#The Weekend Warrior Space Jam: A New Legacy

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Projections have THE GARFIELD MOVIE opening somewhere in the $20-30m range for the three-day, and somewhere over $30m for the 4-day.

In other words, it's opening like a typical post-COVID breakout animated movie. Unless you were the Mario movie, MINIONS 2, or few other films, you stayed below $30-35m for the three-day opening. For context:

$146m - THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE

$120m - SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE

$107m - MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU

$57m - KUNG FU PANDA 4

$50m - LIGHTYEAR

The five half-hundred openers. And then... Other big studio Western animated movie (and in some cases, hybrid)... Squarely below $35m:

$33m - IF

$31m - SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY

$30m - TROLLS BAND TOGETHER

$29m - ELEMENTAL

$28m - MUTANT MAYHEM

$27m - ENCANTO

$23m - THE BAD GUYS

$23m - DC LEAGUE OF SUPER-PETS

$22m - PAW PATROL: THE MIGHTY MOVIE

$22m - SING 2

$19m - WISH

$17m - THE ADDAMS FAMILY 2

$16m - THE BOSS BABY: FAMILY BUSINESS

$14m - TOM & JERRY

$13m - PAW PATROL: THE MOVIE

$12m - MIGRATION

$12m - PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH

$12m - STRANGE WORLD

So, yeah, THE GARFIELD MOVIE is performing as usual. It curiously has a B+ CinemaScore, when usually, an animated picture - no matter the reviews - gets an A- minimum. I still expect it to leg up until INSIDE OUT 2 is released, and make back its fair $60m budget.

Director Mark Dindal deserves a big hit after three movies that didn't quite cut it at the box office. CATS DON'T DANCE was dumped by Warner Bros. and made soooo little in 1997, THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE was similarly dumped by Disney but had the fortune of garnering excellent legs that might not have covered its budget, but it showed that Disney had a sleeper hit on their hands... and then there were the subsequent great video sales that probably un-flopped it a year later. CHICKEN LITTLE barely made the grade. Dindal hadn't directed since, the closest he got was with DreamWorks' unmade ME AND MY SHADOW. Dindal would be replaced by Alessandro Carloni on that film, and then DreamWorks nerfed it altogether. (Though they did briefly revive it as SHADOWS, courting Edgar Wright to direct at one point!)

So, yeah, I'm rooting for Garfield! For Dindal! I'll be seeing the movie in about a week or so.

As for the other side of this weekend's box office coin... FURIOSA:

I want to point out... A lot of people are seemingly confused as to why FURIOSA isn't breaking out... Thus making for a pretty small Memorial Day box office long-weekend...

When were the MAD MAX movies ever these massive blockbusters here in America?

The first film was barely released theatrically in North America, lost in the midst of its domestic distributor - American International Pictures - being acquired. The film's breakout success in its home country, Australia, was really what lead to sequels. MAD MAX 2, released as THE ROAD WARRIOR stateside, did fairly well but wasn't among 1982's biggest movies. MAD MAX: BEYOND THUNDERDOME, thought to be the most Hollywoodized of the movies, also did okay enough. Again, nowhere near the edge of the Top 10. I reckon for most people my age, FURY ROAD was their first MAD MAX movie. It certainly was mine, and then I went and blind-bought the other three movies thereafter.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD opened with a fair $45m back in 2015, and went on to gross $380m worldwide against a $150-180m budget. Barely 2 1/2x that price tag if it was $150m, so I guess it just made it. Enough for more movies to be made at least, as Tom Hardy was signed on to reprise his role as Max Rockatansky for at least a few more films. A fifth movie proper is in development, apparently... But, yeah... $380m. Good gross, but not... Let's see, STAR WARS or MCU-sized. Not DUNE: PART TWO nor RISE/DAWN/WAR OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, for fellow sci-fi comparisons...

And nor did it need to be... There's more a gnarly, punk-like edge to these movies anyways.

Which is why I did not expect FURIOSA to make that much more than FURY ROAD, especially since it's about a younger Furiosa and it's a prequel. Having not seen the movie due to circumstances (I'm gonna aim for it this coming Friday), I've also heard that it's way different from FURY ROAD, which was more or less a two-hour car chase that barely lets up. This apparently, at 2 1/2 hours long, is more in line with the classic MAD MAX movies. There's some vehicular action that really delivers, but the bulk of it is a lot of atmosphere and long stretches that really souses us into the wasteland world of the series.

One of my pals actually compared it to director George Miller's previous film, THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING... And... Uh, if it's really anything like that film, it's going to be interesting to see how it holds up in the coming weeks. THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING is a curious film that I didn't particularly enjoy much, but it's very cool that a $60m movie that appears to be Miller - in his 70s - pondering and reflecting on the art of storytelling and the big mosaic of it all even exists. Now to see that applied to a massive budget action movie in an iconic sci-fi franchise? Even cooler. That's what you call taking a BIG SWING. If MAD MAX 5 happening hinges on this movie's success, I really hope it defies the odds.

So THE GARFIELD MOVIE doesn't have a massive bar to clear, and it's already over $50m worldwide thanks to opening in a few territories beforehand. Should make back the budget easily. Only needs to clear $150m to do that. Legs would really have to be bad in order for it to not do so. FURIOSA is the one I'm concerned about, as that cost $168m to make. If that closes the door on future Wasteland movies, then that will suck big time. Fingers crossed for both.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior July 16, 2021 - SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY, ESCAPE ROOM: TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS, PIG, ROADRUNNER, GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE, and More!

We’re starting to get into the thick of summer where we’re likely to get two or maybe even three wide releases a week, and that’s definitely the case this weekend, even if it’s likely that Marvel’s Black Widow will continue to run rampant and should stay at #1 for a second weekend in a row. I also was busier than usual due to the Emmy nominations yesterday, but I now hopefully have a few easier months until the actual Emmys. (Famous last words.)

We actually have two sequels this week, one a sequel to a movie from a few years back and the other a sequel (of sorts) to a movie from 1996, so yeah, released a few months away from the 25th Anniversary of its predecessor. That always goes well.

