Do you promise to love your wife, to have and to hold, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, while she suffers through grievous memory loss, as long as you both shall live?

That’s the dilemma facing Leo (Channing Tatum) after his wife Paige (Rachel McAdams) recovers from a serious brain trauma wiping out all memories of their marriage in “The Vow.”

The film, loosely based on a true story, tells the standard tale of a young couple who meet, fall in love, get married to live their happily ever after until one of them falls out of love. It’s just not in the way you expect.

When Paige wakes up from a medically induced coma following a car accident, she thinks she is currently engaged to ex-boyfriend Jeremy (Scott Speedman), still in law school, and is in close contact with her estranged parents (Sam Neill and Jessica Lange). Paige resumes her old life, the one she lived before meeting Leo and becoming a completely different person.

So artsy Leo hardly seems her type, and her parents seize the opportunity to re-enter her life again. Can Leo win back the heart of the love of his life? (more…)

It’s unfair to hold Woody Allen to the standard he set 35 years ago with “Annie Hall.”

Allen’s romantic comedy, which beat out “Star Wars” for the Best Picture Oscar in 1977, remains an unabashed delight in its newly minted Blu-ray format. You’ll fall in love with Miss La-dee-dah herself, Diane Keaton, and marvel how Allen could smuggle in so many laughs without sacrificing the film’s bittersweet core.

It’s that rare comedy that hasn’t aged a minute, even if we still scratch our heads over why a stunner like Annie would fall so hard for a neurotic comedian.

What’s more remarkable about re-watching the film is seeing how Allen the artist handled the political divide then … and now.

In “Annie Hall,” Allen’s Alvy Singer is a liberal stand-up comic who is seen at one point performing for an Adlai Stevenson fundraiser. It’s clear from that sequence, and from other stream-of-conscious bits, that he’s a man of the Left. Yet Alvy never rubs us the wrong way no matter how he kevetches about his inability to be truthful to his girlfriends or his unabiding hate for the Left Coast.

Contrast that demeanor to two of Allen’s more recent films, “Whatever Works” and “Midnight in Paris.”

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Two years ago, movie goers were fed a rom-com with more stars than anyone could process.

The result? “Valentine’s Day” lacked the sugary sweetness we demand from romantic fare.

For 2012’s most romantic season, the leads from “The Notebook” and “Dear John” are hoping to pry open our tear ducts. “The Vow,” hitting theaters Feb. 10, casts Rachel McAdams as a woman who loses her memory in a car accident and can’t remember her own husband (Channing Tatum).

The trailer hits the expected notes – the frustration, endless passion and possible salvation of a couple in distress. The stars as as purty as a picture, although Tatum is working so often these days (“The Vow” is the first of four movies he has in the can for 2012) he could be heading for overexposure alerts.

It’s shame we don’t see more in the trailer of actor Scott Speedman, the “Felicity” standout cast here as the “other man” potentially vying for the attentions of McAdams’ character. He’s been picking some sleepers of late, from the woefully underrated “Barney’s Version” to a nasty 2010 thriller “Good Neighbors.”

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“Midnight in Paris” star Rachel McAdams is a big fan of Occupy Wall Street, but she probably gets most of her news about the movement from the mainstream media.

So perhaps we should forgive her for being utterly unaware of the group’s radical roots and extremist behavior.

McAdams, currently in theaters courtesy of “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” shared her views on OWS with Glamour magazine.

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Good piece today by Christian Toto in the Washington Times on Woody Allen’s critical darling “Midnight in Paris.”  I found the film to be quite the disappointment; as Toto notes, Allen takes a bludgeon to America and the Tea Party, but more irritating still is that–aside from the eye candy–the movie is basically one joke repeated over and over from beginning to end.  Aside from a couple of very funny scenes with the talented Michael Sheen, the premise runs thin within the first 45 minutes.  The payoff is also a letdown.  Furthermore, the pompous underlying theme is that Allen equates today’s crop of artists with history’s all-time greats.  Is Allen subtly suggesting he is the Hemingway or Fitzgerald of our time?  Well, he’s not not suggesting it.

[I]n finding artistic and commercial renewal across the pond, Mr. Allen often has flattered European vanities by ogling the sights of their storied capitals with his camera. Unfortunately, in “Midnight,” he also has pandered to European stereotypes of the Ugly American.

[...]

The cross-cultural comedy concerns a burned out Hollywood screenwriter named Gil (Owen Wilson) who hopes a trip to France will inspire him to finish his novel. Gil fantasizes about Paris in the 1920s, a time when artistic giants such as Ernest Hemingway, Cole Porter and F. Scott Fitzgerald roamed its streets.

One mysterious car ride later, Gil finds himself magically transported back to the Lost Generation golden age of his daydreams.

“Midnight in Paris” taps into a timeless American attraction to the City of Light as a cultural beacon, a place even ordinary artists can visit and emerge reborn. Throughout the film, Mr. Allen treats the city’s creative minds, native and transient alike, as intellectual titans.

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After high school, my dad toured the country as a drummer with a Christian rock and roll band called “Daybreak.” We have some of his stuff on vinyl back home, and I like to think they sound like early Beatles. I say this to preface why part of me is biased in favor of the new romantic comedy “Morning Glory,” the story of a young producer’s fight to turn the failing morning show Daybreak into a winning way to wake up. 

