The Weekend Warrior June 10, 2022
TRIBECA FESTIVAL, JURASSIC WORD: DOMINION, MS. MARVEL, and More
We’re going to do things a little differently this week — I feel like I say that every week — because I’m already falling behind, and as you’ll read below, the 2022 Tribeca Festival starts on Wednesday, and I have a bunch of other paid obligations. Because of that, this week’s column is gonna be a little piecemeal, and that’s mainly because I haven’t had the time to see as many movies this week while still finishing my other work. Got it?
Before we get to this week’s movie and streaming offerings, we’ll start with…
I’ve been covering the Tribeca Film Festival (now just Tribeca Festival) since its 2nd year, which was also my first year writing for ComingSoon.net, and I’m excited that it’s kind of getting back to normal this year with more in-person screenings but also a virtual aspect for those who can’t attend in person.
Running from June 8 through 19, this year’s festival kicks off on Wednesday night (tonight!) with Amanda Mitchell’s doc HALFTIME, which follows a period in Jennifer Lopez’s life leading up to her performance at the Super Bowl halftime show, this premiere happening just a few days after she receives a Generation award at the MTV Awards. The movie will then hit Netflix on Tuesday, June 14.
Another movie hitting theaters on June 24 is Scott Derrickson’s horror film, The Black Phone, starring Ethan Hawke, which has been playing at a lot of festivals since premiering at Fantastic Fest last September, but it will screen as part of Tribeca’s hearty Midnight track.
Two movies that debuted at Sundance to raves (including my own) are Cooper Raiff’s Cha Cha Real Smooth and Sophie Hyde’s Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, both which will hit streamers on June 17, the former on Apple TV+ (and getting a nominal theatrical release) and the latter on Hulu.
You probably know BJ Novak from his tenure on “The Office” but he’s making his directorial debut with the crime-comedy Vengeance, co-starring Issa Rae, Ashton Kutcher, Boyd Holbrook, and Dove Cameron, which Focus Features will release on July 29. Another comedic TV actor making his feature directorial debut is Ray Romano, whose Somewhere in Queens will debut with him and Laurie Metcalf, playing husband and wife, whose son “Sticks” is finding success on his high school basketball team.
A third actor making her directorial debut is Kyra Sedgwick with Space Oddity, which has absolutely nothing to do with David Bowie, despite the title. It stars Kyle Allen, who has dreams of going to Mars to colonize it when he meets the new girl in town (Alexandra Shipp).
Katie Holmes’ second feature as a director, Alone Together, was picked up by Screen Media before its Tribeca premiere, starring herself and Jim Sturgess as two strangers who wind up in the same upstate Air B’n’B.
Tribeca often brings filmmakers back, and that’s the case with John Michael McDonagh, and his new film, The Forgiven, which will be released by Roadside Attractions and Vertical on July 1. It stars Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain as a wealthy London couple travelling through Morocco who experience a tragic accident involving a local teen boy. It also stars Matt Smith, Caleb Landry Jones, Abbey Lee, Saïd Taghmaoui and Christopher Abbott.
McDonagh’s first two films, The Guard (which played at Tribecea) and Calvary, were very Irish, and the festival has a fairly long history of premiering films from Ireland, and that’s the case this year with Frank Berry’s Aisha, an Irish drama starring Letitia Wright and Josh O’Connor from The Crown. Wright plays the title character, a Nigerian immigré to Ireland who is seeking asylum and who befriends O’Connor’s security guard.
South African filmmaker Paul Dektor directs American Dreamer, written by Theodore Melfi (Hidden Figures), which stars Peter Dinklage and Shirley MacLaine, while filmmaker Andrew Bujalski is at the festival with There There, the follow-up to his acclaimed Support the Girls, Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening star in David (The Devil Wears Prada) Frankel’s Jerry & Marge Go Large.
There are a couple other movies in the Midnight section that are both Shudder productions. A Wounded Fawn, the latest from Travis Stevens, the director of Jakob’s Wife, which I quite enjoyed, stars Sarah Lind, Josh Ruben (from Scare Me), and Malin Barr, which involves a museum curator targeted by a serial killer. There’s also Gabriel Bier Gislason’s “queer Danish folk-horror romance” Attachment, which I know less about.
And lastly, let’s get to some docs, and every year, Tribeca debuts some of what will inevitably be considered the best docs of the year, and you can’t get more of a doc about documentary filmmaking than Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Hall’s Subject, which talks to some of the subjects of monumental docs like The Staircase, Capturing the Friedmans, Hoop Dreams, and more.
So Yun Um’s very personal doc, Liquor Store Dreams, takes a look at her father’s journey as a Korean liquor store owner in South Central L.A. Violet Du Feng’s Hidden Letters is about the bond between Chinese women forced into marriage via the secret language of Nushu.
Ben Chace’s Music Pictures: New Orleans is the third doc of the year about the music of NOLA, and honestly, the music scene there is so important that there can probably be 100 docs on the subject. This one offers portraits of the likes of Irma Thomas, Little Freddie King, Ellis Marsalis and The Tremé Brass Band – some who appeared in Jazz Fest as well – so I’ll be checking it out to learn more about that scene.
In advance of its July 1 release into theaters, Dan Gellar and Dayna Goldfine’s doc Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, A Song will get a Tribeca premiere, and both of these last two films are playing with concerts to follow, another thing that makes Tribeca quite unique and quite special.
Magnolia will release the doc Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel on July 8, but it will first get an appropriate Tribeca debut, and who knows, maybe it will even premiere at SVA which is literally right down the street from the Chelsea Hotel.
Ben (Winnebago Man) Steinbauer and Berndt Mader’s doc Chop & Steele are about Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, who made their name with the “Found Footage Film Festival,” as well as pulling morning show pranks until they were sued by Gray Television. Also worth checking out is Latvian filmmaker Signe Baumane’s animated pseudo-memoir, My Love Affair With Marriage, a timely film that deals with not just marriage, but love, sex, abortion and more. It features the voices of Dagmara Dominczyk, Matthew Modine, Cameron Monaghan, and Stephen Lang.
Since Tribeca is no longer just about film, there’s a lot of other events including Taylor Swift doing a “Storytellers” talk, which Tig Notero is also doing, and there’s a lot of celebrity guests to look out for, such as Derek Jeter, who has a new docuseries about him called The Captain. They’re also showing Michael Mann’s Heat up at the United Palace with Mann, De Niro, and Al Pacino all on-hand to discuss.
JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION (Universal)
I probably don’t have a ton to write about the third and final movie in the Jurassic World franchise that began back in 2015 and concludes by bringing back characters played by Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, just because I feel like I’ll already be writing a lot about this between my review (coming later on Weds afternoon) and my Gold Derby preview.
You might already know a ton about this movie, including the fact that it was delayed a year after the production was struck with COVID and had to figure out how to continue safely, but this is the sequel to five movies that grossed $1.8 billion just in North America. (That number is more like 5 billion worldwide for the five previous movies.)
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom made $417 million in North America after opening with $148 million, but that was down substantially from the $200 million opening of 2015’s Jurassic World. That’s an interesting drop because it shows that the 14 years between Jurassic Park III and the first Jurassic World built up enough announcement for a huge opening. At the time, only Marvel’s The Avengers had managed that milestone, although Star Wars: the Force Awakens would surpass both those movies opening by the end of 2015. Five other movies have opened over $200 million since then but Disney pretty much has all of the biggest openings between Marvel and Star Wars with Jurassic World and last year’s Spider-Man: No Way Home being the only movies from other studios in the top 16 openers.
Even though Jurassic World did very well, the drop in the opening for Fallen Kingdom is a little disconcerting because it means that some of the excitement had abated in the three years between the first two movies. It’s now been four years since then, so some of that excitement could have been built back up again, but there’s also the idea of Dominion being the grand finale of the entire franchise and few will want to miss that.
