Movie Nation

Had to look it up. Watch and listen for it in the movie when it opens Valentine’s Day.

Impress your friends with your Poppy Family knowledge.

Sure, all the “momentum” and most of the pre Oscar predictor awards have gone to Sam Mendes and “1917” as best director and best picture.

Well, almost all of them.

But as I said last summer, Hollywood loves nothing as much as movies that celebrate the movies. “The Artist ” “Argo.”

So when Hollywood itself votes for best picture, “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” will win.

That would amount to a surprise, and the Academy Awards have been short on those of late.

Tarantino has a shot at best director, too. His best ever. But Mendes will probably still collect that prize.

And the acting honors seem chiseled in stone at this point. Maybe Laura Dern loses, arguably Renee Zellweger SHOULD lose. Good performance, mediocre movie.

But seeing the Hollywood Reporter’s “brutally honest” anonymous voter Oscar ballots this week reflected what I have been thinking all along.

Hollywood will honor “Hollywood.”

Transgender girl just cannot get and keep a job. Not that she really wants one.

Allison Janney and Margot Martindale costar in this bitchy farce.

French Boy Scouts save children. The most famous scout among them? Marcel Marceau.

Did you know the most famous mime in history was with the”Resistance” during WWII?

Did you realize that I am posting this on National Boy Scout Day?

Clemence Poesy, Ed Harris (as General Patton) and Edgar Ramirez also star in this March 27 release.

Ok, maybe that’s not a “Dolittle” level disaster. But when the studio was expecting a $45 million opening weekend and Hollywood box office gurus were saying as high as $60, this weekend “Birds of Prey” are proving to be dead ducks.

“Suicide Squad” aftertaste in play here? That sold hundreds of millions in tickets, and just sucked. Margot Robbie starred in it and film fans do not forget.

Blame the R rating, the violence, chasing away families and fangirls, who needed to turn out.

Blame sexist fanboys for not warming to a sexy, sadistic distaff “Deadpool.”

Or blame Warners, for not hiring funnier writers to punch up the script. I don’t fault the relatively inexperienced director, but Cathy Yan is no Jon Favreau, who is funny and always knew how to lighten the tone of his comic book movies. Having the clout to insist on rewrites is a must. Green directors do not have this clout, which is often why they land the job.

Being “woke” enough to hire women behind the camera and in front of it doesn’t do them any favors if they aren’t the right women.

I’d blame Yan for one big casting blunder, the amateurish Asian kid playing the pickpocket.

Christina Hodson has “Bumblebee” writing on her resume. Did somebody else write the jokes?

Casting Ewan McGregor’s girlfriend should have been a safer bet. Rosie Perez was funnier in the ’90s.

But that all could have been fixed with a better screenplay, more jokes, less graphic violence.

“Bad Boys” added another $10 million, “1917” another $8-9, “Dolittle” and “Jumanji” another $5-6 each.

https://deadline.com/2020/02/birds-of-prey-weekend-box-office-margot-robbie-1202853768/

The embargo for reviews of this video game turned into a movie is midnight Wednesday.

They’re Screening it for critics Saturday.

Vote of confidence? Do James Marsden and Jim Carrey save it?

Animation and re animation, a studio trying to fix the look and sound of the digital hedgehog.

A February sleeper? Or is it how it looks?

The idea behind “Kevin Hart’s Guide to Black History” is to take a “Drunk History” run through the lives of Great African Americans — some famous, many unjustly obscure.

They left out the “drunk” part, but the format is the same as “Drunk History” — light sketch comedy takes on Joe Lewis, Robert Johnson, Mae Jemison, Robert Smalls, Josephine Baker, Henry “Box” Brown and others.

Hart recites these tales to his daughter (played by Saniyya Sidney) and her nerdy white friend (Eoghan Thomas Murphy ).

You think you know Black History, from everything you learned in Black History Month? Ever heard of Underground Railroad hero Henry “Box” Brown, who packed escaped slaves, including himself, in shipping crates and mailed them from Richmond to Philly?

How about Robert Smalls, the slave who hijacked a Confederate gunboat in Charleston and took it and other slaves to freedom on it?

Mae Jemison, played by Tiffany Haddish, was the first African American woman astronaut, but who’s heard of Bessie Coleman, a barnstorming pilot in the ’30s who was the first Black woman to obtain a pilot’s license?

Well-known figures like Frederick Douglas, boxer Joe Lewis and bluesman Robert Johnson are addressed as well.

The reenactments aren’t hilarious, or even funny. But they are flippant and kid-friendly.

Hart’s narration? Strictly of the “quick-and-dirty” variety. No, there’s no profanity (well, a Fokker aircraft crack). But his line readings sound like what they are — recitations read from a page. He mispronounces words and nobody on the set had the nerve to ask for another take.

Still, it’s a breezy if not that funny “Sober History” riff through the lives of Great African Americans, such as the inventor of the potato chip, the true “first man to reach the North Pole” (or, um, get close) and others beyond the tiny ranks of “Black History Month’s Greatest Hits,” which is all many of us were taught in school each February.

MPAA Rating: TV-PG.

