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Page 1 of 8November 11, 2013

By Pamela McClintockMarvel Studios and Disney’s Thor: The Dark World thun-dered its way to a $86.1 mil-lion domestic launch as it continued its global assault, finishing the weekend with a sizeable $327 million in worldwide ticket sales.

That’s an impressive start considering the first Thor, which debuted to $65.7 mil-lion domestically in May 2011, grossed $449.3 million glob-ally. The sequel nabbed one of the top November openings of all time in North America, though it couldn’t quite match the $88.4 million earned by Skyfall on the same weekend a year ago.

The 3D tentpole — which returns Chris Hemsworth as the hammer-wielding superhero — has grossed $240.9 million abroad, where

it began rolling out last week- end. It is pacing a whopping 90 percent ahead of the orig-inal title, which topped out at $268 million internationally (Thor 2 has already eclipsed the $192 million earned by 2011’s Captain America: The

First Avenger). Russia leads with $24.1 million, followed by the U.K. with $22.6 million and China (where it opened on Friday) with $19.6 million.

The movie is doing big business in Imax theaters,

B.O. Report: Thor 2 Scores $86.1 Million Bow

see page 2

Inside:word spreads for book thiefPAge 2

lionsgate mulls hunger games theme parks PAge 3

point break remake rides global wavePAge 4

abbey renewed for 5th seasonPAge 6

movie review: armstrong lie PAge 7

NOV 7-14

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E X P R E S S P A S S E S A V A I L A B L E N O WVisit AFI.com/AFIFEST

For the first time in Marvel’s Avengers film franchise, Thor: The Dark World grossed slightly more domestically on Saturday than on Friday.

box office newsPage 2 of 8November 11, 2013

which generated $11 million in global ticket sales.

Thor 2, like Iron Man 3, is benefiting from 2012’s global blockbuster The Avengers, the crown jewel in Marvel’s superhero film empire. The latter film, which features Hemsworth as Thor and Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, among other Marvel characters, earned $1.5 bil-lion worldwide to become the No. 3 film of all time behind Avatar and Titanic.

For the first time in Mar-vel’s Avengers series, Thor 2 grossed slightly more domes- tically on Saturday than on Friday ($31.7 million versus $31.6 million) in a major vic-tory for Marvel and Disney’s marketing operation. Usu-ally, Friday is by far the big- gest day because of the fan- boy audience.

“[Thor 2] played in an unconventional way,” said Disney’s distribution chief Dave Hollis. “The franchise is moving away from just fanboys and crossing into the mainstream in a way that makes out-of-school, out-of-work Saturday shows super lucrative. The com-bination of storytelling and a very successful, inspired marketing campaign made it appeal to the broadest possible audience.”

Thor 2 played to all quadrants of the movie-going audience and quickly transformed into a date-night movie, with couples making up 62 percent of the audience. Families made up 21 percent of those buying tickets, and teens 17 percent. All told, 39 percent of ticket buyers were under the age

of 25. The sequel nabbed an A- CinemaScore, compared to a B+ for the first Thor.

Females made up an im- pressive 48 percent of Fri-day’s audience — a larger percentage than usual for a superhero pic — but by Sun-day, males made up 62 per-cent of the overall weekend audience.

Most movies shied away from opening opposite Thor 2, but in a counterprogramming move, both 12 Years a Slave and About Time made major expansions this weekend.

Steve McQueen’s awards favorite 12 Years made a dar-ing move in upping its the-ater count from 410 to 1,144. The harrowing slave drama grossed a solid $6.6 million, putting it at No. 7 and push-ing its domestic total past $17.3 million for Fox Search-light and the producers.

Richard Curtis’ romantic comedy About Time wasn’t as lucky. The Working Title movie, distributed by Uni-versal, earned $5.2 million as it increased its location count to 1,200 for a ninth-place finish and rather tepid

$6.7 million domestic gross.Among holdovers, Para-

mount’s Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa continued its dazzling run, coming in No. 2 in its third weekend after grossing $11.3 million for a domestic total of $78.7 mil- lion. Relativity Media’s 3D animated offering Free Birds and CBS Films’ buddy com-edy Last Vegas followed in quick order. Free Birds earned $11.2 million in its second weekend for a North Ameri-can cume of $30.2 million, while Last Vegas collected $11.1 million in its second out-ing for a $33.5 million cume.

