Movie Nation

The best James Brown impersonation of 2013 was Cuba Gooding, Jr.’s single scene riff in “The Butler,” the Oscar winning musician’s son pulling off a little turn, a little shout, a serious suggestion of The Godfather of Soul.

Gooding could have played Brown in a bio pic, had the opportunity ever come along when he was younger.

So it’s Chadwick Boseman, who won plenty of praise for his dignified, seething turn as Jackie Robinson in “42” who gets the nod. Mick Jagger’s production company is involved, and the director of “The Help” will be behind the camera when this untitled film about “the hardest working man in show business” unfolds.

You could be forgiven for rolling your eyes last summer at the news that last summer’s flashy pre-fab pop phenomenon One Direction would be releasing a concert documentary this summer.
Forgiven by everyone save their fans, who might pout for suggesting that one summer’s boy band craze is the next summer’s old news.
But “One Direction: This is Us,” still has a popularity wave to ride a full year after “What Makes You’re Beautiful” and “Live While We’re Young” dominated the airwaves. So stop the eye-rolling.
This film captures the five British lads hand-picked by Simon Cowell to go where NKOTB, Boyz II Men, Backstreet Boys and *N Sync have gone before — up the charts and into arenas around the world. Caught at their peak, they come off as the clean-cut fulfillment of millions of teen and tweenage girl fantasies.
It’s not that different from the Justin Bieber doc, or the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus concert films — sanitized, packaged — presenting these five British or Irish boys, ages 19-21 as paragons of pop virtue while others vouch for what “rebels” they are, and that they have “edge.”
Yeah, they’ve got vast tattoo collections and they’re not shy about losing a shirt and yanking each other’s trousers down on stage in choreographed bits of tomfoolery. We see Harry, Liam, Louis, Zyan and Niall bonding on a tour bus across Europe, a camping trip in Sweden and the occasional stroll down a public street — until they’re recognized and mobbed.
They marvel at their sudden fame, don disguises and work as ushers at a venue here and there.
“One Direction?” Irish prankster Niall Horan, in fake nose, beard and wig tells a couple of fans he’s escorted to their seats. “I think they’re crap!”
They travel to Africa to show their charitable side. Harry Styles goes back to the Cheshire bakery where he used to work the counter to serve a few customers. And being all of 21 or so, they reminisce — “Remember when we met at Boot Camp?” That was where they were brought together, rehearsed and trained to be pop stars by Cowell & Co.
Indie filmmaker sell-out Morgan Spurlock (“Super-Size Me”) shows us how 1D were recruited by Cowell on Britain’s “X-Factor” talent show, how a cadre of hard-core first generation fans amped up enthusiasm for them in the UK before they even had a record out and how much they’ve changed their parents’ lives (buying them houses, etc.) and how much fun they have together as mates on what one describes as a “Benjamin Button” journey — peaking at 20, realizing it’s all “backward” and downhill from here, lads.
It’s a chipper, cheerful portrait with nary a discouraging word in it. And after Katy Perry’s much more revealing and dramatic “Part of Me” film, it’s disappointing that Spurlock didn’t have the access, the footage or the spine to depict any of the cynicism behind such creations, who are manufactured by pop Svengalis like Maurice Starr (New Kids on the Block, et al), Lou Pearlman (Backstreet Boys, *N Sync) and Cowell.
The tunes are catchy, and the 1D boys have charm, a little wit about them, and some stage presence even if their shows have all the spontaneity of a McDonald’s menu.
Not that their fans want to hear that, or hear that they have a limited shelf life. Oh no. They never let us forget that it’s a teenage girls’ world. We’re all just wearing earplugs in it.

(Let’s sum up the summer movies with the Summer Oscars)

MPAA Rating: PG, for mild language
Cast: Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Simon Cowell
Credits: Directed by Morgan Spurlock. A Sony/Tristar release.
Running time: 1:33

