May 7, 2003

Yesterday’s column brought a lot of really interesting responses, provoking some interesting thoughts.  So, today will be a mix-n-match mélange…

FIRST – Let’s all play, Name That Movie Review!!!  (Names and overt clues have been removed to protect the point of the effort.)

Film #1 – “THIS FILM could make more money than any other movie in history

IT is not a truly terrible movie. It's a nice movie. It's not, by any means, as nice as THE ORIGINAL. It's not as fresh and funny and surprising and witty, but it is nice and inoffensive and, in a way that no one associated with it need be ashamed of, it's also silly. Attending to it is a lot like reading the middle of a comic book. It is amusing in fitful patches but you're likely to find more beauty, suspense, discipline, craft and art when watching a New York harbor pilot bring the Queen Elizabeth 2 into her Hudson River berth, which is what IT most reminds me of. It's a big, expensive, time-consuming, essentially mechanical operation.

Gone from THIS FILM are those associations that so enchanted us in THE ORIGINAL, reminders of everything from the Passion of Jesus and the stories of Beowulf and King Arthur to those of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, the Oz books, Buck Rogers and Peanuts. Strictly speaking, THIS FILM isn't even a complete narrative. It has no beginning or end, being simply another chapter in a serial that appears to be continuing not onward and upward but sideways.”

And now, Film #2 – “The first movie was pitched to a broad spectrum of moviegoers, combining the best elements of storytelling, action and computer and visual effects. While upping the ante considerably in the action and effects department, storytelling stumbles frequently this outing as the movie stops cold for philosophical digressions about fate and destiny and reality. These remind one ever so much of tortuous university lectures in symbolic logic on a warm spring day. Instead of Zen-influenced truths punctuating the action and characters' decisions as in the first installment, these now impede the narration.

The film, of course, is a sure thing at the box office.

Perhaps the gamble here is that THE ORIGINAL’S many fans will willingly sit through lengthy character introductions and further amplification of the philosophical realm in which the final battle must be won in order to lay the groundwork for THE THIRD FILM.”

And the answers are:  Film #1 is from The New York Times’ Vincent Canby’s review of The Empire Strikes Back. Film #2 is from Kirk Honeycutt’s Hollywood Reporter review of The Matrix Reloaded.

And the lesson?  Middle movies, particularly in trilogies that are developed in full after a stand-alone first film, are difficult and there is a lot of exposition.  Deal with it!  The great ones truly blossom with a little time and a few more viewings.

ABOUT THE MATRIX R:  ROCK PUPPY wrote in yesterday:  “When The Matrix came out in 1999, I was baffled by its 'R' rating.  A couple of swear words, no nudity, and the violence was essentially bloodless. Sure, there were some intense sequences, but when the movie was shown on network television earlier this year, how many scenes were cut or trimmed?  None.  Now its sequel has been given the expected 'R' rating, and Joel Silver is as baffled as anybody, saying that the MPAA gave it the rating for 'science-fiction violence'.  I guess that the violence in X2, including such scenes as Wolverine ramming his claws into soldiers and Pyro hurling streams of fire at helpless police, isn't science-fiction violence. I can understand Blade II getting an 'R' rating - the violence was very graphic, bloody, and gory.  The Reavers were particularly frightening, and I'm not sure I'd want anyone under the age of 12 to see that without strict parental supervision.

So what's the deal?  Perhaps it's producer Joel Silver himself.  Has he even made a movie that wasn't an 'R'?  Let's see - Cradle 2 The Grave, Swordfish, Exit Wounds, Romeo Must Die, the Lethal Weapon movies, Conspiracy Theory, Demolition Man, The Last Boy Scout, the Predator movies, the Die Hard movies...  Is it beyond the realm of possibility that the MPAA sees the name 'Joel Silver' and thinks 'R'?  The Lord of the Rings movies have limbs and heads chopped off, frightening monsters skewering themselves on swords, and some very intense battle sequences.  Those movies got 'PG-13' ratings.  Hey,

Joel, have you considered using the alias 'Peter Jackson'?

DAVID RESPONDS:  In this situation, I agree with MPAA completely.

If you look at X2, you never see claws go in, you never see the blood, you never see the actual effect of Wolverine's claws.

In the hour and five minutes (without credits) of The Matrix Reloaded, you have lots of gun violence, you have fighting that emphasizes the physical contact, you have all kinds of "don't try this at home" stunts, etc.  If you want to separate out the fact that all this violence takes place inside a giant video game, I can agree. 

