The Weekend Warrior Aug. 11, 2023
THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER, JULES, AURORA’S SUNRISE, THE ETERNAL MEMORY
This is gonna be another column that I’m just gonna have to whip through since I have so many other paying gigs to concentrate on for the next few weeks. There are actually quite a few limited releases this week, and I just didn’t have enough time to watch screeners of them, although there’s one really good movie that I saw last year.
THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER (Universal)
André Øvredal, the director of The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Trollhunter, and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, tackles this biggest movie to date with this section of the Dracula story, taken directly from Bram Stoker’s book as the vampire travels from Romania to England by ship, essentially killing the entire crew. It stars Corey Hawkins from Straight Outta Compton as Clemens, a doctor who takes a job on the Demeter ship in order to get back to England unaware of the ship’s deadly cargo. Not long after they’ve left port, they discover another stowaway in Aisling Franciosci, who the vampire has brought along as his in-ship meal.
I definitely went into this one with high hopes, mainly because it sounded like a solid premise and was directed by a filmmaker who I greatly respect and appreciate, and who probably respects the source material to try to make a movie every bit as good as the previous Dracula and Nosferatu movies going back over 100 years. But something went wrong along the way, maybe because the results are such a grim movie that it’s hard to recommend even to the most staunch horror fan.
Granted, the very opening of the movie shows the Demeter arriving in England and everyone being dead on board, but there’s another thing watching it, especially when you have innocent animals and an actual child (the Captain’s son, played by Woody Norman of C’mon C’mon) being killed along the way.
The thing is that The Last Voyage of the Demeter looks so good, from the production design in creating the ship, and all of the prosthetic makeup used to turn Javier Botet into the famed Nosferatu and the accompanying gore makeup, that it’s a drag that it indeed drags. Even once things pickup, it’s hard to really stay involved, because the tone is just so dark and grim with very little in terms of trying to keep the filmgoer invested. (Maybe I was disappointed that there weren’t more rats, since I vaguely remember the original Dracula and Nosferatu having a boatful of rats, and this one only has two or three.)
Maybe this is a movie I’d appreciate on a different day or watching it on Peacock (where it will eventually end up), but for whatever reason, the movie just didn’t click with me, despite the story of Dracula definitely being in my wheelhouse. It’s such a well-crafted horror film that looks great, but it’s just too grim for its own good. You just don’t kill Woody Norman in my book.
Rating: 6/10
My interview with André Øvredal should run on Above the Line in the next day or so, maybe even later today. Who the fuck knows?
JULES (Bleecker Street)
Sir Ben Kingsley stars in Marc Turtletaub’s quirky comedy as Milton Robinson, a smalltown Pennsylvania man who is constantly complaining to the board council, but even moreso when a UFO lands in his garden and out pops an alien. The movie also stars Harriet Samsom Harris, Zoe Winters, and Jane Curtin, who in the worst moment in the whole movie, sings “Freebird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I’m not making that up.Bleecker Street should be thankful I will not be reviewing this movie, because I found it to be absolutely awful, and I just don’t want to spend any more money thinking about it. It might get a fairly wide release, but I don’t think that will help it get into the top 10, not that it really needs much since $1 million or more would get it into tenth place. Without knowing an exact theater count, I’m not gonna chance it by putting it in my top 10.
THE BOX OFFICE CHART
1. Barbie (Warner Bros.) - $33 million -38%
2. Oppenheimer (Universal) - $19 million -35%
3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Paramount) - $15.5 million -45%
4. Meg 2: The Trench (Warner Bros.) - $11.2 million -63%
5. The Last Voyage of the Demeter (Universal) - $9.3 million N/A
6. Haunted Mansion (Disney) - $5 million -46%
7. Sound of Freedom (Angel Studios) - $4.6 million -40%
8. Talk to Me (A24) - $4 million -38%
9. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 (Paramount) - $3.6 million -38%
AURORA’S SUNRISE
Armenia’s Oscar entry last year is a fantastic animated documentary, directed by Inna Sahakyan, who I actually had a chance to speak with last year, and it’s finally getting a theatrical release at the Village East in New York, at the New Plaza Cinemas uptown, and at the Museum of Moving Image in Astoria, Queens on Saturday and Sunday. Although this would probably be this week’s “Chosen One,” I haven’t actually seen the movie since last year, so I don’t feel comfortable reviewing at this moment, though I do recommend it.
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS (Cohen Media Group)
Juliet Binoche stars in Emmanuel Carrère’s drama, playing famed author Marianne Winckler who goes undercover to investigate how the working class is being exploited in Northern France, getting a job as a cleaner and befriending the other cleaning women. It opens at the Quad Cinema in New York where they continue their “Beautiful Binoche” retrospective, which you can read more about below.
THE ETERNAL MEMORY (MTV Documentary Films)
I’ve heard great things about this doc by Maite Alberti (The Mole Agent) that shares a love story between Chilean couple Augusto and Paulina, who have been together for 25 years but whose lives are affected by Augusto getting diagnosed with Alzheimer’s as his wife (a famous actress and Chilean Minister of Culture) tries to remain engaged. I’ll definitely be watching this soon, although I’m a little nervous about the subject matter being triggering, having lost my own mother to dementia. It opens in New York at the Angelika Cinemas on Friday and then in L.A. and San Fran on August 18.
