In Theaters.
We only get two movies this week — one so mainstream that it hardly needs mentioning, and one art title you may have heard of, but I’m not betting on it.
Before we get down to cases here, it’s worth noting — if you haven’t already — that the summer has not been the world-beater that was expected. Just about everything that has come along has been quite what was hoped for — at least, the big budget items. Even Avengers: Age of Ultron is only in the black because of worldwide sales. On the home front, it has yet to double its production costs. I guess the biggest hit on the U.S. basis is (Clapton save us) Pitch Perfect 2, since it didn’t cost a fortune to make. The question that arises is whether or not we’ve started to burn out on spandex and explosions. The next question is going to be how we feel about CGI dinosaurs.
Now, aside from the movie that needs no introduction, we do get Brett Haley’s I’ll See You in My Dreams — opening Friday at The Carolina and the Fine Arts. This is a special little movie starring Blythe Danner as a 70-something woman who starts questioning her life — and whether maybe there’s more out there than her comfortable little home and her circle of retirement community friends, whose insistence that she, too, needs to move into their community doesn’t really suit her. This is not a big movie. It’s not flashy and a lot of it is on the familiar side (how many times are we going to watch “old folks” getting stoned before the supposed novelty wears off?). But it’s also a pretty bold movie just in its choice of subject matter and its star. We don’t get that many movies about 70-somethings — unless, of course, they’re dysfunctional or odd in some specific way. That’s not the case here, and it makes I’ll See You in My Dreams one of the summer’s pleasanter offerings — and definitely worth a look.
And then…we have Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World — starting Thursday evening at Carmike 10, The Carolina, Co-ed of Brevard, Epic of Hendersonville, and Regal Biltmore Grande. (In other words just about everywhere that could book it, did.) And it’s pervasive. I know, for example it’s taking up four screens — three 2D and one 3D — at The Carolina. I suspect it’ll be much the same everywhere (except the Co-ed which only has one screen). I suppose one might be alarmed over the fact that it has no reviews so far. (I suspect there’s an embargo in place.) But does it really matter? This is clearly, yes, the Next Big Thing, and since there’s nothing it should have any real trouble beating, it’s pretty much got a lock on the box office. I’m more interested than I might be since it was made by Trevorrow who — along with writer Derek Connolly — made Safety Not Guaranteed, which was one of my favorite films of 2012. Since the pair also had input into the screenplay here…well, I’m hardly expecting anything personal like Safety Not Guaranteed, it does raise the prospects. I certainly don’t begrudge them the assignment. Face it, they earned more in five seconds on this than they ever did on Safety Not Guaranteed.
This week we lose Ex Machina, Lambert & Stamp, and The Wrecking Crew at The Carolina. (I truly regret that Lambert & Stamp so underperformed. It deserved better.) The Fine Arts is dropping Far from the Madding Crowd and The Salt of the Earth.
Special Screenings
The Thursday Horror Picture Show has Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) at 8 p.m. on Thu., June 11 in Theater Six at The Carolina. World Cinema is showing Peter Greenaway’s The Belly of an Architect (1987) on Fri., June 12 at 8 p.m. at Phil Mechanic Studios, 109 Roberts St., River Arts District (upstairs in the Railroad Library). The Hendersonville Film Society is screening Michael Ritchie’s The Fantasticks (1995) on Sun., June 14 at 2 p.m. in the Smoky Mountain Theater at Lake Pointe Landing in Hendersonville. The Asheville Film Society is running John Barrymore and Carole Lombard in Howard Hawks’ classic screwball comedy Twentieth Century (1934) on Tue., June 16 at 8 p.m. in Theater Six at The Carolina. More on all titles in this week’s paper — with full reviews in the online edition.
New on DVD
This week the honors go to Kingsman: The Secret Service, but that doesn’t prevent us from getting The Duff, Project Almanac, Serena, and Red Army, too.
Ken, have you ever heard of a cut of Mars Attacks with no aliens? They were talking about it on The Best Show and I can’t remember who they said owns a copy of it, but they were talking about how it was the weirdest thing ever.
News to me. I should think the amusement value would wear out fast. I’m assuming this is some kind of unfinished workprint, not an actual finished movie. I mean, why would it exist?
I could have sworn they said Michael Douglas has the copy. He’s not even in that movie is he?
Not that I recall. This smacks of urban legend to me.
It might be.
I think on the Best Show they were saying that there’s a rumor that Tim Burton has his own copy that’s the complete film but with no aliens, so the actors are reacting to nothing.
Oh OK, I thought it was something like that.
I’m looking most forward to SELF-LESS.
I’m looking forward to Self/Less, but I’ve come to doubt Tarsem Singh will get anywhere near The Fall again. I’ll also be curious as to how long it’ll take to filter down to the provinces. Since it’s Focus Features, I doubt that July 10 date is a wide release.
“The next question is going to be how we feel about CGI dinosaurs.”
I want to go back to guys in big rubber suits, like “The Last Dinosaur”. It was neat watching the boulder cave his head in in slow-motion.
