But the ambition of the morning is kicking my ass.

Of course, I always need to point out that the industry is always changing and always will. The imaginary notion that change is a Frankenstein moment, life brought to a dead body, must be crushed… and it is the villagers who must crush it.

Anyway…

It took a whole week to go from “Hollywood is being burnt to the ground!!!” by Backrooms and Obsession to the box office being led by the completely expected mediocrity of reboots of Scary Movie and Masters of the Universe.

I wasn’t rooting against or for any of them. An event like Obsession, building audience 2 weekends in a row - and don‘t forget those strong weekdays - is an absolute joy if you love movies and the idea of sitting in a movie theater with a passionate audience. The huge following of Backrooms that allowed A24 to narrowcast its marketing (cheaper) and still open to over $80 million domestic is glorious… which it also was when it happened on the other side of the political aisle with The Passion of The Christ 22 years ago.

Likewise, 26 years ago, The Wayanseseses brought a parody of the also-then-hot horror craze to movie theater and opened to $42 million with Scary Movie. So why would anyone be surprised that Scary Movie (unspoken 6) opened to $55 million this weekend?

Interested in what came in second that July weekend in 2000? The 2nd weekend of The Perfect Storm, with $27 million. And in 2nd this weekend? The $29.3 million opening of Masters of the Universe. Déjà vu much?

As for the Heroes of the Revolution from last weekend, Backrooms dropped off 68%. Remember a couple of weekends ago when The Mandalorian and Grogu dropped 70% off the holiday weekend and both Star Wars and Disney were ready to be sold for firewood?

Writing off Backrooms in any way is as insane as writing off Star Wars or Disney based on one film that didn’t find a hoped-for audience.

There is no sane way to downgrade Obsession, though it lost box office for the first time in its 4th weekend. The $25.8 million 4th weekend is the second of the year so far, behind only Michael… and only by $300,000 (if the estimate holds). Remarkable. Still, the little movie that did for Focus is not going to come close to the domestic total of either Michael or the $24 million 4th weekend right behind Obsession, Project Hail Mary. So what? Not “so what because the price tag on the other movies was bigger.” Just “so what?” Obsession has wildly outperformed the wildest expectations and deserves all the flowers in the world… and so do the other 2 films.

The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act did almost $20 million this weekend, fully released on Thursday by Fathom, winning the day. GREAT! Stop dick measuring and take the win!

Getting sucked into the 2019 thing…

Weekend 23 in both years… a sequel at the top… a disappointing IP turn in 2nd place…

We got lucky with Backrooms and Obsession and The Amazing Digital Circus, filling the hole left by the Majors, without a Godzilla: King of the Monsters or a Rocketman (each in their 2nd weekends back then) or even a John Wick 3 (weekend 4) holding on. (I’m giving Disney the Aladdin/Mandalorian comparative entry).

But such is the nature of box office. Some movies do as expected, some overperform, and some underperform. What remains different right now is that the Majors (include Amazon MGM and Lionsgate, if you like) aren’t holding up their end, though Lionsgate’s Michael was as important to April and early May as Backroom and Obsession are this month.

If the Majors were delivering enough films, these wonderful event moments/surprises would be topping the box office sundae instead of being necessary to “keep up.”

Even with them, we are still $800 million behind 2019 as of this date. $420 million of that is just Avengers: Endgame vs the top 2026 grosser to date, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Then January 2019 had 2 $100 million+ grossers while we had nothing higher than $65 million this year… over $100m more against 2026.

There are all kinds of ups and downs along the journey. But a $300 million difference is really in spitting range. Literally a movie or two. Or a few more mid-range successes.

What I really want to avoid is the idea that Scary Movie this weekend was a comeback for comedies. No. It’s a hit comedy. Yay. But it is one of only 4 wide release comedies in theaters this year to date. In order for a genre to have a comeback, a genre has to have the opportunity to fall.

All 3 of the other comedies this year have been unsuccessful commercially. You, Me & Tuscany, The Breadwinner, and I Love Boosters. All four are of very different styles of comedy and a bit surprisingly, 3 of the 4 are Black-starring and Black-directed. Unlike on Tuscany, there is unlikely to be a media wave of conversation about how the failure of The Breadwinner means that “white comedies” may never be made again.

