See it early? See it at midnight? See it on DVD? On how we see movies and how those choices affect our critical analysis.

The word leaking out from last weekend's screening of next month's Evil Dead remake is generally positive, with tepid enthusiasm blending in with absolutely insane raves and foaming-at-the-mouth excitement.  Of course, there was equal amounts of chatter that the venue for this premiere, a packed crowd of demographically perfect horror junkies on opening night of the SXSW Film Festival, had something to do with the uber-positive reception. I can't imagine a more receptive audience than the one that saw the picture in Austin last weekend and I can't imagine the frenzied anticipation and the whole 'I saw it first!' mentality didn't affect the reception. I had a chance to see Oz: The Great and Powerful at the All Media screening on Monday night but passed because I knew my kid might want to see it and I didn't want to keep her up until 10:30pm on a school night. So I waited until Friday. I bought two tickets to a 2D 7:15pm showing and picked up my kid from school acccordingly.  She liked the movie, and the packed audience went nuts for it too.  I'd be lying if the circumstances of said viewing didn't perhaps allow me to paper over the film's very obvious storytelling issues. I got to see a big event movie on opening night with a packed audience with my excited daughter in tow, which for a film nerd like myself is the very definition of having your cake and eating it too.

2012 in Film: The Runner-Ups.

As we continue recapping the movies that arguably defined 2012, we move on to what I like to call 'The Runner-Ups'.  These films are all very good if not great.  Either they didn't quite make my 'favorite of the year' list or they aren't the kind of thing that belongs on a traditional best-of-year list (you'll see which ones I'm referring to below).  Anyway, consider this a 'great films that aren't among the very best but I darn-well wanted to highlight them' list.  As always, the films below are in alphabetical order.  Without further ado...

Argo (review):
In a year where old-school big-studio genre films for adults solidified their comeback, this Ben Affleck political period piece is the defining example of everything going right.  It cost just $45 million, so it didn't need to be a massive hit to make a profit, but a massive hit it was.  With around $105 million at the domestic till so far, it's among the year's top Oscar contenders, and I still have an inkling that Ben Affleck is going to walk away with the Best Director statue this year (the somewhat false 'comeback kid' narrative is too good to resist).  Argo, concerning a true story of the CIA's attempts to rescue six Americans trapped in Iran during the embassy hostage crisis of 1979, is a pretty terrific film through-and-through.  The only reason it doesn't rank higher is that it's really not about anything other than itself.  It's a caper film, a procedural, but with no attempts at any additional relevancy.  That's not a bad thing per-se, but it arguably prevents the film from being anything other than a terrific piece of old-school moviemaking.  That's not exactly an insult, as it's still a top-notch piece of meat-and-potatoes entertainment.

Weekend Box Office (09/16/12) Paul Anderson dominates the box office on all fronts as Resident Evil 5 tops and The Master crushes in record limited debut.

It was a very good weekend to be a director named Paul Anderson.  Both W.S. and Thomas had a movie out this weekend and both did pretty well, one somewhat under-performing while the other arguably over-performing.  The top film of the weekend was Sony's Resident Evil:Retribution, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, which earned a frankly disappointing $21 million.  The series, based on a horror video game franchise, has been one of the more consistent genre franchises over the last decade (essay). The first film opened in March 2002 to $17 million, and it eventually grossed $40 million domestic and $102 million worldwide on a $33 million budget. Resident Evil: Apocalypse set the release template two years later, opening in early September 2004 to $23 million and grossing $51 million domestic and $129 million worldwide on a $45 million budget. Resident Evil: Extinction pulled the same trick in 2007, opening to $23 million and grossing $50 million domestic and $147 million worldwide on a $45 million budget. Two years ago, the $60 million-costing Resident Evil: Afterlife, which came with the added gimmick of being shot in 3D film, opened with $26 million.  So this opening has to be a let-down, well below the series average even with 3D-upcharges factored in (the film played 48% 3D, 34% 2D, 14% IMAX, and 4% PLF).  Adjusted for inflation, the first two sequel openings would be about $28 million apiece, with the original opening to just-under $25 million. 

Review: The Master (2012) is an intimate, if aloof, American epic told on a sprawling 70mm canvas.

The Master

2012
137 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master is such an aggressively ambiguous picture that it is almost a risk to attempt to assign explicit meaning to it.  It is a sprawling and majestic character study, visually dynamic (see it in 70mm if at all possible) and superbly acted throughout.  But it is arguably more of a technical exercise than an emotional journey, as the film keeps us at somewhat of a distance even as the characters occasionally pour their hearts out onscreen.  But as for the film's deeper meaning, I imagine each and every single viewer will have differing opinions on that, and yes I admit my thoughts on the film may in fact be less worthwhile by virtue of only taking in a single theatrical viewing.  But as Roger Ebert occasionally said, it's not 'what it's about' but 'how it's about it'.  Whatever it is The Master is about, and I do have my theories, it tells its story in a rather splendid fashion.

Shouldn't once be enough? Are movies like (allegedly) The Master that *require* multiple viewings playing fair?

Having had to miss the press screenings that I was invited to for family and work-related reasons, I will likely be checking out Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master at tonight's 7:15pm Landmark show (I already bought a ticket to the sold-out show, but it depends on when my wife gets home from work tonight and what the traffic's like).  Truth be told, I probably would have waited until next weekend when the film went wide if not for A) I want to see this thing in 70mm and B) there are approximately 700 new films opening next weekend.  As I've said before, when one plays in the critical circles, you can feel like the last person on Earth to see a movie merely by waiting until opening night.  I may or may not offer a review of the picture this weekend, depending on my schedule and whether or not I have anything new to offer to the critical conversation.  More importantly, I can only hope that I get enough out of the film from only seeing it once.  Much of the punditry I've read over the last month has stated that the film can't be fully appreciated in a single viewing.  The question I'm asking this morning is whether that is a fair standard for a film to be held to?  Point being, even in an era when it's easier than ever to rewatch movies, be it in theaters or home-video formats, what responsibility should a filmmaker have to make sure his or her film can be appreciated and digested on a single viewing?  And perhaps more importantly, should "Oh you need to see it twice!" be a fair defense if a film doesn't quite work the first time around?

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. 

Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master gets a teaser.

P.T. Anderson's long-awaited follow-up to There Will Be Blood is allegedly a fictionalized version of the origins of Scientology (with Philip Seymour Hoffman playing an L. Ron Hubbard-esque figure), but this teaser has nothing of that nature to tease.  Instead all we get is a jittery Joaquin Phoenix nervously being interrogated by an authority figure about an unseen incident.  Obviously this is an exceedingly cryptic little clip, but for die-hard fans (I've liked all of his four of his previous films but only loved Magnolia) it will have to do.  The Master opens on October 12th.  As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson