July 23, 2021
If you’ve spent more than 15 minutes in a conversation with me, you know that I am a numbers guy. And if you had the (mis)fortune of working with me for any period of time, you know that I have been a finance person for most of my adult life. That’s right – I’m a self-aware spreadsheet nerd. Works out well for my clients who come to me for help with managing their business finances. Generating interesting conversation? Not so much. So, as I embark on this examination of the year so far in movies, I decided to start with the numbers to check in on the state of the movie industry.
Over the last few weeks, the industry headlines have highlighted the strong box-office results for two major Summer releases. The latest entry in The Fast and the Furious franchise, F9: The Fast Saga, earned $70 million in its first weekend, easily the biggest number of the year. Two weeks later, Black Widow, the new Marvel movie from Disney, earned $80 million in its opening weekend. Let’s do a little compare and contrast. Last Summer, there were virtually no new movies released until Labor Day weekend when Christopher Nolan’s Tenet earned a paltry $9 million. Even in a pandemic, its tally was underwhelming compared to expectations, so there was a big concern about the future of movies. It even helped nudge the film’s studio, Warner Bros. Pictures, into its strategy for 2021 where all of their movies have been released in theaters and on HBO Max on the same day. Well, kind of. You see, it’s a little confusing, but we’ll cover that as part of this series. Let’s do one more comparison.
So, this year was naturally much higher than 2020. How about 2019? Two years ago, the number one film around this time was Toy Story 4, which grossed $120 million in its opening weekend (gasp!), with Spider-Man: Far From Home debuting with $92 million two weeks later. So, are movies back to where they were before the pandemic? Of course not, but it’s a hell of a lot better than 2020 (like just about everything in our lives).
But, there’s one more interesting point. Black Widow was simultaneously released on Disney+ for an additional $30 charge. That means that you can watch it from the comfort of your home (as many times as you want) for your monthly subscription fee, plus an extra $30. If you’ve got kids at home, and going to the movies is a bit of a hassle, it might be worth it. Disney reported last week that in addition to the $80 million Black Widow grossed in theaters, they also earned $60 million in Disney+ rentals from home, for a total domestic tally of $140 million. That’s pretty good for a country still reeling from a pandemic, and further highlights consumers’ willingness to rent a movie from home and pay a $30 fee. There’s a reason that Disney quickly reported these results, when streamers are typically cagey about their numbers. Disney is ecstatic and wanted to let the world know, especially since they keep the vast majority of money from the home rentals, but have to share box office receipts with theater chains. That last point explains why the National Association of Theatre Owners issued a strong statement this week condemning Disney’s strategy, indicating that the theater performance would have been a lot stronger, especially after seeing a big drop off in the film’s second week. I’m sure Disney feels otherwise, which is further evidence of the blurring lines of theaters and streamers. Which brings me to a problem I’ve been noticing.
Is Editing Dead?
I’ll be clear at the start of this mini-rant. I don’t mind a long film. In fact, some of my favorite movies have extensive runtimes – Zodiac, There Will Be Blood, and Inglourious Basterds are almost three hours, and The Godfather Part II is almost four hours. But here’s the thing. If you’re going to make a long movie, make it good for God’s sake. If you ever watch interviews with the great directors about some of their classic movies, you’ll hear them talk about scenes that they had to cut either to make the story flow better or to get under the studio’s request for runtime. And there’s the rub. You see, before the era of streaming services, theater chains needed to be concerned with how many times they could show a film each day. The more showings, the more revenue. So, it would make sense that longer movies might crowd out the opportunity to maximize showings per day. For streamers, it doesn’t matter. Your limit is not how many hours your theater is open. Your limit is the number of terabytes on your servers.
Where am I going with this? There have been some movies I’ve watched this year that have ranged from “Good, but should have been better” (In The Heights), to “Pretty good, but should have been shorter” (Cruella), to “Not so good” (Army of the Dead) to “Just damn awful” (The Tomorrow War) that have been pushing 2 ½ hours. It makes me wonder if the art of editing a film to a nice crisp runtime has been lost. I recently wrote about the masterpiece Fargo, which is only 100 minutes. I’m sure the first cut the director looked at was well over two hours, but he did a great job editing it to a manageable length. It’s hard to make something shorter and still good. You know the old quote: “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” More is not necessarily better. Well, unless it’s The Beatles.
