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WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND Sept 7, 2018 – The Nun, Peppermint, God Bless the Broken Road

Hallelujah! We made it through another summer, one with a lot of really strong studio and independent films and only a few dogs (and even those were a lot more tolerable than in years past).

Normally, the first weekend of September after Labor Day would be a down weekend but with the blockbuster success of New Line’s adaptation of Stephen King’s It last year, all that has changed. Mind you, there have been other solid September openers like Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion and a couple Resident Evil movies, but this weekend, New Line is going to go whole hog with the latest Conjuring spin-off/prequel, and another studio is gonna try to give it some genre competition.

THE NUN (New Line/WB)

The Fall movie season kicks off with a movie that could have easily opened over the summer or waited until October to take advantage of the impending Halloween (the holiday, not the movie). With last year’s huge success for New Line’s adaptation of Stephen King’s It, the studio is hoping horror fans will pull a repeat and help kick off a strong fall movie season after some late summer hits.

If you don’t already know, The Nun is a spin-off prequel to June 2016’s The Conjuring 2 directed by James Wan which grossed $102 million from a $40.4 million openig. That’s just slightly less than the original The Conjuring made in July 2013, grossing $137 mill. domestic after a $41.9 million opening.

The first movie led to the hit Annabelle spin-off and its prequel Annabelle: Creation, but The Nun is both a spin-off and prequel directed by Corin Hardy, who helmed the indie horror The Hallows a few years back. This one stars Taissa Farmiga, sister of The Conjuring star Vera Farmiga who has appeared on a number of seasons of FX’s American Horror Story, plus it also stars Oscar nominee Demian Bichir, who has appeared in everything from Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight to Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant.

While there might already be some franchise fatigue for these horror movies tying into the “Conjuring Universe,” the marketing for the movie has been spot-on with some of the scariest TV spots and trailers of the year. With schools back in session, the teen and older kids will certainly be up for a scary movie to see with classmates, as will older adult horror fans who appreciate the finesse that Wan brings to his horror films. As we saw with Itlast year, horror is definitely bigger money than ever especially with a strong and scary horror premise like this one.

The Nun should be good for the same $36 to 40 million range as the Annabelle movies, although it won’t get the opening weekend bump of a summer or October pre-Halloween release nor will it have much chance for legs with next week’s The Predator aiming for the same audience. If it’s any good, it should be able to still make $100 million with the other September releases seeming fairly bland.

Oh, and there’s already a sixth “Conjuring Universe” film slated for next July, so we’ll see if that’s a prequel/sequel to The Nun or maybe it will be a family film with Lorraine and Ed Warren meeting as kids and getting into ghost-chasing ala Scooby Doo. (It’s actually a movie about the Crooked Man from Conjuring 2, not to be confused with the Slender Man from Slender Man.)

Mini-Review: You probably won’t have to have seen The Conjuring 2 to know all you need to know for this suitable prequel, which is intrinsically linked to one of the more interesting side-plots from that horror movie. In fact, there’s such a simplicity to the plot and small cast within The Nunthat you probably wouldn’t even have to know that any other movies in the series exist, although obviously, you might get more out of The Conjuring 2 knowing the history of that mysterious nun.

Taking place in 1952, a young nun at a Romanian abbey has committed suicide (as we see in the opening) and Father Burke (Demian Bichir) has been sent to investigate with a young Postulant named Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga). When they arrive, they’re greeted by the still shaken groundskeeper Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet) who tells them that the abbey has been cursed, and over the course of the next few nights, Father Burke and Irene all about that curse which has the abbey’s nuns praying 24/7.

There probably isn’t too much more that needs to be said about the curse that has created the title adversary, except that producer James Wan has found another real deal in director Corin Hardy (The Hallows), sincethe Irish filmmaker knows how to create a horror movie for modern audiences that pays suitable homage to the likes of The Exorcist, as well as Italian giallo greats Bava and Argento.

The Nun might be a little slow for the younger horror fans who love jump scares and seeing stupid teens getting killed. With only three primary characters, there’s only so much killing that can be done, but there’s plenty of scares and many visuals that are quite horrific. As expected, the gore is on point with excellent creature performance by a villain that often looks like early Marilyn Manson.

Fans of The Conjuring movies will definitely like where The Nun ends up, and here’s hoping we’ll eventually see more of the Warrens, as they’re a hard act to top when it comes to supernatural investigators.

