Why an R-rating for A Good Day To Die Hard matters...

Bruce Willis let it be known to Harry Knowles late Friday night (and Fox confirmed sometime later) that A Good Day To Die Hard will be opening on February 14th, 2013 with an R-rating.  That's somewhat of a surprise, since Live Free Or Die Hard infamously went out as a PG-13 and still ended up as the biggest domestic grosser of the series.  On the other hand, it still earned less worldwide than Die Hard: With a Vengeance way back in 1995 and is actually the lowest-grossing entry in the series when adjusted for inflation, so it stands to reason that the PG-13 didn't make a difference either way.  Of course, cutting down a movie for a PG-13 to get the kids and then opening it on the same weekend as a Pixar movie is somewhat stupid, but I digress.  Of course, the fact that the film is going to be R-rated doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be good.  Heck, it may not mean anything other than John McClane saying "fuck" more than once amid otherwise bloodless (or hastily CGI-inserted bloody) violence.  From the sound of Willis's statement, it seems that Fox wasn't aiming for an R-rated movie, but that they are merely willing to accept the MPAA's position.  This is itself is encouraging and possibly a sign of a 'new day' for mainstream studio films.  

I've written before about the fact that 2012 saw a reemergence of mainstream studio fare that went out as R-rated.  That trend continues this month with every single wide release in January save the PG-13 horror drama Mama being R-rated.  It may be too much to hope for that the fatally-butchered Taken 2 was perhaps the final gasp of the dreaded R-13?  I've written countless times about the R-13, which is basically when studios take a film that is clearly intended to be R-rated and either construct it just so as to escape with a PG-13 (think The Bourne Legacy, Vantage Point, or Angels & Demons) or hastily re-edit the film in post-production so as to get a PG-13 despite containing arguably R-rated violence and R-rated sensibilities (think Lockout, Sucker Punch, and yes, Live Free Or Die Hard).  What we've seen over the last year are several high profile films that didn't just get released with R-ratings, but got to keep their R-ratings despite not necessarily having to do so.  Fox ironically led the charge here.  Yes, they allowed Taken 2 to get butchered to a PG-13, but I presume they were just reading the tea leaves on the first installment's massive domestic numbers.

Nonetheless, they let Ridley Scott keep his R-rating for Prometheus, even though it could have easily been cut to a PG-13 with only a few alterations regarding a major second act scene (the rest of the film is relatively restrained in its violence).  Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was even more of a financial risk without that PG-13 to snag the teen boys that the film was arguably aimed at, yet it went out as an R anyway.  Warner Bros.' The Gangster Squad is surely filled with gunfire and lethal violence, but much of its blood is CGI and Warner darn-well could have cut the film to a PG-13, especially after the Aurora theater shootings tainted the film through unintentional association.  But out it went this weekend, R-rated and bloody as all-get out.  My issues with The Gangster Squad aside, I appreciated its commitment to gratuitous violence and excessive bloodshed the likes we haven't seen in a major studio non-horror release (not helmed by Tarantino, natch) in quite some time.  And this weekend sees the release of Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Last Stand, a film that wavered between ratings before Lionsgate decided to go for the R.

And now we have A Good Day To Die Hard, which surely could have played just as well, give or take, as the PG-13 rated Live Free Or Die Hard with the blood digitally removed and the "f-bombs" dubbed.  Yet 20th Century Fox will unleash this fifth Die Hard film as an R-rated adult entertainment, damn the potential consequences on the domestic box office front.  What's encouraging about these recent releases isn't just that the studios are releasing them as R-rated, but that they don't seem to care as much about what rating the film happens to get.  Had A Good Day To Die Hard been awarded a PG-13 by the MPAA, Fox would have just released it as is.  Same with Prometheus.  But both films got hit with R-ratings and thus Fox just said 'so be it' rather than demanding cuts or alterations.  What we're seeing is a possible return to the late-90's, where studios may have preferred PG-13 ratings when possible but weren't dead-set on it.  A Good Day To Die Hard may still be a bad movie (or not... Live Free Or Die Hard was much better than most expected), but the fact that Fox and other studios aren't quite as obsessed with the "PG-13 at all costs!" dogma is still to be saluted.

Scott Mendelson

Why Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar snub is a moral outrage.

For a general discussion of the Oscar nominations, go HERE.

In the broad scheme of things, the only Oscar snub that qualifies as an outrage is the omission of Kathryn Bigelow for Best Director.  Not because it's a bigger slight than snubbing Ben Affleck or Samuel L. Jackson or the like, but because her omission is clearly the result of the kind of smear campaign against the film that has made politics next-to-impossible for the last decade or so.  It's the same kind of baseless campaign that prevented Susan Rice from being nominated for Secretary of State, it's the same mud-slinging that caused Obama to (wrongly) dismiss Van Jones early in his term, thus providing the GOP their first scalp.  And to add insult to injury, Bigelow has been deemed wholly responsible by those who wrongly believe that Zero Dark Thirty endorses torture, leaving screenwriter Mark Boal (who got a nomination) off the hook.  If this kind of stuff happens every time someone tries to make a challenging film for adults, then we can kiss such things goodbye from those who seek award recognition.  If this is a sign of things to come, where Hollywood becomes as frenzied and maddening as politics, then that is a troubling thing indeed.

Many who were too timid or wrongheaded to fully voice their opposition to torture back when it was first uncovered back in 2004 are now offering full-throated and fiery condemnations of Ms. Bigelow for showing recreations of torture and accusing her of endorsing the practice merely by refusing to explicitly condemn it.  She's been called a warmonger, an apologist, and yes, a Nazi.  If this is the kind of reaction we can expect when filmmakers attempt to make adult films with adult sensibilities that speak to its viewers at an adult level, then it's no wonder such films are so increasingly rare in mainstream cinema. The reason this matters beyond mere Oscar prognosticating is that it sends a clear signal to filmmakers who seek to work in the studio system that they shouldn't truly make adult films pitched at adults.  The core sin of Zero Dark Thirty is that it didn't have a supporting character on the sidelines talking about the immorality and/or impracticality of torture.  It didn't have a big scene where the major characters have a debate on torture.  Now such a scene would be implausible considering the film as it exists, yet the absence of this kind of condescending hand-holding has now opened the film up to accusations, from politicians, pundits, even religious leaders (I just received an email from Rabbi Arthur Waskow entitled Should Oscar go to pro-Nazi film "Triumph of the Will"?).

All because Bigelow and Boal didn't spoon-feed their opinions to the audience in a way that made for easy digestion.  They didn't have a fictionalized scene where a character explicitly explains to the audience how they got each piece of vital information over the eight years during which the film takes place.  They trusted the audience to make the connections.  It's the connection between the opening torture scene and the horrifying terrorist massacre that the torture fails to prevent.  It's the connection between the stopping of torture and use of trickery that elicits worthwhile information that eventually, eight years later and only after the discovery of information that had been in an old file all along , leads to Bin Laden's compound.  It's the connection that bribery elicits the key information late in the game rather than torture.  It's the very fact that the film's climactic raid is the least cathartic and least empowering moment of American violence on can imagine.  Those whining that the film endorses torture seem to miss the point that the film doesn't entirely endorse the execution of Osama Bin Laden, presenting it as perhaps a necessary evil but a vile, horrific, and brutish act of foreign aggression nonetheless.  One must remember that the film initially began back when Bin Laden was still alive and it was presumed that he'd never actually be caught.  It was initially a Moby Dick-esque story of futile obsession, and I'd argue the film still stays on that path even with the new ending. 

