When the private life overwhelms the public persona - Is Tom Cruise about to become the next Mel Gibson?

I don't generally discuss gossip, so I'm going to do my best to keep this film-centric.  First and foremost, there is bitter irony that this is all occurring just as Tom Cruise has reaffirmed his movie stardom.  Seven years ago, his box office bankability was put in severe doubt due to the beginning of his courtship of Ms. Katie Holmes.  Now, just as Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol has reaffirmed both his box office muscle and his dedication to a certain level of mainstream quality, the end of this relationship may torpedo his career all over again, be it temporarily or permanently.  Now of course the film that Mr. Cruise was promoting back in June of 2005 when he performed his famous couch-jumping was Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, which went on to earn $234 million in the US and $591 million worldwide, making it Cruise's highest grossing film ever on both levels (M:I4 eclipsed it worldwide last year with $693 million).  In the years that followed, we had a somewhat under-performing franchise sequel (Mission: Impossible III with $133m domestic and $397m worldwide on a $160m budget), a political drama that was never going to be a blockbuster (Lions For Lambs, which earned $15 million in the US but $63 million worldwide on a $35 million budget), an over-budgeted but well-reviewed potboiler (Valkyrie, which cost $90 million and earned $200 million worldwide), and Knight and Day, a $117 million action comedy with Cameron Diaz that still earned $261 million worldwide.  So, coupled with a crowd-pleasing cameo in Tropic Thunder, the idea that Tom Cruise had lost his luster was more about public relations and alienating some of his more casual fans than any real loss of box office mojo.  But this may be different...

Hoping for yesterday: why Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, and the big movie stars of our generation are not going to magically reclaim their past stardom.

This is a slightly updated version of an essay I wrote back in late May.

This Fourth of July holiday, we have seen the release of Larry Crowne, a poorly reviewed romantic comedy starring Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks.  The film will not top $20 million over the four-day weekend (on just a $30 million budget, natch), which will countless pundits to wonder why Hanks and Roberts aren't mega stars anymore.  Two months ago, we saw the wide release of Jodie Foster's flawed-but-interesting drama The Beaver, which failed to even gross $1 million for a variety of factors (mixed reviews, weird premise, a terrible trailer, etc).  But the film is being held to the perhaps unfair standard of determining whether or not Mel Gibson can return to his former box office glory.  Never mind that the film should no more be expected to perform like Lethal Weapon 4 than The Man Without A Face, the media has been abuzz with articles along the lines of 'Can The Beaver save Mel Gibson?"  This year will see much hand-wringing about the sustainable stardom of some of the very biggest 1980s/1990s stars.  Over 2011, we have seen or will see the alleged box office comebacks of Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Harrison Ford, Jim Carrey, and Tom Cruise, plus the continuing saga of Arnold Schwarzenegger's post-'governator' movie plans.  Without obsessing too much on certain offscreen behaviors that jeopardize the popularity of a few of those names, the question is: Why should we be expecting these former mega-stars to still be at the peak of their stardom?

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.

2010 in Review: The Underrated

Let us continue our look back at the year in film with a token acknowledgement of ten films that were not quite as bad as their critical reputations. For the record, not all of the films below are good pictures. In a film criticism world that follows the sensationalized political landscape more and more, films are often judged as either unqualified masterpieces or pure failures. We have lost the ability to acknowledge that some films are just 'good', 'okay', or 'not that bad'. The following are in alphabetical order.

Death at a Funeral
This Neil LaBute comedy got hammered for daring to remake a seemingly untouchable 2007 Frank Oz picture, all while critics couldn't decide if said original was any good in the first place. I have not seen the original, but this American variation works as a genuinely funny family comedy. Chris Rock makes an excellent and sympathetic straight man, James Mardsen is a fine clown, Zoe Saldana looks dynamite while getting to be funny, and the cast is filled with notable character actors (Loretta Devine, Keith David, Danny Glover) who just happen to be African-American. The first third is sharper than the rest, but it's a consistently entertaining piece of filmmaking.

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

Right or Wrong, The Hangover 2 does not need Mel Gibson.

Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms and the rest of the cast just plain didn't want Mel Gibson in The Hangover 2. That much we know, as his cameo role as a crazed tattoo artist was announced, then retracted and recast with Liam Neeson in just a few days last week. Since then, there has been much speculation and discussion in the blogosphere, much of it centering on the alleged hypocrisy of allowing a convicted rapist (Mike Tyson) to appear in the original Hangover while crying foul at casting a man who is an occasional drunk driver and periodic anti-Semite/racist asshole. But sometimes it's really not that complicated. What if the disapproval over casting Mel Gibson in The Hangover 2 had nothing to do with morality, but with simple business sense?