411 Movies Roundtable: May 2009 (Part 1)
Posted by Owain J. Brimfield on 05.01.2009
The 411 staff takes a look back at the month that was, and discusses the upcoming big releases in May!
Welcome to the monthly 411 Movies Roundtable. Wouldn't you know it, it's time once again for the summer movie season, and this season opens immediately with some huge hitters ready to whet our appetite for the tasty blockbuster. This month, Hugh Jackman flexes his claws, Christian Bale struggles to maintain his temper in the face of Skynet, and J.J. Abrams attempts to breed a new generation of Trekkies, and also lends the idea to this month's picture theme.
Let's get down to business...
Introducing this month's participants:
Furious as always, Arnold Furious!
Hush hush, it's Jeremy Thomas!
Still getting flak for his love of Crank 2, Bryan Kristopowitz!
An alternate take for Shawn S. Lealos!
Returning from Hollywood, Steve Gustafson!
Rounding out the usual suspects, Jason Chamberlain!
...and I'm your host, Owain J. Brimfield!
The Month That Was
Arnold Furious
Biggest Winner of the Month:Fast & Furious delivered a record breaking opening for April and not only that its very presence drove the attendance up on other pictures, which is frankly shocking but true. I didn't realise the franchise had so much in built audience but I was proved wrong. A $71M opening weekend is frankly scary.
Biggest Loser of the Month:Dragonball:Evolution sucked and no one went to see it. No real surprises there but hey, I call them as I see them.
Biggest Movie News of the Month: For me I was shocked at Green Lantern getting a whopping $150M budget. Did people not learn from Watchmen? You really need an in-built audience for that kind of money. Maybe I'm off base here but I figured DC only had two worthwhile properties; Batman & Superman. I could be wrong though. Coming off the success of Batman they have a chance to pitch one of their other characters into the mainstream. Good luck to ‘em. Maybe they can pull an Iron Man.
Your Most Anticipated Movie of the Month: Some serious choice this month. There are several films I'm dying to see. Star Trek looks wicked slick and I'm not even a big Trek fan. Terminator: Salvation is a must see for me but if I could only see one film this month it'd be Up. Pixar always delivers. Even with their weaker films.
Recommended DVD Release of the Month:Frost/Nixon looks to be a good punt. I didn't enjoy it as much as some but it's still a mighty battle of two great orators. The showman Frost and the tricky Nixon. Ron Howard keeps things tense as the verbal sparring takes glorious centre-stage.
Classic Movie of the Month:Giant. George Stevens' sweeping Texas family tale covers two generations but the show is totally stolen by James Dean. What a movie star he could and should have become had he not been taken from us so early. If you think Heath Ledger is a tragedy imagine his career cut short after just three films (I reckon Dean's career ended at the point where Ledger had shot A Knight's Tale). Dean only starred in 3 films and was Oscar nominated for two of them. Giant is perhaps his best and most complex role as he tackles lonely ranch hand Jett Rink from a penniless loser to an oil tycoon.
Movie Quote of the Month: "Yuens, you guys are my infantry. One of you dies, God gave me another one." – Seth Rogen counts his blessings in Observe and Report.
Jeremy Thomas
Biggest Winner of the Month:Fast & Furious. No one saw this being as big of a hit as it was. Not the studio, not the box office pundits, nobody. The film burned rubber on its way to a $71 million opening weekend and by the time this is posted will likely be the highest grossing film in the franchise. Vin Diesel, you have a film career again, congratulations. Maybe it's time to strike while the iron is hot and try to get those other Riddick films made, eh? Oh, and Paul Walker, you've eked by enough to make a few more terrible bombs like Timeline and Into the Blue. Have fun with that.
Biggest Loser of the Month:Dragonball: Evolution. Okay, seriously...did I call this one, or did I call this one? Not only is it, unmitigatedly and unabashedly the worst film of the year so far, it's bombed in ways that can only be described by that well-known internet phrase "EPIC FAIL." You know what's the sad part about this? Fox greenlit a sequel before the film was released, and to date they haven't nixed that plan thanks to decent grosses overseas before the film hit our shores. So we might just see another of these. DAMMIT!
Biggest Movie News of the Month: Internet piracy was all over the news this month, between the leaking of a workprint of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and the guilty verdict for the four founders of the Pirate Bay torrent website. Both of these caused an uproar from their own sides of this argument, though let's be frank here: the workprint leak won't hurt Fox's profits any - though it'll give them a nice excuse if the movie fails due to sucking - and the Pirate Bay quartet will keep this tied up in appeals forever, and I don't think the guilty conviction will hold up. It's easier to find illegal torrents by searching Google or Yahoo! than it is the Pirate Bay... are Eric Schmidt or Carol Bertz going to be put on trial? Not a chance, and you can bet they'll be trying to find a way to make sure that the Pirate Bay conviction is overturned so they don't have to worry about it.
Your Most Anticipated Movie of the Month: Hey, look, the summer movie season's started. How do you know? Because there's ninety bajillion big releases coming out this month. Seriously, they couldn't have put just ONE of them in April that would have had a picked-clean month in which to totally clean up? Yeah, I'm not bitter at all, I promise. Anyway, even if X-Men Origins: Wolverine is crap I'll be there, and Star Trek has managed to get me excited. Angels & Demons is going to be bad-ass and Drag Me to Hell looks killer too. But for me, it's all about the John Connor, so sign me up for Terminator: Salvation. Hoo-ah!
Recommended DVD Release of the Month: There's a few good ones here... the Criterion Collection edition of Benjamin Button comes out, but I don't feel that it deserves a Criterion disc yet, so screw it. There's also Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, Valkyrie, My Bloody Valentine 3-D and a deluxe edition of the Michael Douglas film Falling Down from 1993. Of all of those, I'll go with Underworld, which I really enjoyed and need to complete the trilogy on DVD.
Classic Movie of the Month: In keeping with my most anticipated movie of the month, you gotta show some love for The Terminator, the film that started it all. T2 may be the better film, but this is the film that kicked it off for us, and for the tiny budget it looked damn good and kicked some serious ass.
Movie Quote of the Month: "Come on. Do I look like the mother of the future? I mean, am I tough, organized? I CAN'T EVEN BALANCE MY CHECKBOOK!" - Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), The Terminator
Bryan Kristopowitz
Biggest Winner of the Month: Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, as their Fast & Furious had a huge opening, better than expected. This is especially good for Diesel since his last movie, Babylon A.D., tanked big time (it wasn't that bad).
Biggest Loser of the Month: Lindsay Lohan, as her career continues to spiral downward. She can't get out of the gossip rags (the old "even bad publicity is good publicity" saying just doesn't apply here). And to make matters even worse, her latest movie debuted not in theatres but on the Family Channel. That can't be good for the ego.
Biggest Movie News of the Month: It's official: Jackie Earle Haley is the new Freddy Krueger. The A Nightmare on Elm Street remake also just got officially interesting. Oh, and Night of the Creeps is finally going to get a special edition DVD. That's just damn cool.
Your Most Anticipated Movie of the Month: Almost every movie on this release list is worth seeing. Almost. I'll give you a list of the movies I don't want to see instead: Ghosts of Girlfriend Past and Management.
Recommended DVD Release of the Month: There's lots of great stuff coming out this month: Lipstick Jungle: Season 2, October Road: Season 2 (this set apparently includes a special, made for DVD epilogue that wraps up the show. We get to find out who exactly fathered that kid), Jake and the Fatman: Season 2, Taken, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, T2: Skynet Edition (whatever the hell that is), Fanboys, My Bloody Valentine 3-D, Outlander (that James Caviezel thing), Driven to Kill (a new Seagal movie), El Dorado, and a deluxe edition of the Michael Douglas classic Falling Down. (That has to set a new record for the most ambiguous answer in roundtable history, surely? - Ed)
Classic Movie of the Month:Robocop 3 (1993): While it isn't as good as the Verhoeven original or the Irvin Kershner directed sequel, it's still kind of fun. Robert John Burke steps into the role of Robocop/Alex Murphy, and he does an okay job (the voice is a little weird, but at least he looks like Robocop). The story sees Omni Consumer Products desperately trying to get construction of Delta City going, bringing in sadistic mercenaries to handle any neighborhood stragglers (people just don't want to leave their homes). Robocop, sensing injustice afoot, decides to join the stragglers and fight back against the OCP thugs. So you've got Robocop fighting mercenaries, weird beard gangs of street punks, and a pair of Japanese ninja cyborgs. There's no gore, but there is plenty of action (Robocop has a jetpack and a machine gun hand attachment that's pretty dang cool). Rip Torn plays the head of OCP in this one, too, putting in a great performance. My favorite part, though? When the cops decide to strike and Johnson (the great Felton Perry) starts yelling at them about their health care benefits and their pensions. Just thinking about that scene makes me smile. Again, not a great movie, but definitely watchable.
