Review: Red Tails (2012) is a low-key, mostly entertaining history lesson/B-movie.

Red Tails
2012
120 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

The strongest aspect of director Anthony Hemingway and producer George Lucas's Red Tails is that it lives in a somewhat Utopian film industry where African-American dramas aren't all that big of a deal.  The picture may have an unfair burden of proving the bankability of larger-budget ($58 million) genre fare revolving entirely around African Americans, but you don't see that sweat onscreen.  It treats itself not like a test case, or a passion project for one of the more financially successful independent filmmakers of our age, but merely a B-movie action drama that involves actors like Cuba Cooding Jr. Terrence Howard, and David Oyelowo.  Red Tails may be (unfortunately) an anomaly, but those behind and in front of the camera treat this as if it were one of many minority-led historical dramas that open each month at the local multiplex.

Weekend Box Office (09/11/11): Contagion easily tops, Warrior tragically fumbles, Creature hilariously tanks.

It was good news/bad news at the box office this weekend.  Two critically-acclaimed adult entries squared off and only only came out shining.  The winner for the weekend was Steven Soderbergh's Contagion (review), grossing $22.4 million from 3,222 screens.  The all-star pandemic thriller fits squarely into the realm of Soderbergh's 'commercial ventures'.  With the exception of Erin Brockovich (which was a Julia Roberts vehicle), Soderbergh alternates between artier and sometimes experimental fare of varying quality (Bubble, The Limey, King of the Hill - good!  The Girlfriend Experience, The Good German, Full Frontal - bad!) and all-star genre entries that are inherently populist and commercial even with their occasional artier sensibilities (Ocean's 11, Traffic, Out of Sight, etc).  But even his commercial ventures are generally aimed at adults with adult sensibilities, so the solid opening weekend is to be celebrated.  The well-reviewed film played mostly to the over-25 set, which means it has a chance at solid legs as the younger kids check it out over the next month. It earned a B- from Cinemascore, which is probably owed to the fact that it's genuinely unnerving in its plausibility (audiences claim to love horror but don't like to be actually disturbed or frightened) and artier than its trailer lets on. I haven't seen it yet as my son had a contagious infection over the weekend.  We considered taking him on Friday afternoon and hoping he would cough in all the right places for maximum comedy, but we thought better of it (we saw it Sunday evening instead).

Weekend Box Office (09/04/11): Adult films trash the cheap exploitation fare and dominate Labor Day weekend, as The Help and The Debt defeat Shark Night and Apollo 18.

Summer must be over, as grownups as seemingly returning to the marketplace.  In what was always going to be a light moviegoing holiday weekend, the low-key adult thriller (on 1,826 screens) defeated the more heavily advertised and wider-playing genre entries.  First of all, The Help once again topped the box office for the third weekend in a row ($19 million for its four-day holiday weekend, with a $14.6 million Fri-Sun total, actually rising 0.5% from last weekend).  I'm not sure what the record is for the most consecutive weekends at number one for a movie that did not debut in first place, but the crowd-pleasing period drama has to be high on the would-be list.  With $123 million in a month, the film now sits as the eighth-highest grossing drama of all-time released in the summer, a list that becomes even shorter when you discount war-themed action pictures (Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbor, Gladiator).  It is still outpacing Bridesmaids by a significant margin ($106 million after four weekends) and could very well flirt with $180 million if it can hold onto screens and fend off adult-skewing pictures (Warrior, Contagion, Moneyball) in the next month.

Weekend Box Office (08/28/11): Summer 2011 ends with a Hurricane, kneecapping three new releases (Colombiana. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, Our Idiot Brother) and all holdovers.

It's a tough thing to accurately gauge how well a movie would have done if not for an unforeseen variable, such as in this case a massive hurricane that threatened much of the East Coast of the country and shut down hundreds of movie theaters over the weekend.  As such, it feels a little unfair to pick on movies that didn't open all-that well, since who is to say how they would have performed under normal conditions.  So, for the sake of not kicking people while they are down, this summary will be focused on the positive developments over the weekend.

