Movies: 3Summer Movies, 3 Different promos

A quick stroll outside the local cineplex showed the summer season is in full swing. While the current showings include disaster flick "San Andreas" and the Melissa McCarthy comedic vehicle, "Spy" the "Coming Attractions" posters (and standees) reflect the conventional summer fare, as in sequels (Jurassic and Minions) and super-hero stories (Ant-Man)


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"Man of Steel" Proves Its Box Office Mettle

Haven't seen it yet (plan for this week), but clearly the folks at Warner Bros. are breathing a sigh of release that this Superman soared - as this LA Times (via the Gleaner) report makes the point.

Man of Steel leaped over box office expectations in a single weekend.

The Warner Bros superhero film earned US$113m in its opening weekend at the box office, according to studio estimates yesterday. The retelling of Superman's backstory earned an additional US$12m from last Thursday's screenings, bringing its domestic total to US$125m. Original expectations for Man of Steel ranged from US$75m to US$130m.

"They finally got the Superman formula right," said Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com. "Superhero movies really are the bread and butter of the summer box office. The fact thatIron Man 3 has the biggest opening of the year so far and Man of Steel has the second biggest opening of the year just proves that."

Man of Steel, which stars British actor Henry Cavill as Superman and Amy Adams as Lois Lane, also toppled the record for biggest opening in June. It was previously held by the Disney-Pixar film Toy Story 3, which banked US$110m when it opened in 2010. Superman Returns, the previous Superman film which starred Brandon Routh in the title role, launched with a respectable US$52.5m in 2006.

Sony's This Is the End opened in second place behind Man of Steelwith US$20.5m in its opening weekend. The comedy, starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jonah Hill and Craig Robinson as versions of themselves trapped in a mansion during the apocalypse, opened Wednesday, earning a domestic total of US$32.8m. The film cost just US$32m to produce.

OUTSTANDING FLICK

"We knew we were going to have competition, but we felt our movie stood on its own and had its own voice," said Rory Bruer, Sony's president of worldwide distribution. "I believe we've absolutely proven that. To have this amount of money in the bank with its cost of production, good reviews and word of mouth really puts our feet on solid ground."

In its third weekend at the box office, the Lionsgate illusionist heist filmNow You See Me fleeced US$10.3m in third place, bringing its total domestic haul to US$80m. Universal's Fast & Furious 6 arrived in fourth place, with US$9.4m, while the studio's invasion horror film The Purge, starring Ethan Hawke, scared up US$8.2m in the fifth spot.

The super openings of Man of Steel and This Is the End helped to lift the box office 50 per cent over last year, when Madagascar 3 andPrometheus held on to the top spots. Man of Steel will face off against stiff competition next week, when Paramount's zombie thriller World War Z and the Disney-Pixar's prequel Monster's University both debut.

These are the estimated ticket sales for Friday through yesterday at United States and Canadian theatres, according to Hollywood.com.

1. Man of Steel, US$113m

2. This Is the End, US$20.5m

3. Now You See Me, US$10.3m

4. Fast & Furious 6, US$9.4m

5. The Purge, US$8.2m

6. The Internship, US$7m

7. Epic, US$6m

8. Star Trek: Into Darkness, US$5.6m

9. After Earth, US$3.7m

10. Iron Man 3, US$2.9m

Superhero roll-Call: The Avengers

"How bad is it?" Samuel Jackson's Nick Fury asks ironically, at the beginning of this grand - and gobsmackingly profitable - superhero party.

As it turns out, not too bad at all. Awash in hype, and newly crowned as the opening week box office champ in the US, this superhero comic adaptation definitely struck me as one too many, something to pass on and observe the Hollywood feeding frenzy until the arrival of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight finisher.

But, give credit where its due, in this case, director and co-writer Joss Whedon has managed to walk the fine and treacherous line between fanboys and critical appraisers. He gets plenty of support form his A-List cast, most notably Robert Downey Jr, who after two previous turns as Iron Man, makes the character indelibly his own here. As with so many good guy-bad guy tussles, the bad guy is generally a better performer. Tom Hiddleston, as the megalomaniac Loki, combines a Shakesperean actor's tongue with the sensibilities of your standard Saturday morning cartoon villain to good effect. The only one-on-ones that fall short of the mark are the ones involving his Asgardian brother Thor (Chris Hemsworth).

The plot? Oh, there's enough of that flying around on the Web and other sources so as to save us the burden of repeating it here. Something about an unbeatable, inexhaustible source of energy and all that. Apart from the repartee, where Whedon's flick really shines is in the efx. A giant aircraft carrier that itself becomes an aircraft; Tony Stark "suiting up" as Iron man while in free fall from high atop his eponymous building; Thor, busting out of  a presumed impenetrable "jail cell" (built alternately for the Hulk and for his brother) while also in free fall. These snippets are undeniably exhilarating, even for the most jaded, and they make the film's final 20 minutes even more regrettable: a by-the-numbers carnival of mayhem and explosions complete with gigantic, super-hideous reptilian alien airships (try saying that 5 times fast!).

