Forthcoming Film Furore!: Dinner For Schmucks, The Losers, The A-Team, The Expendables, The Good Heart

OK, so we're running through a few films here, but with good reason. With Summer just around the corner, we're seeing a lot of trailers for big brainless summer movies. Three of the films we're showing you the trailers for are "team of badasses on a mission" movies: The Losers, The A-Team, and The Expendables.

But first, let's look at the trailer for Dinner for Schmucks. A remake of a French film, Dinner for Schmucks stars Paul Rudd as a guy who needs to bring a huge idiot to dinner at his boss's house to get a promotion. Rudd finds Steve Carrell, a well-meaning simpleton who stuffs dead mice and puts them into dioramas. There's not a lot in the trailer that's laugh-out-loud funny, but Rudd and Carrell are two of the most likeable comedians around, and the supporting cast is strong, including Zach Galifianakis, Bruce Greenwood, Kristin Schaal, Ron Livingston, and Jemaine Clement. We'll wait for another trailer before we make up our minds about this one.

Right, let's look at our men on missions. First up is The Losers. Based on the Vertigo graphic novel, The Losers are a badass special ops team that is betrayed by the government and left for dead. However, they decide to get payback. Produced by Joel Silver, who produced movies like Predator and Lethal Weapon back in the day, and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Sherlock Holmes and Orphan more recently, the film seems to be going for fun more than anything else. The film stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who came out of Watchmen with reputation enhanced, action queen of the moment Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Star Trek), newly crowned Captain America Chris Evans (Sunshine, Scott Pilgrim), The Wire's Idris Elba, and Jason Patric as bad guy Max. Director Sylvain White's resumé isn't great, but it's only his third feature. At the moment, this looks like the film with the greatest potential to not be a disaster

Now onto the A-Team. As we all know, they're four men imprisoned for a crime they didn't commit, who promptly escaped and if you can find them maybe you can hire them. They can also use whatever's in a room to create something destructive with the help of a quick montage. This movie version of the series is written and directed by Joe Carnahan, who must be looking for some of the pedigree he got with gritty cop thriller Narc, and lost with overblown muddled assassin movie Smokin' Aces. The cast is good, with Liam Neeson getting paid handsomely for playing Hannibal Smith, Hangover star Bradley Cooper as Face, and District 9's Sharlto Copley as Howlin' Mad Murdock. They're joined by Watchmen's Patrick Wilson as the villain, and Jessica Biel as the love interest. Ultimate Fighter Quinton "Rampage" Jackson stars as B.A. Baracus. The trailer looks like they're going for fun, but it's a sad fact that, despite what Seinfeld taught us, most movies that feature anything falling out of a plane and shooting back at the plane are normally crap.

And now for The Expendables. Sylvester Stallone has managed to get almost every action star to sign for this men on a mission movie. Sly himself leads his team of bad-ass mercenaries, made up of Jason Statham, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Dolph Lundgren, and Randy Couture into South America to take down evil CIA agent Eric Roberts. Oh, and he gets the jobs from Mickey Rourke, and Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenneger cameo as shady government guys. With this cast list, I'm going to see it no matter how bad the reviews are. It basically looks like a Rambo film, but with a bigger supporting cast. Let's just hope that Stallone wrote his co-stars actual characters, rather than just having them stand in the background. I'm still looking forward to it!

Finally, to counter the big budget stupidity, here is a trailer for a little indie film called The Good Heart. It stars Brian Cox as a grouchy New York bar owner who takes in homeless Paul Dano to groom him as his successor. This trailer shows off Cox and Dano, who look like they're giving excellent peformances, and it looks like a nice mixture of Jim Jarmusch-style humour and Hal Hartley-esque dialogue. This may well be worth seeking out.

Rantings and Ravings: How Paul Rudd makes cinema better.

My good friend and blog co-author came up with an interesting theory regarding the popularity of Paul Rudd. Apparently Mr. Rudd is some kind of Superman villain waiting to use our admiration for evil. No human could be this likeable. If we discount this theory, then why is it that we all like Paul Rudd so much? Why is he so likeable. You know, I don't think I've met anyone who, after being told who he is, promptly tells me that he's terrible. It's not as if he hasn't been in bad movies. Some really bad movies. But while most of the other Apatow troupe have come in for some backlash (Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Steve Carell, Will Ferrell). What's the deal? Well, for starters, unlike some of the Apatow crowd, Rudd's been working since 1995. Unlike, say, Jonah Hill, he wasn't suddenly presented to us as somebody who's hilarious.

