One Year Ago--August 2, 2019:
New Wide Releases:
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw--1/$60 million/$174 million/13/67%/60--As if 8 (soon to be 9) movies in the main series wasn't enough, America's favorite fast cars go vroom franchise got its first spinoff, which is a rather obvious attempt to keep Dwayne Johnson involved after his much-publicized falling out with Vin Diesel. Still, the entry, which teams up Johnson's American government agent Hobbs with Jason Statham's British agent Shaw to stop a cyberterrorist (Idris Elba) who has framed Shaw's sister (Vanessa Kirby) for stealing a dangerous computer virus, was well received by critics and audiences, even if it underperformed the more recent entries in the main franchise. Helen Mirren reprises her role as Statham's mother, and there's a couple of comic cameos, one from one of Johnson's frequent co-stars, and another from the star of director David Leitch's previous film.
Director: David Leitch
Five Years Ago--July 31, 2015:
New Wide Releases:
Mission: Impossible-Rouge Nation--1/$55.5 million/$195 million/11/93%/75--It's no surprise that Tom Cruise just loves doing the Mission: Impossible movies, because they're the only one of his films that remain consistent box office winners. The fifth entry in the franchise was no exception, with Cruise's super-agent Ethan Hunt on the run from the CIA who suspect that he's turned into a terrorist, while trying to take down the real terrorist organization that responsible for the mayhem. Franchise regular Ving Rhames returned as Cruise's colleague, joined by Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg as other agents, Rebecca Ferguson as a terrorist with conflicted loyalties, and Alec Baldwin as the director of the CIA. Cruise also performed several of his own stunts, including hanging on the outside of an airplane flying a mile up in the air.
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Vacation--2/$14.7 million/$58.9 million/50/27%/34--The fifth film in the vulnerable franchise (assuming you don't count Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure) and the first since 1997's Vegas Vacation starred Ed Helms as the series's fifth Rusty, who is now all grown up with a family of his own, including wife Christina Applegate. Deciding that what the family needed was some quality bonding time, and apparently not inheriting the memories of first Rusty Anthony Michael Hall, he decides to recreate his childhood trip to Wally World, with predictably disastrous results. Leslie Mann played Audrey #5, Chris Hemsworth her husband, Keegan-Michael Key and Regina Hall played family friends, and Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo reprised their roles as Clark and Ellen. The poor reviews and disappointing box office probably means we don't need to worry about a sequel in which Jason Sudeikis takes his family to Europe anytime soon. On a personal note, the film has an extended sequence supposedly set in my hometown, which, I can assure you, was filmed absolutely nowhere near my hometown.
Director: John Francis Daley and Johnathan Goldstein
Ten Years Ago--July 30, 2010:
#1 Movie:
Inception--$27.5 million
New Wide Releases:
Dinner for Schmucks--2/$23.5 million/$73 million/46/41%/56--French writer/director Francis Veber, who has had his works routinely turned into usually mediocre American comedies from the 70s through the 90s, had one last, appropriately mediocre adaption with this remake of his 1998 film Le Diner de Cons. Paul Rudd gets invited by his boss to a special dinner he hosts where each guest should bring along someone ridiculous for the "real" guests to mock. Rudd invites Steve Carell, an IRS agent who uses dead stuffed mice in dioramas recreating famous works of art, only to have Carell innocently destroy his entire life. Zach Galifianakis played Carell's even weirder boss, and Octavia Spencer, still a year away from The Help, had a small part as one of the mocked guests.
Director: Jay Roach
Charlie St. Cloud--5/$12.4 million/$31.2 million/93/27%/37--Attempting to prove he could do more than sing and dance around a basketball court, Zac Efron played the the title character in this melodrama, who hangs out with his little brother every day, even though said brother died in a car crash five years earlier. When he meets a girl, he has to decide if he's going to stay with his brother's ghost or start living his life again. Kim Basinger played Efron's mother and Ray Liotta played a paramedic who Efron befriended.
