Furious still #, Latin Lover #2

For the weekend of April 28-30, 2017, The Fate of the Furious had another big drop, but no new release was going to touch it. It's already passed $1 billion worldwide.

Of the new releases, the biggest hit has to be Baahubali 2, with a per-screen average that tentpole releases would pray for on opening weekend. The first one made $6.7 million in the US in 2015, decent for an India release in the US, but word-of-mouth in the right markets helped propel this to a bonafide hit.

How to Be a Latin Lover succeeded by putting Mexican star Eugenio Derbez (Instructions Not Included) with a name supporting cast (Salma Hayek, Kristen Bell, Rob Lowe). Niche titles tend to do well in these dead spaces the week before a big title opens.

On paper, any movie that starred Tom Hanks (Sully), Emma Watson (Beauty & the Beast), John Boyega (The Force Awakens), Bill Paxton (in one of his final roles), etc., should be successful, right? Especially with a critically-acclaimed director in James Ponsolt (The Spectacular Now, The End of the Tour) making his first mainstream movie. But after lukewarm reactions to the trailer, it looks like the studio knew they had a dud on their hands and dumped it here without screening it for critics. (It's currently at 16% on RottenTomatoes).

Beauty & the Beast is now the 13th highest grossing movie of all time. It should pass Captain America: Civil War for 12th place sometime next week.

Opens May 5
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY 2 with Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana and Dave Bautista.

Beauty & the Beast - Movie Review

Starring Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Kevin Kline, Josh Gad, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci, Audra McDonald and Gugu Mbatha-Raw.
Written by Stephen Chbosky & Evan Spiliotopoulos.
Directed by Bill Condon.

★★★

This movie for the most part balanced that fine line between being faithful to the original but finding parts where it can be its own thing. If anything, it's too faithful to the original, so that variances stuck out more.

Emma Watson is Belle, our French bookworm who longs for adventure. Dan Stevens is the Beast, a spoiled prince living in a cursed castle. One element they added that I appreciated was an explanation on why the townspeople didn't seem to know about this castle or this alleged prince.

The "Be Our Guest" number was a highlight, no small thanks to Ewan McGregor's capable vocals. Luke Evans as Gaston does the best among the human actors.

Regression - DVD Review

REGRESSION (R) Starring Ethan Hawke, Emma Watson, David Thewlis, Dale Dickey, David Dencik, Devon Bostick, Lothaire Bluteau, Aaron Ashmore and Peter MacNeill.
Written & Directed by Alejandro Amenabar.

★

I had hopes for this psychological thriller from the man who made 2001's The Others. But since I was able to guess the ending in the first few minutes, it wound up being a suspenseless atmospheric slog.

Circa 1990, Ethan Hawke plays Bruce Kenner, a detective investigating a child molestation case. A father (David Dencik) is accused of molesting his 17-year-old daughter Angela (Emma Watson) as part of a satanic sex-abuse ring. Her psychiatrist (David Thewlis) engages in regression hypnosis, and it helps his patients remember more and more of what they're suppressed. Soon Kenner himself is having nightmares and visions about satanists infiltrating the police force.

The film has the gauzy sheen of a 1990 celluloid film, not to mention a score that'd be at home in Kiss the Girls or Taking Lives. Hawke knows how to make middle-grade thrillers semi-work (The Purge, Sinister), but he can't pull this off. I don't know if anyone could.

Colonia - DVD Review

COLONIA (R) Starring Emma Watson, Daniel Bruhl, Michael Nyqvist and Vicky Krieps.
Written by Florian Gallenberger & Torsten Wenzel.
Directed by Florian Gallenberger.

★★

I had never heard of Chile's Colonia Dignidad, and about 30 minutes into the movie, I had to pause to see if this was based on a real thing. Sure enough, it was.

Lena (Emma Watson) and Daniel (Daniel Bruhl) are idealists in Chile during Pinochet's military coup of the government. Daniel is captured and taken away to the Colonia Dignidad, a religious-cult prison-camp run by ex-Nazis. Daniel is tortured and questioned and eventually tuned loose into the camp population.

Lena decides to volunteer to join the cult and enter the camp. It's run by Paul "Pius" Shafer (Michael Nyqvist), a cross between Jim Jones and Reinhard Heydrich. The camp's rules are so bizarre, it could only be based on truth. I can see what attracted Watson to the project, unpleasant though most of it is to sit through. I should also mention in reading up on Colonia Dignidad, there is so much more they could have done with it. The cast is willing but the script is weak.

Noah - Movie Review

ByCommonConsent.com

Starring Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Emma Watson, Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone, Logan Lerman and Douglas Booth. Directed by Darren Aronofsky.

★★½

My first impressions were what they were, but I was inspired to do a little more research into the story of Noah. I've always known the Bible's version, but I also read the Torah and Midrash, which has subtle differences and theories.

Noah is a hybrid tale. It has some adventure and some thrills and some psychosexual drama that you'd expect from the director of Black Swan.

Did he take artistic liberties? Sure. Which ones are the most egregious?

I don't have a problem with the rock monsters. The Bible refers to "giants" walking the land in those days, and the Torah and Midrash refer to the Nephilim - fallen angels - and combine these two, so sure, now the Nephilim are giants, encased in rock bodies unable to return to heaven. I'll give it that.

I don't have a problem with Noah's environmentalism, which he takes a weird extreme. But I can also see why there would be confusion. In this story, mankind's only been on the Earth a handful of generations, and after the fall of Adam and Eve, and the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, man's figuring out how to make it on his own in this dreary world. Noah still sees tending the Earth, respecting the plants and animals, as part of his righteous duty.

