Of course, had this uncreative idea been realized with artistry—that is, directed by somebody other than McG, whose obnoxious pseudonym adequately characterizes his brand of Hollywood hackwork—perhaps the film’s commerciality would have been less evident. But even the least discriminating Friday night megaplex-goer will recognize the shoddy filmmaking on display. From the beginning, the male-targeted material is a bust – the opening action sequences, featuring a shootout between Pine and Hardy’s CIA agents and Russian arms-dealers, is one of the most incompetently constructed in recent memory, full of visual flourishes and quick-cuts that make it virtually impossible to follow. It’s soon joined by equally inept rom-com fodder.

In fact, for all the synthetic testosterone that writers Timothy Dowling and Simon Kinberg attempt to inject into the movie via the CIA mission subplot, This Means War is still 90 percent romantic-comedy. Pine’s FDR (presumably, but not certainly, named after President FDR) and Hardy’s Tuck happen to be dating the same woman (Witherspoon’s Lauren), unbeknownst to the other. When they realize this, they do what every CIA agent would do – turn the honest mix-up into a competition, each using the agency’s resources to spy on and sabotage the other’s dates.

The three leads are given little to work with and they have zero chemistry with one another—neither the Pine/Hardy bromance nor the dual Witherspoon romances are believable—but they are nonetheless the highlight of the movie. Even subject to McG’s lackluster puppeteering, the trio’s star qualities are readily apparent. Each of them (particularly Witherspoon) has an undeniable magnetism that somehow penetrates through the awful material. The same cannot be said for supporter Chelsea Handler, whose success has never eluded me more than while watching this movie, wherein she spits out lines like “You think Gloria Steinem got arrested and sat in a jail cell so you could be a little bitch!?” in order to reinforce her ‘alcoholic feminist’ image.

If the film weren’t directed with such cocky confidence—McG’s penchant for over-the-top kinetics just screams “You should like this!”—then perhaps I would have allowed myself to simply ignore its ineptitude and enjoy the stars’ charisma. Having that ability would not have rendered This Means War a good movie, but it would have made for a more tolerable experience than the one that millions of moviegoers will endure this weekend.

* * *

This Means War (2012, USA). Produced by Michael Green, Simon Kinberg, Jeff Kwatinetz, James Lassiter, Brent O’Connor, Robert Simonds, Will Smith, and Lisa Stewart. Directed by McG. Written for the screen by Timothy Dowling and Simon Kinberg. Story by Timothy Dowling and Marcus Gautesen. Starring Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, Tom Hardy, Til Schweiger, Chelsea Handler, John Paul Ruttan, Abigail Spencer, and Angela Bassett. Distributed by 20th Century Fox. Rated PG-13, with a running time of 98 minutes.

The Secret World of Arrietty

Miyazaki and co-writer Keiko Niwa make a few changes to the specifics of Norton’s novel, but for the most part stay true to it. Twelve-year-old Shawn (voice of David Henrie), sick with a heart condition, is sent to live at his great aunt’s home in the country so he can get some rest before surgery. There, he discovers the Clocks, a family of three-inch tall people who live under the floorboards and “borrow” small scraps of food and household goods to live off. Even though she is instructed by her parents (real-life husband and wife Will Arnett and Amy Poehler) to steer clear of all “human beans,” Arrietty Clock (Bridgit Mendler) can’t help but form a bond with Shawn. But not all humans are as non-threatening as the boy – the maid, Hara (Carol Burnett), realizes the Clocks’ presence and places a call to the exterminator.

Yonebayashi proves himself a more than capable director—if not as artistically daring as Miyazaki—but the Western source material makes The Secret World of Arrietty less distinguished than the usual Ghibli film. The studio’s works usually stand out because they use fantastical, “out there” ideas—the cat bus in My Neighbor Totoro, the spirit world in Spirited Away, etc.—in order to engage their characters’ emotions. While The Secret World of Arrietty may boast a premise that is as whimsical as those of its predecessors, it is more plot-centered than character-driven. That is to say, the film is a lot less concerned with discovering who Shawn and the Clocks are as people than it is with whether or not Haru will cause the Clocks to have to move or, worse, get exterminated. Ironically, it’s difficult to care about what happens with the plot when the characters are so one-dimensional.