“Morning Glory” follows Rachel McAdams as Becky Fuller, a driven, klutzy morning show producer with a life-long dream of working for “The Today Show.” Her break comes when she is hired, reluctantly, by the network IBS to host its low-rated morning show, “Daybreak.” 

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“Daybreak” is the epitome of bad morning television. With an aging beauty pageant contestant (Diane Keaton) and a fetish obsessed co-anchor (Ty Burrell) at the show’s helm, McAdams has her work cut out from her. After firing Burrell’s character, McAdams goes searching for a new male co-anchor. Through a contract loophole, she snags her childhood hero Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford), long-time mega hard news journalist and anchor, for co-host. But what starts as a dream come true turns into a nightmare as ratings plummet and Pomeroy refuses to cover soft news. 

As ratings fall, McAdams’ boss delivers an ultimatum: Improve the ratings or lose the show. With her job on the line, McAdams attempts to jump the shark every day for six weeks in order to turn things around. 

“Morning Glory” returns the romance to journalism – the romance of finding a good story or the right angle. And yeah, it’s soft journalism, but with Harrison Ford’s best Walter Cronkite facial expressions and Dan Rather vocal imitation, it’s good fun.  (more…)

For those of you expecting what the trailer promised: a bloated, confusing, noisy, headache-inducing Christmas blockbuster weighed down with CGI and barely made watchable by the presence of He Who Makes Everything Better – star Robert Downey Jr. – you’re in for a surprise. Director Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” might be a tad bloated, somewhat hard to follow, and easily 15 minutes too long, but the director makes this umpteenth cinematic re-imagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s intrepid detective his own and delivers a spirited, entertaining, blissfully mindless couple of hours at the movies.

Ritchie’s slovenly Holmes is a long way from Basil Rathbone’s, the actor who played the resident of 221 B Baker Street in 14 films over half as many years starting in 1939, and he’s even further from Doyle’s. The mannered, sophisticated detective is now a borderline recluse who’s utterly dysfunctional when not preoccupied with a case, a glib ladies man and ready action hero who knows how to use his fists.  As his physician-partner in crimesolving, Jude Law grabs his best role in years as Holmes’ closest friend and mother hen.

Set in London in the late 1800s, the game afoot does not involve Holmes most famous nemesis Professor Moriarty this time, but instead Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), a presumably hanged ritual killer and user of the dark arts who might have risen from the dead with a master plan for world domination. Through an influential Gentleman’s Club of fellow occultists, Blackwood all but controls Scotland Yard which leaves only  Holmes, Watson and Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) — a scheming American woman from Holmes’ past with dueling loyalties and a mind just as sharp as her romantic rival’s — to stop him.   (more…)

In my Final Weekend Tracking column posted on Wednesday, I predicted that X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) would reach $92M on opening weekend, despite soft reviews (now only 38% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). My first fearless forecast of the 2009 summer blockbuster season appears to be close to dead-on (missed by only 5%).

Star-turned-producer Hugh Jackman has scored his second-biggest opening ever and, easily, his biggest as a solo star. Wolverine has mauled the competition with a massive $34.75M opening day (including $5M or so in Thursday midnight sales). That could translate to a 3-day of $86.8M, getting Hollywood’s most lucrative season off to a spectacular start.

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The great thing about a sequel is that it has a built-in audience. The problem with sequels is that, as the numbers after the title go up, so does the production budget. Very hard to know for sure, but sources have told me that the production budget for X-Men was in the $75M range. X-2: X-Men United may have had a budget of about $110M, while the cost of X-Men: The Last Stand was, in all likelihood, as much as $210M. Why doesn’t it make sense to just churn out X-Men 4?

Look at these numbers.

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Recording superstar Beyonce Knowles is building a bankable resume for herself as an actress with Sony Screen Gems’ Obsessed as the latest title burnishing her resume. Co-starring the excellent Idris Elba (The Wire), this low budget, PG-13 genre pic has scored a far-above-expectations $11M on Friday, and it will likely reach $27.5M for the weekend. That is the best opening yet for the former Destiny’s Child lead vocalist as an above-the-title star, topping 2003’s The Fighting Temptations and Cadillac Records from late 2008.

Beyonce does battle with the sexy Ali Larter (HEROES) in OBSESSED

OPENINGS FOR BEYONCE MOVIES
1. Austin Powers: Goldmember – $70.3M opening
2. Obsessed – $27.5M opening (projected)
3. Pink Panther (2006) – $20.2M opening
4. Dreamgirls – $14.1M wide break (after a platform start)
5. The Fighting Temptations – $11.7M opening
6. Cadillac Records – $3.4M opening

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The final weekend of April has never been Hollywood’s favorite release date. In fact, it is generally considered to be among the worst release dates on the calendar. Whatever opens on the final weekend of April gets absolutely crushed by the official start of the summer blockbuster season on the first weekend of May.

The 4 new wide releases and 1 major specialty release set to debut this weekend will face an onslaught of mega-hits over the next month. How can Obsessed (Sony), Earth (Disney), The Soloist, (Dreamworks/Paramount), Fighting (Rogue) and The Informers (Senator) possibly find an audience with X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Warner Bros) arriving next weekend followed by, in successive weeks, Star Trek (Paramount), Angels & Demons (Sony), the combo of Night at the Museum 2 (Fox) and Terminator: Salvation (Fox) and Disney/Pixar’s Up?

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