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| Disney |
(ACTION-ADVENTURE/FANTASY, 2007)
★★★★
Directed by Gore Verbinski
Written by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio
Starring: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Geoffrey Rush, Chow Yun-fat, Bill Nighy, Tom Hollander, Jack Davenport, Kevin R. McNally, Naomie Harris, Stellan Skarsgard, Jonathan Pryce, Lee Arenberg, Mackenzie Crook, David Schofield, Reggie Lee, Angus Barnett, Giles New
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action/adventure violence and some frightening images.
168 minutes
4-Day Weekend Gross: $139.8M
3-Day Weekend Gross: $114.7M
Total Domestic Gross: $309.4M
Worldwide Gross: $963.4M
Estimated Production Cost: $300M
I just posted a suitably lengthy article about this lengthy movie recently in anticipation of the new Pirates of the Caribbean, and you should read it, because it's full of passion. I love this movie. It's the best in the series. It's too long, damn it, but I love this movie.
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| Paramount/Lucasfilm |
(ACTION-ADVENTURE/SCI-FI, 2008)
★★★1/2
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Written by David Koepp
Story by George Lucas and Jeff Nathanson
Starring: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen, Shia LeBeouf, Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Jim Broadbent, Igor Jijikine, Dimitri Diatchenko, Ilia Volok, Alan Dale, Joel Stoffer
Rated PG-13 for adventure violence and scary images.
122 minutes
4-Day Weekend Gross: $126.9M
3-Day Weekend Gross: $100.1M
Total Domestic Gross: $317.1M
Worldwide Gross: $786.6M
Estimated Production Cost: $185M
At the risk of starting to sound like the defender of widely-hated sequels, I'm going to champion INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL as well. I realize that it's far from perfect, and while I disagree with it, I understand at least to some extent where the negative response to the movie comes from. That said, it doesn't make much sense to me why fans of the series, at least logically, would hate KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL and love TEMPLE OF DOOM. Tonally, it makes sense, if you have a preference for the dark chapter of the series, but if you have a problem with Indy surviving an atomic bomb test by climbing in a refrigerator in this movie but not with Indy, Willie and Short Round jumping out of a plane in an inflatable raft, down the Himalayas and over a hundreds-of-feet-tall waterfall, then you can't be taken seriously. Harrison Ford is back as Indiana Jones, older and more grizzled than ever, and this time he's fighting the Commies in a 50s B movie-style plot that takes him into the jungles of South America. Ancient temples, creepy cemeteries, government warehouses full of secret wonders, Red Scare paranoia and psychic warfare; it stumbles along through a few dumb moments (not as many as TEMPLE OF DOOM, and certainly nothing as dreadful as Willie Scott), but it delivers on the pulpy adventure thrills that the name Indiana Jones promises, and frankly, I think it has a lot of heart.
(ACTION/SCI-FI-FANTASY, 2006)
★★
Directed by Brett Ratner
Written by Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Famke Janssen, Anna Paquin, Kelsey Grammer, James Marsden, Rebecca Romijn, Shawn Ashmore, Aaron Stanford, Vinnie Jones, Ellen Page, Daniel Cudmore, Ben Foster, Bill Duke
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action violence, some sexual content and language.
104 minutes
4-Day Weekend Gross: $122.8M
3-Day Weekend Gross: $102.7M
Total Domestic Gross: $234.3M
Worldwide Gross: $459.3M
Estimated Production Cost: $210M
Actually, I'm not going to defend this one. It's not so much that it's a terrible movie as it's just the fact that the first two (directed by Bryan Singer, who opted to direct SUPERMAN RETURNS instead, handing the reins over to Brett Ratner) were typically smart and ambitiously building to this third chapter which winds up squandering that momentum in a much dumber, less interesting and weirdly frivolous 'climactic chapter.' Kelsey Grammer makes a pretty good Beast, even if his dialogue is occasionally cringe-worthy, but most of the new character designs are grotesque and icky, and between the story of Jean Grey/Phoenix and the would-be epic showdown between the X-Men and the Brotherhood (which culminates in little more than a bombastic but uninteresting slug-fest), both are under-served. I can't complain that they didn't make it longer, but they should have made it better.
