Weekend Box Office (01/06/13): Texas Chainsaw 3D tops the first weekend of 2013. Promised Land tanks.

Texas Chainsaw 3D topped the box office this weekend with a robust $23 million.  That's a bit behind the $33 million opening haul for The Devil Inside, but it's still easily the top horror debut for January.  Moreover, the picture earned more, even adjusted for inflation, than the last go around, the painfully underrated Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (retrospective essay).  The 2003 remake took in $28 million way back in October 2003 ($36 million in today's dollars, not even accounting for the whole 3D bump), but this under-hyped and frankly somewhat undersold quasi-sequel to the original 1973 film was never going to reach those heights. Said Platinum Dunes remake was exceedingly well-marketed, with a pioneering trailer (think how often it gets ripped off ten years later), and it basically kicked off the return of the hardcore horror film (along with the mostly ignored Wrong Turn from that May). Of course, the best weapon a new horror January film has is the October release of a new Paranormal Activity sequel, as it's a piece of prime demo-friendly marketing.  The Devil Inside attached its trailer to Paranormal Activity 3 back in October 2011 while Texas Chainsaw 3D had its trailer viewed by those attending Paranormal Activity 4 this October.  Of course, the fourth entry made about half what the third one did, so that probably didn't help.

Who cares and why bother? How national apathy and the 'death of outrage' killed the modern political thriller.

Besides being a terrific thriller, Enemy of the State serves as a touchtone of sorts. No, it wasn't the last adult-skewing, star-driven R-rated thriller released by a major studio, although it seemed that way up until a few years ago. No, the whip-smart Will Smith/Gene Hackman high-tech chase picture was the last time that the classic 'man on the run' template made sense. It was a classic conspiracy thriller, based in the idea that forces in the American government were up to no good, and people who had stumbled upon this information had to be silenced. It was also rooted in the idea that the halls of Congress and the American people would be horrified by the idea that covert forces were up to devious doings, which in turn necessitated murderous cover-ups. I would argue that this now innocently naive idea is yet another victim of a post-9/11 mindset. So as Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) raced around the world with darker factions of the US government on his tail during The Bourne Legacy (review), I couldn't help but wonder "Why bother?". What exactly would be the consequences if America found out that the government had been playing around with science in order to make super-awesome covert killing machines for black-ops missions? Recent evidence suggests that few would do more than feign outrage, share the story on Facebook, and click on the next article.

Review: The Bourne Legacy (2012) not only fails to reboot the franchise but retroactively poisons what came before.

The Bourne Legacy

2012
130 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson
While Tony Gilroy's The Bourne Legacy is being touted as a spin-off from the Matt Damon-starring spy franchise, it actually functions more as a retroactive prequel.  Rather than expanding the story or going off in a different direction, it spends an unholy amount of its screen time explicitly explaining the history and science behind a completely different 'super assassin' program from the one that once bred Jason Bourne (imagine if The Phantom Menace was primarily *about* midichlorians).  Instead of telling a story of relevance or creating interesting characters that happen to exist in the world established by Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass (and of course stemming from Robert Ludlam's original novels), Tony Gilroy takes a proverbial pick-axe to the series, undoing much of the prior narrative while retroactively turning Jason Bourne (of course played by Matt Damon and occasionally seen here in still photographs) into not a conflicted anti-hero but a force of chaos.  All of this would be forgivable and possibly intriguing if the resulting film weren't so bloody dull and unengaging.  But The Bourne Legacy makes me want to apologize for every mean thing I ever said about The Bourne Ultimatum.  The third film may have been a dumbed-down and amped-up remake of the superb Bourne Supremacy, but it at least had a pulse and sheer entertainment value.  The Bourne Legacy makes one yearn for the comparatively high-quality thrills and chills of Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker. 

The Bourne Desperation gets a teaser trailer...

