#red riding hood!lino | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bulbinie · 6 years ago

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Little Red Riding Hood

Author’s note:I’ve been writing this for so LONG AND IT TOOK SO MUCH FROM MY HEALTH♣️😩 (I tried to put a ‘keep reading’ but tumblr didn’t let me post the writing so I decided to take it off.sorry to everyone that has to scroll a lot to get to another fanfic)

Genre:tokyo ghoul au,drama,the slightest of romance(both of them are just being flirty dicks to each other)

Pair:Investigator!Bang Chan x Ghoul!Reader

Warnings:blood,gory,a lot of Hyunjin in store

Word count:4.9K

‘Another body has been found near an old construction site, reportedly of a man in his 30s. The young adult, is said to have been seen earlier that week robbing a supermarket, holding the clerk and a couple of citizens at gunpoint. The man has a criminal record for carjacking, robbery and lewd conduct in public…’

‘The bastard had it coming.’ you say cheerfully, focusing on the newly announced piece of information from the walkie talkie attached to your belt.

You had stolen the old rusty communicator a couple of months ago from the local police station. Getting called in ‘as the last person who had seen the victim’, it was shortly explained to you that the bartender whose body was found limbless, chest wild open, was putting more than the needed stuff in the drinks.

And of course-you knew that. The moment you saw the man behind the bar spiking one of the women’s drinks, who was sitting at the bar, waiting for her beverage to get ready, and chatting in a happy-go-lucky way not suspecting a thing, you had become livid. Luring him outside in one of the dead-end streets near the bar, you listened to his screams and pleas with such satisfaction that you had gone overboard with your actions. Completely blinded by rage-the predator in you calling-you had opened him up, like a kid would do, a stuffed doll to see what’s hiding inside.

———————————————————————

Hearing a muffled cry, your gaze finally falls to the woman under your slightly hovering figure. The tentacles of the red kagune - starting at the base of your back - are tightly wrapped around her mouth to silence the screams.

‘Oh, I almost forgot about you, miss ’ you giggle softly, hitting yourself on the head, acting as if you had just forgotten something from the grocery store and not that a fragile human being was lying under your form. Most of her white coat was soaked up in blood, two small daggers that the investigator tried to use against you in a close combat fight, sunken deeply in the flesh around her shoulder area.

Balanced on your tentacles-planted firmly to the ground-you shorten the proximity between your bodies by relaxing your kagune enough, almost able to feel her ragged breath on your face.

Still smiling slightly, you delicately envelop one of the bloody daggers in your hand. At this point there are tears running down the face of the dove, her eyes screwing shut when you turn the dagger sharply, the movement making the little knife sink in even deeper.

As soon as she opens her eyes again, your expression has changed, no trace left of your breezy attitude. Your red eyes are hooded, a frown plastered on your lips.

‘I’m not going to kill you as I’m already running late because of the little stunt you pulled earlier,’ you explain with a calm tone. ‘-and I need you to be my messenger of the day, okay?’

‘Tell the new chairman of the CCG that me and the former one have a long lasting deal,’ you twist the knife again making the clothed area redden even more.’- and that I will kill every single dove I see strolling around my district and I won’t be as generous as today, got it?’ you finish with a tilt of your head and a cynical smile.

Loosening the grip of your tentacles around her after she nods to show you that she had understood your requirements, you step back on the ground your kagune retracting from its previous spot, disappearing.

While she is trying to fix her breathing pattern, you kneel down next to her, stuffing your hand in the pocket of the white coat, fumbling a little inside. Taking out a phone you quickly send an SOS message with an exact location, throwing it once you are done, next to the dove.

‘Oh and also,’ you say while putting on your red hood, positioning the mask that strongly reminded the lying woman of a wolf face.’-tell your boss that the message is from the Little Red Riding Hood and that I’m the last person the organization wants to mess with.’

And with that you were gone, fading into the shadows.

———————————————————————

‘Did you get here so late because you had to deliver some food to grandma’s house?’ the boy you were supposed to meet 20 minutes ago, teases the moment he spots your figure approaching the old abandoned building. Smoke filled the air from the cigarettes that some ghouls had come outside to light for a quick smoke. With a few fanning motions and a couple of greetings you break through the suffocating curtain that is between you and your friend, who is leaning against the wall. Instead of answering him, you slide out your hands from the pockets of your coat, pulling them up for him to see the dry blood all over your fingers and palms. His smirk falters, a worried look appearing on his face.

You found it cute when he got all worried for you in situations that weren’t even that serious, quickly coming to your aid when you got injured, even if it was a cut to the stomach or a bruised face that he knew was going to heal in a matter of minutes. But you were especially grateful for him when things got nastier, the ghoul always having your back, no questions asked.

‘Did someone attack you?’ he asks while hanging you a wrinkled napkin from the back pocket of his jeans.

‘They sure tried to. Too bad she was all alone, trying to fight with twin daggers.’ you laugh bitterly, starting to clean the blood off with the help of the napkin. ‘Can you believe it, Hyunjin? The old man resigns from his position and all of a sudden doves start flying in trying to hunt in our district.’

‘Maybe things would have been different if he didn’t die’ you finish off, the scenario you voice out, stopping at just that- a plot which will never unfold.

