#nor any interest in working with wb again after everything

[batfleckgifs]

[paulisweeabootrash]

Pokémon 2.B.A. Master

I stumbled across a piece of weeb trash media I had heard of, but neither attempted nor expected to find.  And it’s a bit different.  Today, my friends, we are not doing an anime or manga, or even another novel.  We’re doing a tie-in music album, a American blatant cash-grab based on a Japanese franchise.  Oh no.  Oh yes.

Pokémon 2.B.A. Master (1999)

As a young weeblet, I was a regular watcher of the first two arcs of Pokémon (Kanto and Johto).  It was in both weekday and weekend timeslots, and never seemed to be broadcast in any sensible order, but I nonetheless watched it frequently and enjoyed it no matter how many times WB decided to rerun episodes I’d already seen.  At some point, this CD came out, and I remember seeing ads for it when it was new.  There were even televised music videos for a few of the songs, broadcast as a segment called “Pikachu’s Jukebox”. I never saw a copy of the album in person, and never expected to. Maybe it was one of those that you had to order by calling some number?  I don't remember (or, frankly, care enough to look it up).  Anyway, I recently encountered this in the small music section of a used book store, and I figured "why not?"  And the obvious answer is "most of the contents".

The cover, in addition to using proud and unironic Comic Sans for the subtitle "2.B.A. Master", boasts that the album contains both "Music From The Hit TV Series" and "10 Brand New Songs!"  The former refers obviously to the main theme of the show and every child's favorite mnemonic device, the PokéRap (or “PokéRAP” as it’s spelled for some reason?), but I'm not sure what the third song from the show is.  And again, I don’t care enough to look it up.  The important thing is, John Loeffler wrote all of them, and apparently an absurd number of other Pokémon-related songs.  The "Brand New Songs!" here are mostly new to me, and they’re... a doozy.  Except for the songs from the show, plus “Double Trouble” and maybe “Misty’s Song” if I want to be very generous, I am tempted to suggest you could get a similar musical experience in a shorter time by putting on an episode of Pokémon, playing a mix of Milli Vanilli and Boyz II Men songs over it, and banging your head against a wall.

1. Pokémon Theme

We begin with the extended version of the classic theme, this is a sure dose of nostalgia for anyone who watched the show.  It sounds, considering the release date, a little outdated — I get kind of a "Beat It" vibe, not from the melody, but from the instrumentation, combining 80s-gated drums and searing electric guitar.  But the theme, already one of the few TV themes out there I find enjoyable and not instantly forgettable, extends to a full length surprisingly well, avoiding getting boring or devolving into complete idiocy with lyrics.  I actually like this song as a song, and you can’t convince me otherwise.

2. 2B A Master

The instrumentation in this track is absurdly 90s, and again kind of Michael Jackson-y, but is interesting and varied, especially in the sudden attention-grabbing rhythmic change accompanying the line "the greatest master of Pokémon".  It shows better restraint in its use of things like record scratch noises and basslines running parallel to vocal lines that I find get really old really quickly.  I actually, on the whole, enjoy this song and think the music could have been the basis for something great.  “Could have” being the keyword.  Lest you think I'm going to give a rosy, loving review of this album, no, it quickly gets bad.  Some of the lyrics feel like such forced attempts to get Pokémon references in that I am embarrassed on behalf of the people stuck singing and rapping them, 20 years later.  It’s a waste of what could’ve been a fun funky song.  (Incidentally, why is the title of the song punctuated differently from the title of the album?)

3. Viridian City

The slide downhill continues.  What the hell is this song?  The lyrics are only marginally less stupid than the previous track, the music sounds like a keyboard "dance" preset, and it has a weird rapped/spoken "echoing" of sung lines it’s incredibly hard to imagine anyone ever liked.  Ugh.

4. What Kind of Pokémon Are You?

Third time's the charm, I guess?  After the previous two tracks tried and failed to force Pokémon-related lyrics that just don't work, this one at least manages to fire off a series of type-related puns.  The music, however, turns back towards gratingly boring (and for some reason, the bridge comes thisclose to ripping off "Eye of the Tiger"?).  Actually, no, hahaha, the lyrics remain very stupid, I think I'm just getting "ground down by a Marowak" by how bad the preceding tracks were.

5. My Best Friends

The parts move in unison too closely for my tastes, the lyrics are bland, the vocal arrangement makes it sound downright inappropriately dramatic, and what’s up with the bridge that veers off into doo-wop?  The main thing this song has going for it is the vaguely pleasant piano part in the verses, which really appeals to me (it sounds familiar, although I can’t place what specifically it reminds me of).  The melody of the chorus sounds even more familiar — so familiar in fact I'm starting to wonder if it's a copyright-violation-skirting ripoff of something famous. But otherwise, this is a solid “meh”, sounding like a boy band song that would only briefly have made the charts.

6. Everything Changes

And now we're back to impressions of Michael Jackson.  This one's instrumentation and mood and even bits of the melody are so him that I could almost believe you if you told me this was an outtake that didn't make it onto Bad. (Although the singer sounds less like Jackson the longer the song goes on.) The lyrics, although vaguely applicable to everything, are a welcome change from the previous few tracks by not feeling like Pokémon has been painfully shoehorned in... up until the part where a clip from the show plays during a break between choruses.  Ugh.  Could you really not come up with a better way to make this into a distinctly Pokémon song?

7. The Time Has Come (Pikachu's Goodbye)

Yuck.  The sentimental ballad (I want to call it a “power ballad”, but I’m unsure what exactly counts as one), as a general rule, is a fire hose full of melodrama best used for comedy.  I don't understand how songs like this have ever been taken seriously.  I would expect to hear this as the ending theme to a movie that tries to be a tragedy but can’t quite pull it off.

8. Pokémon (Dance Mix)

I assumed from the title that this was a remix of the theme song, but instead, it's just sort of a filler track...  It makes almost no impression on me at all, although I do enjoy the intro’s use of "backward-sounding" and morphing synths.  Otherwise, this is another track that sounds like it uses keyboard preset backgrounds.

9. Double Trouble (Team Rocket)

Okay, look, I can’t rate this one fairly.  The longest-running fandom-related internal conflict of my life has been whether I'd rather be James or have James as mai hasubando, and I love Team Rocket in general as comedy relief villains.  I used to enthusiastically perform their ridiculous introductory speech with a friend from band camp (I am even more of a geek than you thought).  This song actually bothers to be more specific in terms of its Pokémon subject matter, meaning this is finally a song about Pokémon rather than just a generic pop song with Pokémon flavor, and it uniquely is performed by voice actors from the show, namely those who played Jesse, James, Meowth, and Giovanni.  It really grates on me when the VAs talk over the singers, but unlike some of the other songs, it feels like it builds up and goes somewhere.  We have at least broken free from the boringness of the last few tracks, with almost industrial percussion and chromatic and sometimes dissonant bass and synth lines that really make it a solid villain song, even though it has a hokey “rap written by people who haven’t actually listened to any rap” feel.  And James’s absolutely ludicrous laugh will absolutely alienate who isn’t already a fan of the character, and most people who are, too.

10. Together Forever

The “disappointing imitation of Michael Jackson” theme returns, this time mostly in the voice.  It especially pops out at me with the pronunciation of "friend" as "fraynnnndah!".  Unfortunately, rather than trying to imitate Jackson’s songwriting again, this song seems to want to rip off Stock Aitken Waterman.  And it succeeds at that, too well, as it somehow manages to outcompete a song those writers wrote for Rick Astley to be the worst song with this title.  Also returning here: the use of clips from the show to clumsily force an otherwise generic song to be Pokémon-related.  Hooray.

