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.

Box Office (07/01/11): Transformers: Dark of the Moon picks up the pace ($32.9m), while Larry Crowne underwhelms and Cars 2 crashes.

First, the good news... Transformers: Dark of the Moon grossed a massive $32.9 million on Friday.  That's $11 more than the first Transformers film grossed on its first Friday and just $4 million less than Revenge of the Fallen (despite the first sequel having a $20 million-bigger opening day than this latest installment).  It went up about 50% from Thursday to Friday, the biggest such jump in the franchise.  It's also the third-biggest non-opening Friday in history, behind Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($36 million) and Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith ($33.5 million).  Point being, it's clear that many fans (and general moviegoers) were just waiting for the regular weekend to check out the latest installment.  The film has grossed $97 million since Wednesday, making it technically the biggest three-day gross of 2011.  It has an outside shot at becoming the first $100 million Fri-Sun debut, especially as Monday is a holiday (hence Sunday acts like Saturday).  But whether it ends up with $165 million by Monday or $185 million by Monday, the film is also doing gangbusters business overseas.  The total worldwide six-day debut looks to be in the neighborhood of $400 million.

Box Office (06/29/11): With 60% sold in 3D, Transformers: Dark of the Moon nets $42.7m first day (including Tues-sneaks). It's looks like a $180m 6-day weekend.

Okay, so my arbitrary predictions stemming from yesterday's $13.5 million worth of advance-night and midnight screenings was off by about $10 million.  The third Transformers picture grossed $37.2 million on its first full day, which accounts for $8 million worth of midnight shows but not $5.5 million worth of 9pm advance screenings the evening before.  So the official 'first day' total for Transformers: Dark of the Moon is $42.7 million.  By itself, the $37.2 million number is the sixth-biggest Wednesday of all-time, and the biggest single day of 2011 so far.  That is about $24 million behind the $62 million opening day (with $16 million worth of midnight grosses) for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  And it is about $6 million ahead of the first day ($27.8 million opening Tuesday plus $8.8 million worth of advance-night sneaks) of the first Transformers back over this same long holiday in 2007.  The first Transformers had a six day opening weekend of sorts, opening on Monday at 8pm and plowing through the whole Fourth of July week with about $155 million in the can by the time Sunday night rolled around.  Dark of the Moon has a similar situation, opening on a Wednesday, but having that holiday Monday that Transformers apparently did not have (I say apparently because the Monday gross plummeted 55% from Sunday, which is unusual for a holiday Monday).  The film scored an A from Cinemascore, with 55% of the audience being under 25. It also played 62% male.  With audience satisfaction higher this time around (Revenge of the Fallen had a B+) and those IMAX (more in number than for Revenge of the Fallen) and 3D screens (which made up a whopping 60% of the tickets yesterday) factored in, we should see a similar long-weekend multiplier to the first Transformers (4.3x its opening 1.25 days).  So offhand, we're looking like a six-day weekend total of about $180 million.  Although Paramount would love to get it over the $183.6 million six-day mark, so as to become the third-biggest six-day total ever (behind Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen with $214 million and The Dark Knight with $224 million).

Scott Mendelson

REVIEW: Transformers: Dark of the Moon (3D) is the Transformers movie you've always wanted (for better or worse), complete with political subtext.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon
2011
154 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

On a relative scale, the third time is the charm for the Michael Bay robot-smashing series.  This second sequel  basically gives us the apocalyptic Transformers epic we've been waiting for since 2007.  That which was annoying about the previous two films is still present here, but in more sensible doses.  We still have needlessly campy humor.  We still have Shia LeBeouf trying to wring sympathy from a genuinely obnoxiously-written lead character.  We still have a needless female lead who exists purely to be ogled.  But this time we get a story that takes itself seriously.  We get a narrative that makes a token amount of sense and shows something almost resembling discipline.  And when the action comes, it does deliver the goods.  At long last, Michael Bay gives us a healthy helping of robot-on-robot smackdowns.  The problems with the previous two films are still there, but they are that much easier to forgive because we finally get what we actually came for in a Transformers movie.

Three mediocre human actors kill time before the robot attacks in new Transformers: Dark of the Moon clip.

Not much to offer here.  The only reason this clip is noteworthy is because it is the first time we've seen Rosie Hunginton-Whiteley do anything other than cower in fear and/or stand and look sultry.  She even speaks one or two expositional lines! Of course, the big question remains: Will critics automatically assume that Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is a better actress than Megan Fox because of her British accent?  Either way, Patrick Dempsey is at his Scream 3 worst, leaving us to hope that John Malkovich and Frances McDormand pick up the pre-robot invasion slack for the first 2/3 of the movie.

Scott Mendelson

Transformers: Dark of the Moon gets a poster. Plus a word about science fiction and holiday weekends.

Not much to add here, but it is a little unusual that Transformers is three films in and had yet to have a normal, stand-alone three-day weekend.  Even this picture, the first to open on a Friday, still has the Fourth of July for its holiday Monday.  It's not a complete separation, in fact it's actually a pretty common pattern for big sci-fi franchises.  The Matrix films opened on a Wednesday, a Thursday, and then on a Wednesday.  The Lord of the Rings pictures of course all opened on the same pre-Christmas Wednesday.  Raiders of the Lost Ark is the only Indiana Jones picture to open on a Friday (a non-Holiday no-less).  And the Star Wars franchise had three Wendesday openings (Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, and The Phantom Menace) and three Thursday openings (The Empire Strikes Back, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith).  So hmm... maybe it's the Friday opening that's unusual after all. Although, out of nine Star Trek films, only Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home opened on a non-Friday (it was the Wednesday of Thanksgiving day weekend).  Anyway, enjoy the poster and the random trivia.

Scott Mendelson

Transformers: Dark of the Moon gets a dynamite second trailer, full of long, fluid takes. Although it will make you miss Megan Fox.

Although it's not surprising, it's still impressive just how massive the third (and final?) Transformers picture seems to be. Granted, I'm betting most of the action footage in this trailer is from the last act of the film, but it still is a truly eye-popping piece of marketing. Bay swears up and down that this latest installment is (pick one or all) better, darker, less campy, better written, etc than Revenge of the Fallen, and at this point we have no reason to doubt him. This does appear to be the full-on alien invasion/monster movie epic that many of us thought we were getting with the first sequel, and there is nary a hint of camp or even much humor of any kind in this 150 second clip. One promising thing, which Bay has hinted at, is that shooting in 3D has forced Michael Bay to use longer and more fluid takes, and the results are readily apparent. The best part of the trailer is how long Bay seems to be holding his takes, so we really get a sense of geography and can actually appreciate his full-scale destruction.

Why do we care about, let alone hate, Megan Fox?

News broke yesterday that Megan Fox would in fact not be a part of Transformers 3, which is set to be released on July 3rd, 2011. Before any real details could be articulated, the media at large jumped on the idea that Fox had been fired by Michael Bay in relation for various statements that Fox had made over the last several months that appeared to criticize Mr. Bay. Needless to say, word soon spread, via HitFlix and People, that Fox had actually chosen not to return to the rampaging-robots franchise of her own accord. I have no idea which version is true, and I imagine we'll know in the coming weeks. But the sheer outpouring of joy that greeted the allegation that Fox had been canned for trashing Michael Bay in public was more than a bit obnoxious. The same geeks and entertainment columnists who called co-star Shia LeBeouf honest and gutsy for criticizing Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) were basically applauding the idea that Fox had been fired for basically doing the same thing. Why do so many people hate Megan Fox? Who do they even care?