Through two months, 2013 has been a pretty awful year for major motion pictures at the box office thus far. If you look at a rundown of the year’s biggest films to date, you’ll see that only Identity Thief, a comedic caper about Jason Bateman and Rex Reed’s tiny penis chasing Melissa McCarthy all over the place, has topped the $100 million mark this year.

That means that star-driven action movies like A Good Day to Die Hard ($63 million), Snitch ($31 million) and Parker ($17 million) have been big old turkey turds at the U.S. box office, while unusual entries like the comedic zombie tale Warm Bodies ($63 million) and horror films like Mama ($71 million) and Safe Haven ($62 million) have been surprising successes. Wait, what? Safe Haven isn’t a horror film? But it stars Josh Duhamel and Julianne Hough and is based on a Nicholas Sparks novel. I can’t think of anything more terrifying than that.

The biggest concern* lies with the year’s first huge budget film, Jack the Giant Slayer, which had a $195 million budget and has only grossed $43 million through its first two weeks. However, before any Hollywood execs go burying themselves to the neck into mountains of cocaine, Oz the Great and Powerful may have pulled us out of this year’s early funk, grossing $80 million in the U.S. and Canada this weekend, with an additional $65 million overseas. Although, while $145 million might sound awesome, Oz cost $215 million to make, so Disney would probably appreciate it if you took your brats to see it 12 more times.

Read the rest of this entry »

I could never hate this man.

Rex Reed went on Mark Simone’s show on WOR 710 AM in New York this morning (don’t worry, I don’t know what that is either) to respond to the controversy surrounding his Identity Thief review. If you’ll remember, that was the one Burnsy told you about where Rex called Melissa McCarthy a hippo, and described her as “tractor-sized.” This controversy, according to Reed, has culminated in death threats, and emails wishing he’d get cancer. Speaking with Simone, and you knew this was going to be a favorable news outlet when Simone hilariously said during Rex Reed’s introduction that “telling Rex Reed how to review a movie is like telling Babe Ruth how to hold a bat,” Reed seemed to think that the controversy was all something planned and orchestrated by Universal’s “publicity machine.” He also ascribed Daniel Craig’s success, in part, to having “a good, hard, well-toned body,” but I suppose that’s neither here nor there.

With a voice that sounded a little like the late Huell Howser, Reed said of his haters “This is an organized group of people, believe me. And it’s all being fanned because of Universal’s desire to sell tickets to a bad movie,” which does seem somewhat plausible. He then went on a side rant about Facebook groups “telling kids obesity is good”, saying “only carefully-organized plots can turn into this kind of out-of-control mess.”

That is, the out-of-control mess confined mainly to Rex Reed’s email inbox. To rebut, speaking only for ourselves, we had zero contact with anyone from Universal before writing that post (or after writing it, for that matter). Burnsy saw Reed’s review (likely in the course of writing up a Weekend Movie Guide) and thought it was funny, especially so considering we’d already known Rex Reed as enjoyably un-PC and kind of nutty. We like to bust his balls because it’s fun. I hope he keeps writing and doesn’t get cancer, but I do feel a little bad about focusing the Eye of Sauron that is the internet on poor old Rex Reed (or at least contributing to it).

Reed, after proudly proclaiming that movie reviews are protected speech, defended bringing McCarthy’s weight into his review, arguing that she was already trying to capitalize on it herself. “I object to using health issues like obesity as comedy talking points, ” Reed said. “That’s what this girl does! This Melissa Manchester…”

That’s right, Rex Reed called Melissa McCarthy “Melissa Manchester,”  which is just about the most Rex Reed goddamn thing ever. He went on to make fun of people who emailed him about ‘Declined,’ mistakenly thinking the headline of his review was name of his movie. This without acknowledging that he’d just called the star “Melissa Manchester.” A+ for Rex Reedness.

Read the rest of this entry »

Identity Thief was a movie hardly anyone liked starring an actress critic Rex Reed referred to variously as “tractor sized” and “a hippo,” but just like the mighty hippo of the thundering Zambezi, Identity Thief grossed almost $37 million at the box office this weekend. Does that simile work? Whatever, I’ll check it later.

At 3,141 locations, Identity Thief earned an estimated $36.6 million this weekend. That’s one of the best openings ever for an original R-rated comedy, and it’s director Seth Gordon’s top start ahead of Four Christmases ($31.1 million) and Horrible Bosses ($28.3 million). It’s also way up from Melissa McCarthy’s Bridesmaids ($26.2 million); all three of the aforementioned titles wound up closing with at least $117 million, which suggests a $100 million finish is within reach for Identity Thief.
The Top 12 wound up earning an estimated $89.6 million this weekend, which is off a whopping 48 percent from last year when The Vow and Safe House both opened to over $40 million.
Universal is projecting that Winter Storm Nemo knocked around 10 percent off the weekend, which lines up with what competitive studios are estimating as well. This suggests that, without the storm, Identity Thief could have debuted north of $40 million.
Universal is reporting that the audience was 58 percent female (meaning McCarthy’s fans showed up alongside date-night audiences) and 57 percent were 30 years of age or older. The movie received a middling “B” CinemaScore, which isn’t surprising given the movie’s atrocious 24 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. [BoxOfficeMojo]

$37 million on a down weekend with terrible reviews and bad word of mouth is nothing short of incredible. If studios weren’t trying to stick Melissa McCarthy in everything before, they sure as hell will be now. At some point, she and Rebel Wilson may have to fight. I’m okay with that, but it’d be nice if she picked better projects than a buddy-cop movie with Sandra Bullock with jokes broader than a Mexican soap opera. I didn’t see Identity Thief, if only because it involved someone getting hit in the face with something in the trailer, which hasn’t boded well for comedy since The Three Stooges. No thanks. If I wanted to watch someone get hit in the face in a trailer, I’d hang out with your mom.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bump, set and spike my crotch, am I right?

Opening Everywhere: Identity Thief, Side Effects

Opening In IMAX: Top Gun

FilmDrunk Suggests: Rex Reed says that by paying for a ticket to see Identity Thief, you’re supporting America’s problem with obesity. He also says that your mom is “built like a brontosaurus dick” and that she “lubes with mayonnaise”. His words, not mine. So go see Channing Tatum in Side Effects.

Read the rest of this entry »

Melissa with something that she’d like Rex Reed to sit on.

Rex Reed is a 74-year old film critic who once famously wrote the following sentence about South Korean people in his review for the film Old Boy:

“What else can you expect from a nation weaned on kimchi, a mixture of raw garlic and cabbage buried underground until it rots, dug up from the grave and then served in earthenware pots sold at the Seoul airport as souvenirs?”

He also started the rumor that Marisa Tomei only won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1992 because Jack Palance was wasted when he presented the award. So basically, Reed is a cranky, cantankerous assh*le, and he wants to remind us of that with his new review of Identity Thief in the New York Observer.

Read the rest of this entry »