Seems like Brad Pitt, at age 62, isn't doing as many films as he used to.

His only hits this decade were F1 last year and BULLET TRAIN in 2022.

BABYLON bombed back in 2022 and he did that movie WOLFS with George Clooney in 2024 that wasn't released in theaters but went straight to Apple TV.

There is going to be a big changing of the guard in Hollywood pretty soon. This is a normal cycle that occurs as major actors start to age out and the new young turks switch into the establishment stars. Typically, the male actors have a longer shelf life than the female actresses. That has somewhat changed, as many of the older ladies have taken to headlining streaming shows. However, the romantic leading men and action stars still get to hold on well passed their expiration date.

Now it looks like this time there will be a bigger than usual gap because so many of the best-known actors are older than you would think, while there are as yet few young actors ready to take their place. Here is an incomplete list of the ones I thought of breaking, at 46:

Al Pacino 86
Robert De Niro 82
Sylvester Stallone 79
Arnold Schwarzenegger 78
Samuel L. Jckson 77
Liam Neesom 74
Pierce Brosnan 73
Tom Hanks 69
George Clooney 65
Johnny Depp 63
Tom Cruise 63
Brad Pitt 62
Keanu Reeves 61
Robert Downey Jr. 61
Vin Diesel 58
Jason Statham 58
Will Smith 57
Hugh Jackman 57
Edward Norton 56
Matthew McConaughey 56
Matt Damon 55
Dwayne Johnson 54
Ben Affleck 53
Idris Elba 53
Bradley Cooper 51
Leanardo DiCaprio 51
Pedro Pascal 51
Cillian Murphy 50
Ryan Reynolds 49
Jason Momoa 46
Chris Pratt 46

And the heirs apparent:
Ryan Gosling 45
Chris Evans 44
Chris Hemsworth 42
Austin Butler 34
Tom Holland 30
Timothee Chalamet 30
Jacob Elordi 28

I'm sure I missed a lot, but the point is, just like Robert De Niro, and Jack Nicholson and Warren Beaty before him, many of these actors are either going to retire or move into supporting roles, while younger actors take their place.

So this weekend the big opening movie is Spielberg's "Disclosure Day". According to advance reviews it is the best Spielberg film in a decade. Only I'm not quite sure if that means it's going to be great, or that he hasn't directed a good movie in ten years. Personally I think he's done better as a producer than a director in the later part of his career.

Nevertheless, "Disclosure Day" is being lumped into a "Close Encounters" and "E.T." vibe, which I find too sweet by half these days. If you really want to believe the aliens among us conspiracies, at least go for "They Live". That movie, starring Rowdy Roddy Piper, is a guilty pleasure of mine, especially because I got to meet the man at a signing a few years before he passed. Friendly guy.

"Disclosure Day" cost somewhere between 150M - 190M and its biggest competition is probably "Obsession" and "Backrooms", which both could have been made on an iPhone. Emily Blunt alone will not add much excitement. The following week "Toy Story 5" hits. "Disclosure Day" has a small window to make a lot of money and predictions are tepid at the moment. I think it will ultimately come up short and do better on streaming than in theatres.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Raven,

Here are the Top 10 of the year domestically as of today. Not sure where Disclosure Day will be on the list after this weekend:

1) SUPER MARIO GALAXY
2) MICHAEL
3) PROJECT HAIL MARY
4) DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2
5) OBSESSION
6) HOPPERS
7) BACKROOMS
8) STAR WARS MANDALORIAN
9) SCREAM 7
10) GOAT

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
Here are the Top 10 of the year domestically as of today. Not sure where Disclosure Day will be on the list after this weekend:

1) SUPER MARIO GALAXY
2) MICHAEL
3) PROJECT HAIL MARY
4) DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2
5) OBSESSION
6) HOPPERS
7) BACKROOMS
8) STAR WARS MANDALORIAN
9) SCREAM 7
10) GOAT

I didn't know Hoppers did that well, nobody talked about it. I recently watched it on Disney+ and thought it was wonderful.

Hoppers grossed 166 M in the U.S. and 372 M worldwide. Pretty good.

So far it is the # 2 "kids" film of the year, behind Super Mario Galaxy.

"Michael" is about to pass a worldwide gross of 900 M, and it is still going.

Who would have guessed ?

It's been reported that "Supergirl" is now 25 minutes shorter in the final cut than when previews started. Maybe that's a good thing to get rid of some distracting bloat, maybe it just means that the audience was bored with the backstory between fight scenes.

I think the publicity campaign is lacking. The posters make Milly Alcock look like a snotty teenager hanging out at the mall. Also the addition of Lobo, gives the whole thing the look of a Rob Zombie production, which probably would not have cost the estimated 200M budget.

