Universal is so underwhelmed by the cast of this spring rom-com that they don’t list any of their names in the first trailer for it.
That’s “Little Mermaid” Halle Bailey and “Bridgerton” hunk Regé-Jean Page as the meet-by-accident, lies and trespassing couple.
The studio figured “Marry Me” (meh) director Kat Coiro was worth plugging, but not the stars?
April 10.
“Beast of War” sets up as a fine if not wholly novel approach to the WWII combat “grunts” journey long before it settles into its true destiny — a shark attack tale.
Writer-director Kiah Roache-Turner trots through the tropes of boot camp, with its training, bullying, standing up to bullies, flirting with nurses and the like in a story that reminds us the Aussies took a back seat to almost no culture when it came to racism. We taste the experiences of an Aboriginal recruit (Mark Coles Smith) who is too competent, too big and too tough to take much guff off his tormentors.
Leo has been through things as a boy and survived. No “darkie” or “rock ape” insult from his better-paid white comrades (his training and combat pay is two thirds theirs) shakes his self-assuredness. He helps weaker Will (Joel Nankervis) through a jungle run, and when Will is picked on, Leo gets even on his behalf.
Nurses (Lauren Grimson, Lara Logan Browne) at the boot camp? Leo’s the one confident enough to flirt with them.
But we know a few things about what’s to come. It’s 1942, and boot camp doesn’t last long. They’ll be shipping out for the fight over Papua/New Guinea sooner rather than later. And our writer-director is known for horror — “Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead” and “Sting” were his.
It won’t be long before their troop ship is sunk in the Timor Sea, and Leo, Will, bully Des (Sam Delich) and others (Lee Tiger Halley, Sam Parnonson, Maximillian Johnson) are staring out into the dark fog of night in a sea of debris and corpses and somebody says that line somebody always says in a shark movie.
“What the Hell was that?“
Truth be told, that turn towards finned terror is a disappointment, seeing as how Roache-Turner cast this well and has an interesting angle for a combat film. There hasn’t been a movie about Aboriginal Austrlian soldiers jungle-fighting for King and racist country in WWII, near as I can tell.
Once the narrative shifts to surving that shipwreck, the small group friction and terrors of survival on floating debris, “Beast of War” becomes a simple “Who gets eaten next” and “How can we fight back/survive” tale, albeit one with a spiritual subtext as our young recruit knows sharks and experienced the trauma of an attack as a tween.
Mechanical/CGI shark attack simulations have improved over the decades, and are as terrifying as ever. But the longer this brief “inspired by true events” tale goes on, the more tropes and far-fetched cliches Roach-Turner trots out.
It’s a pity, because the generic story he begins with had more to offer the generic shark/horror tale he winds up telling.
Rating: R, graphic, gruesome violence
Cast: Mark Coles Smith, Joel Nankervis, Sam Delich, Lee Tiger Halley, Lauren Grimson, Sam Parnonson, Lara Logan Browne and Steve Le Marquand
Credits: Scripted and directed by Kiah Roache-Turner. A Well Go USA release.
Running time: 1:27
It’s odd to think of the ’80s as a movie decade in which we can bandy the phrase “They don’t make’em like that any more” about. Hollywood’s blockbuster obsession almost wholly took over, and the roman numeralization of cinema “franchises” became the business model.
It wasn’t just “Rocky” or Indiana Jones or “Jaws” or any Eddie Murphy smash hit that served up sequels.
But there was were defiant voices shouting into the hurricane of mass market commodities that the movies were becoming. Producer David Puttnam was a maverick of the British cinema, an instinctual artist who put his energy into financing and filming “Chariots of Fire,” “The Killing Fields,” “Local Hero,” “Midnight Express” and Ridley Scott’s first film, “The Duelists.”
