Movie Nation

If there’s a tie that binds most of the characters of the Marvel Universe together, it’s the mutability of the supposedly immutable human body. Characters are poisoned by radiation, zapped by electricity, bitten by spiders or broken, crushed, ruined or whatever.
And as Spider-Man cracks in “Amazing Spider-Man 2,” just “shake it off. It’s just your bones, muscles…”
But the real world doesn’t work like that. That’s one reason this comic book world has such a lasting appeal. Bullies are foiled, criminals are caught and great wrongs righted with supernatural intervention by supernaturally augmented humans. Because “Stan Lee is for Real.”
“Amazing 2” is kind of about that. It’s a violent film, with blood and death in between the digitally-animated brawls. Human bodies are tortured and broken, and there’s not always a web slinger there to stop that flipping police car, that hurtling bus, that Russian psychopath or that jet that’s about to crash.
It’s not an altogether pleasant experience. There’s nothing “amazing” about that ultimate modern movie cliche, the montage of a character finding something out about himself in a sequenced edited to a hit pop tune. Terribly ordinary. Things tend to drag as director Marc Webb has problems with focus, keeping the many story threads straight and continuity (Watch Gwen’s outfits). Many otherwise faceless extras pop off the screen as if he’s about to give their nameless characters the same significance as Stan Lee himself — who always has cameos in these Marvels.
But Andrew Garfield finds his voice as the character, making his second try at Peter Parker a caffeinated wise-cracker, enjoying his notoriety, talking to himself just like the guy in the comic book. He’s funny.
Clueless Aunt May (Sally Field) wonders why he has soot all over his face.
“I was…cleaning the chimney!”
“We HAVE no chimney!”
“Whuuu–aaaat?”
Peter hums Spider-Man’s theme song and hurls himself into situations with a teen’s recklessness. He almost misses his and Gwen Stacy’s (Emma Stone) high school graduation, dealing with a villain named Aleksei (Paul Giamatti).
But even though he doesn’t carry the angst of Tobey Maguire’s Spidey, Peter has problems. He sees Gwen’s late dad (Denis Leary) everywhere he looks, and remembers his promise to the dead cop to distance himself from his daughter, due to the danger.
Peter hasn’t seen the opening scene in the movie, in which we flash back to Peter’s parents’ (Campbell Scott, Embeth Davidtz) grisly deaths. And Peter has no idea that his great chemistry with long lost rich-kid pal Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) will go nowhere, because some of us remember 2002’s “Spider-Man” and how Harry turns out.
Jamie Foxx is an ignored, humiliated electrical engineer who has an accident involving electric eels and power lines. That transforms him from a Spider-Man fanboy into a glowing blue guy in a hoodie. In the ethos of this movie, Peter/Spidey reasons with the tormented villains, trying to connect with this doomed rich kid (Osborn) or that this “nobody” engineer.
“You’re not a nobody, you’re SOMEbody!”
Except for the Russian. He’s just…bad.
Returning director Marc Webb relies, again, on the 3D ( and IMAX, in some theaters) flying effects to cover the rough patches — and there are many — in “Amazing 2.” While Garfield and Stone have a nice sass to their scenes, Webb can do nothing to give this relationship the longing and heat of the Kirsten Dunst/Tobey Maguire Mary Jane and Peter moments.
And Webb’s team of screenwriters don’t find any pathos in all this computer animated flying and fighting, not until the finale.
So while this “Spider-Man” is, if anything, more competent than the first film it’s still not one that demands that you stick around after the credits. There’s nothing there.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action/violence
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, Sally Field, Dane DeHaan, Paul Giamatti
Credits: Directed by Marc Webb, scripted by Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Jef Pinkner, James Vanderbilt. A Columbia/Sony Pictures release.
Running time: 2:20

It happened Friday night.

It’s not on a lot of screens, and it only earned $39,000 nationwide all day Friday.

But for fans who won’t just “Let it Go,” Disney’s “Frozen” has passed a pretty big milestone.  Little girls, and little boys, latched onto it and wouldn’t let go.

That’s more than “Finding Nemo,” which topped out at $380 million.

It won’t catch “Toy Story 3,” which ended its run at $415 million. But that’s the thin air of animated film box office that they’re both playing in.

Pixar? Pixar who?

