Year: 2017

They Died With Their Rubber Boots On

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Earlier this month a research-screening veteran conveyed measured enthusiasm about Joseph Kosinski‘s Granite Mountain (Lionsgate, 9.22), a Peter Berg-style firefighting melodrama based on the real-life Yarnell Hill tragedy of 2013 in which 19 elite firefighters (all from nearby Prescott, Arizona) bought the farm. The worst firefighter tragedy since 9/11.

Pic costars Miles Teller, Ben Hardy (who?), Taylor Kitsch, Jennifer Connelly, Jeff Bridges, Andie McDowell and Josh Brolin.

I half-trust this “measured enthusiasm” guy because he loved Call Me By Your Name, which he saw at Sundance at the same Eccles showing I attended, and because we sat down in Las Vegas couple of days ago and talked about the whole realm.

“It’s average Peter Berg fare in most respects, but emotionally it hit harder than your normal fact-based epic,” he opined. Take this with a grain but he claims that Teller delivers his “best work, a mature and nuanced performance.” (MT is portraying Brendan McDonough, the one member of the 20-man Granite Mountain Hotshots who didn’t die in the blaze.)

“Bridges keeps it going with his underbitten West Texas accent from Hell or High Water, and it never gets old. Jennifer C. has some awesome scenes when she yells and cries…pretty heartbreaking.

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Shamrock Green

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After plugging Transformers: The Last Knight (Paramount, 6.23) at Cinemacon, Mark Wahlberg paid a visit to the Las Vegas Wahlburgers, which is right next to my Bally’s hotel. I just bought a burger there — pretty good. The burgeoning fast-food chain is co-owned by three Wahlberg brothers — Paul (chef & general honcho), Donnie and Mark. It’s also a reality series on A&E. No Wahlburgers in Los Angeles yet.

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Never So Few

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It’s not the humans per se who will suffer a final defeat at the finale of War of the Planet of the Apes, but an army of aggressive dicks led by Woody Harrelson‘s Trump-like Colonel. Which of course makes the Ape victory palatable to the likes of you and me. Matt Reeves is a sharp, quality-level filmmaker, and this trilogy finale, obviously, is going to be a strong, well-made film.

Finely shaped and timed as this trailer is, it played a helluva lot better on the huge screen inside the 4000-seat Caesar’s Palace Collisseum than it does right now on my Macbook Air.

By the way: I felt extra-thrilled when a brief clip from John Huston‘s The Maltese Falcon was shown one or two days ago. As great as this 1941 classic looks when I watch the Bluray seems when I watch it on my 65″ 4K screen, seeing it in the big Collisseum screen was a lot better. I’d pay serious money to watch it on a huge super-screen with super-amped sound some day.

Outta Here Tomorrow

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Las Vegas locals love this Thai restaurant. Located within one of the emptiest and gloomiest single-story outdoor malls in the Western hemisphere. Got here at 7:15 pm last night and was told I’d have to wait for a good 75 minutes for a table.

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You Never Know, But Wonder May Snag Best Picture Nomination

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I hadn’t paid any attention to Wonder (Lionsgate, 11.17), a delicate family drama in the vein of Peter Bogdanovich‘s Mask, until today. But now I’m on it, and for good reason.

Based on three relatively recent novels by R.J. Palacio, it’s about the journey of a young kid with a facial deformity (Jacob Tremblay) as he acclimates to school, and how his parents (Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson) and extended family help him along.


Owen Wilson, Julia Roberts during filming of Wonder.

Jacon Tremblay

This kind of story can be cloying or worse in the wrong hands, but I was sensing from the brief trailer shown today that director Steven Chbosky (The Perks of Being A Wallflower) has handled things with restraint and the right kind of emphasis. Maybe.

Three things got my attention. One, it’s obviously going to be an emotionally affecting drama — I could feel the pangs right away. Two, a Lionsgate spokesperson mentioned that Wonder has gotten the highest test scores of any Lionsgate film ever. And three, Wonder‘s original release date, 4.7.17, was changed last February to 11.17, which means Lionsgate knows it has the Oscar nuts.

Who knows how good it’ll turn out to actually be, but I can almost guarantee you that the Academy members who nominated Garth Davis‘s heart-tugging Lion for six Oscars (including Best Picture) are going to give it up for Wonder.

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Killer Klowns

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I’ve never been much for this kind of slam-and-scream horror film, much less for the scary literature of Stephen King. But I have to admit that the red balloon is spooky. Because it drops the Alka Seltzer into the water.

A Darkly Comic Satire of American Arrogance & Exceptionalism — Got It

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David Michod and Brad Pitt‘s War Machine looks and sounds engaging as shit. The Netflix press release calls it “absurdist” and “pitch-black.” Pitt’s General Glenn McMahon – Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Ben Kingsley as former Afghanistan president Hamid Karazi…perfect! With Emory Cohen, Topher Grace, Anthony Michael Hall, Will Poulter, Lakeith Stanfield, Meg Tilly, Tilda Swinton. “We’re not here to win — we’re here to clean up the mess.” War Machine pops on 5.26.17.

When In Doubt, Ask Clem Kadiddlehopper

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Most Americans are total rubes when it comes to respecting pronunications of foreign last names. A year and a half ago I riffed about the yokel way to pronounce the last name of Melissa “Supergirl” Benoist. Semi-cultivated types pronounce this French-origin name as “Ben-whah” while dogpatch Americans pronounce it “Ben-oh-ist” with Benoist herself pronouncing it “Ben-OYST.”