Rating: 7.5/10

PEPPERMINT (STXfilms)

The unfortunate attempt at counter-programming that will essentially be targeting the same young men and women into horror is this revenge thriller from Taken director Pierrre Morel that puts former Aliasstar Jennifer Garner back into the action realm.

Garner has been starring in a mixed bag of movies from the rom-com Love Simonearlier this year to the family film Nine Livesand faith-based hit Miracles from Heaven a few years back. She’s basically been bouncing between rom-coms and family films over the years with a couple Oscar-nominated hits (Dallas Buyers Club, Juno) in between, although she’s wisely stayed away from action since the terrible movie Elektra, itself a spin-off from the equally bad Daredevil.

She’s definitely had a few hits as a film actor as well as memorable classics like 13 Going on 30, but Peppermint will be a good test to see if she can attract men as well as women.

Revenge flicks have had a spotty history at the box office, generally doing better (and being done better) in the ‘70s, but there have been lots of attempts to revive it, everything from the Oscar-winning The Revenant to the Taken movies. Probably the best comparison for this one would be the Jan. release Proud Mary starring Taraji P. Henson, which opened with less than $10 million over the MLK weekend ($11.7 million four-day opening). A few weeks later, Bruce Will starred in MGM’s Death Wish remake, which did slightly better with $13 million, grossing $34 million domestically.

Unfortunately, Peppermint isn’t good, and I don’t expect reviews to be that favorable, which may put off anyone who might see this over The Nun (which also is getting mixed reviews).

Opening in over 2,900 theaters, STXfilms has done a decent job promoting this to be a solid second choice for those not wanting to be scared, and that should allow Peppermint to open somewhere between the two movies mentioned with between $11 and 12 million, maybe slightly more, presuming Garner doesn’t have quite the pull of a Mark Wahlberg or Amy Schumer (the stars of STX’s bigger openers this year.)

Mini-Review: Despite the wonky, strange title for this revenge flick, one goes into it hoping that Jennifer Garner’s presence and her return to action might be a way she can revitalize her career. Sorry, but it ain’t happening.

Garner plays Riley North, an L.A. soccer mom who watches her husband and daughter gunned down by the Mexican drug cartel just because they THINK he planned on robbing from kingpin Diego Garcia (Juan Pablo Raba). The three culprits are released due to a corrupt judge and crafty defense lawyer and Riley goes into hiding (after stealing thousands of dollars from the bank where she worked). When she returns, the three killers are found dead… and then others involved in the injustice following her husband and daughter’s murder also end up killed in brutal ways. (We see Riley doing most of the killing, so it’s no surprise.) Also in the mix are a couple detectives played by John Gallagher Jr. and John Ortiz.

I’m not quite sure exactly how or why we’re supposed to think that Riley’s actions are justified, especially with her vendetta against the Mexican mob, killing many hard-working soldiers just to get to Garcia. In fact, Peppermint is chock-full of every single awful Latino cliché to the point where it’s almost offensive, and with so many clichés in play, it’s not hard to figure out where things are going as every beat is easily predicted.

(The title is derived from the fact that Riley’s daughter orders peppermint ice cream on her birthday before being gunned down… the word is never said again after that. Talk about random movie titling!)

It might be deemed sexist to poo-poo the idea of Garner playing a relentless bad-ass, but it’s ridiculous enough that it had an audience in stitches with the ease it takes her to kill everyone who gets in her way. There’s just no sense to the drastic transition Riley goes through, and there’s very little sign of her earlier nature. The trailer hints at all the training Riley goes through to get to the point where she can take down a drug cartel single-handedly, but that’s nowhere to be found in the actual movie. Also nowhere to be found is Garner bringing any empathy to Riley, even when the story inserts a couple lovable homeless kids to bring a little misplaced heart to the movie’s second half.

Who knows? Maybe now that Ben Affleck isn’t playing Batman, Garner can step into the cowl, but either way, this should be a lesson to the critics who trashed Bruce Willis’ Death Wish remake, because that is an absolute masterpiece compared to this garbage. If you want to see a much better take on this sort of female-driven revenge flick, check out the movie called Revenge, which earns that title more than Peppermint earns its title.

