Blog Posts by Jonathan Crow

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives Strand ReleasingThis week's roundup of independent and foreign movies

features an award-winning movie from a Thai auteur, the directorial debut of a

sitcom star, and disturbing acts of violence from Korea.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

If you're one of those pasty-faced people called

cinephiles, then no doubt you've heard of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, even if

you can't quite pronounce his name. Weerasethakul has built a reputation for

making exquisite, hallucinatory, meandering tales that mix documentary with

fiction and dreams with reality. His latest movie, "Uncle Boonmee,"

which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, is a similarly fragmented

and loopy affair featuring out-of-body experiences, monkey gods, and amorous

catfish. This is either your cup of tea or it's not, but adventurous viewers

might just find themselves enraptured

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With Oscar season now solidly in the rearview mirror,

we're starting to see the first wave of movies from this year's

Morgan Spurlock's latest movie "The Greatest Movie Ever

Sold" is a documentary about product placement, marketing, and advertising

funded entirely by product placement, marketing, and advertising. As you let

that sink in, check out the trailer.

Spurlock first made a name for himself with his 2004

Oscar-nominated documentary "Super Size

Me." He wanted to expose the

connection between the spike in obesity in the country and the lousy

nutritional content of America's

fast food culture. He did so in an elegantly direct way; he subsisted on nothing

but food from McDonald's for a month. By the end of the shoot, the formerly

healthy filmmaker had gained 25 pounds and was well on his was to liver

failure. The effect of the movie was far more devastating than a more conventional

doc; not long after the movie premiered, McDonald's dropped its Super Size meal

and tried to rebrand itself with a healthier image.

For his latest movie, Spurlock is taking on product

placement in movies. Pick any

Robert Redford's latest movie, "The

Conspirator," stars James McAvoy and Robin Wright and tackles an

overlooked footnote of American history: the case of Mary Surratt, the first

woman ever executed by the federal government.

"It's a story that's not really been told," he

told me during the Sundance Film Festival. "Very few people know about

what this story's about, and yet the story is connected to one of the greatest

events in our history, the assassination of Lincoln."

Check out the trailer:

As you can see, the movie is a legal potboiler set during

the uneasy days following the surrender of the Confederacy. Screenwriter James

Solomon spent 14 years researching the story, pulling much of the dialogue from

actual trial transcripts. That historical accuracy was critically important to Redford, who previously directed such period films as

"A River Runs Through It" and "Quiz Show."

"You have to be authentic," Redford

said. "There's no way I can go into something like this without

Ever since word of a "Spider-Man" reboot was announced, fans have been hungry for any scrap of info about the movie. How will this version differ from Sam Raimi's hugely successful franchise? How will Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker stack up against Toby Maguire's? Today, we get an early look at the upcoming flick. Check out the pic below.

The photo, the first released from the movie, shows Parker in

Spider-Man's iconic red and blue suit sans mask. His face has been

scuffed up and his suit, which is more textured and less sculpted than

in Spidey's previous incarnation, looks a bit worse for wear.

Garfield, who was nominated for a Golden Globe for his turn in "The

Social Network," admits to being daunted playing the legendary

web-slinger.

Most-anticipated movies of 2011 >>

"I see it as a massive challenge in many ways," he told Details

magazine. "To make it authentic. To make the character live and breathe

in a new way. The audience already has a

It's 2011, believe it or not, and there's a whole new crop

of movies to look forward to from Norse gods, to Swedish hackers, to Kermit the

Frog. We've put together a list of some of the most anticipated flicks of the

year. Keep reading.

Thor (May 6) -- You'll have to wait until 2012 for the

A-list superheroes like Spider-Man, Batman and even Superman to return to your

local megaplex. In the meantime, there's "Thor." Unlike those others,

this superhero is not a millionaire with a dark side or a high school kid with

unusual insect bites. No. Thor is a god! This movie gives fans a chance to see

the mighty warrior (played by Australian actor Chris Hemsworth) in his own

flick. You'll see him next fighting along side Iron Man and the Hulk in the

hotly anticipated "Avengers" movie, which also comes out in 2012.

Pirates of the Caribbean:

On Stranger Tides (May 20) -- Jack Sparrow is back, which isn't surprising

considering the huge piles of booty raked in by the last three flicks. This

Robert Redford at Sundance Jemal Countess/Wireimage.comLast week I went to the Sundance Film Festival. For 10

days, the small ski town of Park City, Utah, transforms into

all that's glitzy and glamorous, vulgar and great, about the film industry,

concentrated into a few city blocks.

On the glitz side, you see deals being negotiated in the

men's rooms, private parties featuring rock gods like Lou Reed, and movie stars

leaving exclusive lounges with shopping bags filled with swag.

But there's substance, too: Sundance is one of the few

places I've been where saying you've made a short film elicits praise instead

of looks of bemusement and vague pity. It's a place where people get excited

about seeing documentaries on Liberian mass murders or Uday Hussein. It's a

place, in short, where people are really into movies.

Much of this enthusiasm can be traced back to the fest's

founder, Robert Redford. He started the festival 30 years ago and watched it

blossom into a cultural touchstone and marketing Mecca.

I interviewed him hours after returning

'The Nutcracker in 3D' Freestyle ReleasingThere are bad movies and then there are spectacularly bad

movies. In the former category, 2010 suffered from a bumper crop of middling,

mediocre duds -- from the inert "Valentine's Day" to the eerily

joyless "The Last Airbender." Yet none were as transcendently terrible James

Nguyen's  "Birdemic." With its painfully wooden

acting and screen saver-like special effects, this flick is so awful in a

what-the-hell-was-that sort of way that it's become a perverse hit of sorts on

the cult cinema circuit.

This past weekend saw the release of another contender for the

worst movie of the year: "The Nutcracker in 3D."

By every conventional yardstick, "Nutcracker in

3D" is a complete and utter failure. Though it screened in 42 theaters, it

made a scant $89,000 at the box office. By comparison, "The King's

Speech" made over $355,000 on just four screens this weekend.

On top of that, the critics hated it, and I mean really

hated it. Roger

Ebert

lamented, "From what dark night of the soul emerged

The folks at DreamWorks are clearly hoping that impatient
twi-hards will flock to see "I Am Number Four" with the same
obsessive zeal as they did with Stephanie Meyer's tales. The first full-length
trailer for the film just came out. Check it out below:

As you can see, the movie is about an alien who happens
to take the form of a young, golden-haired hunk played by Alex Pettyfer. While
his sequentially-numbered brethren have been knocked off by a shadowy band of
Nosferatu-like villains in exotic locations like Malaysia
and Kenya, Four has holed up in America's
heartland. There he attends high school; falls for Sarah, a young lass with
great teeth; and tries to not look like an alien. That latter part proves to be
difficult when his extraterrestrial powers, like lightning shooting out of his
hands, begin to manifest. As the bad guys start to close in, in steps Number
Six, who just happens to look a lot like Four's high school sweetheart except
with superpowers and with handy sword