Movie Nation

It’s not a terrible movie, better than some installments in the franchise. And since the last film in the series did over $100 million, Paramount has high hopes for a movie it’s dumping on the first weekend of January.

Maybe a $23-25 million opening? Mr. Mojo says so.

That would win the weekend. With some Oscar contenders and “Lone Survivor” slated to roll out wider Jan. 10, this weekend’s winner only has to best “Frozen,” “The Hobbit”, “Wolf of Wall Street” and pictures that have been out a few weeks.

The Guru figures $17 million is the top end of expectations here.

With “Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones”, this found footage franchise abandons the lull you to sleep creepiness of found surveillance footage for full on shaky cam and an altogether more conventional horror movie plot.

But as exhausted as this series and the genre it comes from is, it still manages a few decent jolts thanks to that new approach and a pretty good cast’s reactions to what they, and we, see through the video camera’s viewfinder.

Writer-director Christopher Landon Latinizes the tale, setting this installment among Angelinos in the barrio — teenagers, gang-bangers, abuelas and the like. And even as he recycles some of the funny stereotypes Marlon Wayans & Co. sent up in the “Paranormal” parody, “A Haunted House,” he finds frights and fun in that found footage.

Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) gets a camera for his high school graduation present. He and his pal Hector (Jorge Diaz) and Marisol (Gabrielle Walsh) play with it, taping parties, pickup basketball games and the like. That gets under the skin of the occasional gang banger, but that comes with the territory.

But the crazy lady downstairs in Jesse’s complex is truly out of the ordinary. They hear weird noises, slip the camera down the heat vents and tape a strange sexual ritual. And then Ana dies, killed by Jesse and Hector’s class valedictorian, Oscar (Carlos Pratts). Looking at Oscar, they can see, as we can see, that this boy isn’t right in the head.

The boys will be boys stuff is reasonably realistic. And the stumbling panic about what is happening with these people who knew the late Ana, whom all the kids called “bruja” (witch) is sharply realized. Call the cops!

“Call the cops and tell them WHAT?:

Jesse’s Spanish-speaking granny knows, and her approach to the problem is old school and old school horror.

The bottom line of any horror picture matches your neckline — as in, “Does it make the hairs of your neck stand up?” The answer here, as silly and weary as these movies are, is “Yes. A few times.”

But the jokes, intentional and unintentional, give away why “The Marked Ones” was dumped on the dead first weekend of January. It was never going to be much better than mediocre.

MPAA Rating: R for pervasive language, some violence, graphic nudity and some drug use

Cast: Andrew Jacobs, Gabrielle Walsh, Jorge Diaz, Katie Featherston, Richard Cabral

Credits: Written and directed by Christopher Landon. A Paramount release.

Running time: 1:24

Blockbusters by the score dominated the box office of 2013, sequels — “Iron Man,” “Star Trek,” “Despicable Me” and “Monsters University” and “Hunger Games” sequels dominated. “Grownups 2,” an Wizard of Oz prequel, “Fast & Furious 6” or whatever it is, a Superman reboot — “brand names” did well. “Lone Ranger” did not.

But original fare like the still-earning “Gravity,” “World War Z” and “The Croods” and “The Heat”, “The Conjuring” and “Identity Thief” and “We’re the Millers” made a mark.

“Frozen” will surpass Pixar’s “Monsters University” by this weekend and become Disney’s big earner for the year, but “Despicable Me 2”: will still end of $75 million ahead of it, when all is said and done.

Look down the list. “Mud” cracked the Top 100. “Blue Jasmine” did a fraction of what Woody Allen’s best performers have earned.

Disney’s animated musical “Frozen,” with virtually no competition for the family film holiday dollar (“Walking with Dinosaurs” bombed), has moved back ahead of “The Desolation of Smaug” and seems destined to finish just shy of $300 million when all the coins are counted. Does that help its Oscar chances, with the Academy voters inclined to just go with the flow? Probably.

“Anchorman 2” will hit the $100 million mark by Saturday. Not a world beater, but enough to keep Will Ferrell in movies for a bit longer. Cable is beckoning.

“American Hustle” is still well ahead of Oscar contenders “Saving Mr. Banks” and “Wolf of Wall Street,” but with “Wolf” playing at a lot more mid-American cinemas outside of the big cities, the long term winner could be Scorsese.

“12 Years a Slave” is nearing $40 million, and an Oscar bounce should send that one above $60 or so.

There’s a sound Japanese men make that Westerners typically only experience in the movies, a guttural, testosterone-charged bellow meant to chastise, intimidate and terrorize. It’s the pitch the camp guard uses on Allied prisoners of war, the one we hear when samurai trash talk each other before drawing swords or when yakuza — the Japanese mafia — are threatening beatings, finger-whackings or worse.

And it’s served up with feeling in “Beyond Outrage,” a convoluted, complex and very entertaining gangster picture from writer/director/actor Takeshi “Beat” Kitano. It’s a sequel to his earlier film, “Outrage,” but a genre sequel so solidly built that you don’t need to have seen the first film to get into this one.

A cop has been killed, and in a blast of exposition packed in the opening minutes, we hear of mob links to government corruption, old mob feuds that remain unsettled and a powerful Sanno family that runs the show.

Heaven help the land of the Rising Sun, because the only cops assigned to this murder are the always-a-day-late Shigeta (Yutaka Matsushige) and his corrupt partner, Kataoka (Fumiyo Kohinata). The cozy-with-the-crooks Kataoka pleads “Can’t we cooperate, like old times?” to the Shanno boss, Kato (Tomokazu Miura). But the boss and his hothead lieutenants dismiss him.

Yamamoto, the dead detective, “got too inquisitive” is all they’ll say.

