NOVEMBER, 9


JUSTICE LEAGUE 2

Action / Superhero
Cast: Christian Bale, Henry Cavill, Cobie Smulders, Ryan Reynolds, Joshua Jackson, Joseph Fiennes, Josh Brolin, Mark Strong, Simon Baker, Marion Cotillard.
Director: Christopher Nolan
Screenwriter: Chad Taylor

Box Office: 298 mill.
Net Gains: 588 mill.

Stark’s Reaction:
I simply cannot find the words to describe my state of shock… Look at that! 588 MILLIONS OF NET GAINS! I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW IT WAS POSSIBLE TO REACH A NUMBER LIKE THAT!!! Ok, let’s calm down and analyze… This movie becomes the top 3 best box office ever. And, of course, it becomes by far the top 1 highest net gains ever. To make you understand how amazing this record is I have to say that the previous top 1 highest net gains was ‘Silver Sable and the Genesis Coalition’ and it generated 420 millions of net gains. So ‘Justice League 2’ has not only broken that record but it has absolutely pulverized it! It is the new number one with 168 millions of difference from the second one! This is, without doubt, a historic date in CMP’s history!

IT’S JUST NOT WORKING OUT

Romantic Comedy
Cast: Cameron Diaz, Jason Bateman, Meryl Streep, Vince Vaughn, Emily Blunt
Director: James L. Brooks
Screenwriter: Josh Collins


Box Office: 162 mill.
Net Gains: 171 mill.

Stark’s Reaction:
WOW! Not as important as ‘Justice League 2’ achievements, but these are also most remarkable numbers. We are talking of a romantic comedy here… and look at those numbers! It has been so long since we hadn’t had a ‘sleeper’ like this. Not even in my happiest dreams, I would have thought this movie was going to work this well at box office!

HOUSTATLANTAVEGAS

Comedy / Love Story
Cast: Adam Brody, Emma Stone, Chris Pine, Mila Kunis, Sienna Miller, Rachel Bilson, Thomas Haden Church, John C. McGinley
Director: Todd Philips
Producer: Grand Island Movies
Screenwriter: Dawson Edwards

Box Office: 4 mill.
Net Losses: 30 mill.

Stark’s Reaction:
This week is like a roller-coaster. Here we have something that had not happened either for a very long time in CMP. We don’t see a box office’s disaster like this often (thanks God…). I have checked out the whole list of CMP’s releases and I could only find these ones: ‘Poor Little Rich Boy’ (4 mill.), ‘Outer Eye’ (3 mill.), ‘The Library’ (3 mill.), ‘The Company’ (2 mill.) and the Best Picture GMA Winner ‘Nagasaki Daydreams’ (2 mill.). And all those movies were released many Seasons ago so we were not used to see something like this anymore. Oh, what a week…! These are too many surprises for just one week!


JUSTICE LEAGUE 2

‘It feels stupid pretending to say something bad about a movie that has generated 588 million of net gains for Crazy Moon Pictures. I don’t think that ‘Justice League 2’ is the perfect superhero movie or anything. I still consider that other CMP’s brilliant movies like ‘The Avengers 4: Civil War’, ‘Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia’ or the recent ‘Superman: Last Son’ had a much more consistent story than this one. But sometimes audiences decide to love a movie unconditionally and that is reason enough to admire and praise a production like this. Once said so, ‘Justice League 2’ is a great show wonderfully directed by the always talented Christopher Nolan. The screenplay is well written and the story is well paced. All the members of the cast fit like a glove in their characters. So why should I be picky with this movie? I had a very good time watching it so I will just join the celebration without further comments.’
-Charlie Kiggs

‘Villains are always essential in most superheroes movies. I could mention lots of superheroes movies in which the villain becomes the main attraction of it. ‘Justice League 2’ is close to that. The five members of the JL are wonderful choices. But this time it was the bunch of villains who stole my heart. Brolin, Cotillard and Baker had already proved they could offer a lot playing their characters in previous movies. Joseph Fiennes makes the best Lex Luthor ever (much better than the excessive and exaggerated, almost parodic, works of Hackman and Spacey when they played the character). But the winner of them all is Mark Strong. Sinestro has automatically joined the hall of fame of superheroes movies’ villains. It is his wonderful creation one of the elements that upgrades this movie turning it into an obliged reference for any other superhero movie to be made in the future.’
-Andrew Stampton

‘It may be more spectacular and less dark than ‘The Dark Knight’, but Christopher Nolan has proven again that he is probably the only moviemaker that can offer something new in a genre with such rigid rules and clichés as superheroes movies. Nolan has shot one of the most spectacular sequences I have seen on a movie screen. The long collective fight between heroes and villains is an example of how an action sequence has to be planned, paced and shot. It lasts something like 20 minutes or more, but still it keeps you hypnotized during its whole length, something that only a brilliant moviemaker like Nolan is capable of doing. Nolan has shut their mouth again to anyone that still may consider that a superhero movie is only a piece of cheap entertainment and cannot be a piece of top cinematic quality.’
-Vic Carter

