Biopic of Obamas' first date and Ellen Page baby swap drama among Sundance competition titles

Following the announcement of its Midnight horror-themed section, the Sundance film festival has unveiled the lineup for its competitions, in both dramatic and documentary formats, as well as its non-competitive Next selection, of promising experimental work. Some 65 films have got the nod from the programmers of the influential festival, which is designed to showcase independent and unconventional film-making.

The US dramatic competition has settled on 16 films, with the most attention-grabbing projects including The Birth of a Nation, an ironically titled account of the early-19th century slave rebellion led by Nat Turner; Goat, a fraternity-pledge drama featuring musician Nick Jonas; and Southside With You, a chronicle of Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date in 1980s Chicago. Familiar Sundance faces will be on show in other films: Ellen Page plays the lead in Tallulah, about a woman who passes off another’s child as her own; Jena Malone features in Lovesong, from For Ellen director So Yong Kim; and Rebecca Hall stars in Christine, about the TV reporter Christine Chubbuck, who killed herself on air in 1974.

Chubbuck is also the subject of a film in the US documentary strand: Kate Plays Christine, directed by Robert Greene, in which actor Kate Lynn Sheil prepares to take on a role as Chubbuck. Other major names in the 16 films in this strand include Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe (The Hamster Factor) with The Bad Kids, a study of an unconventional school in the Mojave desert; Josh “Gasland” Fox with How to Let Go of the World, an examination of the effects of climate change, and Jeff Feuerzeig (The Devil and Daniel Johnston) who returns with a profile of mystery author JT LeRoy.

The World sections will feature 12 films each, with the Ireland-based director Rebecca Daly’s Mammal selected for the dramatic competition, alongside India’s Brahman Naman (about a quiz team from Bangalore university) and Israel’s Sand Storm, focusing on a Bedouin mother and daughter whose lives are upended when another wife arrives.

Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi leads the World documentary competition with A Flag Without a Country, chronicling the lives of Kurds attempting to survive harsh conditions. Also selected is The Lovers and the Despot, a UK-produced account of film director Shin Sang-ok and his movie star ex-wife Choi Eun-hee, who were kidnapped by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il; Plaza de la Soledad, directed by photojournalist Maya Goded, about Mexico City’s long-established prostitute community, and Sky Ladder, from British director Kevin Macdonald, a profile of celebrated Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang.

The Next programme, designed to showcase innovative and “forward-thinking” films, has pulled together 10 selections, all US-produced. These include First Girl I Loved, about a girl-girl-boy love triangle at high school; Dark Night, a study of a cinema shooting in suburban America; and The Fits, about a mysterious fainting attack that affects a midwest dance team.

• The Sundance film festival runs from 21-31 January in Park City, Utah.

Taxi Tehran review – a joyous ride

Jafar Panahi is the Iranian film-maker and democracy campaigner facing official harassment with unique wit, grace and humanity – all apparent in his new movie Taxi Tehran, whose quietly defiant good humour and charm will grow on you, as they grew on me when I first saw it in Berlin earlier this year. It is engaging and disarming: a freewheeling semi-improv piece of guerrilla film-making, cleverly staged and choreographed, with the discursive, digressive qualities of an essay film.

In 2010, following his protests against President Ahmadinejad’s democratic legitimacy, Panahi was sentenced to six years’ house arrest on the spurious charge of crimes against the state, together with a 20-year ban on film-making and leaving the country. Yet he has continued to work, shooting films covertly on smartphones and camcorders, smuggling them out of the country as digital files, technically avoiding the ban by having his direction credited to other people, or – as with this one – no credits at all.

Once these complex and subtle films appear abroad, Panahi leaves it to Iranian officialdom to react or not as it wishes, and as far as can be judged, the authorities do not want to appear any more foolish and ham-fisted than they do now. At any rate, the appearance of each of Panahi’s films is now almost a kind of procedural miracle, not seen since Yilmaz Güney directed the 1982 Palme d’Or-winner Yol from prison.

Panahi appears as himself: reduced to driving a cab. The great film director is now a humble taxi driver picking people up on the streets of Tehran, dropping them off, amiably allowing customers to share a ride, sheepishly admitting he doesn’t know where anything is, and never asking for money. If Uber had a special app for hailing free rides from cineastes … well, that would be him. He’s a fictional variant of himself, shooting a zany ridealong selfie on his dashboard-mounted videocam. Or maybe he’s Iran’s equivalent of Larry David, shruggingly accepting his own woes and his own tense celebrity and spinning it all into his creative work.

He has a bizarre mix of clientele. A couple of women get in with some live goldfish in a bowl, leading to predictable disaster when Jafar hits the brakes too hard and winds up having to replenish the bowl with water he would normally use for the radiator. He takes a gravely injured, blood-spattered man and his keening wife to hospital. There is an aggressive young guy who starts arguing with a fellow passenger about whether hanging thieves is a good deterrent.

Panahi allows that argument to echo with a conversation he has later with a friend who has been attacked in his shop, apparently for standing up for a man and woman caught stealing money. In this way, the questions of crime and punishment are coolly, indirectly raised.

Panahi has to pick his niece up from school. She is mortified that her supposedly prestigious film-director uncle only has this nasty little car. She is studying film, and the precocious tyke starts talking about what’s “distributable” and tells him how she has been told to avoid “sordid realism”. Panahi smiles enigmatically: he knows how much sordid realism to avoid. Another young guy studying film asks him about existing works and Panahi says: “Those films are already made; those books are already written. You have to look elsewhere…”

Perhaps an unemployed director is like a taxi driver, cruising the streets, looking to pick up ideas, but benignly: an anti-Travis Bickle, and perhaps being under house-arrest feels like being a driver unable to leave his cab. Certainly, shooting a film inside a car is discreet, and good for evading bans. Abbas Kiarostami has also used the car as a symbol of imprisonment, aimlessness and loneliness in films such as Ten (2002) and Taste of Cherry (1997).

Taxi Tehran comes to two separate crunches. Panahi picks up a friend who is a lawyer, disbarred and prevented, like Panahi, from practising her trade. They discuss the case of Ghoncheh Ghavami, the Iranian woman jailed for trying to attend a men’s volleyball match. Panahi maintains a smilingly fatalistic attitude to it all. Later, Panahi’s feisty niece starts making a short film for her school project; she accidentally films a boy taking money that isn’t his and dramatically intervenes in the situation. Panahi is maybe playfully showing the authorities that film-making is a force for good.

Taxi Tehran is the work of a unique director – and survivor.

