Review: Mirror Mirror (2012) is lifeless and drab, a poor-man's Ella Enchanted.

Mirror Mirror
2012
106 minutes
rated PG

by Scott Mendelson

The good news is that Tarsem Singh's Mirror Mirror is nowhere near as obnoxiously zany and aggressively annoying as the trailers seem to suggest.  Frankly, the most eye-rolling moments of the marketing campaign aren't even in the movie, and I'd be hard-pressed to name more than a few pop-culture references over modern-anachronisms.  And the film is surprisingly nonchalant about gender, presenting a heroine and  female villain whose respective strengths and flaws have little to do with their gender.  But the film is strangely immobile throughout, feeling less like a cinematic experience than an overlong stage-play with expensive costumes and occasionally well-constructed sets.  Every scene goes on too long and every performer seems too tired to give it their all.  When the first trailer dropped, I derisively compared its apparent tone to the live-action Cat in the Hat.  As horrible as that film is, Mirror Mirror could have used some of its boundless energy.


The plot concerns the Snow White legend, more or less.  Orphaned by a mother who died in childbirth and a father who disappeared when she was just eight, Snow White (Lily Collins) lives with her 'wicked stepmother' in the royal castle.  The wicked stepmother (Julia Roberts) has made herself queen and squandered the kingdom's finances for lavish and selfish purposes.  On her eighteenth-birthday, Snow White finally musters the courage to venture outside the castle walls where she discovers that the queen has left her kingdom in disrepair.  The people are starving due to continued taxation and Ms. White vows to convince a visiting prince (Armie Hammer) to use his standing army to topple the queen and restore her own rightful and just place on the thrown.  Yes, there are 'dwarves' too, but they are this time represented as bandits who eventually decide to stop stealing for their own selfish desires and instead do it Robin Hood-style.

The film's politics are arguably open for interpretation.  If you're a Democrat, you'll see the Queen's lavish and selfish spending sprees and its resulting economic disaster as a metaphor for George W. Bush.  But the apparent evil of taxation is so emphasized that the Grover Norquists of the world will merely read it as a Libertarian parable (Ridley Scott's Robin Hood had the same issue, where its W. Bush metaphor was read as a pro-Tea Party rebellion picture).  Interpretations aside, the film suffers from a distinct lack of verve.  It has lush and gorgeous costumes, but most of the sets are relatively unimaginative and/or lacking in a variety of colors.  And while the acting is never-less-than-convincing, everyone seems to be playing it not for high camp or even high-energy, but as a muted and realistic period drama.  Lily Collins, Arnie Hammer, even Julia Roberts rarely rise above polite conversational volumes.  I'm all for low-key when it's appropriate, but this is a seemingly kid-friendly fairy-tale adventure where all of the players act like they just came off one of those five-hour energy shots two hours early. Of course how much of this is the fault of the actors and the director is open to debate, as the film is among one of the laziest editing jobs I've seen in a major feature in quite some time. Every scene plays too long and too slow, with the picture playing less like a cinematic feature than a poorly-blocked play. All of this has a cumulative effect of draining the energy and life out of the film.

 This is a shame because the film does avoid certain pitfalls. While the trailers played up the whole age vs. beauty meme, Julia Roberts still looks gorgeous and her villainy or unattractiveness is never connected to her age or her gender. The prince prefers Snow White because she is kind and flirtatiously sweet, while Roberts's queen is patently rude, snide, and openly power-hungry to the point of mass cruelty. And the film never treats the idea of a strong/independent Snow White as a big deal, as Collins's passivity is clearly due to forced isolation rather than any gender expectations. Once she gains her freedom, empowerment (fueled by wanting to save her now-destitute subjects) comes naturally. While Collins is indeed a knock-out, the film never implies that Roberts is some haggard old crone unworthy of love and happiness. At the end of the day, the fact that the hero and the villain are both women is all-but-irrelevant to the arc of the story.

Still, what Mirror Mirror does right cannot counter-balance what amounts to a stunningly dull and near-lifeless presentation. The film fails as a visual treat, a lively family-friendly adventure, a comic romp, or any of its other apparent goals. The best I can say is that it contains nothing that will bother or upset even the youngest children, which is perhaps noteworthy in a time when everything live-action is PG-13 and even PG-rated animated features are often too intense for younger kids. But when the best I can offer is what it doesn't have or what mistakes it doesn't make, that's not saying much at all. The underrated and under-seen Ella Enchanted covered much of the same territory with far more aplomb, and I cannot recommend it highly enough as a substitute.  My four-year old daughter claims she liked Mirror Mirror, but I honestly think she didn't want to hurt my feelings. She didn't laugh once.  I'm sure she'll enjoy Ella Enchanted.

 Grade: C-

Life after Batman. Ten movies worth anticipating after The Dark Knight Rises.

I've opined here and there about how, to put it bluntly, there isn't much left on the immediate horizon that gives me the kind of anticipation that can remotely equal the kind of 'must-see chills' that I felt for The Dark Knight and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II.  With Chris Nolan's Batman saga ending in July, it brings a certain moment of reflection in regards to my would-be fandom.  To paraphrase LA Confidential, my would-be film fanaticism started with Batman.  Perhaps that's as good a place as any for it to end.  But for the moment, and in the name of eternal optimism, here are a list of ten films that are scheduled for release after the July 20th debut of The Dark Knight Rises that have most peaked my interest.  They don't include every major release that I'm remotely interested in, but these stuck out as ones that I'm genuinely eager to sample for one reason or another.  In order of release date:


Alex Cross (October 26th, 2012)
When my wife and/or I complain about the dearth of mid-budget/star-driven thrillers, we're basically referring to films like Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider.  While said sub-genre has made a most welcome comeback in the last two years, it is still nice to see that the James Patterson franchise has been revived, if only because there are so many novels that can be used for source material in crafting melodramatic 'super hero' detective yarns.  Perhaps the last ten years of sensationalized television crime dramas has negated the need for this kind of big-screen franchise (Criminal Minds is basically James Patterson meets Justice League), but I haven't given up on big-screen genre.  As for the film's controversial casting decision, that also inspires genuine curiosity.  Come what may, Tyler Perry *can* act, he has something to prove, and I like the idea of the unknown.  Point being, we all have a pretty good idea how Idris Elba would have played Mr. Cross (think Luther).  But I have absolutely no idea what Tyler Perry will do with the role.  And that is frankly exciting.

Skyfall (November 9th, 2012)
I suppose I could paraphrase James Earl Jones's 'baseball' speech from the climax of Field of Dreams with 'James Bond'.  "This series... this character... it's a part of our past, Ray."  Anyway, a new 007 adventure will always be cause for excitement, and the Daniel Craig entries have done a fine job of balancing smaller, character-driven stories with the sort of larger-than-life action that this franchise all-but invented.  I like Quantum of Solace more than most, as I find its politically-relevant narrative and morose character beats compensate for some choppy action editing.  I'm not the biggest fan of Sam Mendes, and I find his selection a bit too similar to Marc Forrester the last time around, but Bond is and always will be Bond.  The cast is superb, with Craig and Judi Dench being joined by Ralph Fiennes, Albert Finney, Javier Bardem, and Naomie Harris.   Come what may, "James Bond has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again."  But fifty years after Dr. No, if you build it, people will most definitely come.

Les Misérables (December 14th, 2012)
This is my favorite Broadway musical, bar none.  It's not a 'daring' or 'unconventional' choice, but I still know most of the lyrics by heart.  So yes, the idea of a star-filled big-budget film version of my favorite show has indeed filled me with the sort of anticipation usually reserved for the continuing adventures of Bruce Wayne.  The film has been obscenely well-cast, with old-school song & dance pros like Hugh Jackman, Amanda Seyfried, and Anne Hathaway (watch Ella Enchanted if you doubt her musical chops) joining less conventional picks like Russell Crowe, Helena Bonham Carter, and Sacha Baron Cohen (the latter two did just fine with Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd).  And just for good measure, director Tom Hopper plucked Samantha Barks straight from the stage to reprise Éponine.  There isn't a Gerald Butler in the bunch, and hopefully Hopper won't pull a Chris Columbus and cut out huge chunks of the second act, ala 2005's Rent.  My wife actually hates this show, but then she loves White Chicks and Batman & Robin.  The rest of her family (my in-laws, my sister-in-law, etc) will probably want to see this.  That's fine, Wendy can watch the kids.