Ender’s Game placed No. 5, earning $10.3 million for a do- mestic total of $44 million.

Among awards contend-ers, Sony’s Paul Greengrass drama Captain Phillips, star-ring Tom Hanks, crossed $90 million in its fifth week-end, grossing $5.8 million for a $91 million cume.

The Metropolitan Opera’s The Met: Live in HD scored solidly with Saturday’s live broadcast of Puccini’s Tosca in 800 North American the-aters, grossing $2.3 million.

specialty b.o.: word spreads for book thief By Pamela McClintockWord-of-mouth propelled Fox 2000’s The Book Thief to a solid opening at the North American box office despite mixed reviews.

The Nazi drama, from Downton Abbey director Brian Percival and based on Markus Zusak’s novel, grossed $108,000 from four theaters in New York and Los Angeles for a location average of $27,000, the best of the weekend.

The movie got off to a soft start Friday, but recovered to some degree when traffic shot up 80 percent on Saturday, compared to the expected 40 percent-45 percent. “Word of mouth is clearly kicking in,” said Fox distribution chief Chris Aronson.

Book Thief tells the story of Liesel Meminger (Sophie Nelisse), who goes to live with her German foster par-ents (Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson), who harbor a young Jewish refugee when World War II breaks out.

The drama will slowly expand and be playing in roughly 400 to 500 theaters by Thanksgiving weekend.

The weekend’s other high-profile opening was The Arm- strong Lie, Alex Gibney’s doc-umentary about disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong. The film fared poorly in its debut, earning $20,904 from five theaters for a location average of $6,181. Sony Pic-tures Classics is distributing it domestically.

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weekend box office top 10This

week Movie/Distributor3-day gross

(in mil)Percent change

# of theaters

Per-theater average

Cume to

date

1 Thor: The Dark World (Disney) $86.1 — 3,841 $22,418 $86.1

2 Bad Grandpa (Paramount) 11.3 -44 3,187 3,546 78.7

3 Free Birds (Relativity) 11.2 -29 3,736 2,993 30.2

4 Last Vegas (CBS Films) 11.1 -32 3,082 3,602 33.5

5 Ender’s Game (Lionsgate) 10.3 -62 3,407 3,009 44.0

6 Gravity (Warner Bros.) 8.4 -34 2,720 3,090 231.1

7 12 Years a Slave (Fox Searchlight) 6.6 38 1,144 5,769 17.3

8 Captain Phillips (Sony) 5.8 -31 2,646 2,192 91.0

9 About Time (Universal) 5.2 381 1,200 4,310 6.7

10 Cloudy With a Chance ... 2 (Sony) 2.8 -33 1,836 1,525 110.0rentrak

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movie newsPage 3 of 8November 11, 2013

By Etan VlessingTORONTO — Lionsgate is considering turning its block-buster Hunger Games fran-chise into a theme park.

Lionsgate CEO Jon Felt-heimer on Friday told ana-lysts that the box-office suc-cess of the orig- inal Hunger Games pic, and the launch of the Catching Fire sequel later this month, has prompted approaches by investors about possible franchise-themed amusement parks.

“We have been approached in two different territories about potential theme park opportunities, which gives you a sense of the cultural impact of this franchise,” Feltheimer told analysts dur-ing a conference call after the release of the studio’s second-quarter results.

“We are excited about those opportunities and are pursuing them,” he added.

Talk of the latest ancillary potential for the YA franchise comes as Lionsgate makes a final push to get cinema-goers out to see The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, which hits theaters Nov. 22.

Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, Josh Hutchers- on and other castmembers are to leave the set for the

third and fourth movies in the franchise — Mockingjay: Part 1 and Mockingjay: Part 2 — to fly to Europe to promote the Catching Fire release.

“They will … take a break to promote our worldwide rollout of Catching Fire pre-mieres, beginning in Lon-don this coming Monday,” Feltheimer announced.

The European tour will continue in Berlin, Madrid, Paris and Rome before a red-carpet Los Angeles premiere on Nov. 18.

Lionsgate is hoping that a boost in international box office for Catching Fire will help the sequel outperform the original Hunger Games feature.

The sequel, which report-edly cost $130 million-plus to produce, was directed by Francis Lawrence.

