The Weekend Warrior: Taken 3, Selma, Inherent Vice

Happy New Year and welcome back to the same old Weekend Warrior as we kick things off with the month that tends to offer some of the weakest releases quality-wise, but the films still find some way of doing better business than they would if released in any other month. Go figure.

Back in 2008, French action movie maven Luc Besson came up with a crazy idea: “Let’s turn 57-year-old Irish actor Liam Neeson into an action star!” Mind you, Neeson had mainly done Oscar-worthy fare like Schindler’s List and Kinsey before this, but he also had appeared in George Lucas’ Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace and Batman Begins, so it’s wasn’t like he was a stranger to action. But he took on the role of Bryan Mills for the original Taken, and it was released all over Europe and other countries besides North America. That’s because 20th Century Fox wanted to edit it down to get a PG-13 rating and they finally released it in late February, almost a year after its French debut.

Despite being available via illegal download, Taken did very well, opening with $24.7 million in 3,183 theaters and grossing $145 million domestically, which was more than its solid international release. The movie did so well that Besson and Fox–both big fans of sequels and franchises–greenlit a sequel, Taken 2, which opened in October 2012 with $49.5 million, grossing $140 million domestically and another $236 million overseas.

It’s pretty amazing what the Taken movies have done for Neeson’s career, allowing him to branch out into his own action thrillers, including the likes of Unknown ($63.6 million gross), The Grey ($51.6 million) and last year’s Non-Stop ($92.2 million). The first two of those opened around $20 million and the latter opened closer to $30 million, all based on Neeson’s involvement more than anything else. Of course he’s also done a number of dogs like The A-Team, Clash of the Titans and its sequel, Battleship, Seth MacFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West and A Walk in the Tombstones (both last year), but then he’ll lend his voice to something like The LEGO Movie and people absolutely love him in that role.

The previous Taken movie did well, but it wasn’t that well received among the fans or critics, maybe because it used almost the exact same plot and it wasn’t nearly as exciting as the original, seeming more like a cash grab. That movie was directed by Luc Besson’s right hand guy Olivier Megaton, who also directed The Transporter 3 and Colombiana, and he’s back for the threequel, which doesn’t try to change the formula much. Maybe it isn’t a surprise that Fox isn’t screening this one in advance for critics, so the only reviews you might see may be from the film’s Asian opening this past weekend. 

With moviegoers still being quite jaded about these types of money-grab sequels, we can probably expect this one to do closer to the opening of the original movie, maybe squeezing out an opening in the $30 million range, but it may not even cross the $100 million mark if it doesn’t even stand up to the previous movie.

Interviews

Taken 3 Review (Coming Soon!) 

Part of the reason the movie is getting so much attention is because it deals with an important subject matter that’s extremely relevant in these times where race relations are at an all-time low. While it will certainly be the first choice for many African-Americans, particularly women over a certain age, it should also cater to serious movie fans who’ve heard the buzz from early reviews as well as the Oprah fans who will finally have a chance to see it.

As we’ve been seeing with Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, you don’t need a lot of big name stars for a movie to do decently if it has an interesting subject matter, but it also has the Oprah factor, which means she’ll be pushing it on her show. Parallels can be drawn between this and another movie involving Civil Rights, which was 2013’s Lee Daniels’ The Butler, which opened in mid-August to $24.6 million in nearly 3,000 theaters and grossed $116.6 million domestically. (Daniels was originally on board to direct Selma but bailed on it when he realized it was covering similar ground.)

Selma opened on Christmas Day in roughly 19 theaters and it’s grossed $2.1 million at the time of this writing which isn’t huge, but it’s also been targeting most of its marketing towards the nationwide release on Friday.

Depending on the theater count, Selma should be good for $14 to 16 million in its first weekend of wide release, but expect it to stick around for a while, especially once it receives a number of Oscar nominations on Thursday going into the Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend where it should generate even more business due to the long (and particularly relevant) holiday weekend. We can probably expect this one to end up in the $70 to 80 million range.

Selma Review 

Anderson certainly has his fans among arthouse cinephiles, who often include his movies in their year-end top lists, but after making seven movies, There Will Be Blood is still Anderson’s highest-grossing movie with just $40.2 million. None of his movies have ever played in more than 2,000 theaters even with the eight Oscar nominations Blood got, winning two for actor Daniel Day Lewis and cinematographer Robert Elswit. Anderson himself has gotten three Oscar nominations for his screenplays including Magnolia and Boogie Nights, starring Mark Wahlberg, both which are considered cult hits. 