It is also misleading to just comp to previous comedy openings, suggesting that this is the best comedy opening since 2014.

There were $100 million comedies in 2015 (2), 2016 (2, with Sausage Party at $98m), 2017 (2), 2018, and 2019. For the record, 2014 not only had 22 Jump Street, but Neighbors…. but also 16 others widely released comedies that didn’t make the $100 million mark. (And I am not including animation or other borderline calls.) There were at least a dozen wide-release comedies in 2019.

This year, 4 so far. Last year, 7. 2024, 7.

Half or less than half the pre-COVID allotment of theatrical comedies. So what are we judging?

Okay… I’m done for the night…

But if you read about the box office and feel the wave of exclamation points coming at you, duck and cover. There are lots of important moments and almost no IMPORTANT MOMENTS in any given box office year.

Until tomorrow…

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My expectations were low and I still found this movie a bit shocking.

The film is exceptionally well made. Directorial choices and the skill with creating action sequences might be suspect, but the movie looks good, c/o Guy Hendrix Dyas, Production Designer. The costumes by Richard Sale feel right, given that the whole thing is based on action figures. The make-up and prosthetics all work quite well.

But the movie seems to be a combination of the director’s many films that he loved as a child and wants to emulate with his inability to deliver on those ambitions.

The biggest thing is - and this speaks to the script as well - is that it isn’t funny. It really, really thinks it’s funny. But it’s 2 hours and 20 minutes of dad jokes. Is the lead a hero or a joke? Yes, he is very pretty. But is the character a hero or a joke? It seems to change from scene to scene… but mostly he is a joke… the butt of the jokes. But it’s not a Woody Allen or Ben Stiller movie.

Nicholas Galitzine delivers on what he is asked to do. So does Camila Mendes and Idris Elba. I did wonder, with all love to the actors who played the roles, who the hell was casting a movie full of cameos with relative unknowns. I like James Purefoy, but he felt like a stand-in for a bigger name, Likewise Charlotte Riley, who was fine as The Queen, but had little impact other than being pretty. Morena Baccarin was fine… but where was Gal Gadot or someone else a step higher on the star ladder? It wasn’t that any of them were bad. It’s that this seems like a big budget movie that cheaped out on what were 4 or 5 day gigs.

And what of Jared Leto? His mixture of Tim Curry, Frank Langella, and James Mason was a good idea. But it was like he was the only person in the movie that allowed to make a definitive choice with his character. I haven’t seen anything about whoever played him on set, but I can’t believe it was Leto because as big his swings with his voice, Skeletor moved like a stuntman in a suit… not like the thorough, edge-pushing actor Leto is. I have heard some complain about the performance… if you are amongst them, you must be a fan of watching paint dry,

Did I mention that it isn’t funny?

It tries super hard to be funny. Like most dad jokes, the person telling them thinks they are hysterical.

Clearly, the biggest template for this movie is 1980’s Flash Gordon. Who the hell let him do an homage to Queen, complete with Brian Mays on guitar? But the reason that Flash Gordon remains a cult classic is that it was a pre-CG show with effects that were gloriously cheesy, but without anyone ever winking at the camera. And it’s kinky as hell. You are not going to see anything like a 2026 version of Ornella Muti lying in a skin-tight bodysuit, held down by body-less hands, being whipped by a man and woman in high-end drag in Masters of the Universe. It’s amazing the movie is a PG, back in the pre-PG-13 era. There is no nudity or language, but the film is a little filthy. (For some reason, there is a run on the word “shit,” being used by Camila Mendes’ character 3 or 4 times in a short period.)

As campy as it is, Flash Gordon is funny and in a restrained way, sexy. Very Dino De Laurentiis. Sam Jones’ Flash is endlessly earnest. Brian Blessed as a hair-covered winged wild man and Timothy Dalton as an uptight hero/villain in Robin Hood tights and most of all Max Von Sydow eating the scenery whole as the could-play-kinda-Asian-these days Ming The Merciless are a joy to watch. The men in masks (are they human?) long before Eyes Wide Shut are a hoot. Topol in his most famous role not named Tevye is terrific.

