In Laman's Terms: Who Won, Who Lost, Who Was Just Mid At CinemaCon 2024?

I wasn't at CinemaCon 2024. My fellow Outside Scoop hosts Ryan Scott and Jeremy Fuster did attend the annual Las Vegas event (in which movie studios show off their upcoming features to movie theater owners)! I'm sure the next episode of The Outside Scoop will be chock full of amazing insights from the duo into what upcoming movies look especially choice. For now, though, I thought I'd divulge my thoughts on which studios brought the most buzz to CinemaCon. We're in a transitional period for theatrical cinema. Multiple major studios that have existed for decades are now on the selling block. The public personas executives and studio heads put on at CinemaCon (not to mention the kind of projects they announce) speak volumes about what the near future of cinema looks like. 

Let's dive into that future by exploring what studios brought the goods, which ones stumbled, and which ones just registered as "meh" with their CinemaCon 2024 announcements.

Paramount Pictures Came Out Guns A-Blazing

Ten years ago, the 2014 Paramount Pictures CinemaCon panel focused almost exclusively on three movies: Transformers: Age of Extinction, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), and Hercules. It was a reflection of how few options the studio had in the mid-2010s with its DreamWorks Animation and Marvel Studios distribution deals firmly in the past. Cut to yesterday, though, and Paramount Pictures came out to theater owners with a slew of wildly varying movies headed to theaters. This included a new Damien Chazelle movie (Babylon stans rise up, we won!), a new Scary Movie sequel, an Edgar Wright Running Man remake, and the long-gestating musical comedy from Kendrick Lamar and the South Park guys. Oh, and there were also new Transformers and Ninja Turtles movies announced, because the more things change, the more they stay the same. 

Paramount's explosive 2022 and scoring two major sleeper hits at the start of 2024 seems to have emboldened the studio to finally get a well-rounded slate of theatrical movies together. Heck, the studio even seems to have finally figured out its animated movie problem. For years, Paramount struggled to get a steady stream of new animated movies released. At CinemaCon 2024, though Paramount showed off six different theatrical animated movies destined for theaters over the next 30 months. Little strange Paramount didn't finally announce when Rosemary's Baby prequel Apartment 7A is finally coming out, but otherwise, strong presentation from Paramount. 

Disney And Amazon MGM Studios Kinda Jogged In Place

Disney is in the middle of a transition period for its movie studios. David Greenbaum is only a little over a month into taking over as the head of the studio's movie divisions. Inevitably, the future is a little murky for the Mouse House, so not much was announced at CinemaCon 2024. Still, it was amusing that the studio didn't bring much new to the event. The Mouse House mostly just showed off lengthy pieces of footage from summer 2024 tentpoles like Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and Inside Out 2. No mention of Searchlight Pictures releases, as near as I could tell. A forgettable panel with no big announcements.

Amazon MGM Studios did a closed-door showcase to exhibitors on its ramped up theatrical slate and revealed that new Bart Layton and Luca Guadagnino movies were headed to theaters in 2025. That's all well and good, but I was stuck by Deadline noting that Amazon MGM Studios was planning to send only 11 movies to theaters through 2026. The studio said it planned to do more than 11, but c'mon, those numbers are still meager. Movie theaters need product. Amazon has more money than God. It can afford to send out digital prints and market new movies. A deluge of new Amazon Studios releases (like Holland, Michigan, You're Cordially Invited, The Accountant 2, and Unstoppable, to name a few) are in various stages of production for inevitable streaming premieres. 

Amazon MGM Studios should be sending as many movies inhabiting as many genres as possible to the big screen. Not just action films and award-season contenders. Movie theater exhibitors and moviegoers shouldn't be thankful to corporations for crumbs when it comes to sending titles to theaters. I had a similar thought reading updates on the Warner Bros. CinemaCon panel this year. Some of its upcoming titles sound fun, but it's hard to ignore the Coyote vs. Acme in the room the whole time. How many of these forthcoming features will actually make it to the big screen? Will Zaslav chuck them in a wastebin to get himself a few extra pennies? 

Amazon, WarnerDiscovery, and other companies jeopardized the big screen experience by shoveling everything to streaming. Now they want to come to CinemaCon as "heroes" because they'll send a Dwayne Johnson/Chris Evans Christmas movie to multiplexes? Forget that! You don't get to be the arsonist and the fireman. When Amazon MGM Studios announces a commitment to making 21 new theatrical movies a year like Warner Bros. did back in 2011 or the 17-18 new theatrical movies 20th Century Fox supplied up until 2018, then we'll talk. Currently, Amazon MGM Studios only has seven theatrical releases scheulded for 2023 (I'm being generous and counting the one-week IMAX release The Blue Angels). That's the same number MGM released in 2021 without Amazon money at its back. 2021 was also when movie theaters were largely closed for the first three months of the year. Congratulations for maintaining the status quo and calling it something new Amazon! That's the Silicon Valley way! We should be demanding more from the few companies that have (almost certainly illegally) assumed so much control over the film industry. Otherwise, you end up with the Warner Bros. Pictures and Amazon MGM Studios CinemaCon presentations, which treated baseline competency as some kind of miracle worth applauding. 

What's Going On, Lionsgate?

Now that we've got that leftist anti-corporation ramble out of the way, let's look over at Lionsgate. The indie studio that's too big to be a Relativity Media but never large or steady enough to be one of Big Five, Lionsgate showed up to CinemaCon with promises of big franchises...kind of. More footage from the studios The Crow reboot was dropped along with a new release date of August 23rd. How ironic that this and Kraven the Hunter are now opening back to back to close out summer 2023. Lionsgate also announced a big partnership with Blumhouse Productions to remake a slew of Lionsgate horror movies starting with The Blair Witch Project. That sounds like a shady prospect and not just because the folks behind the original movie have allegedly failed to get properly compensated for their work on that feature. How many "classic" Lionsgate horror movies are there? Is Blumhouse about to reboot The Cabin in the Woods? Are we due for a Cabin Fever legacy sequel? A Bigger Midnight Meat Train? This whole enterprise sounds like a boondoggle in the making.

Nosferatu Sounds Awesome!!

The most exciting presentation at CinemaCon, as a distant spectator bimbo in Dallas, Texas, was easily the first footage from the new Robert Eggers movie, Nosferatu. This production (the latest remake of the classic F.W. Murnau movie) sounds like it could be something special, not to mention as visually evocative as the other features Eggers has helmed. I'll be counting down the minutes until I can bear witness to this Willem Dafoe/Eggers collaboration! This footage came out during the Universal Pictures/Focus Features presentation, which, of course, hinged heavily on more Wicked: Part One material. To say I'm dubious of this feature sustaining two full-length movies is an understatement. However, it keeps sounding like Universal has a massive hit in the making here. 

Have You Seen These Movies?

Finally, let's look at what wasn't shown at CinemaCon: a bevy of movies shot between 2020 and 2022 that major studios have acquired and/or financed, yet still don't have release dates. It seems like the big studios were stockpiling these titles to help fill in the gaps left in the release schedule by the two big 2023 strikes. However, it's getting bizarre how little information is out there for some of these titles that have been sitting on shelves for years now. For instance, the Legendary Pictures release The Toxic Avenger premiered last September to solid reviews. One might think either Columbia Pictures or Warner Bros. (the two go-to studios for Legendary) would pick it up. Still no word on when this one will see the light of day beyond Fantastic Fest. The Anthony Ramos astronaut movie Distant, meanwhile, was shot back at the end of 2020 for Universal. Still no word on where it is.

The list goes on and on. The Sony/Blumhouse horror film They Listen (starring Katerine Waterston and John Cho) started filming in the final weeks of 2022. It hasn't received a new date after it got pushed from its Labor Day 2024 slot nine months ago. Sony/Screen Gems also has The Haunting in Wicker Park on a shelf somewhere, though amusingly that project now sounds like a Late Night With the Devil knock-off. Should've gotten it out sooner! Lionsgate still hasn't divulged its plans for either The Home or Freaky Tales. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. hasn't confirmed whether or not Max Original Movies The Parenting and Am I OK? (the latter of which they acquired back at Sundance 2022) are still going to streaming. On and on the list goes, including the Legendary Pictures release Brothers (shot in 2021), the aforementioned Apartment 7A, and the Dylan O'Brien/Eliza Scanlen thriller Caddo Lake (for Warner Bros./New Line Cinema). So many major titles from the big studios are just hanging in seemingly permanent limbo. Without any new info on their release status emerging from CinemaCon, it's hard to get too excited about the future of these outfits while all the gaps in the 2024 release schedule get even more irritating. They have the movies theaters need, they're just choosing not to release them.

