Johnny Depp and daughter Lily-Rose cast in Kevin Smith's Yoga Hosers

Director Kevin Smith has gone into production on his next film in the True North Trilogy, hot on the heels of finishing the first movie Tusk, with the final one being called Moose Jaws (which is exactly what it sounds like).

Smith came up with the idea for Tusk on
his SModcast podcast

The cast of Yoga Hosers stays the same as Tusk with the majority of the actors playing different characters (a technique Smith used in his View Askew films). The movie is about two teenage Canadian girls (played by Lily-Rose Depp and Smith's own daughter Harley Quinn) who fight supernatural beasts.

Returning cast members from Tusk include Michael Parks, Justin Long, Haley Joel Osment, Génesis Rodríguez and Harley Morenstein. The new cast includes Tony Hale, Natasha Lyonne, Adam Brody, Tyler Posey and long-time Smith collaborator Jason Mewes.

Tusk has it's international premiere at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival.

Identity Thief

It occurs to me that Jason can only play two characters; Jason Bateman and Michael Bluth. While it may seem that they are two different characters, they aren't that far removed. In this movie, he is definitely playing Jason Bateman.

The plot of this movie is simple enough. Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) has his identity stolen by an overweight Florida resident (Melissa McCarthy). Sandy has just become a senior VP at a new financial firm when he discovers the bad news. The police inform him that they can do nothing about it, as it is outside their jurisdiction. Sandy hatches a plan in which he will coerce the other Sandy to confess her crime to his boss Daniel (John Cho). So off he goes to Florida, only to discover that he must drive back to Denver with his detainee.

So what seems like a simple road trip movie is slightly complicated by the fact that the other Sandy (real name Diana) is being followed by both a bounty hunter and two drug dealers controlled by a mysterious prisoner (Jonathan Banks). I found that these characters added an extra layer to the film that was not really needed, but didn't detract from the main storyline too much.

It seems that Seth Gordon has just taken Bateman's character from his last film Horrible Bosses and just put him in a new situation. The jokes in the film aren't hysterically funny, but they aren't unfunny either.

Jason Bateman's character Sandy is a kind of hapless sort who falls into the situation that causes him all this grief very easily. His role here is very much as a straight man to McCarthy, with lots of jokes at his expense about his feminine name. I feel as though Melissa McCarthy is quite up to the standard that she has been in the past. I found the funniest jokes from her were the ones where she tries to sing.

There were a few good cameos from Jon Favreau, Eric Stonestreet and Jonathan Banks (of Breaking Bad fame, fans of that character will recognise him instantly), but all these characters stories never got resolved and it would have been good just to have a round up of them in the closing credits.

Verdict: It's a bit of gamble seeing this movie. You could find McCarthy's antics hilarious or grating. It works well as a road trip movie, but Todd Philips has done better.

The Last Stand

This really should be Arnie's last stand. While it was a fun romp through the Nevada desert, Schwarzenegger has no business fighting crime. It is a young man's game and even he acknowledges the fact.

The Last Stand revolves around Sheriff Ray (Schwarzenegger) and his rag-tag group of deputies trying to stop an escaped cartel boss from making his way to Mexico. The plot is almost that simple. The reason the cartel boss escaped is due to FBI agent John Bannister's (Forrest Whitaker) negligence. The whole thing could have been avoided if he checked up on his agents and moved his prisoner in daylight instead of the wee hours of the morning.

I feel like this movie could have been a whole lot shorter than it's 107 minute running time. There are a whole bunch of extraneous shots of glances between Deputy Sarah Torrance (Jaimie Alexander) and Frank Martinez (Rodrigo Santoro), I'm still not sure what his role was in this movie, and these shots in this modified Corvette, where cartel boss Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) shifts gears. Although they looked cool, we only needed to see them once or twice, not every single time he changes speed.

There is a strange sort of familiarity between Ray and Cortez. I feel as though we are missing some scenes where we find out that Ray has run into relatives of Cortez during his stint as a LAPD Narcotics officer. Although they barely hint at this, it would have been nice in this sort of movie to have that explicit connection. It would also explain the reaction Ray gives when he finds out who is making a run for his town.

The cast (apart from the few who I will point out) were not suited for this film. Of course this role was written for Arnie and he does fit in. The same is said for Johnny Knoxville, who is just playing Johnny Knoxville (like he has any other setting!), and Luis Guzman, as the loyal but hesitant and insanely funny deputy.

On the other hand, Forest Whitaker is playing just an angrier version of the role he played in Species. He only really comes off as incapable of following proper protocol. The other person not suited here is Jaimie Alexander. She is capable of extraordinary range and I felt that she was a wasted talent. The way that they built up the character of Cortez, you were expecting a name actor when he would finally be revealed, but instead we get an unfamiliar face.

The person who sort of defies both of those positions and is in sort of a middle ground is Peter Stormare. Whilst you would expect to see him silently shoving body parts into a wood chipper (Fargo, anyone?), here he is playing a loud gunslinger type and at the end of every scene with him, I was waiting for him to spit his tobacco on the ground.

Verdict: Some great driving sequences coupled with callbacks to old Arnie one-liners ("Consider yourself deputised") make for a great action movie. My recommendation to Arnie: quit acting while you're ahead, maybe move into producing and directing like your Twins co-star Danny DeVito.