Hyunjin nods thoughtfully, stroking his chin with narrowed eyebrows. After a few seconds with no response from him he suddenly swings his arm tightly around your shoulder, pressing your hair uncomfortably under it. With that you know the boy is done worrying for the day, the big smile that appears on his handsome face, lifting up your mood a little. Trying to shake his heavy hand off your shoulder, but to not avail, you jab the tall boy right under the ribs with two fingers rapidly, which makes him shriek and laugh, letting you out of his bear-like grip. After a couple of minutes of messing around, you decide to get inside the building.

At first glance the building looks close to collapsing. No front door separated the inside of it from the dark street, the closest source of light being the street lamp at the end of the alley-almost useless considering the distance from the building and the constant flickering that it did. Inside there was no paint on the walls, the elevator that had once worked gone out of service, no electricity, no -nothing. The only thing left in the creepy place were the bad smell, tag murals all over the blank walls and of course the bar.

The underground venue was a save hang out place for a lot of the ghouls who were on the run or just wanted to relax from the craziness of the outside world. You found the description, your friend and the owner of the place-Minho, had used to introduce his new bar to you, ironic, considering that most of the chaos that he was talking about going down in the city, came from the actions of the ghouls and their habits.

‘Honestly, I’ve always wondered why Minho chose this miserable lot to start his business.’ the boy next to you points out while descending the stairs towards the basement.

With every passing step the darkness, surrounding both of you becomes less. ‘I mean, have you seen that guy? He would do anything to save money. Of course he would pick a creepy building like this that looks like it came straight out of a crime movie. The last time he paid for electricity, was the last time the electrician that got the guts to come here, saw the outside world.’

A loud cackle comes from Hyunjin. ’Lino has some serious problems as a ghoul and a citizen of this town.’

‘Tell me about it’ you say mimicking the wide smile that is plastered on the boy’s lips.

———————————————————————

The energetic song, coming from the end of the small corridor that the stairs lead to, begins to create a giddiness in your belly. The corridor in front of you is illuminated by lamps, all in different colors, littering the polished floor like a small galaxy with its stars. The muffled beat finds its way through your ribs, the piano that is softly playing a cheerful melody in the background and the thought of all the sounds mixing together and then mercilessly crashing with your body once you have passed the bouncer, keeping you away from your final goal-makes you even more ecstatic to get in and enjoy yourself. At the door the bouncer barely looks towards your direction nodding, gesturing with his hand for you to put away your IDs that you had prepared to show, in case it was a different person at the door. With a small greeting from Hyunjin and a smile in return from the other boy, you finally enter the lounge.

The music and the soft colors that are mingling with the dark surround you, at last. Hyunjin quickly hooks his pinky with yours leading the way towards your usual spot, close to the small stage, where on most days, the hired band performed until the early hours of the day. Almost at the end of the crowd that is gathered around the bar and the round tables Hyunjin stops without a warning-causing you to crash into him and accidentally step on the back of his shoe. He turns around and swiftly wraps his hands around your waist, leaning down towards your ear to whisper something you don’t hear at first.

'WHAT' you raise your voice slightly trying to talk over the strong music beat and the voices of all the ghouls. You put my hands around his neck, bringing him even closer to your ear that way showing for him to repeat what he had said.

'I said that I forgot to tell you that there is a new pianist. I heard from Jisung that the guy with the neck tattoo moved to another bar. 'He said loudly into your ear, moving away from you and silently pointing behind him. A slight pout forms on your face, your eyebrows subconsciously scrunching to show your disgust. The tall boy stifles a laugh, masking it with a big smile that shows his pearly white teeth perfectly. With the same sceptic expression on your face, you continue towards the table.

The small round table close to one of the brick-patterned walls, completing the whole “bar” look, always had on Friday nights-a silver plate with the word ‘RESERVED’, placed on top. Both you and Hyunjin were regular visitors of the venue on Fridays-the table close to the stage being a constant pick from the two of you, wanting to jam to the live music as much as possible.

Sitting down, you order a cosmo to Hyunjin, whose turn it was to go to the bar and order the drinks.

A loud whine leaves his mouth followed by a couple of accusatory words about how he was the one who got the drinks for the last two weeks and that it was your turn.

Without saying a word you fixate your eyes on his, the stare that you constantly used on him when you wanted for something to go your way making the boy ‘tsk’ after a couple of seconds, seeing that you won’t budge. Swiftly turning around he pushes through the busy place, leaving you behind with a pleased smile.

Drumming your fingers lightly on the empty table to the beat of the music, you look around the little lounge. On some of the tables scattered around the place, were sitting faces familiar to you and on others there were ghouls that you were seeing for the first time. Customers change regularly, the life of a creature like you, being a constant problem. If you didn’t have a formed group, someone to have your back or you were one of the weaker ghouls, the chance of being hunted down was given at any moment. That’s how it has always been.

Once your eyes have travelled around the whole place, they finally stop on the figure, with its back on display, from where you are sitting. Trying to take a small peak of the new musician’s face you raise from your chair, tilting to the right to attempt and get a look at the strangers’ face.

‘Hey what are you looking at?’

The voice startles you making you retreat from your position, turning your head in its direction.

‘Jesus, Jinnie you scared me.’ You pant, bringing your hand up to your heart.

The boy, with two drinks in his hands is looking amused by the little scare he gave you, averting his eyes to the stage, where you were looking just now. Bringing his gaze back to you, with an even more amused face-he raises his eyebrows teasingly.

‘Someone caught your eye already, Red?’