Movie Quote of the Month: Paul McDaggett: "How may I help you, officer?"
Robocop: "By resisting arrest."
Paul McDaggett (John Castle) and Robocop (Robert John Burke), Robocop 3 (1993)
Shawn S. Lealos
Biggest Winner of the Month:Fast & Furious. Who could have imagined that the fourth installment in a series that has sucked since its first sequel would top $300 million worldwide? I guess people really missed Vin Diesel - action star. Diesel and Paul Walker have provided a shot in the arm to the ailing franchise and I hope this leads Diesel back to his comfort zone of the action flick.
Biggest Loser of the Month:Dragonball. It crashed and burned and hopefully will never be revived.
Biggest Movie News of the Month: Texas has implemented new tax incentives for filmmakers (I have got to read up on these for my own projects to see if an Oklahoma filmmaker can go shoot his movies in Texas and get some tax breaks at the same time) and Robert Rodriguez is taking advantage to great levels. He is shooting a freakin' Predator movie!!!!! I'm a huge Rodriguez fan and he is a shining example of how a talented filmmaker can make it outside the Hollywood system. On top of Predator, he is also shooting Machete, a sci-fi movie called Nervewrackers, as well as Sin City 2 and The Jetsons. For those who are used to filmmakers making many promises and only following through on one of them, remember that Rodriguez normally shoots his movies in rapid succession. He actually filmed Antonio Banderas shooting scenes for two separate movies on the same day a few years back (Spy Kids 3 and Once Upon a Time in Mexico). As a RR fan, I have a lot to look forward to.
Your Most Anticipated Movie of the Month:The Brothers Bloom. Inexplicably, it is not on our list of Coming Attractions (hey, I have to keep this thing down to two pages - Ed), but it comes out May 29th and you should run, not walk, to find this movie in a theater near you. It is directed by Rian Johnson, who last gave us the amazing Brick, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. For anyone who saw Brick, this should be a no brainer. It stars Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody as the "best con-men in the world" taking one last job at the expense of a beautiful and eccentric heiress (Rachel Weisz). In a month of Terminators, mutants and Trekkies, I want to see this small film the most.
Recommended DVD Release of the Month:The Curious Case of Benjamin Button will be coming out this month, and interestingly it will be Criterion releasing it. Criterion always gives the best treatment (both technically and special features wise), so it should be a strong release. David Fincher always gives the goods on his movies (see Seven, Fight Club and Zodiac), so I am looking forward to this one. On a smaller note, Children of Men will be getting a Blu-Ray release on May 26. It is my favorite movie of 2006, making it a must buy for me as well.
Classic Movie of the Month:Forbidden Planet - This is the movie Gene Roddenberry said influenced him to create the original Star Trek television series, it might be time to give it another look. It also features one of the most iconic sci-fi robots of all time in Robby the Robot.
Movie Quote of the Month: "Space, the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship, Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange, new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."
Steve Gustafson
Biggest Winner of the Month: Who else? US! The Moviegoers! It's that time of the year where the anticipation is at an all time high for SUMMER MOVIE SEASON TO BEGIN! Where every movie is going to be awesome... until we actually see it. Then we get to complain about it online! YEAH! I know. This was a completely cop out answer. YAY SUMMER!
Biggest Loser of the Month: Robert Rodriguez. Sorry, the guy is like the greedy little kid who wants all the toys but won't let you play with them! Robert is attaching his name to EVERYTHING! Sin City 2. Then came Barbarella. Then he started shopping around a prison drama television series called Woman in Chains! He got a case of remake fever and claimed Red Sonja. Then this month we get news he has Machete on the planning board. Not enough? It was announced that Rodriguez was assigned the task of relaunching the Predator franchise. MAKE A MOVIE ALREADY!
Biggest Movie News of the Month:X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the internet leak, and the fallout. Let's put an asterisk next to this one. Let's see what the SECOND week at the box office looks like. While at first glance they did all they could to do some damage control on the leak, the initial word is... not so good. Nevertheless, let's wait and see. First week is a gimme. Even people who have seen the bootleg will want to see it on the big screen. No matter what, it's on every one's lips, especially if you are drinking a slurpee from 7-11.
