Category Archives: Reviews

After Summer Slide, Hollywood Looks for Fall Comeback

Image result for hollywood fall 2019 preview movies

Hollywood could use a hero. After a forgettable summer at the box office, the movie industry is looking for an autumn resurgence in ticket sales. With the box office at $3.9 billion for summer 2019, Hollywood registered its second-worst season in theaters in 12 years. And coming back to match last year’s pace won’t be easy.

The film industry has less than four months to bring in about $3 billion in ticket sales if it hopes to tally more than $11 billion for 2019. For the past four years, movies in the U.S. have rung up at least $11 billion annually.

But that string is in jeopardy this year, even with the success of Avengers: Endgame, the highest-grossing film in Hollywood history. Endgame raked in $858 million in ticket sales, or more than a quarter of all summer ticket sales. And with no clear cinematic juggernaut on the horizon, studios will be  hard-pressed to keep its pace at the box office.

“Summer 2019 started off strong thanks to Avengers: Endgame hitting theaters in late April, but struggled thereafter, as tentpole after tentpole performed below expectations at the box office,” noted Sandy Schaefer of ScreenRant. “There were still a few hits along the way (John Wick 3, Spider-Man: Far From Home, The Lion King), but in general audiences seemed a bit underwhelmed by what Hollywood had on the menu. Studios are no doubt hoping for a better turnout over the next four months.”

To create one, studios are bringing several high-profile films to theaters for autumn, including:

Joker (Oct. 4)Image result for joker movie

Joaquin Phoenix plays wannabe stand-up comedian Arthur Fleck in this origins story about Batman’s perennial rival. Warner Bros. is serious about making Joker an awards contender (the studio screened it at this year’s Toronto and Venice’s film festivals ahead of its October release. Director Todd Phillips “is certainly a ways away from his Hangover trilogy days with this Scorseseian crime drama,” Schaefer says. ,”It’s anyone’s guess as to how comic book fans (or viewers in general) will respond to this one.”

http://childpsychiatryassociates.com/wp-content/plugins/fancy-product-designer/assets/css/fancy-product.css Gemini Man (Oct. 11)Image result for gemini man

Will Smith play elite assassin Henry Brogan, who is preparing to retire, when he’s suddenly targeted and pursued by his deadliest opponent yet: his younger clone. “It’s the latest ambitious offering from director Ang Lee, whose previous ‘experiments’ have always been compelling, even when they’re only partly-successful,” Schaefer says. “That should remain the case here.”

Terminator: Dark Fate (Nov. 1)Image result for terminator: dark fate

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong reteam in this tale of Sarah Connor joining forces with a soldier from the future to protect a young woman who’s being hunted by a time-traveling Terminator. “Terminator fans have already been burned by the promise of a fresh start for the series twice, but maybe – just maybe – third time will be the charm for this struggling property,” Schaefer posits.

Doctor Sleep (Nov. 8)Image result for doctor sleep

Set 40 years after his terrifying stay at the Overlook Hotel, Dan Torrance (Ewan McGregor) helps a teenager who’s targeted by a dangerous cult for her own “shining” abilities. Judging by the marketing, Doctor Sleep has the makings of an engaging continuation of (director Mike) Flanagan’s ongoing exploration of trauma and grief through the horror genre,” Schaefer says. “That it also salutes Stanley Kubrick’s Shining movie is just icing on the cake in some ways.”

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Dec. 20)Image result for star wars the rise of skywalker

he Skywalker Saga draws to a close as Rey, Finn, and Poe Dameron fight back against Kylo Ren and the forces of the First Order. “It’s the final chapter in the story of the Skywalker clan, and needs to leave audiences clamoring for more when the galaxy far, far away returns three years from now for its first ever post-Skywalker narrative,” Schaefer notes. She points out the movie is already “keeping fans busy as ever with their speculation in the meantime (especially where it concerns Palpatine’s unexpected return from the grave).”

While studios have fallen behind last year’s record-setting ticket sales, Schaefer believes there are enough big guns in the lineup to take up the slack. “October and November will be loaded with even more franchise offerings than usual, in addition to a number of director-driven films aiming to make some noise.” she says.  “Finally, December will round things out with the now-customary assortment of potential crowd-pleasers and prestige releases.”

