Holiday Recap: Juno, Charlie Wilson’s War, I Am Legend, Sweeney Todd
The best Christmas presents I received this year were from Aaron Sorkin and Diablo Cody. From those two screenwriters came two screenplays. From the screenplays came two of the year’s smartest, most entertaining films. Charlie Wilson’s War, a film about a Texas congressman who decides to wage a covert war against the Soviets by supplying the Afghans with weapons in 1980, is a lesson in geopolitics, probably a 400-level class. It’s not nearly as inspiring as either The American President or The West Wing, but Sorkin here has created three of the best characters he’s ever written. In the hands of Julia Roberts, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Tom Hanks (as Charlie Wilson), Charlie Wilson’s War is an ensemble comedy so smart and so fast you’d swear it came out in the 1930s. Juno is not a 1930s comedy, though....
Read MoreNicole Kidman – Box Office Poison?
I don’t like Nicole Kidman. It’s nothing personal, I just never really enjoyed watching her strain her way through her art house movie roles. She’s never proved herself to be a superb actress. She’s solid, but hardly extraordinary. And with the measly opening for The Golden Compass ($27 million for this $200+ million fantasy epic), we are again reminded that she is not yet a movie star. Kidman has never had a box office smash, the closest being The Others in 2001 which made $95 million at the North American box office. The film that earned her the Best Actress Oscar, The Hours, only garnered $41 million, which was a smashing success considering the film, but a meager take otherwise. Her other Oscar film, Moulin Rouge!, only made $57 million, though its post-theatrical success may have most people thinking...
Read MoreOn Iraq War Films
Much is being made of the box office failures that have been the so-called Iraq War films. Paul Haggis’s In the Valley of Elah, Reese Witherspoon-starrer Rendition and now, Robert Redford’s star-powered Lions for Lambs have all tanked, struggling to attain anything they could call respectable box office tallies. Politics aside, these weren’t good films in the first place (though I can’t speak to Rendition, which I avoided, but does have a lousy 55/100 on MetaCritic.com). There’s a broader cultural imperative evident in these failures and the successes of other films. Why is American Gangster a big box office hit, and now potential Oscar-contender, while films so overtly in tune with the political landscape continue to flounder? The easy answer is escapism. But as films are a reflection of the culture, we can’t help but pay attention to the...
Read MoreOn the AFI List
Short of some the completely disposable bottom 50, the AFI 100 Years, 100 Movies 10th Anniversary List did what it was supposed to do. It made up for many of the glaring mistakes from the 1997 list, like positioning both Vertigo and Raging Bull in the Top Ten, while moving Singin’ in the Rain into a better place. The AFI, did make an interesting about face with the inclusion of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance and the exclusion of the silent film master’s Birth of a Nation. Griffith said that he didn’t make Intolerance, an epic telling four stories of bigotry through history, because he made the notoriously racist, but historically important Birth of a Nation. I’m sure the AFI contributors will say that Intolerance is the better film (which it is), but I’m sure there were political reasons to keep...
Read MoreJericho’s Half-Life
Jericho fans will make one concession when it comes to their favorite post-nuclear drama. That is the first half of the show’s debut season, the Everwood-wannabe, sci-fi, family-drama half, wasn’t good. No, it was bad. Why then did fans send 20 tons of nuts (a reference to what was the “Jericho” series finale) to CBS? Because the second half of the season, starting with the show’s return in February, was stellar TV. For most of the audience, the show was dead in November after months of petty, soap opera-esque drama. A three-month hiatus, however, reorganized the show’s priorities, focusing on the spirit and sacrifice of a community in the face of threats to its very existence. A sense of urgency was created as the conspiracy behind the nuclear explosions in U.S. cities unraveled with renewed fervor. That’s what makes...
Read MoreThe Summer is HOT
Not that I think the crowd-pleasing Pirates of The Caribbean: At World’s End won’t be a huge box office smash, but it’s interesting to consider the expectations of that success. If Pirates 3 doesn’t quickly out gross Spider-Man 3 people will start discussing the failure of Pirates 3. I never thought I would see a day when any $100 million+ weekend could be considered a disappointment. I’m glad it’s here, though. When someone like Lucas says the era of the big movie is over, three movies come along in one month that stand in direct contradiction of that statement. May 2007 will likely be the best month in box office history and this summer is shaping up to be bigger than 2004. That’s big money for big movies. Stay tuned. TFC’s June preview is on it’s...
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