Review: Les Misérables (2012), via rigid source fidelity, sadly makes us question our love for the original show.

Les Misérables

2012
155 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

The harshest thing I can say about Tom Hooper's Les Misérables (teaser/trailer) is that I can only imagine those who have not seen the original show wondering what the fuss has been all about.  The film is painfully faithful, but film is a wholly different medium than live theater and the translation doesn't quite work.  The picture is full of fine performances, almost too good in fact. The film's much-discussed live on-set singing pretty much works, but it only yields inherently different results in a few occasions.  But still, the overall production feels akin to seeing the show for the first time, and that's not a good thing.  What perhaps felt epic on stage comes off onscreen like a rushed and overstuffed story with occasionally inexplicable narrative choices and occasionally misplaced character emphasis.  It comes off feeling less like one of the great epics of Broadway and more like a simplified and audience-pleasing version of the original Victor Hugo novel.

Fox takes its shot at the animation crown with an Epic trailer.

Putting aside the unfortunate "comic relief" of Aziz Ansari's wisecracking slug, this looks quite promising.  The film looks gorgeous and there does seem to be an attempt to tell a mostly serious adventure story.  I missed the earlier, nearly wordless teaser from awhile back, but both previews use Snow Patrol's "What If the Storm Ends?" to rather powerful effect, similar to how well 20th Century Fox used Creed's "Higher" for their Titan A.E. campaign thirteen years ago.  I could do with a little less celebrity casting (Christoph Waltz is distracting as the heavy), but a female protagonist in a film like this is always a plus. Also a plus: Danny Elfman is doing the score.  What's curious is how much this feels like a Dreamworks film, in a good way of course.  For years every wise-cracking animal cartoon was accused of ripping off Dreamworks even as DWA made but a single such movie, Over the Hedge (arguably the best such film in that sub-genre), which came out right at the same time as the likes of Open Season, Barnyard: The Original Party Animals, and The Ant Bully.  This feels more like an attempt to capture the, well, epic adventure found in the Rise of the Guardians, How to Train Your Dragon, the Kung Fu Panda series, and Puss In Boots.  Still, say what you will about the diminishing creative returns for the Ice Age series, Rio was a genuinely entertaining and arguably original animated feature.  As I said a few weeks ago, the holes in Pixar's armor has allowed its competitors to come out in full force.  This seems to be Fox taking its best shot.  Epic opens May 24th, 2013.  As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson        

Les Miserables trailer continues to bring the awesome...

If this thing is even half as good as it looks, if the 'singing on location' is half as effective in the film as it is in the marketing materials, if it's even half as powerful and soaring as its source material... Anyway, enough hyperbole, you have now idea how disappointed I am at having to wait an extra twelve days to see this thing, unless I'm lucky enough to get an invite to the first wave of screenings (which start up November 24th, natch).  So yeah, this dropped a day or two ago but I waited until we got an official HD version that actually was worth savoring.  So savor away.  The only qualm is the lack of billing for Samantha Barks even while relative nobody Eddie Redmayne gets his moment during the roll-coll.  Nonetheless, Les Midersables opens on Christmas Day and I can't friggin wait.

Scott Mendelson

Les Miserables gets character posters and a very familiar theatrical one-sheet. Can't friggin wait...!

The four character posters, highlighting the four lead actors/characters (Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfriend, and likely Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee Anne Hathaway) are after the jump.  I have little to add only to repeating my foaming-at-the-mouth excitement from earlier discussions of this project.  December 25th, or whenever Universal lets me see this thing, can't come soon enough.  The above comparison, which basically speaks for itself, came from Average Film Reviews.

Scott Mendelson

An extended look at Les Miserables. It still looks wonderful.

