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.

Weekend Box Office (09/11/11): Contagion easily tops, Warrior tragically fumbles, Creature hilariously tanks.

It was good news/bad news at the box office this weekend.  Two critically-acclaimed adult entries squared off and only only came out shining.  The winner for the weekend was Steven Soderbergh's Contagion (review), grossing $22.4 million from 3,222 screens.  The all-star pandemic thriller fits squarely into the realm of Soderbergh's 'commercial ventures'.  With the exception of Erin Brockovich (which was a Julia Roberts vehicle), Soderbergh alternates between artier and sometimes experimental fare of varying quality (Bubble, The Limey, King of the Hill - good!  The Girlfriend Experience, The Good German, Full Frontal - bad!) and all-star genre entries that are inherently populist and commercial even with their occasional artier sensibilities (Ocean's 11, Traffic, Out of Sight, etc).  But even his commercial ventures are generally aimed at adults with adult sensibilities, so the solid opening weekend is to be celebrated.  The well-reviewed film played mostly to the over-25 set, which means it has a chance at solid legs as the younger kids check it out over the next month. It earned a B- from Cinemascore, which is probably owed to the fact that it's genuinely unnerving in its plausibility (audiences claim to love horror but don't like to be actually disturbed or frightened) and artier than its trailer lets on. I haven't seen it yet as my son had a contagious infection over the weekend.  We considered taking him on Friday afternoon and hoping he would cough in all the right places for maximum comedy, but we thought better of it (we saw it Sunday evening instead).

For those who care - Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part I gets 'final' posters.

I'm a little busy today, so I'm using this 'straight from the horses' mouth' press release worth of posters as a lazy attempt to drum up hits.  Anyway, enjoy and I'll hopefully have something more substantial later in the weekend.

Scott Mendelson

2011 Summer Movie Review part III: General thoughts and lessons learned.

 This will not be a blow-by-blow of Summer 2011 but more like free association regarding the just-ended summer.  First and foremost, summer 2011 was a terrific success for two reasons.  A) Most of the movies were pretty good.  B) The most obscenely crowded summer season in recent history, one that I wondered aloud would doom the industry, did not in fact crash and burn.  Most of the movies, thanks to record overseas grosses, made at least as much as they needed to in order to break even or make a tidy profit.  Up until the very end of August, there were actually very few out-and-out flops.  The biggest whiffs of the summer are arguably Green Lantern, Cowboys and Aliens, and Conan the Barbarian.  And all three films would have been mere disappointments had they not cost so much.  Green Lantern was a $200 million picture that looked like it cost maybe $100 million.  Cowboys and Aliens was a $165 million film that looked like it cost only a bit more than True Grit ($40 million).  And Conan the Barbarian... well, I haven't seen that one yet.  But I cannot imagine why Lionsgate (or whomever funded the picture) thought there was enough of a yearning for the return of Conan to justify $90 million.  The lesson  this summer is the same one it is every summer: it's the movies, stupid, and those movies shouldn't cost more than they are worth.

UPDATED - Just for fun: How does The Hangover franchise compare with other R-rated sagas?

UPDATED with end-of summer numbers.  I mentioned last week that The Hangover series, with just two movies under its belt, is just under $100 million away from becoming the biggest R-rated franchise of all time in domestic grosses.  In case anyone wants a comparison, here is a list, best I could accumulate... An asterix (*) means that one of the titles in the series in question squeaked by with a PG-13.  Obviously, to be counted, the series has to be predominantly R-rated, so Police Academy does not count despite its initial installment indeed being rated R.  And you have to have at least one sequel, so The Passion of the Christ ($371 million all by itself) does not count either, but I will include remakes and reboots into the respective horror franchises where applicable.  And yes, for those who care, I have also included the list of said franchises with 'adjusted-for-inflation' grosses.  Enjoy...

Scott Mendelson

Two films for the price of one! How DVDs ruined the theatrical documentary.

