The review embargo has lifted on David Robert Mitchell’s “The End Oak Street,” and we might have one last good studio summer movie in our hands — actually two, if you count “Coyote vs Acme,” which I’ll get to a little later.
The aggregates on ‘Oak Street’: 67 on Metacritic and 85% on Rotten Tomatoes. Not bad, all things considered, especially given the fact that the film has been plagued by delays for over a year now, including a title change earlier this year. Warner Bros. had no idea what to do with this $80M movie.
Those scores are not exactly great, and while some believed that an early rave tweet from IndieWire’s David Ehrlich might spell good fortune for the film, his now-published “A-” review is more of an anomaly than an indication of any broader consensus.
Hopefully, the reviews bump up current tracking for ‘Oak Street,’ which is in the $15-$17M range. I mean, how hard can it be to convince mainstream moviegoers to go see a well-reviewed dinosaur movie? The ‘Jurassic World’ movies have been subpar for almost 30 years now, yet they still make the big bucks.
The film stars Ewan McGregor, Anne Hathaway, Christian Convery, and Maisy Stella. Set in a suburban neighborhood during the 1980s, the story centers on a family going through a difficult period. Without warning, their entire community — Flowervale’s Oak Street — is mysteriously transported back to prehistoric times by an unknown supernatural phenomenon.
I’ll be catching ‘Oak Street’ tonight and will start a readers’ reaction thread over the weekend. A new film from David Robert Mitchell is coming, eight years since his last one, “Under the Silver Lake,” and he’s already shot that “It Follows” sequel — which means he has another film set for release next year.
Kushner has been Spielberg's go-to screenwriter for two decades now: "Munich," "Lincoln," "West Side Story" and "The Fabelmans." All four were Best Picture nominees.