This is the kind of Jude Law I like- where he's playing weird character roles. He's always been better at that than as the traditional leading man type (see Road to Perdition, A.I., last year's Anna Karenina). This black comedy opens in the U.K. on Nov 15th, but it's not coming here until April 4th, sadly.
FIRST LOOK: "Dumb and Dumber To"
Harry and Lloyd are back with the duo's first snapshots from the upcoming sequel to 1993's Dumb and Dumber. Jim Carrey posted this one earlier today to his WhoSay account:
FEATURETTE: "Gravity"
Alfonso Cuaron, Sandra Bullock and the crew talking about making Gravity in 3D. The hugely critically acclaimed film is set to come out next Friday, October 4th- can't wait!
Blu-Ray Pick of the Week: "Halloween" (1978)
Even though I admitted to not being a fan of the Friday the 13th movies, the original Halloween is still a great slasher flick, with some of the best suspense scenes of all time. It's John Carpenter who makes it good, that genre master of horror and sci-fi, here even coming up with the classic score himself. Scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis stars in her feature debut, and the 35th anniversary blu-ray looks great and comes out in plenty of time for Halloween. What's notable in this one as opposed to the Friday movies is that most of the actual violence takes place off screen, without sacrificing an ounce of suspense or scares. You can actually make that work in a horror film- who'd have thought?
Original trailer from 1978 (warning- if you haven't seen the movie yet, 70's trailers are notorious for giving away entire films, including the climax and the ending. This one's not so bad but if you don't want to see anything major, you should probably think twice):
BOX OFFICE 9/20-9/22: 'Prisoners' Scares off the Competition
The Hugh Jackman drama Prisoners debuted at No. 1 this weekend, with a $21 million finish, to go along with its strong reviews (79% Rotten Tomatoes). It's something of a surprise that it did so well, considering that it was a very heavy adult drama about kidnapped children, from an unknown French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, but it's turning out to be a testament to Hugh Jackman's continually rising drawing power since 2008 (Real Steel, Les Miserables, and The Wolverine have all done better than expected and were sold based on his star appeal). The movie could be in for some strong legs as while, seeing that it got an "A-" from crowds and played roughly even with men and women (52/48). It will of course, have competition from other dramas competing for the same audience all coming out in the next few weeks (Rush, Gravity and Captain Phillips).
Last week's champ Insidious 2 fell 64% to $14.5 million this weekend, the typical horror movie cliff drop, but its total of $60 million has already made it a huge hit for the studio and director James Wan, more than the first movie finished with in its entire run. The other wide release of the weekend was the dance movie Battle of the Year, which starred Josh Holloway and Chris Brown, and bombed with just $5 million, maybe telling us the days of the hit dance movies like Step Up are over with. And the hit Spanish-language film Instructions Not Included continues to do extremely well, becoming the fifth highest grossing foreign language film of all time in the U.S., and likely to pass Pan's Labyrinth $37 million dollar finish in the next week.
Top 5:
- Prisoners- $21.4 million
- Insidious Chapter 2- $14.5 million
- The Family- $7 million
- Instructions Not Included- $5.7 million
- Battle of the Year- $5 million
In limited release, the 3D version of The Wizard of Oz pulled in an ok $3 million for ninth place, while the big news was Enough Said, the glowingly reviewed romantic comedy with James Gandolfini and Julia-Louis Dreyfus, pulling in a huge $60,000 per screen in only 4 theaters. Perhaps more attention was paid due to Gandolfini's recent passing, but the per screen average was stronger that Ron Howard's car-racing drama Rush, which opened on 5 screens for a $40,000 PTA.
Check back next week for the wide release of Rush against the new releases Don Jon, Baggage Claim, and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2.
