I guess Channing Tatum is back

When I was in the cool old cinema in Ballarat (as mentioned yesterday), I noticed the two adjacent posters you see here. Both movies feature Channing Tatum. It's the sort of detail you don't usually see in real life, often because stars' movies tend to be spaced out at greater intervals, each one intending to capitalize on the next fertile release period of the calendar year. But you'd see it plenty in a movie about a movie star, to show just how famous he or she actually is.

One of the reasons I went beyond noticing it to writing about it here was that a few years back, I examined how Tatum was sort of on the verge of losing his fame.

In this post, which is already two-and-a-half years old now, I wrote about Tatum's unexpected disappearance from the scene, which was already in full bloom by then. Both of the two movies I mentioned at the end of that post -- America: The Motion Picture and Free Guy -- finally came out in 2021, but his roles were so small in them, and it's just voice work in the former, that that hardly felt like a reclaiming of the spotlight. In fact, his cameo in Free Guy had such a sort of desperate quality to it, it felt like an attempt by a filmmaker to prop up the sagging career of a guy we used to know who now needed our help. Free Guy suggested to me that Channing Tatum had forgotten how to be a movie star.

I guess he's remembered.

Now, Dog is probably not anyone's idea of a big return to form. In fact, there's something about its "soldier and his dog" story that seems like a logical step further into the ghetto of obscurity, an attempt at a comeback that just proves how marginalized he's become. At a certain point in some people's careers, they become suited for no better than movies that are intended purely for the consumption of American conservatives, who love their soldiers and their dogs. (Side note: I noticed Dog is being advertised at a local cinema with upcoming BYOD -- Bring Your Own Dog -- sessions. That sounds ... messy.)

But then The Lost City stars Sandra Bullock, who isn't in her peak period either, but is still close enough to it to retain her spot on the A list. For now. 

In any case, having two movie posters side by side in a mainstream movie theater is a sure sign of something.

The Lost City hasn't come out either here or America, but the early verdict is in on Dog, which has a 61 on Metacritic. Promising start. Maybe even the coastal elites will want to watch this one.

Tatum, he may yet return to the elite, though it will take a concerted effort over the next few years. As he is now the parent of at least one young child -- the thing that caused him to sort of step away in the first place -- it remains to be seen if he's got the hustle to get back to the top, or prefers a few paychecks here and there to put food on the table for his son.

Me, I hope we see him back filling that niche he filled ten years ago, when he could make both action movies and comedies come to life. Because cinema needs a Channing Tatum, a loveable lunkhead who feels comfortable in his own skin, and not the one who seemed so awkward and out of place in Free Guy. 

A most unexpected disappearance

I've gotten way behind on my Excel spreadsheet of all the films I've ever seen. It's not worth getting into. I've got a Word document with the exact same information, but I also have a spreadsheet. It doesn't have about the last 500 movies I've seen. So I've been catching up.

In the course of going backward through my Letterboxd diary so as to be sure to add everything, I came across Kingsman: The Golden Circle, which I watched in January of 2018, to give you some idea of my progress. (I still have about 300 to go.) In conjunction with adding the movie, I read a review of it on the site I used to write for ten years ago, All Movie Guide.

That review mentioned Channing Tatum, which made me realize something surprising:

That was the last time I had seen Channing Tatum in a movie.

You know, Channing Tatum, one of the world's biggest and brightest young stars. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen his face grace a poster or his biceps burst through a trailer.

As it turns out, Tatum has been in only two movies since I saw Kingsman. Actually, he's not "in" either of them; only his voice is. He voices the main character in Smallfoot, presumably alongside Zendaya, who is Meechee. But I didn't see that. I did see this year's Lego Movie 2, but he's only the voice of Superman in that one, a tiny role, if I remember correctly.

In other words, a role he could have done over breakfast one day while feeding his child.

Tatum's absence is, indeed, due to fatherhood, or so he claimed when Variety caught up with him last September. "I've got a kid, man," he told Variety, when Variety noticed he'd had a scant year and asked him about it. "That's the biggest job I have."

But also in that article came the revelation that he was about to end his informal hiatus, to get back to work. He didn't do that. Lego 2 couldn't have been what he was talking about, and besides, by September he'd probably already recorded that part. There's something called America: The Motion Picture that is listed in pre-production on IMDB, but there also he provides only a voice, and you'd think, wouldn't have done so yet. His next live action movie appears to be Free Guy, a comedy starring Ryan Reynolds, next July. He's listed fourth in the cast ... so maybe that's what he was talking about?

Still and all, it's a bit of a strange thing for a guy in his Hollywood prime -- his absolute prime -- to take what amounts to two years off, and sort of going on three. He's only 39. Some actors don't even hit their prime until their 40s.

But I wonder if I'd be saying the same thing if he were a woman.