His movie-making motto was “I’m not afraid to fail, providing I fail honorably.” And he didn’t really fail until he tried to reform Hollywood from within by taking over as head of Sony/Columbia/Tristar in the mid-80s, fired “honorably” but quite quickly (after about a year) for pushing smart cinema like “Someone to Watch Over Me,” “Little Nikita,” “Hope and Glory” and the Bill Cosby bomb “Leonard Part 6” into production.
One of the last films he got into theaters before taking Columbia’s reins was quintessential Puttnam and something of a deal-maker for the Columbia hire. “Defence of the Realm” was a jewel created on a modest budget. It’s a crisp, smart, sharply-observant and perfectly paranoid thriller about a government scandal that might have been ginned up to cover up a bigger scandal. A reporter who must turn over clues, take ethical shortcuts, follow his insincts and fight lies, pushback, government threats and the unholy truth that big media companies — even then — are owned by rich men with self-serving agendas that trump independent journalism, no matter how important.
It’s a movie that spent its production money on the cast — Gabriel Byrne, Greta Scaachi, Denholm Elliott, Ian Bannen and Bill Paterson for starters. The director came from and would go back to British TV, an unfussy master of unflashy story-telling and making a production’s trains run on time.
The score might be that twinkly synthesized tinnitus that was the soundtrack of ’80s cinema, a hallmark of the era thanks to the Puttnam-produced/Vangelis-scored “Chariots of Fire.” But it’s the understated, limited dialogue of the underexplained story that makes the viewer pay attention and “come to” the movie rather than having it simplistically served up that makes this crackling, cynical tale a classic.
An unfussy, unspectacular car chase open “Defence,” retitled “Defense” for its m. A stakeout follows. But it isn’t cops or government agents who’re watching who goes into a prostitute’s flat. It’s a newspaper photographer, under orders from editors at the Daily Dispatch. A few snaps confirm what they’ve been told to expect. A Member of Parliament (Ian Bannen) named Markham is seeing the same sex worker of an East German/Russian-connected spy.
Rumpled, seasoned and sometimes sauced political reporter Vernon (Elliott) may advise caution and take the job of confronting his old MP friend/source with the accusation. But younger “ink-stained wretch” Nick Mullen (Byrne) is all over it, and his underhanded Fleet Street ethics have him passing himself off as a policeman to get the MP’s wife to get a rise out of her. Which he does.
The “Red Markham” headlines write themselves.
But Vernon hints that there’s something seriously wrong with this story. And when Nick catches a couple of fellows rummaging through Vernon’s newsroom desk after hours and takes Vernon home from the pub to find the man’s flat has been tossed, he develops his own suspicions.
When someone winds up dead, it’s on Nick to work the phones, follow leads and track down the truth, no matter what his editor (Paterson) and rich, connected publisher (Fulton McKay) think.
“Defence of the Realm” plays as a snapshot-in-time period piece today, a film that captured peak Fleet Street newspapering, with profitable enterprises all up and down that London thoroughfare sending reporters hither and yon to scoop their legions of competitors. The Aussie oligarch Murdoch had already bought his way in and ethics were in a downward spiral that the digital era would only amplify.
The typewriter-filled newsroom is quieter than any depicted in American films. But even if they didn’t call their library/archives “the morgue” filled with story clips (“cuttings,” the Brits called them), the photo archives and chemical, analog enlargement process — following another “tipped” scoop — were the same at pretty much any newspaper in what we used to call “the Free World.”
Decisions are made by the mostly elder statesman of the newspaper’s masthead — senior (white, male) editors. But the publisher is destined to intervene, even though they all say they’ll “not interfere” with what’s being reported.
Martin Stellman’s script — loosely inspired by the Profumo affair of the ’60s (filmed as “Scandal” with Joanne Whalley) — is thin on dialogue. So director David Drury (TV’s “Prime Suspect”) has Byrne get across his state of mind and the next clue he might follow with gestures and facial expressions, not words. Byrne has long been one of my favorite actors, and this is one of his greatest and most compact performances.