Where Whedon, and the cast, is at his best, in the verbal exchanges, whether that between Nick Fury (Jackson brings a kind of "John Singleton hood dad"  sensibility to the role) and the "governing" Council, between Iron Man and Hulk alter-ego Bruce Banner, or between Black Widow (don't get us started on Scarlett Johansen) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner)

Neither totally over the top, nor tediously cerebral, The Avengers is a welcome shot in the arm for what had become a tired superhero genre, paving the way for the other summer blockbusters (Batman and Spider-Man) still to come.
Suit up.    

just The Right Amount of "Rah-Rah": Captain America

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You could consider this plucky little superhero story Hollywood's "Plan With A Man", the man in this case being Chris Evans, who's done the superhero bit before, in "fantastic Four."

The plan? Put a few A and B- lusters (Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci, Hugo Weaving, Derek Luke) with some relative unknowns and obscures and let director Joe Johnston(The Rocketeer) polish them up with his usual can-do spirit and good-natured wit.

For the most part, it works. While there is certainly the usual raft of explosions, gunfights and visual efx, this is one superhero that gets by essentially on his own wits and - admittedly juiced-up - power. There's also, in the typical Johnston style, some gentle yet effective satire. Right after he first discovers his new altered body, our hero becomes a Gov't pawn for the war effort, doing hokey road shows touting war bonds, in which he knocks an even more caricatured Hitler. The sequence ends when "Capo's" schtick falls flat before a troop of real GIs in Italy.

But fear not, the action (slow, we admit) jumps back into the comic book realm. The enemy here is not even the Nazis, but a megalomaniac called Red Skull who's harnessed new weapons technology that can vaporize mere mortals, along with an android (not the phone) army of his own, all of which he is ready to unleash on an unsuspecting world ( Germany included) unless...

Well, you know the rest. Evans is no Christian Bale (who will again have his turn as the Caped Crusader next summer), but he's commanding enough and he has just the right mix of awe and assurance to make the character likeable. Indeed, striking the right tone is the core of the movie's charm. Yes, there's "rah-rah" Americana, but it never overwhelms the story (thin though it may be), nor the viewer.

Mr Bombastic!: Thor - Trailer (OFFICIAL)

With comic book movie adaptations pretty much an assembly line affair these days, its harder to really assess each new creation on its merits.

One standout point for this latest Marvel epic is volume. In a genre marked by loud, busy pictures, Thor could have easily taken on Shaggy's "Boombastic" as its theme song. It yells, bangs, whooshes and barrels its way through roughly two hours in bringing the story of the Norse god of thunder into the 21st century where, of course, everybody's favourite bogeyman, "The Government" is waiting to muddle and mess up things.

And yet, there is - to coin a dancehall phrase - a "bashment" quality to the boisterousness of both the film and its main character. Director Kenneth Branagh decided to chuck his Shakespeare credentials out the window and delivers a mildly asbsurdist, even sardonic take on the superhero, jostling between the New Mexico desert and an Asgard that looks like every archtitectural student's worse thesis flung together. As a kind of mythological gatekeeper between these worlds, Idris Elba (whose token blackness sparked some controversy), picks up on the director's lead and radiates the best kind of cool. His performance says "So what if this is totally incredible stuff? We're doing all right."

As the earthling love interest, Natalie Portman does little to reverse my long-held antipathy toward her, but the inclusion of Kat Dennings as her sister almost makes up for it  - perhaps she and not Portman should have been the love interest, but that's obviously NOT a risk the studio was going to take.

In the lead role, Aussie  Chris Hemsworth, a sort of buff Brad Pitt, is similarly taking some of the air out of the  Thor mythology; you can almost see him suppressing a chuckle or a smirk even as he rails against the "Frostchilds" (the evil race that is seeking to take over Asgard) or upbraiding his own father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins, in an uncharacteristically earnest performance).

As the sort of leading edge of this year's superhero movie tsunami (there's Captain America, Green Lantern, The Avengers and more X-Men still to come), Thor grabs the genre, holds it upside down by the ankles, and gives it a fairly good shake. You won't get much out of watching tis spectacle, but on the other hand it isn't boring, which is more than can be said for many of its cohorts.

Teen Alien Superhero seeks Normal life:I am Number Four - Official Trailer [HD]

All the while I was watching this well-meaning latest effort from DJ Caruso(The Salton Sea), I kept fighting the impression that I was watching an expanded version of Smallville.

Alex Pettyfer (who formerly played teen spy Alex Rider) is John smith (yeah, they went there), a seemingly normal teen who is actually one of the last of a special breed of aliens fleeing persecution from a more warlike species (yeah, they went there, too) he has moved from city to city under the guidance and protection of his alien compatriot, the more snappily named Henri (Deadwood's Timothy Olyphant) who's pretty handy with a sword as we soon find out.

Enter Sarah (Diana Agron), the young outsider at the high school where Smith ends up becoming the love interest, and therefore, a problem in the Henri's eyes, given that the bad guys' arrival on the scene is imminent, since they have picked up his "scent."

But they're not the only ones in search of Smith. He is fourth in line out of nine "specials" that the warlike race wants, and they've already dispatched numbers One through Three, hence the "Number Four" of the title. The thing is Number Six (Ozzie Teresa Palmer) is also on the scene, and is trying desperately to rendezvous with our hero.

There's also a geek (Callan McCauliffe, last seen in the teen romance Flipped), who has some moments but the movie just isn't a compelling whole. Love conquers all, of course, and the cast collectively tries, but the film passes without any significant emotional attachment to any of these characters or their predicament. The marauding aliens are essentially stock types, devoid of intelligence but oddly funny in their brutishness.

I Am Number Four is destined to be merely the latest in a long line of youth-oriented films.