A number of recent Oscar Watch posts on this here blog has made one thing abundantly clear: the Best Actress race looks to be a competitive one in 2016. Already, Emma Stone (La La Land), Ruth Negga (Loving), Rooney Mara (Una), Meryl Streep (Florence Foster Jenkins), and Amy Adams (Nocturnal Animals or Arrival) have established themselves as possibilities. And there’s still performers such as Viola Davis (Fences), Annette Bening (20th Century Women), Emily Blunt (The Girl on the Train), Jessica Chastain (Miss Sloane), and Jennifer Lawrence (Passengers) waiting in the wings.
Yet the race potentially got more interesting at the Venice Film Festival as Jackie has screened to some rave critical reaction. A biopic of First Lady Jacqueline Onassis Kennedy, it’s directed by acclaimed Chilean filmmaker Pablo Farrain and stars Natalie Portman in the title role. Early trade reviews have been over the moon with Portman’s portrayal, with one of them claiming that it may surpass her Oscar winning work in 2010’s Black Swan.
Interestingly, unlike most biopics, this is not based on a book or series of them. Therefore, this could qualify for an Original Screenplay nod. Based on the buzz so far, the love could perhaps extend to the Picture itself and Mr. Farrain.
Yet Jackie is most likely to garner attention for the woman playing her (whether costars such as Greta Gerwig, Peter Sarsgaard and Billy Crudup get noticed remains to be seen). Portman hasn’t really had a buzzed about awards role since Swan six years ago and this appears to be just that. As long as Jackie finds a distributor to give it 2016 consideration (something that will probably occur this week), we appear to have another major factor in an already crowded category.
Four have passed since Oliver Stone released his last picture and it’s been eight years since he’s gotten political. That changes next weekend when Snowden hits theaters. This is a biopic of former CIA analyst Edward Snowden with Joseph Gordon -Levitt in the title role. A stellar supporting cast includes Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Tom Wilkinson, Zachary Quinto, Scott Eastwood, Timothy Olyphant, Rhys Ifans, and Nicolas Cage.
The thriller was originally set for release in December of last year before being pushed to May and, finally, September. Snowden will be a test as to whether audiences wish to spend over two hours witnessing a story well-publicized in the press and already covered in the recent documentary Citizenfour.
My feeling is the answer will be no. Political dramas often struggle at the box office and I don’t see that as an exception. My prediction is Snowden doesn’t reach double digits in its debut as many moviegoers may be getting their fill of current events on the small screen.
BridgetJones’sBaby not only marks the return of a long dormant franchise, but also the return of Oscar winner Renee Zellweger, making her first onscreen appearance in six years. It’s been twice that long since her title character has been in multiplexes.
In 2001, BridgetJones’sDiary was a solid hit, opening to $10.7 million and displaying great legs to get to $71 million domestic. It also earned its lead a Best Actress nod. The 2004 sequel, BridgetJones: TheEdgeofReason, didn’t fare as well with a $40 million eventual gross.
Besides Zellweger returning to one of her most well-known roles, Sharon Maguire (director of the original) is also back. Same with Colin Firth and Jim Broadbent. Not returning: Hugh Grant and the love triangle with Bridget and Mr. Firth is instead completed by Patrick Dempsey.
As I see it, the long wait between entries and middling performance of the second entry doesn’t bode too well here. I highly doubt this can reach the $17.8 million accomplished by MyBigFatGreekWedding2 (another long gestating rom com sequel) earlier this year. After all, the predecessor for that one made $241 million.
My prediction is this doesn’t quite reach teens for its box office birth.
Bridget Jones’s Baby opening weekend prediction: $12.3 million
Seventeen years ago, The Blair Witch Project came out of nowhere and turned into a 1999 summertime smash. The found footage horror pic (we can basically thank it for kicking off that craze) was initially shot for a tiny $60,000 and made $140 million domestically and $248 million worldwide. A year later, a quasi-sequel entitled Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 failed to connect with audiences.
This time around, we have a direct sequel to the original and it was shockingly a secret up until a couple of months ago. The director/writer horror team of Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett have been responsible for some critically acclaimed genre titles such as You’re Next and The Guest. Their latest venture was said to be The Woods and there was even a trailer for it. It wasn’t until this summer’s San Diego Comic Con (where it screened to great buzz) that it was revealed as Blair Witch. Like the 1999 pic, the cast is made up of relative or total unknowns.
Backstory explained, let’s get to its box office potential. First things first – scare tactics have been a bright spot at the multiplexes lately. The Conjuring 2 debuted to $40 million. Lights Out surprised many with a $21 million premiere and Don’t Breathe exceeded all expectations with $26 million out of the gate. That bodes well for this.
One potential concern: will younger viewers feel the connection to a franchise that has laid dormant for over a decade and a half? While the original was a moneymaking sensation, reaction to it was actually polarized and that may have contributed to the mediocre returns of the 2000 follow-up.
That said, I still envision Blair Witch reaching mid to high 20s next weekend with strong word of mouth from its screening helping.