Sicario review – Emily Blunt at the sharp end in war on drugs

When I saw Denis Villeneuve’s stomach-turningly gruesome narco thriller Sicario at Cannes this year, it struck me he had pinched Michael Mann’s style – and pinched his crown, too, like it or not. Perhaps it’s impossible to see a convoy of black SUVs speeding across an urban landscape in a film without thinking of Mann, but Villeneuve certainly carries off the borrowing with style.

The resemblance struck me again this week watching this film a second time, along with the thought that Villeneuve was probably taking notes during Kathryn Bigelow’s Bin Laden thriller Zero Dark Thirty – particularly for those extended special-ops attack scenes filmed in night vision, as if on an alien planet. He maybe even did the same thing with the Coens’ No Country for Old Men, though that is maybe because of the presence of Josh Brolin, and the fact that it is also shot by cinematographer Roger Deakins.

The title is cartel slang for “assassin” or “hitman”, evidently derived from the first-century Sicarii zealots of Judea, though the word is never spoken out loud in the script; screenwriter Taylor Sheridan defers the revelation of how it really applies here to the end of drama, and this disclosure ties up its attendant issues of justice versus revenge, idealism versus cynicism and how American justice is to be applied beyond US borders without anything as quaint as a formal declaration of war.

Emily Blunt plays Kate, a young FBI agent specialising in the relatively uncontentious field of kidnap-victim recovery. She finds herself co-opted into the US Homeland Security war on drugs: a new war on terror whose strategies have been repurposed and relegitimised. After a truly horrendous experience uncovering a cartel-owned safe house full of corpses in Arizona, Kate is asked if she wants to go after the guys ultimately responsible. She agrees, and admits deeply disturbing new men into her life.


Her boss for this mission will be swaggeringly irresponsible and studiedly obnoxious special agent Matt Graver, played by Brolin. There is also a second man, who appears to be Matt’s boss, though he is a civilian consultant from Colombia: Alejandro, played by Benicio Del Toro, courteous and even fatherly towards Kate, solicitous for her well-being, quietly traumatised by some event in his own past. When Kate asks Alejandro what’s going on, he coolly replies: “You’re asking me how a watch works. For now, let’s just keep an eye on the time.”

The plan seems to be to “dramatically overreact” to the safe house situation, in Matt’s words, by arresting a known cartel member with maximum publicity, in order to provoke the drug moguls into high-tailing it back to Mexico and thus revealing who the real players are and making valuable intel gains for arrests. Straight-arrow Kate is fine with all this, until she suspects that Matt and Alejandro are CIA, and what they are actually planning is a deniable multiple-murder attack raid over the border into Mexico itself, and also suspects that these acts of violence against the Mexican enemy are theatrical displays conducted partly to gain trust with the home team and see how operatives are going to bear up under fire. And there is a second level of duplicity and bad faith behind even this, relating to Alejandro’s background.

The tenor and texture of the movie are established with that truly horrible scene at the very beginning where the FBI storm the house. It has its own sheen of horror, aided by the groaning orchestral chords in the musical score from composer Jóhann Jóhannson. The scene lays down a marker for the film’s status as something like a forensic thriller and in its way a procedural thriller, in which the covert procedure itself is the crime.

When Blunt first comes on in all the tough-guy hard-body gear, it is a bit implausible. But she brazens out any possible absurdity with great acting focus and front. She delivers a real star turn, mixing confidence, bewilderment and vulnerability: all the more difficult being up against Brolin and Del Toro, who themselves give huge performances with bells and whistles hooting and clanging.

For me, Sicario is a step forward for Villeneuve: it is less discursive, less reflective than movies such as Prisoners (2013) and Incendies (2010), although I always thought the cerebral content of these pictures was a little supercilious. This is a real white-knuckle thriller, with screeching feedback notes of fear and paranoia, which plays out in a very satisfying atmosphere of pure nihilist ruthlessness.

A Syrian Love Story review – a searing insight into a marriage under fire

A family at war … A Syrian Love Story

Sean McAllister’s documentary about a family of Syrian refugees in Europe would be compelling at any time. Now it is unmissable. This is about love, but it could as well be called A Syrian Rage Story or A Syrian Despair Story. It is the tragic portrait of a disintegrating marriage; the story of two people whose love has been hammered by fate, history and each other.

These are not refugees as we are encouraged to understand them by the nightly news: nameless poor people to whom the prosperous west can respond with pity or guilt. These refugees don’t want to be passive recipients of compassion, but active participants in their own destiny. Above all, they are angry. Their anger floods the screen.

McAllister begins his story in 2009, when Syria was being marketed to westerners as a glamorous, cosmopolitan new tourist destination with ancient culture and monuments as important as anything in Greece and Turkey. And so McAllister begins his movie with a brutal twist of irony, a subliminal flash-forward to a later reality in which our certainties about the Arab spring have been overtaken by the existence of Islamic State. In the capital Damascus, McAllister meets Amer Douad, a Palestinian activist from thea coastal town of Tartus who has a heart-rending story to tell. While in prison, Amer fell in love with a fellow inmate, Ragdha Hassan, a beautiful leftwing Syrian activist against the Assad regime. Now they have three children: Shadi, Kaka and Bob, but she is back in prison and Amer must raise them on his own. McAllister is present with his camera as day by day, week by week, Amer and the children lavish their love on the idea of an absent wife and mother. When Ragdha is finally freed, their joy is overwhelming.

Ragdha Hassan in A Syrian Love Story

But then McAllister is briefly imprisoned by the regime; his friendship makes Amer and Ragdha’s position in Syria untenable. They move, first to the Palestinian enclave of Yarmouk camp, outside Damascus, then to Lebanon, and finally to Paris, having been granted refugee status by the French government. But their marriage is coming apart and McAllister records its breakdown from 2009 to the present.

Raghda is suffering from post-traumatic stress at her brutal jail treatment; she is pierced with guilt at having effectively deserted her comrades’ struggle against Assad, and at becoming an irrelevance herself, washed up on a far shore away from a battle she considers crucial to her identity. Ragdha becomes filled with resentment and depression, and McAllister’s camera captures the way her face, once alight with beauty and fun, becomes clouded and pained. Amer’s face, too, becomes older: hunted, almost furtive, a man with secrets. The film allows us to consider the awful thought that the couple were happiest apart, when they had only the tragically exalted idea of each other. Love depended on prison. Now he accuses her of being impossible to live with, of being arrogant and simply nettled at her own loss of status. Amer’s love curdles into machismo as he demands Ragdha attend to the duties of motherhood. There are walkouts from the family home, suicide attempts and accusations of infidelity.

Incredibly, McAllister was there for a great deal of this. The scenes look real enough. It takes its toll on the children, although their son Kaka emerges as exceptionally perceptive and smart. As a little boy in Syria, he is asked by McAllister about the Assad tyranny: “Does it make you want to leave? Live somewhere else?” He replies: “No, fight.” His views as a teenager in Paris are very different. As for Amer, he begins by speaking to McAllister about Ragdha like this: “She is a strong woman; I am a very weak man.”

Perhaps he has foretold their destiny. But the heartwrenching thing is that her strength and his weakness – as he perceives it – might not have been a problem, had they been able to stay in Syria. Who can tell? It could have been the agony of Syria that destroyed their relationship, or it might have fallen apart in any case. McAllister and his camera might have accelerated the breakdown, though it is just as likely he provided valuable therapy. Even at the end, Amer and Ragdha clearly have feelings for each other. This is love among the ruins.

Eddie Redmayne in first trailer for transgender biopic The Danish Gir

Could Eddie Redmayne win his second Oscar in a row? ... the first trailer for The Danish Girl has landed. Photograph: PR

After winning the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, Eddie Redmayne is hitting the awards circuit again for his role in The Danish Girl.

The trailer for the drama, directed by The King’s Speech’s Tom Hooper, has just arrived and it gives us a closer look at the fact-based tale. Redmayne stars as Einar Wegener, one of the first recipients of sexual reassignment surgery, who became Lili Elbe.

The film chronicles her journey in the 1920s and her role in a love triangle with her illustrator wife and childhood friend, played by Alicia Vikander and Matthias Schoenaerts. Ben Whishaw and Amber Heard also star.

It’s a film that’s almost come to the screen on numerous occasions but always with two female leads (Charlize Theron was once linked to the role). Transgender activists have criticised the choice of Redmayne as they believe it should have been given to someone who has undergone the transition themselves. But director Hooper has defended his decision.

“Eddie was really the person I wanted to make the film with, and I was very passionate about that,” Hooper said to Screen Daily. “I was a great believer in him as an actor. I think also there’s a certain gender fluidity that I sensed in him, that I found intriguing and it led me to think he might be a really interesting person to cast in this role.

“I felt that there was something in him that was drawn to the feminine,” he added. “That was something that I felt he might be interested to explore further.”

The Danish Girl is set to have its world premiere at the Venice film festival on Saturday, 5 September, and will hit US cinemas on 27 November and UK cinemas on 1 January.

American Ultra review: bong ho action comedy puts Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart in a stupor

Freakin’ out... Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart in American Ultra Photograph: Alan Markfield/AP

Summer 2015: the year half-cocked, medium-budget spins on The Bourne Identity made their way to the American theaters. First there was Self/Less, in which an aging Donald Trump-ish developer transfers his consciousness into a Ryan Reynolds special forces fighter, and now there’s American Ultra.

Jesse Eisenberg plays Mike Howell, a convenience store clerk in Nowheresville, West Virginia, whose primary activities include tokin’ weed, being a bit of an anxious space-case and not-deserving his saintly girlfriend, Phoebe (Kristen Stewart). One day bad men come to eliminate Mike, but before they do a strange woman comes and “activates” him with a subliminal phrase. Instinctually, he knows how to turn a spoon into a killbot weapon. The very same one with which he was planning to slurp down some Ramen. Oh, man, I’m freakin’ out!

Mike is, naturally, a former CIA asset that has been deprogrammed, had his memory wiped and is now allowed to live a quiet life out in coal country. But sniveling toad Adrian Yates (Topher Grace, the best thing in this movie, and that’s a sentence I’ve never said before) is a CIA up-and-comer that wants to wipe the slate clean of these lingering agents. He sends in some strong men and, well, that’s when the bit with the spoon happens. There are escalations (Connie Britton represents the only one in Langley, Virginia with a conscience) and reveals (turns out K-Stew isn’t sticking with Mike just because she likes the stench of bongwater). The action sequences build in size, but it is a surprisingly tiresome affair.


Another hit men ... John Leguizamo and Jesse Eisenberg in American Ultra Photograph: Alan Markfield/AP

Part of Mike’s programming is that he’ll have a panic attack if he leaves town, so we in the audience are condemned to this one boring location along with him. A big set piece includes Mike and Phoebe racing off to their friend, a drug dealer played by John Leguizamo. No one quite phones in an annoying performance quite like Leguizamo. Not that he’s always terrible (see Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam for a good turn) but when he’s doing his cussin’, wigged-out schtick in supporting roles he’ll make you pray for a projector malfunction. (A loop of the character Freek from the 2009 Neveldine/Taylor dud Gamer is what would be waiting for me in Room 101).

There’s chasing, fighting, hiding, urgent telephone calls and the introduction of what screenwriting hacks these days call a “big bad.” It’s a fellow mindscaped agent called Laugher, unleashed to take down our cornered hero all the while cackling like The Joker. This sort of thing is typical of film-makers who have a surface understanding of what they eventually want on the screen, but no clue how to get there. Rather than trusting an actor (in this case Walton Goggins) to craft a memorable character, he’s burdened with a preposterous, comic book-like gimmick. (The rest of the movie, as silly as it is, is ultimately played as if it is the real world.) It’s a chump move indicative of the dry script by writer Max Landis (Chronicle) given absolutely zero spark by director Nima Nourizadeh (Project X).

Eisenberg and Stewart in American Ultra Photograph: Alan Markfield/AP

There are, however, a few decent moments in American Ultra. It’s nicely edited, which sounds like a backhanded compliment, but the sequences of convenience store tedium, flash-floods of memory and one big slo-mo shoot ‘em up showdown comes together in slick and engaging ways. (There are two credited editors. Bill Pankow has worked on a number of Brian De Palma’s better movies, and Andrew Marcus worked with Merchant-Ivory Films. These unlikely connections may at least secure American Ultra as an expert level entry in some extreme bar trivia some day.)

Unfortunately both Eisenberg and Stewart, both frequently brilliant, are on unsure footing here. The movie simply doesn’t know if it wants to be Jason Bourne or Cheech and Chong. A few comic throwaways work (few mutter quite like Eisenberg) but the thriller side of the picture is airless, as is the love story. There’s also a coda completely at odds with the thesis of the film, which I will not spoil, but leads me to wonder why we’re suddenly supposed to cheer for an organization we’ve been rooting against the whole time. Ultimately, American Ultra proves that it’s often best to let sleeping agents lie.

