Movie Nation

The considerable charms of Jason Bateman and Olivia Wilde get a considered workout in the lightly charming New York romance “The Longest Week.”
It’s a droll comedy, with a droll narration (by Larry Pine), set among the idle affluent of Manhattan, the sort of film that Woody Allen or Whit Stillman might make, given a Wes Anderson script — a little twee, but not Wes-twee.
Bateman stars as Conrad Valmont, a pampered, 40ish man-child lost in “the distractions of wealth.” He lives in the family hotel, rides with the family chauffeur and spends his huge family allowance.
Then his globe-trotting parents decide to divorce and that neither of them wants to support him. He’s evicted, penniless, with only a pricey haircut, tailored clothes and a motor scooter to his name.
His shrink, played by Woody Allen’s old pal, Tony Roberts, is worried. Conrad is shallow, obsessed with physical beauty. And he’s dead set against the idea of working for a living. How will he survive?
Conrad’s “Longest Week” begins with a first-time-in-decades ride on the subway, which takes him to his artist-friend Dylan (Billy Crudup). The lovelorn Dylan will put him on the sofa for a few days, but he has to fret over Conrad’s little peccadilloes, his inappropriate flirting with high school soccer players.
“Like little VEAL,” Conrad enthuses.
He nags and nags Conrad to not make a play for Dylan’s potential new “ingenue” girlfriend, Beatrice (Olivia Wilde).
“Don’t you try anything,” he says, in maybe 24 different ways.
“I won’t,” Conrad lies. Repeatedly.
Who could resist Beatrice, a child of wealth, a model, a Bach fan who fancies hers as a life of virtue. She’s a vegetarian.
“Do you love animals that much?”
“No, no. I just hate plants!”
Over the course of Conrad’s week, he endures an attempted set-up with a pretentious grad student, played by the comic Jenny Slate of “Obvious Child.” He tries to reach his parents, falls in love, and he hides his impending poverty with style, not letting on he’s penniless in the greatest city in the world…for those who have money.
Writer-director Peter Glanz doesn’t hammer his jokes, relying on the cast to wring charm out of characters and situations. Bateman’s eccentric line-readings will make you smile.
“I think I see some…foie gras. Want some…DUCK?”
Bateman and Wilde share a cute little aging hipster dance scene in a high-end bar where French pop plays on the jukebox. The few genuinely quirky bits, casting Slate as the “post modern criticism major,” making Dylan’s way of ending a relationship the act of giving the kissed-off a used Volvo, pay dividends.
There just aren’t enough such moments. This shiny New York-in-fall film is no deeper than its pairing of “a hopeless romantic” with “the romantically hopeless,” and hoping for the best. Sometimes that works, but not often enough to make this “week” the whirlwind it might have become.
　
　
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content and smoking.
Cast: Jason Bateman, Olivia Wilde, Billy Crudup, Jenny Slate, Tony Roberts
Credits: Written and directed by Peter Glanz. A Gravitas release.
Running time: 1:26

Dock Ellis was a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, New York Yankees and other teams during baseball’s turbulent and flamboyant 1970s.
He won a World Series ring with the Pirates, famously served up an epic home run to Reggie Jackson at an All Star game and won “Comeback Player of the Year” in 1976.
And in 1970, he pitched a no hitter against the San Diego Padres while tripping on LSD. So yeah, he was a genuine character in an era of baseball characters.
“No No: A Dockumentary” captures the essence of this outspoken loud mouth, a self-styled Muhammad Ali of the Major Leagues, a free spirit who wondered, late in life, if he’d ever pitched a major league game stone cold sober. His theory? He hadn’t.
Jeff Radice’s documentary is built around interviews with teammates, his agents, relatives and ex-wives, as well as one late-life interview with Ellis himself. It tracks a baseball career that began in California and adventured through the South in the years not-far-removed from Jackie Robinson’s integration of the game, where minor league towns such as Kinston, N.C. or Salem, Va., had not quite dialed back the racism that Robinson had faced twenty years before. Ellis didn’t take that well.
“I was an angry black man,” he says.
When he got to Pittsburgh, he dressed like Superfly, the drug dealing pimp daddy of early ’70s cinema. He wore curlers to practice. And he took speed — “greenies” — before every pitching appearance. In those pre-drug testing days, “everybody” did it, everybody in the film says. “We were all hungover,” pitcher Steve Blass admits. It was a hard-drinking era where getting one’s focus back, once it was game time, was paramount.
But nobody took that as seriously as Ellis. A drinker and pot smoker since childhood, on game day he went out “high as a Georgia pine.” And he won.
The no hitter is the centerpiece of the film, detailing what he took and when, and how drugs played a role in securing his edge on the diamond. A winning pitcher is an intimidating one, and what could be more intimidating that a tall, hard-throwing pitcher with uncertain control?
“They knew I was high, but they didn’t know what I was high on!”
The amusing anecdotes pile up as Ellis took that intimidation to the next level. He once started a game against hated rivals, the strutting “Big Red Machine” Cincinnati Reds, by beaning every batter he faced. He didn’t win, didn’t finish the inning. But he sent a message.
Rival Reggie Jackson took a beanball to the face that knocked him out of a few games a few years later.
“He knew what he was doing,” one teammate says with a shrug.
We learn who Dock’s mentor was, Negro Leagues pitcher Chet Brewer, but we don’t hear a whisper about his relationship with the equally volatile New York Yankees manager Billy Martin after Dock was traded to them.
And while Ellis only made his LSD no hitter assertion after leaving the game, the footage of that outing, a sloppy (hit batsmen, etc.) “no no,” shows a guy hustling to cover first base on an infield ground ball and getting his sinker across the plate. Yes, Robin Williams is captured using the Ellis anecdote in his drug era stage age, but sportswriters at the game insisted Ellis was lying. None of them, if any are still living, were interviewed.
The third act of “A Dockumentary” sags under the weight of spousal abuse, rehab and his later years as a drug counselor and anti-drug public speaker. But Radice has delivered an engaging portrait of a loose cannon back when professional sports still produced such unfiltered creatures, a man who lived by his own rules, said what he thought and wore curlers to practice when he felt like it.
　
MPAA Rating: unrated, with profanity, accounts of substance and spousal abuse
Cast: Dock Ellis, Al Oliver, Dave Cash, Donald Hall
Credits: Directed by Jeff Radice . An Orchard release.
Running time: 1:40

The long Labor Day weekend may bring an inglorious end to a desultory summer at the box office. But “Guardians of the Galaxy,” which became the biggest grossing film of 2014 (passing “Captain America” sequel and “The Lego Movie”), has reason to celebrate.

Another weekend #1, total take by Monday night, @$21 million.

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” is #2, in every way. “If I Stay” is managing a take in the $9-10 million range.

“As Above, So Below” barely cracked the top five, clearing $8 million.

And “Let’s Be Cops,” which cost nothing, has few laughs and seems tone deaf to the times, is lingering in the top five and could hit $59-60, by last show Monday night.

Zowie.”

“The November Man” didn’t do enough business to suggest Pierce Brosnan has a new franchise on his hands. It finished at #6, and after opening Wed., still only will have $11 million in the bank Monday night.

“Cantinflas,” the 345 screen Pantelion Latin market release, should clear $3 million+ its first weekend.

“Sin City” died, “Ghostbusters” in limited release managed no better than $2.4, “When the Game Stands Tall” held enough audience to stay in the Top Ten — @$7 million.

Pantelion Films is the Spanish language arm of Lionsgate, best known for distributing “Casa de Mi Padre, Will Ferrell’s Mexican vamp. With “Cantinflas,” they’ve picked up a bio-pic of the Mexican Charlie Chaplin, the great comic of the 1940s-60s best known in most of the world, for one role — Paspartout in “Around the World in ’80 Days.” That film came out 60 years ago, and much of America’s Hispanic population is not Mexican-American, so this wasn’t a no-brainer of a bio pic. Who remembers him?

Pantelion dropped the ball in pre-screening it. Or maybe they’re hiding it. But audiences are finding this limited release, and I’m headed to one of two area theaters showing it this AM to check it out.

Much has been made about “Guardians of the Galaxy” failing to reach $300 million at the US box office this summer. But that’s merely a consequence of marketing. If it had opened a week earlier, it might have hit $300 by Labor Day. It would have been the only film this summer to manage that.

More important is it being the best of a bad lot this year, how it rallied a box office that was 20% below last year most of the summer, 30% below for July. The early May-Labor Day numbers are just short of $4 billion, WAY below the numbers from 2013. But it’s not as bad as it might have been, only a 15% drop off, rather than the 20-30% that seemed likely in July.

“Guardians” will win a weak Labor Day weekend with a $15-16 million take, based on Friday’s numbers. 

That will leave it in the $275 range. As I say, if it had opened a weekend earlier it could have hit $300. But tons of movies made $100 (“Edge of Tomorrow” cleared that mark Friday), more than a few made well over $200. So, a bad situation, not the end of the world. Yet.

“Turtles” and “If I Stay” are doing respectable numbers in second and third place.

The new release “As Above, So Below” is earning poor early marks from audiences, following bad reviews from critics, and will be lucky to open in the top five. “November Man” was wisely opened on Wed., as it, “Let’s Be Cops” and “As Above, So Below” are all in the $8-10 million range for the weekend, too close to call for top five standings, as of now. “November” will have earned $13 or so since Wed. by Monday night.

The unpreviewed “Cantinflas” biopic (great Mexican entertainer/film star of the ’50s) is doing very well on a small number of screens. I will have to find a theater showing here in La Florida as it looks to best “Sin City” this weekend. It’s not opened in Greater Orlando, apparently. “Sin City,” with a Mexican-American director, plummeted to 14th place this weekend. Biggest flop of the summer? Yup.

“Ghostbusters” re-opened in theaters, to a couple of million, tops, and “Chef” added enough theaters to finally clear $30 million.

The summer is finishing as it began, with a whimper — down 15% in the US from 2013, the worst showing since 1997. Ticket sales look even worse than the cash take.

Considering the overload of sequels, comic book adaptations and generally repetitious fare, Hollywood should take this as a wake up call. Several comedies flopped, only “22 Jump Street” performed.

But next summer’s “impressive” line up has even more comic book adaptations and sequels set up. Golly.

“As Above, So Below” takes forever to go below. It takes even longer to attempt to be scary. A tale of catacombs and the creatures one might find down there, it’s mostly an “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” or “”Angels and Demons” ripoff, with horror elements. Dull, claustrophobic, but the shaky camera style wears itself out with this one. It gave me a headache. Poor reviews for this last major release of the summer. Will it earn a dime? Hard to say. Box Office Guru figures $9 million. Maybe.
“The November Man” is Pierce Brosnan’ shot at reviving his Bond fortunes, a muddled spy thriller with some interesting elements but which wears its budget and cast-cheap-models as every scene’s extras. His co-star/rival, Luke Bracey, brings nothing to the movie. Olga Kurylenko shows some leg and a few others show some skin. Yeah, it’s that cynical.  It opened Wed. to poor reviews and won’t make more than a few million by Monday night, so all Pierce’s talk show chatter about a series of films is just that — talk.

“The Last of Robin Hood” is a limited release bio-drama about the last “love” of Errol Flynn’s life, an underage paramour played by Dakota Fanning. You see the problem right there. Kevin Kline is Flynn, Susan Sarandon is the mother who lets her daughter take up with an infamous movie star. But Fanning kills the movie. Kills it. Go to college, dear. Make something of yourself. Train to become Elle Fanning’s agent/manager.

The Elmore Leonard adaptation “Life of Crime” is earning mixed notices. A ’70s kidnapping dramedy, it stars Mos Def and John Hawkes as the reasonably clever kidnappers who bring in a doltish weak link to help kidnap Jennifer Aniston. She’s married to the brutish, crooked drunk played by Tim Robbins, who has run off to the Bahamas to be with his wily paramour (Isla Fisher). Decent casting, funny bits, it works well enough. Aniston is the movie’s weakest link, though. She just doesn’t have it, whatever “it” was in terms of something she can bring to the party.

