The Weekend Warrior August 26, 2022
THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING, THE INVITATION, THE GOOD BOSS, BREAKING, FUNNY PAGES, ME TIME, SAMARITAN, and more!
I’ve been writing about box office for so long now that I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve had to mention the “Dog Days of Summer,” while writing about the second to last weekend in August, but yeah, it’s rarely good. I have a few examples of that below, but in the past few years pre-COVID, this weekend has mostly had movies from previous weekends at #1 with one rare recent exception. Again, see below.
THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING (MGM/UA Releasing)
Seven years after making Mad Max: Fury Road, a movie that won six Oscars out of ten nominations, filmmaker George Miller is back with a very different movie, an adaptation of A.S. Byatt’s short story about Alithea, a scholar travelling in Istanbul (played by Tilda Swinton) who encounters a Djinn (played by Idris Elba) who grants her three wishes.
It’s so nice that George Miller is back, and he’s doing a movie that’s different from what may be expected, although in this case, I’m not sure Three Thousand Years of Longing really has much to offer in the way that his popular films like the Babe and the Happy Feet movies did. And of course, this is also no Mad Max. What it does have is the popular duo of Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton, their first movie together, which could be seen as a decent sell, as might be the film’s “Arabian Knights” type setting, at least for the backstory of Elba’s character.
The movie premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May to much excitement, but it just hasn’t made as many fans as some of the other Cannes premieres like Elvis and Top Gun: Maverick. Reviews are mixed at best, at 64% on Rotten Tomatoes, which really isn’t THAT bad, but this is a movie that really is going to succeed or fail based on whether the reviews stay up in that 60% range.
MGM/UA is releasing Miller’s movie into roughly 2,500 theaters, so not exceedingly wide, but it was probably a smart move to put it on this weekend rather than its original release for next Wednesday. I think this one may be good for $7 or 8 million, but I wouldn’t be remotely surprised if it ends up lower, just because this just doesn’t have the excitement factor of other summer movies, and this has become a notoriously bad weekend.
Mini-Review: Well, I really wanted to like George Miller’s new movie, and I even went into it after avoiding the reviews from Cannes for months. Unfortunately, this just isn’t his best work, and I’m not sure if it’s the fault of the source material or just that his passion for it led to a movie that just doesn’t have the mainstream appeal of some of his earlier films. In some ways, this is to Miller as The Lovely Bones was to Peter Jackson, although at least that was a best-selling book.
We meet Swinton’s Alithea on her trip to Istanbul where she finds an ornate bottle in an antiques shop. Of course, there’s a Djinn in that bottle, and it’s played by Idris Elba – yeah, the guy who was fighting against a lion just last week. The rest of the movie involves the two of them in a hotel room wearing bath robes as the Djinn waits for Alithea to make her three wishes and tells her his sad story of how love got him trapped within the bottle.
That’s pretty much the entire plot. While it’s fun watching Miller playing in the “Arabian Knights” of the Djinn’s past and how at times, that reminds me of the films of Terry Gilliam (most notably Baron Munchausen, a personal fave), it just didn’t keep me particularly invested in any of it. Yes, it’s sad but true. Miller’s latest is a bit of a snoozefest, and it didn’t help that I decided to watch it early in the morning either.
There isn’t much else to say about it. Alithea eventually brings the Djinn back to the UK with her where he encounters her racist neighbors, but there’s nothing that really clicks beyond the flashbacks.
It’s a true shame Three Thousand Years of Longing just never truly grabs nor entertains the viewer on the level of George Miller’s other movies. Because of that, it’s likely to be seen as one of the year’s biggest duds, even if it’s technically solid as an attempted experiment.
Rating: 6/10
THE INVITATION (Sony/Screen Gems)
I won’t have nearly as much to say about this new vampire movie starring Nathalie Emmauel from the “Fast and Furious” movies as Evie, a woman who travels to England when she discovers she has a long-lost cousin and a family there… and they’re vampires!!!! Okay, I think that’s what the movie is about. I haven’t actually seen it, but this has been around for a while as a movie called The Bride, before Sony literally dumped it on what is normally one of the worst weekends of the year.
Honestly, that’s all I really have to say about this movie, because even if I went back and looked at the other horror movies released in this weekend in August, I don’t expect a lot. Although Rob Zombie’s Halloween and The Final Destination did fine over Labor Day weekend, the weekend before just rarely cuts it with very few hits. The last few years, late August had a few long-running hits including Angel Has Fallen (2019), Crazy Rich Asians (2018), and The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017), and the last weekend of August in 2016 had a rare horror hit in Don’t Breathe – that was also released by Sony’s Screen Gems division, I believe, which might explain this movie on this date – but then the year before, there was the thriller No Escape, which opened with $8 million in 3,355 theaters.
