Movie Box Review

At FOX, perhaps the most terrifying 7 words in the English language:  AMERICAN IDOL May Not Have Hit Bottom.

FOX:  Despite no special competition on any other network, Idol's 5.1 was down a full ratings point from last week, and down a horrible 35% from last year's parallel episode.  This is still, of course, a very high rating (FOX easily won the night), and Idol, as Mitch Metcalf has shown, skews fairly well with high-income viewers, but make no mistake:  these declines are costing FOX millions of dollars.  Even worse, since advertiser refunds are customarily made in the form of free "make-good" spots on the schedule, and nothing else on FOX rates anywhere near Idol's numbers, the network will have to give away either more Idol inventory or a lot of time in other shows.  And worst of all, it's not clear that these drops are going to stop anytime soon. 

NBC:  So this is NBC, 2011-2012:  nothing but football in the winter, and nothing but The Voice in the spring.  The network is certainly entitled to a little dancing in the street over the fact that they really do have this season's music competition show of choice (at least so far), but the rest of the schedule is an atrocity.  Last night's 1.2 has to be one of the lowest non-holiday, in-season (let alone sweeps) Sun-Thurs nights for any network ever.  The highest rated show of the night was SVU, with a 1.6 that was its lowest rating in a dozen years on the air.  WHITNEY was the night's "success story," as its 1.5 managed to stay 0.1 above its series low.  ARE YOU THERE, CHELSEA? hit a new series low 1.3 (Chelsea may be there; no one else is).  And let's not even talk about the unbelievable 0.6 for ROCK CENTER. 

ABC:  But then, not a lot of good news for anyone last night. THE MIDDLE and SUBURGATORY hit new season lows of 2.3.  MODERN FAMIILY and HAPPY ENDINGS were, respectively, 0.2 and 0.1 above season lows.  (Endings, however, did win the prize for Random Pop Culture Reference Of the Week--a prize Community usually owns when it's on the air--when Brad, whose cologne attracts pigeons, was referred to as "Mr. Tuppence A Bag," about as sweet a Mary Poppins gag as you'll ever find.)  The idea of pre-empting Revenge with a special pre-Oscar "Before They Were Stars" installment of 20/20 must have seemed like a good idea at the time; at 1.4, it wasn't.

CBS:  The hits keep coming:  SURVIVOR's 2.8 was the lowest regular episode in that show's 12-year history, and CRIMINAL MINDS tied a season low 3.1.  But then--gasp!--something good:  CSI, with its 2d Elisabeth Shue episode (but probably helped as well by the weak competition on ABC) went up 0.2 from last week, with a 2.8 that almost equaled the NBC and ABC ratings combined.

CW:  ONE TREE HILL's 0.7 was higher than last night's Rock Center.  REMODELED, though, continued marching graveward with a 0.3.

Tonight FOX airs an hour of Idol, followed by THE FINDER.  All the networks feature new episodes, except NBC, which airs its last Grimm rerun at 10PM (Awake starts next week), and CW, which moves to its own drummer and is already in Thursday reruns even though we're still in February sweeps.

Somewhere, Edward R. Murrow weeps.

CBS:  The attempt to resurrect Murrow's 59-year old celebrity interview vehicle PERSON TO PERSON with Charlie Rose and Lara Logan flopped badly with a 1.1 (wait, people didn't want to see the inside of Warren Buffet's house?).  But Survivor will be back next week, so no long-term damage done.  CRIMINAL MINDS was in its recent neighborhood (its lead over Mobbed on FOX will likely look better when final ratings are released and the Idol overrun into Mobbed's hour is removed).  As expected, CSI took a big hit from the last new episode, which was Marg Helgenberger's finale, but still won its hour.  Next week Elisabeth Shue debuts as the show's new female lead, and we'll see if that does anything for the show.

FOX:  AMERICAN IDOL held at a 6.0, which naturally destroyed the competition but was still down almost 30% from last year at this time--and was also about 10% below Monday's number for The Voice.  MOBBED was purportedly up for the night, but again that may well change once the Idol overrun is removed.

ABC:  THE MIDDLE and SUBURGATORY were basically even with their earlier numbers against Idol, while MODERN FAMILY and HAPPY ENDINGS, which had last aired new episodes against a 2-hour Idol, predictably did better against Mobbed.  REVENGE matched its last few originals--we'll see if next week's arc finale gives the show a bump.

NBC:  Even though Idol was stable, its NBC competition of WHITNEY and ARE YOU THERE, CHELSEA? managed to be down to a pair of 1.5s, which is even with the series low that Up All Night had when it aired on Wednesdays.  ROCK CENTER unsurprisingly was slaughtered in its new 9PM timeslot, with a 1.1 against 3 networks that all averaged a 3.0 or more in the hour.  SVU was in last place at 10PM, although considering the difference in lead-ins, a 2.2 (only 0.5 behind CSI) was almost a moral victory.

CW:  ONE TREE HILL continues to hold nicely with a 0.7, while REMODELED continues to need one of its own with a 0.4.

Virtually all new sweeps episodes on every network tonight.  NBC will air a 1-hour 30 ROCK at 8PM, preempting PARKS & RECREATION, which should have little effect on the ratings, and while the network waits to launch AWAKE after sweeps, it'll re-air the post-Super Bowl edition of THE VOICE at 10PM.

Sundance is sometimes thrilling, but it can also be an ordeal.  Especially when the films are good, but not great.  And even more so if you arrive with limited tickets, and are left to the tender mercies of the Wait List lines (which, given Sundance's idiosyncratic approach to Wait Lists, requires standing on each one twice, 2-3 hours before a screening and then again half an hour in advance--it makes for a lot of lines).  So there are some notable omissions below:  major acquisitions like The Surrogate, Arbitrage, Safety Not Guaranteed and Black Rock were just impossible to see.  However, the 22 capsule reviews below give a fair idea of what the festival was like.

One other note:  the US distributors listed below are accurate as of the time of writing, but no doubt there will be more acquisitions over time:  it's hard to imagine that commercial comedies like Bachelorette or The First Time, and awards hopefuls like Smashed, won't eventually be released.

All that being said:  here, more or less in order of preference, was one man's Sundance 2012:

LIBERAL ARTS (IFC):  Josh Radnor, star of How I Met Your Mother, shows signs of potentially becoming a major filmmaker with this beautifully realized, intelligent and even graceful comedy-drama.  To say it's about the relationship between a 35-year old academic administrator (Radnor) and a 19-year old college student (the again-remarkable Elisabeth Olsen) is to minimize the scope of Radnor's ambitions and achievements--it's really a film about growing up, at any age.  Full Review Here.

FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL... (Focus):  Jamie Travis's comedy is smaller in scope and budget than Bridesmaids, but more subversive and just maybe flat-out funner.  Two women (Ari Graynor and Lauren Anne Miller, also co-writer of the hilarious script with Katie Anne Naylon) who can barely stand each other find themselves running a phone-sex business together, leading to hysterical laughs and, incredibly enough, some genuinely earned sentiment.  The last reel is irresistible.  Full Review Here.

COMPLIANCE (Magnolia): The most unsettling drama of the festival, a true-life story about the impulse to obey authority no matter what.  Director/Screenwriter Craig Zobel guides a letter-perfect cast (headed by Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker, Pat Healy and Bill Camp) methodically down a path that leads to a horror that's more shocking for being so banal.  Full Review Here.

CELESTE AND JESSE FOREVER (Sony Classics): Rashida Jones' and Will McCormack's script tells the awkward, funny and sad story of a relationship that refuses to admit it's over.  Under Lee Toland Krieger's direction, Jones and Andy Samberg (yes, Andy Samberg) give sensitive performances that are as effectively serious as they are comic.  Full Review Here.

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD (Fox Searchlight):  The Festival's Dramatic Jury Grand Prize Winner is a story about life in the poverty-stricken Louisiana bayou, rhapsodically visualized by director Benh Zeitlin, and with brilliant music and sound design to match.  It's gorgeous and completely unlike any other film at Sundance, but it's also for people who thought the trouble with The Tree Of Life was that it was too tightly plotted.  Full Review Here. 

SAVE THE DATE (No Distrib):   More serio-comic romance about break-ups and new romances, this one a little more on the indie nose.  Michael Mohan's film (written with playwright Egan Reich and graphic novelist Jeffrey Brown, whose drawings inspired the script) leaves itself open to charges of conscious hipsterism, but its hugely appealing cast, headed by Lizzy Caplan (in what deserves to be a breakout performance) and Alison Brie as sisters, helps keep things grounded.  Full Review Here. 

SMASHED (No Distrib):  Days of Wine and Roses for the 21st-century, with a spectacular Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the spouse who decides to get sober, and Aaron Paul as her husband who doesn't.  The script by James Ponsoldt (who also directed) and Susan Burke dares to be funny about all this (and with a cast that includes Nick Offerman, Megan Mullaly and Octavia Spencer, there isn't a laugh left on the table), but it also accommodates heartbreak, searing arguments and the ambivalence of the newly sober.  Full Review Here. 

THE FIRST TIME (No Distrib): Can a movie be too lovable for its own good?  Writer/Director Jonathan Kasdan is so fond of his teen leads (Britt Robertson and Dylan O'Brien) that he barely gives their romance any challenges to overcome--they're just endlessly charming, articulate and cute, and while that's diverting, it's also a little thin.  Full Review Here. 

ROOM 237 (No Distrib):  Either the prospect of a straight-faced 104-minute study of obsessive theories concerning Stanley Kubrick's The Shining thrills you, or it doesn't.  As a Kubrick devotee, count me among the (probably limited) group that couldn't wait.  In any case, given that the entire movie is composed of footage director Rodney Ascher considers "fair use," the film may never be seen in its current form outside festival venues.  Full review Here. 

BACHELORETTE (No Distrib):  Leslye Headland's movie writing/directing debut, based (although apparently rather loosely) on her own play, ends up being far more conventional and less edgy than it starts out to be, as its 3 "heroines" (Lizzy Caplan again, this time with Kirsten Dunst and Isla Fisher) are forced to learn Life Lessons and Become Better People in the final reels.  Until that point, though, there are plenty of dirty, socially unacceptable laughs to be found.  Full Review Here. 

SHADOW DANCER (ATO):  James Marsh's low-key, complicated thriller (adapted by Tom Brady from his own novel) works the LeCarre side of the spy street, with morally ambiguous characters and no end of betrayals.  Andrea Riseborough is the IRA member forced to turn informer by MI6's Clive Owen in a Belfast where no one on either side can be trusted.  The fact that everyone is hiding something means that we don't get to know any of the characters particularly well, but the film is very effectively put together.  Full Review Here. 

2 DAYS IN NEW YORK (Magnolia):  Julie Delpy's sequel to her own 2 Days In Paris is more sit-commy than its predecessor, but a lot of fun.  Her character's eccentric family (including Delpy's own father playing her dad) again occupies center stage, this time visiting her in NY rather than being visited.  The movie's most pleasant surprise is Chris Rock as Delpy's new boyfriend, more assured and relaxed than he's ever been on the big screen before.  Full Review Here. 

WISH YOU WERE HERE (Entertainment One):  Two Australian couples go on a vacation to Cambodia, but only 3 people come back.  Kieren Darcy-Smith's drama (co-written with Felicity Price, who also plays one of the leads) isn't really a thriller so much as a story about the damage caused by secrets hidden and revealed.  Price, along with Joel Edgerton and Teresa Palmer (in a much more intense role than any of her Hollywood eye-candy parts) are excellent.  Full Review Here. 

MIDDLE OF NOWHERE (Participant/AFFRM): The basic story of Ava DuVernay's film could have been the stuff of a TV movie:  a young mother (Emayatzy Corinealdi) waits out her husband (Omari Hardwick)'s prison term; as she finds out more about him, she comes to question the limits of her own loyalty.  As written and directed by DuVernay, however, and performed by Corinealdi, Middle of Nowhere has a dignity and seriousness that sets it apart.  At times it can feel stolid, but it consistently recognizes the humanity of its characters.  Full Review Here. 

OSLO AUGUST 31 (No Distrib):   A loose Norwegian remake by Joachim Trier (co-written with Eskil Vogt) of Louis Malle's The Fire Within, about a drug addict in recovery (Anders Danielsen Lie) having his first day back in the real world so he can interview for a job.   Extremely well performed and filmed, but unrelievedly grim to the very end, with insights overwhelmed by an aestheticized embrace of self-destruction.  

HELLO I MUST BE GOING (No Distrib):  Todd Louiso's film, written by Sarah Koskoff, is unintentionally the less interesting version of Liberal Arts:  a narrowly-focused story about a depressed (divorced, out-of-work) 35-year old (Melanie Lynskey, very good) who begins a romance with a 19-year old (Christopher Abbott) that sparks her back to life.  Mild, populated by dysfunctional family tropes, and lacking in ambition.  Full Review Here. 

FILLY BROWN (No Distrib):  The familiar Sundance subgenre of a low-income young woman's struggle to improve her life.  Youssef Delara (who also wrote the script) and Michael D. Olmos directed this somewhat ham-handed story about an aspiring rapper (the terrific Gina Rodriguez) and her interactions with her jailed mother, dependable father, and some music industry pros who--spoiler alert!--aren't all that trustworthy.  Full Review Here. 

V/H/S (Magnolia): Gimmick (horror anthology) piled upon gimmick ("found footage"), with different indie-terror directors behind the camera for each of the 6 segments.  There's some inventiveness in the ways the footage is justified (Skype, eyeglasses with a spy camera built in), a dollop of memorable gore and a few cheap thrills, but before too long, a serious law of diminishing returns kicks in.  Full Review Here. 

