Wayne Kramer

Super Duper Alice Cooper Trailer

It's fair to say that Vincent Furnier made musical history when he became Alice Cooper; an androgynous shock rocker who spent his teenage years pursuing a career in rock, and certainly not following in his preacher father's footsteps. From his inception, Alice Cooper went against the grain of what is accepted in modern music with over-the-top, gore-filled live shows which at one point saw a chicken get unwittingly murdered by his audience. However, the fun soon got out of hand when Alice Cooper and his band got fully submerged in the rock 'n' roll world of alcohol and drug abuse. Setting up the drinking club The Hollywood Vampires, Alice Cooper would be hospitalised more than once for his substance abuse issues, getting so obsessed with that world that he would not even be able to remember large chunks of his recording career.

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Crime Comedy Capers In The New Trailer For Paul Walker's 'Hustlers' [Trailer + Pictures]

By Jack de Aguilar in Movies / TV / Theatre on 25 April 2014

Paul Walker Norman Reedus Wayne Kramer Elijah Wood

Watch the explosive trailer below.

‘Hustlers’, known in the USA as ‘Pawn Shop Chronicles’, has a brand new trailer featuring the late Paul Walker. The film draws together three plotlines - including meth addicted white supremacists, a man looking for his kidnapped wife, and an Elvis impersonator - centred on one place: the pawn shop; the epicentre for the poor trying to catch a break, and the focus of many a ridiculous situation.

Kevin Rankin and Paul Walker in "Hustlers"

And ridiculous situations are ample in the short peek we get in this new trailer. Walker himself seems to have adopted a ‘trailer trash’ character, bemoaning his partner in crime for swapping their shotgun for money to buy fuel. Where did that shop take place? You guessed it. “Man, how the hell we gonna rob Stanley without a shotgun?” a dishevelled Walker asks. Matt Dillon, Elijah Wood, Brendan Fraser and Norman Reedus (of Walking Dead fame) also star.

Continue reading: Crime Comedy Capers In The New Trailer For Paul Walker's 'Hustlers' [Trailer + Pictures]

Hustlers Trailer

The pawn shop is the last resort for most broke people; the place where the impoverished and the desperate sell off their most prized valuables in exchange for an obscenely disproportionate amount of money. In 'Hustlers', it's where three dramatic stories begin; first, a pair of newlyweds find themselves in the shop where, as fate would have it, the groom finds the ring of his first wife who has been missing for some time. While he decides to seek out her kidnapper, a pair of small time criminals are concocting a plan to rob their meth dealer - though their armed robbery plan is inhibited when one of them pawns his shotgun. Meanwhile, one serious-minded Elvis Presley impersonator wishes to pawn his alleged gold Elvis memorabilia as he moves into the town hoping to land a new job in a fairground.

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Crossing Over Review

By Rich Cline

Good

Crash meets Babel in this multi-strand Los Angeles immigration drama. The film is well-made and benefits from a very strong cast, but it's both overly worthy and rather pushy about its perspective.

Immigration cop Max (Ford) clearly has compassion for the illegals he rounds up with partner Hamid (Curtis), a naturalised citizen from Iran. But visa official Cole (Liotta) is exploiting the desperation of a wannabe Aussie actress (Eve), while her British friend (Sturgess) finds a loophole in the law. Meanwhile, Cole's wife (Judd) is an immigration lawyer trying to help a 15-year-old Bangladeshi girl (Bishil) picked up by the FBI on suspicion of terrorism due to a school project. And Yong (Chon) is a Korean teen caught up with an Asian gang.

There are several other storylines, and each touches on a specific aspect of immigration, with a range of ethnicities, visa situations and personal issues, all of which come up against the rigid rule of law. Even harsher are FBI tactics that throw out rights such as privacy, free speech and the presumption of innocence, not to mention simple human decency. But then, their paranoia is echoed by people on the streets and in the classrooms.

In other words, the film is packed with thought-provoking material; it's vitally important simply because filmmaker Kramer is airing such complex issues. The Bangladeshi family is the most involving story, with a lovely, understated performance by Bishil as a girl whose whole life comes undone because she dares to think deeply. This story could have supported the whole film, and sometimes sits at odds with Sturgess' more comical tale, Eve and Liotta's sordid encounters, or Curtis' increasingly disturbing journey.

The entire cast gives offhanded, natural performances that hold our interest.