We’ll start with SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY (Warner Bros.), the long-awaited sequel/reboot of the 1996 movie that captured Michael Jordan at the height of his popularity and paired him with the Looney Tunes i.e. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, etc. For years, Warner Bros. and various parties have been trying to make a sequel, but it took basketball superstar, Lebron James and no less than Ryan (Black Panther) Coogler, to finally get the sequel made.

Directed by Malcolm D. Lee (Girls Trip, Barbershop: The Next Cut), the sequel involves James and his son Dom (newcomer Cedric Joe) having issues that are taken advantage by an A.I. named Al G. Rhythm (played by Don Cheadle) who brings James and Dom to the Warner Bros. “Server-verse” for a basketball game that teams James with the Looney Tunes against his son and a group of super-powered NBA and WNBA stars i.e. The Goon Squad.

Yeah, it’s a similar concept as what led to the 1996 movie that capitalized on Jordan’s popularity and threw in other NBA greats like Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing, plus a little Bill Murray, and then lots of Warner Bros’ popular toon characters. That original movie opened with $27.5 million in 2,650 theaters in mid-November 1996 against the second weekend of Mel Gibson’s Ransom, but it went on to gross $90.4 million domestically with the bump from the holidays (which A New Legacy doesn’t have). In some ways, the movie was a response to the success of the 1988 hybrid Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which included many of the Looney Tunes, despite it being a Disney movie.

Looney Tunes movies (and even movies based on WB properties like the Cartoon Network) haven’t done particularly well since the first movie with Looney Tunes: Back in Action opening in November 2003 with just $9.3 million and grossing just $20.5 million domestically, which isn’t good. Space Jam: A New Legacy is Warner Bros’ first attempt to bring its toons back to theaters, and the company will be watching it closely since it has already started production on Coyote vs. Acme, a CG animated film featuring the age-old nemeses.

As far as basketball movies, the comedy Uncle Drew, which also starred Lil Rel Howery oddly, that opened with a decent $15.4 million in the summer of 2018 and grossed $42.6 million domestically, but that’s without the name brand of “Space Jam” or the beloved toons that will be a bigger selling point to kids than the basketball.

Working in Space Jam’s favor is that it’s a movie both for adults who were kids when the first movie came out, as well as modern-day kids who love sports or the toons, and that should help drive business over the weekend. What is likely to hurt is that the reviews, so far, have been absolutely TERRIBLE - 35% on Rotten Tomatoes, and while that might not put off the kids, it certainly will put off their parents.

The movie is also debuting simultaneously on HBO Max, just like other Warner Bros. movies this year, although as we’ve seen with Godzilla vs. Kong and Mortal Kombat, that doesn’t necessarily hamper how a movie might do in theaters. One thing that’s changed is that Disney announced its PVOD numbers from Black Widow’s Disney+ debut over the weekend, which might change people’s tunes about feeling the need to go to theaters to see a movie like this, and that certainly might affect Space Jam’s opening weekend, but I think it will mean an opening in the mid-to-high $20 millions vs. something in the mid-$30 millions. It also doesn’t have too much family competition until Disney’s Jungle Cruise in two weeks, so it should be able to make $70 million in domestic theaters even with it being readily available on HBO Max.

Mini-Review: I’ll freely admit that I don’t have the long-term nostalgia for the original Space Jam of so many others. In fact, I only saw it for the first time a few days ago on my TV set, which may be the way many will see Space Jam: A New Legacy due to the fact that it’s on HBO Max. It’s just another casualty of my ‘90s when I wasn’t seeing many movies and also wasn’t going to see “kids’ movies.” But I do have a soft spot in my heart for the Looney Tunes, and HBO Max even did a pretty good job with its revival last year with some new shorts.

Unfortunately, this is more of a Lebron James/Warner Bros jam, to the point where you might wonder whether Lebron dictated how he wanted to be depicted to the gaggle of writers, and then Warner Bros came in and said, “Make sure to mention how great all our other properties are as well!”

The general plot involves Don Cheadle’s dumbly pun-named Al G. Rhythm -- I promise you’ll cringe everytime you hear that name -- trying to get attention by creating a showstopping basketball game between James and his son in a video game designed by the latter, and for whatever reason, it’s James who turns to Bugs Bunny to put together a team. It’s nearly 30 minutes before we finally see the Looney Tunes together, and that’s probably the best part of the movie, as Bugs goes to visit different worlds in the Warners “server-verse” to find his compatriots. I won’t spoil some of the movie worlds it visits, but these are some of the movie’s funniest scenes, although the laughs are fleeting since they’re relatively short gags. They're ruined by the movie going overboard in an attempt to throw James into some of these worlds, particularly the DC Comics superhero-verse, which seems like it might be influenced by the cartoons but never quite achieves that style of animation.

An hour into the movie, the Tune Squad is turned into 3-dimensional CG, as they face the Goon Squad team of NBA and WNBA all-stars transformed into creatures with superpowers. It's just unable to recover as the movie’s last hour focuses on that game, which is fine other than the fact that it's an awkward combination of the CG players with the audience being all sorts of background cosplayers acting as if they were found on Hollywood Boulevard or Times Square. This is the first time in a long time where I felt that the background actors ruined every scene... and then, of course, James and Cheadle are in there in a guise that seems to be a mix of human and CG.

I’ve been a fan of director Malcolm Lee for quite a long time, but Space Jam: A New Legacy is just an absolute disaster of a mess. Not that any of that matters much, because James is clearly a better ball player than he is an actor, and that fact keeps any of the movie from really gelling or offering much in terms of fun or excitement. I wanted to like the movie or find out what so many kids seemed to enjoy about the original movie 25 years ago, but sadly, that just never happened.

Rating: 5/10

The movie I’m looking forward to the most this week and will probably have seen by the time I write this is the high-concept horror sequel, ESCAPE ROOM: TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS (Sony), which follows up a little over two years since the original Escape Room. This one is also directed by Adam Robitel and starring Taylor Russell and Ben Logan as survivors of an escape room created by an evil corporation doing experiments to see how people will act. The movie benefitted from putting terror into a very familiar and popular world of escape rooms, which obviously have not been quite as prominent since COVID racked the land.

