Movie Nation

Say this for “Last Vegas.” CBS Films didn’t scrimp on cast, baby.

FIVE Oscar winners star in this comedy about old men, lifelong pals “from the neighborhood,” gathering in Vegas to celebrate the marriage of one of their ranks.

Michael Douglas, Robert DeNiro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline AND…Mary Steenburgen, as a Vegas lounge singer who sort of upsets the applecart.

Talking with Douglas and Steenburgen today. He’s having a pretty good year, thanks to this film and his Liberace turn. She’s had a long, delightful career that (“Melvin & Howard,” “Cross Creek”) that included working with everybody who is anybody — Jack Nicholson, Malcolm McDowell (“Time After Time”), and so on.

Questions for the on-screen “couple”? One or the other? Post them as comments, and thanks.

Another great weekend for “Gravity,” which holds 3D IMAX screens captive and appears to have enough staying power to do top five well into November. Over $30 million this weekend.

“Captain Phillips” had a good “hold,” as the Box Office Watchers say, and is headed towards $100 million domestic, with a few Oscar nominations seemingly in the bag.  Another $15 million+.

But Screen Gems’ “Carrie” skidded from a promising Thursday night to a fading Friday and Saturday. It should earn $15 million ($17 million) over the weekend. Indifferent reviews didn’t help. Screen Gems foolishly bought themselves ill will and bad buzz by not previewing it widely — just a select few “easy lays” in the critical universe.

I spent the better part of last week trying to get them to show it to me in advance. And as it turned out, it wasn’t awful. But remember Roger’s Rule.

Studios never hide movies they’re proud of.

A Stephen King “Brand Name” film, all alone as a horror offering in October, this should have been review proof. But when you hide it, NOBODY talks about it. Good or bad. And ill will among critics can be costly. Teachable moment, Screen Gems. Preview your movies. Or don’t. But this half-hearted, play favorites crap? Doesn’t work out, does it? Cost you $10 million, probably.

The conception of the film was flawed. The idea of giving feminist “Girls Don’t Cry” filmmaker Kimberly Peirce a chance to give her take on the material made it bully-centric and timely. But not scary. Give it to a horror director and let them go back to King’s “Rashomon” like novel — different accounts of how Carrie turned out that way and what happened that fateful night.

Anyhoo…

“Escape Plan” kind of drives a nail into the Stallone-Schwarzenegger comebacks — unless it blows up overseas. Under $10 million. “Expendables” or bust for this two geezers.

Biggest bomb of the weekend? Indifferent reviews KILLED “The Fifth Estate.” The title didn’t help, Benedict Cumberbatch isn’t box office, yes. Where were all his Cumberbitches? Nobody showed up — $1.7-2.0 million. For a picture that opens wide (over 1700 screens), that’s a notable flop. Biggest of the year, according to IMDb.

“Prisoners” and “Meatballs” continue to cash in and hang around the top ten, and will be there until Nov. 1.

Erotic, but about more than the sex, droll, but about more than witty lines and cutting observations by and about bored suburban moms, “Concussion” is a most promising first feature from writer-director Stacie Passon.
It’s well-acted, sometimes poignant and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. Passon’s little domestic melodrama about the demands of motherhood, the dullness of upscale suburbia with its Pilates-hot yoga-ladies who lunch, hangs on what could have been just a gimmick, but isn’t.
So don’t call it “Desperate Lesbian Housewives.”
We meet Abbey (Robin Weigert), 42, covered in blood, racing to the hospital and cursing the rambunctious son who whacked her in the head with a ball. The damage is probably superficial. But you never know, so there are tests.
That blow to the head might have shaken up Abbey’s world. Is she content to gossip, jog, do exercise classes and listen to the blah-blah-blah chatter of women whose horizons are as limited as hers? Her wife (Julie Fain Lawrence) is older and has lost interest in sex. And Abbey isn’t inclined to suffer all this in silence.
She’s a decorator who buys, fixes up and flips lofts “in the city” (Manhattan). And she tells Justin (Johnathan Tchaikovsky), her hunky young contractor, everything.
“You’re like, a swinger, right?”
Abbey confesses that she just visited a hooker, and it didn’t work. One thing leads to another, and Justin sets her up with “The Girl,” a mysterious madam who arranges a better quality of gay prostitute.
Stick with me, here.
One thing leads to another, and very quickly, the mother of two, who throws fabulous dinner parties where gay and straight neighbors meet and mingle without a hint of awkwardness, is working for “The Girl,” with Justin as their go between.
“You’d be my…what?” she asks him, coyly.
“Let’s…not…go there. I’m just the guy who sets things up.”
Abbey soon finds herself screening (“We can meet for coffee. Or tea.”) and then having a paid tumble with awkward young women looking for an older woman experience, or lonely, sex-starved women closer to her own age — who come to her unfinished loft for an assignation, and maybe a little judgment about her decorating choices.
Meetings with “The Girl” (Emily Kinney, a stitch) are both all business and hilarious.
Meetings with clients have a hint of the absurd in them. Abbey hands an overweight, inexperienced girl books on diet and sex.
“‘The Essential Gandhi.’ It’s an excellent book for weight loss.”
Of course there are consequences, predictable enough. And a gorgeous neighbor (Maggie Siff) threatens the whole notion of anonymous, consequence-free fooling around.
Sasson doesn’t do much with her title metaphor, doesn’t make much of those Abbey neglects with her new side career. Hot sex scenes? Sure, a few. And some of the downside of the trade is suggested. The whole “bored so I became a hooker” thing is a little played out, even with the lesbian twist.
But “Concussion” deserves more of an audience than just the film festival circuit. And it’s not just an introduction to a writer-director with talent, but to a slew of under-employed and superb actresses, and the hunky Tchaikovsky.