11. Misty's Song

Huh.  Now this one is interesting.  Buried deep in the album, we get something from a character POV that doesn’t just set trivia or quotes from the show to music.  Yvette Laboy does a believable job filling in as the singing counterpart for Rachel Lillis's speaking voice for Misty, and I just don't find it nearly as ridiculous as the other ballads on the album, for some reason. It even portrays a tsundere as insecure rather than just an obnoxious walking trope!  Sure, it's not great, but it's not bad either, especially after the other attempted ballads on here.  Until you remember that it's a 14-year-old singing a love song to a 10-year-old, which... ick.  It could've been sweet if put in the mouth of another character with a more age-appropriate relationship. Anyone want to rerecord this as “Kaname's Song” or something?

12. PokéRAP

Oh, educational rap.  Why?  It’s just unbearably cheesy and doesn’t seem to have had much thought put into it, as a general rule.  And this song is no exception.  Sure, I guess it has value as a mnemonic exercise (and it does a decent job of that, as anyone who still has large chunks of it memorized can tell you), but no value as music.  It often doesn’t even come close to rhyming where you’d expect it to, and it's obvious that Loeffler et al weren't sure what to do with a few of the names at all — Grimer and Chansey have egregious pauses after them, for example, and Omastar is stretched across space enough for two or three names for no good reason.  It is broken into convenient-sized stanzas that are only somewhat awkwardly forced into the established meter, but that meter has a too-regular feel, bouncing like a musical Superball, that even I, someone with no particular knowledge of nor interest in rap, recognize as being cheesier than Vanilla Ice.  It also hasn’t aged well.  The sung parts have absolutely no dynamic range and stay at MAXIMUM DRAMA LEVEL at all times.  Over the past 20 years, the lyrics have also become obsolete due to the many additional generations of Pokémon media and consequently much longer list of Pokémon to memorize.  Those topics have been covered in excruciating detail by Brian David Gilbert, who is much cleverer than I am, and yes, I do highly recommend sitting through that entire half-hour video.  All I can really add to that is, it's considerably less annoying than certain other mnemonic songs I was exposed to growing up. A bad song, unless you’re viewing it through sheer unfiltered silliness?  Yes.  A surprisingly catchy song that was a good marketing move?  Also yes.  And 20+ years later, I still can't avoid laughing at the way he says "Wartortle".

13. You Can Do It (If You Really Try)

The album could've gone out on that upbeat note, but no, they had to go for another overblown ballad, this time trying far too hard to be inspirational.  The plus side is, it's not yet another generic 80s/90s pop song.  The minus side is, it sounds like something that would be playing on the PA in a church thrift store.  Or a fake ad on an episode of SNL.  I do not feel empowered by this level of unironic encouragement.  I just feel like my eyes are rolling so hard they'll fall out.  Its only saving grace is that it’s somehow not the most irritating inspirational ballad from the late 90s that was used in connection with a geek-magnet TV show.

Overall... Although I want to describe the music as being "generic" — and it is full of the tiredest parts of 80s and 90s music, wandering from orchestra hits to record scratch noises to cutesy synthesizer "dings" to what seem to be several different singers' bad Michael Jackson impressions — some of it is actually interesting!  See, no matter what impression you got from what I said above, I don’t categorically hate this style of music.  I made multiple comparisons to songs from Thriller and Bad because I think most of the songs on those albums are examples of how to do this genre very well.  But 2.B.A. Master doesn’t just lag because I’m comparing it to widely-beloved albums.  Writing this review actually sent me introspecting for quite a while about what music I enjoy and why.  And I realized, many of the cheesiest and most flawed aspects of this album are also present on less-acclaimed albums I enjoy very much, like the niche The Golden Age of Wireless by Thomas Dolby and the virtually-unknown Playgrounds ‘n’ Glass by Urban Blight.  But, while Dolby’s music often has the same cheesy synthesizer voices and lack of dynamics or has weirdly melodramatic moments, it’s also often clearly experimenting with particular effects and techniques, and his lyrics have evocative images or stories that make the songs really engaging.  And, while Urban Blight’s lyrics are often cliche-ridden or downright idiotic, the 80s/90s pop music instrumentation and style elements are varied and used with... for lack of a better term, more discretion, I guess?, which makes me feel like their songs are building to something musically.  Well, except the song “Favorite Flavor”, which is just garbage.

The point is, while neither of those examples is a great album (at least not to my taste, which I freely admit colors this), they are both still good.  Unfortunately, while some songs on 2.B.A. Master approach goodness, they are the exception, not the rule.  Most of the music is simple and predictable and seem to use the more grating tropes of the time like orchestra hits and record-scratch noises just because they can, and most of the lyrics are less "song about Pokémon" and more "attempts at being vaguely inspirational with Pokémon references forced in uncomfortably".  Some of the songs are enjoyable in a "this was an earnest attempt” and/or guilty pleasure sort of way (and I unironically like the B-52s, so believe me, I know "this was an earnest attempt” and/or guilty pleasure music), but there’s very little on here I’d actually call good.  The best track here musically, “2B A Master”, is wasted on blah lyrics, and the one that most accomplishes the goal of being a song about Pokémon, “Double Trouble”, suffers greatly from its speaking-over-the-singers vocal performance.  All I can say is, I’m glad I got this album used.

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W/A/S Scores: 3/0/7

Weeb: The lyrics require some prior specific knowledge of the Pokémon anime to not be completely baffling, but Pokémon is probably the most well-known and well-entrenched Japanese franchise on this side of the Pacific, and other than that, it’s decidedly American, or at least decidedly within the musical cultures of Western Europe and the Anglosphere.

Ass: No.

Shit: AAAAAAAAH.  Okay, okay, no, seriously, there are a few good points, but it’s at best average-quality 90s pop with a veneer of Pokémon over the top.

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Oh Weird: While writing this and hunting down appropriate links, I was surprised to see how many uploads of, and even covers of, songs from this album there are on Youtube.  I assumed this album was a more or less forgotten piece of bad 90s media, but apparently it’s one with a significant fanbase.

Oh Cool: Maddie Blaustein, the original English-language voice actress for Meowth was also a comic editor and writer for both Marvel and DC and the Creative Director for the Weekly World News. Oh, and she was intersex and, according to one of the sources cited by the Wikipedia article, bi.

Oh No: Educational rap is still a thing, and there are resources to make your own.

[dalekofchaos]

My problem with DCEU’s Birds Of Prey

I was excited that we are gonna see Black Canary, Huntress and Montoya as the Question and possibly Barbara as Oracle and Cassandra Cain’s live action debut. But then I read the rumored synopsis.

"After splitting up with The Joker, Harley Quinn and three other female superheroes – Black Canary, Huntress and Renee Montoya – come together to save the life of a little girl (Cassandra Cain) from an evil crime lord."

Okay if this rumor is true. I honestly have no interest in this movie. 

It is rumored that Black Mask will be the villain of the movie and are you serious? Do you honestly expect me to believe that Black Mask can subdue and hold Cassandra Cain hostage? It would be ONE THING if this were Lady Shiva or David Cain. But Black Mask? Cassandra Cain would absolutely DESTROY Roman Sionis. The mere thought that Cass needs saving from Sionis is preposterous and idiotic. This is how you’re gonna introduce Cassandra Cain, the best Batgirl, Bruce’s daughter and one of the best combatants in the DCU? What the actual fuck are you even doing?

