Opening August 31st: Is Shia LaBeouf A Movie Star?

What Constitutes A Movie Star Now Anyway?

Search "the last movie star" and you will see a bunch of articles written in the last couple of years claiming everyone from Denzel Washington to Will Smith or Brad Pitt is the last movie star on the planet. This June illustrated perfectly why many are decreeing the death of the movie star when Tom Cruise and Adam Sandler both crashed and burned at the box office on the same weekend. "Movie stars don't have small opening weekends" the argument goes and if that is THE criteria than it is hard to find a "movie star", Will Smith and Denzel might be the only two, everyone else has a dud or a flop or a stink-bomb, that is except for Shia LaBeouf. 

Since 2007 when Shia (if he might be a movie star I can just use his first name, right?) followed up the surprisingly good Rear Window remake (Disturbia) with the first Transformers Mr. LaBeouf (that doesn't feel quite right either) has made the following movies: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($786 million world-wide), Eagle Eye (a $100 million dollar domestic hit), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($836 million world-wide), Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps ($134 million world-wide) and Transformers: Dark of the Moon ($1.1 billion world-wide). Five movies and over $3 billion in world-wide box office. Five movies and the closest thing to a dud was the "performed as expected" Wall Street sequel. That run looks an awful lot like Harrison Ford's 1980's run when he alternated Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies to become the biggest box office star of his time. But we all considered Harrison Ford to be a movie star, does anyone think of Shia that way (except for Shia himself of course)? The short answer is no.

Maybe the reasons we don't think of good old Shia as a movie star aren't really fair. I mean, is it his fault that he has been the star of the three most horribly reviewed blockbusters of all time? Well, maybe a little (although I actually think he is pretty good in the Transformers movies doing what he is asked to do). Is it his fault that he is producing blockbusters within a generation where true fame is found more on reality TV and the Disney channel than in making movies? Is it his fault that he has only made one movie (Eagle Eye) in the last five years that wasn't a remake or a sequel? And that is the rub, but it is a rub that Mr. Labeouf is changing starting this weekend with a movie about a prohibition era moonshine family that is being pitched as much as a Tom Hardy vehicle as a Shia LaBeouf one. Maybe this will do for Shia what Witness did for Harrison, prove he can be more than the kid that knows Optimus Prime and owns Bumblebee. Maybe, but I kind of doubt it.

Can Numbers Lie? Is This The Worst August In A Decade?

It May Be Hard To Ague Anything But

Should This Be The
#1 Movie of the Month?

The clock is ticking on August, an August that looks to achieve the worst box office numbers since 1998 (not adjusted for anything, just gross numbers). There has not been a single movie that hasn't underperformed this month (believe me, they expected more than $85 million at this point of The Bourne Legacy's run) and for most "underperformed" doesn't do justice for how they have done. But does that mean that this month has been a "bad" month of movies? Well, it hasn't been a great month (and normally I love August movies), maybe even calling it a so-so month is a bit of stretch ... So, yeah, it is a bad month, I guess the question is has it been the worst August in the past decade? Only one way to know for sure, let's take a look.

There are basically three categories by which a month can be judged; box office, big budget quality & depth, indie/cult classics. Think about it, do you view last May as a great movie month? Well, May failed absolutely in the second category (big budget quality & depth) even if one great blockbuster hid the dearth of quality and bolstered the first category (box office) to unprecedented heights. May also didn't have a great indie/cult classic unless The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has greater legs than I expect it will. So, we have a month that is strong in one category and weak in two, fair to say May was not a great month. Having said that, any month with one of the biggest hits in movie history can't be considered an awful month either. So May is somewhere in the middle and is destined to be overrated because of The Avengers.

Let's see how this August stacks up with other August's ...

2012 Summer Round-Up: Winners & Losers

Because Some Have To Win and Some Have To Loose

We've already taken a look at what lessons can be learned by the summer that was (check it out here), now here is the more straight forward and fun way to look back ... The Winners and The Losers:

Winners:

1. Joss Whedon. The king of geeks. The king of the cult hits. The king of "cancelled too soon". Now he is the king of the box office and has been made the king of the Marvel movie universe.

2. Christopher Nolan. Godfather Part III. Go watch it some time and you will be struck by a couple of things. First, it's not as bad as you think. Second, it absolutely pales in comparison to the first two. The nature of ending a trilogy is that disappointment is the rule and even if you are OK, if the first two are great OK isn't nearly good enough. Nolan can walk away from Batman with head held high because TDKR is much better than OK (even if not as good as TDK).

The FFG on TV: True Blood Season 5 - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

The Post-Mortum For The Season That Was

True Blood finished off season 5 last night with what might have been their best season finale to date ***SPOILER Bill dying then rising from his own blood as Lilith's chosen one SPOILER*** capping off a solid second half of a season that truthfully did not start well. Now seems like the perfect time to look back at all that was right, all that was wrong and all that needs to change before season 6 rolls around.

