Author: S. Brady Calhoun

This column is about money and Hollywood, but please do not mistake a discussion about studio decisions for a discussion about what “should” be made. 

I think the biggest thing I want to impart here before we get started, is that you as an artist, a writer, a director or a creative person should absolutely not think this way. A great film, or book, or television show, is worth a million times more than whatever lucre it generates. Even an album that is initially considered a failure can launch a thousand bands and change a thousand lives. 

And we don’t know, have no way of knowing, if the ripples we create in the water cause a flood downstream.   

The people who call films or television shows, or novels or comic books “content,” are the enemy. They are the people Mel Brooks was speaking to shortly after a screening of The Elephant Man when the studio executives wanted director David Lynch to start making cuts. 

“We screened the film for you to bring you up to date as to the status of that venture,” Brooks said. “Do not misconstrue this as our soliciting the input of raging primitives.” 

Brooks’ autobiography, “All About Me,” has several little anecdotes like that. He screened Blazing Saddles for studio executives and the head of the studio pulled him aside and basically told him to cut every offensive scene out of the movie. Brooks, who later laughingly said if he did that the movie would be 14 minutes long, told the exec he would make all the changes and then ignored it completely. 

When the movie came out, and was a huge hit, he never again heard boo from the studio. 

But, if you are a studio chief, the one with the power to actually make things happen, the question you face every year is not about changing the content of the things that were already shot, it’s deciding what to make in the first place. 

If you have a billion dollars in the budget to make movies next year what would you greenlight? 

Here’s the top 20 movies by worldwide box office 2023 according to Box Office Mojo.

• Barbie $1,441,761,333
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie $1,361,990,276
• Oppenheimer $950,191,715
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 $845,555,777
• Fast X $704,709,660
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse $690,516,673
• The Little Mermaid $569,626,289
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One $567,535,383
• Elemental $495,851,987
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania $476,071,180
• John Wick: Chapter 4 $440,146,694
• Transformers: Rise of the Beasts $438,966,392
• Meg 2: The Trench $395,000,317
• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny $383,963,057
• Creed III $275,248,615
• Five Nights at Freddy’s $271,913,275
• The Flash $270,633,313
• The Nun II $268,067,073
• Sound of Freedom $247,801,879
• Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour $246,365,022

The obvious caveats are that the year is not over and the numbers may change somewhat between now and December 31. But, I think the list is instructive enough at this point that we can discuss it.

Let’s go with the easy ones first. If you are the studio lucky enough to be in business with Greta Gerwig, the director of Barbie, or Christopher Nolan, the director of Oppenheimer, you probably hand them whatever amount of money they want and let them do whatever they want. 

Isn’t that the easiest answer? 

“Hi, the movie you just made for us made a billion dollars please make another one.”

Of course, when you are dealing with studio executives the most obvious answer is not always the one you suspect. In my mind, Barbie was a hit because Gerwig made an impressive film and the marketing hit the right tone and it, and Oppenheimer became a moviegoing phenomenon on the same weekend.

People went to see them as a double bill! I’m not sure that is particular synergy can be cloned and recreated on demand. Nor, I’m sorry to say, does this mean that the movie-going audience is starved for original creative works for adults. 

You can certainly find people online cheerleading for this, and I wish them well and I do believe studios need to take a few more chances each year. They also should identify several writers and directors and just let them roam free. 

Of course, that strategy probably ends with a fiasco of the level of Heavens Gate. But we will get a load of interesting movies in the meantime. 

However, at least some executives somewhere think they know the key ingredient for success. They know, in their executive hearts what the masses want. 

And it’s a toy movie franchise. 

So, yes, I would greenlight whatever Gerwig wants to do next. Yes, I would also greenlight a Barbie sequel (with or without Gerwig but hopefully with) but no, I do not think the success of Barbie means that what the world is craving a cinematic universe featuring the trials and tribulations of Polly Pocket, Boglins and (I kid you not) Chatty Cathy and Betsy Wetsy.

It’s this kind of thinking that leads you to release Haunted Mansion in July instead of October. 

We’re going to do part two of this tomorrow. 

But in the meantime look at that Top 20 and ask yourself what types of movies would you greenlight? The top 3 so far this year are not sequels, so does that mean it’s time for more original movies from top talent? Or is the argument that the top three are not sequels deceiving. After all, while Barbie and Super Mario are not sequels they are based on existing properties that have worldwide recognition.

Do you find five directors who are as talented as Gerwig and Nolan, hand them $100 million and say, “Do what you want, just make it great?” 

Or do you say to Christopher Nolan, ‘Please pick any videogame you would like and our $100 million and make us a movie.”

No one will do that but I would dearly love to be in the room when they try.

Also, don’t sleep on horror movies. Will your horror movie make $500,000 million or more at the box office? Probably not. But if you make something of the caliber of Five Nights at Freddy’s (budget $20 mil) or The Nun 2 (budget $40 mil) and then make $200 or $300 million back you can probably sleep easy at night. 

All things being equal, knowing what we can know from the numbers, is it time for more superheroes, a videogame/toy line cinematic universe or something else?    

I have so many problems with this movie as a writer and a person who grew up on American television and films.

This movie has no structure. This movie has no plot. This movie barely has fully realized characters. It’s one of the few nails I’ve ever seen that refuses to be hammered down. 

And yet, it’s glorious. 

A flick that starts with a crime story but is never all that interested in the crime story. It sketches out a romance and then just decides we have had enough of those two characters and follows a different couple to the end. 

Also, the story and characters are not much more than sketches, fragments or dreams of night life in a city. A close up view of a few people but no macguffin, no real drama and no need for any of that. 

I don’t think I have ever seen a movie just fundamentally reject the very concept of being a movie before but this one does. 

And yet, it’s a wonderul hang out. I instantly fell in love with Faye Wong who just takes over the proceedings and steals every moment. 

Like I said, there was a crime movie that could have existed here. And then there was a romantic comedy. Near the end, it veers deep into romcom territory but that’s a little like saying you got 9 friends together and announced you were a baseball team. 

But if a team never takes the field is it really a team? Is it a movie if it rejects nearly every storytelling requirement you think you know? 

If I’m standing in a storm and refuse a raincoat will I come out dry? 

Writer/director Kar-Wai Wong dances in between the rain drops until we get to the credits.

A study of two people in pain. 

The movie shows us Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan who are neighbors. Both are married to other people and as we slowly learn both have been (mostly) abandoned by their respective spouses. 

The chemistry between Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung is off the charts. Visually, it’s a stunning flick. Claustrophobic and colorful with scenes that vibrate with lust and longing. 

There is just a bit of humor. What Mr. Chan’s friend does with his last $2 made me chuckle. 

But the movie sums itself up with this piece of dialogue: 

Chow Mo-wan: I sometimes wonder what I’d be if I hadn’t married. Have you ever thought of that?
Su Li-zhen Chan: Maybe happier.

Those of you looking for something like Lost in Translation or Past Lives will be happy with this. 

I ended up here because I wanted to watch more Tony Leung films. He’s in Hard Boiled, one of the greatest action movies ever made and one of my personal faves and he turned up in Shang-Chi. 

And he’s got a magnetic presence and the acting chops to play everything from a wounded lover to an action hero. 

But having seen this now I want to track down all of Director Wong Kar-wai’s films. And I want to watch this again without the stress of making sure I’m not missing anything. 

For those of us who love the arts there are few things better than discovering a new thing. When you get around to a band that was popular decades before you were born and now you get the joy of listening to every album, finding the new things to love. 

And with movies it is the same with directors, screenwriters and actors and actresses. So I’m looking forward to tracking more of Kar-wai’s work down. 

Anyway, In The Mood For Love drops the viewer into deep water and you will either sink or swim. As the kids say, you will vibe with this or you won’t.

Quentin Tarantino dedicated two chapters of his book, Cinema Speculation to Stallone movies. Rocky, the phenomenon that turned Sly into a superstar. And Paradise Alley, his wrestling follow up that bombed. 

