Tag Archives: peppermint

The Nun Scares Up a Franchise Best Opening to Take First

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The Nun shows again that people don’t hate sequels. It set a franchise best for The Conjuring series of films with an estimated $53.5 million, beating the first film’s $41.8 million. That’s the second largest opening in September ever. It’s also the second highest opening ever for an R-rated horror film.

The film played to an audience that was 51% mae and 44% were 25 years or older. It’s the first film in that universe that hasn’t played to a majority female audience.

The film had success overseas as well with an estimated $77.5 million from 60 markets for a $131 million global debut. With a budget of just $22 million, the studio and creators must be happy with this one already.

Warner Bros. continues its streak of hits marking the fifth week the studio has held the top spot. It has found success with The Meg and Crazy Rich Asians as well. It also held the #2 spot for the weekend. That’s the fourth straight week for that, an achievement that hasn’t happened in over 25 years.

In second place was Crazy Rich Asians which was the champ for the previous three weekends. The film brought in an estimated $13.6 million to bring its domestic total to $136.2 million. It also added $5.6 million in 23 markets to brings its overseas total to $28.5 million. The film opens in the UK this coming weekend, Mexico on September 21, and Japan on September 28.

Peppermint debuted in third place with an estimated $13.3 million on a $25 million budget. The film also opened in 17 markets overseas grossing an estimated $1.4 million. It continues a rollout that goes well into January 2019.

In fourth place was The Meg which earned an estimated $6 million to bring its domestic total to $131.6 million. It also brought in an estimated $11.3 million from 67 territories to bring its international total to $360.4 million and a global total of $492 million.

Searching rounded out the top five with an estimated $4.5 million domestically and $7.5 million internationally. The film has earned $14.3 million domestically, $17.7 million at the foreign box office for a total of $32 million worldwide after three weeks.

In comic film news….

Ant-Man and the Wasp came in at #21 at the weekend box office with an estimated $608,000 to bring its domestic total to $214.8 million.

Avengers: Infinity War is still bringing in the dollars. That movie was #41 and added $19,000 to its domestic total which now stands at $678.8 million.

We’ll be back in an hour for a deeper dive into 2018’s comic adaptations.

Movie Review: Peppermint

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Peppermint is the same movie we’ve seen dozens of times before, but with a singular twist: this time it’s a woman.

Jennifer Garner plays Riley North, our vigilante heroine, who takes on a Los Angeles drug cartel after her family was murdered. This revenge thriller subgenre has been recently elevated by Keanu Reeves and David Leitch in John Wick, and even by Denzel Washington in The Equalizer,  but this just simply does not live up to that same level.

Instead, it plays out much like a middling revenge thriller with all of its tropes generally intact. Except for one– because in this instance it’s the husband who gets “fridged” instead of the wife. We also get John Gallagher Jr sporting the most 70’s cop mustache seen on film in forty years playing your incredibly typical cop. It’s not bad, just predictable.

Many years ago Jennifer Garner starred in what is likely the worst film based on a mainstream comic book character in recent memory: Elektra. That was a mess, but this film shows what might have been done with Garner in a lead role taking on a bunch of baddies as a badass assassin. She fills that role perfectly, and her recent off screen super heroic actions also help build cache and audience buy-in as we root for her to take down the bad guys. This is a return to form for Garner who first broke out in this type of role in Alias and a reminder of her formidable presence and action star skills that Hollywood recently seems to be ignoring in favor of putting her in more typical “mom” roles.

Back to Elektra– the comparison to comic book movies is not far afield, as the film this most fully resembles is The Punisher starring Thomas Jane and John Travolta. It is not a surprise that our screenwriter, Chad St. John, wrote the Punisher short film Dirty Laundry. . . as well as London Has Fallen. This film’s pedigree also includes director Pierre Morel, who made the first Taken film. Strip away any of that film’s uniqueness and you have that same sort of by the numbers over the top action violence, but that doesn’t make it altogether unenjoyable to watch.

Indeed, many of the action scenes have a glimmer that makes you wish this film was just ever so slightly better. The film also tries to tease out a few subplots around social media use and the epidemic of homelessness currently facing many cities in America but especially Los Angeles, but fails to really land any of them.

What we’re left with is a lot of unmet potential — and in an era where we have John Wick (or Atomic Blonde), this just doesn’t quite measure up. However, it’s certainly better than most of the films that Garner has recently been in, and it would be great to see more of her in these action roles — and generally more women out in front of action films playing the roles that are normally reserved for our Bruce Willises, Liam Neesons and Charles Bronsons.

This is a proof of concept that women can play these roles just as well as men, and a showcase for Garner’s skills as an action star which should be taken more advantage of, but the film never breaks out of its tropes.

2.5 out of 5 stars