In Laman's Terms: An Ode to The Transfixing Lived-In Realities of Stephen McKinley Henderson Performances

Movie stars are who we want to be. We strive to have the cool confidence of Humphrey Bogart. We yearn to have the commanding presence of Lupita Nyong’o. We clamor for the charm of Jean Arthur. We yearn for the immediately captivating aura of Amy Adams. We can live vicariously through these figures. They afford viewers a chance to be all the things we’re not in reality. Movie stars let moviegoers live out their fantasies. Character actors, meanwhile, captivate because they remind us of reality. Through these figures, we see the types of human beings we see every day at the store, at work, or anywhere else. They help normalize all the messy and flawed parts of our lives with their performances. On top of all that, they make the world of an individual movie feel alive. The best character actors leave an impression on you with minimal screentime. In just a few minutes, they make you believe the inhabitants of a fictional story have a far deeper life than just what the protagonist is going through. 

All these qualities and more are exemplified by the career of Stephen McKinley Henderson. Now anchoring the new release Civil War, Henderson has become a fixture of movies of all shapes and sizes in recent years. Why wouldn’t he? He embodies why character actors are so compelling. 

Born in 1949, Henderson got his start as an actor in the world of stage productions. He graced several acclaimed off-Broadway productions starting in 1986 and also appeared in multiple Broadway projects in the 2000s. Save for two small acting roles, Henderson did not appear in feature films until the 21st century. Even then, before 2011 (when he started showing up in wide theatrical releases and Best Picture nominees), it was only a smattering of minor roles in indie pictures. This quality of Henderson’s career is important to understanding why he works so well as a modern character actor. Not only did being immersed in Broadway help Henderson hone his craft, it also makes him a fresh face for moviegoers. 

Unless you’re one of the lucky few to have seen him perform off-Broadway or in London in the 1990s, chances are you don’t have decades of pre-conceived notions of “who” Henderson is. He doesn’t have a lengthy pre-2010 filmography that informs how people perceive his characters. This allows his roles in movies like Lady Bird, Dune, Causeway, and others to stand on their own two feet. These characters can feel like standalone creations rather than getting swallowed up by Henderson’s larger filmography. Of course, even if Henderson had decades of on-screen performances to his name, there’s a good chance he’d still immerse viewers in the various roles he’s inhabited.

For vivid proof of that, look no further than the 2011 feature Tower Heist. This is probably the only instance in history in which that Brett Ratner directorial vehicle will ever be used as a shining artistic example of something. Yet such praise is actually applicable here since this Ben Stiller/Eddie Murphy comedy contains a supporting performance from Stephen McKinley Henderson as retiring doorman Lester. In his on-screen work, Henderson brings way more gravitas and lived-in believability to the role than this movie deserves! There's this shot in Tower Heist that's lingered in with me for years (before I even knew who Henderson was). It's a tight close-up of Lester's forlorn face in a hospital bed right after he attempted to commit suicide after losing his pension. It's such an evocative image because of the actor in the frame. Henderson doesn't need to speak a word. On his face is years of anguish. Uncertainty over what the future holds. So much of Tower Heist is hollow. In just this shot, Henderson communicates a fully-dimensional human being that grabs your attention and sympathy.

The rest of Tower Heist is surface-level fluff that never quite gets either its laughs or anger at the 1% vivid enough to make the movie reach its fullest potential. But good grief, Stephen McKinley Henderson still manages to excel as an actor here! He even gets the viewer to feel genuine euphoria in a moment during a closing montage showing Lester filled with joy after receiving a gift from Stiller's protagonist. Even if the motion picture he's inhabiting isn't the greatest in the world, Henderson will still leave an impression on you. When you put him in something extraordinary, well, then you're working with cinematic magic. Take his work in Lady Bird, for example.

One of the endless joys of Greta Gerwig as a writer and director is that she loves everyone in her movies. From waiters showing up for one scene to sometimes adversarial characters, she's got compassion in her soul for everybody and all their weird neuroses. You don't need to be "perfect" to get depicted with empathy in a Gerwig film. You can make plasters of your feet. You can be an asshole. You can look like Margot Robbie and still not feel "pretty" enough. Watching the relatable messy souls at the heart of Lady Bird, Little Women, and Barbie, Gerwig offers something quietly reassuring to the viewer. All her complicated characters deserve love. That quietly reminds one that all of us in our fragmented nuances deserve love too. So many performances across her three movies encapsulate this theme beautifully. One that my mind always goes back to is Henderson as theater teacher Father Leviatch in Lady Bird.

Stephen McKinley Henderson in Civil War

For starters, Henderson is inspired casting in this role and not just because he's a veteran of acting on stage. The soft-spoken but decisive persona Henderson evokes for Leviatch is just who you'd want guiding you down the world of acting as a vulnerable teaching. You get the sense that he has experience, but he's not overwhelming you with how much he knows. It's a perfect personality for this job...which makes the character's eventual emotional problems all the more impactful to witness. Henderson's performance and Gerwig's camera frame Leviatch's breakdown into tears in front of his students without an ounce of judgment nor is the sight of a grown man getting emotional played for cheap laughs. Henderson does not portray this extreme display of sorrow as a caricature but rather with such cutting reality. A dam has burst inside this man. That's an event that requires a deftly detailed performance, not mockery.

A later scene of Leviatch visiting Marion McPherson (Laurie Metcalfe) about his emotional problems once again demonstrates Henderson's power to communicate so much in understated terms. Just his slightly hesitant line readings (and the way he emphasizes Leviatch wanting to keep this issue a secret) suggest how much courage it took for Leviatch to make this visit. You get the sense in Henderson's reserved physicality and line deliveries that this is a guy who bottled these feelings up for years and years. He doesn't need a massive monologue to communicate Leviatch's rich history. He evokes it beautifully. Greta Gerwig is a filmmaker who thrives on finding the captivating story in every on-screen figure. So too does Stephen McKinley Henderson find the rich humanity in every role he plays, especially in his Lady Bird character.

Performances like Henderson's have always been important in the history of cinema. Can you imagine countless vintage movies being as good as they were without the efforts of performers like Peter Lorre and Lionel Barrymore? But someone like Stephen McKinley Henderson is even more important now in the modern age of cinema. So many of our lead actors no longer look like discernible recognizable humans. It's the o'l "Everybody Is Beautiful And No One Is Horny" situation. Folks like Henry Cavill and Dwayne Johnson rock impossible bodies that only look like that because of water deprivation. Even Jake Gyllenhaal has now to get into his Road House physique to be a "proper" modern movie star. These forms have gone from being "aspirational" to just flat-out ridiculous. People look so far removed from anything resembling "normal" humans that it's hard to take them seriously.

Thankfully, artists like Stephen McKinley Henderson still exist in this business. He's here to instantly exude a sense of lived-in reality that captivates your imagination. This is true even when he's only on-screen briefly, such as his one-scene appearance in Manchester by the Sea (where he's strikingly surrounded by shelves and all kinds of clutter). In that Kenneth Lonergan movie, Henderson communicates such long-term disillusionment with closed-off employee Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck). Not anger, just quiet disappointment over his inability to get through to the man working for him. Once again, we get a lifetime of information masterfully communicated in the subtlest details of a Stephen McKinley Henderson. In an age of movie stars dominated by Ryan Reynolds and Chris Pratt, we need that kind of subtlety and authenticity more than ever. While his character in Lady Bird sadly noted "they didn't understand it" regarding his play, one can easily understand why Stephen McKinley Henderson is one of this generation's greatest character actors.

Civil War Is a Chillingly Nebulous Descent Into the American Apocalypse...And Then It Isn't

As Civil War begins, America is not in crisis. It's in shambles. A Second American Civil War has consumed the country, with the primary rivals in the fight being the United States of America and Western powers consisting of California and Texas (Florida is a separate faction aiding the latter group). Writer/director Alex Garland tells this saga through the eyes of journalists. Specifically, Civil War chronicles traumatized and weary Lee (Kirsten Dunst), the upbeat Joel (Wagner Moura), experienced Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), and 23-year-old newbie photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny). This quartet is determined to travel from New York City to Washington D.C. to secure an interview with the unnamed President of the United States (Nick Offerman). 

Washington has become a battleground where journalists are "shot on sight," per Sammy. Yet this group continues on their mission, encountering the gruesome remains of America along their journey.

