The Weekend Warrior April 29, 2022
MEMORY, FIDDLER’S JOURNEY TO THE SCREEN, HATCHING, VORTEX, ANAÏS IN LOVE, THE SURVIVOR, HELLO BOOKSTORE, and More
Finally! It’s the end of April, the end of the spring movie season AND the end of COVID!!! Well, maybe two out of three ain’t bad. We also only get one new wide release, so thank you for that, Gods of Distribution.
That movie is…
MEMORY (Briarcliff)
Liam Neeson returns with his fourth theatrical release since the COVID pandemic hit, fifth if you include the Netflix movie, The Ice Road (which in my opinion, is the best of the bunch). In this one, he plays (yet another) hired killer, this one suffering from Alzheimer’s, who refuses to fulfill his assignment to kill a young girl; when she turns up dead, he goes after those responsible. Yes, that plot does sound a lot like a mash-up of every Liam Neeson movie from the last few years, but this is also such a Liam Neeson type role, one might wonder if this was written specifically for him, or if it just happened to come his way after Clint Eastwood turned it down. (The Venn Diagram of plotlines between the movies being made by Eastwood and Neeson is almost two concentric circles, at this point.)
Unlike Eastwood, Neeson has never shied away from franchises (or potential ones), since he starred in George Lucas’ Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace, as well as Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, voiced Aslan in two of the Narnia films and played Zeus in the Clash of the Titans remake and its sequel. And then he starred in the Luc Besson-produced Taken, and it completely changed the type of roles Neeson would be put up for. In fact, it led to a string of similar action-thrillers – some good, some bad, and some very bad. While the Taken movies generally did well, the third movie grossing $89 million in North America, compared to the $139 to 145 million of the previous two, Neeson only had a few other movies do that well, such as Non-Stop in 2014. Since then, it’s led to movies making substantially less from A Walk Among the Tombstones (later in 2014) to Run All Night to The Commuter (those last two directed by Non-Stop director Jaume Collet-Sera), Steve McQueen’s Widows in 2018, and then Cold Pursuit in early 2019. The fact that neither The Marksman and Honest Thief made more than $15.5 million domestically needs to have a big old asterisk since theaters in New York and L.A. remained closed, but that didn’t account for last year’s Blacklight making only $13.2 million worldwide, showing the steepening decline in Neeson’s draw at the box office.
Memory is directed by Martin Campbell, who has been responsible for fine action films like the James Bond movies, “Casino Royale” and “Goldeneye,” and very bad superhero movies like the Ryan Reynolds “Green Lantern” movie. Last year, his action movie The Protégé, starring Maggie Q, was released into 2,577 theaters where it only grossed $7.4 million after a $3 million opening.
Reviews are embargoed until after this column goes live, but I’m not expecting too many raves – my own review will be added here around noon on Wednesday. Because of this, I think Memory might do better than Blacklight with around $4 million or so, but that’s going to make it tough for it to get into the top 5 with so many stronger returning movies.
Mini-Review: At this point, it’s so hard to watch a Liam Neeson movie and take it very seriously. Despite getting theatrical releases, there doesn’t seem to be much in terms of originality to set them apart from each other. Last year’s The Ice Road is one of the rare exceptions, even if it actually ended up being in a similar setting as another recent Neeson flick, Cold Pursuit. It just was a better movie overall, because there were solid story ideas and action beats throughout.
Even with an experienced action director like Martin Campbell, Memory just never gets past the fact that it’s a very plain and by-the-books cookie cutter revenge thriller that forays into similar ground as so many other movies starring Neeson. This one begins with Guy Peace’s FBI agent Vincent Serra undercover, trying to take down a sex-trafficking ring after an encounter with a young Mexican girl (Mia Sanchez). Vincent is then set to El Paso with his partner (Harold Torres) to investigate the murder of a man who might be involved with that girl, which leads him to a mysterious killer (Neeson’s character) who is involved with a string of murders, including possibly the girl herself. We also learn that that Neeson’s Alex Lewis is experiencing advanced Alzheimer’s which makes him forget things, so he writes on his arm to remind him of things.