Many of Anderson’s other movies opened in limited release before going wide but they rarely do huge business outside the bigger cities, the classic case being when he teamed with Adam Sandler for Punch Drunk Love, which grossed nearly $10 million in limited release, but when it expanded wide into 1,252 theaters, it only averaged $3,200 and it ended up earning less than $20 million.

Inherent Vice already opened in 16 theaters on December 12 where it grossed around a million so far, but the 55% drop-off in its second weekend is not a good sign that it’s been getting decent word-of-mouth.

Warner Bros. is taking the same approach with this as they did with Spike Jonze’s Her, also starring Joaquin Phoenix. That opened in limited release in mid-December (one week later than Inherent Vice) and managed to gross $3 million before expanding into over 1,700 theaters where it grossed $5.3 million. But that movie had a lot more buzz going into the weekend and only grossed $25.6 million total despite being nominated for Best Picture.

Depending on how many theaters it gets–right now it’s estimated at 400 to 500–we can see this one missing out on the Top 10 altogether, winding up with less than $2 million for the weekend and probably less than $15 million total, since I don’t expect it to receive the Oscar love of some of Anderson’s previous movies. 

Inherent Vice Review

This Week’s UPDATED Predictions –

UPDATE: So there weren’t a lot of big revelations with the final theater counts although Inherent Vice is getting closer to 650 theaters than the 400 earlier projected. I still don’t think it will do well enough to break into the Top 10 but will end up just outside. The other two movies should end up around where I originally predicted although we may have underestimated Taken 3 slightly. Also, The Imitation Game is nearly double its theaters on the Friday leading up to the Golden Globes and the Oscar nominations hoping it capitalize on a couple wins.

1. Taken 3 (20th Century Fox) – $30.2 million N/A (up $2.4 million)

2. Selma (Paramount) – $15.5 million +2150% (same)

3. Into the Woods (Disney) – $10.5 million -43%

4. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (New Line/WB) – $10.3 million -53%

5. Unbroken (Universal) – $10.0 million -45%

6. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (20th Century Fox) – $6.6 million -54%

7. The Imitation Game (The Weinstein Company) – $6.1 million -23% (up .6 million)

8. The Woman in Black 2 Angel of Death (Relativity) – $5.3 million -65%

9. Annie (Sony) – $5.1 million -55%

10. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (Lionsgate) – $3.9 million -47% (down .2 million)

— Inherent Vice (Warner Bros.) – $3.2 million (up $1.7 million)

Next Week:

It’s Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday weekend with most schools and government offices being closed on Monday and we’re getting a new Kevin Hart comedy, The Wedding Ringer (Screen Gems), co-starring Josh Gad from Frozen, the British family film starring the talking bear Paddington (The Weinstein Company), Chris Hemsworth stars in Michael Mann’s latest cyber-thriller blackhat (Universal), while Bradley Cooper’s military drama American Sniper (Warner Bros.) expands nationwide after a phenomenal showing in limited release.

This Week’s Limited Releases:

Nothing has really knocked my socks off this week, but this is what we’re working with…

Science Fiction:  

Predestination Review

Horror/Thriller:

Dark Summer (IFC Midnight)

Director: Paul Solet

Stars: Keir Gilchrist, Peter Stormare, Stella Maeve, Maestro Harrell, Grace Phipps

Of Note: The director of the Sundance cult smash Grace returns with a suspense thriller about a teen under house arrest in a house that may be haunted by the ghost of a former classmate. It opens at New York’s IFC Center and On Demand, and will open in L.A. on January 23.

The World Made Straight (Millennium Entertainment)

Director: David Burris

Stars: Jeremy Irvine, Noah Wyle, Minka Kelly, Haley Joel Osment, Adelaide Clemens

Of Note: Adapting Ron Rash’s novel about a young man (War Horse star Jeremy Irvine) who tries to start a new life in a rural community in North Carolina while coming to terms with his family’s dark past that dates back to the Civil War.

Documentary:

Farewell Herr Schwartz (Kino Lorber)

Director: Yael Reuveny

Of Note: First-time filmmaker Reuveny explores how her family was split by World War II with half her family in East Germany and the other half in Israel, neither aware of the other side. She goes back to the old neighborhood to find out exactly what happened in this doc that opens at New York’s Quad Cinema on Friday.

