The Weekend Warrior August 19, 2022
BEAST, DRAGON BALL SUPER: SUPER HERO, SPIN ME ROUND, ORPHAN: FIRST KILL, SHE-HULK: ATTORNEY AT LAW, GLORIOUS, and More
Let’s see if I do a little bit better this week than I did last week – I mean, not that writing more than 4,000 words is anything to sneeze at, but man, I felt like I was hacking out the column rather than putting a lot of time and energy into it. (And oddly, I ended up very close on most of my predictions so maybe I should do that more often.)
You should know by now that I’m doing a weekly box office preview for Gold Derby, and since that pays, and this column doesn’t, I may have to eventually phase this out, because I just don’t have time to watch and review as many movies as I’d like to and still make a living.
But yeah, this is another week where I’m writing this almost at the last minute with very little time to watch all the movies released, so I’m doing the best I can, and hope you still enjoy the results.
BEAST (Universal)
The higher-profile new movie of the weekend might not be the movie that wins at the box office, even though Universal has been doing a decent push for Idris Elba’s lion attack movie, which co-stars Sharlto Copley and is directed by Baltasar Kormákur (who I interviewed over at Below the Line).
This is an interesting movie and the latest Will Packer production. While Elba has become a fairly big star with all the franchise movies he’s done from the Thor and Avengers movies to 2019’s Fast and Furious Presents Hobbs and Shaw (in which he played the villain), and lots more. In some ways, Beast is Elba’s first movie as a leading man, although he was the biggest name in Beasts of No Nations, an early Netflix pick-up directed by Cary Fukunaga, which reported no box office. Before that, Elba played Nelson Mandela in 2013’s Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, a Weinstein biopic that only made $8.3 million in domestic box office. Another movie that could be a better comparison is 2017’s The Mountain Between Us, a survival thriller co-starring Elba with Kate Winslet, which made $30.3 million after a $10.5 million opening.
Being that Beast is definitely more of a genre film that has a similar appeal as 2019’s alligator thriller Crawl, released by Paramount and opening with $12 million, it seems like there’s a good chance of Elba’s fans looking to watch him a face a real(ish)-world antagonist might give this a look, especially with Bullet Train already slipping away and the movie’s other new wide release appealing to a very different audience.
Beast seems good to make somewhere between $10and 15 million this weekend in 3,500+ theaters, and it could hold up well over the next few weeks, even with Elba offering his own competition by starring in another movie opening next week.
Unfortunately, reviews are embargoed until Thursday at noon, so I’ll add my review back once the embargo is up.
Mini-Review: This looked kind of fun with the trailers I’ve seen over the past few months, and yet, there’s a lot more character-building and drama built into the expected tension and action that takes this B-movie premise into more serious territory.
The simple plot involves Idris Elba as Dr. Nate Samuels, a widower with two teen daughters who he drags to Africa to visit the village where their mother grew up. Once there, they connect with his friend, Martin (Sharlto Copley), who manages a game reserve and has been dealing with poachers, who as the film opens have decimated a lion pack before the remaining alpha male kills as many of them as possible. This is what Samuels and his daughters (who are quite disconnected with their out-of-touch Dad) fall into, discovering that his wife’s village has already been terrorized by this rogue lion with dozens left dead. The thing is that this lion isn’t killing for food, but seemingly for reasons that make no sense.
Again, it’s a pretty simple premise that’s set-up for Samuels and his daughter to be trapped out in the wild with this lion hoping to make them its next victims. Oh, and the poachers return, as well, but they’re more anxious to kill this lion than to save a family in danger.
This is a pretty decent thriller, one that definitely does a commendable job building tension with whether any of the main characters will survive with a pretty hideous and ferocious CG lion terrorizing them at every turn. Director Baltasar Kormákur is pretty good at this kind of thing, as we saw in Everest, and the creative people he works with do a great job, whether it’s capturing or enhancing the African tundra or the VFX team that created this rather realistic and horrific lion.
Maybe my biggest disappointment with Beast is its last act. Without spoiling it, I just felt like the lion survived so much that was thrown at it, and then that very imporant aspect of the movie just kind of peters away, even as the movie keeps going. On the other hand, the movie does use its B-movie roots to speak out against poachers and the damage they’re doing the eco-system in Africa, and that does kind of make up for any issues I might have had.
Still, it’s a fairly taut and entertaining thriller, one that rarely wears out its welcome, which is something to be said in itself when it comes to a modern genre film.
