Review: Lawless (2012) is a generic and often dull macho crime drama that works only as right-wing propaganda.

Lawless

2012
115 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Twenty years ago, a film as formulaic and frankly contrived as John Hillcoat's Lawless would be considered nothing more than a pretty lousy B-movie that happened to have a few decent actors in the mix.  And today that is the best I can say about the film, even if its pedigree might have originally positioned it as some kind of Oscar bait.  The film can either be read as straight-ahead manly action drama or it can be viewed as a piece of political propaganda, positioning the noble 'regular Americans' against openly corrupt federal government forces who threaten their freedom to uh... bootleg.  I frankly hope the film is indeed intended to be read as such, as I'll take a bad film that's at least about 'something' over a pointless exercise in he-man violence.  At the very least, it stands as John Hillcoat's happiest film yet.  Unlike The Proposition or The Road, you won't exit theaters in a soul-crushing funk.  But unlike those two films, it's not a very good movie at all.  I suppose that's the trade-off, no?  Still, either way, Lawless is depressing all the same.

John Gosling previews the week's new film releases (08/31/2)

It's another mixed bag at the box office this weekend, with serious drama and horror tussling with a brand new family film. With last weekend being the lowest grossing of the year so far, studios will be looking for something, anything to turn things around.  The widest opening release this weekend is the Sam Raimi produced, The Possession. It stars Jeffery Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick as a divorced couple whose daughter, Em, becomes obsessed with opening a Hebrew-inscribed box she bought at a garage sale. When her behaviour becomes erratic, the parents blame it on the recent trauma of their divorce. However, things quickly escalate, leaving them forced to scramble for an explanation and a solution, scientific or supernatural, for whatever is attempting to destroy their daughter before its too late. Raimi acts as producer, via his Ghost House Pictures company, with Ole Bornedal directing. Bornedal shot to fame with the 1994 Danish film, Nightwatch (he also directed the 1997 English-language remake) and won acclaim with I Am Dina in 2002. Raimi and Bornedal are no strangers, the former having acted as distributor on the laters 2007 comedy/horror flick, Vikaren (aka The Substitute) via his Ghost Pictures subsidiary, Underground. The director was drawn to The Possession from the initial script, seeing it as an allegory for divorce, rather than a straight scare flick. The core device in the film, the Dibbuk box, is actually based on a real life item, said to be haunted by a spirit from Jewish folklore. 

How a severe lack of 'cause and effect' undoes all that is good about The Dark Knight Rises, and why its alleged political underpinnings are merely a smokescreen.

It's not the plot holes or periodically silly coincidences.  This will not be a list of 'things that don't work in The Dark Knight Rises' but rather an old-fashioned essay (shocker!) concerning what I feel are the overall screenwriting flaws that tear down and ultimately destroy what otherwise is a technically fine motion picture.  Obviously it's pure unapologetic spoilers after the jump, so tread no further if you don't want to know.  But the short version is that, aside from certain logic issues, almost nothing that occurs during the first 150 minutes of the film truly matters in regards to how the story ends.  And moreover, the unwillingness to focus on the people actually being affected by the (mostly off screen) chaos renders the film's token topicality not only politically irrelevant but dangerously close to exploitation.  To wit...

Weekend Box Office: Seemingly affected by frontloaded anticipation more than tragedy, The Dark Knight Rises opens with $160 million, good for third-best debut ever.

When a heavily-anticipated film debuts alongside a mass murder that takes place during a midnight showing of said film, it's difficult to know how to analyze the opening weekend figures.  Under normal circumstances, the fact that The Dark Knight Rises (trailer/review/spoiler thread) debuted with $160 million over the weekend would lend itself to the usual analysis, dealing with weekend multipliers, midnight-percentages, comparisons to The Dark Knight and other recent blockbusters, and a guesstimate in regards to final domestic outcome.  But it is impossible for now to know what the effect of the shooting had on the film's short term or long term box office performance. So for the sake of this calculation, we will basically presume that the shooting had little quantifiable effect on the numbers.  Quite frankly, looking over the data, I'm inclined to believe as much.  The film did about as well, give-or-take, as it would have been expected to do.  But the numbers, presuming little-to-no effect from Friday morning's tragedy, means that the third Chris Nolan Batman film was a slightly less anticipated affair than the last go-around, which will likely bode (comparatively) ill for long-term grosses.  Basically, horror of horrors, The Dark Knight Rises might just perform like a normal quick-kill mega-blockbuster.

