Weekend Forecast: 5/14/09
There’s only one new wide release this week so if live in New York and you’ve already seen Star Trek (and even if you haven’t), LiC recommends you check out Olivier Assayas’ lovely Summer Hours playing at IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza. It’s officially our favorite movie up to this point in 2009. New Yorkers and Los Angelinos should also keep an eye out for the quirky and strange Big Man Japan. Let’s just say Dai-Nipponjin could kick Wolverine’s ass with one giant arm tied behind his back. Plus he carries a handy collapsible umbrella. You know… just in case.
Opening wide:
- Angels & Demons. The Da Vinci Load made $217 million in the US which isn’t great when you consider its estimated $125 million budget. Unfortunately, it went on to make an additional half a billion overseas, thus erasing any hope that they’d spare us a sequel. Repent foreigners for the day of reckoning is nigh. Tom Hanks returns with a better hairstyle and hopefully a bit less jibber jabber for what is technically a prequel to the airless and artless Da Vinci. It’s like a Robert Langdon origin story! This time he’s out to stop an Illuminati plot to destroy the Vatican. Now if only he’d do something about Ron Howard’s plot to destroy cinema.
Opening in limited release:
- Big Man Japan. It’s Hancock (minus Will Smith and plus not sucking) meets Ultraman as a seemingly ordinary Japanese slacker is turned into a giant not-so-superhero in order to save Japan from evil and absurd monsters. It turns out he’s one of a long line of such heroes, but unfortunately he’s not very good at what he does, his heart’s not really in it and no one seems to want him around. Told in mock documentary style, Big Man Japan is an odd and sad little sci-fi comedy infused with the spirit and following the structure of a particularly strange monster fighting videogame. It ends with a fanciful climax straight out of an episode of the aforementioned Japanese sci-fi TV show. Recommended if you’re sick to death of ordinary superhero movies like I am or if you just have a thing for colossal Japanese dudes with blue underwear and Don King haircuts. You know who you are.
- The Brothers Bloom (Opens wide on 5/29). Rachel Weisz, Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo and Rinko Kikuchi star in Rian (Brick) Johnson’s tale of two brotherly con men who plan one last scam involving a beautiful heiress, which is great until one of them falls in love with her. I love the cast, but I’m increasingly skeptical about this especially after the seven-minute opening. Nevertheless, I want it to be big fun. If it lives up to its potential, it could be among the most enjoyable movies of a dusty and dry summer. If not…well they can’t all be winners.
- Jerichow. Christian (Yella) Petzold’s Turkish love triangle set in a small town in the former East Germany premiered to good reviews at Venice in 2008. That’s about all I can tell you about it, but check out the interesting trailer.
- Management. Did you know there was a Jennifer Aniston romantic comedy coming out this weekend? This one is an indie production that premiered at Toronto last year to modestly positive reviews. It tells the story of a successful sales representative (Aniston) who checks into an out of the way motel run by a 30-something slacker (Steve Zahn). Against the odds, they hook up and he follows her back to Baltimore where an opposites-attract romantic comedy is born.
- O’Horten. From Sweden’s Bent Hamer (Factotum, Kitchen Stories), this film looks like the kind of gentle, quirky European number that makes me want to gouge my eyes out…or it could be a complete charmer. Frankly, the odds are about 50/50.
Opening in New York:
- Summer Hours. Olivier Assayas marshals the technical skill and thematic interest he’s shown in such films as Irma Vep, Late August Early September and Clean and weds them to a story that has the added gravity of emotional resonance. The result is perhaps his best film yet and the best of the year so far. This is a melancholy film full of longing, yet also balanced with a measure of hope as a family copes with the demise of their past and the uncertainty of their future as a unit. Beautiful and bittersweet, it’s a very nearly perfect film and it comes with LiC’s highest recommendation. Stay tuned for a full review.
The Kinks make their second appearance as musical sponsors for this edition of the Weekend Forecast. Why? Because they rule. I’m pretty sure this one hasn’t been co-opted by Wes Anderson for a soundtrack yet, but it should be. Here’s Little Miss Queen of Darkness.
Filed under: Weekend Forecast
I’m glad O’Horten is finally out, because they’ve been running the trailer on and off at the local artplex for a year now and I’m tired of seeing it. Hope the trailer didn’t give away every ounce of quirk.
