#WhatToWatchThisWeekend TheWeekendWarrior Movies Reviews BoxOffice ThePossessionOfHannahGrace

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WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND November 30, 2018  - The Possession of Hannah Grace

Finally! A long-needed reprieve from the slew of fall releases with a weekend where there’s only one new wide release … and it’s the textbook definition of a “dumper,” too. At least all the Thanksgiving releases did better than I predicted, particularly Creed II, and they should continue to dominate over the next couple weeks until a bunch of new wide releases open on December 14.

THE POSSESSION OF HANNAH GRACE (Sony/Screen Gems)

I’m not even sure what to say about this horror movie, originally called “Cadaver,” except that it was directed by Dutch filmmaker Diederik Van Rooijen (no, I don’t know that name either) and that it’s been on the shelf for quite some time. Presumably, it’s a leftover from the Clint Culpepper Screen Gems that was famous for making low-budget horror films that would be bounced around the release calendar, sometimes for years. This one is about the found corpse of a young girl who may have been killed via exorcism.

This was originally supposed to open in the summer of 2017, but like so many other Screen Gems films, it was continually pushed back, so now it follows the studio’s summer horror release Slender Man, which probably should have done better than its $30.6 million domestic gross. The  it wound up on the less-than-desirable weekend after Thanksgiving, a known dumping ground.

Regardless, various horror hits have proven that having bankable stars isn’t completely necessary, and one thing that Possession has going for it is exactly that, having the word “possession” in its title, because it’s something that still holds a lot of interest for horror fans. Having the word “exorcism” in the title helped Scott Derickson’s debut The Exorcism of Emily Rose and The Last Exorcism, though not the latter’s unfortunate sequel. Chances are that few over the age of 20 will have any interest in the movie even with stronger horror films like Halloween and Overlord mostly vacating theaters.

Like Slender Man, this movie doesn’t really have any bankable stars, with Shay Mitchell from Pretty Little Liars being the film’s biggest name, followed by Grey Damon, Mirror Master from The Flash.

On top of that, Screen Gems is only opening Possession in less than 2,000 theaters, another pointer that it shows little faith in the movie, as does the fact it won’t be screened in advance for critics (another Screen Gems practice of olde). I’m sure that the critics forced to pay to see the movie on Thursday night to review will just be THRILLED to write raves about a movie that few will know or care about. Frankly, I’ll be shocked if The Possession of Hannah Grace gets anywhere near the top 5 this weekend, and a 7th place opening with between $5 and 6 million would be about as good as it should get.

This week’s Top 10 should look something like this…

1. Ralph Breaks the Internet  (Disney) - $24.5 million -56% 2. Creed II  (MGM) - $18.5 million -48% 3. The Grinch  (Universal) - $14 million -54% 4. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald  (Warner Bros.) - $12.7 million -57% 5. Bohemian Rhapsody  (20thCentury Fox) - $7 million -50% 6. Instant Family (Paramount) - $6.5 million -48% 7. The Possession of Hannah Grace  (Sony/Screen Gems) - $5.3 million N/A 8. Widows  (20thCentury Fox) – $4.4 million -47% 9. Robin Hood (Lionsgate) - $3.9 million -58% 10. Green Book  (Universal) - $3.3 million* -40%

*UPDATE: Universal didn’t expand this into more theaters as I expected, so I’ve lowered my number accordingly. Maybe the studio will expand it further next week.

LIMITED RELEASES

While there’s only one new wide release, there’s plenty of limiteds, and two of the most high-profile ones are from Netflix, one that’s also streaming Friday, the other streaming in December.  For those who want to go out this weekend, there’s also a musical-comedy to put horror fans into the holiday spirit that’s been running the genre fest circuit…

Those who have been waiting for this year’s big holiday musical zombie comedy are in luck, because John McPhail’s ANNA AND THE APOCALYPSE (Orion Pictures) comes out Friday after playing almost every genre festival going back to Fantastic Fest 2017. Taking place in the town of Little Haven, it stars Ella Hunt as Anna, a young woman planning for her high school holiday musical whose world is turned upside-down by the zombie apocalypse, but that’s not going to stop her and her friends from breaking out into song. I saw this film a few months back, and I was mixed on it, partially because it’s such an obvious homage to Shaun of the Dead but also has very modern poppy songs that really weren’t my cup-of-tea. I know a lot of people who love the movie, though, and if you want a fun time, I think the film is quickly becoming a cult classic among those who have seen and dug it.