The most striking thing about this teaser (which premiered late last week) is that it's in fact a variation on an old joke my wife and I used to do back when The Bourne Ultimatum came out five years ago.  It's no secret that I kinda hate The Bourne Ultimatum, finding it to be a dumbed-down, streamlined, crowd-pleasing remake of The Bourne Supremacy.  But the goofiest part of the picture is the revelation that Jason Bourne wasn't just a patient in the Treadstone program, no, he was also involved in an even more secret and devious organization: Blackbriar (which, to be fair, was I believe referenced offhand at the finale of The Bourne Identity)!  So if the fourth film ever came to fruition, we'd inevitably see the reveal of yet another uber-secret government-sanctioned wet-ops program.  "If you were horrified by Treadstone... if you were mortified by Blackbriar... then you will shit your pants when you learn about Bald Eagle!!"  Bourne: "Oh my god... you turned us into half-human/half-robot killing machines!"  Reanimated Clive Owen: "Look... what... they (loading-loading)... make (Error!  Error!) you give!"  Sadly that absurdest bit seems perilously close to fruition with this new teaser for The Bourne Redundancy.  

Weekend Box Office (12/26/11): MI4 tops and War Horse makes strong Xmas day show as 10,000 movies get small piece of Christmas pie.

 Oh god, what a crowded and complicated weekend this was.  You had three major movies opening on Wednesday, one of which had been in IMAX release five days earlier and one had been racking up bucks all over Europe since October.  You had one major release on Friday and two biggies right on Christmas Day, plus a smattering of limited releases and wide expansions all throughout the weekend.  Topping the box office was the wide release of Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol (review), which earned $29 million over the Friday-to-Sunday portion, with $61.3 million between the Wedneday-Monday six day wide opening.  Combined with five days of IMAX-exclusive grosses ($17 million), and the fourth entry in the franchise has a solid $78 million all-told.  Those aren't insane numbers, especially when you consider that the original Mission: Impossible grossed a then-record $74 million in six days way back in 1996 and the next two sequels did $91 million and $57 million (the latter off a normal non-holiday weekend) in their first six days, but Paramount knew it was sacrificing opening weekend might in exchange for long-term play-ability.  It should be noted that aside from a few outliers (Interview With the Vampire, Minority Report, and War of the Worlds) and the first three Mission: Impossible films, Cruise's opening weekends generally fall in the $25 million range, whereby they usually slowly crawl to $100-130 million.  So while the the pure $29 million Fri-Sun number is a bit below the prior M:I entries, it's actually at the high end of Cruise's opening weekend scale.          

Cameron Crowe's We Bought a Zoo gets a cute and clever poster and a PG rating.

Please don't stink.  Please be better than Elizabethtown.  I don't expect anything approaching Almost Famous, but please be at least as good as Vanilla Sky. By the way, somewhat unexpectedly, this one just got a PG for 'language and some thematic elements'.  As I wrote three years ago, it's pretty rare for a live-action film to get a PG in this day-and-age, and it's clear that Fox is going after the 'bring the whole family' crowd that made Marley and Me such a smash in Christmas 2008.

Scott Mendelson

Review: Contagion (2011) stumbles by giving us Cliff Notes to much grander story.

Contagion
2011
105 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

The 106-minute cut of Steven Soderbergh's Contagion is a generally engaging and always intelligent film.  It is clearly Soderbergh's attempt to play around in the Irwin Allen disaster genre in a style that befits the director's more buttoned-down and vérité style.  But like Traffic before it, this would-be epic feels like the abridged version of a much longer film.  Traffic was supposed to be an all-encompassing look at the futility of America's Drug War and the damage that it causes at home and abroad, but it played out like as a choppy, unfocused, 'highlights-only' variation of the British mini-series from which it was based.  Contagion, which is not based on any prior source but rather an original Scott Z. Burns screenplay, has the same problem, even more so because it is nearly an hour shorter than Traffic.  Contagion is more successful in imposing its viewpoint on the audience, and it's arguably a better film, but I still can't help but wonder how much more effective the 150-minute version of Contagion would have been.

Waited for DVD: The Adjustment Bureau - Free will is terrific, except when it's really destiny in disguise.