Telugu epic Baahubali smashes box-office record in Bollywood takedown

Overwhelming debut … Baahubali Photograph: PR

The winner

Spin-offs have been a desperate last throw of the dice for animation franchises: Puss-in-Boots, Planes and, most recently, Penguins of Madagascar were box-office low points for, respectively, the Shrek, Cars and Madagascar series. That won’t be an issue for Universal’s irrepressible Minions, whose current $395.7m (£235m) worldwide gross already puts it within spitting distance of parent film Despicable Me’s $543.1m total, after just four weekends. Minions finally opened in the US this frame, with $115.2m comfortably surpassing the recent $90.4m for Pixar’s Inside Out (which cost twice as much) and snatching the second highest animation debut of all time (behind Shrek the Third’s $121.6m).

As noted here a fortnight ago, the dungareed yellow critters have a far higher degree of brand awareness than Puss-in-Boots and Madagascar’s Penguins, which is why talk of $1bn for this spin-off ain’t idle. (That would make it the third such 10-digiter for an on-fire Universal in 2015, after Furious 7 and Jurassic World.) The only question mark is whether the manic and one-dimensional Minions will hold as well through the summer as the two Despicables, which also opened in July but whose soft-centred sentiment gave them broader-than-expected appeal. But the huge start promises a US take in the order of a minimum $300m; on the current 70.9% international split, that points to $1bn overall and possibly more, with many territories yet to kick off.

Franchises tend to proportionally gross more overseas with each instalment, especially with the US gross usually falling off, but if Minions can combine that trend with improved takings across the board, it’ll confirm Despicable Me’s position as the dominant animation franchise of the 2010s. This week’s debuts suggest it’s happening, with figures from Mexico ($19.7m) and Russia ($14.3m) that are 32% and 17% up respectively on Despicable Me 2. So far it’s opened at No 1 in every single country, apart from Australia, where it clashed with Jurassic Park, and India, where local hero Baahubali (see below) was too strong. If it hangs in as well as Despicable Me 2 and beats that film’s $970.8m, it’ll be interesting to see the impact on Despicable Me 3 in 2017. The shift in focus back towards glum evil mastermind Gru could be an anticlimax after the babbling yellow takeover.

Telugu champion

It’s been a slow year financially for Indian cinema, with box-office watchers waiting until late May for romcom sequel Tanu Weds Manu Returns to finally break the 100-crore mark ($15.7m) for local films. Unexpectedly, it’s the Telugu industry – generally a notch down on takings from Bollywood – that has provided the first true barnstormer of 2015, in the shape of SS Rajamouli’s epic saga of a deposed king, Baahubali. Being touted as the most expensive Indian film ever certainly didn’t dampen its prospects (though the $40m budget was technically split over two parts), and early reports suggest it has monstered the 108-crore ($17m) debut weekend record set last Diwali by Shah Rukh Khan’s Happy New Year.

Friday and Saturday saw takings for Baahubali (also filmed in Tamil, and dubbed into Hindi and Malayalam) in the order of 135 crore, and a Hindustan Times piece has pegged the whole weekend at 165 crore ($26m). Worldwide figures aren’t yet available, but it took $3m in the US, within a whisker of the $3.5m for Aamir Khan’s religious satire PK, the highest-grossing Indian film worldwide. So Baahubali should have placed in the vicinity of sixth or seventh on the global chart, minimum. Most heartening is that Rajamouli’s film was warmly reviewed: the Guardian called it “a near-perfect balance between physicality and poetics”, and Times of India said “the larger-than-life execution matches [Rajamouli’s] grandiose vision”. So, in contrast to the likes of Happy New Year – which the old Bollywood razzle-dazzle routine couldn’t prevent from dropping off embarrassingly – Baahubali has a shot at setting a box-office record for the ages. Or at least until part two, next year.

In a quiet week on the new global-release front, a pause to consider the after-effects of one of the year’s most startling performances. Everyone seemed in agreement that Charlize Theron’s embattled Furiosa, not Tom Hardy’s haunted Max, was the true star of Fury Road. With its theatrical run more or less done now – $359.5m worldwide, making the $150m film a modest success – what impact will it have on her career? This intense performer has anchored plenty of substantial material (North Country, The Burning Plain, Young Adult), and in the wake of her 2004 Oscar win for Monster, found herself in bankable blockbuster territory once before with sci-fi thriller Aeon Flux. That, making $52m on a $62m budget, didn’t work out – and is perhaps why Warner Bros thought she wasn’t a surefire marketing element for Fury Road, whose feminist aspect went completely uncommunicated prior to the first reviews. But Theron deserves credit for spurring the fourth Mad Max film to the frenzied pitch that made it such a treat. So, equally, she deserves a mainstream project that not only exploits her natural screen authority, but is set up as a true test of her bankability – and is promoted accordingly. Fury Road – which might have taken more if it had explicitly targeted female filmgoers – surely has earned Theron the benefit of any doubt. At 39, she may not get many more chances.

Beyond Hollywood

Other than Korean north-south thriller NLL: Battle of Yeonpyeong, holding firm in its third week just outside the global top 10, it was all Chinese traffic taking advantage of the country’s Hollywood blackout period. In a big week for the present roaring trade in lightweight, gooey, coming-of-age hankie-dabbers, newcomer Forever Young edged out the fourth entry in the prolific Tiny Times franchise, about four Shanghai BFFs, $38.1m to $36m. The former is the feature-length debut of TV host He Jiong, spinning out a hit song he recorded a few years ago into a tale of performing-school love and woes. The Sydney Morning Herald review intriguingly suggests that, were it not for the censor board, the film might be more inclined to delve further into its lingering homoerotic undertone. In 10th place on the global chart, with $10m, was Monkey King: Hero Is Back, a 3D animated take on the apparently indefatigable local literary linchpin last seen in Donnie Yen’s box office-conquering version early last year. Down in 12th place, Chen Kaige’s neo-wuxia Monk Comes Down the Mountain, covered in last week’s column, dropped a pretty precipitous 78% – possibly hounded out by the flashier contemporary offerings.

