The Weekend Warrior June 24, 2022
ELVIS, THE BLACK PHONE, MARCEL THE SNAIL WITH SHOES ON, GATLOPP, FLUX GOURMET, THE MAN FROM TORONTO, and More
Well, this is NOT going to be fun, because I write this on Tuesday night at almost 11pm, and I have not written A SINGLE WORD for this week’s column. In fact, I haven’t even watched as many movies I like to in order to review them for this column, and honestly, I have no idea how much I’ll get done by… well, let’s presume you’re reading this on Thursday sometime, okay?
Yes, it has been a tough week between Tribeca and Emmy interviews… lots and lots of interviews, in fact, many that I haven’t yet completed, plus I’ve seen maybe six movies coming out this week with not a review written yet. (I have a partially finished review of Elvis that I hope will be finished and posted before this column, but we’ll see.)
It’s kind of frustrating, because I’ve gone literally decades being able to crank out this column and do other things, but the past two months have just been miserable, not so much writers’ block but just not getting as much done as I’d like… and I just have so many other obligations in life on top of the financial ones that require me to finish up some of my paid assignments. For those not keeping track, this column is not one of them.
Anyway, enough moping… hopefully there will be something below this line (unintentional pun) by the time I hit post on Thursday morning.
ELVIS (Warner Bros.)
Let’s start with the movie that is my most anticipated movie of the year, because a.) I love Baz Luhrmann and his movies, and b.) He doesn’t make a movie a year like some directors. In fact, Elvis is only his sixth movie in nearly thirty years, which may be why they’re so good.
Making a movie about Elvis Presley is an interesting choice, because there was a time when Elvis was the biggest superstar in the world but that was in the ‘50s and ‘60s mainly and times have changed to a point where younger people may not be that interested in Elvis. He may even be considered “problematic” in this day and age.
Luhrmann found an amazing actor in Austin Butler to play Elvis over his 20-plus year, and though Butler has only had small roles in movies (like Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood), he mainly has been doing television for the past 16 years (he’s in his early 30s). If nothing else, Elvis will turn Butler into a star… that is, depending on whether people see it, including awards voters.
Luhrmann’s less-than-secret weapon for the movie is Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker, who at one time was a huge global superstar as well, but in recent years has mainly been found on streaming sites like Apple TV+ where his last two movies, Finch and Greyhound debuted. In between, he did have News of the World, which actually got a theatrical release but over Christmas 2020 when COVID was still wracking the country and movie theaters were still closed in New York and L.A. Other than that, Hanks has mostly been providing his voice for the Toy Story movies. Oh, right, and in late 2019, he starred as Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which made about $62 million domestically and got Hanks another Oscar nomination in the supporting category. Later this year, Hanks reunites with Robert Zemeckis for Pinocchio, which is likely to be a DIsney+ movie, but then he’ll star in the remake, A Man Called Otto, which very well could be another Oscar play for the veteran.
The cast also includes Olivia DeJonge as Priscilla Presley, Kelvin Harrison Jr. as BB King, and more, but a lot of the focus is obviously being put on Hanks and Butler, since it’s about their characters, primarily
Warner Bros. brought Elvis to Cannes for its premiere where it received mostly positive or mixed positive reviews, and it’s currently at 83% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is pretty good when you compare it to Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby, which was panned with 48% Rotten on Rotten Tomatoes. Reviews for his prior film, Australia, were only a little bit better. Even so, Gatsby became one of Luhrmann’s biggest hits, opening with $50.1 million (more than Australia made in total) and grossing $144.8 million domestic and another $208.8 million overseas, which made it Luhrmann’s biggest hit.
It’s interesting to note that Luhrmann’s films have always done better internationally than in North America, so taking on the subject matter of Elvis could help him greatly in the States where Presley has such a huge and devout fan base, mostly of older Southerners, which could be a great way for Luhrnann to solidify his U.S. audience as a follow-up to Gatsby and his Netflix series, The Get Down.