Bigelow and Boal could have pitched the film to the dumber members of the audience.  They could have had scenes where characters explicitly explained their own moral stances and/or the progression of information that is discovered over eight long and bloody years.  They chose instead to trust the audience and the mainstream media and publicity-hungry politicians have betrayed that trust.  Bigelow and Boal trusted our intelligence and the reaction to the picture has now insulted our intelligence.  It's really no different than the reaction to Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, where he was accused of committing the very sin he was criticizing because audiences and critics couldn't look past the short skirts.  It's really no different than the rather habitual writing-off of any number of popcorn entertainments because critics and pundits were unwilling to even acknowledge that mainstream studio fare might have some worthwhile ideas beneath the surface.  But this time it happened to a major Oscar contender that received glorious reviews.  This time it happened to a would-be prestige picture, and the resulting firestorm is far more severe than mere dismissal.  Congress wants to launch an investigation, Bigelow and Boal are being compared to Leni Riefenstahl, and one of the best films of 2012, one that dares to not only be critical of the various post-9/11 failures but also one of our alleged successes, is forever tainted by the now accepted notion that it endorses torture on a practical and moral level.

The damage is done and it is severe.  This is why we see so many would-be adult films that are pitched to the level of children.  This is why a film like the R-rated Gangster Squad feels like a kids' adventure that happens to contain graphic violence.  Because truly adult films don't hold our hands and explain everything to the audience.  And in today's 24-hour shock/outrage news cycle, there is no real chance for such a film.  In an era where showing off behavior is automatically seen as endorsing it, in a time where a rather conventional hero's journey like Django Unchained is considered 'brave' and/or 'courageous' purely because it happens to be about slavery, in an era where Spielberg's Lincoln has to fight off charges that it's view on race relations is simplistic (ignoring the very first scene, where Lincoln blows off a valid question of a black Union soldier), there is no room for subtly and nuance in today's entertainment discourse.  And that's the real moral outrage.  Bigelow will be fine.  The film remains untouched for those who love it.  But the damage has been done and the message is clear: Don't treat adults like adults or you will be pounced upon like screaming children.

Scott Mendelson                   

The year the presumed favorites didn't even get nominated. Thoughts on the 2013 Oscar nominations...

Despite all of the pre-awards chatter and what-not, there were still a few surprises in this morning's Oscar nominations.  The biggest shock, for me anyway, was the inclusion of Christoph Waltz for Best Supporting Actor in Django Unchained and the unfortunate exclusion of Leonardo DiCaprio (who I frankly expected to win) and Samuel L. Jackson (who gave the film's best performance) for same.  Waltz is fine, although it's interesting in that A) he's basically the film's lead character and B) he's playing a riff on the work he did in Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, but this time on the side of the angels (it's possible that voters simply voted for the most morally righteous white character in a film full of racists, ala Tommy Lee Jones's expected nom for Lincoln).  Django Unchained scored a best picture nomination (one of nine films nominated) but Tarantino was denied a Best Director nod.  The other massive snub was the exclusion of Ben Affleck for Best Director for Argo, despite the film being up for Best Picture and Alan Arkin snagging a Best Supporting Actor nomination.  I honestly can't figure that one out, as pretty much everyone who loved Argo gave Affleck full and complete credit for the film.  It's disheartening in that Affleck has made a real effort to use his star power to direct the kind of mainstream big-studio grown up genre fare that has been neglected over the last decade, and a snub can surely be read as 'Don't bother, just go direct Justice League'.  The Best Director category also provided the other mega-shock this morning, snubbing the proverbial front runner Kathryn Bigelow.  I'd hate to think the stupid 'torture debate' had an effect, but I think the stupid torture debate had an effect.     

Other than that, there's really nothing to "complain" about.  Yes, I think The Silver Linings Playbook is vastly overrated, so its noms for Best Picture, Best Director (David O'Russell), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Robert De Niro), Best Supporting Actress (Jackie Weaver), Best Actress (Jennifer Lawrence, in a clear supporting role, natch), and quite surprisingly Bradley Cooper for Best Actor offer token annoyance, but oh well.  Heck, the sheer dominance in the major categories, as well as the above-mentioned snubs for the other front-runners, makes The Silver Linings Playbook a front-runner for a sweep in the major categories.  On the plus side of surprises, Beasts of the Southern Wild kicked ass this morning.  The happiest nomination for me was the not-entirely expected but very much hoped for Best Actress nod for Quvenzhane Wallace.  The film snagged a Best Picture nod and a Best Director nod for Benh Zeitlin, along with the expected Best Adapted Screenplay nomination.  Zeitlin and the somewhat surprise nom for Michael Hanke (Amour, which also received a Best Foreign film nod, a Best Actress nomination for Emmanuelle Riva, and a Best Picture nod) pushing out the expected nods for Tarantino, Affleck, and/or Bigelow. I'm relieved that ParaNorman got a Best Animated feature nomination and now I'm torn between my favorite animated film of the year and the sheer righteousness of seeing Tim Burton win his first Oscar for a stop-motion black and white animated feature.

It is indeed strange how many would-be front-runners got snubbed this year.  Weinstein's The Intouchables, which grossed $400 million worldwide, didn't get the expected Best Foreign Film nod, which is fine since it's a terrible movie.  Tom Hopper didn't get a Best Director nod for Les Miserables, which is fine because even many who liked the film think his direction was terrible (Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman got their expected nominations).  But on the plus side, that made for some unexpected nominees.  Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman all got somewhat unexpected and deserved nominations for The Master, which makes one wonder how close the rather divisive (and peaked too soon) picture came from sneaking into the Best Picture race. Helen Hunt snuck into the Best Supporting Actress category for The Sessions (IE - the one Oscar bait film that most of us forgot to see), and since I think she damn-well deserved her derided win 15 years ago for As Good As It Gets, I'm happy to see her out of the Pay It Forward jail.  The Dark Knight Rises got deservedly snubbed (although a sound nomination or two would have yielded comedic reactions) while The Avengers snuck in at the FX category level (although Life of Pi is the front-runner to win that).  I'm not a *huge* Skyfall fan, but I would have been fine with the critically-acclaimed action-adventure getting some Oscar love outside of the tech categories, as there has been a huge problem for ages regarding the automatic dismissal of popcorn entertainment that rises to the level of art.  Although Roger Deakins is arguably the front-runner for Best Cinematography and it would be fitting for Skyfall to win for its very best component.

For what it's worth, the race now comes down to Lincoln and The Silver Linings Playbook.  Lincoln leads the pack with twelve nominations, but The Silver Linings Playbook has nominations in all seven major categories, which is a true rarity.  Zero Dark Thirty goes from the proverbial Best Picture front-runner to an also-ran whose once preordained victory for Jessica Chastain now seems at best an underdog fight against Jennifer Lawrence. What's also a little disconcerting is that, aside from Beasts of the Southern Wild (The Moonrise Kingdom only received a Best Original Screenplay nom among major categories), all nine Best Picture nominees (and most of the nominees in the major categories) came during the unofficial October-December Oscar season, making release dates the most important factor in terms of momentum.  But overall it's a good mix of nominees.  The happiest nominations were ParaNorman and Quvenzhane Wallace.  The saddest omissions were Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson, although the most outrageous and arguably dangerous snub was Kathryn Bigelow's absence as it seems to indicate that the chattering, started by many who had not even seen Zero Dark Thirty, seemed to have a real effect.  And this will also make the possible Mark Boal victory for Best Original screenplay (not likely but possible) a bit awkward, as it means the male half of a two-person passion project wins while the female half doesn't even get nominated.  But the lack of clear front-runners as well as the surprise dominance of The Silver Linings Playbook will make for an unpredictable Oscar ceremony, as well as offering the possibility of several major surprises.

Okay, it's time for me to wake the kids and get them ready for school.  What are your thoughts on the Oscar nominations?  Happiest surprise? Saddest upset?  Who or what are the front runners now that the nominations have actually been announced sans many presumed front runners?  Sound off below!                       

