Movie Nation

“This is like one of those ’80s movies,” wide-eyed Sarah (Aubrey Plaza) observes at one point in the later scenes of “About Alex.”
Yes, it is. More like “that ’80s movie” — singular. “About Alex” is “The Big Chill” — the one about a group of college friends who reunite, in their early 30s, at the big house in the country where one of them lived and just killed himself.
In “About Alex,” not-as-old college friends gather in the big house in the country where one of their number just tried to kill himself. While it’s entirely possible that these late twentysomethings would have run across 1983’s “The Big Chill” somewhere — Jeff Goldblum’s hipster appeal has never been greater — it’s far more likely that the writer-director son of Oscar winner Ed Zwick just figured he could get away with a knock-off, as long as he had a character joke about it.
Everybody had lost touch with Alex (Jason Ritter, the son of John Ritter), dodging his emails, text messages, etc. He was kind of needy. So he writes a poetic final note, paraphrasing Shakespeare.
“Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.”
And then slashed his wrists. Newspaper copy editor and would-be novelist Ben (Nate Parker of “The Great Debaters”) and his girlfriend Siri (Maggie Grace), mouthy academic Josh (Max Greenfield), mergers attorney Sarah (Aubrey Plaza) and hedge fund success Isaac (Max Minghella, son of Oscar winning director Anthony Minghella) flock to his side. Or his house.
They haven’t had the time to clean up the bloody bathroom when Alex sashays back in, grinning, dropped off by a taxi. He’s the best-adjusted recent suicide survivor in the history of film.
Everybody in this group has history, everybody has issues and a lot of those issues have to do with crushes, love affairs, and the like. Alex is sort of peripheral to all that as that old gang from college sort through the messiness of their lingering connections.
“What happened to us?” they ask. “We got serious,” they answer.
Josh makes deep observations about “our parents’ music” (Springsteen) vs. “our music” (Arcade Fire), how people aren’t “close” any more thanks to social media, and how nobody goes deep into thought about relationships, events and their lives — “they just relate them to” this movie (“Wedding Crashers”) or that sitcom (“Friends”).
It’s all so shallow it’s tempting to dismiss this as “Nepotism: The Movie,” with all the Hollywood offspring, on camera and off. Really, Jesse Zwick, if the best idea you can script is a scene where the guys are in a group and all they can think to say is “What do you think the girls are doing?”, it’s time to suck it up and ask daddy for tips.
“About Alex” eventually finds some third act drama amid a sea of glib banalities. Plaza, of TV’s “Parks and Recreation,” is still over-reliant on eye-rolling as her go-to acting move. But Greenfield, Parker and Jane Levy, playing Isaac’s too-young/suicide hot line operator girlfriend (yeah, really) give decent performances.
As “Big Chill” knockoffs go, the world has seen worse. Someday, when future hipsters dig deep into the filmography of the guy we’ll be calling “The New Jeff Goldblum” (Greenfield), maybe they’ll stumble across “About Alex.” And wonder what ’80s movie the eye-roller is comparing this to.
MPAA Rating: R for language and drug use
Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Nate Parker, Maggie Grace, Max Minghella, Jason Ritter, Jane Levy, Max Greenfield
Credits: Written and directed by Jesse Zwick. A Screen Media release.
Running time

