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weekendwarriorblog · 6 years

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WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND – Uncle Drew, Sicario and More

June comes to an end with a couple smaller movies that probably could have been released any time during the year, but their respective studios feel there’s a place for them among all the bigger studio tentpoles and franchises taking up movie screens. Oddly, one of the movies is a sequel to a movie released by the other studio.

UNCLE DREW (Summit/Lionsgate)

The first offering trying to get some business away from the big boys is this PG-13 sports comedy directed by Charles Stone III, whose last movie Step Sisters streamed on Netflix without much of a theatrical release. Even so, Stone has had a number of hits in the early ‘00s including Drumline and Mr. 3000, a baseball comedy starring the late Bernie Mac, so he might be the perfect helmer for this movie.

This one brings together a varied cast of African-American talent including a number of actual basketball players wearing make-up and wigs to make them look like old baseball players. The title character is played by the Boston Celtics’ Kyrie Irving, who originated the character for the short on which this film is based, but a lot of the comedic focus for the movie is put on Lil Rel Howery from Get Out and Tiffany Haddish, who broke out in last summer’s Girls Trip. Lil Rel plays Dax, the coach of a street ball team preparing for the 50thRucker Park Classic, who loses the team to his lifelong enemy, played by Nick Kroll from The League. When Dax sees the elderly Uncle Drew schooling a bunch of kids, Dax enlists Drew who puts together that team.

That team includes former basketball star Shaquile O’Neal, who hasn’t been appearing in many movies in recent years, other than a voice role or two. O’Neal transitioned from the basketball court to the movie screen in the ‘90s with movies like Kazaam and Steel, so this is kind of a throwback to his older fans. Other basketball players (barely recognizable in old make-up) include Reggie Miller, Nate Robinson, Chris Webber, Aaron Gordon and Lisa Leslie, so one expects that basketball fans will be the main draw. Rounding out the comedic cast are vets Mike Epps and J.B. Smoove as a comedic Greek chorus. The results are kind of a cross between Johnny Knoxville’s Bad Grandpa and the Barbershop movies.

Other than maybe Haddish, it’s hard to see any of the cast being much of a draw to non-basketball fans, so it’s up to the marketing, which has done a good job selling this comedy even to those outside its expected target audience. This may be a tougher movie to gauge its box office prospects, not being the target audience i.e. I don’t watch basketball, but Lionsgate is giving it a wider-than-usual release for this type of movie into 2,600 theaters, similar to the Barbershop films, all of which opened over $20 million. (For more perspective, Stone’s earlier film Drumline opened with $12.6 million in less than 2,000 theaters, and Uncle Drew is likely to have a similarly regionalized appeal.)

The trailers and ads look amusing enough and the movie isn’t bad (see below), so presuming that the movie was advertised during the last few months through the NBA Championships means that the film’s target older male audience will likely give it a chance and maybe they’ll bring some younger b-ball fans. That should help Uncle Drew make around $15 or 16 million, possibly even more, which should put it just ahead of Sicario despite being in fewer theaters.

Mini-Review: While the movie is about as silly and predictable as one might expect from watching the trailers, there’s definitely something to be said for how funny and entertaining it is, even if you don’t really know the players beneath the make-up. It’s pretty great that Lil Rel Howery, who stole so many scenes in Get Out, has been given such a great vehicle, and some of the funniest moments are when he’s being picked on by the ball players or being bullied by Nick Kroll and Tiffany Haddish, as his ex-girlfriend. Not all of the movie works, and it’s a little hard to believe that a team of “old men” could perform the way that they do, but I guess if you’re a fan of their work on the courts, that can make up for the obvious lack of acting skills chops in Irving and the others. (Yes, even Shaq, who has been acting for decades now.) There probably isn’t that much more to say about the movie, but it’s more in the vein of the Barbershop movies with basketball players instead of comedians. Even having ringers like Mike Epps and J.B. Smoove show up randomly doesn’t fully use their talents, but hopefully the movie will do well so Howery will get more opportunities like this. There’s definitely a potential franchise to be had if they can figure out how to get past the feeling that this should be its own standalone comedy. Rating:7/10

SICARIO: DAY OF THE SOLDADO (Sony)

While the summer movie season regularly produces a number of sequels to hit franchises, this sequel being released by Sony is the follow-up to a smaller independently-made film that showcased a lot of brilliant talent and ended up creating a cult following while also receiving three Oscar nominations.

The original Sicario was directed by Dennis Villeneuve, who would go onto bigger hits like Arrival (for which he received an Oscar nod) and Blade Runner 2049. The movie was released by Lionsgate in select cities for two weeks, but when it expanded into 2,620 theaters, it made over $12 million on its way to $46.9 million domestic based on a $30 million budget. It also the first produced screenplay by Taylor Sheridan, who also went on to be nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay for Hell or High Water.

Emily Blunt isn’t in this sequel, as it instead focuses on the characters played by Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro as a CIA fixer and the Colombian assassin he works with to help fight the Mexican cartels. In this case, they’re dealing with the cartels’ human trafficking across the border, which certainly is timely to what’s going on in the country today, which should make it of interest.

Brolin is already having a bang-up summer, having starred in two of the season’s biggest hits, playing Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War and Cable in Deadpool 2, and the original Sicario has been playing on Netflix to presumably build up anticipation for another movie in the franchise.

In a perfect world, the sequel to Sicario would have a similar bump as John Wick: Chapter 2 had over the original John Wick, opening with twice as much, but it’s hard to tell whether there’s nearly as much anticipation for this sequel. It certainly could do well among Latino males in North America, especially with little direct competition, but the subject might hit close to home to make this a choice for weekend entertainment.

At one point, I thought Sicario would be good for a third place showing, but I think it will fall just short of the far-stronger Uncle Drew, even though that’s in a few less theaters*, just because it’s a far stronger sell as a comedy. Sicario should end up in fourth place with between $12 and 15 million, not great but not awful either. (*Quick Correction: It seems like the estimated theater counts have been adjusted so that Sicario might be in fewer theaters than Uncle Drew, but I’ll know for sure on Thursday.)

Mini-Review: I deliberately didn’t rewatch the original Sicario before seeing this sequel, and it’s probably a good thing, because it would have just left me even more disappointed. I loved that film and it’s look at the government’s war on drugs, but this time, it’s more about the government’s war on terrorism and the Mexican drug cartels transporting people across the border. Sound familiar? Yeah, there are definite correlations with what’s going on in the country right now, but the fact that Oscar-nominated writer Taylor Sheridan probably wrote this movie before Trump was elected makes it ridiculous to even mention this fact (as I just did). Mind you, this isn’t the first movie to explore the Latin American immigrant experience, and there are far better instances, such as Jonas Cuaron’s Desierto and Cary Fukunaga’s Sin Nombre.

Josh Brolins’ FBI agent Matt Graver is commissioned to do whatever it takes to take down the Mexican cartels, which are now being considered terrorists after a supermarket is bombed. The idea is to start a war between the cartels, and the way Matt does this is by kidnapping the young daughter of the top Mexican druglord, played by Isabela Moner from Transformers: The Last Knight (once again playing a character with her own name). What this does is allow Del Toro to have some great scenes with Moner, creating a relationship that almost makes up for the fact that Brolin seems to be phoning it in this time, not to mention there only being a few scenes with Brolin and Del Toro together. (The movie also keeps cutting back to this young man being recruited by the cartels, but it doesn’t make much sense to even have him in the movie until near the end.)

Italian director Stefano Sollima (Gomorrah) leans so heavily on the score by Hildur Guðnadóttir, the Icelandic protégé of the late Johann Johannsen, who scored the original film, that the music’s attempt to create tension instead wears out its welcome fairly quickly.

There’s probably room for another movie if this one does well, but it’s a shame that the movie only starts getting interesting in the last 20 minutes and then it just ends, leaving you wondering why they couldn’t cut something out from the dull first two-thirds of the movie.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado is noticeably lacking due to the absence of so much of what made the first film so good, particularly Villaneuve, so it’s hard to imagine many people will be as into this as the first movie. Rating: 6/10

Of course, neither of these movies will have enough of an impact to knock the 1-2 punch of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and The Incredibles 2out of the top spots with the former having a bigger drop in its second weekend then the latter in its third. Another film to keep an eye on is the Bollywood biopic Sanju, starring Ranbir Kapoor as Sanjay Dutt, which is a highly-anticipated film being released by Fox International Productions (FIP) into around 350 theaters, which should be enough to get it into the top 10 as well. (It won’t have Thursday previews, so it might be hard to tell how it’s doing until Friday estimates on Saturday.)

So the Top 10 should look something like this…

1. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Universal) - $63.6 million -57%

2. The Incredibles 2 (Disney-Pixar) - $44 million -45%

3. Uncle Drew (Lionsgate) - $15.6 million N/A

4. Sicario: Day of the Soldado (Sony) - $12.6 million N/A

5. Ocean’s 8 (Warner Bros.) - $7.6 million -35%

6. Tag (New Line/WB) – $4.5 million -45%

7. Deadpool 2 (20thCentury Fox) - $2.9 million -45%

8. Sanju (FIP) - $2.5 million N/A

9. Solo: A Star Wars Story (Lucasfilm/Disney) - $2.3 million -50%

10. Hereditary (A24) – $2 million -47%

LIMITED RELEASES, ETC.

I’m happy to say that there’s quite a lot of good stuff being released in select cities this weekend, including two of the bigger buzz films from Sundance.

Opening on Thursday at the Metrograph in NYC is Bobbito Garcia’s doc Rock Rubber 45s (Saboteur Media), which is basically an overview of his amazing life and career, starting as a street basketball prodigy, to his tenure working in A&R at Def Jam during its heyday, becoming a sought-after DJ, as well as a sneaker-designing pioneer. Garcia is a bit of a Zelig with his presence felt in so many different aspects of music, sports and fashion, and if you’re into streetball then you should definitely check out this movie either before or after seeing Uncle Drew. The Puerto Rican Garcia enlisted a number of celebrity friends/fans including Lin Manuel Miranda, Michael Rapaport and Rosie Perez to help tell his story, and yeah, it’s a little weird for Garcia to be directing a doc about himself, but hey, who else would know him better? (And there’s some really personal revelations made in the doc.)

Winter’s Bone director Debra Granik returns with Leave No Trace (Bleecker Street), starring Ben Foster and newcomer Thomasin McKenzie as father Will and daughter “Tom” living in the wilds of Portland, basically wanting to live by their own rules instead of society. When they’re found by the authorities, they’re forced to change their ways, but it’s going to be tougher for Will, a former soldier, to adjust to a different life than the one they’ve created for themselves in the woods. This fantastic drama will open in select cities Friday.

Tim Wardle’s doc Three Identical Strangers (Neon), a hit out of the Sundance Film Festival, takes a look at the three young men who discovered at the age of 19 that they were one third of a triad of triplets. They spend the rest of their lives taking advantage of the fame they received from the amazing revelation only to discover a dark secret about why they were separated at birth. This is a great doc that I highly recommend if you’re looking for more of the genre to see after Won’t You Be My Neighbor and RBG. (What a GREAT year for docs we’re having!)

Jessica Chastain stars in the Susanna White-directed Western Woman Walks Ahead (A24) as New York painter Katherine Weldon who travels to North Dakota to paint a portrait of Chief Sitting Bull (Michael Greyeyes), who is contending with the government trying to get his people to agree to their land treaty. Also starring Sam Rockwell and Ciaran Hinds, this is a decent historical drama that includes a bit of romance but also offers an inherent timeliness with our current government treating immigrants as badly as the government did its natives back in the 19thCentury. I also had a chance to interview director Susanna White at Toronto, and you can read that interview and learn more about the film over at NextBestPicture.com.

If you’re looking for some alternatives to the wide releases, I can recommend all four movies above.

After that, there’s a few odds and ends, including Pasha Patriki’s undersea action-thriller Black Water (Saban Films/Lionsgate) starring ‘80s legends Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren – seriously? Have these two never been in a movie together?!? –with Van Damme playing an operative being kept as a prisoner by the CIA on a submarine until he joins forces with a fellow prisoner, played by Lundgren.

That movie is not to be confused with Dark River (Filmrise), Clio Barnard’s psychological drama starring Ruth Wilson as Alice, a woman who returns to her hometown after the death of her father to claim the family farm from her brother (Mark Stanley). It’ll play in select cities and be available On Demand after premiering at the Toronto Film Festival last year.

The Craft and Hamlet II director Andrew Fleming reunites with Steve Coogan for Ideal Home (Brainstorm Media), which co-stars Paul Rudd, the two of them playing a bickering gay couple whose life is changed when a ten-year-old shows up claiming to be one of their grandsons.

Kate Bosworth stars in Mike P. Nelson’s post-apocalyptic thriller The Domestics (Orion Classics) along with Tyler Hoechlin, which will be released in theaters Thursday, then On Demand Friday, so don’t blink or you’ll miss it.

I haven’t seen Xavier Legrand’s French drama Custody (Kino Lorber), which opens at the IFC Centerafter running the festival gauntlet, but it involves a couple getting divorced who get into a custody battle. The IFC Center is also playing a 4k restoration of Alexandre Rockwell’s In the Soup starring Steve Buscemi following its premiere at Tribeca a few months back.

Israeli filmmaker Ofir Raul Grazier’s The Cakemaker (Strand), the Centerpiece of the New York Jewish Film Festival is about Thomas, a gay German baker who begins an affair with a married Israeli businessman, but when he dies, Thomas travels to Jerusalem under a false identity and begins working with his lover’s widow. It will open at the Quadin New York on Friday. (The Quad is also starting an ambitious series called “The New York Woman” with female-centric films set in New York City. Lots of good stuff in there!)

Other stuff out this weekend include Matt Osterman’s sci-fi film Hover (Syfy Films), written and starring Aussie actor Cleopatra Coleman (The Last Man on Earth, Step Up Revolution); Oscar-winning filmmaker Louis Psihoyos’ new doc Gamechangers (Parade Deck Films) about UFC champ James Wilks’ road to recovery after being injured; Daniel McCabe’s doc This is Congo (Abramorama), which looks at the ongoing conflict in the African country (on the 58thAnniversary of its independence); and also the self-explanatory Larger than Life: The Kevyn Aucoin Story (The Orchard) will open in Chicago Friday, in L.A. on July 20, and then be On Demand and digital starting July 31.

If you’re in New York, you’ll probably already know about the New York Asian Film Festival, which kicks off its 17thyear this Friday with Tominaga Masanori’s Dynamite Graffiti and closing with Erik Matti’s Phillipine film BuyBust. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to see any of the movies in advance, but there are always some nice surprises.

But honestly, if you don’t feel like going out to the movies and just want to stay home and watch Season 2 of the Netflix lady wrestling show Glow, then I certainly won’t blame you.

That’s it for this week. Next week is the 4thof July (on Wednesday) with Blumhouse’s The First Purgetaking on Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp opening Friday. I hope to have the column up by Weds. morning.

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