We’ll get this out of the way right off the bat – Bachelorette is not Bridesmaids, though the film’s premise (three girls embark on a bachelorette party adventure for a bride they hate!) sounds like the perfect post-Bridesmaids feature for a ladies’ night out. In reality, Leslye Headland’s film is a production that’s perfectly crafted for people who hate their friends. Toxic, nasty, and ugly, Bachelorette reaffirms stereotypes about women (they are bitches! They are sluts! They are emotionally unstable!) and their relationships (they secretly all hate each other!) that should have disappeared from cinema (and the world) long ago. 

If Jake Schreier‘s Robot and Frank is too believed, the near future is very similar to the present – just with more hipsters enamored of things they don’t understand and more robots consigned to help with everyday tasks. Both come, oddly enough, to a head in Schreier’s feature debut about a man, his robot, and the things that bond them (including a distaste for said hipsters). The film is a wily mix of genres - Robot and Frank is a buddy comedy, a fish out of water story, a heist film, and a drama about aging in its many forms – and it mostly delivers on its immense promise when it works within the bounds of dry and clever comedy. But when the film allows itself to slack, it slumps almost irrevocably, and it never quite recovers from an unsatisfying and overemotional middle.

Writer-director Rod Lurie was in a bit of a lose-lose situation when it came to dealing with the hardcore Straw Dogs fans. Like all remakes, if Lurie deviated too much, many critics would ask, “Why call it Straw Dogs?” If the Nothing But the Truth director stayed too faithful, then he’d get ripped on for making a carbon copy. There’s a tough middle ground between those two sides, and Lurie made enough changes to try to find it. For one thing, unlike Sam Peckinpah, Rod Lurie doesn’t hate women. All jokes aside, the original film earned controversy, partly because Peckinpah’s depiction of his female lead was deemed misogynistic. That’s not much of a surprise — Peckinpah treated that character with such disgust, as he treated all the main characters in that film with disgust. His film was about David (played in this version by James Marsden) finding his inner animal, while Lurie opted for David finding his inner man. Here’s what Rod Lurie had to say about the commercial potential of a Straw Dogs remake, the fine line between David being manly and narcissistic, and Peckinpah’s depiction of Amy versus his own: Note: this interview contains spoilers.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr feels the weight of the fall movie season. It’s September, and while the kids are heading back to school, he’s playing hooky with Sarah Jessica Parker chick flicks and yet another not-quite-70s-video-nasty remake. Kevin is consoled by the release of Drive, however, because Albert Brooks as a crime boss makes him chuckle. And his love for 3D and Disney meet head-on in a collision of awesomeness.

“EVERYONE HAS A BREAKING POINT,” Yeesh. There’s a good poster in here, but that unneeded and silly tagline doesn’t help matters much. But, really, how many taglines are genuinely good nowadays? Pretty much none. Screen Gems has just putout this lesser homage (via director Rod Lurie’s twitter feed) to the original 1971 Straw Dogs poster; something that’ll anger fans, but will probably work for the average filmgoers who have no idea what a Peckinpah is.

This Straw Dogs trailer ain’t too pretty, but neither is the audience it was cut for. Screen Gems made this for all the youngin’s going to see Priest (*shudders*) this weekend, and it plays well for that demographic. The audience I was with didn’t look to be the types that are Peckinpah fans, a.k.a. the young and texting generation. To fans of the original and Peckinpah, yes, this is not a good trailer. But for those completely unfamiliar with the original, it works. It is completely by-the-numbers, but why wouldn’t Screen Gems cut a trailer to showcase the main showdown at the end? The trailer does reveal a whole lot, except for the “big” scene, which is surprising. Rod Lurie is a solid writer/director, so I have faith that he’s made something far less generic than this first glimpse implies. Also, to those complaining about the idea of having James Marsden playing a wimpy and passive man, that’s ridiculous. Far more masculine men or equals to Marsden have played those characteristics greatly, even Stallone, someone that doesn’t exactly have a wide “range,” did it well in Cop Land. Marsden has got the chops to pull it off. Check it out for yourself:

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr recovers from a full day of watching Armageddon back-to-back to crawl back to the multiplex. He re-lived the last eight minutes of Source Code over and over, thoroughly confusing himself. Then he stumbled into the theater next door to learn about the true meaning of Easter from Russell Brand and James Marsden. Things take a decidedly creepy turn when he watches Insidious and wets himself more than once. This led to a very unfortunate scene while he watched the sexual-predator cautionary tale Trust. No one would believe him it was just wee wee.