Rating: 5/10

GOD BLESS THE BROKEN ROAD (Freestyle Releasing)

Everyone probably knows by now how poorly I do when trying to predict faith-based films, maybe because I just have no connection to the material, but in this case, I’ve actually seen frequent commercials for this one, which is rarely the case. It’s directed by Harold Cronk, the director of God’s Not Dead, God’s Not Dead 2 and next week’s Unbroken: Path to Redemption. Yes, Cronk not only has two movies this year but he has two movies being released in back-to-back weeks with similar names. Despite having a title similar to a Rascal Flatts song, the movie is about a woman whose husband is killed at war but instead of waging war on all of Iraq ala Peppermint’s heroine, she then meets and falls for a race car driver. The movie basically offers lots of things that might appeal to people in the Red States: country music, war heroes, racing and of course, faith. I don’t know if that will make this seem that appealing, but being self-distributed into 1,200 or more theaters, this should be able to bring in around $3 million as counter-programming to the weekend’s genre films with very few other wholesome PG options in theaters.

I’ll be curious to see how much shuffling around happens in the Top 10 especially with last week’s thriller Searching doing much better than expected and Screen Gems having a lot more room to expand it based on positive word-of-mouth. (I hear that it will expand into over 2,000 theaters Friday, which should allow it to bump up into the top 5.) Also, can the late summer hits like The Meg and Mission: Impossible hold up with new and somewhat genre fare like The Nun and Peppermint opening this week?

This week’s Top 10 should look something like this…

1. The Nun (New Line) - $38.2 million N/A 2. Crazy Rich Asians (New Line) - $14 million -37% 3. Peppermint (STXfilms) – $11 million N/A 4. The Meg (Warner Bros.) - $5.6 million -47% 5. Searching (Screen Gems) - $5.2 million -14% 6. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Paramount) - $3.7 million -50% 7. Operation Finale (MGM) - $3.3 million -45% 8. God Bless the Broken Road (Freestyle Releasing) - $3 million N/A 9. Christopher Robin (Disney) - $3 million -43% 10. Alpha (Sony) - $2.5 million -40%

LIMITED RELEASES

Before we get to this week’s specialty releases, I want to give New Yorkers a reminder that Ethan Hawke’s musical biopic BLAZE (Sundance Selects) will open in New York at Lincoln Center and the IFC Center on Friday. You can read more about that here.

This week’s specialty releases are brought to you by the “name game” starting with the docs…

Heather Lenz’s Kusama - Infinity (Magnolia) is a portrait of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, the top-selling female artist in the world, who has alienated many of her peers even while overcoming obstacles like growing up in WWII-torn Japan. It will open at the Film Forum in New York and the Landmark Nuart in L.A. Friday, and you can find out when it will play elsewhere on the Official Site.

Anthony&Alex’s Susanne Bartsch: On Top (The Orchard) is a portrait of NYC nightlife and fashion icon Susanne Bartsch, who helped launch the career of RuPaul (the film’s Exec. Producer) while championing designers Marc Jacobs and Vivienne Westwood and raising millions to fight AIDS. It will be On Demand and Digital, but also will open in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Monica Film Center.

Amy Scott’s Hal (Oscilloscope) is obviously not about the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but is instead about legendary filmmaker Hal Ashby, who is responsible for some of the greatest films of the ‘70s including Harold and Maude (a personal fave), The Last Detail, Coming Home and Being There. The doc includes interviews with Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Jeff Bridges and contemporary filmmakers like Alexander Payne, Judd Apatow and more.It opens on Friday at the IFC Center, who is also doing a Hal Ashby: The Seventies retrospective starting Friday, including a couple double bills with the aforementioned doc. It will open in L.A. at the Landmark Nuart on Sept. 14. (Honestly, not being into art or fashion, this doc is probably more my speed.)

Now playing at the Film Forum and opening in L.A. on Sept. 27 is the historic doc Bisbee ’17 (4th Row Films), the new doc from Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine, Actress), which looks at the town of Bisbee, Arizona, and the events of 1917 when 2,000 striking immigrant miners were rounded up at gunpoint and herdered into cattle cars before being abandoned in the desert. As with his past docs, Green specializes in recreating the events which his films are covering.

Next up, a disparate group of genre films…

Clive Tonge’s Mara (Saban Films) stars Olga Kurylenko as Kate Fuller, a criminal psychologist interviewing the witness of a strangling who the man’s eight-year-old daughter Sophie only identifies with the word “Mara.” Apparently that’s a demon who kills her victims as they sleep… I somehow doubt this could be anywhere near as scary as The Nun but it’s another option on VOD and Digital HD if you can’t find a theater playing it.

Rungano Nyoni’s feature debut I Am Not a Witch (Film Movement) is set in a village in present-day Zambia, and it ALSO involves an 8-year-old girl, this one accused of being a witch and having a choice between punishments. It opens at the Quad Cinema Friday, BAM in Brooklyn as well as other theaters. You can find the full release schedule here.