Your Most Anticipated Movie of the Month: Look at this! A tie! Between Star Trek and Terminator: Salvation. Yeah, another cop out answer from me!
Recommended DVD Release of the Month:Taken. How awesome was this movie? A former spy relies on his old skills to save his daughter, who has been forced into the slave trade.
Classic Movie of the Month:Confessions of a Superhero. I came across this by accident... thanks Hulu! A cool little documentary chronicles the lives of three guys and one woman who make their living working as superhero characters on Hollywood Boulevard. Surprisingly candid, it looks into their daily lives and reveals their struggles and triumphs as they pursue and achieve their own kind of fame. Definitely worth a look.
Movie Quote of the Month: Bryan: "I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."
Marko: [after a long pause] "Good luck." - Taken
Jason Chamberlain
Biggest Winner of the Month: Vin to the Diesel! Fast & Furious kicked ass at the box office and will no doubt add some clout to Diesel's attempts to get more his Riddick films made. I hear he's doing another xXx too. Franchises aren't so bad after all eh Vin?
Biggest Loser of the Month:Dragonball and more specifically, James Marsters. He's a super talented dude who really deserves to break through and this movie was his chance, and it failed.
Biggest Movie News of the Month: Yeah, it's gotta be the leak of Wolverine. I didn't even think about downloading it because I have no interest in seeing an unfinished movie. I don't believe for a second it will have a real effect on the box office take, but what it has certainly done is shine another spotlight on illegal downloading. Not good for people who like free shit. Like, everybody.
Your Most Anticipated Movie of the Month:Wolverine. Like I said I didn't heed the dark call of the unfinished version and I'm glad I didn't because now I can go into this baby fresh not knowing what to expect. I think it's going to be a blast.
Recommended DVD Release of the Month:Fanboys is out on DVD? Shit, it never came to any theatre anywhere NEAR me. At least I finally get to see it!
Classic Movie of the Month: Check out The Replacements, with Keanu Reeves as a failed quarterback who leads a team of misfits to the playoffs. Good times!
Movie Quote of the Month: Will Hunting: "Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll take a shot. Say I'm working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had no problem with, get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number got called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass. And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And, of course, the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin', 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what do I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure fuck it, while I'm at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president." - Good Will Hunting
Owain J. Brimfield
Biggest Winner of the Month: I never thought I'd say it, but I have to agree with the others that a certain NOS-fuelled franchise wins the day here. I sincerely hope that Vin Diesel uses his newly reignited box office potential to make the sequel to Pitch Black that that movie deserves, and that Paul Walker uses his newly reignited wallet to retire to a quiet, happy life without ever acting again.
Biggest Loser of the Month:Dragonball, which as far as I can see has been by far the most critically reviled movie this year. It's a poor adaptation of a pretty poor series, and you can't help but feel a little sorry for all involved (except for Chow Yun Fat, who should have known better). Let's hope that this doesn't deter Hollywood from plundering some of the actually decent source material that the Far East has to offer.
Biggest Movie News of the Month: Has to be the palaver surrounding the leak of the Wolverine workprint. Personally I can't see the appeal of watching a film as big as this in an unfinished state, but hell, each to their own. Just be aware that bitching about the movie's quality solely on the basis of an unfinished print automatically qualifies you as a Grade-A ignoramus.
Your Most Anticipated Movie of the Month:Terminator for me. Wolverine's a big draw, and I may make the heretofore unprecedented step of going to the cinema twice in a month, but the return of Skynet absolutely wins my favours this time round. The original two films are both in my top ten and I have a soft spot for the third, which given the horribly low expectations we all had turned out to be pretty decent. Let's hope the franchise gets a deserved new lease of life here, even if it does have to contend with the lamest pseudonym in showbusiness at the helm.
Recommended DVD Release of the Month: Did I hear someone say Benjamin Button is out? Odd that it's on Criterion, but I'll be snapping it up regardless as I didn't catch it during its theatrical run, and Fincher is a big favourite of mine.
Classic Movie of the Month: Since the first one's already been picked, I'll go with Terminator 2 here, specifically the "Ultimate Edition" or whatever it's called that adds about twenty minutes to the running time that switches the focus ever-so-slightly more to the science fiction elements rather than the action. It's an absolute masterpiece and every fan of cinema owes it to themselves to watch this movie.
Movie Quote of the Month: "I know now why you cry." - Ahnuld, wiping a tear from young Eddie Furlong's cheek in T2. Corniest line ever?