I hesitated before watching Knives Over Forks on Netflix Instant yesterday.  I had an interest in the picture, and the DVD was in my Blockbuster quque, so there was seemingly no reason for me not to just watch it right from my Netflix streaming system, right?  Well, first I had to go online and look up the reviews for the Blu Ray.  Specifically, I needed to check what kind of supplemental materials were on the disc.  To my relief, there was only about six minutes of PSA-type material to be found, so I watched the movie yesterday (quick review - the information is worthwhile, but it's a terribly amateurish documentary with few real insights beyond its broad thesis).  I have discussed before the problem of films coming out on DVD 3-5 months after theatrical with significantly altered or extended 'director's cuts' and how that negates the whole purpose of seeing a film in a theater.  Documentaries are a different story.  When you watch a documentary in theaters, you get the final film.  But when you rent a documentary on DVD, there is a good chance that you'll actually get two films for the price of one, with enough extra material in the form of deleted scenes and unedited interviews to constitute a second look at the same subject.

Go big or go home. Why, in an era when mainstream films are stuck in limited release, the relative successes of The Debt and Our Idiot Brother matter.

Normally I would not spend a column championing a small $5 million comedy that is on track to gross over $30 million as anything other than a 'gee, I like when that happens'.  And while there are many reasons to praise the $14 million six-day opening of The Debt, the most surprising thing about it is that Focus Features debuted the film wide enough to achieve that kind of opening in the first place.  In a movie-going world where any number of seemingly mainstream pictures die in the art-house, peaking at 500 screens and unable to capitalize on mainstream buzz or word of mouth, kudos to the Weinstein Company and Focus Features for just opening these movies the old fashioned way.  They may have sensibilities that differ from the most popular versions of their respective genre.  Our Idiot Brother is (allegedly) a bit more painful and quirky than a Judd Apatow film, while The Debt is closer to John le Carré than Jason Bourne.  But they are both damn-well mainstream entertainments, and both films will be quite profitable because their respective studios treated them as such.  

Weekend Box Office (09/04/11): Adult films trash the cheap exploitation fare and dominate Labor Day weekend, as The Help and The Debt defeat Shark Night and Apollo 18.

Summer must be over, as grownups as seemingly returning to the marketplace.  In what was always going to be a light moviegoing holiday weekend, the low-key adult thriller (on 1,826 screens) defeated the more heavily advertised and wider-playing genre entries.  First of all, The Help once again topped the box office for the third weekend in a row ($19 million for its four-day holiday weekend, with a $14.6 million Fri-Sun total, actually rising 0.5% from last weekend).  I'm not sure what the record is for the most consecutive weekends at number one for a movie that did not debut in first place, but the crowd-pleasing period drama has to be high on the would-be list.  With $123 million in a month, the film now sits as the eighth-highest grossing drama of all-time released in the summer, a list that becomes even shorter when you discount war-themed action pictures (Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbor, Gladiator).  It is still outpacing Bridesmaids by a significant margin ($106 million after four weekends) and could very well flirt with $180 million if it can hold onto screens and fend off adult-skewing pictures (Warrior, Contagion, Moneyball) in the next month.

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.

Review: Bunraku (2011) is visually stylish, exciting, substance-free action picture

Bunraku

2011
124 minutes
rated R
In theaters September 30th.  Available On Demand September 1st.

by Scott Mendelson

There is a certain danger to any movie that spends the first five minutes explicitly explaining why the picture looks and sounds as it does.  In this case, we have to understand why the world of Bunraku looks like a hybrid between the 1960s Batman TV show and a blood-drenched martial arts drama.  The film is certainly a case of style over substance, and the utter lack of substance may be fatal for some viewers.  But the picture boasts a unique visual palatte and some interesting ideas.  It also boasts at least two wonderful action sequences, creative in their design and accomplished in their execution, that makes the film almost worth watching.  Bunraku is not quite a good film, but it is surely a bad one worth watching for those who know what they are getting into.