Rating: 7/10
DRAGON BALL SUPER: SUPER HERO (CrunchyRoll)
Anime is hotter than ever, and CrunchyRoll has been there to capitalize on it with a number of theatrical releases based on many popular classic anime cartoons. I personally don’t know a ton about anime (even though I did have a manga phase many Sailer Moons ago), so it’s often hard to gauge interest and awareness for these movies, but in general, anime has been blowing up in recent years.
The first anime movie to really explode in the States was the first Pokémon movie in 1999, which opened with $31 million and grossing $85.7 million, but it led to a series of movies with dwindling returns, which made some think anime was also dying in terms of theatrical. A few things helped disprove that including Japanese legend Hayao Miyazaki who had substantial hits in the States with Spirited Away and others, boosted by support from Disney. The current wave seemed to begin in 2019 when FUNimation and then CrunchyRoll (the two companies are now one) began releasing theatrical features based on popular cartoons, the original Dragon Ball Super: Broly opening with $9.8 million on the MLK three-day weekend after making another $10 million in the previous two days.
Although Broly only grossed $30.7 million domestic, it did that in just 1,267 theaters, but seeing that success helped convince other U.S. theater chains to release upcoming FUNimation movies, including 2021’s Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train, which opened with $21.2 million in 2,087 theaters. That was a pretty amazing number, considering that theaters in New York and L.A. were just reopening, and it had to take on another remake juggernaut in Mortal Kombat (which won that weekend with slightly more in a photo finish). Earlier this year, CrunchyRoll released Jujutsu Kaisen 0: The Movie into 2,418 theaters, and it opened with $14.8 million but didn’t quite make $30 million.
That brings us to the Dragon Ball Super sequel, which has received decent reviews so far, but also is getting a wide release into around 3,100 theaters, including IMAX, Dolby and other premium formats (with higher ticket prices). I’m not sure how many anime fans shell out for the higher-price tickets, but those who do (or those who use AMC A-List like I do) will definitely help boost the movie’s weekend opening to surpass Beast. Even though this is second in the column (mainly because I won’t have a chance to see it), it’s very likely to be #1 for the weekend with somewhere between $15 and 20 million, but with a just as good chance to make even more.
THE CHART:
1. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (Crunchyroll) - $17.6 million N/A
2. Beast (Universal) - $12.3 million N/A
3. Bullet Train (Sony) - $6.1 million -51%
4. Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount) - $5.5 million -22%
5. DC League of Super-Heroes (Warner Bros.) - $4.4 million -38%
6. Thor: Love and Thunder (Marvel/Disney) - $3.3 million -43%
7. Minions: The Rise of Gru (Universal) - $3.2 million -35%
8. Nope (Universal) - $3 million -44%
9. Bodies Bodies Bodies (A24) - $2.6 million -18%
10. Where the Crawdads Sing (Sony) - $2.6 million -38%
Unfortunately, I only had the chance to watch two of the new limited releases this weekend…
ORPHAN: FIRST KILL (Paramount)
I’d been looking forward to this prequel ever since I heard it was happening, and if you haven’t seen the original 2009 horror film, Orphan, you might want to step away, as there might be some spoilers in here for that first movie, which had a pretty major twist in it.
Directed by William Brent Bell of The Boy movies, it once again stars Isabelle Fuhrmann, once again playing Esther, but this time we meet her way before the events of Orphan when she’s the psychotic woman Leena, institutionalized in a psychiatric facility in Estonia until she hatches a master escape plan and poses as the missing daughter of a wealthy couple (Julia Stiles, Rossif Sutherland), returned home after being kidnapped. (So, again, this movie takes place before Orphan even though the once-child-actor Fuhrmann is now 12 years older. Got it?)
I’ll admit to being somewhat skeptical but with a combination of visual effects and just the fact that Fuhrmann is such a good actor, you really believe that she’s a 30-year-old pretending to be a little girl in order to convince this family to take in. There’s actually a lot more going on here, and Orphan: First Kill offers almost as twisted of a twist as the original Orphan, one that keeps it far more interesting than “Esther” just showing up and randomly killing people.
Part of the reason the movie works as well as it does (and maybe more than Brent’s The Boy movies) is that Fuhrmann is matched well with Stiles (another child actor) as well as Sutherland, who yes, is related to the famed Sutherland acting family, though I wasn’t really familiar with his other work. Things get a wonkier as it veers towards its final climax, and there’s just the general issue one might have with prequels, because you kind of know where the movie has to end up… and it does.