The Good

Eric finally being Eric again ... Bill turning crazy/evil ... Bill and Sookie NOT being together ... Tara as a vampire ... Sam shifting into a fly, flying into a vampire's mouth then shifting back into a person inside the vampire ... the entire finale ... Pam ... Russell ... Steve Newlin is still alive ... faeries are crazy ... Lafayette is amoral again (and not perpetually sad) ... Salome is dead ... the Authority is no more ... Andy has six faerie children ... Sam Trammell playing Luna being Sam ... vampire hate group ("hate groups are about more than just hate") ... Edgington/Newlin love connection ... Andy and Jason trying to solve cases together (I will always contend that an Andy & Jason buddy cop spin-off would work) ... Lilith ...

The 5 Lessons Learned From The Summer of 2012

As the kids head back to school and Hollywood begins its annual dumping of movies they have no hope for into the theaters I think it is just about time to look back at the summer that was and try to see what we have learned.

Lesson #1: When in doubt release a superhero movie.

There was some buzz at the end of last summer when four comic book based superhero movies filled the multiplexes that the world was getting a little weary of men in suits. Obviously we were wrong. This summer's three big superhero flicks (The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises and The Amazing Spider-Man) grossed over $3 billion world-wide combined. Billion with a "B"! The least successful of the three (The Amazing Spider-Man) grossed nearly $700 million world-wide, or roughly the same as the two biggest comic book movies last summer (Thor and Captain America) combined. Domestically The Avengers, TDKR and The Amazing Spider-Man finished 1-2-3 at the box office and represent 40% of the total box office for the summer of 2012. Any doubt anyone had about comic book superheroes as movie stars has to have been erased this summer.

Of course, that is what we said last summer about adult comedies ...

Opening August 24th: Is It Just Me Or Have We Seen This Movie Before?

Kids Are Heading Back To School And Hollywood Is Commencing Its Annual Dumping Of Movies That Are Tried But Maybe Not True

Haven't We Seen This Before?

There are a lot of theories out there about how many stories really exist. Conflict theory espouses that all stories follow one of only seven plots (man vs. nature, man vs. man, man vs. the environment, man vs. machines/technology, man vs. the supernatural, man vs. self, man vs. god/religion). Other's say it is only three, some say twenty-four or thirty-six and still others stick with seven, its just a different seven (Neil Perkin wrote a great article about these different theories on his blog Only Dead Fish that you can read here).  The point is that most stories (and this is even more true in film than in literature) follow familiar beats and that is not necesarilly a bad thing. The trick is generally you don't want the movie to feel like you are just telling the same old story. You want people to say its like XYZ movie, not it's just XYZ movie with different actors. This week's movies seem to fail to achieve that distinction which may not be all bad, but it definitely isn't all good.

Of course this shouldn't be all that surprising as we find ourselves in the end of August, one of two great dumping grounds for hollywood (the other is January) where they put movies they have little faith in (they generally have little investment in these films as well where even the "big" releases have budgets in the $25 to $30 million range). Genres rule the day at the end of August, movies with core audiences, movies that you can figure out what it is just by seeing the poster, movies like these...

The FFG on TV: The Newsroom - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

As The Aaron Sorkin Drama Comes To A Close It's Time To Take A Look At What Has Made The Freshman Drama Fun, Frustrating and Downright Maddening

Some people hate it, some people love it, The Newsroom has become Exhibit A for Sorkin at his best and at his worst. Truthfully, from week to week I am not sure if I am watching because I think it is really good or if I am "hate watching" it (a Louis CK term that I love, ironically). With the finale airing this Sunday it seems like a good time to take a look that all that was right and all that was wrong with probably the most Sorkin-y of all dramas.

The Good

There hasn't been a single episode where there wasn't something that I really enjoyed. Here are some random "goods"... Jeff Daniels has been making Sorkin's dialogue sing ... "What does God sound like? How is that not the first question?" ... Sam Waterston in anti Law & Order mode ... David Krumholtz can still play smart better than almost anyone ... Dev Patel believes in Bigfoot ... Thomas Sadoski is one of the most likable assholes on TV today ... Olivia Munn isn't unwatchable.

