Movie Nation

It’s an OMFG samurai sword and sorcery picture, coming out in December. And Keanu Reeves stars in it, a “half-breed” and “outcast” who joins an intrepid gang of leaderless/masterless samurai (Ronin) to “save our land.”

This summer cinema season has seen enough epic flops to cause Hollywood to rethink how it does business.

Or at least, it’s caused The Hollywood Reporter to say Hollywood is rethinking its business model.

“White House Down” lost its shirt by being the second movie on the same subject in less than six months, something Sony knew before starting production.

“The Lone Ranger” kept getting postponed over budget issues. Disney greenlit it, and Jerry Bruckheimer still got his dime $250 million, for a Western? THR suggests budget creep was the cause of that. A $150-180 million write-off, Disney’s biggest flop — maybe ever.

A deluge of animated films, none of them true stand-outs. “Epic” underperformed, “Monsters University underwhelmed and “Turbo” tanked. Only “Despicable Me 2” seemed to live up to expectations. “The Smurfs 2” and “Planes” from Disney (plainly a Pixar production in all but name) are yet to come. Anybody have great expectations for those?

THR suggests that “original” scripts — not adaptations of hit comics or sequels or lingering franchises — will suffer and get that extra scrutiny and no green light if they cost over $125 million. That’s owing to “Pacific Rim,” which will have to make most of its money around the Pacific Rim.

We’ve reached comic book picture saturation — but only “R.I.P.D.” truly failed, thus far. An amusing end for “Iron Man,” a middling “Man of Steel,” yet another “Wolverine” (the titles show a “Spider-Man” lack of imagination), they make their money in three weeks and are forgotten by one and all after that. Maybe the genre hasn’t run its course, but the end, when it comes, will be sudden and catastrophic. Hollywood is making too many comic book movies, by far.

The credo could be, as THR suggests, “Make better movies,” “make more movies aimed at women,” and I’d add release a scattering of pictures that will reach an older audience, which abandons the cinema most summers as Not Safe for Seniors. The gambles are smaller with cheaper fare and some of those cheap pictures — from “Mud” and “Still Mine” to Kevin Hart’s concert pic to “The Way, Way Back” and perhaps “The To Do List” will pay off. For every five “Girl Most Likely” failures, a single hit can offset that on the balance sheets.

The only true “small change” hits this summer, truthfully, have been “The Purge” and Kevin Hart’s “Let Me Explain.” Only “Mud,” a late spring film, joins in the cost-under-$10, made more than $20 list.

Younger viewers have abandoned TV en masse, consuming media on notebooks, phones and soon Google Glass. If theaters are to survive in any form beyond the next decade, the product is going to have to cater to more than just horror, comic book fanboy and the occasional date picture comedy audience.

