Punch Drunk Podcast: Tammy; Deliver Us from Evil

Is it just me or is this a low key line-up for 4th of July weekend? Even still, we have plenty to talk about with Melissa McCarthy's latest, a team-up with Susan Sarandon in Tammy. Next up is Eric Bana in the horror department with Deliver Us From Evil. So that's adult comedy and horror, what will the kids do? THINK OF THE CHILDREN! Oh, that's right! We have them covered as well with Relativity's Earth to Echo. All this and any news fit to bring to the airwaves on this week's Punch Drunk Podcast.

The Punch Drunk Podcast airs live every Sunday morning at 11AM on Blogtalkradio.

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Box Office: 'Transformers 4' Leads Weak July 4th Weekend; 'Tammy' Underwhelms

1. Transformers: Age of Extinction- $36.4M/$174.7M
This is the rare July 4th weekend that doesn't include a single summer blockbuster, at least in terms of budget and scope. And so it was fairly easy for Transformers: Age of Extinction to hold on to the top spot, the first film of 2014 to repeat, even though it dropped 63% from last week. After two weeks Michael Bay's fourth crack at the Transformers has sparked $575M worldwide, a good chunk of that coming from China, and there's every reason to think it will surpass $1B as 'Dark of the Moon' did.
2. Tammy- $21.1M/$32.9M
The top new release this week was Tammy, which features Melissa McCarthy doing the same thing she's been doing for a few years now, namely crashing into things and putting herself down. While the film will come in just short of the debuts for Identity Thief and The Heat, those movies came with some pretty big co-stars while this is entirely a McCarthy effort, meaning people bought tickets just to see her. And at a cost of only $20M the film is already in the black even if it underwhelms overall.
3. Deliver Us from Evil- $9.5M/$15M
This has not been the strongest year for horror movies, coming off the red-hot streak of genre movies in 2013, but Scott Derrickson's Deliver Us from Evil is off to a pretty good start. The Eric Bana/Edgar Ramirez exorcism thriller opened up with $15M since its debut on Wednesday, and at a cost of only $30M it should prove successful enough for producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Hopefully this convinces Marvel to cast Ramirez in Scott Derrickson's Doctor Strange movie. Yes please?
4. 22 Jump Street- $9.4M/$158.8M
5. How to Train your Dragon 2- $8.7M/$140M
6. Earth to Echo- $8.2M/$13.5M
The E.T. meets The Goonies sci-fi flick Earth to Echo didn't get a ton of marketing hype and its biggest star is The X-factor breakout Astro, but it opened with a solid $13.5M over five days. While that may not sound like much it's probably all or mostly profit for the low budget feature, which Relativity bought (nearly completed, too) from Disney on the cheap some time back.
7. Maleficent- $6.1M/$213.8M
8. Jersey Boys- $5.1M/$36.7M
9. Think Like a Man Too- $4.9M/$57.1M
10. Edge of Tomorrow- $3.6M/$90.8M

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Review: 'Deliver Us from Evil' Starring Eric Bana and Edgar Ramirez

Just how seriously one should take Scott Derrickson's latest crack at the exorcism genre, Deliver Us from Evil, is spelled out pretty early on. That's when we meet the very Australian actor Eric Bana as New York cop Ralph Sarchie, utilizing a distracting Brooklyn accent that is never less than comical. It's also when the limits of poor casting are taken to another level with funny guy Joel McHale as his tough, wise-cracking partner. This is not a movie that cares altogether much about the details, and as it laughably asserts some basis in reality it becomes just another boring movie about demonic possession.

Based on the cases of the real-life Sarchie, Deliver Us from Evil is basically a dull police procedural with just enough supernatural to separate it from an episode of Criminal Minds. The warmed over frights begin in Iraq where three soldiers have stumbled upon something ominous, something we know is probably evil and really clingy. Jumping to New York, we are introduced to Sarchie (Bana), a cookie-cutter cop with a heap of personal issues pulled straight from the playbook. You won't be surprised to learn that his wife (Olivia Munn, not called upon to do much thankfully) and daughter don't see dear old Dad very often, and when they do he's distant. "Even when you're here you're not here", she says, quoting from just about every cop movie ever. Sarchie has been having a rough time of it lately. In short order he discovers a dead baby in an alley, then he begins investigating a string of connected disturbances. First off, a domestic call leads him and smart-ass partner Butler (McHale) to a grungy, filthy home where the wife has been abused by her husband, an Iraq War vet. Then a seemingly-possessed mother tosses her baby into the lion's den at the zoo, leading Sarchie to have a We Bought a Zoo showdown with the jungle cats, and finally the discovery of a badly decomposed body in an apartment building.