‘Shhhhh ’, you try to silence the loud boy, a finger in front of your lips to indicate that he should shut up.

Instead of taking a seat, Hyunjin puts the drinks down, flashing you a final glance. Before you can even ask him what the hell he is planning, he has already taken four big steps and is up on the little stage, starting a conversation with the new pianist.

‘Oh my god’ you breath out, quickly sitting down at the table, lowering as much as possible in your seat. Putting your hand over your face in embarrassment, shielding yourself from the situation happening in front of you.

Deciding to take a glance after a moment, you peak from under your hand and you are met with two eyes staring at you.

The first thought you get is ‘shit, he is pretty’

His dark curls are falling into his eyes and his expression is neutral-eyes hooded-but holy fuck you don’t think you have ever seen a boy more attractive than this one.

And his smell, almost makes you sigh, the strong fragrance coming from him, almost clouding your mind.

But then another thought appears in your head:

‘He looks familiar’

And suddenly, Hyunjin is back, smiling as brightly as ever, this time taking his place next to you.

‘What did you tell him?’ you ask, your whole attention on the boy next to you.

‘Not that much,’ he shrugs, bringing his straw up to his mouth to take a sip of the mixed beverage. ’I told him that you’ve got a little crush on him’

‘You want to die?’ you tell him with your most threating tone, punching him in the upper arm-the boy almost spilling the substance of the glass, from your sudden action. ’I don’t even know him, now he is going to think I’m all weird.’ You groan, covering your face with both hands.

A laugh erupts from the guilty boy, slightly nudging your side. ’Don’t worry, I think he was kind of amused’

At his words you remove your hands, squinting suspiciously at him.

‘I think I heard him mutter a little ‘cute’ ,while I was telling him how madly in love you were with him.’

‘You are a liar, Hwang Hyunjin’ you voice out, pointing a finger at him.

‘Am not’ he says in return.

‘Are’ you answer back, this kind of bickering being a usual thing in your friendship.

‘Am not’

The first tunes of a jazzy melody start replacing the beats of the music-now turned off, the little thing going on between you and the boy, stopping immediately, both of your attention shifting to the performers standing on the grey stage- a pianist, saxophonist, bassist and a drummer.

The live music, draws a content sigh from your lips, finally feeling relaxed. Quietly chatting with Hyunjin, now and then, wanting to enjoy the music as much as possible. At one point, you are discussing the new pianist, whose name Hyunjin forgot to ask about. His style was definitely different from the man with the neck tattoo that you were used to listening to. This guy’s technique was way cleaner, regulating the sound better and there was the needed emotion put into the playing to make the whole thing almost perfect.

After 30 minutes of non-stop playing, the saxophonist announces that they will have a quick break after one more song. The piece is lively, the energy of the performers-contagious. Hyunjin is dancing around in his seat, you joining him in the process. But at one point something doesn’t feel right, the feeling of someone watching you making you snap your head towards the still playing pianist. His profile is visible and even if he isn’t technically watching you, your gut feeling is going crazy, his presence all of a sudden feeling heavy. And the uneasiness doesn’t stop.

The song ends and you feel even worse, completely losing yourself in your thoughts, now that nothing was distracting you from the bad feeling in your stomach.

Something was just not right. You were sure that you had seen the new pianist somewhere around town. But you passed hundreds of people every day if not even more. You would surely remember a boy with such an intoxicating smell like his if you had passed him down the streets of the big town. And if you didn’t know any better, you would have almost mistaken his smell for that of a human.

But that can’t be, right?

Human in the bar which only the creatures of the underworld knew about.

Unless…

Stirring your drink, your gaze shift towards the little stage, feeling someone’s eyes on you once again. The boy you were just thinking about has turned his head away from the keys of the piano, in the direction towards the small table where you and Hyunjin are sitting, a bottle of water in his hands. When he catches you starring back a shameless smirk appears on his face, followed by a quick wink, dimples prominent.

And then it hits you. The dimples.

———————————————————————

‘I managed to collect as much information as possible on the new members of the agency that were at the latest conference. Had the chance to snap a couple of pictures outside the building.’ the text on your phone said followed by a list of names and five images of men and women all dressed up in fancy suits.

‘You should have heard the speech that the son of the new chairman presented. I almost spilled coffee all over one lady, trying to hold in my laughter. The speech was full of over political bullshit about the differences between the ghouls and the humans. Talking about good and evil as if he knows what those two concepts mean in the situation we are in. On top of that he got appointed for a leader of a new squad.’

Snorting loudly at the text, you scroll down to the provided images. There is a picture of a young boy, under which, the name ‘Bang Chan’ is written, followed by the title ‘The chairman’s son’.

The first thing that catches your attention are the dimples. He looks naïve, the cheerfulness that oozes from him, a strong contrast to the others around him, making you believe that he wouldn’t be that much of a threat to anyone.

Your phone dings again, the new message catching your attention.

‘I also heard that he is an artificial. Guess daddy doesn’t love his son that much.’

One-eyed ghoul, huh?

———————————————————————

Of course. How dumb can you be? That’s why his fragrance was so alluring.

‘We have to leave’ you say out of nowhere, unintentionally locking eyes with the suspect.

The ‘what’ that comes from Hyunjin’s lips, sounds as if you are in a tunnel, his voice coming from somewhere far away from you. Your mind is swerving with thoughts about the situation you are in.

