Anyone who follows the box office will look upon this weekend's results and feel strong pangs of deja vu. Isn't this the same thing as las week?! Pretty much, yeah. The vast majority of the top ten stayed in the same position as last weekend thanks to an incredibly weak crop of new releases, making these some of the strangest box office numbers seen in 2012.
Brad Pitt and director Andrew Dominik's 'Killing them Softly' opens this weekend, and it's a film I consider as strained as it is strong -- for every great performance there's a heavy-handed bit of symbolism, and all the subtext is pretty much text. But it -- and a recent Variety article pondering if movies are too long (and, by the way, uh, the answer is "No," thank you very much) -- sent me back to thinking about 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,' Pitt and Dominik's excellent, overlooked previous 2007 release.
‘Killing Them Softly’ has a lot of characters but just one motivation: money. Everyone we see is after the almighty dollar. An low-level mobster hires two men to knock off an underground poker game; one of the thieves wants to use his cut to buy heroin he can sell for more cash. The mob wants the dough from the poker game back so they hire a hitman to find and kill the thieves. He’s after a payday, too -- and when he collects it, President Obama is on a television in the background, delivering his election night speech from 2008 when he proudly proclaimed that we are a nation of one people from a collection of United -- rather than red or blue -- States. The hitman, Jackie (Brad Pitt) isn’t buying it. “One people?” he scoffs. “A myth created by Thomas Jefferson,” who didn’t really believe all men were created equal; he was a slave owner who didn’t want to pay any more taxes to England. “America isn’t a country,” Jackie continues. “It’s a business.”
We're a little over a week away from the release of 'Killing Them Softly,' and it's killing us that we can't see this movie yet. The latest trailer has dropped and it's got plenty of James Gandolfini and gun violence to go around.
When it comes to big summer movies, getting moved around the calendar is often a big deal. When it comes to smaller movies, a little less so. But for positioning purposes both 'Sinister' and 'Killing Them Softly' have had their release dates pushed back.
Since its generally warm reception at this year's Cannes Film Festival, 'Killing Them Softy' has emerged as one of this Fall's most anticipated movies. Although we've already gotten an American one-sheet, French movie site Cinema Teaser has revealed the international poster. Check it out below!
Take a good whiff because the fall movie season is just around the corner, and boy does it smell great. Among the many titles that have us tingling with anticipation is The Weinstein Company's new movie 'Killing Them Softly.' Sadly this new poster doesn't do the film any justice.
Though the picture may have been delayed to October 19, we're still anxiously awaiting the arrival of Andrew Dominik's 'Killing Them Softly.' Now there's a trailer, and we're still anxious.
Titles mean a lot, and it's easy to understand why Andrew Dominik's genre thriller 'Cogan's Trade' had its name changed to 'Killing Them Softly.' With violence implied from the title, it now sounds more like genre fare than a misspelled sequel to an old Clint Eastwood film. What we didn't know was that star Brad Pitt nearly says the title in the film. And you can see if for yourself in this new clip.
When you've got Brad Pitt as the lead in your movie, it's surprising when you don't sell the movie just on having one of the world's biggest movie stars in your film. So kudos to Andrew Dominik's 'Killing Them Softly' for not relying on Pitt's star wattage for their first poster. Check it out...
