NOVEMBER, 15


GOD OF WAR

Action Adventure
Cast: Vin Diesel, Maria Bello, Rosario Dawson, Nicholas Hope, Anthony Hopkins, Odette Yustman, Stephanie Janusaukas
Director and Producer: Guillermo Del Toro
Screenwriter: Josh Collins

Box Office: 78 mill.
Net Gains: 10 mill.

Stark’s Reaction:
When you invest an amazing amount of money in a movie production (in fact, finally this one turned out to be one of the most expensive movies ever produced by the Studio), you spend another huge amount of money in the marketing campaign and then box office is as weak as this, 'a bit disappointed' is not enough to describe how I feel… Poor box office and even worse net gains for a top budget production like this. Production costs rose to the sky making almost impossible to make a big net benefit.

STATE OF MIND

Action / Crime
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Michael Chiklis, Martin Freeman, William Fitchner, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Olivia Wilde, Dennis Quaid, Boris Kodjoe.
Director: Neil Blomkamp
Screenwriter: Chad Taylor

Box Office: 20 mill.
Net Losses: 17 mill.

Stark’s Reaction:
I wrote past Friday that I had bad vibrations about this release… And my pessimistic prediction has been confirmed. Sometimes, I hate to be right.

PRETEND TO SMILE

Drama
Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Vera Farmiga, Alfred Molina, Jeremy Sumpter. Cameo by Joshua Jackson.
Director: Tom Ford
Screenwriter Dawson Edwards

Box Office: 19 mill.
Net Losses: 9 mill.

Stark’s Reaction:
It seems like this Season we have gone back to the bad old days when it was so difficult to make a drama work at box office. Another terrible week for the Studio… Nine movies released this Season and five of them have flopped at box office. I can’t remember such a disaster ever before in CMP’s history.


GOD OF WAR

‘Guillermo Del Toro has left aside his independent spirit in his CMP’s career to be in charge of very mainstream top budget productions like the ‘Dragonlance’ trilogy or this ‘God Of War’. Having the chance to manage a huge budget allows Del Toro to display without limits all his visual power. And that’s what he does in this spectacular production. ‘God Of War’ is more than anything else a visual show. Del Toro builds up an epic universe to tell a mythological adventure in which the scenario and digital effects end up eating the story itself. As a mainstream production, ‘God Of War’ is the big show expected. But, from a creative point of view, in this transition from being an outsider of the industry to be a mainstream author, Del Toro has lost a bit the freshness and naivety of films like ‘Hellboy’.’
-Vic Carter

‘Some CMP’s authors insist on considering Vin Diesel as an actor capable of doing something more than the routine ‘Fast & Furious’ movies. Big mistake. Could Stallone really do something more than playing Rambo or Rocky in his glory days? I understand that it was needed a muscular guy to play Kratos. But betting so much money in a film production starred by Vin Diesel is an unconscious move. ‘God Of War’ pretends to be something more than a popcorn movie. It pretends to mix entertainment with a certain level of artsy quality. And that’s too much for Vin Diesel. Producers didn’t count on the prejudices of a wide segment of the audience that will never believe that Diesel can make a quality movie. So don’t be surprised by the low box office.’
-Andrew Stampton

‘Del Toro and Collins have built up a false mythological story same way than Bradley and Stark did some Seasons ago with ‘Athena’. The funny thing is that this ‘God Of War’ is closer to the visual style of ‘300’ than ‘Athena’, although it was Zack Snyder who directed this one. Less intellectually pretentious than ‘Athena’, ‘God Of War’ is more ambitious than that one in terms of visual strength. But while ‘Athena’ was more credible, ‘God Of War’ is too much slaved of its origin as videogame and that makes it much more superficial. Characters and the relationships between them are not developed enough as action sequences take precedence over the rest of the elements of the story (not even the family tragedy is developed as much as it could have been) turning the film into a baroque and sophisticated but also too superficial show.’
-Tim Reeve

