Tavern Talk: Video Review - FREAKY

It's been a while, but given original Initial Reaction co-host Charles Browder was able to return for a random review of one of the few new releases in theaters coupled with the fact I won't be doing a full write-up on Freaky, it seemed as good a time as any to re-vamp the video review posts. To add some perspective, the last post I wrote of this nature was back in March for the Disney/Pixar release of Onward which published on March 11th AKA the week the entire world shut down. This was honestly the day before major studios would announce delays in some of their biggest movies planned for the remainder of the calendar year and given this post focuses as much if not more on the box office results of the movie myself and my co-host had reviewed the week prior it seemed silly to try and talk about anything when nothing was coming out. Things have changed somewhat since the beginning of September when Tenet more or less forced theaters to re-open with a slew of low-key new releases premiering since and a lot of anniversary editions and restorations of older classics mostly being shown instead. That of course brings us to mid-November which saw the release of Universal and Blumhouse’s body-swap horror-comedy Freaky which has topped the box office for two straight weeks now (again, mostly due to lack of competition and no other new, wide releases), but while the film debuted to $3.6 million on nearly 2,500 screens in its first weekend the second week of the films release was plagued (pun intended) by news of COVID-19 cases continuing to rise across the nation resulting in an only $1.2 million haul for a total domestic cume just shy of $5.6 million. Not bad for a movie rumored to be budgeted at right around $6 million during a pandemic, but still pretty bleak in terms of theater-going prospects for the foreseeable future. Overseas, the film added $3.7 million bringing its worldwide total to $9.2 million. As Thanksgiving approaches, Universal’s animated sequel The Croods: A New Age is slated to hit theaters over the holiday weekend and there is still some hope that business will pick up, but with families largely (hopefully) remaining confined to their own households for the festivities this year the question is how many will risk going to the movies to see a seven year-later sequel to an animated movie? Time will tell, but hopefully we'll have more video reviews coming sooner rather than later. As always, be sure to follow the official TAVERN TALK by Initial Reaction YouTube channel as well as on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter where you can find all the latest content! 

CAPTIVE STATE Review

Rupert Wyatt passed on making a sequel, never mind a complete trilogy of Planet of the Apes movies which then gave writer/director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In) an in to complete the trilogy and go on to now be penning and planning a solo Batman film for WB's DCEU. Would Wyatt have preferred this career path? Who's to say? And who's to say if Wyatt had rounded out the Apes films that he would have been offered the Batman film at all, but it does stand to question if Wyatt regrets his decision to pass on such high profile opportunities. Since deciding not to return to the world of stories about simians though, Wyatt has only made one feature (2014's re-make of The Gambler for Paramount which held a $25 million production budget and only turned over a $39 million worldwide gross) with Captive State being his second outing into feature-length material and a seemingly personal one at that. Wyatt co-wrote the screenplay for Captive State with Erica Beeney (The Battle of Shaker Heights) and serves as a producer, but this low-budget drama/thriller has more in common with Wyatt's 2008 breakout, The Escapist, than it does his 2011 introduction to the mainstream despite posing as a tale that typically functions on the same scale or budget as a Planet of the Apes sequel.

Teaser Trailer for CAPTIVE STATE Starring John Goodman

Say what you will about Matt Reeves and his two sequels in the latest Planet of the Apes trilogy, but my favorite of the bunch is still Rupert Wyatt's initial film. So much better than it had any right to be, Rise of the Planet of the Apes came on the heels of Wyatt's little seen, but insanely entertaining 2008 film, The Escapist. Hell, I even thought The Gambler was a solid genre exercise even if there wasn't necessarily a need for it to exist and Wyatt came up with nothing in the way of that purpose, but instead simply executed the beats in fine fashion. Next year though, the director is back with his first original effort since that 2008 prison break actioner in Captive State. Written with Project Greenlight alum Erica Beeney the film is set nearly a decade after the occupation of earth by an extraterrestrial force as the narrative will explore the lives of those on both sides of the conflict: the collaborators and dissidents. While this first teaser trailer doesn't give viewers much by way of story details it more offers brief glimpses the tone of the movie will take on in order to acclimate them with this grounded sci-fi setting that is said to attempt to shine light on the modern surveillance state, the threats to civil liberties, and the role of dissent within an authoritarian society. While Captive State is most definitely a sci-fi thriller it seems to have bigger ideas on the brain, but while it remains to be seen how well it will convey such ideas this first splattering of images certainly indicates the "how" in how Wyatt plans to convey such themes while keeping the facade of a pure genre picture. The teaser also only briefly highlights some of the names in the cast as well given we only have single shots of some and only split seconds of others despite the fact Wyatt has recruited the likes of John Goodman and Vera Farmiga to play alongside up-and-comer's such as Moonlight's Ashton Sanders, White Boy Rick's Jonathan Majors, If Beale Street Could Talk's KiKi Layne, and rapper Machine Gun Kelly AKA Colson Baker. Captive State also stars Alan Ruck, James Ransone, Madeline Brewer, D.B. Sweeney, Kevin Dunn, and opens on March 29, 2019.