Your Weekly Guide to New Movies for March 24, 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.

(Note: The Weekend Warrior is currently looking for a "guestpert" on computer animation for next week's column. If you work in the animation field or are a diehard fan of the genre, please Email me with your creditentials at the earliest convenience by clicking on the link above.)

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THE CHOSEN ONE:

MARDI GRAS: MADE IN CHINA (no distributor)
Directed by David Redmon
Genre: Documentary
Story: This documentary follows the path of plastic beads that are dispersed at Mardi Gras every year back to where they’re manufactured in China, where teen factory workers work 18 hours a day for ridiculous pay.

Continuing what Michael Moore started in The Big One, director David Redmon take an in-depth look into globalization at work by following the path of the beads thrown at flashers at Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The coverage Redmon gets is really impressive, interviewing everyone involved from the workers to their supervisor, the American distributor and even various Mardi Gras revelers, giving the fullest picture of the path these beads take after being hand-assembled by underpaid workers. It’s pretty deep to watch the laissez faire attitude and reaction by partying Americans to what goes into making the beads, while the workers, who tend to live at the factory and get punished if they talk while working, seem to be amused by the frivolous use of their hard labor. The film is an interesting counterpoint to all of the “Girls Gone Wild” type videos of women exposing themselves for these beads, which are often considered disposable. More then anything, I was floored that this documentary, one of the best I’ve seen this year, wasn’t picked up by THINKFilm or Magnolia or another indie for distribution, since it seems like it could have found an audience. (Apparently, it’s already played on cable, which might be one reason.) Regardless, it opens in New York at the Cinema Village on Friday for one week, and it’ll play other cities in the next few months.

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NEW THIS WEEK:

Wow! A weekend without a single remake or sequel. Have I died and gone to heaven?

INSIDE MAN (Universal Pictures)
Starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe, Chiwetel Ejiofor
Directed by Spike Lee (She’s Gotta Have It, Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X; Written by Russell Gewirtz
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Rated R for language and some violent images
Tagline: “It looked like the perfect bank robbery. But you can't judge a crime by its cover.”
Story: A bank robber (Clive Owen) plans one of the most elaborate bank heists in history, putting him against a New York police detective (Denzel Washington), the bank’s owner (Christopher Plummer) and the power broker (Jodie Foster) trying to make everyone happy.
Mini-Review: While there are a lot of clever ideas in this heist drama and the thought of such a great cast working with Spike Lee and a bigger budget should be promising, this thriller might be too intelligent for its own good. The decent performances barely make up for the characters being mostly unlikable with none that you can root for, and the pace moves at a crawl due to all the dialogue scenes. Of course, Spike Lee puts his inimitable stamp on the whole thing with subtle (and not so) commentary on politics and race relations in New York, which tends to bog things down further and make the whole thing more confusing than it needs to be. Rating: 5/10

The bank heist movie has a great history, which may be why mega-producer Brian Grazer immediately saw worth in Russell Gewirtz’s first script about a clever bank robbery with a number of twists. Originally, the movie was going to be directed by Grazer’s long-time business partner Ron Howard, but then he got caught up in The Da Vinci Code. They ended up making an interesting choice for a replacement in director Spike Lee, who had made literally dozens of films in his 20-year career, but never had directed a straight-ahead mainstream studio crime thriller.

With Spike on board, it was a lot easier to get Denzel Washington to play Detective Keith Frazier, because he had just lost his next project, the gangster film True Blue, making Inside Man Denzel’s first new movie in almost two years. (See Star Spotlight below for more on Washington’s illustrious career.) To play the head of the bank robbers, they hired Clive Owen, who was coming off a number of minor hits including Closer, for which he won a Golden Globe, and the thriller Derailed with Jennifer Aniston. Unfortunately, he spends most of the movie with his face covered, which won’t make his female fans very happy. (It certainly didn’t do much to help Hugo Weaving sell last week’s V For Vendetta!) If the two actors weren’t enough to get the film fast tracked, Lee also was able to get Jodie Foster for a small but important role as power broker, a woman who seems to have her own motivations for the success of the bank robbery. Foster is coming off two back-to-back hits spaced almost four years apart, and four years ago this weekend, she had her biggest success with David Fincher’s Panic Room, although her role is much smaller and she’s not a very likeable character. The movie also stars Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe and Chiwetel Ejiofor, all talented actors in their own right.

