The Dictator is a bit of a departure for Sacha Baron Cohen. In previous movies in which he’s played the lead (Ali G, Borat, Bruno), Baron Cohen has interacted with members of the public who were completely unaware that he was playing a character. He still plays a larger-than-life character here, but this time, the film he inhabits is completely fictional. Does this change in comedic style work as well as his previous efforts? Read on to find out.

Sacha Baron Cohen stars as Admiral General Aladeen, the supreme leader of the fictional Republic of Wadiya. Ben Kingsley plays an advisor who was passed over for leadership some years prior, and he puts a plot in motion to get Aladeen out of the way. (Of course he does. He’s Ben Kingsley. See: Persia, Prince of.) See, there’s oil in Wadiya that Aladeen refuses to sell to outside nations, but Kingsley’s character is wheeling and dealing behind the scenes and stands to make billions in commission if he can start selling it to other countries. During a trip to New York City, Aladeen is supposed to speak in front of the United Nations, but he’s replaced with a body double and left for dead outside the city, setting up the major conflict of the film: can the real Aladeen, now unrecognizable without his iconic beard, make it to the UN in time to stop a new Wadiyan constitution from being signed?

With all of that out of the way, let’s return to the question posed at the beginning of this review. Does a completely fictional narrative work as well as Baron Cohen’s previous efforts? Not quite. In satire, which The Dictator most certainly is, I’ve always found interactions with real people over the course of a film to paint a broader picture of the general population’s consensus, therefore turning the looking glass back on ourselves and allowing us to examine our culture’s ignorance, apathy, prejudices, or whatever the issue may be. It may not be completely representative of the entire nation’s opinions, but at least there are real people that you can point to as concrete examples and say, “look, these people actually believe what they’re saying.”

In a fictional narrative, that element is gone in favor of actors speaking pre-written dialogue, and there’s just something about that method that takes the bite off the criticisms Baron Cohen tries to make. At the end of The Dictator, Admiral General Aladeen gives a long speech which, in so many words, condemns the leadership of the United States as a type of dictatorship. It works, and it’s even sadly funny, but I think watching real people’s behavior is a much more subtle way to critique society’s impulses rather than going with a pre-planned speech.

Putting its stylistic choices aside, I think The Dictator has a few great moments of comedic brilliance in it. With Borat, I was put off by the cultural phenomenon it became in the weeks and months after its release, but returning to that movie years later, I found it hilarious. I’m guessing something similar will happen here, but in the meantime, Baron Cohen knows his audience and knows how to play up his strengths. His blustery buffoon character is at his best when he’s completely out of his element, and Baron Cohen knows how to walk the line between gross-out humor (which there is a bit of here, but not as much as previous films) and one-liners. He’s also got a solid supporting cast this time around, including John C. Reilly as a racist American officer, UCB co-founder Ian Roberts as a police officer, Anna Faris as the Brooklyn-based hippie love interest, and even Megan Fox playing herself in a cameo appearance.

But this movie is really a coming out party for Jason Mantzoukas, who you may recognize as Rafi from the FX series “The League” or from a bit part on “Parks and Recreation.” He plays Wadiya’s former head of nuclear science who now lives in New York City’s Little Wadiya, and he helps Aladeen with his plan to reclaim his position as supreme leader. Mantzoukas’ comic timing is spot-on, and he is responsible for some of the film’s funniest moments. He essentially plays the straight man to Aladeen’s wild man, and watching him get flustered at Baron Cohen’s stupidity was a personal highlight of this movie. There’s a great series of gags that play out in Little Wadiya that I won’t ruin, but they all involve flashbacks of Aladeen having members of his country assassinated. You’ll know it when you see it.

Is The Dictator Sacha Baron Cohen’s best film? It’s tough to say, especially with comedies. Though the lack of unsuspecting real people might not be as funny as the alternative, perhaps this is a step in the right direction for the auteur. It shows that he’s willing to step outside of his comfort zone a little, and I think watching him grow as a comedian may be more important than watching him play the same games in his self-constructed sandbox over and over again. Until next time…

Read similar posts to Review: The Dictator on Filmonic

Whenever you hear about an action-heist script being shopped around you usually assume the likes of Mark Walhberg, Dwayne Johnson, or Jason Statham (ie. male action stars) will become involved. However, on this occasion Paramount is developing a heist project with both Zoe Saldana and Megan Fox in mind to lead.

According to Deadline a script called Swindle was chased by both Universal and Paramount, with the latter emerging victorious. Both Saldana and Fox will produce the movie alongside Michael De Luca (Moneyball), and the whole project emerged because both actresses thought it would be cool to work with each other (and knew males around the world would be lined up opening weekend).

The storyline is being kept under wraps, but it was written by Enzo Mileti and Scott Wilson. It could be a while before things get moving though as Saldana is currently shooting Star Trek 2 and will then shoot Blood Ties with director Guillaume Canet. She’s also in talks to join Christian Bale and Casey Affleck in Out of the Furnace, and then James Cameron will be requiring her for those Avatar sequels at some point.