The South African Western Five Fingers For Marseilles (Uncork’d Entertainment) from director Michael Matthews involves five black cowboys, known as the Five Fingers, who fight against the police oppression of the colonial town in Marseille. When two police are killed, the group breaks up and the one who killed the police becomes the outlaw known as the Lion of Marseilles once he’s released from prison twenty years later, after the battle to end Apartheid in South Africa has been won. This was a huge box office hit in South Africa that played Toronto and Fantastic Fest last year as well as Fantasia in July.

In Xavier Giannoli’s The Apparition (Music Box Films), opening in select theaters Friday, Vincent Lindon plays journalist Jacques, whose reputation as an investigator attracts the attention of the Vatican to investigate an apparition in a small French village where he meets a young girl who claims to have seen the spirit of the Virgin Mary. For those who want something a little more French than this week’s The Nun, this is the movie for you!

The new film from Frontier(s), Hitman and The Divide director Xavier Gens is Cold Skin (Samuel Goldwyn) about a steamship heading towards the Antarctic Circle with a young man on board who is meant to replace the island’s weather observer but who ends up in a lighthouse with a brute played by Ray Stevenson (Thor). It opens in select cities and On Demand.

Bil Kiely’s teen coming-of-age film Age of Summer (Freestyle Digital Media) is about a young boy (played by Percy Haynes White of Gifted) who is put to the test in the co-ed Junior Lifeguard Program in 1986. It’ll be in select theaters and on VOD Friday.

STREAMING

Premiering on PBS this Friday and streaming on Saturday is Glenn Holstan’s doc Wyeth (American Masters), which looks at artist Andrew Wyath through interviews with his sons and never-before-seen archival material from his family’s personal collection.

On Friday, Netflix offers the quirky teen rom-com Sierra Burgess is a Loser starring Shannon Purser, RJ Cyler and Noah Centineo, which is a modern retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac, and Madeleine Gavin’s African doc City of Joy about a group of women who have been through unspeakable horros in war-torn Congo and the center that helps them regain a sense of self-powerment. (If you’re a Netflix subscriber, you can just click on the titles on Friday to watch.)

REPERTORY

Gonna try to make this a more regular feature with so much new interest in older movies, not just from me, but in general. Click on the theater name for more info about the films discussed. (I hope to add other regions like Chicago and Toronto shortly.)

METROGRAPH (NYC):

Continuing the “Anime-versaries,” Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue (GKIDS/Fathom) will get a special 20thanniversary rerelease on Thursday and Saturday across the nation through Fathom while the Metrograph will be playing it for a week.

The Metrograph is also doing a Jack Smith series (sorry, not familiar with his work) and a series of films from 1968 (all celebrating their 50thanniversary!) called Everything Was Now: “1968” Circa 1968, which runs through the weekend and includes everything from George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Deadto The Battle of Algiers to Wild in the Streets and Godard’s La Chinoise.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Godard’s Rolling Stones doc Sympathy for the Devil will screen on Friday night with cinematographer Tony Richmond doing a QnA. Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon will screen on Sunday night with Kubrick right-hand man and Filmworker doc subject Leon Vitali doing a QnA. Lastly, John Landis’ The Blues Brothers will play on Saturday night as part of the theater’s Aretha Franklin tribute with Landis introducing the film.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART (L.A.):

Wes Craven’s classic The Hills Have Eyes will screen at midnight Friday with actor Suze Lanier-Bramlett in person.

AERO (LA):

Continuing its 4th “The French Had a Name For It” series with double features of Fever Rises at El Pao / Such a Pretty Little Beach tonight, Poison Ivy / The Strange Mr. Steve tomorrow night, Maigret Sets a Trap / Symphony for a Massacre Saturday and The Last of the Six / The Assassin Lives at 21 on Sunday. I’ve seen exactly one of those. Any guesses?

MOMA (N.Y.) continues its Jacques Audiard retrospective through Sept. 20, just before the release of the French filmmaker’s first English language film The Sisters Brothers. As a huge Audiard fan, I recommend Read My Lips, The Beat My Heart Skipped and Dheepan, presuming you’ve already seen Une Propheteand Rust and Bone.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC) will play Wilson Yip’sParadox as part of its “Fist and Sword” series on Friday and Gary Marshall’s A League of Their Own Saturday morning as part of its Family Series. You’ll also have a chance to see PT Anderson’s The Master back in 70mm as part of its 70mm series on Friday.

That’s it for this week… next week, THE PREDATOR! Plus White Boy Rick and A Simple Favor

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