It’s probably not surprising that an authorized Stallone documentary spends a serious amount of time on Rocky and like 30 seconds on Paradise Alley. 

Tarantino is big presence here as he explains how audiences reacted to Rocky. Spoiler, you could hear them cheering in the street. He also walks us through how the Rocky movies, written by Stallone, often reflected what he had to say about his life at the time. 

There are some things here that were new to me as a longtime Stallone fan. I didn’t know just how rough his childhood was and the documentary focuses on the abuse and trauma he suffered from his father.

It gives Stallone a lot of credit but I still think he will never be given his due as a great writer. Yes, he was a great writer in service to making himself look great as an actor but Rocky and First Blood are incredible. They are flicks that reach the pinnacle of what movies can be. 

After spending a significant amount of time on the rise the movie pretty much ignores all the dreck Stallone made. I guess Sly didn’t want to talk
about them. 

Copland gets a little shout out. And man, Copland is one of the great crime movies of the 1990s. It gets dismissed as a bomb and it was, but it’s also up among the Stallone performances that you simply must see. 

The documentary is content to let Stallone walk you through his career and he explains some of the thinking behind his choices. 

“Sure it’s ridiculous, but it’s … theatrical,” is going to be my answer for every bad decision I make from here on out. 

Stallone is dealing with aging. How could it all have gone by so fast? How can we already be here? 

Anyway, this is a fun bit of movie star history but it’s not terribly inciteful. It does confront the abuse Stallone faced and you can sense he’s still working out those issues. He’s also confronting the choices he made along the way. 

I know a man who told me he once apologized to his wife and child because he was never home. The apology was nice, I’m sure, but you can never get that time back. 

The doc makes much of the fact that Stallone is moving. He acts like he needs a fresh start. But his kids are grown and that old house, full of statues and memorabilia, must have seemed like a tomb. 

A journalist went to visit Muhammad Ali in his old age. The writer discovered that Ali was keeping all of his belts and other items from his legendary career in a barn. 

“I had the world,” he said. “And it was nothing.”

A slight documentary that shines a light on the best parts of Albert Brooks comedy career. This isn’t a critical assessment as it is directed by Brooks closest friend(since high school!), Rob Reiner. 

So what it is, is a loving tribute and a nice highlight reel of Brooks’ career. 

I’m solidly middle aged and I had no connection to the Brooks who was a frequent guest of Carson and Letterman. Apparently he did something different, funny and weird every time out. 

My first encounter with Brooks was watching Defending Your Life on HBO every time it came on. It’s clear that it was his finest moment as a writer, director and star and its well worth tracking down, even now, for those of you who haven’t seen it. 

The doc takes a few moments to highlight his roles on the Simpsons and his turns as a bad guy is some good movies and, of course, as a desperate clownfish father trying to find his son. 

A gaggle of comedy heavyweights do interviews and pay tribute and Brooks talks about his work. 

Those of you who thought Sly (the documentary about Sylvester Stallone) was not enough of a meal will get even less here. 

At least that one presented the real troubles Stallone faced in his family life and in his creative endevours. 

Brooks certainly has his own family issues and the doc deals with those. But nothing lingers or sticks.

What I’m trying to get across is that I watched it last night, it was funny and I enjoyed it. And this morning I’m struggling to think of anything that would make it more than a highlight reel.

And it’s just not there. 

It did make me want to watch Defending Your Life again. And I’ll probably watch Drive one more time and check out The Muse and Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World each for the first time. 

As a commercial for Brooks’ career this does a fine job. And this isn’t a bad thing I suppose, give people their flowers while they are still with us.

The first thing that hit me about The Killer is how screamingly funny it is. 

I don’t want to give too much away but it’s more than just the cute alias names that no normal citizen recognizes — it’s also every step in The Killer’s journey being a step further away from his repeated mantras. 

It’s a movie about a guy violating his (horrific) ethos and regressing until you watch him and be amazed as he does all of the things he’s been saying a good criminal would never do. 

Judge me by my actions.  

Director David Fincher, screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker and lead actor Michael Fassbender clearly know what they have here and extract every bit of entertainment value out of the proposition. 