The future

Marvel closes Phase 2 of operations, hoping to repeat last summer’s out-of-leftfield Guardians of the Galaxy triumph with the similarly goofy Ant-Man, and shrinking Paul Rudd in order to elevate him to blockbuster leading-man status – surely the first such inverted tack on star-making since Rick Moranis and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids? This new, potentially tender shoot of the Marvel meta-franchise, opening day-and-date in 50 territories, has tough competition from Minions. A box-office return at the lower end of the spectrum for the company (somewhere between the $65.7m for Thor and $94.3m for Guardians) looks more likely for its US debut. Pixels, Sony’s hipster-friendly blockbuster in which Earth is under attack from a blocky Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and other 80s arcade denizens, pops a first coin in the slot in South Korea, before a 40-something-country rollout the following frame. And Bollywood stumps up some proper competition for Baahubali in the shape of Salman Khan’s latest, Bajrangi Bhaijaan, on release to capitalise on the Muslim superstar and Alan Cumming lookalike’s fan base as Ramadan winds up. With Khan’s appeal against a five-year-sentence for running over a homeless man still hanging over him, the new film’s plot – a magnanimous Indian fella helps a stranded, mute Pakistani woman get back over the border – has the awkward ring of a timely public-relations overture.

Top 10 global box office, 10-12 July

1. Minions, $239.5m from 57 territories. $395.7m cum – 70.9% international; 29.1% US
2. Terminator Genisys, $61m from 61 territories. $224.8m cum – 69.4% int; 30.6% US
3. Jurassic World, $39.8m from 66 territories. $1.46bn cum – 59.7% int; 40.3% US
4. (New) Forever Young, $38.1m from 4 territories. $38.6 cum – 99.9% int; 0.1% US
5. Inside Out, $36.2m from 45 territories. $435.4m cum – 34.9% int; 65.1% US
6. (New) Tiny Times 4.0, $36m from 1 territory. $54m cum – 100% int
7. Magic Mike XXL, $19.9m from 31 territories. $68.9m cum – 29.7% int; 70.3% US
8. Ted 2, $18m from 36 territories. $124.8m cum – 42.6% int; 57.4% US
9. (New) Gallows, $11.2m from 14 territories – 10.7% int; 89.3% US
10. (New) Monkey King: Hero Is Back, $10m from 1 territory. $11.5m cum – 100% int

• Thanks to Rentrak. This week’s figures are based on estimates; all historical figures unadjusted, unless otherwise stated.

The best films of 2015 so far – Australia

Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts in While We’re Young

January

The Imitation Game
Director: Morten Tyldum
Running time: 114 minutes
Certificate: M
Oscar-winning drama that tells the true story of Alan Turing whose code-breaking helped to win the second world war while homophobic laws hastened his tragic downfall.

Birdman
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Running time: 119 minutes
Certificate: MA 15+
One-shot, double-Oscar-winning comedy starring Michael Keaton as an actor who tries to put his movie superhero past behind him by classying it up on Broadway.

Paper Planes
Director: Robert Connolly
Running time: 96 minutes
Certificate: G
Warmly-received look into the competitive world of paper plane throwing with a big homegrown heart and driven by Sam Worthington and a charming young cast.

American Sniper
Director: Clint Eastwood
Running time: 134 minutes
Certificate: MA 15+
Clint Eastwood’s most commercially successful film to date stars Bradley Cooper as US Navy SEAL Chris Kyle who became one of the most lethal snipers in American history.

The Theory of Everything
Director: James Marsh
Running time: 123 minutes
Certificate: G
In an Oscar-winning turn, Eddie Redmayne plays physicist Stephen Hawking, whose relationship with wife (Felicity Jones) is tested by his motor neurone disease.

Foxcatcher
Director: Bennett Miller
Running time: 134 minutes
Certificate: M
Brooding true story of eccentric billionaire John du Pont, who invited a down-on-his-luck wrestler (Channing Tatum) to train at this estate, with tragic results.

February

Kingsman: The Secret Service
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Running time: 129 minutes
Certificate: MA 15+
This box office comic book adaptation stars Colin Firth as an agent who mentors a rufty-tufty youth training to become a super-spy.
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The Interview
Director: Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg
Running time: 112 minutes
Certificate: MA 15+
Controversial comedy with James Franco and Seth Rogen as a TV host and producer who are recruited to assassinate Kim Jong-un during an interview.

Selma
Director: Ava DuVernay
Running time: 128 minutes
Certificate: M
The story of Martin Luther King’s struggle to get African-American people the right to vote without fear of discrimination by focusing on a march in Alabama.

A Most Violent Year
Director: JC Chandor
Running time: 125 minutes
Certificate: MA 15+
A crime drama starring Oscar Isaac as a business-owner trying to keep on the right side of law, despite mounting pressure from all around him.

March

Inherent Vice
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Running time: 149 minutes
Certificate: MA 15+
Woozy, polarising adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s cult novel, with Joaquin Phoenix as a perma-stoned PI investigating the disappearance of an ex.

Home
Director: Tim Johnson
Running time: 96 minutes
Certificate: PG
Animated comedy with Rihanna voicing a young girl who befriends an alien that helps her to find her mother after the human population is relocated.

Big Eyes
Director: Tim Burton
Running time: 106 minutes
Certificate: M
The true story of an artist, played by Amy Adams, who is convinced by a new boyfriend to put his name on her paintings to achieve more success in 60s California.

Shaun the Sheep the Movie
Director: Mark Burton & Richard Goleszowski
Running time: 85 minutes
Certificate: G
In the Aardman creation’s first big screen outing, this kids adventure follows Shaun as he heads to the big city with his flock to save the farmer.

Leviathan
Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev
Running time: 142 minutes
Certificate: M
Nominated for best foreign language film at the Oscars, this Russian drama follows a man as he tried to maintain control of his property as the authorities try to break him.

April

Furious 7
Director: James Wan
Running time: 140 minutes
Certificate: M
Already one of the five most successful films of all time at the worldwide box office, this action-packed sequel brings back Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, in his final role, as they are pitted against a revenge-seeking Kurt Russell.

X+Y
Director: Morgan Matthews
Running time: 111 minutes
Certificate: M
A young maths prodigy must overcome is social anxiety when he lands a spot on the British squad at the International Mathematics Olympiad.

While We’re Young
Director: Noah Baumbach
Running time: 97 minutes
Certificate: M
Hipster satire starring Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts as a couple stuck in a rut who befriend a younger couple, played by Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried, causing them to reassess their outlook on life.

Avengers: Age of Ultron
Director: Joss Whedon
Running time: 141 minutes
Certificate: M
Smash hit Marvel sequel which brings back the supervillain-fighting band of heroes who are faced with a new enemy, played by James Spader via motion capture, intent on destruction.

May

Wild Tales
Director: Damián Szifron
Running time: 122 minutes
Certificate: MA 15+
A collection of darkly funny tales from Argentina, revolving around themes of anger and revenge that was nominated for the best foreign language film Oscar.