Rob Friedman, co-chair of Lionsgate’s motion pic-ture group, said the strong tracking for Catching Fire domestically is being mir-rored overseas.

“We’ve been monitoring tracking around the globe, really, and in addition to the very strong tracking domestically, we’re seeing the same sort of results in the U.K., Germany, and our Italian distributor is very excited about what’s going on there,” he reported dur-ing the analyst call.

lin set to helm Uni’s Upcoming boUrne movieBy Borys KitFast & Furious franchise di-rector Justin Lin is coming back in the franchise game and back at Universal.

Lin, who helmed the last four Fast & Furious movies, has come aboard to direct the last installment of the studio’s Bourne action mov-ies, sources confirmed.

The project is a follow-up to 2012’s The Bourne Legacy and continues the adventures of Aaron Cross, the character played by Jeremy Renner.

Lin will join returning producer Frank Marshall as well as Jeffrey Weiner and Ben Smith from Captivate.

The pic is in development and has no writer on board. That gives Lin time to poten-tially do another project. The helmer left Fast & Furious 7 due to its accelerated sched-ule and didn’t have time to re-energize from franchise fatigue. It now seems like he’s slowly getting ready for a re- turn to the tentpole business.

Lin is repped by CAA, Cinetic Management and Sloss Eckhouse Law.

Jonze’s her caUses stir at rome festBy Eric J. LymanROMe — This was Her week-end at the Rome Film Festival.

The European premiere of Spike Jonze’s Her, an unusual romantic drama about a

love affair between a lonely man and a computer oper-ating system, was the talk of the eight-year-old festival over its opening weekend, playing to full screenings and causing a buzz among critics and journalists.

Scarlett Johansson, who plays the voice of the operat-ing system that seeks to be more human, and Joaquin Phoenix, in the main role, were joined on Rome’s red carpet on Sunday by sup-porting actress Rooney Mara and Jonze.

Earlier in the day, Phoenix stole the show at the film’s presser when he showed up in good spirits, wowing the packed auditorium with dry, irreverent jokes: When one journalist remarked that she thought the pic “was the best film at the festival, by far,” Phoenix quipped that she might not be objective. “She’s my aunt,” he said. And when the next questioner contra- dicted her by pointing out that the third day of a 10-day event was too early to anoint a best film, Phoenix pointed to the second questioner and deadpanned, “But he’s not related to me.”

Nonetheless, it’s clear that the warm reception for the in-competition film is welcome for a fest whose press clip-pings in recent months have been dominated by political and economic pressures and debate among stakeholders over the future of the event.

The competition slate goes into full swing today, with seven different films screening in at least one of the fest’s venues.

The festival runs through Sunday.

Hunger Games to Get Its Own Theme Parks?

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Feltheimer

afm 2013Page 4 of 8November 11, 2013

By Scott Roxborough and Pamela McClintockSANTA MONICA, Calif. — Lionsgate is hanging ten with Alcon Entertainment’s Point Break reboot, which has quickly become the big-gest success story of the 2013 American Film Market after selling out around the globe. The big-budget update of Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 action-thriller will feature a myriad of extreme sports, and not just surfing.

In the current uncertain market climate, it is almost unheard of for an indepen-dent film to sell without a cast attached, but uber sales-man Patrick Wachsberger, co-chairman of the Lions-gate Motion Picture Group, has done just that with Point Break as foreign distributors rushed to outbid each other for rights to the pic, which Warner Bros. expects to re-lease domestically in spring 2015 on behalf of Alcon.

Alcon, coming off the box- office success of Prisoners, is fully financing the ambi-tious project. Lionsgate is handling the film overseas.

Point Break’s dazzling suc-cess at AFM is all the more impressive when you con-sider the movie’s director, Ericson Core, has just one feature directing credit to his name — 2006 football pic Invincible starring Mark Wahlberg. But Core knows how to deliver stunning visu-als (he was the cinematog-

rapher on the first Fast and the Furious film) and a pitch reel produced for AFM appar- ently blew buyers away.

“Buyers were sold on the high concept of the film,” Wachsberger told The Holly-wood Reporter. “This is going to be a much larger scale film than the first one.”

