Zack Snyder shows off a photo of the partially covered new Batmobile from his Batman/Superman movie (speaking of, when on earth are they going to give it a title?). I don't know though- it looks like it may resemble the Tim Burton one. What do you think?
Movie of the Day: "Terms of Endearment" (1983)
Well, what did you expect? It may have been predictable but what else could I possibly choose on the day itself- James L. Brooks' 1983 classic is the definitive Mother's Day movie, there's just no denying it. Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger are the ultimate mother-daughter pair, their incredible performances (and those of the supporting cast) hitting every note across the entire human emotional spectrum. It's a movie not just about their relationship with each other, but also their relationships with their friends, husbands, lovers and children as no less than 15 years pass over the course of these two women's lives. It's really hard to strike the right tone in a movie like this, where it's just as funny as it is sad at times, often like life itself, and yet it never for one moment hits a false note. You'll laugh and sob in equal parts- so sit back and enjoy this one with your own mother if you can. I can't recommend it enough- this Best Picture winner is one of my personal top ten favorite movies ever.
Original trailer:
BOX OFFICE 5/09-5/11: 'Neighbors' Demolishes 'Spider-Man'
Neighbors way, way exceeded expectations this week, pulling in a massive $51 million over the Mother's Day weekend. The R-rated comedy with stars Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne attracted an audience that was 53% female (maybe thanks to having a female co-star or perhaps a shirtless Zac Efron) and over age 25, although it only got a "B" Cinemascore. Sometimes the Cinemascore ratings can mean less with comedies though, as they are often scored lower than action movies or dramas, and yet still manage to earn big totals at the box office overall.
Meanwhile, Amazing Spider-Man 2 suffered a huge drop this weekend, falling 59% to $37 million- that's further than any of the last three Marvel movies (showing that the Cinemascore rating on action movies can still predict whether a film has legs or not). It has $147 million total and $550 million worldwide, which are obviously still good numbers, but whether or not it ends up with just over $200 million domestic depends on how well it holds up to direct competition with Godzilla next weekend. In the other holdovers, The Other Woman came in with $9 million, bringing its total to $61 million, with Heaven is For Real and Captain America rounding out the top five.
Top 5:
- Neighbors- $51 million
- The Amazing Spider-Man 2- $37.2 million
- The Other Woman- $9.3 million
- Heaven is For Real- $7 million
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier- $6.5 million
In limited release, Jon Favreau's Chef opened on six screens with a $34k per screen average, which is fairly decent, even if it seems like the kind of movie with recognizable names in it that should have at least been given a wide release. Next up it's Godzilla, trying to redeem itself as a franchise after the bungled 1998 version kind of destroyed the monster's rep. See you then!
Movie of the Day: "Imitation of Life" (1959)
Time to pull out the tissue boxes, everybody- today's Mother's Day movie is a major tearjerker from the 1950's, and by the end it's practically daring you not to tear up. Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life is about two moms, a white woman (Lana Turner) and a black woman (Juanita Moore), and their relationship with each other and their respective daughters. Actually, even though Lana Turner and Sandra Dee get top billing, the major story here is the Juanita Moore/Susan Kohner relationship, and both actresses got Oscar nominations for their roles. Kohner is a light skinned girl who can "pass" for white and wants to disown her own mother in order to do it. The tragedy of this situation is the focal point of the story, and like in Mildred Pierce, it kind of makes you hate the kid in this movie, even though she's slightly redeemed at the end (but not before it's too late). Douglas Sirk's movies were considered trashy soap operas at the time of their release in the 1950's, but audiences loved them and they remain engrossing today, like the best soaps will always be. This is a remake of a 1933 movie with Claudette Colbert (one of the earliest movies about race relations ever), but this one can tackle the issue more directly thanks to the time in which it was made and it gives the Juanita Moore character a more fleshed out role.