Cast: Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish, Lil Rel Howery, Nika King, Alphonso McAuley , Greg Germann, Christopher Mychael Watson

Credits: Directed by Tom Stern, scripted by Brian Volk-Weiss, Evan White. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:17

“Horse Girl” is a candy-colored descent into madness, a lightweight drama that maintains something like suspense as we cringe through a woman’s struggle to just maintain the appearance of “normality” and “sanity.”

Alison Brie of dark comedies such as “The Disaster Artist” and “The Little Hours” co-wrote and stars in this character study in loneliness, sadness and a growing disconnection with reality.

The innocuous title doesn’t give away what a sugar-coated but downbeat movie this is. In the words of the late Vic Ferrari, “Whoa. Hard to get happy after THAT one.”

Brie plays Sarah, a gawky, awkward but cute clerk at the fabric and hobby store, smiling and chatting away her days with her colleagues and her boss (Molly Shannon).

When we see her later at the stables, instructing a wealthy teen in horseback riding, we figure that’s just her side hustle. It’s her birthday, so maybe some other folks from her Zumba class will join her for drinks.

She’s got a roommate, Nikki (Debby Ryan) who has a boyfriend who has a roommate Nikki would like to hook Sarah up with. Nikki even gives her a makeover when the guy (John Reynolds) comes off for drinks — “Show off your body. You never do that!”

All is normal, right down to the conservative late model Volvo Sarah drives around town.

But at home, she sleepwalks. She has nosebleeds. She zones out at traffic lights.

“I’m sorry. I don’t remember!”

She’s absorbed with this supernatural crime drama, “Purgatory,” which features diabolical alien cloning and an intrepid cop (Robin Tunney) out to foil their evil plans.

And she has disturbing dreams, of lying on a white floor alongside strangers, portals of piercing light. Searching the Internet for answers to what ails her serves up plausible solutions, and “alien abduction.”

That’s when she sees a stranger (John Ortiz) from her dreams, a plumbing contractor. That’s when we start to fear for Sarah, worrying that her grip on reality is — like her car — something she will misplace or forget.

That’s when we notice how the other folks at the stables (Toby Huss) regard her warily. There’s a sense of indulgence in the roomie, whose patience is wearing thin, in her kindly boss and in Gary (Paul Reiser), who turns out to be her one-time step-dad.

There’s backstory and “history” coming, and it won’t be happy go lucky.

Brie lays it all out there for this film, struggling to take us inside Sarah’s madness. She has pleasant, sentient moments and manages to clumsily flirt and carry on normal conversations –embellished with tiny fibs and white lies.

Sarah is carrying some heavy secrets.

The tension Brie builds into this character — that Kristen Wiig vulnerability teetering on the edge of pathos thing — and into the story isn’t something easily achieved. “Horse Girl” takes on a dread that grows more disquieting as the movie meanders on.

But that meandering is a problem, the bubbly surface to the character stands out more than the alarm, panic at what she doesn’t understand and more importantly doesn’t remember.

“Horse Girl” makes a nice showcase for a writer/actress with range and fearlessness. It’s just that — dread aside — the film feels lightweight and frothy, first scene to last. She’s put her all into a character that keeps us at arm’s length and a movie that’s not serious enough for its subject — mental illness.

MPAA Rating: R (for language and some sexuality, graphic nudity and drug use)

Cast: Alison Brie, Molly Shannon, Debby Ryan, John Reynolds, John Ortiz and Paul Reiser

Credits: Directed by Jeff Baena, script by Jeff Baena and Alison Brie. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:44

It’s a female centric R-rated comic book thriller directed by a Sundance winner.

And it has been hyped to the moon and back, with Warners feelings it DC muscle after “Aquaman” and “Joker.”

Fangirls have to show up. Will the fanboys join them?

Thursday night’s previews of “Birds of Prey” cleared only $4 million, a fraction of what we can expect from your typical comic book film, even the R-rated ones. That’s less than “Shazam,” which pulled in $5.9 not that long ago.

It is fan friendly, although praise has been muted. Check the Metacritic rating, not Rottentomatoes, for confirmation of that. Take away Margot Robbie and there is not much here to latch onto.

Insanely violent. Leave the kids at home.

Exhibitor Relations is saying $60 million this weekend is within reach, Variety guessing $50 and Warners $45.

Saner heads suggest a $40-50 million weekend for the opening, right on the bottom edge of “healthy.” And will it have “Wonder Woman” legs?

Anything below $40 and you’re allowed to whisper “bomb.”

This looks a lot more like fans are leery of that “Suicide Squad” hangover, even if the pandering pileup on Rottentomatoes doesn’t share that justifiable skepticism.

In any event, it will own a weekend or two in February and fans will probably get it into the black. But maybe not.

Warners needs to find funnier script doctors and directors with a little more experience and clout and feel for the genre.

The fights and the violence and the gloom are here, but the wit and spark of life? Not so much.

https://deadline.com/2020/02/birds-of-prey-weekend-box-office-margot-robbie-1202853768/

Will F., taking on a wee bit of Irish brogue just to fit in, y’see, stars in this comedy about ghosts, Satanic rites and a washed-up rock star (Will) who makes his pact with the you know who to come back from “show business death.”
Mar. 6 we see it.