The final trailer for The Dark Knight Rises finally sells me. I'm officially excited again. It feels good to be back on board.

I'm frankly a little disappointed that Warner Bros. didn't have the courage to just wait a few days and debut this thing in theaters attached to The Avengers.  This is a big-scale trailer and deserves to be seen in theaters before dissecting it on a computer-screen.  Unless they were trying to slightly chip away at The Avengers's opening weekend (re - repeat viewings from those who've attended press/preview screenings), I really don't know why they chickened out at the last minute.  But having said that, this is a pretty terrific trailer.  Yes, much of the material in the first 2/3 is merely extended glimpses of what we've seen before, but this looks like exactly what it needs to be: an emotionally-powerful, socially-relevant action-drama that happens to take place within the world of Batman.  The clip uses the slow rising towards the familiar Batman Begins theme to literally raise goose-bumps.  Bane looks more imposing in action, Hathaway's Catwoman feels surprisingly appropriate and at home in Nolan's Gotham, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt seems to be filling the role of the 'hope' that Jim Gordon has apparently lost (his lack of screentime here makes me all-the-more concerned that he dies in the first act, which in-turn spurs Bruce out of retirement).  Kudos to Warner and Nolan for crafting three trailers that, like The Dark Knight four years ago, only reveal the barest bits of plot and story.  I don't expect this to be a game-changer like The Dark Knight, and I don't expect it to appeal to the inner-Bat geek in me as much as the last iconic Batman/Gordon vs. The Joker epic did.  But there now seems little doubt that The Dark Knight Rises should at least be a damn-good motion picture and a hell of a series finale.  This one drops July 20th.  As always, we'll see, but I'm back on the 'happy train'.

Scott Mendelson 

Weekend Box Office (04/29/12): Think Like a Man tops again as four new releases perform relatively poorly. Oh, and The Avengers assemble overseas to the tune of $178 million.

In the weekend before the official start of the summer season, four new releases, all of which were relatively smaller fare, all debuted to numbers ranging from not awful to genuinely awful (or example 4,321 on why comparing total weekend box office is stupid).  The top film this weekend was once again Think Like A Man, which dropped a surprisingly decent 46%, earning another $18 million.  The ensemble romantic comedy has now earned $60 million, putting it on track to be among the domestic bigger grossers of the first 1/3 of 2012.  If we're specifically talking 'black-films', then the Tim Story picture is a few days from outgrossing every Tyler Perry movie save Madea Goes to Jail, which grossed $90 million three years ago (the second highest-grossing Perry film is the $63 million-grossing Madea's Family Reunion). With a smaller drop and a larger second weekend off a $8 million-smaller opening weekend, it may pass that mark all the way to $100 million if it can hold onto screens as summer begins.  It will soon surpass the $65 million gross of Barbershop 2, the $67 million gross of Waiting to Exhale, and the $75 million gross of Barbershop within the next full week.  It's also out-grosssed and/or will likely out-gross any number of higher-profile 'white' romantic comedies or dramas (the $81 million-grossing Dear John, the $84 million-grossing Stupid, Crazy Love, the $54 million-grossing New Year's Eve, etc).  Usually when a $12 million-budgeted film ends up flirting with $100 million, studios respond with sequels and/or star-vehicles for certain higher-profile cast-members.  We'll see if Hollywood again writes off this 'unconventional' smash hit as a 'fluke' or whether Kevin Hart, Gabrielle Union, and Meagan Good (among others) get any 'bumps' off this film's unquestionable success.

Another weekend, another perfect example of the utter stupidity of weekend-to-weekend box office comparison...

Granted, I'm going by unofficial weekend estimates based on the Friday box office figures, but it appears that the entire total gross of all films in the box office top-twelve this weekend will equal around $96 million.  This same weekend last year had a total top-12 gross of $145 million, meaning this weekend will be down by about 34%.  I guess according to the standards set by the 'official' box office punditry, that would mean that moviegoing may be in a slump, right?  I mean, weekend-to-weekend totals are down by nearly $50 million compared to 2011 on this specific weekend!  Oh... wait, what's that you say?  Last weekend had the debut of Universal's Fast Five, the much-anticipated fifth installment in the recharged Fast/Furious franchise?  You remember Fast Five, right?  Great reviews, strong marketing, popular franchise... all of these things led to a massive $86 million opening weekend, the biggest in Universal history.  Yes that's right, last year had Universal rolling the dice and successfully kicking off the summer season a week earlier than usual, and it paid off in spades.  So you have a weekend where one film last year made almost as much as the entire top-twelve films' total grosses from this year.  You mean we shouldn't be too surprised if the cumulative might of The Raven, Safe, The Pirates: Band of Misfits, and The Five-Year Engagement couldn't quite measure up to a blockbuster debut like Fast Five? The four openers should gross about $36 million combined over the weekend, or about what Fast Five alone made on its opening day.  Oh right, maybe, just maybe, it IS about the individual movies performing at levels that are judged based on the respective expectations of each specific picture after all!  Four small-ish pictures debuted with relatively small-ish grosses, and their combined might plus the various holdovers weren't enough to equal the juggernaut of a presold (and well-reviewed, natch) blockbuster sequel.

Review: Safe (2012) delivers brutally polished film noir action drama in what may be Jason Statham's best film yet.

