That's a first! MPAA awards a PG-13 to The Dark Knight Rises IMAX prologue.

Yes, indeed, it appears that not only will you be seeing that 6-8 minute IMAX preview of The Dark Knight Rises attached to IMAX prints of Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol (which has just been rated PG-13 for 'sequences of intense action and violence') but that extended scene has actually gotten its very own MPAA rating.  So the IMAX preview for The Dark Knight Rises has been rated PG-13 for 'some violence'.  To my knowledge, this is the first time a preview of a movie, even an extended scene, has received its own MPAA rating classification.  But yeah, that prologue will be appropriate for audiences thirteen years old and up.  I don't have anything to share, I just thought it was funny and The Dark Knight Rises generally works well as page-view bait anyway.  This post has been rated AS - Arbitrary and Shameless.

Scott Mendelson

Because popularity doesn't negate quality - Warner Bros goes the distance for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II Oscar love.

Warner Bros. is going full-force with their Oscar hopes for the final Harry Potter film, as evidenced by the above trailer, a 44-page booklet included with this week's Hollywood Reporter, and their official website, which features a list of 'for your consideration' categories and samples of Alexandre Desplat's moody score.  I'm actually torn on this one, as while I certainly believe that the series overall deserves some kind of Oscar acknowledgement for its accomplishments, the eighth film in the series is not anywhere near my favorite of the series.  Having said that, had the Academy kept the ten-nominee rule, the film would have been all-but guaranteed a Best Picture nomination.  And I'm convinced that the change to however its going to work this year was a specific change from elitist Academy members in order to prevent 'popular entertainments' such as this one, an overwhelming majority of positive reviews aside, from getting Oscar love.  So it does indeed look like we'll have another batch of Best Picture contenders that are merely 'appropriate' Oscar bait, regardless of how audiences and critics actually felt about them (The Reader and Revolutionary Road both have lower 'Tomato Meter' scores than Tower Heist and Snakes on a Plane).  If only for that absurd ideology ("Eeek!  People saw and liked it... it's not worthy!"), I kinda hope that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II sneaks into the final 5-10 anyway.

Scott Mendelson 

Scott Mendelson returns to podcasting.

For those interested, here is a 90-minute podcast which I participated in on Sunday night with three other film critics (Aaron Neuwirth, Abraham Moua, and Matt Levin).  The primary topics are A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas and Tower Heist, with any number of random digressions tossed in.  Hope you enjoy it, I had a good time and I will, barring unforeseen variables, likely be returning to their show on December 18th to discuss Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.


Scott Mendelson

Thoughts on the Brett Ratner mess: When explicit slurs become part of everyday language and how to deal with their casual and out-of-context use.

I don't think Brett Ratner is a homophobe, at least not from the current evidence.  He may be an ignorant or thoughtless person, but I no more think he is a homophobe for using the word 'faggot' then I do believe that any of you are homophobes for using the word 'sissy'.  Nor do I believe that most of you hold any prejudicial inclinations towards gypsies even if you occasionally use the word 'gyp' (or 'gypped') in everyday conversation.  There are words that have highly prejudicial origins that have just happened to become commonplace expressions in the English language.  Their original meanings have been lost to time, and they have been accepted as part of normal (if crude) conversation.  For much of my lifetime (and I presume much longer than that), the term 'fag' or 'faggot' had a meaning completely separate from its explicit use as an anti-gay slur.  It basically had a secondary meaning as a derogatory term that, while perhaps related to certain stereotypes about homosexuals (weak, uncool, etc), was not intended as an explicit put-down of homosexuals.  Point being, you can call someone or something a 'fag' without referring to homosexuality.  You probably shouldn't, as doing so shows either ignorance of the word's origins or an indifference to its real meaning, but you can.

Weekend Box Office (11/06/11): Puss in Boots tops again with record hold, while Tower Heist and A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas slightly underperform.

 Well it looks like the answer to last weekend's big question was "B".  Dreamworks did indeed trade one boffo opening weekend for two rock-solid weekends after all.  Last weekend, after being moved onto Halloween weekend at the last minute, Puss In Boots (review and trailer) debuted with a mediocre (for Dreamworks Animation) $34 million.  I speculated that perhaps Dreamworks simply was hoping to have an extra weekend before facing off against Happy Feet 2 (November 18th) and were hoping to use positive word of mouth to fuel a strong hold this weekend as well.  Puss In Boots topped the box office again, with another $33 million.  That's a drop of 3% from last weekend.  The Shrek spin-off pulled in the smallest second weekend drop for a Dreamworks animated film of all-time, behind only the 0.2% rise of the first Shrek, which had the Memorial Day weekend holiday behind it.  In fact, give-or-take how the final numbers measure up to the 3.6% drop of the second weekend of The Sixth Sense, and the 2.8% increase for My Dog Skip (coming off just a $5 million debut , Puss In Boots may have snagged the record for the smallest second-weekend drop for a non-Holiday weekend.