MPAA Rating: R for strong sexual content and some language
Cast: Robin Weigert,Johnathan Tchaikovsky, Maggie Siff, Julie Fain Lawrence, Emily Kinney
Credits: Written and directed by Stacie Passon. A Weinstein Co. release.
Running time: 1:37

Alfonso Cuaron’s “Gravity” is doing gangbuster’s business on this, its third weekend. Another $28-30 million. It is hanging onto audience share and rolling towards $200 million, with no end in sight. $350, maybe?

“Carrie,” despite botched marketing (Screen Gems didn’t build buzz on it, did one telekinetic stunt viral ad that didn’t do much and then refused to preview it before deadline to most critics), is managing what horror movies typically manage — an $18 million opening. The good ones, the ones with buzz, do $25+.  This is just “meh,” not a flop by any means. It’s not that bad, but not very good, either. A missed opportunity by Screen Gems.

“Captain Phillips” is riding good reviews into the Tom Hanks record books. It’s his biggest hit in ages, and while it’s no threat to “Gravity,” it’ll do $100 million when all is said and done. Another $17 million or so this weekend, a 40% drop from its opening weekend. Not too shabby.

Indifferent reviews killed “The Fifth Estate.” Confusing? A little. But there was genuine Oscar buzz for Benedict Cumberbatch, the Brit of the moment, early on. And that is gone with the wind. Maybe the whole Edward Snowden thing, the Bradley Manning transgender hooplah, has soured us on the idea that knee-jerk exposing of government secrets doesn’t make us safer and has a malice about it that, on first blush, isn’t evident. Assange gets lumped in with other sociopaths and the movie can’t make up its mind whether he’s crazy, naive or sociopathic.  It may do as little as $2 million this weekend.

Getting a Broadway show on its feet and up and running is a journey often fraught with drama, hurt feelings and failure. Happy endings are rare and best appreciated if we know the struggle, revisions, hard work and tough casting and re-casting decisions it took to achieve success.
Much of that is missing from “Broadway Idiot,” a tuneful but extremely superficial slice of cinematic triumphalism celebrating the conversion of Green Day’s 2004 concept album, “American Idiot,” into a stage musical that ran for 422 performances at Broadway’s St. James Theatre. Producers had to update a Bush Era screed about suburban angst and post 9/11 American ennui into something that felt fresh in 2009-10.
Though we’re treated to some wonderful moments and we develop a pretty thorough understanding of the back story on the songs and the era that spawned this angry, defiant, anarchic song cycle, there’s never a discouraging word uttered in this picture’s 80 minutes.
We don’t see the casting process, just a little of how the creative team turned songs into character and story ideas.  We skim past the mixed to bad reviews, the pain of changing actors — re-casting for this reason or that. There’s little drama to the big moment when Green Day gives its permission for the show to proceed. There’s just Billie Joe Armstrong and the other two guys in the band (totally in the background), sitting in a rehearsal studio, beaming, slack-jawed at the conversion of “Last Night on Earth” from rock ballad to a moving, choral moment.
“Oh,” Armstrong grins. “This can work.”
Nobody argues. Nobody’s feelings are hurt when Green Day frontman and singer-songwriter Armstrong takes over the lead role on Broadway, after others have busted their humps to get it there. That we know of, anyway.
The big revelation here is that Armstrong, a Bay Area punk who formed and leads an American band that is the only serious modern contender for U2’s “Most Relevant Rock Act” title, knows Broadway and sang show tunes, on stage, as a child. Director Doug Hamilton, a PBS vet, wisely sticks this information in the later acts. It’s like that moment we learned gangster rapper Tupac Shakur was indulged with acting and ballet lessons as a child — a bit of a head-snap.
The “American Idiot” album — with later songs such as “Last Night on Earth” and “21 Guns” added to the stage production — has the thematic weight to carry a musical. The film captures the magic and manic energy of the performances, the inventive choreography and spine-tingling tunes.
But surely there was more struggle to getting it on stage than we see here. And stage director and book co-writer Michael Mayer may say “I don’t read the reviews” and the cast can agree with him. That doesn’t make them go away, the way this show did long before entering Broadway’s record books.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with lots of profanity
Cast: Billie Joe Armstrong, Michael Mayer, Rebeca Naomi Jones, John Gallagher Jr.
Credits: Directed by Doug Hamilton. A FilmBuff release . 
Running time: 1:21