The Dark Knight Rises spoiler discussion thread...

So it's midnight on the West Coast, which means the first midnight showings are just letting out on the East Coast.  Okay, you know the drill.  Here's hoping I have more comments here than I did for The Amazing Spider-Man.  Anyway, I'm actually going to be away from my keyboard for a couple days, but I'll *try* to do a weekend box office write-up on Sunday morning.  Until then, it's officially open season for anyone who saw the third and final Chris Nolan Batman film.  You've heard my thoughts, now time to share yours, in as much detail as you desire.

Scott Mendelson

Review: The Dark Knight Rises (2012) is the least of the Nolan Bat-films, continuing the curse of the comic book threequels.

The Dark Knight Rises

2012
165 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson


First and foremost, I cannot decide at the moment if The Dark Knight Rises (trailer) is a 'better film' than Spider-Man 3, Batman Forever, and/or X-Men: The Last Stand.  The fact that I have to outright state as much should tell you what a comparative disappointment this film is.  Overall, its many storytelling flaws bring the picture down, offering only engaging acting, entertaining character interaction, and the kind of empty-headed (but oft impressive) action spectacle associated with more conventional blockbusters.  It is a hodgepodge of several classic Batman stories squished into one chaotic narrative that ends up resembling a mash-up of Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Rocky III. There are moments of emotional engagement in the first third and the final moments pack an appropriate wallop.  But the film frankly drags for much of its middle 90 minutes on its way to a surprisingly unremarkable climax.  Save for mostly fine performances, including a terrific supporting turn by Anne Hathaway, and some wonderful character beats scattered throughout, this is sadly the very definition of an unnecessary sequel.

The Dark Knight Rises gets a pretty solid theatrical one-sheet and six rain or snow-soaked character posters..

I seem to be in the minority, but I rather like this poster.  Unlike the two key posters for The Dark Knight, there are no nonsensical tag-lines ("Welcome to a City Without Rules"), no odd imagery of Batman standing in front of a burning building as if he's claiming credit for said explosion, and no odd placement where the point of visual focus is a giant wheel from that silly Bat-Pod.  It's just Batman himself, appropriately brooding with the unofficial logo for the film (the buildings of Gotham collapsing into a bat-symbol) and a variation on the "The Fire Rises" would-be catchphrase (doesn't quite have the same ring to it as "Why So Serious?").  Of note, Anne Hathaway gets billing above Tom Hardy implying either Hathaway is the obvious bigger star or Bane's role is smaller than has been let on.  I remember being shocked when Tommy Lee Jones got billing ahead of red-hot Jim Carrey in Batman Forever only to realize that Two-Face was actually the primary villain as opposed to The Riddler.  UPDATE - Warner Bros. dropped three moody and rain-soaked character posters and three less impressive snow-drenched character posters this morning, so I'm adding them below the jump.  Anyway, there isn't much left to do but speculate until this starts screening toward the very end of June, with junket screenings likely falling before July 4th weekend and regular press screenings starting about 1.5-2 weeks before July 20th.  Am I as excited for this as I was for The Dark Knight four years ago?  Not even close, but I have no reason thus-far to believe that The Dark Knight Rises won't be an awfully good action-drama.  As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson

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 

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

For those who care - a truckload of The Dark Knight Rises photos...

I'm shocked... SHOCKED that Time Warner's biggest summer movie has made the cover of Time Warner-owned Entertainment Weekly's annual summer movie preview issue.  I'm just happy that I don't have to keep using that same 'Batman aims his laser-gun' shot every time I write about the movie.  Anyway, I'm not going to dissect these to death, and I presume that Nolan and company aren't releasing anything that could be over-analyzed anyway.  But I will say that Bane looks not terribly intimidating in action and it's a little silly to see Batman wielding what appears to be an IPad (minor carping I know...).  Anyway, while most of the Internet was buzzing about Anne Hathaway's ass earlier this week (the promo image was an apparent unauthorized leak and has been removed), I was all about that 'Ella-Enchanted-quality' hair.  But that's no surprise if you know me well enough.The rest are after the jump.   Enjoy.

