Movie Box Review

It's a measure of how desperately this year's Oscar needed some kind of surprise that the closest thing to a thrill all evening was Meryl Streep's win as Best Actress.  Streep has been winning Academy Awards since 1979, and she'd been touted for her performance as Margaret Thatcher since months before THE IRON LADY even opened.  By virtually every measure, she'd been a close 2d to Viola Davis as favorite all along.  One could even make the argument that choosing Streep over Davis was actually the more conservative move in the category.  (And a bittersweet one, because although Streep--despite her protestations--will almost certainly have more chances at the prize before she's done, it might not be so easy for Davis to climb that hill again.)  And yet, when Streep's name was announced, it was the night's only jolt of electricity:  Something Finally Happened!

Streep's victory also underscored, for anyone who doubted, that Harvey Weinstein is the master of his era's (maybe any era's) Oscar gamesmanship.  Streep had been a strong contender for THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA and for JULIE AND JULIA, and both times she'd been denied.  Iron Lady was the least successful, least-seen and least-liked of Streep's recent vehicles, but Weinstein's absolutely unapologetic willingness to play the card of "winning 29 years ago is like not winning at all," stressed in every Streep-for-Best-Actress ad, did the trick.  

Weinstein was also behind another surprise, the victory of UNDEFEATED for Best Feature Documentary over the favored PINA and PARADISE LOST 3.  (He can't claim the night's below-the-line shocker when THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO took Best Editing.)  And of course, he was the architect of the night's most inevitable set of victories, as THE ARTIST marched to the podium every time it really counted.

Apart from the Weinstein brigade, the Oscars were mostly widely scattered, as THE DESCENDANTS, THE HELP and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS each won a single award, Christopher Plummer took his unofficial lifetime achievement prize, and HUGO went home with all the awards no one cares about.

Ironically, 2012 will probably be the wrong year to be Harvey Weinstein's touted entry for Best Picture:  after THE KING'S SPEECH and The Artist in consecutive years, the Academy may go out of its way to show its independence from his hegemony.  But if there's any certainty in the Oscar universe, it's that he'll be back.

Here's your complete set of Oscar winners:

This year's Academy Awards have so far engendered the kind of enthusiasm and excitement usually associated with a suburban DMV office on a Tuesday afternoon.  People seem to be sullenly resigned to the inevitability of THE ARTIST's victory, even though it would be unlikely to get anything like a majority of the Academy's estimated 5000 votes--but with the Best Picture vote split 9 ways, it doesn't need to come anywhere near that (the winning movie could theoretically take the award with only around 556 votes).  In any case, no unified opposition has formed in favor of any particular competing film, and the same apathy exists in almost every other major category.  At this rate, we might as well be talking about presidential politics.  

Are the Oscars really doomed to be this dull?  (ABC certainly hopes not, or this could be the lowest-rated ceremony in history.)  Is there no possibility for any unexpected moments of shock or even mild surprise?  Let's take a look.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:  As Mitch Metcalf noted in his survey of Oscar wagering odds, this is one category where The Artist is at a disadvantage (odds of 2:1), probably because as a silent movie, its intertitles don't provide much in the way of sparkling dialogue.  There are many who would like to see Woody Allen get some recognition for his late-career renaissance with MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, and that's currently the 2:5 favorite.  The other nominees MARGIN CALL, A SEPARATION and BRIDESMAIDS are all likely of the "be happy you're nominated" variety, although lovers of longshots might want to consider a wager on Bridesmaids at 23:1--it's by far the biggest hit of the group, and somewhat trendy after its critics' awards.  CHOICE:  Margin Call.  PREDICTION:  Midnight In Paris.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:  No one particularly cares about this category this year, but it's one of the very few to be fairly wide open.  THE DESCENDANTS is the favorite at 2:5 because of its perceived stature in the Best Picture race, and because with its polished dialogue it feels "written," but strictly as a work of adaptation, MONEYBALL, at 4:1, probably deserves to win, and its script is by the all-star team of Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian.  There's also increasing sentiment pointing to HUGO at 5:1, another tough adaptation from a children's picture book.  TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY, which deserves its place, and THE IDES OF MARCH, which doesn't (it's actually weaker than its source material), are probably just along for the ride.  CHOICE AND PREDICTION:  Moneyball.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:  Here's where things get easy, and thus somewhat tedious.  Octavia Spencer is an overwhelming 1:20 favorite for THE HELP, and no other nominee seems to have a prayer of catching her.  Those who believe the Academy will utterly genuflect to The Artist may want to take a chance on 2d choice Berenice Bejo at 9:1, but 2011 It Girl Jessica Chastain will be back again to win in some future year, and Melissa McCarthy and Janet McTeer, with 2 of the year's most distinctive performances, will have to be content with their nomination certificates.  CHOICE:  Jessica Chastain.  PREDICTION:  Octavia Spencer.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:  Did the Academy bother to nominate anyone besides Christopher Plummer?  Oh, they did?  At 1:25, Plummer is the biggest favorite in any major category, and since unlike racehorses, actors can't be disqualified from a race for bumping another nominee or falling down and breaking their leg, he's pretty much unbeatable.  In another year, he and  Max Von Sydow (at 19:1) might have split the lovable old codger vote, but Plummer's accumulated industry goodwill just outweighs Von Sydow.'s  That leaves Kenneth Branagh (9:1) out of luck. Nick Nolte, while no longer young, isn't yet at the old codger stage of his career, and Jonah Hill is just in the promising newcomer stage of his.  CHOICE:  Max Von Sydow.  PREDICTION:  Christopher Plummer.