The original Escape Room opened the very first weekend of January 2019, which has seen a lot of horror hits over the years, and it proved to be a wise move by Sony since it opened with $18.2 million despite the lack of any big stars. It also had better legs than most horror movies, grossing $57 million domestically and $98 million overseas. It also did quite well in DVD and Blu-ray sales, which meant that the sequel was greenlit fairly quickly.

Unlike Space Jam: A New Legacy, the Escape Room sequel is coming out a little over two years since the first movie, which is good since more young people will remember it. Another advantage it has is that it’s ONLY playing in theaters, plus it’s also getting a full 9-hour advantage by opening on Thursday afternoon, so it could make quite a bit of money before Space Jam shows up and takes over the second spot behind Marvel’s Black Widow. It’s also PG-13 so teenagers who might not have much interest in other movies out there (or they’ve already seen them) will be able to see the movie as a group without adults.

That said, I’m not quite sure the Escape Room sequel can open anywhere near the first movie only because it’s getting a summer release where it might not be getting quite the attention of other high-profile movies out there. I’d like to think it can pull in somewhere around $15 million and maybe moviegoers will surprise me since that first movie was generally popular and its sequel can’t be viewed on some streamer day and date. We’ll see if it can then translate that into a $35 to 40 million domestic total, since I’m not sure it can match the take of the original at least domestically.

My review for Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is over at Below the Line, and you'll see that I liked it quite a bit.

This Week’s Top 10 Predictions:

Since I don’t think that Space Jam: A New Legacy will make $40 million this weekend, that keeps Black Widow at the top for a second weekend in a row.

1. Black Widow (Marvel/Disney) - $35 million -57%

2. Space Jam: A New Legacy (Warner Bros.) - $27.8 million N/A

3. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (Sony) - $15 million N/A

4. F9 (Universal) - $6 million -48%

5. The Boss Baby: Family Business (Universal/DreamWorks Animation) - $4.8 million -46%

6. The Forever Purge (Universal) - $3.8 million -47%

7. A Quiet Place Part II (Paramount) - $2.4million -28%

8. Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (Focus) - $2.1 million N/A

9. Cruella (Disney) - $1.9 million -20%

10. The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard (Lionsgate) - .9 million -47%

This week’s “Chosen One” is Rosalynde LeBlanc and Tom Hurwitz’s documentary, CAN YOU BRING IT: BILL T. JONES AND D-MAN IN THE WATERS (Kino Lorber), which is a surprisingly good documentary that combines a classic work of contemporary dance with how it originated from out of the AIDS pandemic of the ‘80s. Bill T. Jones was running the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company with his love and partner Arnie Zane, when the latter died from AIDS, and the deaths that followed led Jones to create “D-Man in the Waters.” Decades later, LeBlanc is performing “D-Man” with her college dance class, and she, along with Cinematographer Tom Hurwitz, ASC, capture that experience and embellish it with interviews with Jones and the original company performers.

Honestly, I’ve always been a bit reticent about dance and movies about dance, even though I’m almost always find that I enjoy them, like, for example, Wim Wenders’ Pina and the Cunningham doc from a few years back. The same thing happened with Can You Bring It, where I went in expecting to hate it or not find it interesting, and nothing could be further from the truth. FIrst of all, the original dance performance is something to behold, because there’s just an amazing physicality involved, which is why it’s amazing to watch LeBlanc (and the Jones himself) discussing the conditions in which the piece was written, but also getting some historical context about New York City at the time and how it was left ravaged by AIDS.

Hurwitz has tons of experience with documentary but LeBlanc is a relative newbie, but the two of them working together create a fantastic portrait of Jones, his amazing choreography work, and how the world of dance has been improved by the existence of his work and younger dancers trying to recapture the spirit of the original work. As I said, this movie was a pleasant surprise by how much I enjoyed it, since it woudln’t normally be my thing, but if you have even a remote interest in NYC’s iconic contribution to dance and how it was torn apart by the ‘80s AIDS crisis, you should give this a look.

Can You Bring It opens at the Film Forum this Friday, plus it will also be available via Virtual Cinema nationwide. Also starting at the Film Forum on Friday is its first series since the pandemic, a comprehensive Humphrey Bogart hardboiled retrospective with 19 films in 35mm and DCP.

You can also read my interview with Director/DoP Tom Hurwitz over at Below the Line later today.

A movie I’ve really been looking forward to seeing is Morgan Neville’s ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN (Focus Features), which does for the famed celebrity author and chef what Neville’s previous movie, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, did for Mister Rogers, really going in-depth into the life and career of the celebrated and opinionated foodie. Bourdain committed suicide in June 2018, leaving a lot of his friends and fans wondering why he would take his own life when he was at the height of his career. Neville’s film looks at that, but it takes some time before it gets there.

Oddly, even though I was a huge Bourdain fan and even moreso after reading his book, “Kitchen Confidential,” this isn’t my favorite movie Neville has made, and I’m still trying to figure out why. Sure, there’s tons of extra never-before-seen footage from the taping of his various world-travelling television shows. They do show us another side of Bourdain that maybe we didn’t get to see from what was eventually aired.

I guess I was disappointed that Neville didn’t try to talk to Asia Argento, or maybe he did, and she declined? (I was hoping to talk to Morgan Neville for Below the Line about this movie, but it wasn’t meant to be.) Bourdain’s friends and co-workers on the show talk about how Argento’s inclusion into Bourdain’s life disrupted the creation of his television show, particularly the Hong Kong episode Argento directed, which apparently wasn’t without its problems, even before it was yanked from CNN after Bourdain’s death. No one blames Argento for Bourdain's choice to kill himself, but it would have been nice to get her take on the man for a more complete profile.

Even so, one of my biggest issues with the movie -- and this is where I prove unequivocally that absolutely NO ONE reads this column -- has nothing to do with Neville’s filmmaking prowess or storytelling ability, but more to do with the complete inability by many that talk about his death to understand why there have been so many prominent suicides by hanging: Bourdain, Michael Hutchence of INXS, Chris Connelly of Soundgarden, and quite a few more. When you make the decision to end your life by hanging, there’s only two ways it can go: you fail miserably i.e. the rope snaps, the knots aren’t tied properly... or you die. Even if you have second thoughts while you’re standing on the chair, once you drop, you’re dead even if you merely slipped. This is why hanging has been such a popular form of execution for hundreds and hundreds of years. It’s hard to screw it up. Unfortunately, when you’ve decided you no longer want to live, and you decide to hang yourself, it’s much easier to succeed in doing so… and for better or worse, I’m not sure that Neville or any of Bourdain’s friends interviewed have ever been to that point where they tried to hang themselves to really understand that. It’s minor and probably will be a non-issue to most seeing this movie, but having been at that point of hopelessness myself (probably for far different reasons than Bourdain), that bothered me a little. That sort of context would have helped people who watch the movie understand Bourdain's last moments.

Despite those issues, Roadrunner brilliantly captures the spirit and tone of Bourdain’s character as depicted on his various television series. That's why Roadrunner is a movie that mostly worked for me as a fan of Bourdain’s amazing writing and television work.

Focus continues to give its movies semi-wide releases, and this one is going pretty wide into 800 theaters, so it might be able to peek into the top 10, maybe?

Another movie coming to theaters is Michael Sarnoski’s PIG (NEON), starring Nicholas Cage as Robin Feld, a reclusive hermit of a man who once was a legendary Portland chef. He’s now living on his own in the middle of nowhere with his truffle-foraging pig, but one night, some people break in and steal the pig, thinking that it’s their path to fortunes. Robin isn’t having any of it, and he follows his pig’s trail to a fight club and then to the father of one of his main buyers (Alex Wolff).

Even though I’ve known about this movie for some time, I didn’t really know that much about it. Like man, I expected it to be a straight-up revenge action flick a bit like John Wick, but the only thing this has in common with that is that this as terrific a showcase for Cage as an actor as that was for Keanu Reeves. Spending much of the movie completely bedraggled and beaten-up, this is still a far more subdued performance for Cage than some might be expecting, and a slower and more subdued film with only a few moments achieving anything that could be considered “action.”

Even so, this is such a great vehicle for Cage, and Alex Wolff is also quite good, plus there’s a foodie aspect to the movie that should make it a great double feature with Roadrunner. It should be expected with so much of it involving truffles, which not many people outside of chefs and gourmands know much about

Some people might go into Pig with the wrong expectations of this being some sort of genre revenge flick, but it’s in fact a pretty solid character drama, truly showing off Cage’s terrific ability at creating character, so hopefully, it will find its audience even it might not be the one some might expect.

Rating: 7.5/10

Pig will actually open in a few hundred theaters nationwide so plenty of opportunities to see it that way.

Netflix has a duo of high-profile films this week, including the action-thriller GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE (Netflix), starring Karen Gillan and directed by Israreli filmmaker Navot Papushado (Big Bad Wolves). Gillan plays Sam, an assassin for a group called The Firm, a second generation assassin no less since her mother Scarlet (Lena Headey) was also an assassin. One day, she finds herself on the bad side of a crime lord whose son she killed (on a mission) and finds herself having to fight off dozens of killers as she tries to protect that man’s 9-year-old daughter Emily (Chloe Coleman).

I can’t believe how much I absolutely hated a good part of this movie, because I generally like Gillan and some of the others in this movie, but I don’t any of them are doing particularly good work. For instance, Paul Giamatti is in full-on scenery-chewing mode as head of the Firm, but there’s also a great trio of women known as the Librarians, played by Michelle Yeoh, Carla Gugino and Angela Bassett, who I wish were in the film more than they actually are, because they literally are the best part of the film. (I also was pretty disappointed by Coleman’s bland performance lacking any of the personality she showed in My Spy, in which she was very funny.)

Basically, it feels like this is another filmmaker who has seen Tarantino’s Kill BIll a few dozen times and thought they could do something just as cool. The fact that it’s so flagrant and obvious in its ripping that movie off, it’s almost impossible to fully enjoy it. What’s really missing is Tarantino’s knack for sharp writing, because the writing in this movie is just terrible.

I thought the score was probably the most interesting aspect of the movie, but even that was highly derivative of what Tarantino has done. Even the needle drop choices during the bigger action pieces feel too much like something Tarantino might do, but generally better.

Sure, there’s some cool action scenes, and the last act generally gets better once Headey and the Librarians rejoin the fray to fight off a cadre of henchmen, but the writing never improves, so it’s just a movie that relies on far too many “oooo… Cooooool!” moments that never really come together.

As much as Gunpowder Milkshake tries to be cool and stylish, it always feels like it’s trying too hard without understanding why movies like Tarantino’s and others work so well. Any of the bad-ass fight sequences are constantly marred as soon as there tries to be any sort of talking or story.

Rating: 5.5/10

The third part of the horror series based on R.L. Stine’s books, FEAR STREET PART 3: 1666 (Netflix), will hit the streamer on Friday, this one being a prequel to the previous two movies, taking place in 1666. I’m still behind on this series, but looking forward to a night where I can finally watch all three.

I definitely had more movies to watch than usual that I just didn’t get to include some of them like Martin WIlson’s directorial debut, the horror-thriller GREAT WHITE (RLJEfilms/Shudder), which stars Katrina Bowden and others, about a tourist trip that turns into a nightmare when five passengers on a sea plane get stranded miles from the shore and try to survive as they run out of supplies and run into, you guessed it, a shark. Sounds like my kind of movie, but I’ve just been swamped.

I was pretty tickled by the premise for Jean-Paul Salomé’s MAMA WEED (Brainstorm Media/Music Box Films), starring the wonderful Isabelle Hupert as Patience, a French-Arabic translator for the Paris anti-narcotics police unit who interprets calls between the city’s top drug dealers. She’s taking care of her aging mother and one day she hears the son of one of her mother’s nurses, so she tries to protect him but ends up with a huge cache of hash, so she becomes a drug dealer herself, becoming the persona of “Mama Weed.” Nominated for a César for its screenplay, the movie will open in select theaters this Friday and then be available On Demand on July 23.

Another doc of note is Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt’s NO ORDINARY MAN (Oscilloscope), which tells the story of American jazz musician Billy Tipton who had spent his entire career passing off as a man, unbeknownst to his wife and son that he was born female. It’s an intriguing story that unfortunately got mangled by the talk shows after Tipton’s death in 1989, but the filmmakers use an interesting way to tell the story rather than using talking heads. I haven’t actually watched it yet, but it sounds intriguing. It will open at the IFC Center in New York and the Landmark Nuart in L.A. on Friday.