Director: Burr Steers
Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore--6/$12.3 million/$43.6 million/72/13%/30--Cats & Dogs proved to be a surprise hit the summer of 2001, so the existence of a sequel isn't much of a surprise. The fact it took 9 years to make, well after the fan base of the first film had outgrown it, is. Cats and dogs, who are both secretly superintelligent, team up to save the world from the titular Kitty (voiced by Bette Midler). Other voice actors include Nick Nolte, Christina Applegate, Neil Patrick Harris, J.K. Simmons, and Sean Hayes, reprising his role as the villain from the first film. The unsuspecting human characters were played by Chris O'Donnell and Jack McBrayer.
Director: Brad Peyton
New Limited Releases:
Get Low--$9.2 million/135/85%/77--A modest art-house success, this drama starred Robert Duvall as a mysterious hermit in 1930s rural Tennessee who suddenly re-emerges, wanting to stage an elaborate funeral for himself--while he is still alive. Less-than-honest funeral director Bill Murray agrees to conduct the service, and the town tries to unravel the mystery of exactly why Duvall fled into the back woods decades ago--a secret that might involve his teenage girlfriend Sissy Spacek. The drama, which had sat on the shelf for nearly a year after it premiered at 2009's Toronto Film Festival, earned a lot of praise for the performances of Duvall and Murray.
Director: Aaron Schneider
Fifteen Years Ago--August 5, 2005:
New Wide Releases:
The Dukes of Hazzard--1/$30.7 million/$80.3 million/26/14%/33--This adaption of the long-running 70s/80s TV show that was primarily an excuse for endless car chases throughout the countryside starred Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville as good ol' boy cousins and moonshiners Bo and Luke Duke, never meanin' no harm, but it beats all you've ever saw, been in trouble with the law since they day they were born. They uncover a plot by corrupt, white-suited county commissioner Boss Hogg (Burt Reynolds) to steal land for a mining company and have to outwit not just the local cops, but the state cops as well to foil the scheme. Jessica Simpson leaped from music and reality TV with her acting debut as Bo and Luke's cousin Daisy (don't any of these people have siblings?) and Willie Nelson appeared in a rare acting role as Uncle Jesse (or parents?). Wonder Woman herself, Lynda Carter (who was also in Sky High, which opened the previous weekend) played Jesse's love interest. Director Jay Chandrasekhar is part of the comedy troupe Broken Lizard, which might explain why he and fellow troupe member Erik Stolhanske stop the action to recreate one of Super Troopers more memorable bits in the middle of the movie.
Director: Jay Chandrasekhar
New Limited Releases:
Broken Flowers--$13.7 million/134/87%/79--After receiving an anonymous letter claiming he had a teenage son, a former playboy (Bill Murray) hits the road to meet with four former girlfriends (Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange, and Tilda Swinton) to see if any of them could have written the letter. Jeffrey Wright played a friend who convinces him to go on the journey, Julie Delphy played Murray's most recent ex-girlfriend, and Chloe Sevigny played Lange's assistant.
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Junebug--$2.7 million/184/86%/80--Amy Adams had her breakout performance (and earned her first Oscar nomination) for this comedy-drama about a Chicago art gallery owner (Embeth Davidtz) who visits her husband's (Alessandro Nivola) rural North Carolina hometown, both to visit a local artist and meet her husband's family, which consists of his parents, his resentful brother (Ben McKenzie) and his pregnant sister-in-law (Adams). The good notices didn't really help the box office much, but Adams would quickly graduate to much bigger roles.
Director: Phil Morrison
Twenty Years Ago--August 4, 2000:
New Wide Releases:
Hollow Man--1/$26.4 million/$73.2 million/31/27%/24--An extremely arrogant scientist (Kevin Bacon), experimenting with invisibility, decides to become the first human test subject, but when he is unable to be brought back to the world of the visible, he becomes unstable and increasingly violent. Among the others on his team are former girlfriend Elisabeth Shue and her new boyfriend, Josh Brolin. After getting his critical mojo back after Starship Troopers, director Paul Verhoeven seemed to lose it again, as this ended up being a fairly typical slasher film, albeit one with a much better cast and impressive, Oscar-nominated Visual Effects. After this Verhoeven left Hollywood, and his subsequent films have been filmed in Europe. A straight-to-video sequel would follow in 2006.