Blair Witch opening weekend prediction: $27.4 million
For my Bridget Jones’s Baby prediction, click here:
For over a quarter century, I’ve known Brian De Palma’s TheBonfireoftheVanities only by its reputation. Its very, very bad reputation. The picture belongs in a category along with Heaven’sGate, Ishtar, LastActionHero, Waterworld and others as The Giant Hollywood Bomb. Some (Gate, Waterworld) have gained a better reputation as time has gone on. Bonfire, on the other hand, is barely discussed at all.
I recently had the pleasure of viewing the documentary DePalma, which is a serious treat for movie lovers. In it, the director basically talks for two hours about every one of his features in order. Some are classics or near classics (Carrie, DressedtoKill, BlowOut, Scarface,TheUntouchables, Carlito’sWay). Some are not (SnakeEyes anyone?). Others received mixed reviews upon initial reaction such as CasualtiesofWar. There’s mainstream hits like Mission: Impossible and mainstream flops like MissiontoMars. Curiosities like RaisingCain and WiseGuys.
Then there’s this. Based upon a celebrated novel by Tom Wolfe, a bulk of the Bonfire criticism came from its significant departures from its source material. Having never read it, I had the benefit of not having to compare it. Unfortunately, it didn’t help much.
After watching this for the first time, it’s easy to get why this was ballyhooed in 1990 as a misguided and miscast effort. The other thing about famous flops is that years later, it’s kind of cool for cinephiles to say it was actually pretty good. For the purposes of this post, I’m not cool.
The star power is significant. Tom Hanks is Sherman McCoy, a yuppie NYC bond trader with a socialite wife (Kim Cattrall) and a southern belle mistress named Maria (Melanie Griffith). One night out with his girlfriend, they take a wrong turn into the Bronx where Maria accidentally hits a young black male and puts him into a coma. They leave the scene but the story doesn’t end there. An intersection of political ambition, religious leader ambition, and journalistic ambition land Sherman in a world of hurt. Chronicling it all is reporter Peter Fallow, played by Bruce Willis with all of his smarm and none of his charm.
Bonfire wants so badly to be an indictment of 1980s greed and shallowness. However, it goes so far in the direction of farce that you can’t take those overtones seriously for one second. By the time a virtuous judge (Morgan Freeman, getting to demonstrate his heavenly voice in one monologue) lectures all the characters on their indecency, we already feel that the message has been browbeaten into us.
One of the biggest complaints of the book to pic adaptation was the softening of the Sherman character into a sympathetic figure (he apparently wasn’t much of one in Wolfe’s writing). While I can’t speak to that, I can only say that Hanks at least has somewhat of a character to work with instead of the caricatures he’s onscreen with. That includes Griffith’s annoying seductress and Cattrall’s nails on chalkboard work as his ultra privileged wife. It includes F. Murray Abraham, yelling his way through the role of the district attorney who wants to be Mayor and John Hancock as a sleazy and media hungry pastor.
Bonfire is an ugly film about mostly ugly people that goes for laughs in an over the top way that isn’t pretty. It was badly received in 1990 and hasn’t aged well due to some racial aspects that couldn’t fly today.
Now… having said all that, I’m glad I finally witnessed what all the mostly forgotten fuss was about. And even in this quite disappointing experience, there are De Palma touches to be appreciated including a fabulous continuous opening shot of Willis entering a party in his honor. Of all the bombs in Hollywood lore, I bet it has the most entertaining and technically impressive first five minutes of them all. Sadly, there’s still two hours that follows after that and most of it solidifies the fire that greeted it.
Critics have been singing the praises of English actress Sally Hawkins for years and awards voters have occasionally taken note. Her work in 2008’s Happy–Go–Lucky won her a Best Actress Golden Globe in the Musical/Comedy race (she missed the cut on an Oscar nod). The Academy did at last recognize her with a Supporting Actress nom for 2013’s BlueJasmine.
The Telluride Film Festival has opened up the possibility for her first lead Actress nod for Maudie. It screened over the weekend and casts Hawkins in a biopic of Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis, who suffers from serious physical disabilities. Aisling Walsh directs with Ethan Hawke as co-lead.
Reviews for the film itself were mixed and it stands no real at recognition from the Academy other than for Ms. Hawkins. If a distributor gets this out before year’s end and mounts a campaign, she could find herself in the mix of what’s looking like a very crowded Actress race.
BLOGGER’S UPDATE (09/09/16): I can no longer ignore the strong signals that Sully will top the box office this weekend. I’m not changing my When the Bough Breaks forecast, but am upping Sully from $19.8M to $28.5M.
The second weekend of September brings us four new entries that will likely perform significantly different. There’s the Clint Eastwood/Tom Hanks collaboration Sully, romantic thriller When the Bough Breaks, horror pic The Disappointments Room and Belgian animated export The Wild Life. You can peruse my detailed prediction posts on each of them here:
As I see it, there could be a serious battle for the #1 slot between Bough and Sully. The latter debuted to positive reviews over the weekend (75% currently on Rotten Tomatoes). The former is a critic proof entity that could follow in the footsteps of September 2014’s No Good Deed and September 2015’s The Perfect Guy with grosses in the low to mid 20s. Meanwhile, I have Sully not quite reaching $20M, though it’ll likely have solid legs in subsequent weekends.