Civil War is the best movie Alex Garland has ever directed until it suddenly isn't. But before it runs out of steam, it's tremendously gripping. Many of Garland's greatest strengths as a filmmaker are put to great use here, namely his gift for striking displays of grotesquerie. This story does not take place in the nascent days of a grand conflict. Lee and company are inhabiting a country where unspeakable horrors are now everyday occurrences. This reality informs chilling images vividly realized by Garland and his go-to cinematographer Rob Hardy. A shot of two overpasses, one of which has "GO STEELERS" graffiti on it while the other is home to two hung corpses dangling in the wind, is a great example of this. Trivial interests and human rights violations co-existing in the same space. That sounds like America. A shot of piles of abandoned and brutalized cars stacked up on a pair of roads is similarly haunting and beautifully composed. The lack of information on what happened here just makes this sight all the more terrifying to witness.

That ambiguity ties into another central element of Civil War: its apolitical nature. Garland has been very open that the movie doesn't function as a treatise for any political side. Refusing to commit to an ideology means that Civil War can never function as impactfully as social commentary as works by filmmakers like Samuel Fuller, Boots Riley, and Lizzie Borden. However, initially, this tactic does make some sense. For the first 2/3 of Civil War, the focus is on four journalists navigating smaller bursts of conflict. They're rarely on the front lines of the action. They're just stuck in the crossfire of two snipers shooting at a trigger-happy adversary or an unnamed xenophobic soldier played by Jesse Plemons. 

In these intimate confines, Civil War's apolitical impulses feel more like a way to reflect how long this Second Civil War has lasted. Even the people fighting in it don't know what they're quarreling over. Personal grudges and brawls for survival have replaced larger ideological motivations. Plus, Garland thrives as a filmmaker in executing small-scale bursts of suspense, as seen by his previous artistic accomplishments in movies like 28 Days Later (for which he wrote the script) and Ex Machina (which he also directed). A scene where Jessie joyfully tries to leap from one moving car to another had me closing my eyes in dread. A later confrontation with a character played by Plemons leaves one clutching their breath thanks to how masterfully paced this set-piece is. It doesn't hurt that Plemons is also transfixing in this sequence!

The earlier parts of Civil War also find interesting moments for things to simmer and let us get to know our four journalists. An early sequence of this quartet settling down for the night at an abandoned freight yard is full of great touches, including the lived-in rapport between Dunst and Henderson. The smallest details of their interactions exude a rich history of friendship. Even the run-down backdrop of these nighttime conversations accentuates the bonds between these people. Everything is crumbling around them. Every slab of metal characters walk by is slathered in rust. Gunfire from distant battles rights up the night sky. Yet Joel still takes the time to let Lee know she's not alone. Exploring private bursts of human connection in times of incomprehensible strife informs Civil War's greatest sequences.

Unfortunately, those same qualities evaporate once the climax of Civil War arrives. For its final thirty minutes, Garland chronicles a nighttime assault on Washington D.C. The main characters easily get lost in the shuffle of this operation. This is the stretch of the story where the apolitical nature of Civil War also becomes an unfortunate problem. It's easy to forgive a dearth of specific social commentary when the feature is keeping you engaged with small-scale suspense sequences. However, once the screen is suddenly filled with military hardware and endless sounds of gunfire, the thematic hollowness engulfs the proceedings. Civil War's vagueness over the forces behind the Second American Civil War is an asset when it informs haunting shots of brutalized vehicles scattered across the road. Ambiguity is your friend when chronicling the aftermath of these skirmishes. Unfortunately, that same quality is a massive problem when Civil War just focuses on soldiers blowing stuff up.

Civil War previously got a lot of power leaving things to the viewer's imagination. Those first two acts functioning like Stalker by way of The Devil Came on Horseback crackle with ominous suspense. Once we're front-and-center on the battlefield, though, there just isn't much dramatic tension. Worse, whether intentional or not, Civil War devolving into a finale from a Peter Berg movie even reveals a bit of thematic timidity on the part of Garland. He's clearly comfortable with eschewing ambiguity when it comes to showing off the prowess of American military forces. However, he avoids addressing a slew of real-world sociopolitical issues informing America's modern political nightmare that Civil War is capitalizing on. Garland is happy to eschew ambiguity to indulge in traditional cinematic military-heavy imagery while avoiding wading into more "divisive" territory. It's quite common to see motion pictures dedicating screentime to the military (the Department of Defense and Pentagon encourage such projects!), this flaw isn't exclusive to Civil War, In the interest of fairness, it also isn't like any military branch of the movie comes out looking like "champs" thanks to all the unarmed civilians getting shot down. Depiction does not equal endorsement and Civil War depicting soldiers slaughtering people does not mean Garland thinks that's "awesome".

However, the best parts of Civil War previously relied on quiet suspense and unspeakable atrocities occurring in the daytime. It's a shame it all devolves into a dimly lit cacophony of noise that feels like it could be lifted from any other military drama. Even the dialogue becomes more didactic and clumsy in this stretch of the story while great actors like Dunst get stuck in the background in favor of more explosions. Such a conventional finish can't help but make one realize all the thematic potential left on the table, especially since Garland's "apolitical" PR stance ends up being nonsense (no art is apolitical, particularly ones this enamored with showcasing military vehicles and choppers). Initially, the nebulousness of Civil War is a great anchor for incredibly memorable suspenseful sequences. Too bad it all leads to a third act that betrays the movie's best qualities. One might even say Civil War wins some artistic battles, but struggles to win the war.

In Laman's Terms: When Did The Sony Pictures Classics Box Office Slump Begin?

CW: References to Woody Allen

Over this past weekend, Sony Pictures Classics actually got a decent hit. Not an amazing overperformer, but Wicked Little Lies grossed around $1.5 million from roughly 1,000 theaters. That puts its wide release per theater average just slightly behind the wide release opening weekend per theater average of the studio's Stan & Ollie from five years ago. It also instantly puts the title on track to exceed the domestic hauls of the studio's biggest movies of the last two years (Living and Parallel Mothers), neither of which made over $3 million. That latter detail really reflects how Sony Pictures Classics has been in a weird box office slump for years now. What's going on? How is an arthouse studio with Sony money sometimes even falling behind Bleecker Street at the box office? Let's explore the answers to those questions, shall we?

For the full context of the history of Sony Pictures Classics, let's look at a very important chart. Courtesy of The-Numbers, this chart chronicles the annual box office haul of the studio every year from 1997 to 2024.

Save for the studio's massive 2001 (when Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon bolstered the annual box office haul), the peak era of Sony Pictures Classics is from 2009-2015. Every year in this timespan, Sony Pictures Classics cleared $45 million domestically annually. All but two of those years saw grosses exceed $50 million. In hindsight, a key reason for this was Woody Allen. The distributor began releasing the man's movies annually with the 2009 title Whatever Works. While that feature went nowhere financially, the 2011 title Midnight in Paris revived Allen's career. Paris became the second-biggest Sony Classics release in history and his next three features each became among the only 26 Sony Pictures Classics movies to ever crack $10 million domestically. Even a lower-grossing entry like Magic in the Moonlight accounted for nearly 25% of the annual box office haul of Sony Pictures Classics.

It's also worth mentioning that Sony Pictures Classics was in a bit of a "in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king" scenario from 2009 to 2015.' This was a dark period for American arthouse cinema (hey, that should be the subject of a future In Laman's Terms column!). In 2008, Paramount Vantage and Warner Independent Pictures were both shut down. Miramax would finally cease operations in 2010 after being a shell of its former self in 2008 and 2009. A24 and NEON were years away from existing, let alone being notable arthouse players. Netflix still sent envelopes to your mailbox rather than plunking down $20+ million for the distribution rights to Sundance darlings. Fox Searchlight and Focus Features were still around in this era, but, the options for indie movies looking for arthouse distribution circa. 2010 weren't great. This gave Sony Pictures Classics an edge in getting buzzy titles and even just screens for its titles. Whereas Sony Pictures Classics was the 26th biggest studio domestically in 2023, this outfit was the 13th biggest studio of 2010 and the 14th biggest studio of 2012.

Unsurprisingly, the box office fortunes of Sony Pictures Classics took a downward spin once Woody Allen signed a deal to make movies with Amazon Studios. That deal kicked off with Cafe Society in 2016, a year when Sony Pictures Classics only cleared $32 million. This was the studio's lowest-grossing year domestically since 2004 and was weighed down by only one movie (The Lady in the Van) clearing $5 million. In this year, the studio had a string of severe box office duds like I Saw the Light, The Hollars, and The Bronze, the latter of which was the rare Sony Classics release to immediately bow in wide release. Unsurprisingly, Sony Pictures Classics slipped to the 17th spot among studios at the domestic box office in 2016. Among the studio's Sony Pictures Classics slipped behind were Bleecker Street, STX Entertainment (both of which were founded in 2015), and A24, which scored its first $20+ million grosser that year with The VVitch.