How had you forgotten about him? You shouldn’t have underestimated the chairman’s son with just one look at a picture. You were so far from the truth. The fact that he had found the underground bar just in a month when high class investigators have been suspicious, trying to grasp on even the smallest evidence that a place like this, where ghouls gathered, existed, made a shiver run down your body.

‘Someone snitched the place out. God, when I find the snitch, I’m going to pull all the vocal chords out of their throat.’

Suddenly the ghoul sitting next to you, stands abruptly, the panic prominent in his body language.

‘Sit down, Hwang’ you command, lightly tugging at the silver chain hanging from his jeans. ’We shouldn’t attract any attention.’

‘I don’t think that would be a problem’ he says pointing slightly towards the stage.

An intense classical melody had started playing, the unusual genre for this place, drawing all the attention towards the pianist, producing the sound with his fingers. The music grows hectic with every note, the switching between the threatening octaves with quick chattering treble figures, reminding you of a constant chase between a predator and a prey.

Predator and a prey. Isn’t that familiar?

‘I think I was right, about him being interested in you’ Hyunjin laughs lightly, without taking his off the pianist.

‘What do you-‘

‘The piece he is playing? It’s Rachmaninoff’s Little Red Riding Hood.’

At this point the music sounds out of control.

And then the screams come.

The first thing that stands out to you the most in all the havoc that is created, once the door is kicked down is the whip-like quinque that comes through the wall.

You recognize the rattling sound that it makes the moment it slices through a girl that was seated opposite the wooden door.

‘Fuck, why is Woojin here?’ Hyunjin says in a panicky voice, squeezing your arm tightly, shaking it a bit.

You were feeling as if you were watching a movie, the scene in front of you unfolding slowly, every sound around you completely dull.

Good question? Why was he here? Why were one of the most dangerous investigators, at the venue that was kept a secret for such a long time?

Bang Chan.

At that moment something inside of you switches.

Finally, turning towards the boy with the strong grip on your arm, you smile.

‘Hey are you-‘

Before he can finish his question, you cut him off, placing both of your arms on his shoulders.

‘Take the emergency stairs, you hear me? Call Minho and tell him what’s happening.’

The emergency stairs were something that Minho had come up with for exactly situations like this one. You remember him telling you about it one day, puzzled by the hatch that was in the corner of the girl’s restroom. He had explained that the stairs that were under the hatch lead to some tunnels that he found about, when looking at old plans of the building. The tunnels were connected to a couple of streets down the venue.

‘And you want me to leave you behind?’ he asks in disbelief.

‘I’ll be fine, Jinnie. And when all of this ends I’m going to explain everything.’ you say already pushing him in the direction of the toilet.

‘Hey, no let me stay here and prote-‘you cut him off for the nth time tonight, stopping your pushing motion, turning him around. Cradling his face with one of your hands, you peck his cheek softly.

‘I can’t risk losing you.’

With those last words you turn around, slowly starting to approach the fight scene.

———————————————————————

‘Oh, Red Riding Hood, long time no see.’ Woojin say the moment he finally catches the glimpse of your red coat, sending his rattling weapon, swinging towards you.

With a jump to the side you avoid the flying blades, gracefully.

Woojin was one of the high-rated investigators, whose face never matched his true scary nature.

If there was someone that you avoided as much as possible from the whole organizations, it was definitely Woojin.

‘I missed you too, Wojinnie. I’m surprised to see you working under the orders of a newbie.’ you pout in fake sympathy, delighted once you see his expression falter for a moment. But he is back to normal in a second, him closing on you, ready to strike once again.

With another jump in the air you are on the other side of the man, a laugh escaping your throat.

‘Would be delighted to continue this between us, but I have a new target to hunt down.’ You tell the young man while scanning quickly the room for the boy who was sitting at the piano, but he wasn’t there.

Taking in your surroundings on the way to the stairs, slashing with your kagune through some doves, you can’t help but fill the scorching rage inside of you. Dozens of bodies were laying on the ground, some still alive and some ghouls still up trying to fight off the enemy. Taking two steps at a time you are finally out of the basement, feeling the light breeze of the night hitting your face once you are outside.

———————————————————————

You don’t get the chance to even take one step before you are pined to the wall.

And in that moment two red eyes, meet one.

Your arms and legs are painfully getting forced by the kagune of the boy standing in front of you, his hand pressing down on your throat, to keep you in place.

So he isn’t an artificial. He is a real one-eyed ghoul. Born like that.

‘I knew that there was something fishy going on, the moment Lee Felix-one of the ‘assistants’ almost spilled coffee all over one of the women in the conference room. He started acting all uneasy when I shared my plans for ghoul termination. And from there it was quite easy getting the information I needed,’ he says calmly, a lazy smile on his face. ’Maybe next time try to implement someone in the organization, who doesn’t squirm when we talk about gory stuff?’

‘If you did something to Felix, I swear I’m going to make you regret it’ a growl like sound leaves you at his words, trying to reach him, your head almost overpowering his tight grip on your throat, but it’s once again pushed harshly against the wall making you groan.

A loud giggle emits from the boy, seeing you struggle greatly, his suffocating choke-hold, automatically making your hands wrap around his, to try to pry them away

‘You know, everyone talks about you, amongst my squad. All of them are telling me what a pain in the ass you were before you made that cowardly deal with the former chairman. But all I see is a dumb puppy who walks around thinking that she is the Big Bad Wolf.’ He puts a strand of your hair behind your ear with his free hand, gazing in your eyes. ‘But, let me tell you something,’ he says leaning to whisper the next thing in your ear. ‘There is a new Big Bad Wolf in the game and you have nothing against me, love’

He was definitely something else. He had his way with words, goosebumps travelling all around your body while listening to his monologue. But that was all there it was to him, just talk.