We get to spend an awful lot of time with Sarchie and Butler as they dryly fumble around to piece these events together, not really seeing it as anything other than typical big city craziness. Of course there are strange Latin inscriptions at every crime scene and Sarchie starts hearing voices, but the idea of it as something supernatural eludes him because, as we are often reminded in heavy-handed fashion, he's a lapsed Catholic who now trusts in his gut rather than God. All of that changes with the arrival of the one aspect of the film that makes it worth enduring, and that's Edgar Ramirez as Father Mendoza, a chain-smoking priest who is like Constantine by way of Doctor Strange. A man with his own personal demons, a bag of evil-fighting tools, and a fondness for liquor, Mendoza informs Sarchie that everything he's seeing are part of some seriously bad mojo that needs to be cleansed. Time to break out the holy water.

Derrickson, who also directed The Exorcism of Emily Rose and the much better Sinister is a filmmaker who excels at creating a foreboding mood. His obsidian view of New York is a hellish nightmare of bad tidings, and with the introduction of Mendoza the film temporarily flashes potential for going beyond the norm. While we don't get to see Mendoza and Sarchie together nearly enough, the conversations they have about faith and guilt hold a lot of weight, in particular a discussion about God's place in a world of such terrible violence. But these moments of character are disparate, and both men too underwritten as a whole. Ramirez is a jolt of fire and brimstone as Mendoza, though, so good that it makes one hope the rumors of him joining Derrickson's Doctor Strange film are true. Can't argue that he hasn't been field tested for the role.

Deliver Us from Evil soon jettisons any pretense and goes straight for the exorcism scene we all knew was coming with very little variation from what's been the standard ever since The Exorcism. The sheer fury of their psychological demon battle is impressive to behold but we've seen it all before; shattering windows, screaming, painful truths revealed, and lots of crucifixes. Maybe at some point a film will come along that depicts this battle of good vs. pure evil in way we've never seen but Deliver Us from Evil won't be it.

 Rating: 2.5 out of 5

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New Trailer for Supernatural Thriller 'Deliver Us From Evil' Starring Eric Bana

There was a time when horror movies were pretty much relegated to Halloween, for obvious reasons, but lately we've seen some big genre hits emerge right in the middle of summer. And Jerry Bruckheimer, who knows a thing or two about producing summer blockbusters, is hoping Scott Derrickson's Deliver Us From Evil can be the next one.

A new trailer has been released for the supernatural thriller, which stars Eric Bana as Ralph Sarchie, a detective who teams up with an unconventional priest played by Edgar Ramirez. Together they battle demonic forces of evil while Sarchie struggles with his own personal demons. The film is based on Sarchie book which supposedly recounts his real-life experiences.

Deliver Us from Evil opens July 2nd.

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Trailers for Horror 'Deliver Us from Evil' Starring Eric Bana, Edgar Ramirez, and Olivia Munn

There seem to be a great many similarities between Scott Derrickson's Deliver Us from Evil and this past summer's The Conjuring. The trailers Derrickson has put together here, our first real look at the film, employ a similar slow burn style, and it makes sure to tell us it's inspired by the real life demonic cases investigated NYPD Sergeant Ralph Sarchie. Adding that dash of supposed truth doesn't necessarily make the film any scarier, and hopefully this one has enough chills on its own.

Starring Eric Bana, Edgar Ramirez, Olivia Munn, Sean Harris and Joel McHale, Deliver Us from Evil has a pretty conventional set-up that may be tough to overcome. Bana plays a cop, who of course is suffering from a personal crisis, who is joined by an unconventional priest trained in the rituals of exorcism, to investigate a series of demonic possessions.

Deliver Us from Evil opens July 2nd.

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