Trailer Time: The Magnificent Seven, The Girl on the Train, Jason Bourne and The Founder

Lots of trailers out this week, showing us what's in store for the rest of the year. Let's start with the reboot of one of the greatest Westerns in cinema.

 

The wild, wild west is back with Antoine Fuqua's remake of the classic The Magnificent Seven! With his Training Day star Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Byung-Hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Martin Sensmeier teaming up to go up against Peter Sarsgaard's baddie, the first teaser shows us how the assembling of the band of outlaws and heroes coming together to save a town. There will be much debate on whether a reboot or remake like this is needed after the previous masterpieces with Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) and the 1960 version with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, but casting Washington in the lead is welcome addition, for sure. The Magnificent Seven releases on September 23, 2016.

Right on the heels of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl came Paula Hawkins's psychological thriller, The Girl on the Train. The best-selling novel is being turned into a film which releases on October 7, 2016 with Emily Blunt as the titular girl who thinks she witnessed a murder from the train. Along with co-stars Rebecca Ferguson, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Haley Bennett and Alison Janney, the movie focuses on Rachel (Emily Blunt) and quest to separate fact from fiction. The first teaser looks fantastic, great choice with Kanye West's Heartless playing over it. However, I am disappointed that the filmmakers decided to change the setting of the novel from U.K. to America. It's missing something essential in the change, I believe. The Girl on the Train is directed by Tate Taylor.

The spy who just won't go away, Matt Damon returns back to the franchise with Jason Bourne. This time, original director Paul Greengrass too is on board to helm this latest film. The first teaser has everyone's favourite amnesiac making his presence known, yet again. I don't know why they keep getting surprised that he returns. You created a super spy, now deal with it. Julia Stiles seems to be the only returning cast member from the previous films, while newly minted Oscar winner Alicia Vikander and Tommy Lee Jones join the cast to hunt down Jason Bourne. The film is in theaters on July 29.

Michael Keaton, who's on an all-time professional high with the last two Oscar Best Picture wins under his belt, steps into the shoes of McDonald's founder Ray Kroc. But as the first trailer begins to unveil, can he rightly be considered the founder of the fast food franchise, when the idea and the conception was someone else's? The Founder co-stars Laura Dern, Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch and B.J. Novak and is directed by John Lee Hancock. It releases August 5, 2016.

Around the World in Posters: Les Miserables, Lone Ranger, Hitchcock, Gangster Squad and more!

The cast of Les Miserables - Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe.

I spot Sonic the Hedgehog among the characters for Disney's Wreck-It Ralph.  This was truly the only game I ever excelled at.  

Denzel's back in another thriller with Robert Zemeckis' Flight.

The UK Quad poster for Great Expectations with Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Jeremy Levine and Holliday Grainger.

New Hitchcock poster featuring the rest of the cast, Helen Mirren as his wife Alma, Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh and Jessica Biel as Vera Miles. 

Hey, I didn't know Bilbo Baggins had a lightsaber.  New banner from The Hobbit.

The teaser poster for the new project by Edgar Wright, The World's End, the epic pub crawl film which will obviously have Wright regulars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

Gangster Squad poster with a dreamy Ryan Gosling.  Can't get enough of dreamy Ryan Gosling posters.  

Teaser poster for the new Jack Reacher film with Tom Cruise.  Too simple and not too exciting.

And finally, my favorite of the bunch, the poster for The Lone Ranger with Armie Hammer as the masked hero and Johnny Depp as his sidekick.  Great design on this one.

Movie Review: Safe House

The last Denzel Washington film I saw was Unstoppable and it got me thinking, he's really settled himself into these kinds of mid-level roles in what feels like straight to DVD movies.  Safe House did open in the theaters but it feels right at home in your living room.

The film is set in Cape Town, South Africa where a relative newbie CIA agent Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) has been operating a safe house all by his lonesome for the past twelve months.  He has a lovely French girlfriend Ana (Nora Amezeder) who he lies to about his day job and background.  What he really wants in life is to move up the totem pole of the CIA to finally become a case worker.  One of his seniors, Agent David Barlow(Brendan Gleeson) assures him with hard work and dedication, he'll surely get there.

In another part of Cape Town, a shady deal is being done in between a former-CIA-agent-turned traitor Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) and a MI6 Agent Alec Wade (Liam Cunningham).  A microchip containing potentially damaging information is released and so as that happens, it begins.  All of a sudden, these thugs emerge from the crowd and begin to pursue Frost.  He tries to escape but the MI6 Agent Wade is killed and then Frost has nowhere else to escape but the American consulate.  He goes in and surrenders.

Frost's acquiescence arouses the suspicion of everyone in the CIA.  Why he has come back now?  What's he got? And most importantly, what are we going to do?  First things first, they decide to send him to Weston's safe house so a team can arrive there and interrogate him.  Nine men bring Frost to the safe house but once they settle in to begin to question Frost, they are ambushed by those same thugs chasing Frost from the beginning of the film.  

What does newbie Matt do?  Only he manages to survive and take Frost out the back door as he is now "his responsibility".  A car chase ensues.  Matt has to deliver Frost to another safe house but not yet.  Not before Frost starts to play some mind games with the youngster and start to plant some seeds of doubt into his head about his role in this whole affair.

The best thing about Safe House is the setting.  By putting the action in South Africa, we are treated to the same Hollywood chase and fight scenes but this time with some new venues.  We are shown the downtown Cape Town, the Metrorail and the Cape Town Stadium and Langa Township that reminded me of District 9 as locations where Frost tries to escape from Matt.  The rest of the film is pure Hollywood routine as both Frost and Matt who is actually after that dangerous file that Frost possesses. It could even be someone in the CIA! 

Safe House is entertaining enough for the action sequences but once it's over you'll realize there's nothing really spectacular that's going to make it stand out from the rest of the action thrillers out there.  But it's become what we expect from the latest Denzel Washington release, a DVD watch only.  

Directed by Daniel Espinosa; Screenplay by David Guggenheim; Cinematography by Oliver Wood; Edited by Richard Pearson; Music by Ramin Djawadi

Additional cast: Vera Farmiga, Sam Shepard, Ruben Blades, Robert Patrick, Joel Kinnaman

Rating: