ComingSoon.net - The Weekend Warrior

Your Weekly Guide to New Movies for June 16, 2006
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 final projections based on actual theatre counts.

THE BATTLE CRY!
(If you have anything to say about this or anything else written in the column, feedback and Email is always welcome, and almost always responded to.)

What’s going on with the Oscars this year? After all, this year is almost half over and we don’t have many frontrunners, early faves or anything really being taken too seriously into consideration for the world’s most over-hyped movie awards. Maybe it’s just a bit of extra fallout from this being the Year of the Dumb, emphasized by at least three of this week’s new movies, but it’s a shame that sites that dedicate themselves to the Oscars are struggling to find anything to write about.

Of course, there’s the age-old myth that releasing an Oscar potential in the summer means it will be forgotten by the time nominations came round. That may have been the case with Road to Perdition a few years ago, for sure. When Ron Howard’s boxing drama Cinderella Man came out last June, people were proclaiming it right and left as an early Oscar frontrunner, but by the time November came around, most people really had forgotten around it. When it was ignored for nominations, most people blamed it as much on the summer release as its star Russell Crowe’s off-screen behavior. At least the former theory proved fruitless when you realize that the Best Picture winner, Crash, opened in theatres a month earlier.

It seems strange that after almost six months, nothing really has been leaving any sort of lasting impression. Sure, there are a few good movies like Thank You for Smoking, which has a chance at a screenplay nomination, or V For Vendetta or United 93—all movies with a political slant, I might add--and a lot of great docs like this week’s Wordplay, but it’s a shame that the critics’ declarations of the winter and spring being a dumping ground for bad movies seems to have become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I know that I’ve only given 3 movies a perfect score of 10/10 this year, and two of those movies were foreign films that came out last year before getting a release in the United States. (Incidentally, one of them is next week’s The Chosen One.)

There’s certainly something to be said about releasing a few quality movies earlier in the summer so that they’ll be on DVD by the time awards season comes around, because it would give people who aren’t interested in the latest action-effects movie something else to see. It’s a shame that the studios don’t see it this way.

Every week, we see movie releases being moved closer and closer to the end of the year to make sure they’ll be remembered and considered for awards, and it’s making the year so backloaded in terms of quality that you have to wonder whether people will be sick of all the bad movies by August or September. Surely this same period last year offered better movies, as well as more movies screened for critics, but still, the summer and fall were awful in terms of box office. Now, this year, things are better for the box office, yet there doesn’t seem to be anything really great on the horizon, except for maybe Superman Returns or Pirates of the Caribbean. (Expect severe depression if either one of these sucks.)

THE CHOSEN ONE:

WORDPLAY (IFC Films/The Weinstein Company)
Starring Will Shortz, Jon Stewart, William Jefferson Clinton, Ken Burns, The Indigo Girls, Jon Delfin, Merl Reagle, Mike Mussina
Directed by Patrick Creadon; Written by Patrick Creadon, Christine O’Malley
Genre: Documentary
Rated: PG
Tagline: “Discover a World That Thinks INSIDE the box.”
Story: An in-depth look at the history of the New York Times crossword puzzle and its current editor Will Shortz, as seen through the eyes of those who do them every day, from ex-presidents like Bill Clinton to filmmakers like Ken Burns and fake newscasters, such as Jon Stewart.
REVIEW
INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR PATRICK CREADON

For the second week in a row, we feature an NPR-related movie completely by coincidence. (We’re not so smart or stuffy here at “The Weekend Warrior” that we would listen to anything so cultured.) This time it’s Patrick Creadon’s documentary about the New York Times Crossword Puzzle and its 13-year editor Will Shortz, whose attempt to create challenging puzzles on a daily basis has created a dedicated fanbase from all different aspects of society. Ex-presidents, entertainers and crossword puzzle geeks get a thrill from solving the clues and filling in the boxes, and this documentary does a great job giving a cross-section of the different personalities involved with making and playing the puzzles, culminating in the 2005 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford, CT. If you ever felt like a geek and need to feel better about yourself, than some of the characters in Wordplay will make you feel less like a nerd, as it introduces a number of people who live and breathe crossword puzzles, while also showing the thought and work that goes into creating them. It’s a very entertaining and amusing film on many levels, which you can read more about in my full review (link above).

As with most IFC movies, this will open at the IFC Center on Friday and expand into more cities on June 23, but expect it to expand fairly wide over the course of the summer.

NEW THIS WEEK:

"Oh, yeah? Well, your sushi was undercooked! Ha!"

THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT (Universal Pictures)
Starring Lucas Black, Bow Wow, Brian Tee, Sung Kang, Sonny Chiba, Jason Tobin, Nathalie Kelly
Directed by Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow, Annapolis); Written by Chris Morgan (Cellular), Alfredo Botello
Genre: Action, Sequel
Rated PG-13 (for reckless and illegal behavior involving teens, violence, language and sexual content)
Tagline: “Speed Needs No Translation.”
Story: The latest installment of the racing series follows Sean Boswell (Lucas Black), a hotheaded street racer who moves to Japan to live with his military father, but he learns that the easiest way for him to feel at home is to get involved with the underground world of “drift racing,” putting him against the local champ, who has ties to the mob.
Mini-Review: Surprisingly, new director Justin Lin does a decent job salvaging what almost was a dead franchise with some great racing action and a generally fun and entertaining story. Sure, a lot of the writing and acting isn't that great, but Lucas Black and Bow Wow are head and shoulders above Paul Walker and Tyrese as far as bringing personality and charm to their roles. Overall, the whole movie has the feel of a modern Asian crime film, and when you mix in the exciting action scenes, you end up with a threequel which is quite a bit better than the previous installment. Rating: 7/10

Five years ago, producer Neil Moritz had the foresight to see that the hot L.A. trend of illegal street-racing using souped-up cars would make for an exciting movie. Sure enough, The Fast and the Furious, directed by The Skulls’ Rob Cohen and starring up ‘n’ comers Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster, became a surprise hit in the summer of ‘01, as young people rushed out to see the movie for its high-speed racing and spectacular crashes. It made over $40 million its opening weekend, twice what many analysts predicted, and $144 million total, solidifying Vin Diesel’s standing as a bonafide box office star. When Diesel and Cohen bowed out of the sequel to do XXX, it seemed like the franchise would die, but its sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious ended up making over $50 million its opening weekend two years later.

Arriving in the wake of last week’s Cars, the street racers are back for a third installment, and this time, the action has been moved to Japan, which is sure to offer some cross-cultural hilarity ala Lost in Translation. (The poor Americans don’t stand a chance if they wait for the translation of “Ready, Set, Go!”) This time, not even Paul Walker stuck around, leaving an opening for Lucas Black, a little known actor who appeared in movies like Friday Night Lights and Jarhead, to take the lead role. Despite a slight resemblance to Walker, he’s not going to bring anything to the table as far as getting people into theatres. The action threequel also stars 19-year-old rapper Bow Wow, who looked like he might have a successful movie career after starring in the basketball comedy Like Mike and playing Cedric the Entertainer’s son in Johnson Family Vacation, but the disappointing showing for last year’s Roll Bounce makes it seem like he was more popular back when he was Lil. They get a bit of added help from Asian film legend Sonny Chiba, last seen in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1. (He was the weird guy in the sushi bar.)

When 2 Fast 2 Furious came out three years ago, people thought that the departure of Rob Cohen and Vin Diesel would have a big effect on people going to see the movie; its opening weekend proved otherwise. The argument that this threequel won’t do so well without Paul Walker and director John Singleton falls flat when you realize that most of Paul Walker’s recent movies, like last year’s Into the Blue and this year’s Running Scared, were outright bombs, showing that there must be something more to this franchise than who is starring or directing.

Obviously, the people who will go see this are there for the racing action, but the action genre has suffered in the past year, last summer seeing back-to-back bombs like The Island and Stealth just a few short months after the flop XXX: State of the Union, another sequel that lost its previous director and star. The last movie, 2 Fast 2 Furious, wasn’t that great so it might have lost some of the franchise’s fans, and moviegoers are generally skeptical of sequels nowadays. It doesn’t help that this one was originally planned as a direct-to-video movie ala the recent American Pie Presents Band Camp, before Universal realized that it deserved a theatrical release based on the success of the previous movies.

