Planning the right date night when you’re married or in a committed relationship can get stale. While my review of DATE NIGHT will be posted tomorrow, Twentieth Century Fox gave us a summer preview on Tuesday morning in a location that’s sure to be a date night staging ground.
The AMC Fork and Screen Buckhead was the place Tuesday for local Atlanta area critics to gather, sample food offered by the theater, and watch tasters of Fox’ summer offerings. The six screen theater is a hybrid of sorts where audiences can order a meal, a drink, and catch a flick all at the same time. In my first visit to this location, I was impressed by the layout—each theater has banks of tables and comfortable leather adjustable chairs. Seated in front of one of these long tables with a huge chunk of cheesecake before me, I really felt like a VIP. AMC has gone to great lengths to give the theater the look and feel of a private screening room experience. And you can even order a stiff drink if the movie gets too boring!
Fox rolled trailers for their summer offerings. While these trailers are readily available on the Internet, and I’ve posted a couple of the YouTube embeds below, there’s nothing like seeing them on the big screen, especially while putting down fork fulls of tasty cheesecake.
The feature film shown at the event was DATE NIGHT, which I’ll be formally reviewing tomorrow both here on my blog and as part of this week’s Film Fix TV show. Before the feature presentation, we saw the by now tired trailer for MARMADUKE, based on the famous comic with the large mischievous dog featuring the goofy and comforting voice talents of Owen Wilson. MARMADUKE is destined be a date afternoon with my 6 year-old daughter for sure.
Another father/daughter flick previewed was RAMONA AND BEEZUS, which has a great cast led by Selena Gomez from the popular WIZARDS OF WAVERLY PLACE. Likely to be a dating cheese fest, not the cake variety I assure you, is KNIGHT AND DAY, the trailer of which made me question whether the laws of physics were being suspended like they were in the 1980s. Giving KNIGHT a real critical chance is less the presence of couch jumping Tom Cruise and fading but always lovely Cameron Diaz and more to do with the steady and consistent director James Mangold (3:10 TO YUMA and WALK THE LINE).
And speaking of the 1980s, we were treated to the longer trailer of THE A TEAM which looks entertaining but might find that market crowded with releases of the super-hip looking THE LOSERS and the impossible to resist return of Stallone and company in THE EXPENDIBLES. Still the brand name A TEAM should ensure solid returns for Fox this summer. Whether it will lead to a new franchise will depend heavily on the quality of the movie in addition to its box office performance.
Of the other trailers shared with us, I was taken with the PREDATORS trailer. Yes, we’ve seen it before, but the concept struck me as more than passable. And it was great to see more of Walton Goggins who plays a convict dropped into the Predators’ planet. The concept which is another take on THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME reminded me of CUBE. It’s a mysterious fish out of water type story. A number of killers are plucked from earth and dropped onto a planet where they are hunted and battle the Predator inhabitants. Produced by Robert Rodriguez, the movie is directed by Nimrod Antal, whose last film ARMORED failed to create much of a stir at the box office.
Perhaps the guilty pleasure of the late summer will be the return of Michael Douglas to his Oscar winning role of Gordon Gekko in WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS. Again a trailer repeat, there’s nothing like seeing Douglas play bad and talk about greed, however, this time around, things might end up differently for Douglas’ Gekko. Not only will the film see Oliver Stone back in the director’s chair but also the addition of fresh-faced Carey Mulligan playing a character named Winnie Gekko. We will have a chance to see it all in September, which will be the end of the dog days of summer.
And based on Fox’ summer sched alone, dating in the hot season ahead shows much promise—movies are always a solid date night option. And by tuning into the DailyFilmFix, you can find some direction as to where to spend those coveted nightly outings away from the kids.
