Inspiration has come in all shapes and cinematic sizes this spring. Ticket sales tanked in early January, and even with a Marvel superhero, a Disney princess and a Lion King prequel in the mix, only two of the year's weekends so far have topped $100 million, a level that was routine just a few years ago.
So what's Tinseltown serving up this weekend? A mythical beast, a folk singer and an oil-covered flightless bird. Not conventional box office magnets, certainly, but interesting nonetheless. Here's the scoop:
Death of a Unicorn
In theaters starting Friday
A secluded manse, a roadkill unicorn, a family of greedy pharmaceutical moguls, and an innocent teenager are the main ingredients in this amusingly grisly, if scattered, horror comedy. Slammed by a rental car before the credits, the pony-sized title critter turns out to be a surprisingly resilient colt with parents that are long-in-the-tooth in a variety of senses. The mythical beast has purple blood that heals everything from acne to cancer, a fact that sends filmmaker Alex Scharfman on a satirical trot through corporate money-grubbing, absent panels of the centuries-old Unicorn Tapestries at the Met Cloisters and the usual horror genre tropes. The film would have benefitted from a tighter edit and a bigger effects budget, but its principals — especially Jenna Ortega as the only person on screen with a conscience, and Will Poulter as her polar opposite — are clearly having a ball.
The Penguin Lessons
In theaters starting Friday
Buenos Aires, 1976, a teacher played by Steve Coogan shows up at St. George's, an exclusive boy's school, just as a bomb goes off in the distance. "Argentina's in chaos, a military coup is imminent," the headmaster (Jonathan Pryce) tells him jauntily. And this chirpy little film, based on a memoir by Tom Michell, takes roughly that same cheery approach to its curmudgeonly central character and the flightless bird that adopts him after he cleans it up from an oil slick. The teacher talks freedom and human rights with his students, but when a 19-year-old cleaning lady he's befriended is "disappeared" (kidnapped by the government) in broad daylight in his presence, he just stands there. When he gets back to campus, he says, "If I'd been arrested too, would it have helped?" Which is perhaps the right question, but he's saying it to the penguin. The cutesiness doesn't end there, nor the broad but timid messaging, nor the main character's personal growth, all of which the filmmakers apparently regard as sufficient in a film set during a horrific period of dictatorial brutality. It's not sufficient, of course. And things didn't go nearly that affirmatively for tens of thousands of innocent victims in Argentina.
The Ballad of Wallis Island
In limited theaters starting Friday, everywhere April 18
When folk-rock legend Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden) arrives on an island off the coast of Wales for a concert, he has no idea what he's in for. His one-man greeting committee, Charles (Tim Key), is a two-time lottery winner and a pun-happy, relentlessly cheerful chatterbox, who makes no bones about being a superfan. So much so that he's also invited McGwyer's ex-girlfriend/partner Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan) along with her American husband (Akemnji Ndifornyen). And as if all that weren't awkward enough, Charles is planning to be the concert's entire audience. A leisurely expansion of a 2007 Basden/Key short film, the comedy manages to be at once an odd-couple bromance, a showcase for Key's uproarious woolgathering, a quite respectable musical event, a meditation on grief, and an achingly nostalgic look at the harmonies we carry with us through life.
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