Box Office: 'American Sniper' Shoots Down January Record with $90.2M

1. American Sniper- $90.2M/$93.6M
Reservations about the film and its somewhat controversial depiction of lethal sniper Chris Kyle aside, Clint Eastwood's American Sniper destroyed the January records with $90.2M. The film, which stars Bradley Cooper in a performance that is earning him a great amount of Oscars buzz, had been performing extraordinarily well in limited release for three weeks, but nobody could have foreseen an expansion like this. It not only surpasses Ride Along as the top-grossing January film, but is well on the way to becoming Eastwood's highest-grossing movie of his legendary filmmaking career. Military films have had a rough go about it over the last few years but we've seen that recently that starpower can be enough to trump that. Brad Pitt helped lead Fury to a solid $85M domestically ($201M worldwide), and Bradley Cooper's gruff but emotional turn in American Sniper was clearly a big draw, aided by some truly great TV spots.
2. The Wedding Ringer- $21M
It's another solid early-season comedy for the reliable Kevin Hart as buddy comedy The Wedding Ringer opened with $21M. That's a pretty steep drop from last year's Ride Along (which just lost its January record to American Sniper), but it also doesn't have the benefit of Ice Cube in a supporting role. Nothing against Josh Gad but he's no Ice Cube. The $23M production should finish up as another mid-level hit for Hart, and bodes well for his next film Get Hard opposite Will Ferrell. Expect that one to do much better.
3. Paddington- $19.2M
The Weinstein Company has to consider the $19.2M debut of Paddington sweeter than a marmalade sandwich. The CGI/Live-Action film has been earning some terrific reviews, and deservedly so, both in the US and abroad, having earned $141M worldwide already. It also makes for the most successful Nicole Kidman film in what seems like forever. Remember when she was relevant? Anyway, it looks like moving Paddington from its prior Christmas Day slot was a smart choice as it now becomes the first hit family film of 2015.
4. Taken 3- $14M/$62.8M
Last week's champ Taken 3 took a shot to the body and fell 64% in its second weekend, on the way to $14M and $62.8M domestic. But this franchise, which is apparently wrapping up now (yeah right), has done the most damage overseas. The film has gained an additional $64M internationally and should be enough to keep 20th Century Fox plenty happy.
5. Selma- $8.3M/$25.9M
Here's the thing about getting an Oscar bump: a film has to earn enough Oscar nominations to warrant one. Unfortunately, Ava DuVernay's Selma was largely snubbed by the Academy Awards this week, even though it still got slotted for Best Picture. The controversy surrounding that may be enough to propel it further down the line, but for now the film is bumping along at an underwhelming level. Fortunately, the $20M production has already made back back its budget and should see a bump over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
6. The Imitation Game- $7.1M/$50.7M
7. Into the Woods- $6.5M/$114.2M
8. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies- $4.8M/$244.5M
9. Unbroken- $4.2M/$108.6M
10. Blackhat- $4M
And the first flop of 2015 goes to Michael Mann's techno-thriller Blackhat, which stars Chris Hemsworth as a brawny computer hacker. Apparently nobody wants to watch Thor jabbing away at a keyboard for two hours, and Mann's long since lost his cred as a box office draw. The film does have an international flavor and could perform better internationally, but that is something we'll have to wait and find out. 

Read More

Review - The Wedding Ringer starring Kevin Hart, Josh Gad and Kaley Cuoco

My first review of the year and it’s a Kevin Hart movie. I know how that sounds, like man Julian is starting the hate MAD early. See I like Kevin Hart, I laugh at Kevin Hart and I see most of his output even, that Real Husbands of Hollywood show on BET. I just find it interesting that we might be in a thing where mid-January is his time to shine in the theaters and get money. One more year after Ride Along last year and this movie The Wedding Ringer and proof will be in the pudding. The Wedding Ringer is another starring vehicle for Hart this timed teamed with Josh Gad aka Olaf the new GOAT snowman. Also in this movie is Kaley Cuoco and a personal fav of mine Olivia Thirlby.

The Wedding Ringer is about Jimmy, played by Hart, a man that sells his services as a Best Man to people who don’t have one for their weddings. Josh Gad plays Doug, a man with no friends at all and is marrying his dream girl but has been lying about a made up best friend by the name of Bic Mitchum to her since they got engaged. Doug ends up being referred to Jimmy to help him in his problem and he hires Jimmy to be Bic and also get him groomsman and an entire history of friendship in two weeks before he weds Cuoco’s Gretchen. That’s essentially what you learn in the trailer and to be honest I wasn’t totally impressed with the idea in itself. Luckily I was surprised with The Wedding Ringer, not only was there a lot more to the movie than I thought, they also didn’t spoil all the great laughs in the trailer. I wanted to give someone a high five for that alone.

