Madasgscar 3 is #1, Prometheus #2

For the weekend of June 8-10.

1. Madagascar 3 - $60.35 million - 1 wk (DW)
. . . 4258 screens / $14,173 per screen
2. Prometheus - $50 - 1 wk (Fox)
. . . 3396 / $14,723
3. Snow White and the Huntsman - $23.02 ($98.5) - 2 wks (U) -59.1%
. . . 3777 / $6095
4. Men in Black III - $13.5 ($135.5) - 3 wks (Sony) -51.9%
. . . 3792 / $3560
5. The Avengers - $10.81 ($571.86) - 6 wks (BV) -47.2%
. . . 3129 / $3454
6. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - $3.24 ($31) - 6 wks (FS) -27.8%
. . . 1298 / $2492
7. What to Expect When You're Expecting - $2.71 ($35.75) - 4 wks (LG) -38.5%
. . . 2087 / $1299
8. Battleship - $2.29 ($59.83) - 4 wks (U) -55.1%
. . . 1954 / $1170
9. The Dictator - $2.15 ($55.19) - 4 wks (Par) -54.3%
. . . 1651 / $1302
10. Moonrise Kingdom - $1.58 ($3.75) - 3 wks (Foc) +80.1%
. . . 96 / $16,448
11. Dark Shadows - 1.36 ($73.74) - 5 wks (WB) -63.3%
. . . 1550 / $877
12. The Hunger Games - $1.05 ($400.25) - 12 wks (LG) -33%
. . . 751 / $1398

Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted ultimately triumphed over the weekend after Prometheus edged it on Friday.  They're almost even in per-screen count.

The Hunger Games finally passed $400 million domestic, and The Avengers just might be able to get to $600 million domestic still. It's currently the third-highest grossing movie of all time, behind Avatar and Titanic.

Underworld Awakening - DVD Review

Starring Kate Beckinsale, Stephen Rea, Michael Ealy, Charles Dance, Theo James and India Eisley.  Directed by Marland & Stein.

★½

After skipping Underworld 3, Kate Beckinsale is back for Underworld 4 and the result is breathtakingly... repetitive. It might as well be a Resident Evil sequel.

They rewrite some of the events from Underworld 2 to get Selene asleep in cryogenic freeze for 12 years. She awakens to a world where the vampires have been identified and eradicated. Right off the bat, she kills about twelve humans escaping the lab, more than a few begging her to not kill them. So... Selene's the bad guy, right?

Nope. We're to root for her as she fights back against a Lychan conspiracy, and since we don't have Michael Sheen's werewolf here to root for, I guess it's okay to just take it in stride that the lychans are the bad guys, and the vampires are the good guys. They're the underdogs.

The highlight for me was seeing Charles Dance (Game of Thrones' Tywin Lannister) as a vampire. But he's not in it enough, and nothing else about this movie is necessary or even justifies its existence. And yes, they leave it open for Underworld 5. Let it go.

Samuel L. Jackson joins Robocop remake

Samuel L. Jackson will play a powerful media mogul in Jose Padilha's remake of RoboCop.  He joins the previously cast Gary Oldman as RoboCop's creator-developer, and then The Killing's Joel Kinnaman plays Alex Murphy, the policeman left for dead and turned into the title character.

Jackson can currently be seen as Nick Fury in The Avengers, and will appear in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained this December.  RoboCop has a tentative release date of August 9, 2013.

Speaking of Django Unchained, here's its trailer:

A&E's Longmire - TV Review

I really dug the first episode of this cable drama about a sheriff in Wyoming. I suppose I could call it a really laid-back Justified, but it might wind up being more procedural than that. If it has some season-spanning plotlines, I'll stick with it. It has Katee Sackhoff, so that's a plus. Interesting to see Lou Diamond Phillips getting work too. As is tradition, the manly main role goes to an Australian - Robert Taylor. He hides his accent well. I'll definitely watch episode 2.

Random Movie Stuff - 6/6/12

- Marvel may be moving forward with a Black Panther movie. In the comic books, he's prince of the fictitious African nation of Wakanda, not to mention a great warrior and brilliant scientist.