Rudd first came to audiences' attention playing Alicia Silverstone's love interest in Clueless, and "Dave Paris" in Baz Luhrmann's caffeine-addled Romeo and Juliet, not to mention grown-up Tommy Doyle in Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers. He continued paying his dues in rom-coms (The Object of My Affection), misguided indies (200 Cigarettes), and popped up in a small role as Charlize Theron's fiance in The Cider House Rules. He even appeared with bleached hair as the American guy in the "Hong-Kong-action-cyborg-gone-awry" movie Gen-X Cops 2: Metal Mayhem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAwxdMKlTog

Then people seemed to realise he was funny. He starred in the cult comedy Wet Hot American Summer as Andy, the asshole boyfriend to end all asshole boyfriends. He throws kids out of moving vans, calls his girlfriend a dyke, and dumps the girl he's cheating on his girlfriend with by telling her that "You taste like a burger. I don't like you anymore." Oh and he has the finest double take ever. He also popped up in a small guest appearance on Amy Sedaris' wonderfully scabrous TV show Strangers with Candy, a sure sign of growing appreciation among fellow comics. In 2002 he went mainstream by starring as Phoebe's boyfriend and eventually husband Mike in Friends. We're willing to forgive him for this, because we know that some people really like Friends.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZZ2d-x6o2I

In 2003 he starred in Neil LaBute's underrated drama The Shape of Things as the haplessly manipulated Adam, who's convinced by his new art-student girlfriend (a never-better Rachel Weisz) to give up his friends, change his personality, and even get a nose-job. The twist is crushing. Rudd is excellent as the well-meaning but weak-willed Adam. His next role could not have been more different. 2004 saw the release of Anchorman, the first of the Apatow/Ferrell/McKay movies. Its runaway success meant that Will Ferrell could pretty much do anything he wanted, but Rudd is also hilarious as mustachioed, Sex Panther-wearing Brian Fantana. He gets his fair share of the best lines, including "60% of the time, it works every time" , and the memorable notion of naming one's testicles. He also had a small role as Laura Linney's ex-addict brother in Dylan Kidd's P.S. (also underrated).

2005 saw the release of Judd Apatow's directorial début, as well as Steve Carell's first starring role, The 40 Year Old Virgin. Here again was Rudd, in a supporting but hysterically funny role, showing that he could not only stand out in an ensemble (the "you know how I know you're gay" scene is still hysterical), but work to make the ensemble group funnier (which is impressive, given it's made up of the not-unfunny Romany Malco, Seth Rogen, and Jane Lynch). But unlike fellow cast-mate Rogen, there was no sudden jump to major box-office leading man. He popped up in funny cameo roles in Night of the Museum (big success) and Fast Track (big failure). He made The Ten with the Wet Hot American Summer gang that didn't recreate the previous film's cult popularity (despite a better-known cast). He guest starred on Veronica Mars and Reno: 911, and starred opposite Michelle Pfeiffer in quickly forgotten rom-com I Could Never Be Your Woman.

He got better reviews in Judd Apatow's second movie, Knocked Up. In some hands Rudd's character could have been a thankless role. He plays Pete, Katherine Heigl's brother-in-law, who's grown unhappy in his marriage and sneaks off in the middle of the night to play fantasy baseball. Rudd manages to create a character who's likeable, not in spite of his pettiness, but almost because of it. In what is essentially a very optimistic film, Pete and Debbie (the excellent Leslie Mann) show what is sometimes inevitable in life. Things don't always work out. "The biggest problem in our marriage is that she wants me around". Oh and he's funny in it too.

After Knocked Up Rudd became a lot more visible, and his appeal more obvious. The reason why his John Lennon is so funny in Walk Hard is because it's so brazenly awful. He's a welcome comic relief in the overlong Forgetting Sarah Marshall. And, to be honest, we can just about forgive Over Her Dead Body because hey, it's not like anybody actually saw it.

It's with his last two lead roles that Paul Rudd's finally found the acclaim he deserves. Role Models sounded like a pretty lazy Hollywood pitch: two slackers have to do community service with kids. But the script (co-written by Rudd) is clever, and most importantly, funny enough to make the film consistently watchable. The film is hilarious, with Rudd's misanthropic Danny playing off Seann William Scott's upbeat Wheeler to great comic effect. What also makes the film work is that, unlike many comedy characters whose cold exterior melts to reveal a warm fuzzy character, Danny actually comes across as believable. We've all been pissed off and frustrated at the things and events that cause himto vent spleen. We just don't react to them as wittily. "Really? It's called a venti? Who calls it that, Fellini?" Role Models deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, because it's just as funny without the lengthy sentimentalizing. Of course, there is some, courtesy of Danny's relationship with Elizabeth Banks, but it's done with a sense of humour and it doesn't add an extra 40 minutes onto the film.

I Love You, Man billed itself as a bromantic comedy, and it really is the best way to describe it. This is mainly because it has the exact same structure as a romantic comedy. John Hamburg's comedy does assume that it's novelty means that it can get away with following formula, but it's certainly worth a watch. The film is especially funny during the first act, as Rudd's Peter Klaven realises that he has no friends. A series of excrutiating man-dates ensue, as Rudd attempts to bond, be cool, and avoid getting French-kissed by a man. The embarrassment is so effective because Klaven is such a likeable character. And there's that word again: likeable!

What we can see by looking at Rudd's career is that he's paid his dues in some less than loveable movies, done excellent dramatic work, been a part of excellent ensemble casts, and proven that he can carry the burden of a lead. And the answer to our question? Well....I think he might be a Superman villain.