Debuting on Hulu this week is the amazing six-part docuseries called MCCARTNEY 3, 2, 1 (Hulu), which as you can safely assume is about Beatles founder Paul McCartney, covering his sixty-year career as he talks with producer Rick Rubin in a studio filled with instruments and tapes of some of the great songs that Rubin mixes different elements up and down to discuss how they were done with McCartney. I generally love music docs, but this is something truly special that I expect to rewatch many times over the next few years.

Netflix also has a new docuseries called HEIST (Netflix) and is debuting a doc about tennis great, Naomi Osaka, this week. Meanwhile, the anthology prequel series, American Horror Stories, debuts on FX and FX on Hulu this week, as well, so it’s a pretty busy weekend, which was bound to happen after last week’s bye week.

Other movies out this week that I didn’t get to include:

Die in a Gunfight (Lionsgate) Out of Death (Vertical) Casanova, Last Love (Cohen Media) How to Deter a Robber

Next week, two more new movies, including the action prequel, SNAKE EYES, starring Henry Golding, and M. Night Shyamalan’s new thriller, OLD.

[mleighsquickspot]

Back at it again my Lovelies. I hope you're doing well, staying safe and all that goodness. I hope your weekend has left you feeling recharged and ready to take this week on. As always check me out on my other social media's the link will be below and let's get into my thoughts on last weeks questions...

Tuesday, the line "I don't know their intentions" just gets to me when I listen to the end of most bad encounter stories. I listen to stories narrated on several different horror channels and so many of them end with that line. Noe true if you got away the OP's don't know for sure what the bad guy or person's wanted to exactly to do to them, but come on. Given the situation in most cases you can think of what the intentions were. I totally understand that no one in a horror situation would want to linger on thoughts of what could have happened to them... I don't know, that line just really irks me for some reason.

Thursday, the Muppet show the Barbarian and the Troll lol it seems kind of fun. I watched a quick moment of it last time it was on and to me it's like if Zena warrior princess met Skeletor from He-Man, and they threw in a troll for some reason lol. I guess I'll have to watch more maybe but from what I've seen so far it gives me a giggle or two.

Sunday, lol all I can say is wow, it looks like a mix of a whole bunch of stuff. I can say I like the visuals and a lot of the call backs and references but it still is very silly. And I know its for kids and the original film way silly to yet, this looks very crazy. Also why Space Jam Legacy? I guess some one really liked Tron Legacy lol.

Let me know what you think and pass the thought along my friend's 😊.

Stay well and safe Inter World 💗.

Click on my new Link Tree link to find all of my social media https://linktr.ee/Mleighqs

Check out my YouTube Channel and become a $1 patron and support my work.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 7/23/21 - SNAKE EYES, OLD, VAL, JOE BELL, SETTLERS, JOLT, MANDIBLES, and More!

So I definitely underestimated Space Jam: A New Legacy last week and way overestimated Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, maybe because I liked the latter way more than the former and probably underestimated the nostalgia factor for Space Jam… oh, yeah, and the fact that it was also on HBO Max, which didn’t really matter since it grossed more than $30 million anyway. Meanwhile, Escape Room, a rare theatrical-only movie, failed to bring people into theaters to see it as it ended up making about half what I expected. Oh, well. It happens. Live and learn.

Hey, guess what? We don’t have any sequels this week! Okay, to be fair, we do have a spin-off/prequel sort of thing, so I guess that counts.

The latter is SNAKE EYES: G.I. JOE ORIGINS (Paramount Pictures/MGM/Skydance), the latest attempt by Hasbro Films to reboot its G.I. Joe franchise with Henry Golding from Crazy Rich Asians playing the popular anti-hero from the oh-so-popular Hasbro toys, comics and cartoons. As you can surmise from the subtitle, Snake Eyes, directed by Robert Schwentke (Red, R.I.P.D.), is an origin story for the most enigmatic member of the Joe team. Much of the rest of the cast are Asian actors or martial arts specialists like Iko Uwais from The Raid and its sequel. The movie does introduce Samara Weaving from Ready or Not as Scarlet, another popular G.I. Joe character, as well as her counterpart, the Baronness, so it’s definitely a G.I. Joe movie still.

It’s been quite some time since the previous Joe movie, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which was released in March 2013 where it opened with $40.5 million, which is less than the previous movie, 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which opened with $54.7 million. The two movies made $150.2 million and $122.5 million respectively, although “Retaliation” did slightly better overseas to gross $375.7 million to Rise of Cobra’s $302 million. Those aren’t huge numbers compared to Hasbro’s other big toy-related franchise, the “Transformers” movies by Michael Bay, which were doing almost $300 million in the U.S. alone. Retaliation may have been hurt by being delayed a number of times putting more time between the original movie and sequel, but it introduced a few great new ideas and characters played by Dwayne “Franchise Viagra” Johnson and Bruce “You Have My Direct Deposit Info, Right?” Willis.

There is an odd connection between “Retaliation” and Snake Eyes, because the former was directed by Jon Chu, who directed Golding in Crazy Rich Asians, the movie that broke him out. Chu had talked forever about doing another G.I. Joe movie but it seems like he’s moved on and has a lot on his plate now, so who knows if we’ll ever get another direct sequel? It’s hard to say if and how Snake Eyes might integrate with previous or future Joe movies.

Either way, the G.I. Joe franchise obviously has a number of dedicated fans who might want to see more of where Snake Eyes came from, and the trailers make it look like it’s in a similar vein as John Wick Chapter 3. Unfortunately, I won’t be seeing this until Tuesday night and reviews won’t hit until Thursday, so I’m going to have to gauge interest in this without knowing whether critics liked this any more than the previous movies. (Okay, reviews went live at 3 this morning, but I was already asleep, having already finished writing this column, as always.)

I can see Snake Eyes pushing for an opening somewhere in the mid-$20 millions, and maybe it will over-perform like last week’s Space Jam: A New Legacy or Mortal Kombat and bring in closer to $30 million, since one presumes that the Joe fanbase hasn’t gone anywhere and would go with this over Old.