Fincher proved with The Social Network and Mank that he could make great movies without a bunch of brutal set pieces. But this is the other thing. It features well shot and interesting violence similar to Gone Girl, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Panic Room. It’s not 

There is one scene that reminded me of the master, Alfred Hitchcock. 

“In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man,” he said. 

When The Killer invades a home to get some revenge (something his mantra would suggest he should never do) Fincher gives us a perfect showcase of how hard it is to kill a man. 

The Killer takes time to show that and to show some of the effort it takes to get away clean. Clean physically, a clean getaway from the cops but never a clean escape for your soul. 

Fincher has probably made another flick that incels will latch onto but as he said in the interviews leading to The Killer’s release it’s not his fault if the people who watch his movie can’t recognize that he’s condemning them and not praising their commitment to being trashbag human beings. 

It remains thrilling to watch Fincher’s flicks. I don’t believe in the auteur theory (unless the director is also the screenwriter and even then the enterprise is a massive collaborative undertaking) but Fincher is one of the handful of current directors who could honestly lay claim to the title. 

Does this material work without a director of his taste and caliber? Maybe, but you would end up with something a lot closer to a John Wick knock off than the riveting little noir crime story you get here. 

One final thing, The Killer, after killing one innocent person and killing someone else that he maybe could have left alive then goes out of his way to drug a dog so that he can accomplish a bit of revenge without killing the animal. 

Why does he do this? This guy has been telling us for most of the movie that he is a nhillist who believes that his deadly actions will have no consequences in the world. 

Cause it’s a movie. 

And Fincher, Fassbender and Walker aren’t dopes. They know they can get away with a ton of indiscriminate killing but a dog … that’s where the audience will draw the line.

Funny, well paced and with decent action — if you want to watch a Marvel movie this is a pretty great one.

I’m not sure you need to have done the homework to enjoy this but it’s definitely a continuation of several Marvel projects including the first Captain Marvel movie along with WandaVision and the Ms. Marvel Disney Plus shows. You can skip the Nick Fury show.

Iman Vellani remains incredibly charming and she lights up the proceedings with kid enthusiasm. The bits of drama here work fine but this is a comedy and either you enjoy Marvel comedy or you don’t.

The flick wrings fun out of Ms Marvel’s family and Sam Jackson always has a good time playing Nick Fury. 

I’m pretty amazed that the villain plan is just the plot from Spaceballs and this has a solid answer to The Trolley Problem.

I do wish there had been more time for Brie Larsen’s Captain Marvel and Teyonah Paris’ Spectrum but you get a pretty cool Superhero sleepover out of the thing and a visit to one fun alien world.

And while I may have wanted a bit more the slight run time is a pretty solid advantage. Tell a few jokes, fight a few supervillains, get in, get out and wrap it up. 

It’s not a biopic of an important man or an investigation into the heart of American darkness. It’s a superhero romp. If that’s the kind of thing you are looking for you will find it here.

One of the best movies of the year and a tough watch. 

Martin Scorsese, Lily Gladstone, Robert DeNiro and Leo DiCaprio deliver an epic about the evil that men do. 

There was a way to make a crowd pleasing story about the investigation into the Osage Nation murders. That would have looked like any number of murder investigation dramas. You will surely know by now DiCaprio was supposed to play the FBI agent leading the charge. 

I would have loved that movie.

Instead, Scorcese goes his own way trying to make a film about two people who love each other even if one of them is a monster. 

Scorsese, ever the Catholic, knows that none of us ever really reckon with our sins.  

As I watched it I was struck by how much DeNiro’s William King Hale felt like Dracula and that DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart was his Renfield. 

That movie spends so much of its time in a woman’s bedroom while she is sick from a mysterious disease was surely not a coincidence. 

Or maybe that was just me. 

It’s a tough ask to get an audience to spend most of a movie with Renfield even if he’s played by Leo.

It’s also clear that Scorsese does not want to glorify violence here and he either minimizes it or makes it truly horrifying. (Mostly)

If you go to this hoping for one of Scorsese’s gangster epics you will be disappointed.

