Preview and Projections for the Weekend of March 4, 2005
By Edward Douglas -

Greetings and welcome back to the Weekend Warrior, your weekly guide to the weekend’s new movies. Tune in every Tuesday for the latest look at the upcoming weekend, and then check back on Friday for any last minute updates.

WEEKEND PROJECTIONS - final update 3.3.05

Third month of the year is the third week with three new movies, two of them high profile comedies that will likely split moviegoers this weekend. John Travolta returns as Chili Palmer, the Hollywood gangster from the movie version of Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty, this time taking on the music business in Be Cool. The large ensemble cast offers something for everyone with popular stars like Uma Thurman, Vincent Vaughn and Cedric the Entertainer, which should make it the shoe-in for the top spot. Then again, Vin Diesel breaks type playing a navy seal guarding a bunch of kids in Disney’s family comedy The Pacifier, which should bring in enough family audiences over the weekend to make a strong play for second place. The sci-fi thriller The Jacket from British film director John Maybury is getting a rather low-key release despite starring Adrien Brody and Keira Knightley. Treading similar ground as last year’s Ashton Kutcher thriller The Butterfly Effect, it may be too bizarre to find a mainstream audience. Meanwhile, last week’s #1 and 2 movies, Hitch and Diary of a Mad Black Woman may fight it out for third place, while Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby will likely get a nice bump from its Oscar wins. (After seeing Million Dollar Baby for a second time, I've decided to forgive the Academy.)

TW	LW	Title	Weekend (in millions)	Change	# Of Theaters	Average	Week
1	New	Be Cool	$27.0	N/A	3,216	$8,396	1
2	New	The Pacifier	$22.0	N/A	3,131	$7,186	1
3	1	Diary of a Mad Black Woman	$12.6	-43%	1,703	$7,399	2
4	2	Hitch	$12.0	-42%	3,438	$3,490	4
5	6	Million Dollar Baby	$9.0	23%	2,350	$3,830	12
6	3	Constantine	$5.7	-52%	2,758	$2,067	3
7	New	The Jacket	$5.3	N/A	1,331	$4,074	1
8	5	Man of the House	$5.0	-45%	2,422	$2,064	2
9	6	Because of Winn-Dixie	$4.4	-35%	2,506	$1,756	3
10	4	Cursed	$4.1	-58%	2,805	$1,462	2
			Est. Weekend Total $107.60	Est. Avg. Drop-Off -36%		Est. Average PTA $4,163

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BE COOL (MGM Studios)
Starring: John Travolta, Vince Vaughn, Uma Thurman, Danny DeVito, The Rock, Andre 3000, Christina Milian, Harvey Keitel, Cedric the Entertainer, Robert Pastorelli, Steven Tyler, James Woods
Directed by: F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job, A Man Apart, The Negotiator, Friday)
Genres: Crime, Comedy, Music
Rated PG-13
Theatre Count: 3,216
Tagline: “Everyone is looking for the next big hit.”
Mini-Review: Despite some bad stereotypes and an unrealistic view of the music business, Be Cool is funnier than the original, if only because The Rock, Cedric and Vince Vaughn steal the show. Not to say that it's not nice to see the wonderful chemistry between Travolta and Thurman back on screen, but their dancer number seemed quite gratuitous. Rating: 7 out of 10

In this sequel to the 1995 “hit” comedy Get Shorty, John Travolta reprises his role as Chili Palmer, Hollywood gangster, who now turns his eye to the music business. Using his “negotiation skills,” he tries to run an independent record label with the wife of a murdered friend, played by Uma Thurman, and try to get his young singer (Christina Milian) a hit record.

In 1995, John Travolta was coming off his big comeback in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, and an adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s novel Get Shorty seemed like the perfect follow-up, since it mixed crime and comedy within a Hollywood setting. With a cast that included Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito and relative newcomer James Gandolfini, the movie did better than expected, opening at #1 with just over $12 million, and word-of-mouth was strong enough for it to stay in the top spot for three weeks, earning a grand total of $74 million in theatres. In 1999, Leonard wrote a follow-up novel Be Cool, which put Palmer into the music business, and in the years since then, Get Shorty has racked up years of DVD and video rentals and sales, including a recent rerelease in a special edition DVD, to help keep interest in Leonard’s character.