BEST ACTRESS:  There was a time when this looked like a real race between Meryl Streep and Viola Davis, but Davis has plunged ahead like Secretariat at the Belmont.  The current odds of 5:6 for Davis and 1:1 for Streep are misleadingly close, although one can never count out Harvey Weinstein and his none-too-subtle campaign bellowing the 29 years since Streep last won.  Michelle Williams might as well have gone lame down the stretch, Glenn Close picked the wrong year to seek a lifetime achievement award, and Rooney Mara is this category's Promising Newcomer.  CHOICE:  Michelle Williams.  PREDICTION:  Viola Davis.

BEST ACTOR:  The closest we're going to come to an exciting result this year.  George Clooney (1:2) is, well, George Clooney, as well-loved as anyone in Hollywood and with a solid stack of critics' awards to back him up this year.  Jean Dujardin (6:4) is the star of the probable Best Picture winner, and quite a charmer himself, plus he has the added degree of difficulty of performing silently (if there's one thing the Academy loves, it's degree of difficulty).  The fact that Dujardin shockingly won the SAG award means that either he has this sewn up, or that it was a reality check for Clooney's supporters, who realized they'd better get their votes in or risk blowing it.  Could Brad Pitt sneak in there at 18:1 for a universally-respected performance in a lower-profile film?  Probably not, but if this were a horserace, you'd want to include him on your exacta tickets.  Gary Oldman is a less likely sleeper at 22:1, especially because Tinker Tailor never really took off at the boxoffice.  Demian Bechir, while no newcomer, gets the Hey, We Just Noticed You slot.  CHOICE:  Brad Pitt.  PREDICTION:  George Clooney.

BEST DIRECTOR:  The smart money at 1:6 says that as Best Picture goes, so does Best Director, and that's probably right, clearing the way for Michel Hazanavicius to make his triumphant way to the podium.  If Martin Scorsese hadn't won just 6 years ago, this year would certainly be his, but he did, making his 4:1 odds probably overly optimistic.  Alexander Payne isn't the kind of showy director likely to win if his movie doesn't, so 13:1 sounds about right for him.  Terrence Malick, on the other hand, is both adored and disdained by passionate viewers on each side, and THE TREE OF LIFE wasn't enough of a hit to break him out of his art-house cell.  Those with some spare cash might want to consider Woody Allen, a huge longshot at 35:1 who's coming off the biggest hit of his career.  CHOICE:  Martin Scorsese.  PREDICTION:  Michel Hazanavicius.

