Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
Well, this looks terrible. I mean, I guess I wasn’t expecting it to be good — although I’ll admit to hoping it would be because Hansel and Gretel is one of my very favorite fairy tales, and I have all kinds of ideas about what would happen to them after their happily ever after — but I’m concerned that this might sink to Van Helsing levels of awful. I’m ridiculously fond of Jeremy Renner, but his voiceover here is pretty bad, and Gemma Arterton is coming off as a bad parody of a badass to me. And for fuck’s sake, is that a machine gun?
On the upside, you can’t go wrong with Famke Janssen as your villain. (Well, the movie can still go hideously, hideously wrong {X-Men: The Last Stand, I’m looking at you}, but it will not be her fault because she is awesome.) And maybe this movie will be so ridiculously self-aware and cheesy that I’ll be forced to love it despite myself.
(I know, I know. Wishful thinking. Let me have this moment.)
Branded
Wow, forget anything I said about Hansel and Gretel. This looks terrible. This looks so terrible that when I saw a trailer for it on TV, I didn’t believe it was real. I was waiting for it to turn back into a commercial about, I don’t know, Doritos or something. (This trailer isn’t actually the one I saw on television, but I couldn’t find that one. Still, this looks plenty bad.)
Why is this a real movie? Why does this exist instead of a Deadpool film? Gah.
End of Watch
This isn’t really my kind of movie — I prefer silly buddy cop action movies to gritty things like this — but the bond between the two guys could work for me, and I’m interested in seeing America Ferrera as a cop. (She’s in the trailer for, like, a second. I’m hopeful she’s a slightly bigger part in the actual film.)
The trailer itself didn’t wow me, but the clip afterwards with Michael Pena’s “white girl voice” actually made me laugh, so . . . I don’t know. Kind of doubtful, but maybe someday I’d see it.
Cloud Atlas
Well, this looks . . . interesting. I’m a little turned off by Tom Hanks and Halle Berry (yes, yes, I know they’re both good actors, but I’m not a big fan of either of them lately for various reasons) but the story looks so unusual that I can’t help but be curious, and some of the shots look pretty damn awesome. I’m kind of intrigued despite myself.
I haven’t read the book that this is based on, but now I find myself wanting to look it up. I’m pretty sure I’ll give this one a shot eventually. I’m hoping I can follow this better than The Fountain, anyway.
And finally . . . The Bay
Ugh. I just hate this on principle. These are real events . . . this footage was confiscated . . . the government doesn’t want you to know . . . I HATE YOU, YOU LYING LIARS WHO LIE. GO AWAY, PLEASE.
I mean, seriously. I can’t even focus on the story for how much I hate this marketing. For fuck’s sake.
My Geek Blasphemy 
I cannot agree with you more about “This is real footage” blah blah blah being the dryhump of marketing campaigns.
Snagged that from Frisky Dingo, shut up.
The thing about branded is that it feels like a psychological thriller where they’ve been told to add ridiculous amounts of CGI. It’s like two films meshed together. That’s the only way I can make sense of it.
On the one hand there’s the idea that advertising is being used to control people’s minds. But on the other hand there’s the alien monsters thing. These two elements worked together pretty well in John Carpenter’s “They Live”, but I have no idea how they could possibly be linked here.
I would say the reason “Branded” exists instead of a Deadpool movie is because we’re inundated with superhero movies and we need more original ideas. But seeing as its basically a daft reimagining of “They Live”, I guess that rules out that explanation.
Also, that advert at the beginning is stupid. Adverts always use models. Those people look too much like they might actually eat burgers. Advertisers just wouldn’t use them.
I can so see how that conversation would go in the Writer’s Room. “Yes, so this psychological thriller you have is really interesting, but you know what it could use? RIDICULOUS AMOUNTS OF CGI. Write in a reason for that, would you?” And the writers are like, “Um . . .”
I get what you mean about superhero movies, but I like superhero movies, so it doesn’t really bother me. Besides, if it was made right, Deadpool could be amazing, and I really want Ryan Reynolds to actually be in a good superhero film, dammit.
I get the advertising-as-brainwashing thing going on in Branded, and even if they’re not doing it particularly well, that seems like a reasonable metaphor to make. What really boggles my mind is that the advertising isn’t just brainwashing people, it can also literally turn into monsters? Like, that coke bottle sculpture is just a disguise for a skyscraper-scaling glass monster? WTF? fatpie42 is right about it looking like two different movies put together.
Hey, the beginning of the trailer for The Bay is remarkably similar to the opening of The Tunnel, another “the government covered these real events up,” found footage horror movie.
Yeah, I agree with you two — it does seem like two movies shoved together into one, and I expect that one to be terrible.
I am SO TIRED of ‘government covered up these real events found footage horror movies’. Jam an icepick into my BRAIN tired.
Love your blog! I came across it doing research for my podcast. Would you have any interest coming on the show? We just started in Dec. 2011 and are doing reviews and mostly top 5 and top 10 lists. But we are going to be expanding our content. I think you might bring a fun twist to the show.
Thank you so much! Let me think about the podcast . . . one of the reasons I blog is that I write a lot better than I talk 🙂