It’s that time again. The weekend obviously starts early here for those of us living in the U.S. (Fourth of July weekend for those readers elsewhere), so it’s time to look at the box-office.
There’s two new entries, “Public Enemies” and “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs ,” which will try and do battle with “Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen.” Sadly, the uber-dumb Michael Bay film seems to have the upper hand and it feels likely that the Michael Mann film or the kids threequel can best it. “Revenge of the Fallen has already grossed, $228 million in North America and $449 million worldwide which makes it just $12 million dollars short from the highest grossing film of the year internationally, “Angels & Demons.” Presumably that small deficit will be taken care of easily this weekend.
If Bay’s sequel dominates again, the second slot should probably go to Michael Mann’s gangster epic, “Public Enemies” starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, however as we presumed, ‘ Enemies’ has critics (and fans) are divided, and it only has a 61% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Top Critics like it a bit better where the film has a 65%, but not a great score for Mann who is a beloved filmmaker. I personally didn’t think it was great and two Playlist contributors I’ve heard from were also divided. One loved it, the other one called it, “geez, ROUGH.” As we said in our review, it’ll be up for subjective opinion maybe more so than anything released this year. Some love the grandeur, detail and style, while some find fault with the lack of drama and emotion. As much as we had problems with it, we hope it’s mixed critical reception doesn’t affect it at the box-office too much, and more importantly doesn’t affect Michael Mann from doing his thing (though as some like Anne Thompson have noted, filmmaking is just getting too bloated dollar-wise, for this day and age, so it might be tough from here on in).
We have little so say about “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.” It’s voiced by Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Simon Pegg and more and only has a 36% RT. Sure, it’s a kids film and not meant for adult critics, but most reviews we’ve read is that it even insults the intelligence of children. Hard to say since those adults aren’t kids. Parents don’t have a lot to choose from though.
In the Limited Release zone it doesn’t look exactly terrific either, although 81-year-old French director Agnes Varda’s (“Cléo de 5 à 7”) autobiographical documentary, “Beaches of Agnes” has a super solid 93% RT rating.
The best bet that we can endorse in limited release is the Chilean black dramedy, “Tony Manero” which has a super solid 93 RT rating. Set in 1970s Chile during the oppressive dictatorial Pinochet years, it chronicles a man obsessed with “Saturday Night Fever,” and its titular character that was played by John Travolta, Tony Manero, and winning a look-alike/dance-alike contest. The compulsion is so great it become pathological mania and the film, directed by Pablo Larrain, does a wonderful job of blending absurdist and genuinely chilling tones. It’s a bit of genre-defier and we thought it was pretty great when we saw it last year at NYFF. If you want to see something dark, twisted and funny with vision and depth that is far greater than the clunky and juvenile, “Observe & Report,” from earlier this year, this is your best bet.
Nia Vardalos can’t seem to do anything right this year. Her reunion with John Corbett called, “I Hate Valentine’s Day” was ripped apart by critics and has a dismal 22% on RT. Her earlier 2009 comeback film, “My Life in Ruins,” could have been the title for her reviews. The film was also brutalized by critics and received an incredibly low 12% rating on RT. 2009 is not a happy “Big Fat Greek Wedding” for her and the box-office seems to be dead for her too.
Elsewhere, the French comedy thriller that we wanted to see, but missed, “The Girl From Monaco” has a pretty decent 71% RT Rating. The documentary, “Nollywood Babylon” about the booming Nigerian film industry is something we saw at IFFBoston earlier this year and never got around to writing a review about. It’s a semi-fascinating doc about a burgeoning film scene that is unfortunately so low-budget and basically unwatchable (all the film’s look positively dreadful). The films are created on the cheap and turned around super fast. The hilariously arrogant, yet god-humble Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen, is one of the key directors featured in the doc and he will have probably shot and edited a new film by the end of today. But the doc does contain a lot of interesting socio-political commentary about the institutional religions in the country that are so far-reaching they even pollute this new cinema (a lot of it based on witchcraft and fear-mongering which is evident in a big portion of the films). It’s not something to run out of your way to see unfortunately, but if you happen to ever catch when it presumably makes the rounds on the IFC channel, you could probably do a lot worse.
In Retro-Cinema around New York, the retrospective on the great Russian imagist, Andrei Tarkovsky starts next Wednesday (July 7) at Walter Reade. The director of such internal-world tone-poems such as “Solaris,” (a cult film adored by many and known as the Russian “2001”) “The Mirror,” and his amazing debut, “Ivan’s Childhood,” if you live in NY, this is a collection of films you should not miss. But just note, Tarkovsky loved to take his placid time and many of these films reach the three hour-plus mark. “Andrei Rublev” is a contemporary audience-testing 205 minutes long, but try not to let that dissuade you. In the end you’ll be far richer for having made it through the hypnotic experience.