Category: Movie Dramas (Page 176 of 188)

Multiplex Mayhem: “My PG-13 Kung-Fu Defeats All R-Rated Comedy!”

April 20, 2008 /

Oof! Once again, my sorry prognostication skills are naked before the world. Fortunately for me, it’s not like anyone really expects me to eat William Shatner’s toupee. I mean, it’s not like I could actually obtain the thing — he still needs it for “Boston Legal.” (I’m damn glad I didn’t suggest Tony Curtis’s apparently retired piece.)

So, quickly forgetting my ignoble defeat, let us move to the cold, hard numbers from the number crunchers of Box Office Mojo….

* “The Forbidden Kingdom” earned a healthy $20,870,000 at some 3,151 cinema dojos, more than doubling both Jet Li and Jackie Chan’s most recent vehicles, with the exception of the still powerful (for some reason) “Rush Hour” franchise. Considering the international appeal of the its stars and subject matter, this one seems on-track to make a healthy profit for its relatively modest rumored budget of $55 million. (Considering Chan and Li’s fame, one has to imagine they’re taking a lot of their compensation on “the back end.” $55 million would barely pay for the vegan lunch of two similarly powerful Hollywood heavyweights.)

*”Forgetting Sarah Marshall” was remembered by enough filmgoers to net $17, 348,000 on just under 2,800 screens. (And, no, it didn’t beat “Kingdom” on per screen averages either, earning $6,200 to the fight-fest’s $6,623.) Relative to it’s $30 million budget — which is low by current studio movie standards but still strikes me as somewhat inflated for a non star-driven, non-effects-laden comedy — it’s doing just fine, but nowhere near the bonanza of “Superbad,” which had about six months of buzz, an odd sort of star power from its three unknown leads, and the world’s most relatable premise for the prime moviegoing demographic of hormonally-challenged males and the hormonally-challenged of heart.

* “88 Minutes,” this weekend’s critically reviled, geriatricly pitched, Al Pacino starrer, did badly and failed to make it into third place. (That honor went to last weekend’s top film, the PG-13 slasher remake “Prom Night“). Still, it did better than you might think, netting some $6,800,000 from unsuspecting adults easily lulled by a familiar name and a premise that dates back to 1950. Whoo-ha.

* “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” was booked into 1,052 theaters — as far as I know, a post-“Fahrenheit 9/11” record for any documentary. Despite some controversy, the buzz on this doc — which only got two Tomatometer-adjudged “fresh” reviews, including a mild endorsement from Mark Moring of Christianity Today — was basically non-existent, though it was able get positive blurbs from Christian far-right heavyweights James Dobson and Pat Robertson, as well as lousy film critic turned annoying rightwing radio host Michael Medved. Presumably a mostly conservative evangelical audience was able to put $3,153,000 in the collection plate, and a not horrible per screen average of just under $3,000. Nevertheless, it looks like the Beast (aka Michael Moore) remains by far the king of the documentary box-office.

*This is especially true as the liberal heir apparent to the Beast’s throne of first-person filmmaking, Morgan Spurlock, failed to make much of a dent in arthouses with “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden” which had a pretty dismal opening weekend with a per-screen average of only $1,401 in 102 theaters and a grand total of $143,000. It did, however, manage to beat a truly low profile — so low it can’t be found on Rotten Tomatoes — but possibly not horrible horror flick called “Pathology” which did find it’s way into fifty theaters this week, but perhaps not for long. Mr. Disgusting likes the film, but smells a rat at MGM….

Action Movies, Actors, Actresses, Documentaries, External Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, News

Multiplex Mayhem: Romantic Shtick vs. Middle-Aged Martial Arts

April 18, 2008 /

I know I may live to regret this, but….


* If “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” is not the #1 movie this weekend, I’ll eat William Shatner’s toupee. This latest, strongly reviewed, entry from the Judd Apatow hit factory is pretty much made for a weekend like this. It’s got what appears to be more than enough raunch to entice males as well as sufficient romantic appeal to lure female moviegoers — and everyone likes to laugh. With great buzz and a some very funny trailers, I don’t see how this one loses.