- Warner Bros. is moving forward with plans for a Justice League movie. It'd unclear whether Henry Cavill's Superman or Christian Bale's Batman would be in it, or if they'd start from scratch.

- And hey, they've also hired a writer for a Wonder Woman movie.

- So if we can get some movement on a Flash movie, then you can have Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and Flash for your Justice League movie.

- Producer Rick McCallum gave an update about the planned live-action Star Wars TV series. He said it'll be like a Deadwood in Space, where it explores the underbelly of the galaxy. He said they're still trying to figure out how to control the costs of making it. The events on the series will take place somewhere between Episodes III and IV.

Snow White and the Huntsman - Movie Review

Starring Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Sam Claflin, Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Nick Frost, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan and Sam Spruell.
Directed by Rupert Sanders.

★★★

Kristen Stewart is a good actress. I know she doesn't seem like it in the Twilight movies, but in everything else she does, there's more to her. I point to Panic Room, Adventureland and The Runaways as examples. Here, she's Snow White, a princess imprisoned by her evil stepmother Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron). Snow White escapes one day, and with good timing, for Ravenna is planning on taking her heart as part of a spell to grant her immortality.

Snow White makes it to the Dark Forest, and the Queen sends her men to find someone who can track her down. They bring to her the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth), a drunken widower who on his good days is an effective tracker.

Eventually the dawrfs come into play.

Stewart doesn't quite get there in all her scenes. There's a rousing speech she gives her people before battle that doesn't really work. Theron, meanwhile, owns the movie as Ravenna, remaining young by stealing the youth from others. I liked Hemsworth as the Huntsman. I think he'll prove to be a better actor than Sam Worthington.

And then there's the dwarfs. I loved the dwarfs. This one goes the Lord of the Rings route by taking regular actors and using makeup, CGI and camera tricks to dwarf them. Bob Hoskins stands out as the oldest, wisest, blind dwarf, but Ian McShane, Ray Winstone, Eddie Marsan, Nick Frost, Toby Jones, etc., all get their moments.

This visually arresting fantasy brought to mind some of those 1980's classics like Ladyhawke and The NeverEnding Story.

Weekend Box Office - 6/3/12

1. Snow White & the Huntsman - $56.26 million - 1 wk (U)
. . . 3773 screens / $14,910 per screen
2. Men in Black 3 - $29.3 ($112.3) - 2 wks (Sony) -46.3%
. . . 4248 / $6897
3. The Avengers - $20.27 ($552.74) - 5 wks (BV) -44.7%
. . . 3670 / $5524
4. Battleship - $4.81 ($55.12) - 3 wks (U) -56.5%
. . . 3144 / $1530
5. The Dictator - $4.73 ($50.84) - 3 wks (Par) -49.1%
. . . 2649 / $1784
6. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - $4.6 ($25.5) - 5 wks (FS) -28%
. . . 1294 / $3555
7. What to Expect When Expecting - $4.43 ($30.72) - 3 wks (LG) -38%
. . . 2907 / $1524
8. Dark Shadows - $3.86 ($70.83) - 4 wks (WB) -48.6%
. . . 3002 / $1286
9. Chernobyl Diaries - $3.05 ($14.42) - 2 wks (WB) -61.7%
. . . 2433 / $1252
10. For Greater Glory - $1.8 - 1 wk (Arc)
. . . 757 / $2378
11. The Hunger Games - $1.5 ($398.27) - 11 wks (LG) -35.1%
. . . 1099 / $1365

Snow White's a hit. It'll ultimately gross a little less than Men in Black III, but MiB3 cost about $50 million more to make. It's going to ease the blow for Universal after Battleship tanked.

Opens Friday
MADAGASCAR 3 with the voices of Ben Stiller, Chris Rock and David Schwimmer.
PROMETHEUS with Naomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron.