But it’s not just that they perform well. Their characters are grounded in something. Bless Nicholas Galitzine for doing the best he could, but the character never really transforms from Mr Anderson to Neo. He keeps flipping back and forth. And that’s not even as bad as the film never really finding that focus. It was a great gag in Hong Kong Phooey and Mr Magoo - no longer than 20 minutes a crack - when the hero thinks they are winning the fight, but he’s really lucking into it. But in a movie like this when the rules and set and re-set over and over and over and over, the audience cannot build up a head of steam, no matter how much it wants to.

As a director, Travis Knight seems much more interested in checking off the various fighting skills and looks of Masters characters than creating a story that the audience can follow and embrace. He has these grand sets… really gorgeous… but the action is too close up and too chaotic to follow outside of each specific set of moves. All amusing the first time and increasingly boring the many other times they happen. It’s like he watched the book chase on the Ewok planet and instead of understanding that it worked because we could follow each step, he should make it louder, faster, funnier. But LFF makes it less engaging. We don’t need more. We need comprehension. we want to take the journey, not to be hit over the head with flashy effects that have no emotional weight.

Of course, the other way to go is to make it as funny as this team seems to think they were being.

What is He-Man became the macho ass that his power brings out in some people when he powered up… but then went back to his sweet, overly earnest self when he wasn’t carrying the sword? I’m not saying this is the answer or the movie I needed… I am just saying, it would give us something to watch and anticipate. What if Teela saw Adam as a brother and became uncontrollably drawn to him when he He-Manned up, even though she was completely conscious that he became an asshole and was a great guy when just Adam… giving her feelings to fight? Again… not saying “make that movie.” I am saying, “Make ANY movie more complex than what you did,”

Finally… what a major Cringer cop-out.

Cringer is a scardey cat taking tiger… the Paul Lynde of the animal kingdom. And when Adam transforms into He-Man, he turns Cringer into Battle Cat… without his consent.

Basically, the movie reduces him to a very minor, uninteresting side kick. BOO!!!

Even worse, they seem to have gotten “need someone like Richard Kind” to do the voice.

For me, this represents very much what is wrong with the movie. It can’t commit. It won’t push us an inch. It just isn’t fun… ny.

And what makes this soooooo frustrating is that the production really is gorgeous. And the actors are good. They did all they were asked. But they just weren’t asked to be in a good movie with a good script.

They had the power.

Until tomorrow…

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Did you laugh? If you laughed, you will enjoy this movie. If you did not, you will not enjoy this movie.

It’s a bunch of jokes about movies and getting high and being gay and being Black.

I took my 16-year-old to the screening and I am sure he didn’t get half the references… but he still had a good time. Silly, big jokes. Like a living cartoon, but one of those old ones that made fun of movie stars.

Of course, Scary Movie is much filthier than WB ever considered being in 1941. When they ask if you are sensitive to being offended, it is an honest pitch.

Things haven’t changed much since the first Scary Movie… only most of the movies and TV shows they are mocking.

There is a part of the film in which they go into the mode of an old TV show (not spoiling) that went off the air a couple of years after that first movie in 2000. And I kinda got it, but it was such a reach that I really wasn’t sure they were doing it… the parody names clarified it.

One of the favorite jokes in the film, repeated at least 5 times, is that they want to make a reference but the film/show is too obscure for anyone to remember. But it got a laugh pretty much every time they went there.

I didn’t feel like the movie was a waste of my time. Or a necessity to fill the tank on my movie-loving soul. I laughed. I enjoyed watching the filmmakers decide to go in this direction or that at the drop of a hat, often referencing the choices they were making. It is a very special episode of In Living Color: Horror/Thriller Edition. There were surprise cameos. Some very smart. A few very dumb. But dumb is why you go to this movie.

If the parody of Longlegs being ShortFingers makes you laugh when reading it, you will LOVE the movie. Me? There is only one ShortFingers and he lives in the White House right now. But one thing this movie is not is political. Every goose gets cooked at the whim of people trying to make you laugh.

There is really nothing more insightful to tell you.

Until tomorrow…

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Ever hear of Confirmation Bias?

How about Shiny Object Syndrome?

Welcome to a movie weekend that really does matter… but not remotely to the level of hysteria that is being pantomimed by so many people online and most sadly, expectedly in the media.