Even though The Secret World of Arrietty may not match up to Ghibli’s usual standards, however, it’s still an enjoyable diversion for several reasons. First, the hand-drawn animation is as gorgeous as ever, once again proving the legitimacy of the medium, even in a computer-generated era. Its command of scale, with alternating shots from the Clocks’ and the humans’ perspectives, is particularly impressive. Second, in the Ghibli tradition, Yonebayashi gets the little things right – a cat that puffs up when it sees the Clocks, a clever action vignette in which Arrietty’s father teaches her how to borrow sugar, etc. And lastly, even though they are provided little to work with in the character department, the American voice actors do a spirited job with the dub. Families who have not experienced Ghibli’s past glories will likely be wholly satisfied with The Secret of Arrietty; hopefully, they will also be compelled to seek out the studio’s formative works.

* * *

The Secret World of Arrietty (2012, Japan). Produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall, Hayao Miyazaki, and Toshio Suzuki. Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi. Written for the screen by Hayao Miyazaki and Keiko Niwa, based on the novel by Mary Norton. Featuring the voices of Bridgit Mendler, David Henrie, Will Arnett, Amy Poehler, Carol Burnett, and Moises Arias. Distributed by Warner Bros. Rated PG, with a running time of 94 minutes.

In light of the larger audience Zhang was able to cultivate with those pictures, it is unfortunate that his subsequent efforts have been disappointments – dumped into a handful of art-house and ethnic theaters not to thrive with niche groups, but to fall into obscurity. Continuing the slump initiated by the lavish-but-empty Curse of the Golden Flower and the failed remake exercise A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop is The Flowers of War, a dramatization of the Rape of Nanking that aspires to be Shakespearean but ends up cartoonish.

Even though it is situated within the real-life atrocity that resulted in 300,000 Chinese deaths, the central story of The Flowers of War is fictional. Christian Bale plays an alcoholic American mortician who poses as a priest in order to protect the occupants of a church—half schoolgirl orphans and half prostitutes seeking refuge, naturally—from rape and murder. You read that right – we’re meant to believe that the Imperial Japanese army respected a church as neutral ground simply because it had a bearded Bruce Wayne pretending to be its purveyor.

If the above synopsis makes the movie sound absurd, that’s because it is. In fact, the sequences of extreme violence in The Flowers of War are not disturbing for the obvious reasons; instead, they are disturbing because they are exploitative when juxtaposed against the hokum of the rest of the film. The reason for Zhang to tell a fictional account of these events was to make the emotions more accessible and personal for viewers, but ironically, by crafting such a soap opera-like narrative, he achieves the opposite effect. As if the silliness of the basic premise wasn’t enough, there is also a romance between Bale and one of the prostitutes that nearly extends into the realm of self-parody.

The visual compositions are immaculate—alternately beautiful and gritty—but that’s par for the course in a Zhang film (thanks to usual cinematographer Zhao Xiaoding). It’s every other area that’s problematic. Clearly, Zhang intended the inappropriately campy tone of The Flowers of War – this is evidenced by the fact that the actors, especially Bale, are in lock-step with it throughout. But how he envisioned this possibly working in a movie about the Rape of Nanking is a mystery. All one can hope for is that Zhang regains touch of the superior sensibility that defined him as a filmmaker through the ’90s and the early 2000s, for it helped create several movies that were not only better than The Flowers of War, but legitimately great.

* * *

The Flowers of War (2012, China). Produced by Deng Chaoying, William Kong, David Linde, Leo Shi Young, and Zhang Weiping. Directed by Zhang Yimou. Written for the screen by Liu Heng, based on the novel by Yan Geling. Starring Christian Bale, Paul Schneider, Ni Ni, Tong Dawei, Zhang Xinyi, and Atsurô Watabe. Distributed by Wrekin Hill Entertainment. Rated R, with a running time of 146 minutes.

The reason the subject is off-putting is because it forces Madonna to approach the storytelling of W.E. not as the celebrity that she is, but as a fan (she admits to being fascinated by Simpson, herself). This is because the film is told from the fan perspective — with an intensely personal (if not exactly illuminating) view of Wally cross-cut with an abbreviated biopic of the Duchess, laced with Wally’s own projections. Wally feels misunderstood by her detached husband (Richard Coyle), which she also views as the story of the Duchess’ life — the Duke (James D’Arcy) was her third husband, and their publicly maligned marriage effectively disqualified him from being King. (You may remember him as the brother played by Guy Pearce in The King’s Speech.)