After departing the Transformers franchise people assumed Megan Fox would disappear, but she’s been lining up a few comedies such as Friends With Kids which is out now and Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator which is due out in May. She’ll also be seen in Judd Apatow’s This Is Forty with Paul Rudd.

Image made by TheIronLion.

Read similar posts to Zoe Saldana and Megan Fox team up for Swindle on Filmonic

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences has teamed up with Funny or Die to produce a trailer for the 84th Academy Awards, which will air February 26th.

The trailer features former Transformers co-stars Josh Duhamel and Megan Fox on the hunt for Oscar host Billy Crystal, and they meet a few familiar faces along the way (namely William Fichtner, Vinnie Jones and Robin Williams).

Watch below:

The Oscar nominations will be announced on Tuesday, January 24th.

Read similar posts to Trailer for the 84th Academy Awards on Filmonic

While Sacha Baron Cohen made his name with the mockumentaries Borat and Bruno, he’s been taking solid acting gigs in ‘real’ films over recent years such as Sweeney Todd and most recently Hugo. He’s also set to appear in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained and will play the villain in Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables, but not before he unleashes another wacky character onto the world with The Dictator.

Paramount has today released the first trailer for the film via Moviefone, and this time Cohen in joined by Anna Faris, Sir Ben Kingsley, Megan Fox, John C. Reilly and J.B. Smoove.

In the film Sacha Baron Cohen plays a ruthless dictator who heads to the U.S. for a meeting at the United Nations and finds that his number two has replaced him with an unsuspecting sheepherder lookalike. As the dictator wanders the city, he meets the owner of an organic food store. She turns around his dictatorial thinking, and there’s a little romance in it as well.

Cohen has re-teamed with Borat and Bruno director Larry Charles, and The Dictator will be released May 11, 2012.

Read similar posts to Trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator on Filmonic

We got our first look at Sacha Baron Cohen in his next Bruno/Borat-style movie The Dictator two weeks ago, and now THR has word that both Megan Fox and John C. Reilly will be joining the cast. No further details on their roles were given, but they are said to be making cameo appearances so it’s probably best we stay in the dark.

In the film Sacha Baron Cohen plays a ruthless dictator who heads to the U.S. for a meeting at the United Nations and finds that his number two has replaced him with an unsuspecting sheepherder lookalike. As the dictator wanders the city, he meets the owner of an organic food store. She turns around his dictatorial thinking, and there’s a little romance in it as well.

Cohen has re-teamed with Borat and Bruno director Larry Charles, and will also be joined on-screen by Sir Ben Kingsley, Jason Mantzoukas, and Anna Faris.

Read similar posts to Megan Fox and John C. Reilly join The Dictator on Filmonic

When it was announced that Megan Fox wouldn’t be returning for Transformers 3 a few weeks before filming was set to begin there were conflicting reports as to why. Did Michael Bay fire the actress, or did Fox walk? We’ve heard bits here and there over the past year, but now Shia LaBeouf has given a pretty frank and honest explanation.

From the L.A Times:

“Megan developed this Spice Girl strength, this woman-empowerment [stuff] that made her feel awkward about her involvement with Michael, who some people think is a very lascivious filmmaker, the way he films women,” LaBeouf said. “Mike films women in a way that appeals to a 16-year-old sexuality. It’s summer. It’s Michael’s style. And I think [Fox] never got comfortable with it. This is a girl who was taken from complete obscurity and placed in a sex-driven role in front of the whole world and told she was the sexiest woman in America. And she had a hard time accepting it. When Mike would ask her to do specific things, there was no time for fluffy talk. We’re on the run. And the one thing Mike lacks is tact. There’s no time for [LaBeouf assumes a gentle voice] ‘I would like you to just arch your back 70 degrees.’”

Fox must have become tired of being told to lean suggestively over different modes of transportation. It was pretty clear what Bay’s ‘style’ was when he started test-screening for Fox’s replacement. They were all models. He wasn’t interested in acting talent, it was all about looks.

I think people should give Rosie Huntington-Whiteley a shot (don’t judge a book by its cover and all), but the fact Paramount haven’t shown much of her speaking and acting in the trailers isn’t encouraging. Fortunately Whiteley seems to be good at all the other stuff she’s asked to do, as Shia explained:

“Rosie comes with this Victoria’s Secret background, and she’s comfortable with it, so she can get down with Mike’s way of working and it makes the whole set vibe very different,”.

I’m sure there many who don’t mind seeing aesthetically pleasing females rolling around in their summer blockbusters, but there’s something quite sad about an actress having to quit a film because the director just wants her to ‘be looking fine’. But then again, Fox did decide to play a prostitute in Jonah Hex.