While Fast and the Furious may still be the first choice this weekend for many guys from 12 to 18, a demographic who hasn’t been catered to since X-Men: The Last Stand, many of them are just as likely to want to go see the new Jack Black comedy Nacho Libre. While the last Fast and the Furious disproved all the theories about the director and cast mattering for its success, it also didn’t have this type of competition. In this case, it has to contend more with a Pixar family film in its second weekend and that will ultimately be its defeat.

Why I Should See It: There are cars in it… and they go really fast…
Why Not: Didn’t we just see that in Cars!?! And at least that didn’t have any humans messing things up with bad acting.
Projection: $22 to 24 million opening weekend on its way to $65 million total.

"And we thought we had it bad with King Kong..."

"And we thought we had it bad with King Kong..."

GARFIELD: A TAIL OF TWO KITTIES (20^th Century Fox)
Starring Breckin Meyer, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Billy Connolly, Bill Murray (voice)
Directed by Tim Hill (Max Keeble’s Big Move, Muppets in Space); Written by Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow (Garfield, Cheaper by the Dozen), Tim Hill
Genre: Animated, Comedy, Family
Rated PG (for some off-color elements)
Story: Garfield is back (again voiced by Bill Murray) but this time he goes with Jon to England, where Garfield is mistaken for a regal look-a-like, and targeted by the “nefarious” Lord Dargis (Billy Connolly), who wants to take over the castle. (Yes, it really is the Garfield version of the Charles Dickens classic, which of course makes you wonder…. Since when do cats own castles?)

Anyone whose been holding their breath waiting for someone to tie classic Victorian literature into ‘80s comic strip humor only has to look so far as this week’s second sequel offering, another one pretending it’s not a sequel by removing the number. At least in this case, it’s probably warranted since family sequels rarely do as well or better than the original movies, as seen by 2002’s Stuart Little 2 or Steve Martin’s Cheaper by the Dozen 2 last year. (Of course, computer animated sequels like Shrek 2 and Ice Age 2 are the exceptions to this.)

Either way, this is the return of Jim Davis’ lasagna-eating feline who took the funny pages by storm in the late ‘70s, became a cartoon hit in the ‘80s, and then was turned into a combination live action-CGI movie in 2004, which made over $75 million after a $21.7 million opening in a busy weekend. The premise for this sequel isn’t very original, copying movies like the action-comedy Shanghai Knights and the 2002 family sequel Agent Cody Banks 2 by bringing the main character to England. Cody Banks 2 is a good example of a family sequel failing to do as well as the original, and the lack of originality makes it obvious how desperate Fox is to capitalize on the success of the first movie. (It’s good to note that Fox has had HUGE success with sequels this year from Martin Lawrence’s Big Momma’s House 2 to Ice Age 2 and X-Men: The Last Stand.)

For the most part, this is the same cast, and I’d feel bad for Scottish comedian Billy Connolly falling so low that he would do a movie like this, until I remember that the lead character is voiced by an actor who was nominated for an Oscar less than three years ago. Yup, Bill Murray once again provides his distinctive voice and delivery for the CGI fat cat, because maybe the pay day was to big to turn down. Likewise, both Breckin Meyer and Jennifer Love Hewitt are back as Jon and his love interest… probably because they don’t have very much else to do right now.

Garfield is one of the most widely syndicated strips in the country, so the character is very popular, but as far as the movie, it will probably appeal more towards the younger kids that loved Garfield’s antics in the first movie. Parents may be a bit harder to persuade to sit through another Garfield movie, though, especially considering how bad this one looks even compared to the original movie.

Although the original movie did well in a similarly busy weekend, facing the second weekend of Harry Potter/Prisoner of Azkaban, that movie probably wasn’t geared towards younger kids and it was seriously frontloaded. (Garfield did a lot of its business on Friday and didn’t increase much on Saturday, which points to more frontloading than most kids’ movies.) Garfield 2, if you will, has to contend with Cars, the surprisingly leggy Over the Hedge, and Jack Black’s Nacho Libre in its opening weekend, all of which will give parents plenty of other options to distract their kids as school lets out, so I wouldn’t expect this to do nearly as well as the previous movie. (Then again, I greatly underestimated the appeal of the first movie, so what do I know?)

