Directed by: Louis Leterrier

Written by: Zak Penn, Edward Norton (uncredited but we know better)

Based on the classic Marvel character created by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby

Starring: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, William Hurt, Tim Blake Nelson, Ty Burrell, Christina Cabot, Peter Mensah, Lou Ferrigno (voice & cameo)

Distributed by Universal

Film begins screening in the U.K. on Thursday but check your local listings for opening times/dates

Review by Michael Edwards

OK folks, I’ve sat through the full 114 minutes and am now ready to judge this fittingly bulky movie. The good news is, it doesn’t completely suck. The bad news is, it isn’t amazing either. My reviews of these big action movies tend to spark controversy whether it’s from me being too critical or not critical enough, so I’m ready to justify my opinions to the fullest here!

There was a real backlash against Ang Lee’s 2003 HULK, it was widely felt the CGI was lame, the story weak and the action uninspired. I’m pleased to inform you that a lot of that is rectified here: far from the glossily rounded figure of his last incarnation, this computer-generated behemoth bulges with sinewy muscle fibres that look ready to burst. The story doesn’t waste ages on the backstory either, in fact it’s pretty much pictorially covered in the opening credits and occasionally infused into the rest of the movie, which is a nice change. The action sequences are pretty cool too, there’s lots of smashing, heavy artillery and the final battle between the two massive fiends is impressive enough. Cars get smashed, wrecking balls are hurled about and I was even delighted to hear the words “Hulk smash!” ring out at a critical moment, and from the lips of Lou Ferrigno no less!

But that said it really felt like this was a movie salvaging a brand, setting our to undo the damage of a clumsy predecessor rather than whetting our appetites for a new era of the big green fella (who, I feel I should admit, has always been my favourite Marvel character). Roping in some great acting talent was definitely a good idea, but Edward Norton and Liv Tyler are somewhat undernourished with the script in this affair.

Bruce Banner’s vulnerability and fear comes across nicely in the capable wild-eyes of the man who has has a stab at a man fighting the beast inside before, but it’s really not given much space to develop in the few short and painfully formulaic scenes which are clearly just teeing up the action bonanzas. This constant awareness of what’s coming next certainly undermined the pleasure of the action sequences for me, and it made the romance element seem more like a half-hearted hint at a subplot than the driving force behind Banner’s hunt for a cure.

What’s more, whilst William Hurt fitted the character of General Ross PERFECTLY, I felt Tim Roth was a bit off the mark for Russian/English mercenary Emil Blonsky. His performance was restrained and he didn’t convince as a military man whose first love is hands-on combat. He just has too much of that cunning, looking over someone’s shoulder, crafty psycho persona in his characters to work as someone hungering after the brute force that Banner possesses. Tim Blake Nelson is probably most on form as the crazy Dr. Sterns, whose good intentions (a classic Marvel twist suggests) may not lead where he’d hoped.

I’ve also begun to wonder whether there might be a bit of an intrinsic problem with the big screen incarnations of our modern-day Jekyll and Hyde.

Cramming itself into the summer blockbuster slot with all the big budget kit that carries is one thing, but it also brings with it certain other expectations, one of which this particularly character is least capable of providing: humour. The sad story of this unassuming and now constantly nervous scientist and his willfully destructive alter-ego just isn’t geared for laughs. We’re treated to a few good attempts here, including Bruce’s broken Portuguese resulting in him telling someone “You wouldn’t like me when I’m hungry”, but it’s just not quite as easily incorporated as in other Marvel and DC adaptations. What’s more, the seriousness of the tale is always undermined by the fact that the monster is a huge, green monster that just can’t look realistic!