Django Unchained (December 25th, 2012)
I'm not the world's biggest Jamie Fox fan.  I found his Oscar-winning performance in Ray to be a few notches above Saturday Night Live-mimicry (same goes for Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady, natch).  So while I wish Will Smith had indeed signed on for this one, the project itself seems like a surefire winner.  Quentin Tarantino's foray into westerns is exciting enough, let alone one that directly deals with that pesky slavery issue in a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Christoph Waltz, Kerry Washington, Anthony LaPaglia, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  This promises to be another larger-than-life jaunt that plays with how we view real-life through a cinematic prism, while delivering the kind of old-school 'movie making' that seems to be in short supply these days.

Now You See Me (January 18th, 2013)
In an age where it feels like every newly announced project is a reboot, remake, or unrequested sequel (cough-Triplets-cough), this one earns its place on the list mostly through having a great original concept.  Louis Leterrier (who also has something to prove, after getting screwed by studio interference on both The Incredible Hulk and Clash of the Titans) helms this thriller concerning a team of magicians who use their skills to rob banks right in the middle of their on-stage performances. Neat.  This one has a great cast too, with Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Isla Fischer, and both Michael Caine *and* Morgan Freeman coming to play (will they flip a coin to decide whether Caine or Freeman narrates the trailer?).  I know little about the film other than the premise and the cast, but this sounds on paper like oodles of fun.

After Earth (June 7th, 2013)
This is it.  This Will Smith/Jaden Smith vehicle is the last chance for M. Night Shyamalan to prove that his early triumphs weren't some kind of fluke.  The helmer of two of the best movies of the last fifteen years (The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable) has fallen into a pit so deep that perhaps not even the biggest movie star in the world can pull him out.  As I wrote when the project was first announced, I am hopeful that Shaymalan will benefit from again having someone above him to tell him 'No' when required, and Smith will benefit with Shyamalan's once sure-hand with actors (he is responsible for any number of career high turns - Bruce Willis, Toni Collette, Mel Gibson, Paul Giamatti, etc prior to The Happening).  At this point I talk about M. Night Shyamalan the way Luke Skywalker and/or Padme Amidala talked about Anakin Skywalker at the end of their respective Star Wars trilogies.  I know there is still talent and potential there... somewhere beneath the hubris.  We never got that last great album from Michael Jackson before his premature demise three years ago.  I still have faith that M. Night Shyamalan has at least a couple more gems left.  

Man of Steel (June 14th, 2013)
Unlike many of you here, I like Zack Snyder.  I've vigorously defended the intellectually-challenging Sucker Punch and was impressed by the character-driven Dawn of the Dead remake and the visually stunning and potently anti-war Legends of the Guardians.  As for Watchmen, there are moments of beauty, especially in the first third and Patrick Wilson's star turn, and it's perhaps the best possible Watchmen movie that could have been made.  I'm not a fan of 300, but that's probably as much to due with Frank Miller's source material as the film itself.  We know Snyder can do the kind of big-scale action that has largely been absent from super hero pictures, and we know he can focus on character when its required.  With Chris Nolan's guiding hand, a truly terrific cast (Henry Cavill, Russell Crowe, Amy Adams, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Michael Shannon, Lawrence Fishburne, Chris Meloni, Richard Schiff, etc) and all signs pointing to the superb Superman: Birthright as the source material, there is no reason not to at least hope that this is the epic and socially-relevant Superman movie we've been waiting for over the last 30 years.

Red 2 (August 2nd, 2013)  
The original Red was a narrative mess that barely coasted on its terrific cast and amusing premise.  I still love the idea of older character actors playing in the action/thriller sandbox, so interest was piqued when Summit hired the inexplicably unemployed Dean Parisot to helm the sequel.  Parisot directed one of the best comedies of the 1990s, and Galaxy Quest is a textbook example of how to successfully meld genre satire, character-development and sympathy, and action that has weight and consequence.  So yeah, this immediately becomes a likely contender for a sequel that far surpasses the original.  I don't know who is returning from the first go-around, although I hope they allow the dead characters to stay dead and make smart choices about who to add this time around.  I do have my own suggestions...

Phineas and Ferb: the Movie (August 26th, 2013)
Why didn't anyone tell me how awesome this cartoon is?  I had seen merchandise at Disneyland and had heard the theme song playing at the park, but my daughter's random curiosity allowed me to discover what its easily one of the coolest and smartest comedies currently airing.  The plot basically involves two step-brothers who get into crazy (and usually science-based) adventures over the summer while their disapproving older sister tries to 'bust them' (IE - clue in their parents to the antics).  Meanwhile, their pet platypus is secretly a covert spy who constantly battles a mad scientist who lives in the same city and constantly tries to bring ruin to the tristate area.  The premise is clever enough, but the writing is absolutely gangbusters, suggesting a sense of humor akin to The Emperor's New Groove.  My daughter has moved on to other cartoons, but I'm still hooked.  Anyway, I have no idea what Disney has in store for this apparent live-action/animation hybrid, and it could easily be something resembling the tragedy that is The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.  But the Mouse House, however floundering they are in regards to older-skewing live-action properties, has been nothing-but-caring and cautious when it comes to family fare.  And I too old to be excited about a Phineas and Ferb movie?  Yes, yes I am.  But don't judge me if you haven't sampled it.       

The Untitled Pixar Movie That Takes You Inside the Mind (May 30th, 2014)
Obviously this one is pretty much a blank slate save for the premise and release date, but the idea of Pixar playing around in the realm of human psychology is enough to sell me.  A token kudos for again including a female protagonist, suggesting that this summer's Brave isn't just a gimmick.  We'll know more about this one when we know more about this one, but for the moment I am officially intrigued by something that feels far outside the Pixar template.

And that's a wrap.  Yes, there are other big-studio films that are somewhat interesting (The Hobbit, a Shane Black-helmed Iron Man 3, etc), and yes there will always be festival surprises and indie treats that no one saw coming.  But the point is that there is indeed stuff to look forward to after Batman hangs up his cape this summer.  Now it's your turn to share what upcoming releases are most enticing?  What do you most look forward to after this summer?

Scott Mendelson

Dreamworks' Rise of the Guardians gets a generic trailer.

It's no secret that Dreamworks films often turn out to be far more complicated than their marketing campaigns might imply.  For example, Megamind's marketing didn't even hint at the jaw-dropping plot twist in the first twenty minutes, nor did it detail any of the major narrative turns in the third act or the 'must there be evil to co-exist with good?' subtext that made the movie more than just a gimmick.  And Kung Fu Panda 2's marketing sold easy-going comedy and stress-free action without hinting at the emotionally draining story at its core while Puss In Boots sold bawdy gags instead of trippy fairy-tale adventure.  So when I say this preview looks painfully generic, take it with a grain of salt.  But judging just what's on display, it's a little disheartening to see a fascinating idea (a look into the lives of the various holiday-themed creatures of our modern American mythology) and use them purely as a springboard for a conventional action picture (uh-oh, Santa Clause, Tooth Fairy, and the gang have to stop a random villain!).  Again, I'm hoping there is more to the story, even while I'll try to avoid as much spoiler information as possible.  It's no secret I hold Dreamworks Animation in very high regard, so I can only presume that they have something more up their sleave.  Rise of the Guardians opens on November 21st, which is a new release date (Thanksgiving weekend) for a Dreamworks cartoon.  As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson

Review: Wrath of the Titans (2012) mostly delivers the big-scale, cheesy matinee goods, in genuinely glorious 3D to boot.

Wrath of the Titans

2012
99 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Jonathan Liebesman's Wrath of the Titans is arguably about as 'good' as a movie called Wrath of the Titans can be expected to be.  It is convincingly acted by its principals, has a story that mostly makes sense, and has at least a few scenes of genuine visual enchantment.  I could complain that I wish it had more of what it does right (epic battles of humans versus gods, some wonderful set designs, Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes having a full-blown 'camp-out') and less of what it does wrong (an almost beside-the-point narrative, a relatively blank-slate supporting cast, generally useless attempts at character development), and clever readers will notice that I just did in an offhand fashion.  But the picture delivers the goods in ways that the Louis Leterrier original did not two years ago.  It is also clear that Warner Bros learned its lesson regarding cheap 3D-conversions.  While Clash of the Titans became the poster child for the evils of 3D-cash ins, Wrath of the Titans features some of the most impressive live-action 3D seen to date.  If you're actually going to spend money on something called Wrath of the Titans, it is honestly worth seeing in its 3D glory.  Of course, there is irony in me recommending something that works best as a cheap Saturday matinee in a format that makes it noticeably less cheap, but that's your conundrum.

I could go into the plot, but I imagine most of you don't care.  So all you need to know is that ten years have passed since Clash of the Titans, and Perseus (an absolutely committed Sam Worthington) is a single-father to a young son (poor Gemma Arterton was brought back to life in the epilogue of Clash of the Titans only to die offscreen here).  Anyway, various power-brokering between the various gods have once again threatened humanity, so Perseus reluctantly suits up to save the day.  That's pretty much the ballgame, although the picture takes a bit too long to get to that point.  As in the first film, the villains stupidly target Perseus directly, turning a reluctant warrior into a committed opponent.  But the plot is of course merely a clothesline to hang some large-scale action sequences and some genuinely eye-popping set designs.  As noted above, the film is indeed a visual marvel, and I'm especially partial to a gigantic labyrinth that leads to Tartarus.  It is indeed a splendid labyrinth, filled with traps and an ever-changing system of walkways, doors, and steps.  As for the action sequences, the focus is generally on Perseus's attempts at survival, so some of the cutting is a bit too close and tight for my tastes.  However, the larger the opponent, the wider Liebesman shoots and the longer her holds each shot.  Unlike the first film, which felt genuinely claustrophobic, this one feels more like a large-scale action fable, with the scope and scale to justify its obvious expense (I don't know the budget).

But almost as impressive as the visual oomph is the goofball acting provided by Ralph Fiennes, Liam Neeson, and one other elder statesman who I won't name since he wasn't mentioned in the advertising.  Neeson and Fiennes have an especially grand time, as they do more with more screen-time, culminating in a third act moment that is so absolutely absurd (yet strangely appropriate) that I almost wanted to applaud its sheer audacity.  Furthermore this film has a lighter touch than the last go-around, including a few moments that all-but mock the self-seriousness of the prior picture.  But the film's core flaw is that there just isn't enough of what is good in its brief 90 minutes+credits run time.  The film has a relatively incident-lite second act, and most of the gonzo fun is held for the climax.  I suppose we're supposed to care about Worthington's budding romance with warrior queen Andromeda (played by Alexa Davalos in the first film, but Rosamund Pike this time around), but I was turned off by another instance of 'revolving door of disposable female leads'.  And I suppose we should care about the various family turmoil among the Gods, but all of the Gods are such bastards (although Zues is more of a clear-cut good guy this time around) that I really don't have much sympathy.  Perhaps due to budgetary constraints or perhaps director Liebesman (who tries the same 'plausible authenticity in a fantastical scenario' trick that he attempted with Battle: Los Angeles and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning) and writers Dan Mazeau, David Johnson, and Greg Berlanti were trying to make a real movie, but the film feels occasionally restrained when it should be over-the-top.  Trying to make a 'real movie' is great when you deliver, but when you fail, you just make audiences angry because you wasted time that could have been spent with 1,000-foot tall wind monsters and the like.

Still, if one is going to buy a Saturday afternoon (or better yet, Saturday morning before noon) ticket to Wrath of the Titans, one will indeed get their money's worth, even in its pricier 3D format.  Like a lot of near-misses, it's just good enough to make me wish it was truly great.  But the actors are having fun, the film is gorgeous to look at, and the picture delivers enough big-scale action and moments of eye candy to justify your time and expense.  Wrath of the Titans isn't quite 'good', but it delivers most of what it promises and generally justifies its existence as silly big-scale B-movie fun.

Grade: C+            

Question of the day: Why *isn't* Twilight's Bella Swan a feminist creation?

In a classical sense, FEMINISM is defined as believing that women should have the same rights, freedoms, choices, privileges, and benefits as men in a civilized society.  Under that relatively general definition, I would argue most rational people, men and women, would classify themselves as 'feminist'.  In my eye, the feminist ideal is not one where women constantly make the 'correct' moral and/or professional decisions or choices that further their own independence, but merely that they have the freedom to do so if they so desire.  So I ask the question, why exactly is the Twilight Saga inherently anti-feminist?  I'm speaking merely to the movies and not the books, but as the series has unfolded, it's primarily been about one thing: Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) relentlessly pursuing a singular goal, to be in a long-term relationship with Edward Cullen, no matter what obstacle or constructive criticism is hurled her way.  We may not agree with Bella's choice in men, but as I've written before (HERE), I'm not entirely sure the films agree with her either.  Moreover, if feminism is about having the choice to, as a woman, live your life as you see fit, isn't her dogged pursuit of Mr. Cullen inherently feminist by virtue of it being absolutely Bella's choice?

Bella is not the only female in the Twilight Saga, something which critics of the series would do well to notice when discussing why the series has such a strong female following.  Even if we disapprove of Bella's 'throw your life away for a guy' mentality, she is not the only example of womanhood on display.  At the very least, we have Bella's school-age friends, who operate as an alternative to what a teenage girl can do with her life after high school.  Hell, Anna Kendrick's Jessica openly rebuts Bella's seemingly close-minded choice, both indirectly in her graduation speech in Twilight Saga: Eclipse, and directly in the opening reel of Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part I when she wonders out-loud why an 18-year old girl would get married if she weren't already pregnant.  And nearly every human and human/wolf spends pretty much the entirety of the first four films basically telling Bella *not* to run off with that brooding guy she met in her high school biology class (even if Taylor Lautner's Jacob has obviously selfish motivations).  Even Edward himself seems to be trying to talk Bella out of it right up to the night before the wedding.

But no matter where the films stand on Bella's choices throughout the Twilight Saga, they are absolutely presented as 'her choices'.  It is her choice to make a life with Edward, it is her choice to allow herself to be turned into a vampire, it is her choice to refuse to terminate her unborn fetus when it directly threatens her life.  Slight digression, but much of the talk regarding the most recent film has discussed its apparent value as anti-abortion propaganda But said pundits missed the fact that being pro-choice isn't about women choosing abortions but merely about women having access to a legal and safe abortion if they so choose.  Moreover, during that middle hour of the fourth film, Bella is pretty much the only character in the film who doesn't want to terminate the pregnancy, so if we (the moviegoers) disagree with that decision, we're hardly alone or demonized for our opinions.  Moreover, the whole scenario can be read as a young woman rebutting the men in her life who want to tell her what to do about her body.  Also of note, the big fear is that this human/vampire hybrid baby will kill her during the pregnancy and um, Bella indeed dies, so those who favor terminating the pregnancy end up having a point.