MOWGLI: LEGEND OF THE JUNGLE is Andy Serkis’ second feature as a director, and as you may have guessed, it’s based on the same Rudyard Kipling novel “The Jungle Book” that inspired the Disney movies, using the performance capture CG technology Serkis perfected in the “Planet of the Apes” movies.  Featuring performances and voices by Cate Blanchett (voicing the python Kaa), Christian Bale (as Bagheera), Benedict Cumberbatch (Shere Khan) and Serkis himself as Balloo, this is a much darker take on the material, probably not for very small kids, but I liked it more than the Jon Favreau Disney movie, maybe because it handles things more seriously. I also thought newcomer Rohand Chand was a much more palatable Mowgli.  The film does decently when it’s just Mowgli and talking animals, but gets even better when humans are introduced into the story. Netflix will give Mowgli a limited theatrical release before streaming on the network starting Dec. 7.

The latest GKIDS animated contender to the Disney animated Oscar domination is MIRAI (GKIDS), the new film from filmmaker Mamoru Hosoda (Summer Wars, Wolf Children) along with Japan’s Studio Chizu. It’s about a four-year-old boy named Kun, whose parents give him a baby sister named Mirai (or “future”), who he immediately is jealous of due to the attention she gets. I watched the dubbed version of the movie (not my favorite thing since dubbed Japanese films always seem somewhat dumbed down for Western audiences), featuring the voices of John Cho, Rebecca Hall and Daniel Dae Kim, and it’s a fairly sweet movie with some great life lessons for younger children. It doesn’t have as many fantasy aspects as other Japanese Anime films but it does have Kun interacting with different versions of those around him, including his dog.

Receiving a one-week qualifying release on Friday is Germany’s Oscar entry is NEVER LOOK AWAY  (Sony Classics), the new film from Oscar-winning filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others). This is another historical drama, loosely based on the life of visual artist Gerhard Richter with Tom Schilling (Woman in Gold) playing a young artist who has watched East Berlin go from Nazi occupation, watching his older sister be sentenced to death due to her mental illness by a ruthless Nazi doctor (Sebastian Koch), to falling in love with a young woman (Paula Beer) who happens to be that doctor’s daughter and escaping to West Berlin during the country’s contemporary art movement. I found the movie to be overly long and a little confusing, because I wasn’t sure what the movie was supposed to be about until about 30 minutes into it.  Either way, it will open for its full theatrical release in February.

Another Oscar entry out Friday is the one from Italy, which is Alice Rohrwacher’s HAPPY AS LAZARRO, exec. produced by Martin Scorsese and getting a limited theatrical release in New York and L.A. (mainly for Oscar qualification) at the same time as streaming on Netflix. It’s a fable set within the countryside estate of Inviolata, a community of hard-working tobacco farmers who are being used by the area’s greedy Marquise. Much of the film is seen through the eyes of a teenaged simpleton named Lazzaro (Adriano Tardiolo), who observes more than he speaks, creating an introspective film that jumps forward in time… and that’s about all I can say about what’s a pretty major plot twist.

Another acclaimed doc getting a limited theatrical release is Dava Whisenant’s BATHTUBS OVER BROADWAY (Focus Features), which follows comedy writer Steve Young who discovered a number of vintage record albums that ended up being “internal use only” cast recordings for Broadway musicals made for some of America’s biggest companies like General Electric, Ford and more. The winner of this year’s Albert Maysles Award for Best New Documentary Director, the film features interviews with David Letterman (White wrote for Letterman’s show and Letterman is also the film’s exec. producer), Chita Rivera, Martin Short and more, and it will get a limited release Friday.

In THE MERCY  (Screen Media), directed by James Marsh (The Theory of Everything, Man on Wire), Colin Firth plays Donald Crowhurst, an amateur sailor who participates in a 1968 round-the-world sailing race.  Although he isn’t as experienced as other racers, Crowhurst’s design sense convinces him that he can be the fastest in the round-the-world race, much to the concern of his wife (played by Rachel Weisz). Crowhurst’s journey in his boat the Teignmouth Electron was the stuff of legend as he relayed stories back to the press in England, but as they say on the internet, you would not BELIEVE how his story ended…. And I won’t give it away. As a sailing aficionado myself (having received my sailing license a few short years ago), I was pretty excited for this movie when I heard about it a few years ago -- I even asked Firth about this when I interviewed him for the last Bridget Jones movie -- but it ended up being a dull and ultimately dour affair that didn’t even keep this sailing fan invested.

Opening on Wednesday at the Metrograph is Gary Hustwit’s doc Rams (Film First) about design innovator Dieter Rams, best known for his work at Braun and Vitsoe. No surprise that the theater owned by a designer and doc filmmaker in Alex Olch would show this, and Hustwit will be there in person after the 6pm screening Friday and 4:30pm screening Sunday to discuss. Also, it features an original score by Brian Eno!