Looking forward to Summer Hours coming here eventually. I’ve heard Angels and Demons might actually be a decent movie this time out and that would be good for fans. Big Man Japan looks like a movie I would have been all over 10 years ago, but now I can’t muster the energy for it.
Indeed. Craig has promoted SUMMER HOURS regularly for a while, and I am hoping to see it over the weekend, if I can fit it in with a scheduled staging of AIN’T MISBEHAVEN and more importantly a combined communion-confirmation party for my two daughters. But there’s no doubt this is the one to see.
Yes! I was hoping Jerichow was on its way out. Here’s my little blurb from MSPIFF. I thought it was fantastic.
I do want to see O’Horten and the Brothers Bloom but have to wait a week or so for both. And Summer Hours obviously shot to the top of my list weeks back when Craig mentioned it as a candidate for his favorite of the year. We get it 6/5 I believe. And Management was dropped completely from the release schedule all of a sudden, replaced with Tyson for tomorrow. Dunno what that means, but Tyson played well at MSPIFF so maybe there was a last minute change.
Big Man Japan – man, what a trip. I think you had more patience than I did, Craig. Parts of it I liked a lot, but more often than not it was just straight “WTF?”
And Angels and Demons – well considering I’ve avoided reading either book or seeing the last movie, it would have to take some stunning reviews to get me out to see it.
I hope I haven’t overhyped Summer Hours. It really is a subtle film and I don’t want to step on it, but I also want to make sure everyone knows about it. It hit me for personal reasons so it won’t be a huge shock to me if other people don’t react as strongly.
At a screening the other night there was a gaggle of blue-hair industry types talking about some of the recent screenings they’d been to and they complained that Summer Hours “didn’t have any meat on its bones” yet they grabbed a spork and ate Departures for lunch.
I wanted to turn around and knock their heads together 3 Stooges style. Departures was ok, but mostly sentimental crap. Summer Hours was sublime.
Probably a bunch of Oscar voters.
I am curious about O’Horten, but I have a bad feeling about it. We’ll see.
Big Man Japan…I was frequently WTF, but I was laughing while I was WTFing. This is not a movie that will appeal to most people, but I think genre fans, particularly of old Japanese monster movies and TV shows will get a kick out of it. It was bizarre for sure.
I’ve heard mixed things about A&D and as I said before the Illuminati plot grabs me and the trailer looked watchable….but based on how I feel about Da Vinci and about Howard, I’d be a fool to go see it, wouldn’t I?
Also, thanks for the tip on Jerichow. I seemed to recall you saying you’d seen it or were going to see it. The trailer certainly grabbed my attention.
Question (I may have asked this before), but any word on The Owl and the Sparrow? It’s playing here right now and I know little about it, but apparently it’s gotten some positive reviews elsewhere.
I’ve heard as much as you, Joel – might be a nice little discovery.
Craig, I agree about the target audience for BMJ, and part of me wants to see more of the actor, who is apparently a huge star. I thought he was pretty funny even outside of the WTF scenes.
Owl/Sparrow won some award at LAFF in 2007 and it got some good reviews. It FINALLY made a week’s appearance at a theater in LA (the poor bastards ended up having to self distribute it or something) a few months back and that was the last I heard of it.
Oh ok, it wasn’t self released, but here’s the story: http://livingincinema.com/2009/01/15/indies-catch-a-wave/
Daniel, yeah I liked the actor quite a bit. He kind of carried it for me in between the head-shaking WTF moments. The scene where he meets up with his daughter was actually kind of moving.
Yay for The Kinks! :D
This weekend will be Star Trek for me probably, but maybe I’ll be able to catch Summer Hours too.
For the record I still like Tom Hanks.
Yes please. Go see Summer Hours. It has Juliette Binoche in it, so how bad could it be?
I also like Tom Hanks, as a human being and often as an actor. I went through a snobby phase where I thought I hated him (the Gump years), but I really didn’t. He seems like too damn nice of a guy.
Had to see the STAR TREK film so I could have some sort of opine. I agree with Craig basically, except I thought 80 percent of the humor was forced and unwanted. I was waiting for the pauses so Scotty could fill them with a quip. The film’s best line is “I like him.”