Regardless of Breaking Dawn's take on abortion, feminism is not about forcing women to choose an independent path but merely giving women the choice to make that informed decision.  For example it's no more just to shame women who choose to be stay-at-home mothers as 'betraying themselves' than it is to condemn working mothers as doing some kind of harm to her family unit.  We debate back and forth about what is the 'correct' decision for today's women without realizing that feminism is not about the choice that one woman or another makes but merely the fact that she has that choice.  Bella Swan is a fully-functional and intelligent young woman who makes a fully-formed decision about her life.  We may disagree with that choice and may say that said decision makes her a poor role model for young women (that's a debate for a different day), but why exactly is Bella an anti-feminist character?  Feminism is about women having the choice to live their lives as they wish to.  And that is exactly what Bella does for nearly every moment of the Twilight Saga.  Bella Swan may not be a role model in a conventional sense, but she is arguably a shining example of feminism in its purest, if not idealized, form.

Now you can tell me why I'm wrong. Is a female character inherently anti-feminist because she makes decisions that seem to fit in with the stereotypical patriarchy-approved life style, or is Bella a feminist because she fights for her right to both make her choices and have those choices be respected by her friends, family, and peers?  Sound off below.

Scott Mendelson

For other Twilight-essays I have written over the years, go HERE, HERE, and HERE.        

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part II gets a bare-minimalist teaser.

I'm sure there will be whining about how little this teaser reveals about this November's series finale of the Twilight Saga, but why carp?  Kudos for Summit/Lionsgate for not giving away the store, since there is absolutely no need to do so.  This is the fifth entry in a remarkably consistent series, so obviously those who don't care now won't care in November.  And those who already care either read the books or might want to walk into the theater unaware.  So yay for the marketing campaign seeing fit to not give away a gosh-darned thing a mere eight months prior to release.  Anyway, Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part II concludes the franchise on November 16th, 2012, eleven years to the day when the Harry Potter saga began.

Scott Mendelson

Weekend Box Office: (03/25/12): The Hunger Games debuts with $152 million.

Besting any number of opening weekend records, The Hunger Games (review HERE) opened this weekend with a scorching $152.5 million.  That's the third-biggest opening weekend of all-time, behind The Dark Knight ($158 million) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II ($169 million).  Obviously by virtue of being number 03 on the list, it's also the biggest opening weekend for a non-summer movie, a non-sequel.  It's of course the biggest debut in history for a film not released by Warner Bros. during the third weekend in July, for those keeping release-date score.  It's also Lionsgate's highest-grossing film ever after just three days, besting the $119 million domestic total of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.  While it's Lionsgate's most expensive movie, it's still an example of smart budgeting as it came it at $90 million before tax credits which brought the total exposure to just $78 million.  Even if you factor in the hardcore marketing campaign over the last month, Lionsgate is surely in the black or will be by Friday, making everything after this pure profit.  There isn't too much to say because this record debut has been prognosticated to the point of tedium over the last two months, as one tracking report after another continually upped the predicted opening weekend number, to the point where the film would have been called a 'flop' if it hadn't opened with at least $100 million (not by me, mind you).  But yeah, Lionsgate pulled some of the best marketing in modern history (teaser/trailer01/trailer02), turning a relatively popular young adult book series into a mainstream media 'event', which in turn made the film adaptation into a must-sample event even for audiences who only had token knowledge of the series.

Here's the breakdown.  The film pulled in $19.75 million at midnight on Friday night, and then pulled in $67.2 million on its opening day (the fifth-biggest Friday ever).  The film held surprisingly strong on Saturday earning another $50.3 million, or down 25% from the Friday total but actually up 5% from the $44.45 million that the film earned during normal business hours on Friday.  By the way, that non-midnight Friday total was the fourth-biggest on record, behind  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II ($43 million at midnight, $47.5 million on normal Friday business hours), The Dark Knight ($48.7 million) and Spider-Man 3 ($49.8 million).  Its $50.3 million Saturday is the second biggest, behind the $51.3 million second day of Spider-Man 3.  The film dropped a reasonable 30% on Sunday for a $36 million third day-gross, which is the seventh-biggest Sunday on record.  Obviously these are estimates so it could bounce up or down the various single-day charts when the finals are released on Monday.  It earned a 2.26x weekend multiplier, which is generally pretty terrible but a bit above the last few Harry Potter and Twilight sequels, so it seems that it's now officially in the same league.

Demographics wise, the film earned an A from Cinemascore audience polling, including an A+ from the under-18 set.  The film sold 10% ($15.25 million) of its tickets in glorious 2D IMAX.  Despite its reputation as a tween/tween-friendly series, the film pulled in 56% over-25 years old.  The film played 61% female, which again disabuses the notion that this female-centric action picture played exclusively to women.  If you look at the very largest franchises over the last ten years (Avatar, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man, Harry Potter, Nolan's Batman films), they were not merely hardcore guy-friendly films, but rather big-budget genre fare that appealed to men and women equally.  There are exceptions (Twilight and Transformers respectively), but the very biggest tentpole success stories were not 'grr... no girls allowed!' testosterone fests, which is something Hollywood would do well to realize.  Where it finishes in America is an open question of course, although logic would dictate that it end in the same $290-310 million range as most of the Harry Potter or Twilight films.  

Okay, if you've been reading my sight over the weekend, you'll remember that I kinda hated the film.  So where does that factor into my thoughts about its success?  First of all, quality and box office are two separate things, especially over opening weekend.  But my deep qualms about the film aside, this is a win on several fronts.  Again, it's a huge win for the idea of female-fronted blockbusters and the concept that females don't have to be regulated to romantic comedies.  But arguably as important, it's a win for the idea of franchise originality.  The Hunger Games was not based on a kids cartoon from the 1980s or a remake of a blockbuster from the 1990s.  It was a new literary franchise written specifically for today's audiences, not revamped/rebooted/regurgitated from another era purely for easier 'branding' (essay HERE).  My wife, who also has not read the books, wanted to see it specifically because it was something new and something different, and she was excited to walk into the theater not knowing who these characters were and what was going to happen (she didn't like it anymore than I did, but oh well).  As fanboys fume over whether or not the next batch of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies are going to be teenage and/or alien, we as moviegoing audiences should encourage, with our box office dollar, new myths for today's generation.  New versus old... that is the triumph of The Hunger Games this weekend and that is why it is worth celebrating no matter what you thought of the film.  

There were no other wide releases, although Sony Gems released the acclaimed Indonesian action film The Raid: Redemption onto fourteen screens for a $15,000 per-screen average.  It expands pretty heavily over the next two weeks (if I can wait until the 6th of April, it will be right next door), so we'll keep an eye on it.  Also in semi-wide release was the reissue of the anti-abortion drama October Baby, which had a 14-screen release last October before being snapped up by Samuel Goldyn and opening in 360 theaters this weekend.  It earned $1.8 million this weekend, which is pretty good for such a low-profile release.  In holdover news, last weekend's lone new release 21 Jump Street held strong considering the competition, dropping 41% for a $21 million second weekend.  The film has now earned $71 million.  The other major Channing Tatum release of 2012, The Vow, now has $122.7 million, meaning it has surpassed The Bodyguard on the list of romantic dramas.  It's now the sixth-biggest romantic drama of all time, and the third (behind An Officer and a Gentleman and Jerry Maguire) that isn't special effects-intensive (Pearl Harbor, Ghost, and Titanic).  John Carter had another terrible weekend, dropping 62% and ending its seventeenth day with $62 million domestic and $234 million worldwide.  The Lorax now has $177 million while Act of Valor has $65 million.  Project X crossed $50 million and A Thousand Words crossed $15 million.  Safe House is at $122 million while Journey 2: The Beginning sits with $97 million and should cross $100 million in a week or so (it's over $300 million worldwide).

That's it for this weekend.  Next weekend we get Wrath of the Titans (review Wednesday) and the first of two major Snow White films this year, Mirror, Mirror (which my daughter might actually want to see on Friday... gasp!).  Until then take care and keep reading.

Scott Mendelson

A safely sanitized celebration of state-sponsored child murder. The disturbingly crowd-pleasing immorality of The Hunger Games.

The Hunger Games: an IMAX Experience
2012
142 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Note - this is not a conventional review and there will be far more spoilers than usual.  So warned...