Why I Should See It: It may be the only way we can hear Bill Murray being funny…
Why Not: Actually, it’s just as easy to rent Stripes, Caddyshack or Meatballs… and it won’t hurt your brain nearly as much.
Projection: $14 to 16 million opening weekend on its way to $45 million.

"I was told this was Weight Watcher's *Anonymous*."

"I was told this was Weight Watcher's *Anonymous*."

NACHO LIBRE (Paramount Pictures)
Starring Jack Black, Ana de la Reguera, Héctor Jimenez, Richard Montoya, Peter Stormare
Directed by Jared Hess; Written by Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess (Napoleon Dynamite), Mike White (School of Rock, The Good Girl)
Genre: Comedy
Rated PG (for some rough action, and crude humor including dialogue)
Story: Raised in a Mexican monastery, Nacho (Jack Black) must come to the rescue of the orphanage when it’s about to be closed down, so he dons a mask and tights to enter a Lucha Libre (wrestling) competition in order to win enough money to save it, as well as the heart of the orphanage’s pretty nun.

Take the director behind the ’04 comedy hit Napoleon Dynamite, team him with one of America’s most popular comic actors Jack Black, and give them a high concept premise that involves Mexican wrestling, and it seems like a sure-fire formula for a comedy hit. Black has quickly become one of the most popular comic actors among guys from 15 to 30, and if you forget Envy, as most people did, this will be Jack Black’s first comedy in over two years. (Go down and read more about Jack Black in our Star Spotlight.)

This is also the second movie from director Jared Hess, the BYU film school student whose low-budget Sundance favorite Napoleon Dynamite turned into a solid sleeper hit in the summer of ’04, while introducing the world to John Heder, star of the recent Benchwarmers. For this one, Hesse collaborated with Mike White, Black’s friend, frequent collaborator and writer of School of Rock, which was a decent size hit for Black.

There's not much more you need to know about the high concept comedy except that it's Jack Black playing a Mexican Luchadore wrestler, and there are a couple potential audiences for this movie, from Black’s normal male fans, to the Latino market interested in the film’s Luchardore subject matter. Kids may also find the physical humor of the movie to be funny much like Steve Martin’s recent hit remake of The Pink Panther. Of course, Black already has been able to capture the funny bones of young kids with his movie School of Rock, so getting a PG rating for this might make a big difference in the audience it’s able to bring in. The fact that the movie is produced in conjunction with Nickelodeon Films also adds to the marketing towards a younger audience who are looking for things to do now that school is done for many of them.

For the most part, the commercials are everywhere, especially on MTV where Black’s teen audience is open to their influence. To older folks, the commercials and trailers will look dumb, but as we’ve seen far too many times this year (The Benchwarmers, Pink Panther), dumb comedy seems to be at a new height, so if you pair this sort of dumb high concept with the potential powerhouse combo of Black and Hess, it’s almost impossible to write off this movie’s huge potential.

Obviously, Paramount feels very confident about the demand and interest in it since they’ll be opening the movie slightly early with Thursday night screenings at 10pm. That plus Black’s appeal to a wider range of audiences than The Fast and the Furious will probably make the difference between whether this gets into second or third place. One might feel stronger about the movie’s legs if Black didn’t have to take on Adam Sandler’s movie Click next weekend.

Why I Should See It: It’s Jack Black’s return to comedy and the follow-up to Napoleon Dynamite by Jared Hess!
Why Not: Jack Black in stretchy pants. I think my popcorn’s coming back up…
Projection: $24 to 27 million opening weekend on its way to $75 million.

"You're in a glass house...by the side of a lake..what do you do?"

"You're in a glass house...by the side of a lake..what do you do?"

THE LAKE HOUSE (Warner Bros.)
Starring Sandra Bullock, Keanu Reeves, Dylan Walsh, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Christopher Plummer
Directed by Alejandro Agresti (lots of Argentine movies); Written by David Auburn (Proof)
Genre: Drama, Romance
Rated PG (for some language and a disturbing image)
Tagline: “How do you hold onto someone you never met?” (And how do you get a restraining order when they won’t let go?)
Story: A doctor who has just moved into a lakeside home (Sandra Bullock) begins having transactions with the house’s previous resident and its architect (Keanu Reeves)… only he is writing to her from two years earlier, allowing them to have a very strange romance.
REVIEW

This is clearly one of the strangest movies to be released this summer, not only because it’s a remake of a Korean movie with an Italian name by an Argentine director, but also because it stars two huge Hollywood stars, working together for the first time in 12 years. Back in 1994, Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock starred in the action movie Speed, which ended up grossing over $120 million, making Bullock a household name and raising Reeves from arthouse fave to action star. (This was still five years before The Matrix.) Reeves bowed out of the sequel, which ended up making about a third that amount, a true bomb, but both of them have gone on to have illustrious careers since then.