Now to my issue with Harley.

“Harley joins The Birds Of Prey” Let me stop you right there. It is already canon in the DCEU that Harley Quinn helped The Joker murder Jason Todd. Do you honestly think Barbara and Helena would ever accept Harley’s help? Do you honestly think there is a force alive that could stop Helena Bertinelli from killing Harley Quinn for what she and Joker did to Jason? And if DC chose to keep Zack Snyder’s bullshit of Dick being the Robin who died, do you fucking really expect me to believe Barbara to ever accept Harley Quinn’s help if Dick was the Robin who died? The mere concept that Barbara and Helena would ever accept Harley’s help after what Joker and Harley did to Jason is complete and utter bullshit. Harley has already shown in Suicide Squad that she’s a villain. “We’re bad guys, it’s what we do” Harley and Joker are in love in these movies. Harley willingly went home with The Joker, showing that she loves him. Whether Margot Robbie, WB/DC likes it or not The Joker and Harley love each other.

And now I need to address the real problem I have with how DC treats Harley. 

Harley Quinn is a villain. 

Harleen Quinzel chose to become Harley Quinn.  Harleen Quinzel was not tortured or thrown in chemicals to become Harley Quinn. Harleen Quinzel fell in love with The Joker in therapy. There is a large portion of manipulation on The Joker’s part, but it was Harleen’s choice to become Harley Quinn. She’s not a victim of The Joker’s madness, she chose to become who she is.

Their relationship isn’t one sided abuse it’s an on and off again relationship. The Joker and Harley are both insane and dysfunctional, there is no way this can be a normal and healthy relationship because that is the complete opposite of these two characters. No one is saying the relationship is healthy nor do I suggest it to be healthy or a relationship to strive towards. It’s meant to be a violent, unstable relationship. It’s also fictional. It’s a fictional relationship between two horrible, demented murdering clowns. To pretend the relationship is a run of the mill one that’s portrayed as healthy is just preposterous. Same with pretending the relationship isn’t also filled with a sick, twisted romance. Romanticizing Joker/Harley isn’t the problem. The problem is encouraging the behaviors, which no one is. And I love them together, they are like the psychotic clownish super villain Bonnie And Clyde. The Joker DOES love Harley, he is incapable of showing it normally because he has never felt love for anyone and because he’s trash. If he didn’t love Harley he would have killed her ages ago, if all he needed was a way out of Arkham, Harley would have been killed.  He tries to kill her to push her away because he thinks that romance is a distraction and alien. Really, Joker sees Harley as the perfect partner. and this is according to Harley’s creator Paul Dini, The Joker himself Mark Hamil and Harley herself Arleen Sorkin “He loves her as much as he can. He loves her in his way.” -Paul Dini “…That, to me, is kinda their private life. Joker opens up and in those moments he is whatever he is at his core and all his demons come in. And the only one he trusts with that is Harley, or Harley’s the only one who knows how to deal with him in those moments.” -Paul Dini “Expressing emotion in any way that’s real and meaningful is alien to The Joker, but he’s learning those parts of himself, however unconsciously, through Harley.” -Mark Hamil “Everyone else sees The Joker laugh; only Harley has ever seen him cry.” -Arleen Sorkin She’s completely and utterly obsessed and in love with The Joker. She loves Ivy too, but her heart is primarily with Joker. Hell there was a comic where Joker was all nice and sweet to Harley and eventually Harley became bored and tried to get the old Joker back. Harley is in love with the mad clown, Harley wouldn’t have it any other way.

Harley Quinn is not a hero nor is she a anti-hero as DC has been trying to reshape her as. Harley Quinn IS A VILLAIN! Harley is not this role-model, she is a psychopath and a villain. Harley is not as psychotic as The Joker, Harley Quinn can be just as dangerous. Harley isn’t this precious baby, she isn’t a precious teddy bear and she isn’t someone to coddle regardless of how much you love her.  She doesn’t need to be protected from The Joker when she’s a super villain who has murdered her fair share of people and can hold her own against The Joker. She’s also crazy exuberant and peppy. She’s lighthearted evil.

Harley Quinn isn’t a pushover or defenseless cinnamon roll “that must be protected at all costs”. Harley can defend herself and kick Joker’s ass, she can hold her own against Batman(Harley came the closest to killing Batman) or any of the rouge’s gallery and she can fought Mercy Graves and she won that fight!

Harley works best as a second in command/follower. Why?  Because she became a villain in the first place to follow someone. And she as a villain only follows two people, Joker and Ivy. She has no motivation if she’s not following someone else, and her character is not meant to be heroic or quirky. She’s obsessive, lovesick and is solely devoted to her two loves. She kills for Joker and Ivy, she steals for them, she collaborated with them. If she’s not with one of them, her heart isn’t in it. And having her own solo series had rendered her into just another generic female anti hero. And since she was created to be a sidekick, she really works best in small doses. Trying to overwrite her character weakens the complexities of her.

Harleen Quinzel did not come to Arkham Asylum to help people. Harleen was power hungry and saw the inmates as a get rich quick scheme for a book and wanted to be the one to understand The Joker’s secrets and what made him what he is. In her own words. “I’ve always had an attraction for extreme personalities, they’re more exciting more challenging. You can’t deny there’s an element of glamour to these super criminals.”

Harley’s dad was and is a con artist. He’s been in and out of jail, constantly cheating on Harley’s mom, duping rich women for everything they have. Growing up in Bensonhurst around her constantly cheating and lying father, being left in squalor with her bitter mom and slacker brother, Harley vowed she’d be different, make a difference and actually be somebody. But it’s the classic tale of growing up to be what you hate. Harley loved cutting corners like her dad, though I imagine she always justified that to herself by saying she was actually going to make a difference, unlike her con artist father. And then she also became her mother, by falling in with The Joker, who is scarily a lot like her father.  

Harleen Quinzel  was already traumatized and unstable from her fiance committing suicide right front of her but went into Arkham right after that anyways because she wanted to study the inmates from Arkham Asylum and wanted to study The Joker so she could be famous for  learning his secrets, which we all know what happened. I would say the madness was already in Harley just buried underneath, The Joker just helped it surface.

Like it or not The Joker and Harley are made for each other. Harley’s entire character is built around The Joker. The only way Harley would ever be free from Joker’s influence is if she stripped away the clown aesthetic, stopped calling herself Harley Quinn and became Harleen Quinzel again.  Harley is supposed to be obsessed with the Joker and no one else, she was created for The Joker.  In my opinion, taking away the obsession a character is literally built around will not improve it.  Everything would have been different if Harley hadn’t been built around the Joker, but she was created for him, therefore taking her away from him not only is out of character, but is also bad for the character itself. Joker, like it or not, was and still is what made Harley a special, complex character. Harley Quinn does not work without The Joker and does not work by trying to make her a hero or an anti-hero. She was created to be a villain and taking that away does not work at all

The issue with Harlivy. I love Harley and Ivy together  but I hate what The New 52 and Rebirth and  Jimmy Palmiotti & Amanda Conner have turned them into. This has to do largely because Poison Ivy is no longer Poison Ivy. In the New 52, Poison Ivy is no longer an eco-terrorist/feminist, she no longer hates humans, she has no character and is just a cardboard cutout who is Harley’s love interest. And if you hate Joker/Harley because it’s an abusive relationship that’s fine and dandy but do not act like Harley/Ivy are the perfect girlfriends. Both relationships are not good for Harley. Ivy is abusive and manipulative of Harley. Ivy has beaten Harley, guilt-trips and manipulates Harley to abandon Joker for her, and further toys with her mind, restricts her daily life, and threatens her if she ever shows any interest to leave Ivy to go back to Joker. Ivy has poisoned her, left her for dead, had fantasies about strangling her, and all because Harley annoyed Ivy and either messed up their plans or put her plants in danger. Ivy is not the perfect girlfriend for Harley that the fans choose to picture, Ivy is a super villain who has no regard for human life, Harley is the only exception, but even sometimes Ivy wants to kill Harley and has tried many times to do so. She is not the character The New 52 and Rebirth keeps telling you she is. I love Harley/Ivy but the New 52 and it’s fans have pretty much driven me away, I love them in DCAU and in the pre-DCU but I do not ignore the abuse.

