There's normally nothing I hate more than teasers for trailers, but this one at least does it a little more creatively. The snarky Deadpool himself talks to the camera and us to tease his upcoming trailer tomorrow, and who know, maybe this will finally be the movie Ryan Reynolds stars in that's successful? Tune back in tomorrow for the full red band trailer they showed to ecstatic crowds at Comic Con.
Robert DeNiro and Anne Hathaway Team Up in Another Look at 'The Intern'
Strangely enough, I still don't think this movie looks too bad. Sweet and sentimental I'm sure, but for Nancy Meyers it actually doesn't look so much like her usual fare. I don't know, maybe it'll work (despite Anne Hathaway's involvement).
REVIEW: "Ant-Man" (2015) Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas. Dir. Peyton Reed
Marvel's Ant-Man, their latest attempt to kickstart one of the lesser known comic book properties, is a movie so light and airy it may well not even exist, and it wooshes past you so fast it's tempting to forget you saw it five minutes after it's over. On some level, a certain lightness of touch in the material is to be admired and even sought after (what I've often complained about over on the DC side of things is their misbegotten strides to take inherently ridiculous premises way too seriously), but on the other hand, go too casual with it and the impression it leaves is that nothing here matters an ounce, and the film was simply rolled off the assembly line as fast as possible in order to move on to the next one.
The subject matter in Ant-Man is simple and preposterous- a guy inherits a mysteriously powered suit that shrinks him to the size of an ant with the strength of a superhuman. On its face this could be a wacky concept that should be treated with wild creativity and a sense of humor, something that director Edgar Wright (original writer of the story and script and who'd been attached to the project for years) would have no doubt brought to the material, having directed such idiosyncratic comedies as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. But after creative conflict with the Marvel showrunners behind the scenes, Wright left the film to be completed by studio hire Peyton Reed, with some script rewrites by star Paul Rudd and Adam McKay to keep the humor intact. From what we get on the screen, I take it Marvel simply wanted the idea to remain as conventional and accessible to as wide an audience as humanly possible, and so therefore the story follows a through line so unoriginal it could have easily been written by committee.
Paul Rudd, always an amiable and genial everyguy, is Scott Lang, a recent ex-con whose inability to see his daughter thanks to his unemployed, formerly convicted status, spars his return to thievery with his trusty gang of friendly ex-cons (seriously, these guys are some G-rated felons), but falls into the trap of Michael Douglas's Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man, who's looking for someone to step into his former suit. Pym is the head of a company that's being taken over by Corey Stoll, the requisite bad guy trying to steal Pym's technology, and it's up to Pym and his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) to train Scott to use the suit and pull off a heist in order to stop Stoll from becoming the Yellow Jacket. The movie's small scope and purposely tiny reach, comparatively speaking when faced with the world ending plans of the villains in The Avengers movies, could be considered a refreshingly modest approach, but there's nothing much to care about in this by the numbers, unremarkable origin story. Even Paul Rudd plays it as if he knows the whole thing is lame, and the movie races through Scott's inevitable training montage and Hope's daddy-daughter conflict as though it can't wait to get it all over with. We know where it's going from the very beginning and it never deviates one second from the predictable outcome- there's a heist pulled by the good guys and Ant-Man and Yellow Jacket get in a fight, there's lots of punching, toys get knocked over, and for some humor we get occasional breakaway from the POV shots to show us how funny it is that Ant-Man's really tiny, as if we'd forgotten.
Even his smallness doesn't amount to much, as he learns how to speak to the ants with no real marveling (sorry for the pun) at the micro-universe as it exists, which we barely see. Frankly, there were more emotional stakes involved in in 1989's Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. At this point Marvel knows how to tune these movies out like clockwork, tossing in the required emotional beats at all the right moments for its films to qualify as correctly formed and properly structured entertainments, but I can see the cogs churning. This one especially felt like it only barely hung together enough to make the cut. It left my thoughts the moment is was over, and I doubt I'll give it another one past the end of this sentence.
* *
10 Globe Trotting Films for August
At the start of this new month, we're in the last part of the summer, and so it's time to hand down the ten movies for August, which fall under the theme of "Going Global." That means that for your movie binge this month, each choice will take you to a different country, where they speak a different language, so if you're anti-subtitles, this won't be the month for you. Foreign-language films rue the day here, and we have some of the very best, like Amelie, Run Lola Run, and The Barbarian Invasions, alongside classics like La Dolce Vita (above), Seven Samurai, Fanny and Alexander and The Spirit of the Beehive. Each transports you to another place and sometimes another time, and so for the last month of summer you can spend it going on a worldwide cinematic vacation, even if you can't make it for the real thing. Read more about this month's theme at our Movies For Every Month page and click here for the full list of ten movies to see in August (complete with their original trailers). Here's to the dog days of summer. Happy Movie Watching!
Derek Zoolander Returns in New Teaser
Zoolander 2 is coming, guys. Or I guess I should say, 2oolander. The first teaser is exactly what fans of the old movie would expect, but I do wonder what the demand for this is now, or if anyone besides those older fans have even seen the first movie after all these years. It became something of a cult film, but I don't know if it ever became one of those that was discovered by a new people even years after it came out.