For their reunion, they’ve signed up for a romantic drama geared more towards women and girls, much like the 2004 summer movie The Notebook, which became a true sleeper hit as word got around that it was a great romantic date movie, something we could definitely use more of. This movie’s premise is a bit strange, owing more to the thriller Feedback if remaked as a Harlequin romance novel. Essentially, the two main characters start a correspondence with each other despite living two years apart, and it’s the kind of idea that will either intrigue people or confuse the hell out of them. (See Ashton Kutcher’s movie The Butterfly Effect to get some idea how time travel can really cause lots of confusing plot issues.)

For Bullock, this type of movie isn’t so much of a stretch, because she often appears in movies geared more towards women, including past hits like the Miss Congeniality films and The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, based on a popular women’s book. She hasn’t done as much serious drama, though she was a producer and a part of the SAG-winning ensemble cast of Crash, last year’s Academy Award winner for Best Picture. It certainly seems like Bullock is trying to get away from the slapstick romantic comedies that have been her box office bread and butter over the years. (Bullock also has a cameo role in Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick’s indie drama Loverboy, which opens in select cities this weekend. See below.)

On the other hand, Keanu Reeves has been all over the map in recent years from big budget action flicks like The Matrix trilogy and Constantine to smaller indies like last year’s Thumbsucker. His attempts at doing romance include a supporting role in the Jack Nicholson-Diane Keaton romantic comedy Something’s Gotta Give and the drama Sweet November, opposite Charlize Theron. The latter most closely resembles this movie, and that was only able to make $11 million its opening weekend and a dismal $25 million total. Of course, Theron wasn’t as known back then and not nearly the star that Sandra Bullock is now.

What’s interesting is that the two stars are working with a director who is virtually unknown in the States, Alejandro Agresti, though Warner Bros. has certainly proven to have an eye for talent with some of the foreign directors they’ve signed to projects in recent years, so it could be a big break for the Argentina native.

Unfortunately, these types of movies rarely do big business opening weekend, and it won’t help that it’s going to have a fight getting audiences away from the other movies offered this week. Really, the only advantages are that it will be a better movie for women and the date crowd than the others, and if the movie is as good as its intriguing premise, it may be able to sustain some business over the following weeks as women look for alternatives to Adam Sandler and Superman Returns. Unfortunately, Bullock and Reeves’ attempt to recapture their magic from Speed included a rather awkward and uncomfortable appearance by the two of them at the MTV Movie Awards last week, which certainly didn’t do much for anyone to want to see them in a movie together ever again.

Why I Should See It: Bullock and Reeves have already proven their on-screen chemistry, so let’s see if they still have chemistry when they don’t appear onscreen together.
Why Not: This concept may be even too weird for me… and I kind of understood Primer!
Projection: $12 to 14 million on its way to $40 million

STAR SPOTLIGHT: Jack Black!

There may be no other actor who has had a more impressive career than Jack Black, because Black was able to turn what might have been a career as a bit character actor into one in which he’s one of the top comedic actors in the country. At the same time, Black also built a huge fanbase for his musical career as one half of the folk-metal duo, Tenacious D, who will also get their first movie, Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, later this year.

Really, it’s not bad for someone who started with small roles in movies like Waterworld and Enemy of the State, but a lot of it comes down to Black’s big break with a featured supporting role in Stephen Frears’ adaptation of Nick Hornby’s book High Fidelity. He pretty much stole the movie from the movie’s leading man John Cusack, a tradition that Black continued into other movies like Saving Silverman.