What follows is a fascinating game of “Let’s you and him fight” where Kataoka tries to set up rivals to take down the Sannos, finagling this mob underling or that one to seek an alliance with the Hanabishi clan against the Sannos. Mobsters plot and die, others shake in their boots for fear of discovery.

Kitano, probably best known in the U.S. for his take on the legendary blind swordsman Zatoichi a decade ago, slowly weaves a web of dread into the story as we wonder just how deep the corruption reaches, whom to trust and whom to root for. And then we meet Kitano’s character, Otomo, an aged mobster doing time in prison, his death faked by the authorities. Kataoka charms and strong-arms the bullish Otomo into seeking revenge on the mobsters who put him inside and arranges his early release.

Kitano gave himself the chewiest character, which throws the film out of balance. With all the treachery, betrayals, mob hits and executions, all the palace intrigue within the various yakuza gangs, the cops get lost in the background. And only Otomo, and his equally-scarred brother yakuza, Nimura (Hideo Nakano) seem capable of anything noble in this world of ritual, hierarchy and backstabbing.

The violence — when it comes — is sudden and shocking, with much bellowing and posturing before guns are drawn and blood is spilled. Kitano stages some pretty gruesome, incredibly effective torture scenes and the cast of this men-in-a-man’s-world thriller wear their murderous machismo with style.

Sure, it’s just a subtitled genre picture and one with plenty of slow stretches in between blasts of tension and action. But “Beyond Outrage” reaches above and beyond most Hollywood underworld movies to deliver a tale of righteous revenge doled out only after showing us how much it is deserved.

MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, language and brief sexual images

Cast: Fumiyo Kohinata Fumiyo Kohinata Takeshi Kitano, Yutaka Matsushige, Tomokazu Miura, Hideo Nakano

Credits: Written and directed by Takeshi Kitano. A Magnet release.

Running time: 1:52

Margo Martindale comes off as this bluff Earth Mother, sassy and droll, a woman who’s heard it all. Cast her as an aged barmaid, a cynical aunt, a grumpy mother or grandmother and let her drop a few bon mots in her dry, Texas drawl.
“People think I’m this no-nonsense, blunt sort of woman,” she says. “Maybe it’s some way I’m coming off. Something will happen and I hear friends go, ‘Oh, you know what MARGO would say.’ Like they know.”
Martindale, 62, laughs.
“I am much more introspective and quiet than these women Hollywood has me play. But I guess I am a lot more like these women than I know.”
Take Mattie Fae, her character in “August: Osage County.” She’s quick with the pointed, wounding put-down. And in her own way, she’s every bit as mean as her unfiltered harpy of a sister, played by Meryl Streep.
“She and her sister have survived the same things, this awful dysfunctional Oklahoma family that they grew up in, for starters. They’re survivors, but they’re both very hard, tough women. Their mother was a very sharp tongued woman, and so are they.”
Where Oscar winners Streep and Julia Roberts (playing her daughter) are loud and combative, sorting out a bad relationship with shouting matches, Mattie Fae is quieter, softer — coping with her sister in calmer tones, putting down her put-upon son (Benedict Cumberbatch) with a smile. It’s a turn that makes her stand out in a cast of Hollywood A-listers.
“If you’re listening to the other actors, they’re going to help you figure out where you fit in,” Martindale says. “I believe we’re all on the same, level playing field…Tracy Letts’ writing, it’s like Tennessee Williams or Eugene O’Neill. And Meryl set the bar very high, and that raises your expectations. You have to be your best and on your toes, because you know she is.
“So there’s restraint in Mattie Fae. She thinks she’s kind of come up in the world. She’s kept a secret, and confined her temper to that sharp tongue. But she’s a force of nature, too. She’s just not that loud about it.”

“‘Force of nature” comes up a lot in stories about Martindale and reviews of her work. An alumna of the University of Michigan and Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, she popped up on TV in “Lonesome Dove” in the late ’80s, with choice supporting parts in films such as “The Firm,” “Nobody’s Fool” and “Dead Man Walking” getting her noticed. She was the mother of the “Million Dollar Baby,” and has been in four films with Streep, three with Susan Sarandon. Recent years have seen her take on recurring roles in many a TV series — currently as a KGB handler of Russian spies in America in “The Americans.” Another “no-nonsense” part, she says.
“But for someone who plays all these ‘no nonsense’ women, there is a silly, frivolous part of me, a nonsense side. That’s why I have a sitcom, I guess.”
Martindale is front and center in CBS TV’s “The Millers,” a sitcom about a newly-divorced journalist (Will Arnett) coping with the problems of his equally split-up parents (Martindale and Beau Bridges).
“Carol Miller, is as no-nonsense as everybody else I play. She just speaks a lot faster than I do. I didn’t need to lose my accent. But I wanted her to be a fast-talker, kind of wound up. I can’t underplay her, because the character is kind of the driving force of that show. So I crank her up. Beau Bridges gets to underplay, which is usually what I prefer. But have to drive it.”
She may be, as the Christian Science Monitor notes in its review of “August: Osage County,” “always wonderful.” But a formula sitcom can be a severe test of that.
“She absolutely refuses to condescend to the material,” Willa Paskin wrote in Slate, in a review panning the show but trotting out “Force of Nature” for its headline, praising Martindale. It’s the sort of rim shot one-liner comedy that requires her to sell lines like this one, with conviction.
“I had to wash my underwear in the bathroom sink. So don’t get your panties in a wad when you find my panties in a wad.”
Her TV work isn’t slowing down the film career, Martindale says. Her next film, “Heaven is for Real,” opens in the spring.
“Step by step and inch by inch, I’ve found my way. Not sure how. It’s great to be my age and have more work than I know what to do with.”