Mini-Review: While I’m not really much of a G.I. Joe fan, I am a fan of martial arts, swordplay, and Japanese culture like Yakuza and samurai and such. Not really knowing that much about the title character of Snake Eyes, I was kind of interested in knowing more about him, especially the fact that they cast a real actor to play him for this movie in Henry Golding. (Sorry, not sorry, Ray Park.)

We meet him as a boy with no name, having gotten his nickname from the man who killed his father when he was a boy, urging his dad to roll dice in order to live. He rolls (what else?) snake eyes. Decades later, the boy is a man working for the Yakuza and a particularly nasty guy named Kenta (Takehiro Hira) who nearly kills Snake Eyes before he’s paired with Tommy (Andrew Koji), the prodigal son of the Arashikage clan who also happen to be Kenta’s sworn enemies. Having saved Tommy’s life, Snake Eyes is urged to stay at the family castle and train to join the clan as an assassin. His training involves a series of tests conducted by Blind Master (Peter Mensah) and Hard Master (Iko Uwais), but we soon learn that Snake Eyes is still loyal to Kenta and used his friendship with Tommy as a ruse to infiltrate the castle and steal their greatest weapon. Oh, yeah there’s also giant snakes, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Having seen Robert Schwentke’s The Captain, I know the director can make great movies, and Snake Eyes is probably one of his better American films, at least that I’ve seen. The reason this movie work at all is the casting for most of the may Asian roles are fantastic. I particularly enjoyed seeing Haruke Abe as Akiko, one of the truly kick-ass women in the movie, but the same can be said for Eri Ishida, who plays Tommy’s grandmother and the head of Tommy’s clan, and she too has some great action moments. The point is that Snake Eyes doesn’t suffer from the decision to cast talented Asian actors in the same way that Mortal Kombat did.

The movie’s biggest issues arrive when they try to fit G.I. Joe and Cobra into the mix (about an hour into the movie), because it definitely feels shoehorned into what is becoming a decent movie about honor and loyalty. I have never heard of Spanish actress Ursula Corbero, but she’s absolutely garbage as Baronness, vamping and trying to make the role more comicky apparently. By comparison, I’m generally a fan of Samara Weaving, but she isn’t much better as Scarlett. Since these are both popular G.I. Joe characters, I can’t imagine the fans will be too happy.

A lot of what happens at the end is telegraphed from a mile away, especially if you already figured out where the relationship between Snake Eyes and Tommy is going. (Maybe it isn’t a secret, but in case it isn’t obvious…)

Snake Eyes works fine as the G.I. Joe origin it’s meant to be, but I would have been perfectly fine without any G.I. Joe references at all, and if this was just a cool Asian action flick like The Villainess or some of Takashi Miike’s yakuza films.

Rating: 7/10

M. Night Shyamalan returns to theaters after a brief sojourn into TV with Apple TV+’s Servant (which is great) with his latest high-concept thriller, OLD (Universal Pictures), which involves a family who goes to visit a remote tropical beach where they learn that something on the beach is making them age extraordinarily fast. The movie stars Gael Garcia Bernal, Vicky Krieps from Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, Alex Wolff from Hereditary (and last week’s Pig), and Thomasin McKenzie from Jojo Rabbit. It’s a pretty great ensemble cast for sure, but how many of those actors have a proven track record to bring people into theaters? Not many, but will that matter?

Shyamalan has had an amazing career as a filmmaker in terms of box office with six movies that grossed over $100 million (and a seventh that came close), one movie (Signs) that grossed over $200 million, and then his early film, The Sixth Sense, which came close to $300 million domestically. (This is all domestic, if you didn’t figure it out.) Shyamalan’s movies have done very well overseas, often matching the amount the movies made in the States. Shyamalan’s last two movies, 2017’s Split and 2019’s Glass, took the director back to his earlier movie, 2000’s Unbreakable, starring Bruce Willis, and both those movies grossed more. (To be fair, ticket prices have increased a lot since 2000.) Glass opened with $40 million in January 2019, roughly the same as Split’s opening, and that’s a fairly standard opening for the filmmaker.

Old doesn’t have that connection to a popular past movie, nor does it really have the starpower of some of Shyamalan’s movies, so it’s definitely at a disadvantage and possibly more in line with his 2015 “comeback” thriller, The Visit, which grossed $65.2 million from an opening of $25.2 million.

Horror movies and thrillers don’t necessarily need to have big name stars but it doesn’t hurt -- look at Ethan Hawke’s forays into genre with Sinister and The Purge for Blumhouse -- and though any of the cast could appear on talk shows to promote the film, I’m not sure if any of them could be considered a draw at this point. (Maybe Alex Wolff, since he’s quite popular among young women for his horror movies and music career.)

Any way you look at it, Shyamalan has become a filmmaker whose name on a film helps drive people to see the movies in theaters, and that will be the case here, as well. You combine the Shyamalan name with an easy-to-sell concept like a beach that ages people (vs. the relaxation beaches normally provide)

My review for this one will be over at Below the Line later on Thursday, but I’m presuming that critics will be mixed on this one at best. If they go negative, which I could see happening, that might theoretically hurt the movie’s chances, although it should still be good for opening weekend.

Because of this, and because Old might lose some of its male audiences to the above Snake Eyes -- oddly, neither of these movies will be available on streaming day and date, mind you -- Shyamalan’s latest will probably end up in the mid-to-high-teens, although it might be able to make $20 million in a push.

1. Snake Eyes (Paramount/MGM/Skydance) - $24.1 million N/A

2. Old (Universal) - $17 million N/A

3. Space Jam: A New Legacy (Warner Bros.) - $15 million -51%

4. Black Widow (Marvel/Disney) - $13.5 million -48%

5. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (Sony) - $4.5 million -49%

6. F9 (Universal) - $4.4 million -43%

7. The Boss Baby: Family Business (Universal/DreamWorks Animation) - $2.6 million -45%

8. The Forever Purge (Universal) - $2.1 million -49%

8. A Quiet Place Part II (Paramount) - $1.6 million -25%

10. Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (Focus) - $1 million -47%

There are a few more theatrical releases, but let’s start by getting into this week’s “Chosen One”, which is…

Leo Scott and Ting Poo’s doc VAL (Amazon) refers to actor Val Kilmer, who goes through his entire career in this fascinating portrait in which we see him in the present day dealing with the debilitating throat cancer that’s nearly taken his voice. Culled from almost four decades of archival footage, most of it shot by Kilmer himself, the film puts together an amazing story of Kilmer’s life as a working actor, but also captures his family life, his tough relationship with his father and how his marriage and career deteriorated over time.

