Movies

This Looks Terrible – Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

Alex Marino

Watch this shitty trailer for Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. This is a great example of a “phoning it in” film where all the stars are just doing it for the money. Chris Pine is just looking for a paycheck while he waits for the next Star Trek movie to start filming, Keira Knightley is praying to be cast in another film adaptation of a literary classic, and Kevin Costner still can’t figure out how to make another great baseball movie.

My favorite part about this trailer is the awful audio editing. The first two words are “Jack” and “Ryan” and it’s painfully obvious they are from two different scenes in the movie. It blows my mind that they couldn’t find an audio clip where those two words — the name of the fucking title character — were spoken consecutively. At first I thought it was just lazy but isn’t it actually more work to splice the audio together than to find the part in the movie where they speak his full name?

But the crown jewel of this trailer is its inability to match up the dialogue with what the characters are actually saying. While Kevin and Chris are on the bench and Pine says that “there’s gonna be a coordinated attack on U.S. soil” (which is also spliced audio) you can see during the closeup he’s saying exactly zero of those words. At 0:21 Costner says “secrets” but his mouth looks like he’s actually saying “five” which is probably an optimistic IMDB score for this shit tier movie. They’re not even trying at 0:17 when Pine sees Knightley in his hotel room. She’s supposed to be saying “say they are” but it looks more like “good job,” which coincidentally is the opposite of the quality of work the editors did on this trailer.

In all honesty this movie is going to be great for what it is: a garbage action thriller where Chris Pine has to kill Kevin Costner so he can morph into Smaug and eat Martin Freeman by next Christmas.

Image credit: IMDB

Tough Questions: What’s the Best New Movie You’ve Seen in Five Years?

This is the first repeat feature – every Monday we’re going to ask everyone who hangs out around here to answer a tough question. This week?

What’s the Best New Movie You’ve Seen in Five Years?

Rules are simple: it has to be a new movie and you have to have seen it in the last five years. I figured you could work that out on your own, but here we are.

Scott Phillips

I’m not really a “movie guy”. I like movies, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve been on a prolonged television binge the last two years trying to catch up on every great television show of the past decade and that has prevented me from spending a lot of time watching movies.

I’m also cheap as fuck.

Suffice it to say, I’m not the best person to be answering this question.

But I’ll go with The Town, Ben Affleck’s tremendous action/drama set in Baaaaston.

I won’t go into serious detail about The Town — in case you live under the rock that doesn’t show major motion pictures like I live under — but I remember going to see The Town with a couple of friends, getting baked in the parking garage of my local cinema and being completely blown away (pun intended?) by the opening scene.

From there, I was fixated on “The Town” and how it played out. I loved the characters, the actors — Renner is a fucking G — and the general setting and premise. Every time I pass an armored truck, I fully believe I can take it down if I had a reliable crew and a couple of 40s of Old English in me.

It’s not the best movie I’ve ever seen, but it’s the one that I enjoy watching the most on repeat viewing from the past couple of years.

Also, how have the robbery outfits not been a more popular group Halloween costume?

Mike Hannemann

Hands down, The World’s End.  I already love everything Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright do but this really stuck with me.  Pegg’s portrayal of an bi-polar addict refusing to let go of his youth struck a deep chord in me, because it mirrored the same fears I have now.  Which was shocking because, back when I saw Shaun of the Dead all those years ago, I related to the exact same struggles that character had.  Best movie’s don’t have to be the ones with the best writing or acting, but the ones that stick with you on a personal level long after the end credits roll.

Alex Marino

Up in the Air (2009).  One of the few movies I’ve ever seen where every line served a purpose and every scene advanced the movie towards its ending.  Perfect acting all around with a script that was smart, funny, heartbreaking, and honest.  Up in the Air was one of those movies that had my complete attention for its duration and I’m not sure I’ve been able to say that for any movie since.

Alex Russell

Alex’s answer is pretty solid. I loved that damn movie more than just about anything, but I have to go with Moon (2009). Moon is a haunting movie about solitude and identity. Sam Rockwell has to live in a base on the Moon while he mines the surface for energy to send back to Earth. Saying anything about it borders on spoilers, but Sam Rockwell and a robot voiced by Kevin Spacey are the only true characters in the entire movie. It makes the entire thing feel very, very tense. I don’t even like movies like this, but I can’t suggest Moon enough.