The Matrix films practically define the "soft R."  Goldmember should have been an R, in my book.   Armageddon is right on the edge.  I don't know by The Ring was not an R. 

Why was Beverly Hills Cop an R?  Language.  Would never have that language today.  They would have shaved it for the PG-13. 

It's true.  The Matrixes do not revel in nudity or harsh language.  But like Total Recall, which also had cartoon violence for the most part, it is relentless.

Remember, the ratings are meant as a guide for parents.  The problem is that they have become a tool of censorship.  Reloaded deserves an R.  But if parents want to send their kids anyway, they should be able to do so.”

ON BOX OFFICE COMPARISONS:  McCARTNEY wrote:  “I don't mean to pick on you in particular, since you're merely guilty of an institutional sin, but for once, how about some discussion of constant dollars?  The landscape of records changes pretty dramatically when examined fairly and honestly.  Don't you think the fact that the R-rated

BEVERLY HILLS COP grossed slightly more than SPIDER-MAN when inflation is

factored in counts for something, particularly in light of the fact that the USA was considerably less populous back then?  Of course it is true that 1984 was a different time -- fundamentalists were just waking up to their power, and they hadn't yet acquired quite the death-grip they have on our culture now -- but a fact is a fact, and this one bears repeating since it's so often left unmentioned.

I don't mean to suggest that THE MATRIX RELOADED, MATRIX REVOLUTIONS,

TERMINATOR 3 and maybe BAD BOYS 2 will cause some kind of sea change in Hollywood, even if they're all wildly successful.  We should be so lucky, but rolling back the clock to the days when some percentage of each year's tentpole movies was liable to be rated R, and some very successful with that R rating, is no doubt a pipe dream.  But this pretense that the R rating has always been box office death just serves the enemy.

BTW, I think RELOADED will break $100M in its extended opening weekend, and

I don't think it's impossible that it'll beat SPIDER-MAN's sure-to-be-short-lived record.  It will depend on the release pattern, though, and on whether Loews Theaters' sociopathic new policy of not admitting anyone under TWENTY-TWO to R-rated movies is a freak aberration here in NYC (of all places) or whether it's happening all over the country.  (To be fair, I haven't even confirmed that it's policy at any Loews other than the wretched one we saw CONFIDENCE in a week or so back.)”

DAVID RESPONDS: I tend to find the analysis of box office from the past in "adjusted' dollars to be an absurdity. 

Beverly Hills Cop also played for a year.  And if the film business wanted to have movies run like that again, it could.  But it does not.

So, I am interested in what is. 

The R rating is not death.  It is exclusively a question of how wide the net is going to be.  Tentpoles do not exist anymore.  "Tentpole" is now a misnomer for a big movie.  It has always been the case that the larger the base to which you can market, the more money you can make.  Period. 

If Adaptation has gotten to $50 million, Sony would have been thrilled.  If X-Men did $150 million, it would be a flop.  Each film has its own life and its own rules.  Remember, Beverly Hills Cop cost like $15 million to make. 

And for the record, Reloaded will be profitable (worldwide) when it hits about $125 million domestic.

But more to the point, is there some great attribute to the R that you care about?  I'm far more concerned about the films fighting for $20 million than these behemoths competing for these insanely huge box office numbers.

McCARTNEY kicks back:  “Granted, there's no perfectly flat, linear way to analyze movie performance over long periods of time because there's no way to simply and accurately quantify the effects of home video, DVD, cable, competing media like computer and video games, and so on.  But while merely looking at constant dollars isn't perfectly and completely illuminating, it's much more accurate and honest than pretending that a dollar is a dollar is a dollar.  The plain fact is that today's dollar was worth under 58 cents in 1984.  It's disingenuous at best to compare the prices and performance of other products in different times without adjusting for inflation; why is

the same not true of movies?  In fact, this obsession with new "records" and "milestones" without any reference to inflation is basically an out and out lie.  Today's $300M gross is yesterday's $250M gross is the day before's $100M gross.  Do you really think that the $100M benchmark is as meaningful as it used to be?

>>Beverly Hills Cop also played for a year.  And if the film business wanted to have movies run like that again, it could.  But it does not.

No, there's no way it could run movies like that again.  The public is conditioned to getting event movies all at once.  In fact, the world is increasingly being conditioned to getting everything at once.  And everything, including information, is moving much faster than it was in 1984.  There is no possible way to turn back the clock.  Finance alone precludes carrying that kind of overhead for that length of time.

