‘Bad Moms,’ a Comedy of Outrage Pegged to Smother Mothers

Review: ‘Bad Moms,’ a Comedy of Outrage Pegged to Smother Mothers

From left, Annie Mumolo, Jada Pinkett Smith and Christina Applegate in “Bad Moms.” Credit Michele K. Short

Are women trending? I guess they are! Suddenly, they seem to be just everywhere, onscreen and offscreen, in comic-book flicks, in childhood-destroying comedies and even in the presidential race. The latest big-screen evidence that women are hot (kind of), and not simply in a frat-boy way, is “Bad Moms,” a funny, giddy, sentimental laugh-in from Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, who wrote the 2009 hit comedy “The Hangover.” That movie pretty much ignored the ladies but made enough money to spawn another smash and a second, less successful sequel that may have killed off the franchise.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: First review

Effects-stuffed stage sequel explores the past and future of The Boy Who Lived

“Why is everybody staring at us?” asks young Albus Potter nervously.

Better get used to it, kid.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has pulled off a transfiguration challenge worthy of Professor McGonagall: Converting the visually arresting world of Harry Potter into stage play. Currently in previews and officially opening July 30 in London’s West End, Cursed Child goes far beyond dutiful brand extension with an entirely original and hugely ambitious sequel to the Potter books, presented in two parts and nearly five hours long. Author J.K. Rowling, working with London theatre veterans Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, have delivered a production that’s as spectacular as it is ambitious, stuffed with special effects and twists that had a preview audience gasping, Cursed Child is a story that doesn’t play it safe with the Potter canon and will change how fans see certain favorite characters forever.

How The Dark Tower movie connects to Stephen King's other books

How The Dark Tower movie
connects to Stephen King's other books

The Dark Tower

Take a look at any stack of Stephen King novels, and what you’re really looking at are the chapters in one big story. At the center stands his epic – The Dark Tower, which binds them all together.

All of his worlds are one, but they’re simply different levels of the Tower, a stack of dimensions that came to symbolize the author’s imagination – or his mile-high bibliography.

“You know, everything I’ve done kind of reflects back to The Dark Tower books,” King says, although that wasn’t exactly intentional.

“Listen man, I’m the kind of writer that doesn’t know jack sh– about anything,” he says. “I’m totally intuitive about this. I don’t plot ahead, I don’t outline, and when you start to see those connections you embrace them. You don’t push them away, you don’t say ‘Oh no, that can’t be.’”

Unless… you’re making a movie and don’t have the screen rights. Then you have to count on the audience recognizing the covert connections.

There are countless ways his novels thread together, and you can explore them all on Uncle Steve’s website.

Below are King’s own thoughts on the unspoken ways The Dark Tower movie links to his other tales, ranked from “definite” to “ooookay, sure”:

Box Office: 'Secret Life of Pets'

Box Office: 'Secret Life of Pets' Heading for $90 Million-Plus Debut

Another animated film about animals is basking in the warm summer glow with Secret Life of Pets off to a strong start in its domestic debut. The Illumination Entertainment and Universal film is tracking to earn in the mid to high $30 million range on Friday on its way to a $90 million-plus debut.

Meanwhile, this weekend’s other new offering, Fox’s raunchy comedy Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, should earn around $6 million Friday (including $1.6 million from Thursday night) for a debut in the $13 million to $15 million range.

The Secret Life of Pets earned a strong $5.3 million in late night shows Thursday for Illumination Entertainment's second best opening behind Minions ($6.24M) and ahead of Despicable Me 2 ($4.7M) and Despicable Me ($590K). Minions opened to $115.7 million last July.

The film will earn enough to unseat the other animated film, holdover Finding Dory, from the No. 1 spot for the weekend. Disney and Pixar's hit has taken in more than $400 million domestically after three weekends in theaters, and is likely to grab another $20 million-plus this weekend.

Secret Life of Pets, which played in select theaters Thursday night before opening everywhere Friday (it will screen in roughly 4,300 theaters), reveals what pets do after their human friends leave the house. The voice cast includes Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet and Kevin Hart (it's the first time the three have worked on an animated movie), Jenny Slate, Ellie Kemper, Lake Bell, Dana Carvey, Hannibal Buress, Bobby Moynihan, Steve Coogan and Albert Brooks. Chris Rinaud (Despicable Me, Despicable Me 2) directed.

The weekend's other new nationwide entry is Fox and Chernin Entertainment's R-rated comedy Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, starring Zac Efron and Adam Devine.

Directed by Jake Szymanski, Mike and Dave follows to debauched brothers who are tasked with finding respectable dates for their sister's wedding. They put an ad on Craigslist, and end up taking two best friends (Anna Kendrick and Aubrey Plaza) who are actually bigger troublemakers than they are.

source: hollywoodreporter

'Legend Of Tarzan' Snags Surprisingly Mighty $14M Friday

Box Office: 'Legend Of Tarzan' Snags Surprisingly Mighty $14M Friday

The Legend of Tarzan

Budgets matter. That’s one lesson for The Legend of Tarzan this weekend. The good news is that the Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc./Village Roadshow production opened a bit better than I was expecting over this holiday weekend. The film earned $14.04 million on its first day, including $2.55m in Thursday previews and $1.4m in IMAX alone. That means we’re probably looking at a Fri-Sun total of around $36m and a Fri-Mon cume of around $43m.

Considering how little heat the film had going into the weekend, and how bad the reviews turned out to be, that’s a genuinely pleasant surprise and a marketing triumph. If this David Yates film had cost $120 million to produce instead of $180m, I might be calling for a minor celebration. But that insane $180m budget means that Warner and friends are still betting on massive overseas interest. They may get it, but that’s a “wait and see” proposition.

It’s as I always say, don’t spend Return of the King money on Fellowship of the Ring. $180 million is what you spend on The Return of Tarzan after The Legend of Tarzan snags $600m worldwide. We’ve seen this play out so many times before, with John Carter, The Lone Ranger, Pan, Robin Hood, and probably with next year’s Knights of the Round Table: King Arthur, which stars box office dynamo Charlie Hunnam.

The film stars Alexander Skarsgård as the title character, Samuel L. Jackson as George Washington Williams (who deserves his own spin-off movie), Christoph Waltz as the villain, and Margot Robbie as Jane (who shockingly spends 75% of the film as a hostage). So once again we have a situation where an untested (white) male lead is tasked with headlining a would-be blockbuster franchise based on a known but not terribly beloved character with a budget so high that it has to capture the zeitgeist just to break even.

So the fact that this one is opening a bit better than expected means that it will at least make more than the likes of Pan or The Lone Ranger in America, not that it’s a hit quite yet. To be fair, the film may play a little better simply because it’s a “new” property in a summer of sequels. We haven’t had a live-action Tarzan movie since 1998 (the little-seen Casper Van Dien flop Tarzan and the Lost City) and then Greystoke way back in 1984. That may help King Arthur as well since we haven’t had an outright fanatical Knights of the Round Table movie since Excalibur in 1981.

But just because audiences have heard of your property/character doesn’t mean they crave a feature film/franchise based on said character. Or, at the very least, don’t spend so much on your Tarzan film that you’re still sweating bullets even if it passes $100m domestic. Still, that’s a hell of an opening for a movie most of us wrote off a long time ago.




source: forbes