I don’t think some fans love Harley. They are in love with the idea of who they think Harley Quinn is and they reject the previous universe/classic version of Harley. Fans are willing to accept the New 52 version over classic. In the New 52 Harley is no longer the villain we love. She’s a looney toon female deadpool. I love that they made Harley/Ivy a thing but the writers do not understand either character AT ALL. It’s sad really. A character who is so well written in the past but instead the majority of her fandom prefers a watered down version that is not her, but a generic Deadpool clone and prefer to have Ivy be totally out of character just so Harley and her can be in a relationship.

[minaminokyoko]

A ‘Justice League’ Rant

Foreword

Alright, DC fans. Before you light your torches and grab your Aquaman pitchforks and set off a rousing chorus of "Kill the Beast" when you read my review/rant, I am going to attempt to set the mood and explain myself. Some of you won't care. Some of you won't even read the whole thing before you jump onto your keyboards and proclaim that I'm just a stupid girl who doesn't understand comic books and comic book movies and that the Justice League movie is great and it's better than all the Marvel movies.

Let me stop you right there. 

This ain't about the Marvel movies.

This is about DC and Warner Bros and filmmaking in general.

I don't have it out for DC/WB. I don't have it out for the DCEU. This anger and disappointment is not a result of the 20+ Marvel Cinematic Universe's successful run. This anger and disappointment comes from deep inside a little girl who at the tender age of six or seven first realized what kind of person she wanted to be when she saw Batman: Mask of the Phantasm for the first time. One of my earliest memories was seeing the pain and torment that Bruce Wayne went through after he fell in love with Andrea and he wanted so desperately for it to be okay that he loved her and that he didn't want to keep his promise anymore. I have loved DC since I was old enough to love anything. I love Batman so much that I have his symbol tattooed on my right shoulder. Dead serious. He is my guiding light and he has been since I was six years old.

So, once more, I want you to understand that the reason I hate the Justice League movie is not because I dislike DC.

The reason I hate the Justice League movie is that the Justice League movie hates me.

This movie is hollow. It is a hollow farce. It took six of the most beloved characters in fictional history and stripped them of all the reasons why they have been beacons of entertainment since their inception and plastered them on a cheap ass green screen and shoved it out into the world to make a quick buck. There was no passion, no heart, and no creativity in this film. It doesn't have an original thought in its damn head. Not one. Everything I saw was something I've seen before elsewhere, and it was done better elsewhere. If you don't believe me, fine. Let's go point-by-point. I will fully explain every reason why I almost demanded my money back after sitting through this poisonous flick.

-The plot is so unbelievably thin you couldn't stretch it farther than a couple of inches. Forgetting the fact that Batman vs. Superman was one of the worst films ever, picking up where it left off somehow just made it hurt even worse since we had to acknowledge the fact that it exists and then have to build another plot from the resulting shitstorm. So we begin with Crazy Steve (Note: I refuse to call him Batman or Bruce Wayne, because BatAffleck is neither. He in no way represents any Batman other than Linkara's epithet Crazy Steve from his reviews.) catching a  burglar (with a literal sack of stolen shit on his back, like he's a fucking crook from the 1950's or something) and then a parademon appears and he kills it. So...first of all, was Crazy Steve there for the crook and the parademon just happened to be there? Or was Crazy Steve there for the parademon and he just used the crook? That makes absolutely no sense. Those two things didn't need to be there together. It's a plot contrivance of the highest order.  It was also unnecessary as fuck. You could have just had Crazy Steve on patrol and he saw the demon, caught it, and then it died. After seeing this, the jump from 'hey, a weird alien’ to 'ZOMG WE GOTTA GET THE BAND BACK TOGETHER' is liable to give you fucking whiplash. Crazy Steve immediately jumps to "putting a team together" when he has such little evidence of the calamity, and it's even more absurd since Crazy Steve has NO experience working with a team. At most, Jason Todd existed at some point, but that's it. He doesn't know anything about metahumans aside from maybe what Amanda Waller mentioned to him at the end of the equally abysmal Suicide Squad. Further more, he just starts trying to collect these people without explaining why they should just arbitrarily trust a man they just fucking met who dresses up like a giant fucking bat. I mean, would you? Really? Especially knowing that he tried to kill Superman on incredibly flimsy reasoning? How do you know he won't immediately turn on you if you turn your head and cough and seem like a threat to him? Crazy Steve had no way of knowing aside from Diana that any of these people were stable enough to form a team and try to fight an unknown enemy. It was so rushed. He just whisks them away and doesn't blink at revealing his secret identity to four perfect fucking strangers (though Diana arguably doesn't count; she's much more level-headed and hasn't shown a propensity for losing it at the slightest provocation.)

-There is no team dynamic. At all. It's just a room full of superpowered people. The closest thing to a relationship is between Crazy Steve and Wondy, and even then, they maybe have three whole fucking conversations, and none of them are beyond superficial. It's like the movie was afraid of making an actual development, so it just kept throwing inane quips around in the hopes of distracting you from the fact that there are no characters. The whole reason the Justice League itself as a concept excites me is because you have this room full of colorful personalities with different backgrounds who come together for the common good and want to help mankind and protect the innocent. We don't know barely anyone's motivations because this movie is running off the fumes of a bad sequel. We know Wonder Woman's motivations for the most part, but having the JLA movie before her sequels still leaves a large piece of the mythos missing because we don't know how she adjusted to modern life. We don't know if she lost faith in humanity again or where she stands because we were still in the 1940's when we last saw her. Cyborg's backstory is mentioned, but his motivations are also non-existent. We get the whole "I'm a monster" thing but they immediately move on from any possible origin or explanation of what he's going through and what he wants to do since he's got these abilities but could be seen as a freak to normal people. The Flash also got a driveby explanation, but again, without prior films or history, we basically have to guess what motivates him. I know Barry Allen because I'm a comic book fan, but your average person may not. It's completely unfair to them that you just jump from place to place without explaining how Barry got his speed, why his father's in jail, and why he just jumped at the chance to fight crime despite the fact that he doesn't know how to fucking fight apparently. It's so discourteous to the character to slap him in there and not tell us why. Why does he want to help anyone if he's scared? Why isn't he insanely rich by now from the various ways he could use his speed? And then, fuck me, Aquaman is the worst of the bunch. They make no attempts to explain anything about his background. Who is the red-haired lady? I know it's Mera because again, I am a comic book fan, but the chances that your average moviegoer knows are astronomical, and so they get to sit there completely confused about who she is and what she can do and what she means to Arthur. We don't know why Arthur was just chilling out around that one village and why he gave a single shit about humanity or how he got his powers or just...anything! Anything at all! Other than he's really mouthy and has a nice chest. Look, I might be able to overlook the depressing lack of explanation, but none of these characters bond with each other or have any reasons to care about one another. There are no human aspects to them because the only one so far who has been fully explored as a character aside from Wonder Woman is Crazy Steve. Crazy Steve got some development in BvS, but certainly not enough for you to emotionally connect with him because he was a revenge hungry psychopath in the previous film. The entire fucking point of the League is to see these interesting people butt heads, but then laugh and get along with each other and get ready to protect their home from threats. Here, they're just doing what Crazy Steve tells them to do because...reasons.

-Superman's resurrection. Holy fucking shit. I just spent the last twenty minutes ranting about this to one of my friends. Where do I even start with how goddamn stupid this shit is? It comes out of fucking nowhere. After this hastily slapped together team fights Steppenwolf one time, Crazy Steve in true Crazy Steve fashion decides that we should disgrace the dead and bring Superman back. Crazy Steve has no fucking idea how the Motherbox works. None. He has done no research, he has no knowledge of Kryptonian technology, nor is he at all aware of Darkseid and the New Gods' technology. But he's like, "Nah, bruh, we all suck and we need Superman." As an aside, I am really angry at how this movie is sucking that Kryptonian cock too. How dare you. How dare you imply that these badass heroes who were doing just fine on their own in the comics and animated shows need Superman like he's their fucking babysitter. Maybe if you had established the team dynamic and established the characters, they'd be able to fight better. Crazy Steve took one fucking look at the team that had been together a grand total of like four fucking hours and decided they were all gonna die without Superman's help. It's not only reckless and poorly thought out, it's honestly insulting. It's insulting that Crazy Steve would drag Kal El from heaven (because, for real, it's entirely possible he was in literal paradise and you sorry motherfuckers took him away from his parents and his loved ones of Krypton for your selfish asses) just on the assumption that the team wasn't strong enough. My God. I am just floored by this development in the movie. It pisses me off that the movie just shrugs and acts like it was for the best to spit in the face of God and drag Kal back to earth. Maybe you shouldn't have killed him in the first fucking place, you shitlords. And it's more frustrating to me since in the comics, after DC panicked and wrote in the "regenerative coma" that they didn't just use that instead. I'd be less angry if they introduced the idea that he was never dead to begin with, but in the death-like coma. It's a cop out, but it's better than literally Frankensteining Superman from heaven to fight your fucking battle for you.

-The dialogue is painful. So painful. It is so tacked on. I went to the theater tonight at 3:50pm and I'd say there was maybe 20-25 people in there and they laughed twice. You heard me. Twice. That was an almost two hour movie, and the audience only laughed twice. Hell, I only laughed once, and it was at the end credits scene where Superman jokes that The Flash is off the team if he loses. That was the only genuine line that I heard out of this movie. It's so apparent that the studio was trying to course correct the film away from the drab, hopeless "vision" of Zack Snyder. It doesn't work. The humor misses by a mile because it's just so awkward. These versions of the heroes take themselves way too seriously, or the quips are directed at the wrong characters. Aquaman is introduced pretty much as a dumb dudebro with a devil-may-care attitude. His snarky dialogue is fine, but when you try to have Crazy Steve the focus of a joke, it falls flat since he's a killer and an asshole and the levity doesn't feel right. There's a little tingle on the back of your neck from how awkward it is when someone makes a joke and then there's this awkward silence afterward because the movie assumes you need a minute to laugh. No, movie. No. If you want a joke to land, you need either timing or context. Pointing out the fact that Crazy Steve wears a batsuit isn't inherently funny. You need context. The "I'm rich" line is a better example of a joke that should have landed, but didn't because it was in the trailer. That has context. That is humor. Just having The Flash say things out loud that he sees isn't funny. Having him be awkward around Crazy Steve isn't funny because the two of them don't know each other and Crazy Steve is mostly straight-faced and so the lines slide off of him like dung. Diana is a better example, as she gives off a very warm presence. For example, Cyborg remarking that Diana needed to keep the merman off him almost landed because the two of them have at least held a conversation and so it feels natural that he might finally make a joke around her. It also landed better because Diana is definitely the only one who appears to have a heart. Everything else is just a vain attempt to lighten the mood, but it just clashes with the deadly serious tone everything else is shot with.

-Not explaining the mythology. Jesus Christ. I'm one of those people who believes that you cannot make a film and just sneer at your audience and go, "Oh, just read the comics if you want to know what's going on!" No. You are not allowed to do that. Film is not an add on. In a film, you are charged with telling a comprehensive story with characters who develop and change over the course of their adventure. That is storytelling 101, and this movie utterly fails. It does just like Suicide Squad where it just starts throwing names at you and not telling you who anyone is with the assumption that "only comic book nerds are watching this anyway" or "well, there are only children watching and they don't care to know who everyone is, they just want to see things get smashed." Wrong. You are wrong. We don't know Steppenwolf, we don't know Darkseid, we don't Apocalypse, we don't know Lanterns, we don't know Atlantis, we don't know jackshit as an audience! And yet they just jam all these names down your throat and expect you to be able to pay attention when you have about ninety thousand questions in your head during the course of the fucking movie. Films should find common ground with the audience. Some mystery is good. Throwing in small cameos or references can feel like a nice garnish to the mythology, but this movie just glosses over everything and thinks it's fine. None of this stuff has been established aside from Krypton and Kryptonian technology. You're doing everyone a disservice by refusing to lay the foundation for the villain and the premise of the plot.

-The effects are mostly atrocious. Out of everything I've cited here, this makes the least amount of sense to me. This is WB, for God's sake. Time Warner. You have all the money in the fucking world and this is the best you can do? I mean, the Dark Knight trilogy alone should have you funded for every superhero movie for the next ten years, and yet we get Henry Cavill's Uncanny Valley mouth as a result of the childish fucking dispute over his mustache, we get CGI that looks like it's from the goddamn Spawn movie at times, and then every single thing is shot from an obvious green/blue room that it feels like the fucking Phantom Menace all over again. I never felt like anything they were doing was real. I mean, to me, it felt like the only set in the whole fucking movie was the Batcave. They are so obviously on a soundstage the entire time and none of the backgrounds blend, and they don't even bother with smaller things like having the wind blow or the colors change or the shadows move to trick your brain into accepting the CGI. Oh, and why Digi-Bat? I'm flabbergasted as to why 80% of Crazy Steve's scenes are digital. He's the non-powered team member. Why wasn't it just a stunt guy? Was Ben Affleck really that fat and lazy that he didn't want to do any fight scenes? It was like watching a freaking PlayStation 1 game whenever he fought someone. My guess is that this project got rushed after shooting and reshoots and so instead of going over the effects with a fine toothed comb and adding layers onto them so that the scenes felt real, they just gave up and only touched them up. Now, I'm not talking about things like Cyborg where it was a front and center integrated effect. Even though I still hate his design (to me, he looks like a Black Ken doll head on a Terminator body), I believed he was there and moving around. Aside from him, though? Nah, bruh. I didn't believe anyone was doing anything.

