I don't quite know what to think of this movie, since I never read the Roald Dahl book it's based on. And Spielberg hasn't done a family film in a long time, so who knows how this one could turn out. But with a screenplay from the late Melissa Mathison, there's some hope that it could end up being worthwhile, as long as they get the CGI rendered giants right. Newly minted Oscar winner Mark Rylance takes on the key role of the giant here, and the movie's coming out July 1st. Here's hoping.
BOX OFFICE 4/01-4/03: 'Batman v Superman' Plummets 68% but Stays on Top
So, even though BvS stayed in first place in its second weekend in theaters, the big story is the 68 percent drop-off from the week before, which indicates toxic word-of-mouth, as was expected after poor reviews and a not so great Cinemascore from audiences. It fell further than Man of Steel did three years ago, and with pretty much zero competition to boot. Audiences are clearly indifferent to this superhero team-up at best, and even though it's grossed 681 million worldwide at this point, the staggering 82 percent drop-off in China of all places, probably has the studio more concerned than anything else. There's some question as to whether it reaches 1 billion globally now, which is what it needed to be profitable, given the budget. I wish the movie had been an even worse failure to ensure that WB changes course and fires the director, but I guess the brand name of the superheroes is bulletproof as far as initial interest is concerned. Still, if money is the bottom line, as it always is for the studios, they should at least be aware by now that if the movie had actually been any good, they could have easily made more. A lot more.
On the other hand, Zootopia has exhibited tremendous staying power in second place, falling a teeny 16 percent from last week and bringing in another 20 million, for a 275 million domestic total, and 787 million worldwide at this point. With Japan being the last international market for it to open in, there's a chance the well received Disney film could cross that billion dollar mark. As it is, it will be only the tenth animated film to make more than 300 million in the U.S. The rest of the top five was filled out by My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, which held nicely from last week, the new release God's Not Dead 2, which disappointed with 8 million, and the other faith based movie Miracles From Heaven, which is holding up well and is now at 46 million total.
Top 5:
- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice- 52.4 million
- Zootopia- 20 million
- My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2- 11.1 million
- God's Not Dead 2- 8.1 million
- Miracles From Heaven- 7.6 million
In limited release, Richard Linklater's Everybody Wants Some opened in 19 theaters, earning 323k for the weekend and scoring a PTA of 17k, which is decent enough, while Don Cheadle's Miles Davis biopic Miles Ahead, opened on 4 screens for a strong PTA of 30k. Next week it's Melissa McCarthy's new comedy The Boss against the actioner Hardcore Henry, both opening in wide release. We'll see, but I think it's possible McCarthy's fanbase can get The Boss to take first place away from Batman/Superman, especially if it continues its steep fall.
10 Side-Splitting Comedies for April Fool's Day
April 1st may be the day where you can't believe anything you read on the internet, but my list of favorite comedies is the exception to the rule. You can definitely trust this one. I use this holiday to celebrate raucous comedies for the entire month, not just one day, and so you can go to our Movies For Every Month page to read about what I think makes a classic comedy. The list includes Tootsie, A Fish Called Wanda, His Girl Friday, Office Space, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and Ghostbusters, just to name a few. Then head over to the April movie page to see the complete list of my ten all time faves, with the original trailers, to sit back and laugh with all month long. Happy April Fools everyone!
Paul Rudd and Patton Oswalt Voice Act in Red Band Trailer for 'Nerdland'
Hmmm. Are animated movies for adults making a comeback? First Sausage Party and now this movie, the style of which resembles something more akin to the old Beavis and Butthead cartoons than the dominant CGI style of today. But at least it's something different. Who knows- maybe it could be good.
Jonah Hill and Miles Teller in Trailer for 'War Dogs'
Ugh. This is obviously another movie about insufferable assholes acting insufferably, with a whole Wolf of Wall Street vibe, but for gun runners instead. Lovely. But frankly, it really doesn't help matters that this movie is starring two actors who tend to give off that vibe in real life as well. I don't know who would want to sit through this one.
Emilia Clarke Stars in 'Me Before You'
So, I'm guessing this is Britain's version of a Nicholas Sparks adaptation? Sure looks like it, with all the requisite tearjerker elements included. I'm iffy on Emilia Clarke's acting skills, but she looks alright here, and I figured she was going to try to break out from Game of Thrones eventually. The cheese factor looks dialed up to eleven though, doesn't it?
Surprise Second Teaser for 'The LEGO Batman Movie' Pops Up
Looks like the marketing campaign for this one is already in full force, with a surprise second teaser being released in the same week. The jokes and the references to the live action movies are already reflective of the hyper self aware humor in the social media/meme era we live in- I'm sure people are going to go nuts for this the same as they did for the last one and Deadpool and other movies of a similar ilk lately.
Patty Duke 1946-2016
Oscar winner Patty Duke has died at the age of 69, passing away from a ruptured intestine. The actress won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at age 16 for her performance as Helen Keller in 1962's The Miracle Worker, a role she originated on Broadway, before going on to become the star of The Patty Duke Show, which ran from 1963 to 1966. She continued to act in films and television, earned 10 Emmy nominations and three Emmy awards, and served as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1985 to 1988. She was also a longtime advocate for mental health, after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1982. She is survived by her sons Sean and MacKenzie Astin, both actors in their own right, her other son Kevin Pearce, and her three granddaughers.