So with that in mind it is fair to say that this is a good effort at a tough character. Watching a passable (as far as a massive green irradiated beast can be) CGI hulk battle a massive military arsenal and a creepy nemesis provided some easy entertainment for a couple of hours. There were enough nods at the history of the franchise, including the necessary presence of Lou Ferrigno, a momentary intrusion of the mournful piano music from the TV series and the hulk’s favourite line. But it just wasn’t a great movie, at its best it was fun and at its worst predictable and formulaic - THE INCREDIBLE HULK is Marvel’s attempt at a safe bet to steady the franchise. I wouldn’t warn anyone off of it, but it isn’t going to be the best movie of the summer by a long shot.

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Eccentric director Quentin Tarantino pulled out of the Rolling Roadshow event in Spain this weekend where (yes I’m very much jealous) they are screening the whole Dollars trilogy in open area venues and he was set to introduce For a Few Dollars More to the crowd.

The reason he pulled out is because he is preparing to begin production on his epic World War II movie Inglorious Bastards which he claimed at Cannes would be ready for next year’s festival in the early summer of 2009 and if it that’s the case, casting would have to begin soon.

Now alongside Michael Madsen, one name that has been attached for years to the project is Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs actor Tim Roth who gave this response when asked about the movie this week…

“I keep hearing about it, but we haven’t talked about it,” Roth said. “It’s a thing that me and Quentin talked about a long time ago so we’ll see. I hope so,” he said as he crossed his fingers.

I second the finger crossing. Roth is said to be somewhere in between filming the British comedy 44 Inch Chest and the 13th century Spanish drama King Conqueror. It’s unknown how quickly he would be able to commit for Tarantino.

source - coming soon

Written & Directed by: Michael Haneke

Based on his own 1997 thriller Funny Games made in his native Austria

Starring: Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet, Devon Gearhart, Boyd Gaines, Siobhan Fallon

Distributed by Warner Independent Pictures

Film was released in the U.K. on April 4th 2008

Review by Matt Holmes

In a small art house theatre this week I saw what is undoubtedly the worst and most insulting motion picture of 2008 so far and thankfully it’s now pretty much completely out of U.K. cinema’s so you can avoid this cinematic tragedy. It’s not because it’s badly directed, it’s not because it’s badly acted… those are fine, really good at times in fact but it’s because of it’s tone and shameful exploitative art exercise which serves no other purpose than to lecture the audience in something which the film itself promotes.

If ever the term “having your cake and eating it” reigns true it is for this piece of garbage.

I don’t like being told off when I go to the theatre, especially when it’s for something I haven’t done. I’ve paid my £5 to sit down and be entertained, be moved, be challenged psychologically or philosophically. I pay my money to see something new - I don’t pay it to see a film which lectures me about violence in movies but is itself the most shockingly open in it’s own since Eli Roth tortured students in Hostel.

Talented Austrian director Michael Haneke pulls nothing back here. Funny Games is a cruel exercise in audience manipulation and violence, like Alfred Hitchcock’s brilliant Psycho if the whole film was as shocking as the shower scene with Janet Leigh. If the whole of Psycho had none of the ‘MacGuffin’s’ or the well rounded characters, or the settings, the pacing and was simply about Anthony Perkins torturing a poor women and enjoying it too - it might have gone something like this.

It’s uncompromising and every bit as chillingly effective as the first time Haneke shot this tale of a happy middle class family retreating to the comfort of their summer vacation home when they become part of a sickening and murderous game by two psychotic young boys.

In this almost shot for shot redo, Naomi Watts and Tim Roth play Mr. and Mrs. Farber who along with their son George (Devon Gearhart) are tortured by inhumane games by two boys for their own sick amusement. The always sinister on screen Michael Pitt who kinda has half an innocent face, and half the face of a preserve young sexual pervert plays one of the boys with his sidekick Brady Corbert - equally as uncomfortable to be around and you just wonder if there characters are both mentally challenged because they show no humanity.

They are the middle class sinister villains - the innocent white golf clothes, the glove wearing, the politeness… they are those young kids who will always get along with the older generation who appreciate these values highly but of course we know better. If you have ever seen Rope by Alfred Hitchcock - they are almost like the bastard child of those two killers.

