Sep 05 2008
Movies Opening September 5
I guess this is the death week between summer being over and the fancy Oscar-worthy fall movies come out. After having give movies come out last week, only one came out this week. They couldn’t find anything better though?
Nationwide Releases
Bangkok Dangerous
Directed: Oxide Pang Chun, Danny Pang
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Chakrit Yamnarm, Charlie Yeung
Trailer
Synopsis: Greasy-haired assassin rethinks his job when he is hired to kill an actual nice guy that helps poor people.
My Take: Um, I’m going to ignore this movie came out.
RT Score: 8%
RT Consensus: With murky cinematography, a meandering pace, a dull storyline, and rather wooden performances, The Pang Brothers’ Hollywood remake of Bangkok Dangerous is unsuccessful.
Limited Releases
Pool
Directed: Chris Smith
Starring: Nana Patekar, Venkatesh Chavan, Jhangir Badshah, Ayesha Mohan
Trailer
Synopsis: Coming-of-age story where a boy in India who works in a hotel, but offers to work for a wealthy home owner with a pool he dreams of swimming in, and there’s a chance of a better life.
My Take: It won awards at Sundance, but didn’t do much for me from the trailer.
RT Score: 94%
Ping Pong Playa
Directed: Jessica Yu
Starring: Jimmy Tsai, Andrew Vo, Khary Payton, Jim Lau, Roger Fan
Trailer
Synopsis: A Chinese-American rules at basketball until his mother is injured and he needs to run the family business of Ping Pong.
My Take: The premise sounds like it could be funny, yet the trailer wasn’t.
RT Score: 62%
RT Consensus: A gentle, light, kid friendly comedy about a Chinese-American hoopster turned ping pong pro, Playa is a charming but considerable digression from director Jessica Yu’s previous works.
Everybody Wants To Be Italian
Directed: Jason Todd Ipson
Starring: Jay Jablonski, Cerena Vincent, John Kapelos, John Enos, Richard Libertini
Trailer
Synopsis: Italians are supposed to be great lovers, except for this one guy who keeps screwing things up with various hot women.
My Take: His ex and his new girlfriend looked identical. I couldn’t tell them apart.
RT Score: 0%
September 6th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Wow, it is a sad week in the movie world. Time for me to read a book I guess, or maybe the movie industry wants to help me save money. They understand that movies are expensive these days and don’t want me to feel that I need to see one this week I guess.
Your take on Bangkok Dangerous actually made me laugh out loud. I can’t think of any movies with a long haired Nicholas Cage that I have enjoyed. I hope next week looks better.
September 6th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
I like Nicolas Cage movies. He did have long hair in Con-Air, he was buff and
hot in that movie. I may not see this movie in the theater, but I will Netflix it for sure.
September 20th, 2008 at 8:13 am
I saw Nicholas Cage on David Letterman this week talking about this movie. Even the clip they chose to show was boring. I did learn however that Nicholas Cage owns a house in New Orleans which is supposed to be the most haunted mansion in the US. He hasn’t slept overnight there yet. I thought that made him kinda interesting. Also he had done away with the weird curly hair and looked much better.
September 27th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Oh Nicholas Cage, please make a good movie so that I can watch it and be happy.