A lot of people still fondly remember Before Sunrise, the romance Richard Linklater released in 1995 about a couple of young people (played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) who meet on a train, spend a day together in Vienna, and then part ways, perhaps never to see each other again. It’s a quiet little movie about love and relationships, a character piece that focuses pretty solely on maintaining a dialogue and travelogue-esque location spotlighting. But it worked, and the ambiguity of the ending, where you never knew if these two kids with this immediate connection would ever really see each other again, was pretty sublime. So there was a lot of apprehension when it was announced that a sequel, Before Sunset, would be released in 2004, at least on my part. This one was about the same two characters reuniting nine years later, and this time spending a day together in Paris. Surely this sequel would ruin the perfection of the first film and all of that delicious ambiguity that it left you with, wouldn’t it? Turns out, not really. Before Sunset showed us how Hawke and Delpy’s characters had aged and matured in interesting, but authentic ways, it completely recaptured the magic of the first film, and it diminished the original in no way. That’s no small feat, but surely a third film would be the charm when it came to ruining what those first two offered up, wouldn’t it? Could Hawke and Delpy walking around a city [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

The remake that nobody asked for of the Paul Verhoeven action classic Total Recall has a secret. Is it a long hidden alien reactor that can supply Mars with enough oxygen for everyone to breathe? Is it a surprise cameo by the original film’s star Arnold Schwarzenegger? No, it’s neither of those things: at all. As a matter of fact, this new version of the story isn’t going to take place on Mars, it’s set in the future countries Euromerica and New Shanghai. There is a super secret cameo that’s going to take place in the movie though. Are you ready for it?

When I look back at the films of my youth one thing remains constant—I love a 90s slacker. Tall, long-haired, ripped up jeans and cardigans falling disheveled off their shoulders. These are the men I always kept in the back of my mind as I entered the dating world. However, it wasn’t until a friend pointed it out that I realized I had such a 90s slacker fixation. To me, the characters Ethan Hawke, Christian Bale, and Rory Cochrane played in early to mid 90s films embodied everything sensual and perfect about being an adult. Especially their rejection of the adult world as it was. As I aged, I started to notice other benefits to these men. They were creative, romantic, adventurous, smoked (which always makes you sexy, no?), and most of all magnetic to everyone around them. Reality Bites’ main bad-boy Troy Dyer (Hawke) was the ultimate artist. He painted, wrote music, and left every woman swooning after him. His detachment from his best friend Lelaina (Winona Ryder) only intensified her need for him, and encouraged their eventual coitus. It wasn’t that he tried hard to get the girl, he just couldn’t keep them from coming at him. Who cared if he couldn’t hold down a job, or pay his share of the rent? Troy was always a charmer capable of surviving, and with him went my heart.

Kevin Carr sits his chubbiness down weighs in on Alice in Wonderland and Brooklyn’s Finest.

It’s a monumental time for the Fat Guys at the Movies. Both Kevin and Neil have seen the movies for the week, but they can’t agree on a damn thing… especially in regards to Gentlemen Broncos in the DVD Roundup. It’s a Fat Guy Smackdown all around!

Having just this morning seen the premiere of Antoine Fuqua’s latest film Brooklyn’s Finest, I can now officially confirm that this is one director that knows what to do to keep me coming back for more.

Kevin Carr sits his chubbiness down and sees if Daybreakers, Leap Year and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus can make the grade.

If there is one thing movie-going audiences have been saturated with of late it is vampire films. Luckily, some of them have turned out to be pretty damn good…

Those who are like me will note that the first trailer for Daybreakers, the bleak apocalyptic vampire flick from the resourceful and über-talented Spierig brothers, was brilliant. This second one on the other hand…

As we get closer to its January release, we know that you are salivating for some more looks at a real vampire movie, The Sperig Brothers’ Daybreakers. With that in mind, we dug up a few cool stills, a poster and a new TV spot.

The world is facing a massive food shortage. Because they’re running out of human blood.

Richard Gere seems to have been making superb career choices lately. Now he plans to keep it up by signing on for two films we should start anticipating as he will be working with some great talents.

After at least a decade, if not much more, of lackluster films from Sidney Lumet, the fading titan has strikingly returned to form with a fiery, blustering crash. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is easily the best-acted film of the year, but what’s more is that it’s a sharp piece of cultural criticism about late capitalism and the depths of tragedy it’s capable of producing. Nearly three-quarters of the way into the film, Marisa Tomei asks her husband, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, for car fare to her mother’s house; “I could really use some money,” she says, and she might as well be speaking for every character in the film. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is about money, pure and anything but simple: its role as America’s driving force, main object of desire and the one thing of which no one seems to have enough. Hoffman is introduced in a position of dominance, retrocopulating with his wife Tomei (it’s surprisingly graphic, despite being filmed in a non-revealing long shot), a dominance he’ll resume, though not in a porously-penetrative way, throughout the rest of the film in regards to his little brother, played by Ethan Hawke. Hoffman pushes him into a robbery he doesn’t want, nor have the brains, to commit but both, to their undoing, are in desperate need of the cash they assure themselves that they’ll score. (And Hoffman, the cokeheaded corporate exec, is too much the coward to do it himself.) Hoffman is obsessed with [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is as good of a film as Sidney Lumet has ever made and that is really saying something considering he’s been at it for over half-a-century.