The Hunger Games, as it exists as a film, is caught between two worlds.  One on hand, it wants to be a dramatic thriller about a totalitarian regime that picks children at random and forces them to fight each other to the death for the entertainment of the wealthy masses.  On the other hand, it wants to be a series that appeals to mass audiences in order to rack up massive box office grosses and become 'the next big franchise'.  As a direct result of this conundrum, the picture not only fails as a social/political commentary but becomes an ugly celebration of the very narrative that it should be condemning.  By refusing to look directly at its own story and by instead fashioning a convenient morality out of its murderous sporting event, it lets the audience off the hook and even encourages them to enjoy the blood-sport as 'entertainment'.  The film may appear to be mocking reality show conventions and the tendency to emphasize simplistic narratives to alleviate discomfort, but by virtue of what it omits and what it emphasizes, The Hunger Games is a prime example of what it claims to criticize. The film is so afraid to confront the horror of its premise that, in its need to create a mass-audience PG-13 franchise, it makes the cheering audience culpable and every bit as guilty as those who would watch such a thing in real life.

First and foremost, the film fails by refusing to develop or examine nearly all of the 24 Hunger Games contestants.  The large number of competitors/victims is actually solved by having eleven of them get slaughtered within the first five minutes of the competition (eight hours in actual time).  So the majority of the onscreen competition comes down to thirteen contestants.  Other than the lead character (Katniss Everdeen played by Jennifer Lawrence) and her would-be partner/love interest (Peeta Mellark played by Josh Hutcherson), not a single contestant is given any depth.  For the majority of the film, we are watching unnamed contestants kill other nearly-faceless contestants.  When the cast is whittled down, we are left with the pretty blonde, the cute redhead, the hot brunette, the tall black guy, the young black girl, the main 'villain', and a few nameless/faceless white males. We do spend a few moments with one very young competitor (Rue - the 'young black girl'), but only so we can feel sad when Katniss fails to save her.  It is in defense of that character that Katiniss commits her only explicit killing of another contestant.  But that blink-and-you-miss it arrow to the chest is overshadowed by her sorrow over a fallen teammate, and that scene highlights the creepy dichotomy at play throughout the entire film.  Almost from the start, the film divides up its contestants into two groups: the 'nice kids' who are almost never shown killing anyone and the 'bad kids' who not only kill onscreen but relish the opportunity.

Led by Cato (Alexander Ludwig), a tall, muscular young man who is immediately tagged as 'the main villain', half of the surviving contestants formed what can only be described as a 'posse of evil', as they hunt down and trap the other 'sympathetic' contestants.  Not only are these kids efficient killers, they seem to be outright psychopaths, taunting our heroes and doing all they can to create audience animosity.  It is one of them who is responsible for the death of Katniss's beloved Rue (Amandla Stenberg), yet even they are dispatched in ways that are either quasi-accidental  or otherwise morally clean (bee stings, poisoned berries, Cato breaking someone's neck as 'punishment for failure').  At no point do any sympathetic contestants get their hands uncomfortably bloody.  The closest the film comes to that is the brutal death of Clove (Isabelle Fuhrman), who is smashed against a wall by Thresh (Dayo Okeniyi).  But that moment is of course 'morally sound'.  Clove is attempting to kill Katniss and taunts about the earlier killing of Rue when Thresh grabs her and smacks her into a hard surface as 'revenge' for the early killing.  The audience literally roared with applause.

It is that moment that exemplifies everything that is wrong with the picture.  The film does not ask us to stare point-blank at the horror implicit in its premise, but rather pick sides, cheer for your heroes, boo for the villains, and thrill when the contestants you don't like get bumped off ("Take *that*, bitch!" the audience all-but shouted).  Moreover, the sympathetic contestants never have to behave in morally messy ways, with Katniss only directly causing a single (self-defense) death, and indirectly causing another death via bee-sting.  Co-survivor Peeta escapes without a single explicit kill to his name (Katniss and Peeta are both involved in Cato's climactic death without either of them being directly responsible for it).  After establishing Thresh as a sympathetic character (he spares Katniss's life 'just this once' because she tried to protect Rue), he is eaten off-screen by CGI beasts who show up right at the end purely to allow the two remaining contestants to be killed with without dirtying Peeta or Katniss's hands.  Remember, these people are not 'good guys' and 'bad guys', they are all impoverished children who have been kidnapped from their homes and forced to fight each other to the death for entertainment of the '1%'.  The idea that we should have any favorites or that we should take any joy in the proceedings makes us as culpable as the would-be oppressors.  And the fact that the film so readily divides up the contestants as such in order to promote an easily-digestible narrative shows how fraudulent it is no matter what relevant social issues it pertains to bring up.

One might argue that Gary Ross and company are attempting to put us in the shoes of the bloodthirsty audiences as a form of meta-commentary.  But there is just one problem with this: the film never shows us the downside.  For the sake of a PG-13, we see next-to-no actual onscreen violence and bloodshed.  We see not a single grieving parent reacting to watching their child get gutted on television.  We see not a single mother or father react with horror as their child murders another child in front of a worldwide audience.  We don't see a single contestant expressing dismay over killing anyone else or, with the exception of Katniss and Peeta, even any disapproval at being put in this situation in the first place. That we see brief snippets of what appears to be a rioting district after Rue dies only makes us question why this doesn't happen during every Hunger Games?  We don't even see much of the privileged masses watching these games, so in the context of the film, the only ones watching these games are you and me.  In fact, the only personal reaction we see to any of the onscreen action is Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth) making a sad face when he sees Katniss snuggle up to Peeta.  There is clever commentary in the somewhat fake Katniss/Peeta relationship about the need for some kind of romantic narrative in even the most inappropriate of stories, but the film tries to have it both ways by creating a romantic rival in the person of Gale (who is, in the context of this film, an absolutely useless and unnecessary character) and by keeping Peeta alive at the end.  

Oh the hoops the film jumps through to keep Peeta alive!  Despite a premise that should logically climax with Katniss tragically killing Peeta in order to 'win' the game, despite the fact that said action and her likely emotional reaction to it would arguably atone for at least some of the above-noted issues, the film goes out of its way to keep Katniss's fake love interest alive at the end of the movie.  Why?  Well, so she can be forced to choose which two devoted boys she will pick in the next book, of course!  By not focusing on the violence inherent in its 'sport' and by not giving depth to any of the supporting characters, the film by-default becomes about how Katniss first 'met' and fell for Peeta.  It's not about the government oppression of the impoverished underclass. It's not about Katniss's personal arc as she competes in the games, because she does not grow or change AT ALL during the course of the film.  It's not about the Hunger Games in any real social context, since it creates the very sort of easily-digestible and crowd-pleasing narrative that it claims to mock.  It's not about how an underclass reacts to the ritual slaughter of its young, because we basically never see any reaction.  So, by default, the only 'story progression' is Katniss's would-be romance with a local boy who joins her in the games.  For all the hub-bub about how the film is some kind of feminist triumph because it's a female-centric action picture (and I can't help but wonder if her passivity was due to not wanting to show a *girl* killing people), in the end it's still about a girl who meets a new boy, with the implication that a would-be love triangle (WHO will she choose?!) will be the primary focus of the next chapter of the story.

The film is well-acted by all, even if only Woody Harrelson shows any depth and casting Stanley Tucci as 'exposition man' is a crime that should merit jail time.  The dialogue (save useless exposition) is fine. The film feel longer than its 142 minutes even while we can't help but wonder what ended up on the cutting room floor (there is so much that goes unexplained about how their world operates, such as why it's called 'the hunger games' or how the populace reacts to grand-scale cheating).  But while The Hunger Games is not a badly-made film, it is a well-made monstrosity by virtue of its construction and editorial choices.  I cannot speak to the source material, so perhaps Susanne Collins deserves much of the blame (although a good adaptation takes what's good and changes what isn't).  But be it due to inherent flaws in the source material or a need to distill the film into crowd-pleasing comfort food, the film as it stands is a prime example of condescension to the point of immorality.  It presents an inherently terrible and tragic situation, but constantly looks away while framing its story in simplistic good vs. evil terms so that the audience never confronts what they are embracing.  It is an example, not a commentary on, a society that packages difficult situations into conventional, easily-digestible, and comforting narratives so as to not confront any inconvenient truths.