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Space Cowboys--3/$18.1 million/$90.5 million/25/78%/73--When a former Soviet satellite needs to be prevented from falling to Earth, NASA, not having anyone on hand who understands the outdated electronics onboard, turns to a former test pilot (Clint Eastwood) who never made the astronaut ranks. He insists on bringing aboard his former colleagues (Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, and James Garner) to take the mission together. The film, which seems likely to have been at least partially inspired by John Glenn's 1998 return to space, was well-received, and ended up being Eastwood's biggest hit between In the Line of Fire and Million Dollar Baby. James Cromwell played Eastwood's former commanding officer, now an important NASA official, Marcia Gay Harden as another NASA official, William Devane (who was also in Hollow Man) as the flight director, Loren Dean and Courtney B. Vance as astronauts, Blair Brown as a doctor, and Jon Hamm, in his film debut, in a blink-and-you-miss it role as a pilot early in the movie. The Sound Editing would be nominated for an Oscar.
Director: Clint Eastwood
Coyote Ugly--4/$17.3 million/$60.8 million/42/23%/27--Piper Perabo starred in this fictionalized look at a real Manhattan bar, where the waitresses and female bartenders regularly hop on the bar to dance. Perabo played an aspiring songwriter who gets a job at the bar, which is owned by Maria Bello. There, she tries to hide her new job from her conservative father (John Goodman) and launching a romance with a patron (Adam Garcia). Tyra Banks, Bridget Moynahan, and Melanie Lynskey played fellow bartenders, and a then-unknown Johnny Knoxville had a bit part. Despite the poor reviews, the film got decent word-of-mouth and became a minor hit.
Director: David McNally
New Limited Releases:
Saving Grace--$12.2 million/127/63%/62--After being widowed and discovering her husband had left her in debt by hundreds of thousands of pounds, a proper British woman (Brenda Blethyn) decides the best way to save her house is to start growing pot, for which she enlists her loyal gardener (Craig Ferguson) to help. The comedy did fairly well in the US, and led to a long-running TV spinoff, Doc Martin, starring co-star Martin Clunes
Director: Nigel Cole
Twenty-Five Years Ago--August 4, 1995:
#1 Movie:
Waterworld--$13.5 million
New Wide Releases:
Something to Talk About--2/$11.1 million/$50.9 million/34/39%/62--Julia Roberts discovers husband Dennis Quaid is cheating on her, and angrily moves back home with her parents. However, in her old-fashioned Southern small town, she discovers nearly everyone thinks she should let bygones be bygones, including her own father (Robert Duvall). Gena Rowlands played her mother and Kyra Sedgwick her sister. The success of the film helped Roberts break out of a mini-slump, though it wouldn't be until My Best Friend's Wedding in two years before she would truly be back on top of the box office.
Director: Lasse Hallstrom
Babe--3/$8.7 million/$63.7 million/28/97%/83--The summer's second talking pig movie fared far better than the already forgotten Gordy. When a young piglet finds his way to the sheep farm of James Cromwell, he finds a place among the sheep dogs and eventually befriends the sheep, and, to the shock of everyone, becoming a champion herder himself. Critics, who undoubtedly feared the worst, were utterly charmed, and the film became a sleeper hit. It would eventually earn seven Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Cromwell, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction, and Best Film Editing. It would upset Apollo 13 to take Best Visual Effects. A sequel would follow in 1998.
Director: Chris Noonan
Virtuosity--4/$8.3 million/$24.1 million/70/32%/39--In this violent actioner, a computer simulated serial killer (Russell Crowe, in only his second major American movie), fused with the personalities of 150 real serial killers, manages to break out of the computer and escape into the real world. The only one who might be able to stop him is former cop Denzel Washington, now a convicted murderer himself. Kelly Lynch played Washington's prison psychologist who helps him track Crowe down, and 9-year-old Kaley Cuoco played her daughter. Critics found the whole thing deeply silly, and even with Washington, audiences largely chose to ignore the film.
Director: Brett Leonard
Bushwhacked--10/$3 million/$7.9 million/128/11%/NA--The last of the goodwill Daniel Stern had earned from Home Alone and City Slickers pretty much ran out with this comedy, which despite clearly being aimed at young kids, still had an F-bomb, which earned it a PG-13. Stern played a hapless delivery man who becomes a prime suspect in a millionaire's murder, which causes him to go on the run. He ends up posing as a scoutmaster to lead a group of scouts on a journey to a nearby mountaintop. Future Emmy winner Ann Dowd played the mother of one of the boys.