Happy Birthday Bill Murray
One of my favorite comedians, Bill Murray turns 63 today- so here's a little tribute to the guy who started out on SNL, exploded into our favorite movie wiseguy in the 80's and 90's, and finally morphed into the sometimes serious actor and devoted Wes Anderson bit player he is today (though he still cuts it up on Letterman once in a while, see below). Caddyshack, Stripes, Ghostbusters, Lost in Translation, Zombieland- I can hardly choose my favorite. Oh forget it, yes I can- it's Groundhog Day, no question. Here's to you Bill!
One of the best scenes from Ghostbusters, right at the beginning:
And my favorite scene from one of my favorite movies of all time, Groundhog Day ("this is a man we're talking about, right?")
And here's his fantastic appearance on Letterman just a few weeks ago for the 20th anniversary of The Late Show:
Movie of the Day: "Some Kind of Wonderful" (1987)
So we conclude John Hughes week tonight with another Howard Deutch directed entry, and it's essentially the reverse of Pretty in Pink, but with the appropriate ending this time. Eric Stoltz is the working class Keith, who's in love with the rich and popular Amanda Jones (Lea Thompson), and oblivious to the fact that his tomboy best pal Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson) is in love with him. Lea Thompson is in the same league with Andrew McCarthy's Blane as far as charisma goes, so thankfully in this one our hero makes the right choice in the triangle. This is the least celebrated of the Hughes high school canon (probably even Weird Science is better known), but the best part of this movie is the really strong chemistry between Keith and Watts. Whereas you could never really see Andie winding up with Duckie either in Pretty in Pink, in this one there's no doubt these two belong together. A sweet romance to cap off John Hughes week in Back to School Month.
Trailer from 1987:
Movie of the Day: "Sixteen Candles" (1984)
The movie that gave us Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall and director John Hughes. A sweet and funny coming-of-age comedy that to be honest, is probably the most dated of the high school movies this week (some of the Long Duck Dong stuff is cringeworthy now), but it's still pretty funny in most of the other spots. Anthony Michael Hall, especially, is great in his quintessential role as the "Geek." Poor, mopey Samantha is bummed when her whole family forgets her birthday, but all is right with the world when she finally gets noticed by Jake, the most popular guy in school (let's just pretend Michael Schoeffling doesn't look about twenty years older than 15-year-old Molly Ringwald here). One of the most memorable freeze-frame endings in the movies.
Trailer from 1984:
POSTER: "Labor Day"
The new poster for Jason Reitman's Labor Day has been released, but honestly, I'm more curious about where on earth the trailer for this movie is. I suppose they've got a while, since it doesn't come out until December 25th, but given that it's already been seen and every other festival movie has one, I mean come on- what's the hold up?
TRAILER #2: "Blue is the Warmest Color"
The first U.S. trailer for the Palme D'Or winner has no dialogue, which bugs me. I don't know why they always do that for foreign language films here- are they trying to trick people? Or do they think people who watch trailers are too lazy to even read subtitles for 10 seconds? The critically acclaimed movie is coming out on October 25th, and as I mentioned before, it got slapped with the NC-17 rating, so we'll see how many theaters will actually play it.
NEW PICS: "Catching Fire"
Lots of new images came out today from the next installment of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, coming out Nov 22nd. Here's a few of them:
Movie of the Day: "Pretty in Pink" (1986)
John Hughes week continues in Back to School month, with this third teen classic that was actually not directed by him (Howard Deutch did the honors here), just written and produced, but his fingerprints were all over it nonetheless. His third collaboration with Molly Ringwald, the teen queen of the 80's, was about a girl from the wrong side of the tracks (literally in this case), who falls for pasty rich boy Blane (ugh). I never liked Andrew McCarthy in that role, and always wanted Ringwald's Andie to end up with Duckie (Jon Cryer), no matter how much of dork he was. But the best reason to see this is for James Spader, who casually steals every single scene as Blane's best friend Steff, with that smug Spader superiority fully in place. He's unintentionally hilarious, which just makes the movie better. (One more thing about this film- the clothes are particularly out of control here, it's almost like an 80's parody movie even though it came out in '86. People seriously dressed like this? Yikes).
Original Trailer from 1986:
