16 September

Drive

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, Isaac Oscar, Albert Brooks

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He’s directed Bronson, Valhalla Rising, and Pusher. He’s written Jude, The Four Feathers, and Killshot. Together, Nicolas Winding Refn and Hossein Amini are taking Ryan Gosling and turning him into a Hollywood stuntmen walking dangerously close along the edge of legal and unlawful. When a heist goes wrong, it’s contract killers on his tail. With Albert Brooks as the chief bad guy and a cast including Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, and Ron Pearlman, the acting appears ready to deliver. Now, if our duo can find a way to make this otherwise familiar material seem fresh—perhaps ala David Lynch’s Lost Highway—they may have something.

I Don’t Know How She Does It

Director: Douglas McGrath

Cast: Sarah Jessica Parker, Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, Christina Hendricks, Olivia Munn, Kelsey Grammer

Frankly, we can’t understand why the moviegoing public ALLOWS her to do it. For all her Sex and the City sizzle, Sarah Jessica Parker is an underachiever when it comes to all other areas of pop culture. That she is considered a fashion icon is as much about hype as a real lack of style trendsetters. Like Jennifer Aniston, she continues to ride the coattails of something that was so last Lohan and yet here she is in yet another contemporary comedy (apparently, no one involved with this one heard of the Morgans, either). This story of a supermom discovering her limits sounds lame, and our guess is that it will be.

Straw Dogs

Director: Rod Lurie

Cast: James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, Alexander Skarsgård, Dominic Purcell, Laz Alonso, Willa Holland, James Woods

Remake The Wild Bunch and be done with it… oh wait, they’re doing that as well. In this case, the formidable 1971 thriller which starred Dustin Hoffman and Susan George has been retrofitted to the heart the deep South and recast with James Madsen as the husband and Kate Bosworth as the potential sexual assault statistic. The trailer makes it all seem like a revamp of Last House on the Left, with the revenge element taking splattery center stage. While Sam would appreciate the blood, he’d probably hate everything else.

Restless

Director: Gus Van Sant

Cast: Henry Hopper, Mia Wasikowska, Schuyler Fisk,  Jane Adams, Chin Han

It looks like former indie darling Gus Van Sant is up to his old oddball tricks again. After a decade wandering in the complicated combined commercial/arthouse wilderness, he’s back to being a baffling, challenging filmmaker. The story here centers on a girl dying of cancer who meets a funeral “groupie”. They fall in love, while he seeks advice from the ghost of a World War II Kamikaze pilot. Though withdrawn from both Sundance and a January 2011 release, advanced word on this supposed return to form has been very positive. Let’s hope it’s more My Own Private Idaho and less Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.