The movie has a lot going for it, from the great cast to the easy sell of the premise, and it should be able to bring in a good cross-section of movie audiences. Being Spike Lee and Denzel Washington’s first collaboration since He Got Game will help this movie bring in urban audiences, while women might want to see Jodie Foster play another strong character. Who knows? Maybe even a few people will see it for Owen, although he’s likely to get overshadowed by the other two actors. Fortunately, it has very little competition for the older audiences (over 20) that might want to see it, though the commercials and trailers haven’t been particularly impressive and reviews will probably be mixed, at best. Still, there's few movies that could be sold as easily based on star power and their credibility alone, and that's what will get people into theatres.

Why I Should See It: Spike Lee directing one of the best casts he’s had in years in a genre that usually offers promising cinematic moments.
Why Not: Clive Owen’s face is covered and both Jodie Foster and Denzel Washington play flawed, and sometimes unlikable, characters.
Projection: $21 to 23 million on its way to $65 million, which may make it the highest grossing movie of Spike Lee’s career.

STAY ALIVE (Hollywood Pictures)
Starring Jon Foster, Samaire Armstrong, Frankie Muniz, Sophia Bush, Adam Goldberg
Directed by Willian Brent Bell (Sparkle and Charm); Written by William Brent Bell, Matthew Peterman
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Rated PG-13 for horror violence, disturbing images, language, brief sexual and drug content
Tagline: “Play It To Death.”
Story: A group of teenagers discover a bootleg video game, but once they start playing it, they each start dying just like they do in the video game. As they become addicted to the game, they need to find a way to beat the game’s central villain, The Blood Countess, before she kills them all.

In this world full of horror movie remakes, original ideas come around once in awhile, but it’s very rare. When it does, it usually involves something high concept like White Noise or Boogeyman, and while there have been some hits among original horror films like the Saw movies and Eli Roth’s Hostel, the latest offering, Stay Alive, looks like it owes more to the high concept technological horror of movies like feardotcom or Cry_Wolf. Instead of having a website that kills people, it has a video game, making it like The Ring meets I Know What You Did Last Summer. Obviously, they’re hoping that video game fans will relate to the characters or premise and flock to the movie in droves, but if you think about it, the recent movie version of BloodRayne, an actual video game, bombed, and video game fans might just scoff at this movie as an obvious ploy by Hollywood (Pictures) to be cool. Honestly, they’re more likely to wait for something like April’s Silent Hill, which is a cool video game by a great director, and it will probably have more scares than this. On the other hand, this may be one of those rare video games that actually has some recognized faces and names, including the ultra-hot Samaire Armstrong from “Entourage” and “The O.C” and apparently, it also features Frankie “Malcolm in the Middle” Muniz, even though he’s not featured in the trailers. You’re just as likely to recognize Adam Goldberg, who has been in many movies from Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle to A Beautiful Mind, but the film’s real star is Jon Foster, who has been on “Law and Order” and other TV shows, but probably doesn’t have too many fans, as of yet. The trailer doesn’t look that bad, but it took Hollywood Pictures forever to get one out there, and they might have waited too long to get any buzz going on the movie. The fact that the movie is PG-13 might put off true horror fans who know this will be another homogenized horror movie, although it could get a few of the dumb teens who flock to other bad PG-13 horror movies. It’s getting a moderate release into less than 2,000 theatres while following the recent trend of not being screened for critics.

Why I Should See It: I guess watching a video game come to life and kill stupid video game players might be fun.
Why Not: If you’ve seen any of the last-minute marketing, you might be skeptical of the movie being any good.
Projection: $5 to 7 million opening weekend on its way to $15 million total.

LARRY THE CABLE GUY: HEALTH INSPECTOR (Lionsgate)
Starring Larry the Cable Guy, Iris Bahr, Bruce Bruce, Joanna Cassidy, Brooke Dillman, Tony Hale, David Koechner, Lisa Lampanelli, Megyn Price, Tom Wilson, Joe Pantoliano
Directed by Trent Cooper (The Comeback, Coaching the Minors); Written by Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer (Max Keeble’s Big Movie, upcoming Just My Luck)
Genre: Comedy
Rated PG-13 (for crude and sexual content, and for language)
Tagline: “They’ll give anyone a badge.” (Alternately, replace “badge” with “movie.”)
Story: Larry the Cable Guy, part of the successful Blue Collar Comedy Tour and Comedy Central, plays a health inspector who is paired with a straight-arrow rookie partner to investigate a series of cases of food poisonings at fancy restaurants.

