The Weekend Warrior May 27, 2022 (Memorial Day!)
TOP GUN: MAVERICK, THE BOB’S BURGERS MOVIE, BLEEDING AUDIO, A CHIARA, 18 1/2, and More
It’s Memorial Day weekend, and anyone who has been reading this column or any of its offshoots for the past 20 years probably knows what that means: MOVIES!! (And Ed generally over or underestimating every movie’s box office potential.)
It’s a little bit disconcerting that a new COVID variant is on the rise just as theaters are trying to get people out of the summer heat and into seats, but hopefully, people know how to stay safe, and they’re excited about some of this week’s offerings, because it is Memorial Day, and it would be great to see more than one big blockbuster released this month.
TOP GUN: MAVERICK (Paramount)
It’s hard to believe that it’s been four years since Tom Cruise’s last movie, Mission: Impossible - Fallout, which featured one of Cruise’s most lasting characters, Ethan Hunt, making his sixth movie appearance. Even as that movie made $787 million worldwide, the best global showing for both the franchise and Cruise, plans were getting underway for the superstar to return to one of his earliest roles, that of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell of Top Gun, which was the actor’s first bonafide blockbuster back in 1986. The movie made $180 million in North America and about the same overseas at a time when that was a LOT of money.
Ever since then, Cruise has had such an interesting career, punctuated by the “Mission: Impossible” franchise which began in 1996 and is still going strong – the trailer for next year’s Mission: Impossible - Dead Recoking Part 1 will be playing in front of Top Gun: Maverick just to help drive up excitement. I mean, there have been a few stumbling blocks in that career that seem to come out of questionable decisions like… Rock of Ages… and The Mummy… and playing the title character in Jack Reacher, which was actually the directorial debut of Cruise’s long-time collaborator, Christopher McQuarrie. Oddly, another one of those “bombs” was the sci-fi movie Oblivion, but Cruise clearly liked working with that movie’s director, Joseph Kosinski, to bring him on board for this sequel.
It certainly seems like that last Mission: Impossible did a great job erasing some of Cruise’s missteps from earlier years, but one still has to wonder whether returning to Top Gun so long after the original movie will be enough to turn its sequel into a huge global blockbuster. Cruise certainly has been doing the rounds with it from CinemaCon last month to the film’s San Diego premiere on the USS Midway to Cannes last week, as Cruise does his usual global jaunt to promote the movie.
Cruise isn’t the only person in the movie as the cast also includes Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris, Glen Powell, Jon Hamm, and a younger breed of jet pilots being trained by Cruise’s character. Some of them have even been doing the talk show rounds, but Top Gun: Maverick, like the original movie, will mostly be about Cruise.
Uncoincidentally, the original Top Gun has been streaming on Netflix for some time (maybe it’s on Paramount+, too?), but in the highest level of synergy, CBS/Viacom aired the movie on a Saturday night a few weeks back including some behind-the-scenes stuff from Maverick, which should go a long way.
UPDATE: Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention all the great reviews — 97% on Rotten Tomatoes! — including my own.
The fact is that Top Gun: Maverick will be Tom Cruise’s biggest opening to date, and while some think it could open over $100 million in the four days, I’ll go just south of that amount, since I really don’t see anyone under 20 years old or so caring much about the movie. But chances are that any guy over that age and maybe a few under will make this their first choice for the weekend, and it should be worth quite a bit of replay value so it’ll also be gunning for War of the Worlds as Cruise’s highest-grossing domestic movie. (His last movie, Mission: Impossible - Fallout still holds the worldwide box office record for cruise.)
THE BOB’S BURGERS MOVIE (20th Century/Disney)
After writing the above, I probably asked myself the same question you did after reading it, which was, “Why would any other studio want to release a movie against Top Gun: Maverick if that is going to make so much money this weekend?” It’s a good question, and maybe I’d have a better answer if I had ever seen the Fox animated series, Bob’s Burgers, before very recently, but it has had a great 12-season run on Fox, a network notorious for cancelling shows.
There’s a very good chance that The Bob’s Burgers Movie was something that was greenlit before Disney took over, but it’s still getting the planned theatrical release even if some may have felt it was better suited for Hulu, the Disney streamer on which you can watch the entire series. Granted, the animated series didn’t launch until 2011 but that was four years after The Simpsons Movie had become such a huge global blockbuster, opening with $74 million in July 2007 and grossing $527 worldwide.
I only watched my very first episodes of Bob’s Burgers recently, and I really enjoyed it, so I can totally understand how it’s found such a devout fanbase, and I also can understand why someone at Fox thought that it was a fanbase that could drive a theatrical release. The thing is that we’ve probably seen more non-anime animated series flopping when they come to movie theaters than successes. The Simpsons Movie is a rare case of the latter, and The Rugrats Movie was a pretty big hit for Paramount and Nickelodeon in 1998, grossing $100 million domestically.
In between, there were lots of failures, some more dismal than others. For instance, South Park was a very popular animated series, but South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut opened with just $14.8 million for Paramount just a few months after The Rugrats Movie and it grossed roughly half as much domestically. There were lots of other even bigger bombs like The Powerpuff Girls (grossed$11.4 million in 2002), Doug’s First Movie ($19.4 million also in 1999), and 2018’s Teen Titans Go! To the Movies ($29.8 million). Even a “Star Wars” animated movie didn’t explode as Star Wars: The Clone Wars tapped out at $35.1 million in 2008.
That puts The Bob’s Burgers Movie in a weird place, and honestly, I’m not sure it will even do as much as South Park since it’s opening against a much stronger theatrical offering that will appeal to a similar male audience, maybe a slightly younger one.
A month ago, I could have seen this opening with $20 to 30 million or more, but having seen how things have gone the past month, it’s obvious the box office just hasn’t been strong enough for more than one big movie at a time, so I see The Bob’s Burgers Movie opening in the $11 to 13 million range, and it will probably end up on Hulu before the 4th of July.
Mini-Review: Having not really seen the animated series until very recently, I was a bit perplexed how and why it might warrant a feature length movie, and I definitely feel like others who see this movie without seeing a single episode of the series might feel the same way.
Essentially, this is an extended episode, since it breaks away from the show’s “done in one” aspect, which I presume has continued throughout its 12 season. (Again, I’ve only seen a few of the very early episodes, and I totally get why people find them funny.) Bob and Linda Belcher are having problems paying off the bank loan for the restaurant’s equipment, but their attempt to step up business to pay the bank is complicated when a giant sinkhole opens in front of the restaurant. Each of their three kids is dealing with their own personal issues: Louise (voiced by Kristen Schaal) is getting tired of being treated like (and called) a “baby,” Tina (Dan Mintz) is still fixated with making Jimmy Jr. her summer boyfriend, while Gene just wants to have his band play the bandshell at the nearby carnival. Instead, the three kids end up going on a mission to find the killer behind a skeletal corpse found in the sinkhole.
I didn’t go into this movie really knowing what to expect, because the trailers have generally not been very informative of what this movie was going to be about. After watching just a few episodes, I knew enough about the Belcher family and a few of the other recurring characters (like the glomming Teddy who seems to have a thing for Linda). As with the episodes of the show I’ve seen, the writers/filmmakers do a great job doing whatever it takes for a laugh, even when the plot becomes far more complex than it needs to be.
The first thing that threw me off and almost lost me was when the characters break out in song, because other than Schaal, there really is not anyone in this voice cast who should be singing. But the point is that Linda is always the positive one in the relationship, countering Bob’s constant pessimism and worries.
I’m not sure what else to say, because I know critics who regularly watch the show who didn’t care for the movie while myself and others I know who aren’t as avid fans of the show enjoyed the movie for its ability to be edgier and more eclectic than most of the PG animated movies out there.
The Bob’s Burgers Movie is a fairly painless but ultimately funny endeavor, which plays so well with an audience, it may leave you wondering how you’ve been enjoying the series so much over the past 11 years while sitting alone at home.
Rating: 7.5/10
THE CHART:
This should be a good weekend for movie theaters to maybe pick up some business with Doctor Strange business starting to slow down. Top Gun: Maverick is guaranteed to be #1 this weekend, but The Bob’s Burgers Movie might pick up enough of a younger male audience to at least place in fourth. Neither will have much of an effect on the two dominant family films, The Bad Guys and Sonic the Hedgehog 2, even though both are either on VOD or streaming at this point. (Note: The below numbers are all for the four-day weekend.) UPDATE: With the widest release in box office history, I’m giving my Top Gun prediction a slight bump going into the weekend, so it should be able to cross $100 million by Monday.
1. Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount) - $103 million N/A (up $8 million)
2. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Marvel/Disney) - $21 million -34%
3. The Bob’s Burgers Movie (20th Century/Disney) - $13.2 million N/A
4. Downton Abbey: A New Era (Focus Features) - $11.5 million -28%
5. The Bad Guys (DreamWorks Animation/Universal) - $5.7 million -7%
6. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Paramount) - $3.4 million -14%
7. Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24) - $3 million -5%
8. Men (A24) - $1.7 million -45%
9. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (Warner Bros) - $1.3 million -32%
10. Firestarter (Universal) - $1.1 million -42%
This week’s “Chosen One” is…
BLEEDING AUDIO (Good Deed Entertainment)
I was fortunate to have seen Chelsea Christer’s doc about the Oakland rock group, The Matches, as a juror at OxFilm last year – it actually won its category@ – but oddly, the Matches were not a group I had ever heard of, maybe because I’ve lived on the East Coast, or more likely, because I was already too old and cranky to be into young neo-punk bands in the mid-’00s.
But apparently, there’s such a diehard fanbase for a band I’ve never heard of that their (mostly female?) fans have taken to tattooing themselves with song titles, lyrics, and even the band’s signature. But this terrific music doc immediately bodes the question of why a band that has so many other rock stars as fans (many interviewed for this movie) just never broke it big. That may have been Christer’s thesis question when starting the movie, and it doesn’t gloss over what’s involved with making it as a band and the naivety some young bands have when going into the music business and signing a record deal.
Before we get to that point, we learn about how they initially started playing area clubs as the Locals along with their then 15-year-old guitar player, Jon Devoto, before changing their name to The Matches, due to another band claiming the “Locals” epithet. Once they find their new name, the audience they’re building locally turns into a veritable cult that includes other label bands who bring them on the road as their support. Eventually, the Matches have signed to Epitath, have made a couple records, and are playing 200 to 300 gigs a year, but still not making the kind of money a band needs to survive.
Eventually, the band breaks up, and things just get more heartbreaking from there. I definitely know how it feels, having gotten behind other artists and bands that have worked so hard to try to make it as musicians only to be thwarted by a business that eagerly eats up bands like The Matches and spits them out when they’re not bringing in the kind of money even “indie labels” like Epitaph is expecting.
Christer is such a great filmmaker, and Bleeding Audio is just an amazing rags to riches story with a suitably satisfying comeback epilogue. It is everything Anvil: The Story of Anvil could and should have been.
A CHIARA (NEON)
This Italian drama directed by Jonas Carpignano premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival where it won an award, but I was surprised to learn that it’s the third film in a seeming trilogy by the filmmaker that deals with the Calabria-based crime syndicate in Italy, so yeah, it’s another Italian film about the famed Mafia dealings in the country. The film starts with the 18th birthday party for the older of two sisters, Giulia (Grecia Rotolo), whose 15-year-old younger sister Chiara (Swamy Rotolo) gets worried when their father Claudio (played by Claudio Rotolo, so presumably their real father) disappears, so Chiara skips school and goes out looking for him. Eventually, she finds him and ends up learning a lot more about his drug trade then she expects.
This was an interesting coming-of-age drama, mainly because you watch it presuming that Claudio and his colleagues must have some connections to crime, and sure enough, they do, but what makes the film different from other such films is that Carpignano decided to tell the story through the eyes of Chiara. And he’s found a really fantastic actress in Ms. Rotolo, and he then decided to do the daring thing of casting her entire family around her. I literally have no idea if any of the Rotolos are actors regularly, but it’s quite a coup for Carpignano to put together this entire group of relatives to play a family.
Mind you, I was not familiar with any of Carpignano’s earlier films but the way he brings us into this life so innocuously with the birthday party and then slowly progresses to Chiara fully learning about her father’s Mafia dealings and drug business eventually does pay off despite the rather slow build-up.
While it took me some time to really get into what Carpignano was trying to do, I liked A Chiara enough to be interested in checking out some of his previous films.
Rating: 7/10
A Chiara will open in select cities, including the IFC Center in New York City.
18 1/2 (Adventure Entertainment)
Opening in L.A. at the Laemmle Monica Film Center, as well as the IFC Center and the Film Noir Cinema in New York this Friday, before expanding to other theaters on June 3, is the new film from Dan (Bernard and Huey) Mirvish, who also happens to be the cofounder of the annual Slamdance Film Festival. The title signifies the 18 ½ minute gap in the Nixon tapes with Willa Fitzgerald (from Scream: the TV Series) playing Connie, a White House transcriber in 1974 who obtains the only copy of a tape that includes that gap. She goes along with John (The Umbrella Academy) Magaro’s Paul to a remote beach-side motel (pretending to be married) to try to uncover what’s on the tape and figure out what to do with it.
This is an interesting film that’s part political thriller but also has a good deal of humor, so it could be deemed a comedy of sorts, too. I have to say that my interest in Nixon and Watergate is fairly minimal despite being alive (albeit very young and equally disinterested) when all of that was going on. Mirvish takes this interesting idea and writes a sharp script (co-written by Daniel Moya) and finds some really talented lesser-known actors to cast in it, as well as a few ringers. Richard Kind is definitely the latter as the motel’s very funny front desk guy, Josh. They also encounter an older couple, Samuel and Lina, played by Vondie Curtis-Hall and Catherine Curtin (Stranger Things), who are the most pivotal of the supporting characters.
The movie tends to be rather talkie, but I really liked Willa Fitzgerald and John Magaro as the main characters, as they do a good job carrying this as they meet various residents of the motel. (Mirvish also has a pretty amazing voice cast for the tape and other things, including Jon Cryer, Bruce Campbell, the one and only Lloyd Kaufman (!), and Ted Raimi.)
The movie does get pretty crazy by the last act with a bit of unexpected action, but still, the mix of tones really does a lot to enforce the originality inherent in 18 ½, and I was pretty impressed with what Mirvish achieved on (presumably) a fairly small budget. I even liked the songs in the movie, which were written specifically for it, rather than trying to get some very expensive known ‘70s songs to enforce the film’s period.
Rating: 7/10
THERE ARE NO SAINTS (Paramount/Saban Films)
Opening in theaters, as well as on digital and on demand is this action revenge-thriller that I was more than a little excited by when I saw that the screenplay was written by Paul Schrader, as well as with some of the casting. Directed by Alfonso Pineda Ulloa, the film stars José María Yazpik as ex-convict Neto, a killer known as “the Jesuit,” who is released from prison just before his wife (Paz Vega) is murdered and their son kidnapped and taken to Mexico by a real estate mogul named Vincent (Neal McDonough). Neto swears to get his son back and get revenge.
Okay, I’m going to start by saying that I did not like this movie and had some real issues for some very specific reasons, but I’ll start by saying a few good things, the first one being that Ulloa is a pretty decent director who apparently has had a robust career in Mexico, though I’d never heard of him before this. I have no idea how a screenplay by Schrader got to him, but good for him on getting the gig. He also has a terrific leading man in José María Yazpik in the lead role of an ex-convict trying to get out of the killing business but driven back into it.
Yazpik plays Neto who needs to rescue his son Julio and avenge his wife’s murder, neither which are particularly original ideas for a revenge thriller, which may be why Schrader didn’t bother to direct this movie himself. At first, it seems like we’re in for a decently-directed action-thriller, but it’s pretty obvious any good things one might feel about the movie are quickly marred by a number of horrendous performances, led by Neal McDonough, who – at least at first – seems to be the film’s primary baddie.
As bad as the movie is, the only other saving grace comes in the form of Shannyn Sossamon (yes, that one) as Inez, a waitress at a strip bar Neto visits to find answers then hires her to pretend to be his wife as he travels down to Mexico. Tim Roth also has a fun but far underused character, but the two of them are trying to create a balance with the horrid amount of violence against women throughout, and after you see what happens with Neto’s wife and another woman, you can’t imagine Inez will fare much better.
What’s tragic is that you wonder if any of this misogyny was already in Schrader’s screenplay – maybe it was a script sitting in a drawer since the ‘70s? – but even though Ulloa does have a knack for decent action scenes, but the amount of needless violence means it’s not even remotely fun or entertaining to watch, even when Neto is getting his deserved revenge on Vincent by torturing him.
By the time Ron Perlman – one of my favorite actors, mind you – shows up in the last act as a pedophile crime lord, we find out that McDonough’s Vincent is not the most horrible person that Neto encounters. By that point, we’ve had to endure so much awfulness (including McDonough’s ham-fisted performance) and cookie-cutter tropes and clichés, that really nothing can save a movie that’s just vengeance layered on top of vengeance, made even uglier with gory violence and horrible misogynist stereotypes further marred by so much horrendous ugliness and machismo. This was an absolutely grueling movie to get through.
Rating: 4.5/10
PLAYLIST (Kino Lorber)
Opening at the IFC Center in New York is graphic novelist Nine Antico’s directorial debut, a French comedy that stars Sara Forestier as 20-something graphic artist Sophie, who is trying to make ends meet in Paris, taking a job as a waitress after not getting into art school, and hanging out with her friend Julia and bouncing between lovers. (I received a screener for this a bit late to review for this week’s column but will add some thoughts if and when I have time to watch it.)
Also at the IFC Center this Friday is the 2022 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour, which as the title suggests will screen 7 short films from this year’s Sundance. I haven’t seen any of them, so I have nothing further to add.
Streaming…
It’s pretty crazy that one of the biggest annual weekends at the box office might see some competition from two streaming series, OBI-WAN KENOBI on Disney+ and the premiere of the first half of the 4th season of STRANGER THINGS on Netflix. They’re not screening the former in advance, nor have I really seen much of the latter, so probably nothing to say about either… but I assume if you’re a fan of either, you’ll already know about them. Also, there’s a new Ricky Gervais standup special, called SUPERNATURE, on Netflix.
This week, Apple TV+ is also doing a week-long Prehistoric Planet premiere, which I really know very little about. Also, the documentary Elizabeth: A Portrait in Part(s), directed by the late Roger Michell, will premiere on Showtime this Friday.
Repertory stuff….
You may have noticed that I’ve moved FilmLinc to the top of this section, and that’s became they’re debuting a terrific new retrospective series this week called “Human Conditions: The Films of Mike Leigh,” which as you’ve probably guessed, is a very full and thorough series showing the movies of the great 7-time Oscar-nominee Mike Leigh. It includes all of his Oscar-nominated films like Secret & Lies, as well as Topsy Turvy, Vera Drake, Another Year, Mr. Tuner, Happy-Go-Lucky, and then some of his more esoteric older films. I honestly hadn’t seen any of Mr. Leigh’s movies before seeing Vera Drake, but I instantly became a fan, though I still didn’t make much of an effort to see his other movies since I don’t remember there being a retrospective of his films in New York in recent memory… until now. One of the first Leigh movies I hadn’t seen that I got to see through this series was Naked from 1993, starring the great David Thewlis, and if you want to talk about toxic masculinity, this movie preceded Alex Garland’s Men by almost thirty years. That movie is a great example
MOMI is also stepping up its retrospective game with the series “Mann to Mann: The Manly Melodramas of Michael Mann” with screenings of Heat, Collateral, The Inside, and Miami Vice. It’s also continuing “How It’s Done: The Cinema of James Wong Howe” through the weekend. As part of its “World of Animation” series, you can see the 1972 Japanese Anime Panda! Go Panda! On Saturday as well as next Friday.
Starting Friday, you can watch Michael Roemer’s 1984 film, Vengeance is Mine, in a new 35mm print. On Sunday, “Film Forum Jr.” is offering a Charlie Chaplin triple-feature all in 35mm: A Dog’s Life and Shoulder Arms both from 1918 and The Pilgrim from 1923.
The great “Late Night: Hong Kong Goes International” series continues this weekend with screenings on Weds night (tonight) of John Woo’s Mission: Impossible II and Face/Off, and then this weekend, you can watch Andrzej Barkowiak’s Romeo Must Die (2000) and Cradle 2 the Grave (2003), both starring Jet Li, and also RZA’s 2012 movie, The Man with the Iron Fists. Besides rescreening Spirited Away this afternoon (Weds) as part of “Alexandra Smith Selects”, “Playtime: Studio Ghibli” will screen Isao Takahata’s Pom Poko (1992) on Saturday (with subtitles) and Sunday (dubbed). “Metrograph Presents A to Z” continues this weekend with an eclectic line-up that includes the Farrellys’ classic comedy blockbuster, There’s Something About Mary (1998), as well as Michael Snow’s La Region Centrale (1971), and Robert Rosselini’s 1950 film, Stromboli. The aforementioned “Alexandra Smith Selects” is screening everything from Michelle Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) to Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991) to Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1978) and more.
In advance of Adam Sandler’s Hustle opening there on Friday, June 3, “Six with Sandler” will start on Friday, screening Funny People, Punch-Drunk Love, Spanglish, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), The Wedding Singer, and Uncut Gems. (WHAT?!? No The Cobbler?!?) (You can also still catch Martin Scorsese’s The Departed on Thursday.)
Like many repertory theaters, the Roxy is showing some David Cronenberg movies including Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method tonight (Weds), Dead Ringers on Thursday, The Dead Zone on Friday, Saturday and Sunday (along with Nicolas Refn’s Drive), along with Cosmopolis on Saturday.
AMERICAN CINEMATHEQUE (Los Angeles)
At the Los Feliz 3 theater, you can catch “Crimes of Cronenberg,” a free 7-film series running through the weekend, co-presented by Beyond Fest, with A History of Violence and Eastern Promises screening Friday, eXisteNz and Videodrome on Saturday, Dead Ringers and The Fly on Sunday, and a rare screening of his 1970 movie Crimes of the Future on Monday night.
Satoshi Kon’s Paprika shows again as part of “Late Night Favorites,” as will Perfect Blue and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.
ETC…
DINNER IN AMERICA (Best and Final Releasing)
Next week… David Cronenberg returns with Crimes of the Future while IFC Midnight releases the thriller, Watcher, though I’m not sure how wide either of those will be.
Box office data provided by The-Numbers.com.