Oscar contenders are peppering most weekends this October, pretty unusual for Hollywood to roll them out, en masse, pre-Thanksgiving, but there are more to come, so have at it.

“12 Years a Slave” is the best picture contender to beat — epic, moving, well cast and acted, and about race and slavery as it really was practiced in the American South. Rapturous reviews for this one, including my own.

“All is Lost” has the finest performance in Robert Redford’s long, legendary career. A real one-man tour de force. Breathless reviews for that one, including my own. A best actor nomination, probably a best actor Oscar for him.

“Carrie” is a misguided but still interesting remake of the Brian DePalma classic based on the Stephen King novel. Mixed to negative reviews for that one. Chloe Grace Moretz seems a little off, but it also has the wrong director and more of an agenda than merely horrifying us, so an intriguing failure. If it bombs, blame Screen Gems, which has botched the marketing of it utterly.

“Escape Plan” goes down easier than the many recent Stallone and/or Arnold S. “comeback” megaviolent actioners. LEss gruesome, less sadistic, less racist. Mixed reviews, Watchable, if you’re into those two.

And “The Fifth Estate” was supposed to be an Oscar contender for Benedict Cumberbatch. The reviews for this dizzying but generally fascinating look inside Julian Assange’s Wikileaks and the morality of it killed that Oscar buzz. I rather liked it, but a lot of people found it impossible to follow

More horrific than scary, director Kimberly Peirce (“Girls Don’t Cry”) sees Stephen King’s “Carrie” through the lens of today’s bullying epidemic and all the hand-wringing that has followed it.
This remake of the film that made Brian DePalma famous — neither version hews that closely to the King novella — is reasonably well cast but off-tone, a vengeance tale with a Carrie who is coming to grips with her puberty-linked telekinetic powers. She’s been to the library. She’s done her research.
Chloe Grace Moretz isn’t subtle in the title role, a cowering, scowling girl who walks the halls and skulks through her classes almost in the fetal position, an outsider fearful of her classmates and the religious fanatic mother (Julianne Moore) who is raising her.
Carrie is bullied, and if you remember the story, it’s an unforgettable example of that mean teen passion, involving menstrual cycles, the locker room, mean girl peers and — in a modern touch — cell phone video. Carrie is wary of the other kids, especially Chris (Portia Doubleday), a teen who has somehow tanned herself orange for some scenes.
Chris’ pal Sue (Gabriella Wilde) is the mean girl with a conscience, gorgeous but full of regret over what happened in that locker room. Ansel Elgort is Tommy, Sue’s jock boyfriend, somebody who might actually share her compassion for poor, outcast Carrie White.
Peirce isn’t at home in the genre and makes that plain all too often, giving away her punches, stumbling to maintain the tone and any sense of mystery about what is coming in this very familiar tale. She delights in unnerving, bloody closeups and takes pains to not overly sexualize the sexually active girls of Ewen “No Dress Code” High.
The real terror comes from the mother-daughter relationship, with Moore bewitchingly unhinged as a woman naive to the world outside her fundamentalism and harsh in her judgments of it.
“These are GODless times,” she inveighs at a customer at the dry cleaners where she works, jabbing and scratching her arms and legs, drawing blood to atone for her own sins. She’s a harridan, and every scene with Carrie has you fearing some fresh, potentially lethal cruelty from her mother.
So yes, even if you know how this story goes, there are moments that work wickedly well in between the needlessly drawn out ones, by which I mean the entire, predictable third act.
Moretz (“Kick-Ass”) doesn’t engender much sympathy. But when Tommy asks Carrie to the prom with a  disarming charm (at Sue’s gallant suggestion) and Carrie’s caring gym teacher (Judy Greer) counsels caution and everybody’s dancing and having a good time, you really do wish these kids had spent more time looking for fire resistant prom dresses.

MPAA Rating: R for bloody violence, disturbing images, language and some sexual content.
Cast: Chloe Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore, Judy Greer, Gabriella Wilde, Portia Doubleday, Ansel Elgort
Credits: Directed Kimberly Peirce, written by a Lawrence D. Cohen and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, based on the Stephen King novel. An MGM/Screen Gems release. 
Running time: 1:49