Ivan Locke is organized. We can tell by the way he loads everything he’ll need into his BMW SUV. He’s a born manager, a gifted multi-tasker. Every call he makes or takes carries the tone of a man calming down this employee, that boss, this overly-excited son worked up over a soccer match or that hysterical woman waiting to give birth.
You’d never know — but you soon find out — that his world is coming unraveled, right over the Bluetooth he all but wears out on the way from a construction site in England’s Midlands to a hospital in London.
A woman, not his wife, is about to give birth to his child. His job, which has him supervising tomorrow’s “biggest concrete pour in the history of Europe” (outside of military or nuclear plant construction, the exacting Locke corrects), has taken a back seat. He’s going to be present for the birth.
“I’ve made my decision,” he says, calmly, to his furious boss.
“You will be fine,” and “don’t start drinking (cider) he tells his frantic and overwhelmed assistant, who will have to supervise the pour by himself.
“I won’t be home for the match,” is all he’ll tell his youngest son.
“I want to move on to a practical next step” is the wrong thing to say to his “distressed” wife, after he breaks the news.
And every few minutes, he refuses to tell his paramour that he loves her, or to reassure the doctor and nurse who call that she will have “family” there for the birth.
“I am the father,” he says, firmly and devoid of emotion. He will be there. He’s being responsible. To everyone.
“Locke” is a compressed, compact melodrama that is just actor Tom Hardy in a car, driving down the M6, meeting his mistakes and the people he has let down head on — the only way he knows how. It’s a measured, compelling performance that starts out quiet and works its way toward frantic, with Hardy never losing his Stiff Upper Lip reserve.
He just Keeps Calm and Drives On.
Hardy and writer-director Steven Knight keep this intimate story pretty close to riveting, as Locke ticks through calls to see to it that things at home are manageable, things in the distant hospital are under control and every T is crossed at a very complicated work site, where concrete has to be poured all at once, matching grades of foundation cement from multiple providers, with roads closed to allow the trucks through.
Even when things go sideways, or “pear-shaped” as the Brits put it, Locke tries to keep his cool. His fury at the assistant who starts hitting the cider despite specific warnings not to drink, his annoyance at cops who break their word, a town council member who won’t deal with a last minute hiccup because he’s “at an Indian restaurant,” the wife who keeps weeping and hanging up on him, the lover whose hysteria takes on a different tone when she’s sedated.
Hardy makes this guy a regular iceberg who only starts to thaw as we begin to understand why he turned out this way.
The obstacles that keep popping up seem melodramatic, and some touches — a man lecturing his dead father — don’t really work.
But “Locke” will hold your interest as it presents a side of the burly, bluff “Dark Knight” villain we have never seen before on screen.

MPAA Rating: R for language throughout.
Cast: Tom Hardy, the voices of Olivia Colman, Ruth Wilson, Andrew Scott
Credits: Written and directed by Steven Knight. An A24 release.
Running time: 1:25

Predictions by box office prognosticators figured “The Other Woman” were all below $20 million — enough, in some cases, to win the weekend, but not suggesting how the movie really plays to a female audience.

I saw it with such an audience early last week. And the lady pic plays.

As of Saturday AM, it looks as if “The Other Woman” could haul in $25 million or more by midnight Sunday. Will the Saturday business, boosted by w2w word of mouth, go up? Or down?

We’ll see.

“Brick Mansions,” Paul Walker’s next to last film, isn’t great and isn’t performing well at all. Maybe $10 million if it lights up on Saturday. Not likely. I guess his fans will turn out for his final “Fast/Furious” and that’s that.

“The Quiet Ones” is bombing, big time. Not even $4 million. Poorly marketed, a period piece horror picture with enough entertainment value on its own, weak but still with a few shocks to it.

“Rio 2” is about to clear $100 million, “Heaven is for Real” has taken the last hunk of the cheaper/indie “God’s Not Dead” faith-film audience.

“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” looks like it’ll hit $250/US before it is chased from screens for summer fare, “Divergent” will hit $140-150 before it loses all its screens. “Bears” is doing better than one might have expected, considering how weakly it opened,

“The Other Woman” isn’t nearly as raunchy as “Bridesmaids”, or as McCarthy or Bullocky as “The Heat.” But listening to the excited chatter and reaction o the mostly-female preview audience I saw it with, this Cameron Diaz/Leslie Mann/Kate Upton comedy has BIG potential.

Reviews have been surprisingly poor, overall.

Box office Mojo is saying $17 million. I’d say higher. It’s funny, especially in the first hour.

Box Office Guru is calling it a $14 million hit, which might not let it win the weekend over “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”

No WAY say I. I am figuring mid-20s, even if R-rated male-oriented comedies are a surer thing. It could blow up.