Hart and Gad really play off of each other well. The script and the performances play the dynamic of cool loner guy and lonely uncool guy really well. The plot of the movie is very easy to guess in what happens to all the characters. Friendships are made, backs are had, and muddy football games are played. For the most part the film is pretty down to earth in what happens with the comedy but for some reason once they get to the Bachelor Party things get a little too wild, a little too, I might say, Adam Sandler-esque then thankfully it goes back to a nice sense of normal. Another weird thing that stood out to me is that Olivia Thirlby is shot almost entirely in soft focus like it’s in the 60s. I don’t understand totally why they made that choice for a movie in 2015 but hey whatever man. It’s not that distracting for 99.9% of the audience.

So to wrap up The Wedding Ringer is a pretty decent R rated comedy for this time of the year. It’s also a bit different type of character for Hart instead of the annoyingly loud sidekick or narrator all-knowing funny black guy i.e. Think like a Man or About Last Night.  In this terrible season of weak releasing and Award season catch up it’s something new that you can see on weekend night and laugh.

Read More

Travis' 10 Must See Movies of January

Ahhh, January. The year always begins with such promise, and then the first month is generally filled with crapola. Mostly, but not completely. It's an annual argument I tend to have with my pal and WAFCA president Tim Gordon that January never has any good movies in it. That's simply not true. You just have to look a little bit harder to find them, but every month, even January, has stuff to get excited for. And this year in particular there are quite a few; enough that I had to think a little bit about what to include and what to leave off.

Also complicating the process is that many of January biggest films actually opened in December for qualifying Oscar runs. So you won't find movies like Selma, American Sniper, Inherent Vice, Leviathan, A Most Violent Year, Still Alice, or Two Days, One Night on this list. And keep in mind these are simply MY picks for the 10 movies I think will be worth checking out; the kind that I think could be worth plunking down a few bucks to see. I could be wrong. I'll try to do this every month if time allows.

Appropriate Behavior (January 16th)
Director: Desiree Akhavan
Cast: Desiree Akhavan, Scott Adsit, Rebecca Henderson, Anh Duong

I always show a little preference to movies I missed at Sundance (where I spend most of January), and one film I kept hearing about last year was Desiree Akhavan's off-beat rom-com, Appropriate Behavior. She writes, directs, and stars in the film about a politically correct bisexual Persian woman who tries to remain in her family's good graces while dealing with the realities of the Manhattan dating scene. It's been called funny and irreverent, and certainly the film doesn't resemble what we usually get from this tired old genre.

Blackhat (January 16th)
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, Tang Wei

Dude, it's Michael friggin' Mann! Any time he puts out a new film is a cause to stand up and take notice, and Blackhat couldn't get arriving in a more timely fashion. In the wake of the Sony hacking scandal a film about  cyber-terrorism could resonate with audiences in a major way....or they could be burned out on the subject and avoid it. We shall see. The film stars Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth, as a prisoner released to aid a joint American/Chinese task force in taking down a global cyber-criminal.

Taken 3 (January 9th)
Director: Olivier Megaton
Cast: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Forest Whitaker, Famke Janssen, Sam Spruell, Jonny Weston, Dougray Scott

I'm only putting this on here because I'll happily pay to see this franchise end. Liam Neeson bashes in a few or skulls as ex-black ops dude Bryan Mills, and this time he'll need his particular set of skills to get out of a bum murder rap. Forest Whitaker joins the cast as the clueless top cop on his tail, proving once again that Whitaker is good for about one decent role per year surrounded by forgettable supporting performances like this.

Black Sea (January 23rd)
Director: Kevin MacDonald
Cast: Jude Law, Scoot McNairy, Michael Smiley, Ben Mendelsohn

Speaking of Forest Whitaker, his The Last King of Scotland director Kevin MacDonald returns with Black Sea, a submarine thriller some have likened to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Cool deal, sign me up. I love a good submarine flick because they always come with a certain degree of paranoia and claustrophobia, which should be heavy with a cast like this. Jude Law stars as an unemployed ship captain who takes a job with a mysterious backer and motley crew to locate a stash of sunken gold, and of course things don't go according to plan.

