90% for Frank, a comedy about a band with a very eccentric but charming and talented lead played by Michael Fassbender, who keeps his handsome face hidden inside a papier-mâché head throughout the movie; 87% for The Trip to Italy, another travelogue with Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan traveling through Italy, seeing the sights, eating a lot of great food and possibly practicing a few Michael Caine impersonations along the way; 75% for Dinosaur 13, a documentary about “Sue,” the fossilized T. rex and the legal fight over her; 73% for Jealousy, a French film about a man who leaves his family, winds up with another woman and then has to ponder issues about fidelity and infidelity; 57% for Ragnarok, a Norwegian adventure about an archaeologist and ancient runes; 54% for The Zero Theorem, Terry Gilliam’s probably very stylish but hard to follow movie about a computer hacker trying to find out the truth while being sabotaged by “the Management;” 42% for Life After Beth, a black comedy about a young woman who dies and comes back as a sort of zombie; 34% for The Expendables 3, in which a bunch of old guys shoot stuff; 33% for Coldwater, about a teenage boy in a juvenile reform facility in the wilderness; 27% for The Giver, in which a teenage boy is chosen to learn the truth about his mysterious Utopian community; and 12% for Let’s Be Cops, in which two guys pretend to be cops.
96% for Love Is Strange, in which two gay men (Alfred Molina and John Lithgow) in a long-standing relationship get married, and the many repercussions of that; 96% for Metro Manila, a Filipino film about a farmer who goes to Manila to find work; 83% for To Be Takei, the autobiographical documentary about Star Trek actor and gay rights activist George Takei; 78% for The One I Love, about “a couple in a struggling marriage escapes for the weekend… and end up facing an unusual dilemma,” to quote Wikipedia. 64% for 14 Blades, a Chinese martial arts period adventure movie that looks pretty wicked cool; 41% for If I Stay, a movie about a teenage girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) who is a promising young musician and has to choose between her boyfriend and her education at Juilliard when a car accident puts her in a coma, and she has to choose whether to live or die; 41% for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, which, while having a great title, looks horribly violent and sad; 20% for When the Game Stands Tall, because high school football is the most important thing in the world; 4% for Are You Here, with Owen Wilson, Zach Galifianakis and Amy Poehler in a road trip comedy.
I have six more titles with No Score Yet: Another Me, with Sophie Turner and Jonathan Rhys Meyers: “A teenager finds her perfect life upended when she’s stalked by a mysterious doppelganger who has her eyes set on assuming her identity.” Some kind of ghost mystery/thriller? Kabbalah Me, a documentary about a man’s exploration of Kabbalah; May in the Summer, about a Jordanian woman who is about to get married to her Muslim fiancé whose family is falling apart; The Possession of Michael King, a horror movie about the possession of Michael King; The Prince, an action thriller with Jason Patric, Bruce Willis and John Cusack; Salvo, an Italian crime drama about a Mafia hitman who meets a woman who changes his life.
X-Men: Days of Future Past and Edge of Tomorrow are probably tied as my favorite movies of the summer. Lucy and Guardians of the Galaxy were a little bit of a letdown - just something missing. I still want to see Calvary and A Most Wanted Man; trailers look great.
Just saw it, and loved it.
Oscar time for Mr. Linklater, methinks, to go with his “discovery” Matt McConaghey’s from last year. A good decade for Texas cinema.
For my last post in this thread, here are this week’s movie releases:
98% for Starred Up, a British drama about a teen transferred to his dad’s prison; 91% for Patema Inverted, in which two kids are separated by opposite gravities; 75% for The Congress, in which Robin Wright, sort of playing herself, gets uploaded into a computer; 64% for The Notebook, about twins working together to survive World War II; 60% for Life of Crime, something about Jennifer Anison getting kidnapped; 43% for The Calling, some kind of The Exorcist meets Fargo supernatural crime thriller with Susan Sarandon as a police officer; 34% for The November Man, some kind of Pierce Brosnan action thriller; 33% for The Last of Robin Hood, with Kevin Kline as an aging Errol Flynn; 29% for As Above, So Below, more “found footage in enclosed, dark spaces” nonsense, this time taking place in the Paris catacombs.
And that’s it for summer, folks! Have a wonderful three-day weekend!
I saw A Most Wanted Man last Wednesday, it was very good. Very tense spy thriller that doesn’t rely on car chases and explosions. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is outstanding, with top notch support from Rachel McAdams and Willem Dafoe. Highly recommend.
A list of this year’s big movies and their profitability. This is the amount of money they’ve made (domestically) divided by their production budget. In other words, for every dollar that was spent making the movie how many dollars did it earn?
God’s Not Dead - 30.40
The Fault in our Stars - 10.40
Neighbors - 8.34
The Purge: Anarchy - 7.96
Heaven is for Real - 7.62
Ride Along - 5.37
Let’s Be Cops - 4.54
If I Stay - 4.34
The LEGO Movie - 4.30
Tammy - 4.22
About Last Night - 3.89
22 Jump Street - 3.82
Lucy - 3.12
Think Like a Man Too - 2.72
The Hundred-Foot Journey - 2.34
The Other Woman - 2.10
Guardians of the Galaxy - 1.85
Non-Stop - 1.83
Divergent - 1.78
Captain America: The Winter Soldier - 1.53
The Nut Job - 1.53
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - 1.48
Maleficent - 1.33
Rio 2 - 1.28
Godzilla - 1.25
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - 1.22
How to Train Your Dragon 2 - 1.21
Transformers: Age of Extinction - 1.17
X-Men: Days of Future Past - 1.17
Planes: Fire & Rescue - 1.17
The Monuments Men - 1.11
Muppets Most Wanted - 1.02
300: Rise of An Empire - 0.97
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit - 0.84
Noah - 0.81
Mr. Peabody & Sherman - 0.77
Hercules - 0.72
RoboCop - 0.59
Edge of Tomorrow - 0.56
Why are you limiting it to the domestic take? The latest TRANSFORMERS flick grossed only $245 million hereabouts on a $210 million budget, but isn’t the real story that it pulled in $835 million overseas to break the billion-dollar mark?
As Mason said to Dixon, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.
And studios don’t consider foreign gross to be the same as domestic gross. Domestic gross is clearly preferred. When a studio sells tickets in other countries, there are often had delays and difficulties in getting the income back to the studio. One rule of thumb I’ve heard is that one dollar in domestic gross is considered to be the equivalent of two dollars in foreign gross.