BEST PICTURE:  Well, here we are.  Harvey Weinstein has, as is his wont, run an absolutely brilliant campaign for The Artist, successfully obscuring the fact that audiences in general haven't been taken by it, and playing up every conceivable voter-friendly angle.  (My favorites:  the ad emphasizing that Artist was the only Best Picture nominee to be shot in Los Angeles, and the screening hosted by producer Thomas Langmann strictly so Langmann could couple the film with The Two Of Us, the 1967 Best Foreign Film winner directed by Langmann's father Claude Berri, so that The Artist could magically be linked in voter minds with the older film's storyline of a Jewish boy rescued from the Nazis by an elderly gentile--Jews, children, the Holocaust and a lovable old codger, all in one neat package!)  The movie's 1:6 odds are well-earned.  Could anything beat it?  The 2d choice is The Descendants at 6:1, a movie that has gathered no head of steam whatsoever, and after that is the huge money-loser Hugo at 14:1 (remember, Scorsese had his victory lap 6 years ago).  Those looking for something, anything, to take the prize should probably concentrate on The Help at 18:1, the only genuine boxoffice hit of the nominees and winner of the SAG ensemble award (but the fact that the picture couldn't even get nominated for Best Director or Adapted Screenplay shows how tenuous its support probably is).  War Horse, a disappointment in every way, is somewhat puzzlingly next at 26:1.  Then the unlikely Midnight In Paris, Moneyball and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close follow at 55-59:1, and at the rear is the aesthete's dream, The Tree of Life at 73:1.  CHOICE:  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  PREDICTION (reluctantly):  The Artist.

Sigh.  Yawn.  We'll look in on the Oscar race again as we get closer to the big night... if we can find the energy.

It takes about an hour, but Nicholas McCarthy's THE PACT, which premiered in the Park City At Midnight section at Sundance, eventually turns out to have a neat twist up its sleeve, one that switches the movie from haunted house horror to an entirely different subgenre of thriller.  And after that, a solid reel or so of scares and suspense kicks in, and the picture moves into another gear.

The question will be whether that's enough, given that the hour preceding the twist has been an exceedingly routine low-budget chiller, and that the ending afterward is a cruddy, obvious cheap-shock coda. 

The Pact is McCarthy's first feature, expanded from a short that previously screened at Sundance.  It's set mostly in and around a house where a single mother (of the sadistic variety, not the noble, self-sacrificing kind) raised 2 daughters, both of whom left town as soon as they were old enough.  When the story begins, mom has recently died, and a prologue mysteriously dispatches the older sister, herself a (much better) single mother, while having an ill-fated Skype session with her young daughter.  (This year's Sundance lesson of both The Pact and V/H/S:  stay away from Skype.)  This brings biker sister Annie (Caity Lotz) somewhat reluctantly to town, less to attend her mother's funeral than to find out what happened to her older sister.  We're immediately plunged into the world of inexplicable sounds, disquieting nightmares, unseen forces that fling our heroine against the walls, and shadowy was-that-really-there? figures.

All of this comes right out of the haunted house movie textbook, and McCarthy isn't a skilled enough filmmaker to hide the lack of production values.  Instead we get the usual silences leading to sudden musical and sonic zings, many lightbulbs that flare and then burst, and ghostly visitations.  Even lay-up set-pieces like the visit of an eccentric psychic (who Annie, in an unlikely development, knew in high school), offer minimal fun.  With the exception of Lotz (she played the niece of Don Draper's California "wife" on Mad Men), who has plenty of charisma as the Ripley-like Annie, the acting is for the most part wooden and subpar.

And then The Pact zigs when you expect it to zag, and McCarthy suddenly gets his directing feet under him for a few minutes.  It builds a lot of goodwill... which he then squanders with his dumb, predictable epilogue.  This leaves The Pact as a severely mixed bag, one that has its jolting moments, but doesn't deliver consistently or professionally enough to justify its festival berth.

V/H/S, which screened as part of Sundance's Park City At Midnight series, is a gimmick piled upon a gimmick.

First is the horror anthology itself, familiar from the Twilight Zone movie and Rod Serling's Night Gallery TV show, among many others.  In this case, half a dozen unrelated short films, each from a different director, are presented as an omnibus film.  The additional gimmick is that all the stories are variations of the "found footage" horror subgenre that kicked off with The Blair Witch Project and became a franchise with Paranormal Activity.  The connective tissue (so to speak) of the movie is a loose story (directed by Adam Wingard) about a group of thieves hired to steal a mysterious VHS tape from a house; to no one's surprise except theirs, as various members of the gang settle down to watch the videos, they're slaughtered one by one. 

