Happy 244th, America! Let's hope we make it to 245. On the movie front, the first two weekends of July usually bring forth some major blockbusters. Let the fireworks commence!
One Year Ago--July 5, 2019:
New Wide Releases:
Spider-Man: Far From Home--1/$92.6 million/$390.5 million/7/90%/69--2019's biggest non-Disney film (though, of course, it is very much Disney-adjacent) sent Peter Parker (Tom Holland) off to Europe on a class trip, only to discover that when you're Spider-Man, chaos tends to follow. Aside from MCU regulars like Samuel L. Jackson, Corbie Smulders, and Jon Favreau, and Spider-Man: Homecoming vets Marisa Tomei and Zendaya, the big new arrival is Jake Gyllanhaal as a new hero who may have a hidden agenda.
Director: Jon Watts
Midsommar--6/$6.6 million/$27.4 million/86/83%/72--Director Ari Aster deftly avoided the sophomore slump with his second feature film getting nearly as strong reviews as 2018's horror sensation Hereditary. Florence Pugh decides to join her boyfriend and some others in going to Sweden to attend a once-in-a-lifetime celebration, only to gradually discover that the commune putting on the party might have sinister motives. While this wasn't a huge success at the box office, it was profitable, and like Hereditary, it will have an impassioned cult surrounding it for years to come.
Director: Ari Aster
Five Years Ago--July 3, 2015:
#1 Movie:
Inside Out--$29.8 million
New Wide Releases:
Terminator: Genisys--3/$27 million/$89.8 million/32/27%/38--Even though the last unambiguously successful Terminator movie came out in 1991, there is something about the franchise that keeps studios from refusing to finally pull the plug. Genisys, coming out six years after the last reboot attempt in Terminator: Salvation, kept that film's PG-13 rating and brought back Arnold Schwarzenegger, only to wind up with the franchise's lowest gross since the original back in 1984. This one mucks up the timeline even further, with Schwarzenegger's Terminator actually arriving in the early 70s. Schwarzenegger is the only cast member from prior films to make an appearance, as Jason Clarke becomes the 4th cinematic John Connor, Emilia Clarke is the new Sarah Connor, and Jai Courtney is the third cinematic Kyle Reese, with J.K. Simmons, Matt Smith, and Courtney B. Vance also co-starring. After this flopped, plans for direct sequels were cancelled and instead there was yet another reboot in 2019, which managed to flop even harder.
Director: Alan Taylor
Magic Mike XXL--4/$12.9 million/$66 million/46/65%/60--This follow-up to the surprise hit of 2012 is mostly a road movie, as Channing Tatum and his male stripper pals (including Joe Manganiello and Matt Bomer) head from Tampa to Myrtle Beach for a stripper convention. Joining the cast are Amber Head as a photographer that Tatum takes an interest in, Jada Pinkett Smith as a strip club owner, Donald Glover as a rapper the guys meet on the trip, Elizabeth Banks as the convention's organizer, and Andie MacDowell as a wealthy woman who enjoys the attention of the group.
Director: Gregory Jacobs
New Limited Releases:
Amy--$8.4 million/130/95%/85--British musician Any Winehouse was a singular talent whose signature song, "Rehab", proved sadly prophetic when she succumbed to alcohol poisoning in 2011 at only 27. This highly acclaimed documentary explored her life and career, which much previously-unseen footage of the late singer. The film would win the Best Documentary at the Oscars.
Director: Asif Kapadia
Expanding:
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl--9/$1.3 million
Ten Years Ago--July 2, 2010:
New Wide Releases:
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse--1/$64.8 million/$300.5 million/4/48%/58--After releasing the first two Twilight movies at Thanksgiving, Summit tried their luck with a mid-summer release for the third entry, opening in less than 8 months after the arrival of New Moon. Kristin Stewart spends the movie trying to decide between vampire Robert Pattinson and werewolf Taylor Lautner. Oh, and there's an army of evil vampires that is on its way to kill them all. The move to summer didn't seem to slow down the series at all, as Eclipse still holds the record for best Wednesday opening ever and it ended up the biggest grosser of the entire series. Nevertheless, the series headed back to November for the two-part adaption of Breaking Dawn.
