Hollywood Crashes

Since the thing in 2020, Hollywood box office takings have tanked; 2025 is a bad year, with flops such as F1: The Movie, but all years leading up have been bad.

Before the thing in 2020, the box office was not great, but it was survivable.

See the below graph, the data is taken from Box Office Mojo for reference:

There are many reasons for this collapse, principal amongst them are that they're just not making movies people want to watch. Movies these days are not entertaining, that's it, right there.

Trump Movie Tariff

Now we hear of 100% US tariffs being place on 'foreign made' movies. This begs the question; what exactly is foreign: are we talking about movies in a language other than English, or movies produced by studios outside of US control? 

As I understand it, these days movies are made all over the show, with special effects and various scenes being filmed in multiple locations. The industry is still centred in the US, but these same US capital sources produce the movies everywhere. Is a movie deemed US-made if 50.01% of it is 'made' in the US?

I saw a recent video where bicycle parts from China were shipped to Mexico, assembled into a bicycle there and then imported to the US, thus legally evading China tariffs as the parts had been transformed into something.

Movies may go the same way, with components being made elsewhere, but the movie being assembled in the US. I don't know the industry all that well, but I'm thinking now is not the time to invest in the cinema business.

Movie: Sound of Freedom - 3 Stars

Social media is heavily promoting the movie Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel as US agent Tim Ballard who sets out to rescue a girl from captivity (given how strict Blogspot are about the nature of this captivity, I'm going to avoid talking about the industry this young girl is involved with).

The subject matter is very important and is handled sensitively. It is raw without being excessively so, and explains the mission well.

Where I think the movie falls down is it feels more like a TV offering. The lighting is often in darkness, indicating a low budget, and most of the dialogue is care of Caviezel himself, always speaking with a low growl, almost a half-whisper which has become commonplace in television. I believe they do this to convey more meaning, or something, but it is lame and detracts from the believability of the story. No-one yells, tells a joke, or speaks at normal volume. I mean, how much of brooding looks can one movie pack in?

We needed to know more about the bad guys, these characters were cardboard cutouts. This is a problem as we are meant to be supporting the good guy. It's hard to develop complete support for his cause if we do not fully appreciate just how evil the bad guys are.

The pace of the movie is fine overall, but it feels like the movie is coming to an end a little too early. This is where some children are rescued from an island. From that point the movie tends to drift, just when it shouldn't. The pace and urgency should lift after this crescendo, but I found myself becoming distracted. Was the movie extended in a later cut? 

Sound of Freedom won the July 4th Box Office in the US. This came off the back of strong presales, beating out Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Since then it has scored more top spots and always been in the top three. This is an amazing accomplishment and testament to the filmmakers persistence. Is it worth watching? Yes, it is, but don't expect too much. If it succeeds in waking people up to what is going on in the world, then it will have done its job.

⭐⭐⭐✫✫

Movie: The Personal History of David Copperfield

I tried watching The Personal History of David Copperfield on the TV the other night, but gave up. It wasn't the actors that annoyed me, but the way they'd butchered the plot. The filmmakers jarringly departed from the Charles Dickens novel. I stopped watching rather early, when David ventures to find his great-aunt and she takes him in. In the movie he is shown to be a young man, while in the book he is just a young boy who loses everything on the journey, even having to sell his outer clothing to buy food.

There are glaring omissions. Here's a list (just off the top of my head):

No Barkis, so no famous statement; Barkis is Willin'.

No badly run Salem House school David is sent to by his stepfather, so how does David meet Steerforth and little Tommy Traddles?

Did they have David's mother giving birth to a son by his stepfather?

When mother and baby die, David is sent to work at a wine merchants. He meets Mr Micawber at that point but when Mr Micawber ends up in debtors prison, David runs away while still very young. Yet the movie shows David to be quite mature and he learns of his mother's death while working at the wine merchants.

David's great-aunt, Betsy Trotwood lives in Dover, in a house located not at all as shown in the movie. 

I stopped watching. No Barkis, no Steerforth nor Tommy Traddles. I imagine the good school David's great-aunt sends him to, Dr Strong's will be where David meets Steerforth and Tommy Traddles for the first time. Was this good school shown to be like the badly run Salem House? I can only speculate.

Have these philistine filmmakers no respect for literature?

Alien: Covenant - Review

I watched the movie Alien: Covenant last night on free to air TV. The original movie was very entertaining. I'd suggest that's because despite the crew keeping to the manual, the Alien still causes havoc.

