Some more big failures, just released:

ALLIED with Brad Pitt, 13 M

BAD SANTA 2, 6 M

RULES DON'T APPLY-- Warren Beatty's first film in 15 years; made less than 2 M so far

Out of those 3, the only one I'm surprised about is Bad Santa 2. Not that I thought it would be a good movie, just that I thought enough people with nothing to do would look for a holiday comedy.

Rules Don't Apply - Warren Beatty playing Howard Hughes. Modern audiences don't care about Beatty or remember Hughes, but if they did it would be because Leo already played him in The Aviator.

Allied - A World War II romance of spies. The TV ads told you the whole story except the ending. I read the "twist" ending, skip it.

Warren Beatty is almost 80 years old, and no one cares about him anymore, as you said

People pretty much remember him from his films from 1967-1981, and then a few years in the 1990s. Maybe he should have stayed retired

Re: BAD SANTA 2. Do people care about Billy Bob Thornton anymore ? Haven't seen him in awhile

Another 1990s / early 2000s guy who has disappeared

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
Re: BAD SANTA 2. Do people care about Billy Bob Thornton anymore ? Haven't seen him in awhile

Another 1990s / early 2000s guy who has disappeared

Not at all, but you might not be able to recognize him. Thornton appears in 3 or 4 films every year and does TV. He is in a limited series now, Goliath. He is a very, very good actor, but he often does supporting roles too. He is not young anymore and Bad Santa is the kind of job that pays the bills, but he has not disappeared, he is well respected in the industry.

He had a very highly regarded turn in the first season of the FX series "Fargo" a couple of years ago and is now starring on his own series "Goliath" (produced by Amazon, if I'm not mistaken).

As for movies, his peaks are the amazing "Sling Blade" and the original "Bad Santa", but he's been in a lot of other good ones besides those and has shown a lot of versatility throughout his career. Besides those two masterpieces mentioned above, I heartily recommend "A Simple Plan" from Sam Raimi, "Monsters Ball" (the one that netted Halle Berry her Oscar) and "The Man Who Wasn't There" from the Coen Brothers.

Wish Billy Bob had an autograph card...

I have not seen most of the bad films this year, I do try to avoid them. However I just watched Jason Bourne on DVD and I am pretty confident in saying that it MUST be the WORST movie of 2016, even without seeing all the others turkeys. The rest is SPOILERS, so don't read if you want to see, just don't say you weren't warned.

I am a fan of the Bourne movies 1 - 3, so don't think I like saying this. It is the WORST movie of the year because it has so much talent and so much money put in and there is absolutely no reason for its existence. It fails on every level of film making.

The big name actors are irrelevant, they have nothing to do. They are cardboard characters with little to no dialogue for most of the movie. There are no roles and there is no plot. It is the exact same premise and often the exact same scenes shot in slightly different locations, as you had in Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum. You just don't have the terrific Joan Allen and her substitute here, Alicia Vikander, plays only on one note as the ambitious female operative. The primary assassin, Vincent Cassel, doesn't even have a name. He is billed as The Asset. Tommy Lee Jones just walks around yelling at his CIA men in person or by phone. Riz Ahmed is supposed to be a Steve Jobs type, but his part never comes to life. Julia Stiles, the only holdover from prior films, runs around at the beginning before she rather quickly dies. And Matt Damon just walks and runs around all over with a sneer, stopping only to hit someone in the face every few minutes. As Bourne he hardly talks and has only a few scenes of brief conversations with other actors.

Which brings me to a great drinking game if you are so inclined. Every time some person walks through a door, take a drink. You will be on the floor in 10 minutes. I'm not kidding, I'm not exaggerating. The only thing these characters do is go through doors. Elevator doors, hotel room doors, lobby doors, roof doors, basement doors, airport doors, train doors, apartment doors, warehouse doors, they don't miss any door you can name. Add it all together and you have 20 minutes of this film just watching people walk or run around and go through doors. It really is that bad.

But you say, its an action movie and that's all that matters. I agree, except that Jason Bourne fails on its most elemental level. The editing destroys all the action scenes. You can't follow anything because the cuts are too quick and the camera jumps from character to character, in both close ups and wide range. The big fight between Bourne and The Asset is ruined because you can't see enough to know what happened. I don't know how Bourne killed him and I watched it twice. I think he stabbed him, but all of a sudden he was dead. The big car chase through Las Vegas that must have smashed a hundred cars and a casino was edited into a jumble of panned shots that made you dizzy.