STATE OF MIND

‘Watching this movie, I had the feeling that Chad Taylor had found a good premise to work on but finally he did not decide what to do with it. ‘State Of Mind’ is not an action thriller about a hostage kidnapping. It is not either a business thriller ala ‘Wall Street’ or a drama about the complex relationships between a father and his son or the picture of a dysfunctional young man. It has a bit of all that but it does not get to be any of that. The result is an inconsistent story that does not go anywhere. It seems like Taylor does not exactly know what to do with the story, trying to save it with useless turns (some of them as senseless as letting us know at the end that Garfield’s character is autistic, although he has not behaved in any way as an autistic person at all during the movie), and Neil Blomkamp just cannot do anything to save the movie. A failed work, anyway you look at it.’
-Roy Wisnlow

‘I have the feeling that CMP is overestimating lately the star power of some young talents. Young stars like Andrew Garfield, Emma Watson or Robert Pattinson still don’t have the appeal enough to fill the movie theatres by themselves, no matter how much teenagers love them. When they work with a quality material – Pattinson with ‘The Forgotten’ trilogy or Emma Watson with ‘The Jungle’ – they get to shine as movie stars. But if the material is not solid enough (‘Grow Old With Me’, this ‘State Of Mind’) they have not reached yet the screen presence or acting skills enough to save the function with only their presence. Andrew Garfield, like Pattinson or Watson or Daniel Radcliff among others, has a promising future ahead of him as long as he makes the right choices in his career and, most of all, as long as he understands that he is not yet the big star he may get to be in the future.’
-Jackie O’Callaghan

‘I only have one doubt about ‘State Of Mind’. I wonder what would have happened if finally Martin Scorsese would have directed this movie as it was originally planned. Would have been Scorsese talented enough to build a vibrant story upon this screenplay? Would have the originally cast Pitt or Hanks or Penn got to build characters interesting enough instead of the flat acting works made but their replacements? Or was this story condemned to failure no matter the talents involved? We’ll never know. The only truth is that ‘State Of Mind’ is an absolutely dispensable movie hardly bearable to watch even on DVD.’
-Mark Anderson

PRETEND TO SMILE

‘It has been said often that CMP is a pretty conservative Movie Studio. Sex and nudity are not usual elements in CMP’s movies. In that sense, ‘Pretend To Smile’ deserves to be applauded at least because it dares to show without complexes hard sex sequences and to get into the issue of prostitution without squeamishness. The stylish Tom Ford has made a brave movie without commercial concessions. In some way, this movie shows more a ‘picture’ than a ‘story’. The film is the portrait of a young prostitute and her drama looking more to provoke feelings in the audience that to develop a plot. And Ford reaches his objective: at the end, you can understand the melancholic sadness of this young woman and to share her feelings, feeling as disgusted and hopeless as she feels about her own life. A deep, painful and interesting movie.’
-Anne Roman

‘Brave debut in CMP by Amanda Seyfried. She has dared to choose a difficult movie that had no chance to become a box office’s success. And she has also dared to play a complex character with full nudity included. Not many young stars would have been as brave as her. And the best of it is that, at the end, ‘Pretend To Smile’ is most of all a personal success for her. Seyfried perfectly shows the mix of vulnerability and strength her character demands, the hardness of living the life of a mature woman still being a young girl and the sad mixture between hopelessness and hope in the way she faces life. Her acting work is by far the best of this movie.’
-Chris Burgess

‘The problem a moviemaker has when he has to tell a story with no real plot is that still the movie needs to last at least 80 or 90 minutes. And no doubt that was a problem with this Dawson Edwards’ screenplay. Inevitably, Tom Ford has been obliged to stretch sequences, dialogues, silences… everything, too much. And the also inevitable result of that is a movie with a severe lack of pace and interest. Tom Ford has not created with this story the atmosphere he got to create with his previous film, the interesting ‘A Single Man’. Here, he only tries to look artsy as diluted characters, undefined relationships and unconcluded situations turn ‘Pretend To Smile’ in a failed movie not as artsy or as dramatic or as inspirational as it pretended to be.’
-Amy Ratched