‘Oz’ Steals ‘Burt Wonderstone’s’ Box Office Magic

It was expected to be the biggest wizard’s duel to grace the box office since Harry battled Voldemort, but it turned out that “Burt Wonderstone” was nothing more than an expensive illusion, as the new Steve Carell comedy was completely crushed by returning champ “Oz the Great and Powerful” this weekend.

How bad was it? “Burt Wonderstone,” which cost an estimated $32 million and which co-stars one of the biggest box office comedy draws of all time in Jim Carrey, bombed out with just $10.3 million despite being boosted by a Thursday night pre-release and a massive rollout to over 3,100 screens. Even worse, “Burt Wonderstone” scored just a C+ Cinemascore with viewers while also racking up a brutal 25% fresh rating on Rottentomatoes.

Meanwhile, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, because he’s busy laughing all the way to the bank. Thanks in part to “Burt Wonderstone’s” epic collapse, returning champion “Oz the Great and Powerful” cruised to its second straight box office win, collecting another $42.2 million to push its 10-day total to $145 million domestically and $281.8 million worldwide.

Even the surprise success of Halle Berry’s kidnapping thriller “The Call” couldn’t put a dent in “Oz the great and Powerful.” But Berry appears to have a bona fide hit on her hands, as strong word of mouth pushed the film to an estimated $17.1 million opening, which reportedly is already enough for the low budget film to turn a profit.

Next week, of course, “Oz the Great and Powerful” will face some legitimate competition at the box office, as the DreamWorks animated epic “The Croods” opens alongside the Gerard Butler action piece “Olympus Has Fallen” and Tina Fey’s new romcom “Admission.” But for now, magic rules Hollywood — and “Oz” is the greatest and most powerful wizard around.

Here’s a look at the full box office top ten, courtesy of Hollywood.com:

1. “Oz the Great and Powerful” – $42.2m (our review)
2. “The Call” – $17.1m (our review)
3. “Burt Wonderstone” – $10.3m (our review)
4. “Jack the Giant Slayer” – $6.2m (our review)
5. “Identity Thief” – $4.5m (our review)
6. “Snitch” – $3.5m (our review)
7. “21 and Over” – $2.6m (our review)
8. “Silver Linings Playbook” – $2.6m (our review)
9. “Safe Haven” – $2.5m (our review)
10. “Escape from Planet Earth” – $2.3m (our review)

Categories: News

Tags: Box office, Oz: The Great and Powerful, The Call, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

Review: ‘Side Effects’ Is a Magic Trick

Steven Soderbergh is one of cinema’s all time great magicians. He isn’t just one of our most versatile directors, he’s a bonafide polymath, frequently working as his own editor and DP under none-too-secret pseudonyms. And you should see his latest trick, “Side Effects.” He’s taken what, on paper, boils down to an extra ridiculous episode of “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” and passes it off as high cinematic art. It is a bugfu*k crazy yarn, more like what you’d expect out of Brian De Palma, but with that ineffable hum – the Soderbergh snap – the cool camera, exquisite framing, shallow focus and scenes that don’t last a frame longer than they have to.

“Side Effects” is a movie that changes a lot and moves quickly. Each of its turns are terrific. Teaming once more with Scott Z. Burns, writer of “The Informant!” and, more germane to this film, “Contagion,” “Side Effects” is a film that won’t sit still. It’s more than “just when you think you know what’s happening, THIS happens.” This is a rare case of the very genre of the film we’re dealing with transforming without warning.

We begin as a sophisticated drama. Rooney Mara is trying to create a welcoming return for Channing Tatum. He is a white collar criminal, ending a prison sentence. She was a wife in Connecticut, now forced to live in New York City and work at a graphic design studio. (It’s telling when the typical bourgeois fantasy is considered slumming it.) Mara’s history of depression suddenly flares up with a spontaneous suicide attempt and now she’s under the care of honest, earnest psychiatrist Jude Law.

He’s honest, but he’s not a saint. When the free lunches come from drug companies, he takes them, as well as a well-compensated opportunity to introduce patients to new anti-depressants. He’s above board, though. He makes all the required disclosures, but is this really doing enough, especially when the safety of his patients’ minds are at stake?

The drug in question isn’t what Mara’s on, though. She ends up on a different, fairly new pill, a medication recommended to Law by Catherine Zeta-Jones, Mara’s old doctor from Connecticut. This is what sets Mara off into dark places and “Side Effects” into the loopiest psychological thriller since “Spellbound.”