While Wachsberger wouldn’t comment on Point Break’s budget, buyers sug-gest it will come in at tent- pole level, with insiders plac-ing it somewhere between $90 million-$110 million. Wachsberger said the concept of the reboot would revisit the original film’s characters Johnny Utah — an under-cover FBI agent investigating a series of daring robberies — and Bodhi — the head robber and extreme athlete whose spiritual pursuit of the ultimate kick fascinates and intrigues the cop.

In the original, Keanu Reeves and the late Patrick

Swayze played Utah and Bodhi, respectively. But the new film will go beyond big-wave surfing to include the massive world of extreme sports, including wingsuiting, snowboarding, rock climbing and motorcycle racing.

Giving the project street cred are extreme sport stars including professional sky-diver and BASE jumper Jeb Corliss and legendary American rock climber Chris Sharma, who will act as con-sultants on Point Break.

While the original was largely set in California, the new film will go global, with location shooting planned in Germany, Austria, Switzer- land, Italy, China and Malta.

“This will be much more like a James Bond film,” Core told buyers in the AFM pitch reel, giving an idea of the planned scale of the pic.

“It is probably the best high-concept film out there,” said Markus Zimmer, acqui-sitions head for Concorde, which is thought to have paid several million for Ger-many rights to the pic.

Kurt Wimmer (Total Re-call) has penned the script to the new Point Break, which Oscar-nominated The Blind Side producers Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove are producing for Alcon together with John Baldec-chi (The Mexican), Wimmer and Christopher W. Taylor.

Robert L. Levy, Peter Abrams and John McMur-

rick are executive producing. Principal photography is set to begin in March.

Lionsgate has had a banner AFM. In addition to Point Break, Wachsberger also sold out its two other biggest market titles: Alex Proyas’ epic adventure film Gods of Egypt starring Gerard But-ler, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Brenton Thwaites and Geof-frey Rush; and Mortdecai, in which Johnny Depp plays a debonair art dealer and part-time rogue who goes on a globe-trotting adventure with wife Gwyneth Paltrow in a race to recover a stolen painting rumored to con-tain the secrets of long lost Nazi gold. Ewan McGregor, Olivia Munn and Paul Bet-tany also star; David Koepp (Premium Rush) is directing.

Rushing off from speaking with THR to catch a flight to the London premiere of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Wachsberger noted that before AFM he had been worried his tight schedule would leave him too little time to close deals.

“It didn’t turn out to be a problem,” he quipped. “We’re done.”

bUyers flock to theron’s dark placesBy Scott RoxboroughSANTA MONICA, Calif. — International buyers are more than willing to follow Charlize Theron to Dark Places, as Exclusive Media has racked up pre-sales deals across Europe and Asia for

Point Break Reboot Catches Global Wave

see page 5

Patrick Swayze, left, and Keanu Reeves starred in 1991’s Point Break, but Alcon Entertainment has yet to cast its remake.

afm 2013Page 5 of 8November 11, 2013

the feature film adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s best-selling novel about a brutal crime and its impact a quarter of a century later.

Exclusive, which is pro-ducing and co-financing Dark Places, closed all-rights deals for the title at AFM for France (Mars), Canada (Remstar), Japan (CCC), Scandinavia (Svensk), Swit-zerland (Ascot Elite) and Russia (West), among many others. Dark Places has also all but sold out across Latin America, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.

Theron stars as a woman who, as a 7-year-old girl, sur-vived the massacre of her family. She testified against her brother as the murderer but, 25 years later, a group investigating the crime con-fronts her with questions about what really happened.

Nicholas Hoult, Chloe Grace Moretz, Christina Hendricks and Drea de Matteo also star. Gilles Paquet-Brenner (Sarah’s Key) wrote and directed Dark Places with Exclusive Media and Cuatro Plus Films providing financing.

Exclusive’s Matt Jackson is producing with Stephane Marsil of Hugo Films, Ther-on’s Denver & Delilah Pro-ductions partners Beth Kono and AJ Dix and Mandalay’s Cathy Schulman and Matt Rhodes. Exclusive Media’s Guy East, Nigel Sinclair, Tobin Armbrust and Alex Brunner will receive execu-tive producer credits along with Peter Safran.

Flynn’s most recent novel, Gone Girl, spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the New York Times

bestseller list and has sold some 2 million copies to date.