Travolta is going on his third career now. After playing Barbarino on the ‘70s sitcom “Welcome Back Kotter” and starring in hit movies like Saturday Night Fever, his career hit a bit of a downswing until Quentin Tarantino hired him to star in his second movie in 1994. Travolta received an Oscar nomination for the role of a gangster, kicking off a second career starring in a variety of movies from dramas like Phenomenon to action thrillers like The General’s Daughter and Basic. In the ten years since, he has played a hero in John Woo’s Face/Off and the most recent Ladder 49, a villain in The Punisher and Swordfish, and has earned enough respect in Hollywood to collect a $20 million paycheck for his acting. That was until 2000, when Travolta’s career hit a snag as he dedicated his time and money into producing a film based on L. Ron Hubbard’s sci-fi epic Battlefield Earth which was a disaster, followed by Nora Ephron’s comedy Lucky Numbers, which did even worse. Travolta hasn’t done many comedies since then, although he always adds some comedy to his movies (intentionally or not). Although Travolta is taking a step back by playing Chili Palmer again, he obviously knows that he needs to branch out a bit, something he tried to do in the poorly-received indie drama A Love Song for Bobby Long. Because his box office career has been so inconsistent, it’s hard to determine if Travolta is nearly as popular as he used to be, although he obviously has his fans—most likely older and mixed between men and women. It’s hard to think that Be Cool might do well based on his presence alone.

Fortunately, he’s not alone, because he’s being reunited with Uma Thurman, whose own career got a boost when she starred opposite him in Pulp Fiction. Her career floundered in the years after that with her biggest attempt at fame being the disastrous big screen version of The Avengers. She married Ethan Hawke, had a couple of kids and turned her back on acting for a while. In 2003, Thurman’s career was revived, once again by Quentin Tarantino, who had her as his lead in the two-part action-revenge saga Kill Bill, which made over $135 million in theatres and millions more in DVD sales and rentals. It also got Thurman two Golden Globe nominations and a ton of new fans. (In between the two movies, her own John Woo action flick Paycheck was released to minimal fanfare.) Reuniting Thurman and Travolta wouldn’t be complete if they didn’t have a dance together as a tribute to one of their most memorable moments from Pulp Fiction, and it’s something that will win over a lot of nostalgia seekers.

Be Cool’s not-so-secret weapon is Vince Vaughn, born of indie roots co-starring in John Favreau’s Swingers and Made—both crime comedies—before appearing in blockbusters like The Lost World. Two years ago, Vaughn finally found his real calling, playing one of three middle aged frathouse buddies in Old School, which began a run of comedies including Starsky & Hutch and Dodgeball, each grossing progressively more money last year. Not surprisingly, Vaughn’s character in Be Cool, a manager who thinks he’s black, is getting the most laughs from the popular trailer, which should help the movie bring in the teen fans from those other films. Vaugh should continue his streak appearing with Owen Wilson in this summer’s comedy, The Wedding Crashers.

Travolta, Thurman and Vaughn
Title	Release Date	Theater Count		Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Ladder 49	10/1/04	3260		$22.09	$6,776	$74.54
Basic	3/28/03	2,876		$11.51	$4,003	$26.60
Domestic Disturbance	11/2/01	2,910		$14.03	$4,822	$45.21
Primary Colors	3/20/98	1,965		$12.05	$6,132	$39.30
Lucky Numbers	10/27/00	2,497		$4.54	$1,818	$10.01
Get Shorty	10/20/95	1,612		$12.70	$7,878	$72.00
Pulp Fiction	10/14/94	1,338		$9.31	$6,958	$107.93
Kill Bill Vol. 2	4/16/04	2,971		$25.10	$8,450	$66.21
Kill Bill Vol. 1	10/10/03	3,102		$22.09	$7,121	$69.82
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story	6/18/04	2,694		$30.07	$11,162	$114.06
Starsky & Hutch	3/5/04	3,185		$28.10	$8,824	$88.20
Old School	2/21/03	2,689		$17.45	$6,491	$75.16

Be Cool has such a varied cast of actors, comics and musicians that it is likely to have something to appeal to just about everyone. Former wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson performs against type as a gay bodyguard. Cedric the Entertainer and Christina Milian follow their appearance in last week’s Tommy Lee Jones comedy Man of the House, with more prominent roles as a gangsta rap producer and Chili’s main recording artist. (As a successful recording artist herself, Milian won’t have too hard a time playing the part.) The only other returning character from the first film is Danny DeVito’s Martin Weir, probably in a smaller role, while Harvey Keitel reunites with Travolta for the first time since Pulp Fiction. Be Cool’s music business plot has made it the perfect tie-in for the music business with musicians like Andre (3000) Benjamin of the hip-hop group Outkast and even Steven Tyler from perennial rock group Aerosmith having featured roles. Travolta, Tyler and Milian even presented an award at the recent Grammy Awards, giving a plug to their movie in the bargain, creating the type of music/movie business synergy that Be Cool needs.

Be Cool also brings author Elmore Leonard one step closer to becoming the most adapted writer since Stephen King. Leonard has written dozens of bestselling books over the last few decades, many of which have been adapted. After the success of Get Shorty, respected directors like Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh adapted his crime novels “Rum Punch” and “Out of Sight,” while Don Cheadle was in talks to make his directorial debut with Leonard’s recent book “Tishomingo Blues.” The most recent adaptation was last year’s The Big Bounce based on Leonard’s first crime novel. Although it had already been made into a film, this modern comedy remake starring Owen Wilson and Morgan Freeman was a huge box office bomb. Although the Leonard connection to Be Cool is not being played up—for obvious reasons--it’s rare for a movie sequel to be based on a novel as is the case with Be Cool. Of course, the last time this was done was Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, which failed to achieve the success of the first book and film.

It’s surprising that Quentin Tarantino isn’t directing Be Cool, not only because it stars three of his Pulp Fiction actors, but also because of his own proclivity for Leonard after turning “Rum Punch” into Jackie Brown. Instead, they got F. Gary Gray, director of Paramount’s hit remake of The Italian Job, to take over for original director Barry Sonnenfeld, who went onto a couple ensemble comedy disasters like Big Trouble and Evolution. Gray seems like the perfect guy for the job, having steered another ensemble cast to turn The Italian Job into a sleeper hit in 2003.

The biggest hurdle for Be Cool may be the sequel factor, since in recent years, few comedy sequels have done as well as the original movies. The best examples are Analyze That and The Whole Ten Yards, two crime-comedy sequels which bombed despite reuniting the original casts, maybe since no one really needed or wanted sequels to them. The same might be said about Be Cool, written by the writer of Analyze That no less. It’s been so long since Get Shorty that much of its audience may have already grown up and moved on, and might not have so much interest in a sequel. Be Cool is a different enough title from the original movie that people may see it as a separate entity, especially since the only thing in common with Get Shorty is Travolta, DeVito and the Elmore Leonard source material.

Either way, MGM has not had very much luck with their own sequels in the last few years, as Barbershop 2 made less than the original, as did the second Agent Cody Banks film with Frankie Muniz. Be Cool is their first big movie since being bought by Sony, and they may be too busy with the transition to properly promote it, although the trailer has definitely created more buzz for the movie than anything else.

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count		Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
The Italian Job	5/30/03	2,633		$19.46	$7,390	$105.63
The Whole Ten Yards	4/9/04	2,654		$6.69	$2,519	$16.32
The Whole Nine Yards	2/18/00	2,910		$13.73	$4,720	$57.26
Analyze That	12/6/02	2,635		$11.03	$4,186	$31.82
Analyze This	3/5/99	2,518		$18.38	$7,299	$106.69
Barbershop 2: Back in Business	2/6/04	2,711		$24.24	$8,942	$64.96
The Big Bounce	1/30/04	2,304		$3.34	$1,448	$6.47
Big Trouble	4/5/02	1,961		$3.55	$1,808	$7.26
Out of Sight	6/26/98	2,106		$12.02	$5,708	$37.56
Jackie Brown	12/26/97	1,370		$9.01	$6,577	$39.67

Why I Should See It: This diverse cast mixed with a strong premise could make this movie rife for laughs.
Why Not: Crime comedies are so ‘90s.

Bottom Line: Ten years since the original film, Be Cool will probably have to sell itself more on the gags and the varied cast than the sequel factor, although enough people have seen Get Shorty that they may be ready for Travolta’s return to being a comic star.

Projection: $26 to 28 million opening weekend and around $75 million total.

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THE JACKET (Warner Independent Pictures)
Starring: Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley, Daniel Craig, Kris Kristofferson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kelly Lynch, Brad Renfro, Mackenzie Phillips
Directed by: John Maybury (Remembrance of Things Fast: True Stories Visual Lies, Genetron, Man to Man, Tunnel of Love, Absurd, The Value of Ignorance)
Genres: Sci-Fi, Thriller, Drama
Rated R
Theatre Count: 1,331
Tagline: “Terror has a new name.” (I’m taking a wild guess that it’s not “George.”)
MY REVIEW

Oscar winning actor Adrien Brody (The Pianist) plays a Gulf War veteran, placed in an asylum on his return home after being accused of murder. His doctor uses unconventional means to cure his madness, injecting him with experimental drugs and placing him in the morgue’s body drawer, which causes him to have visions of his own death, giving him four days to find out what is real if he wants to save his own life.

In a year where dumb comedies and dumber horror films are the only choices in theatres, The Jacket will try to offer something more intelligent in a psychological thriller with sci-fi elements that could appeal to those who enjoyed movies like Ashton Kutcher’s The Butterful Effect and Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys starring Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt. While discerning filmgoers tend to enjoy these films, they tend to go over the heads of mainstream audiences, something Focus Features faced with last year’s Charlie Kaufman romance Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The reputation of Kaufman and the movie’s star, Jim Carrey, did help that movie make over $8 million opening weekend even though it had a similar moderate release as The Jacket.

By comparison, The Jacket does have two strong actors who will be easily recognized by moviegoers. Adrien Brody was tooling around for a few years before his breakout in Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam in 1999, but it took him almost three years before he took another role that would get him worldwide recognition, as well as an Oscar, starring in Roman Polanski’s holocaust drama The Pianist. It was a surprise win for the actor that immediately got him noticed. Since then, he’s only appeared in a few little-seen indies like Dummy and Love the Hard Way, but his last movie was M. Night Shyamalan’s much reviled The Village. At least his next movie will be Peter Jackson’s King Kong, which should greatly help his Q rating.

His co-star Keira Knightley first got notice co-starring in Gurinder Chadha’s popular 2003 comedy hit Bend It Like Beckham, but she truly won over audiences a few months later with Disney’s high-profile blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean with Johnny Depp. She further got her foot into American doors with her prominent role in Richard Curtis’ holiday romantic comedy Love, Actually a few months later. Then again, none of that helped her bring in the fans of those movies when she played Guinevere in Jerry Bruckheimer’s big budget dud King Arthur last summer. The cast also features Kris Kristofferson from the Blade movies and noted British actor Daniel Craig, who still hasn’t made much of a name over here.

Some may be surprised that The Jacket is director John Maybury’s sixteenth film, since he’s been making movies over 20 years. No, I haven’t heard of any of his experimental films either, but apparently, most of them have done the film festival circuit, establishing enough of a reputation for him to get two such impressive actors. Few Americans will know of these movies, so it will be hard to sell the movie based on his previous work.