‘You are, you are,’ you try to question with great difficulty. ‘-definitely new aren’t you?’ ‘Let me..let me give you an advice for future references. Cut the talk because,’ he sees the tentacles too late feeling the pierce in his abdomen, his kagune loosening around your limbs and his hand around your throat. ’because it takes your focus away from your surroundings.’

With a kick to his chest, Chan is sent back flying, falling to the ground with a loud thud, followed by

groans and incoherent curses.

You place your hands on your knees, coughing loudly, while messaging your throat, marks present on your neck, left by his fingers. Once your breathing is back to normal, you finally look at the lying figure, engulfed by the dark.

Humming to yourself, a slight sway in your hips, you approach his body, Chan’s arms pressed against the gash on his lower body that had yet to start healing. Kneeling down next to him you softly trace your fingers from his neck up to his chin, taking it between your fingers. Tilting his head up, for him to look in your still red eyes, you smile softly; the words leaving your mouth next, not matching your cute demeanor.

‘You still have a long way to go, before you can call yourself the Big Bad Wolf. For now, you are going to be my Little Red Riding Hood, Channie.’

Standing up from your place you put your hood up, taking your mask out for the second time that night. Before you put on the mask, you blow a kiss to the injured boy saying your last words of the night.

‘And if you don’t behave correctly, I will eat you up and no one will be able to save you’

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weekendwarriorblog · 6 years ago

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WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND Feb. 1, 2019 - MISS BALA

It’s Super Bowl weekend, and you know what means, right? No, I don’t either, but normally, the Super Bowl has an effect on Sunday box office as people will go to Super Bowl parties or watch it with friends which makes it less of a necessity to go to the movies, so anything opening needs to make sure to do well on Friday and Saturday. Into that market comes a female-driven action thriller that might benefit from having a weekend to itself.

MISS BALA (Sony)

Directed by Catherine Hardwick (Twilight, Thirteen, The Nativity, Red Riding Hood) Written by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer Cast: Gina Rodriguez, Anthony Mackie, Ismael Cruz Cordova MPAA Rating: PG-13

The only wide release this weekend is this female-driven revenge thriller starring the beloved Gina Rodriguez from Jane the Virgin, which is based on a 2011 Mexican film that was Mexico’s Oscar submission that year. (It didn’t even get nominated.) The film was popular enough that the producers found a studio interested in a remake starring one of the more beloved LatinX actors from recent years.

Although Gina Rodriguez has never received an Emmy nomination, she’s received three Golden Globe nominations, all for Jane the Virgin, winning with her first nod in 2015. She hasn’t quite made a name for herself in the movie realm, mostly voicing roles in animated films and having small roles in last year’s Annihilation and Deepwater Horizon. (I hate to say this, but I still sometimes get her mixed up with Fast and Furious star Michelle Rodriguez, but they are indeed two different people.)

It also stars Anthony Mackie, who was last seen in Fox’s The Hate U Give, but who has really exploded as a star after being cast as The Falcon for Marvel Studios’ Captain America: The Winter Soldier, appearing in a couple Marvel movies since then.

Miss Bala is following in the same general genre realm as 2018’s Proud Mary, starring Taraji P. Henson, which opened with just under $10 million on MLK Jr. weekend and grossed $20.9 million, or Jennifer Garner’s Peppermint, which grossed $35.5 million after opening with $13.4 million. Oddly, both those movies opened on weekend with much stronger competition – Liam Neeson’s The Commuter and The Nun – which is not something Miss Bala has to worry about.

Although I’m not sure Miss Bala can make huge waves, it should do well among urban audiences and maybe more among women than the typical action thriller might, although this is usually a male-driven genre. Unfortunately, Sony is only opening it in roughly 2,000 theaters, probably focused on those urban markets, maybe hoping to get in some of the LatinX audience who make up a good percentage of moviegoers these days. Much of the recent marketing is focusing on the amount of LatinX people involved with making the movie, so they’re clearly hoping to get some of the business of Pantelion’s bigger releases.

Mind you, last weekend, The Kid Who Would Be King opened much MUCH lower than expected, and I expect this sort of ennui to affect Miss Bala as well. An opening in the $7 to 8 million range should probably be expected, which might allow Glass to remain #1 for a third weekend despite the Sunday competition from the Super Bowl.

Mini-Review:

It’s been so long since I saw the Mexican movie Miss Bala, all I really remember of it is that it’s about a beauty contest winner who gets caught up in the war on drugs between the DEA and Mexican gangsters, and with the relationship between Mexico and the U.S. so much in the news, it makes sense that a studio would want to remake it for American audiences.

In this case, it’s Gina Rodriguez’s Gloria, an L.A. make-up artist who travels down to Tijuana to support her friend Suzu, who has entered the Miss Baja competition – again, Gloria is there just to support her friend -- and yet, when they go out to a nightclub, Gloria witnesses the Estrella gang showing up to shoot up the place and kill the police chief. Suzu gets lost in the melee, and next thing Gloria knows, she’s taken by the gang, whose leader Lino (Ismael Cruz Cordova) takes a liking to her. Trying to escape, she ends up encountering the DEA who wants to use Gloria to keep the Estrella gang in their sights.