Original Trailer:
TRAILER: "Ida"
Ida premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year and is now in limited release, but it's worth looking for. It's a Polish drama about a young nun in the 1960's who discovers the truth about her family background and is currently sitting at an impressive 97% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. This is another film that's currently making the rounds at the spring film festivals around the country, so keep an eye out for it. It may be a contender for Foreign Language Film category at next year's Oscars:
TRAILER #2: "Maps to the Stars"
The second trailer for Maps to the Stars makes it look even more disturbing and Cronenberg-esque. It's nice to see the always underrated Julianne Moore in a good part again too. No release date for this one yet, but we'll soon hear how it's received when it plays at the Cannes Film Festival in a week or two:
Movie of the Day: "The Joy Luck Club" (1993)
Today's film celebrating movie moms is The Joy Luck Club, from 1993, a very emotional and moving story about four Chinese immigrant women and their adult Chinese-American daughters. It was based on the great book by Amy Tan (one of my favorites) and tells the story of the present day lives of the daughters and in flashback, the previous lives of their mothers in China before coming to America. It deals with the culture clash between the mothers and daughters as it explores how different the women's lives are from the past generation. The sad thing about this movie is that to this day it's still one of the few mainstream films ever made that focuses on the lives of Asian-Americans, who remain a severely overlooked minority group in Hollywood.
Trailer:
TRAILER: "Snowpiercer"
The long-awaited Snowpiercer, from South Korean director Bong Joon Ho, is finally coming out on June 27th. This movie's been delayed for months, because the director was caught up in a fierce battle with American distributor Harvey Weinstein (a confrontation you never want to enter, frankly) over releasing his cut of the movie, and not Weinstein's, who wanted at least 20 minutes chopped from the film. Bong Joon Ho won out however, so we're getting his original version when it hits theaters, and it definitely looks unique. An action-packed sci-fi based on the French graphic novel Le Transpersoneige, Bong shot 80% of the film in English and with an ensemble cast of both American and South Korean actors. His other movies are the acclaimed Memories of Murder, The Host (which I loved) and Mother, so I'm looking forward to checking this one out.
TRAILER #2: "Begin Again"
The new U.K. trailer for Begin Again, the latest music romance from the director of Once, came out today. It looks great and even though it's coming out July 4th, it's been playing at various film festivals this spring and I personally can't wait to see it at SIFF in a couple of weeks. Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo team up to record an album all around New York City, and yes that is Keira doing her own singing in the movie:
Movie of the Day: "Mildred Pierce" (1945)
One of my favorite film noirs of all time is a perfect entry for Mother's Day week, as it tells the story of the self-sacrificing Mildred, the mother who does everything in the world for her daughter, including giving up all the things she wants for herself, only to be betrayed by the increasingly evil child as she grows older. Okay, so it's not exactly a happy Mother's Day movie, but it's a hugely entertaining melodrama with some classic performances from Joan Crawford (who famously won an Oscar for this) but especially Ann Blyth as the horrible little two-faced Veda- seriously, you're going to want to see Mildred take down this demon spawn through any means necessary by the time the finale rolls around. This is one of the greats.
Original Trailer (unusually for the time, this is kind of a misleading trailer, which omits the mother-daughter story and plays up the film noir angle, but Mildred is anything but a femme fatale- that role actually belongs to Ann Blyth in the film):
TRAILER #2: "One Million Ways to Die in the West"
The second red-band trailer that's even raunchier than the first, filled with the kind of gross and off color jokes that are Seth MacFarlane's brand of humor. This actually looks pretty funny (if MacFarlane's your cup of tea that is, which he isn't for everyone), and I have a feeling it's going to be big hit when it comes out on May 30th. MacFarlane fans are pretty rabid and brought his first movie Ted to a surprise $218 million in 2012. The question is whether he himself can transfer from the behind the scenes guy to an on-camera screen presence, but I don't know, he looks pretty at ease to me in these trailers.
TRAILER: "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day"
As I watched this trailer knowing it was written by Lisa Cholodenko (who I just recommended yesterday for writing and directing The Kids Are All Right) and directed by Miguel Arteta (who made Chuck and Buck and The Good Girl), it became sort of surreal how bad this looks. Frankly, the trailer just got worse and worse as it went along, and it only seems to have a passing resemblance to the classic kids book from 1972 it's based on. And it's too bad, because obviously Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner are two of the most likable actors in Hollywood, but this just doesn't cut it. Unless somehow this is an awful trailer to what's actually a really good movie underneath, which sometimes happens, but I kind of doubt it here. It's coming out October 10th.
