Movie Nation

Equal parts dark and comically disturbing, “The Brass Teapot” is a fantasy parable for our times, a film that literally equates pain with greed.
A car wreck is how it begins. Alice (Juno Temple) is forever job hunting, that degree in art history being a $40,000 dollar waste. And John (Michael Angarano) was just laid off. A fender-bender next to an antique store has Alice doing something she oughtn’t – swiping an ornate, baroque brass teapot.
“Stealing? We’re like two steps above white trash as it is!”
But there’s something about this kettle. The “pain” of the car crash has led to a wad of money popping out of it. Alice makes the connection in a flash. Pinch, punch or cut yourself, or sock John in the kisser, and money comes out.
Thus do the impoverished lives of these small-town folk change forever – just so long as they’re willing to suffer for the cash. “No anesthesia” dentistry, elaborate tattoos, fights picked in bars, you name it – they suffer it.
And get paid.
“It’s not going to get out of hand,” she says. So of course it does, starting with the Hassidic thugs who show up, rough them up and try to swipe back the teapot. Yeah, it’s got history. Dr. Ling (Steve Park) knows it and tries to warn them. This “Antiques Road Show” curiosity is going to get them killed.
“Brass Teapot” rides a very thin premise – pain for financial gain – a long way, rather like that 2009 film that was first a “Twilight Zone” episode, “The Box.” First John is the pragmatist, with Alice addicted to the cash. And then things change.
For the first time, they’re keeping up with all those rich 20somethings (Alexis Bledel is their old nemesis, and new rich neighbor once they buy a McMansion). Their trashy landlord (Billy Magnussen) used to hit on Alice when they were late on the rent. Now, he’s got his eye on their money source.
Director Ramaa Mosley, making her feature film debut, makes the self-violence squirm inducing and the dilemma intriguing enough to hold our interest.
But as the ideas run out and the film takes its predictable turn towards doom, “The Brass Teapot” stumbles into tedium, a parable that never quite resolves itself into the moral lesson it so desperately wants to convey. Perhaps a few more visits by the Hassidic thugs would have helped.

MPAA Rating: R for violence, some sexual content, language and drug use
Cast: Juno Temple, Michael Angarano, Alexis Bledel, Steve Park
Credits: Directed by Ramaa Mosely, written by Tim Macy. A Magnet release.
Running time: 1:41

His last few movies have seriously underperformed and his star is fading.

So what has the 40something Jim Carrey done? He’s gone and injected himself into the gun debate. Intemperate language about the NRA (which, truthfully, deserves it), and this Funny or Die video (not very funny) have caused fans — yeah, there’s plenty of overlap with the “Dumb & Dumber/”Liar Liar” set — to go on eBay and sell Jim Carrey memorabilia so they can “buy a gun with the proceeds.”

Well played.

Taking into account that the reason Carrey isn’t drawing audience any more is the same every comic faces — his audience has aged out of going out to the movies — this is not what he wants to be talking about at this stage of his career. It may be an important national debate, but he’s adding little to it.

And while gun rights advocates and Fox News may be quick to claim they killed his career, it was bleeding out before this happened. Why let them take credit?
“Kick-Ass 2” and “Burt Wonderstone” suggest that he’s content with supporting roles on the screen. Off the screen, does he need this kind of attention?

The link to the Funny or Die video is below. WordPress seems to have issues with me posting it.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/0433b30576/cold-dead-hand-with-jim-carrey?playlist=featured_videos

“The Croods” is turning into Dreamworks’ version of “Oz,” a family-friendly hit with legs. It’s headed towards a $30 million+ second weekend at the box office.

That’s only down 30% or so from last weekend and it gives Fox an “Ice Age” size hit this spring break.

But “G.I. Joe: Retaliation,” a PG-13 family not-unfriendly actioner, is winning the weekend. Baded ona  very good Good Friday — $15 million –– it’s looking like a $45 million hit. That’s higher than most estimates.

