Movie Nation

“American Sniper” may very well set a Super Bowl weekend box office record, as Friday’s take suggests it is on a pace to better the $31.1 million that a “Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus” concert film did a few years back.

I could see “Sniper” doing just that, as I sense a somewhat muted response to this Super Bowl — overexposed, tainted teams, etc.

Could Spongebob Squarepants be the movie hero to take down Eastwood’s first-person shooter movie? Or will that be “Fifty Shades of Grey?”

“Paddington” is bearing down on $50 million, and will be close by Sunday night.

“Project Almanac” is managing a middling $7 million or so, poor for a teen centric sci-fi shakey cam picture. “Black or White” won’t hit $7.

Open Road’s “The Loft,” released with zero fanfare or press coverage, finishes off a desultory January by bombing, big time. A $1-2 million take is all Karl Urban & Co. can manage. None of the new openings are truly awful, but there’s no reason to turn off the game to go see “Almanac” or “Loft.” “Black or White” could appeal to non football fans.

“The Imitation Game” is having the longest legs of any lower-budget Oscar contender. It’s closing in on $70 million.

Ask actor Jonny Weston what he’s been up to while he’s been waiting for what could be his “big break” to hit theaters. Go ahead.
“Twiddling my thumbs,” he says, laughing. “I’ve been waiting what, a year and a half for (“Project Almanac”) to come out? It’s your whole future on hold, basically.”
He had supporting parts in such little seen gems as “Chasing Mavericks” and “John Dies at the End,” which virtually no one saw. So don’t bother trying to bum him out that reviews for “Almanac,” a teen time travel (in “Blair Witch” shaky cam) thriller are decidedly mixed. “Could have been a lot worse,” The Boston Globe opined. Even The New York Daily News endorsement has this zinger — “Every generation gets the time travel it deserves.”
“All this time,” Weston says. “Now, one last bit of waiting. I’m waiting for all my friends to call me and tell me what they thought of it.”
And that past year wasn’t exactly thumb-twiddling. He’s in the “Divergent” sequel, “Insurgent.” He just finished with “We Are Your Friends,” set in the world of LA’s EDM (electronic dance music) DJs. So it’s all good.
“Research” for playing the “Almanac” genius-nerd consisted of watching Youtube videos of time travel theories giving seminars. But what the self-confessed “‘Twilight Zone’ geek,” “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” and “Back to the Future III” fan can do, with authority, is list his favorite time travel movie conventions, ideas he knew he and his cast mates would have to play when “Project Almanac” went into production.
“You’ve got to explain the science. (“Interstellar,” “Star Trek IV”). Or try to (“Looper”). Or ignore it. (“Safety Not Guaranteed,””Peggy Sue Got Married”). We explain it, but we don’t take up the whole movie doing that.
“You’ve got to go back and meet a dead loved-one. (“Peggy Sue Got Married”, “Looper”).
“You probably want to win the lottery. You get the girl of your dreams. Seriously, what would you do if you had access to a time machine? Get a girl. Get the money.”
What about Weston? Suppose the 26 year-old got access to a “Hot Tub Time Machine”?
“I can’t even begin to think about what I’d do over — THOUSANDS of auditions I’d take or do over, for starters. Life gets you off on tangents. You change the past, those tangents change. I might not even be an actor.”
And nothing stifles creativity like winning the lottery.
“Exactly!”
But what about consequences?
“You go back and save somebody in the past, and that person might save someone who ruins a thousand lives “(The Butterfly Effect,” et al). That’s too much responsibility for one person. Would you use that power if you had it? I invariably say ‘Yes,’ because, let’s be honest. It’s human nature to want to try to change your life.”
But it’s the message of the movie that “There are no ‘second chances.'”
Right, Weston says. But you’ve got to give audiences what they want from a time travel movie. So that “message” can be fudged.
“Maybe, if you take that second chance, make sure you get it right this second time. This time, remember to say ‘I love you.'”

OK, maybe you missed his winning work in the surf bio-drama “Chasing Mavericks.” Or “Taken 3.”

