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By Marni Weisz
Hot Rod
August
Is it just us, or does Hot Rod remind anyone else of Will Ferrell’s Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby? (Although, with that mustache, it looks like there’s a bit of Ron Burgundy in there, too.) Like Ferrell, star Andy Samberg comes from Saturday Night Live. This is his first attempt to break into movies, and what better model to follow than Ferrell’s?
Samberg plays Rod Kimble, a self-taught stuntman who plans to use the winnings from a stunt competition to help fund his dad’s (Ian McShane) heart operation. Without it, dad will die. The catch here is that Kimble hates his dad, who’s abused him since childhood, and just wants to be able to kick his ass when he’s better.
Like another SNL alum, Adam Sandler, often does, Samberg has made this film with the help of his childhood friends, director Akiva Schaffer and co-star Jorma Taccone.
The Kingdom
September
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From left: Jennifer Garner, Ali Suliman,
and Jamie Foxx in The Kingdom
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The real-life attack on an
international housing compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in May 2003 is
the jumping off point for this political thriller produced by Michael Mann and directed by Peter Berg (Very Bad Things). But beyond that initial premise, the characters and situations are all imagined.
Jamie Foxx
plays FBI special agent Ronald Fleury, who’s sent to Riyadh after a
deadly terrorist attack on a complex that houses Americans. Fleury
chooses agents Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner), Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman) and Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper)
to help him with his assignment — take down the terrorist cell
responsible within a single week. The film was shot not in the Middle
East, but the Arizona desert, where the extreme heat took Garner
down…she reportedly passed out from heat exhaustion.
Mann — known for his slick visual style and taut action sequences in films like Collateral and Miami Vice — doesn’t often produce films he doesn’t direct, so it’ll be interesting to see to what extent this film has his touch.
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BRIEFLY
September
The Nanny Diaries: This based-on-the-book comedy starring Scarlett Johansson as an ill-treated nanny was supposed to come out last April. But at the last moment the studio bumped it back saying they wanted to position it better for awards season contention. Could it be true?
October
The Golden Age: Cate Blanchett resumes the role of Queen Elizabeth the First for director Shekhar Kapur. The pair did Elizabeth together in 1998, which earned seven Oscar nominations, winning one for Makeup. This time we concentrate on Liz’s relationship with Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen) and the challenges to her rule.