What To Watch At Midnight: NOT The Change-Up

Do Yourself A Favor, If You See The Change-Up Coming On HBO Change The Channel

Don't you hate it when you see a movie full of people you like but you just don't like the movie? That is  The Change-Up, a movie that is filled with likable actors but can never find any balance between raunch and heart and can't find the comedy behind the overt attempts at shocking. The plot is as simple and straight forward as you can imagine. One guy is an uptight lawyer who is about to be made partner at his firm and is unsuccessfully juggling career with his wife, young daughter and twin babies at home.  The other dude is his life long friend who is a high school drop out and wannabe actor who spends his days getting high, having sex and doing not much of anything else. One night the boys go out, get drunk, pee in a fountain, lie to each other that they wished they had each other's life and wouldn't you know it, the next morning the arise to find that they have switched places (and bodies). In a panic they hurry back to said fountain only to find it has been removed by the city (making these the most efficient city workers on the planet since they were able to remove a fountain entirely before lunch on the day they started the project).

The FFG on Sports - How NOT To Screw Up Your Fantasy Draft

I know, what is a movie guy talking about sports for? I actually wrote this for something else and decided just to throw it up here in case some of my readers were interested. 

Please do enjoy (or don't)

R.I.P. Tony Scott, Here Is Your Mount Rushmore

1944 - 2012

Tony Scott was really unlucky. He was unlucky because he was destined to be compared to two other men and the comparison to those two particular men somehow hid his unique talent from many of our consciousness. Tony Scott has been unfairly viewed as a cross between his brother Ridley and the other MTV style director of the last 25 years, Michael Bay. He is not a cross between these two men. Tony Scott's films were high on style, but they also were filled with great performances, had surprising depth with multiple viewing and were fun without making you feel like they were making you dumber while you were watching them. Maybe he doesn't have a Blade Runner or Alien in his filmography, but Ridley doesn't have anything that comes close to the cultural impact of Top Gun. Maybe the cutting and general style of The Last Boy Scout is comparable to Michael Bay's Bad Boys but when did Michael Bay make anything like True Romance? In the wake of his tragic death it is a good time to appreciate Tony Scott for what he was, an extremely talented filmmaker who brought us some of the most memorable moments in film of the last 25 years. To that end here is the Mount Rushmore of Tony Scott.

Opening August 17th: Why Are We Surprised?

When I hopped on Twitter it was the first thing that hit me in the face today, people are liking Expendables 2 and others are surprised by it. Sure, no one is surprised if a 45 year old who made his way through college watching Cobra, Running Man, The Commando, Delta Force, Terminator, Die Hard, Lion Heart and so many more GREAT action flicks that I could fill up an entire post listing them (yes, I am now inspired to do the greatest action flicks of the 80's list) is excited about Expendables 2, it was made for us. No, what is shocking is that a lot of people are liking it, 64% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes (better than Total Recall and Bourne Legacy) kind of liking it. Women saying "I'm embarrassed to admit it, but it was really fun" kind of liking it. Absurd "best movie of the summer" exaggerated proclamations kind of liking it. But why are we surprised by this? Why are we surprised that a group of individuals who have proven they know how to make this kind of movie have made it well? I'm surprised by the surprise. It makes no sense.

The internet is filled with surprise this week, surprise that should not be. People are surprised ParaNorman doesn't quite make it to Coraline depth but like Coraline may actually play better to adults than children (did you watch the trailer?). People are surprised Prascilla Presley attended the 35th Anniversary of the Kings death at Graceland (ok, maybe that was a little surprising). People are surprised that Sparkle chose not to screen the film in advance (fortunately no one is shocked that their apparently isn't any plot). People are surprised that the GOP is letting Donald Trump actually be involved in their convention (at least I am shocked by that). People are shocked that The Odd Life of Timothy Green was one of only 2 movies to not be certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes of the 8 films being released this week (9 movies actually, but like I said Sparkle wasn't reviewed and therefore didn't have a score, although it may now... yup and it is actually better than The Odd Life of Timothy Green even if it is still rotten at 59%). Fortunately no one acted surprised to find at that Cosmopolis was moody, its directed by David Cronenberg so of course its moody. The world may be full of surprises, but none of this weeks films should shock us.

Opening August 10th (and 8th): What Makes Your Pulse Pound?

I Want To Write Movie Reviews Like An Action Movie

Every action flick, no matter how bad, is described one of three ways; they are either "pulse pounding", "heart stopping" or contain "edge of your seat excitement". Leaving aside the improbability of something being at once pulse pounding and heart stopping (unless they are suggesting one leads to the other, which probably isn't a good selling point for anything) I've always wondered how they can be so sure that something will illicit the same physical reaction in all people. Is it simply a function of speed, the rapid assault of stimuli coupled with random loud noises and explosions that causes these reactions? And if that is all it takes then I want to take on the challenge, I want to create a pulse-pounding, heart-stopping blog post that contains edge-of-your-seat excitement.

Here We Go!

Opening August 3rd: A Massive Range Of Probable Outcomes

Generally We Have A Good Idea Of What Movies Will Likely Do, This Week Every Possibility Seems Likely

Hit? Bomb? So-So? Could Be Any Of Them.

