1. Burnt (The Weinstein Company, 3,003 Theaters, 101 Minutes, Rated R for language throughout, Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score at press time: 24% Fresh [63 Reviews]): Ten years ago, Bradley Cooper starred in the Fox TV show, Kitchen Confidential, based on the life of Anthony Bourdain, which featured Cooper as a once famous chef whose hard partying life style forced him to hit bottom yet who gets one last chance at greatness in the high pressure world of New York City restaurants.
Today, Cooper stars in this film as a once famous chef whose hard partying life style forced him to hit bottom yet who gets one last chance at greatness in the high pressure world of London restaurants.
I can’t wait until 2025, where Cooper will star as a once famous chef whose hard partying life style forced him to hit bottom yet who gets one last chance at greatness in the high pressure world of Hong Kong restaurants.
2. Our Brand Is Crisis (Warner Brothers, 2,202 Theaters, 107 Minutes, Rated R for language including some sexual references, Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score at press time: 32% Fresh [74 Reviews]): Bradley Cooper isn’t the only one referencing a decade old work in the present day film. This film is fictionalized version of the 2005 documentary of the same name which detailed the efforts of James Carville’s campaign marketing firm’s efforts to influence the 2002 Bolivian Presidential Election.
In this one, Sandra Bullock plays a feisty campaign manager who who comes out of retirement make the underdog candidate a contender in the election. In the process, she butts heads with Billy Bob Thornton’s character, who ironically played a thinly-veiled version of Carville in 1998’s Primary Colors, a campaign manager working for the opposing candidate.
Bullock can play roles like this in her sleep, and the film was on the 2008 Blacklist of most popular unmade scripts of the year. However, that Tomatometer score shows that something has gone sour in the mix.
3. Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (Paramount, 1,509 Theaters,93 Minutes, Rated R for zombie violence and gore, sexual material, graphic nudity, and language throughout, Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score at press time: 21% Fresh [19 Reviews]): At one time, it used to be that all you had to do to separate your zombie film from the pack was to have your zombies run. Nowadays, as the zombie film field gets larger and larger, you have to come up with new angles and high concepts to make your mark in the genre.
This film’s high concept is that a group of nondescript, litigation free scouts camp out in the woods just as the zombie apocalypse breaks out. Once they return to civilization, they must use their preparedness skills to save their loved ones and survive long enough until order is restored.
This is another Blacklist entry, this time from 2010, whose Tomatometer score doesn’t seem to match the script’s popularity. Maybe the Blacklist isn’t really a thing anymore.
