Yet another "next Twilight", The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, gets a surprisingly solid trailer.

Get More: 

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Jamie Campbell Bower, Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

At the very least, this looks a lot better than The Host.  Yes we're seeing what amounts to Underworld or Blade told from the point of view of the Scott Speedman/N'Bushe Wright character, but it still *looks* good.  The production values seem solid, with some genuinely creepy imagery and promises of more than one action scene.  Having Jared Harris narrate your trailer never hurts, nor is advertising his supporting role.  There are some decent character actors hidden behind the (presumably) star-crossed lovers (Lily Collins and Jamie Campbell Bower), including CCH Pounder and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.  Of course, the best-cast of the various attempted Harry Potter cash-ins (Percy Jackson Etc Etc) turned out to be the worst, so that may mean little.  Of the three "next great young-adult literary film franchise" sneak peaks we've seen thus far, I'm partial to this one.  For what it's worth, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones opens August 23, 2013.  As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson  

3 of a Kind: Mirror Mirror and two prior fractured fairy-tales that end on a song.

Why Relativity saw fit to release this climactic dance number from Mirror Mirror well-ahead of its theatrical release, I cannot say.  But while it's pretty disconnected from the film, it does reveal a pretty big spoiler involving the fate of a major supporting character (and also ruins one of the biggest 'wtf?' cameos in recent memory).  It may not be fair to continuously compare Mirror Mirror to the somewhat similar Ella Enchanted, but it is worth noting that they actually end in pretty much the same way, albeit with an established song as opposed to an original Bollywood-ish tune.

Review: Mirror Mirror (2012) is lifeless and drab, a poor-man's Ella Enchanted.

Mirror Mirror
2012
106 minutes
rated PG

by Scott Mendelson

The good news is that Tarsem Singh's Mirror Mirror is nowhere near as obnoxiously zany and aggressively annoying as the trailers seem to suggest.  Frankly, the most eye-rolling moments of the marketing campaign aren't even in the movie, and I'd be hard-pressed to name more than a few pop-culture references over modern-anachronisms.  And the film is surprisingly nonchalant about gender, presenting a heroine and  female villain whose respective strengths and flaws have little to do with their gender.  But the film is strangely immobile throughout, feeling less like a cinematic experience than an overlong stage-play with expensive costumes and occasionally well-constructed sets.  Every scene goes on too long and every performer seems too tired to give it their all.  When the first trailer dropped, I derisively compared its apparent tone to the live-action Cat in the Hat.  As horrible as that film is, Mirror Mirror could have used some of its boundless energy.

Trailer: Tarsem's Snow White revamp, Mirror Mirror, looks like a terrible remake of Ella Enchanted, as Julia Roberts invokes The Cat in the Hat.

Wow... just wow.  This looks shockingly bad, a sophomoric, obnoxious, and outright painful.  The humor seems to be on the level of Happily N'Ever After, and any kind of would-be 'fairy tale reversal' shtick just points out that Ella Enchanted did it first, did it smarter and wittier, and did it without having to piggy-back on a famous property.  Julia Roberts looks so strained and campy that she evokes an awkward kind of sympathy with her ghastly 'comic moments' and the constant pokes at her age (most of her bits revolve around how apparently old and ugly she is).  Of course Lily Collins looks gorgeous and fetching, and Arnie Hammer looks blandly-dashing, but the whole tone reeks of Mike Meyer's The Cat in the Hat.  This one drops on March 16th, 2012.  As always, we'll see, but unless this is some kind of bait-and-switch, um... yeah.

Scott Mendelson  

Review: Fault of Abduction (2011) lie not with the star, but with its script, stunts.

Abduction
2011
105 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

A good movie can overcome a weak central performance (see - On Her Majesty's Secret Service), just as a sparkling central performance can make a mediocre movie feel like a great one (see - Iron Man).  But a poor story combined with a mediocre lead performance is a pretty toxic combination.  Thus we have Taylor Lautner's Abduction.  I had a token amount of hope for the picture because I like trashy thrillers, even ones that star actors I don't generally care for (see - Shooter).  But the movie is just-plain bad.  It's not bad because Taylor Lautner can't act, although this is surely not a convincing testament to his star power.  It is weak because it fails to excel in the areas that had little to do with whether or not its lead actor was up to the task.  John Singleton is saddled with a weak script and a shocking lack of big-scale action.

Happily Never After: The sad (and sexist?) rush to cast some of our most promising young actresses as fairy tale princesses.

There were a few interesting articles written over the last several months about the unusual amount of ass-kicking (or at least take-charge) young female roles being written into mainstream cinema.  Whether it was Chloe Moretz in Kick-Ass, Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit, Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone, or Saoirse Ronan in Hanna, the last 18 months or so has seen a mini-wave of genre pictures where young females were basically the lead characters (or in the case of Kick-Ass the star attraction), 'strong independent character' (god, I hate that cliche) who not only could fend for themselves but were not defined in any way, shape, or form by their male love interest (not a one of them had a boyfriend).  Yes, I would include Sucker Punch in this category, as it was basically a satiric examination of whether ass-kicking young women in pop culture were automatically sexualized by virtue of the salacious nature of such imagery (stop whining and read THIS).  The somewhat negative undercurrent of this trend is that these actresses were generally under 18, often barely passed puberty.  Point being, what would become of these actresses once they reached adulthood?  If recent developments are any indication, Hollywood has a genuine desire to roll back the progress clock and turn these actresses into fairy tale princesses.