There’s something about the idea of that quintessentially modern mensch Griffin Dunne (“After Hours,” “Dallas Buyers Club”) in a period piece that doesn’t connect.
But Griffin Dunne as an academic has-been, forced to dress in 19th century frontier wear to recreate the quest of Lewis & Clark to humor his crazy re-enactor father? That works.
“The Discoverers” showcases Dunne in a part he was born to play. Lewis Birch still sports an ’80s haircut, still wears the stubble, though all his hair is going grey. He’s a Chicago community college teacher who has to moonlight as a security guard, who still has standards when the school is all about keeping the student loan money coming in, and who keeps the last Volvo he could afford together with duct tape.
Newly split from his wife, Lewis drags the kids along to a Portland conference which could re-launch his academic career, a lecture based on his magnum opus about the expedition he was named after. His ground-breaking Lewis & Clark history runs to 6,000 pages, took him 20 years to write, years in which he failed his way down the academic food chain.
But just as snarky Zoe (Madeleine Martin) and stoner Jack doze off in the back seat, Lewis learns his mother is ill. Lewis, who hasn’t visited there in decades, drags the kids there only to find the old woman dead and the old man (Stuart Margolin) lost in a reenactment fantasy.
Next thing you know, the ever-put-upon Lewis and his too-modern kids are slogging along in buckskins, play-actors in an annual “Discovery Trek,” with politically incorrect locals recreating a portion of the quest of the “Corps of Discovery.”
Writer-director Justin Schwarz is covering a bit of “Little Miss Sunshine” on foot, here. Grandpa is catatonic, and armed with a musket. David Rasche plays a co-leader of their corps. Lewis may indulge their fantasy, even though he’s an expert. Zoe, sort of a Sarah Vowell smart-aleck, isn’t having it.
“Not to be a stickler,” she begins this criticism or that one, “But isn’t it a little gender-biased to give only the MEN weapons?”
Lewis is estranged from his father, who prefers his other son (John C. McGinley). Yes, Lewis and father Stanley are both deep into Lewis and Clark, but the script lets us pick up on what must have come between them.
The trek has father-daughter bonding moments, and a stoner-son/blonde teen re-enactor romance. And there’s yet another available potential mate (Carla Buono) for Lewis, should he have the wherewithal to not come off as bitter and martyred, and weepy when he smokes pot.
There are convenient coincidences, aside from the romantic possibilities, but not a lot of low points to this comedy. But the comic highs aren’t that high, and the whole is rather on-the-nose and unsurprising. Schwarz doesn’t discover much new about publish-or-slowly-perish academia, from the soapbox this teacher stands on to the Swedish car these fellows always drive (in the movies, anyway).
Still, “The Discoverers” can be relished for the novel setting, and for Dunne and Martin’s performances in scenes separate or together. Dunne has earned the right to play this loser. And Martin is so good that in Zoe, you can see, hear and dread the ex-wife that her mother is alleged to be.

　
MPAA Rating: unrated, with profanity, pot use, gun play, adult situations
Cast: Griffin Dunne, Madeleine Martin, Stuart Margolin, Carla Buono, David Rasche
Credits: Written and directed by Justin Schwarz. A Quadratic Media release.
Running time: 1:44

The casting of Matthew McConaughey looked promising, Jessica Chastain’s in it, and Michael Caine (of course). Christopher Nolan’s cautionary, hopeful film about a Global Warming doomed Earth in search of a replacement planet epic opens right after election day, where the Global Warming deniers are apparently set for big gains. Coincidence?

This promising fall romantic comedy pairs up Daniel Radcliffe with Zoe Kazan, a sort of meeting Ms. Right at the Wrong Time sort of farce.

Adam Driver and Mackenzie Davis are the two “best friends” who show up to remind us how short the leads are.

This trailer seems to give away the whole movie, but as it’s homework (I’m interviewing Radcliffe about “What If”), I am heading into this with high hopes. Rom-com seems to be one genre Hollywood has forgotten how to make.

Saturday further boosted the fortunes of “Guardians of the Galaxy” and Marvel Studios, as the big Thursday night and huge Friday added another banner day to the film’s tally.

$95.5 million, by midnight Sunday, says deadline.com.

“Get On Up” is under-performing, but should be a stick-around-through-August performer, after opening with about $14 million this weekend.

“Lucy” lost 60% of its opening weekend take, but is still managing $18 million+. “Hercules” dropped 65% and is headed for a quick fade.

“A Most Wanted Man” has climbed into the top ten, for people who want a little something to chew on in their summer cinema, other than just jokes and special effects.

“And So It Goes” is holding audience and should play to the senior set through August, though it won’t make enough to bring Rob Reiner back to directing’s A-list.

“Calvary” did a whopping $19,000 on a single New York screen.

The top ten films this weekend, which do not count the “Transformers” among their ranks, added up to 50-60% more in total box office than the same weekend last summer. So “Guardians” may yet put a dent in that huge summer deficit the business has been dealing with since “Spider-Man” underwhelmed.