More than anything, we have to look at the history of the musical biopic, of which there’ve been many, but as far as recent ones, we can look at 2004’s Ray, starring Jamie Foxx (who won an Oscar for playing Ray Charles), and 2005’s Walk the Line, which got Joaquin Phoenix another Oscar nomination. Ray opened with $20 million in late October, while Walk the Line opened in November the following year with $22.4 million, making $119 domestically vs. Ray’s $75 million. I probably should also mention Get on Up, the James Brown biopic starring the late Chadwick Boseman, which didnt do great, making only $30.5 million domestic, which makes you think if it would have done better if released AFTER Boseman became Black Panther for Marvel. (I personally believe it was his performance in this movie which convinced Kevin Feige to cast him in the role.)
More recently, there was Bohemian Rhapsody, which grossed over $200 million in November 2018, and 2019’s Rocketman, which at least opened in summer with $25.7 million and came close to $100 million, as well. It’s interesting to look at the relative success of the latter two movies, which shows that there’s more interest in musical superstars who probably appealed more to the parents of the 20-something-and-down crowd than to the younger set.
It doesn’t seem like reviews have really hurt Luhrmann over his past few movies, as he’s a true auteur and visionary who tens to appeal to younger moviegoers with his musical choices… including how the music for Moulin Rouge! Inspired a Tony-winning musical that’s still on Broadway. Maybe I’m biased but I really feel that Luhrman is a filmmaker who can bring audiences to the theater with his name and involvement alone.
We’ll probably see this weekend but I think the combination of Luhrmann, Hanks and Elvis can do a lot to bring in a decent-sized audience for Elvis this weekend, maybe somewhere in the lower-to-mid $40 millions vs. the $50 million for Gatsby. If audiences like it as much as some critics, it could have a decent run through July and August and $100 million seems almost guaranteed, at least domestically.
By the time you read this, my review should be done, which you can read here, and you can also read my interview with Baz’s wife, co-producer, production designer, and costume designer (a 4-time Oscar winner for those two categories alone) Catherine Martin over at Below the Line hopefully before Friday.
THE BLACK PHONE (Universal)
Offering some counter-programming is the return of director Scott Derrickson to the horror genre with this adaptation of a short story by Joe Hill, which also reunites him with his Sinister producer, Jason Blum, and star Ethan Hawke… as well as James Ransome, who appeared in Sinister and starred in its sequel.
The Black Phone is an interesting retro-horror film set in 1978 and having Hawke play “The Grabber,” a creepy man who is kidnapping and killing young boys. It follows the story of one such boy name Finn (played by Mason Thames) who is taken and starts uncovering mysterious circumstances behind his kidnapping as he’s trapped in the Grabber’s basement.
The Black Phone debuted at Fantastic Fest all the way back last September and then it was supposed to come out in early February but it was then delayed to summer, allowing it to play at SXSW. The early reviews from those two fests were pretty good, to the point where it was at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes for the longest time, but now it’s at the much more reasonable 86% Fresh. (That’s when I was writing this on Wednesday, so who knows where it is now?)
This isn’t Hawke’s first foray into horror with Blumhouse, as he also starred in 2012’s Sinister, which opened with $18 million in a prime horror weekend in mid-October on its way to $48 million. The following year, Hawke also starred in the Blumhouse-produced The Purge, which opened with an amazing $34 million in early June 2013. That was a great example of how horror can be released as counter-programming to the summer blockbusters, and it’s led to similar successes like The Conjuring, which opened a month after The Purge with a similar $41.9 million opening but with much better legs to gross $137.4 million, leading to a franchise that’s done better than almost any other recent horror franchise. In fact, last year’s The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do it opened with $24.1 million (with a concurrent streaming release on HBO Max) and grossed $65.6 million.
That’s a pretty wide gamut of openings we’re looking at, and being a new idea, The Black Phone probably will lean more towards the lower numbers and maybe even less than $20 million, because it’s opening in such a competitive summer market even without that much in terms of horror. Either way, it seems likely that the best The Black Phone can do is open in fifth place against the stronger summer popcorn hits.
