Movie of the Day: "Paper Moon" (1973)

For Father's Day, I'm recommending this '70's classic for which the 9-year-old Tatum O'Neal won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (which is really a crime in itself, because she's the clear lead of this movie and carries the whole thing on her shoulders, but as usual, the Academy rarely recognizes lead performances from child actors). In this Depression-era story, Tatum stars as an orphan who teams up with a con man who may or may not be her father, and the two of them scam their way through the midwest, posing as bible salesmen. The magic of this movie comes from the chemistry between the real life father-daughter pairing, which is genuine, funny and completely charming, but especially because Tatum O'Neal is just so perfect as the street smart, cigarette smoking, wise beyond her years urchin who really wants to hang out with her dad and will stop at no lengths to do so. Peter Bogdanovich directed it as a kind of throwback to road movies from the 1930's, and the gorgeous black and white cinematography is a tribute to that as well. Enjoy this one. It's pretty much impossible not to.

Original 1973 Trailer:

Anton Yelchin 1989-2016

Some horribly tragic news today, as 27-year-old actor Anton Yelchin was found dead this morning, after apparently being pinned between his own car, a mailbox pillar and a security fence in his driveway. The police are describing it as a freak accident, as the car seems to have rolled down the driveway and onto Yelchin after he had gotten out of it briefly. Anton Yelchin was probably best known for the recent Star Trek films, where he had taken over the role of Chekhov from original series actor Walter Koenig. But he also had a long resume of other films in his too short career, including Terminator Salvation, Fright Night, Charlie Bartlett, Like Crazy, and Only Lovers Left Alive. He co-stars for the final time as Chekhov in the upcoming Star Trek Beyond, which is being released just next month.

BOX OFFICE 6/17-6/19: 'Finding Dory' Crushes the Competition

It was expected to be huge and it did not disappoint. Thirteen years after the original Finding Nemo, Dory arrived in theaters with a record breaking haul of 136 million over the weekend, the biggest opening ever for an animated film. Nemo has become such a classic of the Pixar filmography over the years that the long gap didn't seem to hurt it at all. It easily beat out Shrek the Third by about 15 million, which had held that record since 2007.

In second place was Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson's Central Intelligence, which actually surpassed its own expectations, opening with 34 million on top of fairly decent reviews, at least for a Kevin Hart movie. Both new releases earned Cinemascores of "A" and "A-," which will allow them to hold up over the coming weeks against films like Independence Day, The BFG and The Secret Life of Pets. Rounding out the top five were three films that tumbled big from their openings last week, as The Conjuring 2, Now You See Me 2 and Warcraft all plummeted dramatically.

Top 5:

Finding Dory- 136 million
Central Intelligence- 34.5 million
The Conjuring 2- 15.6 million
Now You See Me 2- 9.6 million
Warcraft- 6.5 million

Obviously, the mega popular overseas Warcraft hasn't caught on even a little bit here, despite becoming a global phenomenon everywhere else. And next weekend it's the release of Independence Day: Resurgence, along with the Blake Lively vs a shark movie The Shallows and Matthew McConaughey's Civil War-era drama Free State of Jones. I have a feeling Dory can hold up against Resurgence, which isn't generating a lot of buzz recently, surprisingly enough.

New Trailer for Animated Movie 'Storks'

I was not impressed by the teaser for this film, and this new trailer actually makes it look even worse. Honestly, are these movies just getting stupider by the day? WB's newly formed animation unit looks off to a rough start, if this is their first effort after The Lego Movie. This one comes out September 23rd.

Teaser for Tupac Biopic 'All Eyez On Me'

This is just a glimpse of the upcoming Tupac movie, so the most I can say right now is boy, does this guy look like him. It's an eery resemblance actually, which is always a good start when it comes to biopics. It's coming out November 11th and directed by Benny Boom, who comes from music videos, but I'm betting there's going to be a lot of interest in this one.

Full Trailer for 'Pete's Dragon'

Disney's new live-action adventure shows off the big green fuzzy dragon in this new trailer- not sure how crazy I am about the way that thing looks. Anyone else think it looks too fake? I mean, yes, dragons aren't real anyway, but it still looks strange to me. Also, how does this kid know how to talk if he grew up alone in the wilderness? Does the dragon speak?

BOX OFFICE 6/10-6/12: 'The Conjuring 2' Scares Up 40 Million

So, in no surprise, the sequel to the 2014 hit The Conjuring earned nearly as much as its predecessor did on opening weekend, with a healthy 40 million debut over three days, sitting on decent reviews and an "A-" Cinemascore. Director James Wan has a litany of successful horror films to his name in recent years, including the Saw franchise and the Insidious series, not to mention last year's 1.5 billion grossing Fast and Furious installment, so this continues his roll, although it probably won't match the 137 million total of the first film, because horror movies tend to drop off quickly.