There have been other factors involved, including the pandemic but more immediate obstacles for Dominion to open absolutely enormous includes the fact that Top Gun: Maverick has been doing so well in the last couple weeks, grossing $300 million, and the word-of-mouth and repeat viewings of Tom Cruise’s movie could theoretically put a dink in Dominion’s opening. Universal did release Jurassic World: Dominion a week early in a few markets including Mexico and others where it grossed $55 million last weekend, which is a pretty good start.
At one point, I thought that (at least in theory) Jurassic World: Dominion could open bigger than Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but now I’m not so sure anymore, since there seems to be quite a bit of negativity surrounding Trevorrow and the franchise in general. Reviews (including my own) probably won’t hit until after this has been made live, but I have this strange feeling film critics will have their knives out for Trevorrow’s return to the franchise. It certainly seems that the case from the reactions I’ve seen earlier this week.
Even so, to everyone else on the planet, Jurassic World: Dominion is a major event movie and that will be driving a lot of the business to theaters, especially formats like IMAX and Dolby with their higher-priced ticketing. Because of this, I think Dominion will end up higher than the opening of Fallen Kingdom but still below the opening of the 2015 Jurassic World. We’ll have to see if it can hold up against next week’s return of Pixar to theaters with Lightyear, in order to achieve the $400 million domestic gross of Fallen Kingdom.
THE CHART:
Gee, I wonder what will be #1 this weekend? Kind of a no-brainer, I guess, but the real question is how many theaters the other movies besides Top Gun: Maverick will lose this weekend to give more screens to Dominion.
Update 6/9: There’s no way around the fact that the terrible reviews for Jurassic World: Dominion are likely going to do damage this weekend, so I’m lowering my prediction, though I am wondering if it can do even worse damage. Either way, it’s going to take a massive hit next week, especially if the CinemaScore is just as bad.
1. Jurassic World: Dominion (Universal) - $158.3 million N/A (down 8 million)
2. Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount) - $47 million -48%
3. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Marvel/Disney) - $4.5 million -51%
4. The Bad Guys (DreamWorks Animation/Universal) - $2.4 million -30%
5. The Bob’s Burgers Movie (20th Century) - $2.1 million -55%
6. Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24) - $1.6 million -20%
7. Downton Abbey: A New Era (Focus Features) - $1.5 million -53%
8. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Paramount) - $1.1 million -36%
Streaming…
MS. MARVEL (Disney+)
If I were to say that the latest Disney+ show is “not my Ms. Marvel,” I hope people reading this will understand that it’s not because I’m racist or have anything against anyone involved with Marvel’s latest Disney+ show. It’s just that LITERALLY this is not the Ms. Marvel I knew when I first started reading comics in the ‘70s, which featured Carol Danvers in her first superhero role and short-lived solo book decades before she was promoted to “Captain Marvel.”
Created by Bisha K. Ali (Four Weddings and a Funeral), this Ms. Marvel is Iman Villani’s Kamala Khan, an eighth grader living in Jersey City, who is so obsessed with Carol Danvers’ Captain Marvel that she plans to cosplay as her for the upcoming “Avengers Con.” But she’ll have to sneak out of the house to attend because her deeply religious Pakistan family doesn’t approve of that sort of thing. Yes, we have finally gotten to the point where Marvel isn’t making shows about superheroes anymore, but about the kids who are obsessed with them. It’s the ultimate snake eating its own tail.
Comparisons to Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade are pretty hard to avoid, although Ms. Marvel starts out so cutesy and overstuffed with animation to depict Kamala’s daydreaming, it gets pretty hard to bear at times. At first, Villani portrays Kamala as so overbearingly cocky with such delusions of grandeur you might wonder if people of her generation really are that obnoxious. Eventually, the first episode does get to “Avengers Con” and Kamala adds a family heirloom bangle to her costume that gives her the powers to create solid constructs out of energy ala Green Lantern. That’s it. That’s her origin.