“Passion” is Brian DePalma’s teasing, overripe remake of the forgettable French thriller “Love Crime.”  With its broadly drawn characters, erotic hints of homo-and-heterosexual betrayal and lethal corporate intrigues, it’s a competent take on material that may have seemed more current and scandalous in France (in 2010) than it does in America.
The hook here is that the corporate folks seducing, stealing credit and back-stabbing each other are women.
Isabelle (Noomi Rapace) is a European ad exec who, with her provocatively dressed assistant (Karoline Herfurth) cooks up an account-saving cell phone campaign based on what the camera on that phone catches when a good-looking woman leaves it on in the back pocket of her tight jeans. Video of men spraining their necks as they turn around to check out the woman’s bottom becomes a viral sensation.
But the moment this winning pitch is made, Christine, Isabelle’s American boss (Rachel McAdams) takes credit for it. Isabelle seems over matched against the composed, ruthless Christine. Revenge comes only after serious study.
Isabelle dallies with Christine’s corporate beau (Paul Anderson). It backfires and Isabelle cracks up. And that’s when things get real.
McAdams has been a polished mean girl ever since “Mean Girls.” Pale, with perfectly lurid red lipstick and the cold-eyed confidence of a killer, she seduces, ensnares and fillets as if for sport — anything to get her back to the New York home office.
“I used to want to be admired,” she purrs. “But now I want to be loved.”
Since her “Dragon Tattoo” days, Rapace has worn a sort of bi-curious persona well — a victim who can turn into a cunning hunter in a flash. Is Isabelle really lovelorn, tempted out of her depth, easily manipulated by men or women who take an interest?
The dialogue, straight out of the Bette Davis/Joan Crawford era of epic Hollywood cat fights, leans toward the “You’re more like me than you think” with the actresses — McAdams especially, wearing their best “Of course you know this means WAR” scowl.
DePalma flirts with the lurid and tosses in some interesting third act surprises, but never finds his way back to the sexually charged tone and shocks of his earlier thrillers (“Dressed to Kill”). The plot tricks aren’t that tricky, the broadly-played characters are red herrings.
As with much of his recent work (“Black Dahlia” and “Femme Fatale”), “Passion” is the very thing this movie lacks.

MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, language and some violence.
Cast: Rachel McAdams, Noomi Rapace, Paul Anderson, Rainer Boch
Credits: Directed by Brian DePalma, written by Natalie Carter and Brian DePalma, based on the French film “Love Crime.” An eOne release
Running time: 1:42

A terrorist attack, a murderous cover-up, a highly publicized trial and two lawyers — former lovers — forced to stay apart during the proceedings, “Closed Circuit” has all the makings for an incendiary thriller.
But this paranoid, cynical tale of terror and privacy and the ways the intelligence apparatus deals with one by stealing the other never quite catches fire. Blame it on the weak chemistry of the stars, blame it on the way the script refuses to let them develop chemistry and the perfunctory way the story is dispensed with, but the sparks aren’t there.
Eric Bana is Martin, an English barrister tasked with defending the lone surviving suspect in a mass murder terror bombing. Britain’s State Secrets act means that he’s not the only lawyer on the case. There will be evidence that cannot be heard in open court, and that, for arcane reasons, Martin will not be allowed to hear. Rebecca Hall plays Claudia, another lawyer tasked as “special advocate,” basically the attorney in charge of the suspect’s case in that closed-door part of the trial.
They cannot meet, discuss the case or share what they know with one another. That’s probably for the best, as she’s the reason his marriage broke up. Not that they tell the judge this.

The fact that the first attorney on the case killed himself sets off no apparent alarm bells, but within hours, both Claudia and Martin have reason to believe they’re under surveillance, and that the people watching may be interested in doing more than just observing.
Director John Crowley once did the lively and surprising Irish dramedy “Intermission,” and he jazzes this up with lots of split screens — as many as 15 different surveillance images capture the prelude to the terror attack. “Closed Circuit” is built on parallel threads telling the same story. We see Martin dig, make a discovery, fret over suspicious cabbies and dinner party guests (Julia Stiles is a reporter). We see Claudia interview the suspect’s family and worry over the spy (Riz Ahmed) charged with delivering evidence to her and seeing what she does with it. Neither tells the other what he or she has found out.
Jim Broadbent lets just a hint of sinister peek through as the attorney general who charges them with taking this highly public trial. We and Martin question his motives. Ciaran Hinds plays a solicitor who plays the role of “fixer,” getting them access to evidence — separately — doing background work, listening in on their meetings with the client (Denis Moschitto).
At 92 minutes, “Closed Circuit” should feel tidier and tighter than it is. Screenwriter Steven Knight dispenses with back story by having Bana and Hall’s characters blurt out exposition, sizing people up with a few pithy, memorized bits of background and profile data, sort of the “I know your type” speech. That doesn’t spare the film the inane “Keep looking” shout from the spy chief whose minions have lost track of someone (What else are they going to do?) or “OK, you know the plan” (Then why say so?). There’s no virtue in a lean script that still packs in so many things that don’t need to be said.
It feels as if there’s more story here, more movie that was lopped out. We never have time to size characters up for ourselves or invest in anyone before their lives are put in jeopardy. Bana and Hall play their relationship as deflatingly raw — not a romance that either dares to revisit. But that lowers the stakes as well.
For all the split screens that play up Britain as a surveillance state, Crowley never really ratchets up the paranoia, and never allows the juice to flow through this closed circuit.

