Last year’s Sundance Film Festival featured a break-out hit with J.C. Chandor’s Margin Call, a taut and talky tale of investment bankers trying to chuck bad money and bad books in the early days of the financial crisis. Chandor’s film has been cleaning up nicely on the awards circuit, and it’s surely paved the way for screenwriter and documentarian Nicholas Jarecki‘s feature film debut, a sexier sister to Margin Call.  Arbitrage brings out the big guns to tell its twisted story – starring Richard Gere as hedge fund magnate Robert Miller attempting to sell his family business, with Susan Sarandon as his charitable wife Ellen, Brit Marling as smarty-pants daughter Brooke, and the ever-solid Tim Roth as a police detective steadily cracking open their rarefied lives. Here, Jarecki has crafted great atmosphere – we understand the Millers’ lifestyle and relationships within mere minutes, and the film holds that tone and that feel throughout its perhaps slightly-too-long runtime. Arbitrage is slick and watchable, well-made and with some nice surprises, but it’s void of any sense of humanity, and seeing rich people doing bad stuff doesn’t amount to stick-to-your-ribs cinema.

I break Quentin Tarantino’s career up into two stages. The first stage consists of his first three films, which are all crime movies, are all set in L.A., and which all just feel very much like “Quentin Tarantino movies” (a genre unto itself back in the 90s, if you lump in all the pretenders). After those first three films, he took a pretty lengthy six year break, and then he came back and started exploring other genres, making movies that were largely homages to the B-cinema he enjoyed in his youth. While there’s a soft spot in my heart for most of Inglorious Basterds, in general I prefer that first stage of Tarantino’s career to what came after. And as far as that first trilogy of crime films goes, I think most people are in agreement that Pulp Fiction is the masterpiece. It was the one that broke down the doors of the movie industry and ushered indie filmmaking into the mainstream, and it’s the one most often referenced when people talk about his career; so I’m not going to focus on that one here. I’m going to focus instead on Tarantino’s debut feature Reservoir Dogs, which was the film that first got heads turned in his direction, and which still gets mentioned right alongside Pulp Fiction as badass things from the 90s. And also I’m going to focus on Jackie Brown, which is kind of the forgotten Tarantino film. This is one that doesn’t get brought up much these [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]

Editor’s Note: With Ashe taking a much needed vacation, we turn to the insightful talent of writer Maxwell Yezpitelok for this week’s list. Go read more of his work. But read this first. And then go check that stuff out. Woody Allen has to have one of the greatest casting directors in show business, if we overlook the fact that for some reason they keep casting short middle-aged Jewish guys opposite women like Julia Roberts, Scarlett Johansson and Charlize Theron. But seriously, look at all the big name stars that keep showing up in his movies, sometimes for the whole movie and sometimes for just a few seconds. In honor of that genius scene in Midnight in Paris where Adrien Brody completely kills it as Dali (only to never again), here are the greatest actor cameos in Allen’s forty-something films:

I don’t know how many of you had a chance to check out Lie to Me, but it is a pretty awesome show. Now we have a pretty awesome giveaway for our pretty awesome readers. We have three copies of Lie to Me: Season One to give away, so keep on reading for the goods.

The Incredible Hulk is one of those movies — the kind that you should probably be buying on Blu-ray either way. Though, it would certainly be the laziest review of my career if I were to just chalk this up to ‘see it because its in HD’, so I will attempt to break it down a bit.

Quentin Tarantino has kept his fans waiting for his remake of the World War II “Dirtier Dozen” movie, leading some to call him an inglorious bastard himself. Well, the script’s finally out and we’ve learned a lot, including that Brad Pitt may want in, as well as the fact that Tarantino likes to spell ‘bastard’ the wrong way.

In the tradition of X-Men and Spider-Man, this version of The Incredible Hulk is a solid adaptation for the big screen that retains its comic book feel.

After the emotionally draining experience that was Iron Man in early May, the fanboy inside of me was sure that there was no way that Marvel Studios could go two-for-two in the Summer of ’08. Go figure, I was wrong.

Movie marketing! You can’t live without it. Trailers, tie ins, internet promotions, action figures, lunch boxes. They’re part of what drives the movie business especially when it comes to big budget action films like the new The Incredible Hulk.

Why does it feel like The Incredible Hulk is the odd-man out when it comes to this year’s summer movie line-up? In my mind, it has something to do with the slow manner in which Universal Studios has marketed the film, waiting until only recently to release the first teaser trailer. Or at least, that is how it may seem. Few people realize that The Incredible Hulk is seemingly on pace with movies that come out near it, namely The Dark Knight. What might have thrown us all off is the barrage of media being thrown out there for Iron Man, Marvel’s other big superhero flick this summer. We forget that Iron Man will be here in a few weeks (Yes!), while Hulk is still a few months away. But enough about the waiting game, today we have something new, courtesy of National CineMedia. It doesn’t show us much more footage from the film than the first trailer, which isn’t much at all, but it does go into the story a bit. This should help explain the non-origin story better for those who were worried. Personally, I am warming up to The Hulk, getting excited, and hoping that he doesn’t get buried in the mix of summer movie marketing all at the same time. Watch the behind-the-scenes featurette below: [flv:http://media.filmschoolrejects.com/clips/incredible-hulk-bts.flv 480 290] The Incredible Hulk is directed by Louis Leterrier, who previously brought us The Transporter series. The script was written by Zak Penn (X-Men 2, X-Men 3) and then [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]

Just like last year’s No Country for Old Men, Funny Games plays with the conventions of movie violence and asks us “Why” do we accept it? [Grade: A-]

Does watching a hoidy-toidy family of stiff shirts play “Name That Tune” with opera CDs make you wish you could watch them die? If so, Funny Games is a movie for you.

German Director Michael Haneke talks about the shot-for-shot American remake of his “message free” thriller.

Ed Norton rises up as The Incredible Hulk! Finally!

Michael Haneke’s shot-for-shot remake starts with intensity and rolls on toward stupidity like a breakless freight train.

I am truly excited for this film, and this age restricted red-band just added the fuel to my fire. I absolutely cannot wait to see this, as demented as that sounds. I guess when Straw Dogs is one of your favorite films, something has to be wrong with you.