The Jacket is the first film from Warner Independent Pictures to get a wide release. Last year, they released a bunch of independent and foreign films in limited release, the most notable ones being Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s A Very Long Engagement and Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset, both which received Oscar nominations but very little in theatres. The indie subdivision of the mighty WB is still trying to find its footing as far as promoting and distributing films, much like Focus Features last year. The Jacket has a surprisingly good trailer, but for the most part, the promotion has been exclusively on the ‘net, and there are only so many people who check out sites like these, so awareness for the movie is very low. Similar movies like Jacob’s Ladder and Twelve Monkeys found audiences despite similar moderate releases, but they had the benefits of bankable box office stars, whereas a psychological thriller like Frailty didn’t do very well despite sterling reviews. Early reviews for The Jacket have not been nearly as good, and it doesn’t help that the only positive quote comes from someone whose raves were used to promote Alexander.

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
The Pianist	3/28/03	557	$9.77	$1.45	$2,613	$32.52
Summer of Sam	7/2/99	1,536		$5.99	$3,900	$19.13
King Arthur	7/9/04	3,086	$8.43	$15.19	$4,924	$51.80
Love Actually	11/7/03	576		$6.89	$11,955	$59.08
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl	7/11/03	3,269	$24.00	$46.63	$14,264	$305.41
The Butterfly Effect	1/23/04	2,605		$17.07	$6,551	$57.65
Gothika	11/21/03	2,382		$19.29	$8,097	$58.95
Frailty	4/12/02	1,497		$4.21	$2,806	$13.08
Twelve Monkeys	1/5/96	1,533	$0.37	$13.84	$9,028	$57.14
Jacob's Ladder	11/2/90	1,052		$7.50	$7,129	$25.97

Why I Should See It: It seems like an intelligent thriller with an interesting premise.
Why Not: An experimental director making a thriller with such a complex premise seems like it would leave many people, including critics, scratching their heads.

Bottom Line: The Jacket has some elements in common with cool movies like The Butterfly Effect and 12 Monkeys, but the lack of decent marketing and second-string actors like Brody and Knightley won’t be enough to get the movie’s esoteric premise across to mainstream America. Its moderate release will likely find little more than a niche market.

Projection: $4 to 6 million opening weekend on its way to $15 million total.

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THE PACIFIER (Walt Disney Pictures)
Starring: Vin Diesel, Lauren Graham, Faith Ford, Brittany Snow, Max Theriot, Morgan York, Carol Kane, Brad Garrett
Directed by: Adam Shankman (Bringing Down the House, A Walk to Remember, The Wedding Planner)
Genres: Comedy, Family, Action
Rated PG
Theatre Count: 3,131
Tagline: “Prepare for bottle.”

Vin Diesel plays Shane Wolfe, a disgraced Navy SEAL, assigned to protect the five children of a scientist who was murdered while working on government secrets. He quickly learns that taking care of kids is going to be the hardest assignment he’s ever taken.

If there is one proven commodity in comedy, it’s that if you put an actor not known for working with kids into a movie kids, it will do well…among kids. Whatever it is about this “fish out of water” subgenre, it’s proven successful among mainstream audiences time and time again. It’s not exactly a new premise, since this idea was first introduced in the ‘50s and ‘60s. The modern version of the genre kicked off when action star Arnold Schwarzenegger had a big hit with Kindergarten Cop, although the following year, pro wrestler Hulk Hogan took on babysitting in Suburban Commando to lesser success. In 2003, Eddie Murphy, who already had success with family comedies, played a babysitter in Daddy Day Care followed later that year by Steve Martin in a remake of Cheaper by the Dozen, both which did well. In January, gangsta rapper Ice Cube tried to break type by doing a family comedy, quite a departure for a guy known for roughing up anyone who disses him or his crew. It did surprisingly well opening weekend and has maintained a place in the Top 10 ever since. Kindergarten Cop and Cheaper by the Dozen both had the advantage of opening over the Christmas holiday weekend, while Daddy Day Care came out during a plum summer weekend, but The Pacifier has the backing of Disney, who have mastered the art of marketing family comedies after decades of experience.