I Have Some Good News and Some Bad News: The Beatles: Get Back
One of my more anticipated movies of this year (well, actually it was supposed to be out a year ago) is The Beatles: Get Back, Peter Jackson’s look at the band’s making of Let It Be, the last album they released right after breaking up. As I covered in my Summer Movie Preview here, the film was slated to come out in August. Then a funny thing happened. Disney recently announced that instead of releasing the film in theaters, Jackson’s documentary will now be a six hour series released in three parts over Thanksgiving weekend on Disney+. Apparently after combing through 60 hours of video and 150 hours of audio, Jackson could only get this project down to six hours. OK, this could be bloated and not worth the extra runtime, but when it comes to a master filmmaker like Jackson and the Fab Four, I’m in. It’s been hard enough to determine what’s a movie and what’s television these last few years, we now literally have a movie that was turned into a television series.
Now the bad news. While I’ll take the additional four hours of this movie/series, I would have preferred to be able to see Get Back on the big screen, but that’s the world we live in now. It also stinks that we have to wait an extra three months until it’s released, but if you need a Beatles fix beforehand, I highly recommend the new series McCartney 3,2,1 on Hulu. The former Beatle talks with legendary producer Rick Rubin about his life and his music. Here’s the great part – it’s not a cheesy interview show with a talentless hack asking the questions. Rubin is one of the all-time greats, so he knows how to ask questions, leverage technology to isolate parts of songs on the soundboard during the conversations, and most importantly – he stays out of the way and lets McCartney talk. It’s six 30 minute episodes. Or is that a three hour documentary? Who knows? All I know is that it’s excellent if you are a Beatles fan and I would love to see another three hours of footage. Since we’re in the world of blurred lines between movies and TV, let’s dive into some excellent TV shows that I saw this Summer and highly recommend.
Jean Smart is a National Treasure – Hacks and Mare of Easttown
If you are in my age demographic (translation: old), you may remember Jean Smart as one of the sassy characters in the 1980s sitcom Designing Women. You may have read about her recent renaissance and asked yourself, “Where has she been?” Well, the short answer is that she has been very active in both film and television. She never went away, it’s just that the projects she worked on never took off as major hits that got a lot of publicity. The last few years, however, have shown that she is on a hot streak as an actress. In 2015, she played the matriarch of a crime family in the outstanding second season of the television series Fargo, earning an Emmy nomination. Four years later, she was one of the stars of Watchmen, the comic-book limited series for HBO, earning rave reviews and another Emmy nomination.
This year has proven to be another banner one for Smart as she stars in two excellent series on HBO Max. She is the lead of Hacks, the story of an aging stand-up comic facing the end of her residency in Las Vegas while dealing with the reality that she needs to partner with a new writer to get out of a rut. Newcomer Hannah Einbinder plays the writer and goes toe to toe with Smart’s acerbic attitude in every episode. Hacks is an excellent display of clever writing, comedic timing, and sweet storylines. In Mare of Easttown, the story of a troubled small-town detective (Kate Winslet) investigating the disappearance of a young woman, Smart plays a supporting role as Winslet’s mother, but still shines. Winslet is clearly the star here, but Smart is very effective in her scenes with her, not willing to put up with her daughter’s crap, but being supportive when she really needs her. This series was outstanding and is set up for a showdown with The Queen’s Gambit at the Emmy awards later this year. Smart received nominations for Best Actress in a Comedy (for Hacks) and Best Supporting Actress for a Limited Series (for Mare of Easttown). And oh yeah, she was just cast in Babylon, the next film from Damian Chazelle (director of La La Land), which is a 1920’s Hollywood period piece starring Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, coming in 2022. Smart turns 70 later this year, but with this run she is on, it is a reminder that it’s Jean Smart’s world and we’re just living in it. Hacks and Mare of Easttown are available on HBO Max.
Glad I Revisited This One – For All Mankind
In November 2019, Apple launched its streaming service (creatively titled Apple TV+) with a few pieces of original programming. Unlike its streaming competitors (Netflix, Amazon, HBO Max, Disney+), Apple doesn’t have a film library to lean on when signing up subscribers. And while some of its programming has been really good (like The Morning Show and Ted Lasso), there have been a lot of misses. One of the first series launched by Apple was For All Mankind, a show with a creative premise about what the space race would have looked like had Russia beat the United States to the moon, which is exactly what happens in the pilot episode. We watched the first episode, but couldn’t get into it.
