Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, The Nice Guys

In Theaters This Week (5/19/2016) – The Nice Guys, Angry Birds, and Neigbors 2

Angry Birds
Each Thursday we look at what is going to be coming out in theaters this weekend, show you the trailers for the big releases, predict the box office winner and just generally give you enough of a carrot to pull you through the rest of the work week.  May 19th brings three challengers to Captain America: Civil War, but can any of them take down what is now the #1 film of 2016 (Cap just passed the $1 billion global mark today)?  Cap is now the 24th highest-grossing film of all-time globally, and will likely be in the top 20 by weekend’s end.

Neighbors 2, Zac Efron, Seth Rogen

The three challengers to Disney/Marvel hit different demographics, and might bring a film with less momentum down.  Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising hits the comedy nerve with Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne and Zac Efron returning from Neighbors.  The game that ate the memory of a trillion iPhones is now a movie.  Angry Birds; The Movie is getting mixed reviews to poor (as is Neighbors 2).  I cannot for the life of me imagine what they could possibly fill a feature-length film plot with in the eternal war between inexplicably green pigs and furious, furious birds.  The film I want to see (and is at 91% on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing) is Shane Black’s The Nice Guys.  Shane Black botched Iron Man 3, but interference from the studio and a bad script didn’t help.  Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling seem to have a good rapport in the darkly funny trailers.  The film seems very reminiscent of Black’s Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, which kick-started Robert Downey Jr.’s comeback and is definitely worth a rental if you haven’t checked it out.

The Angry Birds Movie (Jason Sudekis, PG, 1hr 35min)


Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (Seth Rogen, Zac Efron, R, 1hr 32min)

 The Nice Guys (Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, R, 1hr 56min)


HOW DID WE DO LAST WEEK?
KT made the not too difficult choice of Captain America: Civil War to triumph again at the box office, and it did so with one of the best second weekends of all-time.  Cap raked in $72.6 million, and Disney had the #2 film with The Jungle Book adding another $17.1 million to its total.  Money Monsters, despite the star power of George Clooney and Julia Roberts, bombed, pulling in just $14.8 million.  (Lifetime record 9-2).

WHO WILL WIN THE WEEKEND?
Despite the new contenders, Captain America: Civil War is going to enjoy another week atop the box office.  It’ll likely take another team of super heroes to bring down the behemoth when X-Men Apocalypse opens next week.
Captain America: Civil War, Captain America, Iron Man

 

5 thoughts on “In Theaters This Week (5/19/2016) – The Nice Guys, Angry Birds, and Neigbors 2”

  1. Forget Angry Birds. They’re making a Tetris movie.


    When you think about it, video games ought to have been an obvious source of Hollywood fodder. Modern games are cinematic already, and all those old arcade games were so vague in terms of character and context that all a filmmaker has to do is include all the basic elements of the game, then fill in the rest of the movie with whatever he wants. Off the top of my head, here’s a way to do a Pac-Man movie:

    Pac-Man is a short, yellow, potbellied mechanical man who resembles Tik-Tok from the Oz books. He is a treasure hunter/adventurer who arrives by steamboat at an island in the midst of a stormy sea, where an enormous, castle-like edifice lurks. The interior is kind of like the maze from the film Labyrinth, except that everything is mechanical and futuristic. Upon entering, Pac-Man (who is never actually referred to as Pac-Man in the movie itself) starts to follow a path of little gold coins which have been left scattered on the floor for some reason. Pac-Man swallows the coins as he comes upon them, sort of like he’s a piggy bank (the coins rattle around in his stomach as he walks).


    But for some reason, the ghost monsters… the dangerous specters inhabiting the maze, who are not called ghost monsters in the film itself… keep trying to divert Pac-Man from his mission of following the path of coins, using methods that would do Wile E. Coyote proud.

    There is a dark, mysterious moment where Pac-Man comes upon a bowl of fruit, and a voice tries to entice him to eat. He gives into temptation, and finds that the fruit gives him energy and stamina. It turns out that the fruit was laid out by a ghost monster named Clyde, who was bested and replaced by a ghost monster name Sue. Clyde is helping Pac-Man out, as revenge on the other ghost monsters, for betraying him.


    Finally Pac-Man comes to the end of the trail of coins, only to find a similarly rotund female robot, chained to a wall. She says that she left the path of coins long ago, while being pursued by the ghost monsters, in the hope that one day, somebody would find her. She reveals that the ghost monsters were once treasure hunters, just like Pac-Man and herself, and that if Pac-Man hadn’t found her, she was going to transform into a ghost monster too, and very, very soon.

    Pac-Man helps break her free of her chains, and as they are departing the maze, they are surrounded by the ghost monsters. But something happens to make Pac-Man realize that the ghost monsters are not real, but only sentient holograms. With their secret out, and the threat they pose gone, the ghost monsters turn purple and translucent, and Pac-Man and his new companion barrel through them. Then they confront the master at the center of the labyrinth: a rouge Japanese computer programmer who built the maze, and created the ghost monsters, as a way of testing the mettle of the people who entered the maze, and dared to solve it. But the programmer says that Pac-Man can’t keep the coins, and he takes out a buzz saw to cut Pac-Man open and get to them. But Mrs. Pac-Man (yes, it’s her, if you haven’t already guessed) bites down on the blade, and after a struggle it bends and breaks in her metallic mouth. Pac-Man and Mrs. Pac-Man escape on Pac-Man’s steamboat, and at the end of the movie, you see the two of them wheeling a stroller through a park filled with other classic video game characters.


    I just folded all the elements of Pac-Man into something resembling a narrative. If I had a couple of hours to kill, I could probably flesh it out into a detailed treatment. Maybe it would be a good treatment and maybe it would be a bad one. Actually it would probably be really, really bad. But it would be better than the Pac-Man movie that will inevitably be made by Hollywood one day. That I can guarantee.

    Like

    1. It’s a Tetris trilogy. I kid you not. Went up on the Facebook and Twitter pages yesterday. One of those things that I can’t write a whole article about and still do the regular columns.


      Like

      1. Wait, what? You’ve got to be kidding me. Please tell me you’re kidding me. Please tell me this is just a joke.

        Like


      2. Like

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