In second place was Warcraft, which only made about 24 million- not much for a film with a 160 million budget, but this movie is a bit of a riddle, because it's already earned massive numbers overseas, with over 300 million globally and more from China than either Star Wars: The Force Awakens or Batman v Superman earned in their entire runs in that country. And that's in its first four days alone. Wild. Third place went to Now You See Me 2, which dipped slightly from the first film's 29 million opening, while TMNT 2 and X-Men: Apocalypse rounded out the top five by crashing in a big way from previous weekends.

Top 5:

The Conjuring 2- 40 million
Warcraft- 25 million
Now You See Me 2- 23 million
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows- 14.8 million
X-Men: Apocalypse- 10 million

The best numbers posted in limited release this weekend came again from Love and Friendship, which is nearing 10 million total, and The Lobster, crossing 5 million, as this week saw the release of a documentary about Brian DePalma in arthouse theaters as well. Next week it's the opening of Pixar's Finding Dory, which is expected to be huge, and the Kevin Hart/Dwayne Johnson comedy Central Intelligence. It's kind of been a lame month for quality movies, but I'm holding out hope later in July for the next Bourne film, as far as blockbusters go.

First Teaser for Disney's 'Moana'

I don't know why Disney always tries to hide the fact that their musicals are actually, you know, musicals. Obviously Frozen's success shows the audience for this kind of thing is enormous, right? Now we have our first Hawaiian princess to add to the Disney princess line, but you can't really tell a whole lot from this teaser yet. Hopefully it's good, but for my money, Zootopia was so unexpectedly great this year that I'm betting this one will turn out to be the lesser Disney movie of 2016. It's from the directing team that has classics The Little Mermaid and Aladdin under their belt, but also not so great ones like Treasure Planet and Princess and the Frog. So, who knows.

REVIEW: "Captain America: Civil War" (2016) Chris Evans, Robert Downey, Jr. Dir. Joe and Anthony Russo

At this point, I think it's fair to say I've written more or less the same review for the past few Marvel movies, from Guardians of the Galaxy to Age of Ultron to Ant-Man, with a couple of deviations in there, but more or less along the same lines, because the formula has become so efficient and executed so functionally, yet un-creatively, that it's starting to become difficult to come up with something new to say after seeing the latest "episode," as they've essentially become.

Really, what can I go into with this latest one? It's purportedly a Captain America movie, but since every Avenger except Thor and the Hulk are in it, along with the perfunctory introduction of some new people (Black Panther, the latest Spider-Man), it becomes a glorified Avengers vs. each other movie, a concept that comes from a famous comics storyline, yet was clearly selected and timed to compete directly with the recent Batman v Superman disaster. This is a better movie than that one (it's sort of hard not to be), yet, just like all the Marvel Studios films, it feels like a committee-driven, assembly line ready product devoid of anything resembling innovation or any stamp of directorial vision so as not to distinguish it too much from the other episodes in the series.

Which is not to say there aren't some good things in here, especially if you are a fan of these films, and I don't mean to disparage anyone who is. Comic book fans have forever wanted to see the stories from those pages come to life on the big screen, and Marvel, under the all seeing eye of head honcho and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, has become very successful at implementing countless new heroes into a big tent universe that is ready and willing to accommodate any of them without too much fuss. Moments that I liked in this one include the new Black Panther guy (Chadwick Boseman), who basically serves as a teaser for his own film coming next year and has a cool, tight leather striped costume, and yes, the new Spider-Man kid, who's now a teenager in high school again and played by Brit Tom Holland, who looks 12 and runs his mouth off with one-liners the way Spidey should (he's already the most appealing version of Peter Parker yet). Surprisingly, I also did like the epic airport fight scene between all the Avengers, which had the potential to be a trainwreck in the Batman/Superman style, yet it was handled with visual dexterity, a clear sense of where everyone is at all times, who's fighting who, and several perfectly timed jokes within the scene that actually land and work for what they're supposed to do. So kudos to the Russo brothers for pulling that off.

But the story itself is not interesting or really all that important, the characters don't make any more impression on you than they ever have, and at the end of the day it doesn't feel like a film that has any resonance or weight to it in the slightest- and this is in spite of the fact that this particular one is trying to go deeper with its themes of whether or not superheroes should be kept in check by the world governments. Maybe there's a way to make you care about a story like that and about Captain America and Iron Man being on separate sides of an ostensibly hot button political issue, but the truth is I just didn't. Tony Stark's woe is me routine is well played by Robert Downey Jr. this time out, but I still didn't care that much (he's so upset that he and Pepper Potts have recently broken up, but after three of his own movies, this was apparently so unimportant that it happened offscreen. See you around, Gwyneth). And Chris Evans's straight-laced Steve Rogers is desperately devoted to dear old Bucky (Sebastian Stan) until the end, butcome on now, how much does anybody really care about Bucky in these movies anyway? Did you spend the time between Winter Soldier and Civil War pondering, for any single second the, fate of the completely undeveloped Bucky in this universe?

