Review: Carnage (2011) is amusing, but predictable and uninspired.

Carnage
2011
80 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

There is nothing terribly wrong with Carnage, Roman Polanski's adaption of the play God of Carnage.  But it's story, which involves two couples who meet to discuss the playground injury that one child inflicted on another, plays out exactly as you'd expect it to.  It's fun while it lasts (and it's an awfully short picture), but the picture contains little insight and an unfortunate predictability, both in the actual narrative and in the casting, that it renders the final product very-nearly pointless.  Thanks to an unfortunate need to cast exactly-to-type, the film even loses much of its appeal as an acting treat.  It's not a bad picture, and it's entertaining while it's being watched, but it's almost obscenely inconsequential.

Just in time for Halloween: 11 of the better (best?) horror sequels in recent history.

I've tried to do some kind of list every Halloween but stumbled into a bit of writer's block this year.  When you've already written about the worst horror films your wife has made you watch, the best direct-to-DVD horror films and the plain-scariest theatrical horror films in the last twenty years, there's not as much room to play as you might think (best remakes?).  So allow me a little latitude, as I run down ten of the better (best?) horror film sequels in recent memory.  It is ironic that while no genre is more likely to produce sequel-spawning franchises, so few horror sequels are actually any good.  A caveat... this list will not include arguably two of my favorite horror sequels as I've already written about them extensively elsewhere.  If you can't already guess which two I'm referring to, read up here and here.  And now, in glorious alphabetical order (with the exception of the 'number #1 pick')...

Weekend Box Office (05/08/11): Thor grosses $65.7m, Fast Five crashes, and other debuts perform well.

It's a $65.7 million weekend for Thor (review), giving the Marvel adventure pic a solid 2.6x weekend multiplier. It's kinda scary how accurately we can now predict opening weekend grosses just based on the midnight number, but the math once again worked (Thor did 5% of its weekend gross via Thursday midnight sneaks, per usual). Anyway, Marvel was successful at keeping expectations low, saying that anything over $60 million would be a win. And it more-or-less is. The film played heavily 3D, which meant higher ticket prices and the like. I heard plenty of anecdotal stories about moviegoers unable to find a convenient 2D location, which may be part of a depressing trend as the 'summer of 3D' unfolds. But the film had a solid weekend multiplier (if you discount the $3.25 million worth of midnight sneaks, the film's Friday and Saturday figures were pretty even) and decent word of mouth. It earned a B+ from Cinemascore, with an A from those under 18.

Review: The Beaver

The Beaver
2011
90 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

The Beaver is a film hamstrung by an inability to settle on just which story to tell, and how exactly to tell that story. The film basically concerns a suicidal husband/father who apparently adopts another personality through the guise of a stuffed puppet. But director Jodie Foster and writer Kyle Killen constantly bounce back and forth in terms of telling the story through his eyes or through the eyes of his family and coworkers. As a result, there is a constant shift of narrative focus and every nearly major character gets shorted. There is fascinating material on display, with some truly fine performance work to boot, but the whole ends up far less than the sum of the occasionally exceptional parts.

Artistic Comeback? He never left. A look at Matthew McConaughey's best films, post-stardom.

Much of the babbling over this weekends The Lincoln Lawyer has been about the idea that the well-reviewed legal thriller represents some kind of artistic reawakening for Mr. Matthew McConaughey. As is the case with many old-school movie stars, the critics and the pundits have a habit of ignoring McConaughey's more interesting films while highlighting his lesser mainstream fare and then reaching the conclusion that he is not but a paycheck hack. While McConaughey is certainly guilty of some questionable artistic choices, there does seem to be a whiff of genre-bias around this newest entry. It's seems that much of the praise is not so much that The Lincoln Lawyer is allegedly a pretty good movie (I'm waiting until Friday night so the wife can come along) but it is the fact that McConaughey is once again playing in a 'respectable' genre (the legal thriller) as opposed to those 'lesser' romantic comedies that he has starred in from time to time. But, without further ado, let us recount a handful of genuinely good, if not great, films that happen to star Matthew McConaughey. Oh, and this list will only cover from 1996-2009. This is for two reasons: McConaughey became a genuine movie star after A Time To Kill in 1996 and... um... I've never gotten around to see Dazed and Confused from 1993 (I know, I know...). Anyway, onward and upward...

Jodie Foster: "She did not live to earn approval stickers."

Jodie Foster and Mel Gibson's The Beaver gets a trailer.

Oddly enough, I had been paying so little attention to the specific details of this picture that I didn't even realize that Jodie Foster was actually co-starring as well as directing. And I certainly didn't realize that Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Laurence were in this one too. The trailer certainly tries to sell a somewhat generic and uplifting 'triumph over mental illness' story (the voice over is beyond patronizing), but there does seem to be some honest quirk in there. Point being, this certainly looks like something worth checking out. Jodie Foster hasn't directed a film in fifteen years (the superb Home For the Holidays), and she remains an icon in her field and someone who always demands our attention. And, whatever we may think of Mel Gibson the human being, Mel Gibson the actor is someone who rarely missteps, especially when he's trying to make a 'real' movie. Summit Entertainment will be opening this picture sometime in early 2011.

Scott Mendelson