Review: Smokin’ Aces

UK release date: 12th January

After his thoughtful and engaging cop thriller Narc (2001), writer/director Joe Carnahan wildly misses the mark here with this Tarantino-style black comedy.

When Las Vegas showman Buddy “Aces” Israel (Entourage’s Jeremy Piven) agrees to turn FBI informant, his former Mob cronies put out a hit on him. Enter a motley assortment of assassins ranging from Ben Affleck to singer Alicia Keys (who should stick to the day job), with Ray Liotta and Ryan Reynolds thrown into the mix as Federal agents out to protect their asset.

However, instead of crafting characters to laugh with (or even at), Carnahan indulges in a sniggering schoolboy obsession with casual mutilation and silly wigs. It’s safe to say the director has played his joker here — and lost.

Radio Times rating:

*

UK cinema certificate 18
Running time 108mins

Review by Stella Papamichael

News: Ben Affleck

Affleck’s next project, following his moustachioed turn in this week’s Smokin’ Aces, is going to be from behind the camera. As writer/director of Gone, Baby, Gone, he’ll be hoping to revive some of the Oscar-winning success he had as co-screenwriter (with best buddy Matt Damon)  of Good Will Hunting, and has cast his brother, Casey Affleck in the lead. Based on a novel by the same person who wrote the book on which the Oscar-winning Sean Penn flick Mystic River was based, the Boston-set detective thriller revolves around the kidnapping of a four-year-old girl, and also features the likes of Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, and Mark Wahlberg’s oft-forgotten brother Robert.

Review: Hollywoodland

UK release date: 24th November

Though it has all the hallmarks of a film noir — a gumshoe, a mysterious death and not one but two femmes fatales — Hollywoodland doesn’t quite fit the genre bill. Instead, it’s more a poignant love letter to the glory days of Tinseltown, personified by George Reeves (Ben Affleck), a struggling bit-part player who found fame in the 1950s as TV’s Superman.

The film takes liberties with the facts of Reeves’s life, starting with his apparent suicide in 1959 and telling his story in flashback through the eyes of private eye Louis Simo (Adrien Brody), who is hired by Reeves’s mother to look into her son’s death. Simo uncovers three possible alternatives, all hinged on Reeves’s involvement with a rich, powerful and married woman (Diane Lane).

Despite the convincingly dark, smoky atmosphere to Simo’s investigation, Hollywoodland works better when it’s evoking Reeves’s heyday — a cosmetically genteel world of zoot suits and jazz bands, in which the studio system protected its investments at any price.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 125mins

Review by Damon Wise

News: Ben Affleck

Having got a fair amount of Oscar buzz for his turn as former TV Superman George Reeves in this week’s Hollywoodland, Affleck’s next step for his career revival masterplan is a turn as a mustachioed hitman in Smokin’ Aces, a comedy crime caper that could, at a push, pass as a parody of the kind of Tarantino-lite flicks (like Get Shorty) of the mid-1990s. Or it could be a genuine attempt to make that kind of film a decade after they went out of fashion… Due out in the UK in March 2007, whether it’s going to be any good or not is anyone’s guess, but the trailer can be found <a href=”http://www.smokinacesmovie.net/teaser/&#8221; target=”_blank”>here</a>.

Likely to be more promising for Affleck’s future is his planned team-up with best buddy Matt Damon – with whom he won the Oscar for Best Screenplay for Good Will Hunting all those years ago. As yet untitiled, the pair will star as a couple of lawyers who toil for fifteen years to save the life of an innocent man on death row, and is apparently based on a true story. Quite when (or if) it will see the light of day is unclear, considerin Damon’s hectic schedule these days.

Also showing potential is Gone, Baby, Gone – written, produced and directed by Affleck, and starring his younger brother, Casey, alongside Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris. Based on the <a href=”http://www.dennislehanebooks.com/books/gone/&#8221; target=”_blank”>book</a> by Dennis Lehane, the author of the book Sean Penn got his Oscar-winner Mystic River out of. Set around the kidnapping of a four-year-old girl in Boston, it looks set to be rather more serious than most of Affleck’s recent outings – and could, if he’s as good a director as he used to be a writer, prove rather good.

News: Adrien Brody

Oscar-winner Brody puts in a good turn as a noirish detective in this week’s Hollywoodland, though most of the Academy Awards buzz for this film seems to be centred around the “comeback” performance of his co-star Ben Affleck.

It could instead be the upcoming biopic of Spanish bullfighter Manuel Rodríguez Sánchez, Manolete, for which he trained in southern Spain to get the full bullfighting experience, which garners Brody his next batch of nominations. Likely to be a controversial movie for its potential to laud such a cruel sport, and coming from Menno Meyjes, the same writer/director responsible for the John Cusack-starring Hitler biopic Max, word is that the chemistry with co-star Penélope Cruz could make this one to remember on its release in Autumn 2007.

Brody will also be appearing in the experimental director Todd Haynes’ equally experimental exploration of Bob Dylan I’m Not There, alongside a ridiculously impressive cast of the likes of Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett,Charlotte Gainsbourg, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Julianne Moore. Due out next year, Dylan’s life and work is explored through seven characters representing different aspects of the man and music.

News: Johnny Knoxville

The man most associated with the Jackass brand has been doing a decent enough job of turning himself into a genuine film star that it’s amazing his agent still lets him take part in such dangerous antics.

Next up, he’ll be appearing ain a small role longside Ben Affleck, Diane Lane, Mickey Rourke, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Rosario Dawson in hitman comedy caper Killshot, but it will be his film after that (assuming that rumours of his casting are true) which could finally give him his proper movie break. Based on an accalaimed series of graphic novels, Hawaiian Dick is set in a stylised 1950s version of the islands, with down-on-his luck detective Byrd trying to cope with the surprising amount of crime he finds himself surrounded by. If it goes ahead and Knoxville can pull it off, it could just see him hit the A-list…