Listen, if you enjoyed the craziness of Orphan as much as I did, then you’ll definitely want to see this prequel which opens in select cities and also will available digitally and will stream on Paramount+ all this Friday! I just hope that between this and last year’s The Novice, Fuhrmann starts getting a lot more work, because she’s way more than a mere “scream queen.”
Rating: 7/10
SPIN ME ROUND (IFC Films)
The latest movie from Jeff Baena (The Little Hours, Life After Beth) he co-wrote with Allison Brie, who plays Amber, the manager of a chain Italian restaurant called Tuscan Grove in Bakersfield, California, who is offered an invitation to a glamorous trip to Tuscany to receive further training at the Tuscan Grove villa where she has the opportunity to meet Alessandro Nivola’s Nick, the wealthy founder of the chain who starts to show a romantic interest in Amber.
I feel like I need to state in advance that, as hard as I’ve tried, I have just not been able to get into Baena’s films that I’ve seen. I’m not sure if this is just some subconscious jealousy/bias against him, because he’s married to the wonderful Aubrey Plaza (who has a supporting role in the film), but believe me, I do and have tried my hardest to like his movies.
Spin Me Round is another example of a solid idea with a great cast that just sort of falters as it goes along, because it doesn’t know what to do with its basic concept, so it instead creates a mish-mosh of genres with none of them ever really gelling.
At its best and with a cast that includes improvisational comic greats like Molly Shannon (stranger than ever!), Fred Armisen, and Zach Woods, Spin Me Round could have been a solid ensemble comedy with quirky characters surrounding Brie’s straight-laced Amber. Instead, it decides to go down the road of being a romantic drama ala Eat Pray Love (a book Amber is reading) and then veers slightly into being a thriller where Nick or his assistant Kat (Aubrey Plaza) may be responsible for trying to kidnap Amber and others.
Listen, if I was directing my hypothetical wife Aubrey Plaza in a hypothetical movie, I, too, might write a scene where she makes out with Alison Brie, but nothing much comes out of that, and then Plaza’s character seemingly vanishes from the story.
Even the title makes little sense other than the fact that it allows Baena to use an esoteric Roxy music track, which normally I might love (can’t wait to see the band for the first time next month!), but it just feels shoehorned into the movie’s last act in a way that makes little sense. Any attempt at foreshadowing is just too far on the nose to be effective.
Sadly, an intriguing premise and a terrific cast is once again squandered in a movie that doesn’t really know what it wants to be and neither fully works either as a comedy or a thriller and leaves you wanting… less.
Rating: 5.5/10
DELIA’S GONE (Vertical)
Robert Budreau’s drama stars Stephen James from If Beale Street Could Talk, Marisa Tomei, and Travis Fimmel, and like so many movies this week, I just didn’t have time to watch it before I had to get this column written. James plays Louis who has an “intellectual disability” (is this the new PC version of calling someone “mentally challenged”?) and lives with his sister Delia, played by Genelle Williams, who struggles with addiction. When Delia vanishes (hence the title), her truck found abandoned at a bar, the local sheriff (Tomei) realizes she’s been killed with Louis being the main suspect and sent to five years in prison. Once out, Louis is visited by Fimmel’s Stacker who says there’s more to Delia’s murder. Seems very dark and dramatic and maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t have time to watch it?
THREE MINUTES - A LENGTHENING (Super Ltd)
This documentary, written and directed by Bianca Stigter, adapts (and expands on) Glenn Kurtz’s “Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film” about his three minutes of footage of the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk, Poland before the Holocaust (where presumably many or most of them died). I’ll definitely get around to seeing this as soon as I can, because despite my cynicism about movies about the Holocaust, I do think there’s some interesting stories to tell, as seen recently in From Where They Stood, so I’ll have to make some time catch this. It’s playing at the Quad Cinema in New York and presumably other cities, as well.
THE IMMACULATE ROOM (Screen Media Films)
Mukunda Michael Dewil directs this thriller starring Emile Hirsch and Kate Bosworth as a couple who agree to take part in a psychological experiment to compete for 5 million doors if they can last 50 days in a white room with no phones or family, just the “Voice of the Immaculate Room.” Sounds like an intriguing premise for a thriller, and it’s opening at the Village East by Angelika in New York City on Friday, as well as other theaters and On Demand, too!