Scott Mendelson

Here is the complete list, stolen from First Showing:

PICTURE:
Amour
Argo
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Django Unchained
Les Miserables
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty

DIRECTOR:
David O. Russell - Silver Linings Playbook
Ang Lee - Life of Pi
Steven Spielberg - Lincoln
Michael Haneke - Amour
Benh Zeitlin - Beasts of the Southern Wild

ACTOR:
Bradley Cooper - Silver Linings Playbook
Daniel Day-Lewis - Lincoln
Hugh Jackman - Les Misérables
Joaquin Phoenix - The Master
Denzel Washington - Flight

ACTRESS:
Jessica Chastain - Zero Dark Thirty
Jennifer Lawrence - Silver Linings Playbook
Emmanuelle Riva - Amour
Quvenzhané Wallis - Beasts of the Southern Wild
Naomi Watts - The Impossible

SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Christoph Waltz - Django Unchained
Philip Seymour Hoffman - The Master
Robert De Niro - Silver Linings Playbook
Alan Arkin - Argo
Tommy Lee Jones - Lincoln

SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Amy Adams - The Master
Sally Field - Lincoln
Anne Hathaway - Les Misérables
Helen Hunt - The Sessions
Jacki Weaver - Silver Linings Playbook

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:
Amour - Michael Haneke View Trailer / More Information
Django Unchained - Quentin Tarantino View Trailer / More Information
Flight - John Gatins View Trailer / More Information
Moonrise Kingdom - Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola
Zero Dark Thirty - Mark Boal

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:
Argo - Chris Terrio
Beasts of the Southern Wild - Lucy Alibar & Benh Zeitlin
Life of Pi - David Magee
Lincoln - Tony Kushner
Silver Linings Playbook - David O. Russell

ANIMATED FEATURE:
Frankenweenie
The Pirates! Band of Misfits
Wreck-It Ralph
ParaNorman
Brave

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM:
Amour (Austria/France)
Kon-Tiki (Norway)
No (Chile)
A Royal Affair (Denmark)
War Witch (Canada)

CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Anna Karenina - Seamus McGarvey
Django Unchained - Robert Richardson
Life of Pi - Claudio Miranda
Lincoln - Janusz Kaminski
Skyfall - Roger Deakins

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE:
5 Broken Cameras
The Gatekeepers
How to Survive a Plague
The Invisible War
Searching for Sugar Man

DOCUMENTARY SHORT:
Inocente
Kings Point
Mondays at Racine
Open Heart
Redemption

ANIMATED SHORT:
Adam and Dog - Minkyu Lee
Fresh Guacamole - PES
Head over Heels - Timothy Reckart and Fodhla Cronin O'Reilly
Maggie Simpson in "The Longest Daycare" - David Silverman
Paperman - John Kahrs

LIVE-ACTION SHORT:
Asad - Bryan Buckley and Mino Jarjoura
Buzkashi Boys - Sam French and Ariel Nasr
Curfew - Shawn Christensen
Death of a Shadow (Dood van een Schaduw) - Tom Van Avermaet and Ellen De Waele
Henry - Yan England

VISUAL EFFECTS:
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Life of Pi
Marvel's The Avengers
Prometheus
Snow White and the Huntsman

PRODUCTION DESIGN:
Anna Karenina
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Les Miserables
Life of Pi
Lincoln

COSTUME DESIGN:
Anna Karenina
Les Miserables
Lincoln
Mirror Mirror
Snow White and the Huntsman

MAKE-UP & HAIR:
Hitchcock
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Les Miserables

FILM EDITING:
Argo
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty

SOUND MIXING:
Argo
Les Misérables
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Skyfall

SOUND EDITING:
Argo
Django Unchained
Life of Pi
Skyfall
Zero Dark Thirty

ORIGINAL SCORE:
Anna Karenina - Dario Marianelli
Argo - Alexandre Desplat
Life of Pi - Mychael Danna
Lincoln - John Williams
Skyfall - Thomas Newman

ORIGINAL SONG:
"Before My Time" from Chasing Ice
"Everybody Needs A Best Friend" from Ted
"Pi's Lullaby" from Life of Pi
"Skyfall" from Skyfall

"Suddenly" from Les Misérables     

Brandon Peters returns! Brandon Peters dissects the Dirty Harry franchise V: The Dead Pool (1988)

The Dead Pool

1988

Director:  Buddy Van Horn

Starring:  Clint Eastwood, Patricia Clarkson, Liam Neeson, Jim Carrey, Evan C. Kim

Rated R

Fuck with me, buddy, I'll kick your ass so hard you'll have to unbutton your collar to shit.

                        ~Harry Callahan

Dirty Harry returns to the screen one last time in 1988’s The Dead Pool.  Director by another Eastwood “Yes, man”, longtime Eastwood stunt coordinator Buddy Van Horn delivers an adventure that finds the perfect medium between a film like Magnum Force and Sudden Impact. The film boasts likely the most familiar, big name cast of the series.  However, in 1988, this cast was much a bunch of nobodies.  Liam Neeson and Patricia Clarkson had minimalist film experience and were bouncing around television guest spots prior to The Dead Pool.  Jim Carrey (then going by James), was much of nothing then.  He was up and coming in a few films, but this was likely his first major and dramatic venture.  And its not like these were star making or star turning roles for them either.  Most were still years off from making a splash.

The story appears at first as a murder mystery you can play along with, but is really a police drama in which you follow the detectives in discovering the solution.  At first this could appear to be a cheat (like Friday the 13^th), but the clues are spread and there to give this killer some weight.  Eastwood said he liked the hub-bub of getting caught up in a Hollywood-related mystery with colorful subjects that you want to pin guilt on and in reality it ends up just being a Joe-Nobody.  He claims through his research that this is how most police mysteries turned up.  When I watched this as a young lad, I felt like maybe I missed something, but through the many times I've returned to this film, its pretty clear and actually somewhat creepy that the police in this story are way off the trail of this killer a majority of the running time and he is out and freely continuing his mission.

For the most part, the film is pretty much a paint-by-numbers directing job.  However, the key piece of the film is a car chase between Harry and a remote control car armed with a bomb.  It sounds silly, but it’s rather engaging and extremely entertaining.  I’d even go as far as to say it may be the most notable car chase and action scene in the entire series.  It’s a lot of fun.

Harry’s partner survives this time around.  He’s one who’s got all the predisposed info about Harry’s partners and follows what to do to a T.  He also brings some great charm and humor to the part.  Quan is constantly delivering disturbing one-liners at crime scenes with such innocence and a lighthearted tone, its pretty funny.  Harry is also visibly disturbed by it.  There's also plenty of inside baseball humor regarding the movie industry and forcing different races into police movies just for the sake of diversity.  I’m going to go as far as saying that the character of Al Quan is Harry’s most well rounded, fun, memorable and best partner in the entire franchise.

The film is nowhere near as gritty as the last two and its not as comical as the fourth.  But The Dead Pool finds a fine line and becomes a smart piece of popcorn entertainment.  It brings thrills, suspense, laughs and delivers on action movie goods.  Its not too dark or serious to turn off some more mainstream film goers and is far from dopey mindless action.  I highly recommend the first film to people, but if someone isn’t sheen on 70s cinema, this one might work.  The Dead Pool is a hell of a good time.  It sends Harry Callahan out on a very high note.  And like every film previous, it sends him out, with helicopter shot, leaving an area surrounded by a large body of water.

Up Next:  Ranking the Dirty Harry Franchise

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Review: The Gangster Squad (2013) is LA Confidential for kids.

