Category: Movie Dramas (Page 174 of 188)

If there is even the smallest trace of doubt in your mind about what the box-office leader is going to be this Memorial Day weekend, then you’re clearly not paying attention. In fact, the madness has already started.

*With 19 years of pent-up demand for the Indiana Jones franchise, at least among males old enough to have seen the movies the first time around and some of our more respectful children, the only unknown regarding “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is how massive will the inevitable cascade of shekels be for the gang at Paramount. Newshound Nikki Finke is already providing some numbers from the Thursday opening of it’s very long holiday weekend and, so far, it looks potentially ginormous, though it remains to be seen if it will be ultra-super-stupendous ginormous. My personal guess is that it comes up just a little short of the $172 million Memorial Day of “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.” Whatever else was wrong (and many, many things were) with that second/first “Star Wars” trilogy, there was an awful lot of curiosity and suspense built up over just how the series would end, which isn’t quite the case here. I mean, even after hating the first two films in the series, I found myself shelling out to see the third because I just kind of had to. On the other hand, while I didn’t really love either of the two Indy Jones sequels, my strong affection for the genius popcorn rush of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” will carry me giddily into this one. (Though, like most folks in my age group, I likely won’t be seeing it the first weekend…unless I really want to all of a sudden.)

Also, though I’m personally looking forward to seeing Cate Blanchett as a Soviet villain and the long-awaited return of Karen Allen to the series, hats off to the canny casting of talented youth-fave Shia LaBeouf (whose name, I’m told, means “char the beef” in a rarely spoken French-Urdu dialect) to counter the not-quite a septuagenarian Harrison Ford in the title role. There is some concern out there in the moviesphere about the youth appeal factor, but it’s not like Mr. Ford is exactly, you know, old. To quote my man Roger Ebert, Ford “has one of those Robert Mitchum faces that doesn’t age, it only frowns more.”

Speaking of Ebert, the reviews on “Crystal Skull” are largely positive (though significantly less positive with “top critics“). Still, reading many of the reviews and pull-quotes, we see large undercurrents of “well, it’s not the best, but it’s definitely not the worst” or simply a case of critics wanting to not be killjoys to a movie that almost everybody is going to see anyway. Though “Iron Man” and the (finally reviewed by us) “Prince Caspian” will most certainly be hanging in there this weekend, anything less than $130 million would be an insult for Indy. I could say more on the subject, but why? Instead, check out Will Harris‘s fine appreciation of some of the lesser known films in the Harrison Ford oeuvre. Will watched long and hard for us, show him you care.

*Oh, but there are other new releases coming to theaters this week — though probably not to a theater near you if you don’t live in a very large city, as per the Box Office MoJo theater counts. There are several indie flicks of varying levels of interest entering theaters, but I now draw your attention to two attempts at take no prisoners political satire.

By far the weirder of the two is “Postal” — a film crafted by “he’s not just a director, he’s also a punchline” Uwe Boll, whose skills as a pugilist are ranked well above his filmmaking powers. I can’t personally speak to his film talents, as I’ve somehow managed to avoid all of his video game adaptations — as I’ve actually managed to avoid all videogame adaptations. Yet, I can speak to his lack of humor and decency as I just watched arguably the lamest and most offensive trailer since “The Birth of a Nation” on the flick’s website, in which he and some unfortunate but game actors attempt to mine humor from the cockpit of one of the planes that destroyed the WTC on 9/11, stealing it’s main joke from a scabrously effective piece in “The Onion” and missing the point entirely. Seriously crappy stuff.

Intriguingly, Carl DiOrio of the Hollywood Reporter writes that a major release was planned for the “Postal” but megachains Regal and AMC nixed the idea, cutting 1,500 hundred theaters down to somewhere between DiOrio’s estimate of 15 theaters and B.O.Mojo’s four. Gee, could it be that wrapping up a trailer with the destruction of the twin towers isn’t the way to sell your zany comedy? Simply calling it “politically incorrect” doesn’t cut it.

Okay, so the only surprise about the “Postal” reviews is that 17% of critics were willing to go on record as liking it, but the unpleasant surprise for the makers of the new anti-war black comedy, starring and cowritten by critical favorite John Cusack, “War, Inc.” is that only 22% of critics seemed to have much good to say about a movie that should be critical catnip. (Proof, for once and for all, that just putting one’s liberal politics on display does not guarantee good or even decent reviews from film critics.) This is a film that really needs strong reviews, and while it’s likely to go wider, I guess, based on its star power (Marisa Tomei, Hillary Duff, and Ben Kingsley are also aboard), this one seems doomed. Still, “War, Inc.” features Cusack once again playing a likable assassin, once again ably assisted by the wondrous Joan Cusack. While not an actual sequel to “Grosse Pointe Blank,” (Cusack’s character is not named Martin Blank), it might merit a look from those of us who loved that bit of blackest comedy, and our reviewer, Jonathan Flax, seemed to like it.