Streaming…
SHE-HULK: ATTORNEY AT LAW (Disney+)
I was pretty excited for the latest Disney+ series from Marvel, because She-Hulk is one of those characters who has just gotten more interesting as the years have gone on with a number of great runs by John Byrne and more recently, Dan Slott. Both those guys decided to make it more of a comedic title with a lot of fourth-wall breaking, and thankfully, that’s intact in this series, which is probably the closest Marvel has come to a sitcom with the terrific Tatiana Maslany playing Jennifer Walters, who gets Hulk powers when she ends up in a car crash with her cousin, Dr. Bruce Banner (once again played by Mark Ruffalo).
It didn’t even bother me that this She-Hulk’s origin is so different from the one in the ‘70s comics (that I sadly no longer own), because it’s extended over the entire first episode where we get to see a good 30 minutes with Jennifer getting to learn about her powers while competing against the better-known Hulk. (Those who complained about the CG from the trailers probably should chill the eff out, cause both characters look just fine when compared to VFX on other Disney+ shows.)
I honestly think that Tatiana Maslany may have been Marvel’s best casting in a very long time, because she’s able to carry this series with levity and fourth-wall breaking humor that only a few actors could truly pull off. I won’t say too much about the other three episodes I saw except that those who have enjoyed recent Marvel movies like Shang-Chi and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness should enjoy the connecting tissue they have with those movies while still remaining focused on Jen/She-Hulk. (It’s also very funny that Jen breaks the fourth wall to say what most people will be thinking… that Marvel is intentionally using characters like Wong to sell those unfamiliar with She-Hulk.)
But what really makes She-Hulk special is that it’s written and directed by women, so when it deals with things like the horrors of dating and such things, it just has a lot more credibility than when such things were written by Byrne or Slott.
Apparently, there are nine episodes of the (hopefully) first season, and presumably will see more of Jameela Jamil’s Titania, who only appears briefly in Episode 1 but is also should be She-Hulk’s main nemesis. (We do get a tease of one of my favorite Marvel super-villain teams, so hopefully we’ll see more of them, too.)
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is quite a delight, a very funny addition to the Disney+ Marvel line-up with Maslany making me wish that I had made more of an effort to see her previous series, Orphan Black. (Is it just me who finds it odd that Krysten Ritter is starting in an Orphan Black spin-off series? I mean, surely we’ll see her in this as Jessica Jones, since every super-powered lawyer needs their own super-powered private detective, right?)
GLORIOUS (Shudder)
I’ve been looking forward to the new movie from Dr. Rebekah McKendrick, which premiered at Fantasia a few weeks back, but unfortunately, I just didn’t have time to watch it before writing this column. It streams on Shudder starting this Thursday, and it stars Ryan Kwanten as Wes who ends up at a remote rest stop after a bad break-up and gets locked into a bathroom with a stranger in a neighboring stall (played by JK Simmons!) – man, I hate when that happens to me! (AND I just got the title…) – but I guess I’ll just have to see what happens when I watch it over the weekend along with the rest of you intrepid Shudder subscribers.
THE HOUSE OF THE DRAGON (HBO Max)
Starting this Sunday is the long-awaited Game of Thrones spin-off which I haven’t been privy to any early review screeners myself, but I’m certainly looking forward to watching the new show, having been a pretty big Game of Thrones fans right up until the end. I’ve even stayed away from the trailers for this one, just because I want to be surprised.
Repertory stuff… (almost had to skip this again! ARGH!)
Putting Quad first this week, just because I’m really excited about their new repertory series, “Boundless Bardem,” which is running for the next week with lots of movies starring (you guessed it) Oscar winner Javier Bardem! They’re showing a lot of great movies I’ve seen like Skyfall and The Sea Inside, a few I haven’t seen (like I never saw Before Night Falls and Jamón Jamón, though I loved hearing him talk about them on Scott Feinstein’s “Awards Chatter” podcast). There are a few dogs like Darren Aronofsky’s mother!, which I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, though I’m sure some might want to see it out of curiosity, and just a lot of movies squeezed into the week before Bardem’s new movie, The Good Boss, is released next week.
Screening as part of “Welcome to Metrograph A to Z” is Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess from 1973, while this weekend’s “Playtime: Bicycles and Balloons” is the wonderful animated film, The Triplets of Belleville (2003) from Sylvain Chomet. “The Summer of Rohmer” continues both in theaters and on the digital platform. (I’m excited to see that Isabel Sandoval’s debut feature Señorita from 2011 is also streaming EXCLUSIVELY on the platform. If you loved Lingua Franca as much as I did, you’ll definitely want to check it out.) A series that started out last week that I missed (due to time constraints) is “The Process: A Tribute to Robert and Irving Young,” who I don’t know that much about but they’re showing the Coen Brother’s MIller’s Crossing (one of my favorite movies by those brothers) as well as Barbara Kopple’s Oscar-winning doc Harlan County, U.S.A. (last showing on Thursday), and lots more.