Let’s start with a simple rule… anyone connecting the mediocre grosses of The Mandalorian & Grogu to the overwhelming success of Backrooms and Obsession is not to be trusted in the analysis of what this moment means in the history of movie exhibition. If you really, really felt the need to make a connection, it is possible that M&G took a 5% bigger hit in its 2nd weekend - having opened on a 4-day weekend, by the way - than it might have without so much attention to the 2 other films. You want to insist on 10%? Okay. Still not significantly about any other movie in release.

An estimated 69.4% drop for The Mandalorian & Grogu - which may be worse than 70% off when the actual numbers come out tomorrow - absolutely sucks. But there is no reason at all to think it had anything to do with the 2 hard-R thrillers/horror movies that had unexpected massive success. $178 million overall for the weekend’s box office doesn’t begin to force lower grosses for any of the movies in the marketplace. M&G still had its IMAX screens… still was in 4300 venues and probably more than double that number of screens… still grossed a 3rd best in wide-release $5813 per screen. Backsession didn’t land on Grogu rock… word of mouth did.

Of course, the deeply philosophical voices want to make the comparison of a giant Star Wars brand movie to 2 li’l indies because they are comforted by the tale of David bringing down Goliath… and mostly have been whining about Goliath, claiming he is the walking dead anyway, for years. But Goliath isn’t dead… isn’t really even sick. As discussed here many times, there are specific causes of problems with the Star Wars and Marvel brands that aren’t really arguable. Meanwhile, we have had 4 $650m+ worldwide grossers since March, 3 of them in the last 6 weeks.

And even if - let’s pray - 30 Backrooms or Obsessions joined the exhibition universe every year starting in 2027… and let’s say they all average $100 million domestic. That $3 billion would certainly help the overall box office. It would likely be 25% of the overall domestic box office. Those 30 smash hits would be about the financial equivalent of the Top 7, 8, or 9 domestic grossers that are the Mandalorians and other sequel/prequel/IP repetitive titles that “everyone” is so anxious to bury and kick dirt over.

There won’t be 30 $100m horror movies. It would be a small miracle if there were are 6. Last year, we had 3… 5, if you stretch what you claim is horror.

But wait… what about The Rise Of The Young Independent Coming From Social Media? Nothing wrong with being excited about that notion. Much of the great work of the 50s and 60s and 70s came from director weened on live television. I have no bias against anyone building their chops via any platform they find to work within. YouTube and other social media do not have a very strong history of talent converting to traditional platforms… and there are none more traditional than Focus and A24. But as someone pointed out, Kane Parsons was able to “test” Backrooms for years on YouTube and came to the movie with a unique insight about what his audience would want. Cool. Are there 5 more like him with IP as clear and popular and convertible? You tell me.

Be clear… I am thrilled with the success of Obsession and Backrooms. These are singular events. Obsession is the highest grossing release ever released by Focus Features and Backrooms will be the #1 ever from A24 by midweek. There is not a single ounce of negativity on my part about the business success of these movies. Happy for everyone involved and for the industry overall. Success is great and great success is greater.

I have pointed out before that these two movies are very different in their steps to theaters, distribution strategies, genres, and production histories. I am intolerant of the lazy blur of “horror” used for both films and for all films with blood in them. Researching, I found a list of last year’s Top 10 horror films and included were Jurassic World: Rebirth, Demon Slayer, Predator: Badlands, and Chainsaw Man, none of which I would classify as horror films. We can certainly argue about this if you are so inclined. (I am not.)

In the case of the two movies of the moment, Backrooms, which is much more a horror movie in my view, is also much more supported by very high-end traditional Hollywood companies/creatives who are responsible for the giant releases that are being positioned as the Goliath here. Shawn Levy, who leads 21 Laps, is the director of next summer’s Star Wars entry, Starfighter… and 1 of 11 people with “produced by” credits on the film… as is for Fox CEO Peter Chernin. Nothing wrong with this and it shouldn’t distract from applause for the young director, Kane Parsons. But Parsons has talked about the many people who approached him about making a Backrooms movie before he moved forward with James Wan, Levy, Chernin, and so many others to make this happen… on a budget significantly bigger than most Sundance movies.

None of this assured the success of Backrooms. That is another set of events. It was still an underdog. But these mainstream pros of long-standing saw the possibilities. How A24 has marketed it clearly was a huge factor. The film itself fits the marketing, which is a positive occurrence. The authenticity signaled by Kane Parsons as the director mattered a lot.

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So what’s biggest surprise of the summer for me so far? How much I enjoyed John Carney’s new film, Power Ballad.

I have never disliked a John Carney film… but I have never been fully onboard, starting 20 years ago with Once, which made feel the villain in some circles. Even though I liked the song… oh my God, I got sick of that song. I was okay with Begin Again, not a fan of Sing Street almost on principal, and Flora & Son didn’t make me think it should have had a theatrical.

But I had a really good time with Power Ballad. I’m kind of amazed that anyone over 40 or with a kid would not… but reading the few negative reviews, I got the sense that those who don’t like it LOVED his other films. What I didn’t love turned the switch for them. Fair enough.

The big premise for the film is right there in the trailer… famous young music star steals a song from a middle-aged guy who has never really made it and the song becomes a worldwide sensation.

But here’s the thing… what really works about the movie is that it isn’t that simple. The boy band singer, Danny, played by Nick Jonas, is no longer a hot commodity. When he and Paul Rudd’s Rick play together at a small wedding for Danny’s childhood friend, the movie shows someone who is famous, but is also needy and generous. When the duo hangs out and works on songs together for one night - the best sequence in the movie - it feels deeply sincere and considered for both men.

Rick goes back to his small life in Dublin with his wife and teen daughter, not without frustration, but okay with his life. When Danny goes back to L.A., he faces his recent history of rejection from the powers behind big fame and fortune (though he already has the big house and fast cars).

Danny has the looks and the voice, but he doesn’t have the song. His manager and his girlfriend are both lukewarm on his work to the point of losing what he had earned. Until Danny plays one of Rick’s songs for his girlfriend… and with that, unlocks a future beyond everything he’s been trying to recover from his boy band days.

Unfortunately, part of this is that Danny traps himself into telling the girlfriend, who might be The One, that the song, "How to Write a Song Without You," is about her.

If there is a flaw in the film, it’s that the movie can’t make up its mind - and there are clear rewrites on some sections - whether Danny is a real villain or not. He is very, very good and very, very bad. But that keeps things interesting. And the movie keeps pushing through that indecision regarding one character with the sincerity and clarity around the other lead character, Rudd’s Rick.

It is a movie cliche to see Rick as the underdog we root for. But Carney and his screenwriting partner Peter McDonald don’t just lean on that. They almost shove Rick through a midlife crisis in the ways the loss of his song, his potential, his future, and his identity drive him somewhat mad.

I’m not going to write a word about the 3rd act here. Like so much of the movie, some of the stuff that seems like it won’t work at all turns into an unexpected strength. The ending is really interesting and will make great dinner fodder… but you’ll have to discover it for yourself.

All I will say is this. Sometimes, you really want the obvious to happen. And when it doesn’t, it challenges us as an audience to reconsider our expectations. Which I really liked about this film.

In so many ways, this is an old fashioned movie. And I mean that in the most complimentary way. Good, quirky story well told. Laughs, tears, sincerity, things we can all identify with if we have some life under our belts.

The thing about Rudd here is that he isn’t just playing the most likable man in the world, which seems to be his nature. He is playing a really nice guy who can easily become a prickly pear. And then he can recover with us.

Another thing I realized in this movie is that I can’t really tell the difference between Jack Reynor and Leo Woodall… though both seem like interesting candidates for the next Bond. Woodall is in Tuner, which is another excellent movie for adults for 2 acts, before it kind of collapses on itself. (Also connecting the two movies is Havana Rose Liu, who is in both films.)

It’s unusual to have an adult movie (or two) worth your time in the middle of the summer. But I recommend this one highly. It’s a little silly, a little complicated, a little unexpected, a little heart breaking and making. It feeds the audience,

There are a lot of big rides at the movie carnival this summer. But there is something lovely about just going to the movies and being entertained by real characters who have real human experiences that we can identify with. And Power Ballad does that with a song in it heart.

Until tomorrow…

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That’s pretty much my review. Let me add…

André Øvredal didn’t help himself… but he won’t take the blame for this mess. The actors are doing their best… none will come away with anyone’s enthusiasm, but this car wreck will not likely hurt their careers. I never understood why there were people saying terrible things about Walter Hamada, formerly of WB and DC… a producer here, he is not making a good argument for himself. Gary Dauberman is a screenwriter with a nice history who sometimes produces… just a producer here.

But it is the screenplay, above and beyond, that is the most horrifying thing about this movie. I’m pretty sure there was a lot of re-cutting of this film from the early cuts to the release cut, just 94 minutes, and so paper-thin that doilies beat it up in the schoolyard. I won’t name the screenwriters here because I don’t believe in punching down… or in this case, mocking the near-dead bleeding out on the side of the industry road. (Watch them have a huge hit in 3 years…. show business!)

It steals freely from a range of films from It Follows (without the logic) to Bad Boys 2 (slightly less disgusting) without ever offering a payoff befitting its predecessors. The great and under-used-these-days Melissa Leo gets to play the wary elder usually played by a male character actor… and you will love how they kept her workload down to 2 days.

Roger Ebert loved to talk about how for some horror movies to continue on, characters had to do incredibly dumb things. This is the kind of movie in which the “hero couple,” warned to not drive at night and to never stop proceeds to drive and night at to stop multiple times after that clear warning… after they have seen the supernatural villain… so they completely understand the stakes and keep doing the same stupid shit.

This is a movie in which a tire blows out, forcing out couple to stop, after which the male removes the tire, the woman wanders away insanely, the man gets under the van (you can tell what is going to happen with the man and the van from those 5 words alone without even knowing how the movie works) to retrieve the nuts to secure the replacement tire (which we never even see), and then, once he escapes the van with relatively minor injury and she escapes her moronic wandering into danger, he and she jump into the van and drive away, never having put the invisible replacement tire on the car. (I’m sure the editors tried to fix this and couldn’t… one of the many, “they won’t notice” moments in this clusterfilm.)

This is a movie in which the couple is trying to drive during daylight and then all of a sudden they both fall asleep while driving and wake up to it being the dead of night. "How did it become night?” “I don’t know.” GENIUS!

I don’t like the Terrifier movies or the Human Centipede movies, because they are disgusting and misogynistic and like slowing down to watch a very bloody bus wreck then pulling over and laughing at the dead bodies. But that is a matter of personal taste. Both movies and their sequels have something that Passenger does not have… a clear idea that can be followed (however unpleasant).

I am guessing that there was a clear idea in the screenplay when it was presented to these producers and the studio. It’s basically, “Beautiful couple with some bad history in their past decide to give up their nice city lives (they move out of a $4000 a month apartment early on and go to see the world in their Mercedes van, which is not unusual in Europe, but it $80k+ in America) and run into a supernatural rage being that looks like a combo of the Terrifier guy, Angus Scrimm in Phantasm, and Nick Cage’s Longlegs tortures and kills people who stop their cars on rural roads late at night.”

The villain probably had a reason for doing what he does at some point. There were probably some rules about what the being is capable of and not capable of (sometimes, it seems he can fly… sometimes, he seems completely vulnerable to gravity and a bat). And there was probably a cut 20 minutes longer that made more sense, but was even more painfully boring.

What we get, as an audience, is a movie in which the characters act illogically, the villain is ill-defined, and the only real tension in the film is jump scares. The memories of other movies in nearby genres are apparent… and so badly referenced that it almost becomes outright mockery.

But enough with this breathtaking turd of a film. May everyone connected forget the pain and may the industry allow them a chance for redemption, because no one can make something this bad intentionally.

What I want to point out, as I have a few times in the last months, is the Paramount release plan.

I was not in an empty theater in the first screening (2p) today here in Los Angeles. I’d say the theater was 20% full… which is pretty good under the circumstances. About double the weekday crowd I saw the really compelling Is God Is with last week.

The film had its trailer showing in IMAX theaters only, not online, in December/January. They finally dated the movie in January. And they only released the trailer a month go.

