Next (2007) - Weak script sinks Tamahori's Dick adaptation

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Hot and cold meet in terms of colors on this star-pushing poster for Lee Tamahori's Next

A Las Vegas magician can see 2 minutes into his future, as he gets involved in a shooting incident. In its wake he is wanted in order to help retrieve a stolen weapon, and he also falls in love.

 

Next is written by Gary Goldman (Big Trouble in Little China (1986)), Jonathan Hensleigh (Armageddon (1998)) and Paul Bernbaum (Hollywoodland (2006)), loosely adapting the 1954 short story The Golden Man by Philip K. Dick (The Man Who Japed (1956)), and directed by great New-Zealander filmmaker Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors (1994)).

It is regrettably a very bad Dick adaptation. The script is the main culprit: If you ask questions about the plot (as one usually does), almost nothing holds up in Next.

Jessica Biel (The A-Team (2010)) and Nicolas Cage (Astro Boy (2009)) barely make the cut performance-wise, but nothing much happens to their characters in terms of development. Hollow action and CGI doesn't salvage this miscarriage.

 

Related post:

 

Lee Tamahori: Die Another Day (2002) - Tamahori makes a thrilling, grand piece of Bond escapism

 

 

Watch a 2-minute clip from the movie here

 

Cost: 78.1 mil. $

Box office: 77.6 mil. $

= Huge flop (returned 0.99 times its cost)

[Next was released 25 April (France, Belgium) and runs 96 minutes. Shooting took place from April 2006 - ? in Arizona, Las Vegas, Nevada and California, including Los Angeles. The film opened #3, behind holdover hit Disturbia and fellow new release The Invisible, to a 7.1 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent one more weekend in the top 5 (#5) and grossed 18.2 mil. $ (23.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Spain with 7.1 mil. $ (9.2 %) and the UK with 4.9 mil. $ (6.3 %). Tamahori returned with The Devil's Double (2011). Cage returned in National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007); Biel in I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007); and Julianne Moore (Gloria Bell (2018)) in Savage Grace (2007). Next is rotten at 28 % with a 4.60/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Next?

The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden (2013, documentary) or, The Cursed People

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A web of personages laid out over an ominously blood-stained map of the Galapagos Islands makes up this interest-sparking poster for Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine's The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden

In 1933 a disillusioned German couple travel to the deserted Galapagos island Floreana in the Pacific Ocean, but their Nietzsche-inspired way of life there is soon disturbed by other expat Europeans, who soon start to go missing ...

 

The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden is written and directed by Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine (Kids of Survival (1996, documentary, both)), with Celeste Schaefer Snyder (Ballets Russes (2005, documentary)) contributing writing, based on the books, journals, articles and letters of the five islanders, Dore Strauch, Margret Wittmer, Friedrich Ritter, Hinz Wittmer and John Garth.

It is an incredibly fascinating story of the island's new, European vanguard; a nihilist, a self-sufficient, and a self-serving French fake baroness slash mistress/dominatrix. The documentarians have understandably romped in the generous historical materials; extensive diaries from central characters and even film of them, - although it would have been meaningful with some note about where these films actually come from.

The resulting film is nevertheless long, also featuring interviews of descendants, pictures of the islands' prehistoric-looking landscapes and animals, along with narration from big stars, including Cate Blanchett (Bandits (2001)) and Thomas Kretschmann (Prince Valiant (1997)). In light of the many other atrocities also to come from their part of the world during this time, The Galapagos Affair made me wonder whether 1930s Germans were generally a people cursed by some otherworldly, diabolical evil, a genuinely cursed people?

 

Watch a conversation between the filmmakers here about the making of the film

 

Cost: Uncertain

Box office: 247k $ (North America only)

= Uncertain

[The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden premiered 12 October (Hamptons International Film Festival, US) and runs 120 minutes. It opened #86 to a 5k $ first weekend in 1 theater in North America, where it peaked at #53 and in 15 theaters (different weeks). It was screened at a handful of festivals and released in the UK, but only the North-American gross is listed online. Geller and Goldfine are currently in post-production with their next documentary, Hallelujah: It Goes Like This. The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden is certified fresh at 83 % with a 6.90/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden?

Hostel: Part III (2011, video) - Spiegel ends Roth's beloved gore franchise

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The poster for Scott Spiegel's Hostel: Part III looks like a cheap rehash of the posters for the first two films

Four unsympathetic young men are en route to Las Vegas for a bachelor party. Once there they go to a party way off the Strip, where one of them disappears.

Far into Hostel 3, I was in. - The characters of Eli Roth's (Cabin Fever (2002)) first two films (2005 and 2007) aren't angels as well, - but then at some point I realized that I had not even a mild liking for any of the guys here, and that the film's focus seemed to flap around between them, seemingly unclear about who of them was leading the narrative ahead. Michael D. Weiss (Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)) has written the script, 'based on Roth's characters', (although there doesn't seem to be any characters from the first two films in this one.) It is directed by a producer on the first two films, Scott Spiegel (From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (1999)), and Roth was not involved in making it.
When Kip Pardue (The Rules of Attraction (2002)), who plays the ultra-douche, SPOILER begins to fight his friend, the film becomes involuntarily funny, because things simply get too ridiculous. And although Thomas Kretschmann (Valkyrie (2008)) is in this one, he never really becomes a very good villain unfortunately.
Hostel 3 is still a fairly large production SPOILER with cockroach-, face-ripping- and Japanese cyberpunk/crossbow-kills and an intro scene, which cleverly turns the franchise from its Eastern Europe setting to the Americans home scene. But when it's over, a fan of the first two films will almost certainly feel pretty disappointed. The Hostel franchise provisionally dies here.

Related posts:
 
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
 

Here are the four schmucks that are in for some cultural punishment in Scott Spiegel's Hostel: Part III

Watch the trailer for the movie here

Cost: 6 mil. $
Box office: None - released straight-to-DVD and VoD
= Uncertainty
[But almost certainly a huge flop. - However, since DVD sales and VoD revenue have not been publicized, I can't know for sure. Hostel 3 is the first of the Hostel films to go straight-to-DVD. The release was meant to be followed by a viral marketing campaign, which was canceled, when the film got bad test screenings.]

What do you think of Hostel: Part III?