“Road Trip: American Cinema from Coast to Coast” continues this week with screenings of John Carpenter’s The Fog, Hitchcock’s Birds, and Marc Lawrence’s PIgs (1973), while “Late Nites: Miami Heat” will screen Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain, starring Dwayne Johnson and Mark Wahlberg late night on Thursday.
ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE (Downtown Brooklyn, Downtown Manhattan, Staten Island)
As if I wasn’t running late enough on this column, I should mention that Alamo Drafthouse just opened its Staten Island location, which may not be as easy for me to get to as the Brooklyn/Manhattan locations but will definitely make the trek is for the series “RZA’s Saturday Shaolin Theater,” which will show martial arts flicks picked by the Wu Tang Clan’s RZA with this Saturday’s afternoon offering being Master of the Flying Guillotine from 1976, which I’ve been dying to see since seeing the trailer at the Nitehawk’s monthly, “Sundays on Fire!” (which I only haven’t included here ‘cause the screenings aren’t announced in advance.) Anyway, will try to include more Alamo content now that they’re doing more series specific to individual theaters.
Film Forum is in the midst of its “Alan Resnais 100,” celebrating the French filmmaker’s 100th birthday with a big-time retrospective with lots of movies I’ve heard of (like Hiroshima Mon Amour) but never seen. Seems like a good time to put your Criterion collection away and go see some of these movies in theaters. They’re also showing Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg once a day this weekend.
The Paris is continuing its “Directors Select” movies all month, showing movies selected by directors with movies coming to Netflix like Rian Johnson (who picked Friday’s selection, Sidney Giliat’s Green for Danger from 1947), Scott Cooper (Friday and Saturday’s Don’t Look Now by NIcolas Roeg, starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie), Joshua Oppenheimer’s docs The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence (selected by Margaret Brown), and Truffaut’s Don’t Shoot the Piano Player, picked by Noah Baumbach.
MOMI continues its genre love to coincide with its “The Walking Dead” exhibit with “White Zombies: Nightmares of Empire” that will screen Bela Lugosi’s White Zombie on Friday, as well as Ouanga and The Ghost Breakers (with a special panel discussion) on Saturday.
FilmLinc is showing a 4k restored version of Lodge Kerrigan’s 2004 indie Keane, starring Damian Lewis, starting on Friday, and both Kerrigan and Keane will be there on Saturday night for a QnA moderated by Christopher Abbott. They’re also doing a week-long “Animating Funny Pages,” a series of movies selected specifically by filmmaker Owen Kline leading up to the showing of his new movie, Funny Pages, which opens next week.
IFC is screening a new 4k restoration of Vera Chytilová’s 1966 Czech film, Daisies, over the next week, plus lots of other stuff, as usual.
“Messaging the Monstrous” continues with “Folk Horror” through Sunday, and then “Eco Horror” starting on Monday. By this point, you should know the drill… lots of fantastic old and newer horror being screened, mostly single screenings that you won’t want to miss. “Folk Horror” will include Jayro Bustamente’s 2019 film La Llorona (not to be confused with that other movie), as well as Issa Lopez’s Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017), Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves (1984), and more. “Eco Horror” will include the incredible Korean horror film, The Wailing (2016), Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002), George Romeros’ The Crazies (1973) and much more.
Apologies to ROXY CINEMA, who probably has lots of great 35mm stuff this weekend, which you can check out by clicking on its title.
ETC… (and apologies to the publicists that I wasn’t able to get to all of these)
GET AWAY IF YOU CAN (Brainstorm Media)
DINNER PARTY (Vertical Entertainment)
THE RUNNER (Saban Films)
THE TERRITORY (NatGeo Documentary Films )
SQUEAL (Good Deed Entertainment/Cranked Up)
BABYSITTER (MUBI)
LEGACY: THE TRUE STORY OF THE L.A. LAKERS (Hulu)
Next week… filmmaker George Miller returns with 3,000 Years of Longing, starring Idris Elba (him, again!) and Tilda Swinton, while Screen Gems releases the vampire thriller, The Invitation.
Box office data provided by The-Numbers.com.