means that you can do anything you want to do because you know more than the average person. Not just when it comes to hawking hair care products and credit cards, but important things like how to save the Earth and telling governors how to run their states.

And if you’re Tom Cruise, that means you are not only qualified to advise women on how to deal with postpartum depression, but you are also qualified to act as marriage counselor.

That’s right – Tom “Couch Commando” Cruise is, out of the goodness of his heart, David and Victoria Beckham’s new “relationship guru” – because you know with all of their money, they can’t afford a certified therapist:

After an evening with David, Tom decided to have a friendly chat with Victoria about the family’s future, saying it was because he cared so much about all of them,” revealed a source.

“They love each other dearly but Tom is a big believer in talking about issues . He could see they were both worried about the future and what it might hold.”

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Here at Big Hollywood, the film folks get all the fun by previewing film trailers in their posts.  But, since the upcoming “Nine” is a film adaptation of a Broadway musical, I’m claiming this one! 

Directed by Rob Marshall, who did a pretty good job adapting a little show called “Chicago” to film, “Nine” is set for a Fall opening which usually means the studio has Oscar hopes.  “Nine” was a musical adaptation of Federico Fellini’s masterpiece “8 1/2″ and was staged by Tommy Tune in 1982 starring Raul Julia as Italian film director Guido Contini.  For that incredibly demanding role in the film, we get Oscar winner Daniel Day Lewis.  The cast includes Penelope Cruz, Kate Hudson, Nicole Kidman, Fergie, Judy Dench and none other than Sophia Loren! (more…)

Antichrist hasn’t even come out in the United States and I’m already bored.  

If you haven’t heard about Antichrist yet, you will.  It’s the latest movie from Danish art film director Lars von Trier, who has made a name for himself with critically-hailed movies that push the limits his audiences’ tolerance for bizarre sex, bloody violence and artistic pretension.  One of his recent movies focused on an American town where slavery never ended, while another had pretty much an entire American village raping Nicole Kidman.  A third film ends with the American authorities hanging Icelandic rock waif Bjork.   Sensing some themes?   By all accounts, Antichrist is a similarly delightful romp.

Naturally, the critics adore him, and combined with the fact that von Trier despises Americans, you would expect that he would get cut some slack by the French audience at Cannes last weekend when the festival screened Antichrist.  Not so – the few cheers were apparently drowned out by a tsunami of boos when the lights went up.  What happened?  

Maybe, just maybe, people are starting to catch on to the fact that shocking art has become anything but.  The problem for Mr. von Trier and those like him who specialize in transgressive art is that there’s really very little in the way of conventional morality left to transgress.  (more…)

I see a great story in Roxana Saberi. Don’t you? A can’t fail, high-concept, four-quadrant script with a unique storyline. In fact, I’d expect a bidding war no less severe and cutthroat for the rights to Roxana’s story as that for Lone Survivor. You know. A MARIE in Iran meets MISSING kinda thing.

A young and beautiful former Miss North Dakota and reporter for the BBC and NPR, among others, falsely arrested by misogynist Iran and tagged with a series of escalating charges, from buying wine to reporting with expired credentials to espionage, charges even Roxana’s lawyer has not officially seen to date, but upon which Ms. Saberi was just sentenced to eight years in the Iranian Hell of Evin prison in a one-day kangaroo court trial. Coercion was also involved, including a threat to kill her.

Any questions as to who and what we’re really dealing with here now? (more…)

No matter how frustrated, disappointed, or outright disgusted Hollywood makes me, all is forgiven during that brief moment just after the trailers finish and just before the film begins. When those lights dim the chip dissolves from my shoulder and all the filmmaker need do to win me forever is tell one helluva story.

Politics shmolitics… Just take me away.

For we hopeless movie lovers, each year hope (if you’ll pardon the expression) springs eternal with a fresh offering of pull-out-the-stops-studio-balance-sheet-in-the-crosshairs slate of tent poles. And for that reason, this is my favorite part of the movie year because all I want for my ten bucks is to get lost for a couple hours, and from May 1st through the end of August filmdom at least attempts to put the political nonsense on hold to do just that. (more…)

The movie business is not generally kind to women when they pass the age of 40, and Julia Roberts (now 41) is learning that lesson the hard way. The former Pretty Woman has returned to the big screen this weekend in Tony Gilroy’s Duplicity (Universal), and one prominent blogger wrote this headline:

Duplicity soft: Julia’s Comeback? Audiences Say Go Back

Julia Roberts and Clive Owen star in the fun, smart DUPLICITY, from writer/director Tony Gilroy

Roberts’ last starring role was in 2003’s Mona Lisa Smile ($63.8M domestic), and since then she has become a full-time Mom. Overall, she has 8 movies on her resume that have reached $100M in the US with her as a lead (I’m not including the Ocean’s Eleven franchise). Her most successful string of movies started in 1997 with My Best Friend’s Wedding ($127.1M cume) and ended with her Oscar winning performance in Erin Brockovich ($125.6M cume). During that span, she starred in 6 movies, generating an average of $115M in domestic box office.

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Hollywood execs seem to be waking up to the power of women at America’s multiplexes. The success of He’s Just Not That Into You (Warner Bros) and this weekend’s Confessions of a Shopaholic (Disney) can be traced to Meryl Streep’s witty riff on the tyrannical Anna Wintour in The Devil Wears Prada in the summer of 2006. Prada opened to a $27.5M weekend on its way to a $124.75M domestic cume (Streep also earned an Oscar nomination).

Then in July of 2007, New Line grabbed an almost identical $27.47M with the opening weekend of the female-skewing Hairspray, translating to $118.87M domestic. Also Enchanted, starring Amy Adams, was a hit for Disney over the holidays reaching $127.8M domestic.

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