This is the Scorsese of Raging Bull and Silence demanding that an audience bear witness and not look away. 

A movie dedicated to exposing racism and white nationalism at the dawn of the American Century at home and abroad.

At one point a character says he won’t murder anyone and then immediately agrees to the killing when he learns that the victim will be a Native American. And a parade through Osage Main Street features the KKK.

Marty has never been subtle. 

This is a true story, and Scorsese clearly wanted to make something that honored the dead and acknowledged the survivors and the culture of the Osage Nation. 

I think he succeeded even if I left without fist pumping CINEMA! contact high I normally have from Scorsese epics. That was clearly Oppenheimer’s job this year. Marty didn’t want me to leave the theater feeling good. And he succeeded. 

But there are still some of the best moments you will see in a movie all year inside this. 

Those include: A trip to the afterlife, a fight over the cost of a funeral, two scenes with Owls, Lily Gladstone’s slight smiles, Robert DeNiro’s driving glasses, everything Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell do and every scene with the Osage leadership council. 

Those men deliver two sermons with that old time fire. 

We lost Robbie Robertson this year. The leader of The Band and the man who has been handling the music for Scorsese movies for decades. As usual, every choice in Killers is the right one and at one point Blind Willie Johnson’s Dark Was the Night Cold Was the Ground provides a transcendental back drop. This is where the soul of man never dies.

Brendan Frasier again proves that he may be the best character actor in America and everyone should be casting him in anything and everything. 

He gets entrusted with the most important 10 minutes in the movie and he nails it down perfectly. 

I hope he and Gladstone get to spend the next few decades doing exceptional work in great movies. 

Scorsese also gives us a unique final scene.

You’ve seen the end of a movie like this a million times. Finally, you get to the part where the filmmaker has to give the audience everything that actually happens to everyone who is left alive. It’s done with text on the screen right? 

But here — like he did in Goodfellas where Ray Liotta just walks down out of the witness chair, breaks the fourth wall and tells you what happened — Scorsese finds a new way to bring the curtain down. 

That includes a cameo I absolutely did not see coming. Like a lot of this movie I’m conflicted on this. Was it a brilliant bit of business or too showy? 

Irregardless, this another great work from an 80-year-old filmmaker who continues to be one of the very best in the world.

This is one of the top five movies of the year and it probably won’t crack the Scorsese all time Top 10.

Tip your hat to the master.

There was a moment early on in Reptile where Benicio Del Toro’s homicide detective scolds a uniform police officer. 

“When you walk through this crime scene. 12 members of the jury walk with you.” 

Lines like that and the mood of most of Reptile struck me as a film that was made by someone who had either done a homicide investigation or at least had done their research on how these things work. 

That feeling lasts even as the movie hits several cop story cliches on the way to its mostly predictable conclusions. 

Reptile was Directed by Grant Singer with credited writing by Singer, Benjamin Brewer and star Benicio Del Toro. Both visually and in the way the story develops suggests everyone watched an Ozark marathon before filming began.

That’s snarky I admit but it’s not a bad thing. Del Toro’s electric screen presence keeps the proceedings intriguing and Justin Timberlake is perfectly cast as a sleezy real estate agent / possible killer.

Eric Bogosian has fun playing the paternal possibly evil cop/uncle or copuncle and Dominick Lombardozzi gets another role where he plays a friend turned menacing presence in the story.

The movie’s secret weapon is Alicia Silverstone playing the wife of Del Toro’s homicide detective. She gets to have some fun sort of helping him with the investigation and there is the obligatory scene that places her in danger.

I immediately wanted her to be Del Toro’s partner instead of his wife because their natural chemistry could have carried the movie.

Unfortunately, the flick suffers from a byzantine plot and the elements of a conspiracy that it never quite fully explains. Nor does it make the audience care about who did what to whom.

Making those kind of crime tropes interesting is always a tough sell and this movie never gets there. There is a reason that there was only one good season of True Detective and everyone gave up on that show when the season 1 finale couldn’t live up to the mystery hype.