Even if its star and screenwriter, Jason Segel, isn’t the most well known or charismatic member of the Apatow clan, he’s a familiar face from his popular sitcom, “How I Met Your Mother.” It’s also got “Superbad” boy Jonah Hill, “That 70’s Show” star and frequent “Robot Chicken” voice Mila Kunis, and, most of all, Kristin Bell, of “Heroes” and “Veronica Mars.” Bell is both enormously versatile, extremely funny, and one of the most talented young actresses working. She is also enormously hot in a bikini. Having her in the title role can’t be a bad thing.

On the other hand, Variety indicates I’d better start figuring out what brand of beer best washes down a thirty year old toupee, because apparently “Marshall” isn’t “tracking” all that amazingly well, which would scare me if I understood what “tracking” actually meant. (Blogger Jedboy tried to explain it awhile back, which basically comes down to a way to quantify the unquantifiable thing we call “buzz” — it frankly sounds like a lot of overpriced hocus pocus to me, but then I’m sort of genetically predisposed to hate this stuff.)

Maybe straight males are scared of having to look out at Jason Segel’s genitalia for an entire scene. It’s funny how guys who don’t mind watching people being hideously tortured for an hour at a time run screaming from the thought of looking at a penis, but there you go. Also, of course, the fact that this film is ranking as the most well-reviewed Apatow flick since “Superbad” means absolutely nothing because, you know, quality means absolutely nothing. And, of course, the R-rated comedy will have some strong, PG-13 competition from our next intriguing entry. I’m starting to worry.

*”The Forbidden Kingdom” is, in international terms, the biggest cinematic summit meeting since Pacino and De Niro had the ultimate filmic power lunch in “Heat.” Martial arts superstars Jackie Chan and Jet Li are both getting older and therefore, like all athletes, less capable than before of the sort of stunning feats of astonishing grace and agility that they both exhibited back when they were mostly making their best Cantonese language extravaganzas. Teaming them is a canny means of compensating for that problem commercially and should work well enough to make the film very profitable internationally. Though it’s getting somewhat mixed reviews, the fight scenes are reportedly strong and the scenes around it at least somewhat engaging — which is all the fans really demand. “The Forbidden Kingdom” is certain to do very well, but I still think that R-rated laughs still have a broader appeal than even PG-13 martial arts, but then I’m not paying attention to the mighty power of tracking.

*Whatever happens, I think we can safely assume that the new Al Pacino thriller, “88 Minutes” will be enormously lucky to come in a poor third and will likely land much lower down in the top ten. Pacino’s fans are largely the kind of old fogies who might actually pay attention to reviews, and with a dismal 11% “Fresh” rating and word that it was apparently held back for some time, this one really smells like a giant size turkey and is providing fodder for critics’ quipping skills, never a good sign. On the other hand, one of the very few critics to like it, and especially Pacino’s performance, is the venerable Andrew Sarris, so that should be a salve to the egos of Mr. Pacino and director Jon Avnet, if not to the nerves of studio accountants.

Meanwhile in Indiewood….Several pictures that almost define the term “off kilter” open in limited release this weekend, including two poorly reviewed comedy docs coming from different ends of the political spectrum. “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” featuring conservative op-ed writer turned dead-pan movie comic Ben Stein making an argument that there is an academic conspiracy against so-called intelligent design, has so far scored only scored one positive review on the RT Meter. Where are those titans of right-leaning movie criticism, Michael Medved, Kyle Smith, and Box-Office MoJo’s egregious Scott Holleran, when you need them? No doubt hoping to get at least some of the dollars that fundies have been holding back since the release of “The Passion of the Christ,” this comedy documentary is opening in over a thousand theaters, apparently hoping for Michael Moore numbers on its first weekend. Stein can be funny, but I don’t see this making “Sicko” money.

Meanwhile, Morgan “Super Size Me” Spurlock’s new film made a thud on the festival circuit and with most critics. There’s no reason to expect much at the 102 theaters it’s opening in, but the title “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?” has some innate interest and our own Jason Zingale had a few nice things to say about it.