While I’d be okay with going back to the dinosaurs in King Kong (the real one from 1933) or The Lost World (the real one from 1925), I do draw the line at this.
Nightcrawler and Rosewater are Netflix Streaming, as are last year’s underseen Words and Pictures and the Cannes-to-Lifetime Grace of Monaco, which I am curious to watch.
Also on there is The Sisterhood of Night, Kara Hayward’s first film since Moonrise Kingdom.
I hope to get to Words and Pictures tonight, but there’s When Marnie Was There looming at me as a review screener.
I finally caught up with Charlie Victor Romeo on Netflix streaming and that third segment might be the most tense thing I’ve seen so far this year.
I tried really hard to stay excited about Grace of Monaco, but the film had other ideas.
I’ll get to it…maybe.
Looks like Netflix has added Shane Carruth’s Primer, a great mind bender of a film.
Having sat through Upstream Color, I will lose no time in seeing this, if you know what I mean.
Its not as abstract as Upstream Color, it might be one of the best time travel movies ever made or at least one of the best of the last 20 years. I think you might actually like it.
Primer trailer
https://youtu.be/4CC60HJvZRE
It’s more like “Netflix brought it back after not having it for a little while.” That’s where I first saw it in early 2013.
My vote for best time travel movie goes to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
I was thinking I saw it one of the streaming sites, but I couldnt remember which one. 2013 was around the same time I saw it for the first time too.
I’m not beating a path to see it anyway.
I think it was the top answer on a fall 2012 CriticWire survey that asked for the best time travel movie, but I didn’t prioritize seeing it until Upstream Color got raves at Sundance that January. I watched it a few weeks later.
Well, you know how much I…didn’t like Upstream Color. Naming a best time travel movie is a fool’s errand that presupposes an encyclopedic knowledge of the sub-genre, and covers films as diverse as Berkeley Square, Dangerous Corner, It Happened Tomorrow, Portrait of Jennie, The Time Machine, The Time Travelers, and even The House at the End of the World, When Marnie Was There, and, I suppose, Safety Not Guaranteed.
Having confused Words and Pictures (which I’ve seen) with The Rewrite (which I haven’t and still want to), I settled for Daniel Afredson’s Kidnapping Mr. Heinekin…well, if you can get past Jim Sturgess with an appalling blonde dye-job and an awfully English-accented cast as Dutch, I’d call this fact-based kidnapping yarn massively alright. Beyond that, I can’t go. There is a reason why the Girl with the Dragon Tatoo sequels suffered when Daniel Alfredson took over the directorial reins.
I was somewhat surprised at your excitement to revisit Words and Pictures, but remembered you liked it a little more than me.
Nonsense. I like you more than Words and Pictures. Most of the time.
It’s not easy competing with Juliette Binoche.
Well, she never trounced The D Train either.
You don’t know that.
I strongly suspect it.
It is worth noting that Christopher Lee and Ron Moody (Fagin in Oliver!) have died.
Shoot. I figured Christopher Lee was immortal.
That was Dracula who had “risen from the grave” in 1968.
My thinking was that if he could wield a lightsaber in his late 80s and a wizard staff in his 90s, he could do anything.
Well, you could say now he has done everything. (Actually, I like him better in his later years — with Hugo at the top of the list.)
I also thought he was superb as Willy Wonka’s dad.
Also true.
Say, where did this “like” button business come from? It apparently only exists on the “movie news” items.
The unfairly maligned The Cobbler is now Netflix Streaming.
Ah, now that I will make time for…but after dinosaurs run wild.
Indeed.
So I watched The Cobbler. Someone smarter than I am is going to have to explain to me why this was so critically trashed and kicked to the curb. Okay, it may not be the greatest movie ever made, and parts of wear a little thin (but not badly), but it’s not without its charms. Plus, it’s the best performance Adam Sandler ever gave — and I like the fact that he apparently took it on as a passion project and probably worked for scale. (He doesn’t even have a personal assistant credited to him.) Okay, I’d say Punch Drunk Love is a better movie overall, but that’s not so much a performance than a deconstruction of his screen persona.
I had a feeling you’d like it, even considering the Sandler factor – and I agree that it’s his best performance. Yes, it gets a little cornier than McCarthy’s other films, but it has plenty of winning humor and heart and I didn’t find it offensive or ridiculous the way many critics have.
My guess is that there was some sort of critical snowball at last year’s TIFF where a small group did some “Wasn’t that the worst?” babbling and it spread from there. Men, Women and Children – whose critical skewering is warranted in my mind – played at the same TIFF, so perhaps that Sandler film had an effect on how people viewed The Cobbler.
And you wonder why I pay no attention to festival “buzz.”
In this case, it only made me more interested to see it. I didn’t believe McCarthy could have fallen that far – and, well, he hasn’t.
It’s pretty much how I feel about all “buzz.” Negative reviews for Jupiter Ascending kept making it sound like something I’d like to see.