Now a “new” mispronunication has surfaced — the last name of Marvel Films honcho Kevin Feige. New to me, that is. For the last ten-plus years I’ve been saying “fayge” or “feejzh” (like the first syllable in leisure), but yesterday a Cinemacon moderator pronounced it “Fay-gee.” I jumped in my seat…what?

Feige is a German term for fig, the purple-colored tree fruit. Germans would pronounce this “Fye-guh“, which is easily within the realm of American capability.

But it also resembles the medieval term “liege” (as in “my liege”, which is pronounced like the first syllable of “leisure” and which means “my superior”) as well as the Belgian city of Liege, which is pronounced “Lee-ayge.” So for a while there I was saying “fayge” or “feejzh” — a one-syllable, soft-g pronunication. Because Feige’s last name merely reverses the order of the first two vowels (e-i instead of i-e).

But throw Feige’s name into the American cultural meat-grinder and it becomes fay-gee, or almost the same as Weegee, the New York tabloid photographer. Nobody comes up with more dumbshit-sounding pronunciations than Americans…nobody.

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Blood, Sweat and Tears

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So how is Gary Oldman‘s performance as Winston Churchill in Joe Wright‘s Darkest Hour (Focus Features, 11.24)? Or, more precisely, how good or commanding does his Churchill seem in the Darkest Hour trailer that was shown today during a Focus Features presentation inside Caesar’s Palace? Oldman is very, very good. It’s not Churchill himself come back to life (the voice doesn’t quite have that trademark snap, that Winnie-tude), but a genetic splicing of Oldman, Churchill and Wright. It’s somewhere between 85% and 90% of what I’d hoped to see and hear, and considering the expectations that’s pretty damn good. Obviously a locked-in Best Actor thing. Due respect to Brian Cox and Johathan Teplitzky‘s Churchill (which will open in early June), but Oldman’s Winnie is more commanding. Ditto John Lithgow‘s Churchill in The Crown.


Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in Joe Wright’s Finest Hour (Focus Featuyres, 11.24).

Paramount and Focus Slates Aside, Cinemacon Has Been Largely About Promoting Idiot Cartoon Jackhammer Movies

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Hollywood Elsewhere staggered out of Universal‘s Cinemacon presentation a little more than an hour ago. I’d still be there if I hadn’t decided to avoid watching F. Gary Gray‘s The Fate of the Furious (Universal 4.4.17), which is showing as we speak.

For whatever reason Team Universal decided to avoid even mentioning three releases that comprise their fall ’17 slate — Doug Liman‘s American Made, Tomas Alfredson‘s The Snowman (10.13.17) and Jason Hall‘s Thank You For You Service)l.

They focused instead on promoting five jackhammer, bass-thump, super-coarse, high-velocity movies opening between early April and late July — The Fate of the Furious, The Mummy (6.9), Despicable Me 3 (6.30), Girls Trip (7.21.17) and David Leitch‘s Atomic Blonde (7.28). Because slam-thunk moron movies make more dough that those aimed at 25-and-overs.

I’m not saying this is all exhibitors care about, but…well, this is more or less where they live and what seems to concern them the most. Morons and concessions.

If you didn’t know that Universal, a longstanding studio with a proud tradition, has a modest fall slate and that it’s making only the above-mentioned spring and summer movies [which it isn’t), you’d be under an impression that Universal has all but sold its soul to the devil.

Not just Universal, actually, but to a considerable extent Sony, Disney, STX and Warner Bros. Because they’re all making the same movie these days — the same assaultive, gutslamming, ear-splitting, cartoon-like experience that I’m calling generic superjizz.

And yet, curiously, Paramount is to some extent on another planet, at least as far as three of its 2017 films are concerned — Alexander Payne‘s obviously brilliant Downsizing, George Clooney‘s Coen-esque Suburbicon and Alex Garland‘s spooky Annhilation.  And don’t forget Darren Aronofsky‘s Mother, which wasn’t promoted here but will also pop in the fall.

Focus Features, which will stage a Cinemacon luncheon and presentation less than an hour from now, also resides on this planet Atomic Blonde aside, they’ll be releasing four adult-level standouts this year — Sofia Coppola‘s The Beguiled (6.23), Stephen Frears‘ Victoria and Abdul (9.22), Joe Wright‘s Darkest Hour (11.24) and Paul Thomas Anderson‘s untitled fashion drama with Daniel Day Lewis (opening on or near Christmas ’17).

Besson’s Valerian Doesn’t Seem Punchy, Different Enough

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At best Dane DeHaan is a marginal industry star whom the public has little feeling for, much less recognition of. This alone may pose a domestic problem for Luc Besson‘s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (STX, 7.21). Besson has been trying to launch this adaptation of the French sci-fi comics series Valérian and Laureline for many years. He “reportedly scrapped an earlier version of the script after he saw James Cameron‘s Avatar for the first time.” The trailer feels generic. Clara Delevigne costars; backup perfs from Rihanna, Ethan Hawke, Clive Owen, Alain Chabat, Mathieu Kassovitz, Kris Wu, Herbie Hancock, John Goodman and Rutger Hauer.