Vin Diesel could certainly use a change like this, since he’s been hitting foul balls in the last few years after having back-to-back hits with The Fast and the Furious and XXX. His next two movies, the long delayed A Man Apart and Knockaround Guys didn’t do so well, and then last year, The Chronicles of Riddick, a sequel to his sci-fi sleeper hit Pitch Black, didn’t do well enough to make back its $100 million budget. The Pacifier is not the type of movie to appeal to Diesel’s usual audience, which is guys from 15 to 25, but since they have turned their back on him, it’s only fair he follows suit. Then again, many women have considered Diesel to be sexy, and he hasn’t really been in too many movies that could appeal to teen girls and mothers until now. There should be enough action in the movie that older guys might bring their younger kids to see the movie as well.

It’s ironic and amusing that Diesel is doing this sort of family comedy following so closely after Are We There Yet?, since Ice Cube is going to be starring in XXX: State of the Union, the sequel to one of Diesel’s biggest hits in April. Even Cube wasn’t being very original, as his road trip followed less than a year after Johnson Family Vacation, starring his Barbershop co-star Cedric. (All we need is for Vin Diesel to replace Cube in the third Barbershop movie—he’ll have to grow his hair first--and the cycle will be complete.)

Diesel is joined by a slew of television mainstays including hot and sassy Lauren Graham from “The Gilmore Girls,” Faith Ford from “Murphy Brown” and “Hope and Faith,” as well as the popular Brad Garrett from “Everyone Loves Raymond.” Former choreographer Adam Shankman is coming off his biggest hit as a director to date, having helmed the 2003 Steve Martin-Queen Latifah comedy Bringing Down the House. His previous films, the Mandy Moore drama A Walk to Remember and Jennifer Lopez’s romantic comedy The Wedding Planner also did decently among audiences, which certainly shows that he knows how to make movies for mainstream audiences. Like Diesel, The Pacifier is a change of direction for him, being a family action comedy, but he should have enough chops to make sure it doesn’t turn into Agent Cody Banks 2. The movie’s trailer is being as well received as Bringing Down the House, even getting a coveted commercial spot during the Super Bowl, so the awareness of the movie is certainly high even if the audience will be a bit of a mixed bag.

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
The Chronicles of Riddick	6/11/04	2,757		$24.29	$8,810	$57.64
A Man Apart	4/4/03	2,459		$11.02	$4,481	$26.50
XXX	8/9/02	3,374		$44.51	$13,191	$141.20
The Fast and the Furious	6/22/01	2,628		$40.09	$15,255	$144.51
Are We There Yet?	1/21/05	2,709		$18.58	$6,857	$71.92
Cheaper By the Dozen	12/26/03	3,298	$8.18	$27.56	$8,356	$128.03
Daddy Day Care	5/9/03	3,370		$27.62	$8,197	$103.55
Bringing Down the House	3/7/03	2,801		$31.10	$11,104	$132.68
Suburban Commando	10/4/91	899	$0.52	$2.47	$2,747	$6.92
Kindergarten Cop	12/21/90	1,833		$14.72	$8,031	$90.57

Why I Should See It: Vin Diesel taking on soiled baby diapers is a pretty funny concept.
Why Not: Because to some, it may look more like Suburban Commando than Kindergarten Cop. (And there’s a very fine line between the two as you can see in the chart above.)

Bottom Line: Though some may already be sick of this overused comedy premise, the idea of tough guy Vin Diesel taking on kids is the type of premise that mainstream audiences eat up, especially with a trailer as funny as this one. Expect it to pick up any business missed by Be Cool this weekend including teen girls, women and kids under 16, although it may get hurt next week by the release of Robots.

Projection: $21 to 23 million opening weekend on its way to $70 million.

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UNDER THE RADAR

Do you live in a major North American city? If so, there are a number of limited release movies worth checking out. And if you don't live in one of the cities in which these movies open, look for some of them to hit your area sometime in the next few months.

Opening in Limited Release:
GUNNER PALACE (Palm Pictures)

The documentary Gunner Palace compiles Michael Tucker’s footage from the two months he spent in Iraq with a group of American soldiers holed up at the palace of Sadam Hussein’s son, Uday. While they try to have fun and enjoy their free time, the day-to-day attacks by native insurgents makes it difficult. Gunner Palace opens in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington DC on Friday.