The Taking of Tiger Mountain (January 2nd)
Director: Tsui Hark
Cast: Tony Leung, Lin Gengxin, Zhang Hanyu

Chinese director Tsui Hark (Once Upon a Time in China, A Better Tomorrow) may no longer be making the classics he used to, but I still hold out hope for the massive 3D epic, The Taking of Tiger Mountain. It tells the true and oft-adapted story of a Communist soldier who infiltrated a group of bandits during the Chinese Civil War and helped destroy them from within.

The Humbling (January 23rd)
Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Al Pacino, Greta Gerwig

Basically this one had me with "Greta Gerwig", but the film is actually pretty good. I saw it at the Virginia Film Festival a couple of months back and enjoyed the comedic power play between Al Pacino, who plays an aging actor trying to reclaim his mojo, and Gerwig as the flighty and much younger lesbian woman he falls in love with. Pacino hasn't been this tuned in to a role in a very long time, and I can honestly say this is the first adaptation of a Philip Roth novel that I've enjoyed. Perhaps Pacino and Levinson, who worked together on HBO's You Don't Know Jack, should make their partnership a recurring one.

Still Life (January 16th)
Director: Uberto Pasolini
Cast: Eddie Marsan, Joanne Froggatt, Karen Drury

Full confession: I had never heard of this film until a friend saw it at Filmfest DC last year and wouldn't stop raving about it. It stars Eddie Marsan, a wonderful character actor you probably know from The World's End and the Sherlock Holmes movies, and it centers on a lonely man whose job it is to prepare funerals and eulogies for those who have died alone. Fun stuff, eh? The film is directed by Uberto Pasolini and has won awards at the Venice and Abu Dhabi film festivals, with many noting its depth of humanity when dealing with the subject of grief. I'm merely hoping it's another fine showcase for Marsan, an actor who deserves more time in the spotlight.

Red Army (January 23rd)
Director: Gabe Polsky

Rare that a documentary ever enters my radar as a must-see film, but there has been so much strong buzz about Gabe Polsky's Red Army that I can't ignore it. Polsky caught my attention in 2013 with his stirring adaptation The Motel Life (starring Stephen Dorff, Emile Hirsch, and Dakota Fanning) and now he turns his attention to the Soviet Union's hockey dominance during and just after the Cold War. While I could care less about the sport itself, the politics of the time are what fascinate me and how the team's performance was such a huge part of Soviet propaganda. Plus I've heard the team members interviewed absolutely rip into former coach Viktor Tikhonov, who was known for being a ruthless dick.

The Wedding Ringer (January 16th)
Director: Jeremy Garelick
Cast: Kevin Hart, Josh Gad, Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting, Olivia Thirlby

I'll be honest with you, I think The Wedding Ringer looks pretty terrible, but I thought the same thing about Kevin Hart's other early-season comedies and they turned out okay. This one has him as a guy paid to be the best man for loser grooms with no friends. So it kind of looks like Wedding Crashers meets Hitch as Hart buddies up with Josh Gad, no doubt teaching him some kind of life lesson in-between the hijinks, dance-offs, and so forth. There will be more meaningful movies coming out this month but this one has the potential for the most laughs.

Mommy (review here, opens January 23rd)
Director: Xavier Dolan
Cast: Antoine Olivier-Pilon, Anne Dorval, Suzanne Clement

Duh, you knew this had to end up here somewhere. It made my top 10 best movies of the year and was a film I called "electric" and "life-affirming" with emotions too big for the screen to handle. Xavier Dolan's best film yet features a trio of incredible performances, led by Anne Dorval as a single mother who finds her world turned upside down when her violent son (Olivier-Pilon) returns home. What begins as a tense, potentially dangerous soap opera evolves into a unique, hopeful story (with a wonderfully eclectic soundtrack) about the power of maternal love.

A few honorable mentions: Jennifer Aniston's gaining some buzz (and a Golden Globes nomination) for her dramatic performance in Cake, and I would say she's the only reason to see it. Fans of cuddly bears who don't go into profanity-laced tirades may want to check out the CGI/live-action Paddington, starring Nicole Kidman and featuring the voice of Ben Whishaw. Ewan McGregor, Brenton Thwaites, and Alicia Vikander pull off a heist in the crime thriller, Son of a Gun. Hey Star Wars fans! George Lucas has a new movie coming out but it's the animated fantasy, Strange Magic. Sorry. Those looking for a scare may want to check out The Woman in Black: Angel of Death, a sequel that unfortunately features 100% less Daniel Radcliffe. And Benicio Del Toro is more than worth the price of admission as notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar in the kooky action flick, Escobar: Paradise Lost (review here), which also stars Josh Hutcherson.