The former Nebraska pig farmer formerly known as Daniel Lawrence Whitney, but better known as Larry the Cable Guy, makes his jump to movies with a comedy that allows him to do his thing while playing a character. Larry was part of Jeff Foxworthy’s Blue Collar Comedy Tour, which was captured for a movie that was given a limited release back in early 2003, but only made around $600k before going to Comedy Central and spawning their show “Blue Comedy TV”. Larry the Cable Guy is one of the breakouts from that show, having written a book titled after his catchphrase “Git-R-Done “, and he’ll even be providing a main voice for Pixar Studio’s next animated film Cars. The thing is that while Larry may have a lot of good old boy fans, there’s nothing to say that any of them would pay to see a movie starring him. The movie was picked up by Lionsgate just over a month ago and the commercials have been playing regularly on Comedy Central, although it really doesn’t look like anything besides Larry’s fans might want to see, and even they might not be willing to pay to see it. Then again, after Lionsgate’s relative success with Waiting… last year, one shouldn’t completely discount that this comedy might find an audience.

Why I Should See It: You like Larry the Cable Guy?
Why Not: Who would openly admit to liking Larry the Cable Guy!?!?
Projection: Also $5 to 7 million on its way to around $15 million.

STONED (Screen Media Films)
Starring Leo Gregory, Paddy Considine, Monet Mazur, Tuva Novotny, David Morrissey, Ben Whishaw, Amelia Warner, Luke De Woolfson, James D. White, Josef Altin
Directed by Stephen Woolley (producer of most of Neil Jordan’s films); Written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade
Genre: Biodrama, Musical
Tagline: “Before Jimi and Janis, there was Brian."
Story: In the last few months of his life before his body was found in the pool, Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones (Leo Gregory) holed himself up in a country manor, his only connections to the outside world being his Swedish girlfriend and a handyman renovating the place, played by Paddy Considine.
REVIEW

Neil Jordan’s long-time producer Stephen Woolley makes his feature film debut a movie that looks into the last few months in the life of Brian Jones, the long-forgotten founder of the Rolling Stones who was found dead in his pool one night. This is a drama-thriller trying to explain what happened, mainly focusing on the relationship between Jones, played by Green Street Hooligans' Leo Gregory, and the handyman working on his mansion, played by Paddy Considine. The music-filled drama might not be for everyone, although it certainly has plenty of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll and lots of full frontal nudity for both genders. Because of its released by an unknown quantity like Screen Media Films, don’t expect it to be in theatres for long.

Why I Should See It: Rolling Stones fans might be interested in seeing this different view of the band’s founding member.
Why Not: Maybe we didn’t really have to know what happened to Jones before his death.

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STAR SPOTLIGHT: Denzel Washington

One of the most respected African-American actors in Hollywood, Denzel Washington has had an amazing career that has turned him into one of the most consistent and reliable box office draws of the last decade with more than half of his 30-plus movies in the last 20 years grossing over $40 million.

People first began to realize that Denzel was something special when he received his first Oscar nomination playing Steven Biko in Richard Attenborough’s South African drama Cry Freedom in 1987. Three years later, Washington would win his first Oscar for his supporting role in the Civil War drama Glory, and later that year, he had his first leading role in a Spike Lee movie with Mo’ Better Blues, which led to Washington playing the lead in Malcolm X and him getting his first Oscar nomination for a leading role just a few short years later. After that, Washington began taking on leading roles in higher profile studio films like The Pelican Brief with Julia Roberts, the Tom Clancy adaptation Crimson Tide and The Siege, returning to work with Lee between them for the basketball drama, He Got Game.

In 2000, Washington played another real-life person, former boxer Ruben “Hurricane” Carter in The Hurricane, which got him a second leading man Oscar, and later that year, he starred in the Jerry Bruckheimer sports drama Remember the Titans, which would become his highest grossing films. That was followed a year later by Training Day, in which Washington would win an Oscar for his performance as a bad cop. By this point, he was already opening movies over $20 million in the slower spring and fall seasons, and John Q followed with a victory over President’s Day weekend in 2002.

After trying his hand at directing with the 2002 movie Antwone Fisher, Washington appeared in a number of successive thrillers each set a few months apart. The first of them, Out of Time, was Washington’s lowest opening movie in some time, losing to Jack Black’s School of Rock, but Man on Fire, which reunited Washington with director Tony Scott, exceeded expectations both opening weekend and overall. A few months later, he appeared in Jonathan Demme’s remake of The Manchurian Candidate with Meryl Streep, which tried to open against M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village and just barely made more than $20 million its opening weekend. Washington took some time off before appearing in this week’s Inside Man, his first movie in over a year and a half, and the wait between movies is going to drive up interest from his many fans, which should help it become his ninth movie to open at #1 at the box office.