Classic Marketing: How the trailer for Brian DePalma's Mission: Impossible invented the modern movie tease, for better or worse.

If you were old enough (or young enough) to care back in February or March 1996, you probably thought this was the greatest trailer you had ever seen.  And in a certain sense, you were right.  For better or worse, this trailer for Brian DePalma's Mission: Impossible basically redefined the modern movie trailer.  While Batman (1989) was the first major trailer to have no narration or voice over of any kind, the M:I trailer played a different game.  It was arguably the first trailer to move so quickly that you could barely digest the images.  It had plenty of dialogue and plot teases, most of it supplied by an gloriously cryptic Henry Czerny, but the would-be exposition vague enough to not qualify as a spoiler.  On the other hand, it has explicit misdirection, falsely setting up Emmanuelle Béart as a damsel-in-distress while using a sex scene between her and Tom Cruise that wasn't even in the final cut of the film.  But its core contribution to modern film-trailer construction was the sheer speed and intensity of its action montage.  Obviously set to Lalo Schifrin's classic theme (well, maybe not so obviously...), the final rip-roaring 90 seconds arguably redefined how high-energy a trailer could be.

Review: Tower Heist (2011) is a solid, low-key comedic caper that respects its own story and doesn't sacrifice its own reality for laughs.

Tower Heist
2011
110 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Brett Ratner's Tower Heist is an unassuming caper film that works because it doesn't try to force laughs or excitement down our throats.  The film is arguably more of a light drama than a pure comedy, and its laughs never come at the expense of the inherent seriousness of the situation.  Director Ratner and writers Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson take the story that they have created as seriously as they can, while respecting the intelligence and viewpoints of all the major characters.  It is not a great film, but it occasionally flirts with being a great movie.  At its core, Tower Heist is basically as good as every major studio concoction should be as a matter of principle.

Why Denzel Washington is the last old-fashioned movie star...

It is no secret that I often whine about the lack of mid-budget, star-driven, adult-skewing thrillers in this fantasy-tent pole era.  And while there has certainly been a slight resurgence in the form over the last year, it still remains a fact that most of the stars of today and yesterday (or their respective agents) would rather hitch their tent to an established franchise rather than try their hand at the star vehicle.  In a time when Tom  Hanks tried (needlessly I'd argue) to cling to relevancy by stepping into the Dan Brown universe and where even Will Smith was so traumatized by the 'failure' of Seven Pounds that he went speeding back to Men in Black (and may end up doing another Independence Day), Denzel Washington is arguably the last of a dying breed.  He is a true movie star in the purest sense of the term and a reminder of the kind of movies, like Safe House (trailer) that were once made by such stars when the term had any real value.

Denzel Washington/Ryan Reynolds thriller Safe House gets a terrific trailer.

If you've read me for any amount of time, you'd heard me complain the lack of mid-budget star-driven thrillers.  As such, you can imagine that this thing looks right up my alley.  Denzel Washington is playing a villain for the first time since American Gangster four years ago this week, and he looks refreshingly low-key this time around and a solid foil for Ryan Reynolds.  The supporting cast is sharp (Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, Liam Cunningham, Sam Shepard, Robert Patrick, and Tim McGraw) and the trailer effectively uses Jay-Z's "No Church in the Wild" for a solid mix of tension and emotional investment.  A word of warning, the trailer may end up being a bit spoilery, as it heavily hints as a possible antagonist while clearly showing stuff that likely doesn't happen until the third act.  This Universal release drops February 10th, 2012 and it's instantly near the top of my 'must-see' list in the new year.

Scott Mendelson  

Review: A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas 3D (2011) again proves that the first film's brilliance was a fluke.

A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas 3D
2011
90 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is arguably the best comedy of the prior decade.  It's laugh-out-loud funny, but also filled with intelligent characters engaging in outlandish, but almost-plausible adventures in search of a most simple pleasure (a hamburger).  It was crude, but not stupid about its raunch, and it created a wonderful 'this is America' tapestry that helped make it one of the finest films about race/ethnicity relations in modern cinema. Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay is every bit as lousy as most of us expected the first film to be.  It's aimless, painfully unfunny, openly stupid, and trading in the sort of stock storytelling conventions ("Oh, that girl I dated for a few months in college is THE ONE who I must win back!") that the original avoided.  More importantly, it's outright immoral in how it claims political topicality but sells the three biggest post-9/11 lies around (there are no innocent men in Gitmo, the post 9/11 abuses are the result of a few bad apples, and George W. Bush is really just 'one of us').  For better or worse, A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas isn't as offensive as the first sequel, but it's still a shockingly lazy, uninspired affair.  It feels cheap and constrained, with only a handful of laughs and a narrative that sees fit to mostly replicate jokes from the first film.  It's not as aggressively bad as the first sequel, but mere mediocrity is not something to aspire to.