In other words, they spent nothing on marketing, avoiding showing it to almost everyone, and hoped that the film would somehow get the cache’ of a horror film from Neon or A24 or one of the non-major surprises like Terrifier 3. And we will see how it does over this holiday weekend. Whatever amount it scores, it is more than it deserves.

Also involved with the studio releasing this steaming pile of worthlessness is the promise David Ellison made to release 15 films this year. This, with almost no marketing spend, is one of them. It counts… unlike the Top Gun re-releases. So it served that end. By releasing it, the movie’s post-theatrical value is increased and with a tiny marketing budget, they are not flushing 8 figures more into oblivion.

So it’s smart.

It’s also abusive.

I guarantee you that they know over on Melrose. I can hear the meeting after the screening…

“Wow…. that was really horrible.”
”Was it? I slept through most of it.”
”Can we just force it onto Paramount+?”
”No. New Boss needs 15 releases.”
”They always blame the marketing department… hate that!”
”But I have an idea… let’s go Longlegs…”
”What’s Longlegs?”
”That Nic Cage thing that they made a fortune on.”
”You mean National Treasure?”
”No. Keep up. That thing with the funny make-up.”
”Oh… he won Best Supporting Actress, right?”
”Oy.”

Someone’s going to be angry at that… but I actually respect marketing teams and am playing with some stereotypes there. But my main point is, someone came up with this idea and it was really smart. Spend nothing and hope that people sucker themselves into showing up. And the execution of keeping it out of view has worked about as well as it can, unless they had something that is actually really interesting for the target audience.

I went to the movies hoping the film would be better than I expected… which was true of Longlegs for me. Not my favorite, but I get the appeal. Likewise, Terrifier 3. I didn’t see Markiplier’s film and he made that happen in his own, without a studio team behind him, making it all the more unique and impressive.

Finally… NO! This film is not so bad that it’s fun. It could, in a few years, be worthy of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. I mean, I had to restrain myself (failed a couple of times) from speaking the dialogue before it was spoken on screen. And again, they keep doing things that they know they must not do… and time after time, they evade death when they should, in movie logic, die… even though they are a really beautiful couple whose marriage will lead to a kind and divorce by the time the kid is 3. But if there is a God, there will not be a sequel so we can find out.

Until tomorrow…

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Let me start with the headline reference.\

You know how Donald Trump constantly says, “Iran must never get a nuclear weapon,” no matter what question he gets about his failed incursion into Iran and the impact on Americans and the rest of the world?

That is Trump’s inverted version of The Manchurian Candidate playing card. In the movie, captured soldiers are brainwashed by the enemy. They are then returned to their normal lives, seemingly as they had left. But deep in their brain is a unconscious call to action. In the film, when the planted assassin - who has no idea that they are meant to become an assassin - sees a Queen of Diamonds, they snap into a kind of trance and will comply with orders from The Enemy, however horrific.

Iran basically has a very-near-zero chance of creating a nuclear weapon during Trump’s term, even though he has brought them closer than any previous American president by an ego-driven rejection of a working agreement not to build nuclear weapons, allowing Iran to do whatever they pleased in this regard for the last 7 years or so. By offering that repeatedly as the only standard for success, he cannot fail in that regard. But at the same time, he is implanting the can’t-lose-language into the heads of his supporters so that is the only standard they will accept as relevant. He is brainwashing them and taking all other issues, however serious, off the table for them.

Similarly, he has reduced the debate over his ballroom to “national security,” which has never been explained and never will be… so he can never be proven wrong. And his supporters can repeat the claim with 100% confidence and 100% ignorance.

This is what the “45-day window” has become in this industry and especially in the media.

On May 1, AMC’s Adam Aron wrote on X/Twitter…

If the biggest exhibitor in the world says that a “traditional 49-day exclusive theatrical window” is traditional, he must know, right?

But he is demonstrably incorrect. He is misleading everyone… aside from all the fellow exhibitors who would love to kick his ass for his reckless behavior.

The deal for Narnia in February is not anything like the “traditional” or current window. People see “45” (or in this case “49”) and like seeing the Queen of Diamonds, the brain goes blank and everyone - some of those people being very, very smart - and in their trance say as a group, “49 daaayyyyyssss.. Netflix goes traditional.”

False. Undeniably false.

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