Spectacular efx shots and very TV style shakycam direction. Lens flare overkill like watching a video game cut scene circa 1998. Awful TV sytle coinky dinks (Uhura and Kirk in bar, okay; then Green Skin Alien as Uhura’s roomie; then Spock and Uhura; then Spock on the planet and Scotty to boot). All of that is soap opera plotting, the kind that works on the tube but way less here.
I enjoyed it for what it was, which wasn’t much, and thought Pine was fine, the rest okay. Did every scene require an action beat? Best thing was Nimoy of course…and Giacinno’s score was nice if not memorable. And the Beastie Boys song was still dumb along with the phat Nokia placement. Beam me up.
Interesting take on the humor…that sounds like the biggest thing we disagree on. It all seemed character based to me and much more natural than what you often get after a franchise has been dragged out one too many times. The characters were funny, but the movie largely took itself seriously.
The worst example of the forced humor was Uhura kissing Spock on the teleporter while Kirk looks on. Certainly WRATH OF KHAN and VOYAGE HOME had plenty of character based humor, but not the overdone — once again — TV style mugging. I love Pegg and was tired of Scotty Quip in every scene. I did like his tiny quiet alien pal tho…
Give me a break. Voyage Home has so much mugging for the camera it’s not a sci-fi movie, it’s a slapstick comedy.
I liked Voyage Home. It was funny. And Catherine Hicks was awesome.
I like Voyage Home too. It was hilarious…but I’m just saying classic Trek is not without some wacky humor.
Oh, I definitely agree about the wacky humor. Classic Trek is downright campy.
I’m with Alison. Love THE KINKS.
Though I consider myself a big fan (from preadolescence, actually) I’ve never actually heard that song. Leave it to you, Craig.
LITTLE MISS QUEEN OF DARKNESS?
*raises eyebrow*
I’ll say no more…
We apparently don’t get THE BROTHERS BLOOM until the 29th.
Unfortunate but true…
Apparently those early reviews I read of Angels and Demons were a little off-the-mark because it’s being hammered with a 40% at Rottentomatoes and a 50% at Metacritic. Oh well, wasn’t planning on it anyway.
Miranda, you’ll find Little Miss Queen of Darkness on their 1966 album Face to Face which is a great one all around. Not a lot of tunes that turn up on Greatest Hits collections, but I love it.
Joel you can’t be blamed for jumping the gun. The trailer was promising to me despite what I knew about Da Vinci.
Besides, we like Tom Hanks so we had high hopes that his movie would be good.
You’ve made all us ladyfolk swoon with The Kinks. We’re like the teenage girls in the front row screaming in our first-row concert seats.
I’m headed to Little Rock in a few hours to take in the tail end of the Little Rock Film Festival. It’s only the third year for the festival and the first that I’ve been able to attend. And of course I’m already experiencing the distress of festivalgoers everwhere having to choose between films playing against each other on the schedule. Hoping to see at least Goodbye Solo, That Evening Sun and Kaseem the Dream. Anvil! The Story of Anvil is playing, as is 500 Days of Summer, but they are playing opposite of That Evening Sun, which our niece helped make and which apparently features some photos I scanned in of my mother-in-law, so that’s taking priority.
I still like Tom Hanks, too, Alison. Even if I’m not supposed to anymore.
Excellent priorities there, JB. GOOD LUCK!!! I hope you have fun and I look forward to hearing thoughts on Goodbye Solo.
For the record, I give Tom Hanks some grief every once in a while but I love the guy. Talk about a classic struggle with Hollywood story. The man has done just about everything and come out the other end with a storied career and none of the sordid crap that most actors fall into. He’s a gentleman, a talented actor, and he’s mostly used his power for the forces of Good.
My only real complaint is the nepotism with his spawn. Otherwise, I like him and his production company, Playtone, has done some great stuff (Band of Brothers, John Adams, Big Love, Neil Young: Heart of Gold). You gotta respect that.
I like Tom Hanks as a person but I’ve never rated him as an actor. When I think of him as a performer what comes to mind is work that is solid, bordering on bland but saved by a kind of low watt everyman charisma. The closest he ever came to being interesting for me as an actor was in Road to Perdition.
Look forward to hearing about your adventures in the Watercooler Ms. Bee. Have fun!
Hanks is a fine everyman, but I liked him best in Big.