Teensy Reviews: 6 Films We Didn't Review Properly

These reviews could fit in a tweet. Presented to assuage Nathaniel's guilt from not having properly reviewed them when they arrived, though he sometimes dropped hints of his feelings in other contexts.

IN THEATERS

Swiss Army Man (Daniels)
Story: A suicidal man (Paul Dano) finds companionship and a new zest for life when he meets a corpse (Daniel Radcliffe)
Review: Wobbly start, Self sabotaging end. But, Oh!, those imaginative mental heights in the middle. 
Grade: Middle Hour: A- / The Rest: C+

Genius (Michael Grandage)
Story: An account of the long working relationship between famed editor Max Perkins (Colin Firth) and one of his literary finds Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law). Let us not mention the women (Nicole Kidman, The Lovely Laura Linney) lest we rage again at the terrible gender politics
Review: The work of an editor is shape & rhythm, so why is a film about a great one lumpy and lead-footed? Over and under-acted at once. 
Grade: D- 
Extra: Amir's festival review

The Shallows (Jaume Collet-Serra)
Story: A grieving med school dropout is attacked by a shark and stranded in the ocean alone. Can she survive? Review: Mechanical, but that's meant as a compliment. It plays. Slight with just enough bite (sorry). Bonus points for Steven Seagull.
Grade: B 

ON DVD & BLURAY

The Bronze (Bryan Buckley)
Story: Two former Olympic champions (Melissa Rauch & Sebastian Stan) fight over a promising new female gymnast
Review: Rude and daring. But its suffocatingly narrow comic tone mars the promising conceit, good jokes, and a lunatic sex scene. 
Grade: C+ 

How to Be Single (Christian Ditter)
Story: Four single girls (Dakota Johnson, Leslie Mann, Rebel Wilson, Alison Brie) try to find themselves... and maybe a boyfriend... in Manhattan.
Review: Unexpectedly involving performances. Fun. And yet, as uneven and generic as first dates. One entire storyline needs to go.
Grade: B- 

10 Cloverfield Lane (Dan Trachtenberg)
Story: A woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) wakes up chained up by a man (John Goodman) in an underground shelter. Should she fear the man or the apocalypse he swears is raging outside the bunker? 
Review: Discomforting. What it lacks in scope, it makes up for in propulsive plotting: from frying pan to fire to inferno.
Grade: B 

What did you see this weekend?

Moviegoers are officially tired of The Divergent Series as its third installment was off 44% from the previous film. And they've still got one film to go! Studios will soon (hopefully) realize that not every book adaptation deserves multiple movies. Damn you Hunger Games & Hobbit & everything else that encouraged this awful trend of greed over storytelling purity; plodding along when you should set hearts racing is an anti-audience move. Zootopia and Deadpool continue to be huge hits. In fun news, Sally Field's vehicle Hello My Name is Doris got within a ferry ride's distance of the top ten with a million dollar weekend even though it's only on 128 screens. Well done, Sally! 

WIDE RELEASES
01 Zootopia $38 (cum. $201.8)
02 The Divergent Series: Allegiant $29  NEW 
03 Miracles From Heaven $15  NEW 
04 10 Cloverfield Lane $12.5  (cum. $45.1)
05 Deadpool $8 (cum. $340.9) Reviewish

LIMITED RELEASES
less than 800 screens excluding previously wide
01 Hello My Name is Doris $1 (cum. $1.1) 128 screens Review 
02 Kapoor & Sons - Since 1921 $.9 NEW 143 screens
03 Anomalisa $.7 (cum. $3.4) 573 screens
04 The Lady in the Van $.4 (cum. $8.7) 301 screens Review
05 The Other Side of the Door $.1 (cum. $2.7) 227 screens 

OTHER PICTURES
The Bronze, a foul mouthed comedy about Olympic medalists, waited over a year past its buzzy Sundance launch to arrive in theaters and did so (on over 1000 screens) with almost no promotion. I didn't even realize it was opening until I was looking up movie times for something else and I pay attention to release dates. The result was an absolutely bleak $361 per screen average, which is bound to be the worst of the year for a wide release.  

In extremely limited release Midnight Special opened at 5 locations with a strong $184,000 which bodes well for its future. Arnaud Desplechin's My Golden Days (interviewed) earned $27,000 on 3 screens, Argentina's Oscar submission from 2015 El Clan (Nathaniel's review) finally opened to $12,500 on 3 screens and Krisha (Daniel's review) opened to $10,250 on 2 screens.

What did you see this weekend?

Sundance Begins: The Bronze, Dark Horse & Nicole Kidman

Sebastian Stan from his InstagramNathaniel, reporting from the snowy mountains of Park City Utah for the annual Sundance Film Festival. Michael, currently en route, will also be covering though we both missed opening night (I was still visiting family in Utah).

From what I gather the opening night talk mostly revolved around Sebastian Stan's muscular performance in a raunchy sex scene in The Bronze. While that event was happening (unbeknownst to me) I was still visiting my mom and brother and they made me* watch muscular Sebastian Stan and his robot arm terrorizing Captain America and The Black Widow.

So, it was unofficially Sebastian Stan Day. Perhaps this is a good omen for the actor's 2015, which he already seems rather happy about (see photo evidence, left). Variety interviewed him at the premiere and he said the script for The Bronze was so funny that before he even got the role he was quoting his own character to friends. It's a supporting role but a showy one, as a former gold medalist Olympic gymnast 

Dark Horse
After picking up my badge, I raced off to my first movie, the only thing I could squeeze in before a Nicole Kidman party I had no intention of missing. [More...]

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