“The best-selling author of three novels including Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn has proven to be the big drawing card to buyers as well as the film’s all-star cast, and the response so far has been incredible,” said Exclusive president of international sales and dis-tribution Alex Walton.

Dark Places is currently in post-production. Exclusive is screening the first footage of the film for buyers at AFM.

financing deal will give boost to moon biopic By Scott RoxboroughSANTA MONICA, Calif. — A still-untitled biopic of legendary The Who drum-mer Keith Moon will be the first project to be developed under a new slate develop-ment and financing agree-ment announced Saturday by Exclusive Media and Da Vinci Media Ventures.

The new deal between Exclusive and New York-based Da Vinci Media Ven- tures, the management com- pany to the Da Vinci funds led by Wendy Rutland and U.K. tech guru Toby Moores, extends the rolling four-pic equity deal the two firms inked in Cannes this year.

The Who frontman Roger Daltrey has been collaborat-ing with Exclusive Media’s chairman and CEO Nigel Sinclair on the Moon biopic, which would trace the drum- mer’s short, wild life. As re- nowned for his crazy hotel- trashing excesses as for his

revolutionary drumming skills, Moon was key to The Who’s meteoric rise before his sudden death in 1978. Exclusive is currently com-missioning a writer to pen the script for the long-in-development project. The group is looking to set up the feature as a European-based co-production.

“The Keith Moon project is one close to my heart, so I am excited to reinvigorate it and grateful to Wendy, Toby and Da Vinci for their enthusiastic support,” Dal-trey said in a statement.

Added Da Vinci’s Rutland: “I am a massive Who fan and consider Keith Moon to be the greatest rock drum-mer of all time. I could feel Roger’s passion and detailed perspective for this unique story after our first phone call. We are excited to be topping up our deal with Exclusive, and look forward to growing the relationship.”

The Moon biopic will be set up under Exclusive Media’s banner. Rutland will also serve as an execu-tive producer.

phase 4 picks Up Jay z doc madeBy Rebecca FordSANTA MONICA, Calif. — If you missed Ron Howard’s Jay Z concert documentary, Made in America, on Show-time, you’ll have a chance to see it on the big screen.

Phase 4 Films has acquired North American rights to the film, which debuted on Showtime on Oct. 11, and is planning a theatrical release next summer.

The doc follows the hip-hop superstar as he plans a huge two-day music fes-

tival featur-ing a slew of music’s biggest stars, including Drake, Pearl Jam, Run DMC, The Hives, Pas-sion Pit, Calvin

Harris, Janelle Monae and Skrillex. Nearly 80,000 peo-ple attended the Philadelphia event, curated and headlined by Jay Z.

CAA brokered U.S. rights deal on behalf of the film-makers. Canadian rights were handled by The Exchange.

Made premiered in Sep-tember at the Toronto Inter-national Film Festival and was produced by Imagine Entertainment, Marcy Media and RadicalMedia in associa-tion with Participant Media.

“We are thrilled to re-lease this amazing film,” said Phase 4 Films presi-dent and CEO Berry Meyer-owitz. “Made in America is an uplifting and inspiring piece, not just for its musi-cal performances but for the energy and resilience that it portrays.”

At the pic’s Toronto pre-miere, The Hollywood Re-porter critic John DeFore wrote of the film: “It bears the personality of its maker [Ron Howard], an artist whose career has embodied Americana from the start and who understands a film like this can’t be serious if we only hear about ‘making it’ from rock stars.”

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Jay Z

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tv newsPage 6 of 8November 11, 2013

By Michael O’ConnellDownton Abbey still stands. The Emmy-winning drama from Julian Fellowes has been renewed for a fifth season — make that series, for fans in its native U.K. — and will con-tinue to air on PBS’ Master-piece Classics and ITV.

The period piece, which recently wrapped its fourth season in Great Britain rak-ing an average audience of 11.8 million viewers, won’t see its stateside return until Jan. 5. That lengthy delay has yet to dampen Abbey’s ratings momentum. The third run grossed 24 million view-ers, making it PBS’ most-watched drama to date.

“Like millions of other Downton fans, I can’t wait to see what’s next for the Craw-ley family,” said PBS presi-dent and CEO Paula Kerger. “We’re proud to be the home of this extraordinarily enter-taining series, and, along with our stations, we look forward to sharing season five with U.S. audiences.”