Ford is good as the everyman, brushing against the various plots. Despite the insipid Mark Isham score, there are some seriously powerful emotional scenes along the way, although a couple of strands get lost in the shuffle, disappearing for long stretches and only coming back to fit into the final tidy mosaic. Ultimately, Kramer strains to make it gel together, but we still hear his cry for understanding and compassion in a world filled with bigotry and ignorance.

Running Scared Review

By David Thomas

Good

Like Paul Walker's character in it, Running Scared is a lot smarter than it looks. Unfortunately, it spends as much time being dumb as acting dumb, making for an experience that can be as frustrating as it is entertaining. The film is basically three different movies: One, a straightforward crime drama, probably its strongest suit. Two, a satire of the genre, working on many levels from Peckinpah-esque examination of the male psyche to urban Grimm fairy tale. And, sadly, three, a genuinely clunky thriller. Unfortunately, you never know which you'll get from scene to scene, or even moment to moment.Paul Walker plays Joey Gazelle (Get it? He runs. This would be the less clever part.), a family man in suburban Jersey who also happens to work for the local mob. After a deal gone wrong ends up with a lot of dead people, some of them dirty cops, Joey is charged with his usual task of disposing of the gun that killed said cops. Joey, however, has been stashing the guns he's supposed to have ditched as an "insurance policy." When his son Nicky (Alex Neuberger) and his neighbor's kid Oleg (Cameron Bright) witness him adding the weapon to his collection, Oleg sees an opportunity to settle the score with his abusive father, Anzor (Karel Roden).Soon, Anzor is wounded, Oleg is on the run, and Joey has one night to get the gun back or end up dead at the hands of his own people. Since Nicky might know where to find Oleg, what ensues is the worst Take Your Kid To Work Day ever.Writer/director Wayne Kramer (The Cooler) displays an appetite for flashy camera tricks, but we're not in Domino territory here, thank God. Unlike Tony Scott, Kramer shows some restraint and variety, but the frequent double exposures still wear thin. Just as often, though, he creates intimate spaces where his characters can interact, isolated from the surrounding chaos.The writing varies from sly satire to witless implausibility. Chazz Palminteri's character, a dirty cop, steps into more than one commercial parody in the film, making a passing reference to the actor's own Vanilla Coke ad in the process. At the same time the film relies far too much on coincidence to further the plot.The performances here are all adequate. Walker shows that he can do a convincing Jersey accent. Vera Farmiga's performance as Joey's wife is uneven, but effective when it really counts. Bright pulls off the eerie thousand-yard stare of a kid who's seen too much at home, and so is unfazed by the monsters he encounters in the real world.The deliberate nature of some of Kramer's choices suggest something bubbling under the surface. He sets a key action scene in a hockey rink, a place of socially acceptable violence. Anzor has a tattoo of John Wayne on his back, and carries an obsession with the actor that might serve as a commentary on film violence. References to ultra-violent films like Scarface surface from time to time. It's clear that Kramer's trying to say something, but what?Unlike Revolver, which pretentiously aspires to levels it never achieves, Running Scared aspires to levels it occasionally achieves without ever taking itself too seriously, and while being massively entertaining even when it's not making a whole lot of sense. Kramer's sophomore effort shows flashes of brilliance but smacks of an artist still working out what he wants to say and how he wants to say it. It may not be Peckinpah, but if you're a fan of the genre, it's probably worth a look.The DVD includes a commentary track, storyboards, and behind-the-scenes featurette.Sitting unscared.

Mindhunters Review

By Blake French

OK

In Mindhunters, a serial killer uses broken watches to reveal the time he's going to murder his next victim. Ironically, the film itself is like a watch -- a classy watch, in fact -- but a watch, nonetheless; similar in that both are reliable devices that do exactly what you expect of them and do so on autopilot, extracting little effort from the observer, until, of course, a battery change becomes necessary. Unfortunately, Mindhunters needs more than a simple battery replacement.

How's this for a final exam? Jake Harris (Val Kilmer), a controversial FBI instructor, immerses his students in elaborate, realistic training situations, and he pushes them to their limits for their final test. He flies his students (Christian Slater, Patricia Velasquez, Jonny Lee Miller, Clifton Collins Jr., Kathryn Morris, Eion Bailey, and Will Kemp) to a remote island used for war games practice, which has been deserted for the weekend.

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