Comedy:

Looks like the Film Society of Lincoln Center is going to be premiering a lot more exclusive theatrical runs this coming year starting with…

La Ultima Pelicula (M’Aidez Films)

Director: Raya Martin & Mark Peranson

Stars: Alex Ross Perry, Gabino Rodriguez, Iazua Larios

Of Note: The director of last year’s Listen Up, Philip stars as a filmmaker who goes down to Mexico’s Yucatan region in late 2012 in order to make the last film (on the last reel of actual film) before the end of the world. This tribute/spoof to Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie opens at Lincoln Center’s Eleanor Bunin Munroe Film Center for one-week only with Perry and Peranson in attendance for select shows. (On Saturday, they’ll also screen Lawrence Schiller’s The American Dream about the making of Hopper’s movie.) 

My Thoughts…

I’m not sure how much I can recommend this movie or how seriously it can be taken beyond being an amusing oddity. Having not seen the documentary about Hopper’s The Last Movie (and not even really knowing about it), I didn’t come into this movie with that advance information which may be important to understand what the filmmakers were trying to achieve.

Mostly, it follows filmmaker Alex Ross Perry around Mexico spouting rhetoric about how he’s trying to make the last movie on the last reel of film before the end of the world on 12/21/2012. And to do that, he’s gone down to the Yucatan to the region of the Mayans to make it. So in some ways, it’s a mockumentary, but in others, it seems like an experimental student film that doesn’t quite connect. And yet, part of why it’s so hard to connect to it is that it’s not trying to be super-slick or anything, but more of a behind-the-scenes on the making of a fake movie. Is it meant to be deliberately pretentious to be funny or do the filmmakers really take what is being said seriously? Who knows? But it quickly wears out its welcome once you realize that it’s just a lot of the type of film noodling we see far too often when a movie clearly doesn’t have much of a script or gameplan before filming. 

There’s certainly some cleverness to the way old school film techniques are used to create what could be a decent midnight movie for stoners, but the filmmakers don’t quite have the vision of a Jodorowsky to make the movie particularly memorable. It’s also surprising they were able to get a version of “Me and Bobby McGee” for the soundtrack considering the obvious low budget.

Rating: 5.5/10

Let’s Kill Ward’s Wife (Tribeca Film/Well GO USA)

Writer/Director: Scott Foley

Stars: Patrick Wilson, Donald Faison, Nicolette Sheridan, Marika Dominczyk, Dagmara Dominczyk, Amy Acker, Greg Grunberg, Scott Foley, James Carpinello

Of Note: Donald Faison and Patrick Wilson star in this dark comedy in which Faison plays a guy named Ward who hates his wife, as do his friends, so they all plan on ways to get rid of her. 

Foreign Language:

Beloved Sisters (Music Box Films)

Writer/Director: Dominik Graf

Stars: Florian Stetter, Henriette Confurius, Hannah Herzsprung, Claudia Messner

Of Note: Although this was Germany’s selection for the 2014 Academy Awards in the Foreign Language category, it didn’t make the shortlist, maybe because it was such a dull costume drama involving two very different sisters in the late eighteenth century who both fall in love with a writer. 

When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (Cinema Guild)

Director: Corneliu Porumboiu

Stars: Bogdan Dumitrache, Diana Avramut, Mihaela Sirbu

Of Note: The director of the acclaimed Romanian film Police, Adjective (which I absolutely hated) returns with a drama involving a director, an actress and a producer on a car ride through Bucharest. It opens exclusively at the Eleanor Bunin Munroe Film Center at Lincoln Center.

Action:

Black November (eOne Films)

Writer/Director: Jeta Amata

Stars: Mickey Rourke, Anne Heche, Kim Basinger, Vivica A. Fox, Wyclef Jean, Sarah Wayne Callies, Aliaune “Akon” Thiam

Of Note: This movie which originally played the festival circuit in 2012 is actually a reshot version of a 2011 Nigerian film called “Black Gold,” about the struggle by a Nigerian community to fight back against the corrupt government and an oil company who threaten to destroy their land with their excessive drilling and the spills that it’s causing.

You can post any comments or questions below, or you can get in touch with the Weekend Warrior on Twitter. 

Copyright 2015 Edward Douglas