-The fight scenes were worthless. Again, I'm confused as to how this was even logistically possible. Let's recap: we've got a guy who can run faster than the speed of sound,  a dude who can swim on top of Great White Sharks and punch craters into the ocean floor, a kid who has rocket boots and an arm cannon, a woman who can deflect bullets and shoot sonic blasts with her bracelets, a guy who can shoot lasers, fly, use ice breath, run faster than a speeding bullet, and is stronger than anything ever, and lastly a man who knows every martial arts style known to man on top of having a belt with endless nifty gadgets on it. Put that all together. You should be shitting amazing fight scenes, and yet everything last one of them was bland and forgettable. The true lack of passion in the film is what is on display with these boring fight scenes. It's so repetitive. Aquaman throws his pitchfork. Wondy swings her sword or hits her bracelets together. Batman swings. Flash runs and pushes. Superman punches. That's it. Are you fucking kidding me? I can name about a thousand different cool scenarios that we could have seen with these unique powers, and yet we saw the same moves with no creativity to them. Want an example? I personally thought the Wonder Woman movie was just okay, but I at least commend them for using her agility and her invulnerability properly to create excellent visuals for how powerful and capable she is. She smashes. She grabs and throws and uses combat techniques that a warrior race would know. It is very clear when she fights that someone gave a shit and wanted to make you feel like you were a part of the action and to give you something stunning to look at. Granted, I wasn't stunned because I've seen better, but if Wonder Woman had come out in the 90's before I had seen better, then it would have blown my socks off. The JLA movie's fight scenes are tired as hell and like the movie itself, it feels like they are just checking shit off a list. It's an afterthought. There's so little effort involved, and it matches the overall tired tone I was getting out of it all. I want to believe in these heroes. I want to be dazzled by them. I want to be inspired by them. I want the feeling I used to get when I watched the Nolan trilogy--where I knew Bruce Wayne as a character and as a person and I knew his limitations and his passion and his drive, but I also know how and when he was gonna kick some ass and that I was going to be able to enjoy the different creative ways I got to watch him kick some ass. Justice League does not have any of that vigor or wonder or splendor to its fight scenes. They are as thoughtless and calculated as the rest of the movie felt. You want examples? Pop in the first few episodes of the Justice League animated series. I implore you to sit down and watch the way that the team came together, even though we had the history of Batman and Superman previously. Then I want you to move forward to Justice League Unlimited. Watch those. Watch how they use their powers and personalities to not only provide fun, colorful, exciting fight sequences, but how the chemistry between the team members enhances the urgency of the fight and the overall enjoyment of the fight. That's what this movie is missing.

I can write another five pages' worth of criticism, but when I boil everything down to a single point it is this--the Justice League movie is a rushed, soulless attempt to cash in by manipulating the fans into accepting the massive lowering of their standards in our post-Dark Knight Trilogy years of DC/WB.

And I am begging the fans who have done this, accepted this movie and put on blinders to its problems simply because you love DC and you want to say that they made a good movie, please stop it.

I'm not saying you're wrong for enjoying it. If you did, good for you. But what I want you to do is stop letting them play you in this fashion. Because that's what they're doing. They know your heart. They know you have characters that you love that you want to see on the silver screen because they are important to you for whatever reason, and so you are purposely ignoring massive flaws so that you can enjoy what they are sloppily slapping into your eyeballs. I'm saying that you deserve the effort. You are worth the effort of making a movie worthy of these heroes we all love so much. I just want you to know that. You deserve a movie where everyone has a storyline and is developed. You deserve a storyline where the plot makes sense and the team has chemistry and a reason to be a team in the first place. Don't lower your standards so that this movie glides above them. Hold it to the right standards and demand that they do better next time. Don't give them a passing grade. You do have other options. You have the animated films, you have the television shows, you have comic books by the bucketload, and you can make a difference and demand that the filmmakers do these characters justice (cue rimshot) by telling them that this movie is a disappointment and refraining from going to see it again or from buying the DVD. Money talks. Hollywood will laugh off reviews, but that box office shock gets them every time. After all, even though the jokes were last second and tacked on, the fact that we all hated BvS made them change something to try to course correct. You did that. You made a difference. And you can do it again. You can help force them to give you the movie you deserve. You should want that. You should want that for yourself and I want that for you as well.

So if you gotta fight me, fight me. Fine. I'll rebutt you to the ends of the earth if you feel the need to go that far. I'm not trying to trash a thing you love. I love it too and I want them to put some fucking effort into these films and make them as amazing as they should be.

Until that time...I guess come at me, bro.

[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND Sept 7, 2018 – The Nun, Peppermint, God Bless the Broken Road

Hallelujah! We made it through another summer, one with a lot of really strong studio and independent films and only a few dogs (and even those were a lot more tolerable than in years past).

Normally, the first weekend of September after Labor Day would be a down weekend but with the blockbuster success of New Line’s adaptation of Stephen King’s It last year, all that has changed. Mind you, there have been other solid September openers like Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion and a couple Resident Evil movies, but this weekend, New Line is going to go whole hog with the latest Conjuring spin-off/prequel, and another studio is gonna try to give it some genre competition.

THE NUN (New Line/WB)

The Fall movie season kicks off with a movie that could have easily opened over the summer or waited until October to take advantage of the impending Halloween (the holiday, not the movie). With last year’s huge success for New Line’s adaptation of Stephen King’s It, the studio is hoping horror fans will pull a repeat and help kick off a strong fall movie season after some late summer hits.

If you don’t already know, The Nun is a spin-off prequel to June 2016’s The Conjuring 2 directed by James Wan which grossed $102 million from a $40.4 million openig. That’s just slightly less than the original The Conjuring made in July 2013, grossing $137 mill. domestic after a $41.9 million opening.

The first movie led to the hit Annabelle spin-off and its prequel Annabelle: Creation, but The Nun is both a spin-off and prequel directed by Corin Hardy, who helmed the indie horror The Hallows a few years back. This one stars Taissa Farmiga, sister of The Conjuring star Vera Farmiga who has appeared on a number of seasons of FX’s American Horror Story, plus it also stars Oscar nominee Demian Bichir, who has appeared in everything from Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight to Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant.

While there might already be some franchise fatigue for these horror movies tying into the “Conjuring Universe,” the marketing for the movie has been spot-on with some of the scariest TV spots and trailers of the year. With schools back in session, the teen and older kids will certainly be up for a scary movie to see with classmates, as will older adult horror fans who appreciate the finesse that Wan brings to his horror films. As we saw with Itlast year, horror is definitely bigger money than ever especially with a strong and scary horror premise like this one.

The Nun should be good for the same $36 to 40 million range as the Annabelle movies, although it won’t get the opening weekend bump of a summer or October pre-Halloween release nor will it have much chance for legs with next week’s The Predator aiming for the same audience. If it’s any good, it should be able to still make $100 million with the other September releases seeming fairly bland.

Oh, and there’s already a sixth “Conjuring Universe” film slated for next July, so we’ll see if that’s a prequel/sequel to The Nun or maybe it will be a family film with Lorraine and Ed Warren meeting as kids and getting into ghost-chasing ala Scooby Doo. (It’s actually a movie about the Crooked Man from Conjuring 2, not to be confused with the Slender Man from Slender Man.)

Mini-Review: You probably won’t have to have seen The Conjuring 2 to know all you need to know for this suitable prequel, which is intrinsically linked to one of the more interesting side-plots from that horror movie. In fact, there’s such a simplicity to the plot and small cast within The Nunthat you probably wouldn’t even have to know that any other movies in the series exist, although obviously, you might get more out of The Conjuring 2 knowing the history of that mysterious nun.