Madonna resists taking a conventional approach to the dual stories, which proves the film’s Achilles’ heel. It would seem obvious to draw direct narrative parallels between Wally and the Duchess to illustrate how Wally sees so much of herself in the historical figure, but instead, Madonna chooses to keep the parallels emotional — internalized in Cornish’s performance. For as much as this daringly subverts cinematic tradition, it is hugely problematic because Wally, like the Duchess herself, remains an enigma. Without providing the viewer enough information to understand/access Wally, what the movie has to say about its big idea remains a mystery, bottled up inside of an impenetrable protagonist. This is not a criticism of Cornish’s performance, which seems human enough, but the way that Madonna and co-writer Alek Keshishian paint her.

There’s also a head-scratching story-thread involving the developing relationship between Wally and a Sotheby’s security guard, a Russian immigrant named Evgeni (Oscar Isaac). Their scenes together achieve a sort of schizophrenia — some feel like standard rom-com fodder (such as a moment in which Evgeni moons his co-worker on the security camera before a date) and others match the considerably more impressionist tone of the film. Peculiarly, Wally and Evgani’s relationship, which initially feels like a subplot, becomes very significant to W.E. by the ending. It would seem the most prominent theme that Madonna the filmmaker wishes to communicate is, “In my movie, anything goes — make of it what you will.”

Alas, W.E. must be chalked up as an ambitious failure — which, in the scheme of things, is more interesting than a serviceably made film with less ambition. What Madonna wants to say about the celebrity/audience relationship is not clear, but the movie is so compellingly out-of-the-ordinary that the experience alone may be satisfying enough for some viewers.

* * *

W.E. (2012, UK). Produced by Scott Franklin, Donna Gigliotti, Kris Thykier, Colin Vaines, Nigel Wooll, and Sara Zambreno. Directed by Madonna. Written for the screen by Alek Keshishian and Madonna. Starring Abbie Cornish, Andrea Riseborough, James D’Arcy, Oscar Isaac, Richard Coyle, David Harbour, and James Fox. Distributed by The Weinstein Company. Rated R, with a running time of 119 minutes.

But the fact that Journey 2 was conceived as such a commodity only makes its artistic achievements more impressive. Whereas Journey to the Center of the Earth was made solely as an opportunity to showcase brand-new 3-D effects—which I’m sure would look amateurish now, just three years later—this film is a handsomely constructed family entertainment. The key to director Brad Peyton’s success is that he doesn’t overindulge anything; Hutcherson is in transit to the titular island just minutes after learning of it, for instance. This ensures that the obligatory kiddie shtick doesn’t dominate the proceedings – even a particularly silly sequence in which Johnson repeatedly performs a trick with his buff chest muscles is tolerable because it’s over before you know it. (The same goes for Luis Guzmán’s usual dummy theatrics.) Peyton and editor David Rennie’s breezy cutting also makes the film’s climax, in which the characters jumpstart a submarine battery using an electric eel, as rousing as could be – they are appropriately more concerned with orchestrating the tension of the sequence than overemphasizing the cool imagery.

Making Journey 2 more of an ensemble effort than its predecessor was also a wise move by the new screenwriters, Brian and Mark Gunn, primarily because it opens the franchise up to lively performances. Needless to say, Johnson boasts more charisma as an action movie star than Fraser has in his left pinky. Even though the role is one-dimensional, Johnson is able to give it gusto. Michael Caine also shows up as Hutcherson’s grandfather, the explorer who alerted him to the existence of the mysterious island, and he is as likable as ever. Hudgens is basically used as set-dressing, but she doesn’t embarrass herself and looks good in the process. Fused with the tropical sights of Hawaii (alas, they didn’t find the real mysterious island) and Peyton’s quality filmmaking, the cast make for terrific company over a fun, albeit forgettable adventure.