The Gangster Squad

2013
110 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

I've long spoken of the irony of Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy being one of the most mature and adult comic book films ever released (essay).  Despite its PG rating and primarily colors-centric art direction, it's rather violent and genuinely sad, focused on adult characters who deal with very adult problems.  It is perhaps doubly ironic that Ruben Fleischer's The Gangster Squad (trailer), which feels at times like a loose remake of the 1990 Disney release, is so juvenile despite its grown-up cast and its very R-rated violence.  It is cheerfully pulpy but childishly so.  It turns the tale of a group of off-the-books LA cops waging war on gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn, going 'full gangster') into a simplistic adventure seemingly aimed at eight-year old boys.  For much of its running time, it can't decide whether it wants to be a serious gangster drama or a kid-friendly action adventure (graphic violence be damned), before just giving up and becoming a glorified video game instead.  Despite all of that, it is not a boring picture, filled with enjoyably bad acting, laughably cliched and/or corny plot turns, and pretty much non-stop violence.  The Gangster Squad achieves a rarity in this hyper-aware age: It's genuinely so bad that it's (almost) good.

The plot is pretty simple.  Mickey Cohen has immigrated from Chicago to Los Angeles and is killing his way to the top of the organized crime food chain.  Standing in his way are a few honest cops, corralled by Chief Parker (Nick Nolte, growling his way through an extended cameo) and led by Sgt. John O'Mara (Josh Brolin, trying his very best as the proverbial lead), who have declared an unofficial war on the Cohen enterprise.  The other cops rounding out his unit are the devil-may-care womanizer (Ryan Gosling) who has taken up with Cohen's not-quite-girlfriend (Emma Stone, who looks hot and makes out with Gosling but has little other purpose), the family man surveillance guru (Giovanni Ribisi, who plays the token 'Do the ends justify the means?' audience surrogate before his reasonable complaints are forgotten in the carnage-filled climax), the token black guy who of course knows where all the drug connections are (Anthony Mackie, as usual deserving better), the old-school gunslinger (Robert Patrick), and his would-be protege (Michael Peña, who has almost no lines).  Of these characters, only Brolin registers as a fully-developed character, as the film initially frames itself as a story of World War II veterans having come home to LA only to find themselves required to go to war yet again on domestic soil.  It is a rich idea that frankly befits a more adult movie.

Sean Penn is hilariously awful here, basically doing an R-rated version of Big Boy Caprice without Al Pacino's shadings and tragic pathos.  Cohen is allegedly a favorite of the media and the politicians, yet he is so relentlessly violent and so socially uneducated that it's a wonder why anyone would work for him (a good 70% of his screen time is spent viciously dispatching his own men for various infractions).  Whatever dreams Fleischer may have had about crafting a serious action drama go out the window as soon as Cohen shows up (which is in the first scene, natch).  Ironically some of the best work comes from Mireille Enos (from AMC's The Killing) as Brolin's wife.  She's actually giving more to do, especially in the first act, than Emma Stone.   If I somehow doubt the idea that it was Connie O'Mara that selected the men using the kind of acumen that could have landed her a job in intelligence (I'm sure the film is about as true-to-life as Hitchcock), it works in the context of the film and Enos has genuine chemistry with not just Brolin but with Gosling in their one terrific scene together.   Sadly Stone's character basically window dressing until she becomes a plot point.The rest of the cast does their best to maintain dignity as the film gets sillier and sillier, even if Brolin, Gosling, and Penn dominate the proceedings, making the rest of the cast fight for scraps.  As for the 'Are we no better than them?' moral handwringing, it's purely for show, brought up by a single major character and then forgotten as soon as it's inconvenient.

Despite what I've said above, I can't entirely dump on a movie that, perhaps in spite of itself, is pretty entertaining.  Yes, much of its enjoyment comes from the often humorous mix of 'serious drama' and often absurd plot turns and/or obvious character beats.  And in this R-13 era, I must say that this may be the most pervasively violent big-studio release since Blood Diamond.  I appreciated the many times the camera didn't cut away from the bloodshed, even if the reshot finale is full of truly abysmal CGI-blood effects.  Speaking of that finale, it's pretty much where the film stops even trying and descends into full-blown self-parody. I don't know how the original movie theater shooting scene would have worked into the film, but the idea of movie theater patrons being gunned down by gangsters probably would have made thematic sense in a film that periodically acknowledges the collateral damage of crime wars (although there is a scene in Chinatown that seems to serve the same narrative purpose, even if it's sadly more conventional).  The finale itself is a completely thoughtless gunfight that not only resembles a video game but resembles the final level of a specific video game (highlight to reveal: Stranglehold).  Even with the compromised ending, this is a cheerfully R-rated genre entry, full of the kind of wanton violence and unapologetic blood and gore that seems almost quaint by today's standards.  You can see where Warner Bros. could have cut for a PG-13, and I have to give them credit for not doing so.

The Gangster Squad is not a good movie.  But it is that rarity in today's ultra-aware and uber-cynical age; a film so gleefully absurd and ridiculously cliched that it achieves a kind of skewed entertainment value.  It has fine production values, even if you can tell that the picture was shot on video.  The action scenes are relatively solid, and I appreciated a mid-film car chase that resembled a Mario Kart balloon battle mini-game.  Everyone looks great and the film is at no loss for action and violence. In a weird way, Sean Penn's cartoonish performance capsizes any hopes of dramatic authenticity in much the same way Arnold Schwarzenegger's casting in  Batman & Robin altered that film's entire dynamic.  The finale is pretty terrible and I wish Warner Bros. would have just weathered the storm and kept the movie theater scene (at least it's something we haven't seen before).  In the end, The Gangster Squad is a big-scale B-movie with moments of astounding stupidity mixed in with moments of earned enjoyment.  It genuinely plays like a dumbed-down version of LA Confidential by way of Dick Tracy, and it may in itself be a commentary on how childlike even our would-be adult entertainments have become over the last 15-20 years.  If you're an eight-year old boy, this may be your new favorite movie. And to you I say good luck sneaking into a theater this weekend.

Grade: C+

Never an Absolution: 15 years later, a look at the 5 best films murdered during Titanic's 4-month reign of box office terror.

This winter will of course mark the fifteenth anniversary of the momentous box office run of Titanic.  For over three months, the James Cameron epic dominated the box office in a fashion unseen since E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial during its initial 1982 release.  The film sat atop the box office for an unprecedented fifteen weekends, a record for unbroken domination and the second most weekends at number one on history (E.T. had sixteen weekends atop, but only six of them were in a row).  From December 19th, 1997 until April 3rd, 1998, it caused crushed pretty much everything in its path.  Aside from a few offhand Fridays were a new film temporarily took the top spot (US Marshals, The Man With the Iron Mask and the re-release of Grease during its March run), but the first three months of 1998 were all about Titanic.  But while we must remember this astonishing run of utter and complete domination, which was the last of its kind, we must also take a moment to remember the many many films laid to waste in its path.  Oh there were a few survivors, such as the aforementioned Fugitive spin-off and the Three Musketeers sequel that happened to also star Leonardo DiCaprio, along with Adam Sandler's break-out smash The Wedding Singer (as well as um, Everest IMAX which slowly earned $87 million after opening on March 6th). But otherwise Winter 1998 was merely mass grave.  Ironically, there were actually at least several worthwhile films, now mostly forgotten in the dustbin of history, that bombed during those cold winter months.  So this is a place to remember five worthwhile pictures that were flattened by the mighty ship.  All deserved their moment in the spotlight, some have become cult favorites while others are barely remembered at all.    

