John Gosling previews the week's new movies (09/14/12)

After the poor showing last weekend, studios are hoping for better results with this week's releases, which include the fifth Resident Evil movie, a 3D re-release of Finding Nemo and the limited roll out of The Master. 

The Resident Evil series (Biohazard in Japan) kicked off in 1996 when Capcom unleashed their survival horror epic onto an unsuspecting gaming public, to great success. Since then the franchise has gone from strength to strength, with various sequels and spin-offs across a multitude of formats, along with novelizations, comic books, action figures and much more. The games alone have sold in excess of 50 million copies, with a sixth one in the original series due at the end of the month. A move into film seemed inevitable and by 1999, Sony and Capcom announced horror supremo George A. Romero had signed on  to script and direct Resident Evil - something that came about when he directed a commercial for the Playstation release of Resident Evil 2. However, dissatisfied with what Romero turned in (despite it following the plot of the first game quite closely), Capcom fired him from the project and looked to move in a different direction. In 2000 they hired Paul W.S Anderson, a British director who had seen success with his Mortal Kombat adaptation in 1995. 

Ben Affleck's Argo gets a trailer that goes one act too long.

I haven't read the true story that this film is based on (if you want to, here's the WIRED story).  But the general idea seems like just the sort of great story that lends itself to a fun movie.  And the film is filled to the gills with terrific character actors (John Goodman, Bryan Cranston, Victor Garber, Kyle Chandler, Tate Donovan, Phillip, Adrienne Barbeau, and my personal favorite, Zeljko Ivanek, etc).  And while I'm among those who didn't care for The Town, I'm a big fan of Affleck's Gone Baby Gone so he's still batting a solid 0.500 so far.  My only carp is with the trailer itself.  It's a 150-second spot that clearly divided into three acts.  The first 45-seconds or so explains the time, setting, and political crisis that kicks the story into gear, while the middle 45-seconds goes into the actual scheme that made this story worth telling.  Instead of ending at the 90-second mark, with the story fully explained and the stakes completely established, Warner Bros. felt the need to tack on an additional 45-seconds of montage footage, set to 'Dream On' that serves no purpose other than to reestablish the seriousness of the situation and spoil various bits of character and plot that likely goes down in the second or third acts.  The film looks fine, and kudos to Warner Bros for letting this clearly adult-skewing drama go out with an R-rating.  But the trailer is 2/3 terrific and 1/3 pure needless spoilers. If you feel like watching purely out of curiosity, I suggest you stop right at the 90-second mark.  Okay, your turn to share.

Scott Mendelson

Weekend Box Office (01/29/11): The Grey tops, while One For the Money and Man On a Ledge somewhat stumble.

In a somewhat refreshing turn of events, this weekend had three wide releases, all budgeted below $45 million and all technically geared towards adults.  And for the fourth straight weekend this month, an R-rated new release topped the box office yet again.  The top film of the weekend was Joe Carnahan's wilderness survival drama, The Grey.  The Liam Neeson vehicle, concerning plane crash survivors struggling to fend off death by various forms of nature (including wolves), opened with a solid $20 million.  Yes, that's slightly below the $21 million debut of Unknown and the $24 million debut of Taken around this time in 2011 and 2009, but those films were PG-13 while The Grey was rated R.  The picture scored a B- from Cinemascore, which is not surprising.  On one hand, it's a good movie, a thoughtful and introspective mediation on several men coming to terms with their forthcoming demise.  On the other hand, the film was sold as an action picture featuring Liam Neeson fighting wolves with his bare hands.  Without going into spoilers, that's not entirely accurate.  Still the film obviously has fans, as the picture scored a relatively rare 3x weekend multiplier.  Anyway, the film cost Open Road Films just $35 million, so this should be a solid moneymaker for the mini distributor even if the somewhat false advertising causes it to drop hard next weekend.

The lesson for this year's Oscar nominations? Don't be an R-rated film!

For a list of the complete nominations, go HERE.  As always, click on the movies with links for the original theatrical review.  I write a lot about the inexplicable trend of how the various year-end awards groups only consider 'appropriate' movies to be considered awards-material.  There is and always has been a certain disdain for populist entertainment, a trend that's only gotten worse as the independent film movement exploded in the early 1990s and the year-end Oscar bait-calender got more jam-packed over the last five weeks of the year.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II may have received almost unanimously rave reviews (96% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), but it doesn't count because it was a big-budget fantasy drama that is considered 'popular' entertainment.  Bridesmaids may have been one of the most successful R-rated comedies of recent years, a well-reviewed (90% on Rotten Tomatoes) comedy that may have been a game-changer in terms of how mass-market female-driven entertainments are viewed in terms of their commercial potential.  But no, it's not a character-driven dramedy that's one of the best films of the year, it's just that 'women shit in a sink' movie, so it's not worthy.  But a drama with Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock that's gasp... about 9/11?!  That's EXACTLY the kind of film that is supposed to be among the year's best, right?  And so it is that Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a film with a 48% positive ranking on Rotten Tomatoes and a 46% score on Metacritic is now considering by the Academy to be one of the nine best films of the year.

The Hobbit gets a trailer. Maybe you CAN go home again after all...

The highest compliment I can pay to this footage is that it looks absolutely a part of the prior Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Unlike the Star Wars prequels, which looked and felt like a world very different from the original trilogy, this two-part adaptation of The Hobbit should fit right in with the first three films.  How wonderful it is to hear that music again, from the mournful beautiful main 'Shire theme' to the almost subtle appearance of 'the Ring theme' when an old friend pops up in the end, these two films feel of a piece with what came before.  The only real 'concern' I have is that I never found The Hobbit that engaging as a novel.  Truth be told, I never got around to actually reading Lord of the Rings because I wasn't all that intrigued by the original story.  But for those who enjoy the first book as much as the next three, I can find no fault with what is on display at the moment.  The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens on December 14th, 2012.  As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson