We have passes for you and a guest to attend the advance screening of COUPLES RETREAT on Tuesday, October 6 at 7:30 PM at the AMC Town Center (119th & Nall).

All you need to do is fill out the form below. We’ll have a random drawing on Friday, October 2 to determine the winners. Here’s the trailer, website for the film, and a synopsis from the studio:

Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Jon Favreau, Malin Akerman, Kristin Davis, Kristen Bell and Faizon Love star in Universal Pictures’ upcoming comedy COUPLES RETREAT.

The comedy follows four Midwestern couples who embark on a journey to a tropical island resort. While one of the couples is there to work on their marriage, the other three set out to jet ski, spa and enjoy some fun in the sun. They soon discover that participation in the resort’s couples therapy is not optional. Suddenly, their group-rate vacation comes at a price.

What follows is a hilarious look at real world problems faced by all couples. The film also stars Kali Hawk and Jean Reno.

COUPLES RETREAT opens nationwide on Friday, October 9.

Just fill out the form below, and we’ll have a random drawing on Friday, October 2 to determine the winner.

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Tags: advance, contest, COUPLES RETREAT, Faizon Love, free, giveaway, jason bateman, Jon Favreau, kansas city, Kristen Bell, Kristin Davis, Malin Akerman, passes, screening, starring, Vince Vaughn

Man, I hate watching trailers. There’s so much to glean from them in terms of plot and style that I almost just prefer to stay away from them. Every now and then, however, I am drawn to a trailer that I cannot turn away from. “Where the Wild Things Are,” directed by Spike Jonze, is such a trailer.

The CGI-infected special effects world makes everything look the same after a while, and the tactile “wild things” in this movie (despite the fact that their faces have CGI elements) will go a long way towards making us feel that Max is actually interacting with something. Cinematical has posted a gallery of images from the upcoming Maurice Sendak adaptation and–if you must–the trailer is right here.

Richard Kelly is back. You remember him, right? He was the next big thing after “Donnie Darko” finally caught on on DVD. Then he released The Director’s Cut and over-explained everything. Then he released “Southland Tales” and we all wondered what deep end he’d gone off.

He’s back with “The Box,” a thriller starring Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, and Frank Langella that’s based on a Richard Matheson (”I Am Legend”) short story called “Button, Button.” I hope he can find the balance between explaining too much and not enough. It releases on October 30.

Kal Penn (star of TV’s “House” and the “Harold and Kumar” movie series) has joined the Obama administration. The Hollywood Reporter reports that he will “join the staff as an associate director in the Office of Public Liaison. His role will be to connect Obama with the Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities, as well as arts and entertainment groups.” Weird.

Twitter is the shit, simply put. Lots of celebs are using it, but “Iron Man 2″ director Jon Favreau is the only one working every day on a big-budgeted, much-anticipated sequel. He tweets a lot, and is constantly posting pictures from the set. Follow him here and see comments and photos from the “Iron Man 2″ set in realtime. His latest post refers to Garry Schandling, whose casting is very recent news: “Wrapped day two. Time for some sleep. So great to work with Garry.”

When I was at SXSW, Favreau was on a panel with the other stars of “I Love You, Man” and he was taking photos of Paul Rudd and Rashida Jones from the stage and posting them on Twitter. It’s a pretty unique way to experience life through the eyes of a newly crowned Hollywood giant. You can follow Jon Favreau’s Twitter account here.

The Playlist says that Overture Films has picked up the “semi-fictional/quasi-documentary” movie “Paper Heart,” starring Charlyne Yi (the crazy stoned-out chick from “Knocked Up”) and her boyfriend Michael Cera. The movie premiered at Sundance, and was directed by Nicholas Jasenovec, who co-wrote it with Yi. It sounds a like a weird mix of a travel documentary and the faux mocumentary style of “The Office.” “Paper Heart” will get a limited release on August 7 in New York and L.A. and will start expanding on August 14 everywhere else.

Is the box office disappointment of the rated-R superhero flick “Watchmen” to blame or was it a promotional tie-in with Pizza Hut? Whatever the reason,the latest chapter in the “Terminator” saga, “Terminator Salvation,” starring Christian Bale and directed by McG, will be rated PG-13 rather than the “hard” R the director originally promised.

Tags: iron man 2, Jon Favreau, kal penn, michael cera, obama, paper heart, poster, richard kelly, the box, where the wild things are

Eric Melin guest host Whitney Mathews (www.whitneymathews.com) review the new bromance comedy “I Love You, Man,” starring Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Jon Favreau, Jamie Pressly, Rashida Jones, J.K. Simmons, and Andy Samberg. “I Love You, Man” gives Paul Rudd a chance to flex his leading man chops, but does it give him a good character or script to work with? Find out here.

