IN TIME

IN TIME
Written and Directed by Andrew Niccol
Starring Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried and Cillian Murphy


Henry Hamilton: For a few to be immortal, many must die.

Depending on how you see it on any given day or what side of the bed you got up on, time is either on your side or running out. For some, all they’ve got is time on their hands, while for others, time is the enemy. There are a number of time cliches one can reference to sum up a number of situations and all of them seem to culminate within Andrew Niccol’s IN TIME, a science-fiction thriller that could have used a little more time in the oven itself.

IN TIME is interesting enough but that isn’t really enough to make it worth something. At some indeterminate time in the near-ish future, the world has figured out how to stop the aging process. At 25, you’re done and a clock starts on your left forearm that, like any good wrist watch, keeps perfect time for you. Only this watch doesn’t keep you on schedule; this watch is a constant reminder as to how many days or hours or minutes you have left on this planet. Everyone gets a year when they turn 25. It is then up to you to keep finding ways to replenish that time so that you don’t suddenly time out. Like I said, it is interesting enough in theory but in execution, IN TIME is nothing more than a vehicle to continue establishing Timberlake as a thing, thinly veiled as a high concept morality tale.

Time is therefore currency and IN TIME wastes no time with subtlety in demonstrating how there will always be have’s and always have not’s, no matter what our current currency is. After kidnapping the daughter (Amanda Seyfried) of the apparent richest man (read, most immortal man) in the world, the twosome naturally fall for each other in their quest to better the planet and equal the playing field. They begin robbing her parents’ banks and giving the time back to those who desperately need it. Suddenly, Niccol doesn’t seem to know what kind of movie he’s making anymore. Is it sci-fi? Is it a heist movie? Is it Robin Hood? Whatever it is, it is only half entertaining, half of the time and Timberlake only has half the gravitas required to carry this film. In the end, I highly doubt that IN TIME will be able to stand the one test it needed to pass and I don’t think I need to even say what that is at this point.

Black Sheep presents The 2011 Fall Film Preview

This past weekend, I stepped out of the house in shorts and a T-shirt and immediately walked right back in, when I realized how cold it actually was outside. It felt different; it felt like fall. While some people hate the fall, I love it! It’s all sweaters and soup and a welcome farewell to the mind numbing fare of the summer movie season. And with those changing autumn leaves comes the long awaited return of the prestige picture.

Speaking of anticipation, fans of the family drama, YOU CAN COUNT ON ME, from writer/director, Kenneth Lonergan, will finally get to see his sophomore project, MARGARET this fall, some eight years after it was originally shot. Anna Paquin plays a 17-year-old girl (she was 21 at the time of filming) who witnesses an accident and begins believing she may have caused it somehow. She proceeds to slowly destroy everything in her life. In 2009, Fox Searchlight deemed the project, which also stars Matt Damon, unreleasable, but somehow, both parties have now found the path to understanding. A small mystery remains as to who had final cut.

What lies ahead isn’t entirely bleak though. Justin Timberlake continues his transition from pop star to leading man with the sci-fi thriller, IN TIME. Andrew Niccol, the writer of THE TRUMAN SHOW and the writer/director of GATTACA, returns with his first film since 2006. At this indeterminate time in our future, people are genetically designed to die at the age of 25. (I for one am glad to live in a world where I have so far had nine years past that.) People who reach this golden age are given one year to either find more time, be that legitimately or otherwise. Timberlake’s character comes into a century’s worth of time and not surprisingly, that makes him a guy a lot of people want to find. The wide-eyed Amanda Seyfried and Olivia Wilde are along for the trip.

The title, TINKER, TAILER, SOLDIER, SPY, rolls off the tongue with ease and might and, from the looks of the incredibly taut trailer, the film itself might unspool with a similar readiness. Tomas Alfredson, the Swedish director behind the 2008 international cult hit, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, marks his first English-language film with an adaptation of the John Le Carre bestselling spy novel of the same name. Gary Oldman stars as George Smiley, a character who has not been tackled since the late Alec Guiness played him in 1982. Smiley must put his retirement plans on hold in order to ascertain the identity of a mole within the deep folds on the British intelligence agency, MI6. And when that mole just might be Tom Hardy or Colin Firth, in his first post-Oscar role, you know Oldman has his work cut out for him.

Come November, it’s time for some very important things to be done. It’s time to put on makeup; it’s time to light the lights. Yes folks, it’s time to get things started with the first Muppets movie in over 20 years. Entitled simply, THE MUPPETS, this caper finds Kermit et al. banding together to save their old theatre from being destroyed by a greedy oil tycoon type. They have enlisted the likes of Amy Adams and Jason Segel to get the job done and there are plenty more cameos crammed into this welcome return to the big screen, from Neil Patrick Harris to Mila Kunis to Zach Galifianakis. Segel offers his aid in more ways than one as well. He essentially spearheaded this entire Muppets renaissance, even going so far as to co-write the screenplay.