“To be, or not”…let’s make it “To slash, or not to slash.” Because this latest X-Men movie is a lot more existential than recent installments in this comic book series have been.
“The Wolverine” is nothing if not ambitious — a moody, haunted tale of Logan the Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) coping with his ghosts and settling old debts — in Japan, no less. It’s the perfect country for a guy who appreciates a good, sharp blade.
And if this James Mangold (“Walk the Line”) take on the superhero franchise stumbles up blind alleys, overreaches and turns long and repetitious by its bloody-bland predictable third act, at least it gives Jackman something worth chewing over for the first 90 minutes.
We first see our man Logan in solitary, stuck in a well in a Japanese POW camp at the end of Wold War II. His captors panic at the sight of a couple of B-29 bombers, and one frees the American prisoners — very uncharacteristic behavior historically, but hey, this is comic book history. Logan shields the guard when the big blast comes, because this turns out to be Nagasaki, where the second atomic bomb was detonated to force Japan’s surrender.
Decades later, the immortal mutant with the Adamantium knives in his fists is summoned to the side of the man he once saved, summoned by a martial arts pixie (Rila Fukushima).
“Eternity can be a curse,” the dying old man (Hal Yamanouchi), now a billionare, speculates. “A man can run out of things to live for.” He offers his savior the chance to lose his immortality, to live a normal life span without the super-healing powers and strength that make the very idea that Wolverine would have ever been a prisoner of war absurd.
Wolverine finds himself mixed up in the succession between the dying man and his heirs. The Japanese mob, the Yakuza, is trying to nab the supermodel-thin granddaughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto), and Wolverine chases her cross-country to protect her.
Wolverine fits neatly within Japanese culture as a Ronin, a loner, a samurai without a leader or purpose. He’s dreaming a lot about the mutant he loved but had to kill (Famke Janssen) and fretting over the dying old man’s doctor (Svetlana Khodchenkova), a fork-tongued devil so thin she makes Mariko consider a diet. And then his powers start to fail him.
Mangold sets up an interesting premise — an immortal tired of living, faced with mortality. How brave can Wolverine be when the bullets leave permanent holes, when every arrow fired by a ninja could kill and every slashing-fight against samurai sword-wielding foes could be his last?
Then the movie stumbles into the curse of the feeble villains — none worthy of Wolverine’s knives — and the trap of endless fights. The action sequences are grimly violent and entertaining, but there is no character is written or cast in this movie who is worthy of his best efforts.
Jackman has always had great presence in this role, brooding, sulking, wisecracking to alarmed airport metal detector operators.
“Hip replacement.”
This “Wolverine” gets our hopes up, and falls short. If you’re the sort who stays through the credits and swoons over whatever variation on the “Nobody ever dies in Marvelland” the tease for the next film promises, this is for you. For anybody more demanding, even of a summer comic book movie, “The Wolverine” will leave you wanting the higher-minded movie this one promised to be — for a while.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence, some sexuality and language
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Rila Fukushima, Will Yun Lee, Famke Janssen,  Tao Okamoto
Credits: Directed by James Mangold, written by Mark Bomback, Scott Frank and Christopher McQuarrie. A 20th Century Fox release
Running time: 2:02

Origin stories, even non-fiction ones, often make good movies, showing us “How the West was Won” or how demonic possession entered pop culture, pre-“Exorcist” and Amityville (“The Conjuring”).
“Drift” is about the birth of the Australian surfing scene and the industry it spawned. It’s a fictional goulash of invented characters, arch situations and a predictable journey from enthusiastic hobby to business, with a detour into the drug trade in between.
But it’s a lovely thing to look at and an entertaining ride through myth, a well-shot and acted film that stays just ahead of the curl and rarely wipes out.
A prologue introduces us to the Kelly brothers as their mom (Robyn Malcolm) sneaks them out of their abusive Sydney household and sets out for a new life without their brute of a father. The boys convince her to stop in remote Seacliff, in Western Australia. That’s where they can surf, skip school and meet their destiny.
Older brother Andy (Myles Pollard) grows up to work in a local lumberyard, rushing his handling of huge logs and scary cutting gear just so he can squeeze in a few hours on the water.
Jimmy (Xavier Samuel) is the long-haired surf god of the two — “a natural” and a great favorite of the girls in 1972 Western Oz.
An accident that almost drowns Andy and busts his long board leads to the boys to discover the short board revolution that’s sweeping the States. And when a pretty Hawaiian surfer, Lani (Lesley-Anne Brandt) and her surf photographer mentor J.B. (Sam Worthington) float into town, they inspire the lads to turn their passion into a business. If only the bank, the competition and their fellow surfers will listen.
“Drift” is their business name,and their business model — “When there’s surf, we surf. When it’s flat, we work.” But even that’s too much the sell-out to the hashish-loving J.B. He’s not about competition, money and all that. He sees a serene, solo surfer on a remote break and turns wistful.
“Can’t buy all he’s got. Especially if he’s not selling.”
The big business of shipping boards hither and yon exposes Drift to the drug trade (heroin stuffed inside boards to get them past customs) and local skinhead/gangster (Steve Bastoni).
And something of a love triangle is set up alongside the sibling rivalry between Andy and Jimmy. They both have the hots for Lani.
“Drift”  is utterly conventional in so many ways. But the relatively unknown cast, the rough hewn setting and startling cinematography — footage that rivals many a surf documentary’s best shots — give it a boost. Pollard stands out in the cast, but Worthington, unkempt, relaxed and not forced to carry a big budget blockbuster like “Clash of the Titans” or “Avatar” or “Terminator Salvation”, is a delight, the very picture of the surfing zen master. As J.B., he keeps that faraway look in his eyes, always in search of that next, undiscovered wave break.
“If God surfed, that’d be his home break.”