But you’re going to catch Jonny Weston’s winning turn as a sweet, smart kid who finishes up a time machine based on his late DARPA inventor father’s blueprints in “Project Almanac.”

I’m talking to Jonny this AM. Got a question? Post it as a comment below, because I’m looking for suggestions. Thanks!

Amira is a walking contradiction. She wears a hijab, but isn’t shy about showing a little cleavage. She came from Iraq to America, but she hates American soldiers. She is cranky but flippant, profane but still Muslim, pretty when she smiles. Which is almost never.
“I do what I want,” she hisses, in English or Arabic, whenever confronted with these facts. Usually, that happens when she’s on a Lower East Side street corner, hustling pirated DVDs.
“Hey man, have you seen Bridget Jones’s amazing ‘Diary?'”
Sam is an Army veteran who just lost his job as a security guard. Friends tell him his deadpan way with a funny story or joke would work in stand-up. Only it doesn’t.
“Amira & Sam” pairs these two unlikely loners up for an “Only in New York” style romance — with bench side views of the sun setting on the Hudson, combustible teasing, cultural, financial and legal obstacles that stand in the way of love. And somehow, writer-director Sean Mullin’s short, far-fetched love affair comedy charms and works more often than not.
Martin Starr (“This is the End”) is Sam, just done with a multi-year hitch, returned to civilian life with an idealism that doesn’t fit in with the yuppies who insult him out of his security guard job, or the hedge fund crowd that his overly-helpful cousin (Paul Wesley) wants him to run with. Cousin Charlie sees Sam’s military service as a magical connection to potential clients, fellow veterans (David Rasche plays one).
Amira lives, illegally, with her uncle (Laith Nakli), a man who once worked as a translator for Sam’s unit in Iraq. Their connection has a poignant backstory, but Amira isn’t hearing it. She’s hostile from the start, won’t laugh at Sam’s jokes or eat food he has prepared.
Events conspire to throw them together, and while it would be stretching it to say “Hilarity ensues,” the cuteness in their interaction and not-quite-gradual warming does.
She wonders if he’s on Facebook, his questions are more direct.
“Are you bald under that thing?” he says, of her head-covering. “Do you shower in it? Do you shave your pits? Is that an Arab thing? Or just a French thing?”
Mullin crams a lot of melodramatic touches — immigration issues, Charlie giving Sam a sailboat, Charlie’s ethical problems — into 87 minutes. These two would-be lovers leap from hostile and mistrusting to kissing and hugging and showing up at an engagement party, him in his old uniform, her in a stunningly low-cut red party dress, in the most abrupt fashion.
But Starr and especially screen newcomer Shihabi smooth over most of those, and the modestly predictable arc of their story with winsome wit and warmth. We root for them, which is a bottom line must for any romantic comedy, especially the culture clash ones.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with profanity, adult situations

Cast: Martin Starr, Dina Shihabi, Paul Wesley, Laith Nakli, David Rasche

Credits: Written and directed by Sean Mullin.  A Drafthouse Films release.

