Sneaking in one last Happy Mother’s day to all those moms out there, in particular Mrs. Rotten Week, who keeps the parenting on lock down around here. She has to because I’m mostly just thinking about movies all the time. My brain can only do so many things at once. She really picks up the slack, which is great. Love you baby! This week we’ve got Godzilla and one expensive arm.
Just remember, I'm not reviewing these movies, but rather predicting where they'll end up on the Tomatometer. Let's take a look at what This Rotten Week has to offer.
Rotten Watch Prediction
This world has a bunch of issues. Global warming. Mass pollution. Dwindling water resources. Politicians. The list goes on. We are dealing with a lot right now. So the thought of a giant, indestructible "thing" emerging from our oceans and laying waste to the whole kit and kaboodle is equal parts satisfying and ordinary. We’ve got so much going on, that we must wonder: would this be the worst thing that could happen?
Look at the big guy taking over in the Godzilla trailer:
Admission: I’ve never seen the original Godzilla. Whip me in the comments section as you see fit. That being, said, I’ve read how this version is careful to stay true to the original, using a similar story and being sure to pay homage to the "source material." There is something unsettling about a monster or force so indestructible that the combined power of the world’s military would be decided underdogs. Feeling powerless against something "living" that came from our own deep blue depths really plays into something unknown about our own world. Man, it doesn’t seems out of the realm of possibility considering we really don’t know much about what’s going on in the deepest depths of our own planet. We know the surface problems, but what about the ones we can’t see?
Director Gareth Edwards (Monsters-72%) may have captured this helplessness, the idea that humans are weak in the face of such a big threat. Beyond that, this movie looks pretty kick ass, with sweeping action scenes, mass destruction and a big effects budget. Early reviews are positive, though not completely overwhelming (CB’s own Kristy Puchko gave it five stars in a gushing review). Many agree the action scenes are money, and that the plot and characters are definitely on the weaker side. Hey, we can’t have it all, can we? Now let’s deal with our world’s problems before a massive sea creature emerges and burns the whole thing down.
Rotten Watch Prediction
39%
At one point I think I would have said that Hollywood would never run out of baseball stories to tell. Cinema is one of the game’s strongest foothold in Americana, and for a long time the nation's on-going nostalgia with the sport has helped keep a constant production of movies coming that tug at our heartstrings and reinvigorate a sense of wonder. But, man, that time might be passing. We might just be running out of sports stories to tell in general. It may have all already been done.
But before we get into that, see what director Craig Gillespie is bringing to the mound in the Million Dollar Arm trailer:
Look, I love basebll, and write about it daily, so I feel particularly in tune to movies that engage in a dialogue about it. What I mean by baseball stories (or sports stories in general) running dry in the creative sense is that we keeping seeing flicks about the process behind the game rather than the game itself. On the surface, this doesn’t seem like the worst thing, especially if there is a mild human interest story like the one in Million Dollar Arm (down on his luck but still kind of rich agent heads to India to find the next big major league pitcher). But with each movie like this, Moneyball, Draft Day, etc. the modern version of the sports movie is becoming something different. Something corporate. We are rooting for the executives and the agents? Is that really the goal?
This flick is about the agent (Jon Hamm), and not necessarily about the actual kids who become the pitchers. The latter appear to be part of the movie, but far from the leads. It just strikes me (pun intended) as weird and a bit off center.
Director Craig Gillespie has been up and down the critical ladder in his career. Movies like Fright Night (72%) and Lars and the Real Girl (82%) were both winners and Mr. Woodcock (13%) bombed terribly. I’m inclined to think he will pull off some feel-good moments in this one, but early reviews are mixed which is a bad sign out of the gate. Again, I have a feeling that the sports movie shift toward the executives (and not the players) is the wrong direction. Something I hope shifts back sooner than later.
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Kind of a *meh week from a prediction standpoint. Neighbors (Predicted: 90% Actual: 74%) dropped a decent amount over the week, something I should have accounted for. But the early reviews were just so, so positive that I thought it stood a good chance to hover around the 90% mark. This didn’t happen, of course, and it fell out of range. It crushed at the box office though, and 74% for this kind of comedy is still really, really good. I was just hoping it ended up in the "great" range.
Meanwhile, Mom’s Night Out (Predicted: 32% Actual: 17%) sucked, thank goodness. I knew it would be bad, hedged a bit with my score, but killed it in the write up. In some ways I want to count this as a win because my general feelings about it held true with the score. Alas, it wasn’t within ten percent, so no dice.
And finally, Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return (Predicted: 42% Actual: 14%) was awful. I don’t even want to count this one because I almost didn’t even do a write up about it. What I thought would be a movie that appealed to kids with adults having absolutely zero interest was on the mark. What I forgot to account for was that the adults would be the ones writing the review. Oops.
Next time around we get blended and the X-Men go back to the future. It’s going to be a Rotten Week!