MPAA Rating:  R for language and drug content.
Cast: Myles Pollard, Xavier Samuel, Sam Worthington, Lesley-Anne Brandt, Robyn Malcolm
Credits: Directed by Ben Nott and Morgan O’Neill, screenplay by Morgan O’Neill. A Lionsgate release
Running time: 1:35

So many “lose my virginity over the summer” comedies, from “American Pie” to “Superbad,” “Can’t Hardly Wait” to “Girl Next Door.”
But aside from the hilarious “Twilight Saga,” how many have told that torrid tale from the girl’s point of view?
“The To Do List” is a summer romantic comedy dedicated to rectifying that imbalance in a single stroke. It follows a methodical, college-bound teen (Aubrey Plaza) who hurls herself at this “problem” through a summer course of study. And what follows is a raunchy romp,  a “Bridesmaids” to the “Hangovers” of too many hormonal boy movies about taking that “Virginity Hit.”
Writer-director Maggie Carey has assembled a cast that’s too old to be playing high schoolers, set her story in the early ’90s and come up with a rude, sometimes uproarious comedy that is as filthy as “American Pie,” with just a hint of that film’s sentimental sweetness.
Plaza, of TV’s “Parks and Recreation” fearlessly puts it all out there as a teen put out that she hasn’t “put out.” Her Brandy is nerdy, needy, and more funny/skinny than sexy-thin in a swimsuit. And she is obsessed with making lists. All it takes is a little peer pressure from her supposedly more experienced pals (the hilarious Alia Shawkat and Sarah Steele) to make her add “losing it” to her prep for college list — right after “Buy shower shoes.”
Filthy Fiona (Shawkat) knows every form of sex and every euphemism for it that 1993 Boise, Idaho can provide. Brandy, ignoring the insults of her oversexed sis (Rachel Bilson, perfectly cast) and clueless concern of her parents (Clark Gregg and Connie Britton) takes a turn toward sin and away from the Mormon kids’ graduation night party the moment she finishes her valedictorian speech.
Ever on task, she keeps sweet and worshipful Cameron (Johnny Simmons) as a sexual experience backup. But her first day as lifeguard at the local pool, she picks out the hunky Rusty (Scott Porter) and plans her summer’s big finish. Until then, she checks positions, petting variations and foreplay/fooling around items off her sexual “To Do List.” .
Plaza is brilliant at playing someone smart and yet blithely incompetent at the social-sexual demands of her peers. “So many ‘jobs,'” she astutely observes as Fiona runs down that corner of carnality. Plaza and Bilson make believably shrill sibling rivals, with the bombshell Bilson scoring laugh after laugh with her put downs.
“How can I put this in terms a ‘mathlete’ would understand?”
Bill Hader is the slacker manager of the pool where Brandy tests her methods, Christopher Mintz-Plasse is the would-be player who long ago stole the heart of poor Brandy-pal Wendy (Steele) and Andy Samberg has a cameo as a rocker wannabe.
Like most such comedies, the one-big-idea tends to wear thin and Carey struggles to keep this bouncing along as it traverses that tightrope between and tee hee and tasteless.
But the blank-faced Plaza never lets up and never lets on that Brandy is on anything less than a quest — for life experience, liberation and dare we hope it? Love.

(Roger Moore talks with Aubrey Plaza and Bill Hader about talking dirty in the movies.)