Director: David Slade
The Last Airbender--2/$40.3 million/$131.8 million/19/5%/20--It's rather startling to realize this universally panned adaption of the popular Nickelodeon animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender (which dropped the first word of the original title for obvious reasons) was actually a decent-sized hit that summer. Still, the poor reception to the fantasy adventure, in which a 12-year-old kid (Noah Ringer, who would make only one more movie after this) has to go on the run from a prince (Dev Patel) determined to catch him for his abilities to manipulate the four elements to his will doomed the planned trilogy, as the other two films ended up being cancelled. A live action series remake is in the works.
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Fifteen Years Ago--July 8, 2005:
New Wide Releases:
Fantastic Four--1/$56.1 million/$154.7 million/13/27%/40--The Marvel comic book team has had atrocious luck with their big screen adventures, from the officially never-released Roger Corman low-budget production in the early 90s to the disastrous reboot in 2015. This one, the first big-budget version, is arguably the best of the bunch, to damn with faint praise. While on a space station investigating a cloud of energy that is thought to have a mutating effect, astronauts Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans (who would have much better luck portraying another Marvel character a few years later), and Michael Chiklis into the heroic Mr. Fantastic, Invisable Girl, Human Torch, and The Thing, respectively, while Julian McMahon becomes the evil Doctor Doom. Kerry Washington played Chiklis's love interest. It would be followed by a sequel in 2007, before the aforementioned reboot in 2015.
Director: Tim Story
Dark Water--4/$9.9 million/$25.5 million/101/47%/52--Another one of the string of American remakes of Asian horror movies that haunted multiplexes in the mid-aughts, all of which were chasing after the success of The Ring. This one starred Jennifer Connelly as a recent divorcee who moves with her daughter to a run-down apartment, one that is constantly getting water leaks from the seemingly abandoned apartment upstairs. Could it be caused by ghosts? John C. Reilly played the apartment manager, Pete Postlewaite played the building super, Tim Roth was Connelly's lawyer, Dougray Scott her ex-husband, and Camryn Manheim her daughter's teacher. Even though The Grudge had done well the previous fall, horror in summer is always a risky bet, and even with a fine cast, this one failed to offer much in the way of true scares.
Director: Walter Salles
New Limited Releases:
Murderball--$1.5 million/196/98%/87--Murderball, also known as wheelchair rugby, is a highly competitive, full-contact sport for individuals with loss of function in at least three limbs, a sport that seems to mostly consist of the athletes slamming their wheelchairs into each other with as much force as possible. This documentary follows the preparations of the US Paralympic team for the 2004 Games in Athens, and gets into their lives both on and off court. The film would be nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary.
Director: Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro
Twenty Years Ago--July 7, 2000:
New Wide Releases:
Scary Movie--1/$42.3 million/$157 million/9/53%/48--This gross-out spoof of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer (along with The Blair Witch Project and The Matrix) was somehow the biggest comedy of the summer of 2000, despite the biggest cast members at the time being Shawn and Marlon, the lesser-known Wayans brothers, and then-Saturday Night Live cast member Cheri Otari. Then-unknown Anna Faris channeled Neve Campbell and Jennifer Love Hewitt as a high school girl with a dark secret whose friends keep getting murdered in hysterical ways by a guy in a ghostface mask. Carmen Electra played the Drew Barrymore role of the cold opening victim, and Regina Hall played Faris's best friend, who despite dying, would be back for the sequels, of which there would be four of (even though the tagline for this one explicitly promised no sequels).
Director: Keenen Ivory Wayans
The Kid--4/$12.7 million/$69.7 million/34/49%/45--In this Disney fantasy comedy, Bruce Willis played a successful but unfulfilled image consultant who, thanks to the magic of the space-time continuum, meets his 8-year-old self (Spencer Breslin, who has grown up to look nothing like Bruce Willis) who is not happy about the direction that his life went. Together, they have to figure out why Breslin has come forward in time, as well as try to figure out what to do with a deceitful client. Emily Mortimer, who is only a few more years older than Breslin than she is younger than Willis, plays Willis's co-worker/love interest, Lily Tomlin his assistant, and a then-unknown Melissa McCarthy as a waitress.