Maybe $50, 55 all-in since its opening, Midnight Wed.

Considering what Paramount spent on it, that they did re-shoots and postponed it from last summer to now, they have to be happy. Will it break even? That remains to be seen.

“Tyler Perry’s Temptation” will hit the low end of expectations, a pitiful movie pulling in $17 million from his very reliable audience — people who love Oprah.

Stephenie Meyer’s “The Host” is headed into the $15 million range, depending on Saturday word of mouth. That’s not good.

The cinema’s leading purveyor of Southern Gothic, Jeff Nichols, hands Matthew McConaughey his latest tour de force turn in “Mud,” a down and dirty if entirely-too-long melodrama in the “Tobacco Road” tradition.
Nichols (“Shotgun Stories,” “Take Shelter”) has cooked up an exotic stew that includes obsessive love, a woman unworthy of it, a criminal on the run and coming of age tale set against a dying way of life in backwaters Arkansas.
Great performances by McConaughey, a Britney-trashy Reese Witherspoon, a couple of kids, Sam Shepard and Ray McKinnon mark this as one not to miss.

Screening times: Floridafilmfestival.com

The last weekend of spring break packs in one last blockbuster with hopes of packing them in before they head back to school — college, mostly — since the film we’re talking about is “G.I. Joe: Retaliation.”

Will this 3D actioner blow up? Will it exceed the similarly explosive “Olympus Has Fallen’s” take from last weekend?

Variety thinks that Wednesday night’s $2.2 million midnight show opening predicts a $45 million weekend.

The Box Office Guru is thinking it’ll clear $41 million. Maybe. It opened late Wednesday night, and could have a long, fruitful weekend ($49 by Monday AM, the Guru thinks).

Box Office Mojo figures “G.I. Joe” will do a robust $37 million.

Tyler Perry’s new one doesn’t break formula. Well, Madea isn’t in it. His “OTHER” formula — women in crisis.

Box Office Mojo predicts this will do mid-range Tyler Perry business — $18 million. His “Madea” movies have occasionally hit $30.

Box Office Guru thinks only $16 million for this one.

“The Host” is already suffering from awful reviews. It’s sure to be a post-‘Twilight’ let down.

Box Office Mojo is already raining on “The Host,” figuring it won’t hit $15. The Guru figures it’ll clear $15.

“The Croods,” if the crowd I saw leaving the multiplex last night as I waited to watch “Temptation” is any indication, will do another $25-30 million this weekend.

It’s Friday, bright and early. Time to chat with the boys over at “Open Mike” about movies on 740 The Game.
There’s a real guy’s movie — “GI Joe, Retaliation” to drag over the coals.
And a chick picture, Tyler Perry’s latest — “Temptation.”
And a young woman’s sci-fi romance, “The Host.”
And Kerouac’s “On the Road” hits America’s theaters — not good enough to be the Oscar contender they hopped for back last fall, when I saw it. But probably as good a version of this unfilmable novel as we’ll ever get.

That’s at 745 AM on 740 (AM) The Game.  Tune in or listen live HERE.