I think Sony will be pretty happy if The Invitation opens that well, but also, Sony isn’t really screening this in advance for critics, so there probably won’t be any reviews until Friday sometime. (I’m going to go see it on Thursday afternoon using my AMC A-list.) Because of this, I think this will be more in the $5 to 6 million range and probably will end up in fourth place behind Beast.
BREAKING (Bleecker Street)
John Boyega plays Marine veteran Brian Brown-Easley in Abi Damaris Corbin’s movie based on the true story of Brown-Easley taking a Marietta, Georgia bank hostage in order to get his VA benefits, leaving two bank managers (Nicole Beharie, Selenis Leyva) trying to figure out how to get out of it while the police and the media wait outside. This will also be getting a release into a reported 736 theaters this weekend, which probably is good for $1.5 million, which might not be enough to get into the top 10. It’s unfortunate, because this movie, Ms. Corbin’s second feature after 2017’s Actors Anonymous is quite good, as you can read in my review below.
Mini-Review: I missed Breaking at Sundance when it played as “892,” which I couldn’t even tell you what that pertains to, but Boyega gives another fine performance as Brian, a Marine seemingly suffering from PTSD and having financial issues because the V.A. (Veterans Affairs) has held his monthly payment.
Without knowing the story of Brian Brown-Easley, Breaking works as a taut crime-thriller in the vein of Dog Day Afternoon or Spike Lee’s Inside Man, but Ms. Corbin does a terrific job keeping it claustrophobic for the first 40 minutes before going outside the bank and showing how the police and media are dealing with the possibility of Brian blowing up the bank.
As might be expected, Boyega’s terrific performance is a good reason to check this out, but it also features one of the last performances by the always great Michael K. Williams – a performance so good, it might make you tear up – as well as Nicole Beharie as the bank manager who agrees to remain in the bank with Brian and try to resolve his issues. Connie Britton plays someone at the television station who begins a phone rapport with Brian, but things get continuously more tense as it doesn’t seem like Brian might survive his foolish act.
Breaking does a fine job showing you what many veterans have to deal with on a regular basis, but Boyega finds a way into this character’s mental health issues without making it feel exploitative. While you might go see it for Boyega, he’s the standout within an ensemble cast that brings so much to telling Brian’s story.
Rating: 7.5/10
Disney is also rereleasing the Star Wars spin-off/prequel ROGUE ONE (Disney) into an unknown number of IMAX theaters, though I don’t see this doing nearly as well as the recent E.T. the Extraterrestrial re-release, just because this is already on Disney+ and has been for a while.
THE CHART:
This is going to be an even worse weekend than the one a few weeks back, because Dragon Ball Super will have a major tumble but will still remain in first place with less than $10 million. Then there’s just a bunch of mid-range releases mixed in with returning movies, but nothing really exploding.
UPDATE: Theater counts were different enough for me to make some changes on Thursday night before numbers were revealed. I also got to see The Invitation, and it wasn’t so bad, so I think it might beat Three Thousand Years of Longing, after all. Adjusted predictions below.
1. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (Crunchyroll) - $8 million -60% (down .6 million)
2. The Invitation (Sony/Screen Gems) - $7 million N/A (up $1.6 million and two places)
3. Beast (Universal) - $5.6 million -51% (same)
4. Three Thousand Years of Longing (UA Releasing) - $5.1 million N/A (down $1.4 million and two places)
5. Bullet Train (Sony) - $4.9 million -39%
6. Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount) $4.7 million -20%
7. DC League of Super-Heroes (Warner Bros.) - $4.2 million -25%
8. Thor: Love and Thunder (Marvel/Disney) - $2.5 million -38%
9. Where the Crawdads Sing (Sony) - $2.4 million -24%
10. Minions: The Rise of Gru (Universal) - $2.4 million -35%
- Breaking (Bleecker Street) - $1.5 million N/A
- Rogue One IMAX Re-release (Disney/Lucasfilm) - $650,000 N/A
It was a tough choice this week, but this week’s “Chosen One” is…
THE GOOD BOSS (Cohen Media)
Javier Bardem stars in this satire from Spanish filmmaker Fernando León de Aranoa, who reunites with Bardem after 2002’s Mondays in the Sun and 2017’s Finding Pablo. In this movie which was nominated for 20 Goya Awards (Spain’s Oscars), winning six, Bardem plays Blanco, the president and CEO of a company that makes scales of all sorts. The factory is about to be visited by a committee who plans to present Blanco with a prestigious award, but he’s having so many issues with various employees that he’s nervous that they might sabotage his latest honor.
I enjoyed this movie so much without having seen any of Bardem and de Aranoa’s previous collaborations, but I’m not even remotely surprised that this was Spain’s selection for the Oscars over Almodova’s latest movie, though I was surprised that it didn’t either get nominated or shortlisted, apparently. It’s a little crazy, since this is another awards-worthy performance by Bardem, which already scored him his seventh Goya. It also was Spain’s submission for the 94th Oscars, and I’m surprised that it wasn’t even shortlisted.
Without going into huge details about all the plot twists, this reminded me a lot of some of my favorite Coen Brothers movies — A Serious Man immediately came to mind – as Blanco starts to get himself into trouble with angry fired employees and the attractive daughter of friends who joins the company as an intern – something Blanco only discovers after he sleeps with her. Just like the Coens, Aranoa surrounds Bardem’s Blanco with lots of similarly eccentric and quirky characters, and it’s such a hoot watching how the different subplots end up interacting.
Probably one of the more amusing and entertaining foreign films this year, this ends up being a surprisingly fun companion piece to Official Competition, starring Bardem’s real-life wife Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas. It just goes to show you that there’s a lot of really clever and creative filmmakers coming out of Spain that aren’t necessarily named “Almodovar.”
Rating: 8/10
FUNNY PAGES (A24)
This feature film directorial debut by child actor Owen Kline (Life as a House, The Squid and the Whale) stars Daniel Zolghadri (Eighth Grade) as Robert, a young man who wants to be a illustrious cartoonist, but his attempts to move out of his parents’ house just shows that it’s harder than he thought. At his day job working as a public defender, he meets Wallace (Matthew Maher), who has experience working as a color separator for Image Comics, and the doe-eyed Robert wants Wallace to teach him.
I was curious about this movie mainly because I have friends who are cartoonists and work in comics, including the underground comics that inspire Daniel Zolghadri’s character, such as the work of Peter Bagge and Daniel Clowes (who I’ve met and interviewed a few times over the years). In fact, if you ever wondered what it might be like to experience a live action Peter Bagge (and that’s for better or worse) than Funny Pages is for you.
We meet Robert as he’s showing some of his latest work to his beloved teacher, Mr. Katano, played by Stephen Adly Guirgis, who proceeds to strip down to almost nothing, suggesting Robert draw him. Instead, Robert freaks out (as one might when presented with a nude Stephen Adly Guirgis) and runs off, followed by his teacher, who then dies in a car crash. It’s an interesting to a bizarro movie that gets even weirder as Robert sneaks back into his teacher’s classroom to get back his art and is arrested and tried.
I will give Kline credit for having a unique style of storytelling, but it reminds me a lot of the films by the Safdie Brothers – little coincidence since they are producers – and it offers a few amusing scenes (like a couple in Robert’s local comic shop) but quickly derails the actual plot involving Robert wanting to be mentored by the unstable Wallace. Both Zolghardi and Maher give decent performances, and it’s always nice seeing Josh Pais, but things never truly gel the way they need to.
Others might compare Funny Pages to the vastly superior films of Terry Zwigoff (Crumb, Ghost World), but where Kline falters is that his frequent attempts to gross the viewer out, quite effectively at times, just turned me off completely. This is particularly true in the turning point regarding Robert’s roommates, and the movie just never recovers after that.
Rating: 5.5/10
And then we have a few other genre films that I wasn’t able to get to…
ALIENOID (Well Go USA)
From Korea comes this big budget sci-fi action film directed by Choi Dong-hoon, which is planned as the first in a two-part series, this one starring Ryu Jun-Yeol, Kim Woo-bin, and Kim Tae-ri. It takes place in two eras and follows two Goryeo Dynasty gurus (whatever that is) trying to find a time-bending blade when they run into people from the present day who are hunting an alien hiding inside a human body.
MANEATER (Saban Films)
Hey! It’s another shark movie! And sadly, I didn’t have time to watch this one, that’s written and directed by Justin Lee, starring Nicky Whelan as Jesse, who goes on an island vacation with her friends when they become a target for… wait for it… a great white shark! It also stars Trace Adkins, Jeff Fahey, and Shane West.
LOW LIFE (XYZ Films)
Tyler Michael James’ cat-and-mouse thriller hits VOD on Thursday, August 25, as it follows YouTube star Benny, who catches predators online but gets into trouble when he accidentally lets one into his home.