IT’S JUST NOT WORKING OUT

‘Making a good romantic comedy is something much more difficult than it may seem. Romantic comedy is a genre that does not accept surprising endings, violence, sex or any kind of bloody sequence. Everything has to be soft and predictable. Fans of romantic comedies go to watch these movies knowing what they want from them. They don’t want any fright or any breaking of the immutable rules of the genre. But still the movie has to be funny and interesting enough. It’s such a difficult challenge. Only from time to time (maybe only once per decade) a romantic comedy is brilliant enough to offer something new without breaking those rules. ‘Pretty Woman’ or ‘When Harry Met Sally’ (I would include here too ‘500 Days Of Summer’, although it does not completely respect the rules) are some of those rare cases when a predictable romantic comedy becomes a great movie and a box office’s success. ‘It’s Just Not Working Out’ is not as good as those movies. It is much more predictable and stereotyped than all of them. But it is nice, entertaining, enchanting and funny enough to have become an outstanding box office’s hit even though it is not a great movie too. And that does not happen often in this genre. So, most of all, the movie deserves our respect.’
-Amy Ratched

‘Any romantic comedy depends 100% on the chemistry of the starring couple. There is nothing more embarrassing that watching on screen an actress and an actor trying to interact and failing (can I mention here just as one of the many possible examples, Gerard Butler and Jennifer Anniston in the horrendous ‘The Bounty Hunter’?). Cameron Diaz and Jason Bateman – two talents with a proven skill for comedic characters – carry on their shoulders the weight of this movie without major worry. Their chemistry works from the very first moment we see them together on screen. And that helps in a decisive way to make this movie something close to another Diaz’s movie with which this one has certain similarities, ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’, a romantic comedy as nice, funny and pleasant to watch as this one.’
-Jake Cobb

‘There’s something funny about James L. Brooks. He is one of the brains behind ‘The Simpsons’ (my favorite animated tv series of all times by far). But when he decides to direct a movie, he seems to leave always aside the acid, intelligent and twisted sense of humor of that series to become a much more conventional and soft storyteller. In ‘It’s Just Not Working Out’, I miss again that corrosive and caustic sense of humor I presume in a man linked to ‘The Simpsons’ for more than twenty years. As moviemaker, Brooks always moves between a hard sentimentalism (remember ‘Tears Of Endearment’) and a soft comedy tone (like in this one). It does not mean his movies are not well made and funny or moving enough. But it is always as if there is something missing that anyone could reasonably expect from Brooks.’
-Chris Burgess

HOUSATLANTAVEGAS

‘This movie was presented by CMP as a Comedy / Love Story. Untrue. It is not a comedy. I cannot consider a movie a comedy if it doesn’t get to make me at least smile not even for a single time during its whole length. There are not real comedic moments, no funny dialogues and not a single joke that works in it. And let’s make it clear for once and forever: a drunk guy in a strip club is not something automatically funny. It is needed something more than that to be funny. And it isn’t either a love story. A drunk guy has a night of wild sex with a drunk girl. The morning after he asks her to marry him. And she says yes without hesitation. A new variation of ‘boy meets girl’? Well, that’s not what I understand for ‘a love story’. Call me old fashioned, but where has romance gone in these days? Definitely, if Edwards and Philips really pretended to make a comedy / love story, they have failed in both tasks.’
-Anne Roman

‘I thought this was the movie that would definitely launch Adam Brody and Emma Stone as two of the newest biggest stars in CMP. After watching it, I am afraid they have taken a step in the wrong direction. Adam Brody made a wonderful impression with his CMP’s debut, the brilliant ‘Sunshine On Lonely Street’. But that good impression has lost heart with this second movie. And Emma Stone keeps taking wrong decisions in her CMP’s career, combining great movies (‘The Miracle Men’, ‘Son Of The Bride’) with embarrassing ones (‘Psycho: Bloodline’, ‘Out Partying’, this one…). They both owe us now something really good to make us forgive and forget what they have done this time.’
-Tim Reeve

‘Forced. Everything is forced in this story. The picture of the characters, their behavior and reactions, the dialogues and situations… What kind of girl would accept marrying the guy she has just spent a night of alcohol and sex that can hardly remember with? Do we really need Pine and Kunis’ characters in the story? Can you simply believe that casual meeting between Emma and Rachel? I better won’t go on enumerating the multiple inconsistencies of the plot… Well, even the wildest and silliest comedies have some kind of internal coherence. But not this one. Everything is too unbelievable and seems to be forced by Edwards only to try to put some sense in a road movie that goes nowhere. This movie has made me remember a comedy written by Josh Collins and released in Season 7: ‘Super Bowl’. It was also a road movie about a group of young people. Critics were pretty hard on it. But now, compared to ‘Houstatlantavegas’, ‘Super Bowl’ looks like a comedy classic to me. Todd Philips, a specialist in wild road movies, has missed the shot this time. If you liked ‘The Hangover’… avoid this one.’
-Roy Winslow