MPAA Rating: R for pervasive strong crude and sexual content including graphic dialogue, drug and alcohol use, and language – all involving teens.
Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Bill Hader, Scott Porter, Rachel Bilson, Alia Shawkat, Johnny Simmons, Sarah Steele
Credits: Written and directed Maggie Carey. A CBS Films release.
Running time: 1:46

It’s about “blood addiction,” Spike Lee says of his next film.

And he’s trying to crowd fund it to the tune of $1.25 million through Kickstarter.

Spike has had more career obituaries written about him than most any Hollywood director. But he just finished the Hollywood remake of “Oldboy,” is shooting some Mike Tyson project and has another caper picture “Inside Man 2” in the works. His career is in a better spot than it’s been in since the 90s. TV work, features, dabbing in two worlds.

But even Spike Lee has trouble getting other people’s money for his pet projects.

Wes Anderson, a filmmaker with barely a hit on his quirky/distinctive resume, is doing for Peter Bogdanovich what Peter B. was never able to do for Orson Welles back when PB was a hot Hollywood filmmaker. Anderson is producing and helped round up stars for a Bogdanovich film, backing, in essence, a comeback for the director of “The Last Picture Show” and “Paper Moon” and “Mask.”

Jennifer Aniston, Owen Wilson, Eugene Levy, Cybill Shepherd, (of a couple of Peter B. movies in the ’70s) and now comedian Richard Lewis are starring in “Squirrels to the Nuts,” a comedy about a one-time hooker turned Broadway star. It’s shooting in New York.

Screen comedy has taken a decided turn towards the blue in recent years, driven by such runaway raunchy hits as “The Hangover” and “Tropic Thunder.” You can trace the trend back to “Wedding Crashers” or even “There’s Something About Mary”, and the mainstreaming of comic crude has only picked up steam of late.
But it’s taken a while for female-centered comedies to catch up in the cursing and crudity.
“And it’s about time,” cracks Kristen Wiig, whose “Bridesmaids” (2011) first offered up equal time in the “talk dirty to me” department. There was “Bachelorette” that same year, and the rise of comic actress Melissa McCarthy (“Identity Thief”, “The Heat”) suggests that parity in profanity is fast becoming reality.
Which leads us to “The To Do List,” a filthy and funny “John Hughes-style” teen sex comedy centered on a smart but naive girl (Aubrey Plaza) learning every sex act and its slang description over the course of her last summer before college.
“There’s no better time than now for ladies to have their turn in the talking dirty about sex department,” says Plaza (“Parks & Recreation), the 29 year-old who plays graduating high school senior Brandy in the film. “Creating Brandy, I just drew on my own memories of being that age, where you got your information and what you did with it.”
Bill Hader, who plays Willy, the stuck-in-slackerdom pool manager who witnesses Brandy’s blundering summer of sexual research, is married to the film’s writer-director, Maggie Carey, who based this 1993 period piece on her own teen years growing up in Boise, Idaho.
“I don’t know if we’ve made a parody of those John Hughes movies,” Hader (35) says. “But I felt we were making a raunchy version of ‘Sixteen Candles’ all along.
“They’re both films about girls, told from their point of view. ‘Sixteen Candles’ was more innocent — not really a sex comedy that way. She just had a crush on a guy. But you give that an R-rating, and filter it through how Maggie felt at that age and you get our version of that classic John Hughes story.”
In the film (opening July 26) Brandy, a nerdy valedictorian, is peer-pressured into believing that her college years will be fraught with peril if she doesn’t acquire some sexual experience over the summer. Her sex-savvy girlfriend (Alia Shawkat) and older sister (Rachel Bilson) fill her in, and the ever-organized Brandy creates a “To Do List,” which she promptly, and awkwardly, sets out to check off.
“It’s a time in any teenager’s life that’s really intense, when you’re kind of prepared to believe you know everything– confident,” Plaza says. “But underneath all that there is a well of insecurities and fears. Brandy is confident about things she shouldn’t be.”
Hader helped his writer-director wife embellish this account of those awkward years with his own memories of that age.
“Maggie based it on conversations she and her friends had back then, growing up. I was 15 in 1993, and I know that the girls I knew back then read Cosmopolitan and talked about sex with a whole lot more knowledge than the guys. The guys? We didn’t know anything. You’d be with a girl and go, ‘Whoa, how’d you know THAT? Um, OK.'”
Which suggests that whatever its other selling points, “The To Do List” is an R-rated acknowledgement of that ancient observation that “girls mature faster than boys.”
“Honestly, when we were doing the movie, the frank sex talk and the fact it was coming from girls never crossed my mind,” Hader says. “But as the movie is coming out, people are bringing this up a lot.”
Plaza agrees. “It wasn’t a discussion on the set,” she says. “And since it isn’t a problem with a comedy starring mostly guys, that’s only fair, right?”