Though Abbey’s fourth season is technically in the can in the U.K., the annual Christmas special — which will conclude the U.S. run on Feb. 23 — has yet to air.

Abbey is a Carnival Films and Masterpiece co-production, with executive producer Fellowes still shoul-dering all writing duties.

Though an Abbey renewal was more than likely, given the series’ massive interna-tional popularity, it was not obligatory. The series has lost two cast members in the last year and the production is demanding on Fellowes, who remains a hot commod-ity outside of the series.

“As far as we know, we’re all doing season five next year,” executive producer and Carnival managing di-rector Neame told report-ers at the Television Critics Association tour in August. “Beyond that, we really don’t know.”

For now, PBS is likely very anxious to continue to reap the unprecedented buzz that surrounds their pop-culture darling.

“As American audiences ready themselves for the Jan. 5 premiere of season four, our devoted Downton fans will rest easy knowing that a fifth season is on the way,” said Masterpiece execu-tive producer Rebecca Eaton.

fox orders new animated series from macfarlaneBy Lesley Goldberg and Michael O’ConnellFox is expanding its relation-ship with Seth MacFarlane.

The network announced Friday that it has ordered to series Bordertown, a new ani-mated comedy from the cre-ator of Family Guy.

Bordertown hails from Mac-Farlane and Family Guy pro-ducer Mark Hentemann and will debut during the 2014-15 season. The comedy takes place in a fictional desert town in Texas and centers on Bud Buckwald, a married father of three who serves as a border patrol agent who isn’t adjusting well to the cul-tural changes around him. It takes a satirical look at America’s cultural shifts through the evolving relation-ships between Bud’s family and that of his next-door neighbor Ernesto Gonzales, a Mexican immigrant and father of four.

Hentemann created and penned the story and will executive produce alongside MacFarlane. Family Guy’s Alex Carter and Dan Vebber (American Dad, Futurama) are also aboard the 20th Cen-tury Fox Television comedy as co-executive producers. The series has been in devel-opment at the network since 2009, when Fox ultimately picked up Bob’s Burgers to series. (The network recently renewed that animated entry for a fifth season.)

The pickup comes at a time of decline for a portion of

MacFarlane’s Fox empire. Although the executive pro-ducer recently received a full-season order for live-action multicamera comedy Dads, The Cleveland Show was canceled this year and American Dad will finish its 10th run on the network during the 2013-14 season.

TBS picked up American Dad for a 15-episode 11th season in July. And after the final Fox run ends in early 2014, co-creator/ co-showrunner Mike Barker will no longer be on board.

Family Guy, however, remain a powerhouse for Fox. The cartoon continues to drive some of broadcast TV’s youngest viewers to its 9 p.m. Sunday slot, where it is averaging a 2.5 rating among adults 18-49 against NBC’s Sunday Night Football and growing to a 3.4 rating in live-plus-7 returns.

Bordertown also comes as the network said an early farewell to Murder Police, which had been given a 13- episode order at the network but was canceled before its premiere. Producers 20th Century Fox Television plan to shop the series to cable.

Fox will also debut the 13-episode MacFarlane- produced Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey docuseries next year.

For the network, Border-town joins a 2014-15 lineup that includes the already renewed scripted seasons of Sleepy Hollow, Bob’s Burgers, Glee and The Simpsons, as well as new entries Mulaney, Hiero-glyph, Gotham and an untitled comedy from 30 Rock’s Tina Fey, Matt Hubbard and Rob-ert Carlock.

Downton Abbey Set to Return for 5th Season

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The period drama has yet to see its fourth season debut stateside.

movie reviewsPage 7 of 8November 11, 2013

armstrong lieBy Boyd van HoeijOscar-winning documentary director Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) returns to a project he started over five years ago in The Armstrong Lie, which was initially en-visaged as a movie about champion cyclist Lance Arm- strong’s 2009 comeback and now includes material shot after the 2012 revelation that the athlete’s insistent denials of ever having used performance-enhancing drugs were a lie.