But this latest incarnation of the franchise leaves a lot to be desired. A colony space ship, which is no doubt worth hundreds of billions of dollars, is diverted by an obviously incompetent Captain to a previously unknown planet, despite the protest of the second-in-charge. A good case could be made for the Captain to be relieved of his command for even suggesting such nonsense.

Then without further ado, they arrive at the new planet and descend to the surface without fully checking it out. Huh? Oh well, then they kind of split up (never ever split up in a sci-fi - ahem), and as they split one guy says to the other: ' behave yourself with my wife.' The wife of one of the guys is staying with this other dude. Oh, here we are on a previously undiscovered planet, putting careers in jeopardy on a whim, and while there one guy suspects the other guy of indecent intentions toward his wife. Seriously, this is stupid beyond belief.

Then of course we find the Alien is on the planet. Oh no, face hugger paradise (who'd a thunk), and the Captain is enticed by a robot, no less, to look inside a seed pod that just happens to open. Ahh, never look inside, that's a rule of sci-fi too you know. Never ever look inside.

And now everything unravels and we have the sexay, kick-ass, female protagonist who is also kinda vulnerable in a University graduate kind of way, able to survive against all odds. Helped along of course by an insolent and incompetent helmsman, who is excused his utterly cretinous behaviour because he wears a cowboy hat and says things like 'I'm coming in hot'.

I mean, really? The only good thing about the movie is the location of Fiordland National Park in New Zealand.

Rating: 1 star out of 7.

Film Industry: Geoff Murphy

New Zealand film director, Geoff Murphy has died. His most important movie Utu, was set during the frontier days of NZ. His wife, Merata Mita predeceased him, she made NZ's most important documentary, Patu! which was about the 1981 Springbok tour of New Zealand.

Snob's Guide to New Zealand ranks Utu second on its list of important New Zealand films, with Patu! third and the most important documentary. 

Note to Maori Filmmakers

Maori filmmakers are the best New Zealand has to offer I believe. I watched Mt Zion recently and it encapsulates 1979 quite well, with a few quibbles:

The cars. I realise they were probably scrounging round looking for cars to use, the main one being a Holden Kingswood ute; I also saw a 1950's Morris or Wolseley (hard to say), a Jaguar XJ6 and a Bedford van.

About this, thing is, for Maori potato contractors, I don't think the father would be driving such a car as a Holden Kingswood. He'd know anything Holden was unreliable (and a lurch to the left, not politically, they did lurch to the left literally). They were expensive for what you got for the money. More likely he'd be driving a MkIII Zephyr (Ford), or possibly a MkII Zephyr, even a MkI. If he wanted a really good car then it'd be a Chrysler Valiant VH ute, like the one below:

These cars are legendarily reliable and solid, Maori loved them.

I don't know why Pakeha can't make good period movies set in their society, watch the Maori productions and learn I guess.

The Big Short

I went to see the movie, The Big Short, today and I liked it. It's been nominated for an Academy Award for best picture and you know what? It might just win it.

The best performance is by Steve Carell playing a punctilious fund manager called Mark Baum, a character based on the real Steve Eisman. What I really like about this guy is he doesn't trust anything or anyone. He interviews people about the impending collapse and sends his staff to check out houses to find them empty and in arrears. It's all good fun, though I'm left scratching my head a little with the film's message; that strippers shouldn't be allowed to own five houses. I dunno, their money is as good as anyone's I would have thought, but hey, with 5% down, that's maybe not so good.

I'm rambling. Anyway there are other characters, such as Michael Burry of Silicon Investor (SI) message board fame. He's a contrarian, who I think fancies himself as a value investor. I've seen him post on SI recommending John Deere, so I suppose he is, but he most certainly is contrarian. The thinking of a contrarian goes that, if everyone thinks something is a good idea, then it almost certainly isn't and you should be doing the opposite.

Then these two young guns who operate a boutique 'garage band' fund team up with an old-timer played by Brad Pitt. The young guns invest in options on anything that predicts bad things will happen. Mostly these options are cheap and so when bad does happen, they clean up. Risky I'd say. But heh. They're backed into the big leagues by Brad Pitt's character, a New Age capitalist cum philosopher.

Last but by no means least is the person who narrates the movie. This guy is an operator out to make the bucks, driven by the main chance.

What's interesting is that the only people who meet and do business together are the young guns with Brad Pitt, and in another group the Steve Carell camp working with the main chancer. Other than that they all operate alone and often against the grain.

Of course the lovely Marisa Tomei pops in which is always pleasing. She's hot. For the younger members of the audience the cute Selena Gomez turns up to explain what a synthetic CDO is.

I fully recommend The Big Short.