“Brick Mansions” isn’t Paul Walker’s last film, but it is the first to open in wide release since his untimely death late last year. This inferior remake of the French “District B-13”  could do $10-12 million, Tops.

“The Quiet Ones,” a weak horror picture opening wide to middling reviews, may not manage $10 million. The days when horror could reliably promise a $15-20 million opening, even the weaker films, may be gone. There’s just too much of it out there.

Come now, not every demonic possession thriller can claim to be “inspired by true events,” even though all of them do.
“The Quiet Ones” is a rather old-fashioned possession story concocted by those kings of horror camp, Britain’s Hammer Films, and released in the U.S. by Lionsgate. Perhaps as a nod to its origins, it is a period piece — set in 1974 — about an Oxford professor, his overly-dedicated disciples (“The Quiet Ones” of the title), and British hi-tech of the day, from “negative energy” detection gear to reel-to-reel tape recorders, hand-held cinema cameras and Triumph TR6 motorcars.
It’s a load of horrific hooey, having a script gone over by the “Paranormal Activity” guy — which means that much, but far from all we see, is of a “found footage” variety, the experimental treatment run by Dr. Joseph Coupland — Jared Harris, a dreadful Moriarty to Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes, a conspiring ad mogul in “Mad Men.”
Poor Jane (Olivia Cooke) is locked in a room for observation, urged to sit in on seances as the professor tries to see just what demon she has conjured up in her mind that he can uncover and purge.
“You cure one patient, you cure all mankind” of mental illness, he reasons. There’s probably a Nobel Prize in this, his students Krissi (Erin Richards) and Harry (Rory Fleck-Byrne) figure.
Working class Brian (Sam Caflin) is just an audio visual specialist, horrified by the evidence of the supernatural he witnesses (which Dr. Coupland refuses to see as such), and mortified by what the Dr. puts Jane through.
The scares here are of the sudden jolt variety –telekinesis, pyrokinesis — always accompanied by explosively loud shrieks slams and other noises. Harris suggests none of the over-the-top touches Hammer became famous for, though putting Cooke into a tub and dressing Richards in every manner of short shorts is evidence of the Hammer touch. Those Brits loved a little cheesecake with their horror. There’s plenty of blood, but little of that Hammer brio.
The dialogue is banal — “Joseph, I’m scared.”
“That means you’re ALIVE.”
And “I hope you don’t scare, easily.”
If nothing else, any horror movie coming out has the fact that trailers to the next six months of horror pictures will be attached to the previews going or it. So even if the movie you watch is a stiff, a fan can cling to the hope that one of those advertised pictures will be better than this one.
That’s pretty much what you go through with “The Quiet Ones,” sit through the movie just to see the stuff that may be better, even if too many of those movies, like this one, will claim to be “inspired by true events.”

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and terror, sexual content, thematic material, language, and smoking throughout
Cast: Jared Harris, Sam Caflin, Olivia Cooke, Erin Richards, Rory Fleck-Byrne
Credits: Directed by John Pogue, written by Craig Rosenberg, Oren Moverman, John Pogue and based on a script by Tony de Ville. A Hammer Films/Lionsgate release.
Running time: 1:37

The late Paul Walker wasn’t a great actor, but within a narrow corner of the action genre, he was the guy who got the job done. A vulnerable tough guy who could hold his own in stunt brawls and car chases, an actor who said “Bro” like he meant it, he will be missed.

But not for something like “Brick Mansions.” This A-level action/D-level plot is too typical of the lesser fare that Walker squeezed in between the increasingly popular, decreasingly intelligent “Fast & Furious” movies. He might show some range in “Hours,” playing a newly widowed dad trying to save his incubator baby in an hospital that’s been abandoned during Hurricane Katrina. But “Mansions” is like “Vehicle 19” or “Takers,” dumb, noisy junk and the best he could do in a career that never really took off.

“Brick Mansions” is a remake of the French parkour thriller “District B-19,” a run, jump, punch and dangle picture from the Luc Besson (“Taken,” “Transporter”) action stable. David Belle, the French stuntman/parkour specialist who starred in that one, returns here. Walker plays a cop who meets this French wonder while working undercover, and has to match or somehow keep up with a guy who goes over walls, not around them, who plunges through car windows rather than opening the door.

Set in the Detroit of the very near future, in a housing development that’s turned into such an irredeemable ghetto which the government has walled in, “Mansions” showcases Belle as Lino, a French underworld figure who turns into some sort of crusader for cleaning the place up, probably to win back his girl (Catalina Denis).