SPOILER ALERT: On top of that, Lobo is not the main villain. That would be Krem of the Yellow Hills and, never having been big on DC, I have no idea who he is. Don't know much about the actor playing him either. Since superhero movies tend to rise and fall on the villain even more so than the hero, this could make it or break it.

Krem was only introduced recently (2021) in a Supergirl comic book miniseries, basically the story being adapted for this movie, so he's not a very old character.

Disclosure Day made 44 M this weekend. Masters of the Universe only about 9 M for a domestic total of 45 M over 2 weeks.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
Disclosure Day made 44 M this weekend. Masters of the Universe only about 9 M for a domestic total of 45 M over 2 weeks.

"Disclosure Day" probably made more than it deserved. It is exactly what I expected it to be. People will wait for rainy day streaming. "Masters of the Universe" has run its cheesy course already.

The reviews on "Disclosure Day" are perfect examples of when the media wishes something to be true, despite the reality of what is actually there. Everyone in the established media wanted Spielberg's new film to be another "Close Encounters". All their reviews are positive, but not quite raves. Quotes like "his best film in a decade" are kind of vague.

Now read the reviews from online movie bloggers and you will get a much different opinion of the film. Stupid gets mentioned a lot. This is the word-of-mouth opinion that goes out there to carry a movie past first weekend established press. This is the talk that gets a "Backrooms" or "Obsession" noticed before the mainstream press picks it up.

Movie audiences are changing and the movie industry doesn't want to learn the lesson yet, but this summer may be a fork in the road. Backing old, tired horses and old formulas with multi-millions guarantees nothing. I think the key will be "Supergirl". If it hits big, the status quo will hold. If it disappoints at the box office, there is going to be a big reevaluation of what's in the pipeline.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
Disclosure Day made 44 M this weekend. Masters of the Universe only about 9 M for a domestic total of 45 M over 2 weeks.

"Disclosure Day" probably made more than it deserved. It is exactly what I expected it to be. People will wait for rainy day streaming. "Masters of the Universe" has run its cheesy course already.

The reviews on "Disclosure Day" are perfect examples of when the media wishes something to be true, despite the reality of what is actually there. Everyone in the established media wanted Spielberg's new film to be another "Close Encounters". All their reviews are positive, but not quite raves. Quotes like "his best film in a decade" are kind of vague.

Now read the reviews from online movie bloggers and you will get a much different opinion of the film. Stupid gets mentioned a lot. This is the word-of-mouth opinion that goes out there to carry a movie past first weekend established press. This is the talk that gets a "Backrooms" or "Obsession" noticed before the mainstream press picks it up.

Movie audiences are changing and the movie industry doesn't want to learn the lesson yet, but this summer may be a fork in the road. Backing old, tired horses and old formulas with multi-millions guarantees nothing. I think the key will be "Supergirl". If it hits big, the status quo will hold. If it disappoints at the box office, there is going to be a big reevaluation of what's in the pipeline.

Ok, the established media and online movie bloggers have weighed in.
What did you think of it?

quote:

Originally posted by chesspieceface:
Ok, the established media and online movie bloggers have weighed in.
What did you think of it?

You are absolutely right. I haven't seen "Disclosure Day" and have no intention of seeing it in a theatre. I will very likely catch it when it streams, but will also likely do a lot of skipping over scenes till I hit the end. My attention span isn't what it used to be.

When I really want to see a movie, I try to stay away from reading about the plot as much as possible, particularly because I tend to like mysteries and it's less fun when you know who done it. Also mysteries don't usually need a big screen or big special effects. Now Godzilla or Kong or Jurassic need the screen, and I go for those.

You ask me what I think, I think I generally don't like message movies. I know "Disclosure Day" is a message movie. I know Spielberg's message. I know I'm not onboard unless the movie is entertaining beyond the message. I also am not a "we are not alone" X-Files fan. All and all, I think this is not my kind of movie.

Which is not to say that it can't be yours, especially since I think you are much more involved in enjoying certain Director's filmmaking work than I am. We would probably not be seeing many of the same films, but it doesn't make either one of us right more than the other.

I'll end with a quick example. A favorite actress of mine used to be Cate Blanchett. She is a really good actress, who used to be generally mainstream with the occasional art film. Some time ago she became enamored with working with only the Master Class of film directors. As a result, even a spy movie like "Black Bag" is not a normal spy story. It is all great art from her, so I no longer bother watching her films, but I do read their reviews and know that I did the right thing to not waste my time. Which is not to say that it isn't a Master Class, just that it's not for me.

