The Weekend Warrior July 1, 2022
MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU, MR. MALCOLM’S LIST, HALLELUJAH, THE FORGIVEN, RUBIKON, THE PRINCESS, and More
It’s the 4th of July weekend, as the annual summer holiday will take place this coming Monday, and with schools out already, it seems like a good time for another family film, right? At least that’s what Universal hopes, even if the last attempted animated franchise prequel, Lightyear, just hasn’t done well at all. But Buzz Lightyear is no Minions so….
MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU (Universal)
The 4th of July weekend marks the time during the summer when studios will often try to release a family-friendly film in hopes of bringing in that business over the hotter and more humid days of summer. It’s also hopeful that parents will be more apt to take their younger kids to the movies now that the under-5 crowd is able to get vaccinated. And the Minions presumably are still popular after appearing in four previous movies, including 2015’s Minions, which acted as a prequel to the Despicable Me side characters who proved so popular.
I’m not going to go into too much detail about the box office history of the Minions, since you can easily see the numbers at The Numbers, but it all started in 2010 with the first Despicable Me, which had a moderate $56.4 million but grossed $251.5 million domestic and $975.2 million worldwide. That was the benchmark for two direct sequels in 2012 and 2017, and the original Minions spin-off prequel in 2015. The success of the latter with its $115.7 million opening showed Universal and animation house Illumination Studios that people really did love the Minions and wanted to know more about them, although the third Despicable Me movie didn’t do as well, which could also show some fatigue with the franchise.
Despicable Me 3 was five years ago, and it took a bit longer than planned to get Minions: The Rise of Gru ready to release into theaters, but it may be coming out at the perfect time for a couple reasons. One: after a general dirth of family films over the first half of the year, July sees the release of a number of family and animated films and Minions is the first one out of the gate. Two: The last family film released was Pixar’s Lightyear, and that movie underperforming quite badly may reflect
I keep going back to a movie like The Penguins of Madagascar from DreamWorks Animation, which was released over Thanksgiving 2014 and opened with a dismal $35 million over the five-day week and only grossed $83.3 million. It was considered a major disappointment after the success of the Madagascar movies, which all made more than $180 million domestically. So what was missing from Penguins? That’s obvious. All of the high-profile voice actors like Ben Stiller and Chris Rock. Minions: The Rise of Gru has a different problem, because while it brings back Steve Carell’s Gru, older audiences may already be tired of that character seeing how Despicable Me 3 made less than Minions two years earlier. Oh, and all three movies are directed by Kyle Balda (with a couple co-directors for this one).
We look at that drop between Minions and Despicable Me 3, and we have to wonder if that’s a sign for how the new Minions will perform, plus you have to add in the five years between the movies which is a lot of time when you consider that 8-year-olds that saw DM3 are now 13 and probably have moved on to other things, etc.
Reviews are slowly rolling in and my own should be below, and it’s currently at 64% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is better than both 2015’s MInions (55% from critics, 49% from audiences) and 2017’s Despicable Me 3 (59% critics, 53% audience). Those movies generally received less praise and positive reviews than the first two Despicable Me movies, but that’s probably come to be expected since few critics have the patience for additional sequels, prequels, and spin-offs when they like an earlier movie. See Lightyear, again. All the previous movies, other than Despicable Me 3, received “A” CinemaScores, so audiences have a little more patience than critics.
I highly doubt the Minions sequel/Despicable Me prequel can deliver an opening on par with Minions but maybe it can match or come close to the opening of Despicable Me 3, which opened in the weekend before the 4th of July, which in that case, landed on a Tuesday so didn’t help the threequel’s opening so much. Although schools are pretty much out, having Monday being 4th of July means that people will be off work, which will make this one of the possibilities for families to watch over the extended weekend. That should be enough for it to make between $70 and 75 million over the three days, and around $88 million or so including Monday.
Mini-Review: While I can’t say that I have a lot of affection for this franchise of “lovable” Minions, who consistently steal all the previous movies from Steve Carell, The Rise of Gru at least tries to make it as much about the Minions as a prequel to the Despicable Me movies. But there’s still a lot of Gru, and that might be its biggest hindrance.