I don’t bring up Hitchcock lightly. By the end of “Side Effects” one must embrace it as a big, melodramatic spectacle or not at all. What’s such a slick move, however, is how we get there. I must be more careful about spoilers than usual here, but there are steps along the way where “Side Effects” tried on multiple outfits for size.

The upscale, economics-saturated drama (quite reminiscent in tone to “The Girlfriend Experience”) segues into suspense, then a legal yarn, then an “issue” picture and then, for a brief glistening moment, a tale about a man ruined by uncertainty, slowly going mad with paranoia.

Jude Law, who slowly reveals himself to be the film’s protagonist, is the victim of horrible circumstance and just can’t accept his fate and move on. He begins the film eloquent and charming in a stylish office, then becomes a raving, unshaven nut shoving laptops in front of his wife’s face and screaming about 9/11.

But is that where we leave him? No! You’ve no idea how this is going to wind up. Or, you do, if you’ve ever seen a simple mystery thriller before – it’s just that you didn’t know this was a mystery thriller, not with the artful way you see the back of a witnesses’ head in crisp focus while the jury is a group of smeared, blurry faces. Soderbergh’s near-pointillist camera is in philosophic harmony with Burns’ script which parachutes in and out of scenes to reveal their essence. It’s makes for invigorating viewing on its own, but reveals itself as essential in the final scenes.

You may come away from “Side Effects” calling it a potboiler, but there are fascinating themes throughout. In addition to the “Contagion”-like “this could really happen” fear-mongering about psychological pharmaceuticals, sure to be the basis of most press-tour talking points, there are delicious details about the oblique nature of truth. On a more surface level there’s how psychiatric science will always have a great deal of mystery (no one REALLY knows why electro-shock therapy does what it does), but the film gets heavy, man, and anyone who thinks the revelations of the script’s ending are a cop-out should be referred directly back to the script. You can’t ever REALLY know what others are thinking, even when you think you are seeing their true selves.

Grade: A-

Categories: Reviews

Tags: Side Effects

For Your Consideration: Matthew McConaughey in ‘Magic Mike’

When “Magic Mike” was first announced, the world took it as a colossal joke. Channing Tatum getting the biopic treatment? By Steven Soderbergh? It wasn’t quite the cinematic end times, but it was certainly a sign to many that Hollywood — even someone like Soderbergh — had run out of ideas. Studios were becoming so desperate to cash in on a brand that they would pretend Channing Tatum was one.

When the first cast member to sign on was Matthew McConaughey, the movie-watching world rolled its eyes. McConaughey was the finishing dollop of cheese (and chest muscle) that signaled this movie was nothing more than celluloid junk food. Yes, “The Lincoln Lawyer” had won our favorite shirtless surfer some dramatic credibility back, but “Magic Mike” appeared to be a regression into fluff, as if he was trying to atone for wearing a shirt and tie for an entire film. The casting of beefcakes that followed — Alex Pettyfer, Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer and Adam Rodriguez — didn’t bolster the confidence or enthusiasm of cinephiles. At best, Soderbergh was going to turn out a harmless piece of eye-candy for his new friend Channing. At worst, it was going to be, well, a Matthew McConaughey movie.

But then the buzz started. The film wrapped in late October 2011 and was immediately snapped up for distribution by Warner Bros. Insiders were whispering that, despite its appearance, its cast and its dubious origin, the movie was actually really good. It wasn’t long before test screenings singled out McConaughey’s performance as a highlight and an early frontrunner for an Oscar nomination. Once June rolled around, the hype turned out to be true, and the praise has clung to him like a pair of sweaty stripper chaps. The Indie Spirit Awards announced a nomination for McConaughey for Best Supporting Actor - the question is whether or not Dallas can “All right, all right, all right” himself into the Academy Awards.

By now, those who have assiduously avoided “Magic Mike” are scoffing. An Oscar nomination for a stripper named Dallas? For a movie called “Magic Mike”? Is everyone high? Isn’t it just the same old drawling McConaughey? What’s special about this incarnation except the thong?

Well, quite a bit. It’s a stellar performance from McConaughey, and largely because it happily trades on the star’s dopey image. Dallas initially seems like a good ol’ boy who has lucked out in the flesh trade. He’s charming and cocky, reveling in his ability to send his female audience crazy by stroking his own nipples. (His “The law says you cannot touch this!” monologue might be the most quoted scene of 2012.) He’s warm and generous to his cast of studs, especially his star Mike, and seems genuinely hurt when Adam (Pettyfer) tries to give him his first earnings. The way he shoves Adam’s money back at him is tender and paternal.

