Call it a cinephile’s wet dream. Or, perhaps, a nightmarish miscalculation?

Martin Scorsese, while in India promoting the recent theatrical release of Shutter Island, spoke about his long-gestating Sinatra biopic and how he’d like to do it. [The Playlist]

Here’s what the director had to say about his dream project:

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Tracy Morgan and Juliette Binoche are in final negotiations to join director Dito Montiel’s (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Fighting) cop drama Son of No One. Read the full story

HBO has been good to Mr. Pacino in recent years. One of the strongest performances of his career came in 2003′s Angels in America, Mike Nichols‘ brilliant, lush adaptation of the Tony Award-winning Tony Kushner play about homosexuality, religion and politics in 1980s New York City. Think Rent times 1,000.

Pacino played Roy Cohn, the notorious (and notoriously homosexual) Republican.

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It’s being reported by THR that Al Pacino has signed on for a new police thriller titled Son of No One.  The film is set to be directed by Dito Montiel (Fighting, A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints) and produced by Holly Wiersma (Bobby and The Quiet). Read the full story

By Dan Mecca

James Gray’s Two Lovers pulls no punches. In the vein of classic Hollywood romance-tragedies such as A Place in the Sun minus the gloss and the decisiveness, Gray offers up a grainy character study backed up with a constant post-modern uncertainty. It seems that Gray’s film, much like its characters, are trapped in between responsibility and desire.

Joaquin Phoenix, in what he claims is his final performance, plays Leonard, a bi-polar Jewish son living in Brighton Beach with his parents. This is an interesting character – probably much more interesting than he should be thanks to Phoenix’s oddly engrossing performance.
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Remember that time when you were sitting around talking movies with a few friends, and then suddenly that movie comes into the dialogue? You know, that movie. It’s the movie that the rest of your cohorts begin to laud or defame as either a “cinematic milestone” or “hugely overrated,” while you sit there, clueless, and soak up their opinions because you’re supposed to have seen it. Well no worries, we’ve all got that movie, if not more, and what follows is a dedication to those movie buffs who are a bit too proud to admit that they’re not as up on the coveted classic film canon as most would expect. On the other hand, you could just be one of many average film goers who couldn’t care less what movie snobs said if you hadn’t seen a film, and that’s just peachy too.

In no particular order:

Citizen Kane (1941): First off, I’ll admit that this film’s presence on this list is entirely dependent on the kind of film goer you are. One might not lie about having seen this film if attending (or having attended) film school, or any film class for that matter, simply because there’s an extremely high probability that they’ll wind up seeing it in that environment at some point or another. However, given the film’s legendary status among most other movie buffs, there also exists a rather high probability that anyone who hasn’t seen it wouldn’t like to admit otherwise.

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By Dan Mecca

I don’t know where this guy came from, but he is one of the best actors around right now, and if you can’t admit that than you are lying to yourself. It all started, in hindsight, with Wimbledon, a sassy little rom-com starring Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany. And who was Bettany’s younger brother? You guessed it! McAvoy was also the funniest part of the movie, providing laughs where there should not have been any, and playing off Bettany’s awkward charm with…more awkward charm.

And that’s what he’s got: charm. The guy’s a natural, most likely unaware of the depths of his facial expressions and weight of his words. As Carl Colt in Wimbledon, McAvoy played an endearing character, constantly betting (literally) against his brother (Bettany) to lose but rooting for him to win…no matter what the cost.

These terms of endearment would only expand with his next breakout role, that of Mr. Tumnus in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Playing a faun, McAvoy served, once again, as the comic relief in a children’s movie that took itself far too seriously.

And, once again, his performance felt less like acting and more like being, as if McAvoy was always a faun, who just happened to be on set that day, armed with a handful of nice one-liners. Every scene he is in he steals from those wooden kid actors, making every viewer wish he would take their place.

All of this, however, is foreplay. Where McAvoy really broke out was in The Last King of Scotland, playing Dr. Nicholas Garrigan. As the young naive doctor, McAvoy found a dramatic voice not present in his earlier roles. Unfortunately, he was in a film geared not towards his performance, but that of Forest Whittaker and his calculated imitation of Idi Amin. Reminescent of Anthony Hopkins overshadowing Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs or Marlon Brando overshadowing Al Pacino in The Godfather, Whittaker distracts viewers from McAvoy, who carries the film on his shoulders throughout, allowing Whittaker to overact his way to a Best Actor Oscar. I only hope Forest thanked McAvoy for the assist.

But young James’ time will surely come. He anchored Atonement and made the intelligent romance Starter for 10 delightful, with considerable help from Rebecca Hall, another up-and-comer with ridculously natural acting chops. Hell, he even made it through Wanted without laughing, which is more than you can say for Morgan Freeman, who was clearly laughing all the way to the bank in that piece of shit. McAvoy even made waves in the 2003 BBC series State of Play, which has since been adapted into an American feature film starring Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck. And while the film sports a nice poster and trailer for its April 17th release, it has a huge problem: no James McAvoy.