It is a prime example of commerce triumphing over art, even in a case where (due to pre-release hype) commercial success was already assured.  It presents kidnap-victims being forced to kill each other for a chance to live in a fashion that will have audiences cheering when one victim thoughtlessly slaughters another.  By virtue of omission and by virtue of simplistic and/or non-existent characterization, it negates whatever symbolism it claims to posses and inherently endorses said state-ordered murder.  The Hunger Games is worse than a bad movie.  It's an immoral movie, possibly even an evil one.

Grade: D+

Midnight Box Office (03/23/12): Hunger Games scores $19.75m at 12:01am.

First and foremost, The Hunger Games earned a robust $19.75 million at midnight screenings alone, besting a record for a non-sequel and the seventh-biggest midnight haul of all-time.  It earned more than the $18 million midnight gross of The Dark Knight back in 2008 and the $17 million midnight haul of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith back in 2005. It is the biggest midnight gross for any movie not called Harry Potter or Twilight (Harry Potter 6: $22m, Harry Potter 7.1: $24m, Twilight: New Moon: $26m, Twilight: Eclipse and Breaking Dawn I: $30m, Harry Potter 7.2: $43m).  If this film were like any normal picture (between 4.5% and 6.5% of its weekend at midnight), we'd be looking at a $300-$400million+ opening weekend.  So let's presume that it's a bit front-loaded, but the question is how much so?  The last two Paranormal Activity films earned about 15% of their respective opening weekends at midnight ($6.3m and $8m respectively), while The Dark Knight earned just 11% of its then-record $158 million opening at 12:01am.  The difference between those two figures is the difference between a massive $132 million debut and a record $179 million opening weekend.  On the other hand, if the film really does play like a Harry Potter or Twilight sequel (which would seem to be the likely case), then we should compare it to those openings.

It's unfair to compare the first Hunger Games to the last Harry Potter film (25% at midnight, which would give The Hunger Games just $79 million for the weekend), so throw that one out.  Let's instead use the three-day debuts of the second and fourth Twilight films (18% and 21% respectively, part III opened on a Wednesday) and the Fri-Sun debut of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part I (19%), which was the first Fri debut for a Potter film in five years.  Such comparisons would give The Hunger Games an opening weekend of $109 million, $103 million, or $94 million.  Obviously this is all pure speculation, but I like doing the match for this stuff.  My 'gut' tells me that the 15% figure is the way to go, paving the way for a massive debut of $130 million, a record for a non-sequel.  But if the film truly is the 'next Twilight/Harry Potter' and plays like a quasi-sequel to those franchises, there remains a likely possibility that the film will in fact debut under $100 million.  Again, if that does occur, the first professional pundit to scream 'FLOP!' should get fired on the spot and probably sued by Lionsgate for libel to boot.  We'll know more in about 12 hours.  I'll actually be seeing the film in about ten hours in glorious IMAX 2D.

Scott Mendelson  

Coolest casting news of the year: Michael Wincott to join Fox Searchlight's Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho as Ed Gein! Dare we hope for a comeback?

Variety broke the story, but since they have a pay-wall, I'll link to The Playlist.  I'm not one to comment on every bit of casting news as it happens, but this one is personally exciting so I'll share.  Most of the hub-bub about Fox Searchlight's Alfred Hitcock and the Making of Psycho has focused on the casting of Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh and Jessica Biel as Vera Miles, with Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren as Mr. Hitchcock and his wife.  But buried in the flurry of casting news is what I can only pray is a comeback role for one of my favorite character actors.  Among those joining the cast is none-other than Michael Wincott, who will be playing real-life serial-murderer Ed Gein, who allegedly served as the inspiration for Norman Bates (arguably more-so in the original Robert Bloch novel than the Hitchcock movie).  Anyway, I won't go into Gein's sordid history here (although he's only confirmed to have murdered a few people), but I will say that if you feel like spending $9 to buy the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre  on blu-ray, there is a fine documentary about the man.  He is the loose inspiration for Norman Bates, Leatherface, and Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs, so I suppose it makes sense that he would play a role in this making-of-a-movie story.

Point being, I complained way back in October 2008 about the lack of work that had come Wincott's way over the 2000s.  He hasn't been seen in a studio release since Magnolia's tepid showbiz satire What Just Happened? back in October 2008, and he all-but disappeared after his turn in 2001's Along Came A Spider, where he played Gary Soneji (basically the Moriarty for Detective Alex Cross).  I don't presume to assume that this will be some kind of rebirth for the forever-congested character actor (I've often joked that he sounds like someone who has smoked since he was 6 years old and hasn't cleared his throat since middle school), but I can only hope that perhaps he has reached the age where he is now a 'distinguished character actor'.  Steady work, especially outside of television guest spots, can be tough when you're too old to be a strapping hero but too young to be a mentor or authority figure.  But once you stick it out long enough you can sometimes pull a Bruce McGill and have a second wind as 'that guy'.  McGill is a prime example, as he barely worked in the 1980s save for his guest turns as Jack Dalton on MacGyver.  But all it took was one small role in Michael Mann's The Insider (with one of the film's few 'crowd-pleasing moments') to show off his elder-statesman qualities and he's been steadily employed in major movies ever since.  Any way, we've been down this road before, so here's hoping that this seemingly high-profile role will get Wincott back on the casting directors' lists yet again.

Scott Mendelson

Review: ATM (2012) is a lean genre exercise that does its business and sprints.

ATM

2012
90 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

ATM isn't high art and it's not even great trash.  But it has a clever set-up, somewhat relatable characters, and a lean efficiency that I frankly admired.  This is a movie that does exactly what it sets out to do and then gets the hell outta Dodge.  It is too short to wear out its welcome, and director David Brooks gets a surprising scope out what is basically a single-location horror picture.  While the main characters are not quite as smart as they should be, the film operates less on watching how they react to the core conflict but more on making we, the audience, ask what we would do if confronted by the specific situation.  On that note, it is a moderate success.

The plot is pretty simple.  Three young people (Alice Eve, Brian Geraughty, and Josh Peck) end up traveling together after a late night at work and find themselves inside a large enclosed ATM.  No sooner to they arrive do they notice a mysterious hooded man who seems to be watching them from a safe distance.  Barely moving and not speaking, this hooded man is merely watching... waiting.  Perceived creepiness turns into outright terror and panic when the mysterious watcher escalates the stakes and sheds blood.  Now these three people are trapped together with no plausible means of escape.  That's all you get because that's all you need.  The last hour or so of the film is an extended cat-and-mouse romp, as our three would-be heroes attempt to distract, deflect, or otherwise defeat the violent stranger before he kills them all.

Unlike a number of small-scale real-world horror movies, ATM doesn't stretch its admittedly thin premise past the breaking point.  The film runs just 82 minutes plus credits, which is, for example, 25 minutes shorter than the endlessly tiresome Shuttle from a few years back.  Point being, the film overcomes its inefficiencies through sheer force of speed, barreling through its three acts with just enough compelling dialogue stretches and genuine plot twists to keep one entertained.  The film climaxes not with a bracing shocker ending but rather with a fitfully amusing denouement that adds context to the proceedings without invalidating all that came before.  And since the film has the decency to end before it wears out its welcome, I'll do the same for this review.

Grade: B-      

A whole bunch (9) o' character posters for Tim Burton's Dark Shadows...

