FEBRUARY, 8


ATHENA

Adventure / Epic
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Michael Fassbender, Joaquin Phoenix, Jonathan Rhys-Meyer, Sean Connery, Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Ciaran Hinds, Emily Blunt
Director and Producer: Zack Snyder
Screenwriters: James Bradley and Joey Stark

Box Office: 225 mill.
Net Gains: 197 mill.

Stark’s Reaction:
Great! Second best box office of the Season and also second highest net gains! The extremely high production costs have kept it away from even better net gains. But still it is a wonderful turnout for a release I can confess now that I was a little scared about how it would work.

LOVE LOST

Drama
Cast: Charlize Theron, Hayden Panettiere, Joshua Jackson, Michael Cera, James Gandolfini
Director: James Mangold
Screenwriter: Dawson Edwards


Box Office: 94 mill.
Net Gains: 58 mill.

Stark’s Reaction:
Oh, yeah! Second sleeper of the Season after ‘Foreclosed’. It confirms that the times when it was almost impossible for CMP to make a low budget drama work in box office have been definitely left behind. The female audience segment has responded particularly well and the numbers again beat by far my most optimistic expectations.

LITTLE MISS DOLLFACE

Comedy
Cast: Mackenzie Vega, Madison Pettis, Madeline Carroll, Catherine O’Hara, Taraji P. Henson, Amanda Peet, Jeffrey Wright, Eugene Levy, Jimmy Bennett, Fred Willard
Director: Christopher Guest
Screenwriter: Josh Collins

Box Office: 28 mill.
Net Gains: 17 mill.

Stark’s Reaction:
The only good thing I can say about this weak numbers is that at least the movie has avoided net losses and still has made some nice benefits. All in all, a more than satisfactory week for the Studio!


ATHENA

‘From time to time, Hollywood tries to resurrect peplum movies. In 2004, Wolfgang Petersen with ‘Troy’ and Oliver Stone with ‘Alexander’ (yes, that movie with Colin Farrell and that unforgivable blonde hair) returned to this classic genre. Both movies got a cold answer both from audiences and critics. ‘Athena’ has had better luck in terms of box office. The problem with peplums is that directors and producers are always too worried to make them look very epic and luxurious. It is as if they have to justify each cent spent on the movie. And they forget about the most important thing: entertainment. ‘Athena’ also falls in some of those common defects. The last part of the movie is again a succession of crowded battle sequences, something almost obliged in peplums. But the difference between ‘Athena’ and those movies is that ‘Athena’ has developed more an adventurous spirit. Snyder has worried not only of making it look epic but also of telling an entertaining adventure story. And that makes this movie more appealing to nowadays audiences than those historical recreations that only want to look big forgetting about being entertaining too.’
-Anne Roman

‘It seems like every CMP’s author has Zack Snyder in mind when the thing is making a bigger-than-life epic movie. Snyder has had many opportunities in CMP to succeed and he has missed too many of them. His two first movies for the Studio – ‘Preacher’ and ‘Wild Cards: Battle Of The Rox’ – were interesting movies that did not completely connect with audiences. Then came the epic ‘Kingdom’ saga and the two installments of it sunk Snyder’s prestige in CMP. It wasn’t until ‘Metroid’ when Snyder finally had a box office success in CMP. But, after all, ‘Metroid’ was his less ‘author-esque’ work for the Studio. It was just a mainstream sci-fi / action movie. With ‘Athena’, Snyder has made his second blockbuster for the Studio but again he has renounced to his personal directional style and has adapted to the rules of the industry. ‘Athena’ has nothing to do with ‘300’ in terms of visual creativity. So it all makes me consider again that maybe Snyder is an overvalued moviemaker than only succeeds when he renounces to his personal style and submits to the demands of mainstream Hollywood.’
-Charlie Kiggs

‘Joey Stark likes to revisit classic cinematic concepts from time to time (his recreation of traditional gangsters’ movies with ‘A Jazz Tale’ is a good example of that). And Bradley has also written historical movies before, like ‘The Toymaker’ or ‘Pompeii’. So this ancient Greek adventure looked as a perfect material for them to meet again. But, to be sure that they didn’t fail in this project, they have decided not taking any risk. They have bet for an allstars cast, a luxurious production design, an original / non-original story that allows them to build up spectacular sequences at their will and a starry director like Snyder. The result is the predictable mega-production – supported by a very expensive marketing campaign – that simply cannot go wrong. ‘Athena’ gives everything that promises. But it is more a product perfectly designed to become a blockbuster than a real creative challenge.’
-Vic Carter