Sony Pictures Classics was feeling the lack of Woody Allen movies, but that wasn't the whole story here. After all, the man's 2015 feature Irrational Man was a box office flop, it wasn't like he was the only thing printing money for Sony Pictures Classics. Another issue was simply that the studio began missing out on the award season juggernauts that were previously the studio's bread-and-butter. In the history of Sony Pictures Classics, its biggest moneymakers have been Best Picture nominees like Howards End, Whiplash, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Capote, and others. As late as 2015, Sony Pictures Classics secured an impressive 18 Oscar nominations for a slew of movies. That was the second-highest number of Oscar nods for a single studio that year, only behind Fox Searchlight. Unsurprisingly, 2014 and 2015 (bolstered by box office hauls for those awards darling) each grossed $45+ million for Sony Pictures Classics.

Starting in 2015, though, studios like Netflix, Amazon, and others began shelling out big bucks for award season friendly movies. These outfits also began writing checks to filmmakers Sony Pictures Classics had worked with in the past, like Mike Leigh. It was all part of a long-term plan to make these outfits "respectable" studios. The heads of Sony Pictures Classics have been open in the past about not spending excessively on purchasing or marketing movies, a plan that sometimes works very well for them. However, this method was now getting steamrolled from Silicon Valley streamers with seemingly bottomless pockets. To rub salt into the wounds, Netflix was eyeballing subscribers from all around the world, meaning the streamer was going after international features that Sony Pictures Classics used to have a monopoly on.

The end result of these mid-2010s disruptions left Sony Pictures Classics with a much less diverse slate of titles than it used to handle. Sony Pictures Classics had always skewed a little older, but save for Call Me By Your Name, its 2017 line-up looked like it would only hold an interest for moviegoers over the age of 65. The studio also struggled to properly roll out and market buzzy foreign-language titles that it could've nailed in years past. Whereas A Separation actually made a solid $7 million in its 2012 theatrical run (which encompassed 282 locations at its peak), Toni Erdmann made just under $1.5 million domestically (it never played in more than 112 theaters). Sony Pictures Classics was getting hammered by excessive spending from its competitors, no question about that. However, it was also fumbling its release strategies for the quality movies it did secure distribution for. 

Plus, its slate was becoming narrower and narrower in focus. The days of Sony Pictures Classics distributing mainstream-skewing Chinese fare like Kung Fu Hustle were long in the past. Now the studio was largely selling quiet "quirky" British movies aimed at old white people in the hope of producing the next Lady in the Van. With intense competition from arthouse studio newcomers, a drastically less diverse slate, and only one Best Picture Oscar nominee (Call Me By Your Name) from 2015-2019, it's no wonder this is when the Sony Pictures Classics box office slump came into play. Things got so dire that the studio only released two movies (The Wife and Stan & Ollie) that cleared $5 million each domestically across 2018 and 2019!

With 2019 becoming the third-lowest grossing year for Sony Pictures Classics since 1997, it was clear the studio was in a box office dry spell. In just under a decade, Sony Pictures Classics had gone from being just outside the top ten biggest studios of the year domestically to barely cracking the top 20 biggest studios of 2019. Is there any hope for a major comeback for the studio? At this point, it's hard to tell. A recent announcement that Scarlett Johansson's directorial debut Eleanor the Great will be a collaboration between TriStar Pictures and Sony Pictures Classics (the first time that's ever happened) indicates Sony hasn't forgotten about this struggling arthouse division. Perhaps Pedro Almodovar's English-language debut The Room Next Door (which will likely drop by the end of 2024) will be a sleeper hit for the studio. For now, though, not even the decent wide release expansion of Wicked Little Lies can fight back the reality that Sony Pictures Classics has been in a box office slump that's lasted nearly a decade now. Even as other arthouse studios like Neon and IFC Films are climbing to new box office heights domestically, Sony Pictures Classics is stuck in a financial stupor that shows no signs of subsiding. 

In Laman's Terms: Which Movies Have Been Saved From Streaming Premieres And Why?

Back in May 2022, Nightbitch was bought up by Searchlight Pictures and Hulu. This development returned director Marielle Heller to the arthouse studio that distributed her 2018 feature Can You Ever Forgive Me? It also signaled that Hulu was eager to get into the world of original movies. The streamer and Searchlight had plunked down a reported $25 million for the project, which was set to debut as a Hulu Original Movie. Hulu had only started releasing original movies in October 2019, but since then, it had become a go-to home for COVID-affected movies like Palm Springs, Happiest Season, and The United States vs. Billie Holiday. Plus, as of March 2019, Hulu, Searchlight Pictures, and 20th Century Studios all fell under the Disney umbrella. As made clear in Disney's December 2020 quarterly earnings presentation, the Mouse House saw these two film studios primarily as ways to fill up Hulu with (shudders) "content".

Cut to April 2024 and Searchlight Pictures just announced that Nightbitch will now go exclusively to theaters on December 6, 2024. That high-profile release date mirrors the early December launchpad of Searchlight's 2023 hit Poor Things, a sign of confidence from the studio. Hulu's film ambitions have begun to dry up and it's not the only streamer to start sending its movies off to theatrical releases. There's suddenly a welcome wave of streaming titles headed for multiplexes, including this weekend's Monkey Man. Let's examine some of these titles and how they reflect the current state of streaming exclusive movies, shall we?

Leading off with Nightbitch, let's look at how 20th Century Studios and Searchlight Pictures appear to be moving back towards theatrical-only releases. Hulu dropped 15 original movies throughout 2023, 10 of which came from these two film studios. For the first five months of 2024, Hulu will only be dropping four original movies, two of which (Self-Reliance and The Greatest Hits) got brief theatrical runs before their streaming premieres. Two of those four titles are Searchlight releases. None of them are 20th Century Studios projects. Searchlight only has one other movie (Dust) currently set for a Hulu launch. 20th Century Studios (as of this writing) has none, with upcoming projects from the studio like Ella McCay and Alien: Romulus (the latter of which was once set for a streaming bow) getting set for theatrical premieres.

It was always going to be challenging to transform Hulu (a place known for TV) into a launchpad for original movies. Disney's hesitancy over committing to this plan long-term was apparent when it pulled a slew of 20th Century Studios titles from Hulu in late May 2023. Dropping costly titles behind a paywall forever, that's just not going to fly. Plus, Disney's seen that even adult-skewing dramas like All of Us Strangers can make a tidy $19 million worldwide. Any money is good money for studios and theatrical releases bolster a movie's reputation before it debuts on streaming. No wonder Disney's brief foray into making Hulu the next Netflix is being abandoned in favor of letting Searchlight get back to releasing arthouse dramas theatrically year-round.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros. sent a handful of Max original movies (House Party, Magic Mike's Last Dance, and Evil Dead Rise) to theaters in the first four months of 2023. Meanwhile, Paramount Pictures pumped up Smile from a Paramount+ original film to a big theatrical title after it scored strong test screening scores. That film turned into a major box office hit and a new franchise for the studio. Mean Girls was another Paramount+ feature that Paramount eventually opted to just bump up to In 2022, Paramount+ housed 15 original movies, while in 2023, the service housed 12 of such titles. For the first four months of 2024, Paramount+ has housed only three original movies and there aren't a ton of other original motion pictures on the 2024 horizon for the streamer. Paramount+ still has some major TV movies on the docket (like Michelle Yeoh's Star Trek: Section 31), but like Disney and Hulu, Paramount has clearly fallen out of love with streaming-exclusive movies.

Looking back on it, there was a common problem with many of the original movies these streamers embarked on. None of them wanted to sacrifice the "big blockbusters" everyone assumed would continue to dominate in the 2020s like they did in the 2010s. So they sent a slew of smaller titles to streaming instead. These projects didn't draw a lot of eyeballs to Hulu/Paramount+/Max, etc. In fact, they're just the kind of movies that require the promotional might of a theatrical release to get on people's radar. Would Late Night with the Devil have become such a conversation starter if it had gone straight to Shudder? Probably not. Sending projects like Finestkind and Not Okay to streaming immediately just sent those titles off to die. They could never compete in the endless landscape of competition that currently exists in the streaming marketplace. Even the mighty Netflix couldn't get its original movie Maestro to have anywhere near the viewership of classic 1990s Mel Gibson/Tommy Lee Jones action features on the platform. Folks recognize those vintage movies because they were theatrical events. They're gonna choose what they know over a new smaller streaming movie nobody's heard of. 