I think Empire got these posters first, but thank you to Bohemea for making all nine into one easily-pasted image (Blogger is terrible with trying to line-up multiple pictures in an orderly fashion).  Anyway, above is the final theatrical one-sheet and below are the nine visually-striking character posters.  With just six weeks to go, Warner Bros has finally started the marketing campaign.  And I say good on them for waiting!  Now all they need to do is not release another trailer and not saturate the Internet with clips two weeks prior to May 11th and they can prove that studios don't have to spend a gazillion dollars on a year-long ad campaign for major releases.  Anyway, enjoy.

Scott Mendelson

 

 

 

Review: Goon (2012) earns our respect by respecting itself.

Goon

2012
92 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

On the surface, Goon is an assembly-line underdog sports movie.  And yes the film hits a handful of familiar story beats along the way.  But there is a subtle intelligence to the picture, with characters that are far less broad than you'd expect and a screenplay that feels authentic.  I don't know hockey well enough to judge its accuracy, but I can say that the film feels like it intimately understands the sport as well as the people who play it.  Hockey is not a sport that has inspired very many movies, so when I say that Goon is one of the best films about the sport I've ever seen that may seem like a backhanded compliment.  But it is easily the best hockey movie since Miracle, for whatever that's worth.

The narrative concerns Doug Glatt (Sean William Scott) as a bar bouncer who lucks into a spot on a minor league hockey team via his 'bouncing' skills.  Point being, while it he is not mean or aggressive, he can and will deliver a brutal thrashing if you cross him in a manner that seems to merit physical altercation.  One such incident, where he is assaulted by a hockey player at a local game results in a public beat-down, results in him being recruited to join up as an 'enforcer', which is basically what it sounds like.  Doug can't skate and certainly can't shoot with much skill, but he can beat the crap out of opposing players if the situation calls for it.  This is all standard stuff, as is a subplot about feeling like the black sheep of the family, his romance with a local woman (Alison Pill) and conflicts between himself and the more seasoned players on his team (shocker - team work matters too!).  But director Michael Dowse, along with writers Evan Goldberg and Jay Baruchel (Baruchel has a glorified cameo here) don't treat their story as anything groundbreaking and they instead concentrate on character development.

Doug has a refreshing acknowledgment of his lack of intelligence that earns our sympathy, and his relationship with Pill's Eva is frankly more adult and unromanticized than one would expect.  Eugene Levy has a few moments of down-to-Earth disappointment as the patriarch, and Kim Coates relishes an opportunity not to be playing a scuzzy-looking thug as the team's coach.  Most enjoyable is Liev Schreiber as Ross Rea, a veteran 'enforcer' on the verge of retirement who is both Doug's hero and possibly his final challenge.  Schreiber gives a real performance here, and he has one great third act moment which very nearly mimics a classic scene from Michael Mann's Heat.  While the film is rated R and contains copious hockey-related violence and profanity, it is not a hard-edged or even overtly vulgar picture.  It is a sweet and humanistic comedy that happens to take place in a very R-rated world.  Goon doesn't break any cinematic ground except that it exists as a rare high-quality film set in the world of hockey.  Seann William Scott delivers a fine star turn, ranking alongside The Rundown and Role Models as one of his best performances.

I'm sure if I knew more about hockey I would have enjoyed the picture even more.  But the fact that I know next-to-nothing about the sport yet enjoyed this movie shows just how surprisingly good and accessible Goon happens to be.

Grade: B+

R.I.P., John Carter. What its failure means and why it matters...

With ten days down and $53 million in the domestic kitty and $179 million worldwide, it's pretty much time to call 'time of death' for John Carter.  Disney is announcing that the picture will lose them $200 million, and it's almost fitting. The film serves as a shining example of everything that can go wrong when crafting a franchise film in big-studio Hollywood.  Not only was it a case where everything went wrong, it was a film where everything absolutely had to go right on a record level in order to have any hope of making its investment back.  To be frank, they should have seen it coming from a mile away.   

The film will likely fail to reach even $85 million at the US box office, and it will likely fail to reach $300 million in foreign grosses, putting its worldwide total at under $400 million.  That's not a terrible outcome for most films and had the budget been kept in check, it would probably break even in the end.  But Disney spent $250 million producing John Carter, making it the most expensive non-sequel ever made.  I've whined a lot about reckless budgets for long shot films, but the rule is simple.  Do not spend Return of the King-level money on Fellowship of the Ring.  All three Lord of the Rings films originally came in at around $95 million apiece.  It was only after Fellowship became a monster hit that New Line gave Peter Jackson and company extra money to play around on the next two films, culminating in a now-quaint $150 million budget for The Return of the King.  It's a simple concept.  Unless your film is a guaranteed home run, don't spend so much that you have to hit a home run in order to break even.

John Carter had absolutely no insurance against its mammoth budget.  It was not a well-known property, not a sequel, had no stars, had a generally unknown filmmaker (can anyone outside of us movie geeks tell you who directed Finding Nemo?) with no live-action film making experience and no apparent editorial safeguards, plus an unsafe release date which limited the chances of strong legs.  The sad/shocking part is not that Disney rolled the dice and hoped for the best.  The inexplicable part is that there is absolutely no plausible reason that Disney (or anyone else) should have expected the film to be the kind of hit it needed to be.  Add to that an anemic and confused marketing campaign which made the movie look far worse than it was (I didn't like the movie, but it was better than the marketing implied) and hid the things that actually might have gotten audiences interested (like a well-developed female lead), and there is no reason that Disney shouldn't have seen this coming a year ago.  Sadly, those like myself who have been waving our arms in the air screaming 'Danger!' are now being ridiculed and/or called doomsayers who hurt the film with our negative publicity.

Thanks to out-of-control budgeting, John Carter *had* to be the next-big-thing in order to not lose a fortune. But it wasn't.  It wasn't new and exciting.  It didn't offer new sights and incredible moments of visual wonderment. It had one well-written supporting heroine and a heroic lead who was surprisingly not-terrible surrounded by muddled and/or dull supporting characters who all looked alike and had unpronounceable names.  It offered lackluster action that paled in comparison to the likes of any number of big-scale fantasy films over the last decade (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Avatar, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, etc), while offering not a hint of political/social relevance or parable.  All of these things wouldn't have been fatal (after all, opening weekend is about marketing, not the film) had the deck not been so stacked against it.  Without all of the other ingredients, and with a lackluster marketing campaign to boot, the film was doomed as soon as the budget climbed over $125 million.  And Disney had no right believing that audiences would ignore all of the above factors and race to the theater on opening night just out of habit.

More than anything else, Disney's production of John Carter was a defining exercise in cynicism.  The film was yet another desperate attempt for the Mouse House to create a new boy-friendly franchise, spitting on their profitable female-driven cartoons while they lost money chasing boys again (Prince of Persia) and again (The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which I liked but damn-well shouldn't have cost $150 million).  It was an insanely budgeted film that may have appeared to be a bold risk, but in fact came off as painfully generic and formulaic fantasy adventure that appeared in the marketing materials to resemble a cross between Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes.  But John Carter represents the ultimate cynical hubris in that Disney expected blockbuster success for no particular reason.  Disney merely expected the media to arbitrarily anoint John Carter as 'the next cool thing' and then expected audiences to flock lime lemmings to a terrible-looking movie that they had no reason to expect they would enjoy.  But audiences didn't flock to a lousy-looking movie that offered no promise of any real entertainment.

That is the one silver lining in this mess.  There are many lessons of John Carter (don't overspend, don't skimp on varied marketing if the property needs to be sold to newbies, don't presume that geek interest equals mainstream interest, don't hire an untested filmmaker and let them run wild, etc) and we can expect the studios not to truly learn any of them.  But the key moral of the story is simply that blockbuster-level audiences won't just line up at the ticket boot for anything Hollywood tells them they should see.  They may not always make the best choices, they may choose safety over risk, but they won't just show up on cue purely because a film is arbitrarily crowned as the next defining blockbuster.  The studios still have to work for your money.  And that's actually a good thing.

