Seven NYers Review 'Materialists' 💰
Jeremy Allen White’s Springsteen, Lost in Translation still rules, and Marty’s train set.
Hey cinema sickos – This week, Absolute Box Office is opening its doors not to one, but seven, count ‘em SEVEN, fellow film fans, each of whom will be weighing in on what’s proven to be this year’s most polarizing film, How to Train Your Dragon (JK, it’s Materialists). I still haven’t seen it, but since it’s become the topic of much discussion in movie circles, it felt like the right time to bring in the big guns, aka seven people I know who all had very different responses to Celine Song’s sophomore directorial effort and Past Lives follow-up. That said, if one of these fantastic humans didn’t quite nail how you felt walking out of the theater, please know that my digital door is always open.
Cheers, MB
In this week’s issue:
🎸Jeremy Allen White’s Springsteen lives
💰Seven totally normal New Yorkers weigh in on Materialists
✌️Five great sophomore films
🚂 Bertha does boxcars, and so much more
The Weekend Take: June 20-22 💰
With a rumored $60-million budget, 28 Years Later has already made its money back with a $60-million global opening weekend. The sequel is already in the works with rumors of a third film in this extension trilogy now on the table.
Conversely, Elio, a new sci-fi Pixar movie about a lad abducted by aliens, cost more than $150 million and does not look likely to recoup that money with a soft $21-million domestic opening. In reality, the production budget was closer to $300 million as the entire movie was rewritten and animated multiple times, so… good luck to everyone involved.
But First, the News 🗞️
• Jeremy Allen White is wearing those contacts. Everyone’s favorite genius delinquent from Shameless (and apparent heir to the Hutt clan (and yes, insert your favorite ‘yes chef’ thing here)) is going FULL music biopic superstar with the new film Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, which chronicles the making of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 album, Nebraska. It looks… fine? The director, Scott Cooper, made Crazy Heart, which is a very good film about the music industry. And he also made The Pale Blue Eye, which is a very odd film about cults, West Point, and Edgar Allan Poe. Anyway, J.A.W. does not look like The Boss, nor does he really sound like him, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, just like he did when Bruce randomly popped up on set during the filming.
• Lil’ Momoa def playing worm son. Dune Messiah, the third film in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune trilogy, looks to be filming later this year and will include a major time jump to allow for the Atreides twins to be functioning, speaking characters. But who will play these children of Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya? Well, one of them will be none other than Duncan Idaho Jr., Nakoa-Wolf Momoa (wow, sick name bro). Based on this, it’s safe to say that some elements of the sequel to Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, will come into play here, but no word yet if we’ll see any of the God Emperor himself. I’ll let you seek that out on your own.
• You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, Will Smith. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air famously passed on The Matrix, a role that eventually went to Keanu Reeves after Smith opted for Wild Wild West instead (incredible), and forever reshaped his career. However, it was recently revealed that the man who would one day slap also passed on Inception, a role that eventually went to Leonardo DiCaprio and really helped solidify him as the modern day movie star. “It’s those movies that go into those alternate realities. They don’t pitch well.” Well, good thing he got to mend the fence with Gemini Man and After Earth instead
• Ready or not, here Bond comes. No star? No director? Who cares! It has been written: Bond 26 will shoot next year. You can almost hear Bezos yelling “ship it!” from aboard his mini-yacht that takes him out to his mega-yacht.
• Natasha Leon is playing Joan Rivers, which very much checks out. I do not watch Poker Face, but after Leon famously said to Tara Reed “You’ve never double-clicked your mouse?” in the film American Pie, I knew she was destined for greatness. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes, I think this movie could be very good and I hope it is very good. Let Can We Talk? run where The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel once walked. Also, the facial prosthetics are going to be out of control.