BOX OFFICE 7/31-8/02: 'Rogue Nation' Delivers a Box Office Win for Tom Cruise; New 'Vacation' Flops
The fifth entry in the long running Mission: Impossible franchise opened to a solid $56 million this weekend, above expectations and in line for the third biggest opening of Tom Cruise's career, behind War of the Worlds and Mission: Impossible II. It's a good start for the film, and though it's above past entries in the series, some of them, adjusted for inflation (like MI:2), pulled in bigger audiences overall. Still, it's a success and with a $65 million opening overseas, it comes it at $121 million worldwide for the first weekend. The other new release this week, the remake/reboot of National Lampoon's Vacation, was a disappointment, opening on Wednesday but only coming in with $21 million for the five days. After the success of We're the Millers (which is the real reason this movie was greenlit) that's pretty much a bust.
Ant-Man slipped to third for the week, pulling in $12 million for a new total of $147 million, on track to earn at least $160, while Minions has stayed in the top five for a month now, and Pixels fell 57% from last week's soft opening to just barely come in fifth. Minions has now earned $850 million worldwide, a huge success for the little alien dudes, even if the movie was reportedly a lazy prequel- I guess there's no stopping whatever the appeal of these things are to kids.
Top 5:
- Mission: Impossible- Rogue Nation- $56 million
- Vacation- $14.9 million
- Ant-Man- $12.6 million
- Minions- $12.2 million
- Pixels- $10.4 million
In limited release, James Pondsolt's The End of the Tour, about a reporter's conversation with David Foster Wallace, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Jason Segel, opened pretty well on just a few screens to a $31k average, despite being shrouded in a media controversy (an elite one, to be sure) over the accuracy of the film to Wallace's life. Amy has now grossed over $6 million total and Mr. Holmes crossed $10 million for relative successes in what's been a very weak year for independent films at the box office. Next week it's the opening of Fantastic Four (which is being hidden by the studio from critics until the last minute- uh oh), and Meryl Streep's Ricki and the Flash, along with the Jason Bateman/Joel Edgarton thriller The Gift, and the limited opening of the Sundance hit Diary of a Teenage Girl. The August doldrums have begun, people. See you next week!
New Batman/Superman Pics Reveal Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne
The secret identity looks are out in these new pictures from the Empire magazine spread for Batman v Superman (which I feel like the hype has been building for for about a thousand years now). We also get Wonder Woman's Diana Prince in there, but no looks at Aquaman, the Flash or whoever else was promised to cameo in this. I still don't like Batman's fatsuit, or the fact that there is no possible logical reason for the two to be fighting.
Antonio Banderas Survives Mining Disaster in 'The 33'
The official trailer for The 33 is finally here, and though the story looks good, it still bugs me that they made this whole movie set in Chile but with the actors speaking English. How about commit to the project, people. Talking with Spanish accents is the barest stab at authenticity they could have done- what about going a step further and have everyone speak Spanish instead?
Cary Fukanaga's 'Beasts of No Nation' Gets a Teaser
Netflix is attempting to change the game again, this time for feature film, as Jane Eyre and True Detective director Cary Fukanaga has written and directed this war drama starring Idris Elba for the streaming service, which will premiere it on October 16th but also place it in limited theatrical release that same day. The movie is being treated as a typical theatrical film, premiering at the Venice Film Festival in a prime in-competition slot, so the only difference will be the debut for streaming at the same time. If this works out, if the film manages to land awards attention and buzz for which it's eligible, this could radically shift the landscape of film once again, as more original films with big name directors and casts funded by the company will no doubt start being produced in rapid fashion.
Johnny Depp Transforms into Whitey Bulger in 'Black Mass' Trailer
Black Mass finally gets the full trailer, and while it does look cool, part of me can't help but wonder if this is one of those movies that exists solely as a reason to show off Depp's performance and land him an Oscar nod. I'm sort of getting shades of The Iron Lady here, but I could be wrong. The rest of the cast is pretty great, and the movie is slated to screen at Venice and probably Telluride and Toronto to get a jump on awards season. It's coming out September 18th though, so you won't have to wait long to see it (my own feeling is that if they were truly confident in the film as a whole it would probably be coming out in October or November).
Brie Larsen is Trapped in 'Room'
Room, the new thriller drama from Frank director Lenny Abrahamson, looks to boast another heartbreaking performance from Brie Larsen, who last starred in Short Term 12 and appeared in Trainwreck as Amy Schumer's sister. I hope she can get some attention for this one, because I really think of all newer actresses out there, she really is one with some true talent and emotional range who hasn't quite been paid attention to yet. Room comes out October 16th.
Michael Bay Tackles Benghazi in '13 Hours'
In what you can tell is a Michael Bay movie from the first few seconds of this trailer, he directed a film about the Libyan attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi in 2012- a subject you might immediately think is inappropriate to be explored by Michael Bay of all people, and you'd be completely right. Expect lots of explosions and "kick-ass" soldiers taking people down in this movie, scheduled to come out in January 2016, taking up that American Sniper, Lone Survivor slot which is now a thing, I guess.