(Roger Moore reviews “The To Do List” here).

Screen comedy has taken a decided turn towards the blue in recent years, driven by such runaway raunchy hits as “The Hangover” and “Tropic Thunder.” You can trace the trend back to “Wedding Crashers” or even “There’s Something About Mary”, and the mainstreaming of comic crude has only picked up steam of late.
But it’s taken a while for female-centered comedies to catch up in the cursing and crudity.
“And it’s about time,” cracks Kristen Wiig, whose “Bridesmaids” (2011) first offered up equal time in the “talk dirty to me” department. There was “Bachelorette” that same year, and the rise of comic actress Melissa McCarthy (“Identity Thief”, “The Heat”) suggests that parity in profanity is fast becoming reality.
Which leads us to “The To Do List,” a filthy and funny “John Hughes-style” teen sex comedy centered on a smart but naive girl (Aubrey Plaza) learning every sex act and its slang description over the course of her last summer before college.
“There’s no better time than now for ladies to have their turn in the talking dirty about sex department,” says Plaza (“Parks & Recreation), the 29 year-old who plays graduating high school senior Brandy in the film. “Creating Brandy, I just drew on my own memories of being that age, where you got your information and what you did with it.”
Bill Hader, who plays Willy, the stuck-in-slackerdom pool manager who witnesses Brandy’s blundering summer of sexual research, is married to the film’s writer-director, Maggie Carey, who based this 1993 period piece on her own teen years growing up in Boise, Idaho.
“I don’t know if we’ve made a parody of those John Hughes movies,” Hader (35) says. “But I felt we were making a raunchy version of ‘Sixteen Candles’ all along.
“They’re both films about girls, told from their point of view. ‘Sixteen Candles’ was more innocent — not really a sex comedy that way. She just had a crush on a guy. But you give that an R-rating, and filter it through how Maggie felt at that age and you get our version of that classic John Hughes story.”
In the film (opening July 26) Brandy, a nerdy valedictorian, is peer-pressured into believing that her college years will be fraught with peril if she doesn’t acquire some sexual experience over the summer. Her sex-savvy girlfriend (Alia Shawkat) and older sister (Rachel Bilson) fill her in, and the ever-organized Brandy creates a “To Do List,” which she promptly, and awkwardly, sets out to check off.
“It’s a time in any teenager’s life that’s really intense, when you’re kind of prepared to believe you know everything– confident,” Plaza says. “But underneath all that there is a well of insecurities and fears. Brandy is confident about things she shouldn’t be.”
Hader helped his writer-director wife embellish this account of those awkward years with his own memories of that age.
“Maggie based it on conversations she and her friends had back then, growing up. I was 15 in 1993, and I know that the girls I knew back then read Cosmopolitan and talked about sex with a whole lot more knowledge than the guys. The guys? We didn’t know anything. You’d be with a girl and go, ‘Whoa, how’d you know THAT? Um, OK.'”
Which suggests that whatever its other selling points, “The To Do List” is an R-rated acknowledgement of that ancient observation that “girls mature faster than boys.”
“Honestly, when we were doing the movie, the frank sex talk and the fact it was coming from girls never crossed my mind,” Hader says. “But as the movie is coming out, people are bringing this up a lot.”
Plaza agrees. “It wasn’t a discussion on the set,” she says. “And since it isn’t a problem with a comedy starring mostly guys, that’s only fair, right?”