Earlier this year I wrote about Rachel McAdams, who is only 18 months older than Tatum and similarly in her prime, and how she was probably about to take a couple years off because she was having a baby. That was just a deduction from the timing of her child's birth and the lack of upcoming projects on her IMDB page. But I didn't note my surprise that she'd be taking time off to be a parent. With Tatum, I did.

Well, good on Channing Tatum then. Be a dad. Let your accountant continue to invest your millions. Now's the time your child will remember that you were around. And he or she won't have to grow up on a damn movie set.

Because when you are really ready to return, you'll have no shortage of offers.

... and I call this man "Crazy Eyes"

It's been a long time since I've seen a good old-fashioned, out there, really ill-considered performance in a movie.

Warcraft broke that drought.

As I watched the lead human in the story sneer, leer, grin and glisten, I was trying for the life of me to figure out who the joke was on.

I was also trying for the life of me to figure out why Channing Tatum didn't learn his lesson from Jupiter Ascending and was trying to play another Character with a capital C.

Of course, the man pictured here -- let's call him Crazy Eyes -- is not actually Channing Tatum. But since I'd never heard of Travis Fimmel before (I haven't seen Vikings) and I figured that a potential blockbuster had to have a big star headlining the movie (Ben Foster doesn't count), I spent the whole movie thinking that it was Tatum just totally going for it. I mean, he didn't look 100% like Tatum, but I could easily imagine that it was Tatum going hairy and uglying himself up a bit (kind of like he did in The Hateful Eight). I mean, one would hardly call Fimmel, a model, ugly. But in this part, he's got stringy hair and red-rimmed eyes -- glowing, pulsing, demented eyes.

And I'm not the first person to have confused Fimmel and Tatum. Here, the internet is helping me out on this one:

Except, you know, Travis Fimmel's got crazy eyes.

But let's talk a little bit about that performance. He (or director Duncan Jones, I suppose) made the decision not to give us the usual stolid, determined hero who has a kind manner and can be jovial when he wants to be. We've seen that plenty of times. Instead, Fimmel plays the character Lothar (of the hill people?) as a kind of jester teetering on the verge of insanity. That mindset is not apparent in anything he does, as those things all still fall basically within the realm of traditional hero stuff. It's that unplaceable glimmer in his eyes, that hint of glee that creeps into even scenes where it does not seem appropriate, that distinguishes him.

But if it were just that, the performance wouldn't truly be bad. The way Fimmel responds in the emotional moments is even funnier. I won't tell you exactly what his character has to respond to because that would constitute spoiler territory, but there's this one moment where he's required to quiver with rage, and he just can't do it. His desperation leading up to that moment is similarly laughable.

So yeah, Warcraft is not great. You know this. But I thought a lot of the stuff related to the Orcs (do they have to pay a royalty to the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien?) was really good, especially visually, and especially the opening ten minutes before the title. So I guess it has something in common with one of this year's other big (critical if not commercial) flops, Batman v. Superman, which also had a great opening.

I read the plot description just now on Wikipedia and it's a bit less convoluted than I thought it was when I was watching it. So something clearly got lost in translation.

One actor I did correctly identify, despite the fangs protruding from her mouth, was Paula Patton as a half-human, half-orc character. The only reason I thought it wasn't Patton is because she looked dynamite and I was surprised that they would have cast a 40-year-old actress in this role. She was one of the movie's visuals I must say I quite enjoyed.

Four wide releases, four snarky comments

As you are surely aware, I reserve Fridays for posts about new releases. After some friendly debates on the subject with other film bloggers, I am now more cautious than I used to be about indicting a movie that hasn't come out yet. But I still love talking about new releases on Fridays, even if what I usually have to say falls more along the lines of a silly joke than some kind of penetrating, in-depth analysis. I think it's important that a blog have a certain up-to-the-minute quality, mixed in with the bread and butter of discussing older films.

Some Fridays, I force it -- I write about a new movie even though I don't have a particularly compelling "take" on it. Then there are the Fridays -- like this Friday -- when every single new release inspires me to write an entire post.

So instead of doing that, I'm going to combine four posts into one, with a short section devoted to each of this week's new movies. And as usual, I hope it will make you laugh. At least, when I'm intending to make you laugh.

The title or the egg?

So, which came first with Gnomeo & Juliet -- the title, or the story?

I'm going with the former.

Your options are these:

1) Someone decided to make a movie about garden gnomes in which some of the garden gnomes fall in love, and then happened upon the title Gnomeo & Juliet.

2) Someone realized that "gnome" rhymes with "rome," and that, by extension, "gnomeo" rhymes with "romeo." Someone get me a script!

I think it's the latter.

Wait, which one is supposed to be the hot one?

Although the advertising focus for Just Go With It has shifted almost entirely to Brooklyn Decker emerging from the ocean, Bo Derek-style, with her jiggling boobs barely contained by her skimpy yellow bikini, I first became aware of the movie from a billboard next to the 405 Freeway.