Read More

New Trailer and Red Band Clip for 'The Wedding Ringer' starring Kevin Hart

In the midst of the hacking scandal that shall never end, Sony still has movies coming out. One of those is The Wedding Ringer, which the studio hopes will be next year's first big hit with comedy gold Kevin Hart in the lead.  They recently had to cancel a press event for the film due to all this hacking nonsense, but they still have plenty or reason to be optimistic. While we've seen plenty of the R-rated buddy comedy already, a new trailer and red band clip have been released for you to enjoy.

Why shouldn't Sony be confident? Hart has found success with Ride Along, Think Like a Man Too, and About Last Night in the last year alone, and there's every reason to he can do the same thing with The Wedding Ringer. Josh Gad stars as a groom with no friends who hires Hart to be the Best Man at his wedding, and of course the whole thing goes awry.

Pretty much everything Hart's fans are looking for, right? Also starring Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting and Olivia Thirlby, The Wedding Ringer opens January 16th.

Read More

New Red Band Trailer for 'The Wedding Ringer' with Kevin Hart and Josh Gad

Looking a lot like a really screwed up version of Hitch, the Kevin Hart/Josh Gad comedy The Wedding Ringer seems poised to be one of 2015's first big hits. Few have been on a hotter streak than Hart, and who doesn't love to watch two bro's totally ruining the happy nuptials? So does it have a chance to be the next Wedding Crashers? Check out the new red band trailer and decide for yourself.

Hart plays a guy who runs a business providing "best man" services to grooms who don't have any friends, which makes Gad the perfect client. This is one of the filthiest red band trailers we've seen in months, so definitely don't watch it at work or around the kiddies. Jeremy Garelick, who penned the insightful relationship dramedy The Break-Up, is directing this one and hopefully he has a few things to say about the nature of marriage, as well. Or if he just wants to be straight-up silly like this footage suggests, that's perfectly fine, too.

Also starring Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting, Cloris Leachman, Olivia Thirlby, Jorge Garcia, Alan Ritchson, Jenifer Lewis, and Mimi Rogers, The Wedding Ringer opens January 16th 2015.


The Wedding Ringer Official Trailer #3 (2015) - Kevin Hart, Josh Gad Comedy Movie HD by Allvideos HD

Read More

Kevin Hart is Every Groom's Best Friend in 'The Wedding Ringer' Trailer

Has there been a more successful actor over the last two years than Kevin Hart? The string of hit movies beginning with Think Like a Man and stretching to this year's Ride Along, About Last Night, and Think Like a Man Too make the case that he is one of today's biggest draws. Next year he'll try to keep the momentum going in The Wedding Ringer, which will give him a chance to kick it opposite Josh Gad.

Directed by Jeremy Garelick (writer of The Break-Up), the Hitch-style comedy stars Hart as Jimmy, who runs Best Man Inc., providing "best man services" to grooms who don't have any friends to stand up for them. When Doug (Gad) hires Jimmy for his impending wedding to Paige (Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting), a bromance develops between the two in the midst of all the matrimonial chaos.

The Wedding Ringer walks down the aisle on January 16th.

Read More

Kevin Hart is The Best Man in First Trailer and Images from 'The Wedding Ringer'

This weekend will see Kevin Hart play the worst best man ever in Think Like a Man Too, the sequel to the film that sparked his career and led to hits such as Ride Along and About Last Night. Next year Hart will reteam with uber-producer Will Packer for The Wedding Ringer, and again he'll be part at the center of someone's impending nuptials.

The first images and trailer for The Wedding Ringer have been released, and they feature Hart getting his groove on alongside Josh Gad. Directed and co-written by Jeremy Garelick (The Break-Up), the film has Hart playing a guy who runs a best man service, standing up for grooms who don't have a friend close enough to be part of the wedding. Gad's character hires him, but also decides to fabricate nine other friends and the two must keep things from spinning out of control and ruining the wedding.

Also starring Olivia Thirlby, Kaley Cuoco, Alan Ritchson, and Mimi Rogers, The Wedding Ringer opens January 16th 2015.


THE WEDDING RINGER (2015) Official HD Teaser Trailer by NewTrailers BOS
 

Read More