And wait a darn second. I actually have seen this movie before, and it was a great movie called Memento starring Guy Pearce, who is RIGHT THERE! Okay, that’s really the only thing the movies have in common, since this one introduces so many other elements piled on top of each other to just make the plot far too convoluted and hard to figure out.
Pearce gives the best performance of the bunch, making him the best part of the movie, to the point where Neeson almost becomes a supporting character in his own movie, his painful performance involving stuttering and seizures to try to epitomize Alex’s condition. Belluci, on the other hand, is gravely miscast as Davana, the villainous boss lord behind many of the bad things going on, a role where she has so much trouble delivering lines with her poor English. There’s also Ray Stevenson’s Detective Mora, who seems to be on Davana’s payroll, so he’s just as anxious to find and take down Alex as the FBI.
Having so many different elements built into the story doesn’t make Memory any less predictable or interesting, as much as it just makes things far more confusing to figure out who the players are and why they’re doing what they’re doing. A lot of the movie just feels like a bad television drama, because Campbell never really tries to make any of it feel even remotely cinematic.
The movie does offer a few fun moments like watching Alex shoot a targe in the head then calling him “scum” right afterwards. On the other hand, there’s an equally bad Dirty Harry knock-off where Alex can’t remember if he shot 5 or 6 bullets. I mean, he LITERALLY can’t remember, because he has Alzheimer’s! (At this point, you might want to go down to my review of Vortex and read how hard it was to watch that after watching my mother’s deterioration due to dementia. You can only imagine how miffed I was with how this sort of this was handled in Memory.) Other characterizations aren’t much better with Vincent’s Mexican partner swearing in Spanish as his main character trait, and his character not really adding much otherwise.
It’s things like that which make Memory such a misguided mess from beginning to end, dull at times and then just getting more dour as it goes along, with one of the few saving graces being the casting of Pearce.
Rating: 4.5/10
THE CHART:
1. The Bad Guys (DreamWorks Animation/Universal) - $14.8 million -38%
2. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Paramount) - $9.5 million -40%
3. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (Warner Bros) - $7 million -50%
4. The Northman (Focus) - $5.6 million -54%
5. Memory (Briarcliff) - $4.5 million N/A
6. Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24) - $4.2 million -21%
7. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (Lionsgate) - $4 million -44%
8. The Lost City (Paramount) - $3.3 million -24%
9. Father Stu (Sony) - $1.8 million -46%
10. Morbius (Sony) - $1 million -55%
This week’s “Chosen One” is…
FIDDLER’S JOURNEY TO THE BIG SCREEN (Kino Lorber/Zeitgeist Films)
Narrated by Jeff Goldblum, Daniel Raim’s documentary – which will open at the Angelika in New York on Friday, in L.A. at the Laemmle Royal and Town Center on May 6, and then other cities to follow – takes a look at exactly what the title says, the way that filmmaker Norman Jewison worked to bring the Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, and Joseph Stein-written Broadway hit to the screen for the 1971 movie starring Topol as Tevye. It became the highest grossing film of 1971 with $83.3 million, based on a $9 million budget, and Raim’s film does an amazing job recreating how the movie was made with a lengthy interview with Jewison and many of the others involved who are still around and alive.
Mind you, I may have seen Fiddler on the Roof on television when I was younger, but haven’t seen it since, nor have I see the musical on Broadway, though I definitely know the songs. I think my family must have had the cast record. It turns out that the movie celebrated its 50th anniversary just last year, and Raim has put together a terrific document of what was involved with making the movie. All of Jewison’s anecdotes are solid gold, and his participation is what really makes the movie quite special, whether or not you have a soft spot in your heart for the musical or are just interested in how Hollywood differs now from how it was 50 years ago.
This is such an endlessly fascinating doc that it made me wish this was coordinated with one of the repertory theaters where this is playing to do a 50th anniversary screening of the movie in 35mm, for those who might want to watch it or rewatch it after seeing this doc. (I know. I can rent it on Amazon Prime Video, but that’s not the same as watching a movie in a theater. Fact.)
As far as keeping the spirit of old school Hollywood alive and maybe teaching us a few new things not only about the adaptation process but also about Judaism, Fiddler’s Journey to the Screen is quite a joyous deep dive into a musical and movie that is probably deserving of another revival. (The last Broadway revival was in 2015 and then there was one in the West End a few years ago, but I caught neither.)