That’s probably all you need to know as Gloria is passed around and put to work by both Lino and his gang, the DEA and other factions, all who see her as a way to end the ongoing war.

There’s no question that Rodriguez is a talented actress, something she shows off repeatedly, as she acts scared, acts upset and basically acts her way out of any bad situation into which she’s put. In fact, she’s so much better than every other actor around her, that makes it obvious how bad the other actors are.

Similarly, Catherine Hardwicke has enough experience as a filmmaker to make this work, but she’s clearly working from a script that just doesn’t have enough meat to keep it going, so the film’s pace is all over the place. We get a big shoot-out one minute, then Gloria and Lino are out on a quiet but out-of-place date the next. Over an hour later, we’re BACK at the beauty competition, which you keep thinking has been taken out of the story equation, because it seems like such a non-entity at that point. Not that the beauty contest ever seemed like that big an aspect of the original, but at least it was used as the set-up for the lead character’s journey rather than a plot device shoehorned into her story.

There’s so much that could have been said about this piece in terms of the way women are used as objects for trading and trafficking, but that aspect of the movie gets lost in the interest of making it a cool gangster flick that doesn’t lose the LatinX women watching it… but probably will anyway.

Miss Bala has guns, explosions, a decent guideline to work from and Gina Rodriguez, so why is it still so frickin’ boring?

Rating: 6/10

With that in mind, this week’s Top 10 should look something like below, and it’s likely to be one of the worst weekends of the year with the Top 10 grossing less than $50 million….

UPDATE: A couple minor changes due to actual theater counts being a little different from my earlier estimates, although the most significance addition is Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old, which is re-opening into 735 theaters across the country this weekend. Interest and demand should still be good enough for it to get into the top 10 without around $3 million or so. We’ll have to see how the Super Bowl affects anything on Sunday, especially the L.A. Rams playing the New England Patriots, affecting two important movie markets.

1. Glass (Universal) - $9.5 million -50%

2. The Upside (STX) – $8 million-33%

3. Miss Bala (Sony) - $7.5 million N/A

4. The Kid Who Would Be King (20thCentury Fox) - $4.4 million -38%

5. Aquaman (Warner Bros.) - $4.2 million -43%

6. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse (Sony) - $4.0 million -35% (up .2 million)

7. Green Book (Universal) - $3.8 million -31% (up .3 million)

8. A Dog’s Way Home (Sony) – $3.2 million -37% (up .3 million

9. They Shall Not Grow Old (Warner Bros.) - $2.9 million N/A

10. Escape Room (Sony) - $2.3 million -45%

LIMITED RELEASES

Apparently, Peter Jackson’s THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD (Warner Bros.) will be opening for a limited release into about 500 theaters this weekend after three successful “one-day only” screenings of his 3D colorized WWI footage, grossing more than $8 million. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, I highly recommend it, and who knows? Maybe it will place somewhere in the top 15 for the weekend. You can read more about this fascinating doc in my earlier column.

Just a week after the debut of his Netflix film Polar, Mads Mikkelson returns in the very different survival thriller ARCTIC (Bleecker Street), written and directed by Joe Penna. In this one, he plays Overgard, the sole survivor of a plane crash in the arctic wasteland whose drive to survive is further motivated by a young woman he ends up dragging across the tundra in hopes of saving her. I generally love survival movies like this one and the likes of Touching the Void, 127 Hours and the Kate Winslet-Idris Elba survival movie The Mountain Between Us. This one is particularly special, because Mikkelson is such an amazing actor, and he’s really able to carry this story, often with almost zero dialogue. Penna also shows quite a bit of skill as a first-time director, filming in less-than-desirable conditions to really raise the stakes on what Overgard needs to overcome to survive. I recommend this tense survival film highly if you live in one of the select cities where it will be playing on Friday.

Although his upcoming horror remake Grudge has been shifted back to Jan. 2020, Nicholas (The Eyes of My Mother) Pesce’s second feature PIERCING (Universal Pictures Content Group), based on Ryû Murakami’s novel, stars Christopher Abbott as a man with a disturbing past who hires an equally disturbed escort, played by Mia Wasikowska, for an S&M session that turns into a grisly and deadly game. It’s an extremely disturbing but brilliantly stylish film that throws back to Dario Argento and De Palma – it even uses one of Goblin’s tracks from Argento’s Tenebre – but also pays homage to American Psycho and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. It will open in select theaters, On Demand and Digital HD this Friday

Opening Wednesday at New York’s Film Forum is Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s The Wild Pear Tree (Cinema Guild), the new film from the Turkish director of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, a family drama about a dysfunctional father-son relationship who are pitted against one another. Turkey’s official submission for the Oscars will open exclusively at New York’s Film Forum on Wednesday.

Rooney frontman Robert Schwartzman returns behind the camera with his second feature as a director, The Unicorn (The Orchard), starring Lauren Lapkus (Orange is the New Black) and Nick Rutherford play an engaged couple visiting Palm Springs to celebrate her parents’ 25thwedding vow renewal, when they discover the magic of “threesomes” which they set out to discover for themselves. Having premiered at SXSW last year, it will open in select cities including New York’s Cinema Village, L.A.’s Laemmle Noho and more.