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| Universal |
(ACTION/THRILLER, 2013)
★★1/2
Directed by Justin Lin
Written by Chris Morgan
Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Jordana Brewster, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Gal Gadot, Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges, Luke Evans, Elsa Pataky, Gina Carano, Clara Paget, Kim Kold, Joe Taslim
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action and mayhem throughout, some sexuality and language.
130 minutes
4-Day Weekend Gross: $117M
3-Day Weekend Gross: $97.3M
Total Domestic Gross: $238.6M
Worldwide Gross: $788.6M
Estimated Production Cost: $160M
Of the last few Fast & Furious movies, this is probably the one I remember the least well. Mostly, it all came down to that ridiculously lengthy plane runway sequence didn't it? I wouldn't consider it at all as fun as FAST FIVE, or even FURIOUS 7, although it's probably better than FATE OF THE FURIOUS just was.
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| Fox |
(ACTION/SCI-FI-FANTASY, 2014)
★★★
Directed by Bryan Singer
Written by Simon Kinberg
Story by Jane Goldman & Simon Kinberg & Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Peter Dinklage, Evan Peters, Ellen Page, Josh Helman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Shawn Ashmore, Omar Sy, Daniel Cudmore, Bingbing Fan
Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense sci-fi violence and action, some suggestive material, nudity and language.
131 minutes
4-Day Weekend: $110.5M
3-Day Weekend: $90.8M
Total Domestic Gross: $233.9M
Worldwide Gross: $747.8M
Estimated Production Cost: $200M
It's maybe the third best X-Men movie (not including the Wolverine solo movies or DEADPOOL, not that it would make that much of a difference) after X-MEN: FIRST CLASS and X2: X-MEN UNITED, but it has some very high highs. Following a high stakes story on two fronts; one a dystopic and war-ravaged future and the other at a lynchpin point in history in 1973; it's one of the most emotionally-charged in the series and gets the best of both worlds by teaming up the original X-Men trilogy's star Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) with the cast of FIRST CLASS, led by James McAvoy as Professor X, Michael Fassbender as Magneto, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique and Nicholas Hoult as Beast. It runs kind of long and gets tangled up in overblown, bombastic subplot involving Magneto and a whole damn sports stadium, but it's also fresh, operatic and mature in a way that a lot of superhero movies of the last few years haven't been.
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| Warner Bros. |
(COMEDY, 2011)
Directed by Todd Phillips
Written by Craig Mazin & Scott Armstrong & Todd Phillips
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong, Paul Giamatti, Mike Tyson, Jeffrey Tambor, Mason Lee, Jamie Chung, Sasha Barrese, Gillian Vigman, Yasmin Lee
Rated R for pervasive language, strong sexual content including graphic nudity, drug use and brief violent images.
101 minutes
4-Day Weekend Gross: $103.4M
3-Day Weekend Gross: $85.9M
Total Domestic Gross: $254.4M
Worldwide Gross: $586.7M
Estimated Production Cost: $80M
I still haven't seen this one. I saw the first THE HANGOVER and thought it was fine. It had some funny stuff, although I don't really grasp what it was about that movie that suddenly reignited audiences of R-rated comedy and sent the sequel into big-time blockbuster territory. I'd just started working at the theater in 2011, so I saw some small bits and pieces of PART II during that time, and I also saw the part with the "ladyboy's" bit and pieces, but I've never actually seen the full movie. It's not exactly the sort of thing that makes for a very good sequel anyway, though, huh? It's like the R-rated version of HOME ALONE 2.
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| Universal |
(ADVENTURE-THRILLER/SCI-FI, 1997)
★★
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Written by David Koepp
Starring: Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Pete Postlethwaite, Arliss Howard, Richard Attenborough, Vince Vaughn, Vanessa Lee Chester, Peter Stormare, Harvey Jason, Richard Schiff, Thomas F. Duffy, Thomas Rosales Jr., Camilla Belle
Rated PG-13 for intense sci-fi terror and violence.