This four minute featurette goes into detail about the gimmick of allowing actors to sing live on set as they are filmed.  As if I wasn't anymore excited by the project on principle, this sounds like a wonderful experiment that seems to be working very well.  And the discussion about Hathaway's performance of "I Dreamed A Dream" (around 3:20) is one of those wonderful moments where you realize that the filmmakers indeed made the right artistic choice for exactly the reason you hoped (in this case, doing the song less as a triumphant ode to resiliency and more as a rock-bottom admission of defeat). I know the disappointments of Phantom of the Opera and The Producers have quieted Oscar talk for this one, but this still feels like the one to beat.  It's a fantastic and wrenching drama filled with obscenely good songs performed by some of the best musical actors in the film industry.  In the words of William Hurt in A History Of Violence, "How do you fuck *this* up?".  Anyway, I'm not thrilled about Universal moving the film to December 25th, mostly because I want to see it sooner and there are already a bazillion releases during the last two weeks of the year as it is.  Let's hope one or two of them take refuge in the now nearly vacant December 14th slot (yes, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will be huge, but there is room for viable counter programming). Les Miserables opens on December 25th.  If it's as good as I want it to be, this may be the first film in 4.5 years that I end up seeing twice in a theater.  At the very least, I will certainly be buying the soundtrack.

Scott Mendelson    

Watch/Discuss: Les Miserables teaser delivers the awesome, shoots the film to the top of my 2012 must-see list.

Holy shit. I got goosebumps just watching this thing.  It's no secret that Les Miserables is my favorite stage musical, however unoriginal a choice that may be.  So the source material is golden, you've got an all-star cast of actors who damn-well can sing, plus an Oscar-winning director who A) has complete artistic freedom and B) arguably has to prove that his Best Director Oscar win wasn't merely a bunch of older voters screwing over David Fincher.  And if I may offer a note of cautious optimism, it's all-too easy to craft a winning teaser for a popular Broadway show.  This follows the same template as the first Rent teaser, where you take the most iconic song of the show and set a visual montage to it for 90-150 seconds.  But we know that Anne Hathaway kills her big number (like that was ever in doubt) and that everyone else at least looks authentic while Tom Hooper seems to be emphasizing the period-specific poverty and squalor in a way that's a little tough to do on stage.  It's no secret that the film will feature live on-set recordings rather than lip-syncing to pre-recorded studio sessions, and it's too early to know if that intriguing gamble paid off.  Although that heart-wrenching closeup and vocal break-up at 1:05 suggests it did.  But yeah, this is probably the film I most want to see after The Dark Knight Rises opens.  Hell, if given the choice to see one of them right now, I'm not sure which I'd pick (okay, I'd pick Dark Knight Rises simply because I don't have the script memorized by heart).  One minor marketing nitpick, the onscreen text 'The Dream Lives' is borderline tasteless considering both the obvious text of the song in question and Fantine's character arc.  Anyway, Tom Hopper's Les Miserables opens on December 14th.  If my wife doesn't like it, she can stay home with the kids while I take whichever of her family members wins the straw game to the press screening.  If Universal has truly pulled this off, then Battleship is completely forgiven.   But, for the sake of cautious optimism, I'm including the dynamite first teasers to Rent and The Phantom of the Opera after the jump.

Scott Mendelson

Weekend Box Office (02/26/12): Act of Valor scores big, Good Deeds opens low for Tyler Perry, while Wanderlust and Gone tank.

In yet another stupidly crowded weekend at the box office (in such a crowded marketplace where only one new release debuted on more than 2,200 screens), we had yet another solid surprise, as the low-budget Act of Valor topped the box office with a $24.4 million debut.  Relativity bought the $12 million production for  $13 million and then spent another $30-$40 million to market it.  Said marketing campaign highlighted the film's lone quirk - that it starred actual Navy Seals and allegedly presented a more accurate picture of how such soldiers conduct themselves in the battlefield (they also bought a couple Super Bowl ads and screened the crap out of the film all over the country prior to release).  Of course, such lofty attempts at realism didn't prevent a Perils of Pauline subplot (Roselyn Sanchez plays a kidnapped CIA operative who must be rescued by these manly men from torturous bad guys), but the marketing campaign certainly played on the idea that this film was more 'real' than the likes of Navy Seals.  The picture earned an A from Cinemascore, which means that audiences obviously didn't mind the fact that the real life Seals are better at killing people than the whole 'acting' thing.  As somewhat expected, it played best in regions that have military bases and places that certain parties dismissively refer to as 'fly-over country' (don't be that asshole).  