Taking place in 1952, a young nun at a Romanian abbey has committed suicide (as we see in the opening) and Father Burke (Demian Bichir) has been sent to investigate with a young Postulant named Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga). When they arrive, they’re greeted by the still shaken groundskeeper Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet) who tells them that the abbey has been cursed, and over the course of the next few nights, Father Burke and Irene all about that curse which has the abbey’s nuns praying 24/7.

There probably isn’t too much more that needs to be said about the curse that has created the title adversary, except that producer James Wan has found another real deal in director Corin Hardy (The Hallows), sincethe Irish filmmaker knows how to create a horror movie for modern audiences that pays suitable homage to the likes of The Exorcist, as well as Italian giallo greats Bava and Argento.

The Nun might be a little slow for the younger horror fans who love jump scares and seeing stupid teens getting killed. With only three primary characters, there’s only so much killing that can be done, but there’s plenty of scares and many visuals that are quite horrific. As expected, the gore is on point with excellent creature performance by a villain that often looks like early Marilyn Manson.

Fans of The Conjuring movies will definitely like where The Nun ends up, and here’s hoping we’ll eventually see more of the Warrens, as they’re a hard act to top when it comes to supernatural investigators.

Rating: 7.5/10

PEPPERMINT (STXfilms)

The unfortunate attempt at counter-programming that will essentially be targeting the same young men and women into horror is this revenge thriller from Taken director Pierrre Morel that puts former Aliasstar Jennifer Garner back into the action realm.

Garner has been starring in a mixed bag of movies from the rom-com Love Simonearlier this year to the family film Nine Livesand faith-based hit Miracles from Heaven a few years back. She’s basically been bouncing between rom-coms and family films over the years with a couple Oscar-nominated hits (Dallas Buyers Club, Juno) in between, although she’s wisely stayed away from action since the terrible movie Elektra, itself a spin-off from the equally bad Daredevil.

She’s definitely had a few hits as a film actor as well as memorable classics like 13 Going on 30, but Peppermint will be a good test to see if she can attract men as well as women.

Revenge flicks have had a spotty history at the box office, generally doing better (and being done better) in the ‘70s, but there have been lots of attempts to revive it, everything from the Oscar-winning The Revenant to the Taken movies. Probably the best comparison for this one would be the Jan. release Proud Mary starring Taraji P. Henson, which opened with less than $10 million over the MLK weekend  ($11.7 million four-day opening). A few weeks later, Bruce Will starred in MGM’s Death Wish remake, which did slightly better with $13 million, grossing $34 million domestically.

Unfortunately, Peppermint isn’t good, and I don’t expect reviews to be that favorable, which may put off anyone who might see this over The Nun (which also is getting mixed reviews).

Opening in over 2,900 theaters, STXfilms has done a decent job promoting this to be a solid second choice for those not wanting to be scared, and that should allow Peppermint to open somewhere between the two movies mentioned with between $11 and 12 million, maybe slightly more, presuming Garner doesn’t have quite the pull of a Mark Wahlberg or Amy Schumer (the stars of STX’s bigger openers this year.)

Mini-Review: Despite the wonky, strange title for this revenge flick, one goes into it hoping that Jennifer Garner’s presence and her return to action might be a way she can revitalize her career. Sorry, but it ain’t happening.

Garner plays Riley North, an L.A. soccer mom who watches her husband and daughter gunned down by the Mexican drug cartel just because they THINK he planned on robbing from kingpin Diego Garcia (Juan Pablo Raba). The three culprits are released due to a corrupt judge and crafty defense lawyer and Riley goes into hiding (after stealing thousands of dollars from the bank where she worked). When she returns, the three killers are found dead… and then others involved in the injustice following her husband and daughter’s murder also end up killed in brutal ways. (We see Riley doing most of the killing, so it’s no surprise.) Also in the mix are a couple detectives played by John Gallagher Jr. and John Ortiz.

I’m not quite sure exactly how or why we’re supposed to think that Riley’s actions are justified, especially with her vendetta against the Mexican mob, killing many hard-working soldiers just to get to Garcia.  In fact, Peppermint is chock-full of every single awful Latino cliché to the point where it’s almost offensive, and with so many clichés in play, it’s not hard to figure out where things are going as every beat is easily predicted.

(The title is derived from the fact that Riley’s daughter orders peppermint ice cream on her birthday before being gunned down… the word is never said again after that. Talk about random movie titling!)

It might be deemed sexist to poo-poo the idea of Garner playing a relentless bad-ass, but it’s ridiculous enough that it had an audience in stitches with the ease it takes her to kill everyone who gets in her way. There’s just no sense to the drastic transition Riley goes through, and there’s very little sign of her earlier nature.  The trailer hints at all the training Riley goes through to get to the point where she can take down a drug cartel single-handedly, but that’s nowhere to be found in the actual movie. Also nowhere to be found is Garner bringing any empathy to Riley, even when the story inserts a couple lovable homeless kids to bring a little misplaced heart to the movie’s second half.

Who knows? Maybe now that Ben Affleck isn’t playing Batman, Garner can step into the cowl, but either way, this should be a lesson to the critics who trashed Bruce Willis’ Death Wish remake, because that is an absolute masterpiece compared to this garbage. If you want to see a much better take on this sort of female-driven revenge flick, check out the movie called Revenge, which earns that title more than Peppermint earns its title.

Rating: 5/10

GOD BLESS THE BROKEN ROAD (Freestyle Releasing)

Everyone probably knows by now how poorly I do when trying to predict faith-based films, maybe because I just have no connection to the material, but in this case, I’ve actually seen frequent commercials for this one, which is rarely the case. It’s directed by Harold Cronk, the director of God’s Not Dead, God’s Not Dead 2 and next week’s Unbroken: Path to Redemption. Yes, Cronk not only has two movies this year but he has two movies being released in back-to-back weeks with similar names. Despite having a title similar to a Rascal Flatts song, the movie is about a woman whose husband is killed at war but instead of waging war on all of Iraq ala Peppermint’s heroine, she then meets and falls for a race car driver. The movie basically offers lots of things that might appeal to people in the Red States: country music, war heroes, racing and of course, faith. I don’t know if that will make this seem that appealing, but being self-distributed into 1,200 or more theaters, this should be able to bring in around $3 million as counter-programming to the weekend’s genre films with very few other wholesome PG options in theaters.

I’ll be curious to see how much shuffling around happens in the Top 10 especially with last week’s thriller Searching doing much better than expected and Screen Gems having a lot more room to expand it based on positive word-of-mouth. (I hear that it will expand into over 2,000 theaters Friday, which should allow it to bump up into the top 5.) Also, can the late summer hits like The Meg and Mission: Impossible hold up with new and somewhat genre fare like The Nun and Peppermint opening this week?

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

1. The Nun  (New Line) - $38.2 million N/A 2. Crazy Rich Asians  (New Line) - $14 million -37% 3. Peppermint (STXfilms) – $11 million N/A 4. The Meg  (Warner Bros.) - $5.6 million -47% 5. Searching  (Screen Gems) - $5.2 million -14% 6. Mission: Impossible – Fallout  (Paramount) - $3.7 million -50% 7. Operation Finale  (MGM) - $3.3 million -45% 8. God Bless the Broken Road  (Freestyle Releasing) - $3 million N/A 9. Christopher Robin  (Disney) - $3 million -43% 10. Alpha  (Sony) - $2.5 million -40%

LIMITED RELEASES

Before we get to this week’s specialty releases, I want to give New Yorkers a reminder that Ethan Hawke’s musical biopic BLAZE (Sundance Selects) will open in New York at Lincoln Center and the IFC Center on Friday. You can read more about that here.