A rare limited release from Warner Bros’ is Til Schweiger’s Head Full of Honey, an English remake of his own 2014 German hit of the same name. It stars Nick Nolte as Amadeus, a man who is slowly succumbing to dementia, much to the consternation of his son (Matt Dillon) and his wife (Emily Mortimer). In order to help her grandfather get back some of his memories, Amadeus’ 10-year-old granddaughter Tilda (Nolte’s actual daughter, Sophia Lane Nolte) takes her grandfather to Venice before he can be thrown into a home.

Opening in select theaters and On Demand is the John Pogue-directed crime-thriller Blood Brother  (Lionsgate) starring R’n’B star Trey Songz (aka Tremaine Neverson) as a cop forced to risk his life to stop an ex-con from getting revenge on the childhood friends who let him take the fall for a crime they committed. It also has a cameo by WWE superstar R-Truth!

For one “night” only, people can see the director’s cut of Lars von Trier’s controversial serial killer thriller The House That Jack Built  (IFC Films), starring Matt Dillon, which played (and disgusted many) at Cannes over the summer. I haven’t seen it yet but already got my ticket, hoping that I won’t be as nauseated as I was in the clit-snipping scene in Anti-Christ. Von Trier’s latest also stars and the “American cut” (or whatever it’s called) will be released theatrically on Dec. 14. If you’re in New York, it’s showing almost all day at the IFC Center but with many screenings already sold out.

Henry Barrial’s drama DriverX (Sundance Selects) stars Patrick Fabian (The Last Exorcism) as a  middle-class L.A. father whose record store closes, so to keep his family afloat, he takes a job driving for a ride-share service called “DriverX,” forcing him to learn to deal with his young passengers. It opens at the IFC Center in New York and presumably in L.A. and On Demand.

Just in time for the holidays, the family-friendly animated Elliot: The Littlest Reinder  (Screen Media) will open in select cities Friday and then be available for one-night only in other areas on Saturday night. It’s the story of a miniature horse named Elliot who travels to the North Pole to compete for a spot on Santa’s sleigh team. It features the voices of Josh Hutcherson, John Cleese, Martin Short, Samantha Bee and more.

Opening Friday at the Cinema Village isNo Shade (Artmattan Films), Clare Anyiam-Osigwe’s British romantic drama starring Adele Oni as freelance photographer Jade, who has been in love with her best friend Danny for 10 years, but what’s keeping them from going further is the shade of her skin.

Other films out this weekend include the Bollywood offering 2.0, Shankar’s follow-up to 2010’s Robot; Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza’s Sicilian Ghost Story (Strand) opening at the Quad; the Korean crime-thriller Unstoppable  (Well GO USA) from Kim Min-Ho; and filmmaker Robert Townsend returns with his new doc Making the Five Heartbeats (about his 1991 passion project), which gets an Oscar-qualifying run at L.A.’s Laemmle Noho 7 this Friday and in New York on Dec. 7

STREAMING

Netflix will also be streaming Italy’s Oscar entry HAPPY AS LAZARRO on the streaming network starting Friday in case you can’t get to one of the cities/theaters playing it. (See above for more.) Also, the holiday movies start coming at you hot and heavy with the sequel A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding, starring Rose McIver and Ben Lamb, which follows last year’s holiday rom-com. Angela’s Christmas is an animated family movie set in 1910 Ireland featuring the voices of Ruth Negga (Preacher) and Lucy O’Connell, based on Frank McCourt’s book. (I’m not sure if this is the same short that premiered in 2017 or an extension, sorry!) From France comes Romain Gavra’s  crime-comedy THE WORLD IS YOURS about a small-time mobster who accepts a job in Spain that involves drugs, the Illuminati and his overbearing mother. The description describes the movie as “Cynical” which means that it was made for me! Lastly, there’s Sebastian Hoffman’s Spanish film Tiempo Compartido (translated as “Time Share”), described as “Cerebral” (maybe not so much for me?). It involves two family men trying to save their families from a tropical paradise convinced that an American time share company wants to take their loved ones away.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

A couple more days of the Midnight Cowboy  restoration, plus the Darius Khondji retrospective continues for a few more days – I highly recommend seeing David Fincher’s Se7en on the big screen if you haven’t already. This weekend’s Playtime Family Matinee is one of my personal faves, Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, screening on Saturday and Sunday at 11AM – bring the kids!  A bit last-minute, but Metrograph has added a Spike Lee X6 mini-retrospective, since he was already slated to intro a screening of BlacKkKlansman. They’ve added 1990′s Mo’ Better Blues, his 2006 reunion with Denzel for Inside Man, 2000′s Bamboozled, and one of my personal faves, Summer of Sam from 1999.  (Not really repertory, but the Metrograph is also launching a series this weekend called Double Exposure: Portraits and Parallels Across the Diaspora, as in African and African-American filmmakers. I’m afraid I don’t know too much more than what you can read on the site.)

NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

Exciting news for L.A. repertory buffs… The New Bev is back!! The festivities will kick-off Saturday with screenings of Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, a double feature of Butch and Sundance: The Early Days and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and a 25th Anniversary screening of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused! Unfortunately, these are all sold out online but there may be tickets available at the door. I look forward to the programming ahead for this beloved theater. 

FILM FORUM (NYC):

Rita Hayworth 100 continues through Thursday with screenings of Blood and Sand, Cover Girland The Lady from Shanghai on Wednesday, andPal Joey, Separate Tables and Gilda on Thursday. This weekend’s Film Forum Jr. selection is Elliot Silverstein’s 1965 film Cat Ballou, starring Jane Fonda, Lee Marvin and Nat King Cole. Beginning on Friday, they have a 4k restoration of Edgar G. Ulmer’s 1945 film Detour  (Janus Films), starring Tom Neal and Anne Savage. On Friday, Film Forum is also launching a new 4k restoration of Alex Cox’s 1991 Mexican feature Highway Patrolman (Kino Lorber), and I’m always interested in seeing more from the director of Repo Man and Sid and Nancy. 

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

This weekend, the American Cinematerque’s theater has an Argentina: New Cinema 2018 series, so no repertory for now.

AERO  (LA):

On the other hand, the Cinemateque’s other theater is showing a bunch of Buster Keaton movies as part of The Great Buster series  (named after the recent Peter Bogdonavich doc), which will include Sherlock Jr. (1924) and Steamboat Willie Jr.  (1928) on Friday as a double feature, The General (1926) on Saturday with the 1921 short The High Sign, Seven Chances  (1925) on Sunday with a digital restoration of the short Cops!, followed by a screening of that aforementioned doc Sunday evening. Should be a fun weekend for Buster Keaton fans.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

Ack! Totally spaced on the fact that the Quad was doing a giallo series, which began over the weekend with Perversion Stories: A Fistful of Giallo Restorationspremiering DCPs of many rarey-seen if even screened in the States films like The Case of the Scorpion’s Tale (1971), Torso (1993), The Suspicious Death of a Minor (1975) and more. I’m really bummed that I forgot to mention this in last week’s column (that’s what happens when you begin a series on a Sunday, Quad) and that I wasn’t able to get to any of these, but it runs through Thursday so if you’re reading this on Weds. morning (hopefully), you still have time to catch a few of them.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Late Night Favorites shows James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), Weekend Classics continues its Coen Brothers retrospective with O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) in 35mm on Friday through Sunday, while the Shaw Brothers Spectaculars series offers The Super Inframan

(1975), which looks pretty cool.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

This weekend, the theater gets the restoration of Luchino Viscoti’s Senso (1968) which had been playing at New York’s Film Forum. Matt Donato*’s favorite film of all time, Dude Bro Party Massacre III,  will play at midnight on Friday. (*Look him up on social media!)

FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER (NYC):

German filmmaker Christian Petzold will be in town for a sneak preview of his new film Transiton Friday night, but it will kick off Christian Pentzold: The State We Are In, a two-week retrospective of the underrated German filmmaker who has delivered such modern-day classics as Barbara and Phoenix (one of my favorite movies of 2014), 2008’s Jerichow and many more, some of which have barely been seen in the United States, including his 1998 television film The Sex Thief, and 2000’s The State I Am In. Click on the title above for the full line-up, but Pentzold will do QnAs after Transit and a couple others this coming weekend.

BAM CINEMATEK (NYC):

On Monday, BAM kicked off its Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema series, so no repertory for now.

MOMA (NYC):

The Museum of Modern Art is in the midst of it’s The Contenders 2018 series, but it also continues its Silent Comedy International series with screenings of Transatlantic Teamwork on Thursday and Sunday, Clowning Around (the World) on Thursday, another screening of Daffy in Deutschland on Friday and other repeats over the weekend. Modern Matinees: Douglas Fairbanks Jr.continues with State Secret (1950) on Thursday, Stella Dallas (1925) on Friday then A Woman of Affairs (1928) next Wednesday. Since I haven’t seen any of this, I have nothing further to add.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

The 50thAnniversary restoration of Gordon Quinn and Gerald Temaner’s Inquiring Nuns continues as well as Glenn Close: Ten Great Performances by Glenn Close with Dangerous Liaisonson Friday evening, a “Sensory Friendly Screening” of Disney’s 101 Dalmations on Saturday (as well as another matinee of this on Sunday, Reversal of Fortune and Cookie’s Fortune on Saturday afternoon/evening, as well as Albert Nobbs and Close’s latest The Wife on Sunday.

That’s it for this week. Next week, no new movies in wide release... but I’ll still have a column for those interested in other stuff.