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Twenty-Five Years Ago--July 7, 1995:
#1 Movie:
Apollo 13--$19.6 million
New Wide Releases:
Species--2/$17.2 million/$60.1 million/30/43%/49--It's not a good idea to merge human and alien DNA, as numerous films, including this sci-fi horror entry, remind us. In this case, the hybrid (Natasha Henstridge), who can assume the form of a beautiful young woman, is eager to mate with a human male to begin producing offspring that might bring about the end of the human race. When she escapes her confines and disappears into Los Angeles, a crack team, including Michael Madsen, Alfred Molina, Forest Whitaker, Marg Helgenberger, and Ben Kingsley, as the mad scientist who spliced the DNA together in the first place, is assembled to bring her down. A young Michelle Williams played the alien as a child. Despite being somewhat of a ripoff of Alien (complete with creature designs by H.R. Giger), this did all right business during the summer, and was followed by a theatrical sequel, which flopped, and a third one that went straight to video.
Director: Roger Donaldson
First Knight--3/$10.9 million/$37.6 million/46/44%/NA--The first of the summer's two King Arthur movies, this one chooses to eschew the more magical and supernatural elements of the tale (i.e. no Merlin) to focus on the love triangle between King Arthur (Sean Connery), Guinevere (Julia Ormand), who married Arthur in this version for protection of her homeland, and Lancelot (Richard Gere) who is a wondering vagabond who wins a seat at the Round Table. This is director Jerry Zucker's follow-up to Ghost. Not nearly as well received, he'd wait another six years before returning to comedy with Rat Race.
Director: Jerry Zucker.
Thirty Years Ago--July 6, 1990:
New Wide Releases:
Die Hard 2--1/$21.7 million/$117.5 million/8/68%/67--If it ain't broke...seems to be the mantra for this sequel that substitutes Dulles Airport in Washington DC for an office building in LA and ads a late-in-the-film twist involving a surprise villain, but otherwise largely recycles the plot of the first film, as Bruce Willis gets to spend another Christmas Eve battling terrorists. This time, their plot is to rescue a drug lord being extradited to the United States by taking over the airport, and only Willis can stop them. Bonnie Bedelia, in her second and final appearance in the franchise, once again played Willis's wife, trapped on one of the planes circling up above, Dennis Franz played an airport security officer, Fred Dalton Thompson played an air traffic controller, and John Amos played an Army officer.
Director: Renny Harlin
Jetsons: The Movie--4/$5 million/$20.3 million/62/27%/46--Summer audiences were largely uninterested in meeting George Jetson on the big screen, in what was essentially a feature film length episode that had George getting transferred and taking his boy Elroy, daughter Judy, and Jane, his wife to a new factory that had a problem with sabotage. This ran into some controversy when pop star Tiffany was hired to play Judy, though original voice actress Janet Waldo had already recorded the lines. This would be the final project for legendary voice actor Mel Blanc, who died nearly a year before this came out.
Director: Joseph Barbara, William Hanna, and Iwao Takamoto
Thirty-Five Years Ago--July 5, 1985:
New Wide Releases:
Back to the Future--1/$11.2 million/$210.6 million/1/96%/87--If not the most iconic movie of the 1980s, at least one of the Top 5, the year's biggest hit rocketed sitcom star Michael J. Fox (who, a few months before this came out, had starred in a made-for-TV Meatballs ripoff) to movie stardom. He, of course, played Marty McFly, unwitting time traveler, who finds himself in 1955 discovering that neither his mom (Lea Thompson) nor his dad (Crispin Glover) were the righteous prigs they liked to present their teenage selves as. Somehow, even though good chunks of the plot revolve around Thompson unknowingly lusting after her own son, this still manages to be largely wholesome family entertainment. The film was nominated for four Oscars: Original Screenplay, Sound, and Song ("The Power of Love"), and won for Sound Effects Editing.