This week’s specialty releases are brought to you by the “name game” starting with the docs…

Heather Lenz’s Kusama - Infinity (Magnolia) is a portrait of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, the top-selling female artist in the world, who has alienated many of her peers even while overcoming obstacles like growing up in WWII-torn Japan. It will open at the Film Forum in New York and the Landmark Nuart in L.A. Friday, and you can find out when it will play elsewhere on the Official Site.

Anthony&Alex’s Susanne Bartsch: On Top (The Orchard) is a portrait of NYC nightlife and fashion icon Susanne Bartsch, who helped launch the career of RuPaul (the film’s Exec. Producer) while championing designers Marc Jacobs and Vivienne Westwood and raising millions to fight AIDS. It will be On Demand and Digital, but also will open in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Monica Film Center.

Amy Scott’s Hal (Oscilloscope) is obviously not about the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but is instead about legendary filmmaker Hal Ashby, who is responsible for some of the greatest films of the ‘70s including Harold and Maude (a personal fave), The Last Detail, Coming Home and Being There.  The doc includes interviews with Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Jeff Bridges and contemporary filmmakers like Alexander Payne, Judd Apatow and more.It opens on Friday at the IFC Center, who is also doing a Hal Ashby: The Seventies retrospective starting Friday, including a couple double bills with the aforementioned doc. It will open in L.A. at the Landmark Nuart on Sept. 14. (Honestly, not being into art or fashion, this doc is probably more my speed.)

Now playing at the Film Forum and opening in L.A. on Sept. 27 is the historic doc Bisbee ’17  (4th Row Films), the new doc from Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine, Actress), which looks at the town of Bisbee, Arizona, and the events of 1917 when 2,000 striking immigrant miners were rounded up at gunpoint and herdered into cattle cars before being abandoned in the desert. As with his past docs, Green specializes in recreating the events which his films are covering.

Next up, a disparate group of genre films…

Clive Tonge’s Mara (Saban Films) stars Olga Kurylenko as Kate Fuller, a criminal psychologist interviewing the witness of a strangling who the man’s eight-year-old daughter Sophie only identifies with the word “Mara.” Apparently that’s a demon who kills her victims as they sleep… I somehow doubt this could be anywhere near as scary as The Nun but it’s another option on VOD and Digital HD if you can’t find a theater playing it.  

Rungano Nyoni’s feature debut I Am Not a Witch (Film Movement) is set in a village in present-day Zambia, and it ALSO involves an 8-year-old girl, this one accused of being a witch and having a choice between punishments. It opens at the Quad Cinema Friday, BAM in Brooklyn as well as other theaters. You can find the full release schedule here.

The South African Western Five Fingers For Marseilles (Uncork’d Entertainment) from director Michael Matthews involves five black cowboys, known as the Five Fingers, who fight against the police oppression of the colonial town in Marseille. When two police are killed, the group breaks up and the one who killed the police becomes the outlaw known as the Lion of Marseilles once he’s released from prison twenty years later, after the battle to end Apartheid in South Africa has been won. This was a huge box office hit in South Africa that played Toronto and Fantastic Fest last year as well as Fantasia in July.

In Xavier Giannoli’s The Apparition (Music Box Films), opening in select theaters Friday, Vincent Lindon plays journalist Jacques, whose reputation as an investigator attracts the attention of the Vatican to investigate an apparition in a small French village where he meets a young girl who claims to have seen the spirit of the Virgin Mary. For those who want something a little more French than this week’s The Nun, this is the movie for you!

The new film from Frontier(s), Hitman and The Divide director Xavier Gens is Cold Skin (Samuel Goldwyn) about a steamship heading towards the Antarctic Circle with a young man on board who is meant to replace the island’s weather observer but who ends up in a lighthouse with a brute played by Ray Stevenson (Thor). It opens in select cities and On Demand.

Bil Kiely’s teen coming-of-age film Age of Summer (Freestyle Digital Media) is about a young boy (played by Percy Haynes White of Gifted) who is put to the test in the co-ed Junior Lifeguard Program in 1986.  It’ll be in select theaters and on VOD Friday.

STREAMING

Premiering on PBS this Friday and streaming on Saturday is Glenn Holstan’s doc Wyeth (American Masters), which looks at artist Andrew Wyath through interviews with his sons and never-before-seen archival material from his family’s personal collection.

On Friday, Netflix offers the quirky teen rom-com Sierra Burgess is a Loser starring Shannon Purser, RJ Cyler and Noah Centineo, which is a modern retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac, and Madeleine Gavin’s African doc City of Joy about a group of women who have been through unspeakable horros in war-torn Congo and the center that helps them regain a sense of self-powerment. (If you’re a Netflix subscriber, you can just click on the titles on Friday to watch.)

REPERTORY

Gonna try to make this a more regular feature with so much new interest in older movies, not just from me, but in general. Click on the theater name for more info about the films discussed. (I hope to add other regions like Chicago and Toronto shortly.)

METROGRAPH (NYC):

Continuing the “Anime-versaries,” Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue (GKIDS/Fathom) will get a special 20thanniversary rerelease on Thursday and Saturday across the nation through Fathom while the Metrograph will be playing it for a week.

The Metrograph is also doing a Jack Smith series (sorry, not familiar with his work) and a series of films from 1968 (all celebrating their 50thanniversary!) called Everything Was Now: “1968” Circa 1968, which runs through the weekend and includes everything from George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Deadto The Battle of Algiers to Wild in the Streets and Godard’s La Chinoise.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Godard’s Rolling Stones doc Sympathy for the Devil will screen on Friday night with cinematographer Tony Richmond doing a QnA. Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon will screen on Sunday night with Kubrick right-hand man and Filmworker doc subject Leon Vitali doing a QnA. Lastly, John Landis’ The Blues Brothers will play on Saturday night as part of the theater’s Aretha Franklin tribute with Landis introducing the film.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART (L.A.):

Wes Craven’s classic The Hills Have Eyes will screen at midnight Friday with actor Suze Lanier-Bramlett in person.

AERO (LA):

Continuing its 4th “The French Had a Name For It” series with double features of Fever Rises at El Pao / Such a Pretty Little Beach tonight, Poison Ivy / The Strange Mr. Steve tomorrow night,  Maigret Sets a Trap / Symphony for a Massacre Saturday and The Last of the Six / The Assassin Lives at 21 on Sunday.  I’ve seen exactly one of those. Any guesses?

MOMA (N.Y.) continues its Jacques Audiard retrospective through Sept. 20, just before the release of the French filmmaker’s first English language film The Sisters Brothers. As a huge Audiard fan, I recommend Read My Lips, The Beat My Heart Skipped and Dheepan, presuming you’ve already seen Une Propheteand Rust and Bone.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC) will play Wilson Yip’sParadox as part of its “Fist and Sword” series on Friday and Gary Marshall’s A League of Their Own Saturday morning as part of its Family Series. You’ll also have a chance to see PT Anderson’s The Master back in 70mm as part of its 70mm series on Friday.

That’s it for this week… next week, THE PREDATOR! Plus White Boy Rick and A Simple Favor