While it was not number one this weekend, Sony's EuroCorp pick-up Colombiana opened with $10.3 million for a solid second place.  The Luc Besson-produced vehicle would likely have opened between $12-$15 million without the storm issues.  But even that smaller number is worth noting.  Point being, the film confirms the genuine bank-ability of Zoe Saldana, who co-starred in Avatar and Star Trek in 2009 and had supporting roles in The Losers, Takers, and Death at a Funeral in 2010.  Saldana's face was pretty much the entire poster, and the marketing campaign centered entirely around her.  This is among the larger opening weekends that I can recall for a female-led pure action picture (as opposed to sci-fi/horror) that isn't based on a comic book or a video game. Even with the diminished numbers, this is still a larger opening weekend than the far-more high profile Conan the Barbarian, Fright Night, and One Day from last weekend.  Point being, there is indeed a market for action pictures starring minorities and/or women. Maybe the market isn't big enough to support $100 million+ productions, but as long as the budget is reasonable (in this case, $40 million), we damn-sure should be seeing more of this kind of thing.  The film earned an A- from Cinemascore and played 65% over-25 and 57% female.  And yes, it's pretty darn fun and well-crafted, even if the narrative is contrived and the film guts itself for that PG-13.

One to represent all? How The Help is being punished for a lack of minority-driven films, rather than its own merits as a movie.

I'm not going to get into a point-by-point rundown of why I think many of the criticisms being hurled at The Help are just-plain wrong.  First of all, Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman already did just that, so I'll merely link to his piece.  Second of all, much of the outcry over The Help comes not from what is in the movie itself, but rather what isn't in the film, and (more importantly) what isn't in the marketplace.  It is a clear case of film critics (and social commentators) reviewing not the movie itself, but everything outside the film.  As a stand-alone film, it works as a solid, if not awe-inspiring character piece involving a number of women (black and white) who exist in an employer/employee relationship during the middle of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.  If the picture were one of a dozen films being released by a major studio that centered around African-America actors, its flaws would be less of an issue, merely reasons for calling the film good rather than great.  There may be a dearth of African-American-centered major studio releases.  But it is silly to condemn the one 'shining' example and punish it for the non-existence of other pictures like it.

Weekend Box Office (08/21/11): The Help tops in second weekend, crushes four new releases. Summer of 3D ends with three 3D flops.

As expected, the summer reached its climax this weekend with an ugly pileup, as four new releases failed to achieve anything resembling success, with three of those releases being in 3D and two of them chasing the exact same demographics.  Why oh why did Lionsgate and Disney open Conan the Barbarian and Fright Night on the same weekend?.  With the new releases eating each other alive, The Help snuck into the number one slot during its second weekend.  Dropping just 21% compared to the Fri-Sun portion of its opening weekend, The Help earned $20.4 million and now sits with a twelve-day total of $71.8 million.  This is the very definition of an old-fashioned leggy hit, but in today's front-loaded marketplace, it almost qualifies as a sensation.  $100 million is guaranteed at this point, the question now merely remains how far over/under $150 million it ends up and/or how much the film will factor in the year-end awards races.  Viola Davis is a lock for an Oscar nomination (but will her lead performance get placed in the leading or supporting category) and the film is in a pretty good place for a Best Picture nomination.  It would be a lock under the old 10-nominees system, and said two-year experiment was dismantled partially out of the desire to keep such 'popular entertainments' (IE - well-reviewed films that mainstream audiences actually enjoyed... horrors!) out of the field.

Weekend Box Office (08-14-11): Rise of the Planet of the Apes tops again, The Help sizzles, Final Destination 5, 30 Minutes or Less, and Glee Live! underwhelm.

 It's a little sad when a drop of just under 50% is considered leggy, but here we are.  Rise of the Planet of the Apes dropped 'just' 49% in its second weekend, which was strong enough to once again claim the top spot at the box office.  The well-received franchise reboot earned $27.8 million in weekend two, for a ten-day total of $105 million.  The number puts it well-ahead of movies that opened with similar numbers in summers past, such as I, Robot ($95 million after ten days), X-Men ($99 million), X-Men: First Class ($98 million), GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra ($98 million), and The Incredible Hulk ($97 million).  It is comparatively down from Tim Burton's still-lousy (just watched it again this weekend) Planet of the Apes, which opened with $69 million back in 2001 and ended its tenth day with $123 million.  However, this much-better received and much cheaper variation is falling at a smaller rate, so it has a chance of catching up to the $180 million earned by the Burton re-imagining ten years ago.  The film is doing the usual Fox magic overseas as well, as it has $179.6 million worldwide, which makes this a HUGE win for the $93 million production.