The director of such re-cent, rigorously researched non-fiction exposés as Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God and We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks here makes a rare, somewhat unfocused film that doesn’t contain anything really new or insightfully argued for any casual viewer of ESPN or Oprah, whose tell-all inter-view with the seven-time Tour de France winner from Jan-uary 2013 offered the start-ing point of Gibney’s second stab at making a documen-tary about Armstrong (he interviewed the athlete only three hours after the talk-show queen’s grilling).

Gibney himself, heard in voice-over at several points, explains he had originally wanted to chronicle Arm-strong’s planned comeback in 2009, four years after his retirement from cycling that directly followed his con-secutive 1999-2005 Tour de France wins. Like many other journalists and fans, Gibney acknowledges that the story of Armstrong — raised by a single mom in

Texas and a cancer and sub-sequent chemotherapy sur-vivor before becoming one of the best-known cyclists through his repeated Tour wins — was just too inspir-ing, hopeful and beautiful not to believe.

Though he was a self-described “fan” of his sub-ject, Gibney admits early on that Armstrong “lied to his face” during the making of his failed 2009 film and he’s owed “an explanation on camera.” But there are no hard-hitting questions that Oprah didn’t already ask, though the film does go through greater lengths to explain how the various drugs (including EPO) and blood transfusions aided perfor-mance and went undetected for years.

Still, Armstrong Lie feels more often like a possibil-ity for the director to revive an abandoned passion proj-ect and try to turn it into something of a (cosmetically more appealing) Franken-stein’s Monster, using inter-view and some impressive Tour footage from the orig-inal film and some newly shot material to make what would finally turn out to be a quite absorbing but never riveting or revelatory over-view of Armstrong’s career

and testy personality.The pic falls roughly into

two halves, with the first hour providing the backstory on Armstrong’s career, with talk-ing heads (Armstrong, ex-colleagues such as Frankie Andreu and George Hincapie and bicycling experts) and archive footage painting a picture of the cyclist as a head-strong and controlling leader who was just as much a fanatic on his bike as he was off it (“I was a bully,” he would later say to Oprah). After surviving cancer, Arm-strong seems to have taken to heart the idea that “los-ing equals death.”

The second half dives into the 2009 race, including the nail-biting climb of Mount Ventoux that initiated the beginning of the end, and is contrasted with Gibney’s new interview footage. Through-out, editors Andy Grieve and Tim Squyres lay out the nar-rative quite clearly, though it’s often the material itself that lacks punch or new in- sights into a well-publicized phenomenon that has plagued the cycling sport — and the cycling business; “everyone was making money,” as the protagonist remarks at one point — for years.

One of Gibney’s key ques- tions — why stage a come-

back that would prove fatal and, in the long run, reveal and ruin everything? — is never forcefully addressed and there’s no satisfactory, in-depth answer that explains why Armstrong chose to use the performance-enhancing drugs and lie about it until very recently, when federal investigations were under-way (they’ve since been halted). The filmmaker does hint at the possibility that Armstrong — who continues to claim he was “clean” dur-ing the 2009 Tour (in which he placed third) and its dis-astrous 2010 follow-up (23rd place) — is trying to influence his own narrative even in front of Oprah and Gibney’s cameras. It can’t be a good sign if your subject seems to have the last word.

Opened: Nov. 8 (Sony Pictures Classics).Production: Kennedy/Marshall, Jigsaw Productions, Matt Tolmach. Writer-director: Alex Gibney.Rated R, 122 minutes.

dallas bUyers clUbBy David Rooney“Life is strange,” sings Marc Bolan in one of a handful of T. Rex classics heard on the soundtrack of Dallas Buyers Club. Putting fresh kinks in the familiar AIDS narrative, Jean-Marc Vallee’s enthralling drama recounts the strange life of Ron Wood- roof, a womanizing Texas homophobe who stares down a 30-day death sentence and hustles his way to a place on the vanguard of experimental

The truth catches up in The Armstrong Lie.

see page 8

movie reviewsPage 8 of 8November 11, 2013

HIV/AIDS treatment.The potentially downbeat

subject matter is handled with vigor and an assured light touch, but the Focus Features release gets its biggest assist from the tre-mendous gusto of Matthew McConaughey’s lead perfor-mance. While much of the attention has focused on the actor’s astonishing weight loss for the role, transform-ing himself into a gaunt bag of bones for a good part of the action, this is a full- bodied characterization that will take his already impressive career regenera-tion several steps further.