Director: Robert Zemeckis
The Emerald Forest--5/$4.4 million/$24.5 million/37/85%/NA--Powers Boothe played an engineer living in Brazil supervising the construction of a dam on the Amazon. When his young son is kidnapped by a native tribesman, he spends the next ten years searching for him. When Boothe finally finds him (now played by Charley Boorman, the director's son), he learns that his son's peace-loving tribe (into which he has been fully integrated) is at grave risk not just from the dam but from a much more savage rival tribe. This well-received drama was a surprise hit that summer.
Director: John Boorman
Red Sonja--9/$2.3 million/$7 million/105/15%/35--This is technically not a sequel to Arnold Schwarzenegger's Conan flicks, despite the fact that it's based on the works of Conan creator Robert E. Howard and Schwarzenegger is wearing his Conan costume and the film was directed by Conan the Destroyer director Richard Fleischer. It was no matter, as audiences were clearly uninterested in another sword-and-sandal epic starring him, even if the movie's actual star was newcomer Brigitte Nelson. She played a warrior out for revenge against an evil queen (Sandahl Bergman, who had played Schwarzenegger's ally in the first Conan film) who has stolen an artifact that could give her unlimited power. Schwarzenegger popped up on occasion as another warrior who befriends and helps Nelson. Not even the large amount of promotion that Schwarzenegger got for what was essentially a glorified cameo didn't help this one out at the box office.
Director: Richard Fleischer
Forty Years Ago--July 4, 1980
New Wide Releases:
Airplane!--$83.5 million/4/97%/78--If the exploding volcano movie When Time Ran Out... had officially buried the 70s disaster film craze, Airplane! came along to dance a jig on its grave. Gleefully re-purposing the script to the largely forgotten 1957 melodrama Zero Hour!, about a fighter pilot (Robert Hays) with PTSD who is the only one who can land the jetliner he's on when the pilots are taken ill, the writing/directing team of Jim Abrahams and brothers Jerry and David Zucker stuff it full of sight gags, puns, wordplay, old movie references, sitcom moms who can speak jive, and anything else that struck them as potentially funny. Besides leads Hays and Julie Hagerty, as Hays's stewardess ex-girlfriend who has to help him fly the plane, much of the rest of the cast was made up of actors who would regularly appear in straight-laced versions of this story. Instructed to play it completely straight, actors such as Peter Graves as the gladiator movie-loving captain, Lloyd Bridges as the airport administrator, Robert Stack at the chief pilot who has to help Hays guide the plane down, and Leslie Nielsen, in a career remaking role, as the only doctor among the passengers, helped ramp up the comedy. The film was followed by a sequel that Abrahams and the Zuckers had nothing to do with.
Director: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker
New Limited Releases:
The Blue Lagoon--$58.9 million/9/9%/31--1980 was a banner year for movies featuring under-aged actresses exploring their sexuality. After Little Darlings, Foxes, and Carny, here came The Blue Lagoon, starring 14-year-old Brooke Shields and 18-year-old Christopher Atkins as two survivors of a shipwreck who grow up by themselves on a lush, beautiful, and otherwise unoccupied desert island. Naturally, hormones eventually erupt, and Shields and Atkins do what comes naturally, shown as graphically as the R-rating and the fact that the lead actress was 14 during filming would allow. Despite the horrible reviews, this became a huge hit, which probably says a lot about 1980 in general. The film would be Oscar-nominated for its Cinematography.
Director: Randal Kleiser
Herbie Goes Bananas--$17 million/40/40%/55--The fourth and final (unless you count the subsequent sitcom, TV-movie, and Herbie: Fully Loaded) entry in Disney's inexplicably popular Love Bug series finds Herbie the sentient VW Beetle visiting Mexico, where he joins forces with an adolescent pickpocket to stop three would-be jewel thieves (John Vernon, Alex Rocco, and Richard Jaeckel, all of whom hopefully got nice paychecks out of this). Also co-starring are Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman, and and a young Charles Martin Smith. Pretty much everyone in the cast has had better movies on their resumes than this one.
Director: Vincent McEveety
No comments:
Post a Comment