Righteous Kill

Robert DeNiro and AL Pacino are New York cops in Righteous Kill (Overture Films)

Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro are two of my favorite actors. They both appeared in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II (1974) and it was tantalizing  because each one's scenes brushed up against the other although the two actors never shared screen time. (DeNiro played the young Vito Corleone in flashbacks and Pacino his adult son Michael.) So close and yet so far! Then came Michael Mann's crime thriller Heat (1995) in which Pacino and DeNiro played cop and thief. But again it was mostly a tease because the two only acted together in one scene. So the potential fireworks from having these two acting dynamos perform together still felt untapped. Now Righteous Kill (opening September 12 throughout San Diego) comes along and promises to have them onscreen together for most of the film. Could this finally be the movie I've been waiting for? Building my hopes is that writer Russell Gewirtz penned the twisty Inside Man, but raising a red flag is director Jon Avnet, the man behind the disastrous 88 Minutes.

You can also listen to our discussion of Righteous Kill from the KPBS Film Club of the Air.

Mirrors Comic-Con Press Conference

Director Alexandre Aja (center) and Kiefer Sutherland (right) on the set of Mirrors (20th Century Fox)

Mirrors was not screened for critics and as of yet I haven't managed to get out to see it. But as a fan of horror I did want to let people know that the film was out. Not screening a horror film for the press does not necessarily mean that the studio thinks the film is bad (although that is often the case with other kinds of films that go unscreened). The reason is that horror films have such a built in audience that studios sometimes just don't see a benefit to pre-screening their product. (Plus directors like Eli Roth claims he doesn't like press screenings because too much info leaks out and ruins the scares.) As someone who liked Alexandre Aja's French film Haute Tension, I was looking forward to Mirrors and am hopeful that it will contains some solid scares. The director and cast members Kiefer Sutherland and Amy Smart did hold a press conference at the Hard Rock Hotel during Comic-Con (studios now try to piggyback onto Comic-Con, tapping into the vast number of press people there, even if they don't present a panel at the convention itself). Aja showed a few gore-soaked scenes in a room that had been beautifully draped in thick curtains and adorned with a multitude of mirrors (the backdrop reminded me of the Night Gallery show). But he didn't show enough to really give a sense of whether a level of tension and scares could be maintained. The clips only proved that he is unafraid of delivering gore to his horror fans.

Trailer Tuesday: Righteous Kill

This week's trailer highlight is Righteous Kill starring Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino as two veteran New York City cops. The two friends starred in 1974's The Godfather Part II for Francis Coppola but shared no onscreen time since DeNiro played the young Vito Corleone in flashbacks, and Pacino played his grown son Michael. The two did share screen time in Michael Mann's Heat (1995) but their onscreen interaction was limited to one scene. Now along comes Russell Gewirtz (writer of Inside Man) to hopefully satisfy our curiosity about what these two acting powerhouses could do together with more shared time onscreen. Gewirtz wrote  Righteous Kill with De Niro and Pacino in mind and on screen together for nearly the entire film. Let's see if they can generate even more heat this time around. Trailer courtesy of Overture Films.

Man on Wire

Listen to our KPBS Film Club of the Air discussion of the new documentary Man on Wire (opening August 8 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas). The film chronicles the obessions of Philippe Petit who, on August 7th 1974, walked across a wire illegally rigged between New York's Twin Towers, which were at that time the world's tallest buildings. The film's title is taken from the police report that used the phrase "man on wire" to describe the incident. Filmmaker James Marsh documents -- with an amazing amount of archival footage -- Petit's dream project.  Petit himself is a bundle of energy, passion, and enthusiasm as he describes his dreams and the nuts and bolts details of achieving it. Marsh lets the story play out like a heist film. Without ever mentioning 9/11, Marsh invokes the tragedy as he shows the towers being built and the awe they inspired. The fact that Petit and his crew could sneak into those building with bows and arrows and huge cables, and essentially be able to walk away because their prank was deemed to be not malicious reveals a kind of innocence that we may never be able to recapture. The film has a very bittersweet tone as it almost delivers an elegy to a bygone, more innocent time. Just as Petit after his famous stunt seems unable to recapture that drive and enthusiasm we don't seem able to go back and recapture something from our collective past either. Man on Wire is definitely worth checking out.

The Wackness

Drugs for therapy... The Wackness (Sony Pictures Classics)

It's 1994, and Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) is spending his summer before college listening to hip-hop and selling drugs from an ice cream cart in New York City. His shrink, Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley), lets him trade dope for therapy, but Luke's more interested in the doc's sexy step-daughter than any psychobabble. Writer-director Jonathan Levine serves up a funny, sharp, and ultimately compassionate coming of age tale with his sophomore feature The Wackness (opening July 11 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas). Liste to the KPBS Film Club of the Air Discussion of The Wackness.

Cloverfield

Cloverfield: Can it live up to its hype? (Paramount)

When Transformers opened last July 3 it was almost overshadowed by the trailer that proceeded it. The trailer boasted no title, just the release date of 01-18-08 and some shaky, handheld camera shots that included the head of the Statue of Liberty rolling down a Manhattan street. Since the film being touted came from J. J. Abrams (creator of Alias and Lost), it created a massive buzz. Abrams wouldn't even reveal the film's title at the Comic-Con later that July. There was a teaser poster unveiled that showed the Statue of Liberty without a head and a wake in the water heading to New York that implied a big creature. All Abrams would fess up to at the pop culture con-fab was the fact that while promoting Mission Impossible III in Japan, he and his son came across a store with shelf after shelf of Godzilla toys. That's when he realized that the U.S. needed a monster movie like that. I love King Kong, he confessed at his Comic-Con panel, he's adorable, but I wanted something that was just insane.

Abrams did get something insane. Insane viral marketing for his film months before it even came out. Wild speculation ran rampant on the Internet, people proposed that it was a new Godzilla movie, an H.P.Lovercraft creature, even Voltron! Rumors spread about the title, the story, everything. Not until late October did Abrams confirm that the title was Cloverfield (opening January 18 throughout San Diego), but his refusal to provide any additional information about the film, and specifically about the monster, just kept the Internet a buzz.

Mimic

Mira Sorvino stars in Guillermo Del Toro's first American film Mimic.

In 1993, Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro won acclaim for his feature debut Cronos, a stylish take on the vampire film. This year he releases his first American film Mimic (opening August 21).

Mexican director Guillermo del Toro says that he was raised on a diet of "Catholic horror," and even though he considers himself an atheist, he can't shed his Catholic upbringing. In his first feature, Cronos, he gave a Catholic twist to the vampire genre by offering a Christ-like bloodsucker that's redeemed through his suffering. Now Del Toro explores what happens when man plays god in his new sci-fi horror film Mimic.