One thing I realized while watching the latest Minions is that my patience for Steve Carell outside of The 40 Year Old Virgin (which I’ve watched a million times) has waned quite drastically in recent way. Because of this, the way this movie splits the time evenly between Gru and the Minions meant that every few minutes I was getting thoroughly frustrated. (It does allow for the great Dame Julie Andrews to voice Gru’s mother, though.)
The premise is fairly simple, as it introduces the Vicious 6, a group of super-villains who have just ousted their leader, Wild Knuckles (voiced by Alan Arkin), after getting their hands on the valuable Zodiac jewels. We then meet young Gru, who is barely 12 years old, but has hundreds of Minions doing his bidding already, until Gru is invited to apply to join the Vicious 6. That doesn’t go well, since they laugh at the fact he’s a child, until he steals the Zodiac jewel from them to prove he’s up to the evil expected of those wanting to join the group. One of the Minions – “Otto,” I believe – loses the gem, and then Gru get kidnapped by Wild Knuckles, and that’s pretty much the whole plot set-up
Directed by Kyle Balda, who performed the same duties on the last two movies in the franchise, Minions: Rise of Gru benefits from the zaniness of the villains in the Vicious Six and the actors voicing them, which includes Taraji P. Henson, Lucy Lawless (as a straight-up visual pun named “Nun-chuck”), Danny Trejo, Dolph Lundgren, and Jean-Claude Van Damme, voicing Jean-Clawed, a bad guy with a giant robotic claw. My favorite part of the movie (no surprise) is when Michelle Yeoh shows up as a Chinatown masseuse who trains the Minions looking for Gru in martial arts in order to tackle the various factions between them. It leads to a fun spin on the martial arts training montage we’ve seen so often.
Otherwise, Minions: The Rise of Gru relies on ‘70s music and references to bolster its visual gags, and those are things that maybe older parents (or grandparents… gulp) will get and enjoy more than the kiddies. Probably the most impressive thing about the movie is how visually-sophisticated the film is compared to other animated movies with real crafts like production design fully on display, so that the movie looks better than a Minions movie should.
Minions: The Rise of Gru constantly falls back on the antics of its title characters – and unfortunately, that includes Gru – but it’s harmless enough and (thankfully) has a running time of less than 80 minutes, so it never wears out its welcome the way other animated movies frequently do.
Rating: 7.5/10
MR. MALCOLM’S LIST (Bleecker Street)
Also opening wide this weekend in around 1,380 theaters is this costume dramedy based on Suzanne Allain’s 2020 novel, which she adapted herself into this movie directed by Emma Holly Jones (making her feature debut after directing a short based on the novel). It stars Zawe Ashton and Freida Pinto as two childhood friends who decide to turn the tables on a dashing and rich man named Jeremy Malcolm (played by Sopé Dirisù from His House, Silent Knight, and Mothering Sunday), who keeps a list of what he’s looking for in a match.
After meeting Julia and Selina when they’re school girls at an academy for young ladies, we then cut forward 16 years when Julia (Zawe Ashton) is on a date with the wealthy lord Jeremy Malcolm, who spurns her since she isn’t a particularly intelligent conversationalist. Angry, Julia plots with her cousin Cassidy (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) to get revenge against Mr. Malcolm, who weighs his prospective matches against a list of specific qualities he’s looking for a woman. Julia calls on her friend Selina (Freida Pinto) to turn the tables on Malcolm, but instead, the two of them fall in love.
We’ll get to my thoughts on the movie in a moment, but I am intrigued by Bleecker Street’s decision to release this movie wide right out of the gate, since I’m not sure there’s enough interest among fans of Allain’s fairly recent novel to justify it. Possibly, Bleecker Street just knows that it’s easier to get into the top 10 at the box office these days if you put a movie into enough theaters even if business is spread out quite liberally among those 1,300 theaters.