In 2001, the Farrelly Brothers decided that Black had what it took to be a romantic lead, following in the footsteps of Jim Carrey and Ben Stiller as the star of their fifth comedy Shallow Hal opposite Gwyneth Paltrow. The movie did decent business, largely based on the high concept premise, but Black was suddenly more recognizable among a much wider audience, making him one of the primary reasons for teens to go see MTV Films’ collegiate comedy Orange County.

Whether it be his girth or his knack for physical humor, Black has proven to be popular among kids, too. After providing his voice for the animated comedy The Ice Age, he starred in the comedy hit School of Rock in 2003, which made over $81 million after beating Denzel Washington’s Out of Time its first week out of the gate. Black’s animation work continued into DreamWorks’ 2004 movie Shark Tale and with the upcoming Kung Fu Panda.

When Jack Black teamed with Ben Stiller for Envy, it would seem like an out-of-the-park home run, but it was delayed repeatedly for over a year before being dumped into a busy late spring weekend in ’04 without much ado and was gone just as quickly, being Black’s first bomb since Saving Silverman.

More recently, Black took on the more dramatic role of Carl Denham in Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong. Still, he was the funniest thing about the movie, and it probably helped Black find his biggest audience to date. Many of these new fans should be interested in Black’s big-time return to comedy in Nacho Libre helmed by Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess, but if that isn’t enough to make Black an even bigger star, he follows that with the rock epic Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny and a few smaller films to keep him in the public eye for the rest of ’06.

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
King Kong	12/16/05	3,568	$16.05	$50.13	$14,050	$204.53
Envy	4/30/04	2,445		$6.16	$2,520	$12.18
The School of Rock	10/3/03	2,614		$19.62	$7,507	$81.05
Orange County	1/11/02	2,317		$15.05	$6,497	$41.03
Shallow Hal	11/9/01	2,771		$23.28	$8,401	$70.83
Saving Silverman	2/9/01	2,467		$7.41	$3,004	$19.35
High Fidelity	3/31/00	1,183		$6.43	$5,435	$27.04
The Cable Guy	6/14/96	2,657		$19.81	$7,456	$60.17

THIS WEEK’S "GUEST-PERT”:

The Weekend Warrior is very happy to once again have Sandra McFarland, romance movie expert from The World of KJ, offering her opinions on this week’s romantic drama The Lake House.

She told me that she’d never seen the original Korean movie and knows next to nothing about it, although she did know that the movie’s premise involves a romance between two people living two years apart. “It’s a little strange for a romance, but I feel the trailer conveyed it as effectively as it could have,” she said. “I find it intriguing. With most romances, you probably know how they're going to end. With this one, I'm not so sure.”

“I've always been a big fan of Sandra Bullock, and Keanu Reeves can be good in the right movie or role,” she told me when asked whether she was a fan of the movie’s stars. “Sandra Bullock doesn't have very much dramatic range, but she still usually gives at least an acceptable performance in most dramas I've seen her in. I'm not sure about Keanu as a romantic star, but he and Bullock had really good chemistry in Speed.”

Since Sandra is a huge fan and a respected expert on romance movies, we wondered how this one stood up to others. “Well, it's probably the "straight" romance I've wanted to see the most since The Notebook, not counting comedies and such.”

Even though Sandra’s married, we wondered if she thought the movie would be as big a draw to single women as The Notebook or City of Angels. “I definitely do. I don't see it grossing as much as those two films, but I think it will be a steady performer in the crowded summer season.”

Thanks, Sandra!

ALSO IN LIMITED RELEASE:

Opening in New York on Friday is the first U.S. release by Bauer Martinez Distribution, LAND OF THE BLIND (Bauer Martinez), Robert Edwards’ political drama set in an indeterminate country ruled by a dictatorial government. When a soldier (Ralph Fiennes) becomes friends with a political prisoner, played by Donald Sutherland, they learn how corruption affects anyone who gets involved in the country’s politics.

Walter Salles produces LOWER CITY (CIDADE BAIXA) (Palm Pictures), the debut by Brazilian director Sérgio Machado, in which Alice Braga (City of God) plays a stripper/prostitute who comes between two best friends when they both fall in love with her. REVIEW

Actor Kevin Bacon makes his directorial debut, adapting Victoria Redel’s novel LOVERBOY (THINKFilm) about an overprotective mother (played by Bacon’s wife Kyra Sedgwick) who suddenly finds her young son (newcomer Dominic Scott Kay) drifting away from her. The ensemble cast also includes Marisa Tomei, Matt Dillon, Oliver Platt and Campbell Scott. It opens in New York, L.A., Philly and other cities. REVIEW (Coming Soon!)

