DECEMBER, 6


ALAN WAKE

Action / Mystery
Cast: Tom Cruise, Rebecca Hall, Oliver Platt, Rosamund Pike, Elizabeth Olsen, Brent Sexton, Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson, Brad William Henke, Cristine Ross
Director: David Slade
Producer: Tom Cruise
Screenwriter: Yuri Redding

Box Office: 173 mill.
Net Gains: 193 mill.

Stark’s Reaction:
Excellent turnout for this quality piece of entertainment. It has worked in a wonderful way both in theatres and DVD market. I will fully support Redding if he turns this movie in the beginning of a new franchise. Remarkable achievement too for Cruise as producer.

SUSPIRIA

Horror / Mystery
Cast: Blake Lively, Ophelia Lovibond, Angelica Huston, Helena Bonham-Carter, Daniel Bruhl, Dianna Agron, Hugo Weaving, David Hewlett
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Screenwriter: D.R. Cobb

Box Office: 47 mill.
Net Gains: 15 mill.

Stark’s Reaction:
I am happy Cobb has made net gains with this interesting movie after audiences mistreated the great work he did with another creative horror movie like ‘Midnight’ was.

JUNGLE OF THE DEAD

Adventure / Exploitation
Cast: Nana Visitor, Daniel Roebuk, Rainn Wilson, Bruce Campbell, Sarah Paxton, Tony Todd, Eli Roth, Adam Weisman
Director: Rob Zombie
Producer: Midnight Movies
Screenwriter: Matt Kubrick

Box Office: 60 mill.
Net Gains: 27 mill.

Stark’s Reaction:
If I’m not wrong, these are the best numbers made by a Midnight Movies release in a long time. It’s the nice surprise of this week for me, cause I didn’t really expect such a nice turnout for this one.


ALAN WAKE

‘’Alan Wake’ is a solid product of entertainment built up with an intelligent mix of elements. At some points, it is a suspense movie with a dark atmosphere and reminiscences of paranoid stories like Scorsese’s ‘Shutter Island’, at some others it places the emphasis on digital effects or it even get close to the clichés of a supernatural horror movie and some other moments it becomes a typical ‘whodunit’ film. At the end, it is a bit of all that without being exactly nothing of it. And it works from the entertainment point of view but it makes the film look too much as a formula movie devoid of any author-esque pretension. David Slade has made what he was asked to: a blockbuster. Nothing less. But also nothing more than that. And maybe this story could have allowed him to look for some visual or narrative innovations he has renounced to. At the end, it all stays at an efficient but maybe too mainstream level.’
-Tim Reeve

‘The star power of Tom Cruise still remains. This top budget production is another vehicle mainly conceived for him to shine. He can be seen in each and every sequence of the movie and he proves that, no matter the time passed and his progressive loss of popularity, he still is one of the big names of the industry. As producer, he has built a personal show where everything in the movie – from the well paced action sequences to the efficient display of digital effects – is put at the service of his star power. As an actor, he does again what he has done a million times before. And it still works. Audiences have supported this movie and Cruise now has the right to claim the status he deserves as one of the top stars of our time… yet.’
-Amy Ratched

‘David Slade has taken another step forward in CMP’s world after ‘The Question’ to be considered as one of those directors capable of managing a top budget production. Yuri Redding has shown another side of him as writer of blockbusters and not only of more artsy stories like his two previous works for the Studio, the great ‘The Jungle’ and the failed ‘Innocence’. Tom Cruise has remembered us all that he still rules in the industry. And Harry Stark has made nice profits with it. So the main talents involved in the making of ‘Alan Wake’ can feel happy and satisfied enough. They probably don’t care that they have made a movie with a too confusing plot, more based on the luxurious production design than on narrative coherence and that this is one of those enjoyable films that you forget as soon as you watch it. Their personal objectives have been reached and at the end that’s the main thing they all probably wanted.’
-Vic Carter

SUSPIRIA

‘Horror movies have always been mistreated in CMP’s world both by audiences and critics. Us, the regular reviewers of CMP’s films, have the tendency to consider horror as a minor genre and to treat horror flicks with condescension. That’s why it’s particularly nice to make justice to such an essential movie genre with this ‘Suspiria’. Here we have an excellent horror movie. One of those films that keep you with your heart pounding during its whole length as you stay tense at the edge of your seat. Without appealing to unneeded gory images, ‘Suspiria’ builds up with a perfect pace an increasing suspense and a hypnotizing claustrophobic atmosphere. The disturbing story traps you as if you were caught in that sick dark world as much as the lead character not giving you a second to relax. Great film for those who love a classic concept of horror more based on provoking disturbing feelings than on making you jump on your seat with easy punch lines.’
-Charlie Kiggs

‘I know I should write here about Blake Lively and her debut in CMP. But I won’t. And the reason is that I can’t help writing about Angelica Huston, the big show stealer of this film. We have to be very much grateful to D.R. Cobb and Yuri Redding for having resurrected Angelica’s career in CMP. After playing minor roles in CMP films like ‘Midnight’, ‘Oedipus Rex’ or ‘The Jungle’, Angelica shines in all her splendor in this excellent movie. Her creation of a most creepy witch here is far away from parodic works she’s made like ‘The Adams Family’. In ‘Suspiria’, she has taken her job absolutely seriously and she has built up a character with a disturbing screen presence as terrifying as it had to be. She scares you just with showing up on screen. Simply unforgettable. What a big actress she is. Oh, yes, and it was nice too to see Blake Lively in a CMP movie at last…’
-Jackie O’Callaghan

‘Vincenzo Natali has nothing to do as moviemaker with any of the usual specialists in horror movies of our days. Natali would never direct something like ‘Saw VIII’ or whatever or any other flesh and blood show for teenagers. He is one of those rare cases of a director capable of making author-esque horror films. In fact, this ‘Suspiria’ is even better than the original movie made by Dario Argento more than 25 years ago. Natali is a master creating obsessive atmospheres and quality suspense. Although ‘Suspiria’ is a more mainstream and less experimental work that some other films from him, he has put all his talent in it to create some of the most impressive and scary sequences seen on a movie screen for a long time. And these praises have to be extended to D.R. Cobb not only for writing a well paced screenplay but also for making such intelligent choices to direct and star the film.’
-Roy Winslow

JUNGLE OF THE DEAD

‘When I was a kid, there was a legend around a lousy Italian film titled ‘Cannibal Holocaust’. The film was a fake documentary about a film crew who was at the Amazon filming indigenous tribes and ended up being tortured and eaten alive by them. The legend was that the film was in fact a kind of snuff movie and that the horrible sequences of tortures were real. The legend worked well enough to turn that horrendous movie in a more than decent box office’s success. Thirty years later, Rob Zombie and Matt Kubrick seem to have paid a tribute to that old film. This ‘Jungle Of The Dead’ could be considered almost as an unofficial remake of that movie. Here, they don’t pretend it to make us believe it is a real history but, besides that, the concept is very much the same: a gratuitous succession of brutal sequences with no other interest than offering a gore show about the different ways a tribe of indigenous get rid of unwelcome visitors. As nasty as needless.’
-Chris Burgess

‘The only thing requested to the talents hired for this movie is to know how to scream and show terrified faces while they are killed by the indigenous. Like it happened with past Season’s ‘Island Of The Dead’, we don’t get to know much about the bunch of characters in the story and we don’t really care if they live or die. Rob Zombie and Matt Kubrick do not expect you to feel sorry or shocked or sad for their dead. They only want you to scream, whistle and applaud every time one of them is killed in the most violent way. Watching those flat characters, you don’t think ‘oh, I hope he or she gets to survive…’ You just think ‘oh, I hope this one will be killed in an even more savage way than the previous one…’. Yes, some people have fun with that.’
-Anne Roman

‘Rob Zombie had worked twice before with Matt Kubrick in CMP. Many Seasons ago, Zombie directed an entertaining action movie titled ‘Shotgun Joe’. And, before that, he directed what probably is the best exploitation movie ever made by the Studio and still considered as a cult rarity: ‘Damnation Road’, starred by no other than an ultraviolent Charlize Theron. Both movies made net gains for the Studio. Surprisingly, this third collaboration between Zombie and Kubrick has made too much better numbers than expected. But, in terms of quality, ‘Jungle Of The Dead’ is very far away from those films, specially ‘Damnation Road’. This is only a subproduct oriented to fans of gore without prejudices. Weak stomachs abstain.’
-Mark Anderson