LOVE LOST

‘Dawson Edwards has retaken here a narrative style he already used in another one of his dramas, ’24 Hours To Live’. Again, he takes a few characters with no link between them (not completely here: there is a circumstantial slight link between them this time) and jumps from one to the next as if the movie was a sum of short stories. That risky structure of the story works here better than it did in the mentioned Spike Lee’s movie. At least, there is a certain internal coherence here beyond that weak link between the main characters played by Theron and then Panettiere and Cera. Their stories are different approaches to the same concept, summarized in the title of the movie: the loss of love. But again it is difficult to get into a story where a character is suddenly abandoned to follow another one. As it happened with ’24 Hours To Live’, jumping from one character (and plotline) to another creates a certain distance between the movie and the audience that makes it difficult to completely get hooked to what is happening on screen.’
-Amy Ratched

‘Charlize Theron proves again her star power in this movie. I bet that, without her in it, this irregular movie would have never made the extraordinary box office it has. In fact, it is when Theron is on screen when the movie reaches the top of its emotional intensity. She perfectly plays that woman that simply cannot accept the loss of her beloved man. When the plot abandons her, the paradox is that although the events are much more intense – hard sex, abuse, murder… - that emotional intensity loses strength. It is Theron’s work - the feelings she expresses with just a look, the loneliness she transmits, the painful drama of her imaginary life – what upgrades the movie and turns it into a not perfect but at least interesting enough production.’
-Jackie O’Callaghan

‘Dawson Edwards keeps looking for new ways as story-teller. And that permanent search as author deserves a praise, no matter the results. Edwards could simply keep writing those superheroes movies that have given him his biggest hits. But, instead of that, he proves to be an author in permanent evolution always looking for new things. The result of his daring experiments are sometimes a wonderful finding in terms of visual and narrative style (‘The Cool’) and some others may take him to partially failed movies, like this ‘Love Lost’. But besides the results, I must applaud Edwards for not being a conformist author but a tireless searcher of new cinematic languages.’
-Mark Anderson

LITTLE MISS DOLLFACE

‘There are a few things that should end in this world: war, hunger, Aids… and beauty pageants. Once said so, did we need this movie to remember that? More seriously, the problem with this fake documentary is that it focuses in an issue that it is not exactly of general interest. Not too many people (I guess and I hope) care about that sophisticated torture technique for little girls that this kind of contests are. As it has happened before with other Collins’ stories, he puts his eye again in an issue that it is not too interesting for most of the people: kids’ beauty pageants. You cannot expect a story like this to attract a wide range of moviegoers.’
-Roy Winslow

‘A mockumentary is meant to be funny, excessive, surprising, ironic or even irritating. ‘Little Miss Dollface’ is nothing of that. There are not really comedic situations in this movie. There are not plot twists or unexpected sequences that surprise us. It just pictures all the clichés and stereotyped characters we can imagine that can be found in beauty pageants (the exploited girls, the mean ambitious mothers…). The characters in the story behave exactly as we expect them to behave. ‘No More Bush!’, another CMP’s mockumentary, used a wild premise – the gay love story between Bush and Tony Blair – to laugh at international politics. But ‘Little Miss Dollface’ only makes a loyal picture of what beauty pageants and the people around them are with no special surprise or twist. There is not a real parodic spirit in the story or even funny situations. There is only a denunciation based on showing us the sick atmosphere of these pageants. In that sense, ‘Little Miss Dollface’ could have perfectly been a real documentary and not a faked one.’
-Tim Reeve

‘It is impossible not remembering the wonderful ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ when watching this Christopher Guest’s work. And, honestly, any possible comparison between that great movie and this is terrible for this one. I know the approach to the story, the plot, the tone or the characters in both movies are completely different. But there is a link between them beyond the titles and all the findings of ‘Sunshine’ are missing in ‘Dollface’. Guest has tried to be acid, sharp, brave and funny in his way of showing the drama beneath beauty pageants. But he has not reached any of those objectives. ‘Little Miss Dollface’ is a pretty flat work that does not provoke or make laugh or move the audience enough. Some times, results simply do not meet the good intentions.’
-Andrew Stampton