Opening at the Film Forum on Wednesday is Josh Gilbert’s documentary A/K/A TOMMY CHONG, which chronicles the ‘70s comedy icons battles with the government over the sale of pot smoking paraphernalia, which got him jailed for nine months in a federal prison. Mini-Review: The narrative flow is a bit erratic as it tries to turn the subject matter into something worthy of a full feature, but you do have to appreciate Chong’s ability to stay positive and in good humor while trying to fight the system, especially while losing. It’s astonishing that the government is able to achieve in the 21^st Century what they never were able to accomplish during the ‘70s, just another example of how out of control the current regime really is. If you didn’t respect Chong before, then this documentary does a lot to show him to be a serious political contender ala Jesse Ventura. Rating: 7/10

The following day at the Pioneer Theatre comes Eric Werthman’s erotic drama GOING UNDER (Frontier Films) set in the world of S&M in which a psychotherapist tries to consummate his relationship with an aloof dominatrix.

Spanish funny man Gabriel Toledo (El Crimen Perfecto) stars in ONLY HUMAN (Magnolia Pictures), Dominic Harrari and Teresa de Pelegri’s madcap comedy about a woman who brings her Palestinian boyfriend home to meet the Jewish family, leading to a night of mistaken identity and confusion, when he thinks he’s accidentally killed her father. It opens at the Quad Cinemas in New York. Mini-Review: Great, another movie with lots of non-Jews pretending they’re Jewish. Hardy har har. At least Toledo is in fine form, offering some of the funniest moments in this Spanish Meet the Parents. For the most part, the dark humor is obvious at best and borderline racist at worst and the rest of the cast just can’t keep up with him; that is, except for a surprisingly funny 7-year-old who often steals her scenes. Even so, the movie gets less funny as it goes along and doesn’t leave a very lasting impression. Rating: 5.5/10

Also opening at the Quad is THE MOSTLY UNFABULOUS SOCIAL LIFE OF ETHAN GREEN (Regent Releasing), a romantic comedy based on the underground comic strip about a 26-year-old gay personal assistant trying to find love in all the wrong places.

THIS WEEKEND IN BOX OFFICE HISTORY:

Since we skipped a week, we’ll look at these two weeks in mid-June where there always seems to be a bit of a lull in blockbusters, especially in the weeks with lots of new movies released. This summer period has seen a number of surprise hits as schools start letting out, but it also has seen a number of bitter defeats. A classic case of the latter was in 2003 when none of the three new movies, including the sequels Rugrats Go Wild and Dumb and Dumber, made more than $12 million.

Then again, this period has seen the start of franchises based on other media like the first Scooby-Doo movie which made over $54 million its opening weekend and The Bourne Identity, starring Matt Damon, which earned half that amount the same weekend. Also, Angelina Jolie debuted as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, which is still the biggest opening action movie starring a female lead. Though all three movies spawned sequels, only the Bourne movie has translated into a successful franchise, as it’s sequel doubled the opening of the original movie, while the other two sequels barely made half their predecessors.

This weekend has seen a bunch of surprise hits like the Brangelina action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith, but even more people were shocked when the 2004 comedy Dodgeball, starring Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn, beat out the pairing of Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal. Other mid-June match-ups with surprising results included Swordfish vs. Evolution in ’01 and The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood vs. Bad Company weekend in ’02. Although none of those movies made more than $20 million opening weekend, there were often surprises about which one did better. Another surprise disappointment was the reunion of John Woo and Nicholas Cage for the WW2 drama Windtalkers, which wasn’t able to make even $15 million when it opened against Scooby-Doo and The Bourne Identity.

This weekend is looking a lot like 2003 when three movies, including the first Garfield movie, opened a week after Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and each of them brought in enough business to open over $20 million. Vin Diesel’s Pitch Black sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick came out on top with $24 million but ultimately ended up grossing less than both Garfield and the Nicole Kidman comedy remake of The Stepford Wives.