But unlike Rope, we don’t see them morally challenged and nor do we see them doubting their motives. They are one note characters who Haneke has used to act as ourselves - the voyeuristic viewers of violence for entertainment.

But what message is brought around from acting and glorifying the intentions of what is being critiqued?

Haneke, who first shot Funny Games over ten years ago in his homeland of Austria with actors from his own country has claimed that he wanted to make an English language version of this film way back when but Hollywood wouldn’t touch it. He wanted it to be a lecture movie for American audiences who lapped up the violence in their multiplexes week in and week out - apparently Natural Born Killers was the movie that sparked this idea.

But his essay, if that’s what this is, feels so confused and gimmicky that it’s hard to take serious. In the third act, a character acts as the film editor and rewinds some of what is shown to go back and change the ending. Why would I ever want to see that on screen? It’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen on film.

That kind of manipulation sums up this awful film in a nutshell there is only so much of this crap that you can take before you get sick.

I did actually wonder if Haneke had made a movie he wanted you to walk out of.

Several times his killers openly break the 3rd wall and look you in the eye and almost question what you are still doing watching the movie. It’s something I had to question myself and at that point it’s probably time to leave. I didn’t but I gained nothing from staying. What a hideous film.

A word though for Darious Khondji - the director of photography here. His work is gorgeous here… a bland and distilled mixing of whites and blues… the complete opposite of the atmospheric colours that he brought to Se7en but equally as chillingly and uncomfortable. He is one of the best in the business and if this half star is going to anyone, then it’s deserved by his work undoubtedly.

Haneke is a great director and all the actors here are really solid but I just wish they had come up with a better art film to get across a message. This film as is in no where near as clever as it thinks it is and I kinda felt disgusted by it.

It’s taken a long time for Universal to show us a trailer for The Incredible Hulk reboot/restart but I gotta say, they might have been better off from showing us the big reveal of the big green guy completely, Cloverfield style.

He looks CGI crapola. And so does the rest of the movie. Unbelievably, it looks worse than Ang Lee’s film in nearly every department and you really have to wonder if a good Hulk movie is even possible in this current film climate.

I’m stunned Universal have made the same mistakes again. You have to wonder if it would have been more effective just having a real guy, ala Lou Ferrigno (best on screen incarnation of the character for my money) play the character on screen and not CGI him. BETTER YET, this movie maybe should have gone the motion capture or animated avenue, maybe then we might actually get a massive sized Hulk that doesn’t look ridiculous.

Nothing works here. Edward Norton’s a fine actor but he’s totally wrong for this part, especially the way he is playing it. He does not for one minute feel like a superhero, he can’t carry this picture. Liv Tyler is just horrible. William Hurt in that make-up is just weird.

Tim Roth looks good and we haven’t seen this intensity from him since Planet of the Apes but you just know he’s gonna be CGI for most of it. And from the looks of things his CGI Abomination character, looks exactly that - an abomination.

I think we’ve always known that The Incredible Hulk wasn’t going to be able to reach the heavy standards set by the likes of Spider-Man, X-Men or Batman Begins. We also had our reservations as to whether it would be anywhere near as good as Iron Man. But what Louis Letterier and his A-list crew of actors have cooked up here is just hideous.

The movie opens on June 13th. With this trailer, I can’t see it making the money that Ang Lee’s movie made back in 2003. Actually, while I’m here… below is the trailer for Hulk, a film I didn’t like but is on a different level quality wise to the new movie…

Are you going to see this? What do you think of the trailer for the new movie compared to the old one? Should they have even bothered rebooting everything when they are making the same mistakes with actors who don’t fit the roles?

Our first look at Abomination, the Tim Roth villain from THE INCREDIBLE HULK comes in the form of a preview advertisement for the upcoming toy line. It’s a rare glimpse at what we can expect from the movie which has been extremely secretive up until this point.

So what do we think of the look? Well he’s now brown, so that we don’t get confused by two big green monsters. But I don’t hate it.

Kinda looks like SWAMP THING now…

source - chud