Opening This Weekend: Dueling Eva's ~ Cinesnatch

Yummy Luke Treadaway

The big release for the week is Tim Burton's latest venture with Johnny Depp: Dark Shadows. It also stars film legend Michelle Pfeiffer, as well as Eva Green and, of course, Mrs. Burton herself, Helena Bonham Carter. The Depp/Burton partnership has been quite disappointing as of late (will they ever have another Ed Wood in them?). The cast is full of great actors and the tone is quite campy with lines such as "You may strategically place your wonderful lips on my posterior and kiss it repeatedly." The art direction is pretty sick and Chloë "Grace" Moretz actually looks bearable. Too bad it's not rated R. Boo. But, still, one can still hope ... While Burton shines when he offers his own original creations (as well as the biography), his trade is mostly in updating literary and pop classic material. He gravitates to the mythic qualities of many genres: novellas, operetta, trading car series, and, of course, movie/TV remakes. The latter is the well he draws from the most frequently, the last example being the above average Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Here's hoping Barnabas Collins and 1960s vampire soap opera taps into Burton's strengths as a filmmaker: negotiating through the crazy world's of eclectic, misunderstood protagonists.

We also have what looks to be a lighter, female version of A Better Life: Eva Mendes stars as a working class Latina in a mother/daughter coming-of-age Girl in Progress. A bit of comical take on Taxi Driver, a fed-up Frank and his young partner in crime dispatch the world of all the idiots that inhabit it one asshole at a time in God Bless America. Two Australian horse-racing brothers compete for The Cup. A stranger is handcuffed the whole day to super hot Luke Treadaway in Tonight You're Mine during a musical festival. A French man investigates the murder of a woman who paraded around like Marilyn Monroe in Nobody Else But You. Lebanese comedy-drama Where Do We Go Now examines life in a small, religious town. Also scheduled to open in Indian film Dangerous Ishhq, for which I couldn't find an English-language or subtitled trailer.

Previous OTW:

May 18
May 11
May 4
April 27