Plus, movies like The Holdovers and Where the Crawdads Sing have been doing well in theaters again. Studios have been reminded that more money can be made with smaller titles playing on the big screen than just dumping them on Hulu. Will we continue to see more and more projects like Monkey Man and Nightbitch get saved from the clutches of streaming premieres in favor of grand theatrical debuts? Let's cross our fingers that that's the case. Movie theaters need more movies, no doubt about it, and it clearly pays to bring these titles to the big screen. It's almost like that system's worked for over a century now or something....

Monkey Man is an Ambitious and Deeply Entertaining Ride

 

Summer 2021 (when The Green Knight premiered) was the summer of Dev Patel, but now a new season has dawned for this Oscar-nominated leading man. Now Patel has emerged as a filmmaker while also flexing his chops as an action movie star with Monkey Man (a project he also co-wrote the screenplay for). Excitingly, Monkey Man is much closer in quality to This is Spinal Tap than Star Trek V: The Final Frontier in the pantheon of "directorial debuts from actors turned filmmakers". True, this action movie bites off more than it could chew narratively. But it also pulsates with such verve and ambition! When a movie delivers action this gnarly, I simply must approve of it.

At the start of Monkey Man, Kid (Patel) is working odd jobs in pursuit of vengeance. Though he's primarily making money fighting in the ring under the alias "Monkey Man", he's also started to work as a janitor at a nearby swanky hangout spot. It's in this domicile that the rich, the powerful, and the corrupt all revel in their vices of choice. It is also a go-to spot for relaxation for a man responsible for so much torment in Kid's life. Monkey Man follows Kid in his quest for violent revenge, which eventually entangles the deeply popular (and xenophobic) public figure Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande).

Infectious energy radiates through so much of Monkey Man. An early scene showing a stolen wallet traveling across many working-class hands establishes Patel's love for fast-paced editing and lively camerawork. This is a movie that's on the go, just as Kid is always calculating his next move. The propulsive nature of Monkey Man's beginning and ending doesn't just make this feature exciting to watch. It also lends real impact to a more laidback and introspective second act. This stretch of the story appropriately stands out by in contrast to the rest of the film tonally. That intentional disconnect allows Kid's journey of self-discovery to feel impactful. 

Spanning vibes from contemplative to Edgar Wright-levels of propulsiveness crystallizes how enjoyably expansive the script for Monkey Man is. This screenplay has ambitions as big as the night sky itself, which does result in some jagged narrative elements. Most notably, eventual main antagonist Baba Shakti, though played with a captivating aura by Deshpande, is a bit too disconnected from Kid to sometimes feel like a sufficient "final boss" for the movie. It's easy to see why Kid has beef with police chief Rana (Sikandar Kher) given his direct personal connection to that man. Shakti represents how the evil of Rana goes all the way to the top, a thoughtful move that reflects the systemic rot informing Kid's traumatic past. However, Patel's script (co-written by Paul Angunawela and John Collee) still keeps Kid and Shakti a bit too far apart for much of Monkey Man. No matter the thematic intent behind Shakti's presence in the story, it's still hard to make him feel like the prime action movie adversary for Kid when he has so little direct connection to this character.

The jankier elements of the screenplay (whose foibles also include a lack of pay-off for supporting players like Pitobash's Alphonso) are easier to digest thanks to Monkey Man's most successful screenwriting flourishes. For one thing, it's great to see a 2020s action movie unafraid to get its hands dirty in modern politics. The script is peppered with explicit references to the struggles of Muslims and trans Indians, which lends real tangibility to the "David vs. Goliath" elements of the narrative. I was also struck by a great throwaway line from a TV reporter noting that, in response to attacks on marginalized populations in India, outside countries "condemn" the behavior but won't take any lasting actions to stop it (like economically penalizing uncaring Indian politicians). After months of the US merely saying "no, stop that" to an ongoing genocide, it's great to see a big theatrical release like Monkey Man clearly agitated over countries like America leaping into action to bomb people but not protect the oppressed. 

Where Monkey Man really excels, though, is as a visual exercise. Save for some early instances of shaky-cam, the whole movie looks fantastic. I love that this is a grimy action film unafraid to show people biting noses or trails of gore, but also doesn't just drape everything in dim lighting and shades of grey. The villainous club Kid briefly works at as part of his revenge scheme is coated in bright neon lighting, with streaks of blue and pink dancing across the faces of the corrupt. Meanwhile, harsh yellow color grading dominates the underground boxing scenes to suggest how removed this domain is from reality. Creative uses of such vivid hues are accompanied by sublime editing from Dávid Jancsó and Tim Murrell that show such care in timing. An unforgettable scene where Kid lashes out at a punching bag while a nearby onlooker bangs away on his drums especially makes outstanding use of tightly arranged cuts. Every cut to a new shot contributes to a mounting sense of energy, rather than a dilution of the scene's atmosphere.

Then there's the most important of Monkey Man: those action sequences. In his inaugural directorial effort, Patel shows an impressive command for realizing scrappy hand-to-hand skirmishes. It's always clear who is fighting who, things don't just devolve into visual incoherence to emphasize "intensity". Best of all, he's quite creative in figuring out how Kid can turn the objects around him (from fire extinguishers to a tank of fish to kitchen utensils) into deadly weapons. Needless to say, I had a big sloppy grin on my face throughout these fight sequences and so much else of Monkey Man (including its shockingly delightful trans representation). May there be so many more seasons of Director Dev Patel in our future.

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World...But Expect a Lot From This Movie

Cinema has a default visual language for the apocalypse. The world will end with a spectacular bang brought to life by Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich. Cities will collapse in the blink of an eye. Ordinary people will step up as heroes. Our most powerful government agencies and corporate entities will do everything they can to help people. There can be some escapist fun in watching such spectacles play out. But are they accurate to reality? In reality, the apocalypse is happening all around us at a glacial pace. Climate change is slowly but surely making our planet uninhabitable. Economic gaps between the rich and the poor are getting larger. Our most powerful figures spout nonsense about "overpopulation" being the problem, rather than a handful of rich people wielding too many resources.

Once unthinkable status quo's (like people making a living through gig jobs) are now the standard. This is what the apocalypse looks like. A death by a thousand cuts. Filmmaker Radu Jude's Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World reflects this reality with incredibly biting satire. Sometimes, you have to laugh to stop from crying. So it is with this bleak comedy, which examines our apocalyptic status quo in ways that constantly ring true. 

The first half of Do Not Expect Too Much From The End of the World focuses on the exploits of assistant Angela (Ilinca Manolache), who is traveling around Bucharest to film candidates for a massive corporation's work safety video. Much like fellow 2024 film Problemista, Angela's exploits reflect how much running around is required to make a bare minimum living in the modern world. You're running around frantically like a headless chicken for paychecks you have to beg for. This section of the feature has a fascinating color palette, in which Angela's reality is framed in black-and-white. However, vivid color enters the film whenever we shift to the perspective of Angela filming herself (with a filter making her look like a man) as a parody of a right-wing Andrew Tate supporter. Color is also present in cutaways to footage from the 1981 Lucian Bratu motion picture Angela merge mai departe.

Much like Asteroid City, Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World slathers "the real world" in colors divorced from reality. Heightened cutaways distorting reality, meanwhile, get all the vivid hues of everyday life. Asteroid City used this visual concept to explore how artists put so much of themselves into their works. Jude's latest directorial effort, meanwhile, takes these contrasting color schemes to paint a bleak picture of what's "real" in the modern world. 2024 is a realm disassociated from reality. Distorted news articles and fake social media accounts motivate people's paranoia of "the other." Fear Factor hosts are hailed as greater experts on medicine than doctors. Countries outright deny the existence of the genocides they're committing. 

This phenomenon is reflected all throughout Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World. Chiefly, the wealthy company Angela is working for wants to use carefully chosen testimony from disabled workers to absolve them of the blame for faulty workplace conditions. Meanwhile, other rich individuals featured in the movie constantly shift the blame away from phenomena like sacred graves getting intruded on or forests getting demolished for profit. These folks have the money and power to make the truth whatever they want it to be. This chilling notion informs where color comes into and out of Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World. Distortions or simulacrums of reality are now "viable" enough to warrant color. Reality is now whatever makes the 1% feel cozy. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge the working conditions someone like Angela goes through. Thus, her exploits (and the more realistic anti-corporate anecdotes from those disabled workers) are framed in monochromatic colors. 