As a 25-year-old Jewish man I’m about as far removed from the Hop target demographic as one could get. I’ve never celebrated Easter, I consequently have no strong emotional attachment to the Easter Bunny and I’m not overwhelmed by the notion of a drummer Easter Bunny that sounds an awful lot like Russell Brand and poops out jelly beans. Yet, here we are, faced with the strange phenomenon of an obsessively-tested, painstakingly-commercial, carefully-calibrated product that shouldn’t be any good at all somehow defying those odds. From director Tim Hill, this live action-animation hybrid is more than just a one-note marketing machine, despite those incessant ads on every conceivable NBC Universal platform and the salesman’s desperation that underwrites it. A blatant stab at surrounding the Easter Bunny with a mythology comparable to Santa’s, the picture unfolds in two settings. The first: Easter Island, home to the enormous factory that’s home base for Easter operations, filled with cascading waterfalls of chocolate and bursts of colorful candy dyes. There, teenage rabbit E.B. (Russell Brand) is being groomed by dad (Hugh Laurie) to take over the family business. The picture’s second main locale is the slightly less exotic Los Angeles, where slacker Fred (James Marsden) lives a tired, aimless existence. Our heroes’ destinies collide when E.B. flees his fate through a magical wormhole of sorts, lands in Hollywood and thanks to Fred nearly becomes the world’s most famous road kill. The tandem grows ever-closer from there, as Fred (quickly getting over any pretense of [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]

When the teaser trailer for Hop first hit, it was an incredible moment of adorability and Blur’s “Song 2.” Now, with the first full trailer out, we’re getting a better idea of the Roger Rabbit nature of the flick. It turns out it’s a mixture of live-action and CGI. James Marsden stars as a guy who hits the Easter Bunny-elect (voiced by Russell Brand) with his car, and the two starts an unusual friendship that involves one of them pretending to be a stuffed animal in order to hit on the other’s girlfriend. I’ll let you figure out which one. Check out the trailer for yourself:

Finally a movie studio has realized the intense power of putting up videos of adorable animals doing hilarious things. Granted, it’s got the production value on its side, but I’d take Bunny Rabbit Drumming over Sneezing Panda any day of the week except Thursday (for obvious reasons). HOP comes from the same creative team behind Despicable Me, which was clever enough and managed to make giant, talking tic-tacs into cultural icons. As for the plot, James Marsden voices a slacking rabbit who injures the Easter Bunny (Russell Brand) and brings him in as a house guest while he’s recuperating. Plot simplicity aside, this is one of the best teaser trailers around. Interesting, cute, Blur-ry. Hopefully the film will have the same qualities and warrant a sequel so that iHOP can see the light of day in 2014. [Apple]

“Candy, Chicks and Rock ‘n Roll.” That’s the tag-line for Hop, the upcoming animated feature starring the voice of British comedian turned American movie star Russell Brand. It comes from the creators of Despicable Me, telling the comic tale of Fred (James Marsden), a lovable slacker bunny who accidentally injures the Easter Bunny (Brand) and must take over for him. It finally fills that gap in holiday movies, in which the Easter Bunny is unfortunately mis-represented. This one takes the premise of The Santa Clause and every other mystical holiday movie ever and applies it to Easter. It will surely overtake The Passion of the Christ as the must-watch Easter movie for families. Check the poster after the jump…

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr is all giddy because he’s been invited to a “Dinner for Winners” (though no one has the heart to tell him it’s really a Dinner for Schmucks). He also puts on his 3D glasses to take a gander at some furry spies in Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. Finally, he squeals with excitement about the new Zefron film, but then weeps uncontrollably because Universal didn’t screen it in advance for him.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr kicks ass with Kick-Ass and laughs it up at Death at a Funeral

Kevin and Neil invite you to experience a milestone in Fat Guy history… both Fat Guys have seen the new films this weekend, and they pretty much agree. Get your fire-and-bimstone umbrellas ready!

It’s a funny thing about remakes. For the most part, they are done for the wrong reasons and done with a lack of creativity. It’s something that concerns every movie fan when they hear the word. However, when you do it right, you deserve some praise. And this movie deserves some praise.

There’s something to be said about remakes, I know. And over the course of the nearly 4-year existence of Film School Rejects, we’ve said a lot about them. And with this one, there seems to be a lot to say…

Richard Kelly delivers a muddled movie and Cameron Diaz delivers a muddled southern accent.

Kevin Carr takes a look at this week’s movie releases, including A Christmas Carol, The Fourth Kind and The Box.

Warner Bros. has released the long-anticipated first trailer for the next thriller from Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly this afternoon. And if you don’t like Cameron Diaz, this one’s for you…

Sex Drive is raunchier than you’d expect, and it works. It definitely puts the “sex” back in the teen sex comedy.