A Perfect Getaway Tagged Articles at Cinematical

This post contains some vague spoilers for A Perfect Getaway.

David Twohy's A Perfect Getaway was not destined for commercial glory. Pitched as a generic tropical-set actioner, with no big-name stars and little marketing muscle behind it, its middling box office performance was a foregone conclusion. Last weekend's $5.7 million result seemed pretty much right.

Depending on your point of view, this is either fitting or tragic. Because David Twohy is one of the most fascinating writers and directors working in genre film today. Hollywood has plenty of talented technical craftsmen -- filmmakers who can make an action movie crackle. But it has precious few people who are consistently doing interesting things with action films, thrillers, science-fiction and horror. Twohy is not content to deliver generically competent entertainment. There's always a twist.

The man is best known for the Riddick duology -- Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick. I like each very much in its own right, but they're really intriguing when viewed together. Pitch Black is a rousing piece of sci-fi horror Alien-style. Riddick then took the first film's mythology and radically changed its scale. A small, contained story seamlessly became something huge -- something on the order of epic fantasy. It was a great trick, and Riddick is some of the decade's most underappreciated sci-fi.

"Decent," at least, is the watchword for G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, whose $56 million opening is roughly half of Transformers 2's first weekend gross. I fear that the movie may follow in the footsteps of Watchmen, which opened to $55 million and ended up with not even twice that much when it left domestic theaters. I do think Paramount deserves credit for actually opening a film that the media, for somewhat mysterious reasons, did its best to bury with manufactured bad buzz. It's really not a bad number, and foreign box office should be strong with this one. A year ago I would have expected G.I. Joe to be more of a summer standout.

The $20 million on Julie & Julia seems a little low to me. I expected at least Devil Wears Prada numbers, but I guess this one skewed a little older. Hopefully that will also translate to legs for the well-reviewed film, though Mamma Mia!-style longevity seems unlikely. The clever A Perfect Getaway did mediocre business, as expected, grossing just under $6 million with no real marketing hook. I'll pick this one as my obligatory plug of the week: fans of thoughtful, off-kilter genre films should give it a shot.

They don't make double bills like they used to. I got in on the tail end of the double feature, which was a routine practice at second-run theaters until (at least) the early 80s. As a child my parents only took me to see one or two movies per year, so when I got to my teens and realized I could see two movies for the price of one, I became an addict (my all-time favorite double bill: Excalibur and The Howling). Nowadays you have to create your own double feature, and be willing to pay separate admission fees for each movie. Add in the cost of concessions, which is hard to avoid if you're at a theater for more than four hours, and the price can get out of hand.

Multiplexes don't make it easy to watch movies back-to-back, either, staggering their showtimes to maximize the number of screenings per day, accommodate the sharing of film prints in more than one auditorium, and so forth. All that is understandable from their standpoint, and doesn't present a problem if you're only seeing one movie at a time. But when I'm trying to catch up with several releases that I've missed, it gets to be a big challenge. Let me give you an example.

To varying degrees, I wanted to see all three movies that opened in wide release on Friday (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Julie & Julia, and A Perfect Getaway), ideally one after the one at the first available opportunity, which, for me, was during the day on Saturday.

Agatha Christie had it figured out. Ten victims, one killer. Set it up, knock 'em down.

And while there's something to be said for simplicity -- writer-director David Twohy opts for three couples with two killers among them -- A Perfect Getaway can hardly sustain itself until the suspense can kick in. Unable to cut to the chase, Twohy takes his time and decides to get coy, and as it turns out, the only thing deadlier than a killer in a thriller is a screenwriter.

Things slowed down a bit this past weekend with Judd Apatow's Funny People taking first but opening weaker than many expected. The family comedy Aliens in the Attic took a lackluster fifth place, and the horror flick The Collector is way back there in 11th taking in only $3.5 million. Here's the top five:

1. Funny People: $22.7 million
2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: $17.9 million
3. G-Force: $17.5 million
4. The Ugly Truth: $13.2 million
5. Aliens in the Attic: $8 million

Three newbies this week:

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
What's It All About: Big budget effects-filled extravaganza based on the classic Hasbro line of toys.
Why It Might Do Well: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has pulled in $388 million so far and both films carry similar geek appeal/80s nostalgia.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Some of us are steadfastly holding out for My Little Pony: The Motion Picture.
Number of Theaters: 3,500
Prediction: $56 million

It's all about combat at the cinema this weekend: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (live action toys vs. bad guys, studio vs. critics, movie vs. our critic), Julie & Julia (legendary female chef vs. chauvinistic men, blogger vs. cookbook), A Perfect Getaway (lovers vs. psychopaths, logic vs. thrills). Personally, I haven't seen any of those yet, but I'm hoping they'll exceed my expectations for entertainment. In the meantime, in the spirit of combat, Topless Robot presents their picks for "The 7 Most Implausible Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vehicles."

Think about the possibilities. What if you could head into battle behind the wheel of a tank that launches pizzas at the enemy? What if you could vanquish the villains by tossing them into the Flushomatic Slime Pit (a self-described "high tech toilet bowl")? Coolest of all: what if you could stealthily, yet gracefully, silently sail over enemy lines, thanks to the Ninja Turtle Blimp?