The Adjustment Bureau
2011
105 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

There are any number of movies that make less sense after you think about them then they did as you were watching them.  But The Adjustment Bureau is not only a movie that makes little sense as your watching it, but basically betrays its own philosophy in the process.  Since this is a DVD review, I'm going to be more spoilery than I otherwise would be for a pre-theatrical glance.  There are three major problems with the picture that render the well-intentioned romantic thriller relatively useless as both an emotional entertainment and as an intellectual exercise.  So, if I may forgo the usual plot synopsis, let me cut to the chase...

Weekend Box Office (03/06/11): Two openers (Rango and Adjustment Bureau) win, two openers (Beastly, Take Me Home Tonight) lose.

Paramount released its first non-Dreamworks cartoon in nearly five years this weekend. And indeed, the number one film by a long shot was Gore Verbinski's Rango (teaser/review). The critically-acclaimed and nearly-existential Johnny Depp vehicle grossed $38 million over the three-day weekend. That's the biggest opening for a Paramount animated feature not from Dreamworks, although it's slightly behind in attendance compared to the $32 million opening of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie back in November of 2004. Paramount's animated fare has been exclusively Dreamworks since the August 2006 release of Barnyard: The Original Party Animals. Since they acquired Dreamworks in early 2006, they've basically been just releasing the Katzenberg cartoons. But prior to that, they actually had a good thing going with Nickelodeon, although they have released a few Nickelodeon live-action co-ventures over the last few years (Charlotte's Web, Hotel For Dogs, etc). This will hopefully mark the return of Nickelodeon-funded animated features. Can't let Disney have all the fun.

Guest Review: The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

As happens from time to time, a reader and collegue was able to attend an early screening of an upcoming release and was willing to send his thoughts along. This time, Brandon Peters offers a spoiler-free look at The Adjustment Bureau, which opens this Friday.

The Adjustment Bureau
2011
99 minutes
PG-13

by Brandon Peters

The Adjustment Bureau is an adaptation from the Philip K. Dick short The Adjustment Team. A Philip K. Dick fan am I, however I have not read any of his shorts collections. So, I cannot supply comparisons to the source material. While The Adjustment Bureau is not quite a film spawned from Dick’s works like Blade Runner, Total Recall or A Scanner Darkly, it is nowhere close to the likes of Next or Imposter.

When the MPAA spoils the movie: Rated 'Annoying' for overly descriptive ratings explanations.

While The Adjustment Bureau looks like a pretty mediocre movie on its own, there is now yet another reason it may not be worth checking out. Judging from the trailer, much of the film seems to involve Matt Damon dragging Emily Blunt by the hand as they outrun a bunch of black-suited men who basically want to tune their fates. Yes, it's another movie where the girl is apparently incapable of running away from danger by herself, even when she's a professional ballet dancer. But I digress... the film is theoretically a suspense picture, so we're theoretically supposed to be in suspense when Damon and Blunt attempt to escape their nefarious pursuers. But I won't be. Not because I do or don't care whether or not Damon screws over the ambitions and dreams of a girl he barely knows because he thinks she's pretty. No, it's because, thanks to the MPAA, I know that no harm will actually befall them. The Adjustment Bureau is rated PG-13 for "for brief strong language, some sexuality and a violent image". Yes, just one violent image in the whole movie. So cheer up Damon and Blunt, you're probably going to be just fine.

The Adjustment Bureau gets two awful posters.

These may be two of the lamest pieces of poster art in a long time. Aside from the fact that Emily Blunt apparently cannot run without the help of Matt Damon (she plays a ballet dancer, which means she's probably in much better shape than he is), the entire layout looks poorly photoshopped and not the least bit serious. If this movie is somekind of jokey nod to Hitchcock's man-on-the-run thrillers, then so be it. But the trailer seems to be selling this as a serious thriller. I don't think anyone can look at these posters, especially the tall one with its 'okay, pose for the camera and pretend to run... now!' character shots, and do anything but giggle. Poster fail.

Scott Mendelson