Ultimately, Reptile doesn’t quite rise to the B tier cop movie status of flicks like Copland or Narc but it is a fine example of the genre. While it doesn’t reach super highs it doesn’t fall flat either.

And I promise you I am not joking with this. Netflix should greenlight a sequel immediately and send Del Toro’s character into private investigations with his wife/partner Silverstone. 

They’re cute, they’re haunted by a shared murder solving past and they want to help.

Hollywood is a tough place. 

Director William Friedkin delivered three of the best movies in the 1970s but over the next five decades he was given fewer and fewer chances to deliver his particular brand of dark mayhem.

I think 1985s To Live and Die in LA is up there with his best work and most of the rest of his filmography is something I have avoided. Some of that is on me but I think a lot of it lies at the feet of a Hollywood system that was unwilling to take a chance on great director. 

I’m not enough of an expert in the behind the scenes machinations of Hollywood to tell you why it worked out that way. 

But when I think of Friedkin I think of a guy who like Spielberg and Scorsese should have been given free reign to do whatever he wanted for the rest of his career.

Alas, it does not work that way in Hollywood and never has. The powers that be can usually find someone younger, hungrier and worse at the job to deliver something to the box office. 

Francis Ford Coppola and Sidney Lumet and a host of others were shut down and pushed out too. To be fair, Coppola is working on the film he hopes will be his final masterpiece (funded outside of Hollywood of course). And Lumet’s final movie 2007s Before the Devil Knows You Are Dead is as great as anything he ever did. 

But Friedkin should have ended his career like Scorsese and Spielberg going from passion project to passion project.  

That’s not usually how it goes. Kevin Smith is still directing the movies he wants but he delivers on the cheap and his fan base still buys DVDs. 

Tarantino is a unicorn in this regard but he’s canny enough to deliver 10 films over 30 years and pre-announce a retirement. 

Wes Anderson keeps getting away with it but I’m pretty sure that guy is funded through subscriptions to The New Yorker and a tax on vaping devices. 

Greta Gerwig (Barbie) and Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Oppenheimer) have free reign … for now. 

I’ll be interested to see where they both are in 10 years. 

So for Friedkin, the director who delivered two of the greatest car chases ever filmed and some of the most devastating action sequences of all time what do we get for a final movie? 

A very small, very cheaply made play. 

Friedkin shot it over 14 days. It looks like it was filmed on an iPhone (and I don’t mean that in a good way.) 

The play, The Caine Mutiny-Court Martial is riveting. Think of A Few Good Men but if the characters involved were realistic human beings and if there wasn’t an easy answer.

Almost all of the credit for this must go to Herman Wouk who wrote the story first as a novel which won the Pulitzer Prize and then as a play. A version of it was also made into a Humphrey Bogart flick.

Friedkin’s filmed version grabbed me early and never let go. But it isn’t because of the action or special effects or camera work. 

It’s a simple story, was a naval captain insane when he was relieved of command during a storm? Or were his junior officers retaliating over his gruff command style?

Friedkin is a professional and he makes you forget the threadbare set, the lack of action scenes or even changes in location.

The actors are given space to work and, as always, great actors given great dialogue can create whole worlds. 

Kiefer Southerland, Monica Raymond and Jason Clarke use their skills to create characters who live and breathe inside a small frame.

And it is wonderful to see Lance Reddick who came to prominence as the tough Captain in The Wire getting to play a judge and bring his unique charisma to the screen one last time. 

At one point his reaction to a particular piece of testimony had me howling with laughter. No dialogue, not a joke was told, just a great actor making some magic for the screen. 

If life were like the movies Friedkin would have been given a large budget and an unlimited canvas to make a final statement, a last movie to sum up what he has to say as a filmmaker. 

Of course, nihilistic Billy Friedkin would be the first to tell you that life doesn’t work like that. 

Ultimately, this is a good movie, and Friedkin proves that he could make something great with a budget that probably couldn’t cover a Happy Meal. 

Friedkin had an amazing career. This is a great entry into his filmography. But I’m left wanting more. 

God Bless You Hurricane Billy.