God (almost always referred to as The Creator here) doesn't speak to Noah so much as send him visions. Noah then interprets these visions as to what he must do. And the visions aren't vague. Noah sees the evil of mankind in the way they... eat animals and mine for minerals.  (Not so much the robbery, rape and murder.) In this respect, the Creator/Noah motives reminded me too much of Keanu Reeves in that lame Day the Earth Stood Still remake.

I didn't even mind the villainous Tubal-cain secretly stowing away on the ark.

My biggest problem was Noah's insistance that Ham and Japeth don't get wives. The Bible's pretty clear that all three sons had wives. When the rains started coming, and only Shem has a wife, and Noah's not collecting any women for his other two sons... um, wait a minute. It's a pretty big part of the story that Earth was populated through the generations of Noah's three sons.

Noah believes part of The Creator's plan is for mankind to go extinct. He thinks the Creator called him to save the plants and animals, and then he, his wife, Shem and his wife, and Ham and Japeth will be the last humans on Earth.

Now in the Midrash it says that Noah and his sons entered separately from Noah's wife and his sons' wives, and there's a theory that the animals were separated by gender, and there was therefore no sex by anyone/anything on the ark until after the flood.

In the end, the very very end, Noah does the right thing, and it's implied the Earth will get repopulated when Shem's daughters are old enough for Ham and Japeth to marry, but that whole second half of the movie, I just couldn't get past that change.  Rock monsters? Fine. Stowaway? Fine. Noah wants to make mankind go extinct? No.

Side-notes of praise: The entire flood sequence was great. Aronofsky has proven he can handle a budget. And the acting is great. Crowe, Connelly, Watson, Hopkins, Winstone, even Lerman as Ham. Poor lonely horny Ham.

Noah - Movie Trailer

NOAH, starring Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Emma Watson, Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone and Logan Lerman. Directed by Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan).

This Is the End - Movie Review

Starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride, Emma Watson, Michael Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Rihanna and David Krumholtz.
Directed by Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg.

★★½

This meta-movie where these actors play versions of themselves actually works quite nicely.  Many of them tend to play themselves over and over, so why not just have them be themselves instead of with "character" names? I wonder if Adam Sandler's upset he didn't think of this first.

Jay Baruchel is visiting L.A., a town he doesn't really like.  He and Seth Rogen hang out and get high (what's a Seth Rogen movie without everyone doing pot?) and then head to a party at James Franco's house.  Jay doesn't really want to hang out, but that's when the apocalypse hits.

After the rapture and fire and brimstone and chaos, the cast gets whittled down to Seth, Jay, Franco, Jonah, Craig and Danny, and the six of them are holed up in Franco's house until they can figure out what their next move is.

Each guy is willing to make fun of himself. Jonah Hill has a new air of superiority about himself now that he's forever an "Academy-Award nominee."  Even when he prays he introduces himself to God as "Jonah Hill, from Moneyball."  Franco has a man-crush for Seth but wishes Danny would just die already.  The six have to look at their shallow actorly lives to figure out why they've been left behind.

There is a lot of crudeness and pot humor, but it has a lot of funny moments as well.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - DVD Review

Starring Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, Mae Whitman, Kate Walsh, Dylan McDermott, Nina Dobrev, Paul Rudd, Johnny Simmons, Melanie Lynskey and Joan Cusack.
Directed by Stephen Chbosky.

 ★★★★

A teen-angst drama that John Hughes would be proud to call his own, this is about a shy high-school freshman in 1992 who manages to befriend a circle of seniors and become part of their group.

Logan Lerman (Percy Jackson) is Charlie, the awkward freshman who's had some tragic circumstances push him deeper into his shell, but he manages to get in good graces with two step-siblings who take him under their wing.  From there, we experience the joys and pitfalls of high school with him, and them, a group of friends with universally recognizable characteristics but none feeling stock or cliche. It's one of those rare high school movies that treats its characters like real people.

Sam is a girl trying to push through her previous reputation of promiscuity, and Emma Watson (of Harry Potter fame) plays her beautifully. She takes on a nurturing role to Charlie that deepens as they grow closer. Patrick is her fearless gay stepbrother, and he never feels like he's "the gay guy." He's Patrick, and Ezra Miller is completely different here than he was as the titular pyschopath in We Need to Talk About Kevin.

It brought back a lot of memories. Pretty much the opposite effect of Take Me Home Tonight.

I updated my Top Ten of 2012 to include this. I liked it that much.

My Week with Marilyn - DVD Review

Starring Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Redmayne, Emma Watson, Judi Dench, Toby Jones, Julia Ormond, Jim Carter, Dougray Scott, Dominic Cooper, Derek Jacobi and Zoe Wanamaker. Directed by Simon Curtis.

★★★

Never saw The Prince & the Showgirl, and I think my enjoyment would have been enhanced if I had. This movie is about the experience of filming that movie through the eyes of the third assistant director (Eddie Redmayne), a young man who enjoyed a week of a flirty relationship with Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) on the set.

Monroe had a rough time on the shoot, clashing with co-star/director Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh). Olivier was king of the non-Method, and Monroe had to feel and believe her character's motivations for her star power to shine through.

The reasons to see this movie are Williams and Branagh. Williams captures the vulnerability and allure of Marilyn. Branagh was born to play Olivier and doesn't disappoint. The supporting cast have fun in their roles too, like Julia Ormond as Vivian Leigh. I was a little disappointed that Emma Watson (Harry Potter) didn't have much more to do than play the plain girl that our protagonist neglects.

Williams and Branagh were both nominated for this movie and deservedly so. It just happened to be in the year that Meryl Streep and Christopher Plummer were in the mix.