RED LIGHTS (Millenium):   Rodrigo Cortes's supernatural thriller is classy and fun for a while, with Sigourney Weaver and Cillian Murphy as scientists who debunk false mediums and Robert DeNiro as the one they can't figure out (and Elisabeth Olsen among those in support).  Unfortunately, the second half becomes increasingly dumb, and the ending is awful, both illogical and a cheap trick.  Full Review Here. 

LAY THE FAVORITE (Weinstein): Stephen Frears's comedy-drama about big-time gambling, from a script by D.V. DeVincentis, sounds on paper like it should have everything going for it, from well-regarded autobiographical source material and an experienced, skilled director to a cast that includes Rebecca Hall, Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Vince Vaughn and Laura Prepon.  And yet it's more proof that sure things rarely are:  clumsy, uninspired, rife with miscasting  and not even smart about its own subject matter.  Full Review Here. 

THE PACT (IFC):  Nicholas McCarthy's feature writing/directing debut is mostly a routine Boo! low-budget haunted house movie, but it has one neat twist about an hour in, and a few minutes of genuine suspense after that.  It's not quite enough to make the picture worthwhile--especially because after those promising minutes, the movie winds things up with a cheap-shock coda--but Caity Lotz as the kick-ass heroine has real charisma.  Full Review Here. 

GOATS (No Distrib):  Every festival seems to have at least one prominent loser, and this year it was Christopher Neil's directing debut, adapted by Mark Jude Poirier from his own novel.  Whatever appeal that novel may have had is lost on screen, buried in cliches about prep school and narcissistic New Age mothers, not to mention self-conscious eccentricity involving, well, goats.  Even a cast that includes David Duchovny, Justin Kirk and Ty Burrell can't help, and a mark of the movie's failure is that it's one of the rare times you'll ever see the phrase "a bad performance by Vera Farmiga" (as the mother) used with sad accuracy.   Full Review Here. 

And full versions of all SHOWBUZZDAILY'S Sundance reviews are Here.

Everyone was down, as the new season started to settle in on itself--but some were down more than others.

ABC:  MODERN FAMILY is doing quite spectacularly, more than 20% above last season's average.  The results in other timeslots were more mixed.  SUBURGATORY had a very nice debut at 8:30 (again, kudos to ABC Marketing this Fall), but it's a little disappointing that THE MIDDLE wasn't able to capitalize on NBC's increasing woes at 8PM, although it was still slightly above last season's average.   HAPPY ENDINGS was up a whopping 50% from its average last season, and almost double last year's season finale (which was admittedly in the less attractive 10:30PM slot)--and by the way, rightly so, since in a way Happy Endings had last year's most impressive reboot, miraculously becoming funny after a terrible first few episodes.  REVENGE is still OK, a solid second place in its timeslot, but it's no longer looking like a hit (other than in comparison to last season's disaster The Whole Truth)--and because of its serialized nature, once viewers have left, it'll be awfully hard to get them back.

FOX:  More of the same for X FACTOR:  it's not a blockbuster, but it's a big enough hit to win the night.  I'm not sure how FOX's coverage of the baseball post-season will affect X Factor's schedule over the next few weeks, but if the show has to skip many episodes, that'll be something to keep an eye on.

NBC:  UP ALL NIGHT has pushed past being a dubious success story to a show on the brink of trouble.  Last night's 2.1 puts its numbers squarely into COMMUNITY/PARKS & RECREATION territory, and as much as I love those shows, that's not where you want your big new comedy to be.  FREE AGENTS is just waiting for its cancellation notice, which may be delayed for PR reasons if NBC doesn't want to be the first network to admit to Fall failure.  HARRY'S LAW can't even pull in its presumed older audience, let alone 18-49s.  And the arrival of Danny Pino did nothing for SVU--if the show falls any lower than its current 2.0, it would be a candidate for cancellation anywhere but NBC, where they have too many bigger problems.

CBS:  Stability, thy name is CBS.  SURVIVOR and CSI barely budged from last week, and although CRIMINAL MINDS is now a bit below last season's average, it's facing very strong competition from Modern Family and X Factor.  

CW:  H84 was slightly less DOA than last week (it's unutterably sad to think that may be because Kim Kardashian was featured), and AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL continues to be more than 30% below last season's average.

Tonight, quite a few shows will be airing their second episodes and waiting to find out how many viewers come back for more (look for plenty of Pilot + 1 Reviews tonight).  For NBC, the critical numbers will be for The Office and Whitney in the 9PM hour, which is all that's keeping the network from complete non-football oblivion.