As far as the movie itself, I really didn’t care for it. It’s pretty obvious that Allain and the director, whose work I wasn’t familiar with, were going for something in the vein of Jane Austen, and everyone involved, including the cast, are just trying to pull off a lesser version of better movies like Emma. and Pride and Prejudice. (Oddly, there is even a new version of Austen’s Persuasion, starring Dakota Johnson coming out this week.)
Pinto (probably still best known for her role in the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire) is a terrific actress and she more than makes up for the rest of the fairly weak character. Ashton just isn’t great as the main lead, because she’s just obnoxious and unlikable with no redeeming qualities. Theo James plays her would-be suitor, and he’s still about as bland and vanilla as a mayonnaise sandwich on white bread.
Which brings me to something that just absolutely stumped me...
I don’t take great issue with filmmakers trying to change things up from the all-white costume dramas we’ve seen before, and fairly recently with the Downton Abbey sequel and 2020’s Emma. It has worked a few times like in the recent The Personal History of David Copperfield (starring Pinto’s Slumdog co-star Dev Patel) where the cast is made up from all different backgrounds and ethnicities, but here, it doesn’t work, and it leaves you wondering why it was necessary. I don’t think much of Ms. Ashton as an actor, and casting Ashley Park as a giggling Asian acquaintance just made me wonder, “Why is this character Asian?” And the only white actors are the men, who just aren’t great in terms of acting or characters.
It’s all just very puzzling, and since the movie already has a “been there, seen that” feel to it, it ends up hurting rather than helping Mr. Malcolm’s List, a movie so filled with clichés and stereotypesl, it’s hard to think it really does much of anything to advance the costume drama genre. It all leads up to an endlessly corny ending that left me absolutely howling at times.
I understand the need for representation and inclusivity, but from a business sense, will that help Mr. Malcolm’s List in its theatrical release? Will it mean that more Black moviegoers will check it out, or will it just lose its potential audience of older white women who usually go see these movies. I guess we’ll see on Sunday, but Mr. Malcolm’s List seems like a giant waste of time and money for a very limited audience. I personally have seen many movies like this before, and it really takes a lot for me to go from being bored to physically hating all the characters on screen.
Rating 6/10
THE CHART:
What’s interesting about this weekend is not that Minions will be #1 since that’s a given, but the fact that Top Gun: Maverick has a good chance at being #2, and then with nothing below the top 6 making more than a million, there’s an equally good chance for a number of new and expanding movies to get into the top 10, a situation which the smarter indie distributors will be taking advantage of.
1. Minions: The Rise of Gru (Universal) - $72.7 million N/A
2. Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount) - $21 million -29%
3. Elvis (Warner Bros.) - $17.1 million -45%
4. Jurassic World: Dominion (Universal) - $14 million -48%
5. The Black Phone (Universal) - $12 million -49%
6. Lightyear (Disney/Pixar) - $8.8 million -52%
7. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Marvel/Disney) - $900k -51%
8. Mr. Malcolm’s List (Bleecker Street) - $700k N/A
9. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (A24) - $500k +194%
10. Official Competition (IFC Films) - $350k +700%
This week’s “Chosen One” is…
HALLELUJAH: LEONARD COHEN, A JOURNEY, A SONG (Sony Pictures Classics)
One of my favorite movies at this year’s Tribeca Festival (which I really need to write more about before it gets away from me) is this doc from Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine. It not only looks at the life and career of the great folk singer/songwriter – and it’s not the first doc to do this – but specifically looking at one of his more well-known and frequently-covered songs, “Hallelujah.” It’s not necessarily my favorite Leonard Cohen song, but it’s the one that’s the most well known, more for covers from Jeff Buckley, John Cale, Rufus Wainwright, Bob Dylan, K.D. Lang and so many more.
What’s interesting about this song in Cohen’s oeuvre is that it was a song he spent years perfecting, writing new verses and lyrics before finally releasing, and after John Cale performs a rendition of it on a Leonard Cohen tribute record, so many other artists discover it. It’s actually amazing how the dominoes start falling as Jeff Buckley performs the song, which leads to even younger audiences finding it. The doc does a good job covering the journey of the song while also following Cohen’s own journey from almost obscurity to finding himself through Buddhism and then returning to a mostly sold-out world tour that goes on for years.