HATCHING (IFC Midnight)
This is an incredibly original and distinctive horror feature debut from Finnish filmmaker Hanna Bergholm, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Hatching stars Siiri Solalinna as Tinja, a young gymnast who finds a bird’s egg in the woods behind her house and puts it under her pillow. The egg continues to grow as Tinja watches with curiosity before hatching into an avian creature who becomes more human-like as well as more malevolent, as it helps Tinja deal with some of the frustrations in her life.
I tried to catch this at Sundance when it premiered virtually, but missed out on the window for a virtual screener, though I have had a chance to see the movie a few times since then. Bergholm’s film is a wickedly horrifying horror film but one that’s also a witty dark comedy that seems to be making a statement about the image of the perfect Icelandic family life, and how it can be thrown into disarray with something as simple as a crow crashing through the family’s perfectly idyllic living room one day. It’s actually funny how Bergholm sets up this family as the absolute ideal, happy family, and then literally gets dark with this bird invader trashing their living room. This is very much a coming-of-age film in the way we watch Tinja trying to contend with the perfection being heaped upon her by her mother but also with the responsibilities of taking care of a baby… whatever that is that hatches out of the egg, who is eventually dubbed “Alli.”
I’m actually not sure how much I want to say about Alli’s evolution and what happens in terms of story beats, because Hatching offers some of the icky and often uncomfortable “body horror” elements that made me enjoy so many of Cronenberg’s movies in the ‘80s and ‘90s, but they’re also likely to be more effective for someone going in blind.
One of the things that really impressed me about Bergholm’s film is her lead actress, Siiri Solalinna, who eventually ends up playing somewhat of a dual role that really shows her off to have quite a lot of range. In general, the creature design of the movie is fantastic, because the creature is done so well presumably using a combo of CG and practical effects, and in some cases, the creature stuff is on par or better than far more expensive American studio movies.
This is a genuinely horrifying film that gets darker and darker as it goes along, even if it also has a soft and warm underbelly that’s surprisingly human. I have no idea what Bergholm may want to do next, whether it’s specifically genre or not, but Hatching is quite an impressive debut that introduces us to a singularly unique new vision in filmmaking.
Rating: 7.5/10
VORTEX (Utopia)
French auteur Gaspar Noé (Irreversible) delivers his first of two movies this year, the second of which will come out next week. This one, which hits New York’s IFC Center on Friday, and will open in L.A. on May 6, is presented fully via split screen, it tells the story of an aging Paris couple with the mother (Françoise Lebrun) experiencing the effects of dementia, while her husband (played by none other than Dario Argento!) is dealing with his own declining health. Alex Lutz plays their son, who is trying to deal with his own personal problems while supporting his parents.
I generally have enjoyed some of Noé’s earlier films, but especially Enter the Void, although in recent years, it seems like he’s deliberately trying to test the limits of audience endurance with those who go to see his movies, which certainly was the case with Climax a few years back. Vortex is a different type of endurance, because it’s a very slow movie, essentially a character drama that illustrates the final days of an elderly couple. I will freely admit that I did not realize that the husband was played by Argento, which is kind of cool, similar to the way Noé uses French actors Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg in next week’s movie, which I’ll write more about… you guessed it… next week.
Even so, I had a particularly hard time watching this movie, not just because it’s rather slow in terms of how the plot is developed, but also because my own mother has been dealing with dementia, and watching her deterioration over the past couple years did not exactly make me too open to want to experience this in a movie. That probably was what made it hard for me to fully enjoy Vortex for its craft, since once again, Noé creates something quite unique in how it looks and feels, but the conceit to do it split screen lasts too long, just as the story ends up outlasting its welcome. Vortex is an interesting enough turn in Noé’s exploration of various aspect of life, but it’s disappointing in how ordinary it feels compared to his previous work.
Rating: 6/10
ANAÏS IN LOVE (Magnolia)
Opening in select theaters Friday and then on VOD May 6 is this French comedy (of sorts) from Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet, starring Anaïs Demoustier and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. The former plays the title character, a 30-something woman looking for love and meaning in her life, much like other women her age. She begins having an affair with a significantly older man named Daniel, but after they break out, she meets his partner Emilie (Tedeschi) and the two of them fall in love.