More Harley Quinn and the Joker in International 'Suicide Squad' Trailer
Rumor has it WB execs are currently in the editing room with this movie as we speak, frantically trying to get it to match the tone of the more recent trailers, which are apparently popular because of Bohemian Rhapsody, in my opinion. Early footage indicated it was more of the same, dour, depressing DC universe crap and not the Guardians of the Galaxy rip-off the new trailers implied, so it looks like we may be in for another cobbled together mess, potentially. Can't wait.
Alice Goes on a Wild Ride in New 'Alice Through the Looking Glass' Trailer
Based on the teasers for this movie, I couldn't tell if this really looked better than the first one, which was awful, or if it was just that Jefferson Airplane classic fooling everyone into thinking what you're watching is actually cool. From this new trailer I'm tending to think it might be the latter. Looks like kind of a mess.
REVIEW: "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" (2016) Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill. Dir. Zack Snyder
Zack Snyder's Man of Steel was one of my most despised moviegoing experiences ever, mostly for what it did to the character of Superman, my favorite superhero. It always hurts to see characters you love treated abominably by a person who clearly hates them. In that instance, Man of Steel was a bad movie tarnished further by being an even worse Superman movie, which made it more miserable to sit through, for me personally.
But having gone through all that once, I went into Batman v Superman, directed by the same asinine, superhero hating filmmaker, knowing that his take on Superman and this time Batman as well, would be awful and backward and fundamentally opposed to the worldview that these characters are supposed represent. So I was prepared for the dour, depressing, grim and thoroughly unpleasant sit I knew it would be. I wasn't surprised by the fact that it was all of those things and worse. No, this time what really offended me was the sheer incompetence of the filmmaking on every possible level- from the atrocious and incomprehensible screenplay to the slapshot editing and dull, mindless, CGI shlock that were the fight scenes. To call it an incoherent mess is being kind.
When you start off with the premise that Batman and Superman have to fight each other, you might want to come up with some kind of a reason for that to logically occur. The movie doesn't even try, and the ridiculous fight scene doesn't happen until about 90 minutes in, so if you're waiting for that there's a lot of pretentious nonsense you're going to have to endure first. In this world Batman and Superman are both miserable assholes who hate all people and themselves, hate being heroes, and hate each other on principle. Boy does that sound like the characters we've known for 75 years or what? Who hasn't been waiting for a version of those two that really wants to make you hate them both, right? Anyway, forget all that- that puts us in a bizarro universe from the start, one that I'm not convinced anyone, fans or general audiences have ever really wanted to see. This Batman murders people remorselessly and mercilessly- people who “deserve” it I suppose, since they're the worst criminals ever, like human traffickers and pedophiles, but again, is this really appropriate for a Batman movie? Superman on the other hand, rescues people in slow motion and looks miserable doing it, taking on the burden of their worship with a constant frowning, constipated expression on his face that really strips all the joy out of your soul while watching him.
So into that premise, a series of disconnected and illogical scenes drag on for 90 minutes, throwing endless amounts of characters on the screen, some interacting aimlessly with each other, with people spouting random bouts of pseudo philosophical dialogue at no one in particular, and Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor chewing all the scenery as he contorts himself into a barrage of physical and verbal tics, one of the very worst performances in comic book movie history slapped on top of a character that makes no sense in either motivation or development. But he's actually not the only one. I'm very serious here- nothing in this movie makes any sense. There is no connective storytelling tissue from scene to scene, no motivation ascribed to any character to do or say anything they ever say, and no sense to be had from the awful, and I mean awful dialogue the actors are forced to recite (poor, seasoned vet Holly Hunter suffers the worst from this as she looks embarrassed to be sharing the screen with Eisenberg and confused herself as to why she's saying the things she's saying).
In the middle of this mess comes a ludacris fight scene with Batman and Superman, which despite an hour and a half of set-up, still has no reason to happen, and the resolution it randomly comes to before Batman stabs Superman in the heart with a kryptonite spear is so mindboggling and laughable that it's quite shocking it made it past however many rewrites this script suffered from. Oh, and throughout this collage of pasted together nonsense we have a multitude of dream sequences tossed at us in the form of Batman's recurring nightmares, which are essentially meant to provide the audience with a series of teasers for upcoming movies by throwing in Justice League characters who serve no purpose in this film either- and that includes Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot, unimpressive and emotionless in her debut), who wanders into and out of the frame with virtually no explanation to justify her presence at all. It's apparently so she can pop up in the last big fight, where she joins Batman and Superman in ultimate poser mode (hilariously set to out of nowhere rock/disco music) as the three of them take on Doomsday, an ugly and uncreative looking grey, CGI troll monster for a boring and senseless battle that reaches no satisfying conclusion- unless you count the end of the movie finally arriving as one in and of itself (you might).
This is such an empty and soulless bore of a movie that it's hard not to feel drained by it as it steals nearly three hours of your life without giving anything back to you. There's not a single character who brings any color or energy to this film or whose actions make any sense as far as a story is concerned. Removing Zack Snyder from anything further to do with the DC universe would be the least punishable action that an overprileged, untalented hack like him deserves. I won't look forward to any DCU movie until WB does this, but if it makes the billion dollars in box office money that it was created to do (and that's really all this was created to do), I suppose there's no reason to expect it to happen. It's a sad day for people who love these characters, and an equally sad day for people who just want to be entertained by a decent movie. Batman v Superman was garbage, and I don't care how much money it makes- it deserves to go down in flames along with Zack Snyder's career.
*
Seth Rogen's 'Sausage Party' Gets a Red-Band Trailer
There aren't a lot of animated movies that get made for an adult audience, so I guess this is kinda cool, in theory. Who knows if it's actually enough material for a feature length film though- looks more to me like this might have been better content for a short. What do you think?