Mini-Review: While the message about keeping the American troops in mind is an important one, Gunner Palace is not a very good documentary. The few intelligent thoughts are overrun by soldiers acting like clowns and taking advantage of the cameras to create their own bad rap music videos. A poort attempt to latch onto Michael Moore’s coattails. Rating: 5 out of 10

Opening in New York and Los Angeles:
THE BEST OF YOUTH (Miramax Films)
DEAR FRANKIE (Miramax Films)
WALK ON WATER (Samuel Goldwyn Films)

Marco Tullio Giordana’s epic The Best of Youth tells the story of two Italian brothers—one a free spirited world traveler, the other an introverted police officers—as their lives are changed by the world around them over the course of forty years. Winner of a jury prize at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, this six-hour film, originally intended as a television mini-series, will be released in two parts, both in select theatres on Wednesday.

In Dear Frankie, Emily Mortimer plays the mother of a nine-year old deaf boy named Frankie, who doesn’t want to tell him that the reason they ran away to a Scottish seaside town was to get away from his father. Instead, she says that he is away at sea and makes up letters, but when Frankie begins to wise up, she has to decide whether to tell him the truth or have someone, such as Gerard Butler, pretend to be his father for a day.

Eytan Fox’s Walk on Water tells the story of Eyal (Israeli superstar Lior Ashkenazi), an Israeli Mossad agent on assignment to track down a Nazi war criminal by posing as a tour guide and befriending his grandchildren. The plan backfires as he gets friendlier with them and realizes he needs to reevaluate his priorities.

Opening in New York:
EMILE (Castle Hill Productions)
INTIMATE STORIES (New Yorker Films)

In Carl Bessai’s Emile, Ian McKellen plays a British professor who returns to his childhood home of Victoria, British Columbia (that’s in Canada) to receive an honorary degree, hoping to reconnect with his only living relatives. There, he is forced to revisit dark secrets from his past. This film from 2003 opens at New York’s Quad Cinema.

Mini-Review: Ian McKellen and Deborah Kara Unger are both excellent, but the rest of the cast and the weak script make this a rather bland and slow drama. Would probably have been better as an off-Broadway stage play. Rating: 4 out of 10

WARRIOR'S PICK: Carlos Sorin’s Intimate Stories is about three strangers' trek across South Patagonia, Argentina in linked tales about a poor woman invited to appear on a game show, a lonely old man trying to find his runaway dog and a salesman trying to win the affections of a single mother by getting the perfect birthday cake for her child. Winner of Spain's Goya award for best Spanish language foreign film, this comedic road movie opens in New York at the Cinema Village and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.

Mini-Review: Although it takes a while to get going, Carlos Sorin's sweet little slice-of-life story is a real crowdpleaser that wins you over with its fun characters and situations. Rating: 8 out of 10

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THIS TIME LAST YEAR

Last March kicked off with two new movies, neither of which could make even the slightest dent in Mel Gibson’s magnum opus The Passion of The Christ, which held up well with a second weekend of over $53 million, a mere drop-off of 37% from its amazing opening weekend. This impressive sophomore frame brought its total gross over the $200 million mark in only twelve days. Of the two new movies, Ben Stiller was strong out of the gate with his second movie of 2004, teaming with his regular partner in crime Owen Wilson for their comedy adaptation of the ‘70s television show Starsky and Hutch. It came in second with just over $28 million, about $10 million more than the other new movie, Hidalgo, a horse-racing film starring The Lord of the Rings’ Aragorn, Viggo Mortensen. The Oscar movies like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Monster continued to pick up decent business building up to the ceremony later in the month.

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Next week, the makers of Ice Age return with Robots featuring the voice of Robin Williams; Bruce Willis returns in the action-drama Hostage, and Mel Gibson offers up a slightly less violent version of his 2004 religious blockbuster, The Passion Recut.

Copyright 2005 Edward Douglas