I’m always up for a quirky French rom-com, as I have many favorites, and in this case, filmmaker Bourgeois-Tacquet has an absolute firecracker of a leading lady in Demoustier, who I honestly was not familiar with at all. In fact, I kind of wondered whether this movie was written specifically for her, as we watch her going through her rather convoluted everyday life where she’s juggling a good-looking young boyfriend with trying to find true love. She also begins to have an affair with a significantly older man named Daniel (Denis Podalydès), who seems far more infatuated with Anaïs than vice versa.
Demoustier is quite lively and vivacious, an actor who clearly can carry this film in a similar way as Audrey Tautou carried Amelie, though those similarities only go so far. Anaïs is similarly a very French film, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean we’ll get the requisite talk-talk-talking about books and movies and culture that permeates so many French films, which often acts as a detriment to the actual storytelling.
That’s probably the biggest problem with Anaïs in Love, because it’s a good 40 minutes before Anaïs meets Tedeschi’s Emilie, which is where we get to anything resembling a plot as this often flaky and frivolous young woman suddenly falls for Daniel’s partner and starts to almost stalk her to her a professional writers’ retreat, where she’s wrangled to do odd jobs to pay her way. As compelling as Demoustier is in the first half of this movie, when she’s teamed with Tedeschi where we really see two fine French actors pushing to each other. But that’s also where the film goes down the road of being a modern-day Portrait of a Lady on Fire or Ammonite, and maybe I enjoyed it more than those, because it was modern rather than period.
That said, there’s something about this film that feels far too literary – I honestly have no idea if it’s based on a book or not – but also a little too precious. I had a similar hard time adapting to Anaïs’ flakiness as I did to the lead in The Worst Person in the World, but that movie was just far better written and realized, plus it builds to a far more satisfying conclusion, whereas Anaïs offers a suitably intriguing main character and some nice moments, but often feels forced and ultimately leads to a somewhat schizophrenic ending.
Rating: 7/10
HELLO, BOOKSTORE (Greenwich Entertainment)
Opening at New York’s Film Forum is this new doc from A.B. Zax about Massachusetts independent bookshop owner Matthew Tannenbaum, whose shop originated in 1976 runs into issues due to the pandemic that receives help from his loyal and dedicated community. I knew pretty quickly that this movie wasn’t gonna be for me – I’ve long given up or tried to give up on physical media, including books – although it definitely is well-targeted towards those who go see movies at Film Forum, I’d imagine. An okay doc about a topic that isn’t particularly of interest to me.
FIREBIRD (Roadside Attractions/The Factory)
Peeter Rebane’s Cold War drama based on a true story of a young soldier on an Air Force base named Sergey (played by co-writer Tom Prior) who looks forward to his military service being finished so he can go to Moscow and become an actor. One day, he locks eyes with Roman (Oleg Zagorodnii), an enigmatic ace fighter pilot assigned to the base, and the two are deeply attracted to each other, as they ride the line between friends and lovers. Okay, I’m going to ‘fess up. I started watching this movie, and it didn’t seem like it was for me, so I didn’t get very far. This is a great case of a movie that maybe I would have been able to get through if it had an in-person screening, but just couldn’t get into watching it at home. If I get to this later, I’ll add a review.
RUNWAY 34 (Yash Raj Films)
Although I rarely have a chance to see these Bollywood films in advance of release, I saw the trailer for this in front of RRR a few weeks back, and it looks pretty interesting. It’s produced, directed and stars Ajay Devgn as Captain Vikrant Khanna, an airline pilot whose flight takes an unexpected turn after it departs from an international destination. The movie also stars Amitabh Bachchan as Narayan Vedant, who is trying to uncover the truth about what happened to said flight, as well as Rakul Preet Singh, Angira Dhar, Aakanksha Singh, with a cameo by Carry Minati.
