Trailer Roundup: Vantage Point, Midnight Meat Train, Mama's Boy

Posted by Peter Smith
Vantage Point



This trailer has actually been floating around for a while now, but I’ve only now gotten around to writing it up because I’ve been a little unsure how I feel about it. Namely, I questioned the use of an attempted assassination as a central plot point, much as I questioned the wisdom of same in such forgettable mid-'90s fare as The Jackal and Murder at 1600. But then I realized that similar stuff goes on every week on 24, and if it’s OK for Jack Bauer to do it on television than movies are surely fair game. And make no mistake — Vantage Point looks like nothing so much as a feature-length episode of 24, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And the cast is fairly impressive, anchored by Dennis Quaid, who has become the new Harrison Ford — the no-nonsense middle-aged man of action — now that Ford himself can barely be bothered anymore.

Midnight Meat Train



It was only a matter of time before someone would attempt to fuse a gruesome gorefest in the Hostel vein with a more conventional serial-killer storyline, without the gimmick-riddled feel of the Saw movies. And in that respect, I’m curious to see what screenwriter Clive Barker and director Ryuhei Kitamura are up to here. However, the Kitamura name gives me pause. I know that the guy’s work has a certain cult following, but in my opinion his best-known film, Versus, is a classic case of the fans responding to the flashier elements and overlooking Kitamura’s lack of directorial chops. I fear that the same may happen here, although depending on how much input Barker has in the project it could go either way.

Mama’s Boy



Question after question springs to mind: How much longer can Jon Heder coast on goodwill from Napoleon Dynamite like an ex-child star living off residuals? Has the word "no" disappeared from Diane Keaton’s vocabulary? Why is it that after every fine performance Jeff Daniels has given recently (The Squid and the Whale, The Lookout), he’s immediately turned around and appeared in garbage like this and RV? When will people start casting Anna Faris in movies that aren’t stupid comedies? How old is Eli Wallach nowadays? And how bad does a movie have to look to make me pine for comparatively sublime films like Failure to Launch and even Grandma’s Boy, which wasn’t good but at least had Jonah Hill?

— Paul Clark
+ DIGG + DEL.ICIO.US + REDDIT
Posted Nov 26 2007, 01:00 PM
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Comments

LCosgrove said:

If a stronger director than Kitamura was behind MEAT TRAIN, I'd be more excited, but at least he's not working with original material this time. I fell in love with Barker's "Books of Blood" in high school, so I think I'm kind of obligated to see this. (Terrific story, by the by. Hope they haven't opened it up too much.)

November 27, 2007 10:39 AM

LCosgrove said:

Also, if you want a Faris fix, there's always MAY. Or LOST IN TRANSLATION, of course.

November 27, 2007 10:40 AM

The Screengrab said:

Look at that title. Go ahead, you can laugh. Despite sounding like a budget-rate porno made in 1976, the first impression left by this trailer for The Midnight Meat Train is that Lionsgate is treating us to yet another westernized Japanese horror flick

January 30, 2008 10:51 AM

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