Walker is an undercover cop out to finish off one last drug lord, Tremaine, played by the rapper turned Real Zero of an Actor, RZA.

A plot twist borrowed from “Escape from New York” — a bomb has been stolen and activated by the gangsters, who risk blowing up the entire middle of the city. Damien, the cop, must let the Frenchman be his guide as they dash in among the “Brick Mansions” to defuse it.

Editor turned director Camille Delamarre, a “Taken 2” and “Transporter 3” veteran, drops frames and jump cuts his way through the fights and chases and parkour stunts of this picture, giving the action a jagged, nervy edge. Belle gets a pre-credits showcase sequence, and Walker a brawl, shoot-out and dragged-behind-a-car chase right at the open to set the tone.

But the stupidity of the piece hangs over it from the start, too. The mayor, perhaps relying too much on the French screenwriters who don’t know what an acre is, refers to the Mansions as “20 acres in the middle of the city.” That’s a Walmart parking lot, hardly a large enough setting for all we see here.

The near future — 2018 — may be necessary in terms of the cars, weapons and cell-phones the film uses. But depopulated Detroit is hardly the crowded, cop-packed crime mecca the film depicts.

A bustier and fishnet stockinged assassin named Rayzah (Ayisha Issa) makes a strong impression, but none of the other cops, crooked officials or mob henchmen do. RZA’s Tremaine should be anxious that there’s a big bomb about to blow up his corner of the city.

“Tremaine Alexander don’t do anxious!”

Walker’s best moments have him doing a deadpan double take at some impossible stunt Belle’s Lino has just pulled off, That gives his character a moment to figure out how he can get the same results without having wall-climbing, back flipping and tumbling skills of this Cirque du Detroit sidekick.

And moments like that, even in a dumb movie, add a little sting to the loss of Walker’s amiable, sincere screen presence, a nice guy who always made a convincingly righteous dude, and an actor who wasn’t above letting himself in on the laugh that a lot of these movies he made were.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for frenetic gunplay, violence and action throughout, language, sexual menace and drug material

Cast: Paul Walker, David Belle, RZA, Catalina Denis, Ayisha Issa

Credits: Directed by Camille Delamarre, written by Luc Besson and Bibi Naceri. A Relativity release.

Running time: 1:32

Ben Kingsley classes up “Walking with the Enemy,” an ambitious if muddled World War II drama about the Holocaust in Hungary. Kingsley plays Miklos Horthy, Regent of Hungary during the war. He gives the leader, an ally of Nazi Germany, a complexity — balancing cooperation with Hitler with a self-righteous neutrality about the nation’s Jews — that Horthy himself would approve.
The movie around that small role is just as complicated, if clumsily simplistic, the sort of film where the sweep of history and a vast array of characters almost obliterate what is a simple story.
The enormity of the Holocaust, the scale of the horror, the depth of the depravity, the simple fact that it’s a period piece requiring settings, costumes, trains, trucks, tanks and motorcycles, would be daunting to any filmmaker. But first-time director Mark Schmidt, with assorted screenwriters, plunged right in, staging combat scenes and mass executions, throwing in a love story or good measure. The history is a bit fuzzy, but at least they got the World War II movie tropes right.
Irish actor Jonas Armstrong is Elek, a Jewish college student whose swing dancing good times come to an end in early 1944, as Hungary comes under the administration of Nazi SS Col. Adolph Eichmann (Charles Hubbell). The war has turned against Germany, but Eichmann has arrived to ensure that Hungary’s Jews, mostly protected under the Horthy regime, face the same fate as those of Poland, France and the rest of Europe.
Elek, Miklos (Simon Dutton) and Ferenc (Mark Wells) struggle to adapt to a rapidly deteriorating situation. Elek tries to convince his father, a village rabbi, to see the warning signs and flee with the family. But one thing “Walking with the Enemy” gets right is how dearly bought information was in Nazi Europe. Kept in the dark, people were willing to believe anything to avoid considering the worst.
As Budapest comes under the jurisdiction of the infamous Nazi Col. Skorzeny (Burn Gorman of “Pacific Rim”), Elek sees friends and family arrested, tortured and killed. He and a rotating collection of friends hurl themselves into helping as many as possible escape, starting with distributing Swiss exit visas and eventually donning an SS uniform to free prisoners and save more lives.
Of course, Elek has time for love, courting Hannah (Hannah Tointon) in between acts of derring-do. And that eye-roller is nothing when compared to the dialogue, which sounds as if it came from a WWII Movie Dialogue Generator, and not from nine credited writers. Every scene has a groaner.
“Don’t worry. Nothing will happen. I promise.” Hello, Holocaust?
“Ach, practicing your German again, Elek?” That’ll come in handy.
Seventy years of movies about Nazis and their (Hungarian) collaborators have not altered their cliches.
“Colonel, your reputation precedes you.” “If I may be so bold…” “We have our ORDERS.”
Only Kingsley comes out unscathed, lured into this project by the scant few good scenes and the very best lines.
“The Jews have Eichmann,” Horthy intones. “We have Skorzeny. All we be tested.”
After “Walking with the Enemy,” two hours and four minutes of torture, rape and mass shootings, you’ll feel you’ve been tested, too.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with torture, shootings, attempted rape
Cast: Jonas Armstrong, Hannah Tointon, Burn Gorman, Simon Hepworth, Charles Hubbell, Ben Kingsley
Credits: Directed by Mark Schmidt, screenplay by Kenny Golde. A Liberty Studios release.
Running time: 2:04