All the rich details one can wring from the presence or absence of color in Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World speak volumes to the masterful filmmaking on display here. Just look at the precise details embedded in memorable early scenes, like a grotesque billboard hovering over Angela and her mother at a tombstone. This reminder of capitalism looms over people at their most emotionally vulnerable. Similarly evocative is a lengthy single-take where just the hands of Angela and a wealthy man are seen as they figure out who owns what land surrounding that cemetery. That latter dude is insistent (erroneously so) that they aren't in the wrong for intruding on the grave site. Temporary removal of on-screen humans emphasizes how aloof people are from taking responsibility for their actions. Plus, it's just darkly amusing to see a quietly terse conversation play out with just off-screen dialogue and wagging fingers. 

It's thrilling to watch a movie so committed to its most offbeat visual impulses. That same dedication is also found Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World dives head-first into being superb searing satire. Just look at a lengthy sequence where Angela's higher-ups try to pick out the "proper" disabled worker to anchor their new work safety campaign. Here, we see supposedly "progressive" corporate vultures engaging in a deluge of ableist language and constantly finding economic reasons to erase Romani people from the campaign. It's such a disgusting display of smiling cruelty that could be lifted from any modern boardroom in the world. With this sequence, one sees the inevitable terrifying end result of treating human beings as a means to financial ends. The performances are pitch-perfect here and Jude's script reverberates with such palpable contempt for this behavior. 

The future has arrived in Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World. What do we have to show for ourselves in this age of technological marvels? If this movie is any indication, mostly just lawsuits against corporations that will never end, cum-stained dresses, and lots of crosses on the side of the road. This bleak reality of the world circa. 2024 is expertly executed under the gifted filmmaking of Radu Jude. He balances authenticity and vivid visual flourishes all throughout this appropriately lengthy tour de force, right down to a lengthy single-take shot comprising the feature's entire second section. Oh, and on top of all that, Radu Jude also managed to squeeze in an on-screen appearance by Uwe Boll into a genuinely top-notch movie?!? Maybe miracles are still possible in this world...even during a slow-burn apocalypse. 

In Laman's Terms: How Did The Toxic Release Date Wars of the 2010s Begin?

 

Pictured (from left to right): Warner Bros. and Disney executives skirmishing over claims to 2018 release dates, circa. 2013

In the 2010s, a new practice began emerging for major American movie studios: claiming release dates years in advance. It's not like studios had never been obsessed with release dates. Countless past projects had been rushed to meet release date demands, usually because of pre-established marketing commitments studios couldn't escape. But in the 2010s, this practice was taken to another level. Now studios were staking out release dates for untitled movies five or six years deep into the future! This policy has become so ingrained into the everyday news cycle of cinema that it can be easy to take for granted such a bizarre practice. Major corporations are laying claim to big dates well into the future for projects that may never happen! It's a paranoid process that especially reflected one particular studio throwing its weight around in the 2010s. Instead of just accepting this oddness as a facet of reality, why don't we explore the origins of this phenomenon that has the world with multiple untitled Warner Bros. and Disney tentpoles set for 2026?

It all began with animated movies. These projects often take three or four years to make (sometimes even more!). This lengthy creative process means studios are well-aware of, say, what their 2017 animated tentpoles will be before their live-action movies. The latter titles can start filming a year before their proposed release dates and still make a May/June/July etc. date. Animated films need to get the ball rolling much sooner. Still, before the 2010s, it was a bit rare to have studios publicly announce an animation outfit's slate years in advance. Disney provided an early exception to this phenomenon by making a big splashy announcement of its next four years of animated movies in 2008. However, this was mostly done to reassure stockholders that the John Lasseter/Ed Catmull era of Disney Animation was providing a steady slate of new titles. 

The fact that several of those announced titles (namely King of the Elves and Newt) never happened due to subsequent development issues seemed to temporarily halt Disney's plans to unveil Pixar movies far off in advance. 2012 Pixar projects Brave and Monsters University were confirmed back in 2010, two years before their initial planned releases. Meanwhile, fellow animation studio DreamWorks Animation was also getting leg-up on potential release dates by announcing its next three years of movies in 2009. The announcement of those titles features a detail reflecting how it was once incomprehensible to announce a release date without a specific film attached. In revealing that it planned to drop an unknown film in November 2012, DreamWorks Animation revealed a trio of potential gestating titles that could take that slot.

When did this practice begin to ramp up to include both live-action movies and almost exclusively untitled projects? The shift appears to have occurred in 2013. Granted, in 2011 Disney set release dates for a pair of untitled Marvel Studios movies for 2014. However, that was still within the three-year maximum timespan Pixar and DreamWorks Animation used to establish release date. 2013 was when Disney suddenly staked out eight release date slots between then and 2018 for untitled Disney Animation and Pixar releases. That's a massive five year gulf between the announcement and when those titles would premiere! Even given how long animated movies are in production, it's conceivable animated projects hadn't even been green-lit for those 2018 slots yet!

How did Disney go from setting titles up two or three in advance to five-year planning so quickly? The changing factor appears to have been The Avengers in 2012. That hit title had been the result of long-term planning (though, ironically, The Avengers was only given a release date three years before its original planned debut). Disney wanted to apply that methodology to every corner of its corporate empire. Plus, Disney and all other American studios were now altering their release slates drastically. 2013 was the year Hollywood learned to stop worrying and embrace the tentpole while eschewing mid-budget movies. Wall Street stockholders and risk-averse studio executives were now fixated on cinematic universes and franchise fare above all else. Such costly titles needed all the help they could get in recouping their costs...including getting prime release date real estate. A proper launchpad could mean the difference between debuting an Iron Man 3 or a 47 Ronin.

Disney kicked this trend off, but every studio soon got in on the game. A few weeks after Disney's announcement of its 2013-2018 animated movie slate, 20th Century Fox revealed a bevy of 2013-2018 release dates for untitled animated tentpoles. The freshness of this release strategy was apparent in a SlashFilm report on the latter news, which ended with the writer asking readers if they liked this new approach to establishing release dates. A new status quo had been established and this site wanted to get the feedback of its readers. In October 2014, this phenomenon arguably reached its peak (though it would by no means fizzle out subsequently) when Marvel Studios and Warner Bros./DC announced a slew of new superhero movies. The former company held a big event at the El Captain Theatre to reveal its features through Avengers: Endgame (then known as Avengers: Infinity War Part II) in May 2019. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. used a shareholders meeting to reveal its expansive slate of DC Comics adaptations through a Green Lantern Corps. title in the summer of 2020. Now studios were planning six years in advance!

Those two examples demonstrated the dark underbelly of an already creepy process. Disney and Warner Bros. were claiming release dates far in advance not just to spur on fanboy enthusiasm, but to also tell other studios to stay away. Rival companies knew years in advance not to tango with Captain America: Civil War or Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. These were movies apparently so big that they needed their release dates announced years beforehand. Who would want to open counterprogramming against that? As late as 2015, Ant-Man opened on the same day as Trainwreck. Save for the occasional instance of Trolls and Hacksaw Ridge opening against Doctor Strange, most MCU titles from 2016 onward opened against no other wide releases. Announcing these dates so far ahead of time made it seem like these slots belonged "exclusively" to Disney/Warner Bros. In the process, the days of counterprogramming against blockbusters withered away in the late 2010s, harming the box office in the process.

In the end, a bunch of these advanced release dates didn't live up to their grand ambitions. Amusingly, both of DC's planned 2020 movies never saw the light of day. Meanwhile, Disney's Marvel movies had to constantly shift release dates throughout the mid-2010s to account for new factors like Marvel Studios working on new Spider-Man movies. Then there was the COVID-19 pandemic, which shut down theaters and rendered most of these planned release dates null and void. Disney had exerted lots of power and control over movie theaters in the 2010s. But even the Mouse House couldn't stand up to a global health crisis that made the act of established release dates years in advance a punchline.

In the 10+ years since this practice began, Hollywood and moviegoers haven't really benefited from the normalization of making release dates even more important to mainstream studios. Infamous 2010s disasters like Independence Day: Resurgence and Justice League were rushed to meet hastily announced release dates. Meanwhile, non-tentpole titles (which simply can't establish release dates far in advance for a multitude of practical reasons) further suffered in this decade. Not only were studios already eschewing such projects, but now these movies were treated as afterthoughts by studios trying to set up new Hasbro/Valiant Comics/Robin Hood Cinematic Universe projects well into the 2020s. Ironically, its low-budget original movies like Get Out (which was only set for its February 2017 release date four months before it premiered!) prioritizing good writing over shareholder-friendly release dates which have endured from this decade. Those features will stick around in people's minds long after circa. 2013/2014 press releases about "untitled Disney films set for 2019" have long faded from memory.