Pre-weekend projections for the last, best hope of a blockbuster that would save the summer were for “Guardians of the Galaxy” to manage $70-80 million, with the possibility of riding very good reviews to something closer to $100.

And so it goes. When you open a movie on 4,080 screens, especially one without an established brand name, it had better come close to $100 million, because that per screen average is what the theater chains are watching. Marvel mania continues.

To that end, “Guardians” had a huge Thursday night and a very big Friday — well over $35 million — and seems set for a $90-94 million opening weekend. Interest is high, word of mouth is great, says Deadline.com.

Disney can breath a Burbank-sized sigh of relief.

“Get On Up” is interesting counter-programming to the fanboy sci-fi comic book picture. The James Brown musical bio-pic, which has an Oscar worthy lead performance by Chadwick Boseman, is doing precisely what its early tracking predicted — $15-16 million. C’mon people, get on up to see it. It’s the best movie opening wide this weekend.

“A Most Wanted Man” looks to stick around the top ten one more weekend. “Boyhood” still hasn’t opened in enough theaters to turn that high per screen average into a place in that top ten, but it hit over over 300 screens this weekend. So it’ll be close, when the smoke clears.

“Wish I Was Here” and “Magic in the Moonlight” have both widened in release, not that anybody really cares.

Growing up, first in Benin in West Africa and later in France, Djimon Hounsou had “no experience of comic books. I only came to them much later in life.”

So it wasn’t as if the two-time Oscar nominee was on the lookout for a role in a big comic book film franchise. Those rumors that he could take the 2010 animated version of the comic book “Black Panther,” which he voiced, to the big screen, are still only rumors.

But here he is, as Korath, warrior-hunter for the villainous Kree in “Guardians of the Galaxy.”

“I did this because I wanted my son (Kenzo, who is five) to say, ‘My daddy’s in ‘The Guardians of the Galaxy.’ Not exactly a superhero, but he’s in the movie, messing with the superheroes!'”

Hounsou describes the comic book blockbuster as “a new experience for me. Every day, after you’ve spent four hours getting made up, you come onto the set and you see 100 extras with even more makeup on. Strange creatures of every shape and color! Magical! Snake heads, crazy hair and headdresses, tattoos, green skin. You truly feel like you’re on a different planet, and we were just in a studio in London.”

It’s a different sort of acting, with all the digital sets, heavy make-up (“That bloody radio thing they had to glue to my skull every day!”) and added-later effects that make up the scene. “It’s a more liberating sort of acting — bigger, more theatrical. Kind of fun. You take a big swing and just go for it, and you hope (director) James Gunn’s vision will be as cosmic and vast as he is promising. The finished film made me shake my head. ‘We did all THIS?'”

It’s an ensemble action comedy that’s earning breathless praise from the planet’s movie critics, with The Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern echoing others in saying “the people who made this movie must have had a swell time in the process.” Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana and Dave Bautista are the protagonists (along with animated versions of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel) and Hounsou is not the chief villain, but that villain’s henchman.

“Here’s what I look for,” Hounsou says. “My character has to be somewhat relevant to the story. I try to remove this fellow out of the script, while reading it, to see if the story still flows without him. If it does, my participation doesn’t feel as…necessary. That’s a problem. You’re ‘set dressing.’ If it doesn’t, if the tale comes apart without him in it, I’m interested.”

Since first gaining notice as a model performing in Janet Jackson videos, Hounsou has been hired for his exotic good lucks, deep voice and masculine-African presence. But fantasy and science fiction have tapped into how other-worldly he can seem. He was in “The Island” in 2005, and this past year, he filmed “Air,” set in a future where cryogenically preserved humans are guarded so that someday, they can repopulate the Earth. “Seventh Son” has Hounsou co-starring with Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore in a tale of sorcery, evil spirits and a sorcerer’s apprentice.

And then there’s ‘Tarzan,’ “which I have to say, is science fiction in a way,” Hounsou says, cryptically. The film has Alexander Skarsgard in the title role, Christoph Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson. “It’s a more confined, compact movie than ‘Guardians.’ It’s sort of a ‘grown-up’ ‘Tarzan.'”