THE POD GENERATION (Vertical/Roadside Attractions)
Also opening at the Angelika is the new film from Sophie Barthes (Cold Souls), which won the Alfred P. Sloan award at this year’s Sundance. It’s a science fiction film starring Emilia Clarke from Game of Thrones and Chiwetel Ejiofor, and it deals with a couple sharing their pregnancy using detachable artificial wombs.
LOVE LIFE (Oscilloscope)
Opening at the IFC Center in New York on Friday is the new movie from Koji Fukada (Harmonium, A Girl Missing) starring Fumino Kimura and Kento Nagayama as a couple living with their young son when an accident brings the young boy’s father Park (Atom Sunada), who is deaf and homeless, back into her life.
THE MONKEY KING (Netflix)
The popular Chinese fairy tale gets a new take as a family action-adventure about a Monkey and the magical fighting stick he uses to battle all sorts of demons. Directed by Anthony Stacchi (The Boxtrolls), it features the voices of Jimmy O. Yang, Bowen Yang, Stephanie Hsu, BD Wong, Jo Koy, Hoon Lee, and many more, and it will screen this weekend at New York’s IFC Center and other places ahead of it debuting on Netflix on August 18.
OPERATION NAPOLEON (Magnet)
This Icelandic action movie by director Óskar Thór Axelsson involves an Icelandic lawyer named Kristin who received footage of a WWII airplane wreck in one of Iceland’s glaciers, which gets the attention of a group of criminals and a CIA director, and she has to get find out why everyone wants to get the plane. It hits theaters and VOD on Friday.
Starting this weekend is “F. Gary Gray in Action,” a retrospective on the filmmaker who has such an interesting history and career. This weekend, they’ll be showing the thriller Law Abiding Citizen (2009), starring Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx, as well as the early hip-hop movie, Set It Off (1996), starring Jada Pinkett, Vivica A. Fox, Kimberly Elise, and Queen Latifah.
Another exciting series starting this Friday is “The Color of Black and White,” which will include some fantastic modern-day black and white films over the next two weekends. This weekend includes Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess (2013), Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha (2012), Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie (2012), and Pawel Pawlikowski’s Oscar-winning Ida (2013).
“Back to School with Kirsten Dunst” is a great series that has focused on Dunst’s earlier career, and one movie I watched last week that I loved was Michael Patrick Jann’s Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), a mockumentary about a small town beauty pageant that also features future Oscar nominee Amy Adams and future Oscar winner, Allison Janney. It’s playing on Thursday night and Monday. Also this weekend is a rare 35mm showing of Sarah Kernochan’s All I Wanna Do (1998) with Kernochan and the producers attending on Friday night, and finally, Andrew Fleming’s Dick (1999), co-starring Michelle Williams.
“Also Starring… Yaphet Koto” will show one more screening of Ridley Scott’s classic, Alien (1979) on Thursday night.
“Brunch at Metrograph” is showing Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) all weekend. Celine Song’s Past Lives (from this year!) will also screen at Metrograph, and it will also play at the Museum of Moving Image in Astoria (see below).
Beginning Friday, Film Forum will be showing William Richert’s 1979 film, Winter Kills (Rialto), starring Jeff Bridges, John Houston, and Elizabeth Taylor, presented by Quentin Tarantino, and then a couple Billy Wilder movies over the weekend: Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, plus the 3D film series, “A Deeper Look,” will show John Wayne’s Hondo in 3D (1953) on Monday. It will continue to show Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt (1963) as well as the 4k restoration of Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise (1991).
“Nicolas Cage Midnights” screens Con Air and National Treasure this weekend, and the IFC Center is also screening Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch (2011) on Friday and Saturday nights with a video intro from Snyder himself. Friday and Saturday will also have screenings of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Brüno (2009) as part of its “The Red Eye” midnight series.
A new 4k of Alejandro Amenábar’s The Other (2001), starring Nicole Kidman, will also start playing on Friday.
“Beautiful Binoche” has been extended, so this weekend, there will be more screenings of 1988’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Damage, the Oscar winning The English Patient, Certified Copy, and others.
Some cool music stuff this weekend including Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise (1980) and Cool Runnings: The Reggae Movie (1985) on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And screenings of Tim Burton’s Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985) in 35mm on Saturday and Sunday.
As part of “Real Rap: Hip Hop Star Power on Screen,” MOMI will be showing Ice Cube’s Barbershop on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. The museum’s ongoing “See It Big: 70mm!” series, offers three great films this weekend, Christopher Nolan’s Inception on Friday, Spike Lee’s Malcolm X on Saturday, and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey on Sunday. The “Queens on Screen” series will show Dito Montiel’s A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints.
A few things I didn’t get to (mostly VOD stuff):
KING ON SCREEN (Darkstar Pictures)
SORRY WE’RE CLOSED (Gravitas Ventures)
TRADER (XYZ Films)
Hopefully there will be a column next week since there are two new wide releases, Warner Bro’s Blue Beetle and Universal’s R-rated comedy, Strays.