There was a fair amount of imagination put to finding different excuses for the "found footage" to exist.  In one story, directed by David Bruckner, the camera is embedded in a pair of spy eyeglasses worn by one of a trio of frat-boy idiots who are on the hunt for sex--and we all know how well that ends in movies like this.  Another mini-movie (direcred by Joe Swanberg and Simon Barrett), is entirely in the form of Skype chats.  Another, set in the 1990s, and directed by Ti West (House of the Dead), the closest thing to a "name" director in the group, is composed of "home movies" from a second honeymoon that goes wrong.  There is, of course, a slasher-in-the-woods story, directed by Glenn McQuaid.  And in what is probably the most elaborate of the chapters, directed by the collective known as Radio Silence (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Chad Villella, Justin Martinez, Tyler Gillett), another group of morons is unwise enough to spend Halloween night at a "haunted house" party that lives up to its name. 

There are certainly some shocks and enjoyably gruesome violence to be had along the way (the picture will probably have to go out unrated or be edited to avoid an NC-17 in its current form), but the project inevitably suffers from a serious case of diminishing returns.  Because of the stylistic homogeneity imposed on the anthology, chapter after chapter features the same mannerisms:  shaky hand-held (or head-held, in the case of the eyeglass camera) visuals, sudden cuts to blue when the "VHS" picture goes out, staticky interference as supernatural events are captured on tape.  The most controlled chapters are West's and Swanberg/Barrett's, but theirs also have the dumbest stories with the worst endings; the rest are mostly just exercises in watching people wander around for 10 minutes or so and then get hacked apart.  

There are no characters to speak of in any of this, little of what one would call "acting," and certainly no memorable dialogue.  By definition the production values are low-rent.  So V/H/S just exists as a vehicle for gore and creatures jumping out of the shaky, hand-held dark, and 116 minutes of that is far more than anyone who isn't an obsessive could need.

Even though the Oscar race has had clear favorites in THE DESCENDANTS, THE ARTIST and THE HELP since last fall, the first 2 haven't sparked any huge enthusiasm among the general public, where after almost 2 months, Descendants has yet to gross $50M, and Artist, which Harvey Weinstein hasn't dared put into general release, hasn't even made $9M.  And The Help is still battling against its so-so critical reception.  So despite the fact that we all know the Golden Globes shouldn't mean anything, being the choices of around 85 obscure international writers whose opinions, for 364 days of the year, are of no interest to anyone, we've nevertheless looked to the Globes to provide some clarity.  

That being the case, what did we learn tonight?

10.  Ben Kingsley Has A Very Affectionate Wife.  When NBC cut to a woman seemingly giving Sir Ben Kingsley a lap-dance, Twitter exploded with snarky theories about who his companion was.  It turned out to be his wife, an actress who's probably entertaining offers from Starz and Cinemax for original series right now.

9.  Harvey Weinstein Could Win Awards For a Ham Sandwich.  The old joke is that any decent prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict one, but Harvey makes his hold on the Hollywood Foreign Press Associaiton pay off in gold.  In the 10 categories in which The Weinstein Company had a nominee, TWC won 6:  3 for The Artist and 1 each for MY WEEK WITH MARILYN, THE IRON LADY and--most remarkably-- a Best Song award for Madonna's dreadful W.E.

8.  Jean Dujardin's Appearances Probably Won Him Some Oscar Votes.  First there's his silent Douglas Fairbanks bit to end his acceptance speech, then he leaps into a little dance as the telecast cuts to commercial, and in case all that wasn't cute enough, when The Artist wins Comedy/Musical, he's the one with the adorable dog.  If you're vying against George Clooney, Hollywood's King of Charm, you need every trick you can get...

7.  Stars Count At the Globes.  Exhibit A:  Madonna.  Exhibit B:  Steven Spielberg, taking Best Animated Film for THE ADVENTURES OF TININ just because he wasn't going to win anything for WAR HORSE.  (But at least A SEPARATION managed to win Best Foreign Film over Angelina Jolie's picture.)