Battleship - Movie Review

Starring Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgard, Rihanna, Brooklyn Decker, Liam Neeson, Tadanobu Asano, Hamish Linklater, Peter MacNicol, Jesse Plemons and Jerry Ferrara.
Directed by Peter Berg.

★★

When Paramount centered Top Gun around the star power of Tom Cruise, he'd already earned it. After supporting turns in Endless Love, Taps and The Outsiders, he made the most of his big break in Risky Business.

Taylor Kitsch has been given the same opportunity here, in a movie that wants to be Top Gun with Aliens. And he's not really up to the task.

For the first half-hour, this is one of the worst movies of the year. We go through the motions of establishing that Kitsch's Alex Hopper is impulsive, irresponsible, smart, cocky, a real maverick. Heh. His disapproving older brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgard) is there to shout expository dialogue at him, but one too many stunts has led to Alex possibly getting kicked out of the Navy, right after these combat exercises the US is doing with Japan.

Then the aliens finally show up and it gets more interesting. They drop a dome over a few-miles radius, trapping some ships in there with them, and no one can get in or out. What's their motivation? Well, once they blow up the first ship, that's all they need to know.

It never goes off the Roland Emmerich rails, nor does it go into that "commercial for itself" Michael Bay mode. It really stays the whole time in Jerry Bruckheimer-wannabe land. Top Gun more than anything, but it reminded me of Pearl Harbor at one point too.  And, yeah, Transformers.  By the way, Transformers 1 & 3 were better movies than this.

I can't think of an actor though, that could have saved this movie. I mean, I liked Skarsgard and Rihanna and the others in their supporting roles fine, but no one is required to do much. Liam Neeson's part could have been played by anybody. Could have just as easily been Beau Bridges.

And no one ever says "You sank my battleship!"

P.S. I did like the one sequence with AC/DC's "Thunderstruck."

P.P.S. I hated the obvious product placement. Coke Zero, I'm talking about you!

Hatfields & McCoys - TV Review

The History Channel's miniseries about the most famous family feud in US history was already a ratings hit, scoring the best ratings for any basic-cable non-sporting event ever, with over 13 million viewers.

And it helps that it's a great show.  This addictive six-hour event features Kevin Costner as Hatfield patriarch William "Devil Anse" and Bill Paxton as McCoy patriarch Randolph.  The two started as friends, fighting side by side for the Confederacy during the Civil War, but Devil deserts and heads home.  Devil's timber business is able to then flourish, but Randolph stays until the war ends, and his family suffers for it.  Also in there, Devil's uncle murders Randolph's brother Asa, who fought on the Union side.

Bad blood boils and boils, until each side keeps killing the others, trying to "get even."  But it can never really get even.

Throw in there a real Romeo & Juliet subplot, when Devil's son Johnse falls in love with Randolph's daughter Roseanna.

Supporting standouts include on the Hatfield side, Matt Barr (Hellcats) as Johnse, Tom Berenger as Uncle Jim, and Powers Boothe as Devil's brother Wall, and on the McCoy side, Lindsey Pulsipher (True Blood) as Roseanna, Jena Malone as her scheming cousin Nancy, and Mare Winningham as longsuffering matriarch Sally.

I love that Costner nutured this project to fruition. He can star in Westerns for the rest of his life and be successful.  Wouldn't surprise me if he received Emmy attention.

Cool! I'm a guest columnist on Hollywood Elsewhere

Here's my post in all its glory.  It's about the age issues with Men in Black III.

A Dangerous Method - DVD Review

Starring Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Vincent Cassel and Sarah Gabon.
Directed by David Cronenberg.

★★

I'll start with the good. Viggo Mortensen is very good as Sigmund Freud, and Michael Fassbender is very good as Carl Jung. Their conversations crackle.

Unfortunately this movie about talks itself to death. It centers on Sabina Spielrein, a groundbreaking psychoanalyst in real life, but here we meet her as a shreiking woman entering an asylum. We watch Jung analyze her, watch him deal with her issues. He talks to her, he talks to Freud, Freud talks to her. Jung eventually crosses the professional line and takes her as a mistress.

Keira Knightley's performance is all over the map. Sometimes I admired its fearlessness, yet other time she made me want to laugh out loud.

I read about the true story afterwards, and it sounded like they'd been more faithful to real events, it would have been a better movie.

Men in Black III tops Avengers

1. Men in Black 3 - $55 million - 1 wk (Sony)
. . . 4248 screens / $12,947 per screen
2. The Avengers - $36.99 ($513.67) - 4 wks (BV) -33.5%
. . . 3918 / $9440
3. Battleship - $10.8 ($44.3) - 2 wks (U) -57.7%
. . . 3702 / $2917
4. The Dictator - $9.6 ($41.45) - 2 wks (Par) -44.9%
. . . 3014 / $3185
5. Chernobyl Diaries - $8 - 1 wk (WB)
. . . 2433 / $3288
6. Dark Shadows - $7.52 ($63) - 3 wks (WB) -40.3%
. . . 3404 / $2208
7. What to Expect When You're Expecting - $7.15 ($22.17) - 2 wks (LG) -32%
. . . 3021 / $2367
8. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - $6.35 ($16.55) - 4 wks (FS) +96.6%
. . . 1233 / $5150
9. The Hunger Games - $2.75 ($395.21) - 10 wks (LG) -6.8%
. . . 1421 / $1935
10. Think Like A Man - $1.4 ($88.27) - 6 wks (SG) -47.2%
. . . 786 / $1781

MiB3 did what it needed to do. It dethroned The Avengers and put itself in position to at least break even. Haven't seen any official numbers, but most speculations put its budget over $200 million. It would need then to outperform Men in Black II from ten years ago to be profitable.

In limited release Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, starring Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray and Tilda Swinton, did very very well, pulling in $509,000 on only 4 screens. It could be the Midnight in Paris of 2012.

The stage is set for Snow White & the Huntsman to open huge next week.

Men in Black III - Movie Review

Starring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Emma Thompson, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alice Eve, Bill Hader and David Rasche.
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld.

★★★

The first Men in Black came out 15 years ago, and the second came out 10 years ago.  I can't remember much about the second one except that it wasn't near as good as the first.  But even so, the MiB team slide comfortably right back into our hearts, with the cocky Agent J and stoic Agent K keeping the aliens on Earth in line.

The plot here revolves around an alien villain named Boris (Jemaine Clement), who has escaped his supermax prison and stolen a time-travel device.  He intends to go back to 1969 and kill Agent K before he was imprisoned.  Therefore it's up to Agent J to stop him.

The best surprise of the movie is how good a job Josh Brolin does as the young Agent K.  He's not just doing a Tommy Lee Jones impression; we believe this is the same person forty years younger, and he and Smith quickly fall into the same chemistry that Smith and Jones have.

Boris is a good villain too.  He's up there with Vincent D'Onofrio's human cockroach in the first one. I don't even remember who the villain was in the second one.

Public service announcement: there's nothing at the end of the credits.

Gary Oldman joins RoboCop remake

I'm now officially okay with RoboCop being remade.  Gary Oldman will play the scientist who helps transform the mostly-dead Murphy into RoboCop.  Joel Kinnaman (AMC's The Killing) has already been cast as Murphy.  Director Jose Padilha had said he plans to spend more time exploring the transformation from human cop to cyborg law enforcer.

Dark Shadows - Movie Review

Starring Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Green, Helena Bonham Carter, Chloe Moretz, Bella Heathcoate, Jackie Earle Haley, Jonny Lee Miller, Gully McGrath, Alice Cooper and Christopher Lee. Directed by Tim Burton.

★★½

What is it with Tim Burton and a twisted tree on a cliff? All of his movies have that image in there somewhere. A tree, with gnarled branches, near a cliff. Even Big Fish had it.

Anyway, this eighth collaboration between Burton and Johnny Depp is a decent entertainment, even if it's more about visuals and dialogue than story. Depp plays Barnabas Collins, a 200-year-old vampire who's awakened in 1972 and must recalibrate accordingly. He finds his descendants hanging on their vast manor of a house, but barely. Their fishing business is on the skids. Ah, but Barnabas knows where the money's buried and he's determined to turn this family around.

