Surprises too are often tied to expectation, or lack of it. The first film I saw in 2011 surprised me in part because it was the first film I saw in 2011 — that is, a film shunted onto the whistling heath of the January release schedule.
It was Shana Feste?s Country Strong, and it got a raw deal. Casting Gwyneth Paltrow as a country superstar is either a brave decision or an incredibly timid one — regardless, Paltrow stepped into an outsized role and very nearly filled it out. The supporting cast of Leighton Meester, Tim McGraw, and especially Garrett Hedlund give the celebrity melodrama human ballast, and Feste manages to pace a pretty slick story with moments of believable intimacy and alienation.
When it comes to horror films and especially on-screen gore (I suppose off-screen gore as well), I am — as Justin Timberlake?s character pronounced it in the reasonably surprising Friends With Benefits — a huge pu-ssay. Seeing Final Destination 5 next to my name on the assignment slate was a definite short straw situation, but I fancy myself a professional, and so cleared my schedule and my appetite and headed to midtown. I had never seen a Final Destination, which accounted for the formula?s novelty for me — the villain here is death itself, manifested in the trickle down economics of excruciating coincidence — but the film, shot in 3-D, is also brilliantly choreographed and possessed of the kind of tension — outrageous but not totally gratuitous — that directors rarely bother with anymore, when splatters and shakey cams do just as well. Not that there aren?t — heaven knows — plenty of guts a-squishin? in Final Destination 5. But it was worth a few pounds of flesh to be reminded how pleasurable it…
Bali Rodriguez Bar Refaeli Beyoncé Bianca Kajlich Bijou Phillips Blake Lively Blu Cantrell Bonnie Jill Laflin Bridget Moynahan Britney Spears
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