Review: Kill List (2012) is an experiment in genre-switch that fails to truly engage.

Kill List
2012
95 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Ben Wheatly's Kill List suffers from the believe that it is far more clever and original than it actually is.  It earns points for not exactly beginning and ending in the same genre, but the journey is frankly not worth the destination.  The film is technically a dime-a-dozen crime story about a hit man trying to do a job under trying circumstances.  Where it goes in the third act I will not reveal (although don't look too closely at the poster), but the majority of the film is taken up by somewhat cliched characters and relatively unengaging drama  Only the uncommonly gruesome violence, delivered in a clinical and brutal fashion, serves to distinguish the picture.  Even the third-act turn, while somewhat organic and slightly clever, loses points for eventually ending in an almost identical fashion to another 'extreme' horror drama from last year.

The lesson for this year's Oscar nominations? Don't be an R-rated film!

For a list of the complete nominations, go HERE.  As always, click on the movies with links for the original theatrical review.  I write a lot about the inexplicable trend of how the various year-end awards groups only consider 'appropriate' movies to be considered awards-material.  There is and always has been a certain disdain for populist entertainment, a trend that's only gotten worse as the independent film movement exploded in the early 1990s and the year-end Oscar bait-calender got more jam-packed over the last five weeks of the year.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II may have received almost unanimously rave reviews (96% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), but it doesn't count because it was a big-budget fantasy drama that is considered 'popular' entertainment.  Bridesmaids may have been one of the most successful R-rated comedies of recent years, a well-reviewed (90% on Rotten Tomatoes) comedy that may have been a game-changer in terms of how mass-market female-driven entertainments are viewed in terms of their commercial potential.  But no, it's not a character-driven dramedy that's one of the best films of the year, it's just that 'women shit in a sink' movie, so it's not worthy.  But a drama with Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock that's gasp... about 9/11?!  That's EXACTLY the kind of film that is supposed to be among the year's best, right?  And so it is that Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a film with a 48% positive ranking on Rotten Tomatoes and a 46% score on Metacritic is now considering by the Academy to be one of the nine best films of the year.

Weekend Box Office (01/22/11): Underworld: Awakenings and Red Tails score. while Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and Haywire falter slightly.

 Like clockwork, the fourth entry in the ongoing Underworld franchise debuted in the third weekend of January to take the top spot at the box office with a $20 million+ debut.  While the original opened in September of 2003, the rest of the films have all used the mid-January berth every three years.  As so it is that Underworld: Awakenings (trailer) debuted with $25.4 million this weekend.  In pure numbers, that's the second biggest debut of the series, behind the $30 million opening of Underworld: Evolution back in 2006.  But in terms of inflation/tickets sold/etc, it's actually a bit under the $22 million debut ($28 million adjusted for inflation) of the original Underworld.  Considering the last entry, Rise of the Lycans, was a stripped-down prequel lacking franchise star Kate Beckinsale, it's arguably more fair to compare this fourth entry to the first two films in the series.  As such, it's slightly lacking. The budget was $70 million (way up from parts 1 and 3, which cost just #22 million and $35 million respectively, and a bit up from the second film's $50 million budget) and the film had a theoretical 3D price-bump, yet the results weren't even up to the series's peak.  Still, Sony is playing a different game this time around...

Pet Peeve of the day: Attention action filmmakers - security guards are people too!

As a whole, Contraband is a pretty unremarkable would-be thriller.  There is almost no real action, and much of the middle act is a series of monotonous scenes of Kate Beckinsale being threatened and/or beaten by Giovanni Ribisi.  While Ribisi's character felt the need to continually antagonize Mark Wahlberg's family after Wahlberg has already agreed to do the crime in question is to be debated, since you'd think you wouldn't want to antagonize the professional criminal who is being entrusted with your precious cargo.  Anyway, Wahlberg is the classic 'former criminal gone straight' archetype, complete with a loving wife and kids.  If I my spoil the not-so shocking ending of the picture (...SPOILER WARNING...), Contraband ends on a mostly happy note, with Wahlberg having gotten away with the crime, protected his family (including his imperiled brother-in-law), and scored a large amount of capital for himself and his crew.  And even though Wahlberg's character is actually an accessory to a mid-film heist that ends in the wanton murder of about half-a-dozen people, he's still an okay guy.  After all, they were just security guards.

Review: Red Tails (2012) is a low-key, mostly entertaining history lesson/B-movie.

Red Tails
2012
120 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

The strongest aspect of director Anthony Hemingway and producer George Lucas's Red Tails is that it lives in a somewhat Utopian film industry where African-American dramas aren't all that big of a deal.  The picture may have an unfair burden of proving the bankability of larger-budget ($58 million) genre fare revolving entirely around African Americans, but you don't see that sweat onscreen.  It treats itself not like a test case, or a passion project for one of the more financially successful independent filmmakers of our age, but merely a B-movie action drama that involves actors like Cuba Cooding Jr. Terrence Howard, and David Oyelowo.  Red Tails may be (unfortunately) an anomaly, but those behind and in front of the camera treat this as if it were one of many minority-led historical dramas that open each month at the local multiplex.

The Hunger Games gets a (seemingly) final theatrical one-sheet.

This looks like the final poster and official theatrical one-sheet.  The tagline operates both in relation to the story and Lionsgate's optimistic box office predictions.  This one, arguably one of the higher-profile films of the Spring, drops two months from Monday.  I hope Lionsgate has the courage not to cut another trailer, since their first teaser does a splendid job of not giving away the whole picture.  Anyway, as always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson

Chuck Norris is not the cause, merely an alibi. The irony of a PG-13 Expendables II.