* * *

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012, USA). Produced by Michael Bostick, Adam Ellison, Beau Flynn, Charlotte Huggins, Evan Turner, Tripp Vinson, and Marcus Viscidi. Directed by Brad Peyton. Written for the screen by Brian and Mark Gunn. Story by Richard Outten, Brian Gunn, and Mark Gunn. Starring Dwayne Johnson, Michael Caine, Josh Hutcherson, Luis Guzmán, Vanessa Hudgens, and Kristin Davis. Distributed by Warner Bros. Rated PG, with a running time of 94 minutes.

For the most part, the first two acts of the film play as light (but smart) comedy – a welcome rarity in this genre. The best passages are the most existential – those that feature the guys marveling at their newfound powers just for the hell of it, not questioning how or why they got them. The effortless rapport between the three, who seem stoned on their own awesomeness, is infectious, thanks to good writing and amiable performances. The only scenes that feel out of place are those featuring Andrew’s troubled home life – his mom is dying of cancer and his disability-collecting father treats him abusively.

Unfortunately, Andrew’s family problems only factor more prominently into the third act, which finds him growing increasingly willing to exploit his powers out of anger towards his mom’s plight. It becomes clear that Landis is reaching for the obligatory disaster-laden climax in a film that would have been better off without one. (Easier said than done in Hollywood, certainly, but given how many other genre conventions the film subverts, it’s not unreasonable to think it could have gotten away with a radically different ending.) And while there is something to admire in the go-for-broke, interjection-laden lunacy of Chronicle’s finale, it creates more problems than just the ill-fitted tonal shift. For instance, as the action heightens, views from multiple cameras—security cameras, police cameras, cell-phone cameras—are intercut with that of Andrew’s. This implies that a third-party made the film, which raises a host of questions that it never answers (among them: What the hell was the thing in the cave, exactly? What happened in the aftermath of the events?). Given the refreshing originality of its first 45 minutes, it’s a shame that Chronicle ultimately succumbs to being another dumb superhero movie in the end.

* * *

Chronicle (2012, USA). Produced by John Davis, James Dodson, and Adam Schroeder. Directed by Josh Trank. Written for the screen by Max Landis. Story by Josh Trank and Max Landis. Starring Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B. Jordan, Michael Kelly, Ashley Hinshaw, and Bo Petersen. Distributed by 20th Century Fox. Rated PG-13, with a running time of 83 minutes.

The reason the opening question is worth considering is because, without scares, the old-fashioned ghost story loses its luster by design. Making the viewer jump is the core objective of a movie like The Woman in Black, and if such an objective is near impossible to achieve, then perhaps the genre needs to be retired (or at least put on hiatus).

That said, the cast and crew of The Woman in Black do their best to make this a dignified production, and ghost story devotees who enjoy the simple mechanics of the genre should be satisfied by the film. In his first post-Potter role, Daniel Radcliffe makes for a serviceable lead—if a bit too young to be playing a widowed father—but the real pleasure is the supporting cast. As a couple whose child may have been killed by the titular ghost, Ciarán Hinds and Janet McTeer are exceptional; his reserved skepticism about the supernatural being and her questionable sanity both make an impression. The achievements behind the camera are just as noteworthy, from Tim Maurice-Jones’ old school cinematography to Marco Beltrami’s penetrating score.

Thus, even though The Woman in Black can boast neither scares nor narrative depth, it is not a complete bust. In light of the many recent failed attempts to modernize the genre, from Paranormal Activity to The Grudge, director James Watkins’ more traditional take is a welcome change of pace. Furthermore, the filmmaking is consistently competent – and in today’s Hollywood, that’s always worth celebrating, even if the film may not have been worth making in the first place.

* * *

The Woman in Black (2012; UK, Canada, Sweden). Produced by Vic David, Guy East, Ben Holden, Richard Jackson, Roy Lee, Simon Oakes, Brian Oliver, Paul Ritchie, Nigel Sinclair, Todd Thompson, Tyler Thompson, and Sean Wheelan. Directed by James Watkins. Written for the screen by Jane Goldman, based on the novel by Susan Hill. Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Ciarán Hinds, Janet McTeer, Roger Allam, Mary Stockley, Shaun Dooley, and Liz White. Distributed by CBS Films. Rated PG-13, with a running time of 95 minutes.