Streaming…
THE SURVIVOR (HBO Max)
Premiering on HBO at 8pm EST tonight (Weds) and also hitting the streamer following its debut at TIFF last year, is Barry Levinson’s true-life drama, which stars Ben Foster as Harry Haft, a Polish Jew who survived the concentration camp at Auschwitz where he was forced to fight against fellow prisoners in the boxing ring. Helping to get him through the horrors he experienced is his belief that the woman he loves, Leah, is still alive out there somewhere, driving him to find her. Adapted from the book written by Harry’s son, Alan Haft, the movie also stars Vicky Krieps, Billy Magnussen, Peter Sarsgaard, Danny DeVito, and John Leguizamo.
Mini-Review: I have to be honest that when this played TIFF last year, and I had the opportunity to watch it virtually, I just wasn’t in the right headspace to watch a Holocaust movie, nor did I think that the boxing element would do much to elevate this material above the type of Oscar bait that frequently hits the festival circuit in September. I’m glad that I gave this another chance, especially after seeing Fiddler’s Journey to the Screen (this week’s “Chosen One”), because this has a similar link to Jewish tradition and how one man’s belief system was put to the test to survive the horrors of Auschwitz.
We meet Harry once he’s returned to New York and is trying to score a fight against Rocky Marciano, which he hopes will be high-profile enough that maybe his wife Leah will read about it and realize he’s still alive. That plan backfires slightly when a reporter (Peter Sarsgaard) writes a feature on Harry and learns how he was forced by a Nazi soldier (Billy Magnussen) to take on fellow Auschwitz inmates in the boxing ring with the loser of each fight being shot dead. Harry still feels guilty about doing something so horrible to survive, but he becomes more of a pariah once others in his community learn the truth, but he still wants to find Leah, and he gets some help from a Jewish woman named Miriam (played by Vicky Krieps).
Granted that I was skeptical about this movie and story, I ended up being pleasantly surprised by how moving Harry Haft’s story was, because he’s clearly a flawed and damaged human forced to do horrible things to survive. Without fear of contradiction, this is one of Ben Foster’s greatest performances to date, helped by a large amount of makeup work to alter his appearance greatly between the present day and flashback to Auschwitz (which are shown in black and white).
I feel like Levinson outdid himself directing this one, reminding us that Levinson is an Oscar-winning director who has made some great dramatic films in his past. In this case, he’s working from a great screenplay by Justine Juel Gillmer (her first film screenplay), which finds a way to make the jump between time periods work and not feel too disjointed.
Thankfully, the boxing is not as big a part of the movie as I thought it might be, and there’s also a wonderful romantic bond between Harry and Krieps’ Miriam, leading to the film’s last act where Harry is still trying to find redemption and a normal life after his fight with Marciano.
The Survivor is quite a pleasant surprise in that it takes a number of overused movie tropes i.e. the Holocaust and boxing, and tells a story that’s so unique to this one man it’s about. You’re pulled into his story first and foremost by Ben Foster’s powerful performance, but also by Levinson’s knack to make every emotional beat work so well thanks to his vast filmmaking experience.
Rating: 8/10
I LOVE AMERICA (Prime Video)
Sophie Marceau stars in this original French film from Amazon directed and co-written by Lisa Azuelos. Marceau plays Lisa, a single woman who decides to move from Paris to Los Angeles to try to find love after her children have left for college and her mother has died. Once there, she reunites with her drag queen best friend Luka (Djanis Bouzyani), who wants to help her navigate the dating circuit. Sounds cute. I didn’t get around to seeing it in order to review.
THE OFFER (Paramount+)
The long-awaited (and delayed) limited series about the making of The Godfather, starring Miles Teller, Matthew Goode, Juno Temple, Dan Fogler, and more. I haven’t had a chance to see any of it, nor do I have Paramount+, so I guess there’s not much more to say about that either.
Repertory stuff….