PRIVATE DESERT (Kino Lorber)
I didn’t get a chance to see this Brazilian drama which premiered at Venice last year, but it will open at the Quad Cinema on Friday and maybe other theaters? Directed by Aly Muritiba, it involves Daniel, who is suspended as a police academy instructor after his internet girlfriend Sara goes missing, so he decides to drive 2,000 miles across Brazil to find her. That’s really all I know about the movie without seeing it, but I’m always a fan when movies from Brazil are released in this country.
Streaming…
I don’t know what it is with these streaming movies that I’m unable to get a screener early enough that I can watch and review for a Weds (sometimes Thursday) column, but at least the first two are embargoed until late on Thursday anyway.
ME TIME (Netflix)
Kevin Hart and Mark Johnson star in this comedy from John Hamburg, the filmmaker behind probably one of the top 10 best buddy comedies of all time, I Love You, Man. In this one, Hart plays Sonny Fisher, a stay-at-home-dad with two kids who is given some “me time” when his overworked wife Maya (Regina Hall) offers to take the kids away for spring break. Fisher decides to use his time as a free man to attend the 44th birthday party of his old best friend Huck Dembo, a partying bachelor who will probably get Sonny in trouble as they rekindle their friendship. This is only debuting on Netflix Friday, and reviews are embargoed until Thursday night, so I’ll try to find the time to write one and add it here.
SAMARITAN (Prime Video)
Hitting Prime Video on Friday, Sylvester Stallone stars in this action thriller from Julius Avery (Overlord) about Gravity City garbage man Joe Smith, who a 13-year-old named Sam believes is the city’s long-lost hero and whom he hopes will help defeat the evil gang lord Cyrus (Pilou Asbæk) that is abusing the city’s lack of superheroes.
Mini-Review: I really liked Julius Avery’s previous film, Overlord, and was a little bummed and mystified why MGM didn’t feel strongly enough about his follow-up to give it a theatrical release, instead opting for a weak movie by a better-known filmmaker i.e. Three Thousand Years of Longing. Listen, I’ve never said that I understand why these decisions are made, but after seeing Samaritan, the decision became much clearer.
First, we get an animated prologue during the opening credits where we learn about the rivalry between superhero Samaritan and his super-villain brother Nemesis, before Samaritan vanished, presumed dead. Javon 'Wanna' Walton plays tween Sam Cleary, who believes that Samaritan is still alive.
It took me some time to get beyond the fact that this was basically a rip-off of Adam Egypt Mortimer’s Archenemy, while also stealing liberally from Thor and Steel in terms of Samaritan’s power-wielding hammer. Written by Bragi Schut, who wrote the first Escape Room, which I loved, and Season of the Witch, which kind of sucked, it’s a little odd that this is being released so soon after Secret Headquarters, which was also about a kid who discovers his father is a superhero… oh, and that also ended up being dumped to streaming. Coincidence?
Honestly, I just didn’t know about a movie teaming Sylvester Stallone with a kid, so I went into this one with a fair degree of concern and hesitance, probably for good reason. First of all, this is a PG-13 movie involving a kid, which is not necessarily something that actual teens and older people will care for even with the random F-word thrown in there.
Samaritan reunites Avery with Pilou Asbæk from Overlord as Cyrus, a Fagin-like crimelord who uses kids to steal stuff, including Sam, and there are tiny blink-and-you’ll-miss’em roles for Martin Starr and Shameik Moore from two different “Spider-Man” movies. Sam’s best friend Jace (Abraham Clinkscales) also quickly vanishes, as the movie turns into a super-awkward buddy movie between Sam and Joe, which tries to be comic but never delivers much in terms of laughs.
The movie is just poorly written with absolutely horrid dialogue, and the action and stunts don’t do much to save it, as is often the case with Stallone’s movies. Then the whole thing is overpowered with a bombastic score and some very bad visual effects. At least the last act just goes full-on action movie (with a few quips), but it comes with a twist that most will see coming a mile away. At least Secret Headquarters knew what it was (a movie for kids) and that did a fine job making it interesting and entertaining for them; this is an attempt at an “original” superhero movie by filmmakers who clearly should have just stayed out of superheroes.
Maybe it isn’t so hard to believe that a movie with such a horrible plot would also involve such lazy writing and filmmaking, but Samaritan just doesn’t work at all, other than something that can be thrown on streaming in the background while you do other things.
Rating: 5/10
Repertory stuff….