And thus, is a great comic duo born.
“The Other Woman” is a female empowerment comedy and buddy picture, a PG-13 “Bridesmaids,” as if that was even possible. But it is, because of Cameron Diaz and Leslie Mann.
Diaz, whom future generations will look back on in awe that anybody so skinny/sexy could be so very scary, takes the straight-woman role to Mann, an under-rated comedienne who hasn’t worked nearly as much as she should have in the years and years since she married comic brand name Judd Apatow.
This farce, about a romantically jaded lawyer, Carly (Diaz) who realizes her new love of the past two months is actually married to a prattling, scattered but sweet housewife (Mann), gives Diaz a few pratfalls, a lot of pricey clothes and the occasional bikini, and Mann every thing else. Especially every funny thing.
Mann’s “Kate” all but collapses, on learning the truth in the Carly’s office.
“Does this open?” she mumbles, groping and poking, dazed, at a wall-sized window she’d like to jump through.
“You had sex with my husband…fifty times? Don’t you have a JOB?”
She cries to Carly, drinks with Carly, badgers Carly with calls.
“Just wanted to keep you in the loop.”
“Take me OUTTA the loop!”
And she drops in, uninvited, on Carly’s swank city apartment.
“I don’t want to sit anywhere you and Mark had sex.”
“Hmmmmm.”
Mann, who stole “Knocked Up”, plays a great drunk. Pouring her into Carly’s chauffeured Town Car is like watching Buster Keaton in high heels.
Worldwise Carly gets why Mark (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) would cheat on Kate. She’s a clingy ditz, unable to train her Great Dane, catering to her entrepreneur hubby’s every need. Even Kate gets that.
“I am like Martha Stewart with big underpants!”
But Kate wins Carly’s sympathy, and ours.
The Diaz/Mann pairing is helped by a pair of funny supporting players — pop singer Nicki Minaj, a Picasso-parody of what real women look like, plays Carly’s secretary, and Don Johnson plays her five-times-married massage addict of a father.
“Don’t make fun of ‘Nam,” he bellows. “Best years of my life!”
And then the ladies meet a third “other woman.” Voluptuous model Kate Upton plays her, and while it’s not her fault that this Nick Cassavetes comedy hits the wall when she shows up, she’s no actress. Parking her next to Diaz and Mann probably scared the wits out of the older women, but Upton looks like a cheerful, chipmunk-cheeked collection of shapely, dull-eyed baby fat next to them.
Cassavetes plays around with the soundtrack, underscoring Kate’s “little Edith Piaf moment” breakdown with a funny-sad cover of “La Vie en Rose,” getting a little too on-the-nose by using “Mission: Impossible” music for Kate and Carly stalking Mark as he sneaks off to cheat.
It’s too long , and gets more obvious the longer it goes. The villain is weak and Minaj’s caricature seems straight out of a Tyler Perry picture. But Melissa K. Stack’s script has snap and crackle to go with the pop, making this female wish-fulfillment fantasy an “Eat, Pray, Revenge” that delivers the punches that two “Sex and the City” movies never could.
　
MPAA Rating: PG-13 on appeal for mature thematic material, sexual references and language
Cast: Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, Kate Upton, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Don Johnson, Nicki Minaj
Credits: Directed by Nick Cassavetes, written by Melissa K. Stack. A Fox release.
Running time: 1:49