The accomplished cast of supporting players gets across their roles and function in the story even if we can’t pick up everybody’s name or actual job.
Scaachi plays the accused MP’s secretary, that one source our reporter is destined to plead “I need your help” to. She’s too smart to get involved with him, even if he was to allow the distraction of acting “interested.” There’s an early appearance by Robbie Coltrane as a fellow reporter,
Drury gets great suspense out of simple matters like collecting a hidden stash of incriminating documents before a rickety elevator arrives. And he, Stellman and Byrne keep the tone relentlessly downbeat.
We’re warned, with every turn of events, not to expect a Hollywood ending. Because there isn’t one coming. Because, as ’80s thrillers go, “Defence of the Realm” is as blunt and bleak as anything the more celebrated ’70s cinema produced. In either case, they really “don’t make’em like this any more.”
Rating: PG, smoking
Cast: Gabriel Byrne, Greta Scaachi, Denholm Elliott, Ian Bannen, Fulton McKay, Bill Paterson and Robbie Coltrane
Credits: Directed by David Drury, scripted by Martin Stellman. An MGM release streaming on Tubi, Amazon, etc.
Running time: 1:36
An all star cast and Daniel Craig doing the genteel gay Southern detective bit to the max, one more time.
Nov. 26.
For a trigger-happy bank robber, convincing the public and cops that your exploits are “magical,” that you have supernatural protections, would seem like the ultimate edge. Convince law enforcement that bullets pass right through you, that arresting and handcuffing is futile, and they might leave you to your work.
But when that work is blood-stained armed robberies of jewelry stores, armored trucks and even buses and the “collateral damage” body count piles up, even the most cowwardly or corrupt cops know they have to do something.
Tee Yai was a real robber of the post-Vietnam War Thailand of the ‘late 70s. This web link to a place that sells magical amulets of the type he wore link is the best I could find as far as a “biography” of the guy –– of Chinese descent, favored 11mm Colt semi-automatics, mop toppsed and kind of dashing in his wanted posters.
After seeing the latest Thai thriller aiming to tell his story, “Yee Tai: Born to be Bad,” he remains just as much of a mystery. Yee Tai is not exactly the central figure in his own story.
Director Nonzee Nimibutr and screenwriter Chanchana Homsap serve up a bullet-riddled Butch and Sundance story that, thanks to the facts, breaks the formula of most Thai action pictures of recent decades. It’s not about martial arts. Gangsters and cops here drive ’70s vintage Datsuns and the like and shoot it out in a series of stand-offs and hold-ups.
The bursts of grenades and gunplay are pretty much all that recommends this one, which features a lifelong partner Rerk (Wisarut Himmarat) as “Butch” to Nattawin Wattanagitphat‘s Tee Yai/”Sundance.” We get hints that our title charcter is a violent hothead who treats life cheaply, when he isn’t chanting incantations to fend off his pursuers, and only the barest suggestion of how he got that way.
Yes, there’s an abused sex worker, Dao (Supassra Thanachat) whom Rerk, Tee Yai’s accomplice since childhood is sweet on. She’s a pawn who must be fought over, with one brutally dirty cop acting as muscle for her madam. Of course there’s a giant Cadillac hauling around a top level government minister who is forever shouting at and urging on his outgunned cops. Tee Yai, Rerk and accomplices Joon and Kid fire semi-automatics and war surplus M-16s, the cops use revolvers and shotguns. The car chases, involving Datsuns, ancient Toyotas, etc. are nothing to write home about.
The story of robberies, betrayals and the monk/guru the bandits consult because he “taught us everything we know” (About robbing? Killing? Supernatural huxterism?) has possibilities, mainly in the amusing superstition which the police share with the general public.
“You guys think he has magic powers, don’t you?” one frustrated chief inspector gripes (in Thai or dubbed into English).
When the crook you’re pursuing seems unkillable, when he says a few words, blows in a cop’s face and puts the officer to sleep, you can see how Thai Barney Fifes might believe his “legend.”
The predatory robber/killer’s biography is limited to a few flashbacks of how Tee Yai’s con man/snake oil salesman father might have set him on this amoral path and how he and Rerk teamed up and met the monk Luang Po.
But there’s no depth to the characters, especially Tee Yai, little that tells us how or what each is thinking or hoping. The shootouts are routine if excessive and the finale inevitable.
As “Born to be Bad” legends go, ” this Tee Yai tale is strictly weak tea.
Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, prostitution, profanity
Cast: Wisarut Himmarat, Apo Nattawin Wattanagitiphat and Supassra Thanachat
Credits: Directed by Nonzee Nimibutr, scripted by Chanchana Homsap. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:58
Good to see two old favorites get big parts in a feel good drama about the cost of combat experience and attempted “Suicide by Cop.”
Jan. 16
Ruined, emptied-out towns filled with rusting hulks of their mining past, long-shuttered storefronts, mobile homes twenty years past their expiration date, kudzu-overgrown Little League fields and locals who know they’re trapped even if they don’t know that ATV they just bought won’t drive them out of it — that’s the Appalachia of “Hazard,” a simple and poignant portrait of an America that’s been left behind in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.
It’s a taste of Opiod Appalachia, where the insidious oxy has embedded itself into the fabric, the economy and the life expectancy of people who can’t see the big picture. Big Pharma underplays the dangers, crooked doctors run a prescription flood-the-market business, even the “clean” locals get those scripts and resell the drugs to support themselves. And Big Rehab is end game, scamming insurance, state and federal resources to keep the whole cycle running and operating at a profit.
The second feature from Appalachian filmmaker Eddie Mensore (“Mine 9”) is an immersive gem of a drama and an 88 minute long argument for the survival of indie regional cinema. Because Hollywood sure as hell isn’t telling these stories.
Alex Roe of “The Fifth Wave,” “Forever My Girl” and the current “Billy the Kid” streaming series stars as Will, a young father, estranged partner, and an addict and addict’s son who knows how to steal, buy at a discount or finagle the pills that he and his kind can pop, snort or cook and shoot up.
At least he’s not a coal miner. “It’s s— work,” he tells his pain-wracked and now oxy addicted coal miner dad (Steven Ogg).
Sara (Sosie Bacon, you’ll recognize her “Smile”) kicked Will out of the house. She’ll raise their little boy Morgan on her own, if need be.
But “What if I had a plan and the bucks to back it up?”
Will’s dream, “getting out,” fleeing to Myrtle Beach and opening a t-shirt shop. He’s got cash saved up. But it’s how he earns that money — his “I got a house to paint” odd job lies don’t convince anyone — that has her keeping her distance. She’s nearly a year sober, and he isn’t.
And that “plan?” When he unloads pricy pills to some teenagers, we can see what’s coming.
So can the local cop (Dave Davis). He’s at home in the decay all around him, knows everybody and which park the locals shoot up in. Not just because he sets up trail cameras to catch addicts and dealers in the act. Because he grew up with Will. And Sara? She’s his sister. He alone on the underfunded force knows something has to be done before Hazard overdoses itself into oblivion.
Mensore took a Kentucky town’s name and used Harlan County, Kentucky as his gritty, authentic filming location. But “Hazard” could be anywhere from vast swaths of Southwest Virginia, West Virginia, mountain Kentucky, mountaineer Tennessee or the western Carolinas.
As someone who grew up near Appalachia, went to school there, took “Appalachian Studies” courses on the history and never-ending parade of exploitation there and worked and lived in the region, I keep one rule in mind when viewing films set this close to home.
Are the filmmakers, actors included, looking down on a blighted place? Or are they seeing it through the inhabitants’ eyes, and letting us see it the same way?
