Trailer: Pirates of the Caribbean 5: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Posted on March 6, 2017 at 8:00 am
Looks like we get a bit of Jack Sparrow’s backstory — and some gorgeous special effects in this last of the Pirates movies — or so they say!
What Will Win the Oscar in 2019?
Posted on March 5, 2017 at 3:19 pm
Filmonomics says they have a system for predicting what is going to win the Oscar — two years from now!
The likelihoods of a movie being Certified Fresh, financially successful and being nominated for Academy Awards, is knowable at the point of development.
It is based on their multi-point analysis of the script, even before the movie goes into production.
To be sure, correlation is not causation; there are many factors that go into making a movie successful at the box office and during awards season. Still, the implications for filmmakers here are obvious: If high Slated Script Scores are tied to both high financial returns and high probability of critical and award success, then making sure your script is as good as possible is the key to attracting top talent, smart money, and experienced distributors, all of which are essential to increase the likelihood of stronger outcomes and more accurate projections (as we painstakingly researched and wrote about in this prior post). That sounds like common sense, but one has only to look at a theater marquee to see how frequently this advice is ignored. And now that tools exists that can predict your project’s outcome, ignoring it is inexcusable. If a submitted screenplay fails to make the grade under this scoring system, then at least those involved have a benchmark from which to make adjustments and return with something more appealing.
It should be self-evident that you can make a bad movie with a good script but you cannot make a good movie with a bad script. And yet, given the economics of global distribution, the studios keep making the script a lower priority.
See Kong’s Skull Island in 360VR!
Posted on March 5, 2017 at 8:00 am
Explore Skull Island, from this week’s King Kong movie, in this VR video!
MVP of the Week: Stephen Merchant
Posted on March 3, 2017 at 3:29 pm
The 6 foot 7 inch talk Stephen Merchant, who appears in two very different movies opening this week, is also the creative talent who co-created the original British version of “The Office,” as well as “Extras,” “Lip Sync Battle,” and his own series “Hello, Ladies.” This week he appears as Caliban the mutant tracker in the Wolverine movie “Logan” and Walter, the ex-con in the romantic comedy “Table 19.”
His lip sync battle with Joseph Gordon-Levitt is unforgettable. And I also recommend his interview on the WTF podcast with Marc Maron.
Logan
Posted on March 2, 2017 at 6:00 pm
C| Lowest Recommended Age: | Mature High Schooler |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated R for strong brutal violence and language throughout, and for brief nudity |
| Profanity: | Very strong language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking and drunkenness |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Very intense and graphic peril and violence with many disturbing and bloody images, many characters injured and killed |
| Diversity Issues: | A theme of the movie |
| Date Released to Theaters: | March 3, 2017 |
Wolverine fans know that he is a loner, only intermittently joining forces with the X-Men, and his stories often show the influence of classic western sagas. “Logan” is set in the west, and its dry, dusty terrain fits the somber tone of the story. Logan/Wolverine is old and tired. His legendary powers of healing are slowing, and so is he. He and Caliban (Stephen Merchant, looking like Uncle Fester in “The Addams Family”) are caring for Professor Xavier, who is also losing his powers and near the end of his life. The time of the X-Men seems to be ending, too. No new mutants have appeared.
Or, so everyone thought. Logan is threatened by Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), who says he is looking for a woman who is looking for Logan. And she finds him, and offers to pay Logan a lot of money to transport a little girl to the Canadian border. He does not want to do it, but he needs the money to take care of Professor X, and when the woman is murdered, he feels that he has no choice.
Professor X, who struggles with dementia, keeps insisting that the girl has some special qualities, but Logan refuses to believe him…until the tough guys show up and she dispatches them with some very familiar-looking adamantine claws that pop out from her knuckles. Time for a road trip, including an encounter with a sweet farm family and with many perils and threats along the way.
The action is well-staged, though brutal even by comic book movie standards. Jackman and Stewart are always watchable, but the story drags (the movie is well over two hours), and we know where it’s going at every step. One big plot point has to do with Logan’s belief that the story in the comic books cannot be true. He may be persuaded otherwise, but we never are.
Parents should know that this film includes constant and very graphic comic-book/sci-fi peril and violence with many disturbing images and many characters injured and killed, and brief non-sexual nudity.
Family discussion: How does this movie show the influence of classic westerns? Why does Caliban stay loyal?
If you like this, try: the previous Wolverine and X-Men films