129 minutes
4-Day Weekend Gross: $90.1M
3-Day Weekend Gross: $72.1M
Total Domestic Gross: $229M
Worldwide Gross: $618.6M
Estimated Production Cost: $73M
It's hard to see how THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK came out of legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg, but one has to assume that his previous movie, SCHINDLER'S LIST, did a real hard number on him, because he had no heart left to give on this mean-spirited, contrived and generally unpleasant sequel. KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, 1941, and hell, even ALWAYS are practically masterpieces compared to THE LOST WORLD (okay, that's exaggeration, at least in the case of ALWAYS and 1941; I still like CRYSTAL SKULL though). It has a few moments of clever and spectacular action between the trailers hanging off the cliff, the velociraptors in the tall grass, and the T-Rex in the city, but it fails to come up with a suitable justification for bringing people back to an island full of dinosaurs, and once they're there, they act unbearably stupid. Worst of all, it's just a weirdly nasty and angry-feeling movie, most exemplified in the awful moment that Richard Schiff's character is killed more brutally than anyone else in the franchise until Zara in JURASSIC WORLD, and all after such a lengthy sequence of him struggling to and eventually succeeding in saving some annoying unintelligent other characters (JURASSIC WORLD is arguably better than THE LOST WORLD, technically speaking, but I'd sooner rewatch THE LOST WORLD, because as bad as it is, it's still less sickening). I mean, yeah, if you're an actor in a Jurassic Park movie, it sounds fun to have your character killed off in the most grisly way imaginable, but if you expect the viewer to be invested in any way, you have to consider these things.
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| Fox |
(DISASTER-THRILLER/SCI-FI, 2004)
★★
Directed by Roland Emmerich
Written by Roland Emmerich & Jeffrey Nachmanoff
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhall, Emmy Rossum, Dash Mihok, Jay O. Sanders, Sela Ward, Austin Nichols, Arjay Smith, Tamlyn Tomita, Sasha Roiz, Ian Holm, Perry King, Kenneth Welsh
Rated PG-13 for intense situations of peril.
124 minutes
4-Day Weekend Gross: $85.8M
3-Day Weekend Gross: $68.7M
Total Domestic Gross: $186.7M
Worldwide Gross: $544.2M
Estimated Production Cost: $125M
It's been a while since I last saw Roland Emmerich's global warming disaster spectacle, but I remember mostly thinking, "eh." It's thankfully a lot shorter than Emmerich's other visual effects-driven disaster blockbusters (2012, oy vey!), and it was mildly amusing the way it so blatantly rags on right wing punditry by centering an epic world-scale disaster around man-made climate change (to be fair, real climate change denial is a denial of science, while this is an utterly unscientific take on climate change) and even throwing in a scene of Americans clamoring over the southern border into Mexico, but like most of these movies, it's mostly long stretches of boring stuff with uninteresting characters in between the cool mayhem.
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| Fox |
(ACTION/SCI-FI-FANTASY, 2016)
★1/2
Directed by Bryan Singer
Written by Simon Kinberg
Story by Bryan Singer, Simon Kinberg, Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris
Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Oscar Isaac, Rose Byrne, Evan Peters, Josh Helman, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Lucas Till, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Ben Hardy, Alexandra Shipp, Lana Condor, Olivia Munn, Hugh Jackman
Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence, action and destruction, brief strong language and some suggestive images.
144 minutes
4-Day Weekend: $79.8M
3-Day Weekend: $65.7M
Total Domestic Gross: $155.4M
Worldwide Gross: $543.9M
Estimate Production Cost: $178M
After his triumphant return to the franchise with DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, Bryan Singer apparently couldn't let it go without leaving a turd too, because APOCALYPSE is at least as bad if not worse than THE LAST STAND. Heck, it may be the worst in the series, except perhaps for X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE. At least APOCALYPSE has surprisingly gnarly violence, but it's also freaking long. Continuing the story started by FIRST CLASS into the 1980s, but without putting that period setting to any use, the plot revolves around a boring overpowered villain, and devolves into generic and overblown worldwide destruction that ends with absurdly little consequence. The only major point of interest is Magneto, whose story becomes increasingly uninteresting as it goes along and ends bizarrely unresolved, and for all its bloodshed, Wolverine's extended cameo sequence may be the character's (unintended) silliest moment in the series.
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