Scott Mendelson

Weekend Box Office (02/19/12): The Vow and Safe House fend off Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and This Means War.

It was yet another 'photo-finish' at the box office over this President's Day weekend, but as always, it's the hard numbers rather than the arbitrary rankings that matter.  But since we need to decide which movies to discuss first, in order we shall go!  For the moment, it appears that Safe House will top the charts in its second weekend after barely missing the top slot last weekend.  It grossed $23.9 million over the Fri-Sun weekend and $28 million over the holiday.  Safe House will have grossed $82 million by Monday, a rather huge total for Mr. Washington.  In just eleven days, Safe House is Washington's 7th-biggest grosser, out-grossing such films as Training Day ($76 million), Man On Fire ($77 million), and Unstoppable ($81 million).  Barring a complete collapse, Safe House should become Denzel Washington's fifth $100 million grosser over the next weekend, with an outside shot of eclipsing the $130 million gross of American Gangster, which is currently his top grosser.  While we can debate how much credit co-star Ryan Reynolds gets for this one (he certainly didn't hurt...), Safe House is already his fourth-biggest grosser and will likely out-gross Green Lantern's $116 million total in a few weeks.  I'm frankly shocked at the strong legs for this one, as it's certainly one of Washington's worst genre entries in a long career with a number of solid adult-skewing action pictures (it looks like it was shot through a puke filter and edited in a blender, plus the script is so generic it could have been written in a Mad Libs book).  Still, star-power is a rare thing these days, and Denzel Washington clearly has it.  

Follow the bouncing bat! A simple way to deal with that pesky "What the hell did Bane just say?" Dark Knight Rises issue...

There have been rumblings in the blogosphere today that Warner Bros. may or may not have stealthily replaced the Dark Knight Rises IMAX prologue audio tracks with a new mix of said sequence, one with allegedly cleaned-up audio.  This follows two weeks of breathless debate among the geek-squad about whether Chris Nolan should or shouldn't alter the vocal performance of Tom Hardy's Bane (presumably with Hardy's ADR-assistance) in order to appease fans who were unable to hear the primary villain's astute monologuing.  Nolan's position is that the muscle-bound cult leader/terrorist/Mary Sue was always intended to be slightly difficult to understand, so paying audiences can  suck it.

2011 year-end wrap-up part III: Good films you missed.

This is the third of several year-end wrap essays detailing the year in film.  This time, it's about highlighting the good or great films that slipped under the radar somehow.  Some got rave reviews and wide releases but stiffed at the box office while some never made it out of limited release.  All are worth tracking down and all are, with one exception I will point out, now available on DVD/Blu Ray/download/etc.  And nearly all of them are not hardcore independent films, but seemingly mainstream dramas and comedies that would have likely merited a wide release even a few years ago.  Once again, these will be in alphabetical order. 

The Dark Knight Rises gets a moody and refreshingly cryptic trailer. It stills seems to be pointing at Chris Nolan's version of The Dark Knight Returns.

There was absolutely no way that this trailer was going to excite me as much as the first glimpse of The Dark Knight four years ago.  As I've written before, that was basically THE Batman movie that we had been waiting our entire geek-lives to see, a street-level crime epic pitting Batman, Gordon, and Dent against The Joker for the moral soul of Gotham.  So what is this one exactly?  Well, Nolan is obviously going for a pretty grand-scale finale, and the scope is relatively impressive thus far.  I could carp that the attack on the football field is the kind of implausibly weird thing that happens in a C-rate episode of Justice League or in a Transformers movie, but oh well.  Football fanatics, does that still count as a legitimate touchdown?

The fire sputters! About that Dark Knight Rises IMAX prologue...