In this billboard, the same poster you see here, Decker is very small -- she really could just be a random "anybabe," not necessarily part of the plot as a distinct character. So I wasn't struck by the hotness of Decker -- I was struck by the hotness of Jennifer Aniston, now basically an afterthought in the ad campaign.

Anyone with me on this? Have you ever seen Aniston looking quite as beautiful and/or sexy as she looks in this picture?

I'm not interested in getting all pervy here, but there's something about that outfit that just makes Aniston look dynamite. Not only does it accentuate her breasts very nicely -- and make me wonder if the poster was touched up -- but it also provides an excellent showcase for her long, slender legs. Pretty sure those are all Aniston's.

Okay, end pervy portion.

One thing I think is very funny about Just Go With It is how they have basically dropped trying to sell it as a romantic comedy, which is what its Valentine's weekend release date indicates it should be, and Aniston's presence indicates it should be. In fact, they are going almost exclusively for Adam Sandler's fans, as the main line in the campaign has become "Just tell your girlfriend it's a romantic comedy." Did they stop to consider that "your girlfriend" would also be receiving this message?

While it's possible this is the right decision, I am guessing that the driving force for couples going to the movie theater on Valentine's Day weekend is the woman, not the man. So we'll see if this totally backfires. Then again, maybe I'm wrong about that -- maybe going to the movies is a compromise engineered by the guy, when the woman would rather do something more romantic, like dinner.

21st century boy

The Eagle is set in 135 A.D. Unfortunately, its star, Channing Tatum, is set in 2011.

Is it just me, or is Channing Tatum a complete byproduct of the 21st century, unable to play a character in any movie set prior to 1999?

In a brief six-year film career in which he has become pretty prominent, Tatum has played almost exclusively modern male archetypes -- the streetwise brooder/fighter (Fighting), the hip hop dancer (Step Up), the urban athlete (Coach Carter), the extreme sports athlete (Supercross: The Movie), or the modern soldier, either "real" (Dear John/Stop-Loss) or fantastical (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra). There are few actors who owe their essential "look" to Eminem more than Tatum does. In fact, I would not be surprised if he had a role as a white rapper somewhere on the horizon.

So we're supposed to believe him as some kind of Scottish warrior who lived only a hundred years after the death of Christ?

I'm just not seeing it. It's kind of the same reason they don't cast Mark Wahlberg as a viking.

I mean, I might be wrong. Tatum also appeared in Public Enemies, which I did not see, where he must have been either a 1930s gangster or a 1930s lawman. However, most people say not-great things about that movie, so maybe him not pulling it off was one of the not-great things.

But Tatum is definitely a star, so we should expect him to be expanding his roles beyond those of square-jawed 21st century troublemakers and rabble rousers. I can't wait to see him get that street-slanged mouth around some Shakespearean sonnets.

Hardly a credible source

There are a million ways to make fun of Justin Bieber: Never Say Never. I will choose two.

1) On a digital billboard for this movie that I see on my way home for work, there are a couple praising quotations that appear one after another on the screen. The one that really makes me laugh is the one that says "... an inspiring story ..." It's not because I'd like to see what's on either side of the ellipses, but because of who this quotation is attributed to: Sheknows.com.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but when you're pimping a movie, aren't you trying to find the least likely organization to support it, as a sign of just how damn good it is, rather than a source that you would imagine to be in the movie's pocket from the start? Wouldn't you rather find an approving quotation from The Wall Street Journal, than from "Sheknows.com"? Or at the very least, a source with some kind of legitimate media credibility, rather than what appears to be a site for fangirls?

I just went to www.sheknows.com, and it appears to be a site devoted to women and their wants/needs. That much I could have guessed from the name. If I needed further confirmation of its essential frivolousness, every graphic on the site is some shade of pink.

If they wanted to drive the Justin Bieber movie even further into the marginalized ghetto of shrieking 12-year-old girls, congratulations, mission accomplished.

Then again, there's also a certain savviness to knowing your audience.

2) The title. What is Never Say Never supposed to mean?

I think it's funny that the main narrative behind Justin Bieber is supposed to be that he "beat the odds" to become famous, that people told him "all his life" that he "couldn't make it," or something like that. "All his life?" What are we really talking here? The kid is 16, and hasn't he been famous since he was about 12? So when he was 8, someone told him he would never make it?

Wow, what a story of persistence. Brings a tear to my eye.

Never Say Never would make a lot more sense as the title for a movie about an older person, who beat legitimate odds to finally make a name for themselves. Like, Susan Boyle: Never Say Never.

So ... which one am I most likely to see, in the theater or otherwise?

I'm gonna go with Gnomeo & Juliet. I know, I know. But I have to say, I kind of like the animation. It seems different enough to be original, without sacrificing quality.

However, I don't think it will be in the theater. I think it will be "otherwise."