Running time: 1:27

“Selma” wasn’t the only film about race to get short shrift from Oscar voters this past year. “Black or White” is a frank, touching and very well-acted melodrama about child custody and cultural perceptions of “blackness” and “the race card,” and could have earned Octavia Spencer and Kevin Costner fresh Oscar nominations.
Mike “The Upside of Anger” Binder’s latest teaming with Costner has more anger, mixed with alcoholism and a bitterness that may mask racism.
Elliot Anderson (Costner) tells his granddaughter Eloise (Jillian Estell) “We had a bad night last night.” Turns out, the little girl’s grandmother died. Granddad’s been drinking pretty much ever since.
A couple of days pass, with him drinking and driving her to school and stumbling through tying a ribbon in her hair.  She needs him to ease off the sauce, to be tough with her, the way grandma was. He needs to remember to make her brush her teeth.
“Say it like you MEAN it,” the seven-year-old pleads.
Eloise is of mixed race. Her mom’s gone and her African-American dad isn’t in the picture. But those phone messages Elliot is ignoring? Not returning that call is going to cost him.
Grandma Rowena (she goes by “Wee Wee”) wants to see her grandchild. Elliot’s kept them apart, and his reassurances “Come by any time you like” aren’t sincere. Wee Wee (Spencer) has a brother (Anthony Mackie) who is, like Elliot, a high-powered corporate attorney. The custody fight to come will be about “support, community, history.” She doesn’t think her not-quite-in-law is raising the kid “black” enough.
“She’s NOT black!” he counters. “She’s HALF black!”
Binder and Costner soften whatever racial attitudes that Elliot keeps under wraps, in between drinks. Elliot hires a math tutor for this kid (what he really needs help with is combing her hair), and the tutor is an African over-achiever (Mpho Koaho) who becomes the ever-drunk Elliot’s driver and comical confidante.
The script sets us up to buy into stereotypes, then flips those on their head. The rich suburbanite isn’t some cross-burner, though we start to wonder. And Wee Wee may live in South Central Los Angeles with a vast brood of kids and grand-kids surrounding her, but she’s a successful entrepreneur. Her son (Andre Holland) seems like a crack-smoking cliche, but Spencer’s innate intelligence and fight make Wee Wee a nurturer, upbeat, positive, even if one of her kids is a bad apple.
“I’m just lookin’ out for my babies.”
Binder’s film decidedly tilts toward his (white) point of view, but the games he plays with expectations are fun — a black female judge (Paula Newsome) who stares down the outspoken Wee Wee in court, the conservative white guy who rolls into South Central with the ne plus ultra of rapper rides, a black Escalade. Having Elliot hallucinate his dead wife (Jennifer Ehle) but get no advice from her is a twist. As with “Anger,” Binder’s characters fire off glib, politically incorrect insults and characters make some pretty solid arguments in favor of their political incorrectness.
Maybe it plays it too safe, and Costner, an actor doing some of his best work decades after “Dances With Wolves,” should have found more testy edge to this guy, just to make us uncertain about his darkest feelings. But “Black or White” makes a very entertaining movie for a post-Obama America, a smartly observed story that recognizes we may never be a post-racial America.

MPAA Rating:  PG-13 for brief strong language, thematic material involving drug use and drinking, and for a fight

Cast: Kevin Costner, Octavia Spencer, Jillian Estell, Anthony Mackie, Jennifer Ehle

Credits: Written and directed by Mike Binder. A Relativity release.

Running time: 1:39

We Jason Statham aficionados accept grace notes in his films where we find them. And there’s a gem tucked in the middle of “Wild Card,” his
latest.
The scene — a diner, where veteran Vegas bodyguard and luckless gambler Nick Wild (Statham) is collecting information on somebody who beat
up a gal pal of his. Statham shares the table with Daviena McFadden, playing hotel housekeeper Millicent. Like everybody else Nick is friends
with, he “did something for me once.” So she owes him.
He asks her, and the plump/sassy Millicent goes off on how fine he is, what she’d do to Nick in the sack. Even though he’s English. Because
honey, she’s in housekeeping. She knows those people “smell.”
And British director Simon West’s camera catches the British Statham cracking that cool facade, almost breaking character. The lines are laugh-out-loud funny,
and his reaction (McFadden must have been mugging and riffing to him for his close-ups, too) is a first in a Statham film, and hilarious.
“Wild Card” is a meandering, scatterbrained Vegas character thriller written by one of the greatest screenwriters of all time, William “Marathon
Man/Misery/The Princess Bride” Goldman. So even though it’s more random than riveting, only clever and coherent in fits and starts, even
though Statham has long told interviewers (myself included) that he chooses projects based on who the fight choreographer (Cory Yuen) is, “Wild Card” is a cut above the generic Jason.
Nick crosses swords with a standard-issue rich hoodlum (Milo Ventimiglia) who likes to beat up hookers, and much of the movie has his hour of
reckoning, when the mob guy’s hoods show up, hanging over it.
There’s a young rich dork (Michael Angarano) who hires Nick for protection, and to absorb some of his toughness and cool. There’s a waitress
(Anne Heche) who always seats him near the diner’s resident male hustler, so they can overhear his sexual come-ons and laugh at them. Hope
Davis plays the blackjack dealer with the heart of gold. Every Nick winning streak ends with her saying “Black Jack! I lose more friends that
way.”
Jason Alexander is Nick’s one-scene lawyer-friend, the guy who shares an office with him.
The opening has Nick bullying around Max Casella so he can impress his girlfriend (Sofia Vergara). And the finale features Stanley Tucci. All
these stars, taking on a single scene or two in a Jason Statham film, just to do Goldman’s golden lines.
Statham gets most of them, like when he feels “the weight” of “all the gamblers in all the casinos in the world” on what will be, “one way or
another…my last night in Vegas.”
The fights — three big ones — are the usual Statham specials. Nick closes his eyes and dreams of sailing off Corsica, before launching into each brawl. A neat trick, stabbing a knife into the trigger guard of a bad guy’s pistol to keep it from firing. Director Simon “Con Air/The Mechanic” West and the editors cut these fights to Nick’s favorite R & B tunes. Since this is Christmas time, one brawl is set to The Drifters’ swinging cover of “White Christmas.”
Still, “Wild Card” is somewhat less than the sum of its many amusing or at least unusual parts. But with Goldman, West and all these classy co-stars, he’s at least kicking butt in better company these days.

MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, language and some sexuality/nudity

Cast: Jason Statham, Hope Davis, Anne Heche, Michael Angarano, Stanley Tucci, Max Casella, Sofia Vergara

Credits: Directed by Simon West, script by William Goldman, based on his novel. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:32

Kevin Macdonald has done his Roman Army thriller (“The Eagle”), his sci-fi apocalypse (“How I Live Now”), his political journalism thriller (“State of Play”). But what the Oscar-winning documentarian (“One Day in September”) really had a hankering to try was a submarine movie. Something to do, he says, with the confined spaces on a boat and the restrictions of the genre.
“There are a limited number of moves on the chessboard. All you can do is come up with a different order for them. But you still have to have the same moves. If you do that, the story feels more unexpected.”
So, “Black Sea,” an underwater heist picture involving a retired Soviet sub, a motley crew of laid-off British and Russian sailors let by Jude Law, and sunken Nazi gold, is a veritable checklist of submarine picture conventions.
There’s the thrumming of propellers of a hostile ship overhead.
“Check,” Macdonald says with a laugh.
The crash dive, in which the depth gauge inevitably cracks?
“Oh yes!”
Watertight doors cracked shut?
“Got it.”
Moisture dripping from rusty valves, valves that rupture at extreme depth?
“Have to have that, don’t we?”
He was inspired to pursue this project by the Kursk disaster, when a Russian sob sank, much of the crew survived, only to die slow deaths because of the slow speed of rescue efforts.
“That’s a horrible death, an awful way to go,” he thought. He figured out a reason for laid off salvage workers and sailors to be stuck on the bottom and handed the idea off to screenwriter Dennis Kelly. The result is “a grippingly efficient job of trapping its audience amid the pumping pistons and clanging pipes of its inhospitable setting,” Britain’s Observer newspaper enthuses, even if it “tend towards the predictable.” (Britain’s Daily Express).
Macdonald shot much of “Black Sea” on a rusting, retired Soviet era Foxtrot Class sub because “the price was right, and there’s nothing like having real red-star labeled torpedo tubes for authenticity.”
And while shooting a film, with a cast that did not all speak English, Macdonald had an epiphany. He realized the true source
for every submarine thriller, from “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” to “The Hunt for Red October,” “Das Boot” to “K-19: The Widowmaker.”
“All submarine movies are ”Moby Dick.’ There’s always some sort of Captain Ahab. The threat of disunity, disloyalty, is very keen when you’re under the sea. And if you’re in the crew, the fear of the captain doing something wrong has to make you paranoid. That’s in all these films. If the captain goes wrong, you die. That’s just as true in ‘Black Sea’ as it in every other film of the genre.”