MY SECOND FIVE FILM WEEKEND

During the Memorial Day Weekend I went to five films.  This past weekend, I repeated this ordeal:

FILM                                WEEKEND  ROTTEN TOMATOES   MY
                                            RATING    CRITICS AUDIENCE  GRADE

Now You See Me                     2              44%        75%           B

After Earth                              3              12%         44%          B-

Frances Ha                            11               91%        81%          B-

At Any Price                          44              48%         53%         C+

Epic                                        5              61%         67%         ??

Now You See Me is a caper film using magic to befuddle the authorities and audience.  Maybe it was my hearing, but I just could not keep up with the dialogue sufficiently to understand what was totally happening.  I figured it out enough to realize at the end that Mark Ruffalo (right, FBI agent Dylan Rose) was the mastermind, but there were so many loose ends:  how did he gain so much credibility as to bring four second-rate unknowns to the big stage in Las Vegas, and where did he get the knowledge, connections and funds to pull off such an expensive series of ploys.  Clearly, it had something to do with The Eye, of which little was explained, leading, almost surely, to a sequel entitled, THE EYE.  At the end, it was a challenging enough of a film that one might be tempted to see it a second time to more adequately appreciate the nuances.  The most endearing character was Melanie Laurent (right) as Alma Varga, a semi-mysterious interloper from Interpol, mostly because of her French accent, even though I couldn't understand half her English, and none of her French, yet this was my PhD language.

After Earth had some excellent animation, but was a weak movie with huge technical loopholes.  What kind of idiocy overcame Will Smith and his son Jaden to team with M. Night Shyamalan, whose last few directing fiascos have been ignominiously embarrassing.  A 12% review is truly bad.  Hangover 3 got a 20% rating.  On the other hand, John Travolta's Battlefield Earth, yes another Earth, got only 2%.  I found Disney's 2009 Earth, though, garnering 87%.

For the record you got to admire Will for promoting his family, even though the marriage to Jada Pinkett is now unofficially thought to be an open one.  From all reports, it was the wife who first found another lover, Marc Anthony, former husband of Jennifer Lopez, all of 43, now dating 25-year old backup dancer Casper Smart.  As the world turns.

Frances Ha reminded me of Manhattan and Annie Hall, with Greta Gerwig playing Diane Keaton, and without Woody Allen's jokes.  Like Manhattan, Ha is in black and white, but the sense of the characterization leans towards Annie Hall.  Ha, incidentally, is not Chinese.  Ha is the contraction of a longer name beginning with Ha.  This was a charming film, but, kind of sad, in that at the end Frances seems to have given up on her dreams, even though she knew she was not much good at dancing.  Is a realistic and comfortable "rest of your life" better than a torturous existence bereft with disappointments and insults?  This is the final fork in the road now facing the rest of my life.

At Any Price has only been out for six weeks and has already sunk so low that it only made $23,000 for the entire weekend.  Life of Pi has been around for 28 weeks and earned $22,000.  Even though Monsanto and Genetically Modified Organisms [the prevalence of GMO crops: corn (88%), cotton (94%), soy beans (93%), and papaya (75%--I think it's higher)] are are in the headlines today, the drama on a modern-day farm I guess cannot draw crowds.  Dennis Quaid played a glad-handing cheater, who (and I guess this is why he took the part), gains a conscious at the end and almost redeems himself.  You wonder, though, if those fingerprints on that hammer will some day come back to haunt the family.  Ah a sequel.  Quaid and Zac Efron sneak back at night to retrieve this murder weapon, but gets caught, and is somehow rescued by their now famous older son/brother...nah, that's indeed a stretch, especially in Dekalb County, Illinois.

I said last week that I don't go to animated films.  Well I snuck into Epic, and suffered.  First, it was embarrassing, for every adult had at least one child.  Interesting that they all sat so far back in the theater.  No one was in front of me, and I was in the first row of the upper deck.  Why did I go?  Now You See Me had just ended and Epic was just starting, plus, what a list voices:  Jason Sudeikis as Professor Bomba, Amanda Seyfried (Bomba's daughter), Colin Farrell (Ronin the leader of the good leafmen), Beyonce Knowles (Queen of the leafmen), Christoph Waltz (Mandrake, the leader of the bad ones, the Bobbans), Pitbull (as Bufo, a bullfrog), and Steven Tyler (you know, the guy from American Idol and Aerosmith, as a glowworm).  After less than half an hour, I eased out of the building.

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