Fresh off its premiere at the 1stever Iranian Film Festival New York, Iranian filmmaker Mani Haghighi’s Pig (Khook) (IFC Center) has its U.S. theatrical premiere with its story of blacklisted director named Hasan, who hasn’t been allowed to make a film in years (something fairly common in Iran, apparently), so his favorite actress is moving on, his wife has fallen out of love with him and their daughter is moving out. Oh, and also (and I’m putting this in verbatim) “Hasan is upset that he is being inexplicably ignored by the serial killer who has been decapitating the country’s best filmmakers.” Oh, Iran.. you so crazy! It opens at the IFC Center on Friday and in L.A. at the Lammle’s Music Hall and Town Center on Feb. 15.

From Bollywood comes Shelly Chopra Dhar’s Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (FIP), translated as “How I Felt When I Saw That Girl,” starring Sonam Kapoor (Sanju, Neerja) as Sweety, who has to deal with a family a little too excited about marrying her off, although she’s in love with a young writer, hoping her family will accept him. It will open in select cities in roughly 175 theaters, and I’m excited to say that I plan on seeing this Friday.

In that same vein, Rising Star Entertainment Ltd. Releases The Gandhi Murder, directed by Karim Traidia and Pankaj Sehgal, a conspiracy theory period film based on true events leading up to the assassination of Mahatma Ghandi. The film actually has a bunch of Western talent including Stephen Lang from the Avatar movies and Vinnie Jones, and it opens on Thursday, presumably focusing more on its VOD.

Asa Butterfield, Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones and Nina Dobrev star in Peter Hutching’s rom-com THEN CAME YOU (Shout! Studios) with Williams playing Skye, a teen suffering from a terminal illness who befriends 19-year-old hypochondriac Calvin (Butterfield) who helps her with her eccentric bucket list, and she helps him make a play for Nina Dobrev’s Izzy. So kind of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, only with Nina Dobrev instead of Earl. In theaters and On Demand Friday.

Opening in New York, L.A. as well as On Demand (this time for real!) is St. Bernard Syndicate (Uncork’d Entertainment), the new mockumentary from Klown director Mads Brügger – who also has a new documentary at Sundance this week! It’s about two entrepreneurs who try to find their fortune in the Chinese pet industry by creating a breeding center for Saint Bernard dogs that goes off course.

An intriguing on VOD this week is John Potash’s Drugs as Weapons Against Us (Gravitas Ventures), about the CIA’s Project MK-Ultra and how it was used to manipulate musicians and activists to promote drugs for social control. I haven’t seen it but if Potash can offer proof, this will be one not to miss.

There are also a couple Fathom Events on Thursday, the Anime A Silent Voice and the Graham Staines biopic The Least of These, and you’d probably learn just as much about these by clicking on the respective links.

STREAMING

Having just premiered at Sundance, Dan Gilroy’s reunion with his Nightcrawler star Jake Gyllenhaal for VELVET BUZZSAW premieres on Netflix Friday. Gilroys’ horror-thriller takes place in the contemporary art world of Los Angeles, exploring the idea that “artists invest their souls in their work and that, in an ideal world, that work should not be considered a mere commodity.” Sounds like pretty heady stuff, and though I won’t be able to see it until later today, Jake Gyllenhaal is in it, so I should enjoy it. I’ll post some thoughts sometime Thursday. (Note: The movie also opens in New York at the Landmark at 57, and presumably in L.A., too, if you want to see it with an audience.)

Mini-Review: The snooty and pretentious LA. art world is probably rife for humor, and it’s also rife for a horror movie in which some of those snooty and pretentious people within are killed off in gory and fantastical fashion. While the third movie from Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawler) tries its best to mix the two sides of the horror-comedy genre, it constantly runs into trouble trying to keep them together.

Velvet Buzzsaw reunites Gilroy with his Nightcrawler star Jake Gyllenhaal as L.A. art critic Morf Vandewalt, who can make or break a budding artist’s career with one of his reviews. His girlfriend Josephina (Zawe Ashton) works at one of L.A.’s ritziest galleries but she isn’t faring well with her boss Rhodora Haze (Rene Russo, also from Nightcrawler). One night, Josephina finds a dead neighbor and learns that his apartment is teeming with his undiscovered artwork, dark and gloomy and perfect for selling to the L.A. art cognoscenti. Everyone wants to get their hands on the priceless “Dease” artwork, but as Morf finds out more about the artist’s dark past, the people in his circles start dying.

If you’ve seen a lot of horror movies, you’ll probably already recognize the horror sub-genre of an item haunted by a dead man that proceeds to kill those who come into contact with it. This is basically where Gilroy’s latest film is coming from, though the premise of art that can literally kill is just a bit on-the-nose for a movie that’s set-up as a comedy about the art world.

The way Gilroy introduces the cast of characters is almost Altman-ess, as it pokes fun at all the different types vying for the priciest artwork by the mystery painter. Gyllenhaal’s Morf is particularly funny as he transitions from confidence to full-on neuroses, but no one gets more laughs than Natalia Dyer as a young assistant who keeps being passed around from one employer to another, and her reaction to each of their deaths gets funnier each time.

There are a few clever and gory kills and a few less-than-clever kills, but it always feels like it’s never going far enough to appease horror fans, even with a seeming nod to the Phantasm franchise. (Incidentally, the title of the film comes from Rene Russo’s former punk band, incidentally, something which isn’t particularly significant to anything.)