Happy Friday and welcome back to my box office predictions column. After writing five reviews for this weekend’s openers—Big Miracle, Chronicle, The Woman in Black, Declaration of War, and Kill List—I’m anxious to flee my office chair and plop into bed, so let’s get right into things…

Most Americans associate this weekend with the Super Bowl, not the movie theater, but this has historically been a decent frame to release two types of films: teen horror (The Roommate, The Messengers, When a Stranger Calls) and women’s counterprogramming (Dear John, Because I Said So). CBS Films hopes they’ve combined both into one with The Woman in Black, a ghost story that happens to star a female favorite, Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe. But between CBS’s abysmal track record in opening films thus far (their best weekend was The Back-Up Plan’s underwhelming $12.2m) and the found-footage superhero movie Chronicle buzzing among teens (more on that next), The Woman in Black may not prove such an easy sell. Also, as I write in my review, its old-fashioned brand of storytelling is unlikely to scare many, which could potentially result in bad word-of-mouth and therefore frontloading. Still, the worst PG-13 horror opening over Superbowl weekend in recent years was The Uninvited’s $10.3m. With Radcliffe in the mix, I can’t imagine this opening any less than 20% higher than that film, which didn’t have any big names. That would put The Woman in Black at $12.4 million on the weekend.

The real threat to break out this weekend is Chronicle, which has surprisingly been receiving accolades from critics (I was a bit more measured in my praise), has been buzzing on the web, and boasts a robust marketing campaign from 20^th Century Fox. While teenage girls may prefer to see The Woman in Black, their boyfriends (who history shows often make the decision) are probably more excited about this superhero film. Found-footage seems to be all the rage among audiences these days, between The Devil Inside and the Paranormal Activity movies, and I can’t imagine this film bucking that trend. It should open similarly to another teen superhero movie released last February, I Am Number Four, which was based on a popular book series but had nowhere near this level of positive early buzz. That would give Chronicle a strong $19.4 million for the weekend, almost double what it cost to make.

Then there’s the family film Big Miracle, about the 1988 rescue of three whales trapped behind a wall of ice off the coast of Barrow, Alaska. It’s amiable fun for the whole family, but there are no indications that Universal will be able to do here what Warner Bros. did last year with Dolphin Tale. Instead, it’s probably looking at a number closer to Soul Surfer ($10.6m), which was likewise made for families and based on a true story. That said, the number will probably be a bit lower, because Soul Surfer benefited from church-group buyouts. (However, this otherwise benefits the comparison, because it resulted in Soul Surfer taking a big hit on its opening Sunday, as Big Miracle will, due to the Super Bowl.) Thus, I’m pegging Big Miracle at a ho-hum $9 million opening – its only chance at profitability rests in the potential for terrific word-of-mouth, which is reasonably high.

My prediction of what the full top 10 will look like:

1. Chronicle … $19.4 m ($6,674 PTA)
2. The Woman in Black … $12.4m ($4,343 PTA)
3. The Grey … $10.0m ($3,117 PTA) -49.1%
4. Big Miracle … $9.0m ($4,229 PTA)
5. One for the Money … $6.3m ($2,302 PTA) -45.3%
6. Underworld Awakening … $6.2m ($2,352 PTA) -49.8%
7. Red Tails … $5.7m ($2,429 PTA) -44.5%
8. The Descendants … $4.2m ($2,061 PTA) -34.4%
9. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close … $4.1m ($1,637 PTA) -41.3%
10. Man on a Ledge … $3.5m ($1,167 PTA) -56.3%

Does the above mean that Big Miracle is a fundamentally childish, puerile movie? Perhaps, but that often hasn’t stopped most of us from enjoying escapist fare that has required even greater suspension of intellect (the Iron Man and Bourne films, for instance) in the past. On the same token, Hollywood has never approached a true story without some degree of revisionism. I would rather play the pessimist about such logical deficiencies when the movie in question is actually poorly made, which Big Miracle is not. In fact, provided you go along with it, this is quite the breezy, involving underdog (underwhale?) picture. Even if the original hoopla over the story wasn’t warranted and the material about unknowing animals finally allowing the Americans and the Russians to unite for the common good is politically correct gobbledygook, director Kwapis and the committed cast make the inner-child in every viewer care that these poor whales make it out of the ice-blockade unharmed.