And finally, just because we are who we are here at Premium Hollywood, I must mention “Zombie Strippers” which at least has gotten some decent reviews and stars Robert “Freddy Kruger” Englund and Jenna “Porn Star” Jameson. Guys like zombies; guys like strippers; guys like Freddy; guys like porn stars. There would seem to be a market.

Action Movies, Actors, Actresses, Documentaries, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas

Mulitplex Mayhem: Case Closed

April 13, 2008 /

So, once again, my optimistic world view is crushed. Last time, I guessed, against conventional wisdom but a bit cautiously, that audiences would take an apparently so-so action film with some good dialog and (mostly) good actors, if not good acting, over an almost certainly weak entry in the ongoing spate of PG-13 horror films that no one over thirteen seems to like.

I was wrong, oh, so wrong. As the good folks at Box Office Mojo demonstrate, “Prom Night” seriously outperformed the last non-pre-screened horror film, “The Ruins” and grabbed up some $22.7 million over the weekend, perhaps partially aided by the unseasonably hot weather out here on the west to some degree. In any case, audiences didn’t seem to hold a spate of recent PG-13 horror remakes against “Prom Night” — presumably because it wasn’t based on a Japanese ghost story from the last few years, but an R-rated American slasher film from when Jamie Lee Curtis was playing teenagers.

“Street Kings,” on the other hand, soaked up an anemic $12 million, just barely edging out “21,” which continues to perform so well at a healthy $11 million that I feel not quite insane in my suggestion that it actually had a shot at winning this rather lame weekend. At least “21” appears to have an interesting story, so the world might not be ending, even if the weather makes it feel as if it is.

“Smart People,” as expected did pretty blah (or perhaps “bleah”) business, with a rather sad $4.2 million in just over 1,100 theaters.

As for the indies, the drama “The Visitor” opened strong with a $22,000 per screen average in four theaters. The senior-centric comedic documentary “Young@Heart” opened with a reasonably spry, if not quite exuberant, $13,000 average in the same number of theaters.

Kind of an uninspiring week all around, but next week promises to be a bit more fun, with a buzzworthy new release from the Judd Apatow gag-factory and with a cinematic summit meeting of martial arts titans Jet Li and Jackie Chan. Let’s hope there’s not a whole lot of CGI action. I don’t think martial arts fans are wanting another “Bullet Proof Monk.”

Actors, Actresses, Horror Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, News

Multiplex Mayhem: The Preliminary Invesigation

April 11, 2008 /

A sorry weekend seems to be in store at America’s mainstream mansions of mass entertainment this week. So sorry, in fact, that a movie nobody seems to particularly care for, the youth-oriented gambling drama, “21,” has a chance of staying at the #1 spot for a third week, but more likely not.

*”Street Kings” has an okay shot at the #1 spot this week. In fact, until I looked a bit more closely at the reviews (including our own David Medskar’s ho-hum take) and the writing credits, I thought this one showed some promise of being be a pretty strong piece of entertainment, despite the often problematic nature of its star, Keanu Reeves. What excited me was that this film is the screenwriting debut of one of my favorite novelists, James Ellroy. Ellroy’s work has, with the exception of “L.A. Confidential,” pretty much defied decent movie adaptations up to now, particularly in Brian DePalma’s highly regrettable adaptation of perhaps my all-time favorite detective novel, “The Black Dahlia.” So, why not give the Demon Dog of American Letters the chance to come up with something original. Since “Training Day” had a bit of an Ellroy feeling to it with Denzel Washington‘s humorously charismatic bad cop, the choice of director David Ayers, not a great director by any means but an efficient storyteller, made sufficient sense.

Also, an unusually strong supporting cast would seem to help, including a couple of personal favorites — Oscar winner (and fellow Daniel Webster Junior High alum) Forrest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie (“House” to most, charming twit Bertie Wooster and ultra-twit Prince Regent from “Blackadder” to BBC America fans and me), plus Jay Mohr and Cedric the Entertainer, who just seem to make sense in this context…I’d love to hear those guys enunciating some of Ellroy’s poetic, blood-spattered profanity. But, with his original screenplay rewritten by two other credited writers, the reviews are not discussing dialogue that snaps, crackles and pops like it comes from Satan’s own furnace, just another average-to-below-average violence-packed thriller that, at least, doesn’t sound like it’s extremely boring. The bar is set awfully low right now, and this one might just jump over it.