UPDATE: More on “Postal” and the amazing Mr. Uwe Boll. Here’s an interview with him explaining the situation from MTV (via this morning’s IMDb Movie & TV News). The short version is he’s distributing himself through his own company — and not all that well. It’s not playing in Manhattan, though they were able to get a screen in Brooklyn, and many of the theaters are showing it only once or twice a day. The interview also links to some “remarks” by Boll, which indicates he also has trouble assembling a coherent self-important rant. He really thinks his movie is like Monty Python….

I made it clear Friday that, my no-link vengeance notwithstanding, I didn’t see Walden and Disney Media suffering for making it next to impossible for Bullz-Eye to review the second “Chronicles of Narnia” film, “Prince Caspian.” But, suffer they did, though perhaps the blow was not fatal. To be fair, $56 million is always a tidy chunk of change, but a dyslexic comedown considering that expectations were closer to $80 million and the first “Narnia” film, “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” reversed the digits for a $65 million opening weekend. And, see, we reviewed that one!

Still, other theories abound. Nikki Finke blames the film’s more violent nature. At first blush, this makes absolutely no sense, since, well, Peter Jackson’s LOTR films didn’t exactly find this to be an impediment, but I’ll give her the possibility that a significant shift in tone could be responsible. I haven’t seen either movie, so I’ll leave actual viewers to judge whether she’s on the right track or not. However, she may be right if audiences come to the theater expecting strawberry shortcake, but find themselves served steak and eggs instead. On the other hand, Carl DiOrio notes that the film seems to be generating positive reaction, so that it may be sticking around through the fierce competition of this summer’s tent-poles flicks. Other factors might include a case of diminishing returns on religion-based marketing efforts, the subject of an interesting Hollywood Reporter article. Also, quite possibly, increasing gas prices , general economic malaise, and the fact that movies themselves are simply way too expensive these days are making parents think long and hard before spending their increasingly limited cash on the sequel to a movie their families enjoyed but perhaps failed to love. Or, maybe, it really is the curse of Bullz-Eye.

Speaking of curses, “Speed Racer” — despite netting some decent word of mouth at least among some parents I know — dropped to an ignominious fourth place in its second week with $7,645,000. However, I should add that the $160 million budget figure that I mentioned last week is now looking more like $120, so that makes the film $40 million worth less of a disaster for its makers. “What Happens in Vegas” defeated it by about $5 million, which does not warm the cockles of my Ashton Kutcher-disliking heart.

Triumphing over all — at least until next weeks return of Indiana Jones — “Iron Man” continues to evade missiles in the #2 spot with well over $31 million — it’s racked up a terrific $222,485,000 in only three weeks, and that’s just the domestic take. I saw “Iron Man” last night, as it happens, and it’s nice to know that a mix of solid storytelling, laughs mixed with dead serious subtext, an enjoyable romance and, of course, plenty of story-based thrills (even if somewhat muffed in the final act, partially because of a less than compelling main villain) still can add up to big dollars, on occasion.

Meanwhile in Indiewood… Box-Office Mojo has mysteriously cut back on the amount of information this week to only the top 35 pictures (trying to boost premium memberships?), but I can still glean a few nuggets.

One is that director Tom McCarthy deserves a nod of congratulation for getting his low-key, small-scale drama, “The Visitor,” into this weekend’s top ten while playing in only 224 theaters. The film has been out for some six weeks now and our plaudits to Overture Films for giving this film the kind of slow, steady release it needs. Meanwhile, we won’t even tell you how the too-quickly released “Redbelt” has fared, despite being a solid enough, violentized update of the fun but creaky chestnut, “Golden Boy.” Also, both the Francophile-friendly thriller “Roman de Gare” and the kid-power opus “Son of Rambow” continue to do solid business.

Sadly, according to an article in yesterday’s L.A. Times, “solid” may no longer be good enough, thanks to the possible spread of the vicious home-run mentality that is slowly rotting mainstream Hollywood to smaller indie films as well, where even an epic drama about the violent and sexually charged life of a figure from history who remains both immensely popular (at least on t-shirts) and controversial forty years after his death (Steve Soderbergh’s “Che”) is having a hard time finding a distributor at Cannes. If some folks have their way, all indie films will soon be “My Big Fat Little Miss Pregnancy.”

Still, even with B.O. Mojo getting all stingy on us, at least Variety was kind enough to let us know of the very strong performance (roughly $15,000 per screen) in just three theaters of Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s critically lauded “Reprise,” a narratively adventurous coming of age film and just the kind of production that’s in real danger of complete marginalization. No surprise that it would be a dark horse, but if even an over the top, zany slapstick spy spoof like “OSS 117: Cairo – Nest of Spies” is considered marginal fare on the freakin’ art house circuit, there indeed may be trouble ahead. Ironic that, just as Americans are growing more comfortable with subtitles, the whole market for movies of any language that are something other than “filmed deals” may be drying up for a time.