McAvoy’s next film is Michael Hoffman’s The Last Station, a film based on Russian author Leo Tolstoy (the guy who wrote War and Peace). McAvoy is not Tolstoy and it looks like he is not the lead, which is refreshing in a way. Maybe he picked the film because he honestly liked the screenplay. The word on the street is that the film, as a matter of fact, is 2010 Oscar material. It appears McAvoy makes any movie he’s in better for it (see both Penelope and Becoming Jane), so I’m willing to bet we see McAvoy at the Academy Awards next year, if not nominated most certainly deserving.

Do you enjoy McAvoy’s performances? Do you see him growing as an actor?

Check out our other spotlights in our Articles section.

By Dan Mecca

This list intends to pay homage to recent classics that have not been given the appropriate respect. In no particular order:

1. Lord of War (2005)  - dir. Andrew Niccol

Nicolas Cage as a smooth-talking gunrunner. The opening credits alone are haunting.

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Here are my worst films of the year, followed by fellow writer, Dan Mecca’s list.

This year brought a couple true masterpieces to the life of cinema, but it also gave us some pretty poor movies and one particularly horrendous movie. Here are the year’s worst films:

Disclaimer: I did not go see such caliber films as The Love Guru, Meet The Spartans, or 10,000 B.C. so those do not appear on my list. Also, there will be spoilers.

I’ll kick it off with some honorable mentions: Rambo, Flawless, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Vantage Point, Speed Racer, Run Fatboy Run, and Hancock.

5) Nights in Rodanthe

In one part of Nights in Rodanthe Richard Gere’s character, Dr. Paul Flanner tells Adrienne (played by Diane Lane) that the hardest thing he has ever had to do was say goodbye to her. This is only days after they have met and even less time since he had to tell his patient’s family why their father and husband died in his hands at the operating table. Yeah, I’m sure saying goodbye was horribly difficult for you. Then we are led to believe, by a montage of disturbingly sexual letters, that the two have completely fallen in love since they departed. Many people will say this is standard fare for a one-note romantic flick, but I’ve seen it done well in Nicholas Sparks’ other movie adaptation, The Notebook. As the movie ended and I could hear tears hit the floor of every woman around me and the groans of the few other men dragged along I wondered how I managed to sit through this atrocity.

4) Jumper

This movie really could have been good. Doug Liman directed such outstanding movies as Bourne Identity, Go, Swingers, and even Mr. and Mrs. Smith; which was enjoyable. The premise is awesome: a person can teleport wherever he wants. Except that person is Hayden Christensen, and he can’t act. His relationship with Rachel Bilson’s character is just annoying and the action leaves much more to be desired. There is zero story, it’s just a bunch of consecutive scenes that the director thought would look cool. The worst part is there is supposed to be a sequel.

3) Righteous Kill

Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino are together again. This is first time since their small stint in Heat and starring, but not seen together, in The Godfather Part II. Sounds like a good idea, right? Well no one told the actors that they haven’t made a good movie in the last couple years, or that the director had another atrocious movie this year, 88 Minutes. Directed by Jon Avnet and released in April, it would be on my list if I could muster up the patience to finish the last 30 minutes. Fortunately, I don’t see that happening. The worst part of the movie is that DeNiro and Pacino have just devolved into playing caricatures of their former personas. Scene after scene (and yes they are in virtually EVERY scene together) they act exactly as one would expect them to act. The film does entertain in a couple of scenes, but with a script so cliché and directing so bland it can’t last for all 100 painful minutes.

2) Max Payne

The videogame this film is based on is all sorts of wonderful, and mainly because of the story. Somehow this film managed to botch it, taking out the best elements and adding in some of the worst. Director John Moore tried to push every scene to the maximum amount of grittiness possible and it comes off cheesy and laughable. PG-13 as well? Come on. At least it wasn’t Mark Wahlberg’s worst movie of the year.

1) The Happening

“Be scientific, douchebag”

Dan Mecca’s Worst Films of the Year:

5. The Happening

For this one I can only say that the once-reliable M. Night Shyamalan did appear to try really hard. At achieving what I could not tell you. Featuring the worst performance of Marky Mark’s career, this film promises the best of Shyamalan in the first fifteen minutes and then literally does everything wrong, derailing into an ambitious, pretentious, asininely-written opus concerning – the environment? I mean, I guess.

4. Fool’s Gold

I just don’t even know how this thing was not “accidentally” burnt in the editing room. Probably because Matthew McConaughey’s too cute. Understandable.

3. Made of Honor

Before I lambaste this movie, let me just say this: I like romantic-comedies. I enjoyed 27 Dresses, I came to love The Notebook and When Harry Met Sally, It Happened One Night and You’ve Got Mail are all personal favorites. This movie demeans those movies (yes even 27 Dresses) so vehemently I almost walked out of the theater several times. But I didn’t, because I was with a lovely girl and I relished the thought of writing this. Don’t ever see this movie, no matter how many McDreams you’ve had about McDreamy. It will just offend you.

2. 88 Minutes

I remember when Al Pacino was the greatest actor of all time. He’s not anymore. Here’s the proof.

1. Max Payne

I remember when Mark Wahlberg was the greatest rapper-turned-actor of all time, even better (for a Departed moment) than Big Willie. He’s not anymore. Here’s the proof. Oh and The Happening too.

What movies did youhate this year?