There to throw a wrench in his plans is Angelique (Eva Green), the witch who cursed him and locked him away and has spent the past couple centuries making his family fail.

This is one of Depp's better characters under Burton's watch. Barnabas is an 18th-century aristocrat with some adjusting to do, and Depp's umpteenth variant on the Eurotrash accent still entertains. Most of the supporting cast is good in their less-flashy roles. (I just like seeing Michelle Pfeiffer get work).

The main problem for me was the ending, by which I mean the last twenty minutes or so. Tis a giant mess. Each thread is tied up, but the pacing and general clumsy execution is as though pages 80-95 of the script just said "Hijinks ensue."

I loved the early 1970's soundtrack. It's worth a rental, but you can wait until then.

NBC's Community - TV Review

This show is genius.

What's brilliant about it is how it deepens the characters and is true to them even as it goes off on a alternate-timeline episode, or the one where they're in an 1980's video game the whole time.

I'm glad they were renewed, but I'm bummed that creator Dan Harmon was fired.  If Community becomes more bland, it's going to lose some loyal fans, and that'll be the tipping point to get it cancelled.

Random Movie Stuff - 5/20/12

- Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy will star in a cop-buddy movie for director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids).

-  Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote, The Ides of March) will star in John le Carre's A Most Wanted Man.

- Johnny Depp is playing Tonto in next summer's The Lone Ranger. After that he's going to be doing a remake of The Thin Man with director Rob Marshall (Chicago), and then he'll star in The Night Stalker, about a reporter tracking a serial killer but then learns it's actually a vampire. Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) will direct.

- Frank Grillo (The Grey) has joined the cast of Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. It stars Joel Edgerton (Warrior), Kyle Chandler (Super 8), Jessica Chastain (The Help), Jason Clarke (Public Enemies), Mark Strong (Green Lantern), Chris Pratt (Moneyball), Edgar Ramirez (Carlos) and Harold Perrineau Jr. (Lost).

- Atlas Shrugged Part II will open this October. It has a different director (John Putch) and cast, which now includes Samantha Mathis, Jason Beghe, Arye Gross and Paul McCrane.

Avengers bests Battleship for #1

1. The Avengers - $55.06 million ($457.08) - 3 wks (BV) -46.6%
. . . 4249 screens / $12,958 per screen
2. Battleship - $25.3 - 1 wk (U)
. . . 3690 / $6856
3. The Dictator - $17.42 ($24.46) - 1 wk (Par)
. . . 3008 / $5790
4. Dark Shadows - $12.77 ($50.91) - 2 wks (WB) -57%
. . . 3755 / $3401
5. What to Expect When You're Expecting - $10.5 - 1 wk (LG)
. . . 3021 / $3476
6. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - $3.25 ($8.26) - 3 wks (FS) +21.6%
. . . 178 / $18,258
7. The Hunger Games - $3 ($391.63) - 9 wks (LG) -33.4%
. . . 2064 / $1453
8. Think Like A Man - $2.7 ($85.89) - 5 wks (SG) -53.6%
. . . 1722 / $1568

So what led to the big-budget bomb that is Battleship?  Maybe its mistake was in not having any stars in it, aside from Liam Neeson in a clear supporting role.  John Carter made the same mistake with the same lead (Taylor Kitsch).  Maybe its mistake was taking a board game and turning it into an alien-invasion-at-sea movie, when the board game is about two equals squaring off.  Maybe its mistake was opening too soon after The Avengers.  Whatever the reason, critics hate it, and it's tanking stateside.  I can see why they opening earlier overseas.

The Dictator and What to Expect When You're Expecting are footnotes this summer.

The Avengers is on course to become only the fourth movie in history (the others being Avatar, Titanic and The Dark Knight) to pass $500 million domestic.

So Men in Black and The Chernobyl Diaries are poised to do well, simply because those 14-screen megaplexes won't be able to get those other non-Avengers movies off their screens fast enough.