This story broke yesterday (I first read it yesterday morning at Collider), but since it was based on a translation of an interview that actor Chuck Norris gave to a Polish magazine, I thought I'd wait to make sure it wasn't a mistranslation.  But Sylvester Stallone has confirmed to Ain't It Cool News that The Expendables II will indeed be PG-13, although his explanation doesn't specifically blame Mr. Norris.  To wit, here, translated into English, is the 'offending' portion of Chuck Norris's interview:

"In Expendables 2, there was a lot of vulgar dialogue in the screenplay. For this reason, many young people wouldn’t be able to watch this. But I don’t play in movies like this,” Norris explained. “Due to that I said I won’t be a part of that if the hardcore language is not erased. Producers accepted my conditions and the movie will be classified in the category of PG-13."

And here is Sly Stallone's confirmation:

"Harry (Knowles), the film is fantastic with Van Damme turning in an inspired performance... Our final battle is one for the ages. The PG13 rumor is true, but before your readers pass judgement, trust me when I say this film is LARGE in every way and delivers on every level. This movie touches on many emotions which we want to share with the broadest audience possible, BUT, fear not, this Barbeque of Grand scale Ass Bashing will not leave anyone hungry..."

What is strange about this is not that Stallone and his band of 80s and 2000s action stars are catering to the whims of one very over-the-hill action icon, or that Norris thinks that hearing profanity is more harmful to youngsters than watching over-the-top violence (in a pre-Sopranos/24 era, Walker: Texas Ranger was once considered the most violent show on television).  No what's strange is that the first Expendables, judging on the theatrical cut, was clearly intended to be a PG-13 in the first place.  Watching the film back in August 2010, I distinctly remember thinking that this was an awfully soft R, and that up until a certain third-act action sequence involving Stallone with a knife, it appeared that there wasn't going to be all that much R-rated violence at all.  Stallone and company waffled back and forth prior to the film's release about its rating, and I am still convinced to this day that it was always intended to be a PG-13 movie.

Review: Miss Bala (2012) is a jolting and relentless bit of nasty business.

Miss Bala
2012
113 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Gerardo Naranjo's bracing and relatively uncompromising Miss Bala operates on two levels.  On the surface, it is a harrowing descent into a slice of hell, seen through the eyes on a single unwitting participant.  Its genre elements kick into gear at around the fifteen-minute mark and never let up until the sobering conclusion.  As a propulsive exercise, it exists as the kind of 'you are there' experience that would put most 'found-footage' horror films to shame.  But it also exists as a brutal reminder of the absurdity of the ongoing drug war and the deplorable circumstances that exist for women in all-too many countries, as well as the lack of options for escaping said circumstances.  It does not really need the onscreen text that more-or-less spells out its message just as the credits roll.  The film itself operates as a powerful social statement, on top of being a pretty solid thriller.

Blaming the victim: The problem with Beauty & the Beast isn't Belle but the Beast.

Note -For what it's worth, the 3D conversion left me unimpressed.  If you want to see it, do it because you want to see the picture on the big screen again, not because the 3D conversion adds any real value.  If you want to read a similar retrospective discussion of The Lion King, go HERE.  

I've long joked that I was able to ruin Disney's Beauty and the Beast merely by uttering two words: "Stockholm Syndrome".  Having sampled the film in 3D over the weekend, it remains one of the just-plain weirder Disney cartoons in recent times. It is still a highly entertaining and visually impressive bit of entertainment.  It's easy to see and remember (I was eleven when I saw it the weekend after Thanksgiving in 1991 as part of a double-sneak preview following Father of the Bride) how those who thought of Disney animated films as relative trifles like Robin Hood or Oliver and Company were knocked back by the sheer seriousness and scale on display.  Even more than The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast was arguably the first Disney cartoon since the initial batch (think Pinocchio and Bambi) that felt like a grand-scale MOVIE.  But watching it again, for the second time in two years (I bought the 2D Blu Ray over Hanukkah 2010), there are a few things that bear mentioning, both about the movie itself and the nature of how its critiqued.

Weekend Box Office (01/15/11): Contraband scores surprisingly large debut, Beauty & the Beast plus Joyful Noise open well in 'everybody wins!' MLK weekend.

I've talked a lot about how the under-reported story of 2011 box office was the return to fiscal sanity in regards to production budgets and this weekend is a prime example.  We have three big openers, all of which cost under $30 million, which means all of them are well on their way to profitability merely by posting a solid if-not-spectacular opening.   Shocking all of Mendelson's Memos box office analysts (IE - me), Mark Wahlberg powered the low-budget ($25 million) and R-rated Contraband to a $24 million Fri-Sun/$28 million Fri-Mon debut all by himself to win the weekend.  Wahlberg has had his share of big weekends (Planet of the Apes, The Perfect Storm, The Happening, etc), but they all arguably had larger factors at play other than just Walhberg's relatively limited star-power.  The closest comparison is the 2005 debut of Four Brothers, but I'd argue that at least some of the credit for that $21 million debut goes to director John Singleton, along with the fact that it was hard-R action picture in a PG-13 time.  Comparability, Shooter debuted in early 2007 with $15 million, albeit against the $24 million opening weekend of TMNT and the $19 million third-weekend of 300.  Chalk it up to lack of demo competition, a growing appetite for R-rated genre fare, a token boost from Kate Beckinsale's token fanbase, or something in the marketing that I frankly didn't see, but Walhberg just scored his biggest 'all by myself!' debut of his career.