Seven New Yorkers Review Materialists 💰
“I had mixed feels. It had a lot of flaws, but I liked it overall. I liked the message she (Celine Song) was getting across and think a LOT of dumb, single, basic b*tches could learn a thing or two about who they are looking for in a partner. Also, hate to say it, but didn’t LOVE Chris Evans’ acting.” - 35, Female
“Well I’m never gonna get that two hours of my life back.” - 40+, Male
“I was so eager and optimistic going in as it seemed to have all the fixins for a great summer flick: three hotties, New York City, and a love triangle. But overall it left me confused and underwhelmed with not enough rom or com. Its only redeeming qualities were Dakota Johnson’s incredibly chic outfits, silver jewelry and perfect hair. So not a total loss of an afternoon in the end.” - 33, F
“I hated it with a passion. It was like a depressing Sweet Home Alabama – A dour, bleak look at dating in NY.” - 36, F
“A searing portrait of dating in the modern age, of what materialism is doing to love and partnership. Celine (Song) beautifully tackled a core feeling I think so many experience with dating in this time: value and the worthlessness our current climate begets.” - 33, F
“I left after 30 minutes. Walked out.” - 36, F
“Well that was an odd movie! I didn’t love it. Dakota J, very powerful (will be investigating her workout routine) and it was shot beautifully, but it was kind of… pointless? Unclear on the message other than calling out how much value men place on women’s level of fitness and how much value women assign to men’s height and income. But interested to read a bit and see if I missed something / a deeper message other than “marry the broke guy if you really love him!” Also, Dakota was pretty flat in her delivery overall despite looking 🔥. Anyway, those are my thoughts!” - 34, F
The TL;DR
Rating: 🙃 🤔 🤨
What is Materialists? A pseudo-rom-not-so-com that asks the important question: “Does leg extension surgery really change how tall a man is… on the inside?”
Should you make time for this film? I don’t feel qualified to answer that, but I will watch it at some point. I was WAY behind on the Past Lives train, and had to watch it a second time before it just absolutely bowled me over, so maybe that’ll happen again.
Will it be a contender at next year’s Oscars? We’ve got a lot of time (and movies) to go before the next Academy Awards, so who knows. Maybe screenplay? Maybe not.
What will you remember most from this film? Based on a source I trust more than others, maybe just how hot Dakota Johnson is. You tell me.
My Five Favorite Movie Trilogies 🧑🧒🧒
Whiplash by Damien Chazelle (2014)
Where all my Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench heads at? I was actually looking forward to talking about what I guess is actually Damien Chazelle’s third film, La La Land, but I guess “Lil’ Drummer Boy (Fletcher’s Version)” will have to do. Man, Whiplash just hits so hard, and it was the first example of Chazelle doing “the Chazelle,” aka the first 90% of this movie is good… but the last 10% is magnificent. Think about it: Whiplash’s final scene? Holy sh*t. The ending montage in La La Land? I mean, holier sh*t. THE F*CKING MOON LANDING in First Man? You can’t hear it, but I just dabbed. The pseudo-psychedelic movie montage featuring the film Avatar at the end of Babylon?! If you were there, you know. Anyway, I go back and forth on Miles Teller, but I thought he might be the next great American actor after I saw him in this. And while that may no longer be the case, at least we’ll always have Long Drink.
Lost in Translation by Sofia Coppola (2003)
True story: When I saw the band Phoenix open for Beck at Madison Square Garden a few years ago, I watched Sofia Coppola, who is married to Phoenix’s lead singer, Thomas Mars (whose legal last name is Croquet, by the way), leave the absolute second Phoenix’s set ended, which I thought was both very funny and very awesome. Lost in Translation was not the first Sofia movie I saw, that would be Somewhere, nor is it the most imaginative film of hers in my opinion, that would be Marie Antoinette, but Lost in Translation is, to me, her most impactful film. It introduced the entire world to adult Scarlett Johansson (even though she was… 17 when they filmed it), a whole generation to a new side of Bill Murray, and didn’t rush, unlike so many films that potentially appealed to those at formative ages at that time. Also, it’s part of one of the all-time, see-saw film couplings with Her (take a minute and read about that here). Oh, and if you need a reminder of what makes Lost in Translation such a little slice of magic, watch the scene when our two stars first meet at the Park Hyatt bar.
Boogie Nights by Paul Thomas Anderson (1997)
I had planned to talk about Harold and Maude here, but I’m trying to branch out… so let’s talk about f*cking Boogie Nights instead. Someone, queue the music – we’re gettin’ in the pool. As someone who consumes a lot of film media, there’s a phrase that’s commonly thrown around to describe a particularly impactful film, one that makes you think, “I didn’t even know you could do that in a movie.” Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, which is also the ultimate, “Just give me the money to do what I want and get the hell out of my way” moves, is one of those. There’s nothing that I can say that this simply stupendous Grantland oral history (RIP) doesn’t say 1,000 times better, but there are very few films that can make you feel so amazing and so horrible while watching 17 different actors take the leap from “Oh, they’re interesting” to “That’s John C. Riley, mother f*cker, and don’t you dare forget the C.”
Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino (1994)
Speaking of transcendent second films made by supremely impactful mid-90s film makers, when’s the last time you watched Pulp Fiction? Because, ya wanna know something? It’s even better than you remember. In the pantheon of Oscar travesties, the fact that it didn’t win Best Picture (“Stupid is as stupid does”), Director (“Mama said they was my magic shoes”), or Supporting Actor for Samuel L. Jackson (I don’t know any of Martin Landau’s lines when he won for playing Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood, but he did have one great recurring bit on Entourage, which unfortunately did not qualify for the Oscars on account of it being too good) is truly shameful. This might not even be one of the seven best scenes in the movie, but it’s somehow one of the 10 best scenes of the 90s.”OK gentlemen, you’ve both been to County before I’m sure…” Man, what a movie!
Dazed and Confused by Richard Linklater (1993)
Look, there are a lot of incredible sophomore efforts out there, so I thought it was important to include some honorable mentions. We’ve got: Ryan Coogler’s Creed, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, David Fincher’s Se7en, Christopher Nolan’s Memento, and Kevin Smith’s Mallrats just to name an extremely select few. But Dazed and Confused lives in a special world, one filled with cannabinoidal smoke, half-empty beer cans, and somehow both too little and not enough mustache to go around. This was Richard Linklater’s proof of concept, his statement of intent. Where Slacker started a conversation, Dazed and Confused, which famously bombed at the box office before becoming something more than just a cult classic, carried it into new waters – pulling, stretching, and alright-alright-alrighting all the way. If there were no Dazed and Confused, there would be no Before trilogy or Bernie, and especially no Everybody Wants Some!!, which would suck. It’s Linklater’s thesis on time on screen and the perception by which it does or does not pass. It is iconic, it is a flawed masterpiece, and no matter how old I get, it stays the same age.
What the F*ck Is This Movie? 🚂
Boxcar Bertha (1972)
Martin Scorsese’s second film, Boxcar Bertha, is probably best remembered as the movie that came right before Mean Streets when Scorsese really became Scorsese, De Niro became De Niro, and Harvey Keitel, well, you get it. But it’s loved by many out there in its own right, and while not that weird in the grand scheme of Scorsese’s massive filmography, it’s still interesting to see the master learn to walk in front of our own eyes:
Martin Scorsese's second feature loosely adapts the autobiography of Bertha Thompson, portraying the adventures of the Depression-era criminal following the death of her father. Bertha (Barbara Hershey) joins union organizer Big Bill Shelly (David Carradine) in fighting anti-union forces after an unexpected murder drives them to a life of robbing trains. The atmospheric tale depicts their life on the lam, doing whatever is necessary to survive.
Sure, sign me up Bertha (and Marty).
Seen anything good lately (other than Boxcar Bertha)? What did you think of Materialists? How f*cking crazy is it that Pulp Fiction was only QT’s second movie? Truly, just wild stuff. Let me know by responding to this email.