Review: Gone (2012) is a cheerfully absurd thriller that either toys with genre expectations or just makes no sense whatsoever.

Gone

2012
95 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Gone is that strange sort of movie that actually grows in esteem when you look back on it and realize just how preposterous it really is.  The plot technically involves Amanda Seyfried as Jill, a young woman looking for her missing sister.  The twist being that she is absolutely sure that said sister (Emily Wickersham) has been abducted by the same serial murderer who kidnapped poor Jill and tossed her in a pit just over a year ago in a failed attempt to add her to his collection of corpses.  That's all the plot you need, as what follows is a surprisingly relentless and fast-paced investigation thriller that barely stops to take its breath until late in the third act.  While the events don't technically unfold in real time, there is such a propulsive forward momentum that the picture feels like a very low-budget, nothing-but-essentials variation on 24 meshed with Run Lola Run and an extended episode Busy Town Mysteries.  I wouldn't go so far as to cal Gone 'good', but I admired its just-the-facts pacing and, in hindsight, its rather ludicrousness plotting.

Amanda Seyfried's Gone gets a (possibly) uber-spoilerific trailer.

This looks pretty run-of-the-mill, although it's nice to see Seyfried back to doing star vehicles instead of being Justin Timberlake's hostage/love interest.  But if you watch this trailer, you might want to stop right before the 2:13 mark, or right after the title flashes.  The last ten seconds contain a button, which has apparently has Seyfried in a phone conversation with the killer in question.  Fair enough, except I think I recognize said murderer's voice.  While the murderer's identity shouldn't be too hard to figure as I'm pretty sure it follows two of the rules for deducing such a thing (which name actor is playing a seemingly useless character and which said actor gets unusually high billing for playing such a useless character).  Still, if I'm correct, it's awfully dirty pool for  Summit Entertainment to blatantly give away the game as such.  Anyway, the film looks generic if intriguing, Seyfried looks gorgeous per-usual, and it looks like serviceable junk to keep us entertained between the Oscars and the summer movie season.  But if you must watch, don't watch the whole thing.

Scott Mendelson   

Weekend Box Office (10/30/11): Puss In Boots makes muted (for Dreamworks) number-one debut, while Timberlake/Seyfried's In Time and Depp's Rum Diary underwhelm.

 

Dreamworks seems to have paid a price for their risky release date, as Puss In Boots (review) debuted with a comparatively soft $34 million over the weekend.  We'll find out for sure on Monday if it broke the Halloween opening weekend record (Saw III grossed $33 million on this weekend in 2006), it's still a pretty disappointing number and well below the norm for major Dreamworks cartoons.  The studio has had a healthy run on the first weekend in November for the last several years (Megamind, Madagascar 2, Bee Movie, Flushed Away), but the decision was made recently to move the film back one weekend right into the heart of the kid-friendly holiday known as Halloween. As it stands for the $130 million production, the debut is the lowest opening for a Dreamworks cartoon since Flushed Away, which debuted with just $18.8 million in November 2006 (an Aardman Animations production, it nearly doubled its $64 million US gross overseas).  While a massive snowstorm on the East Coast likely kept moviegoers indoors on Saturday and possibly Sunday, the film's $9.6 million opening day was below par as well.  As it is, the film played 59% female and 55% over-25.  It also played to a 35% Hispanic audience, while 51% of the tickets were in 3D and 7% were in IMAX.  The comparative uptick in 3D sales makes sense, since it's some of the better 3D we've seen to date.

Weekend Box Office (10/23/11): Paranormal Activity 3 scores record October debut with $52.6 million (but it's not the top horror opening).