The filmmakers talk to many of Cohen’s friends and collaborators who were around at the time of the song’s writing, including the producer of the original song on one of Cohen’s albums. As much as Hallelujah paints a fairly thorough portrait of Cohen, it’s still very much about the song and its evolution, and that balance of subject and song makes this my favorite doc of the year so far.
Rating: 9/10
HALLELUJAH will open in New York at the Film Forum and Film at Lincoln Center and in L.A. at the Laemmle Royal, and possibly at other theaters.
THE FORGIVEN (Roadside Attractions)
Filmmaker John Michael McDonagh (The Guard, Calvary) returns with another movie that takes him out of Ireland, a Morocco-based thriller starring recent Oscar winner Jessica Chastain and Ralph Fiennes. They play a married couple who travel to Morocco to attend an elaborate party in a remote area of the desert, who accidentally hit a local boy with their car while driving there. Based on the novel by Lawrence Osborne, the film shows the repercussions of their actions and how it affects not only their marriage but their time in the area. The movie also stars Matt Smith, Caleb Landry Jones, Christopher Abbott, and Abbey Lee.
This is actually another movie I saw that premiered at Tribeca, and which I liked quite a lot, mainly because it takes McDonagh out of his comfort zone of Ireland and away from crime comedies, as was the case with The Garde and War on Everyone. The setting obviously plays a large part in that, but he also has two great leads to hold it together. While I’m not sure this is Chastain’s best work, it’s also not her worst, and I loved seeing her having a bit of a romantic fling with Christopher Abbott. Then, on the other side of things is Fiennes, who really is doing his best work as a man trying to do what’s right after the horrible death.
There’s a lot of tension as Fiennes’ character is taken away from the relative safety of the lavish party setting to a small village where who knows what’s going to happen to him from the boy’s father seeking revenge. What really helps the authenticity of McDonagh’s adaptation is the talented Arabic actors he’s hired, who really help with the drama and tension, particularly the actor playing the dead boy’s father who holds his own in a particularly dramatic scene with Fiennes.
I don’t think The Forgiven will be for everyone. It reminded me a bit of Brad Anderson’s Beirut a few years back, which was written by Tony Gilroy. It played at Sundance and was received fairly well, but didn’t really find much of an audiences in theaters, if I remember correctly. (It was received by Bleecker Media and made $5 million.)
But it’s obvious that McDonagh has a pretty solid handle on the material, on creating drama in general, and putting together a great cast of actors and have them deliver some really strong work. Because of this, The Forgiven is a relatively decent drama that uses its cast and setting quite well, but it definitely will be an acquired taste.
Rating: 7/10
You can read my interview with McDonagh and his wife/producer/editor Elizabeth Eves over at Below the Line.
RUBIKON (IFC Midnight)
Austrian filmmaker Magdalena Lauritsch helms this deep space thriller about a group of astronauts trapped in a space station after Earth has been covered in a toxic fog, wondering if they should return home to find survivors or stay safe where they are. I was going to write a full review for this, but my lack of time and inclination to pan another movie this week has saved this one from a minor drubbing. It isn’t bad, particularly the Austrian lead actress, Julia Franz Richter, who some may remember from the popular festival favorite, Undine. The movie’s production values in terms of creating the space station and the outer space views are impressive, especially since this is probably not a very big budget movie. It reminded me a bit of a movie called Europa Report, which similarly tried to squeeze a lot of sci-fi out of a small budget. This one moves at a similarly laconic pace, but I don’t think the script is as strong, and the other leads just aren’t up to the level of acting as Ms. Richter, something that’s fairly obvious throughout some of the more intense scenes. In other words, Rubikon is perfectly fine for a slow burn sci-fi film, but Ms. Lauritsch, directing her first feature, could have used a lot more help in getting the script to a better place before rolling cameras.