Fallen (01/16/98):
Released over the Martin Luther King day holiday weekend, this absolutely superb supernatural thriller remains one of Denzel Washington's best movies, certainly among his very best genre entries.  Gregory Hoblit has been in director jail since the appallingly terrible 2008 Diane Lane thriller Untraceable, but he had a heck of a run in the mid-90s, culminating with the terrific time travel thriller Frequency.  His most famous film is the 1996 legal thriller Primal Fear which launched the career of Edward Norton and introduced most of America (those who hadn't seen Congo) to Laura Linney.  But his best film remains his follow-up, a coldly clinical but genuinely emotional drama concerning a would-be demon who leaps from body to body in order to kill and kill again.  Washington is terrific as the cop who slowly discovers this terrible secret while John Goodman and Donald Sutherland provide fine support.  Elias Koteas has a terrific extended cameo, one which announced his transition from 'that guy who played Casey Jones in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' to a top-notch character actor. The film mostly forsakes gore and merely treats the very act of murder as a tragic horror in-and-of-itself.  Fallen is a somber and surprisingly weighty mix of theological drama and supernatural thriller, but there's a good chance you've never even heard of it.  It's currently available in various physical media formats (DVD, Blu Ray, etc.) as well as free of charge on Amazon Instant for Prime members.    

Deep Rising (01/30/98):
I've had friends and colleagues telling me for years to check out this early Stephen Sommers picture, and I have to say they were right.  Released during the middle of a half-decade or so run of big-scale monster movies (brought on by the surprise success of Spieces in 1995 and/or the CGI boom represented by Jurassic Park), this is an energetic and unapologetically trashy bit of B-movie fun.  The cast, including the likes of Treat Williams, Famke Janssen, Anthony Heald, Wes Studi, Cliff Curtis, Djimon Hounsou, and Sommers mainstay Kevin J. O'Connor, is obviously having fun, and the Sommers-penned screenplay sparkles with genuinely humorous interplay.  The plot concerns a crew of seemingly good-hearted mercenaries hired by less good-hearted mercenaries to commit apparent piracy on a nearby cruise ship.  Alas, fate has intervened and they arrive to discover an empty ship with the walls and floors painted in blood.    More than that I will not say, but you can guess where this is going.  Nonetheless, despite some dodgy climactic CGI (which also slightly marred The Mummy Returns), this unapologetically R-rated comedic monster thriller delivers the goods right up to the end.  It may have tanked at the box office (just $11 million on a $45 million budget), but it was a pioneer in its own way.  Just as Die Hard set the 'lone man trapped in a single location against bad guys' template for a generation of straight-to-VHS action pictures,  Deep Rising, with its rogues gallery up against a giant unstoppable monster, gave way to a sub-genre of direct-to-DVD horror films.  It also feels like the big-scale predecessor to every SyFy Saturday night original film ever made.

Dark City (02/27/98):
I distinctly remember seeing the trailer for this one attached to the opening night prints of Scream 2 and thinking it was going to be a monster hit.  Alas, it was not to be, and it merely settled for being one of the best science fiction films of the last twenty years.  This modern classic proceeded The Matrix by a year and is perhaps forever doomed to be 'the one that isn't The Matrix'.  That's a shame.  The Matrix is pretty great, but Dark City is better.  Of all the various 'your life isn't really your life' films to follow in the wake of Total Recall, this is the only one that deals with the emotional and moral fall out of such a revelation.  The visually dazzling film deals with the very nature of how the absence of consequence affects our choices while tossing in a strong 'nature versus nurture' debate in the bargain.  While The Matrix plays as a textbook Joseph Campbell hero's journey, with all the cathartic wish-fulfillment empowerment that goes along with that, Alex Proyas's Dark City instead aims for mournful introspection and becomes a richer entertainment for it.  There are unforgettable images throughout, including a third-act reveal that is genuinely breathtaking. And while the acting isn't what anyone would call 'showy', Rufus Sewell and Jennifer Connolly are terrific (this is the film that broke Connolly out of her post-Rocketeer rut) while Keifer Sutherland and William Hurt give fine turns as well.  There are a hundred wonderful ideas in this science-fiction classic, and a hundred wonderful images to go with them (the special effects are terrific and always in service of the story), as well as a twisting story that keeps adding layers right up to the final scenes. Track down the director's cut and lose yourself in one of the best and most original science fiction films of my lifetime.     

Twilight (03/06/98):
No, not *that* Twilight.  This delicious bit of film noir is Paul Newman's second-to-last lead role.  Like a lot of 'final' films of aging stars, this one confronts the mortality of its lead(s) head-on, telling a somewhat conventional mystery while also dealing with the realization that the once great giants of their ages are mostly ready to be put out to pasture.  Also starring Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, and James Garner, the picture works in plays out a bit like John Wayne's The Shootist, with a bit of the old 'one last quest for the aging warrior' thrown in.  But aside from end-of-life pathos (Hackman's character is dying of cancer), it's a riveting and entertaining thriller, both suspenseful and witty with plenty of quirky gumshoe dialogue for the veterans to chew on.  Also joining the fun are John Spencer, Giancarlo Esposito, M. Emmet Walsh, Stockard Channing. The plot involves the usual blackmail, potential murder, and rediscovery of decades-old sins, along with very early performances from Reese Witherspoon and Liev Schreiber plus the American theatrical debut of current Zero Dark Thirty star Jason Clarke as 'cop 1'.   This was one of Robert Benton's last films and everyone in the cast, even the comparatively young Susan Sarandon, has a lifetime's worth of regret and sorrow that makes the film more than just an old-school film noir.  Although it's also a darn-good old-school detective movie.  The film may never have been a true break-out hit, but it surely deserved more than the mere $15 million in domestic bod office that it got during that bitter March winter.

Primary Colors (03/20/98):
It's weird how in just six months we ended up with three of the best political comedies of recent years opening right on top of each other.  Wag the Dog arguably got the attention it deserved, even as it was accused of ripping off the Monica Lewinsky scandal that broke *after* the film's December 1997 release.  Warren Beatty's Bulworth was both incredibly insightful and frustratingly uneven, although I'd imagine its saga of a morally empty politician hitting rock bottom would resonate even more today.  But lost amid the shuffle is Mike Nichols's absolutely terrific adaptation of the Joe Klein novel, itself allegedly based on the Democratic primary campaign of Bill Clinton in the run up to the 1992 general election.  John Travolta plays "not Bill Clinton" while Emma Thompson does not play Hillary Clinton.  But what makes the film work as more than a gimmick is its refusal to be defined by the events that it is loosely based on.  This is a universal political fable, one about the constant struggle between winning 'the right way' versus just winning at all.  Kathy Bates was justly Oscar nominated while Adrian Lester is the proverbial lead and our eyes and ears into this up-close look at the 'war room' in all of its forms.  Primary Colors is a sprawling, intelligent, and absolutely adult political dramedy, one that never condescends to its audience or (unlike a certain George Clooney potboiler from 2011) adds implausible thriller elements in order to goose up the melodrama.  Fifteen years later, Primary Colors transcends its subject matter to become an all-encompassing look at the morality of victory even when victory is the morally superior outcome.

And that's a wrap for this memorial service.  Now before you ask, I didn't include The Big Lebowski for two reasons.  A) I don't love it as much as others do and B) with $17 million, it was still the Coen Brothers' third highest grosser at the time (behind Fargo and Raising Arizona), meaning that it arguably didn't make all that much less than it otherwise would have without Titanic mowing down everything in its path.  And, for what it's worth, it should be reiterated that Titanic was and still is an absolutely terrific film, so the recognition of some other great films released during the same period is not about bringing down the James Cameron masterpiece but merely about sharing the love.  So your turn... what were your favorite theatrical releases during that blood-drenched winter of 1998?  Share below as always.

Scott Mendelson

Love the sinner, hate the sin: Films I like or love despite finding them morally or ideologically objectionable.