“The Process: A Tribute to Robert and Irwin Young” continues this weekend (actually just Thursday) with screenings of Robert Young’s Triumph of the Spirit (1989) and The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1982), John Hanson’s 1984 film Wildrose, and Robert Young’s Rich Kids (1975), mostly on 35mm.
“Welcome to Metrograph A to Z” offers a bunch of films this weekend, including Stanley Kubrick’s first film The Killing (1956), Agnes Varda’s Jane B. par Agnes V. (1988), an “imaginary biopic” about Jane Birkin, John Huston’s 1946 doc, Let There Be Light, and more.
“Road Trip: American Cinema from Coast to Coast” is still going strong with quite a mix of movie this weekend, including The Exiles, The Misfits, Clint Eastwood’s Play Misty for Me, Nina Menkes’ Queen of Diamonds, Paul Schrader’s 1979 film, Hardcore, and a lot more. Oh, yeah, and PT Anderson’s Inherent Vice (2014) in 35mm!
“Playtime: Bicycles and Balloons” is screening both Pixar’s Up and the Dardennes’ The Kid with a Bike this weekend and a few days next week. “Late Nites: Miami Heat” looks to be winding down with a good one, Jonathan Demme’s Married to the Mob from 1988!
Incidentally, Metrograph’s digital At Home platform has populated with a lot of new things recently, so it’s a great time to subscribe for $5 a month. (That membership comes with lots of other perks.)
“Directors Select” continues with Bram Stoker’s Dracula from Francis Ford Coppola (selected by Scott Cooper) on Thursday and Sunday, Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) on Saturday (selected by Noah Baumbach), and the 1963 horror film, The Haunting also on Saturday. Sunday, they’ll screen The World According to Garp, starring the late Robin Williams (another Baumbach selection), and then on Tuesday, you have a rare chance to see the 1973 murder mystery The Last of Sheila on the big screen, thanks to Rian Johnson!
As its “Alan Resnais 100” series continues, the Forum will also keep the Resnais love going with a one-week run of a new 4k restoration of his 1966 film, La Guerre Est Finie, as well as a few more screenings of his very popular Hiroshima Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad, and others through the weekend. It’s also doing a one-week run of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964), a stone-cold classic.
Continuing the series with a 4k restoration of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors: Red (1994) (and the other movies in the trilogy continue to show as well!)
ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE (Downtown Brooklyn, Downtown Manhattan, Staten Island)
At the three New York Alamos, you can see John Carpenter’s They Live in either digital 2D or 35mm, so go to the link above and choose the showing/location that works for you.
One of my all-time favorite movies, Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World from 2001 will screen in a 2k restoration, but even more exciting is the IFC Center’s “World of Wong Kar Wai” series, showing 12 of the master’s movies, many in 35mm, as well as a new director’s cut of The Hand. If you love Wong Kar Wai, but haven’t been able to see many of his movies on a big screen, this is your chance! This weekend’s “Late Night Favorites” is Jodorowsky’s classic midnight movie, El Topo, as well as Kubrick’s The Shining, Michael Mann’s Heat, as well as a few other IFC regulars like David Lynch’s Lost Highway.
As promised, MOMA’s horror series “Messaging the Monstrous” continues with “Eco Horror” including Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever and The Green Inferno, the 1984 cult classic C.H.U.D., and more. Sunday begins the next series “Creatures” with everything from Neil Marshall’s The Descent (2005) to John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), Benson and Moorhead’s Spring (2014), Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield, and one of my favorite movies of 2006, Bong Joon-ho’s The Host!
This weekend’s “See It Big: 70mm!” offerings are Disney’s Tron from 1982, as well as Disney’s Sleeping Beauty on Saturday. “White Zombies: Nightmares of Empire” continue with another screening of White Zombie, as well as two showings of Jacques Tourneur’s horror classic, I Walked with a Zombie from 1943. Friday afternoon, you can see the original Men In Black as part of “Queens on Screen.”
This weekend’s 35mm offerings include Jennifer’s Body on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday! They’re also showing Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People (1942), also in 35mm on Thursday and Saturday, as well as Roman Polanski’s Bitter Moon (1992).
ETC…
ADOPTING AUDREY (Vertical)
OUT OF THE BLUE (Quiver Distribution)
JANE (Blue Fox Entertainment)
UNTRAPPED: THE STORY OF LIL BABY (Prime Video)
THE STRANGER IN OUR BED
Next week… it’s Labor Day weekend, and Spider-Man: No Way Home is being rereleased with more footage?!? And Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is being rereleased in premium formats?!? At least there’s also the Sundance satire, Honk for Jesus, Praise the Lord., starring Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown, but expect another down weekend.
Box office data provided by The-Numbers.com.