Scott Mendelson

Snow White and the Huntsman gets a second (and very expensive) trailer.

This is certainly an improvement over the first teaser, if only in that it actually highlights Kristen Stewart's Snow White over the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth).  Whatever my thoughts on what this film represents (the rush to stick promising young actresses in the fairy tale princess box, the trend of giving completely green young filmmakers the reins to insanely expensive tentpoles, the creative bankruptcy that has spawned two competing Snow White films), this does look awfully compelling, at least on a visual level.  While I still think it's insane, I now can see why Universal spent $175 million on this picture, as at least the money looks somewhat on the screen.  There are certain special effects (the shattering soldiers for example) that are 'new', which is always a plus for your marketing campaign.  And while the young leads seem quite boring, Charlize Theron appears to be having the time of her life as the 'wicked queen'.  But at the end of the day, this still a Snow White meets Lord of the Rings hybrid, and thus there are only so many narrative paths the story can take.  Still, whatever my issues with the project in principal, this doesn't look like a lazy thoughtless effort (that it's going out as 2D theoretically implies a certain amount of care).  Universal drops this one on June 1st.  As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson       

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter gets a second silly trailer.

I never got around to posting the first teaser because I couldn't bring myself to care, so I'm posting both here.  Yes, I've heard that the novel is somewhat clever and that it's somewhat political (vampires are basically Confederates who were draining the life from the nation by continuing slavery) as well as a genre mash-up.  But in film form, especially by the brain-dead razzle-dazzle idiot who gave us Night Watch and Wanted (not a Timur Bekmambetov fan, folks), I can't imagine this actually being a 'real movie' as opposed to some wanky absurdity.  Am I being unfair?  Perhaps. But there is something disheartening about a concept that basically amounts to three seven year old boys exclaiming 'gee, wouldn't it be cool if...' not only becoming a bestselling novel but a big budget would-be franchise film.  On the plus side, the film allegedly cost just $69 million so it doesn't have to break box office records to make a profit (which in turn leaves more room for eccentricity).  Anyway, star Benjamin Walker allegedly kicked ass on Broadway in Bloody Andrew Jackson, so this isn't too much of a stretch for him, and the rest of the cast (Dominic Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jimmi Simpson, Robin McLeavy, Alan Tudyk, and Rufus Sewell),  is solid.  20th Century Fox debuts Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter on June 22nd.  As always, we'll see, and I'll be the first to gladly eat crow if this turns out to be a thing of substance.

Scott Mendelson

Weekend Box Office (03/18/12) 21 Jump Street tops, John Carter crashes, Case de Mi Padre scores in limited release.

There isn't anything too surprising about a well-marketed and well-reviewed mainstream comedy opening well on its debut weekend, especially when there are no new releases to compete against.  Still, 21 Jump Street (review) topped the box office this weekend with a whopping estimated $35 million.  If that number holds up, it will be the seventh-biggest debut for an R-rated comedy ever, as well as the fifth-biggest R-rated comedy debut for a non-sequel and the largest such debut outside of summer.  Sony knew they had a winner on their hands, as the $42 million-budgeted film was as much a commentary on the current trend of recycling brand names as an example of such.  They've been screening it out the wazoo, building solid buzz and strong word-of-mouth, for months on end.  Oddly enough, the film earned just a 'B' from Cinemascore, and I'm frankly puzzled by that.  Yes, audiences under 25 gave it an A, but it's such a winning film that I'm shocked it's not playing well across the board (my 61-year old father-in-law laughed his butt off at the press screening).  It's a terrifically funny and uncommonly warm and sweet (for an R-rated action comedy) picture, so one would presume that it will have legs in the coming weeks.  Hopefully Sony will focus its second round of advertising on getting females into the theater (although it played 47% female and 50% over/under 25 years old) by emphasizing how  *not* sexist and/or homophobic the picture is. It faces no direct competition (aside from the all-consuming hurricane that is The Hunger Games next weekend) until April 6th, when Universal debuts American Reunion.  This is another big win for Channing Tatum.  This is his third-biggest debut behind The Vow ($40 million) and GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra ($54 million).  He also has a second GI Joe movie as well as a Steven Soderbergh reunion in Magic Mike both opening on June 29th.  This is Jonah Hill's second biggest live-action debut behind the $54 million opening of Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.

Following last week's semi-wide release of Friends With Kids (which expanded to 640 screens this weekend and grossed another $1.5 million, dropping 25%), we have three more theoretically mainstream films that have been relegated to the arthouse circuit.  Will Ferrell's telanoleva satire Casa de Mi Padre debuted with $2.2 million on just 382 screens, the Jason Segel/Ed Helms comedy Jeff Who Lives At Home debuted with on a mere 254 screens grossing $840,000, and the 90s-action throwback Seeking Justice (with Nicolas Cage) debuted on 231 screens grossing $260,000.  The highest grossing of the trio was Lionsgate's Will Ferrell romp (which is entirely in Spanish with English subtitles), as it earned  a solid $5,700 per-screen average.  Yes, the film cost just $6 million, but you'd think that a decent marketing campaign centered around one of the more popular comic actors around could generate an opening of at least $10 million, with a final gross of around $25-30 million (Weinstein Company pulled that same trick for the $5 million Paul Rudd vehicle Our Idiot Brother last August).  I've long complained about the ever-increasing trend of treating seemingly mainstream genre fare, even ones with big stars, and tossing them off to die in limited release so that The Lorax can have a 2D screen, a 3D screen, and an IMAX screen all to itself.  Long story short, arthouse audiences aren't the sort to flock to a bawdy Will Ferrell comedy while Ferrell fans are either unable to find it at a nearby cinema or don't realize that it's being released.  Memo to studios - if you want your films to make money, you might want to position them to actually be seen by paying audiences.  In uber-limited release news, Kid With the Bike grossed $51,000 on three screens while Detachment (the best film of 2012 thus far) grossed $11,100 on two screens.

The rest of the news is holdover related.  The Lorax held strong in weekend three, grossing another $22 million (-41%) and ending day 17 with $158 million domestic. Despite stronger weekend totals, the Illumination film has slightly fallen behind the respective $161 million 17-day total of Despicable Me, although it's still a lock for $200 million, something that no other non-Disney/Pixar or Dreamworks cartoon has done in America save Despicable Me.  John Carter fell a mediocre 55%, grossing $13.5 million and ending weekend two with $53 million domestic and $179 million worldwide.  It's now falling behind Prince of Persia and will finish below $90 million domestic.  With that pesky $250 million budget and The Hunger Games set to kill everything in its path next week, it's a grim future for the John Carter of Mars.  That's all I have for that one as I'm writing a piece on the film's financial failure later in the week (I wanted to wait at least two weekends before calling it).  The two other new releases from last week, Silent House and A Thousand Words did nominal business in relation to their small opening weekends last week.  The real-time/one-take horror film grossed another $2 million for a $10.5 million total.  Normally a drop of 69% would be troubling, but the film is so cheap that it's already on its way to token profitability.  The Eddie Murphy comedy had a halfway-decent drop of 41% for a second weekend of $3.75 million, but the expensive Paramount leftover has still grossed just $12.1 million.

In news regarding films older than two weeks,  Safe House continues to hold steady and has crossed $120 million.  Project X grossed another $4 million and now sits with $48 million.  It will be interesting to see how the couple would-be copycat parties over the last week (once of which killed someone) will affect the in-development sequel.  Act of Valor crossed $60 million this weekend, and   The Vow sits with $121 million, meaning it will surpass The Bodyguard ($121.9 million) on the list of romantic dramas in the next few days, with the $129 million gross of An Officer and a Gentleman next in its sights.  This Means War crossed $50 million while   Journey 2:The Mysterious Island now sits with $95 million, as its worldwide total speeds past $300 million.

That's it for this weekend. Join us next weekend for the sure-to-be monstrous debut of The Hunger Games. Until then, keep reading and commenting.

Scott Mendelson