Fast forward two years later, and I started reading how the second season, especially the final episode, was outstanding, and that the creators had continued to push the limits with the creativity of the storylines. So, I decided to go back and give this one a second chance, and I’m here to report that I’m glad I did. The remainder of season one builds on the premise of the United States losing the race to the moon by driving us down an alternate timeline of what our history might have looked like, including a much better representation of women as leaders in NASA and astronauts in space. There are some aspects of history that are the same, but some that have changed, and the creators do a clever job of showing this through newspaper headlines or television broadcasts, but the key facts are subtle and don’t hit you over the head. The special effects are top notch (maybe not blockbuster Marvel movie quality, but still great for a television series), and while a few of the storylines can be a little schmaltzy, the acting is very good, and the combination of tension and drama make for a good series. Both seasons of For All Mankind are available on Apple TV+ now.
Before we wrap part 1, let’s move past the television series and cover a few movies. First, here’s one to avoid…
How to Not Launch a Streaming Service – Infinite
Another streaming service launched a few months ago and it would be understandable if you’ve never heard of it. ViacomCBS, one of the large media conglomerates (and owner of CBS Television and Paramount Pictures) launched its service, Paramount+ with a minimal movie catalogue and a lot of CBS television shows. To be fair, it has added a lot of really good movies recently, but early on it was pretty barren. Paramount decided to take one of its upcoming theatrical releases and launch it on its streaming service, bypassing theaters. That film was Infinite, a futuristic action film with Mark Wahlberg as an ordinary man who discovers that he has lived past lives and has to save the world….or something like that. I have to be honest – the plot was kind of hard to follow and the film was laughably bad. Wahlberg’s acting is so wooden in this movie and had me wondering (when I zoned out trying to follow the plot) why he is a movie star. He has another new movie coming out this week (Joe Bell) that looks like dreadful schmaltz and I can’t figure out why he keeps getting paychecks. I started asking myself if he has ever been good in a movie. Yes, he was good in The Departed, but he was playing a Boston-bred punk, so….not really acting? And he was outstanding in Boogie Nights, the excellent Paul Thomas Anderson film about the adult film industry. Then it hit me. The performers in those films are not really known for their acting….so maybe that’s why he was so good in it? Ok, moving right along… Infinite is available on Paramount+ if you are looking for an evening of unintentional comedy.
About Those Blockbusters – F9: The Fast Saga and Black Widow
Big disclaimer. I was never a consumer of the Fast and Furious saga, but decided to watch the movies in the series over the last few months, so I could have the backstory before seeing the latest release. These movies are what they are – if you know going in that you are not about to watch great cinema or a classic Hollywood movie, then they are just fine. I found the fifth, sixth and seventh films the best, as the films moved from stories about street racers to films with more of a heist theme. The seventh film, in particular, was well done, as they continued to ratchet up the action set pieces and stunts, all while paying tribute to Paul Walker, who was one of the original stars of the franchise and tragically died while the film was being made. The new one is fine. It’s not great. It’s not horrendous. It’s fine. You get some great stunts, ridiculous action sequences, some funny moments, some funnier unintentional comedy, and a satisfying ending. Yes, the acting is pretty bad at times (especially Vin Diesel, but unlike Wahlberg, I get the sense Diesel is in on the joke), but these movies are like a bowl of ice cream. You know it’s bad for you, but it still tastes good. F9: The Fast Saga is now playing in theaters.
Another disclaimer. I’ve never been a Marvel fan. Not that I have anything against superhero films – I’ve seen some of the DC Comics films, I just never got into Marvel and always felt I was too far behind to catch up. That being said, when I saw the trailer for Black Widow and read that it was somewhat of an origin story (meaning I didn’t need to know a lot about the Marvel universe to enjoy it), I decided to give it a shot. I have to say that I found it quite enjoyable. Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh are excellent as the titular character and her younger sister. The plot has your typical superhero film trope – our main character is trying to stop a villain plotting to do evil in the world – but there is also a great dynamic of the movie with the parents of our main characters, played by David Harbour and Rachel Weisz. The complicated past of this “family” leads to some very funny moments, as well as some genuine emotion among the four characters. I can’t say how this compares to other films in the Marvel canon, but I have to say that this was an enjoyable way to spend time in a theater. Black Widow is now playing in theaters and is available on Disney+ with Premier Access.
That’s it for this week. I’ll be back for part two of my mid-year movie report next week with some more recommendations of good releases from the first half of this year (and a few to avoid), as well as some help navigating the challenging world of figuring out where movies are available to watch. Thanks for reading and if you’d like to be notified of future posts, you can subscribe here.