Wednesday's are the days I begin to look at what movies will be released on Friday in anticipation of writing my weekly previews on Thursday. I look through the list of anywhere from 8 to 10 movies and I have a good idea how successful they will probably be. Online buzz, reviews, the weekend they are being released, what other movies are out there, who's the star, who's the director, what the trailer looks like and some number of other factors (including how good the movie actually is) all come together to give me (or anyone else for that matter) a pretty good, and generally accurate, idea of what's going to happen. If you're saying to yourself "well, then why are there so many surprises?" I would say simply if we didn't have a good idea and we weren't generally right than there wouldn't be ANY surprises. The surprise hits and bombs exist because they are the exceptions to the rule, the statistical outliers. There is a likely, a probable outcome for the success of a movie, so when The Watch significantly underperforms we aren't surprised because there were a whole bunch of indicators before it ever came out that the movie had problems (same with Battleship, The Dark Shadows and most other underperforming movie of the summer). That is why when The Dictator "bombed" it was surprising, because most of the indicators pointed to (not Borat success maybe, but still) a strong showing. This week it is impossible for me to be surprised.

Do I think Total Recall will be the an August hit, grossing in the $120 to $150 million range domestically and adding significant International box office to it's totals? Maybe. Do I think Total Recall will be a so-so performer domestically, grossing something like $75 to $100 million, but be markedly stronger internationally and become one of those "why are they making another Total Recall?" movies because people wont appreciate its profitability outside the U.S.? Maybe. I can't think of any scenario for the box office success or failure of Total Recall that I don't see as a real possibility. And you know what, I feel the same way about Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days. Even the limited release movies, because some have "stars", have an abnormally likely range of potential outcomes.

Of course, a large part of the reason behind this abnormality is that it is August and it is an Olympic year and there is a Batman movie in the theaters. Any one of those factors could kill a movie or have absolutely no impact on any given movie. The combination of those factors and movies and stars whose track records are unpredictable to say the least leads to a weekend where I can honestly say, I just don't know. And if you know me you know how much I hate admitting that.

10 Movies That Should Not Be Forgotten

Did You Know 601 Movies Were Released in 2011?

Have You Forgotten Me
Already?

A lot of things have happened over the years that changed the movie industry forever. The end of the studio system, CGI, foreign distribution, heck even going back to the advent of color film technological and business practice advances have drastically changed how the movie industry operates (and I didn't even mention the birth of "talkies"). One could argue for any one of those factors to be the biggest game changer and if they made that argument they would be wrong. The biggest change to the movie industry was the VHS machine. Why? Because it forced movies to cycle out of the theaters which forced hollywood to make many more movies. In 1980 161 movies were released in U.S. theaters, by 1984 that number had grown 332% to 536. The 601 movies released last year were not even a record in 2007 631 movies were released (and these are just movies that have been released into at least one theater, it doesn't count the truly direct to DVD market which has boomed over the last decade). If you are curious, that means roughly 12 movies per week were released in 2007 and over 11 in 2011. Crazy, right?

Don't misunderstand me, I am not saying this is a bad thing or that mass production has under-cut art (maybe it has, but that's not the point). Honestly I like the fact that there are more movies but the constant wave of new movies, month after month, year after year, has had a horrible side-effect. As years pass we simply forget some movies. I am not talking about little indie movies that never found an audience or big blockbusters whose formulaic nature make them inherently forgettable (fun but forgettable). I am talking about good movies, movies that people found to some degree or another, that have fallen through the cracks of our memory and all the while USA Network forces us to remember Cameron Diaz's The Sweetest Thing by replaying it every third day (sorry, I'll just never understand how that movie has found a life on cable when it rightly bombed in the theaters - Cameron Diaz and Thomas Jane have less than 0% chemistry in that movie). Well, there are some movies that I see this happening to and I feel the need to intervene. Here are 23 from the last decade:

About a Boy, Minority Report, Dark Blue, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, Man on Fire, King Arthur, I Robot, Layer Cake, Lucky Number Slevin, The Prestige, Turistas, Zodiac, Reign Over Me, Dan in Real Life, Hitman, Definitely Maybe, The Bank Job, Smart People, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Watchmen, Big Fan, The Losers, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.

Honestly, I probably could have thought of 20 more. I am not suggesting these (or the 10 to follow for that matter) are my favorite movies of the last ten years, these are just the one's I liked that I am afraid are in danger of being forgotten and even though you may not see it, I think all of those movies could drift away soon. So, while cable TV makes sure there are some movies, not always good movies, that we wont forget, there are good movies that don't get on cable, end up in the 3 for $10 bin at Best Buy and become forgotten. These 10 movies from the last 10 years should not suffer that fate.