White House Down gets a conspiratorial trailer...

Well, color me intrigued. Sony is making smart choices here, selling this second Die Hard In the White House movie not as a pulpy action flick but as a large-scale disaster movie.  It puts the film squarely in the realm of director Roland Emmerich and successfully differentiates itself from Olympus Has Fallen.  Also of note, other than the larger scale seemingly on display (this is the more expensive version, natch), is the opposing narratives.  While Olympus Has Fallen concerned a certain xenophobic 'scary foreigners will try to destroy America!' plot line, White House Down seems to be going for the more conspiracy-minded 'we did this to ourselves by betraying our morals' or what-have-you.  It also teases plot twists and surprises beyond the action template, making viewers wonder what terrible secrets will be revealed and who and what actually caused the onscreen carnage.  So yeah, I think the world is big enough for two White House-under siege movies.  White House Down opens June 28th, 2013.  As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson         

Weekend Box Office (01/13/13): Zero Dark Thirty tops while Gangster Squad disappoints and Haunted House overperforms.

After nearly a month in limited release, Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty (review) finally went wide this weekend and it grossed $24 million to top the weekend box office. The film now has a $29 million cume.  All eyes were on this one, with the big question being whether critical acclaim and film punditry would translate into mainstream interest.  Obviously the current 'does the movie promote torture?' controversy brought the film all kinds of free publicity, but I'd argue it scared off just as many as it brought it.  By the way, no it doesn't endorse torture because... well just watch the movie again (essay 01/essay 02)!  Anyway, the closest comparison is the Martin Luther King Day Jr. weekend wide-release debut of Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down eleven years ago next weekend, which pulled in $33 million over four days and $28 million over Fri-Sun.  The 'hunt for Bin Laden' film's debut is a bit lower, especially when inflation is accounted for (BHD's 3-day total is around $38 million in 2013 dollars), but the Scott picture was pretty much a nonstop action picture while Bigelow's is an icy and often cold 2.5 hour procedural where even the climactic action sequence is meant to disturb more than excite.  The film played 59% male and 62% over 30. Sony did a great job selling this one somewhat falsely as a triumphant action drama, although they didn't seem to make as much of an effort to bring in females for what is indeed a female-centric character drama (Jessica Chastain is terrific here).  Despite a merely okay  2.6x weekend multiplier, expect pretty strong legs as this becomes the defacto water-cooler Oscar contender (Oscar nomination essay 01/Oscar nomination essay 02), the one everyone has to see in order to participate in the national dialogue.

Review: Django Unchained (2012) entertains but is oddly generic and surprisingly conventional.

Django Unchained

2012
165 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Quentin Tarantino arguably made Django Unchained (teaser/trailer) because he wanted to try his hand at a Spaghetti Western, and that's basically what he has done.  Alas, the film is little more than a genre exercise, with little more than the obvious role reversals to justify its artistic existence.  That is is mostly entertaining and well-acted across the board goes without saying, but after the slyly subversive Inglorious Basterds, I frankly expect more from the filmmaker.  For a filmmaker known for narrative surprises and challenging the expectations of his audience, his newest entry is oddly conventional and almost timid in terms of how it approaches its subject matter.  Oh, it surely qualifies as another film focusing on revisionist revenge-fantasy history, as well as how we often use the cinematic lens to comprehend the least savory parts of our history, but as a stand-alone film it is lacking in substance.  It is a good movie, for sure, but it is quite frankly not a very good film.

Tarantino's Django Unchained gets a full trailer, keeps its awful Christmas Day release date.

As usual with most recent Tarantino films, if you look closely at the trailer you'll find bits of action surrounded by lots of people talking and talking.  The effectiveness of a Tarantino film generally rests with the quality of the conversations.  In this case, why not spend Christmas day listening to Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, and Christoph Waltz chit-chat for a couple hours (or more)?  DiCaprio looks like he's having the time of his life and if the film earns Oscar love he seems the most likely recipient.  As I've said before, Tarantino makes *movies* and this gorgeous and richly-colorful bit of revisionist history looks like no exception.  Will it be high art, a subversive look at another very dark historical chapter through the wish-fulfillment lens of cinema? One hopes so, as Inglorious Bastards pulled off that trick three years ago.  But even if it's just a trashy good time, it looks like a fun time with good company.  I'm not sure how smart a Christmas day release is. If you have a bunch of family members in the house after Christmas, what are the chances everyone in the family is old enough for this hard-R action comedy?  Truth be told, the big family is going to probably see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey again as a consensus choice.  If I were Weinstein Company, I'd move this one to the December 14th slot vacated by Les Miserables, which is now opening alongside Django Unchained.  Oh heck, December 7th now has nothing but the Gerald Butler romcom Playing For Keeps.  Point being, being perceived as a box office flop won't help the film's Oscar chances, especially with voting occurring even earlier this season.   So I'd get the hell out of Christmas if I were them.  Anyway, what do you think of the trailer or the release date?

Scott Mendelson