Sure, G.I. Joe has all the latest, futuristic geegaws and gadgets, and Julie & Julia has its kitchen utensils, and A Perfect Getaway has its kisses and hand weapons, but if I could stride into battle atop a "Thrashin', Bad Boy Bashin' Skateboard" (AKA Cheapskate Motorized Skateboard), I think the fight would be over before it even began. You can check out all seven implausible combat vehicles at Topless Robot. Feel free to let us know: what are your picks for the most implausible combat vehicles -- from real life, movies, cartoons, or toy shelves?

The Road
This bleak tale of one family trying to survive the apocalypse is based on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, author of No Country For Old Men. After some kind of global cataclysm (it's not clear if it's a nuclear war), a man played by Viggo Mortensen must help his son to survive by whatever means necessary. Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce and Robert Duvall also star. This looks darkly fascinating and probably would have gone well with a Cinematical Seven I did not long ago. This one comes out on October 16.

Pandorum
This new trailer reveals quite a bit more than the teaser we saw awhile back. Two men awaken aboard a space craft wondering what's become of the thousands of other crew members. Other people show up as do some scary monster types who may be the mutated crew. Looks like an intersting take on the Alien formula. Watch for this one on September 4.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel
I didn't see the first film because it looked pretty awful, although the ridiculous amount of money it made showed that not everybody thought so. This teaser, which involves Alvin, Simon and Theodore doing their rendition of the 20th Century Fox Fanfare is pretty cute and the film should presumably please those who enjoyed the original. This one scurries into theaters on Christmas Day.

I didn't realize it until now, but it's probably a safe bet that everyone either likes Steve Zahn or Milla Jovovich. So someone was finally smart enough to stick them in the same movie as newlyweds being hunted down in David Twohy's A Perfect Getaway.

From the looks of things, I do hope that their Hawaiian honeymoon from hell skews closer to The Most Dangerous Game than Turistas, as the couple juggles suspicion between fellow travelers Timothy Olyphant (well, duh) and Chris Hemsworth (Kirk's pop from J.J. Trek, and a Josh-Brolin-in-No-Country doppelganger here).

Twohy demonstrated a knack with B-grade thrills with Below, Pitch Black, and The Arrival, so let's hope he keeps the streak alive and defies the shrug-worthy placement of any film on an August release date (and this after much previous shuffling to boot).

Getaway currently opens August 14th opposite roughly a gajillion movies -- Taking Woodstock, Ponyo, The Time Traveler's Wife, Bandslam, District 9, and others -- so if it (or Wife) flinches and gets put off, don't act so surprised. My suggestion? Counter-program against constant comedies on July 10th or Harry Potter on July 17th. We could use something tropical there...

Cannes deals may be tepid, but Variety has a whole bunch of new casting notices. Here's part one:

Years ago, one of James Russo's first gigs was as a Convenience Store Robber in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Since then, he's popped up in Beverly Hills Cop, The Blue Iguana, Donnie Brasco, and Paris. Now he has nabbed the part of Walter Dietrich in Michael Mann's Public Enemies. Dietrich was a man who John Dillinger came across while in the Michigan City penitentiary -- he was teaching Dillinger and others "the methods of Herman 'Baron' K. Lamm, a Prussian army officer turned highly successful bank robber."

But that's not the only getaway in this batch. Katie Chonacas, who grabbed a part in The Code last year, has signed on for a supporting role in the Timothy Olyphant and Milla Jovovich flick A Perfect Getaway. There's no word on who she'll play in the film, which focuses on two honeymooners (Steve Zahn and Jovovich) who get stalked by some killers (Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez).

Lastly, in this batch, there's youngin' Sterling Beaumon. The kid, who has popped up in shows like 7th Heaven and Heroes, has scored himself the starring role in a big-screen adaptation of R.L. Stine's Mostly Ghostly. The film focuses on a kid name Max (Beaumon), who has ghostly friends. The film also stars LiLo's little sister Ali Lohan.

And here are yet another round of small casting bites, courtesy of Variety:

• You might not be familiar with the name Frederic von Anhalt, but you're certainly familiar with his famous wife -- the one and only Zsa Zsa Gabor. While he only has a few acting gigs to his name, the man has scored a part as "a corrupt Las Vegas casino owner" in Charlie Matthau's upcoming flick Baby-O, which has begun filming in Las Vegas and LA -- the same locales used in Matthau's 2007 production, Mikey & Dolores. As for von Anhalt, this seems to be a side gig to his many adult adoptions. According to IMDb, Frederic and Zsa Zsa have adopted a handful of grown men lately.
• Chris Hemsworth, meanwhile, looks to be your regular sort of actor. Aside from his high-profile gig playing Captain Kirk's father in Star Trek, he is also looking for A Perfect Getaway. This is that Hawaiian thriller with Timothy Olyphant, Milla Jovovich, Steve Zahn, and Kiele Sanchez, which you can find out more about here. Hemsworth gets to play some dude named Kale.
• Kale is not one of the stalkees in his gig, but I don't know if the same can be said for Arlen Escarpeta, who you might remember from We Are Marshall, or from The Ten, where he got Oliver Platt's Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation as a father figure. Arlen has picked up "a lead role" in the remake of Friday the 13th, which is shooting now down in Austin. Will he survive, or will he be a victim?
  
• Finally, there's Alexis Dziena, who has nabbed a gig as a sister to Kristen Bell in When in Rome. Dziena will player Bell's younger sister "who's getting married on a whim." This is just one of many roles the actress has nabbed lately. She was in Fool's Gold, and just wrapped a part in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.