Mensore, a West Va. U. alumnus, gets it. The “dreams” — of Myrtle Beach or just a getaway to King’s Island amusement park in Cincinnati — are limited, as are the horizons. He catches a few non-actors showing off on their ATVs in the opening credits. This is not America’s Smart Decision Belt.
The world he shows us is a town and region wrapped up in co-dependency. Will barking at Officer John about what he’s trying to accomplish, when this abused woman needs her pills for pain, and the extras as income because she’s fled a bad marriage and lives in a van, speaks volumes. Such stories are everywhere in a region where intergenerational co-dependency is almost the only economic life left. Even if it’s killing people.
A muddled ending and the over-familiarity of the ground we’re covering dull the movie’s impact, but only a little.
Mensore gets it right and tells a story validated by journalism and every trip through the region and everybody you know who lives there. And Roe, Bacon, Ogg, Davis and the parade of non-acting Appalachians we glimpse along the edges of the frame let us feel they’re living it, even if only for the length of a film shoot in Harlan County, Kentucky.
Rating: R, drug abuse, sex, profanity
Cast: Alex Roe, Sosie Bacon, Steven Ogg and Dave Davis
Credits: Scripted and directed by Eddie Mensore. A Quiver release on Plex, Amazon Prime.
Running time: 1:28
What record is sitting on the turntable in Norman Bates’ room on his mother’s motel?
Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony. The kinky bugger. He had a Napoleon complex — Lovely Ludwing Van had a flirtation many artsy anti monarchy Europeans shared when the Frenchman first came to power. Or maybe Norman just thought it spelled “Erotica.” Cold comfort to Marian Crane, who should have noticed all the birds the creep stuffed, remembered her avian last name and fled.
First up in this concert, a suite of music from the score of the Appalachian Carolina Civil War romance “Cold Mountain.”
But why is it that every film, concert or funeral I attend has me parked next to the one ill mannered rube who insists on playing with her/his phone?
As Jack Donaghy memorably put it in many an episode of “30 Rock” when confronted by such gaucherie, “What are we, farmers?”
Eddie Murphy has a lot to be satisfied with.
A gifted mimic turned overnight stand-up star, famous since his teen years on “Saturday Night Live,” a ground-breaking African American superstar of the screen, for decades one of the biggest box office draws and one of the best paid actors ever, mentor and example to generations of Black comics and actors who followed him, idolized by millions, what’s he got to complain about?
At 64, he’s maintained a career that took him from Next Big Thing to Hottest Thing on Screen to Dad Comedies, making classics (“48 Hours,” “Trading Places”) and finding more recent critical acclaim (“Dream Girls,” “Dolemite is My Name”) that reminds us he’s overdue for a career achievement Oscar.
That’s the version of Eddie Murphy that he wants to you see in “Being Eddie,” self-satisfied. It’s an obviously Eddie-approved documentary about his life and career that editor-turned-first-time-doc-director Angus Wall filmed.
Eddie tells the story of his life — a glimpsed-over childhood, the father who left and the stepfather who supported him and even became the good-natured butt of onstage Eddie jokes about his drinking, his devotion to Richard Pryor and stand-up from the age of 13, his teenaged stardom and beyond.
He notes how he avoided the drug and alcohol downfall that took down so many of his idols and contemporaries, and friends, colleagues and his late brother Charlie Murphy back this up by confirming Eddie “was never the life of the party” — any party.
Director John Landis relates how Paramount had set up “Trading Places” for Richard Pryor, but “Richard set himself on fire,” Eddie jokes/explains. He speaks about the role then-Paramount exec Jeffrey Katzenberg had on starting his film career and “protecting me” from getting fired from “48 Hours,” his film debut, and Katzenberg confirms telling his fellow execs to be patient, because Eddie is “special.”
Murphy jokes about an entire older generation of Hollywood that suddenly wanted to meet him for dinner, drinks, what have you. Who knows what Yul Brynner had in mind when he invited Eddie home?