McConaughey’s recent director on Magic Mike, Steven Soderbergh, comes to mind while watching this accomplished feature from Quebecois filmmaker Vallee (C.R.A.Z.Y., The Young Vic-toria). The unconstrained visual style, the gritty feel for environment, the ease of the character interplay and the fuss-free, almost casual eye for detail all recall the looseness and vitality of Soderbergh’s best work.

Vallee and screenwriters Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack waste no time in conveying what type of man Ron is, introducing him in the midst of a coke-fueled three-way in a rodeo holding pen with a couple of trashy women. A Dallas electrician by trade and a reckless cow-boy by nature, he lands in Mercy Hospital in 1985 after a minor work accident. A blood test reveals he has the HIV virus and an alarm-ingly low T-cell count. But he reacts with hostility to doctors

Sevard (Denis O’Hare) and Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner), interpreting their diagnosis as a slur on his rampantly heterosexual masculinity.

After some hard-partying denial, the stark reality of his deteriorating health prompts Ron to start researching the virus. Unwilling to take his chances in clinical trials for the new drug AZT, he begins buying doses from a crooked hospital orderly. But when that supply dries up, Ron crosses the border to Mex-ico, where an unlicensed American doctor (Griffin Dunne) is getting results with alternative treatments.

Translating his own urgent need for medication into an entrepreneurial opportunity, Ron begins smuggling sup-plies of vitamin- and protein- based anti-viral meds into Texas. In order to build a client base among the un-familiar gay community, he partners with a drug-addicted transsexual he met in the hospital, Rayon (Jared Leto), who isn’t scared off by bigoted Ron’s animosity.

To get around potential legal strife they establish a club in which monthly mem-bership buys a full treatment regimen. Ron also begins traveling — to Japan, China, the Netherlands — for AIDS

drugs being developed abroad, undeterred by the attempts of the FDA, the DEA and the IRS to shut him down.

The pic doesn’t advocate self-medication, nor does it trivialize the long and hard-fought frontline battle for effective HIV treatment in America (see last year’s bril-liant doc, How to Survive a Plague) by elevating the rogue efforts of a straight guy. It tells a very specific story of one AIDS patient’s refusal to slink off and die quietly while the medical profession and pharmaceu-tical giants dragged their heels, focusing almost ex-clusively on prohibitively expensive AZT and ignor-ing its toxic side effects.

While that shameful chap-ter of American institutional failure to address a pandemic is explored only peripherally here, it provides rich back-ground texture. Likewise the homophobic ignorance di-rected at Ron by his former drinking buddies, giving him an illuminating taste of his own intolerance.

But what distinguishes Borten and Wallack’s screen-play is its refusal to sentimen-talize by providing humbling epiphanies to set Ron on the right path and endow him with empathy. His racket re-

mains driven primarily by self-interest, and yet almost unwittingly, his crusade for the right to control his treat-ment becomes an altruistic one, while his attitude toward those he once scorned softens by imperceptible degrees.

McConaughey plays these subtle shifts beauti-fully in a rowdy turn that’s full of piss and vinegar but also unexpected heart. Ron is presented as such irre-deemable trash early on that it requires an actor who can own the rough edges but also has real charm deployment skills to keep him in our sympa-thies. McConaughey aces that tricky balancing act. He has affecting moments, both with Garner and Leto, but the surprise is how funny he makes the story of a man pushing back death.

Garner’s role has less di-mension, but she brings a lot of warmth as Eve comes around to admiring Ron’s resourcefulness and recog-nizing the merit in what he’s doing. In the showier sup-porting role, Leto is simply wonderful. Fully inhabiting Rayon, he makes the slender creature anything but syn-thetic, his flirtatious banter poignantly underscored by helpless self-destructiveness.

Opened: Nov. 1 (Focus).Production: Voltage Pictures, R2 Films, Evolution Independent.Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Jared Leto, Denis O’Hare, Steve Zahn, Michael O’Neill, Dallas Roberts, Griffin Dunne, Kevin Rankin, Donna Duplantier, Deneen Tyler.Director: Jean-Marc Vallee.Rated R, 116 minutes. thr

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Jared Leto, left, and Matthew McConaughey form an unlikely alliance in Dallas Buyers Club.