They’re going to have to start issuing licenses to all these filmmakers who insist on shooting their movies in the shaky-cam “found footage” format. Maybe have the “Blair Witch” guys and Oren “Paranormal” Pelli sign those licenses. Because something needs to be done to limit this explosion of cell-cam/security cam/nanny cam and GoPro footage that’s dominating the Horror Hit Parade.

Those “Quarantine” and “Poughkeepsie Tapes” Minnesotans, the Dowdle Brothers, overuse and abuse hand-held cameras for “As Above, So Below,” a thriller about what might come after you in the Catacombs beneath Paris. It’s a modest marriage of “Indiana Jones” and “Da Vinci Code” archaeological puzzle solving with the denizens of “The Descent,” supernaturally attached, almost as an afterthought. And for all the paranoia that climbing through dark caves beneath Paris promises, the Dowdles insist on a headache-inducing orgy of bouncing, tumbling cameras to seal the deal.

In a “Last Crusade” prologue, “urban archaeologist Scarlett (Perdita Weeks) videos herself sneaking into Iran in an attempt to poke around some caves before the superstitious government blows up some priceless piece of human history.

Her Iranian contact warns her not to follow her late archaeologist dad’s footsteps.

“His quest was a path to madness.”

But she is nothing if not single-minded. She finds evidence of this “Philosopher’s Stone” talisman he was looking for, and surviving the demolition of the caves (shaky/dusty cam), sets out to Paris to finish his search for the alchemist’s ultimate prize — a magic rock.

She picks up a videographer who wants to make a documentary about her , Benjy (Edwin Hodge), her old translator pal George (Ben Feldman) and a trio of French spelunking punks, let by a guy who calls himself Papillion (butterfly), played by Francois Civil.

Scarlett puts on her best French weave see-through off-the-shoulder sweater, and they’re off, with Papillon leading them to the unknown corner of the ancient French burial chambers, where six million dead Frenchfolk are entombed.

“As Above” takes forever to go below, and once there, another long while passes before supernatural stuff starts troubling their trek. Papillon warns the bloody tourists, at every turn, to avoid passing through the wrong Catacombs.

“Which ones have filled with water? Which have collapsed? Which are EVIL?”

Scarlett an intrepid Brit, is heedless. George, afraid of caves and Benjy, not thrilled to be amongst all those bones. are dragged along by her force of will. And then its “This is WRONG” and “This is a BAD idea” as cadaverous faces are glimpsed and other inexplicable things happen, which they don’t stop to explicate.

The performances are perfunctory, the rising tide of fear they should all be feeling is limited to Benjy’s single claustrophobic panic attack. That’s the only compelling, human moment the players manage in all this.

It’s more unpleasant than scary, and ever so slow in getting up to speed. The Dowdles’ “Quarantine” was one of the better films of the “Found Footage” era. But they made that six years ago, long before this format had been beaten and shaken to death. With “So Below,” their license to jiggle, toss and turn the camera should be suspended.

MPAA Rating: R for bloody violence/terror, and language throughout

Cast: Perdita Weeks, Ben Feldman, Edwin Hodge, François Civil

Credits: Directed by John Erick Dowdle, screenplay by Drew Dowdle and John Erick Dowdle. A ime: 1:33

Well, they’re showing it after print deadlines, after the last minute and in some sort of effort to control the buzz “As Above So Below” generates.

Which generally means POS.

The trailer is reasonably compelling — pretty young British “urban archeologist” leads a youthful team into the catacombs of Paris, where TERROR strikes.

But again, studios never hide products they’re proud of by not previewing those products to critics and buzz-building audiences. And studios never roll out films they have high hopes for on Labor Day weekend. Never.

Blake Rayne is the ’50s rocker followed into his Elvis-on-the-toilet dotage in this period piece about rock, then and now. Ashley Judd, Ray Liotta and Seth Green also show up.

“The Identical” opens Sept. 5.