It should be noted that I wasn't a huge fan of the bank robbery prologue for The Dark Knight four years ago.  It was the traditional trailer that got be uber-excited.  I will concede that the bank robbery sequence worked better in the film than it did as a stand-alone preview (as gorgeous as it looked, the dialogue was a little wonky and it was 'just a bank robbery').  Having said that, the seven-minute sequence that allegedly opens The Dark Knight Rises is actually somewhat terrible.  Whether or not it was a rush job (as I've heard), the sequence fails in several seemingly basic ways that leaves a very poor first impression about the otherwise unseen film.

Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) is Smart, Suspenseful, Engaging, Terrific.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy
2011
128 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Tomas Alfredson so badly wants to concoct a 1970s-style thriller that it would be laughable if the final product weren't so darn good.  From the somewhat hazy cinematography to the John Barry-ish score to the overtly cold and clinical nature of the narrative, this is a film that (appropriately) wants to take us back to what many consider to the peak of mainstream adult filmmaking.  What makes the picture work as more than just an acting-treat or period-homage is the undertone of impotence and irrelevance that makes the film into a grand tragedy.  By retaining the 1970s setting, Alfredson makes potent commentary about the futile and possibly irrelevant nature of modern espionage.  Point being, forty years later, none of the secrets that were fought over mean a damn thing anymore.

Mc G's This Means War trailer is emblematic of what's wrong with marketing.

There is nothing particularly wrong with this trailer per-se.  It's neat to see Tom Hardy in a comedy, Witherspoon looks stunning, and the general plot (two CIA agents clash when they realize they are dating the same girl) is fitfully amusing.  But here's the problem.  In the first 66 seconds, we meet the two spies (Hardy and Chris Pine) and the young woman they are both dating (Reese Witherspoon).  We establish the conflict, toss off a few jokes and, with the opening action montage, establish that this will be a pretty big-scale action comedy.  So, after about 1:06, we have all we need.  Flash the title, maybe give a button gag, and then fade to black.  The remaining 85 seconds merely exist to spoil gags from the film.  And since we've established that this is a pretty expensive movie, it's pretty much guaranteed that the film will only have maybe half-a-dozen or so major 'give-and-take' moments between the two would-be suitors.  The trailer sees fit to spoil three of them, plus a major action sequence between the two male leads.  So basically all that is left for the movie to do is reveal whatever gags weren't in the trailer and reveal the finale*.  How wonderful would it have been for 20th Century Fox to merely leave the majority of the movie to our imagination, to merely cut to black at the 1:06 mark with the satisfaction of perfectly setting up the movie without actually giving anything away past the first twenty-minutes or so.  Alas... Anyway, McG's This Means War comes out February 17th, 2012 (better to capitalize on Valentine's Day) and as always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson

*SPOILER GUESS --- I'm guessing that either Witherspoon gets kidnapped by the bad guys in the third act or (especially since she gets first billing) she turns out to be a spy using them for intel.  

Review: Warrior (2011) takes well-worn sports-film tropes, adds engrossing drama, fine acting, terrific dialogue, and an uncommon intelligence.

Warrior
2011
139 minutes
rated PG-13

I cannot count how many times I have watched a sports-related drama and thought to myself "How much better would this movie be if the main opponent wasn't a two-dimensional villain?".  Whether adult-aimed Oscar bait (Cinderella Man) or family-friendly faith-based dramas (Soul Surfer), any number of underdog sports movies have dramatically shot themselves in the foot by feeling the need to make the opponent into a vicious, selfish, and occasionally murderous antagonist who 'must be taken down'.  There are exceptions (Akeelah and the Bee, Miracle), but the majority of sports films feel the need to pander to the audiences' baser instincts by not just making the big game about the triumph of our hero, but about the defeat of a genuine villain.  Writer/director Gavin O'Conner (who directed the aforementioned Miracle) finds a neat way out of this contrived set-up, and I'm a little shocked that no one thought of it before.  Instead of focusing on one underdog who must triumph in an athletic event, Warrior focuses on two would-be athletic opponents, giving them both equally valid reasons to want to succeed and refusing to give either of them the moral advantage.  This is just one of a handful of thoughtful choices that O'Conner makes in shaping Warrior into a top-notch entry in its respective genre and an all-around fine character drama.