Let's pretend for a moment that Zero Dark Thirty does in fact do all of the things that its critics, many of whom have not even seen the film, are claiming.  Let's pretend that it endorses torture on a practical and/or moral level.  Let's pretend that it implies/states that information gleaned from torture was essential in catching Osama Bin Laden and would not have been discovered any other way.  Does that (incorrect, I'd argue) interpretation automatically negate its worth as quality film making?  There has been much discussion of the alleged morality of Bigelow and Boal's superb procedural, much of it penned by those who believe that either it is 'pro-torture' or at least will be interpreted as much by general moviegoers (a classic case of 'I'm smart enough to understand but they aren't').  The question for those critics becomes whether its alleged sins negates its worth and/or can be separated from its qualities as a film.  But quite frankly, it's more than possible to enjoy a film while disagreeing with its opinions or moral worldview.  In fact, this whole thing started with David Edelstein picking the film as his favorite of 2012 while also calling it morally reprehensible.With that in mind, without endorsing any of the somewhat simplistic ( in my opinion wrongheaded) views of Zero Dark Thirty, I thought this would be a good time to discuss a few films that I happen to like and/or love despite being vehemently opposed to their respective ideologies. Spoilers ahoy!

The Devil's Advocate (1997):
Yes, the core arc is that of Keanu Reeves as a hotshot litigator coming undone due to his deadly sin of pride.  But from start to finish, the film has a rather disturbing view of the criminal justice system, one that basically states that certain kind of people who are accused of certain kind of crimes don't deserve a robust defense.  We are supposed to be disturbed when Kevin viciously tears into the complaining witness in a child molestation case (Heather Matarazzo), without noticing that the only reason she falls apart on the stand is because she lies to pretty much every question he asks her.  We are supposed to be bemused when Kevin defends the rights of an animal sacrifice-er (Delroy Lindo) on First Amendment grounds without noticing that, yeah, that's kind of how 'freedom of religion' sometimes works.  And we are supposed to be saddened when Kevin makes the choice to put an alibi witness on the stand who is *probably* lying without noticing that A) he doesn't know for sure and B) any decent prosecutor would have asked the same question that caused him to doubt her in the first place. Yet despite its anti-due process message, the Taylor Hackford film is absolutely terrific fun, with terrific performances by Al Pacino (low-key as the Devil until the very end) and Keanu Reeves (in a rare overacting turn), plus a star-making supporting turn by Charlize Theron.  It's a rare example of big-budget supernatural horror for adults with all the fixings that go with that.   It's morally indefensible ("some people don't deserve a robust criminal defense") but it's also one of the most enjoyable big-scale supernatural thrillers of the late 1990s.

The 6th Day (2000):
This Arnold Schwarzenegger cloning adventure is actually pretty good save for Arnold's terrible performance  Something we have learned is that Arnie can only act with uber-strong direction, be it from Ivan Reitman, James Cameron, or one-offs like Paul Verhoeven and Andrew Davis.  But the film is a relatively satisfying, mostly low-key (for once, taking an R-rated film into PG-13 territory almost makes sense) action thriller.  Like most films about cloning, the film comes out pretty harshly against it.  I can't say I'm a big fan of human cloning either, but the film equates cloning with the very worst kind of science and corruption.  Again, no great shakes there, but it also somewhat champions those who would murder those responsible for human cloning.  The film kicks off with a massacre aboard a helicopter, committed by a ragtag group of would-be freedom fighters who are rebelling against the cloning industries.  Those would-be terrorists eventually murder a clone of Arnold's best friend before themselves being slaughtered by the evil Tony Goldwyn's henchmen in a scene meant to inspire token sympathy for the newly dead.  It's not a tough leap to say that Roger Spottiswade's sci-fi parable basically condones the murder of those who would do science that certain groups (be they religiously-motivated or otherwise) don't approve of.  The 6th Day manages to be an entertaining and mostly intelligent sci-fi cautionary tale even with a subtext that's arguably pro-abortion doctor homicide.           

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Surrogates (2009):
Both films are basically science-fiction fables centered around the classic "What if everything was as it was in our world except for one key difference?".  In the case of Surrogates, it's the scientific ability to basically have robotic versions of yourselves live your life for you (you can sit at home and control your surrogate while they live your life for you).  With Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, it's the idea of being able to erase bad memories as a way to discard unpleasant moments in your life.  And both films basically come to the oddly authoritarian notion that we, as consenting and informed adults, should not have the right to said technologies.  In Surrogates, Bruce Willis makes a climactic decision to shut down the entire grid that powers the machines, thus forcing humanity to live its own existence again.  In Eternal Sunshine, an employee of the memory-wiping service lashes out at her boss (who had an affair with her but then erased her memory) by mailing the forgotten memories (recorded on tapes, natch) to every single person who has chosen to use the service.  At the very least, one can at least admit the horrifying psychological damage brought about by such an action (consider the countless paying customers who chose to have truly horrific memories expunged), what right does she have to negate the choice of those who made the fully-informed choice to have their memories altered?  One can argue about whether humanity would benefit from such technologies, but both films (and many others like them) end by arguing that adults, rational adults, shouldn't be allowed to have certain *things* even if they are fully aware of the consequences and aware of the issues being raised.  

The Island (2005):
 This was Michael Bay's second attempt at being taken seriously, after the overblown and undercooked Pearl Harbor.  Despite a second action-packed half that isn't as compelling as the character/plot-driven first half, it remains a smart piece of big-scale sci-fi.  But the film also is, like most Michael Bay films, rather conservative in its politics. Bad Boys 2 is a giant ode to American exceptionalism (Americans are using drugs, so it's okay to wreck Cuba) and the post-9/11 stomping on civil liberties, while the whole Transformers trilogy is a pro-incursion parable for American's invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.  Seriously, Revenge of the Fallen is "Here's why we can't leave the Middle East" while Dark of the Moon is "Hey, we left and look what happened!".  But The Island is the most explicit in its morality, with a final act which makes a bald-faced comparison between abortion (or, perhaps more  and the Holocaust.  In its final scenes, we see clones, people born purely to be spare parts for other rich people, being herded up into what are basically gas chambers to be exterminated.  The film of course also plays on the idea of the more generalized persecuted 'other' (witness lead henchman Djimon Hounsou switching sides after relaying a story of being persecuted in childhood), but the lasting imagery is one of 'aborted people' being sent to their deaths under the idea that they aren't 'real people'.  Obviously, as someone who is pro-choice, I'd have to take issue with the film's politics.  But that doesn't mean I don't think it's a pretty solid thriller.

The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012):
No, I don't think the film is some kind of post-9/11 "war on terror' apologeta.  I debunked said theory in quite a bit of detail HERE.  And no, I don't think The Dark Knight Rises is a fascist epic about how the 99%ers are secretly a bunch of insane terrorists who want to conduct a 'reign of terror' while secretly plotting doomsday (nor do I actually enjoy the movie all that much, but I digress).  I discussed that a little bit HERE.  But I have always taken issue with the very last scene of The Dark Knight.  While it works thematically and is arguably set up in prior scenes, the concept that a comforting lie is necessary to 'save Gotham' is frankly abhorrent.  In short, the idea that the populace needs comforting falsehoods is the kind of thing that got us into Iraq in the first place ("Why sure, the evil Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 and we're gonna get him!").  This is to say nothing about the hero myths built around Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman  and how they helped foster the public's acceptance of an immoral military adventure (ironically, the brutal and discomforting final act of Zero Dark Thirty does much to demystify the execution of Osama Bin Laden).

At the end of The Dark Knight, we are apparently told that the only way to defeat The Joker is to hold up Harvey Dent as a hero while letting Batman brand himself as a villain.  Had the franchise ended there, we would have at least been in a position to debate the morality of Batman's climactic choice, since Nolan's film doesn't actually offer an opinion on it.  But wait, you say?  The Dark Knight Rises deals with the aftershocks of the film's finale, right? Not quite.  While Chris Nolan stated that The Dark Knight Rises would deal with the side effects of telling a big lie (and presumably getting caught), that in itself was a falsehood. The fact that eight years of peace and relative prosperity was built on a myth is ultimately irrelevant to overreaching plot.  The idea that the 'Dent Act' was built on a lie is immaterial since the Dent Act (those convicted of organized crimes would serve out their entire sentences) isn't exactly a breach of civil liberties in the first place.  The idea that Batman took the blame for Harvey Dent's murders partially to scare criminals again is negated by the fact that he retired after that fateful night.

The idea that Gotham would come undone once the truth came out is frankly nonexistent as the only scene dealing with this is a single heated conversation between Jim Gordon and John Blake, which is in turn irrelevant to the overall story (and why is he so angry with Gordon when he knows for the entire film that Bruce Wayne told the same lie?).  Taken as a whole, the only thing that came from Batman and Jim Gordon telling a big lie is eight years of relative safety and peace for the beleaguered Gotham City.  Said peace is not halted because of 'the big lie', but merely due to the outside machinations of an obsessive terrorist (Bane) doing the bidding of Talia Al Ghul in an eight-year long revenge scheme for the death of her father.  Thus, minus any other context or negative consequences, one must presume that Batman did the right thing in taking the fall for Harvey Dent.  Thus the films, if only by accident brought on by sloppy writing in the third film, end up basically endorsing the idea that it's okay for authority figures to lie to the populace in order to make them feel better and/or cover up uncomfortable truths.

I guess I could include the Twilight Saga, except I'm not entirely sure how much the films actually endorse Bella Swan's worldview. Anyway, that's a wrap for this particular pontification.  Your turn, folks.  What films do you enjoy even while disagreeing with them on a moral or ideological level?  To my conservative readers, what bits of liberal propoganda still work for your as motion pictures?  To my liberal readers, what conservative-leaning films (like, um, Ghostbusters) still work for you?  Sound off below.

Scott Mendelson

Weekend Box Office (01/06/13): Texas Chainsaw 3D tops the first weekend of 2013. Promised Land tanks.

Texas Chainsaw 3D topped the box office this weekend with a robust $23 million.  That's a bit behind the $33 million opening haul for The Devil Inside, but it's still easily the top horror debut for January.  Moreover, the picture earned more, even adjusted for inflation, than the last go around, the painfully underrated Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (retrospective essay).  The 2003 remake took in $28 million way back in October 2003 ($36 million in today's dollars, not even accounting for the whole 3D bump), but this under-hyped and frankly somewhat undersold quasi-sequel to the original 1973 film was never going to reach those heights. Said Platinum Dunes remake was exceedingly well-marketed, with a pioneering trailer (think how often it gets ripped off ten years later), and it basically kicked off the return of the hardcore horror film (along with the mostly ignored Wrong Turn from that May). Of course, the best weapon a new horror January film has is the October release of a new Paranormal Activity sequel, as it's a piece of prime demo-friendly marketing.  The Devil Inside attached its trailer to Paranormal Activity 3 back in October 2011 while Texas Chainsaw 3D had its trailer viewed by those attending Paranormal Activity 4 this October.  Of course, the fourth entry made about half what the third one did, so that probably didn't help.

That this under-marketed was still able to kick up a solid opening is proof of the franchise's long-standing popularity with genre fans (this is the seventh entry in forty years), or maybe just the fact that we haven't had a horror film since October.  Point being, if I'm a studio head, I'm going to make darn-sure that I have a horror film to open the first weekend in January so I can attach my trailer to Paranormal Activity 5. Still cheap horror is cheap horror, and this may bring about a new franchise for Lionsgate, especially if it doesn't utterly collapse in weekend two ala Friday the 13th in 2009 and A Nightmare On Elm Street in 2010.  That it earned a C+ (halfway decent for a horror film and well above the "F" earned by The Devil Inside last year) and had a halfway decent  (for a horror sequel/remake/reboot) 2.3x multiplier portends a probable continuation in a couple years.  It played 52% female and 64% under 25 years old. Oddly, 1 out of 3 attendees under 25 years of age stated a primary reason for attending the film was due to the starring role of musical artist Trey Songz.  I have no idea who that is, meaning I'm officially old.  I did not see the film, opting to skip those Thursday night at 10:00pm screenings.  But fellow critic Aaron Neuwirth did so and immediately warned me to stay far far away, so as thanks for that I'll link to his review (he *was* right about Pitch Perfect after all).

The major expansion this weekend was for Matt Damon's Promised Land.  Gus Van Sant's well-reviewed 'fracking is bad but it's complicated...' morality play earned just $4.6 million for the weekend.  Chalk it up to being mostly buried during the frenzied Oscar season.  Frankly, this could have been a probable winner as the 'adult movie of choice' later in the year, but the the film needed to come out early in the year in order to qualify for and capitalize on the Oscar nominations that it won't get.  Adults were busy catching up on higher-profile (and arguably more appealing) Oscar bait like Les Miserables, Django Unchained, and Lincoln.  The Impossible suffered the same fate as it expanded to 572 theaters this weekend, choosing to be a small fish in a big pond rather than a small fish in a mostly-empty pond.  The somewhat controversial true-life disaster drama took in an okay $2.7 million ($4,825 per screen).  Sure the picture may pick up an Oscar nomination for Naomi Watts, but is that worth fighting for crumbs?  Next weekend's (at long last) expansion of Zero Dark Thirty is a bigger question mark.  The film expanded to 60 screens this weekend and wracked up $2.75 million for its troubles (a frankly massive $45,000 per-screen average).  Will the film's relentlessly wrong-head torture controversy help the film or hurt it?  Will audiences think they're getting the next Black Hawk Down?   

Other than that, it was strictly holdover news, of which there is little.  The Hobbit continues to pace ahead of Fellowship of the Ring while potentially catching up to The Two Towers (it actually had a bigger fourth weekend - $17.5 million - than the other three Lord of the Rings films, but the somewhat different release date may play a part in that). With $263 million domestic, $300 million is now pretty much a lock.  Of course, with a worldwide total racing towards $900 million (now at $824 million), few will care if the prequel ends up somewhat trailing the prior Lord of the Rings totals.  Django Unchained had a pretty terrific second weekend, ringing up $20 million (-33%) and crossing the $100 million mark in record time for a Tarantino picture.  It's at $106 million already, assuring that it will surpass the $120 million domestic haul for Inglorious Basterds.  It's already the fifth-biggest western of all time and it should pass Wild Wild West ($113 million) next weekend and Rango ($123 million) soon after. Tarantino is now officially one of the few directors, along with James Cameron, Chris Nolan, and Steven Spielberg, who is more valuable as a name-above-the-title marquee attraction than any actor he might cast in his pictures.  Also of note, Parental Guidance is holding stupidly well, with the film already crossing the $50 million mark.

Les Miserables is falling a little harder, with "just" $16 million in its second weekend (-41%), but it's still huge as far as musicals go.  At around $103.6 million after two weekends, it's just above of the $103.2 million total for Dreamgirls and around $15 million from unseating Hairspray ($118 million) as the fifth biggest musical ever.  With surefire Oscar nominations and at least one guaranteed win (Anne Hathaway), it's got a shot at taking out Chicago for the biggest grossing musical of all time sans re-release.  Grease's $188 million total made up of several rereleases, although its $159 million original 1978 gross would equal about $550 million today (and The Sound of Music's $156 million total would equal about $1.1 billion today). It also has $184 million worldwide. Jack Reacher isn't going to make it to $100 million, although $85 million is possible (it's at $64 million) and a strong overseas performance could still get us that much anticipated Jack Reacher: Malick Attack that we all desperately want.  This Is Forty has $54 million and has now outgrossed Funny People while Rise of the Guardians may just make it to $100 million domestic after all (it's at $97 million), while inching towards $300 million worldwide (it's at $262 million).  Not a smash by Dreamworks standards, but not an epic flop either.  Oh, and Wreck It Ralph crossed $300 million worldwide too.  

That's it for this weekend.  Join us next weekend for the wide expansion of Zero Dark Thirty and the wide release of The Gangster Squad and the Wayan Brothers horror spoof A Haunted House.  Until then, do read my entire '2012 in review' wrap-up, which includes eleven essays in all.

Scott Mendelson

2012 in Review... now all in one place!

All of my 2012 in film retrospective essays in one convenient location.  This includes the six 'best/worst' movie lists, the three trend pieces from the last couple months, and the two 'good movies news in 2012' pieces that I wrote back in June which darn-sure still applied over the rest of the year.  Please share, comment, and enjoy.

Scott Mendelson

Good Movie News in 2012: The return of R-rated movies.

Good Movie News in 2012: The return of the "movie".


2012 in Film: Pre-thatrical Video On Demand goes mainstream.

2012 in Film: Audiences show (relatively) good taste.

2012 in Film: The female-driven blockbuster is no longer a surprise, no longer written off as a 'fluke'.


2012 in Film: Good films you probably missed in theaters.

2012 in Film: The Underrated of unfairly maligned.

2012 in Film: The Overrated.

2012 in Film: The Runners-Up.

2012 in Film: The year's "Worst" films.

2012 in Film: The year's "Best" films.

The Host (1 of 3 'next Twilight's) gets 3 theme posters.

Yahoo Movies just debuted three new theme-specific posters for one of three major young-adult literature adaptations dropping this year.  The clear advantage that it has over Beautiful Creatures and The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is that it's based of course on book written by Stephanie Meyer, she of Twilight fame.  Saoirse Ronan is the real deal, William Hurt always has my attention, and Andrew Niccol seems an uncommonly good match for the material.  This could be Open Road's shot at the big time, the same way Twilight elevated Summit Entertainment just a couple years into its existence.  Anyway, The Host debuts on March 29, 2013.  As always, we'll see. For those who care, a synopsis is after the jump.

Scott Mendelson
From Stephenie Meyer (author of The Twilight Saga) comes The Host, a love story set in the future, where Earth is occupied by a species who erase the minds of their human hosts, leaving their bodies intact. Melanie Stryder (Saoirse Ronan) is one of the last surviving humans who fights back, risking her life for the people she cares about most – Jared (Max Irons), Ian (Jake Abel), her brother Jamie (Chandler Canterbury) and her Uncle Jeb (William Hurt) – proving that love can conquer all.

In defense of... Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.

With yet another would-be remake/reboot/sequel of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre arriving in theaters tonight night at 10pm (this time merely titled Texas Chainsaw 3D), I thought now would be as good a time as any to offer my thoughts on my favorite entry in the very long running series.  No, I'm not talking about the admittedly groundbreaking Tobe Hopper original, nor the surprisingly good 2003 remake, nor even one of the wacky 'official' sequels.  No, truth be told, my favorite variation on the adventures of Leatherface and his cannibalistic family remains the last one.  I'm speaking of course of Jonathan Liebesman's 2006 prequel to Marcus Nispel's 2003 remake (complicated, I know), entitled merely Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.  The film was a moderate box office success ($19 million opening weekend, $51 million worldwide off a $16 million budget) but was roundly panned by most critics and even a large number of would-be hardcore horror fans.  To this day, I'm not sure why.  Yes, it can be argued that we don't need an origin story for Leatherface and his murderous clan. We don't need to see how he was born, how he got the chainsaw, or how a certain villain from the prior entry happened to have lost his legs.  But perhaps too well hidden in the minutiae of its origin stories and mythology building is nothing less than a top-flight horror film.

If it can be said that a good horror film is partially defined by the audience wanting the film's would-be victims to actually survive their ordeal, then this picture is an unmitigated triumph.  It quickly and efficiently introduces its four young protagonists (Jordana Brewster, Taylor Handley, Diora Baird, and Matt Bomer) and instantly plunges us into their all-too real moral dilemma   While the original Tobe Hopper film (and any number of iconic 1970s horror films) served as a metaphor for Vietnam-era slaughter, this film takes that subtext and successfully makes it text.  We are presented with two young couples, with Handley and Borner heading off on one last road trip with their respective girlfriends before they reenlist in the overseas war effort.  The choice of whether to plunge into (or in the case of Boomer, rejoin) the overseas foreign policy blunder is treated with all the gravity and respect it deserves.  Of course, the question of fight or flight is rendered naught when they are involved in a car accident that brings them to attention of Sheriff Hoyt, again played with scenery-chewing malice by R. Lee Ermey.  One smart decision that the film makes straight off the bat is to not use Leatherface as the primary force of terror in the picture.  He is the muscle of the family, called in when his services are required, but Sheriff Hoyt is the primary evildoer and it is Ermey who makes us squirm.

Unlike the 2003 remake, which only flirted with the idea of cannibalism, this prequel dives right in, blatantly showing off the Hewitt family's penchant for devouring human flesh.  For those who like their horror films literally swimming in gore, you certainly get that here, in spades.  I've seen both the R-rated cut and the NC-17/Unrated version, and both are genuinely disturbing in their blood-drenched visuals (obviously the unrated cut is the preferred version, running six minutes longer and containing about 30 seconds of censored gore).  What's impressive is how the film doesn't relish its violence or its gore.  The violence is not to be cheered or celebrated but feared and/or mourned.  Good people die horribly with no real rhyme or reason, with the added (if obvious) irony of fleeing one killing field for another giving it weight..  Also of note, Liebesman and writers Sheldon Turner and David J Schow ratchet up the suspense in the simplest manner possible: they keep as many of the would-be victims alive for as long as possible.  A major character is horribly dispatched in the first act, after which we wait. We wait and worry even while we sit there wondering, nay hoping that maybe some of them might get out alive.  We are indeed treated to a variation of the iconic dinner sequence, which horrifies in its own special way.  The film is scary and unsettling because the character groundwork has been laid.  Whether its Jordana Brewster's would-be 'final girl' or the two brothers torn between family loyalty and self-preservation, the film is terrifying because we like these people and don't want them to die.

Yes, I will be the first to admit that there film has a few too many 'here's how this character found this item' moments, but frankly the film itself is so compelling that they don't stick out as much as they otherwise would.  Putting aside the obvious profit-minded motive for making a prequel to a successful remake, this picture is an under-appreciated piece of genre art.  Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning is simply a terrific example of gruesome grindhouse horror, made compelling and unsettling by Jonathan Liebesman's commitment to a kind of real-world plausibility.  It's the 'if this happened, here's how it would really go' feeling, which also added surprising gravity to lesser genre entertainments such as Battle: Los Angles and Wrath of the Titans, that gives this film its brutal kick (it's also what makes him very wrong for the would-be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot, since we already got our 'realistic' film version back in 1990).  I can't speak to the quality of John Luessenhop's new 3D-enhanced series entry (I may or may not catch it tonight at 10:00pm, depending on my schedule and my personal disposition), but I will take this moment to encourage those who never tried it, as well as those who wrongly knocked it, to give the vastly underrated Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning a chance.  It does its genre proud and it's still my favorite Texas Chainsaw Massacre film of all.

Scott Mendelson