Heeeeere’s Stanley!

Image result for stanley kubrick the shining

In 1980, while promoting his film The Shining, Stanley Kubrick gave a rare interpretation of one of his movie endings — in this case the 1921 photo at the end of the film that suggested that Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson) had been part of the Overlook Hotel for decades. “The ballroom photograph at the very end,” Kubrick said, “suggests the reincarnation of Jack.”

This year, Kubrick is experiencing a reincarnation of his own. The enigmatic director is resurfacing on big screens and small:

  • In November, the film Doctor Sleep, an adaptation of Stephen King’s sequel-novel to The Shining, hits theaters — along with some of Kubrick’s most iconic images from his controversial interpretation of King’s first book.
  • Kubrick enjoyed a resurgence on the internet this summer, as the Apollo 11 mission celebrated its 50th anniversary and conspiracy theorists resurfaced en masse to suggest that Kubrick staged a fake moon landing and admitted as much in subtle clues from The Shining.Image result for shining danny apollo 11
  • The film Ready Play One — which Indiewire called “Steven Spielberg’s Epic Tribute to Stanley Kubrick” — enjoyed a healthy run on video shelves. The film, which featured detailed Shining scene reenactments, spent two weeks  at No. 1 for video sales and collected more than $31 million.Image result for stanley kubrick the shining
  • Kubrick, Walt Disney and Stan Lee were inducted this year into Hollywood’s Visual Effects Society Hall of Fame for their “profound impact on the field of visual effects.”Image result for Kubrick, Walt Disney and Stand Lee were inducted this year into Hollywood's Visual Effects Society Hall of Fame
  • The director acts as the centerpiece for The HollywoodBowles’ latest book, The Last Novel of Jack Torrance. (In a shameless bit of self-promotion, the ghosts of the Overlook gave the book an enthusiastic severed-thumbs-up.)

Of all the reincarnations, Sleep has to be the most intriguing. While the studio and author have said that Sleep is a faithful adaption of King’s book, the movie clearly borrows from Kubrick’s masterpiece (which King famously hated, and produced a TV miniseries in response). Speaking to reporters earlier this summer, director Mike Flanagan explained the tightrope act of blending two classics, along with his nerves about bringing up the film to King.

“When it came to trying to crack the adaptation, I went back to the book first,” said Flanagan, who previously directed the well-received King adaptation Gerald’s Game. “The big conversation that we had to have was about whether or not we could still do a faithful adaptation of the novel as King had laid it out while inhabiting the universe that Kubrick had created. And that was a conversation that we had to have with Stephen King, to kick the whole thing off, and if that conversation hadn’t gone the way it went, we wouldn’t have done the film.

“Stephen King’s opinions about the Kubrick adaptation are famous, and complicated, and complicated to the point where, if you’ve read (Doctor Sleep), you know that he actively and intentionally ignored everything that Kubrick had changed about his novel, and kind of defiantly said, ‘Nope, this completely exists outside the Kubrick universe.’” Flanagan said. “We really needed to try to bring those worlds back together again. We had to go to King and explain how… and in particular how to get into the vision of the Overlook that Kubrick had created. And our pitches to Stephen went over surprisingly well, and we came out of the conversation with not only his blessing to do what we ended up doing, but his encouragement.”

But it came with an emotional cost, the director explained. “This project has had for me the two most nerve-wracking moments of my entire career,” Flanagan said. “The first was sending the first draft of the script to Stephen King, and that was utterly terrifying, but he thankfully really loved it. And the second was at the end, very recently, of this post-production process, when the film was sent to Stephen to watch and also to the Kubrick estate. Both went very well, and that was always the hope going in, was that if there was some universe in which Stephen King and the Stanley estate could both love this movie, that is the dream. Threading that needle has been the source of every ulcer we’ve had for the last two years.”Image result for stephen king hates the shining

Set 40 years after the events of The Shining, Doctor Sleep stars Ewan McGregor as the grown-up Danny Torrance who encounters a teenager named Abra (Kyliegh Curran) with her own powerful extrasensory gift, known as the “shine.” Rebecca Ferguson plays Rose the Hat, the leader of a group called The True Knot, who feed off the shine of innocents in their quest for immortality. The film opens Nov. 8.

