The Bank Job
Directed by Roger Donaldson
Starring Jason Statham, Daniel Mays, Saffron Burrows, James Faulkner, Stephen Campbell Moore
Rated R
Release date: March 7, 2008

It’s funny how a simple sentence can change your entire outlook on a movie.

“Based on a true story.”

We see it all the time preceding certain books and movies but its placement seems curious sometimes, no? It’s not like Saving Private Ryan felt the need to say that it was based on a true story. Why? Well, we kinda already figured that out. No, we see this disclaimer in front of movies that suggest that we may not otherwise believe what we are about to see had it not been for the fact that is was based on events that actually took place. Does anyone think The Blair Witch Project would have been half as successful had it not been for those five simple words? Exactly. The truth just feels more interesting. It’s actually quite a master stroke of marketing. It allows the filmmakers to play with the facts more than usually allowed because we the viewer tend to turn a blind eye to certain inaccuracies and embrace it as fact regardless of that voice in the back of our head asking “Did this REALLY happen?” I think Mark Twain said it best, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.”

It is a fine line to walk though.

This brings us to The Bank Job. Based on an actual bank robbery in London in 1971, the story was alleged to have been hidden until now due to a government gag order to protect certain members of the British Royal Family. How it was hidden for almost 40 years until a Hollywood movie revealed the events as fact is beyond me but, hey, they said it was so it’s gotta be true, right?

Semi-Pro
Directed by Kent Alterman
Starring Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson, Andre ‘Andre 3000’ Benjamin, Jay Phillips, Will Arnett
Rated R
Release date: February 29, 2008

Certain things in life we have been conditioned to just take for granted. For example, I know that every October I go on a camping trip into the middle of nowhere, every weekend I see at least one new movie in the theatre, and Will Ferrell is one of the most consistent comedic actors working today. This is why the following statement physically pains me to type:

Will Ferrell’s act is growing stale.

I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later and I should have seen this coming, I just wasn’t ready to see it happen already.

Semi-Pro is the story of Jackie Moon (Will Ferrell), a singer whose one-hit single “Love Me Sexy” made him rich. He then used the profits to buy an ABA basketball team, the Flint Michigan Tropics. They happen to be the worst team in the league. This may have something to do with the fact that Jackie is the owner, coach, promotional manager, and star player. He may not be a very good player, but he’s a star nonetheless. In 1976, just before the ABA collapses, the NBA agrees to merge the four best teams in the ABA into their league. Jackie trades the team washing machine for former Boston Celtic benchwarmer Ed Monix (Woody Harrelson) to make a run at 4th place and a spot in the NBA. Think: a dumbed down basketball version of Slap Shot and you’ll get close.

Dirt
Season 2
Starring Courteney Cox Arquette, Ian Hart, Laura Allen, Josh Stewart
FX Network
Sundays, 10pm EST
Premiere date: March 2, 2008

“Even network news is recycling the story. So much for covering the bombings in Iraq.”

We all kind of have a secret love affair with tabloid press. We perch ourselves on one side or the other of the unspoken moral argument, but however you look at it, we’re all guilty. We’ve all read the stories or seen the headlines. I wouldn’t say most of us knowingly seek them out, but it’s almost impossible to avoid. Why would we? As sad a commentary as it is to say aloud, it’s free entertainment. Equally sad is the fact that it’s not entirely our fault. We really have nowhere to hide and we really have no choice. Over the past decade, tabloid press has risen from the seedy underbelly of journalism to the mainstream. You can barely pull up the front page of a news website, read the paper, or turn on the national news without the barrage of “˜now what happened?’ information being regurgitated onto us about the latest celebrity train wreck flavor of the week. As sensational as it is and as much as part of us wants to see them turn it all around, we keep reading out of sheer morbid curiosity. Anyway, that’s just what constitutes “˜news’.

Come to think of it, in today’s culture of the internet and needing to know information almost before it even happens, it kind of shocks me that a show like Dirt hasn’t made its way to TV before now.

Dirt focuses on the publication Dirt Now, a fictional glossy tabloid magazine run by editor in chief Lucy Spiller (Courteney Cox Arquette). She is all business and is an admitted workaholic who has no time for stories of the mundane. Lucy is interested only in breaking the latest new story and has almost no remorse for the people she interacts with so long as there is a story to be told. She has no conjunction about ruining the lives of celebrities who do not cooperate with her. Lucy’s partner in crime is Don Konkey (Ian Hart), her long-time friend and mildly schizophrenic paparazzi who stops at nothing to get his assigned story.

Margot at the Wedding
Directed by Noah Baumbach
Starring Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black
Paramount Home Video
Available Feb. 19, 2008

When I was younger a friend of mine had his birthday party over a weekend at his parents’ house. A bunch of us spent the night watching movies, playing video games, and eating pizza — standard fare for the time and not unlike any other time we had done the same thing. But this one particular time we were all hanging out watching a movie and his parents got into some kind of argument in the next room. We all tried to ignore it by turning up the TV but no one was even paying attention to that anymore. My friend was understandably embarrassed which, in turn made us all a little uneasy, but through the whole event, no one ever really stopped listening to see what was going on. Watching Margot at the Wedding gave me that same feeling of uneasiness.

Margot (Nicole Kidman) sets out to visit her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who announced that she’s marrying her boyfriend Malcolm (Jack Black). The sisters are not on speaking terms. The reason for this is never said aloud but as the story unfolds you begin to get an inclination as to why.

Jumper
Directed by Doug Liman
Starring Hayden Christensen, Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie Bell, Diane Lane
Rated PG-13
Release date: Feb. 14, 2008

One of the cardinal rules of good filmmaking is to not underestimate the intelligence of your audience. There are different levels, but it makes you wonder which is the bigger crime: not trusting your audience to figure out a movie on its own without being beat over the head with the answer, or thinking they aren’t smart enough to notice that they could have known the answer if given a plot to do so. One of the first lines in Jumper told me all I needed to know about the intentions of the film:

“It didn’t used to be this way. I used to be a regular chump. Like you.”

Great”¦

David Rice (Hayden Christensen) finds out as a teenager that he has the ability to “jump,” or teleport. His mother left when he was five and he lives with his father. After almost drowning one day he accidentally jumps to a library, then home, then to NYC, then into a bank to steal money. If I am moving too fast for you, not to worry, however long it took you to read that last sentence is about as much time as the movie allowed for a back story, so you’re up to speed.