6.  The HFPA Isn't Thrilled With The Artist Either.  3 of the 4 categories The Weinstein Company lost were defeats for Artist:  Director (Martin Scorsese for HUGO), Screenplay (Woody Allen for MIDNIGHT IN PARIS), and Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer for The Help), with Supporting Actor going to Christopher Plummer for BEGINNERS rather than Kenneth Branagh for My Week With Marilyn.  And 2 of the 3 awards Artist won (Picture and Actor) were in Comedy/Musical, where under Globe rules, it didn't have to face off with any of the heavier Dramatic competition.  (The only exception was the meaningless category of Best Score.)  The message:  they liked Artist a lot--but they didn't love it.

5.  The HFPA Might Want to Keep Its Earlier Awards Quiet.  Jessica Lange won Best Actress for King Kong?  Really?  It might be a good rule of thumb not to mention any Globe winners from the pre-Pia Zadora erea.

4.  Brad Pitt's Loss Was Meaningful.  Pitt has his work cut out for him trying to get the Oscar against Clooney and Dujardin, especially because MONEYBALL, although it might get nominated, isn't a serious contender for Best Picture, and its director Bennett Miller didn't get a DGA nomination and may not do better with the Oscars.  A Globe win would have been extremely helpful.

3.  Ricky Gervais Can Be As Bland A Host As Anyone.  For all his and NBC's hype of how outrageous he was going to be, Gervais didn't say anything remotely shocking or insulting in the entire telecast, and his "A" material was at the level of mentioning "Jodie Foster's Beaver."  Even what would have been his one sharp bit of asking Johnny Depp if he'd ever actually seen The Tourist was undercut by the fact that he'd just said that his buddy Depp guest stars on his new HBO series.  Given Gervais's limp material, Madonna's shot at his bow that likened kissing him to kissing a woman seemed nastier than anything Gervais had to say.  (The best zinger of the night actually came from Seth Rogen, noting as he read the Best Comedy/Musical Actress nominees that Michelle Williams was in "that hysterical comedy" My Week With Marilyn.)

2.  The Help's Loss At the Globes Doesn't Mean Much.  With the HFPA's foreign sensibilities, The Help isn't exactly their style.  (A loss for The Descendants, though, would have been crippling for that film.)  Much more important will be the SAG and PGA Awards. 

1.  The Oscar Race Is Still Open.  At this point, The Artist, The Help, The Descendants, Hugo and even Midnight In Paris could all still have a legitimate shot at Oscar, as could Clooney, Dujardin and Pitt for Actor, and Streep, Williams and Viola Davis for Actress.  Consider the Globes tonight's equivalent of the New Hampshire primary:  it confirmed most of what we already knew, but didn't resolve much.

Next up:  the Producers Guild Awards on January 21.

Sundance announced the second group of its 2012 titles today (Competition entries were announced yesterday; Premieres will be unveiled on Monday), mostly in what are traditionally the most untraditional categories of the Festival:  Park City At Midnight, Next, and New Frontier. Also announced were the Spotlight films, which is where Sundance puts films that have already shown at other festivals.  Below, some titles that instantly catch the eye:

THE RAID:  This is a Spotlight title seen in Toronto (my review is here), a galloping action movie that features one spectacular fight scene after another.  It's already won US distribution and a probable English-language remake.  

WHERE DO WE GO NOW?:  A very well-regarded Toronto title from the Middle East, about Lebanese women trying to defuse religious tensions.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS:  Another extremely well-reviewed Toronto film, a new version of the classic story directed by Fish Tank's Andrea Arnold.

YOUR SISTER'S SISTER:  Yet more Toronto goodness, a funny and perceptive semi-improvised comedy (my review is here) that stars Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt and Mark Duplass as a trio caught in an extremely messy family situation.

BLACK ROCK:  Thinking of Duplass, he's credited as writer (although the film was almost certainly improvisational) of his wife Katie Aselton's midnight thriller that stars her with Lake Bell and Kate Bosworth.  Aselton's The Freebie was one of the most impressive surprises of last year's Sundance , so her follow-up is eagerly anticipated.

EXCISION:  Now this sounds like a midnight movie:  a high school student who wants to be a doctor "goes to extremes" to please her mother, with a cast that includes 90210's AnnaLynne McCord, Traci Lords, Roger Bart and John Waters.

GRABBERS:  Meet an Irish blood-sucking sea creature.

SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS:  The last 48 hours of LCD Soundsystem.

TIM AND ERIC'S BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE:  Directed by and starring Tim and Eric.

V/H/S:  Half a dozen directors including mumblecore maestro Joe Swanberg and House of the Dead's Ti West combine for a midnight "found footage" horror movie.

COMPLIANCE:  A prank caller convinces a fast food manager to interrogate an employee, and things don't go well, with a cast that includes Dreama Walker, who'll be a star of ABC's Don't Trust the Bitch in Apt 23 as soon as the network puts the damn show on the air.

I AM NOT A HIPSTER:  Just because of the title, which will apply to very few people in the Sundance audience.

SLEEPWALK WITH ME:  Standup comic Mike Birbiglia makes his directing (with Seth Barrish) and starring debut in the story of a standup comic who sleepwalks, with Lauren Ambrose.

28 HOTEL ROOMS:  A long-term love affair seen in fragments, with Chris Messina and Marin Ireland.

ROOM 237:  "An experimental documentary explores the numerous theories about the real meaning of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining."  You couldn't keep me away from this one with a stick.

The new 3D action-fest IMMORTALS got off to a reasonably good start with $1.4M in Thursday midnight screenings.  This isn't anything spectacular, but it's slightly higher than the $1.3M RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES made in its midnight runs, and far better than the $550K pulled in last week by A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D XMAS.

A normal trajectory for a fanboy-fueled fantasy adventure like Immortals would see a very strong Friday, then little if any increase on Saturday and steady drops after that.  But Immortals benefits from having no direct action competition in the market, with family-oriented comedy in JACK AND JILL and PUSS IN BOOTS, and an older crowd gravitating to TOWER HEIST. 

Stay with SHOWBUZZDAILY all weekend for updated boxoffice numbers and analysis!

The new PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 is off to a good start:  its $8M boxoffice from midnight shows last night was 30% higher than Paranormal 2's midnight performance, and in a league with Hangover 2's $10.4M, which is the highest ever for an R-rated title.

When the inevitable US remake of the French thriller SLEEPLESS NIGHT arrives, it'll benefit from some sharper dialogue (assuming the subtitles in Toronto were fully translating the original), a bit more characterization and a slightly more varied tone.  But the framework already exists for a solid action hit.

The picture begins as a variant of another recent French thriller, Point Blank.  This time the hero Vincent (Tomer Sisley) isn't a complete innocent:  he's either a crooked cop or a good cop pretending to be crooked--it's never entirely clear, and frankly it doesn't matter much; either way he causes a mess. This time, the loved one kidnapped by the bad guys isn't his pregnant wife, it's his teen son.  But otherwise the set-up leads to the same place:  a crime boss takes the boy hostage and tells the hero he has to complete a task for them if he wants to see his son alive, which means returning the bag of cocaine he violently grabbed from them in the first reel.

Sleepless Night, though, takes that premise and melds it with another indebted to Die Hard:  one renegade eluding his foes in a limited space.  Vincent has to deliver the coke to the giant nightclub complex owned by the crime boss, which he's more than willing to do--but naturally things don't go so smoothly, and the dope is stolen from him before he can hand it over.  Soon Vincent has to make his way all over the crowded, deafeningly loud nightclub, from disco to private club to high-class restaurant to kitchen to poolroom to offices, desperately trying to find the drugs, his son and/or the kidnapper, all the time pursued by a variety of opponents on both sides of the law.  Oh, and did I mention that he got stabbed when he stole the coke in the first place?  So he's also bleeding while all this is going on.

Sleepless Night is exhilaratingly exciting stuff, and Jardin (who also wrote the script with Nicolas Saada) does an expert job of keeping the logistics and plotline in order.  The picture is a nonstop race against time, with some wild action sequences, notably a kitchen battle so brutal it becomes black comedy.  Because the nightclub is virtually the co-star of the picture, Jardin wisely made an unconventional choice for his cameraman:  Tom Stern, Clint Eastwood's house cinemtographer for the past decade, who'd never done a foreign film before.  The production design by Hubert Pouille also deserves special note, as does the unrelenting editing by Marco Cave and Christophe Pinel.  

