Welcome to the dog days of summer, where the deafening roar of rocket turbines and rat-a-tat-tat of Tommy guns have subsided and we find ourselves in relative quiet, for now. Only the squealing of guinea pigs and Katherine Heigl risk disturbing our summer reverie. In all seriousness, mainstream cineplex choices are particularly dire this weekend, but everyone needs a break sometimes, even Hollywood.
Will this one be the lowest grossing of the summer? Did no studio realize there was a major hole in the schedule or was there just really nothing to drop on Friday, July 24? Nope, the studios actually had their thinking caps on cause no on wanted to follow-up the behemoth act that was “Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Price” and that’s likely going to prove to be intelligent thinking.
‘Half-Blood Prince’ will likely rule the roost again, and it’s conceivable that pictures like, “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” and “Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen,” could keep their number two and three box-office slots. There’s three films in wide release this weekend, all of them look terrible and all of them are receiving really terrible reviews.
However, will that matter? The first picture is a kids film, “G-Force,” and we recognize it’s not for us and for critics. Will kids take to it? It has an all-star cast (not that it really matters to kids) which features voice work from Jon Favreau, Penelope Cruz, Sam Rockwell, Nicolas Cage, Steve Buscemi, Tracey Morgan and features the real life Zach Galifianakis, Bill Nighy and Will Arnett. It is also the feature film debut for director Hoyt H. Yeatman Jr., who previously worked with Jerry Bruckheimer as a visual effects artist and supervisor on such eye-gasming gems as “Con Air” and “Armageddon,” so plan on “The Rock” for kids. It has a sub-par 27% RT rating, but again, it’s not for critics and adults. We saw the trailer when we saw “Up” in theaters and it did not seem reprehensible and if you have young children, we bet they would enjoy it.
Next up: our irrational love for Katherine Heigl was stymied by the folks at Sony who did not invite us to “The Ugly Truth,” the idiotic-looking battle of the sexes comedy that stars Gerard Butler as a chauvinist TV star asshole and Heigl as the brassy TV show producer who falls for him regardless if he’s a major dick because he’s hot (ahh, yes, the great messages put out there). Perhaps it’s best we weren’t invited as the picture has a brutal 11% RT Rating, and it will most likely not be the surprise hit “Legally Blonde” was for its director, Robert Luketic. Plus we should know better having gone to see “27 Dresses,” for Heigl and rewarded with the cinematic kick to the crotch for our misguided effort.
Than there’s the “Orphan,” directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who almost snagged a Worst Picture and Worst Remake award at the 2006 Golden Raspberries for “House of Wax,” which looks like a straight paycheck gig for Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard which is weird because the latter generally doesn’t take many jobs like that. Farmiga is a pretty strong actress when she wants to be, but either has a mortgage, a shitty agent of bad taste because this is the second, creepy-kid horror she’s been in within 24 months (the last one was “Joshua” which had Sam Rockwell in the tireless husband role). Maybe the script was decent and this is why they signed on? Isabelle Fuhrman plays the creepy porcelain-doll-looking brat and if you can watch that trailer and think, “wow, that looks like something I really want to see,” you should probably be lobotomized as soon as humanly possible. Though the backhanded compliment of this week’s box-office is that is has the highest critical score of any mainstream release this weekend with a pretty low, 42% percent RT Rating, but that’s sort of like smelling three turds and going, “this one smells the least repugnant.”
So yeah, if you live in city that only has megaplex theaters and malls. Do yourself a favor: read a book because you’ll probably lose precious brain cells otherwise.
In Limited Release: It’s not drastically better, but there is hope. The biggest and brightest film by far is Armando Iannucci’s “The Office”-like political comedy, “In The Loop,” which stars Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Gina McKee, the always serviceablly funny David Rasche, James Gandolfini and the return of Anna Chlumsky (remember her?), who has seemingly been away from film for years, but is all growed up now. “In The Loop,” satirically centers on political nitwits in the U.K. plus their American counterparts all trying to escalate the Iraq war circa 2003 (more or less anyhow, with some accidentally kicking it into gear and doing their best to make damage control). It has an incredibly good 93% RT rating which makes us want to stop in our tracks and say, “who, hold the phone!” It’s tremendously funny for the most part and entertaining, but it’s also not high art and since it’s based on Iannucci’s British political BBC show “The Thick of It,” the laughs and entire story tend to be incredibly episodic and fleeting. It’s essentially a 1 hour and 45 minute BBC sitcom stretched into a feature-length movie and while we suppose there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s still not really a film. Still, you could do a lot worse and we did mostly enjoy ourselves, and Peter Capaldi is admittedly stellar with his imaginative use of new-fangled f-bombs.
Opening in 6 theaters is first-time director John Hindman’s film “The Answer Man” (which has been changing titles, first “The Dream of the Romans” and “Arlen Faber” since before its premiere at Sundance earlier this year; never a great sign of confidence). Jeff Daniels stars alongside solid performers Lauren Graham, Lou Taylor Pucci, and Olivia Thirlby, as a best selling reclusive author who finds his life intertwined with a single mother and a freshly-rehabbed bookstore owner. One of us caught it at the Boston Independent Film Festival and thought it was fresh romantic comedy with understated humor and strong performances deserving of a wider audience. RT isn’t so kind with a 33% average. See for yourself, but probably a decent bet compared with the wider fare.
Other options in limited release are “Shrink,”starring Kevin Spacey, as a you guessed it, shrink with problems of his own dealing with Hollywood clients in LA-LA Land. Looks like another patronizing Hollywood insider pic, that no one outside of the biz can be bothered with. How fantastic, another Kevin Spacey project that no one cares about. Seriously, can that guy make a decent movie or just disappear into the ether? RT has it at 14%. We haven’t been to a screening yet, but “English Surgeon” looks to be a compelling documentary concerning a London neurosurgeon who travels to Ukraine, treating patients who marvel at modern medical technique. It is currently sitting pretty at 90% on RT and also boasts a score by Nick Cave which makes it of additional interest.
That’s about it. If you’re living in New York, you have no choice other than going to see the Nicholas Ray retrospective at Film Forum. Be there or consider yourself hopelessly square beyond redemption. No, seriously.