In Theaters This Weekend

... I can't.

What happened to Paul Bettany? I'm going to go ahead and blame it on Wimbledon. Let's look - Dogville, Master and Commander, A Knight's Tale, A Beautiful Mind... all Oscar worthy performances. He was shaping up to be the actor of his generation, but then came Wimbledon and the land of guaranteed audiences. Wimbledon, Firewall, Legion, and now Priest? Creation, and his astonishing portrayal of Charles Darwin, is the late exception. 

With Priest and Bridesmaids (consider it an... estrogen-fueled The Hangover) opening this weekend, can you guess what I'm going to recommend? Let's take a brief look at both after the jump. 

More after the cut--

Why I Love Film - #7 (nsfw)

Sid and Nancy they ain't

There's a special brand (!) of genius behind Russell Brand and Rose Byrne's creations of rockstars Aldous Snow and Jackie Q. We were introduced to Aldous, a once famously sober rockstar, in Forgetting Sarah Marshall (when he used to have sex with Sarah Marshall) and were introduced to Jackie Q in Get Him to the Greek. The foul hilarity that spews forth from their mouths around each other kind of belie the talents they have as actors, but only on the surface. Once you can get past what they're saying, and you can pay attention to how they're saying it, the characters are two of the smartest things to come to film in the last few years. And definite career makers of performances. 

And something like this could only be captured on the big screen. The performances, and characters, are too big for anywhere else. 

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Insidious

Drag me to Hot Topic

There's a sense of familiarity in a movie like Insidious. Horror movies these days are a dime a dozen. But Insidious' familiarity comes from a deeper place; it comes from true classics like Poltergeist or even Paranormal Activity, who's producers helped get this film done. Those films work because the have a handle on their atmosphere (something every good horror film has). If you can't control the tone of your film, how can you hope to control the tone of your audience? The answer to that seems easy - that's why films like The Fog get remade, and films like Boogeyman are conceived every day. Tell some audiences to be afraid, and naturally they will be. An example of making your audience afraid, rather than simply suggesting their fear, is a Japanese film called Ju-on, later re-filmed as The Grudge (to, arguably, the same effect). An even better example, Psycho. 

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