public enemies Tagged Articles at Cinematical

As expected, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen won't have the word of mouth to hang around Star Trek style, though its megaton opening has already made it the year's top grosser. It fell just over 60% in its second weekend to virtually tie with Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs' bow with $42.5 million in the estimates, though the final numbers will surely break the deadlock.* A 60% drop is by no means unusual for a movie that opened to well over $100 million, so don't think the drop is a badge of shame or anything. Mr. Bay is still very, very happy.

Dawn of the Dinosaurs, meanwhile, collected $67.5 million over the five-day holiday weekend. That's not a bad showing either; its franchise predecessor collected about that much in its first three-day weekend, but it had virtually no competition at the end of March in 2006. The third film's numbers are likely enough to keep the franchise alive.

I was impressed with the showing for Public Enemies, which really leveraged its cast and gangster movie hook to the tune of $26.2 million over three days, and $41 million over five. Michael Mann's current top box office performer is Collateral with just over $100 million; it's unclear that Public Enemies, which is lengthy, difficult and dark, will be able to hang on long enough to toy with that number. But I think it's already earned a minor victory.

*Edited to note: The deadlock was broken in favor of Transformers, $42.3 million vs. $41.7 million.

The full top 10 after the jump.

From Pacman to Public Enemies, he's had more ups and downs than most other actors of his generation. Christian Bale has careened between extreme highs and deep lows, in the view of the folks at MovieFill, and they decided that a rollercoaster was the most apt visual metaphor for his career. A reduced-size version can be seen above.

They squeeze most of his films into the chart, though they left out a few. Before his sensational role in Mary Harron's American Psycho, he was very appealing in Metroland and got good notices in Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine; pre-Batman Begins / The Dark Knight, he was fun to watch as a frisky villain in John Singleton's Shaft and an uptight, would-be psychiatrist in Laurel Canyon. I don't agree with every notation in the chart. Harsh Times, for example, is cited as one of his "lows," but Bale was riveting. Two notorious off-screen incidents are included, which both affected his public perception, though it seems somewhat unfair to lump those in with his films.

Still, the rollercoaster graphic provides an easy way to look back and consider the range and daring of what he's done, especially earlier in his career. Recently he's been in more big-budget productions than anything else, and next up is David O. Russell's boxing biopic The Fighter. I'd love to see him in a couple of smaller indie flicks. What are your thoughts on Christian Bale's career so far? More ups than downs?

Michael Mann's latest crime opus has already hit theaters, and like most of his devoted fans, I was there opening day. Granted, my desire to be first in line for Public Enemies mainly had to do with my preoccupation with pretty boys in nice suits, but trust me, there were some loftier ideals at work. One of the reasons I love Mann's films is that he finds new ways to tell relatively traditional stories...which brings me to Miami Vice. Vice definitely wasn't one of Mann's most popular films, but I always defend this flick, and here's why: growing up, I watched Miami Vice, and I might have loved it, but even at the tender age of 10 I knew it was kind of silly. I had always wondered what the series would have looked like if the show had a little less cheap humor about Crockett and his alligator and a little more 'dignity' -- fast forward to 2006, and that's exactly what Mann did.

Gone were the over the top white suits and wise cracks (I mean, thank god I didn't have to watch Colin Farrell yucking it up with 'Elvis'), and instead, Mann replaced them with a darker, meaner, and (dare I say it?) more realistic Miami Vice. But just because Mann brought Vice into the present, didn't mean that those traditional touches were gone, and the teaser was proof. That first trailer had it all -- the music perfectly timed with every shotgun pump, speedboats, helicopters, guns and hot girls...and you can't get more Miami Vice than that.

After the jump; the teaser and a reminder of Vice on the small screen..

Giant robots kicked some shiny metal butt last weekend as the new Transformers movie earned the second highest gross of any film in its first five days (The Dark Knight still has the lead). In the wake of all this cybernetic mayhem, My Sister's Keeper did respectably well enough to take fifth on its opening weekend. Here's the top five:

1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: $108.9 million ($200 million since Wednesday)
2. The Proposal: $18.6 million
3. The Hangover: $17 million
4. Up: $13 million
5. My Sister's Keeper: $12.4 million

Two new releases this week, each with a historical flair.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
What's It All About: This is the third installment in the popular animated series. This time around our gang of prehistoric pals discover an underground world in which dinosaurs still exist.
Why It Might Do Well: 2006's Ice Age: The Meltdown had a $68 million dollar opening weekend.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Rottentomatoes.com is giving it a disappointing 37%.
Number of Theaters: 3,993
Prediction: $66 million

Public Enemies
What's It All About: Michael Mann directs this film about depression-era bank robber John Dillinger.
Why It Might Do Well: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale and Academy Award winner Marion Cotillard make for a compelling cast, and based on the trailer they pull off the period setting quite believably.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Only 57% at Rottentomatoes.com.
Number of Theaters: 3,200
Prediction: $28 million

Essentially there are two kinds of gangster movies: those made during the time when men wore hats in real life and those made during the time when men wore hats that came from wardrobe. The first type are usually in black-and-white, punchy, nervy and full of wisecracks. The second type are usually longer and more violent, but slower-paced and nobler of purpose, as if the hats suddenly carried an extra weight, an extra sadness. What Michael Mann has achieved with the new Public Enemies is an often fascinating, striking combination of the two.

I walked into the new film, convinced that it could never top lean, mean B-movie classics like Max Nosseck's Dillinger (1945) or Don Siegel's Baby Face Nelson (1957) in which these gangsters were initially immortalized. But it equals them, capturing some of their raw energy and allure and clocking in as a longer, but equally fast-moving and adrenaline-pumping example. Somehow Mann only manages to use the extra time for flash and spectacle, and hardly any for depth or detail, but that only helps to speed things along. Happily, he also avoids the typical origin story, and plunges right in.

Are you psyched to see Captain Jack Sparrow as a real-life gangster? Johnny Depp plays an infamous criminal in Michael Mann's Public Enemies, which opens tomorrow. But in a world where giant robots draw huge crowds, "do audiences want to see Depp as a fairly realistic, non-fantasy version of Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger?"

That's the question asked by Anne Thompson, a veteran industry analyst. She describes the movie as only "fitfully engaging ... often flat as a pancake." She says that Michael Mann's "biggest misstep here is the same as the Wachowskis with Speed Racer. His pursuit of what interests him formally may leave audiences behind." Like David Fincher's Zodiac and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Mann's own Collateral and Miami Vice, Public Enemies was shot on high-definition video. Thompson claims: "When moviegoers watch a period film, no matter how authentically recreated, they aren't expecting it to look like this. There's something jarring about the way Public Enemies shoves us into the past."

I don't know about you, but I could use a good shove now and again. I've enjoyed Mann's last two films, and the trailers for Public Enemies have done a good job of whetting my appetite. The cast, including Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, and Billy Crudup, looks solid. I don't have any preconception about how period films should look -- I want a good, well-told story with interesting characters. How about you? Do you have certain expectations about how films set in the past should look? Do you want to see Johnny Depp as a "fairly-realistic, non-fantasy" bank robber?

Not many movie-going summers have had the good sense or fortune to formally kick themselves off with the likes of Hugh Jackman and his razor-sharp jazz hands, but as these are the times in which we live in, it's a clear indication that we're in for about eighteen weeks of spectacular spectaculars worth gulping down popcorn and guzzling down pop* with.

Eugene's already shone the spotlight on a fair amount of smaller titles worth your while, so our staff tried to keep the focus on that which we haven't seen, those spectacles for which we're most excited and least likely to text during. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: sit down and shut up, because these are the seven movies that we're fairly f**kin' pumped for.

(*Okay, I pretty much never call soda that, but you get the idea.)

Moon
The last time we saw Sam Rockwell in outer space he was playing the two headed President of the Galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He plays it a little closer to home this time as the lone employee of a mining company working an outpost on the moon. He works his three-year tour of duty with hope of returning to his wife and daughter when it's all done, but things go wrong when he discovers a downed space craft (at least I think that's what's going on) containing an injured man who is his exact duplicate. This looks like a science fiction thriller with a lot of potential and things get luney (for a limited release anyway) on June 12.

Public Enemies
Historical drama with a lot of flare starring Johnny Depp as notorious bank robber John Dillinger. Throw in Christian Bale as FBI agent Melvin Purvis and Billy Crudup (yes, the blue naked guy from Watchmen) as J. Edgar Hoover and you've got a gangster flick worth seeing. This second trailer brings to mind films like The Untouchables and Road to Perdition. Watch for this one on July 1.


Shorts
Robert Rodriguez has proven equally adept at making children's movies and flicks for grownups. This time he's plunging back into the kiddie pool with a story about a put upon kid who discovers a magic rock that makes all his wishes come true. I'm far from the target demo but the film looks cute and I got a few laughs out of the trailer. We'll be seeing this one on August 7.

In lieu of last night's hush-hush premiere of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot in Austin, to a crowd fully expecting to see mere clips and then The Wrath of Khan instead, we checked our Inbox of the Future (patent pending) to see what other shenanigans the Alamo Drafthouse might have in store for these coming months...

April 15th -- An admitted sneak screening of X-Men Origins: Wolverine was preceded by the director's cut of Australia, with Hugh Jackman himself collecting money at the door as "a favor to Baz." However, many stayed to take advantage of the opportunity to literally stone Roger Friedman in the parking lot. Several Austinites returned their bongs to their cars when they realized that this didn't mean whatever they thought it meant, while others were commissioned to restrain Hitfix's Drew McWeeny when he took to chucking nearby scooters towards the tied-up Friedman -- a sight which left AICN's Massawyrm in equal awe and fear for his property.

May 5th -- What was alleged to be a screening of Piranha II: The Spawning turned out to be the informal premiere of McG's Terminator: Salvation, to the disappointment of many fanboys who had their fingers crossed for Avatar, but would settle for this instead. Compounding the frustrations was the appearance of Linda Hamilton, who proceeded to narrate the film live in person to an annoyed crowd. Tangents included all those weeds she pulled in the garden last week and that couch Jim took in the divorce.