ACCEPTED (Greenwich)
Dan Chen’s documentary follows four high school seniors in Louisiana who attend the K-12 school T.M. Landry, which has earned a reputation for sending its graduates to Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. That is, until the New York Times publishes an exposé on Landry’s controversial methods of success. This will be playing at the Quad Cinema in New York starting Friday.
PERSUASION (Netflix)
Dakota Johnson stars in the latest adaptation of a Jane Austen novel, this one directed by Carrie Cracknell and starring Johnson as Anne Elliot, a young woman with modern sensibilities whose family is at the brink of bankruptcy. When Frederick Wentworth, a handsome man she snubbed, returns into her life, she must decide between putting the past behind her or give him a second chance. It also stars Cosmo Jarvis, Richard E. Grant, Henry Golding, and Nikki Amuka-Bird, and it will hit select theaters this Friday (including the Paris in NYC) before its debut streaming on Netflix on July 15.
CLARA SOLA (Oscilloscope)
This film from Costa Rica debuted in the Directors’ Fortnight at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, and it’s now playing at the IFC Center in New York City (with filmmaker QnAs!), and then will open at the Landmark Westwood in L.A. on Friday, July 8. Directed and co-written by Nathalie Álvarez Mesén, it’s set in a remote village of Costa Rica where 40-year-old Clara (Wendy Chinchilla Araya) deals with her oppressive mother (Flor María Vargas Chavez) but her affinity for animals allows her to find solace with them. When her younger niece (Ana Julia Porras Espinoza) starts preparing for her quinceañera, Clara has a sexual awakening. I haven’t had a chance to watch this yet but it does sound like an intriguing foreign film.
Streaming…
THE PRINCESS (20th Century/Hulu)
At first, I assumed this was a Disney+ princess movie, but in fact, it’s a movie about a princess (played by Joey King) who has been kidnapped and locked in a tower, set to be wed to a sociopathic royal, played by Dominic Cooper. Little does he know that the princess has been trained in martial arts and can be quite brutal in taking out her kidnappers. This movie is directed by Vietnamese filmmaker Le-Van Kiet, who already has had two prevous movies released this year, the shark movie The Requin, starring Alicia Silverstone, and the Vietnamese ghost story, The Ancestral — neither were particularly good. Reviews for this are embargoed until Friday morning. Make of THAT what you will.
BAYMAX! (Disney+)
A real Disney thing hitting Disney+ on Friday is this new series of shorts starting the popular robotic character from Big Hero 6, in which he visits various people and tries to help them with their “health problems” as designated by Baymax. I’ve watched the first couple episodes, and they’re cute, probably a little better than the Forky shorts from a couple years back.
THE TERMINAL LIST (Prime Video)
Because we can’t have a single weekend without at least ONE of the Chrises, this new series based on Jack Carr’s novel stars Chris Pratt as James Reece, who returns home to his family after his platoon of Navy SEALs is attacked during a covert mission. Reece has conflict memories of what happened and discovers “dark forces” working against him. The series also stars Constance Wu, Riley Keough, and a rogue’s gallery of mediocre actors like Taylor Kitsch, Jai Courtney, and Patrick Schwarzenegger. I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, although Antoine Fuqua is involved as a producer and directs one episode so maybe it won’t be so bad.
Hitting Netflix this Friday is Stranger Things Season 4 Vol 2 i.e. the final two episodes of the long-awaited fourth season, and apparently, the finale of the season is 2 ½ hour long!? Sorry, Duffer Brothers, but when you’re making episodic “television” and an episode is that long, you might be better off just making movies.
ENDANGERED (HBO)
Now playing on HBO Max after debuting at the 2022 Tribeca Festival, this new doc from Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp) follows a year in the life of four journalists in democratic countries where freedom of the press is thought to be a “given” except they’re dealing with online misinformation and leaders who demean the importance of the press. It’s exec. Produced by Ronan Farrow, a terrific journalist himself.
The third season of the popular animated HARLEY QUINN series also debuts on HBO Max this Thursday with three new episodes.