The movies can bring an actor fame. But fame moves to a new level when you’ve starred in a science fiction blockbuster, especially one based on a comic book. Ask anybody who ever played “The Dark Knight” or “The Man of Steel,” or even played a supporting character in a film about them. Hounsou has a perfect role model for how to handle that fanboy adulation on the set with him in “Tarzan.”

“I don’t have to ask Samuel L. Jackson about what is coming, or how to deal with it,” Hounsou jokes, wondering about conventions and the like. “I mean, just LOOK at him. He IS comic book movie cool. He owns it, and that’s how you handle that.”

Changing one’s profile by appearing in a fanboy friendly blockbuster isn’t a bad thing, especially if you want to get more stories set in your native Africa on the screen. Hounsou has this Somali pirate tale “The Lion’s Share” that he wants to make — an issues action drama, not unlike his Oscar nominated “Blood Diamond.”

“Stories about Africa are rare, so it’s always special to get a chance to play an African character in Africa. I look for those, and would love for an African story to be one that reached a lot of people, the world over, and be a success. Movies are still a great way to educate the world about a people, a place, a problem. People will learn

She showed up on TV, made her mark in films such as “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” broke out as a fanboy fave with “Kick-Ass” and “Let Me In,” and starred in the remake of “Carrie.”

Chloe Grace Moretz is just 17, and has her first romantic weeper set to come out Aug. 22. “If I Stay” is about a girl put in a coma by a tragic car accident, and the flashbacks and present day events her spirit observes that figure in her decision to cling to life or just let go.

Questions for Chloe? Comment below. I’m always looking for suggestions before sitting down with an interview with a star.

“Guardians of the Galaxy” arrives at the end of a summer overloaded with comic book franchises and science fiction franchises and fantasies that could be franchises.

So if you’re looking for a reason that the box office has skidded to numbers well below previous years — a STEEP drop-off — that might be one of the best places to place the blame. Overfamiliarity. Comic book fatigue. Tired of “Transformers,” kind of over the “Apes.”

Not that those films didn’t make their money, but none of them have had any staying power.

“Guardians” won’t be burdened with that. It’s opening in August, so theoretically, it’ll make its money in three weeks and fade from the scene as fall begins.

But it’s opening on 4000 screens. Disney has marketed the daylights out of it. The reviews have been “Captain America” good, if not “Avengers” glowing.

My best buzz indicator — simple spikes in traffic on this blog for trailers, and the review, suggest it should do well.

How well? $50 million would be at the low end of expectations. $85 would be almost “Avengers” sized. I figure $70 or so is reasonable, $100 would shock me. I was at a screening at a popular Disney World multiplex last night, and while there were lines waiting for the first showings of it, they weren’t “Twilight” or “Avengers” length lines.

Box Office Mojo figures low $80s.

Box Office Guru guesses $72, but he’s under the impression it only opens on 3,800 screens.

“Get on Up,” the best film going into wide release this weekend, could have been held for awards season, but every now and then, an August movie wins an Oscar. Chadwick Boseman’s performance stands out, as does the film, in these dog days of summer cinema season.

The Guru and Box Office Mojo both think this will better “Jersey Boys” numbers, and do $15-16.

“Lucy” should finish second, losing a lot of audience to “Guardians.” “Hercules” will lose just as much, if not more.

Kevin Kline was born to play Errol Flynn, at some point. So he does, in “The Last of Robin Hood” (Aug. 29). Aged swashbuckler, pencil thin mustache, he’s well-cast as the seducer of underage women. But who would have realized how much former child star and sometime “Boardwalk Empire” player Max Casella looks like Stanley Kubrick, back when he wanted Flynn to star in “Lolita”? He looks right (has Kubrick’s penchant for looking down, eyes aimed up at the camera, much as he had his actors do) and is spot-on in the role.

It took entirely too long for somebody to use the well-preserved Kline as Flynn (he’s 67, now, much older than Errol was when he died). Somebody should find something more substantial to do with Casella as Stanley K. He has the look, the voice, the chops.