I don’t mean to argue that the movie is void of actions worth celebrating on the merits, either. Scenes in which the town comes together to dig a path of holes in the ice to help the whales escape are as moving as any you’ll find in a squeaky-clean Hollywood production. A sequence in which two Minnesota brothers hop on a plane to lend their newly-invented deicing machine to the effort should likewise elicit smiles from most viewers. Furthermore, for as silly as the story’s popularity may have been in the scheme of things, the movie’s ability to serve as an encapsulation of a bygone era—way, way back when an item on the nightly news could captivate an entire nation—is surprisingly compelling.

The likable characters and performances seal the deal. John Krasinski plays a less snarky, more ambitious version of his everyman persona on “The Office” – an amiable take on the “small-town journalist committed to making a big difference”-archetype. Drew Barrymore clearly believes in her hippy-dippy character, which works well because any level of externalization by the actress would have corrupted the purity of the woman’s over-the-top intentions. (Side question for the environmentalists out there: Why would a Greenpeace activist be opposed to letting nature take its course in this situation?) And perhaps most enjoyable in the film is Kristen Bell, who with her usual bubbly gusto plays an L.A. reporter who heads to Barrow for the scoop.

There are better movies for the whole family out there right now—Hugo, We Bought a Zoo, and the Beauty and the Beast re-release—but that doesn’t take away from the fact that Big Miracle is good, wholesome entertainment. As long as you don’t question the movie’s loose conception of heroism, you’ll like it just fine.

* * *

Big Miracle (2012, USA). Produced by Stuart M. Besser, Tim Bevan, Liza Chasin, Eric Fellner, Steve Golin, Paul Green, and Michael Sugar. Directed by Ken Kwapis. Written for the screen by Jack Amiel and Michael Begler, based on the book by Thomas Rose. Starring John Krasinski, Drew Barrymore, Ahmaogak Sweeney, Kristen Bell, Ted Danson, Tim Blake Nelson, and Vinessa Shaw. Distributed by Universal Pictures. Rated PG, with a running time of 107 minutes.

After a dinner party sequence that finds main character Jay (Neil Maskell) in a puzzlingly unstable state of mind, the movie becomes a fairly standard, albeit incredibly brutal tale of hit-men carrying out a high-stakes job. Jay and partner Gal (Michael Smiley) follow the ‘kill list’ provided to them by an illusive client, crossing the names off one by one. There are clues that things are not what they seem–references to a past job gone wrong, a hit who claims that he knows Jay before he stares into the barrel of the gun, etc.–and the backstory is often kept intentionally vague, but few viewers will expect the absolute 180-degree mind-fuck that co-writer/director Ben Wheatley (Down Terrace) pulls in the final act. In fact, you’re lucky to make sense of the experience even days after you see it.

That may sound great on paper, but Kill List becomes morally reprehensible in the final twist, which reframes all the explicit violence that has come before as part of a glorified audience guessing game. I won’t spoil what happens for the poor souls who remain committed to enduring the film, but I will say that Wheatley ultimately takes things in a campy direction that makes the graphicness of what has come before morally/artistically unjustifiable. If they knew it was camp from the start, most viewers would be reviled by the entire picture.

Furthermore, you know a movie doesn’t have much to offer when it obscures major story points simply so that it can later reveal them, shocking viewers rather than stimulating them. The only wholly commendable elements of Kill List are the gritty widescreen cinematography by Laurie Rose and the credible lead performances by Maskell and Smiley, which are ultimately rendered useless by Wheatley’s sorry puppeteering antics. Some will no doubt get a kick out of Kill List’s confounding final turn, but only because they are naïve and/or inebriated enough to be impressed by narrative manipulation over actual substance.

* * *

Kill List (2012, UK). Originally reviewed for AFI Fest 2011 (11.4.2011). Produced by Katherine Butler, Ally Gipps, Robin Gutch, Hugo Heppell, Mark Herbert, Claire Jones, Barry Ryan, and Andrew Starke. Directed by Ben Wheatley. Written for the screen by Amy Jump and Ben Wheatley. Starring Neil Maskell, Michael Smiley, MyAnna Buring, Harry Simpson, Emma Fryer, and Struan Rodger. Distributed by IFC Films. Not rated, with a running time of 95 minutes.