Safe

2012
95 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Writer/director Boaz Yakin's Safe is the kind of B-movie action film that does the designation proud.  It is openly thoughtful and intelligent, crafting a truly engrossing bit of character drama while holding the action in reserve until it matters.  It delicately balances a real-world narrative with action sequences that are just a touch over-the-top without ever sacrificing drama for thrills or vice-versa.  It's unapologetically what it is, but Yakin and star Jason Statham have crafted a rock-solid action drama that is rooted in 1940s film-noir transfused with an authentic post-9/11 paranoia New York City milieu.  It's high time I stopped referring to movies like this (adult-skewing R-rated star-driven genre pictures) as 'the kind of films they just don't make anymore', since such films have clearly made a comeback in the last couple years.  And Safe is a sterling example of why they have a genuine value in the cinematic landscape.

Please enjoy these 12 character posters from The Expendables 2.

Lionsgate sent these straight to me, a day late per usual.  Actually, I'm not complaining because it means I don't have to track down where each poster debuted yesterday and give each site credit.  That it's the right thing to do doesn't make it less of a pain.  Anyway, enjoy these twelve character posters from The Expendables 2 after the jump.  Coming this August from Lionsgate, featuring as much R-rated violence and gore as post-production CGI can bring you.  Can you guess which of the twelve distinctly looks like he could most-certainly *not* kick your ass?  Well, no besides Chuck Norris...

Scott Mendelson

Review: So close yet so far, Joss Whedon's The Avengers (2012) is an often soaring but occasionally frustrating B-movie with several A+ ingredients.

The Avengers

2012
142 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

In a film like The Avengers, which brings together strands of several prior pictures into a mostly cohesive whole, it is arguably inevitable that individual pieces will end up working better than the sum of its parts. That the film works at all is almost a miracle, and it's so purely entertaining and contains so much that works like gangbusters that it's tempting to ignore what doesn't work and merely salute the enterprise. It is a relentlessly engaging and confident motion picture, boasting a cast that in a more respected genre would make it an Oscar-bait film. But the film comes so close to out-and-out greatness that it's almost disheartening to point out the core issues at fault, both because it feels petty and because it's almost a genre masterpiece. Still, there is much to like and quite a bit to love about Joss Whedon's The Avengers. On a pure popcorn spectacle scale I can't imagine anyone feeling that they didn't get their money's worth. As a piece of art however, it's a trickier proposition.

John Hillcoat's Lawless gets a just-plain fun trailer.

Let's not pretend that this looks like high art just because it has a terrific cast and a period-set American crime story at its center. But I also won't pretend that this doesn't look like quite a bit of fun. Shia LaBeouf's career as a genuine leading man will live or die based on his reception here, but the cast he is surrounded by (Tom Hardy, Jessica Chaistan, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Mia Wasikowska, Noah Taylor) is so bloody terrific that all he has to do is keep his head above water. The narrative is pretty generic, but this is yet another one of those 'old fashioned movies' that I've been talking about. Real actors and movie stars in knotty, presumably character-driven narratives that don't cost so much that they can be profitable without blockbuster status. There are those who will hyperventilate and swear that Lawless (formally titled The Wettest Country) will be one of the best films of the year, and it very well may be. But for now, let's just take a breath and acknowledge that it looks like an awfully good movie. Lawless debuts courtesy of The Weinstein Company on August 31st. As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson

Pixar's Brave gets a tonally awkward and redundant trailer.

The first 90 seconds of this 2.5-minute trailer is basically a distilled version of what's either the first act or the two reel of the film.  It's all stuff we've seen before, with an emphasis on light comedy and the lead's feeling of gender-based disenfranchisement.  But at around the 90-second mark, the trailer completely shifts gears and tries to arbitrarily sell a mythic fantasy picture, despite little in the footage to sell that.  Yes, I like the Celtic music, but putting somber, moving music in a series of somewhat random images does not make a trailer feel epic.  There's obviously a lot that Pixar/Disney isn't revealing in regards to the second half of the first, and more power to them for that.  But if you want to be cryptic, just stop cutting trailers and sell the film based on what you have.  

GI Joe: Retaliation trailers kill off one of 2012's biggest stars.

Say what you will about hindsight and what-not, but I imagine that Paramount is kicking itself in the ass right now for the decision to kill off Channing Tatum in the opening act (scene?) of this second G.I. Joe film.  No, he wasn't exactly the highlight of The Rise of Cobra, but in the last three years 'that guy from Step Up' has been hacking away at would-be stardom and seems to have hit the jackpot this year.  He's now arguably the king of the romantic drama and scored huzzahs and box office with 21 Jump Street.  Between 21 Jump Street and The Vow (plus Haywire which turned him into Stephen Soderbergh's best buddy), Tatum is easily the 'break-out star of 2012' four months in.  Had Paramount had the good sense to let him stick around, they'd have a film starring Tatum and Dwayne Johnson, whose Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is the second-highest grossing American film at the global box office with $322 million thus far.  Paramount could have had two of the biggest male movie stars around in the same film shooting guns and dodging explosives together, but they (or director Jon Chu) had to listen to fanboy whining.  I wouldn't be the least-bit surprised to see an end-credit cookie showing that Duke really survived after all.

The not-so subtle negative messaging in Jessica Chastain's Iron Man 3 character description.

The big casting news from yesterday was the announcement that Jessica Chastain is being sought for a major role in Iron Man 3, joining Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, and (allegedly) Andy Lau alongside the various returning cast members (basically every surviving character from the first two films save for Sam Rockwell).  The cast listing for the other *male* actors primarily described their occupations and/or role in the story (Kingsley is the villain, Pearce is a 'sinister scientist', Lau is 'a scientist').   But the actress is being touted not just as a scientist but as "a sexy scientist every bit as smart as Tony Stark".  Because despite winning raves in seven films last year, with countless award nominations to go along with it, Ms. Chastain can't just be described as a scientist.  Oh no, she has to be a hot piece of ass who despite being (gasp!) a girl is as intelligent as Mr. Stark.