As noted, the script does a better job of moving the action along than of developing strong characters, and the dialogue is on the cartoonish side.  But that's why God made rewrites.  There's also a small diminishment of suspense around two-thirds of the way through, as Vincent and his pursuers chase through the same set of locales in what becomes a bit of a loop, leading to a certain repetitiveness (although Jardin pulls out of it for a terrifically crazy ending).  The picture isn't ready for Brad Pitt or Ryan Gosling just yet.  But it's damn close:  Sleepless Night is already a long night's worth of fun.  

As has been reported, there really was an ambulance outside the Ryerson Theatre in Toronto after the midnight premiere of Alexandre Courtes' THE INCIDENT, there to rescue at least one person who had fainted during the movie.  Of course, this may just mean that Toronto Film Festival patrons have delicate sensibilities--an idea supported by the fact that someone also fainted at the premiere of Shame (apparently because of the film's one violent scene, not the sex).  The Incident has some wild violence toward the end, but it's not nearly scary or shocking enough to be a menace to the public health.

The movie is an extremely slow-burning thriller.  It's one of those "based on a true story" things, set in Washington state in the late 1980s, where all 4 members of an aspiring rock band (Rupert Evans, Kenny Doughty, Joseph Kennedy, Richard Brake) work together in the kitchen of an asylum for the criminally insane.  We watch in much too painstaking detail (and even padded out, the picture only runs 85 minutes) as the buddies bicker, cook, plan for their next gig, talk about the menu and the food delivery schedule, and so on.  (We only see the personal life of one of the men, which in movie terms tells you something about how things will go once the violence begins.)  Courtes, working from a script by Jerome Fansten, is careful to show us all the security--the thick plexiglass, multiple locks and sliding metal doors that separate the kitchen, with its sharp objects, ovens and other potential weapons, from the inmates--and the muttering hostility of the patients.

Finally, when we've almost given up on the possibility of seeing people get butchered, a lightning storm fries the asylum's electrical system, and every single inmate instantly becomes a homicidal maniac.  Even here, there are lots of scenes of our heroes plodding down one identical hallway after another, laboriously discovering that the doors are unlocked (except the ones that could get them out) and the guards are being slaughtered.  Finally, in the last reel or so, the lunatics start inventively murdering our heroes, and The Incident offers a few minutes of dirty thrills before it ends.

This is Courtes' film debut after directing a host of music videos, but The Incident doesn't even have the superficial slickness we associate with that kind of work; it's cheap-looking and the gore, while sometimes very graphic, is low-rent.   The movie's been acquired by IFC Midnight, which typically mounts a token theatrical release but concentrates on pay-per-view and cable, and that's probably where this belongs--remember, if you see it on the channel guide, no need to tune in until the last half hour.  And don't worry, it's unlikely you'll need to have the local hospital alerted that an ambulance might be necessary--unless you, too, are a film festival delicate flower.

TIFF's Midnight Madness program is exactly what you think it is:  10 flat-out, unapologetic genre movies that premiere each night at midnight in front of a raucous crowd at the 1200-seat Ryerson Theatre.  In any given year, the Madness may include unexpected gems like last year's Insidious and 2006's Borat, interestingly weird pictures such as A Town Called Panic and Inside, and plenty that are just plan bad like John Carpenter's The Ward and Diablo Cody's Jennifer's Body.

This year, things kicked off with THE RAID, which is Indonesian but directed by Welshman Gareth Huw Evans.  I don't know that it'll ever get a mainstream US release--there's a limited American market for subtitled Indonesian action movies--but it could certainly get remade, and Evans may find his phone ringing.

The movie's concept is simple:  a group of cops have been sent into the apartment complex where a crime boss has his headquarters.  The idea is to get in and out fast with the villain in cuffs, before the residents (most of whom work for him) can catch on, but of course it doesn't work out that way.  The police are found out, and have to fight their way through practically every room of the building, as they struggle to stay alive long enough to reach his lair on the top floor and capture him.  As you'd expect, not all the cops are who they seem to be, and neither are all of the bad guys.