But as we revel in the anecdotes and see and hear Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Tracy Morgan, Arsenio Hall and others sing Murphy’s praises, it’s pretty obvious this is a life and career that has been sanitized for Eddie’s protection.
The more interesting Eddie is the one who recalls his infamous Peak Era Eddie on-stage bit of truth-to-power Oscar presentation speech back in 1988 — “Black people will not ride the caboose of society, and we will not bring up the rear anymore. And I want you to recognize us.” Murphy figures that’s the main reason he’s never gotten an Oscar, honorary or otherwise.
“Norbit?” Sure, that might have cost him the “Dream Girls” best supporting actor Oscar. But there was also the cavalcade of crap that came before that and for years after it. “Meet Dave,” anyone?
“My advice to young comics? Don’t ever play a rocket ship.”
He’s certain Hollywood holds a grudge the way he does — 35 years estranged from “Saturday Night Live” because David Spade joked “Look children, it’s a falling star! Make a wish” about “Vampire in Brooklyn,” one of the legions of ill-conceived dogs Murphy brought to the screen after his peak.
So there’s no Lorne Michael testimonial, no Walter Hill (director of “48 Hours” and Richard Pryor’s “Brewster’s Millions”), no Nick Nolte or any “Beverly Hills Cop” co-star here to speak about working with him.
It’s enlightening to hear Murphy assert and others back up the doors he opened when he took roles because “Nobody’s seen a Black guy” in this or that sort of on-screen part. That “Hollywood before Eddie” and Hollywood after him statement about his significance is undeniable.
He’s been canny about his career and image all along. Remember Muphy’s first big screen entrance? What song is he caterwauling in a prison cell in “48 Hours?” “Roxanne” by The Police. That’s a hip and white-American moviegoing audience approved choice of tune, something I noted at the time. Edgy Eddie was “safe” for Middle American moviegoers was the message he always sent.
Murphy wanders his Roman villa-sized $85 million Beverly Park mansion and tells us stories and it’s fun to see him opening up, even if he isn’t opening up that much. And we can’t help but notice the select group of co-stars and proteges (Rock, Chappelle, etc) who sing his praises. Even if Arsenio Hall has some interesting insights, he’s never shaken the “Eddie’s Lapdog” image he’s justly worn his entire life.
There’s lots of appreciation for Murphy’s stand-up documentaries “Raw” and “Delirious,” much of it from Chappelle and Morgan. But there’s no mention of the widely criticized homophobia Murphy threw out there in both those stand-up tours, something he has in common with Chappelle and Morgan, who’ve also gone for homophobic laughs, perhaps taking their cue from their idol.
Perhaps that’s one reason comic elder-statesman Jerry Seinfed says “The rules are just different for him.”
Murphy mentions his divorce in passing, shows off his new wife and “ten kids.” He leaves out the Spice Girl he had to be sued to make him admit he was her baby daddy. That “baby” is now a teen and just came out as transgender, by the way. He doesn’t talk about his infamous police stop for picking up a transgender prostitute named Shalimir.
Hell, Hugh Grant makes jokes about his similar arrest, and he’s not even a stand up comic. Think of how Murphy, who shows off ventriloquist dummies he had made of Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby for a possible stand-up “conversation” he never got around to staging, might relate his “real” and even embarrassing experiences on stage.
“Eddie Murphy telling a story made you feel like you were there,” Kevin Hart marvels.
So while his tribute to big brother Chair is touching, and it’s entertaining to hear what Murphy does tell us, the origins of his gift for voices and character creation (from “Gumby, dammit” on “SNL” to all those makeup-assisted roles he took in “The Nutty Professor,” “Norbit,” and “Coming to America”) and flattering for all these comics to lament that he hasn’t gone back and done some stand-up, “Being Eddie” never overcomes the “hagiography” label.
Murphy telling us which broke actor’s tombstone he paid for and which famous Black performers he “buried” (paid for their funeral) is righteous but self-serving. Having no contrary voices in this fawning film makes such “admissions” grating.
In the recent rush of comics lauded in bio-documentaries, “Being Eddie” simply isn’t on a par with “John Candy” I Like Me,” or “Pee Wee as Himself.” Let’s hope Eddie doesn’t wait until he’s dead for his story to fully be told.
Rating: R, profanity
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle, Jerry Seinfeld, Tracee Ellis Ross, Chris Rock, Tracy Morgan, Arsenio Hall, Reginald Hudlin, Jeffrey Katzenberg, John Landis, Brian Grazer, Charlie Murphy and Richard Pryor.
Credits: Directed by Angus Wall. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:43
A franchise revival, a remake and a big sci-fi/monster holdover walk into a bar…
This weekend’s box office isn’t one for the record books, as nothing is making Marvel/Pixar/”Avatar” money in a $12-$20 ticket environment. But it does show why Hollywood clings to old reliables and why cineplexes are grateful for them. Because something’s got to keep the lights on.
“Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” is the third film about magicians as grand illusionists and caper comedy Robin Hoods, the first film to put Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fischer, Dave Franco and Woody back on screen together since 2013, and the first in the franchise (Fisher missed the second film) since 2016.
It did a decent Thursday night ($2.1 or so) setting up an $8.4 million “opening day” Friday and bested the Edgar Wright remake of Stephen King’s “The Running Man” ($1.9/$6.5), which had a passable Friday. “Now You See Me” has the advantage of a PG-13 family-friendly rating, and The Numbers reports that its final tally reflected that — $21.3 million.
“The Running Man,” now an R-rated Glen Powell star vehicle, with Colman Domingo and Josh Brolin in villainous support, tallied $17 million, better than the $15 million it seemed headed for, but a lot less than the mid $20s first projected. Ouch. There’s a lot of money on the screen in this $110 million thriller.
Neither film is riding critical acclaim in this horse race.
Wright is beloved by fanboys/girls thanks to “Sean of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.” He tries to take this material seriously in light of its dystopian connection to the ICE/fascism world we live in but never settles on a tone that works or a final act that pays off.
And “Now You See Me” was never all that to start with and adding three Gen Z accomplices and Rosamund Pike as a South African villain with the oddest Afrikaner accent of them all doesn’t help. Deadline.com says these “illusion” films are big in China. But what’s up with that colon in the middle of the title?
Projections are for “Predator Badlands” to lose over 66% of its opening weekend audience and earned $13 million this weekend, perhaps a bit more. It could come in second. I poked my head into a showing on Thursday evening that had a lot more people in it than the “preview” of “The Running Man” I was there to see.
The Colleen Hoover weeper “Regretting You” is finally fading away, but is still outperforming expectations, managing $5 million when $3.8 seemed the best it would manage.
“Black Phone 2” adds $2.65 million and enjoys its last weekend in the top five and appears destined to clear $84-86 million by the time it loses its screens.
Another new release, one I didn’t get to myself, is “Keeper,” a no-budget horror title from Neon and Osgood Perkins (“Longlegs,” “The Monkey,” “Blackcoat’s Daughter”). It finished in sixth $2.5 million take. Neon keeps betting on this guy.
Nothing else is making money, as “Nuremburg” ($2.4) and the sort-of faith-based “Sarah’s Oil” ($2.34) never took off, “Chainsaw Man” ($1.6) is finally fading away and “Bugonia” ($1.6) and out of the top ten “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” underwhelmed and his fans have aged out of moviegoing during the first Obama administration.
“Tron: Ares” exits the top ten/top twelve and the scene with a $72 million take. The damned thing cost $180 million.
Maybe Netflix should have opened “Frankenstein” in more cinemas and for a few weeks longer.
Movie Nation 