It really surprised me how much I loved this movie, because honestly, I’ve never been a particularly big Kilmer fan, other than a few favorites like Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, and probably a few others. In fact, I finally saw Top Gun for the first time a few months ago, and I wasn’t even that big a fan, as I don’t think it aged well. But what’s great about Val, the movie, is that you get to see some of Kilmer’s own footage from on set and off for movies like Top Gun and even The Island of Doctor Moreau, which he admits was a complete disaster, a shame since it was the only chance to work with his idol, Marlon Brando (who barely shows up to set).

What’s particularly eerie is hearing a younger Val narrating the film, clearly recorded from before he was hit with the debilitating throat cancer, but the filmmakers did a great job editing all of Kilmer’s footage and words into a surprisingly cohesive (and still very linear) story.

Besides seeing the footage and how it meshed with Kilmer’s narration, I also greatly appreciated the score by Garth Stevenson, as well as the song choices, which includes some familiar tunes but always in a different way than what we’re used to. I’m really curious if Val picked some of the tunes himself, but whoever the music supervisor was on this film, really did an amazing job getting songs that meshed well with Stevenson’s music.

Val is a terrific portrait of an actor who probably never got the level of respect he deserved , but it’s also a film that will make you think of your own life and mortality.

Mark Wahlberg stars in and as JOE BELL (Roadside Attractions/Vertical) in this drama directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green, who helmed the excellent and underrated Monsters and Men. Green didn’t write this one, but it was written by Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry, the Oscar-winning writers of Brokeback Mountain. With that in mind, you’d expect something more interesting, but as I watched Joe Bell, I actually wasn’t aware that it was based on a real person/story.

The long and short of it is that Wahlberg’s Joe Bell is a father who has decided to walk across the country from Oregon to New York City to talk to anyone who will listen about bullying, and why it’s bad. Yup, that’s it. That’s the movie. To be fair, we do get to see Joe spending time with his gay son Jadin (Reed Miller), and those are generally the best parts of the film, but one thing that really didn’t work for me was the structure, especially the time spent (SPOILER!) pretending that Jadin was already dead before Joe went on his cross-country walk. It’s something that’s casually revealed when Joe stops in a gay bar for a drink and mentions it to a drag queen.

Otherwise, Joe Bell is a movie that leans so heavily on the screenplay and Wahlberg’s performance, which is better than others we’ve seen from him but isn’t that great. Overall, the film is just so dour, glum and frankly, quite dull, that there’s very little that can make it more interesting, especially since the narrative and structure makes the whole thing kind of obvious.

Maybe there’s a better version of this movie but when you get to what is quite a grim ending and then you realize that it’s a true story, you kind of wish that thing called “artistic license” was used more liberally to make a better movie. All Joe Bell does is state the obvious: that bullying is bad, especially towards people different and possibly more fragile than you.

Rating: 6/10

I'm not sure how wide Roadside plans on releasing Joe Bell, but I'd expect 400 to 500 theaters, but I'm not sure that's enough to get it into the Top 10.

Wyatt Rockefeller’s feature film directorial debut, SETTLERS (IFC Midnight) takes place on Mars, and at first, it deals with a couple (played by Johnny Lee Miller and Sofia Boutella) living on a remote base there with their young daughter Remmy (Brooklynn Prince), but it’s soon attacked by a stranger who wants them to leave. The movie premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last month and will get a release into select theaters on Friday as well as be released in various digital formats.

Settlers starts off as if it might be a home invasion movie with a sci-fi twist, but that aspect of it is fleeting, as it soon becomes a drama where the stranger Jerry (Ismael Cruz Cordova) moves in with Remmy and her mother, and then other stuff happens. Oh, yeah, there’s also an adorable robot named Steve.

Don’t get me wrong, because I genuinely liked Settlers, although I think I was expecting something more genre-y since it’s being released by IFC Midnight. Because of the setting, I was expecting something more science fiction or home invasion, and I guess comparing it to a Western would be fair due to the wilderness setting, but really, it’s a character drama about how three people need to coexist together, especially when one of them is a stranger in their midst. Seeing how Boutella’s character slowly warms up to Jerry while Remmy is still suspicious and even angry at her mother accepting the stranger.

In many ways, this is Prince’s movie, because she’s so good in this role that she almost supports the adult actors by leading. Prince is so compelling that she’s even able to keep you interested when Remmy is just wandering around, exploring various aspects of the environment around their home base. That is, at least until the last act when the film jumps forward a number of years and Nell Tiger Free (from Servant) takes over the role of Remmy (quite fluidly, in fact).

This creates a very different dynamic between Jerry and Remmy that might feel a bit pervy to some women (okay, most women). Cordova is also quite good in a role that’s tough to sell, because he isn’t the typical bad man.

Settlers is a quiet and subdued film with not a lot of action or dialogue for that matter, but it reminds me quite a bit of Moon, and it’s a similarly solid debut by Rockefeller, showing him to be a strong storyteller able to get strong performances out of his relatively small cast. (Oh, and hey, I should have an interview with Rockefeller next week over at Below the Line.)

Rating: 7/10

Kate Beckinsale stars in the action-thriller JOLT (Amazon), which hits Amazon Prime Video this Friday. It's directed by Tanya Wexler (Buffaloed), and in the movie, Beckinsale plays Lindy, a woman with a debilitating condition that gives her insane strength when she gets angry, and she gets angry a LOT. But no, this is not like the upcoming She-Hulk series, though it’s an incredible action movie for sure.

