This could be our Peak Nic Cage moment, a “meta” movie about the real Nicolas Cage caught up in some Nic Cage movie style nonsense. Debt, sleazy operators, an Oscar winner reduced to taking any gig he can get. All here.
https://t.co/B4qUT1gXbz https://twitter.com/RottenTomatoes/status/1195693752725032961?s=20
Give the people a great movie that isn’t a franchise, that has nothing to do with grown women and men in tights, and is over 2 and a half hours long, and the people will come.
IF it is an “event,” IF it has a dazzling pair of leads and impressive support, IF it is a prestige picture that might be the Best Picture of the year, that is.
“Ford v Ferrari” is all of those things, an it is opening at an impressive $28 million. Not “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” money, but it should have have a nice long fall into winter run.
“Charlie’s Angels,” rebooted again after 20 years, have passed their expiration date. Kristen Stewart and two nobodies star in a competent and empowering but joyless Enterprise, as I said in my review.
Audiences could smell the cynicism and are staying away. It every Girl scout troop in America goes on Sat. and Sunday, it might clear $11. Right now? Elizabeth Banks has directed a bomb.
“The Good Liar”;opened wide, which is I guess a strategy for making your money off a dull and predictable Big Con thriller starring the great Dame Helen and the Great Sir Ian. It may clear $3.
A platformed release can’t save a misfire. Variety was naming it as a best picture and best director contender, sight unseen, as late as last weekend. Nope.
“Midway” will earn another $8 million and should hold screens throgh the end of the month. Somethin to take Dad to over Thanksgiving, if “Ford v Ferrari” is too long of an investment.
“Doctor Sleep” is still snoozing. Word of mouth didn’t help it or “Last Christmas” or “Playing with Fire” survive their second weekend.
https://deadline.com/2019/11/ford-v-ferrari-charlies-angels-weekend-box-office-1202787070/
A common pitfall of animation start-ups is spending their money on famous names as voice actors instead of higher end animation and better gag writers.
But Netflix upends that standing rule with its first animated feature, “Klaus.” Casting Jason Schwartzman as the voice of the lead, a postman from the past who “discovers” Santa and helps invent the holiday tradition of writing letters to Santa for presents delivered on Christmas, was inspired.
This isn’t one of those one-liner loaded Dreamworks cartoons. But Wes Anderson pal Schwartzman, with his quirky line-readings, eccentric pauses and the like, makes every line funny or at least light-hearted enough to come off.
In the old country in the fairytale early 19th century, Jesper is the lazy son of the postmaster general of the Royal Post Office.
“You know how long it took to PRESS this uniform? I don’t either, but SOMEbody took the time…”
Dad sends Jesper away to prove himself, to the furthest reaches of civilization — snowy Smeerensburg. He’s got to get the post office there up and running, and deliver 6,000 letters before he can even consider getting promoted back into the real world.
And those 6,000 letters never look more out of reach than the minute he is dropped off by the smart aleck ferryman (Norm MacDonald). Nobody here writes. The whole town is wholly consumed by an ages-old feud.
Everybody fights everybody else. Constantly. The factions are led by Mrs. Krum (Joan Cusack) and Mr. Ellingboe (Will Sasso). They all have mailboxes, but near as we can tell, they’ve never been used.
Jesper has to trick a small child into buying a stamp just to MAIL back a drawing the child made that blew out of a window and into the wannabe postman’s hands.
And that little act of, well, extortion sets our whole story in motion. That first “letter” falls in the hands of the inhabitant of The Woodsman’s Cabin, a hermit’s house Jesper stops at trying to drum up some business.
The woodsman (J.K. Simmons) is a hulking, white-bearded figure who loves his axe and has filled his trees with birdhouses (“Totally normal…not a symptom of mental illness in ANY way.”) and his cabin with toys he’s carved, hammered, painted and stored. And he gives Jesper a package to deliver to the lonely child whose forlorn drawing touched him.
Boom! There it is, Santa’s “Origin Story,” just like The Joker’s — without the facepaint.
The little boy gets the first-ever gift in Smeerensburg. His peers see it and want a toy of their own. Who do they write to, again? And hey, “We don’t know HOW to write! Who can teach us?”
The postman isn’t the only useless civil servant in Smeerensburg. Alva (Rashida Jones) was hired to be a teacher.
“I took a teaching job at a place where people don’t send their kids to school!”
She makes ends meet as a fish monger.
“Can we open a window in here? I can’t…really pretend…any longer…”
So the teacher is reluctantly recruited to teach the kids how to write letters to this woodsman, “Klaus,” and the postman has to convince this Klaus fellow to donate his toys. And Klaus, naturally, wants to come along for the deliveries.
The postal coach has to lose its wheels to become a sleigh, the tired nag pulling it replaced with reindeer, and bit by bit, Jesper adds to the myth. Gifts are left next to the fireplace. Maybe in a stocking you hang from the mantel.
Bully writes for a toy? Maybe we just drop lumps of coal in his stocking.
“‘Naughty list’ he calls it.” And whispering, “TRUST me. You do NOT want to be on the naughty list!”
The back-engineering of the holiday traditions are ingenious and offbeat. Anybody over the age of five will jump just ahead of the story, here and there, seeing “Oh, THAT’s going to be Santa’s Workshop,’ and ‘THIS is where Santa gets his helpers in the workshop.”
Cute.
The look of the animation is an angular, broad and slightly under-animated hybrid of Chuck Jones and Tim Burton’s styles. “Klaus” is closer to old TV specials animation than the lush CGI of Pixar, Sony, Blue Sky or Dreamworks.
It’s not remotely as polished as the earlier contenders in the animated children’s film field, but “Klaus” is good enough to have earned a theatrical release, on a par with MGM’s “The Addams Family,” in any event.
An annual holiday classic? Probably not. But you can count on a return visit from “Klaus” every holiday season, as long as there’s a Netflix.
MPAA Rating: PG
Cast: The voices of Jason Schwartzman, Rashida Jones, J. K. Simmons, Joan Cusack, Will Sasso and Norm McDonald
Credits: Directed by Sergio Pablos, script by Zach Lewis, Jim Mahoney and Sergio Pablos. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:38
The latest “Charlie’s Angels” reboot acknowledges its place in the Farrah Fawcett to Cameron Diaz to Kristen Stewart continuum. The “Townsend Agency” has had many Angels, many Bosleys.
It opens with a documentary montage of girls competing at sports, tackling big challenges and taking their rightful place at the table. So yes, it’s empowering, after a fashion — with plenty of nods to sexy fashion.
And the action scenes in the film demonstrate, again for the slow-learners, that actresses (and their stunt doubles) can handle fight choreography and action beats as well or better than any man.
Actress-turned-director (and co-star) Elizabeth Banks might be more at home in comedies, in front of (and in the case of the last “Pitch Perfect”) behind the camera. But she’s never less than competent at staging brawls, gun battles, The Big Heist and the Clever Con.
Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott (“Aladdin”) and Ella Balinska, a British actress best known for the TV series “The Athena” but little known in this hemisphere, are put through their paces with skill.
But damn, this thing is pretty much joyless — no fun at all. Reports of Stewart’s gifts as a budding comedienne have been wildly-exaggerated, the one-liners don’t land and the story’s a non-starter and a bit of a downer, to boot.
The new Angels and their fight-teacher Bosley (Djimon Hounsou) spring into action when an engineer, Jane (Balinska) turns whistleblower on this dangerous new energy tech she’s helped develop that’s about to be released to the world.
Her sexist, credit-hog dunce of a boss (Nat Faxon) dismisses her concerns. If only she could get the word out.
But the moment the Angels make contact, the whistleblower is targeted. A pitiless assassin (Jonathan Tucker) is on her trail.
And the just-retired Bosley (Patrick Stewart) is onto something, too. Will new Bosley (Banks) help them make their getaway and save the day?
Whatever the benefits to the picture’s sex appeal, guys instinctively mistrust any female-lead action picture where too much attention has been paid to hair and makeup and heels and cleavage and short skirts and bare-midriff costumes. “Ocean’s 8,” anyone? Still, it tells us that everybody should be on the same page about this enterprise. It’s meant to be candy-colored escape, action-oriented fun.
But death is treated as glibly as in any vintage Schwarzenegger actioner, and even the funny lines get lost in the scuffle.
“You swiped RIGHT,” Stewart’s sexually ambiguous Sabina snaps at one quarry she’s about to drop. “I’M your girlfriend now!”
How’d you get that ID, MI-6 alumna Elena (Scott)?
“I compressed his carotid and de-oxygenated his brain stem!”
Just flies off the tongue, doesn’t it?
The film changes locations — Rio to Hamburg, Berlin, Malibu and Istanbul — as often as our heroines change costumes.
The caper moments have a comic snap to them, the straight action bits a sense of unreality — except when people die. The villains, save for Tucker, are colorless.
Then again, it looks like one and all had fun taking on this action vamp. But you know, the Diaz, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore “Angels” movies were fraught with tantrums and tensions on the set. Legendary for it.
But the movies? Both of their “Angels” outings were more fun than this.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for action/violence, language and some suggestive material
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Elizabeth Banks, Naomi Scott, Ella Balinska, Patrick Stewart, Sam Claflin, Chris Pang and Djimon Hounsou
Credits: Written and directed by Elizabeth Banks. A Sony Columbia release.
Running time: 1:58
“The Warrior Queen of Jhansi” is a respectable B-movie from India about a heroine of “The Mutiny,” the 1857-58 Indian Rebellion against the rule of the British East India Company and its British soldiers.
Ambitious, if choppy, flatly-acted and less inspiring than was its intention, it is the story of Lakshmibai, the Rani of Jhansi, who resisted the all-powerful East India Company’s efforts to annex her princely state after the death of her husband,bstripping its independence and the succession of her stepson.
Devika Bhise has the title role, a genuine warrior queen who galloped into battle with her troops, fought with sabre and bow, and coined — the film says — the term “freedom fighter” in her quest to free her people from the British corporate and colonial yoke.
When widowed and threatened by the ruthless, racist Company Man (Nathaniel Parker), unappeased by the sympathetic British soldier (Ben Lamb) who acts as go-between, the young Rani lets her temper show.
“I would remind you I am no stranger to battle.”
Trained with sword, rifle and bow since childhood, she was ready to fight.
But the action is slow to come in this “Warrior” tale. There’s much intrigue, a whole lot of chewing out by Queen Victoria (Jodhi May) directed at Lord Palmerston (Derek Jacobi) of “the greatest company in history.” The Queen has Indian sympathies driven by an Indian Muslim attendant, as “The Warrior Queen” seems to be moving the timeline up for the “Victoria & Abdul” story — which happened decades later.
Years pass, and yet the dead maharaja’s adopted son, whom the Brits signed off on as heir to the throne (Jhansi was a British-allied state), doesn’t grow up. At all.
The picture slips into a confused murk during the interval between when The Company first decided not to recognize Rani’s family succession and the beginning of the rebellion. The Rani must find alliances before the British finally attack.
Because cholera holds them at bay for a while. Eventually, though, led by Sir Hugh Rose (Rupert Everett, unenthused), they march. The great siege begins, the cannon roar and The Rani charges into action, a sabre in each hand.
Bhise (“The Accidental Husband,” “The Man Who Knew Infinity”) is fine in the action scenes, less interesting in the assorted ladies-in-waiting/confer with advisors/negotiate with the British officer interludes.
Her fiery moments of “Do NOT presume to tell me what I can and cannot do,” her speeches to rally the troops with tales of “rivers of blood…flowing through our motherland” are nothing special.
Bhise’s mother, actress and producer turned director and co-writer Swati Bhise, doesn’t demand more from her, and the film she conjures up is often exposed as a malnourished polemic about British racism, sexism and Anglo-Christian supremacy as resisted by this Brahmin born royal.
Not that epic, in other words.
Most of the fighting in this two year rebellion, sparked by British decisions to force Muslim Indian East India Co. troops to use paper cartridges sealed with animal fat for their rifles, is kept off camera in this would-be epic.
There are continuity errors, and not just having the same little boy play the young prince in scenes set five years apart.
Parker is agreeably vile as the “racist Brit,” the one who fumes “We owe these vulgar natives nothing. They’re barbarians!” Jacobi’s East India chief tries to charm Victoria with the notion that they’re “civilizing” and “converting to Christianity” the vast, fractious subcontinent that this extra-governmental corporation is running.
May’s Victoria gets her back up nicely. If only Bhise exhibited this sort of confident fury as Rani.
“The Warrior Queen of Jhansi” is educational only if you take to the Internet afterwards to look up the details I just filled in, allowing you to realize the corrections that needed to be made to the film’s account.
The entire enterprise has a tentative feel, with the elder Bhise more confident directing dialogue vignettes and the combat than with handling the sweep of the story, which feels incoherent, as often as not.
And as unemotional as most of this depressingly uninspiring, blood-stained tale is, you have to wonder what’s missing, and how the filmmaker can presume to tie Rani’s heroic struggle with the eventual independence of India, which came almost 100 years later.
She had to be more charismatic than this to inspire over the ages.
MPAA Rating: R for some violence
Cast: Devika Bhise, Jodhi May, Rupert Everett, Nathaniel Parker, Derek Jacobi, Arif Zakaria, Siyaa Patil and Omar Malik.
Credits: Directed by Swati Bhise, script by Dekia Bhise, Olivia Emden and Swati Bhise. A Roadside Attractions release.
Running time: 1:42
For those who haven’t been paying attention, Indian films and movies set in India have been showing up on screens nationwide with increasing frequency.
Few have made much of a dent in the US box office, but the Subcontinent Diaspora in North America is large enough to justify the effort.
“The Warrior Queen of Jhansi” is a piece of Indian history about Manu, a woman who resisted the corporate tyranny of the British East India Company, became queen of her state and leader of an army that included women.
Looks fun. 2400 plus screens have this, so Roadside Attractions is gambling that it will have wide appeal. Let’s see if it should.
The star power, stellar reviews and awards season cachet of one of the best pictures of the year should be enough to ensure “Ford v. Ferrari” will own at least one weekend at the box office.
Tracking interest — retweets, YouTube views of the trailer, IMDb pageviews — point to a $20 million plus opening for this prestige picture about racing and iconoclasts changing the culture of a huge corporation.
But after “Doctor Sleep” underwhelmed last weekend, does this very guy-centric dramedy seem like such a sure thing?
Elizabeth Banks, Kristen Stewart and Patrick Stewart are rebooting “Charlie’s Angels,” but does that star power add up to anything like a sure thing? No. It could do $13, Variety and Box Office Mojo are saying. It could be a surprise smash. Remember “Hustlers?”
“The Good Liar” had awards buzz..until critics saw it. Older cast, limited box office appeal, it feels like a limited release that is opening wide. I don’t think it will manage the $6 to 7 million projected for Dame Helen and Sir Ian’s handiwork.
“The Warrior Queen of Jhansi” is opening wide with limited buzz, promotion, etc.
If “Midway” has another good weekend it will clear the $35 million mark since release by midnight Sunday.
I figure “Playing with Fire” will bottom out, and “Doctor Sleep” will show little sign of waking up.
Will the top ten clear $100 million all together? Box Office Mojo says “No.”But let’s hope so. There are some good choices out there.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/article/ed3765437444/?ref_=bo_at_a
You can’t manufacture a “cult film.”
But you can play around with “Hey you guys, this REALLY happened!” Try a new twist on the “found footage” horror formula that “The Blair Witch Project” perfected, a “long lost movie” myth with a touch of “The Ring” about it.
Call it “The Deadliest Movie Ever Made,” and make it about a motion picture that screens as “the work of the Devil,” a movie never truly released because people who saw it died, a theater that showed it burned up and killed a bunch of people.
San Franciscans who tried to watch it decades later rioted, and more death ensued.
“Antrum” is its title, a 1979 American made “indie” film that a couple of film festival programmers screened for admission to their fests in the ’80s — and met untimely ends.
This is the “cursed movie” myth that dogs John Wayne’s debacle “The Conqueror” or more recently, where “Poltergeist” lost a lot of sweet and respected actors, and let Craig T. Nelson live.
Filmmakers David Amito and Michael Laicini wrap their conceit in a mockumentary, complete with “experts” on “Antrum” and “demonology” and horror movies. Their expert testimonials speak of it being “the Holy Grail” of cult films, one that it’s “not safe” to watch.
A favorite amateurish touch? They misspell “Budapest,” the city where the theater allegedly burned down in their “tribute” closing credits. Perfect.
The “only print” of the movie itself is an odd affair, a simple spin on “Pet Sematary” with Cyrillic and English credits, and a bizarre tale of a little boy (Rowan Smyth) who sees his beloved dog Maxine, “put down” by a vet.
Nathan knows “All dogs go to heaven.” But Mom says no, Maxine was “bad.” She’s a hound in hell, now.
Nathan is so distraught that his sister Oralee (Nicole Tompkins) locates a book of necromancy and leads him on a camping trip to the forest “where Satan fell when he was cast out of Heaven.”
They’ll follow the book’s directions, with chapters headed “Before You Get to Hell,” and “Welcome to Hell” (not pictured, the prologue, “So You want to Go to Hell). They’ll find the exact spot, near a hollowed out tree, and dig their way through the layers of hell until they find the one Maxine is in, and bring her home.
They’d better watch out for Cerberus, the multi-headed dog that supposedly patrols the banks of the River Styx, at the entrance to Hell in Greek myth. Nathan thinks he hears him.
Flickering flash-cut black and white inserts interrupt this quest, images of Satan in the shadows, of people being tortured. Odd noises blast out of the soundtrack, too. Which of these trigger viewers’ deaths?
The footage looks properly grainy in some scenes, the light has a hint of that “Eastmancolor at dawn” flavor common to the movies of the day.
And the kids? They soldier on through layers of Hell described by chapters labeled “Nefastas,””Malificus” and “Demonium.”
“Look, it’s a DEMON!” Actually, it’s a stop-motion-animated demonic squirrel with a black tail.
I appreciate the effort here. The idea is sound, but the script needed several more passes before they committed to shooting it. The odd Cyrillic titles suggest a funnier way to go — shoot the damned thing in Hungarian, make the “legend” more exotic and foreign. It’s not like we’re told this is a Hungarian or whatever print that was found recently in Connecticut.
The “Look, a DEMON” bit is the only thing here that’s funny, and that’s another direction one could have taken “Antrum.” Cult films like “The Room” are often laughed at.
“Antrum” has no other laughs, and unless you’re a rube who falls for every “Hey, you guys, this REALLY happened” on the Internet, there’s not much here to hold our interest.
“Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made” isn’t amateurish enough to be charming or professional enough to pull off the con job.
MPAA Rating: unrated, violence
Cast: Rowan Smyth, Nicole Tompkins
Credits: Written and directed by David Amito, Michael Laicini. An Uncork’d Entertainment release.
Running time: 1:34
An ageing actress summons her extended family to scenic Sintra, Portugal, in “Frankie,” a lovely but downbeat and dull showcase for Isabelle Huppert, who has the title role.
You’d think that with a husband, ex-husband, stepdaughter who is contemplating divorce, a son who isn’t the closest to her and a rebellious step-granddaughter about to head off to college, the filmmakers could manage a few sparks, some confrontations — something out of this set-up.
But not really. Director Ira Sachs makes chatty, relationshippy melodramas, for the most part — films that often have gay texts, subtexts or merely a character or two. While “Love is Strange” and “Little Men” or “Keep the Lights On” have their acting moments and other virtues, they are conflicts in a minor key. Not enough happens.
“Frankie” is filled with absurdly frank confessions and moments of over-sharing as a stellar cast breaks up into pairs for scenes that don’t so much go anywhere as flesh in the back stories in front of one of the loveliest tourist towns on The Continent.
Frankie is married to Jimmy (Brendan Gleeson), divorced from Michel (Pascal Greggory), who is the father of prickly, lonely Paul (Jérémie Renier).
Frankie would like to fix Paul up with her favorite on-set hair stylist, Ilene (Marissa Tomei). But Ilene’s shown up with her second unit cinematographer beau, Gary (Greg Kinnear). And he’s all about making their relationship permanent.
“We’d have two homes. We don’t need more than that!”
Sylvia, or Vivi (Vinette Robinson) is Jimmy’s daughter from an earlier relationship. And she’s thinking about divorcing Ian (Ariyon Bakare). They’re British, and daughter Maya (Sennia Nanua) is headed for college, and somewhat trapped in the middle of their very civil, almost loving break-up.
Nobody seems all that thrilled to be here, save for the New York film couple. And they “don’t know.”
We can guess what’s going on, with the hired-guide pointing them to this or that “miracle fountain,” siblings fussing over jewelry and estates and financial stuff.
It’s just that everybody is too self-absorbed to work those “issues” out. All this pairing up just gives the Michel the chance to admit that Frankie divorcing him was the best thing to ever happen to him.
“I met Thierry, and I finally let myself fall in love with a man.”
Maya meets a Portugeuse boy who tells her much of his life story on a trolley ride to the beach.
Even the guide gets in on it — “Sometimes, I don’t even know why I stay married.”
The awkward moments have a light dramatic charge; the way Ilene tries to brush off Gary’s proposal, Paul’s little anecdote about the origins of the lifelong friction with his mother.
Huppert plays a character with “playing cupid” on her mind, among other things. The odd lightly amusing line and a couple of fatalistic ones are all Frankie has to offer her. She’s the fulcrum around which the other tales pivot, and there’s not enough to her.
The spark of her being scolded by her granddaughter for swimming in the villa’s pool in the opening scene — “They can take PICTURES.” “That’s OK. I’m very photoGENIC!” — is about as lively as the role, or the movie that follows, gets.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for brief strong language and some sexual material
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Marisa Tomei, Vinette Robinson, Brendan Gleeson, , Ariyon Bakare, Pascal Greggory, Jérémie Renier, Sennia Nanua and Greg Kinnear
Credits: Directed by Ira Sachs, script by Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
Running time: 1:40
Maybe returning to your high school to coach will help with that drinking problem.
A March release, starring Ben and directed by Gavin O’Connor.
Movie Nation 