Despite what everyone else is reporting, Paranormal Activity 3 (review) did not set a record this weekend for the biggest opening for a horror film.  Lest we forget, Hannibal (review) opened with $58 million in February of 2001, which was actually the biggest R-rated opening ever at the time.  Anyway, Paramount's threequel/prequel will have to settle with merely being the second- biggest horror debut ever, the eighth-biggest R-rated opening, and the top October launch.  Tragic, I know. The $5 million film grossed a massive $54 million this weekend, which is a 29% jump from Paranormal Activity 2's $40.6 million opening this time last year.  The film had a massively front loaded weekend, the ninth-biggest on record, with a mere 2.02x weekend multiplier.  Still, that was better than the 2.01x weekend multiplier for Paranormal Activity 2 last year (the sixth-smallest such multiplier).  The picture played 53% under-25 and 54% female.  Considering the film pulled just in $1.7 million more at midnight, the $26 million opening day (around $6 million more than Paranormal Activity 2's $20.6 million Friday) and $12 million jump in total opening weekend compared to the last film, there is a clear growth in this series.

Happily Never After: The sad (and sexist?) rush to cast some of our most promising young actresses as fairy tale princesses.

There were a few interesting articles written over the last several months about the unusual amount of ass-kicking (or at least take-charge) young female roles being written into mainstream cinema.  Whether it was Chloe Moretz in Kick-Ass, Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit, Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone, or Saoirse Ronan in Hanna, the last 18 months or so has seen a mini-wave of genre pictures where young females were basically the lead characters (or in the case of Kick-Ass the star attraction), 'strong independent character' (god, I hate that cliche) who not only could fend for themselves but were not defined in any way, shape, or form by their male love interest (not a one of them had a boyfriend).  Yes, I would include Sucker Punch in this category, as it was basically a satiric examination of whether ass-kicking young women in pop culture were automatically sexualized by virtue of the salacious nature of such imagery (stop whining and read THIS).  The somewhat negative undercurrent of this trend is that these actresses were generally under 18, often barely passed puberty.  Point being, what would become of these actresses once they reached adulthood?  If recent developments are any indication, Hollywood has a genuine desire to roll back the progress clock and turn these actresses into fairy tale princesses.

Weekend Box Office (03/13/11): Battle: Los Angeles hits hard, Red Riding Hood lands softly, while Disney's Mars Needs Moms crashes.

As expected, the heavily-hyped Battle: Los Angeles (teaser/review) topped the box office this weekend, grossing an estimated $35.7 million. If that number holds, it will be the twelfth-biggest March opening in history, and a rock-solid start for a would-be tentpole that cost (depending on who you asked) $70 or $100 million. There was talk that the picture would break out and perhaps reach $50-60 million, but that was frankly silly. We've been spoiled the last few years, with massive March openings like 300 ($70 million), Watchmen ($55 million), and the astonishingly-huge Alice in Wonderland ($116 million). But generally speaking, March releases that aren't animated don't reach $35 million. We didn't have a single live-action $35 million opener in March until 2005 (The Ring Two), and there have been only five others since then prior to this weekend (the three above examples, plus Wild Hogs at $39 million, 10,000 BC at $35 million), so getting anywhere close to $40 million in the third month of the year has to be considered a win, especially without any kind of 3D or IMAX advantage.

Review: Red Riding Hood (2011)

Red Riding Hood
2011
100 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Catherine Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood is a picture that works in spite of itself. Much of the acting is overly formal and stilted, the film looks claustrophobic and stage bound, and the narrative flirts with societal relevance but discards it at every opportunity. But the movie has its pulpy charms and a terrifically entertaining star-turn by Gary Oldman. It is not high art, and it suffers from a PG-13 that dampens the grisly violence and periodic sexuality, but it’s rarely boring and often genuinely amusing.

Press Release: Summit Entertainment aqquires domestic rights to Amanda Seyfried thriller Gone.

AMANDA SEYFRIED TO STAR IN GONE

Summit Entertainment Acquires US Rights to Thriller Lakeshore Entertainment Group and Sierra / Affinity to Commence Sales of Worldwide Rights at the 2011 European Film Market in Berlin

Los Angeles, CA February 9, 2011 – Summit Entertainment, Lakeshore Entertainment Group and Sidney Kimmel Entertainment jointly announced today that Amanda Seyfried will star in thriller Gone, a film to be directed by Heitor Dhalia from a script penned by Allison Burnett. Lakeshore’s Tom Rosenberg and Gary Lucchesi are producing the project alongside Sidney Kimmel. Chris Salvaterra and Dan Abrams will also produce. Summit has acquired U.S. distribution rights and Lakeshore and Sierra / Affinity are handling sales of worldwide rights to the film which commence at the 2011 European Film Market in Berlin. Principal photography is set to begin in April of this year.

Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood (with Amanda Seyfried) gets a terrible second trailer, with a stunningly stupid musical choice.

On one level, this second look at Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood is a pretty generic trailer, a plot-centric piece that basically gives away the majority of the film in chronological order. It also achieves the impossible, as it makes Gary Oldman boring, as his endless narration explicitly spells out the plot of the film in bland generalities. Two trailers in, and the film doesn't feel the least bit original or inspired behind the all-star cast and a hope for some of the self-depreciating humor that made Twilight so much more fun than its morose sequels. Sleepy Hollow had the visual brilliance of a re-energized Tim Burton, the kooky lead performance of Johnny Depp (back when that was still a bit fresh), and a cavalcade of British all-stars. The Wolfman at least had the promise of grown-up horror fare for adults with adult actors at the helm. Both prior films also had the allure of R-rated violence and gore. The film comes out in just under two months, so we'll see as always.

Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood (with Amanda Seyfried) gets a visually dynamic, but needlessly wordy poster.

I rather liked the first moody, low-key poster for this Twilight by way of Sleepy Hallow variation on Little Red Riding Hood. So while this new poster is also visually appealing, and it gives a full cast roll call (always a plus in my book), I must acknowledge that it is a poster for the unthinking masses. It has a contrived image of Amanda Seyfried running for her life, with about a paragraph worth of needless text to go with it (even more than the double-tagline first poster). I much prefer the first tagline, which merely read 'Who's afraid?'. As it is, the film actually test-screened in Woodland Hills on Sunday, so if anyone wants to chime in, feel free. This one comes out March 11th, meaning that two of the more interesting movies of the spring, Red Riding Hood and Battle: Los Angeles, open on the same day. Nice move...

Scott Mendelson

Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood (with Amanda Seyfried) gets an underwhelming trailer and a snazzy poster.

While most pundits have razzed on this trailer for its similarities to the first Twilight film, the immediate comparison I got was Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. It's an ages-old fairy-tale, redone as an adult horror story with a bit of gothic romance thrown in. Alas, Catherine Hardwicke is no Tim Burton when it comes to visuals, and the initial tease lacks the knowing humor that made the Johnny Depp vehicle such a kick and a half. Still, the conventional sell is not necessarily the movie. Hardwicke has lined up an impressive cast (Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Shiloh Fernandez, Virginia Madsen, Lukas Haas, Julie Christie and Billy Burke) and even said first Twilight film had a gentle self-mockery that the sequels lacked. I do like the sparse and moody poster, along with the low-key tagline 'Who's afraid?'. Click on the poster to enlarge. This one comes out March 11th, 2011.

Scott Mendelson

Shrek: The Final Chapter opens with $71 million, while MacGruber crawls to $4.1 million. Weekend box office review (05/23/10).

By any normal standards, a movie opening with $70.8 million in three days would be a pretty big success. So, before we get into what this means for the Shrek franchise, let's talk that number in cold detail for a minute. First of all, it gives the fourth Shrek picture a pretty solid 3.4x weekend multiplier, which was superior to the 3.1x scored by Shrek the Third over its opening weekend. Second of all, in the grand scheme of animated films, it is still the fourth-biggest opening weekend for a cartoon, behind only Shrek 3 ($121 million), Shrek 2 ($108 million), and The Simpsons ($74 million). Also, for what it's worth, it's the fifth-biggest opening weekend for a 'fourth chapter' in box office history, behind Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ($102 million), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($101 million), X-Men Origins: Wolverine ($85 million), and Fast and Furious ($71 million). Of course, if you glance at the numbers posted by the previous two Shrek sequels, you start to see the reason for concern. Come what may, anytime a sequel opens with $50 million less than the prior installment, that's generally a bad thing. Shrek Forever After just made less on its opening weekend than Shrek 2 made on its second weekend ($72.1 million).