Cate recently tried to make a big, loud, and colorful movie for reg'lar folks with "Borderlands", but I guess that was too stupid even for them. It bombed.

Her 2024 miniseries on Apple+, "Disclaimer" opposite Kevin Kline from Alphonso Cuaron, on the other hand, was superb. The story begins with her successful life being unraveled by a newly published book featuring her as a thinly-disguised character that paints her in a horrible, possibly even criminal light. The twist is that what's presented in the book isn't at all what happened in real life. As devastatingly revealed towards the end of the story, she was not in any way the villain of the piece, but rather a victim of a psychopath.

"Black Bag" from Soderbergh was a brisk and stylish thriller, barely over 90 minutes in runtime. The story concerns a group of spies tasked with uncovering a mole in their operation. Since you're not going to see it, the spy in their midst they are trying to uncover ends up being the character played by Rege-Jean Page, the super handsome dude from Season 1 of "Bridgerton". There aren't any real "messages" in either of these pieces. Maybe there's one from "Disclaimer" about being too sure about what you think you know.

NOTE: Spoiler alert above.

She has a long career, I'll stay recent. You didn't mention "Father, Mother, Sister, Brother", or "Rumours", or "The New Boy". Outside of film festivals I don't know how widely they were released. I never saw them, but I know the plots and wouldn't want to.

She did Borderlands because of Eli Roth, as she did the above named movies for their Directors. I saw it when it hit DVD. Absolutely atrocious from beginning to end. Everyone was miscast and it looked like the scenes were spliced together to get something out for the money. I had planned to enjoy it, but I knew the reviews were terrible and they were correct.

I saw TAR on video. Blanchett was terrific, she should have won the Oscar that year, but there were so many holes in that screenplay and so many things left hanging. Field conveniently says the audience should make up their own minds. They always do that when they run out of ideas. I got the idea, she was brilliant, I didn't buy the story for a minute.

I saw "Nightmare Alley" on DVD. Blanchett was the best actor in it. The original with Tyrone Power I know well. They changed its ending because the audience at the time rejected seeing Power turn into a geek. Del Toro went back to the source material for a miserable tale that Bradley Cooper could not carry.

I have not seen "Disclaimer" because I don't have the streamer, but I know the tearjerker plot as it was a book. Again not something I would find logical for a minute.

"Black Bag" I actually did see in a theatre. Of course she did it for Soderbergh and its two set pieces are opening and closing dinner scenes. It is a spy movie, but there is one car bomb, one gun shot, and I guess you can count one poisoning. Otherwise, all the 6 main characters do for 90 minutes is talk, mainly about rather strange relationships with each other. The message is to kill for the one you love, but just don't tell them to shut up.

I could go on to "Where'd You Go Bernadette", another failed hack job, or even more all star high art like "Don't Look Up", but I'll stop here. Suffice to say that I do understand these films and I don't enjoy them. "Thor Ragnarok" was the last Blanchett movie I liked and I'm OK with whatever that means.

quote:

Originally posted by chesspieceface:

NOTE: Spoiler alert above.

That's not how that works.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
I think the publicity campaign is lacking. The posters make Milly Alcock look like a snotty teenager hanging out at the mall.

The trailers do as well. Absolutely nothing they've put out makes me want to see this film.

TOY STORY 5 should gross at least 150 M domestically for the weekend, when it opens this Friday.

It is expected to crush everything for a few weeks, including SUPERGIRL which opens June 24.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
TOY STORY 5 should gross at least 150 M domestically for the weekend, when it opens this Friday.

It is expected to crush everything for a few weeks, including SUPERGIRL which opens June 24.

This idea that blockbuster movies must be Summer movies is counterproductive. It pits them all against each other and even if they take #1 on the opening weekend, which is not guaranteed, by the next weekend someone else appears and the box office drops 60%. There is no time to be left alone and make good theatre money.

If "Project Hail Mary" can come out early and make a lot of cash for a movie not many people knew of before, why couldn't "Supergirl" come out in the Spring or in the Fall? Doesn't DC have enough trouble without going head-to-head with everybody's big movie? If we can figure this out, how come the smart studio executives can't see the logic? Sometimes I think they try to fail on purpose.

Do you remember the summer of 1989 when BATMAN, the third INDIANA JONES film, and LETHAL WEAPON 2 crushed everything else ?

I was a teenager then and I remember it like it was yesterday. Those films blew away almost every other summer blockbuster, including STAR TREK V, the James Bond film LICENCE TO KILL, as well as KARATE KID III. They also hurt the box office for GHOSTBUSTERS II to some extent.