I’m sure Kamala Khan is popular enough in the comics, although I haven’t really read that many of them. As someone fairly new to the character, the way she’s introduced and how she gets her powers in the show are so bland and cliché-ridden, it’s hard to fathom why Marvel thought this character deserved getting her own series to introduce her before bringing her into the greater MCU. (The way America Chavez was introduced in Doctor Strange worked just fine, so why couldn’t that be the case with Kamala Khan before giving her a series?)
On the brighter side, it’s nice to see a show about a younger person getting superpowers, because it’s not something we’ve seen that much outside the comics. Fortunately, the character does grow on you before the second episode decides to introduce a potential love interest in a very good-looking and rugged senior with a British accent.
While we’re dealing with all of Kamala’s family and school drama, the show seemingly forgets it’s meant to be a show about a superhero. It’s great that Marvel is using these Disney+ shows to introduce these characters, but even compared to the recent Moon Knight, the show doesn’t do enough to get anyone who isn’t a tween girl excited about what happens next with this character until it gets back to a seemingly tacked-on plot about a government group wanting to get their hands on Kamala for her unique powers.
The other aggravating thing is how Ms. Ali feels the need to drive the fact that Kamala is Pakistani down the viewer’s throat. This gets even worse in Episode 2 when it follows her to her mosque (where the women are shunted off into a side room) and then gets into a subplot involving her friend wanting to run for election to be the leader of said mosque. Is all of this really necessary to tell Kamala’s story?
I don’t know a ton of Pakistani teen girls from Jersey City (none actually) but I have a feeling they talk about the same things as other teen girls and not about Bollywood movies and such. I know this is done to try to build the character, but it isn’t really necessary since Villani has enough personality to make Kamala entertaining without having to constantly drive home the point she’s Pakistani. (And this stuff isn’t even something particularly new or unique, just that being a Marvel show, so many people watching it have probably never seen any of the far better foreign films or shows that deal with this topic in a more subtle way.)
Don’t get me wrong, because I didn’t exactly hate the character or the series. The first two episodes are okay, but I didn’t feel the creators did enough to make the character one that might keep a viewer invested for five to six hours. That may be because Kamala Khan wasn’t a very interesting character to begin with, so we’re back to this being a not particularly good coming-of-age story ala the far better Eighth Grade, Book Smart, and so many others.
Also on Friday, Netflix is releasing its vampire lesbian series, FIRST KILL (which I haven’t seen), but I’m REALLY looking forward to another series hitting HBO Max this week. IRMA VEP is Olivier Assayas’ first foray into American streaming series with a new version of his 1996 movie, which starred Maggie Cheung and has long been one of my favorite movies of Assayas. This one stars Alicia Vikander as an actress working on a production riddled with problems, who decides to take on a sideline as a cat burglar.
No “Chosen One” this week, and in fact, there’s quite a few smaller movies being released this week, which I hoped to find time to watch but just weren’t able to get around to them. My apologies to everyone involved.
LOST ILLUSIONS (Music Box Films)
Opening in New York at the Film Forum and up at Lincoln Center this Friday and L.A. on June 17 is Xavier Giannoli’s adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s novel, a 19th Century satirical romp starring Benjamin Voisin, Cécile de France, Vincent Lacoste, Jeanne Balibar, Salomé Dewaels, André Marcon, and Xavier Dolan
1982 (Tricycle Logic)
Oualid Mouaness’ award-winning Lebanese film, which played at Toronto in 2019 and where it won a critics prize, finally opens in New York at the Quad Cinema on Friday, followed by L.A. on June 24. It’s a coming-of-age tale set in the Lebanon mountains, taking place over a single day, as it follows an 11-year-old boy’s desireto profess his love for a girl in his class as an invasion is looming.
MAD GOD (IFC Midnight/Shudder)
Opening in theaters in New York and L.A. this Friday and then streaming on Shudder starting Thursday, June 16, is this experimental stop-motion animated film from special effects legend Phil Tippett. It involves a ruined amidst a city of ruins that’s guarded by zombie-like sentries, as it’s visited by “The Assassin.” Apparently, it took Tippett 30 years to complete this movie, so probably worth checking out.