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Scooby-Doo	6/14/02	3,447	$54.16	$15,712	$153.29
Mr. & Mrs. Smith	6/10/05	3,424	$50.34	$14,703	$186.34
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider	6/15/01	3,308	$47.74	$14,430	$131.14
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story	6/18/04	2,694	$30.07	$11,162	$114.06
The Bourne Identity	6/14/02	2,638	$27.12	$10,281	$121.38
The Chronicles of Riddick	6/11/04	2,757	$24.29	$8,810	$57.64
Garfield	6/11/04	3,094	$21.73	$7,023	$75.18
The Stepford Wives	6/11/04	3,057	$21.41	$7,003	$59.48
The Terminal	6/18/04	2,811	$19.05	$6,778	$77.03
Swordfish	6/8/01	2,678	$18.14	$6,776	$69.72
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood	6/7/02	2,507	$16.17	$6,449	$69.59
Windtalkers	6/14/02	2,898	$14.52	$5,010	$40.91

LET’S LOOK AT THE NUMBERS: (Final update 6.15.06)

This weekend is all about returns and reunions as four new movies valiantly try to dethrone Pixar’s latest, Cars, but possibly finding difficulty as it reigns for a second weekend in a row. The two movies with the best chance are the ones that will try to prey on the abundance of free time of the coveted MTV audience as schools let out for the summer. Really, it’s going to come down to tastes (or lack thereof) with this fickle audience, as they’ll have to choose between the return of Jack Black to comedy in Nacho Libre or return of street racing in the threequel The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

At first, it might be a tough call, especially when considering 2 Fast 2 Furious’ $50 million opening, but Black’s growing popularity, as well as that of dumb comedies, surely will prevail, especially when you take into consideration that it’s directed by Jared Hess, the man behind the 2004 sleeper Napoleon Dynamite.

Continuing last week’s racing theme, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is left only with its street racing action to bring the young male audience in after losing both Paul Walker and director John Singleton, but expect it to do most of its business on Friday as teens rush out to see it and then quickly lose interest.

Comic strip fat cat Garfield goes to the UK in the equally awkward titled sequel Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, which might get trounced by the Pixar film and general apathy towards family sequels except among the youngest of kids.

Then there’s The Lake House, a romantic drama reuniting Speed co-stars Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, but it looks like a big budget arthouse film, which may have limited appeal except to older women.

The global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, starring former vice President Al Gore, continues to do decent business, and this week, it gets its widest release into 404 theatres, though it probably will remain just outside the Top 10 yet again, earning another $2.3 - 2.5 million.

Last year, Batman Begins dominated over the box office with $48.7 million while Hillary Duff’s failing career hit another stumbling block with The Perfect Man, and the Top 10 ended up making $127 million, a total which this week’s offerings shouldn’t have a problem besting. Either way, this is the first time in quite a while where the weekend sees three new PG rated movies though Garfield and Nacho Libre will more than likely have to split up the young audiences with Pixar’s Cars.

TW	LW	Title	Weekend (in millions)	Change	# Of Theaters	Average	Week
1	1	Cars	$35.5	-41%	3,988	$8,902	2
2	New	Nacho Libre	$27.1	N/A	3,070	$8,827	1
3	New	The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift	$23.2	N/A	3,026	$7,667	1
4	New	Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties	$14.3	N/A	2,945	$4,856	1
5	New	The Lake House	$12.5	N/A	2,645	$4,726	1
6	2	The Break-Up	$11.2	-45%	3,141	$3,566	3
7	3	X-Men: The Last Stand	$7.5	-53%	2,723	$2,669	4
8	4	The Omen	$6.9	-57%	2,644	$2,534	2
9	6	Over the Hedge	$5.9	-42%	2,264	$2,264	5
10	5	The Da Vinci Code	$5.6	-45%	2,321	$2,321	5
11	7	Prairie Home Companion	$2.7	-40%	767	$3,520	2
			Est. Weekend Total $152.00	Est. Avg. Drop-Off -46%		Est. Average PTA $4,702

Next week, Adam Sandler controls the universe in the new comedy Click--and everyone was all worried about 6/6/06?--and Tyrese gets Waist Deep. Into what? Well, you’ll just have to tune in next week to find out.

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