Opening Friday is a 4k restoration of Stewart Bird and Deborah Shaffer’s 1979 doc, THE WOBBLIES (Kino Lorber), which tells the story of the American labor movement, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which brought together unskilled workers who weren’t able to unionize in the early years of the 20th Century. I found this to be a pretty interesting doc, firstly because I knew very little about the “Wobblies” or how the government and authorities fought against them as America entered WWI (essentially, the same letters of the acronym in reverse, which is eerie since it wasn’t actually called “World War I” at the time), and those picketing for better work conditions were deemed to be socialists, communists and worse. It’s an interesting time capsule with tons of great archival footage and photos, as well as pamphlets and political cartoons from the time. Sure, the movie is definitely full of talking heads with many of those around at the time being interviewed (again, this doc was made in the late ‘70s – presumably every single person in this film is long dead)... but what I enjoyed the most about this film is the abundance of protest songs surrounding the IWW, many which the still surviving members remember enough to sing them while being interviewed. Definitely an interesting film if you’re interested in the history of unions in the United States, and that particular period of time. (Besides playing at the Metrograph, The Wobblies will also play in a number of cities on Sunday, May 1, as part of “International Workers Day.”
Playing this weekend as part of “Metrograph Selects” is John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence (1974), starring the great Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk, as well as Jacques Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go Boating (also from 1974). “Gary Indiana Selects” wraps up this weekend with Billly Wilder’s A Foreign Affair (1948) and Mike Hodges’ Black Rainbow (1989). Also running through Thursday is “Lionel Rogosin X6” plus “Alfreda’s Cinema Presents” will show two shorts, Reality is Not Good Enough (2021) and Suzanne, Suzanne (1982), on Sunday. Abbas Kiarostami’s Like Someone in Love (2012) will screen again on Thursday, as part of “Metrograph Presents A to Z” followed this weekend by Robert Mulligan’s The Man in the Moon (1991).
Running Friday and through the weekend until May 4 is “Crime + Justice Pioneer: A Joe Berlinger Retrospective,” which will show some of the documentary filmmaker’s best and favorite documentaries, including Metallica: Some Kind of Monster and Brother’s Keeper (on Saturday with Berlinger in person), as well as Werner Herzog’s Burden of Dreams and the Maysles’ classic rock concert doc, Gimme Shelter, and other films like John Cassevetes’ Faces.
Starting Friday, the Forum will screen Jean-Jacques Beineix’s 1982 film, Diva, which won four French Cesars, as well as a few more screenings of the 4k restoration of Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria (1957), one of my favorite Italian films, in fact.
On top of continuing the screenings of Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala and David Lynch’s Inland Empire, the IFC Center is showing Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void once each night this weekend, as well as midnight(ish) screenings of The Crow and Re-Animator on Friday and Saturday nights, as well as Lynch’s Eraserhead.
The “Hong Songsoo Multiverse” double features continues on Wednesday, leading to the debut of Director Hong’s newest film, In Front of Your Face, next Friday with a few more double features.
It might be too late to catch Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? (1972) on Weds afternoon, but you can still catch Howard Hawks’ 1938 film Bringing Up Baby on Thursday afternoon, as well as Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (1971) on Friday. (Otherwise, both MOMA and FilmLinc are pretty ensconced in New Directors/New Films through the weekend.)
Sarah Polley’s great 2012 film Stories We Tell will screen on Friday, as part of the “Irregular Evidence: Deepfakes and Suspect Footage in Film” series. Saturday will be a screening of Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man (1956) as part of “Queens (as in the borough) on Screen.” The “Always on Sunday: Greek Film Series” will show Grigoris Karantinakis’ Smyrna, My Beloved (2021) on Sunday.
BAM begins a series called “Queering the Canon: Rom Coms” running from Thursday though May 2, which will include screenings of Greg Berlanti’s 2000 film The Broken Hearts Club, Alice Wu’s Saving Face (2004), Julia Dyer’s Late Bloomers (1996), and more.
(Hm… I may eventually bring some of the L.A. repertory theaters back into the mix, if there’s any interest.)
ETC…
POMPO THE CINEPHILE (GKids)
THE AVIARY (Saban Films/Paramount)
BLACK BOX (Distrib Films/Icarus)
AFRICA (Strand Releasing)
FLINT (Cargo Releasing)
THE WILL TO SEE (Cohen Media Group)
THE SOUND OF VIOLET (Atlas Distribution)
Next week… there’s a little movie coming out from some young upstart indie called “Marvel Studios”... it may be a sequel, but I’m not sure because it doesn’t have a “2” in the title. I mean, what kind of sequel doesn’t have a “2” in the title? Or even a “II”? I guess you’ll have to wait until next week to find out.
Box office data provided by The-Numbers.com.