Mini-Review: I’d been looking forward to seeing this movie for quite some time, since I was such a big fan of Sinister (as well as Doctor Strange), and I was excited to see Scott Derrickson return to horror with another movie starring Ethan Hawke, this time playing the bad guy instead of the victim.
But first we meet Finney (first-timer Mason Thames), a Michigan teenager who has to deal with an alcoholic widower father (Jeremy Davies), who is constantly beating on him and his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), but he’s also being bullied at school. A lot of the discussion around them is about missing students, including a couple that they know, and eventually (as can be expected), Finney is taken by “The Grabber” as well. While trapped in the basement, Finney gets mysterious calls from a disconnected phone on the wall that seems to be coming from the other missing kids, who want to help him escape.
This was an interesting premise for horror, just because there is definitely a fear of one’s kid being kidnapped, and maybe it’s a fear for kids as well. The thing is that the movie is set in 1978 (probably in line with the Joe Hill short story on which it’s based?), and back in those days (when I was 13), parents were a lot more lax about letting their kids going off and doing whatever they want, stay out late, and inevitably being kidnapped. I don’t remember any classmates of mine actually being kidnapped, so I guess I lucked out by growing up in New England. (Although if you remember, that was a huge plot point in Mystic River, too.)
In some ways, I enjoyed the movie as a coming-of-age tale more than the actual supernatural horror elements, because much of Finney’s time after being kidnapped is by himself or interacting with Hawke’s masked creep or various ghost kids. In fact, McGraw almost steals the movie as his foul-mouthed sister, who curses like a sailor as she fights back against the bullies.
The Black Phone isn’t a perfect horror film or suspense thriller, as there are some strange decisions like having James Ransone (from the Sinister movies) playing the brother of Ethan Hawke’s character, who is oblivious to the fact that his brother is the Grabber, though he has lots of theories, none of which involve checking the basement of the house for kidnapped kids. D’oh! It is one of the plot points that left me scratching my head, since this character seems so dead-set on helping the police find the killer i.e. his brother, who is right there.
That’s probably all I can say about that since it leads to a few interesting twists in the last act, and generally, I like Derrickson’s pacing and the moodiness of the piece as well as the genuine scares, and the work of his relatively contained cast.
The Black Phone is a fairly different and unique concept for a horror film, one that focuses as much of its attention on the characters as the antagonist and scares, and because of this, it ends up being quite an effective thriller that manages to be more retro than “heightened.”
Rating: 8/10
Incidentally, I’ll have an interview with Scott Derrickson (fingers crossed, as it hasn’t happened yet) over at Below the Line sometime next week.
THE CHART:
This is going to be an interesting weekend, not only because we’ll have to see whether Baz Luhrmann’s first movie in nine years can do as well as The Great Gatsby. More importantly, we’ll want to see if it can do better than most music biopics to be #1 over three movies that are going to be vying hard for second place, although I’ll give a slight advantage to the unstoppable Top Gun: Maverick over Jurassic World, which is likely to have another sizable drop.
1. Elvis (Warner Bros.) - $44 million N/A
2. Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount) - $31.2 million -30%
3. Jurassic World: Dominion (Universal) - $30.7 million -48%
4. Lightyear (Disney/Pixar) - $27.3 million -46%
5. The Black Phone (Universal) - $18 million N/A
6. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Marvel/Disney) - $2.2 million -51%
Nothing in the bottom four places will make more than a million, so we’re looking at another opportunity for a Bollywood/Telugu movie or another limited release to break into the top 10 given a wide enough release.
This week’s “Chosen One” is…
MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON (A24)
One of this year’s nicest surprises is this hybrid movie of stop-motion animation and live action from director Dean Fleischer-Camp and actress Jenny Slate, who voices Marcel, the title character, who is… wait for it… a shell with shoes on. I have to be honest that I was completely ignorant about the viral video sensation that Fleischer-Camp put together with Slate, his former wife.
In this extended story, Fleischer-Camp essentially plays himself as a man who moves into a new house and discovers Marcel and his grandmother, Nana Connie (voiced by Isabella Rossellini), but the rest of Marcel’s family has disappeared, so Dean agrees to help him look for them, with a little added help from 60 Minutes host Lesley Stahl.