For those reasons, I’m giving Bough the edge to reach the top spot this weekend. I have a feeling there may be those who disagree. As for the other newcomers, I’m expecting wildly disappointing results. Neither The Disappointments Room or The Wild Life seem to have any momentum. My $2.3M and $3.2M estimates for them, respectively, leave them outside the top five.
Here’s how the blog readers feel about my newcomer predictions:
Sully – 64% Too Low, 31% Just About Right, 5% Too High
When the Bough Breaks – 53% Just About Right, 44% Too High, 3% Too Low
The Disappointments Room – 64% Just About Right, 22% Too Low, 14% Too High
The Wild Life – 50% Just About Right, 43% Too Low, 7% Too High
As for holdovers, current two-time champ Don’t Breathe should slip to third with Suicide Squad in fourth. Kubo and Pete’s Dragon are likely to battle for the five spot with similar grosses.
And with that, my top five predictions for the weekend:
1. Sully
Predicted Gross: $28.5 million
2. When the Bough Breaks
Predicted Gross: $22.7 million
3. Don’t Breathe
Predicted Gross: $7.5 million (representing a drop of 52%)
4. Suicide Squad
Predicted Gross: $5.1 million (representing a drop of 49%)
5. Kubo and the Two Strings
Predicted Gross: $3.8 million (representing a drop of 40%)
Box Office Results (September 2-5)
It was a typically sluggish Labor Day weekend as two newcomers failed to connect with audiences. The low-budget horror pic Don’t Breathe, on the other hand, continued to impress with $19.7 million (above my $16.7M estimate) for a total of $55 million.
Suicide Squad was second once again with $12.6 million (in line with my $12.9M projection) as it crossed the $300M line.
Kubo and the Two Strings was third with $8.7 million (I said $8M) for a $36M gross. The four and five spots were holdovers that I incorrectly had outside the top five: Pete’s Dragon with $8.4 million ($66M total) and Sausage Party with $6.4 million ($89M total).
As for the aforementioned newcomers… ouch. Romantic drama The Light Between Oceans was sixth with only $6.1 million (well under my $11.3M prediction).
Sci-fi thriller Morgan fared even worse with just $2.5 million for 18th place… less than a fourth of my generous $10.6M forecast.
And that will do it for now, blog readers! Until next time…
As the Telluride Film Festival has wound to a close, we have another contender in one particular category to discuss. Wakefield is a family drama from director Robin Swicord, a screenwriter known for works such as TheCuriousCaseofBenjaminButton. It’s based on a short story from E.L. Doctorow.
Reviews for the film have been mostly strong. Yet its only chance at Academy recognition is likely with its star, Bryan Cranston. The three-time Emmy winner for “Breaking Bad” got his first Oscar nod just last year with Trumbo.
Critics have signaled this is another highly powerful performance and Telluride has entered his name into the Best Actor discussion over the Labor Day weekend.
Rooney Mara burst onto the scene in 2011 in the Oscar nominated title role of TheGirlwiththeDragonTattoo. She received her second nomination last year in Supporting Actress with Carol. This weekend’s Telluride Film Festival has opened up the possibility of a third nod in six years with Una.
The drama is an adaptation of the stage play Blackbird, dealing with the serious theme of child molestation. It’s heavy stuff according to early reviews (mostly raves) and critics have singled out Mara’s performance. Benedict Andrews makes his directorial debut here with Ben Mendelsohn and Riz Ahmed among the supporting cast.
Whether or not Mara can get the nomination is based on at least three factors. First and foremost, there is no set release date for it, though it’s likely to get a 2016 awards qualifying run. Second, the studio will need to mount a real campaign for the picture to be widely seen. Finally, the Best Actress race on paper looks as competitive as it’s been in recent memory. Still – Telluride gave the actress some needed exposure for a potential third nomination.
It’s been a decade since Mel Gibson has been behind the camera with Apocalypto and these last 10 years have been bumpy ones for the Braveheart Oscar winner. He’s been the subject of controversies and tabloid fodder. His screen appearances have been primarily limited to B movie action flicks of varying quality.
Yet the Venice Film Festival has vaulted him back into the Oscar race with HacksawRidge, his World War II drama which has screened to positive buzz and some sterling reviews. It stars Andrew Garfield, Vince Vaughn, Sam Worthington, Hugo Weaving, Teresa Palmer, and Rachel Griffiths. The Lionsgate release hits screens stateside in November.
Some of the reaction for Hacksaw has used the C word in describing it for Gibson. As in Comeback. Whether or not Academy voters are willing to overlook his personal life and past transgressions and nominate it for Picture or Director is very much an open question. Even with its solid notices, I have Hacksaw currently on the outside looking in. If the film hits with audiences in two months, that dynamic could change.
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