Mad Max: Fury Road
Director: George Miller
Running time: 120 minutes
Certificate: MA 15+
Long-awaited reboot of the dusty apocalyptic action saga with Tom Hardy taking on the lead role, with support from a one-armed Charlize Theron.

Ex Machina
Director: Alex Garland
Running time: 110 minutes
Certificate: MA 15+
A young computer programmer is chosen to spend time with his company’s reclusive CEO, played by Oscar Isaac, who reveals a humanoid robot with her own agenda.

Clouds of Sils Maria
Director: Oliver Assayas
Running time: 125 minutes
Certificate: MA 15+
Juliette Binoche plays an actress who is forced to examine her life when she takes on a role in a play that she starred in 20 years before.

Jurassic World record: dinosaur reboot scores monstrous $511.8m on debut

Dinosaur blockbuster Jurassic World made Hollywood history this weekend after rampaging to a monstrous $511.8m worldwide.
The gargantuan total, the first time a movie has ever opened north of $500m, was helped by a gigantic $204.6m US total and huge $100.8m Chinese bow, as well as $29.6m in the UK. The previous world record opening was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2’s $483.2m bow in 2011.
Colin Trevorrow’s film stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard as employees on a fully operational dinosaur park who discover its newest creation, an enormous genetically modified carnivore named Indominus Rex, has escaped from captivity. It is the fourth film in the Steven Spielberg-created action adventure saga, following 1993’s Jurassic Park, 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park and 2001’s Jurassic Park III.

In the wake of the $150m film’s staggering financial success, it has emerged that Pratt is signed on to shoot a number of sequels, though Safety Not Guaranteed director Trevorrow is not expected to return. “We’re saying if the film-makers agree, we’d love to have another movie,” Universal’s Nick Carpou, told the Hollywood Reporter. “But right now we are concentrating on this movie.”
The film has benefited from a decent, if rarely glowing critical appraisal, and currently boasts a 70% “fresh” rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw called it a “terrifically enjoyable and exciting summer spectacular” in his four-star review on Wednesday, though The Observer’s Mark Kermode flagged up a number of T-Rex sized plot holes.
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Jurassic World’s box office success augurs well for an excellent 2015 for Hollywood, with a more than reasonable chance that five movies released this year could now cross the $1bn mark. Furious 7 and The Avengers: Age of Ultron have already done so, and Trevorrow’s film looks to be well on course. Studios still have James Bond’s latest adventure, Spectre, to come in November, while Star Wars: The Force Awakens bows in December.
Elsewhere on the north American box office it was a quiet weekend, with studios wisely keeping their new offerings as far away from Jurassic World’s frenzied giant reptiles as possible. Paul Feig action comedy Spy, starring Melissa McCarthy, slipped from first to second with $16m in its second week for a total of $56.9m, while Dwayne Johnson disaster flick San Andreas pulled in a third-week total of $11m for an overall haul of $119.3m in third. The top five was rounded out by low budget horror sequel Insidious: Chapter 3, in fourth, with $7.3m in its second week for a $37.3m total, and comedy Pitch Perfect 2, with a fifth-week haul of $5.9m for a total of $170.6m.
US box office chart, 12-14 June
1. Jurassic World: $204.6m - NEW
2. Spy: $16m, $56.9m
3. San Andreas: $11m, $119.3m
4. Insidious: Chapter 3: $7.3m, $37.3m
5. Pitch Perfect 2: $5.9m, $170.6m
6. Entourage: $4.3m, $25.9m
7. Mad Max: Fury Road: $4.1m, $138.6m
8. Avengers: Age of Ultron: $3.6m, $444.7m
9. Tomorrowland: $3.4m, $83.6m
10. Love & Mercy: $1.7m, $4.7m

From gardening week to pie day: the strangest movie tie-ins

As you’re already totally aware, this month brings with it National Gardening Week: seven glorious days for us all to discuss hanging baskets without fear of social rejection. The annual holiday was launched four years ago to celebrate the splendour of grass, flowers and trowels. But this year’s festivities will be marked by something extra special. The new, garden-featuring period drama A Little Chaos has been announced as National Gardening Week’s official film which means that, well, a microsite has been launched with a competition to win tickets to a flower show. And yes, that’s about it.
The film, which stars Kate Winslet as a competitive landscape designer who falls for her boss, has had mixed reviews, but the decision to work with the Royal Horticultural Society at least plays into their key demographic: people who like gardens. Unsurprisingly, it’s the first time there has been an official film for the week-long soil celebration.
Winslet is no stranger to partnering with dubious national celebrations: her melodrama Labor Day was a key element of last year’s National Pie Day. The cross-promotion hinged on a pivotal scene where convicted killer/helpful man-about-the-house Josh Brolin teaches Winslet how to make peach pie, and (naturally) awakens her sexuality. A poster was sent out to bakeries and a Facebook competition launched for pie-lovers to enjoy a private screening.
But the film failed to bring in an audience, even of pie-eaters, with a worldwide gross of only $20m – and the decision to focus a marketing campaign on a scene that was the movie’s unintentionally hilarious low point was, said Lou Lumenick of the New York Post, an “eccentric choice”.
Disney’s recent hit Big Hero 6 happened to coincide with National Hugging Day, which meant that its creator Kevin Zaborney, AKA the Ambassador of Hugs, awarded inflatable robot Baymax the accolade of most huggable character of 2015. Previous winners have included no one – the honour was cooked up to promote the film. But, while the association might seem spurious, the specially created trailer generated 1m views.
While the national holiday tie-ins seem to include the bare minimum of activity, other partnerships work harder to offer more effective, and shareable, content. One of the most successful examples recently saw Air New Zealand join forces with Warner Bros on Hobbit-themed in-flight safety videos. Statistics show that 14% of all visitors to New Zealand are influenced by what they see at the movies, which this campaign cleverly played on. It was a hit online with more than 30m views across the three ads, and visitor figures were up 6.2% last year.
Linking an airline or tourist board to a film’s promotional campaign is a clearer choice of partner than many other case studies. After watching Skyfall, for example, it seems only natural that some audiences might want to visit its locations, so teaming up with Visit Britain makes total sense: there was a reported rise of 41.7% in visits to Glencoe, Scotland after the film’s release. But action-seekers hoping to get involved in a shootout might have been somewhat shortchanged with the spy-free scenery and locals have been fighting back against an increase in litter from disappointed 007 fans. Equally, the Yemen tourist board were forced to sadden fans of Ewan McGregor comedy Salmon Fishing in the Yemen about the lack of actual salmon fishing in the country after they were inundated with eager travellers who clearly thought the film was a documentary.
Finding the right partner for a campaign is key and it’s these carefully considered collaborations that can make a difference. Last year’s partnership between X-Men: Days of Future Past and Virgin Trains seemed like a match made by randomly picking companies out of a hat. The April Fool’s hilarity of rebranding Wolverhampton station as Wolverine and a specially refurbished train with the characters plastered all over it didn’t feel like a natural fit for the film which didn’t a) take place in England or b) feature any trains. Eurostar jumping aboard as the official travel partner of 2004’s Paris-set Phantom of the Opera was a better fit. But since when was having “official travel partner” the key to a film’s marketing campaign?
Some promotional collaborations also have another more earnest objective in mind. With the release of every Saw film, a “Give Til’ It Hurts” blood drive took place and by the time Saw IV was out, the American Red Cross became an official partner. The event was always promoted with an artfully gruesome poster and horror fans were encouraged to give blood, leading to more than 40,000 gallons being donated. In a similar, ahem, vein, last year’s Hunger Games entry saw Lionsgate working with Whole Food Market in a charitable effort that saw money donated to a global poverty charity for every branded bottle of juice.
But donating blood and money wasn’t enough for one particularly demanding campaign ...
In 2013, Zack Snyder’s city-crushing spectacle Man of Steel boasted more than 100 official brand partners. The most insidious was a deal with the National Guard, which involved a campaign to recruit “soldiers of steel” by tying the mythology of Superman to the work of the military. Snyder himself worked on specially branded ads, and there was a tie-in workout routine and online game. The objective was recruitment (would you like to destroy stuff just like Superman?) and the key demographic of 17- 24-year-olds mirrored the target audience for the superhero blockbuster.
While increased ticket sales and interest in the brand are obvious aims for these sorts of activity, often it’s as simple as getting a journalist to write about it. Before you started reading this article, were you even aware of Kate Winslet’s new film about gardening? Had you even realised that National Gardening Week was a thing? Are you craving peach pie now? Do you want a hug? Shall we all go to Glencoe together? And then join the army? Maybe we’re part of the problem.