The token women, Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow and Elizabeth Olsen's Scarlet Witch, are again given precious little to do while the allotted screentime has to go to setting up the upcoming Black Panther and Spider-Man films, and the war between heroes culminates in a fairly lame showdown between Iron Man and Captain America before all rifts will inevitably be healed of course. So in the end, what was really the point of all this? I guess it's nice that in this one we don't have another world ending alien invasion or robot villain for everybody to fight, but these movies have become to so dryly competent and functional as to feel utterly uninteresting to me. I think the one episode after another feel of this franchise belongs in another medium entirely, and that's called television. A format in which you can develop characters, relationships and enemies over time, in arcs that give you something closer to the serialized nature of comics that these big screen adventures aren't capable of in any true emotional sense, especially if you drain each film of the ability to retain its own vision by having a particular kind of voice, ala Deadpool, for example. It's fine, it works, and I even liked some of it while I was watching it. But I'm just finding it harder and harder to remember to care about it.

* * 1/2

BOX OFFICE 6/03-6/05: 'Ninja Turtles' Takes a Quiet First Place as 'X-Men' Plummets

The sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles opened with a bow that ended up about 30 million short of the first film, on top of horrendous reviews, as it became yet another sequel to a hit movie that completely underperformed this year, although it secured No. 1 because last week's winner, X-Men: Apocalypse, fell off a huge cliff this week, tumbling 66 percent with just a 22 million haul. That brings its total to about 116 million, while 2014's Days of Future Past opened with 110 million on its 4-day holiday weekend. Ouch. Overseas it's doing well though, and has already earned a solid 400 million worldwide.

In third place was the romantic drama Me Before You, starring Game of Thrones's Emilia Clarke, which actually did better than expected with 18 million over the weekend. It was based on a bestseller and looks to be appealing to the Fault in Our Stars crowd, so given that it's the only romantic movie in existence in wide release right now, it may have some decent legs going forward. Alice Through the Looking Glass and The Angry Birds Movie filled out the rest of the top five.

Top 5:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2- 35 million
X-Men: Apocalypse- 22 million
Me Before You- 18 million
Alice Through the Looking Glass- 10.7 million
The Angry Birds Movie- 9.8 million

The Lobster continues to do well in limited release with over 3.6 million in total, after adding another 444 theaters, and Whit Stillman's Love and Friendship, based on the Jane Austen epistolary novel, has actually opened to become one of the biggest indie successes of the year, crossing 7 million in just two weeks after expanding to 819 theaters. That Austen fanbase will always be there, folks. Next week it's The Conjuring 2, which will surely break out big time, along with the Warcraft movie and Now You See Me 2, neither of which are expected to do well.

10 Movies to Watch in June

We're at the start of a new month again, and now it's time for the June movies to make their appearance. For the first month of summer, the theme is "cops and robbers," as I've picked out ten action movies about bad guys running from the cops or good guys pursuing crooked cops, or just all around shoot 'em ups. I may have to think about changing the theme for one of my summer months to just plain superheroes, since blockbuster movies these days have changed from simple actioners to specifically comic book centered superhero stories- there are more than enough to choose a list of the ten best superhero flicks ever made at this point, but for now, we're still in this other genre, which holds some of my favorite movies ever, like The French Connection, The Departed, Thelma and Louise, The Big Heat and Le Samourai. I still think variety matters a lot, and most superhero movies would all come from the past decade or so, save for maybe one or two. Head to out Movies for Every month page to read more about the theme and click here for the full list of ten movies complete with original trailers. Have fun kicking back with these great action flicks all month long. Happy June, everybody.

Movie of the Day: "Letters From Iwo Jima" (2006)

On this Memorial Day, I'm recommending one of Clint Eastwood's very best films, made as a companion piece with 2006's Flags of Our Fathers, but this was by far the superior movie. One looked at the toll WWII took on the returning U.S. veterans at the time, while this one was a tribute to the fallen Japanese soldiers at Iwo Jima in 1944. A somber, respectful look at the men who did bravely fight for their country on the other side, this is one of the few films to take the approach that tries to understand our enemies as fellow human beings who gave their lives for their country the same way we did for ours. Ken Watanabe leads a strong ensemble that sensitively renders the experience these men went through as the war in the Pacific was winding down and they knew their fate was doomed. Celebrate the American heroes who serve us on this holiday of course, but don't forget to try and empathize with our fellow humans all over the world who also sacrificed themselves in many tragic ways throughout history.

Original 2006 Trailer: