Wilmington on Movies: That’s My Boy

Say one thing for Adam Sandler: He isn’t afraid of looking like an idiot on screen. Or a boor. Or a horny dude. Or a comedian who doesn’t give a damn what the the critics think of him. In Sandler’s outrageously uninhibited, defiantly obnoxious but good-natured new movie, That’s My Boy, he plays, to the hilt, Donny Berger, an outrageously uninhibited, defiantly obnoxious, good-natured guy who became famous in the ’80s — or had fame thrust upon him, as his classmates colorfully put it — when, as a lippy 13-year-old eighth-grader, he had an affair with his sexy junior high (or middle school) teacher, Mary McGarricle (Eva Amurri Martino), had a baby with her, and became a tabloid sensation.

Friday Estimates: June 16, 2013

Rock of Ages drops like a stone. That’s My Boy soils its pants. And Prometheus takes a hard shot to the head, Friday Two vs Opening Friday. But aside from that, it looks like a perfectly mediocre summer weekend.

Wilmington on DVDs: La Terra Trema; Conversation Piece

La Terra Trema is an almost didactic and preachy leftist film, which often tells you how it feels. (Visconti, along with Antonio Pietrangeli, writes and speaks the narration himself.) But there‘s a majesty in the images of landscape and sea, and an unforced naturalism in the performances, by the actual villagers of Aci Trezza, that both pull you deeply into the human side of the story.

The DVD Wrapup: In Darkness, Sherlock Holmes, Accident, Ghost Rider … More

Try to imagine a Hitchcockian thriller, as choreographed by Rube Goldberg, and you might have an idea what to expect from Pou-Soi Cheang’s perversely clever “Accident.” Set largely in the bustling streets of Hong Kong, the award-winning import describes how a tightly-knit gang plots elaborate hits on people targeted by a mastermind known as the Brain.

Wilmington on DVDs. Sherlock Holmes: AGOS; Journey 2; Ghost Rider: SOV

Elementary…

Wilmington on DVDs: In Darkness

The sewers of Lvov are small and inky black and steeped in an airless-looking gloom, cramped and comfortless, wet with sewage and slime. These sewers look like real sewers. They are true hellholes, and the people hiding there are a mismatched crowd of businessmen, operators, snobs, adulterers, ordinary people, families and even children, all escaping from the Lvov ghetto, crowded together on the walkways and pressed to the breaking point.

Wilmington on Movies: Children of Paradise

Prevert’s script has never been surpassed as sheer literature for the screen. The cast is a great one too, from that ultimate femme fatale Arletty as the irresistible beauty Garance, to the four superb actors who play the four men who adore her unto death: lively, cheerfully seductive Pierre Brasseur as the commanding virtuoso classical actor Frederick LeMaitre; cold Louis Salou as the reptilian Count Edouard de Montray; Marcel Herrand with his evil smile, as the nihilist/dandy/playwright/thief/murderer Lacenaire; and melancholy-looking genius Jean-Louis Barrault as the great sad-eyed mime.

The Weekend Report, June 10, 2012

“Prometheus,” a quasi-prequel to “Alien” was pitted against the third installment of the animated “Madagascar” franchise. Tracking, gut instinct and tossing the I Ching all favored the space odyssey. But while “Prometheus” led Friday box office, Saturday and projected Sunday matinee business provided “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” the edge with a projected $59.9 million weekend. “Prometheus” debuted with a still impressive $50.1 million.

Pride’s Friday 5: June 7, 2012

Three movies, in theaters now; two books, downloadable today. “Oslo, August 31”; “The Color Wheel”; “Moonrise Kingdom”; David Bordwell’s lucid, frightening overview of the digital bend-over, “Pandora’s Digital Box: Films, Files, and the Future of Movies”; and Paul Maher, Jr.’s oral history of the cryptic career of Terrence Malick, “One Big Soul.”

Wilmington on Movies: Prometheus

The template for both the first Alien and Prometheus — movies about small, isolated groups of humans besieged by a malignant space alien or aliens — is probably John W. Campbell’s famous story “Who Goes There?” which was later made, not very faithfully, into Howard Hawks’ and Christian Nyby’s zingy 1951 pop classic The Thing from Another World, and later, more faithfully, into John Carpenter’s gory and generally underrated 1982 The Thing. The 1979 Alien sort of reset that template for all time, at least for movies. (It’s still much used and abused).

Wilmington on DVDs. Coriolanus

Here we have another film treasure taken from the vast and wonderful dramaturgy of William Shakespeare, the greatest playwright who ever lived: “Coriolanus,” bitter, bleak, murderous play of the hell of warfare, of deadly comrades in arms, of the masses and the few, of the ties of blood and the evils of politics — now made into a movie set in the age of bombs and the land of ethnic cleansing (Serbia), directed by and starring, in the title role, that fine melancholy actor Ralph Fiennes, with a performance so extraordinary by Vanessa Redgrave, as Volumnia, the ultimate warrior‘s mother, that it takes your breath away to watch her, and to hear her — as it must have staggered Fiennes while he watched and directed and acted with her, and said the words above, with feeling.

Wilmington on DVDs.The Woodmans

One problem with being a great artist, or a hugely gifted artist, is that the temperament isn’t always easy to live with — especially for the artists themselves. Another problem: You have to depend on perceptive critics and audiences to earn your living or win recognition, and they aren’t always available.

The DVD Wrapup: John Carter, Journey 2, Safe House, Hit So Hard, Hondo, Act of Valor, Desire, Falling Skies … More

This epic sci-fi adventure would have been much better served if it had been marketed as “Edger Rice Burroughs’ John Carter,” instead of simply, “Disney: John Carter.” It takes an ego the size of the Matterhorn to think audiences would feel better about seeing a movie as generically titled as “John Carter,” simply because of the Disney brand, instead of as the brainchild of one of the genre’s godfathers.

Wilmington on DVDs: John Carter; Safe House; Act of Valor

With its cast of real-life Navy Seals playing characters based on themselves, in a script partly drawn from real life, in scenes that the Seals actors helped design and choreograph, Act of Valor should have been the last word in SEALS combat realism. And that’s something that you’d think American audiences would be ready for — especially in the aftermath of the inspiring real-life SEALS trackdown and termination of Osama Bin Laden.

DP/30: PGA’s Produced By Conference 2012, co-chair Gary Lucchesi

For the third year, the Producer’s Guild of America is putting on “Produced By,” bringing together producers for seminars, pitch session, master classes and more. This year, Lakeshore’s Gary Lucchesi is co-chairing. We talked about the event and a history in show business, from a class audited at UCLA to the mailroom to agent to producer. A unique story in a town of unique stories… the kind you might hear at “Produced By.”

DVD Geek: The Rape of the Vampire

The greatest bad movie ever is Plan Nine from Outer Space, but coming in a close number two is Jean Rollin’s exquisitely ridiculous The Rape of the Vampire, which has been released on Blu-ray no less, by Kino Lorber Incorporated as a Redemption title. For one thing, it is in that hoity-toity language, French, which connoisseurs of badness embrace as the language of their superiors. For another thing, it has lots of topless women, which in itself is not a bad thing at all—just ask a nursing infant—but is really dopey when there is no particular narrative reason as to why the women should choose not to drape themselves respectably, particularly when there are a bunch of grunting, farmer-looking types, chasing after them with pitchforks.

The Weekend Report, June 3, 2012

Snow White and the Huntsman eschewed Grumpy and Sleepy and embraced Happy with an estimated $56.3 million debut that easily led weekend movie going. It was the only wide national session though the inspirational For Greater Glory on Mexico’s 1920s Cristeros War posted a passable $1.8 million bow at 757 locations.

Overall box office for the frame fell just short of $145 million for a slight 7% ebb from the immediate prior weekend. It was a sharper 11% decline from 2011 when the opening of X-Men: First Class led the field with $55.1 million and the second weekend of Hangover 2 took the bridesmaid’s position with $31.4 million.

Wilmington on Movies: High School

This particular “High School” is a knowing but mediocre stoner comedy with lots of marijuana in-jokes, but few real laughs — a joyless little pot farce about how a nutty school superintendent, Dr, Leslie Gordon (Michael Chiklis), goes on an anti-pot crusade, and runs up against the detemined sabotage of would-be valedictorian Henry Burke (Matt Bush) and his stoner pal Travis Breaux (Sean Marquette).

Wilmington on Movies: Snow White and the Huntsman

The production design (by Dominic Watkins) and the cinematography (by Greig Fraser) is impressive, but the story loses its polish and swing and a lot of its coherence when the narration stops and it turns into an over-produced ersatz classic.

Friday Estimates: June 1, 2012

Snow White comes out of the box with $20.2 million, leaving the question of what Saturday will look like. Are must-sees sated or will teens make it a hot Saturday night draw? Men in Black III is off 54%, which would be modest if last weekend’s opening was bigger. The Avengers is off a modest 42%, still strong, and will near $550m domestic by the end of the weekend.