At least Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is better than Argylle

In some ways, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire fares best when comparing it to other movies. It’s certainly a good deal better than the 2019 MonsterVerse installment Godzilla: King of the Monsters, for instance. That Michael Dougherty directorial effort had human characters who were outright irritating, the flesh-and-blood humans of The New Empire are more bland than anything else. Meanwhile, The New Empire also stands tall compared to fellow 2024 blockbusters Argylle and Madame Web. Those titles failed to deliver the basic indulgences would want from spy and superhero movies, respectively. Director Adam Wingard at least gives audiences plenty of Kaiju shenanigans for the price of one ticket.

Of course, this cuts both ways. For instance, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire pales in comparison to the 2014 Godzilla title. That attempt to create a modern ominous Godzilla feature is now a distant speck in the distance of this franchise’s rearview mirror. More pressingly Godzilla Minus One just dropped four months ago. That modern classic (among its many accomplishments) proved you can have a Godzilla feature with compelling human characters! Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire stands tall when compared to some blockbuster movies. Unfortunately, its gravest flaws become unavoidable when placing it side-by-side superior big-budget fare. Being better than Godzilla: King of the Monsters doesn't turn your monster movie homage into Pacific Rim.

What's the plot of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire? Simultaneously a whole lot and not much. Kong is lonely in his Hollow Earth domicile. However, he quickly discovers that he's not the only gigantic ape in this territory. Meanwhile, on the surface level of Earth, Godzilla is protecting humanity from big beasts. Screenwriters Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, and Jeremy Slater struggle to come up with compelling material for Godzilla, so this character spends much of The New Empire just going on sidequests to prepare for the finale. There are also humans! Humans are also here. MONARCH scientist Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) is struggling to connect with her teenage daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle), who previously lived with Kong in Hollow Earth. These two, along with master veterinarian Trapper (Dan Stevens) and conspiracy theorist Berni Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry), head to the middle of the planet to help Kong. There, they discover a new threat in the form of knife-wielding red ape Skar King that could put all of creation into jeopardy.

Ten years into the MonsterVerse, we're still being forced to hang out with human characters that nobody has much of a vested-interest in. If you can't come up with the compelling intimate drama of Godzilla Minus One, ditch the human beings! It's especially funny here since the humans don't have any real purpose beyond just being a mouthpiece for kaiju lore. There are no attempts at character arcs, blossoming romances, or any other interpersonal material for these figures. The lack of effort is palpable. This flaw is especially odd on two levels. For one thing, Jia has a potentially interesting story related to her struggles to feel like she belongs on the surface world. She's also the only one of the primary humans to have a direct connection with our beastly protaganists (she used to be best pals with Kong). 

However, the movie keeps her at a distance and frames her story through the eyes of Andrews. What a waste of potential. Also odd is that the primary four humans are totally disconnected physically from Godzilla and Kong for much of the runtime. That means we have to keep cutting back-and-forth from Kong's odyssey across Hollow Earth to humans navigating an ancient temple. It's a peculiar story structure, especially since it keeps distracting from the best parts of the proceedings. Quiet dialogue-free sequences concerning Kong and new character Mini-Kong (an adolescent orange ape) are very enjoyable. It's fun to see how they communicate the interior thoughts of these primates through just body language. Alas, these scenes can't last too long. 

By the end, the humans take a backseat to a lengthy burst of monster mayhem that is quite fun to watch. Scar King's fighting style being molded after what can be best described as "pirate brawler" especially makes him a fun figure to watch tangle with Kong and Godzilla (who opt for more primal bursts of aggressive physicality). With this lengthy set piece, audiences will certainly get what they came for with Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Given how totally incompetent these American blockbusters can be, that counts for something. Then again, hitting the bare minimum isn't a massive triumph. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire provides fleeting bursts of fun, but being superior to Madame Web doesn't make it a towering accomplishment.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SCORE???

Tom Holkenborg A.K.A. Junkie XL provided the score for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Holkenborg exploded in popularity as a film composer after his iconic work on Mad Max: Fury Road. Unfortunately, since then, his work as a composer has been thoroughly generic. Alas, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire does not reverse this trend. I initially liked that he was aiming for an 80s-synth noise with his compositions, that's not quite a sound we've heard before in the MonsterVerse. He and fellow composer Antonio Di Iorio, though, fail to lend dimensions to that sound. There aren't crests and waves to his compositions, no modulations that suggest variety in the tone or atmosphere of The New Empire. It's just the same homophonic blurbs repeated. The electronic influences also vanish once the final fight starts, which means Holkenborg and Di Iorio's compositions just start sounding like a generic Hans Zimmer blockbuster movie score. Compare these tracks to Bobby Krlic's electronic score for Blue Beetle (which did have exciting variations) and it's just no contest. Here's to hoping Holkenborg strikes back as a composer with Furiosa in May.

In Laman's Terms: Why Did The MonsterVerse Evolve From Serious to Silly?

The general public got its first good look at the MonsterVerse through the inaugural domestic trailer for the 2014 Gareth Edwards movie Godzilla. Utilizing portions of György Ligeti's “Requiem” in a homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey, the grim Godzilla teaser kept that gigantic lizard largely off-screen. Viewers saw glimpses of this beast, but nothing concrete. It was all meant to suggest what actual people would witness if Godzilla really attacked our world. This beast would be so massive that you’d only theoretically be able to witness pieces of his massive frame. This visual approach and tone carried over to the final film, which featured a little more silly monster-on-monster action but largely kept things grounded and serious.

A decade later, the tone of the Godzilla marketing campaign is now a distant memory. The full trailer for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is jam-packed full of jokes while all the destruction that these beasts engage in is meant to inspire cheers from the viewer, not leave them in terrified awe. Even the music accompanying this trailer was more frenetic and energetic compared to the somber majesty of using Ligeti compositions for the original Godzilla teaser. The MonsterVerse has pretty much gone to a different tonal planet compared to its earliest days in pop culture…but how did this transformation? And why did the MonsterVerse leave behind what initially seemed like an unshakeable somber tone seeped in realism?

Let's pause and go back to the year of "Don't Cha:" 2005. That's the year Batman Begins opened in theaters and forever changed how Hollywood approached revamping pre-existing brand names. Now every major media franchise was angling to reboot itself with a grim and gritty reboot rooted in the real world. Many of these sagas had previously experienced their own ultra-silly Batman & Robin that left audiences disappointed and indicated that it was time for something different. Thus, the James Bond saga left cars riding tidal waves behind in favor of the grounded exploits of Casino Royale. Terminator: Salvation, meanwhile, abandoned things like Terminator 3’s “talk to the hand” quips to create a realistic war movie where the enemies happen to be robots. Then there was the 2014 American remake of Godzilla, which was aiming to leave behind the style of the 1998 Godzilla title.

This installment marked the last time domestic filmmakers got their hands on this kaiju icon. It turned out to be a box office disappointment while its focus on archly drawn human characters instead of preposterous monster mayhem left fans disgruntled. With the Gareth Edwards Godzilla feature, it was clear audiences shouldn’t expect a retread of the Roland Emmerich take on the character. Instead, this 2014 movie went in the opposite direction of the 1998 Godzilla. Out went silly jokes and in came lots of scenes of humans being far too small to do anything in the face of massive monsters. To make the 2014 Godzilla seem like a must-see movie rather than a retread, there was no choice but to embrace a dark tone.

Ironically, though, the 2014 Godzilla inspired fan reactions that demanded another course correction in tone. While I'm personally a defender of that 2014 film, many had more complicated emotions about the final quality of that Gareth Edwards directorial effort. Specifically, folks largely criticized the lack of screentime for Godzilla and the dour tone. Subsequent follow-ups in the MonsterVerse would no longer occupy the "real world" and then bring some monsters into that space. Instead, Kong: Skull Island sent a bunch of humans to an island packed with beasties. In 2019, Godzilla: King of the Monsters would deliver a follow-up to the 2014 Godzilla that focused heavily on classic Toho monster movie fixtures like Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghiddorah. 