And don’t forget about the book! Operators are standing by, and supplies are limited: As of deadline, there were only a gazillion copies remaining!

Sacha Baron Cohen and the Perils of Playing it Straight

Image result for the spy cohen netflix

Sacha Baron Cohen has made a career out of subterfuge. As Ali G, Borat, Bruno and others, Cohen has used his comedic talents to become Hollywood’s best undercover operator, duping Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, Joe Arpaio, Ted Koppel and more to underscore American hubris, bigotry and overall clulessness with little more than a camera, makeup and an accent. You’d think he’d be a natural for The Spy, Netflix’s new miniseries.

But under the confines of a scripted period drama, Cohen proves less a chameleon and more an apt protagonist for a series that’s short on drama and shorter on plot twists and surprises. The result feels like a documentary that dramatizes portions not caught on camera or through interviews. It’s a serviceable show, and portrays a compelling real-life character. But Spy promises a John le Carré-style drama,  and viewers may feel double-crossed by the unfulfilled pledge.

Cohen plays Eli Cohen (no relation), a real Israeli spy who infiltrated the highest levels of the Syrian government in the 1960s. Baron Cohen is taking on the role not just of a secret agent, but a super one, and the results are undeniably muted, thanks in part to a script that telegraphs where it’s headed in the opening moments of the series.

As The Spy begins, Eli is a happily married Israeli Everyman, an Egyptian Jew forced to expatriate to Tel Aviv.  He bristles at his perceived secondary status as a Sephardic Jew, though his angst is buried within the scribbled love notes to his doting wife Nadia (Hadar Ratzon Rotem). Those conflicting faces underscore The Spy‘s fault line; creator Gideon Raff seems determined to muffle an explosive subject so as not to offend viewer sensitivities. Even the color palate of the series is so dampened as appear black-and-white in sections.

Approached by the Mossad, which is desperate to embed an agent in Syria, Eli turns out to be wiz at spycraft, as a training montage turns Eli into a Bond-ian operative with a memorable call number to boot: Agent 88. Eli learns his new trade from a gruff handler (Noah Emmerich, with one of the more awkward Israeli accents in a series rife with them). Eli begins his identity makeover in Buenos Aires, where he poses as a rich and debonair import-exporter who longs to return to a Syrian homeland he has never seen.

For those not familiar with the real Eli Cohen (he’s much more known in Israel than America), Raff lays out the hero’s arc in the first episode — and scene. The opening shot is a flash-forward to the series’ end, after the Mossad secret agent is captured by the Syrian government and forced to write a farewell letter to his wife. In case you missed the message of the story in trailers, the scene even includes a line of dialogue from a jail observer: “My poor boy, you do not remember your name?”

From there, the series shifts back in time, six years earlier, to portray how Eli turned into the spy he became, and the cost he had to pay in memories and self-identity.  The unforeseeable sacrifice of blind patriotism is fine story fodder, if only it were unforeseeable for viewers. But if you’ve seen any of the Bourne movies, you’ve seen The Spy, just with more nuance, action and acting chops.

What makes The Spy watchable are two intriguing elements: the “true story” gravitas of the series, and the choice of Baron Cohen as the leading man. Sacha Baron playing Eli is a bold decision, given most fans know the chameleon comedian from his situational satires Da Ali G Show, Borat, and Who Is America? Though he’s appeared in dramas before (he was in Hugo and Les Miserables), seeing Cohen play a real-life character with little makeup is an intriguing test of his acting skills — and of audiences’ ability to suspend disbelief.

But after six hours, it’s hard to argue for or against Cohen’s career choice. He hits the emotive marks the script demands, and he hardly weighs down a series that could have crumbled under its own seriousness. But rarely does he  provide more than faces of nervousness or boredom, and it’s hard to tell whether the limitations are in his ability or in the story he inherited. There are even a handful of sterling moments, like when Eli is asked to shoot civilians to prove his loyalty.  But there are too few to call The Spy riveting.

The series benefits from beautiful photography by Itai Ne’eman, and Emmerich adds some much-needed subtlety to the series, despite a clunky accent. Rotem also elevates her character beyond that of a hand-wringing housewife left behind. But the strengths are not enough to negate the series’ looming obviousness. And for a spontaneous actor like Sacha Baron Cohen, predictability is an indefatigable foe.