(Let’s sum up the summer movies with Summer Oscars)
MPAA Rating: R for language and brief violence
Cast: Eric Bana, Rebecca Hall, Jim Broadbent, Julia Stiles
Credits: Directed by John Crowley, written by Steven Knight. A Focus Features release.
Running time: 1:32

“The Butler” probably won’t stick around long enough to pass “We’re the Millers” as a late August surprise at the box office. But it did well enough to win its second weekend in a row — over $17 million.

“Millers” came in second.

“The Mortal Instruments” managed a measly $9million+, $14 since Wednesday.

“The World’s End” did a middling $8-9 million.

“You’re Next” barely over $7 million.

“Blue Jasmine,” Woody Allen’s latest, added over a thousand screens to open wide — finally. They may have waited a week or two too long to roll this one out. The buzz about it was a late July/early August phenomenon. The per screen average is well under $4,000, and the take — now at $14 million — still won’t clear $20 million, even though it cracked the top ten this weekend.

Labor Day Weekend is the traditional end of the summer cinema season, with this summer setting a new record — “Iron Man 3” and “Despicable Me 2” and “Man of Steel” led the way,  “The Heat” and “The Conjuring” and “Now You See Me” stand out as the surprise hits. “The Lone Ranger” and “RIPD” were the biggest flops.

So far.

Julie Harris collected six Tonys and more than a few movie anecdotes over the course of her long, storied career. She acted opposite James Dean in “East of Eden,” and told great stories about what a camera hog and fussbudget scene-stealer he was, busying up his acting with mannerisms so that no eyes would stray off him in a two shot.

She shot a couple of TV movies in Orlando in her later years — “The First of May” and “The Way Back Home” — and I got to meet her – delicate, fragile in her 80s, but you got the impression she’d been like that all along. And very sweet.

She did these movies — Paul Sirmons produced them, co-productions with Valencia College’s student film program — for a song, just to work and help the students by letting them experience what a real movie set was like.

“The Way Back Home” had her working with another legend, Ruby Dee. Classy ladies, both of them. And actors to the very end.

