Movie Nation

The “Alien” prequel “Prometheus” didn’t do much for me or anybody who reviewed it. But it earned $400 million, so Ridley Scott and Fox (Scott,who is getting up there in years, may not direct) are pushing ahead with plans for a sequel to the prequel.

Fassbender and Rapace are on board, a writer’s at work. And…Ugh.

Dr. Amir Jaafari is a revered surgeon in his Tel Aviv hospital, honored by his peers and seemingly embraced by his community. A secular Arab in a Jewish state, he travels easily in the highest medical circles, only occasionally catching a look, an unguarded crack about his Muslim background. If this outsider feeling gets too strong, he can always retreat to the arms of his loving wife Siham.
If you’re mangled in a suicide bombing, he’s the steady hand you want operating — unless you’re a Jewish bigot.
Jaafari comes to see just how thin the veneer encasing his life is when there is such a bombing and innocent children are slaughtered. And the person the police think carried it out was his wife.
Lebanese writer-director Ziad Doueri’s “The Attack” is a moving drama about the journey that this sends Dr. Jaafari (Ali Suliman) on. It begins with a spiral, that moment when the police show him the remains — a pile far too small to contain a whole human body — of his wife (Reymond Amsalem) and start accusing her and by extension him.
He is a “fake secular,” a Muslim mole unknowingly embraced by the Jewish majority. Just how loose that embrace has been becomes obvious the moment he’s accused. A security agent (Dvir Benedek), adoring him for saving his sickly mother in the opening scene, becomes his chief interrogator. Jaafari, whose reaction to the horror of suicide bombings has always been “What is WRONG with these people?”, refuses to believe it.
But as he hears the reasons women become suicide bombers debated on talk radio, as his one Jewish friend and peer (Evgenia Dodena) becomes, to him, “The nice Jew defending the poor little Arab,” the doctor develops doubts. And as suspicions about his own involvement fade,  he sets out to find answers, from the suspicious-acting nephew who visited his wife, from the West Bank city of Nablus, where they are both from, from clerics and hot-headed young true believers there.
Doueiri, the director of “West Beirut,” has seen his film banned in parts of the Arab world because he went to Israel to film it. But this is no “Zionist propaganda” piece. One minute, the doctor is stalked and rebuffed by Palestinians who see him both as the spouse of a martyr and a traitor to his own kind and the film lets us see them as he does — hateful, bloody-minded fanatics. The next, he is enduring insults and rough treatment from security forces who consider him guilty purely on the basis of his heritage.
Suliman ably plays this doctor with the fearlessness of the privileged and makes the arc of his story — Dr. Jaafari should be afraid, of both sides — a compelling journey from grief, denial and confusion to some tiny corner of understanding.
And Doueiri has brilliantly and simply put a compassionate human face on a part of the world where ethnicity still trumps education, class and achievement, where even the successful face, at best, second-class citizenship in their own country.

MPAA Rating: R for some violent images, language and brief sexuality
Cast: Ali Suliman, Evgenia Dodena, Reymond Amsalem, Dvir Benedek:
Credits: Written and directed by Ziad Doueiri . A Cohen Media Group release
Running time: 1:37

His Hollywood career wound down, and like his contemporary, Jet Li, martial arts comic Jackie Chan made noises about retiring a few years back.
But he’s found new life in films back in his native China. He’s had a hit there that hasn’t played over here. And two new films were announced on the heels of “CZ12.”
“Manhattan” will package him in a dark action feature about the Big Apple.
And “Wolf Flag” will take him to the deserts of China for something more ethereal in nature.
The Huyai Brothers studio has a David Ayer (“Training Day”) project in the works, and has signed Brad Pitt for another. So they’re stepping up as players with a shot at worldwide distribution and success.

The old June opening record was for “Toy Story 3.” It was just over $110 million.
“Man of Steel”, also in 3D, with higher prices, pulled in $113 million this weekend. Add in Thursday night showings and it’s at $125 in the US.
Worldwide, it’s over $191 million.
“The Bling Ring” did great numbers from just a few screens — $42,000 a screen.

“This is the End” did over $20 million, with $12 million added on since Wednesday — $32 million plus.

“Now You See Me” is still drawing, now in third place. It’s over $80 million now.

“The Purge” is utterly purged. A 75% plunge since opening weekend.

Despite adding screens, the historical pic and possible Oscar contender “42” only did another $600,000 or so and will not reach $100 million. Unless they pull it and re-open it in late August or something. It’s under $95 and holding.

“Mud” will clear $20 million by next weekend.

Thursday, prognosticators were suggesting the Superman reboot “Man of Steel” would blow up the box office with a $150 million take — Thursday through Sunday midnight.

Friday evening, the huge Friday take was pointing to as much as $132 million U.S. by Sunday.

Saturday night? Maybe not so much. Maybe $125. Still enough to pass “Toy Story 3” in the June opening weekend record books. But with all those 3D screens, and it being what, a whole month since the last comic book blockbuster, $125 seems a gimme.

We’ll know more Sunday, but right now, things have settled down a bit in the “Steel” game.

“This is the End” is looking like a $34 million (since Wednesday) hit. It cost a lot less than the “Man of Steel” budget of $250 million, even though they did stage the end of the world for that one.

I have been expecting a tipping point for years. This endless parade of blockbuster comic book movies cannot go on forever. And yet it does — one expensive smash hit after another.

Comic books themselves may be struggling to hang on, but comic book movies seem utterly unsinkable. I figured “Thor” would stiff, that “Iron Man 2 or 3” would under-perform. “Man of Steel” seems set to turn a healthy profit. “Avengers 2” is in the works. There’s no end to “X-Men” or “Wolverine” movies in sight.

Will this never stop? Even those who adore these movies must be wondering if there isn’t more to movie life out there, if a change in generations will herald a fade to black, if this “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” TV series isn’t taking things over that tipping point where people say, “ENOUGH.”

Veteran critic Joe Queenan, writing for Britain’s Guardian newspaper, dissects the genre, its variables, variety and lack thereof. The movies reflect their times, which are a bit hopeless. When hope in institutions and mortal beings is lost, we turn to the superpowered.

But with three to five films a year, every year, you’d think fatigue would set in amongst people who are more casual consumers of these films. The hardcore don’t seem capable of outgrowing them, but they’re not a huge audience. It’s everybody else that’s turning these into blockbusters. Why are women showing up for these films? As Queenan points out, there’s nobody for them to identify with in this universe.

And I keep peeking into the future, wondering if the next “Wolverine” will kick off the downturn, if the cynical re-boot of the “Spider-Man” franchise will run out of gas or that the cynicism will spread and Warners will announce the next Batman reboot.

Vampires, zombies, super-raunchy ensemble comedies, all have their day and run their course. But not comic book pictures. Not yet. Why is that?