In for a Penny: Who would make the most spine-chilling Pennywise the killer clown?

True Detective’s Cary Fukunaga seems the perfect choice to direct the first ever big-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s It. The 1990 miniseries benefited from a crackerjack-crazy turn from Tim Curry as Pennywise, the leering, sneering killer clown who haunts a small Maine town. But 25 years later, the production seems melodramatic, and some of the adult performances – not to mention the haircuts – are straight out of a Roger Corman flick.

Fukunaga’s brooding style ought to make for a far scarier movie, and there is talk that this will be a two-part film to mirror the split narrative of King’s epic 1,138-page tome. Furthermore, King himself is reported to have given the screenplay his seal of approval.

So far, so good. But Fukunaga says he is still struggling to find the right actor to play Pennywise, the main manifestation of the shape-shifting supernatural nasty. Here’s a few suggestions to help him out.

Michael Shannon

The Boardwalk Empire actor proved that he can play the powderkeg villain to a tee as Nelson Van Alden AKA George Mueller. He may lack Curry’s clownish grin, but those bulging basilisk eyes are unmatched in modern Hollywood.

Michael Shannon in Boardwalk Empire. Photograph: HBO/Everett/Rex Features

Tilda Swinton

The current fan favourite would make for some powerful stunt casting, though the Oscar-winning British actor’s androgynous look is very different from Curry’s extravagantly proportioned features. Swinton was the best thing about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and really went to town on the camp villain front with her squinting, spitting Minister Mason, a cross between Hilda Ogden and Hitler, in the excellent Snowpiercer. She looks scary in clown makeup, and has been tipped for – and played – high-profile male roles before.

Tilda Swinton as the gender-bending Orlando. Photograph: Liam Longman/Adventure Pictures Ltd

Willem Dafoe

A wide grin and intense, baleful eyes are essential to capturing Pennywise’s demonic malignancy, and Dafoe has the perfect look. His Green Goblin stands second only to Heath Ledger’s Joker in the grand pantheon of big-screen supervillains, and his sleazy, dentally challenged mobster Bobby Peru in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart was downright abhorrent.

Willem Dafoe as Bobby Peru in Wild at Heart. Photograph: Landmark Media

Kiefer Sutherland

Nearly three decades after essaying a pretty decent camp cult villain in The Lost Boys, Sutherland would make for an assured Pennywise. He has the ability to deliver the husky New York brogue that Curry pulled off to surprising effect, and his poisonous leer would be straight out of the seventh layer of Hades.

Kiefer Sutherland, second from left, in The Lost Boys. Photograph: Allstar

Nicolas Cage

Bear with me. Cage may have the furniture-chewing capacity of an army of hungry termites, but when he’s good, he’s very good indeed. And while Fukunaga’s take on Pennywise is likely to be more subtle and layered than the 1990 version, it’s still a pretty one-dimensional role. Whoever takes on the part needs to be capable of adding genuine venom to occasionally shonky dialogue (remember all that stuff about “floating in the deadlights”?) Cage has off-kilter energy in spades, as well as a willingness to push the boundaries of taste at every available opportunity. He could be a car crash in the role, but he might also prove a revelation.

Nicolas Cage in Drive Angry. Photograph: Lionsgate/Allstar

Geoffrey Rush

The Aussie Oscar winner certainly has a knack for gurning, sneering villains, with his Captain Hector Barbossa from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies occasionally surpassing even Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow for sea-dog pantomime posturing. And it’s a little-known fact that Rush trained under the late, legendary French mime actor and teacher Jacques Lecoq, so the physical side of the role should be well within his sphere of expertise.

Geoffrey Rush, centre, in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Photograph: Rex/BuenaVista/Everett

Oscars 2015: who will win the best animated feature race?

There are those who complain that it’s too easy to score an Oscar nomination for best animated feature. They’re essentially right: current Academy rules state that at least 16 feature-length animated films must qualify for consideration in any given year for the category to yield five nominees. This year, 20 films did, meaning a full quarter of the titles in play wound up with a nomination. When you consider that 87 submissions for best foreign language film were vying for the same number of slots, or that 323 films qualified for best picture this year, the animated race looks a little soft.
Then again, try telling that to the makers of The Lego Movie. The year’s highest-grossing animated film was also among the year’s most universally acclaimed in any medium. (It cracked the Guardian’s top 10, for starters.) It had been running the table on the precursor award circuit so convincingly that most pundits regarded the Oscar as a done deal. Gasps were heard across Hollywood when, in arguably the biggest shock in the category’s 14-year history, the film failed to score a nomination. The word snub is used too often to describe simple Oscar omissions, but this one felt oddly pointed. Were irreverent directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller being penalised by the Academy’s insular animation branch for their success in the live-action sphere? Was the film’s postmodern blend of art and commerce too distastefully hip for them? Could they simply not bring themselves to vote for something called The Lego Movie? One way or another, the race has lost its pace-setter.