The 2010 French film “Crime d’Amour (Love Crime)” opened to unspectacular reviews and indifferent box office in France and then the U.S. But something about it intrigued legendary American filmmaker Brian DePalma. And when a producer pitched the idea of an English-language remake to him, the director of “Scarface,” “Dressed to Kill,” “The Untouchables” and the first “Mission: Impossible,” could see places where this story of two women’s cutthroat (literally) rivalry in the workplace might benefit from “The DePalma Touch.”
“I quite liked the interaction and dramatic interplay between the rival executives in the advertising firm,” he says of that film, which starred Kristin Scott Thomas as a boss who betrays her assistant, Isabelle (Ludivine Sagnier) leading to deadly consequences as Isabelle seeks revenge. “I really liked the core idea that Isabelle admits that she did something, that she convinces people she did something, and that she was out of her mind when she did. Everything points to her, and those clues are false. It’s kind of an ingenious concept and I ran with it.”
The story already had two variations on DePalma’s beloved femmes fatales, plus Hitchcockian twists and tricks in the plot — another hallmark of his style. What it needed was a way to work in his favorite subject — voyeurism. Think of such ’80s classics as “Blow Out” and “Dressed to Kill,” where characters watch others without them knowing it. “Passion,” the new film version of the story which DePalma adapted and which opens Friday, added today’s favorite voyeurism enabling toy — the smart phone.
“I’m always fascinated by the changes in the way we make movies and the things we make movies about,” he says. “The dominant technology in this movie is the smart phone. It becomes almost a dramatic character.”
He took an idea he found on the Internet — a young woman turns on her phone’s video camera and leaves it in her back pocket to record all the men and woman who turn around to ogle her bottom as she passes them — and built that into an ingenious ad campaign that the “assistant,” Isabelle (Noomi Rapace of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”) comes up with, which her boss (Rachel McAdams) then takes credit for.
“In the original movie, it’s about a business deal that the boss takes credit for,” DePalma explains. “There isn’t a campaign — a product. I made the smart phone the thing that is used to expose Isabelle and humiliate her, and the thing that chronicles her deeds or misdeeds as a murder is constructed are documented, in part, by phone.”
DePalma is of a generation of filmmakers who became known for their style — the trademark things they do with characters, scenes and the camera. He shoots long takes to ratchet up tension, often places women in jeopardy and isn’t shy about making women both victims and victimizers.
“They’re prettier,” he cracks, about his fondness for femmes fatales. And imposing his style on a story?
“It’s not something I think about too often, this business of reputation, style, not repeating myself or repeating myself. That’s something the critics impose on it. I look at the material with my people and we try to figure out the best way to make a movie of it. Sometimes, we repeat certain tropes from our earlier work. That’s because that’s who we are. I have these things I do with the camera, with characters, that make up my style. It’s who I am.”
DePalma, who turns 73 on Sept. 11, is part of that generation of iconoclastic filmmakers that includes Coppola and Scorsese, Spielberg, Schroeder and Friedkin. He’s over a decade removed from his last big hit — the first Tom Cruise “Mission: Impossible” film. DePalma movies have become rarer, and more problematic in recent years — “Femme Fatale” and  “The Black Dahlia” bombed, and 2007’s “Redacted” was barely released. William “The French Connection” Friedkin refers to this stage in a veteran director’s career as “An Uphill climb to the Bottom” in his new memoir, “The Friedkin Connection.”
But early reviews of “Passion” are marginally better than those of DePalma’s most recent thrillers — “If you have a taste for murder and a high tolerance for melodrama, ‘Passion’ — albeit mostly passionless — satisfies,” opines the Toronto Globe and Mail.
DePalma knows he was lucky to land friends and former co-stars Rapace and McAdams as his leads, because that meant his movie would get made. Rapace was offered a role, and she pitched it to McAdams, who co-starred with her in the Robert Downey “Sherlock Holmes” sequel.
“You cast movies these days a lot through happenstance,” DePalma says with a  chuckle. He just hopes a little of that happens his way as he pulls together a film, “Happy Valley,” on the Joe Paterno-Penn State scandal. “Some of them come together quickly and easily, and some don’t. At this stage, they never seem to fall into place the same way twice.”

The rural South hasn’t produced many filmmaking voices. But one of them is Billy Bob Thornton. And that’s important, because there are things a guy who grew up in the South knows, experienced and appreciates that no New York film school alumnus or third generation scion of Hollywood could.
“When you grow up in a small town, there’s not a lot of variety in what you do for entertainment,” the Oscar winning Arkansan drawls. “The sense of wonder is greater when you grow up in a small, rural town. When you’re raised in the middle of nowhere, you wonder ‘What’s out there?'”
And you’d be hard pressed to find a city kid, from either coast, who laid eyes on the vehicle where 1950s and ’60s starlet Jayne Mansfield met her grisly end in a pre-airbags/pre-seatbelts era. It toured Southern county fairs and race tracks in the late ’60s and early ’70s. And it became the title of Thornton’s new film, “Jayne Mansfield’s Car.”
“Oh, I saw it. Twice. My dad, he took me. And Tom Epperson (Thorton’s frequent writing collaborator and lifelong friend) took me once. We saw it in the early ’70s, 71-72.”
“Jayne Mansfield’s Car” is a wildly eccentric slice of late ’60s Southern Gothic about a wealthy Alabama family headed by a World War I vet (Robert Duvall, “the character’s loosely based on my dad”) and featuring two troubled war-vet sons (Kevin Bacon and Thornton), a resentful son who never served (Robert Patrick) and a promiscuous daughter (Katherine LaNasa). The funeral of the matriarch, who moved away and remarried years before, brings English relatives (John Hurt is the patriarch) to town for a good, old fashioned, strained and even kinky family get together.
The London Evening Standard’s critic, Derek Malcolm, called the film a “strange Alabama version of Chekhov,” which fits. That title and the car itself are full of “celebrity and magic,” Thornton says, “because Southerners are closer to death…Death is in our folklore. Sometimes, the most horrible, gory situation would be funny to us. That’s Southern, I think.”
He takes as his inspiration the writings of Nobel Prize-winner William Faulkner, and the films he’s written or co-written (with Epperson) — “One False Move,” “Daddy and Them,” “A Family Thing” and “The Gift” — are as distinctly Southern as anything produced by the author of “As I Lay Dying.” But even though Thornton wrote the movie and the role that made him famous — and won an Oscar for writing “Sling Blade” — “I am first and foremost an actor.”
To that end, the 58 year-old Thornton has filmed lined up well off into the future, with the first, “Parkland” (in which he plays a Secret Service agent who witnesses the JFK assassination) due out in September. But in the 20 odd years that he’s been famous, Thornton has made headlines for all sorts of things that have nothing to do with the work.
He’s had a band, off and on, since his teens. He’s been married five times, to a Playboy model and a trio of actresses, including Angelina Jolie (He was engaged to Laura Dern for years). He has obsessive-compulsive disorder, that manifests itself in well-publicized phobias about antique furniture and certain types of silverware. When he’s playing all these eccentrics on the screen, from “A Simple Plan” to “Bad Santa” or “School for Scoundrels,” there’s a credibility there based on what we know about him.
“My eccentricity is played up a bit more than the reality reflects,” Thornton laughs, as if he didn’t bring on that reputation himself. “If you hung out with me a couple of months, you’d be pretty bored. When you’re doing an interview, there’s usually an angle. They’re looking for an angle, a soundbite or on a talk show, a laugh. What’s the craziest thing about me? I can mention something in an offhand way — a phobia or whatever. It becomes a huge deal. I’m famous for my phobias, and it’s not that they don’t exist. They exist in a lot of people, and it just gets exaggerated with me. I’m not that out-there.”
He swore he’d never direct another movie after he had to cut an hour out of his film of Cormac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses.” But here Thornton is, over a decade later, back behind the camera.
“Don’t expect to find me there again, any time soon,” Thornton says. “The acting takes up most of my time. I only want to direct if it’s kind of ‘my thing,’ a movie that’s Southern, that feels Southern and that sounds Southern that I’ve had a hand in writing.”

