Movie Nation

Alvin Sargent wrote the most emotional, best-directed, best-acted “Spider-Man” movies — the three with Toby and Kirsten.

https://deadline.com/2019/05/alvin-sargent-dead-oscar-winner-ordinary-people-julia-1202612437/

Working in a thriller with Jessica Alba.

Not exactly prestige picture material, but there you go. Not everybody gets an Oscar Bounce.

Assassins have their own support group, and Suki Waterhouse, Tim McInerny, Oldman and Alba and Sadie Frost are in it. “Killers Anonymous” goes into release, from Lionsgate, at the end of June.

The bigger question, “Wait, Film Arcade is still in business, “releasing” movies?

“Being Frank” is about Dad’s “other” family, features Samantha Mathis and Logan Miller, and opens June 14.

A very good Thursday night/Friday gave “Detective Pikachu” a narrow win on the opening night of the Mother’s Day weekend at the box office — $20 million to “Avengers: Endgame’s” $18, according to Deadline.com.

“Endgame” is still projected to win the weekend with another $70 or so million added to Marvel’s coffers, taking it past “Black Panther’s” records, for those keeping score at home.

But “Pikachu” is performing up to its most ambitious predictions, a $50-55 million weekend. Exactly as well as the “Spongebob Movie,” because that’s who it’s for.

“The Hustle” is opening at a robust $13-14 million or so. Hathaway hating reviews aren’t helping it, but as I said in my review, it plays funnier than the last version of this “Bedtime Story” (1964) remake, “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” (1988). I showed that one to my mother on a visit for the weekend last night, and “Scoundrels” isn’t aging well at all. “Hustle” has some weak links, but not the two stars — Hathaway and Rebel. Take Mom to this one on “Mother’s Day.” PG-13 rated Rebel? Funny enough.

“Long Shot” is sticking around, “Poms” isn’t opening big enough to show it is reaching its older, doesn’t go to the movies much clientele — yet. The AARP comedy may hit $7 million if it gets a robust Sat. and Sunday. It could. I took my mother to a matinee showing in Durham, NC, filled with seniors like herself. It plays to that crowd.

“Tolkien” isn’t winning over art house audiences, mostly thanks to middling reviews, one suspects. Then there’s the fact that it’s about the bloke who wrote “Lord of the Rings.” Art house habitues don’t dive into fanboy lit, and the fangirls and fanboys aren’t showing up either –$3.5 million or so is slated for that one.

It’s not necessarily for you. Maybe it’s not “the perfect movie” to take Mom to for Mother’s Day

Unless you want her to write you out of the will.

But if Mom is a grandmom? Well, darling, “Poms” could be right up her alley.

This less than challenging lightweight Senior Citizens Swear and Act Silly farce is built around Diane Keaton, who is showing a determination to keep working even if the movies aren’t up to the films that what she became famous for. Here, she’s got an age-appropriate supporting cast that is grateful for the work.

And they’ve made a comedy that’s going to resonate with anybody over 70.

There’s the grandkid stealthily living with granny (Jackie Weaver) in a stupidly strict retirement community, the steady stream of new arrivals and those “checking out” from “Sun Springs,” the obnoxious son trying to rule his aged mom’s life and a widow suddenly freed from the strictures of a suffocating, “He’s the Boss” marriage.

Yeah, there are “Break a hip” jokes and the best “Over my dead body” gag in recent memory.

None of which makes “Poms” a classic, or anything more than barely passable, even in the eyes of its target demo. But if you’re on your third or fifth AARP card, it plays.

Keaton plays Martha, a single, childless New Yorker we meet on the day of her “estate sale.” No, she’s not dead, as confused shoppers wonder about the person whose stuff they are perusing. But she’s got cancer, and she’s rejecting any further treatment/.

There’s nothing for it but to load up the Subaru and make for Sun Springs retirement community in Georgia, which is where folks without the stamina for Florida end up.

It’s a controlling, over-regulated little piece of shrubs-must-be-cut-just-so and Christmas decorations must be down by Jan. 2 sort of place, lorded over by steel magnolia Vicki (Celia Weston, terrific).

“I’m just here to die,” Martha cracks.

“Wayl, I thank we can aim a mite higher’n that,” Vicki drawls.

Martha’s new neighbor (Weaver) is pushy and on-the-make, hosting all-men poker games, trying to enlist Martha in the “fun.” Martha’s not having it.

But the rules state she “must join” one of the hundred or so clubs there. As neighbor Cheryl took a shine to Martha’s old cheerleading uniform, that’s what they resolve to do — form a  cheer squad.

Documentary filmmaker Zara Hayes directed this (the story was her idea, too), and has modest fun in the “audition” montage — women like Pam Grier shaking their groove thing, trying to make the squad.

The rehearsals, set to The Go Gos and Portugal The Man, are almost cute.

Charlie Tahan is the shy grandson brought in to DJ the rehearsals, Alisha Boe is engaging as a high school cheer captain who journeys from contempt to admiration.

Rhea Perlman may not have enough of a character to play. But the always entertaining Bruce McGill plays the head of security at Sun Springs, old enough to realize “enforcement” there is beneath him, not smart enough to figure out a way out of every call for a noise disturbance or what have you.

Keaton is top billed, but it is Jacki Weaver (“Animal Kingdom,” the movie, not the cable series) who owns the picture, the sassy, salty “grown ass woman” who over-instructs the high schoolers she substitute teaches in sexuality, and turns a teen’s sneering “Break a hip” wish for luck into “Get pregnant.”

The jokes are strictly low-hanging fruit, but the film’s predictable path takes just enough care to avoid the places we’re sure we’re headed to sustain its 91 minutes.

It’s not exactly good, nor does it merit the sort of scorched earth reviews some of the children who couldn’t figure out why “Long Shot” wasn’t that funny and wasn’t exactly a hit.

Maybe you don’t get it. Maybe grandma and grandpa will.

MPAA: PG-13 for some language/sexual references.

Cast: Diane Keaton, Jacki Weaver, Pam Grier, Rhea Perlman, Bruce McGill and Celia Weston

Credits: Directed by Zara Hayes, screenplay by Shane Atkinson.  An STX/eOne release.

Running time: 1:31

Rene Zellweger frees herself from Hollywood jail with this one. That’s the storyline for this Judy just before she died biopic, due out in July.

Dazzling.

An LA Times piece that may be self serving –LA hates “runaway production,” ie any film or TV production not filmed in LA — bit also prescient. Think of what happened in “bathroom bill” states.
“Dear Hollywood:” writes @marymacTV
“By criminalizing abortion after six weeks, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp just turned the millions you save, and the billions you infuse into the state economy, into blood money.” https://t.co/82ddhPsVTl https://twitter.com/latimes/status/1126923628363251712?s=17

https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/5/10/18563503/poms-diane-keaton-anjelica-huston-jackie-weaver-comedy-cheerleaders

It’s a word invented by fanboys, with fangirls eventually getting on board its use, overuse and abuse.

“Spoilers” and “spoiler alert” are applied so broadly that the words, which had no real value to begin with, have become utterly meaningless.

There’s. No. Such. Thing.

I have yet to read a movie review, even from those inclined to do nothing more than summarize the plot and say “I LOVE IT,” that gives away as much as the average movie trailer.

With The Internet Movie Database going to great pains to list the entire cast of a given picture, is anybody “surprised” when this or that character miraculously returns to life in “Avengers: Endgame?” The movies are soap opera comical in their cavalier treatment of “death,” and overlapping universes, “canonical” and non-canonical remakes — endless remakes.

Here’s what a “spoiler” used to be — letting on that Sean Connery shows up as Richard III at the end of Kevin Costner’s “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.” Something like that, a little delight saved for the late third act. Stunt casting, a cool cameo, an “Ocean’s 11” team member showing up in “Ocean’s Eight.”

I take care to avoid giving away more than the inciting incidents that drive the plot, and stop taking notes on a picture’s contents at the end of the first act. I may mention an effect, sequence or quote a telling line from later acts, but closing one’s notebook before the midway point is safe ground, I figure.

Again, the way studios have been cutting trailers since the ’90s gives away a LOT more of the movie than any review ever would, and the average fan has been sold on going to the movie by TV ads and trailers.

I get one or two “Hey, spoilers” complaints a year, on average. And while I check back to see if indeed I have given away a key secret/surprise in the picture, that’s almost never the case. “Happened in the first act,” a widely publicized actor/character inclusion, etc.

Still, the word “spoilers” is all over the cinematic internet and it grows more pointless with every use.

If you’re determined to see something without having any idea of what, specifically, happens and is said, the emotions it might engender, etc., you’re basically going to have to avoid the Internet and turn off alerts on your phone.

And who wants to do that? More to the point, who is going to remember anything you’d call a “spoiler” while you’re watching the movie, if it works and has sucked you into the story?

If you’re hunting for information about a movie you’re going to see, and that includes a REVIEW, which by its nature has probably 50-60 facts in 500 or so words, then there’s no such thing as a “spoiler.”

Now that “Avengers: Endgame” is rolling into its third weekend, will its box office dominance begin to fade?

Hell, I’ve already forgotten much of its generally forgettable three hours. Repeat business has thinned out and most of those inclined to see it have gotten around to it already.

But it’s still another $73 million in it, says Box Office Mojo. That would be another 50-60% down from last weekend’s $147 million or so.

It’s not like it’s losing screens to new releases, yet, although four new films open this weekend, and one looks to be a big performer.

I dare say if “Detective Pikachu,” a Pokemon tale, was on as many screens as “Endgame,” it’d be a real horse race. It’s built for tiny tots, but a generation or two has grown up with the games and the cartoons, and they’re going to be curious.

And Ryan Reynolds is always a draw.

Reviews weren’t dazzling. It’s cluttered, inside-baseball and fan-pandering. Puerile, even. For small kids.

Mojo says it’ll clear $60 million or so.

Deadline.com is saying $55 million or so, a “Spongebob” sized opening, with “Endgame” possibly doing over $80 million.

The only other wide opening for the weekend expected to make something like “bank” is “The Hustle,” a female buddy comedy in vein of “The Heat,” pairing Oscar winner Anne Hathaway with comic bull in a china shop Rebel Wilson. Everybody is parking that one in the range of a $12 million opening. Reviews won’t help it, as the hatred for Anne Hathaway knows no bounds (Rebel may be wearing out her welcome). I found it fun, and that it works about as well as the two movies it is remaking did.

The sober-minded biography of “Hobbit” author J.R.R. “Tokien” got middling to decent reviews and will be lucky to earn $8 million this weekend.

The AARP romp “Poms” will take a while to find its older-skewing audience, but could open in the $7-10 million range.