>>And for the record, Reloaded will be profitable (worldwide) when it hits about $125 million domestic.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the two sequels cost about $350M combined, so this assumption is predicated on foreign grosses exceeding domestic.  That's probably a safe bet, but it just further demonstrates the falsehood of the R=death assumption that was created by boycotts and economic reprisals by fundamentalists against the studios' parent companies, NOT by actual box office performance.

>>But more to the point, is there some great attribute to the R that you care about?  I'm far more concerned about the films fighting for $20 million than these behemoths competing for these insanely huge box office numbers.

Yes, there is.  I want some balance.  2002 was largely a great year for indie and foreign pictures.  There was a lot to like and a lot to love in those segments of the business.  But where the hell was Hollywood?  The only studio movie I really, really loved was CHANGING LANES, and that was essentially a fluke, not the sort of movie we can rely on being produced regularly, especially since it cost $45M and made only $66M domestic ($38.5M in 1984 dollars), profitable but not by much.  SPIDER-MAN was pretty good, but it wasn't great.  I want greatness coming from all sides of the table -- and that's not just me being selfish, it's me saying that greatness would be great for business.  The public is so hungry for quality entertainment that even an imperfect film like SPIDER-MAN is like a huge breath of fresh air -- and is rewarded appropriately.

Remember how it used to work?  The big event movies helped the studios stay healthy so they could also produce plenty of little films.  This has already changed for the worse, but if the industry continues to move ever further towards sanitized, least-common-denominator films designed to offend nobody, it's going to satisfy fewer and fewer people and our domestic film industry will eventually implode.”

DAVID COMES BACK FOR MORE:  Me thinks you are reading too many articles about the business.

There is no "R is death" movement.  The reality has not changed a whit.  Bigger tent, more money.  No one has stopped making R rated movies.  They just know, as it is a fact, that you have more potential audience for a PG-13.

As for the boundary for a hit, no one has been more aggressive about the "$100 million isn't the number anymore" talk than I.  I was the first one to write that a $100 million could lose money.  I have long said that $200 million is the new $100 million. 

But I far prefer saying, "$20 million in 1965 was like $100 million in 2000" to doing economic adjustments.  Why?  Because domestic gross is not the sole factor.  There are so many other ancillary forms of income now and the costs were so different then that it all becomes a blurry mosh pit. 

I suppose someone could do a serious study and factor in every element, though many elements would have to be estimated, given that there were not public records in a lot of these companies in the old days and a lot of numbers were not reported to and in the trades. 

Of course the movie business could have long extended runs if it wanted to again.  It will not, because the corporations are run on quarterly results and an additional $20 million to the bottom line over six months is nowhere are appealing as the quick $80 million to $120 million from the home ales and rental markets.  It has nothing to do with the public.  As you wrote, we are conditioned.  It started with Batman, as I have written a million times.  As soon as the video window snuck to and under 6 months, the theatrical window was changed.  If Fox and WB and Universal and New Line all agreed that they would not release X2 and Matrix 2&3 and Hulk and Rings 3 on video for 2 years, I guarentee you that they would have longer theatrical runs and all five films could have strong lives in second run... 2nd run that no longer exists because of video.  It's All very Mr. Right and Mr. Right Now.  But it's not public taste that drives the release system.  It is studios.

The system was never about making big movies so great little movies could be financed.  Tentpoling - a now dead term - was first about forcing B movies (in the 70s & 80s, before block booking laws changed) down exhibitors throats as payback for giving them the big movies.  Then tentpoles became a way of generating so much profit on one film that the rest of your line-up was paid for and the studio's year was safe.  Then came Batman and video could generate more profit as 2nd run theatrical (the last great 2nd run hit was Jurassic Park), the exhibition window became 2 months because people stopped going back over and over, anticipating a quick availability on video.  The window has gotten smaller and smaller ever since.  And with international and video both now outstripping domestic theatrical, they are becoming more and more the priority.

Here is the out clause... you can still make a lot of money with a cheap movie.  You can no longer make a lot of money with an expensive movie unless you hit the home run.  Marketing costs have grown exponentially.  And now, video/DVD marketing budgets are getting to the same level that a theatrical release was at just a few years ago.

The industry will always adjust to the audience and will follow the money.  Anything beyond that is dumb luck.”