(Roger Moore’s review of “Jayne Mansfield’s Car” is here)

The only new opening this weekend at the movies that’s performing off par is “You’re Next,” a superior slasher picture that should have ridden decent reviews and a reliable fanbase to a $15 million+ opening weekend.

And it isn’t. Based on Friday’s numbers, it’ll be lucky to do $8.

That’s where “The World’s End,” one of the summer’s funniest comedies but also with a distinctly (and limiting) Anglophile-Simon Pegg-Nick Frost appeal should end up — $8. That audience is aging out of cinema-going, I guess, as they hit their 40s with Simon and Nick.

“The Mortal Instruments” took a beating from critics (not awful, just silly, derivative and superfluous) and has done nothing to suggest that Screen Gems made a smart move in picking up the franchise (a second movie already has a release date) or in opening in at the end of the summer. This would have done much better with critics and audiences in April. It’ll come close to $14 million, maybe a bit better based on Saturday kid appeal (maybe much better, as kids are in school and didn’t go during the week).

“The Butler” is doing well in a weak field and should win the weekend with another $15 million+ take. That would get it over $50, probably not on a pace to reach $100 million or stick around deep into September and thus get Oprah her undeserved Oscar.

The real surprise of this late in the season is “We’re the Millers,” an inferior comedy with Jennifer Aniston stripping and Jason Sudeikis quipping. It was well behind “Elysium” upon opening, and has stuck around the top three ever since.

Weak reviews, not that great an opening, and it’s still on track to hit $100 million by Labor Day.

These are the dog days of August, especially for movie goers. It’s not that the films are bad, but expectations drop, the audience shrinks with kids back in school and we are reminded, every Sunday night, that the last blockbuster of summer came out weeks ago.

But two good films come our way this weekend. Will Simon Pegg and the Gang from “Spaced” bow out with a bang with “The World’s End”? Oh, I hope so.

Might the horror picture “You’re Next,” with a lot of actors of zero fame (a couple of indie directors play roles, too) getting slaughtered in a remote mansion, blow up this weekend?

The Hollywood Reporter says no, that “The Butler” will win another weekend, with both “You’re Next” and “Mortal Instruments” lucky to make it to the mid-teens.

Box Office Guru also predicts a second weekend win for “The Butler,” which would have to have a strong run into September in order to engender any serious Oscar talk.

Box Office Mojo figures that “You’re Next” will ride good word of mouth and good reviews to a $14-15 million weekend. That seems low, as a breakout horror film typically manages at least $18.

“Mortal Instruments” had a solid but unspectacular opening Wednesday, as befits a summer movie opening after the target audience has headed back to school.

All are predicting a decent $8-10 million for “The World’s End.” Let’s face it, as funny as these guys are, there’s a reason this plays like an amusing last hurrah. They and their audience are aging and the older folks get, the less likely they are to get smashed to go see Nick and Simon et al get smashed in a cinema. .