Embracing more stylized critters meant the MonsterVerse films were bound to get lighter in tone to some degree. However, changing tastes in blockbuster cinema hastened the MonsterVerse's shift to lighter exploits. Projects like The Avengers had become the new de facto model for Hollywood blockbusters to imitate. Comedy and self-referential jabs were in. The MonsterVerse responded accordingly. By the time 2019 rolled around, King of the Monsters had Bradley Whitford playing an alternate-universe version of Rick Sanchez while commercials for the feature were set to LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out". 

Ironically, this attempt to placate the tastes of modern moviegoers meant that the MonsterVerse had a similar (albeit faster) tonal shift to the classic Showa era of Godzilla movies. After all, that big lizard was introduced in a dark drama that didn't even hint at the idea of other monsters existing. Eventually, Godzilla anchored movies like Destroy All Monsters, which were full of bright colors, zippy tones, and tons of wacky narrative elements. If you stick around long enough in pop culture, the frightening becomes cozy to moviegoers. Even the raptors in Jurassic Park or Darth Vader are now friendly plush toys nostalgic adults cling to. Whether it's in the 1960s or the 2010s, Godzilla became less and less ominous the longer he stuck around on-screen in serialized storytelling (one-off movies like Shin Godzilla and Godzilla Minus One have proven far more effective at retaining his initial horrifying nature). In both eras of the character's history, the movies Godzilla anchors tend to get sillier the deeper into his filmography you get.

In the case of the MonsterVerse, the evolving tone was somewhat inevitable even if there wasn't both the influence of other blockbusters and historical precedence breathing down the neck of this cinematic universe. The MonsterVerse has rarely restored to hiring the same directors twice. Adam Wingard (helmer of Godzilla vs. Kong) is the first artist to direct two movies in the MonsterVerse. Across the first decade of this saga, Gareth Edwards, Jordan Vogt-Roberts, Michael Dougherty, and Wingard have all taken turns reinterpreting these massive beasts. In the process, there's been inevitable changes in the tones of individual films. The 2014 Godzilla from Edwards emphasized grand scale and a somber tone, two hallmarks of this auteur's output. By contrast, Vorg-Robert brought more dark humor and grandiose flourishes to Skull Island while Wingard had an unabashedly kid-friendly silliness imbued in his Godzilla vs. Kong outing.

The rotating door of filmmakers in the MonsterVerse made it inevitable that the tone of these movies would evolve greatly from what was present in that Godzilla teaser all those years ago. The MonsterVerse has never quite found a tonal groove that really clicks (just like it's failed to figure out what larger themes its monsters stand for). Godzilla: King of the Monsters was an especially egregious example of a movie seemingly torn between its impulses towards classical epic storytelling and ham-fisted comedy (why every human character in that movie was comic relief, I'll never understand). Still, it's been undeniably interesting seeing this franchise constantly modulating its tone to the whims of the public's blockbuster movie tastes and the ambitions of individual filmmakers. If there's any fictional character that can withstand so many different tonal swings, it's certainly Godzilla!

Late Night with the Devil/Exhuma/Road House Reviews

There are lots of new releases out there that are getting everyone talking. Instead of just covering one of them...why not explore all three? Ahead, we'll take a look at Late Night with the Devil, Exhuma, and Road House, three of the most buzzed-about new releases of March 2024.

Late Night with the Devil

Sometimes, a horror movie is just a lot of fun to watch. So it is with Late Night with the Devil, which ponders the question of what would happen if a 1970s talk show and The Exorcist collided. Here, the talk show host is Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian), the host of Night Owls with Jack Delroy. The movie chronicles him on Halloween night 1977 trying to boost his ratings by featuring a pair of special guests: Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) and her patient, supposedly possessed child Lilly (Ingrid Torelli). Writer/directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes opt to frame this story primarily as if it's found footage of this episode when it was "recorded live." Heavy swear words get censored with bleeps. All the "live footage" is framed in a 4:3 aspect ratio by cinematographer Matthew Temple (brief monochromatic cutaways to Delroy off the set are filmed in more standard framing). The costumes look perfectly 1970s.

Late Night with the Devil is a riot just in terms of how well it evokes a specific era of television history. Brief glimpses of Hee Haw style sketches, the banter between Delroy and sidekick Gus (Rhys Auteri) cribbed from every late night talk show, even the wide array of guests hosted on this show evokes the groundbreaking talk show Soul! These influences coalesce to create a deeply lived-in world for the Late Night with the Devil characters to inhabit. They're not just existing in a pastiche of 1970s television...they are in 1970s television! That immersion into the past just makes it all the more exciting to watch the spooky slowly but surely creep into Night Owls with Jack Delroy.

Writer/directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes demonstrate a great sense of pacing in how they balance realistic 1970s television with heightened paranormal frights. They've also made a great call in getting David Dastmalchian to anchor the movie as Delroy. For years, Dastmalchian's been a reliably excellent character actor. Inhabiting a lead role is something he pulls off with similarly superb results. He's just so good at playing a believable showman, Delroy comes off as somebody who totally could've been a staple of 1970s television. At the same time, Dastmalchian proves highly skilled at subtly offering up glimpses of something more vulnerable, calculating, and human within Delroy. This man can be downright despicable, but he also makes sure you see the tangible psychology behind his actors. It's a terrific lead performance that only gets more entrancing in the exceptionally disorienting climax to Late Night with the Devil. This is a remarkably entertaining horror film with a dynamite lead performance...what a shame it had to go and use A.I. art for some on-air bumpers.

Exhuma 

One of the biggest global box office successes of 2024 so far is Exhuma, the new horror film from director Jang Jae-hyun. Hailing from Korea, the production concerns shaman Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun) being hired to help rid a baby of a generational curse What should be a simple assignment turns into something much deadlier and more sinister once the excavation of an important grave is conducted. During this process, an ancient evil is unleashed into the world! Hwa-rim now must work alongside the likes of feng shui expert Kim Sang-deok (Choi Min-sik) to ward off a paranormal entity as bloodthirsty as he is malicious! 

The biggest problem with Exhuma is that its visuals are somewhat rote. Some of the best horror movies thrive on very precise images that demonstrate as much craft for staging and blocking as they do for conjuring up frights. Unfortunately, Jae-hyun and cinematographer Lee Mo-gae opt to realize Exhuma in very standard ways. If you've seen an Insidious or Conjuring movie, then you know how Exhuma will frame ghosts that suddenly show up in previously vacant backdrops! At the same time, Jae-hyun does keep the plot moving across its 130-minute runtime. That's no small feat for a horror film, a genre usually best served by sub-90 minute runtimes. Plus, his screenplay eventually finds a very interesting historical grounding for the terrifying ghost. Best of all, a rock-solid cast commits to this material in an engaging fashion. Even when the dialogue or plot points are generic, Kim Go-eun and Choi Min-sik lend weight to the proceedings. Exhuma isn't anything tremendously special, but it's elevated above certain other supernatural horror films simply by the presence of such notable performers.

Road House

I can handle a lot of flaws in a movie. Generic needle drops. Clumsy dialogue. Ham-fisted narrative turns. What I cannot stand are egregious visual flaws that make a feature downright unpleasant to look at. It's one thing to make an artsy film with intentionally abrasive imagery...but why must an escapist action movie make me recoil at shots of characters walking to their car? So it is with the remake of Road House from director Doug Liman. For some reason, this modern take on the saga of Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) opts to douse nighttime exterior shots surrounding the titular location in urine-yellow color grading. No matter the mood or activity outside, scenes set around the Road House are doused in this repulsive color. A slightly more bearable but no less intrusive blue tint dominates interior shots of this locale.

Liman's overuse of bad color grading already drags down Road House. The fact that he executes fight scenes with terrible camerawork just cements the movie as a visual nightmare. God only knows why every skirmish had to be captured with a digital camera that won't stop moving, disorienting editing, and even the occasional inexplicable fish-eye lens. Were these techniques just used to mask when a stunt performer stepped in for actors like Gyllenhaal and Post Malone? Who knows, but these methods render the fights in Road House a chore to sit through. Similarly bad is how screenwriters Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry overload this remake with too much backstory for everyone. Props to the duo for conjuring up a story that isn't just a beat-for-beat retread of the original movie at least. But did this new Road House have to be such a slog that's toxically obsessed with lore? On top of all that, audiences also have to sit through Conor McGregor (playing one of the big baddies here) trying to pretend he's an actor. I'd rather get punched by McGregor than see another minute of him attempting to mimic the energy of a wacky John Wick baddie.

I suppose "pain don't hurt", but watching this new Road House is a painful experience. Let's all join hands and pray Jake Gyllenhaal someday wants to be in real movies again.