* But the smart money at both Variety and the Hollywood Reporter says I’m wrong about “Street Kings.” (Okay, I’m not all that smart and if I was into money, do you think I’d be doing this?) It’s entirely likely this weekend will be won by another in a recent string of review-protected horror flicks, this one a remake of a a movie that wasn’t all that much liked the first time around, “Prom Night.” (The original was a “Halloween” follow-up with Jamie Lee Curtis and Leslie Nielson back when people thought he took this stuff seriously.) The trick here is that this a slasher film that’s rated PG-13, which strikes me as a bit wrong, like showing the pre-sex intros from a gonzo porn film to twelve year boys. Still, while “wrong” often works in show bidness, there has been a glut of horror, both PG-13 and R, lately. Without some real buzz behind it, “Prom Night” may pleasantly disappoint.

*No one’s expecting very much commercially from this week’s semi-indie Fox-Searchlight dark comedy, “Smart People.” With a strong cast led by Dennis Quaid, Thomas Haden Church, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Ellen Page, the set-up and casting — which has Quaid as a recently widowed, ultra-elitist academic dealing with a dysfunctional family and a new girlfriend (Parker) — has resonances with recent “small” hits like “Juno,” “The Squid and the Whale” and “Sideways.” However, even though Bullz-Eye’s Jason Zingale liked it a bit more than most, I think he’d agree this one has nothing like the buzz that accompanied those. Almost always, this kind of picture needs to be seen as unusually good to succeed, and I’m definitely not getting that here.

In fact, the reviews, can get pretty negative, but one did remind me of a grammatical fine point I’d become hazy on. Here’s what Rick Groen of Canada’s Globe and Mail said:

Here, trouble starts early when the rumpled academic in question – Lawrence, the widowed English prof tilling the fields of Victorian literature – is heard misusing the word “loan” as a verb.

I’m embarrassed to admit this took me a second. Yes, it’s not “I’ll loan you the money.” It’s “I’ll lend you the money.” After all, the soon to be Hamlet-stabbed Polonius didn’t advise Laertes, “Neither a borrower nor a loaner be.” A good reminder.

Meanwhile in Indiewood….I’m happy to say, things are looking much more interesting on the arthouse side of things this week. The big indie this week may be “The Visitor,” the new film from writer-director Tom McCarthy — creator of the 2003 Sundance hit, “The Station Agent,” which made Peter Dinklage a household name…well, assuming your household is in Santa Monica or Tribeca.

Anyhow, when I went to Sundance with a bunch of critics for another website, one of my cohorts reported writing the phrase “unlikely friendship” in four separate reviews. And so, like its predecessor, “The Visitor” is a star-free tale of an unlikely friendship, this time between an depressed professor and a young immigrant couple. On the strength of McCarthy’s prior film, I’m wiling to say this one is worth a look and may do some decent business with older filmgoers seeking gentle but smart fair.

Other than that, most of the action is on the documentary front. By far the most high profile doc with solid critical buzz is “Young@Heart,” about a senior citizen’s chorus dealing with a repertoire that includes the words of Sonic Youth, the Clash, James Brown, and Coldplay. Speaking of buzz, but showing up in only four theaters, is “Super High Me,” a film which takes pothead comedian Doug Benson and gives him the Morgan Spurlock treatment. Aside from appearances by such comic luminaries as Sarah Silverman, Bob Odenkirk, and Patton Oswalt, I’m mentioning this one because it’s directed by a guy who played the straight man in this great comedy short a few years back.