THE STORY WON’T DIE
David Henry Gerson’s documentary looks at a young generation of Syrian artists who are using their work to protest the aftermath of the migration of so many refugees from the country
It opens on Friday at the Laemmle in L.A. and then opens in New York at the Cinema Village on June 17.
THE WALK (Vertical)
Justin Chatwin and Terrence Howard star in Daniel Adams’ period drama with Chatwin playing Boston police officer Bill Coughlin who had to face bigotry from the poliec force and pressure in his neighborhood after he’s assigned to protect black high school students who are being bussed to an all-white high school in South Boston during the integration of the school system in 1974.
I’M CHARLIE WALKER (Shout! Studios)
Mike Colter aka Marvel’s Luke Cage stars in Patrick Gilles film about trucking and construction entrepreneur Charlie Walker, who received the contract to clean-up the San Francisco coastline after two oil tankers collided in 1971 spilling millions of gallons of crude oil.
A few odds and ends…
Starting Thursday at Film at Lincoln Center is Open Roads: New Italian Cinema, and I have to be honest that I haven’t seen a ton of modern Italian cinema that I like as much as the movies from the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s (particularly the giallo horror movies from the latter). I really don’t know much about the films playing there but the opening night film, Gabrielle Mainetti’s Freaks Out, which won an award at Venice and six Donatello Awards certainly looks and sounds fun. You can see the full rundown and buy tickets for the films here.
Repertory stuff….
Starting this Friday is “Cindy Sherman Selects,” an eclectic mix of films that include Peeping Tom, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, The Bad Seed, Zabriskie Point, Roman Polanski’s early film The Fearless Vampire Killers, and even The Human Centipede (First Sequence)! I caught a few of the offerings in the “Fantaterror Español” series of Spanish horror films, and it continues this weekend with more screenings of Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972) and Night of the Seagulls (1975), both from Amando de Ossorio. I saw the former last weekend and thought it was a decent chiller, but didn’t feel strongly enough to bother with the latter.
“Late Night: Hong Kong Goes International” will screen Jackie Chan’s Rumble in the Bronx on Friday and Saturday very late, while “Playtime: Studio Ghibli” screens Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro on Thursday and Friday (not so late) and Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) on Saturday (subtitles) and Sunday (dubbed). “Metrograph Presents A to Z” will screen Barbara Loden’s Wanda (1970) on Thursday night, and Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga (1972) will continue to screen through the weekend.
There’s also an interesting digital-only series called “Spell Reel” which is an archive of fllm and audio material from Guinea-Bissau, put together by Filipa César.
Besides the usual weekend late night stuff, the IFC Center will also be screening a new 4k restoration of John Waters’ classic cult film Pink Flamingos starting Friday with John Waters appearing in person on Monday, June 12 doing a QnA and extended intro (both which are sold out, unfortunately).
This weekend’s Film Forum Jr. on Sunday is a good one… The Creature of the Black Lagoon (1954) … in 3D! It’s playing with the Three Stooges short, Spooks! The Montgomery Clift series also runs through next Thursday, June 16, as will Michael Roemer’s Vengeance is Mine (1984).
I don’t know a lot about the films playing in “Beyond Ozu: Hidden Gems of Shochiku Studios,” but it will be running from June 10 until July 9. The series includes everything from silent films from the late ‘20s, early ‘30s (with piano accompaniment) all the way up to Yoji Yamada’s 1991 movie Musuko (My Son)... could be some real gems in there but it’s very much a discovery series.
The Quad’s “Pride Rewind: Queer Cinematic Landmarks and Breakthroughs” continues through the weekend with Too Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, and more.
(Sorry, had to leave a few places out this week.)
Next week, Pixar Animation is back in theaters with Lightyear, the CG-animated prequel to the Toy Story movies with Chris Evans voicing Buzz Lightyear. (Forewarning: Next week’s column may be delayed due to the amount of work I’m doing at Tribeca, but I also won’t have a review of Lightyear, so I’m basically going to continue sucking for a bit.)
Box office data provided by The-Numbers.com.