One could argue that December is not really the fall still but while looking ahead, I see nothing wrong with looking even a little further past that at the same time. While there are many December releases to get excited about, there is one above them all that I am most drawn to. I’ve never read the THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO but I have seen all three of the Swedish films that were adapted from the Steig Larsson series. Ordinarily, I am not a fan of foreign language films being redone in English for mass market appeal but those films are not usually directed by the man behind THE SOCIAL NETWORK, David Fincher. And from the looks of the trailers, it seems to me that Fincher isn’t the least bit concerned about mass appeal. Rather, he seems intent on keeping it dark and authentic. Just in time for the holidays, no less ...

There are oodles of other movies coming, 100+ between now and the close of the year. A great deal of them will be covered in my upcoming TIFF coverage but here is a rundown of the rest for you: Director Steven Soderbergh kills off several Oscar nominees in CONTAGION; one of the most loved animated films of all time, THE LION KING, returns to theatres for a limited 3D run; Taylor Lautner tries really hard to be a big boy in the thriller, ABDUCTION; Daniel Craig plays creepy house with now wife, Rachel Weisz, in Jim Sheridan's DREAM HOUSE; Anna Faris recycles old boyfriends in WHAT'S YOUR NUMBER?; Hugh Jackman takes on robot boxing in REAL STEAL; the world gets a FOOTLOOSE remake it never wanted; Johnny Depp goes back to the world of Hunter S. Thompson in THE RUM DIARY; Michelle Williams gets her Monroe on in MY WEEK WITH MARILYN; Harold & Kumar return for a third trip in A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS; Clint Eastwood takes on Hoover in J. EDGAR, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and potential love interest, Armie Hammer; Martin Scorsese goes family and 3D with HUGO; oh, and I think there should be another TWILIGHT mess in there somewhere.

Stay tuned for Black Sheep's TIFF preview next weekend and the holiday movie preview will bow near the end of November. In the meantime, bon cinema!

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS

Written by Keith Merryman, David A. Newman and Will Gluck

Directed by Will Gluck

Starring Justin Timberlake, Mila Kunis and Woody Harrelson

Dylan: Why do relationships start out so fun and then turn into such a bag of dicks?

Dating is complicated. The scene today can be so cold and callous that most people in it are forced to disengage emotionally from it in order to survive. Enter Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis in FRIENDS WITH BENFITS, director Will Gluck’s follow-up to last fall’s breakout comedy, EASY A. They have a plan that will save everyone from the walls they’ve erected around their hearts by using those walls as the foundation for their mating practices. The logic is that if you’re already emotionally messed up, then you can avoid further damage by not involving emotion anymore. Voila! Dating oversimplified.

Timberlake and Kunis play Dylan and Jamie, two New York City singles at the top of their professional games who have essentially taken themselves off the market to preserve their already battered hearts. They click instantly when they meet and the fast friends decide they should take advantage of their natural chemistry and see if it translates in the bedroom, except without all the mushy stuff. Once they get going, they can’t get enough of each other but is it the sex they’re addicted to or is it each other?

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS tries very hard to disassociate itself from your typical romantic comedy but doesn’t realize that it actually plays into most of that genre’s conventions simultaneously. Fortunately, Timberlake and Kunis are adorable together; their chemistry and comedic timing endears the viewer to their plight, however trite it is, and saves the film from total cliché. Still, the light, casual tone of their relationship, I mean, arrangement, permeates to the rest of the film, making it just as tricky for us to connect emotionally as it is for Dylan and Jamie. It may be about a casual sexual relationship but it plays out more like a one-night stand.

BAD TEACHER

Written by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg

Directed by Jake Kasdan

Starring Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel, Lucy Punch

and Justin Timberlake

Elizabeth Halsey: I think that movies are the new books.

The movies offer a long line of great educators to draw inspiration from. There’s Edward James Olmos in STAND AND DELIVER; Morgan Freeman in LEAN ON ME; and even Michelle Pfeiffer in DANGEROUS MINDS. And while that last example might seem a bit of a stretch, she is still infinitely more admirable than Cameron Diaz in BAD TEACHER. In fact, Diaz’s first month of class curriculum consists entirely of watching these three films so that she can sleep at her desk after downing a shot of Jack first thing every morning.

Diaz plays Elizabeth Halsey, a man-eating, money-grubbing cheat who will say and do anything necessary to ensure she is very well taken care of. Just when she thinks she is set to retire from teaching and marry rich, she is promptly dumped and forced to head back to school for another year. Her new goal is to buy herself some new breasts in hopes of landing an even dumber, richer man than her previous fiancé. BAD TEACHER is pretty light on plot; essentially a group of teachers co-exist at school for the duration of a year and hijinks ensue. Fortunately, these teachers are made up of an incredibly amusing cast of funny people, from Justin Timberlake as Elizabeth’s naïve, new love interest with deep family pockets and very little going on upstairs to Jason Segel as Elizabeth’s obviously better-suited mate, whom she must learn to lower her standards for, as he is just gym teacher after all. It is Lucy Punch who gets the “Teacher of the Year” award though as Elizabeth’s goody-goody nemesis with emotional issues from across the hall.

Director, Jake Kasdan, isn’t kidding around with BAD TEACHER. Elizabeth is a pretty bad person altogether; her badness as a teacher, a mere offshoot of her essentially nasty core. Diaz does bad disturbingly well though, making summer school this year suddenly very cool.