Beckingsale’s Lindy has something called “intermittent explosive disorder” which I’m not sure if that’s a real thing (probably not), but it gives her incredible strength when she gets mad, and it forces her to wear a vest that gives a huge electrical charge when she pushes a button. So yeah, the movie feels a lot like Crank if it had a woman lead instead of Jason Statham. Honestly, if that alone doesn’t sell you on Jolt, then this movie probably isn’t gonna be for you.

It actually starts out as a pseudo-rom-com as Lindy meets a nice guy, played by Jai Courtney, but after a few dates and some great sex, he’s killed, and Lindy is upset but even more furious than normal, swearing to find the man responsible for killing her kinda-boyfriend. So yeah, Jolt quickly turns into a revenge thriller, but it’s one with lots of Beckinsale kicking ass, some great car chases, and lots of funny doofuses getting their asses handed to them, both figuratively and literally.

Surprisingly, Wexler didn’t write this one -- the screenplay’s Scott Wascha -- but her reputation and previous films helped her put together a great cast around Beckinsale, including Stanley Tucci as her therapist who set her up with the shock vest, and Bobby Cannavale and Laverne Cox as the detectives investigating the death of Lindy’s beau, all three of them offering some great humorous dynamics to the mix.

That’s probably why Jolt is quite satisfying, not only in terms of being a female empowerment movie, but also not taking itself too seriously and always keeping the comedy on the darker side. For instance, there’s a scene where Lindy throws live babies at Cox to distract her, but what do you expect from a movie that enjoys giving its main character literal electroshock therapy?

So yeah, I definitely liked Jolt as an action-comedy. Maybe it was a bit too violent for my tastes, at times, but it definitely is everything I hoped to get out of Gunpowder Milkshake last week, and honestly, I had no idea Wexler had this kind of movie in her.

Rating: 7/10

Quirky French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux (Rubber) returns with MANDIBLES (Magnet), a comedy of sorts about a pair of dumbass friends -- Manu (Grégoire Ludig from Keep Your Eye Out) and David Marsais’ Jean-Gab, who steal a car for a job only to find a giant fly inside its trunk, so they decide to train it to rob banks for them.

Yup, it’s another weird one from Dupieux, and honestly, it took me a long time to really get into it, as these two doofuses get into all sorts of predicaments (and who have an amusing “secret” handshake). Where it really takes off is when they meet a group of vacationers, including the one and only Adèle Exarchopoulos as Agnes, a woman who mistakes one of the guys as a high-school lover. Things just get zanier from there as the guys try to sneak in their giant trained fly -- now named Dominique -- into the vacation home where they’re staying with a bunch of Agnes suspicious friends and her brother. (There’s also one woman who literally shouts everything due to a condition, and at first, it was more aggravating than funny, but like everything else in this, she gets funnier over time.)

In fact, after I got to the end of the movie, I ended up going back to rewatch the first half again to see if I missed anything, and surprise, surprise, the two guys and their antics had definitely grown on me by the end, making it easier to enjoy a second view. I certainly wouldn’t recommend any of Dupieux’s movies to just anyone, and that goes for Mandibles, but if you enjoyed the quirky humor of Rubber or last year’s Deerskin, then you might not hate this one, but it’s also not a movie I’d recommend you rush out to see in theaters.

Rating: 6.5/10

A few more words about a few other docs… (As usual, I didn’t get to watch nearly as much as I hoped to get to this week.)

I did get to watch Garret Price’s WOODSTOCK '99: PEACE, LOVE AND RAGE (HBO), which will hit the cable network on Friday. Honestly, I barely remember it, and I’m not even sure I watched it PPV or at all, because there weren’t really that many acts at this year’s festival that interested me. I mean, Limp Bizkit? Korn? Rage Against the Machine? I wasn’t really into any of those in the late ‘90s, and certainly not my sworn-enemy Jewel or Sheryl Crow or Alannis Morrissette, the festival’s token women who were slotted into separate days. Even so, Price is a pretty decent documentation of all the awfulness at that particular festival from portapotties mixing shit in with all the mud or the many cases of sexual harassment, assault and flat-out rape that took place on the campgrounds. I’m sure I heard most of it but seeing it put together like this in the film’s two-hour running time just makes it harder to watch without tearing up. A pretty solid doc that I’m not sure I could fully recommend, but hey, I’ve never been to one of these festivals and after watching this movie, I probably never will. (It is interesting how Price contrasts the disaster of Woodstock ‘99 with the hugely-successful Coachella, which started not long afterwards.)

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to Jamila Wignot’s doc AILEY (NEON) about choreographer Alvin Ailey, making this the second movie about dance or choreography in a row. It opens in New York this weekend, in L.A. theaters next Friday July 30 and then everywhere on August 6.

Then there’s ALL THE STREETS ARE SILENT (Greenwich), Jeremy Elkin’s doc that covers the crossroads between skateboard and hip-hop in downtown Manhattan during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. For whatever reason, I wasn’t able to get around to this, although it features Rosario Dawson, Bobbito Garcia, Stretch Armstrong, Moby (him again?!), Fab 5 Freddy, and a lot of other rappers I’ve never heard of.

Also hitting HBO Max on Thursday is THROUGH OUR EYES (HBO Max/Sesame Workshop docuseries), a series of four 30-minute films designed for adults to watch with their kids age 9 and up, dealing with things like homelessness, parental incarceration, military caregiving, and climate displacement. Sounds fun.

Hitting Netflix on Wednesday is TROLLHUNTERS: RISE OF THE TITANS (Netflix), a movie based on the popular series produced by Guillermo del Toro, which I’ve also never see, so I guess I don’t have a lot to say about this.

Lastly, premiering this week is the second season of Apple TV+’s Emmy-nominated TED LASSO which is probably gonna win a bunch of those Emmys going by previous awards shows. It’s a very popular show. I’m still on Season 1, myself.

Other films I didn’t get to… (sorry, respective publicists!)

HERE AFTER (Vertical)

FEAR AND LOATHING IN ASPEN (Shout Studios!)

Next week, it’s a doozy! Disney finally releases Jungle Cruise, starring Dwayen Johnson and Emily Blunt, while there are two smaller movies looking to make some money, Thomas McCarthy’s Stillwater (Focus Features), starring Matt Damon, and David Lowery’s The Green Knight (A24), starring Dev Patel. Should be an interesting one.