I just really enjoyed this movie a lot, particularly its use of stop-motion animation to tell a fairly simple story, but one that’s just so heartwarming and wonderful, because as may have been evident from those who were obsessed with the YouTube videos, Marcel is just so funny and the movie gets pretty crazy as we finally are introduced to his extended family, which includes a lot more than shells. The feature effectively does more than the simple premise of this lonely shell looking for his family, because the writing and humor is just so clever, but there also seems to be really stakes in Marcel’s pursuit.
It’s also exciting that this seems to be A24’s very first PG movie, so yeah, bring the kids to see this one!
Look for my interview with Dean Fleischer-Camp over at Below the Line soon.
GATLOPP (XYZ Films)
Another really fun and quirky dark comedy hitting On Demand and digital this Friday is Alberto Belli’s movie about a group of friends who get together for a game night to console Paul (Jim Mahoney, who also wrote the script) who just broke up with his awful wife. They end up playing a strange game (called Gatlopp) that has them revealing their deepest secrets to each other, including a few that could end their friendships. The other actors that make up this foursome are Emmy Raver-Lampman, Jon Bass, and Sarunas J. Jackson.
I ended up watching this comedy with such a strange title maybe a week or two ago in the middle of Tribeca, even though I had way too much other stuff to watch, but I also didn’t realize it was going to be delayed a week and only be released on digital and on demand. But that means that you can see the movie ANYWHERE IN THE COUNTRY, and this movie is so clever and funny that I do recommend people check it out. It’s the kind of genre movie that could easily play at the Alamo theaters, but it’s definitely more comedy than horror persé, and the cast put together to tell this story are just so good that the characters feel real even if the situations sometimes seem ludicrous.
But I was already going to love this movie because it gives a great role to Jon Bass, who is just so hilarious in everything he does (even that awful Baywatch movie, which I still liked him in and thought he was the best part of the movie). Even more surprising is how much I liked Raver-Lampman and Jackson, who play two of the friends who once had a relationship and are still holding feelings for each other.
I don’t have a lot more to say about Gatlopp except that it’s able to find an audience despite its strange title, because I know a lot of people who will enjoy this if they make the effort to find it.
FLUX GOURMET (IFC Midnight)
This is the new movie from Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio, In Fabric, The Duke of Burgundy), whose quirky genre fare I tend to enjoy even if it tends to be rather difficult, and Flux Gourmet is definitely more towards the latter side of things, a dark comedy set an institute where a culinary/sound collective get caught up in the politics of the institute and its director (played by Gwendoline Christie).
I’m sorry to say that this is not one of Strickland’s better movies, and in fact, it may, in fact, be his worst, because I did not like this premise at all or how weird the movie got as it went along. First of all, you just have to figure out what’s going on with these three musicians/cooks/performance artists who use food to create music, or at least I think that’s what’s going on. One of them is played by Asa Butterfield from Hugo, who is now 25, but there’s a conflict with the two ladies in the group, especially since he seems to be having an affair with Christie’s character. There’s also a Greek journalist documenting this competition, who seems to have issues with his bowels and is constantly worried about passing gas.
I’m honestly not sure how much more I want to say about this movie, not because I’m worried about spoilers, but because I really don’t want to revisit or relieve this movie. It was a complete waste of time and didn’t even have as much as the glorious visuals or music I’m used to from Strickland’s previous work. It’s just a really weak effort with very little mainstream appeal, and this is coming from someone who liked both Men and Crimes of the Future. I mean, I didn’t LOVE either of those, but they just seemed better executed from stronger filmmakers, whereas Strickland just seemed to reach too far or put too much confidence in people who liked his previous movies being able to bear how awful this one is. (I can easily compare it to Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! Vs. his other movies.)
Flux Gourmet opens at the IFC Center and presumably a few other theaters. I dont recommend it, but it’s there if you’re curious.
There’s some other interesting stuff coming out that I wish I had a chance to watch but see above…
BEBA (Neon)
Opening in New York (also at the IFC Center) and in L.A. on Friday is Rebecca “Beba” Huntt’s debut feature doc, a coming-of-age memoir about finding her own Afro-Latina identity as the daughter of a Dominican father and Venezuelan mother as she tries to navigate a “landscape of intense racial and political unrest.”
APPLES (Cohen Media)
Opening at the Quad Cinema in New York and the Laemlle Playhouse in Pasadena this Friday is Greece’s submission for the Oscars, executive produced by Cate Blanchett, no less. Written and directed by Christo Nikou, it follows a middle-aged guy named Aris (played by Aris Servetalis) who is trying to recover from a worldwide pandemic that causes amnesia.
NOUS (WE) (MUBI)
Debuting at MOMA in New York City and then hitting Mubi on Friday June 29 is this new documentary from the acclaimed filmmaker, Alice Diop, whose film played the festival circuit in 2021 but is now getting a release. This one premiered at Berlinale and played New Directors/New Films in 2021. Diop’s film is a portrait of the Black and immigrant communities in the Parisian suburbs and how their lives are connected by a local commuter train.
VEDETTE
Opening at the Film Forum in New York is this French documentary from directors Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard, which also premiered at Cannes 2021 and played the True/False Film Festival and a couple other doc fests. It follows a Swiss Hérens cow, a particularly aggressive breed of cattle and one particular cow that lives in the Alpine pastures. Just in case Andrea Arnold’s Cow wasn’t enough cow for you, there’s this.
Streaming…
There’s some interesting stuff hitting streaming this week (none of which I’ve had a chance to watch yet, sadly) including…
THE MAN FROM TORONTO (Netflix)
Hitting Netflix on Friday with no theatrical release that I’m aware of is this new action-comedy from Patrick Hughes (The Hitman’s Bodyguard, The Expendables 3), which was supposed to be released by Sony at one point but was then moved around the schedule for the past few years before being sold to Netflix. It stars Kevin Hart (a Netflix regular) as a normal guy who gets confused for a deadly assassin (played by Woody Harrelson) when they end up at the same Airbnb rental. (Harrelson’s part was originally supposed to be played by Jason Statham, which could have made it a bigger theatrical release.) I haven’t watched the movie yet but it’s embargoed until Thursday night, so hopefully, I can get to it.
THE SEA BEAST (Netflix)
I’ve heard some good things about this animated movie which will hit select cities including New York’s Paris Theater this Friday, but will then be on the streaming network on July 8 (which may be when I review it). It’s directed by Chris Williams, who was a co-diretor on Disney’s Moana and directed Big Hero 6, both of which were pretty decent, as well as Bolt. The plot is (from IMDB): “When a young girl stows away on the ship of a legendary sea monster hunter, they launch an epic journey into uncharted waters - and make history to boot.” Its voice cast features Karl Urban, Dan Stevens, Jared Harris, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, and more.
TREVOR: THE MUSICAL (Disney+)
Apparently, this was an off-Broadway musical that was filmed for this Disney+ release. I haven’t seen it in either format but it will hit streaming this Friday.
A few odds and ends…
Starting today at BAM (aka the Brooklyn Academy Music) is the returning BamCinemaFest, which runs from June 23 through June 30. It usually has a diverse variety of indie and foreign films, including many from Sundance, but the only one I’ve seen is the doc, Sirens, about the Iranian all-female metal band, Slave to Sirens, as they deal with the political climate in their country and inter-personal conflicts amidst the band to try to make it. I definitely recommend it, and going by BAM’s normal year-round programming, it should have a good mix of shorts and feature films.
Also, I don’t normally cover the newly-unionized Anthology Film Archives, but they have a new series called “New Tales from Portugese Cinema” which could be an interesting discovery series.
Repertory stuff….
There’s a good reason why the Museum of Modern Art gets the lead-off in this section this week, and that’s because it’s beginning an amazing horror series called “Horror: Messaging the Monstrous,” and when you see the roster of horror movies screening here, you’ll flip the eff out. It starts tonight with a rare 3D screening of the late George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead 3D, and then it will jump into the “Slashers” subdivision of the series which will include Psycho (1960), the 1974 Black Christmas and 1982’s Slumber Party Massacre on Saturday,
Adam Wingard’s You’re Next and David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows (both from 2011) on Sunday, as well as Wes Craven’s Scream, Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood (1971), and more in a series running from now until September some time. (It’s kind of the series also includes Friday the 13th Part II (1981) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II (1986), neither which is actually considered a classic, at least as far as I know.
I’m just as excited that my favorite arthouse theater is launching “Assayas X8,” a fairly short and incomplete retrospective of one of my favorite French filmmakers, Olivier Assayas. If you haven’t seen his terrific 1996 film, Irma Vep, starring Maggie Cheung, and the basis for his HBO Max series of the same name, it’s playing as part of the series, as is his 1994 film (recently rereleased and which I still haven’t seen) Cold Water, Clouds of Sils Maria, Demonlover, Personal Shopper, the very underrated Something in the Air, and more. If there are any of these eight movies you haven’t seen, I recommend getting to the Metrograph over this coming weekend, since these are only running through Sunday!
Oh, one more series is “Muff Dives: The Dyke Bar in Cinema,” curated by Melissa Anderson, which will include screenings this weekend of Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia (2006), Dee Rees’ brilliant Pariah (2011), and Paris Poirier’s 1993 doc Last Call at Maud’s.
“Late Night: Hong Kong Goes International” will show some fun stuff this weekend including one of my personal faves, The Big Hit (1998), starring Mark Wahlberg, and your last chance to see Hard Target and Kung Fu Hustle on Friday night. “Playtime: Studio Ghibli” will show The Secret of Arriety through Thursday afternoon (today) and then Goro Miyazak’s From Up On Poppy Hill (2011) on Saturday (subtitled) and Sunday (dubbed). I don’t know anything about Leslie Thornton’s Peggy and Fred in Hell: Folding, but it’s playing on Friday as part of “Metrograph Presents A to Z.”
Besides continuing its absolutely brilliant 20-film “Beware of Dario Argento” retrospective, which included appearances by the Italian maestro last weekend that were received with extreme admiration, FilmLinc will also begin a run of a 4k restoration of David Lynch’s Lost Highway starting Friday. It’s actually a pretty decent pairing since Lynch’s 1997 movie fits in well with Argento’s “gallio” horror slashers, such as Opera (playing Thursday and Friday), Tenebrae, The Stendhal Syndrome (one of the few films of his I haven’t seen), and more. Just some brilliant bit of programming by FilmLinc if you ask me.
If that isn’t enough horror for you, than MOMI is running a series called “Films of the Dead,” which will screen many of George A. Romero’s seminal zombie films, as well as others like Shaun of the Dead, One Cut of the Dead, and others. This weekend, you can see the original Night of the Living Dead, as Dan O’Bannon’s 1985 Return of the Living Dead as a double feature! The “How It’s Done: the Cinema of James Wong Howe” retrospective to the cinematographer concludes this weekend with screenings of Funny Lady, John Frankenheimer’s Seconds (1966), Peter Pan (1924), Bell Book and Candle, and The Baron of Arizona.
Opening Friday is a new 4k restoration to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeois (1972 - Rialto) set at a dinner party, which makes one wonder why Film Forum isn’t playing the appropriate Flux Gourmet along with it.
Pretty much the same as last week with Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, The Wrath of God continuing its run, along with David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire, joined by John Waters’ Pink Flamingos.
As the Alamo starts to come back to life, I’ll be seeing Bruce Lee’s 1972 martial arts film, First of Fury, on Monday night at the Alamo in Downtown Brooklyn.
ETC…
PRESS PLAY (The Avenue)
THE HUMAN TRIAL (Abramorama)
MURDER AT YELLOWSTONE CITY (RLJEfilms)
REVEALER (Shudder)
Next week… BANANA!!! Yup, you guessed it. MINIONS: RISE OF GRU bring back the lovable animated characters. Can this prequel do better than Lightyear?
Box office data provided by The-Numbers.com.