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Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)
Profits Improbable: A Likely Box Office Flop
The studio had high hopes for this live-action cartoon, as the last entry in the series was a bit of a financial disaster. I guess losses had to be recouped, some profit made and the franchise to be revived.
It doesn't appear this is working out.
As of today, MI has done $152 million in business, worldwide, in eight days of release. Sounds impressive until you consider the economics of mainstream, wide release Hollywood "blockbusters." Pictures of this type are expensive to produce, market, advertise and distribute. Marketing and advertising costs generally run at a figure that's 50% of the production expense, and then distribution and general business costs to support the film are also quite high.
The total cost of MI will be at least $255 million. As a studio's cut of the entire box office drop is roughly 2/3, MI will have to generate about $385 million in business in order to be in the black.
Usually, a film of this type does 45% of its business in the first week of release, and has a useful shelf life in public appeal that lasts about a month and a half. If MI follows this general model, it will do about $320 million in total box office, which means something like $215 million in return to the studio.
The Friday-to-Friday gross on this film is down 60% in its second week. This is hardly encouraging.
You do the math. A $45 million dollar loss is significant, an amount that would be difficult to offset in the aftermarket (DVDs, Blu-rays, secondary release, broadcast rights, etc.).
It is likely this will be the last Tom Cruise MI flick, as the franchise is apparently exhausted in terms of economic vitality, and his brand is obviously diminished.
This is not surprising. Only two franchise pictures have been profitable this year, the Avengers offering and the Jurassic entry. "Mad Max" didn't make back its investment yet, and the current Adam Sandler piece of dreck is destined to be a big money loser, just like his last half dozen films.
Perhaps the studios should start rethinking their strategies. Actioners, CGI extravaganzas and childish attempts at comedies are hardly worth the investment anymore. Time to move on, apparently, to something else. Novelty and producing essentially the same picture time and time again eventually leads to diminishing returns.
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Just Your Typical Mindless, Juvenile Action Flick Piece Of Trash
Just what you could expect. A tiresomely frenetic, needlessly violent and mindless yawn of an actioner with cardboard characters, endless overdone special effects and a $29.95 script.
The storyline was moronic and the acting sucked. Robert Downey, Jr. was particularly lame, a master of two on-screen emotions.
Because I was working this event, I got to sit through it twice in one day. In 3-D. Once would have been more than enough.
No wonder these big-budget, so-called "blockbusters" are such box office bombs these days. They bite it big time the first time or two out as a franchise, and then become even more ridiculous and unwatchable as new installments are puked out. What kind of morons bankroll this type of crap? Really?
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Just Your Typical Action Flick With Extra 3-D Gimmicks
This film was shown as a pre-screening at The Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia on 5/11/15. I was working front-of-house for this event, which was well-promoted and highly anticipated. A virtual sell-out (roughly 400 in the house), but 1/3 of the tickets were Film Society waivers, Press passes and promotional giveaways.
I saw only perhaps 20 minutes of this, and, it was what I expected, a noisy, frenetic, cartoonish exercise in special effects, gratuitous violence and shock value. Ridiculous, lightweight premise and totally unbelievable characters. Visually compelling, but, that was about it...
In this, the flick will make some good coin, because such is what puts meat in the seats these days. Novelty, explosions and comic book narrative are what appeals at present in our low-brow, mainstream popular culture.
We had several walk-outs in the first half hour of the film. I asked these patrons what they didn't like about the film, and, the general response was a "waste of production money and talent." All right, this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but most of these folks were Film Society people, and, as a rule, they have higher standards and more informed taste than your average moviegoer.
At the end of the show, some departing patrons were enthusiastic about the film, but, most who I spoke to indicated that they felt it was merely a somewhat better-than-average actioner, nothing more.
Caveat emptor. When I finished my shift, I felt I was leaving a WWF event rather than an effort at meaningful filmmaking.
As a post-script on August 8, 2015: I predicted this would be a box office flop, and, I was on target.
Through today, this piece of junk has done $368 million in business worldwide. Sounds great, doesn't it? However, the studio gets 2/3 of the total drop, which means the return was around $240 million.
The total cost of the film production, advertising/promotion and distribution was roughly $250 million.
This latest installment in a worn-out franchise didn't even make back its investment during initial release.
Of course, it appealed to its low rent devotees, but, turned out, financially speaking, as "Dead Max."
High Society (1956)
High Priced Trash
Watching this piece of dreck right now on Turner Classic Movies. Although I always felt this was a fairly lame film, this viewing is driving home how second-rate this offering is.
