Fierce People Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Industry attention is still focused on the Toronto festival, but most moviegoers just wanted something good to watch this weekend. Of the four new indie films released in limited engagements, Jeff Garlin's I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With topped the chart, earning $14,000 at its single screen, according to estimates by Box Office Mojo. Garlin is best known for his role as Larry David's long-suffering manager in the HBO improv series Curb Your Enthusiasm (which returned for a new season Sunday night). Karina Longworth interviewed him at Tribeca last year. He wrote, directed and stars in Cheese, "based on his one-man show on being a fat, gig-less, and lonely actor in search of someone to love," according to Ella Taylor's review in Village Voice. The film scored an 80% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

The other three new releases were not far behind, each averaging about $10,000 per screen. Again taking a look at the Rotten Tomatoes approval ratings, In the Shadow of the Moon did best, at 91% positive (Cinematical's James Rocchi liked it too), with The Hunting Party and Fierce People trailing badly, at 41% and 33% positive, respectively. Shadow of the Moon is a doc about the surviving NASA astronauts, Hunting Pary features Richard Gere and Terence Howard as TV journalists chasing stories in war zones and Fierce People is Griffin Dunne's coming of age story, with Diane Lane and Donald Sutherland.

Among holdovers, Death at a Funeral ($2,183 average on 316 screens in its fourth week) and The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters ($1,717 per screen at 39 locations, also in its fourth week) continued to perform nicely. But everyone's favorite underdog, musical drama Once, is the real indie star of the summer. In its 17th week, Once made $1,595 per screen at 141 locations. Go, Once!

Many thanks to Erik for filling in for me on last week's Trailer Park. Now that I'm all rested and recreated, let's look at some films that take us to some weird place either internally or externally. This week on Trailer Park we're traveling from the inner mind to the outer limits.

Right at Your Door
In an all too believable scenario, several dirty bombs are detonated in Los Angeles, sending a radioactive cloud into the sky. Rory Cochrane -- who to me will always be that little stoner from Dazed and Confused -- plays Brad, a man whose wife has gone into the city and he wonders if he'll ever see her again. With the roads jammed, he attempts to make his home as airtight as possible, sealing up every crack and crevice. The radio warns against contact with anyone who was in the vicinity of the blasts as they will be highly contaminated, so when Brad's wife finally does make it back, it's not the happy homecoming we had all hoped for. As realistic as the premise may be, the trailer had me thinking about zombie movies. A large scale catastrophe which results in people barricading themselves inside for fear of the people outside? Sounds like Night of the Living Dead to me, which itself used radiation to explain the menace. Bleak and apocalyptic but fascinating as hell, I'm looking forward to seeing this one. The film starts its limited theatrical release to U.S. theaters on August 24. Have a look at the trailer right here:


The Nines
Usually I find myself gritting my teeth over trailers that don't actually tell you what the movie is about. Isn't that the whole point? This trailer plays its hand close to its vest, not really telling the viewer what's going on, but showing enough to really make me curious. Delightfully vague is how I would describe it. Ryan Reynolds plays three characters: a troubled actor, a television show runner, and an acclaimed videogame designer who find their lives intertwining in mysterious and unsettling ways. There appears to be some Matrix-esque reality bending at work here. Are these three different aspects of the same person? Are these characters in a computer game? Am I dying to find out? A resounding "yup" to the former. Cinematical's own Erik Davis posted an exclusive look at the poster here. The Nines goes into limited release on August 31.