The thing that made Tyler Perry rich is much in evidence in “Tyler Perry’s Temptation,” called “Confessions of a Marriage Counselor” when he toured with it on stage.
There’s no Madea here. But the women are beautiful, serious about clothes, makeup, hair and church.
Older women are “Wise Counsels,” the name of a female-centric church in the movie. And they typically get all the funny, sometimes profane, always “you-listen-to-me-child” lines.
The men are shirtless, rapacious heels, or sensitive pretty boy disappointments. That doesn’t matter, as these movies are first and foremost,”chick pictures” — sermonettes abut relationships, deserving more and eventually getting it.
Just the women, I mean.
But “Temptation” is a cautionary tale about wanting what you haven’t got. The marriage counselor Judith (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) at the heart of it is young, gorgeous, in a glamorous job with a high-end D.C. dating service. She married her childhood sweetheart (Lance Gross), a pharmacist and a serious stiff — looking at goals 10-15 years down the road.
And the Internet tycoon who may invest in the marriage counselor’s business? He (Robbie Jones) has money, confidence and “unsafe sex” written all over him. Her husband, in turn,  might be tempted by a secretive and cowering new cashier (Brandy Norwood) at his pharmacy,
Ella Joyce, as Judith’s preacher-mother, and has the “Madea” role — sassy, testy and all-wise.
Perry clumsily frames this story as a tale a counselor (Candice Coke) tells a young woman thinking of cheating on her husband. The timing of the comic moments is off, and the film drags and drags before reaching a conclusion anybody can see from a mile off.
The quartet of leads is blander-than-bland. The “Temptation” of the title is a come-on and a false promise. How “tempting” can a movie about cheating be with a PG-13 rating?
Casting Norwood, the vapid clothes horse Kim Kardashian as a shallow, judgmental colleague in the dating service and former Miss America Vanessa Williams as the boss of that service suggests that Perry is drawn to women who have been media (and man) victims, from time to time.
But the filmmaker has points to make, about wealth and the allure of the new.
“There’s nothing wrong with being rich and having nice things — so long as the nice things don’t own YOU.”
“We become a lot of different people before we settle into who we are.”
With homilies like that, I expected Perry to get into the talk show/advice game long ago, but Steve Harvey beat him to it. Cranking out two formulaic movies like this a year shows the Atlanta mogul’s true ambition — replacing all those soap operas TV is canceling, two hours at a time.

(Go here to read about “Temptation’s” success or failure at the box office.)

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some violence, sexuality and drug content
Cast: : Jurnee Smollet-Bell, Lance Gross, Vanessa Williams, Brandy Norwood, Robbie Jones
Credits: Written and directed by Tyler Perry. A Lionsgate release.
Running time: 1:51

“Buried Alive” movies connect to our primal fears, and to our love of “What would I do in that situation?” puzzles.
We can’t all be martial artists with the supernatural will of an Uma Thurman. But we can easily put ourselves in Ryan Reynolds’ place, “Buried” in Iraq with only a cell phone to save us.
Thus, we find ourselves stuck in a Jeep Cherokee with advertising man Jackson Alder (Neil Hopkins) in “Detour,” a minimalistic thriller about a guy who takes the wrong road and winds up underneath a mudslide. Hopkins gives an emotional spark to what could have been a mere technical exercise for the filmmakers — how to tell a story with one actor in a dark, buried car — and a problem-solving tour de force for the screenwriters.
What WOULD you do?
Jackson has no cell reception and little memory of how he got there. The airbag is deployed, his nose bloody, and every window — sunroof included — covered in mud. “A disaster like this would lead to some sort of public response,” he reasons.
So at first he waits. Then he panics. He weeps and watches video of his girlfriend (Brea Grant) on his iPhone. He curses the day he moved to California, draws a cross on a car seat and prays.
He takes inventory in the car. How might this tool from the trunk help, or that ash tray? He bargains. He runs through a lot of Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief.
And every now and then he tries something.
Keeping this interesting, even for the short 87 minute (including credits) run-time of “Detour” was no mean feat. Director William Dickerson varies the imagery by showing us a subjective camera, then shots Jackson takes with his phone, then hallucinations and flashbacks to the life he used to lead, to video on the phone that further fills that in.
Hopkins (of “Skyline” and a lot of episodic TV) makes this guy compelling and even amusing, on occasion, even if the script is quite thin on story arc, the “doom to redemption” plot that this promises to deliver.
You’ll be rooting for the guy even in his most self-pitying moments, not an easy trick for a movie with so little, visually and thematically, to it.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with intense moments of peril and profanity
Cast: Neil Hopkins, Brea Grant
Credits: Directed by William Dickerson, written by Dickerson and Dwight Moody. A Level 1 release.
Running time: 1:27