And no one is more delighted about that than the folks at DreamWorks Animation, who now slide by default into the frontrunner position with How to Train Your Dragon 2. In fairness, even before the Oscar nominations were revealed, signs were in place that this safe, attractively crafted, roundly well-liked sequel to the 2010 fantasy smash could be a spoiler in the race: its surprise win at the Golden Globes proved that the appeal of slick traditional storytelling is never to be underestimated with conservative voting groups. With a US gross of $177m, it hasn’t quite matched its predecessor’s success, but it’s still a vastly popular, robustly reviewed choice, while the franchise has generated enough affection that people would like to see it rewarded. The first film was unlucky to come up against Toy Story 3, to date the only sequel to win the Oscar; look for this to become the second.

A few months ago, Big Hero 6 was the big-studio contender most nervously regarded by its rivals: Disney, after all, are the reigning champions, having finally nabbed their first win (not counting Pixar films) in the category with the world-beating phenomenon, Frozen. Yet somehow, despite racking up more than $450m worldwide, the robot-superhero romp is at risk of seeming an afterthought in this race. While Frozen is still a ubiquitous pop-culture fixture 21 months after its release, Big Hero 6 simply hasn’t captured the popular imagination in the same way. (Can anyone who hasn’t seen the film really tell what it’s about?) That may not hurt it as much as you’d think: the film is still sturdy, well-received populist fare, while its canny commercial fusion of the Disney and Marvel brands will net it a lot of corporate-loyalty votes. Still, if any nominee is hindered by its makers’ past glories, it’s this one.
Voters who find the DreamWorks and Disney offerings a little too vanilla have a quirkier mainstream option in The Boxtrolls – the third feature (and third Oscar nominee) from Portland-based stop-motion studio Laika, following Coraline and ParaNorman. With its steampunk styling and flashes of historical allegory, this offbeat, elaborately imagined cautionary tale is perhaps the most divisive contender here. American trade critics trashed the film after its Venice premiere, but it swiftly found more sympathetic admirers – particularly in the UK, where its proportional box office has far outstripped its US numbers. Regard for the film’s craft is high in the animation community; if the final vote were branch-restricted, I’d like its chances more.
But it’s not, and lack of awareness across the wider Academy also puts the final two nominees at a crucial disadvantage. Still, GKIDS, a plucky New York-based distributor of foreign and independent animated films, has established itself as a formidable giant-killer at the nominations stage, regularly sneaking in ahead of glossier megabucks contenders. So it was this year: with The Lego Movie down and out, two gorgeous GKIDS delicacies made the cut. Song of the Sea, Irish animator Tomm Moore’s sumptuous reinterpretation of Celtic selkie mythology, was always a dark horse to be reckoned with: Moore’s last film, the lovely The Secret of Kells, was a shock nominee (GKIDS’ first, in fact) in the category five years ago. His latest is even better – an inventively hand-drawn, culturally rich fairytale, it deserves better than fifth place.
But if either of the arthouse Davids can make a lunge at the American Goliaths – and that’s a big if – it’s more likely to be The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, which has sentimental appeal to match its artistry. The presumed swansong of Studio Ghibli, and the first film in 14 years from 79-year-old master Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies), the film offers voters a second consecutive opportunity to give the cherished Japanese animation house a suitably respectful send-off. (Hayao Miyazaki’s farewell feature The Wind Rises lost out to Frozen last year.) Critics have clustered around Takahata’s film since Cannes, while the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Association handed it their win. It’s by no means quintessential Ghibli: a melancholy adaptation of a 10th-century folk tale, rendered in stylised ink-and-watercolour strokes, it’s a world away from the florid fantasy of Spirited Away (Ghibli’s only Oscar winner to date), but scarcely less exquisite.

First trailer shows Ant-Man has a big hill to climb

Cynics might suggest that you can’t tell much about a movie from its trailer. Yet last year’s promo for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, with its irresistible Blue Swede soundtrack and smart riff on the famous The Usual Suspects lineup sequence, proved a masterful example of the form and completely transformed expectations for the barmy cosmic superhero tale. James Gunn’s nutty little confection went on to make more money than Superman reboot Man of Steel at the global box office, a spectacular feat for a film about a bunch of little-known multi-coloured space weirdos.
Now comes the debut trailer for Marvel’s Ant-Man and, if Guardians of the Galaxy needed help to turn around public perceptions, this one surely requires one of the finest trailers ever seen in the history of Hollywood. Firing the fabulous Edgar Wright as director after more than half a decade of development, only to replace him with Yes Man’s Peyton Reed, has created spectacular negative buzz. And given that context, I’m afraid our first look at Paul Rudd as the diminutive superhero simply fails to stand tall.
The Ant-Man trailer
We see Michael Douglas as Dr Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man in the comics, explaining to Rudd’s petty criminal Scott Lang that he’s about to get a second chance as the titular hero. It’s pitched as a stirring speech set up perfectly for Lang to harpoon all that portentous tension by asking if the name is set in stone. But the Guardians trailer already pulled a similar self-referential trick when Chris Pratt’s Star Lord discovered nobody had ever heard of him - and produced far more laughs.
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The rest of the rather low-key, low-energy trailer largely sees Rudd rollicking around the screen as Ant-Man, complete with trusty insect steed and shockingly unimpressive costume, which to me looks likes something from Doctor Who. It is utterly lacking in the full-blooded, warm-hearted razzamatazz of its predecessor.
Screenwriter Adam McKay (Anchorman) has admitted he rewrote the original screenplay by Wright and Joe Cornish in just six to eight weeks with the help of Rudd. “We just shaped the whole thing, we just tried to streamline it, make it cleaner, make it a little bigger, a little more aggressive, make it funnier in places – we just basically did a rewrite,” he told Collider last year, adding: “Edgar had a really good script. But we just had a blast, and Rudd was just so much fun to write with.”
If Wright and Cornish’s screenplay was so great in the first place, why did it need rewriting? The British pair have been reduced to a story credit on the final movie, and you have to worry that the Ant-Man that finally hits the big screen is going to be a dramatically diminished version of what it might once have been. Let’s hope this is one occasion when the trailer really doesn’t tell the full story.