Sunday, September 12, 2010

Will James Gunn's "Super" deliver a cult hit?

Update: James Gunn's "Super" has been picked up by IFC, meaning, I hope, that it will be available on cable on demand as soon as it hits its probably very meager amount of theaters ... bully

Wow. The word is trickling in from Toronto, and so far I've seen two simply glowing reviews of "Let Me In" from sources I trust, HitFix and The Playlist.

In both cases, the reviewers clearly love the original Swedish movie, "Let the Right One In" (my single favorite movie of 2008), as much as I do. Yet they both say Matt Reeves, director of the surprisingly entertaining "Cloverfield," has done the just about impossible: He's made a movie that, while perhaps not better (which really would be impossible), at least lives up to the spirit of the original and soars thanks to its two young leads, Hit-Girl Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee. You can read those two reviews here and here, and keep an eye out for Reeves' flick Oct. 1.

You can now count me as extremely curious, if not excited, about that flick, but there's something else that came through the midnight circuit up north that sounds like even more my thing. James Gunn, though he delivered a winner in my book with "Slither," is sorely in need of a box office one, since that very entertaining humor/horror mix starring Captain Mal Nathan Fillion and Elizabeth Banks took in a rather amazingly disastrous $7.8 million at the U.S. box office (really? Trust me, maybe it's not great, but this movie is well worth a DVD rental.)

Well, I can't imagine his new movie, "Super," will do a whole lot better, but from what I know so far it seems to be tailor-made for me. Rainn Wilson plays a man who becomes a masked vigilante after his wife (Liv Tyler) gets strung out on drugs and runs off with her dealer (Kevin Bacon). If that casting's not enough to get you intrigued, as you'll see from the clip below, Ellen Page plays Wilson's seriously unhinged sidekick, and she should just be a hoot.

Early Toronto buzz has been good for this too, and according to the headline of an article behind a Variety paywall, buyers are now "circling" it, so here's hoping it's picked up by a studio big enough to bring it to my little corner of the world sometime this fall. Enjoy this first clip I know of, but be warned: Page throws around F-bombs with abandon, so if that kind of thing bothers you, please don't watch it. Peace out.

2 comments:

Jim Marquis said...

That flick looks good.

By the way, is "Get Low" playing in your town? I think that could be my favorite movie of the year so far...

Reel Fanatic said...

Unfortunately not, Mr. Marquis ... I've heard only great things about it from everyone who's seen it, though, so I'll catch it on DVD or perhaps suggest they show it our local film guild