Director: Greg Beeman
Thirty Years Ago--August 3, 1990:
#1 Movie:
Ghost--$10.8 million
New Wide Releases:
Young Guns II--3/$8 million/$44.1 million/30/35%/47--1988's Young Guns left Billy the Kid (Emilo Estevez) alive and well, other than revealing his fate in the epilogue. The sequel expands on that bit, with Billy reuniting with the surviving members of his gang (Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips), along with new colleague Christian Slater. Meanwhile, former comrade Pat Garrett (William Petersen) is appointed sheriff and begins to track the gang down. James Coburn played a cattle baron who wanted Billy dead, and Balthazar Getty played a teenager the gang picked up along the way. The sequel made almost the exact same amount the first film had made two years prior. Jon Bon Jovi's hit song "Blaze of Glory" would get a Best Original Song Oscar nomination.
Director: Geoff Murphy
Mo' Better Blues--7/$4.4 million/$16.2 million/75/71%/61--After the incendiary Do the Right Thing, the fact that Spike Lee's next joint was a straightforward drama about a womanizing jazz trumpeter was seen as a letdown. Denzel Washington (in his first performance since winning the Oscar for Glory that spring, and his first film for Lee) played the trumpeter, who is juggling two women while trying to ease tensions in his group (which included Wesley Snipes and Giancarlo Esposito) and deal with the band's gambling addict manager (Lee). Samuel L. Jackson, a year away from his breakthrough role in Lee's Jungle Fever, played a loan shark, and Diahann Carroll had a cameo as a singer in the club. Lee ran into some controversy when he was accused of antisemitism for his portrayal of the club's owners (Lee regular John Turturro and his real-life brother Nicholas, who, it should be noted, are not Jewish).
Director: Spike Lee
DuckTales: The Movie-Treasure of the Lost Lamp--8/$3.9 million/$18.1 million/66/88%/NA--Disney's attempt to spin off their popular animated series didn't exactly rewrite history (let alone solve a mystery), but did well enough that the studio started churning out lower-budgeted straight-to-video (and occasionally theatrical) movies based on the studios TV shows and sequels to their classic animated titles. At any rate, this first ever animated release by the studio that was not produced by their main animation department had Scrooge McDuck (Alan Young) and his nephews trying to keep the titular lamp, which of course contains a genie (Rip Taylor), out of the hands of an evil sorcerer (Christopher Lloyd). For a TV spinoff, it got surprisingly decent reviews. Over the years, more than a few critics have noticed plot similarities between this and Aladdin, which would open a little over two years later. Woo-oo?
Director: Bob Hathcock
New Limited Releases:
Metropolitan--$2.9 million/138/93%/77--The debut feature of Whit Stillman, this comedy-drama concerns a group of wealthy young college kids in New York and the newcomer to their group, who comes from a more modest background. The film was an art house hit and earned Stillman an Oscar nomination for Original Screenplay.
Director: Whit Stillman
Thirty-Five Years Ago--August 2, 1985:
#1 Movie:
Back to the Future--$8.4 million
New Wide Releases:
Fright Night--3/$6.1 million/$24.9 million/35/91%/62--This well-received horror comedy starred William Ragsdale as a teenager who becomes convinced that his new next-door neighbor (Chris Sarandon) is a vampire. Unfortunately, he's right, and he has to battle for his life, with the help of his girlfriend (Amanda Bearse) and the host of a late-night horror movie show (Roddy McDowell). The film was well-received and became a late-summer sleeper hit. It would be followed by a barely released sequel in 1988 (one that ignored the first film's sequel hook), and a poorly received remake in 2011.
Director: Tom Holland (no, not that one)
Weird Science--4/$4.9 million/$23.8 million/38/58%/46--Anthony Michael Hall opted out of taking a European vacation to star in this John Hughes comedy (the fourth and final film they'd make together) about two nerdy teens (Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith) who, with the help of a computer, a doll, and a power surge, manage to create a beautiful woman (Kelly LeBrock) with magical powers. It was a change of pace for Hughes, whose other movies tend to be somewhat more realistic. Robert Downey, Jr., who in about a month would begin a season-long stint on Saturday Night Live with Hall, played a bully, and Bill Paxton played Mitchell-Smith's mean older brother. The film would be followed a decade later by a 4-season sitcom.