Repertory stuff….
It’s a new month, which means that Metrograph is kicking off a number of new series that run both in its theater and on its digital platform (available for just $5 a month!).
Starting on Friday is “Pioneers of Queer Cinema,” which will explore the contribution to American cinema by “visionary queer artists” and will include movies from Andy Warhol, Todd Haynes, Gregg Araki, Gus Van Sant, and many more. This weekend’s line-up includes Donna Deitch’s Desert Hearts (1985), Jennie Livingston’s Paris is Burning (1990), shorts by Haynes and a lot more running all weekend. Also, the “Muff Dives: The Dyke Bar in Cinema” concludes today with Dee Rees’ excellent Pariah (2011) playing at 2:15pm TODAY (Thursday).
“Road Trip: American Cinema from Coast to Coast” is pretty self-explanatory, but this weekend, it will include screenings of Bob Rafelson’s The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), Larry Yust’s Homebodies (1974), 1986’s Spookies, and much more, once again showing Metrograph to be one of the most innovative programmers for diverse cinema.
“Late Nites: Miami Heat” is this month’s late night series, which will begin this weekend with Barry Sonnenfeld’s Get Shorty (1995), George Armitage’s Miami Blues (1990), starring a very young Alec Baldwin, and Michael Bay’s classic, Bad Boys (1995). The new matinee/family series is “Playtime: Bicycles and Balloons,” which kicks off this weekend with Jacques Tati’s Jour de Fete (1949).
Also, “AssayasX8” ends on Friday, but you can still catch Clouds of Sils Maria, Something in the Air, Cold Water, and Demonlover today and Personal Shopper tomorrow, if you’re looking to complete your collection of Olivier Assayas movies that you’ve watched. “Metrograph Selects” screens Martin Scorsese’s 1993 film The Age of Innocence, tonight at 6:30pm and tomorrow afternoon.
Up at the Museum of Modern Art, its amazing summer-long “Horror: Messaging the Monstrous” series continues with its “Slashers” segment which is almost over, but you can still catch Cindy Sherman’s 1997 movie Office Killer (tonight) and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986). On Saturday, you can catch 2020’s His House from Remi Weeks, which will get a rare theatrical screening. On Sunday, you can catch the 1961 horror film, The Haunting, and Natalie Erika James’ Relic (also from 20200). Oh, those are part of the “Horror of Place” section of the series, which will continue through the next week. (The series includes some great stuff that rarely screens, including foreign horror films like We Are What We Are, The Cremator, and Under the Shadow.)
“Films of the Dead: Romero & Co.” continues this weekend with screenings of Day of the Dead on Friday, and a double feature of NIght of the Living Dead and the amazing Japanese zombie film, One Cut of the Dead on Saturday.
Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise continues through the weekend, as does Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva, but no “Film Forum Jr.” on Sunday?
This weekend’s “Waverly Midnights” is Brian de Palma’s early film, Sisters, starring Margot Kidder, which will play just after midnight on Friday and Saturday. Otherwise, it seems to be playing the same movies that have been playing for the last few weeks, as far as repertory stuff.
Sadly, the “Beware of Dario Argento” series ended yesterday, but you can still catch David Lynch’s Lost Highway in a new 4k restoration.
In conjunction with screening Dakota Johnson’s new Jane Austen film Persuasion, the Paris is also doing a free screening of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Oscar-nominated The Lost Daughter, in which Ms. Johnson has a supporting role.
ETC…
GREEN GHOST AND THE MASTERS OF THE STONE (Gravitas Ventures)
DOULA (Universal)
HOT SEAT (Lionsgate)
FOURTH OF JULY (Circus King)
SNIPER: THE WHITE RAVEN (Well GO USA)
CODE NAME BANSHEE (Screen Media)
Next week… Chris Hemsworth is back as Thor and Natalie Portman is also back as…um… Thor… in THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER! Kachow! (Oops, wrong franchise.) Oh, and my review will be posted here on Tuesday morning.
Box office data provided by The-Numbers.com.