Bland, limp Grace Kelly goes through her typical, wan motions as mere insipid Eye Candy. She can't sing a note, so, what's she doing in this project? Oh, I guess because she appealed to the clueless Mom and Pop audiences of the mid-1950s, her inclusion was to increase marquee (i.e., $$$-generating) value to the production.
Bung Crosby, who appears to be about 70 years old in this flick, does his usually weightless routine and sings in a style that's about 20 years out of date.
Frank Sinatra, who is sometimes a fairly good actor, is miscast, and hence, totally unconvincing in his role.
It's pretty absurd that the point of the film is to play up the love triangle between the three, seeing that der Bungle is old enough to be Kelly's father, and, Ol' Blue Eyes is aging already, 17 years her senior. Not much sexual chemistry is going on in this picture, folks...
So much is made of the fact the score is by Cole Porter, but, it's a pretty average collection of songs. Also outdated...
Louis Armstrong is given an extended cameo role, mostly wasted, but even Satchmo, great as he was in his prime, is showing signs of wear and tear here.
Celeste Holm should have been given more opportunity here, because she's the only bona-fide song and dance performer in the cast.
The script is a lightweight rehash of a much edgier and interesting film made about 15 years before. John Patrick, who wrote a good deal of crap in his career, is responsible for this.
Production values are pretty plastic and cheezy, too. The exterior and interior shots are so ill-matched in tone and design that they appear to be from two different motion pictures.
This film cost $2.7 million to make, which was a pretty high budget back then (perhaps 2x what a musical feature cost at that time), and, it returned about $5 million at the box office. Total profit was a little over $1 million, which made it only somewhat successful at the time. No wonder. Crosby was totally over the hill at that point, Sinatra was in the auto-pilot stage of his career, and Kelly's allure to moviegoers was fading. The Rock and Roll Era was beginning to ascend in 1956, which made this offering look instantly antique.
There's nothing particularly entertaining about this entry. If anything, it's a pretty shallow and annoying vehicle for three "stars" who were already past it.
Flying Leathernecks (1951)
Just Another John Wayne BS Opus, Good Effort By Director Ray
I just watched this predictable, laughable flag-waving chestnut on Turner Classic Movies. Really dated piece of pro-war propaganda with low-quality RKO Pictures production values.
Director Nicolas Ray, whose reputation has been more highly respected in recent years than during his own lifetime, did what he could with limited resources. A cliché-ridden, trite script, a weak leading man and third-rate technical support, yet Ray manages to craft all of this into a film that's at least somewhat watchable, but, in the context of passing history, inadvertently hilarious at times.
Most noteworthy is the typical Hollywod mythos-generation of John Wayne Winning WWII Singlehandedly. What a sad joke. That coward ducked out of his military commitment during the war, yet is positioned as the rah-rah, he-man, stalwart Man Of Action. In actuality, Wayne was classified as too old for service (but, only 34 when the war broke out) and also subject to a family exemption. This is curious, because other established Hollywood stars of his age, who also had families, served in active duty during WWII. Eddie Albert and Gene Autry, to name just a couple.
The head of Republic Pictures, Herbert Yates, threatened to sue Wayne if he enlisted and put his contract on hold. Such would have been a specious lawsuit that would not find any standing in a court of law, and could have given Wayne an opportunity to bring serious suit against his employer on the grounds of public defamation. So, apparently, Wayne didn't make much effort at getting into the war effort.
His co-star, Robert Ryan, actually served stateside as a DI at Camp Pendleton, yet Wayne is portrayed as the Superior Tough Guy in this film. How absurd.
If you like simplistic plots, synthetic studio production, and Chicken Wayne's generally wooden and one-dimensional attempts at acting, this might be your kind of cinematic fare.
The Spoils of Babylon (2014)
Best Left On The Cutting Room Floor
Totally unfunny vanity project for the absolutely untalented Will Ferrell. If this is supposed to be a send-up of the mini-series craze of the 1970s and 1980s, it's about two decades too late. Cartoonish, silly, downright predictable. I watched the first two episodes in order to give it a chance, in hopes that it would develop, but, it got worse as it went on. Seems that they ran out of ideas about mid-way through the second segment. I came to ask myself, "Why am I watching this? I could be doing something much more entertaining, like doing the dishes or cleaning out the catbox." You'd think with all the money Tobey Maguire makes that he'd spring for a bottle of shampoo. Sad to see someone like Tim Robbins reduced to appearing in a piece of dreck like this. And, the rest the cast? Well, a cadre of has-beens and never-was. What passes for funny among present generation television producers, directors, writers and audiences is pretty sad.
Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935)
A Great Domestic Comedy With Fields At His Sad Sack Best
In terms of comedic concept, this is Fields' greatest film. A seemingly minor domestic comedy about a henpecked husband, it is so well developed that most people miss the actual humor because they're probably looking for vulgar, low laughs.
The film opens with the classic "burglars in the basement" passage. Put-upon Ambrose Wolfinger (typically ridiculous Fields persona name), under the pretense of brushing his teeth (rubbing the toothbrush on the sink to ruse his shrewish wife into thinking he's making with concerted oral hygiene). His wife implores him to "please come to bed" while he's more interested in having a few nightcaps.
We learn, right off the bat, that dear Ambrose is a bit circumspect and somewhat quietly manipulative and apparently angry, but, this is a survivor's profile.
Meanwhile, the burglars (including a young Walter Brennan) break into the basement and find his cache of home-made applejack. They help themselves to a few libations and get quickly soused (must have been a wicked brew), and make more noise. Wolfinger's wife rouses him from sleep to go and investigate, and he, not being in any hurry to confront danger, does that elaborate routine while putting on his socks. When she insists that he take his gun with him, and it accidentally goes off, he's genuinely disappointed that the bullet didn't hit her. His call to the "Safety Patrol" is hilarious.
Then, after a spectacular fall down the basement steps, he starts drinking with the burglars and they become fast friends, ending up singing songs from some obscure boys' glee club from Wolfinger's past. The Safety Patrol finally shows up, and hauls Wolfinger off for making illegal hooch and the burglars get away. Ironic. Brilliant.
While in jail, there's that truly great scene of him in the cell with the homicidal maniac. One of the funniest three minutes of film ever recorded.
The bit with him eating burnt toast at the breakfast table the next morning is really great. Truly eating crow.
Then, at work as a "Memory Expert" with a filing system that's a total wreck, the satire of business can't be missed. Seeing that we're supposedly living in an "Information Age," his gross mismanagement of such is a prescient statement about the know-nothings who took over the Office World about 60 years after this film was shot.
Then, comes the central comic trope of the film, his desire to attend the wrestling matches (another present-day obsession of the slobs out there) and creating a bogus reason to take off him work during the afternoon (i.e., his priggish mother-in-law, a teetotaler, dying suddenly due to "bad alcohol"). He gets off from work for the first time in 25 years and goes to the match without a ticket because his original one was pinched by his oafish step-son.
On the way, he runs into his double-hott secretary, whose mother is apparently a good friend of one of the grapplers, Kukalaka Mishobob ("Ah, Kukalaka, didn't know his first name," Wolfinger says.), and they go into the arena together. At that point, Mishobob's opponent, "Tossoff, the Russian Giant" hurls his foe out of the ring, knocking Wolfinger to the ground. His secretary runs to his aid.
At that moment, the aforementioned step-son shows up and sees the spectacle of Wolfinger witless on the cobbles, apparently drunk, in the company of some young babe. Of course, he rushes straight home to report this.
Here you have willful and dimwitted duplicity backfiring, and false presumptions of an observer misreading a situation, which affords the ability to extend the comic conceit. This is total genius.
Meanwhile, Wolfinger's employer has contacted the newspapers about the supposed death of his mother-in-law, and notice of it shows up in the afternoon edition (remember those?) at the Wolfinger residence. Flower arrangements start showing up at the house. Obviously, the Home Front gets outraged about this.
Our Hero, thinking that he has totally gotten over, goes home, not knowing what's waiting for him there.
The structuring of all of this is masterful, and Fields' playing of it is totally right-on.
Of course, all works out well for him in the end. Although fired, his office can't operate without him operating his arcane filing system, and the firm is hoodwinked into rehiring him at a higher salary with a four-week vacation slated before he returns to work.
The final scene shows Wolfinger, his wife (who comes over to his side) and daughter going for a ride in the family car, with the mother-in-law and step-son sitting in the rumble seat during a driving rain. The true second-class pinheads get their comeuppance. Justice prevails.
The storyline of this film is absurd, but, so logical in comedic terms. Comedy is a series of mistakes that leads through a process of ensuing error that reaches a point of pain that must be endured. And, we, the observers, are totally in on the joke, but, the actors aren't.
Great film. Much more intelligent than any of that "American Pie" and Adam Sandler doo-doo that tries to pass itself off as comedy.