Dallas is also obsessive and driven, but in a way we initially appreciate. He wants to put on the best beefcake show in Tampa, and his dream is to make enough money to take Xquisite to Miami. When the show has technical errors (Tarzan passes out), Dallas flips out in a way anyone in a high-stress and chaotic job will identify with. The show must go on, the audience must be satisfied, and no one seems to care more about that than Dallas.

However, the man running a show called Xquisite isn’t exactly the businessman next door. Unsurprisingly, Dallas has a dark side. His relationship with his dancers is unsettlingly intimate and kinky. His view of women is a grim mix of romance and consumerism. His female audience is something to be pleased and teased (his “Ladies of Tampa” song is genuinely sweet), but they’re also something to be crassly derided. Dallas proclaims them to be a screaming and desperate horde, easily manipulated out of their $20 bills with each pelvic thrust and direct eye contact. He’s the portrait of the artist as a scumbag.

Still, isn’t he just McConaughey? Weirdo McConaughey, blowing fire and living in a house decorated entirely with images of himself? That’s certainly what Mike (and the audience) thinks, until Dallas reveals himself to be a vicious and manipulative manager who has been playing his fresh meat for years. The moment he turns on Mike is chilling, as Dallas snaps from laid-back bro to a cruel and craven user in an instant. Mike, who thinks of Dallas as an idiot pal, is as horrified as we are. It’s a terrifically meta moment, as though McConaughey and his alter ego have spent years crafting a daffy bongo-playing image purely to turn on us. While much has been made of his final scene (a deliciously sleazy, feverish striptease where McConaughey’s thong actually snaps off), it’s his throwdown with Mike that’s truly the stuff of a sizzle reel.

Even better, it’s not just Dallas revealing his true colors but the film itself. We thought “Magic Mike” was a smutty comedy with a character named Big Dick Richie, but Dallas’s I-own-you-moment turns it into a thoroughly adult film that could have been made in the ’70s with Warren Beatty or James Caan sporting his studded thong.

McConaughey could – and should – get an Oscar nomination this year for “Magic Mike.” Besides his performance as Dallas, the movies he’s appeared in since cruising around in “The Lincoln Lawyer” are wildly different. In 2011 alone, we saw him on screen as a Stetson-wearing Texas DA in “Bernie,” a psychopathic cop in “Killer Joe” and a very conflicted journalist in “The Paperboy” in quick succession, turning the tables on everyone who wrote him off as a romcom bonehead. He’s currently earning a ton of press for his alarming weight loss as preparation for his role as an AIDS patient in “The Dallas Buyers Club.”

Seemingly overnight, McConaughey has reinvented himself as a dedicated indie actor, willing to strip, wax and starve himself in order to achieve authenticity. If it was revealed tomorrow that McConaughey is actually a character being played by Daniel Day-Lewis in his most method performance to date, it would only be slightly less weird than what’s actually happened to the “Dazed and Confused” star. The Academy loves a career resurrection as much as they love flashy roles, and McConaughey has provided both. He probably won’t win against heavyweight favorites such as Philip Seymour Hoffman (“The Master”) or Tommy Lee Jones (“Lincoln”), but with a thong full of twenties and newfound industry respect, we think he already has.

Categories: Awards, For Your Consideration

Tags: bernie, dazed and confused, For Your Consideration, Killer Joe, Magic Mike, matthew mcconaughey, oscar, The Dallas Buyers Club, the lincoln lawyer, The Paperboy, Magic Mike, The Lincoln Lawyer, Killer Joe, The Paperboy, Steven Soderbergh, Matthew McConaughey

Eric’s Bad Movies: Magic in the Water (1995)

Every year, Hollywood produces several hundred family-oriented movies about workaholic fathers who vow not to neglect their children anymore after something zany happens, often involving an animal. These are among Hollywood’s most vital exports. But did you know that Canada, which is a country located directly north of America, also makes movies like this? It is true! They don’t just involve moose and penguins, either. Magic in the Water is about a Loch Ness monster!

This movie was filmed in a scenic “province” (their version of a state) called “British Columbia” (their version of Washington). It stars Mark Harmon as a brusque and unhelpful psychiatrist who hosts a radio call-in show on which he verbally abuses anyone desperate enough to seek his guidance. His character is named Jack Black, which is unfortunate. Jack Black is divorced and does not have custody of his children, so he compensates for this by being distant and inattentive whenever he’s with them.

Such is the case this particular summer, when he takes the kids to a charming lakeside town where the lake, legend has it, is home to a sea monster called Orky. Jack’s young daughter, Ashley (Sarah Wayne), believes in the legend, because kids are dumb like that. Jack’s 16-year-old son, Josh (a pre-Dawson’s Creek Joshua Jackson), scoffs at his gullible sister. I should point out, however, that the legend comes from a local Indian tribe, represented by a Wise & Mysterious Old Indian character who sits quietly and observes everything, so the chances of the legend being true start rapidly approaching 100 percent.

Also, the movie poster has a picture of Ashley sitting on the head of a sea monster.

Jack Black is here on “vacation” with the kids, but all he does is take work-related calls on his cell phones. Yes, plural. He has two cell phones that we see, and a third one chirping away in his luggage. The screenplay template said, “Insert details establishing that Father character is too busy for his children,” and this particular screenwriter, unable to come up with numerous details, simply multiplied the one detail he could think of.

Dad’s cell phone addiction leaves Ashley and Josh to sit around, bored in a quaint village that has been made all the quainter by being in Canada. One lazy day Ashley is on the pier at the lake when she thinks she sees something in the water and starts talking to it, as one does. She’s pretty sure it’s Orky. When it’s time to go, she leaves six Oreos on the pier as a treat. (Ashley always has a bag of Oreos with her, I don’t know why. I mean, I know why; Nabisco paid for product placement. But I don’t know why in the story.) The next day, the Oreos are still there — except the filling has been taken out!! Somehow Orky the giant lake monster carefully pulled the cookies apart, licked out the middles, and put them back together, despite being a giant lake monster without opposable thumbs! There must be magic in the water, because I can’t even pull an Oreo apart without one of the halves breaking.

Meanwhile, there’s a psychiatrist in town named Wanda Bell (Harley Jane Kozak) who runs a group therapy for people who believe they have not only seen Orky but been temporarily possessed by its spirit. Apparently that is something that Orky does, if it exists (which it does)! But Dr. Wanda figures it’s a hallucination, a psychosis that all her patients have acquired simultaneously. Such mass outbreaks of mental illness are not unprecedented. For example, many residents of Boston have been convinced for several years that the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, even though science proves that this is impossible.

One night Ashley overhears her dad complaining on the phone about how he doesn’t have time to be a father AND talk on his multiple cell phones. Her feelings hurt, Ashley half-heartedly runs away, though all she really does is wander away from the lake house over to another part of the lake. She climbs a rickety rope ladder up the face of a cliff, only to be imperiled when the rungs start snapping under her weight. (Josh climbed it earlier in the movie without incident, but whatever.) Jack goes looking for Ashley and winds up under the ladder just in time to break her fall when she plummets. Ashley is uninjured; Jack has a concussion. Also, at some point in all that he got possessed by Orky. When he wakes up, he is cheerful and merry and eager to play and romp with his children.

Jack now has a psychic connection to Orky and starts to get sick when Orky does. And why is Orky getting sick? Because of the steady diet of Oreo filling? Certainly not! It’s because some bad guys in town keep dumping toxic waste in the lake. It’s unclear where this hazardous material is coming from, as the town’s chief industry is Orky-related tourism, which is rather “green,” ecologically speaking. Maybe the bad guys are making plastic Orky masks out of deadly chemicals, then dumping the extra stuff into the lake, thus slowly poisoning the very thing that ensures their financial stability. Look, I didn’t say their business plan made any sense. Maybe capitalism works differently in Canada, because of the metric system.

Actually, in their defense, the bad guys do not believe that Orky actually exists. In fact, they have decorated a submarine to look like Orky (I do not know where they got a submarine), and they drive it around the lake now and then to ensure continued Orky “sightings” and drum up business. Somehow, Ashley and Josh get trapped in this Orky-submarine, and the submarine starts leaking, and they’re going to drown because I guess they can’t open the hatch and get out, maybe? And for some reason a Japanese boy is with them. And then Orky shows up — a mere 80 minutes into the film, I might add — and saves them, then is healed by the Wise & Mysterious Old Indian, who does some chanting and dancing around a totem pole in the forest, and everyone lives happily ever after.

As far as lame, nonsensical children’s movies borrowed from E.T. go, Magic in the Water is probably the most Canadian, except for Gooby. That’s the quote they can use on the DVD if they want.