I’m sure it would be a lot more fun watching Velvet Buzzsaw with an audience than it would sitting at home watching it on Netflix by yourself, but you’re either going to be fully on board with what Gilroy and his cast are doing or you won’t. There probably won’t be much in-between.

While there are certainly some merits to Dan Gilroy’s first (and hopefully last) foray into horror, the humor often plays better than the horror elements, and they rarely feel like they’re meshed-together particularly well.

Rating: 6/10

The Taiwanese drama Dear Ex from co-directors Chih-Yen Hsu and Mag Hsu stars Ying-Xuan Hsieh as a woman named Sanlian, whose late husband has cut their son out of their will in favorite a man named Jay, played by Roy Chiu, which gets more interesting when her son moves in with Jay.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

Late Nites at Metrograph continues with Diao Yi’Nan’s Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014), an excellent Chinese crime-thriller that I can’t recommend enough, having seen it a number of times since it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. This weekend’s Playtime: Family Matinees is Jean Cocteau’s 1946 classic Beauty and the Beast and then Produced by David O. Selznick continues with screenings of Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945) on Saturday and Sunday and then continuing into February.

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

Weds. and Thurs’ double features are Edward J. Lasko’s Smash Up Alley: 43 The Richard Petty Story (1972) with Jeff Bridges’ The Last American Hero (1973); Friday and Saturday are double features of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) with The Deep (1977) and the weekend’s 2pm Matinee is Norman Tokar’s The Happiest Millionaire (1967). Monday’s Matinee is F. Gary Gray’s 1996 drama Set It Off.

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE BROOKLYN (NYC):

Janus Films’ new 4k Restorations of Jackie Chan’s Police Story and Police Story 2 will be running once a day for the next week at New York’s first Alamo Drafthouse.

FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER (NYC):

Continuing the Film Society’s tribute to filmmakers who recently brought their Oscar-nominated films to the New York Film Festival, there will be a four-day Yorgos Lanthimos retrospective, including his latest film The Favourite, as well as earlier Greek films Dogtooth, Kinetta, Alps and English language films The Lobster (also an Oscar nomimee) and The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

In conjunction with the world premiere of Shudder TV’s Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror, the Egyptian will have a FREE screening Blacula (1971) on Friday night, and a double feature of Tales from the Hood with Tales from the Crypt: Demon Night (both from 1995) on Saturday night.

AERO (LA):

Brad Bird will be appearing in person on Friday to screen his first film The Iron Giant (1999) as part of “Bird Watching: the Animation of Brad Bird,” which continues on Saturday, again with Bird in person, for a double feature of The Incredibles (2004) and its 2018 sequel The Incredibles II.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

The Quad presents two new retrospective series to coincide with the new 4k release of Emmanuelle: Beyond Emmanuelle: Just Jaeckin, a retrospective of the director’s erotic films,and Erotic Journeys: The Many Faces of Em(m)anuelle, which shows the entire series of erotic classics that paved the way for Cinemax.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Waverly Midnights: The Feds will show the late Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winning The Silence of the Lambs (1991) on Friday and Saturday night, Weekend Classics: Early Godard will screen Contempt (1963), while Late Night Favorites goes with Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic The Shining (1980).

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART (LA):

The Nuart’s Friday night midnight selection is Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider from 1969.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

The amazing four-week series Far Out in the 70s: A New Wave of Comedy, 1969 - 1979 continues this week with Paul Mazurksy’s 1969 comedy Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice on Wednesday, as well as the French comedies The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob (1973) and The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe (1972), plus John Waters’Female Trouble (1974). The Alan Arkin-directed Little Murders, starring Elliot Gould,screens on Thursday and Friday with Richard Pryor’s Car Wash on Thursday and Robert Altman’s California Split (also starring Gould) on Friday. Saturday the series continues with three similarly-titled but very different films in the 1979 coming-of-age drama Breaking Away, Hal Ashby and Peter Sellers’ Being There (1979) and Milos Forman’s Taking Off (1971). Sunday you can watch a Woody Allen double feature of his Oscar-winning Annie Hall (1977) and Oscar-nominated Manhattan (1979), in which Allen co-stars with Meryl Streep and Mariel Hemingway. On Monday is a double feature of Melvyn Van Peebles’ Watermelon Man (1970) with the 1973 film Five on the Black Hand Side, both starring Godfrey Cambridge. Tuesday is a screening of La Cage Aux Folles (1978) along with the Elaine May-adapted and Mike Nichols’ directed The Birdcage (1996), starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane, plus the Elaine May-written Warren Beatty remake of Heaven Can Wait (1978). This weekend’s Film Forum Jr. is the 1979 family film The Muppet Movie, screening Saturday and Sunday at 11AM.

MOMA (NYC):

Modern Matinees: Sir Sidney Poitiercontinues with the Sidney Poitier-directed Stir Crazy (1980), starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, on Thursday, 1962’s Paris Blueson Thursday and Sneakers (1992) on Friday. MOMA is also kicking off Cinema of Trauma: The Films of Lee Chang-dong on Friday, looking at the previous films of the Korean director of Burning, including Green Fish (1997), Poetry (2010) and Oasis (2002).

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

This weekend’s Family Matinee and Sensory Friendly Screening is the foreign animated film Zarafa (2012), plus the museum is running its 2019 Cinema Tropical Festival, which includes films from Latin and South America from the past few years.

That’s it for this weekend, and things are currently in development for a few changes next week, so standby!

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