I maybe shouldn’t, because it’s only playing at New York’s Film Forum, but I can’t resist bringing up the mega-Freudian documentary “Stalags,” about pornographic Israeli novels, which started popping up during the 1961 trial of German Holocaust planner Adolph Eichmann. The subject of this porn: Nazi she-wolves administering what we’d now call “enhanced interrogation techniques” (nudge nudge wink wink) to brave British and American soldiers. Let me repeat, these books were written and consumed by Israelis. I’m also plugging the well-reviewed documentary “Bra Boys,” about Australian surfing hooligans. If I don’t, narrator Russell Crowe might beat the crap out of me.

Action Movies, Actors, Actresses, Documentaries, External Movies, Horror Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, News, Reviews

Multiplex Mayhem, Post Game Edition

April 6, 2008 /

Okay, so this is more like what I expected…me being wrong.

On Friday, I went with the supposedly smart money and prognosticated that the star-driven, retro-sports romcom, “Leatherheads” would win the weekend. Sadly, like the good people at Variety, I underestimated the appeal of pretty people gambling and perhaps overestimated the power of over-40 stars to draw young audiences. And so, as per this weekend’s studio estimate, it turns out that “21” has managed to hang on to the top spot with a less than spectacular $15.1 million return.

For the #2 spot, it turns out we have a photo finish. As per the estimates linked to above, “Leatherheads” managed $13,485,000 while, in a somewhat surprising turn, the apparently pretty lame family picture “Nim’s Island” grossed $13,300,000. So close are the two films’ grosses, in fact, the big V’s Pamela Mcclintock warns us that we may have a reversal in store and the queen of schadenfreude, the one they call Nikki Finke, using different numbers, promises as much, reporting that Hollywood insiders are “aghast” that George Clooney can no longer “open” a film. I presume, therefore George is subject to immediate banishment to the island of misfit toys. (She also chooses to make the reviews for the film sound even more disappointing than they were by using the Rotten Tomatoes “Cream of the Crop” rating, which selects only reviews by “Top Critics” — a designation that includes only the best known critics from the largest outlets.) To me, all this portends is that, these days, getting people over thirty or forty into a movie theater has a higher bar. Multiplexes have become increasingly hostile surroundings for non-teens, and there’s no doubt that Clooney’s films skew to an older audience. I mean, isn’t he like 75 or something now? At least Ms. Finke and I seem to agree that reviews actually do matter for some films.

Meanwhile, “Horton Hears a Who” is hanging on quite nicely in the fourth spot. As the first Dr. Seuss-based feature to not cause parents and some children to run screaming into the night, I guess that’s no more a surprise than the “soft” $7,840,00 for the unreviewed horror flick, “The Ruins“.

In other news, “Superhero Movie” isn’t doing great, but at the #6 spot, it’s doing better than it probably deserves. Also, “Under the Same Moon” may not quite be “My Big Fat Undocumented Tearjerker” after all. It made the #12 spot, but its grosses have finally begun a modest decline even after expanding into 47 more theaters.

And there may be more disappointing news for fans of quality movies with perhaps more appeal to the middle-aged set. “Shine a Light” opened on 273 screens, many of them IMAX, extracting about $1.5 million from Rolling Stones fans. It’s per screen average of $5,474 sounds okay — it’s just a couple hundred shy of the per-screen of “21” — but IMAX theaters typically charge about five dollars more per ticket and may often have more seats available than other screens. I know I’m new at this, and I may be missing something, but it looks like the film might not be hitting expectations. On the other hand, this kind of release pattern allows time for word of mouth to have an impact, so there’s still hope.

AND IN INDIEWOOD…. There’s hope here as well, as two crossover films by arty Asians did strong business in very limited release, netting by far the highest per-screen averages of any films this week. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s remake/expansion of a French children’s classic, “The Flight of the Red Balloon” grabbed a paltry sounding $37,000 — but did it on two screens only. Wong Kar-Wai’s Norah Jones’s starring “My Blueberry Nights” had a per-screen average of over $12,000 on six screens, more than double that of “21.”

And, finally, totally ignoring a very sound Bullz-Eye review, according to the Hollywood Reporter some people are seeing the John Lennon assassination drama “Chapter 27” anyway. It has managed to eke out an acceptable per screen average in nine theaters, and has netted $34,377. Hey, folks, it’s your money.

Actors, Actresses, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, News

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