The Raid is a rudimentary movie (even the crime boss's surveillance system seems circa 1974), but the action is utterly non-stop; when the characters take a momentary breather a couple of times in the 101 minutes running time, you need the break as much as they do.  The violence is exhilaratingly extreme in the way that we're not supposed to admit enjoying (after a scene with a broken light bulb, Home Depot will never look the same), and Evans, who edited the film as well as directing, makes it all look remarkably real.  The picture doesn't hold up all the way through for the same reason that many martial arts movies don't:  we're essentially watching the same sequence several times over, and even with the spectacular talents of this cast, eventually they get a bit tiresome.  In addition, the lack of any but the most lazy characterizations takes a toll.

Still, after 2 serious festival movies largely concerned with the profound and complex subject of death and its effect on the living, there's something to be said for the guilty pleasure of a couple of hours watching dozens of people die for no reason other than entertainment.  The Raid is a lot of dumb fun.

CARS 2 overperformed a bit, although $75M isn't much higher than the original Cars opening ($60M) plus 3D ticket prices.  It should hold well over the holiday weekend (the talking vehicles in Transformers skew a little older), but the following week it'll face Paul Blart and his chatty animals in ZOOKEEPER, and that may be more of a challenge.

BAD TEACHER turned out to be a brilliant piece of counterprogramming against the squeaky-clean Cars 2. Not only is it headed for 50% more than Diaz's last comedy opening (What Happens In Vegas), it should make considerably more than the $26M earned in the first 5 days by Knight and Day, which also featured a guy named Cruise.  Its C+ Cinemascore is nothing to brag about; nevertheless, with the giant success of this and Bridesmaids, expect a lot of actresses to be saying dirty words on screen over the next couple of years.  

GREEN LANTERN's collapse makes it another failure for Warners and DC Comics to develop a non-Christopher Nolan franchise.  The pressure that was already on Zack Snyder and his Superman movie The Man Of Steel just got a lot heavier.

MR. POPPER'S PENGUINS held quite nicely, especially in the face of Cars 2.  It's still not going to be a big moneymaker, but it won't embarrass anyone.

While MIDNIGHT IN PARIS continued to romp its way to being a blockbuster in Woody Allen terms, TREE OF LIFE almost doubled its theatre count (still only at 215) and took a hit on its per-theatre number to around $6500;  Beginners had similar results.  A BETTER LIFE, which will be a major marketing challenge for Summit, is headed for an OK $16K in each of only 4 art theatres, while the documentary CONAN O'BRIEN CAN'T STOP will find its audience (if at all) on the home screen, with just $4K per theatre in 40.   

Next weekend will be all TRANSFORMERS:  DARK OF THE MOON.  Or "weekend," since Paramount is opening the movie at 9PM Tuesday night in order to stretch its holiday to 6 1/2 days.  (The last Transformers, which opened on Wednesday--meaning Tuesday midnight--the week before July 4th, racked up $215M in its first 6 days, on its way to a $402M domestic total.)  Universal and Fox will try to counterprogram with soft romantic comedies, respectively the genial LARRY CROWNE aimed at older audiences, and MONTE CARLO for younger girls.

We'll see if SUPER 8 gets to $40M, but in any case Paramount has done the season's best job of managing expectations.  Considering that they've been throwing millions into promoting the movie since the Super Bowl, the idea that the lowest action opening of the summer is somehow good news is a beautiful piece of spin.  Remember that although Super 8 is low-budget by blockbuster standards, it still carries the typical $150M+ in worldwide marketing costs, which puts profit a distance away.--and the B+ average it got from Cinemascore is nothing to sing about, especially since the opening night audience for this should have been pure fanbase.

The X-MEN:  FIRST CLASS hold is disappointing.  This is a high-quality movie that should have benefitted from strong word of mouth, but the combination of the 1960s setting and the no-star cast seems to have turned some audiences off.  It could wind up as the lowest-grossing title in its franchise.

Similarly, Hangover, Kung Fu Panda and Pirates are all heading for the lowest grosses (domestically) of their respective series, although Kung Fu had a nice 3rd week hold--deservedly so.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS saw its per-theatre number come down to earth to around $5500 as it expanded swiftly to nearly 1000 screens--but I'm sure Woody Allen isn't complaining, since even with average holds, it should match Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Match Point as one of his most successful films of the past 25 years.

TREE OF LIFE is expanding more slowly, up to only 47 theatres, and it's holding pretty firmly at around $17K per theatre.  Same for BEGINNERS, which inched up to 19 theatres and should do around $12K in each.