Pages tagged “renee zellweger”

And now, a look at a few of the latest movie trailers to hit the web:

When we learned Josh Brolin would be playing George W. Bush in Oliver Stone's new film W., we were inspired to cast actors to portray some other American presidents. The rest, as they say, is history.

Release Date: Sept. 23
Director: George Clooney
Writers: Duncan Brantley, Rick Reilly
Producers: Grant Heslov, Casey Silver
Starring: George Clooney, Renée Zellweger, John Krasinski

Studio/Run Time: Universal Studios Home Entertainment, 114 mins.

Silly comedy about football's beginnings kinda swell, thanks to Clooney

Say, George Clooney's got a lotta moxie, giving us this slapsticky movie about an aging football player's hail-mary attempt to save his rag-tag 1925 team and bring fame and fans to the fledgling professional sport. He's the cat's pajamas as Jimmy "Dodge" Connolly, all rumpled and dapper in his newsboy cap, three-piece suit and soft smirks. It's hard to understand how Renée Zellweger—as Lexie Littleton, the hard-boiled dame reporter who's "got great legs"—can resist his whiskey-soaked charms for so much of this lighthearted film, instead taking a shine to too-good-to-be-true war hero and football star Carter Rutherford (The Office's John Krasinski). The movie's got a nifty look and feel—Randy Newman's ragtime piano and speakeasy scenes could just as easily be sepia-toned—but it could've done without the Keystone Cops routine. Some of the characters seem half-baked, their conflicts rushed and too easily resolved, and what is presented as a possible script twist never pans out. Thanks to ol' Georgie boy, though, we can forgive the film's faulty construct—because it's fun to watch and he, of course, is the bee's knees.

Watch the trailer for Leatherheads

Release Date: September 19

Director: Ed Harris

Writers: Robert Knott, Ed Harris

Cinematographer: Dean Semler

Starring: Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Jeremy Irons, Renée Zellweger

Studio/Run Time: Warner Bros. Pictures, 114 mins.

If you're setting out to make a Western, you can deconstruct and reinvent the genre like filmmakers have been doing for four decades. Or, you can rely on the tried and true conventions of a bygone era: loners on the plain, justice in the barrel of a gun, and romance thwarted by hard life on the range. In the hands of a good director, even the basics of this purely American genre have a certain charm.