And that's just some of the many things you didn't see and were not explained. I can't recall a recent movie that was so devoid of anything or anyone that I could say was done even professionally well. There was no story and it has no ending, but it's the action that made it terrible. Yeah, this is my turkey of 2016.

Shows you how low Tom Cruise has fallen

In terms of U.S. box office receipts, his Jack Reacher is the 51 st highest grossing movie of 2016 !

Worldwide, it was about # 45

Remember when his films were # 1 ?

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
Remember when his films were # 1 ?

Remember when he was 30 and good looking?

Chris Pratt is heir apparent.

Hard to believe Cruise is 54 years old now

He had hit after hit between 1986 and the early 2000s, but now all he has are the Mission Impossible films, and even those are not HUGE

The decline started around 2007-2010 with Lions for Lambs, Valkyrie, and Knight and Day. Rock of Ages in 2012 was a flop.

I guess nothing lasts forever !

So the holiday movies are rolling out and once again they appear to be a maudlin bunch. It's easy to see why Rogue One will clean up at the box office this year. I hope Office Christmas Party delivers a few laughs.

This week - Fences: A filmed stage play revolving around Denzel Washington as a fairly miserable father and husband. Good times there.

Collateral Beauty: Will Smith continues his run of unwatchable films. Don't tell me Suicide Squad was an exception, it was a money maker of a bad film. This one will not make the money. The trailers of talking to Death look depressing, but that's not even the real story, which is a lot stupider than that sounds. This one is billed as finding miracles, somebody who saw it said it's "94 minutes you'll never get back". A Will Smith movie, I can believe that.

Next week - A Monster Calls: This one has gotten some good reviews, but it is a tear jerker of the highest level. It is partial animated and is the story of a young boy whose mother is dying while he is the victim of bullies at school. He copes with an imaginary monster who spouts meaningful fables. Another happy time story for the holiday season, but if you like crying it might be for you.

I'll try an Office Christmas Party because I'm that deep.

Happy Holidays to all.

Saw the "Office Christmas Party" and "Bad Santa 2" as a double feature at the drive-in theatre on Monday night. Good stuff, good enough, but it's hard not to enjoy drive-in movies with all those cheap snacks we picked up on the way...

To be fair Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow were really good Tom Cruise movies. I'm not even a Tom Cruise fan, but I love both of those films and have watched them several times.

Raven,

Collateral Beauty with Will Smith flopped

quote:

Originally posted by David R:
Raven,

Collateral Beauty with Will Smith flopped

Yeah, it pulled in something like 9M over the weekend. His lowest opening box office ever.

But if you read what this movie is actually about (don't go by the commercial scenes, they are untrue) I can't imagine who could have thought there was an audience for it. The whole story is just so incredibly dumb, it had bomb written all over it.

Going up against a new Star Wars movie certainly didn't help it's chances any.

Something about Will Smith's child dies, and he writes letters to Time, Death, Love to deal with it. Hope I did not spoil it

Here is a list of what movie studios had the biggest hits of the year:


DISNEY was the biggest winner with Dory, Doctor Strange, Capt America, Star Wars, Moana, Jungle Book, Zootopia

WARNER BROS. had hits with Batman/Superman, Fantastic Beasts, Suicide Squad, Tarzan

FOX had hits with Deadpool, Trolls, Kung Fu Panda 3, X-Men

UNIVERSAL's only hits were the The Secret Life of Pets and Jason Bourne


PARAMOUNT'S only Top 20 hit was Star Trek

SONY's only Top 20 "hit" was Ghostbusters

The funny part of that list is that most of them were lousy movies.

Batman/Superman is topping many of the year end worst movies lists. I just saw Jason Bourne and I will tell you that it was a terrible film. As a fan of the first three Bourne movies, there is absolutely no reason for the existence of this one. Suicide Squad was a noisy mess and Ghostbusters proved that all the internet rants weren't worth the finish product. Star Trek and X-Men came and went with only the devoted fans noticing.

They say this was a record year for the box office and it was carried by Star Wars and Marvel and Dory. But there is something wrong when so many other half baked films can pull in so much money just because so many people seem to be willing to make excuses for certain titles.

Disney was clearly the winner, with 7 of the Top 20 highest grossing films of the year

And if Disney had the rights to its other Marvel properties, namely X-Men and Deadpool, it would have had 9 of the Top 20 films

Of the Top 20, 6 were Marvel or DC comic related, with Capt America 3 being the highest grossing one, and X-Men the least