Tags: Andy Samberg, film, I Love You, J.K. Simmons, Jamie Pressly, Jason Segel, Jon Favreau, man, movie review, on-camera, Paul Rudd, Rashida Jones, review

What better actor to play a hard-drinking billionaire playboy than Robert Downey, Jr.—whose own well-publicized brushes with the law inform every scene he’s in? The actor’s real-life troubles serve as a kind of shorthand to the lead character on display, and it helps make “Iron Man” the smartest kind of dumb comic book movie.

What we have here essentially is the story of an arms dealer who gets a conscience after seeing his own weapons used in Afghanistan on the wrong people, namely, himself. This film lays out its geopolitical conflict in way simpler terms than it has any right to, and gets away with it because it is also about a flying suit of armor. It’s like “Charlie Wilson’s War” without the uncomfortable satire, or maybe “Lord of War” with a better sense of humor. Thankfully, this easy-to-swallow political action item comes in the harmless and familiar form of a superhero origin story.

Let’s back up for a second. In the original Marvel comic, the weapons manufactured by the incomparably brilliant and wealthy Tony Stark (Downey, Jr.) are used to fight communism. In the movie, Stark is on a trip to Afghanistan (rather than Vietnam like the comic) to introduce new missile technology to the U.S. Army when he is kidnapped. He then sees his company’s name on all the bombs used by his captors, the evil Afghan warlords. His unique engineering ideas (and a lot of bad guys not paying very good attention) allow him to create a suit from spare heavy metal parts lying around in a cave. With this armor, he will break free and return home with a new sense of purpose.

Director Jon Favreau (“Made,” “Elf,” “Zathura”) knows this premise is be a little hard to swallow, so he keeps things moving fast, and fun. Stark’s arrogance is equally measured by his wit, and by the time he turns into an unlikely hero, we are totally on board. Favreau’s excellent eye for comedy is a huge boon to this movie, which takes itself seriously only when it absolutely has to in order to work as a character mythology. With the movie’s naturalistic, smartass tone, Favreau and Downey, Jr. are admitting that they wouldn’t have believed it either if it hadn’t just happened. They manage to do the impossible after the last eight years of CGI-powered movies—make all the familiar beats in the superhero origin story seem fresh again.

Gwyneth Paltrow plays “Pepper” Potts, Stark’s personal assistant, and every time the two of them are onscreen together, there is a spark waiting to catch fire. Downey, Jr. and Paltrow do a lot with a little here, and lay the foundation for a relationship that will no doubt build through more films. Only Terrence Howard, as Lieutenant Colonel Jim Rhodes, feels underused in “Iron Man.” His character’s screen time is reduced to quick, jokey segments with his pal Stark that showcase the pair’s long friendship. Perhaps Favreau can expand upon this during flashbacks in later “Iron Man” movies.

The best origin tales keep the evil close to home—Spider-Man’s nemeses were his best friend and that guy’s Dad, while Wolverine’s worst enemy is the man who created him. Jeff Bridges is the bald and goateed Obidiah Stane, a friend of the family and Stark’s business partner. Besides being a shifty dude, he also delivers the scariest and most telling line of the movie when he’s berating a Middle Easterner and says something to the effect of “technology has always been your Achilles’ heel in this part of the world.” The nerve!

The central theme of “Iron Man,” like any good superhero flick, is responsibility. Appropriately, the screenplay flirts with the question of whether man can use industry and technology for betterment or whether those staples of American life will use man instead, isolating us from their effects on society. Wrapped up in a slick, entertaining package, “Iron Man” isn’t really willing to get too deep into this age-old quandary, but that doesn’t stop Stane from throwing in references to the atomic bombs dropped on Japan to end World War II.

Maybe the reason Favreau doesn’t pound the movie’s message down our throats is because he doesn’t need to. When the blithely carefree Tony Stark wakes up and grows a pair, its pretty obvious what is happening. The movie doesn’t need to go into the real-world crisis of a military industrial complex that is as ingrained in American life and jobs as going to see superhero movies every summer. The film works on a purely entertaining level alone.

“Iron Man” does, however, simplify issues in a grand fashion. When Iron Man flies halfway around the world to save a Middle Eastern father from being executed in front of his wife and kids, its a pretty larger-than-life moment that speaks volumes for the film’s point of view.  It won’t get anybody to seriously alter their opinions on military spending or where the country allocates its power, but the overall impact it may have is in a general changing attitude towards what is responsible. While its an oversimplification in some eyes, it’s at least a step in the right direction.

Ironically, that same craving for technology that gets people in trouble in the first place also pushes us to want to see gaint “robots” fight each other and blow up stuff real good. Favreau’s “Iron Man” understands both of these things, and delivers what it needs to with a self-aware sense of humor.

Tags: iron man comic book movie review, Iron Man movie review, iron man review, Jon Favreau, marvel iron man, robert downey