Read similar posts to Shia LaBeouf explains why Megan Fox didn’t appear in Transformers: Dark of the Moon on Filmonic

Entertainment Tonight has released our first look at Passion Play, an independent movie from first time director Mitch Glazer which stars Mickey Rourke, Megan Fox, and Bill Murry. It was screened at the Toronto Film Festival over the weekend where it hopes to find distribution, and this clip was likely released to drum up some interest.

In the clip we see Mickey Rourke walking up to a window where he sees Megan Fox taking off her coat and unfurling wings from her back. The two then stare at each other for a while.

Watch below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8stNUjGXBXM

When a jazz trumpeter is taken to the desert and a gun held to his head, we are at the beginning of a delightful fable about romance and dreams. When he meets a beautiful woman who works as the Bird Woman in a circus, he falls madly in love and persuades her to run away with him only to find that life is a little more complicated than simply living one’s fantasies.

Passion Play will probably get a full trailer after it finds distribution, followed by a limited release at some point.

Read similar posts to Megan Fox gets her wings out for Mickey Rourke in Passion Play on Filmonic

With a mere $10 million at the worldwide box office Jonah Hex will never make its $50+ million budget back. Warner Bros. tried to improve the movie by bringing in I Am Legend director Francis Lawrence for re-shoots at the beginning of the year, but when it came to marketing Warner Bros. pretty much wrote it off. They have a Harry Potter movie this year, afterall.

Now the promotional rounds are a distant memory Josh Brolin has shared this thoughts on the finished product, and he isn’t a fan.

From SplashPage:

“Now that I don’t have to promote it? . . . No,” said Brolin when asked if he was proud of “Jonah Hex.”

“We had an original intention and that got away from us a little bit,” he explained. “Everybody did do their best to try and create the best movie with what we had, but I think it got so derailed at a certain point that the assemblage of what we could use was so disconnected to what our original intention was that it just got mixed up.”

Brolin confessed that his feelings about the film made it difficult to promote the finished product — and he even expressed his concerns to the studio’s marketing department prior to the press tour. In the end, however, he said he found a positive angle.

“That’s what I told the marketing people at Warner Bros. I said, ‘I can’t lie about this, so I have to look for a truism that I can go with,” he said. “I do think that if you go in there kind of like with ‘Piranha 3-D’ — when you go to see that movie you go, ‘This is ridiculous and this is fun’ — so if you went into ‘Jonah Hex’ with that, I think you had a good time.”

Fortunately for Brolin this critical and financial bomb shouldn’t have too big of an impact on his career. The actor will begin filming Men in Black 3 alongside Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones later this year, and will be seen in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps on September 24th.

Read similar posts to Josh Brolin isn’t proud of Jonah Hex on Filmonic

Filming on Transformers 3 is currently underway and director Michael Bay had some time to discuss the third film in an interview. He doesn’t give much away, however he does confirm that the villain will be Shockwave, the robot cyclops-turned-laser-cannon, who became dictator of their home world of Cybertron after the other Autobots and Decepticons journeyed to Earth.

Bay also says Transformers 3, which he has decided will be 3D, will have a “killer ending” that will bring the franchise to a close. For now, anyway.

From USA Today:

Plot details are under wraps, but it delves into the space race between the U.S.S.R. and the USA, suggesting there was a hidden Transformers role in it all that remains one of the planet’s most dangerous secrets. “The movie is more of a mystery,” Bay says. “It ties in what we know as history growing up as kids with what really happened.”

While Optimus Prime, Megatron and even Sam all have died and been resurrected, di Bonaventura says this film will have no do-overs: Die, and that’s it.

Bay hints that there may be a lot of that. “As a trilogy, it really ends,” he says. “It could be rebooted again, but I think it has a really killer ending.”

I suppose the franchise could be rebooted in 7-10 years time. Bay’s films are hardly The Lord of the Rings, and could have been a lot better with a different creative team behind them (maybe Neill Blomkamp will be up for directing big budget films in a few years?).

Until then let’s focus on Transformers 3. They’ve already suffered the sequel curse, so it shouldn’t be too hard to improve for the next outing.

Read similar posts to Transformers 3 will have a ‘killer ending’ to complete the trilogy on Filmonic

Warner Bros. has released a second trailer for Jonah Hex via IGN. The first trailer was only released a few weeks ago, but the studio need to make up for all the time they haven’t been marketing it due to re-shoots.

I prefer this trailer to the previous one. It contains some cool shots and goes for the ‘badass’ angle, however i’m still not sure if I want to see it. All the re-shoot talk has caused the film to be tainted in my mind and these average-to-good trailers aren’t getting me excited.

Jonah Hex, which stars Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, John Malkovich and Michael Fassbender, is a Western featuring a scarred-faced bounty hunter. The movie centers on the gunslinger enlisted to track down a former Confederate general who is raising an army of the undead and bent on liberating the South.

The film will be released on June 18th. What do you think of Jonah Hex from the trailers? Will you be seeing it?

Read similar posts to Second Jonah Hex trailer on Filmonic