Director: John Hughes
Follow That Bird--9/$2.4 million/$14 million/62/92%/59--That would be Big Bird (Caroll Spinney), in the first attempt by Sesame Street to expand its reach to the silver screen. Unfortunately, as would be proven several more times, movies aimed at preschoolers are not going to be box office hits, no matter how beloved the source material is. After being placed with a family of dodos in Illinois by a well-meaning social worker, Big Bird decides he'd prefer life in New York City and heads back to Sesame Street, with his friends heading west to try to catch up with him. Most of the show's cast, both human (Bob McGrath, Roscoe Orman, Linda Bove, Alaina Reed) and Muppet (controlled by Frank Oz, Richard Hunt, Jerry Nelson, and of course Jim Henson) participated. In the grand tradition of Muppet movies (and Sesame Street) there were cameos by Chevy Chase, John Candy, Waylon Jennings, and Candy's SCTV co-stars Joe Flaherty and Dave Thomas as the bad guys.
Director: Ken Kwapis
Forty Years Ago--August 1, 1980:
New Wide Releases:
Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Special Edition--$15.7 million/47/95%/90--In 2020, Steven Spielberg's sci-fi masterpiece has somewhat faded from memory compared to his other masterpieces, from Jaws to E.T. to Schindler's List. But in 1980, the film was less than three years old when it got a re-release. As the title suggests, however, this wasn't the version released to theaters in 1977 but a new cut, with additional, newly-shot scenes that Spielberg didn't have the time or budget to shoot during the original production. Other scenes were shortened or removed entirely, leaving this new version to actually be three minutes shorter. For the most part, Spielberg preferred this version over the 1977 cut, except for a scene inside the spaceship that Columbia insisted on including. A third cut, made in 1998, removed this sequence, and all three versions are now widely available on DVD.
Director: Steven Spielberg
The Final Countdown--$16.7 million/42/47%/51--In 1980, a modern aircraft carrier gets caught in some sort of freak electoral storm and finds itself transported through time to December 6, 1941, near Hawaii. The ship's captain (Kirk Douglas) has to decide if he's going to warn the military about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor, or let history take its course. Martin Sheen played a civilian observer onboard the carrier, Charles Durning played a senator from 1941 who is rescued by the carrier when Japanese planes destroy his yacht, James Farentino played an officer who recognized Durning, and Katherine Ross played Durning's assistant. The film, which was filmed with the full corporation of the U.S. Navy, received mixed reviews, and did so-so business.
Director: Don Taylor
Raise the Titanic--NA/NA/38%/NA--It wouldn't be until 1985 that scientists would learn that the Titanic had broken in two during its sinking, meaning it would be impossible to "raise". That knowledge was still nearly a decade away when Clive Cussler released his 1976 bestseller about the salvaging of the most famous ship in history, and still five years away when the movie adaption, which was envisioned to be the first of a series of Cussler adaptions, was released. Given this movie didn't even make back a quarter of its budget, any future installments were cancelled, and Cussler refused to sell his movie rights until a quarter century later, when Sahara also became a money-loser. The plot has Cussler's usual hero, Dirk Pitt (Richard Jordan) teaming with an admiral (Jason Robards) to bring the Titanic to the surface to recover boxes of a rare material that could tilt the balance of the Cold War toward the U.S. Alec Guinness played a Titanic survivor.
Director: Jerry Jameson
New Limited Releases:
The Hunter--$16.3 million/43/50%/31--The final film of Steve McQueen, who would die three months after this opened, he played a bounty hunter in this vignette-heavy film, as he tracks down one bail jumper after another, including LeVar Burton. Tying the film together is a running thread about McQueen's pregnant girlfriend, who wants him to settle down, and the psychopath who is stalking the two of them. Eli Wallach played McQueen's boss, and Ben Johnson played a sheriff who didn't take kindly to McQueen invading his territory.
Director: Buzz Kulik
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