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
The Manchurian Candidate	7/30/04	2,867		$20.02	$6,982	$64.82
Man on Fire	4/23/04	2,979	$0.04	$22.75	$7,637	$77.86
Out of Time	10/3/03	3,076		$16.19	$5,262	$40.91
John Q	2/15/02	2,466		$23.61	$9,575	$71.03
Training Day	10/5/01	2,712		$22.55	$7,315	$76.26
Remember the Titans	9/29/00	1,865		$20.91	$11,212	$115.60
The Hurricane	1/14/00	1,465	$4.06	$9.01	$6,150	$50.67
The Siege	11/6/98	2,541		$13.93	$5,482	$40.93
He Got Game	5/1/98	1,319		$7.61	$5,770	$21.57
Crimson Tide	5/12/95	2,382		$18.61	$7,813	$91.37
Malcolm X	11/20/92	1,124	$3.75	$9.87	$8,781	$48.17
Mo' Better Blues	8/3/90	544		$4.39	$8,070	$15.90
Glory	2/16/90	801	$13.57	$2.68	$3,346	$26.59

ALSO IN LIMITED RELEASE:

AMERICAN GUN (IFC Films) is a collection of post-Columbine stories by Aric Avelino and Steven Bagatourian, about how guns can affect various lives. Featuring Donald Sutherland, Forest Whitaker, Marcia Gay Harden and Linda Cardellini, it opens at New York’s IFC Center in New York. (Mini-Review: A decent Crash-like drama with fine performances from all involved, especially Harden and Whitaker, which only suffers from the DIY production values, and some moments that don’t seem very real because they’re overly dramatized. Other scenes are really powerful, and overall, it’s a worthwhile endeavor. Rating: 8/10)

Two days later, Steven Buscemi’s third film LONESOME JIM (IFC Films) will open at the IFC Center. It stars Casey Affleck as the title character, a man not happy about having to return home to his small town Indiana home after failing to make it in New York, but finding a bit of happiness with a local nurse, played by Liv Tyler. (Mini-Review Coming Soon!)

Opening in 14 theatres in Wisconsin is THE GODFATHER OF GREEN BAY (Garlin Pictures), which tells the tale of veteran stand-up comic Joe Keegan (Pete Schwaba), who travels to a small town in Wisconsin in hopes of getting an audition for “The Tonight Show,” but instead learns that the crowd there can be an even tougher audience than back home in L.A.

The Belgian film L’ENFANT (THE CHILD) (Sony Pictures Classics) from Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne tells the tale of a young crook whose teen girlfriend has a baby, which he promptly steals in hopes of selling it on the black market. The Palm D’or winner at last year’s Cannes Film Festival opens in New York and L.A. on Friday. (Mini-Review: Having seen this before having seen the recent Tsotsi, this idea seemed original, although the main character Bruno is so despicable and unlikable, that it's hard to really care much as you watch him wandering around the city with a baby and then later trying to get the baby back. The film's central theme of redemption and the commentary on what it takes to be a parent gets lost in the film's dull pace, just to end up with the adage that crime doesn't pay. Or in this case, that Cannes doesn't pay. Rating: 6/10)

Liz Merman’s documentary THE BEAUTY ACADEMY OF KABUL (Shadow Distribution) is about a group of American hairdressers, including three Afghan-Americans, who travel to Afghanistan to teach women there how to do hair and makeup in order to start a beauty school there.

Opening at the Quad in New York is THE LADY IN QUESTION IS CHARLES BUSCH (Two Lions Productions), a documentary about legendary cross-dresser Charles Busch, an actor and filmmaker who has made a name for himself appearing in movies like Psycho Beach Party and Die! Mommy! Die! as a woman.

Opening at the Pioneer in New York on Thursday is James Bai’s indie sci-fi film PUZZLEHEAD about a scientist who creates a life-like android version of himself, who suddenly finds sentience and starts competing for the heart of a girl.

AMERICANO (Americano Productions) is a film about a group of Americans who travel to Spain to run in the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, and how the decision to run forces them to rethink their lives, while Rich Christiano’s UNIDENTIFIED (Five and Two Pictures) follows two Christian reporters who investigate a series of UFO sightings, and learn something that creates a wedge between them.

Copyright 2006 Edward Douglas

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