THE DECONSTRUCTION OF A CRITIC:  “Mr. Poland, you may as easily has asked, "when is a review NOT a review." The bewildering Armond White is the reigning champion in this regard; he is incapable of writing about one movie without comparing it favorably or unfavorably to another (and they do not have to be in any way comparable, either; it seems commonly sufficient for him to dismiss any kind of picture as being inferior to "A.I.," "Those Who Love Me Can Take The Train," or the last Li'l Kim video. His insistent nattering about "social conscience" reveals him not even to be so much a film critic as a polemicist. That says, these tendencies render him entertaining if virtually never useful. It's as if at some level he's admitting he doesn't understand what he's seeing, but knows what he likes, and therefore if he likes a movie it's de facto politically satisfying, so he careens about trying to reconcile that. (I probably admire Spielberg as much as he does, but it's quite clear he doesn't have clue one as to what Spielberg is actually up to, and if the latter even reads White's reviews he's probably as bewildered as flattered. I kind of doubt Spielberg reads reviews, though; he's still more a populist than not, and so grosses and Oscars tell him pretty much all he feels he needs to know.)

White is completely impervious to comprehending textures of film technique; a movie is only valuable to him if he can make a case for its being "socially relevant," perhaps the most howlingly inappropriate example of which is when he spent half of the summer of 1997 praising the fact that Jeff Goldblum has a black daughter in "The Lost World" (we never find out if she's his blood daughter or adopted, nor did we really need to know, but it struck me that White seemed unaware that Spielberg has adopted children of color.) He further STILL thinks there was something vivid and important about Chris Tucker's sexually ambiguous DJ in "The Fifth Element," the character was brought up AGAIN just weeks ago; what White seems unable to basically say is that he laughed his ass off at the performance (and I too had found the movie rather logy until Tucker showed up); the best he can say is "socially relevant," and he never really explains what he means by that either, it's just his favorite phrase.

Thus when White gets particularly angry at a movie, it is often for reasons that make sense really only to him, the most egregious example being his preposterous screed against "Unbreakable," in which I believe he gave the ending away in the first couple of paragraphs. I'm not sure he's above doing this even for movies he likes, because to him the point of a movie is not to tell a story, but to fill in a preapproved sociopolitical niche: he is the converted who wants to be preached to, not ever surprised, and as he is blinkered to the concept of anything other than like-minded readers, it may still not occur to him that giving away the ending to "Unbreakable" was simply wrong (but probably in his mind justified, given his longstanding hate-on for Samuel L. Jackson, an actor he couldn't praise enough when the man wasn't a star; Jackson probably snubbed him in imitation of Spike Lee and they're paying the price). You would never catch his NYPress colleague Matt Zoller Seitz doing that, and while Seitz is probably just as liberal as White, he is also someone who, by contrast, has a remarkable grasp of film TECHNIQUE, more so than nearly anyone else presently working; it did not surprise me to recently learn he has become an independent filmmaker himself (even if he had never intended to, it was plain to me he had the chops).

What White and Seitz do, more than "reviews" as such, are essays, in the old Pauline Kael mode. Roger Ebert is closer to a "reviewer" in the traditional mode, and quite a good one at times, though he too is not above failing to review a movie; his legendary tirade against "I Spit On Your Grave" is a review of the grindhouse audience he saw it with, and I think but am not sure (he gets prickly at the oddest moments) that if he had seen it in a different context, he would have had a more intrigued reaction, as he did to a movie I frankly recall as more vile, "Last House on the Left." I was bowled over that Ebert praised "Irreversible," being as that is really "I Spit" all over again, only even meaner, but then he didn't see that with a room full of goons thirsty for fictional blood. I'm not going to make a case for "I Spit" being a great movie by any means, but only the most purely disconnected could relate to the rapes in that one any more than the notorious "Irreversible" sequence; the difference is that the latter film appeared wrapped in the guise of Art. Ironically, "I Spit" director Meir Zarchi thought he WAS making an art film; unlike Gaspar Noe, however, he doesn't have the executional skill to pull it off. (Zarchi's only subsequent film, "Don't Mess With My Sister!", is just as ham-fistedly crafted as "I Spit," but its pro-female undertones are even more overt. Hmm, was Zarchi's problem that he didn't think to rip off "Virgin Spring" as the makers of "Last House On the Left" did? But then Wes Craven was always the savvier filmmaker.)”

READER OF THE DAY:  B&H writes:  “I certainly agree with your stance on Time and Matrix Reloaded. Fortunately, I wouldn't be caught dead reading Time. But the studios do it themselves, too, in trailers. Have you seen the trailer for The Italian Job? It gives away a crucial plot point, and I sat cursing the screen, as this sort of revelation is likely to make me less likely to see the film.”

DROP THE BAUM writes:  “Because you have Silver and the Brothers (possibly) giving TIME the ability to break the embargo and post a review.  Oh, what am I saying, THEY PRINTED THE REVIEW IN A MAGAZINE A WEEK OR SO MORE BEFORE THE MOVIE COMES OUT!  The net is big alone, but printing it in the mag just ups the ante. 

How on earth could Silver or anyone else allow something like this to happen?  How on earth could they have thought this was a good idea?  Not only does Corliss give away the movie, but he gives audience reaction (though tainted) which is less than positive.  For a movie that has been kept under wrap for YEARS to have it's ENTIRE PLOT blown by this guy and TIME is just irony in it's purest form.

The review, unlike yours and a few others on AICN, is no way near positive in anyway.  Corliss comes across like a kid trying to imitate a snarky Peter Travers.  He makes the movie sound like a Michael Bay film with substance.  Good action pieces, but with way too much exposition.  This review, if at it's most affective, could knock a little luster of off the might unstoppable Reloaded.  I cannot for a minute believe that a WARNERS OWN MAGAZINE WOULD SLAM THE KEY WARNERS FRANCHISE THIS YEAR.  I use caps, because it leaves me stunned.  Absolutely and utterly stunned.  Time never treated LOTR like this and that is not even a WARNERS release (yes it is New Line, but those movies do not start with the WB logo all green on the screen).

I would suspect this review might get the EW folks working overtime to appease Warner brothers.  Yeah that point seems very far fetched, but I would not doubt a decent EW review shows up something this week and it might not be as "out of it" as Corliss' reads.

I would never imagine a magazine like TIME would act worse than anyone on the net when it comes to the Matrix Reloaded.  It's a world gone mad.”

This came from PETTICOAT JUNCTION:  “Your outrage, perhaps justified, appears to be fueled by the notion that Richard Corliss is some kind of conscientious, fair-minded journalist who, for unknown reasons, drifted over to the dark side to "review" the "Matrix" sequel. I don't know if he is a friend of yours, but perhaps you should revise your judgment. Perhpas you should read Paul Chutkow's biography of Gerard Depardieu to fully understand what a weasel Corliss really is. Think I'm overstating the case? Consider this quote from the Amazon.com blurb for "Depardieu" --

Toward the end of this addictive biography, the author exposes a critic who seriously and unjustly maligned the great French actor Gerard Depardieu via a willful misinterpretation of the French word assister, an act that threatened the actor's career and personal life. The double irony is that Depardieu's life up until that point had been a search for the American dream and a way to overcome his personal problems with speech. Three things make this recording a rich morsel: Chutkow's attention to every subtext of Depardieu's impossibly dramatic life; the exquisite, on-the-mark voices (in several different accents) of narrator Frederick Davidson; and the comments of Depardieu and his circle of friends that delve into the actor's development and psyche, revealing his huge appetite for life, absolute lack of ego, phoenix-like spirit, remarkable lack of honesty, and great heart.”    

And finally, TORGA TORGA TORGA writes:  “Well Dave you might have hit on something-

Don’t feel sorry for me because I think Bringing out the Dead was Scorcese’s best work of the past 20 years.

Or that the Third Miracle is a great film and Holland should get as much money as she wants.

I do not need your pity because I cried out of joy from Episode 2 because it in all its digital glory was not a film from 2002.

Do not feel sorry because I question The Matrix and Lord of the Rings timelessness due to critics throwing around the term mythic and epic like it were candy.

Or that I am sickened by these Actors’ assumptions they are on the verge of being in a film of greatness.

I was unmoved by Far from Heave because it wasn’t as good as it as the films it purports to be.

Sure feel sorry for me because I enjoyed both What Lies Beneath and Phone Booth because I saw Hitchcock alive no doubt.

Don’t feel sorry for me because “I do not understand” Kubrick’s work. I understand that it fails to hit me on any emotional level, that most of his work often lacks humanity.

Don’t feel sorry for me because I saw Eyes Wide Shut as a droll Jane Austen novel, I’m glad for the themes but that does not make it taut and wonderful.

Please don’t pity me because I enjoyed Die Another Day’s objectification of women.

Feel sorry we can’t have a romantic comedy set in Iraq with Robert Mitchum and Joan Allen.

Feel sorry that I can’t have Ed Harris and Tom Hanks wipe out a tribe of Indians in Italy somewhere.

Feel devastated that as good as Lilo and Stich was, animation decides not to tell a tale, when Miyazaki showed us what is possible.

Feel blessed that Zemeckis is alive, I think we take for granted what he has done. I wonder if we will ruin him.

Feel slightly irritated that as great as everyone thought Minority Report was if Indiana Jones 4 is goofy wonderful most will despise it as a failure.”

E ME:  It’s on you.