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Posted July 4th 2010

Beauty and The Beast…Beauty and The Vampire? Got me…..and got everybody else this weekend also as the ‘The Twilight Saga:Eclipse howled and bit it’s way to the #1 spot taking in $64 million over the weekend with a cumulative total of nearly $162 million for it premiered on Wednesday, June 30th.   ‘ThE Last Airbender’ landed in the #2 position with $70.5million and  ‘Toy Story 3′ is still in there taking in an additional $30 million for a cumulative total of $289 million in the    #3 position at the box office this weekend!

THE LOVE RANCH MOVIE TRAILER

Movie Review: The Love Ranch

TheWashingtonPost.com

By Stephen Holden

No matter how unstrung her characters become, Helen Mirren holds something in reserve. An awareness of the weaknesses of the flesh and the pleasures of surrendering to those weaknesses flickers in her eyes and in the faint half-smile that plays around her lips. She knows.

That bone-deep sensuality lends her portrayal of Grace, the hard-bitten madam of a Reno, Nev., brothel in “Love Ranch,” an empathy and toughness that have little connection to Mark Jacobson’s prosaic screenplay. In Ms. Mirren’s first film to be directed by her husband, Taylor Hackford, since “White Nights” in 1985, her formidable dramatic resources can’t camouflage flat writing that eventually veers into gloppy sentimentality. At times even Ms. Mirren, who adopts a regionless American accent, seems uncomfortable.

Love Ranch is the name of the brothel — a tacky configuration of pink trailers behind a chain fence, with a guard tower — inspired by the real-life Mustang Ranch, which in the early 1970s became Nevada’s first licensed whorehouse. Joe Pesci and Ms. Mirren play Charlie and Grace Bontempo, fictionalized screen versions of Joe and Sally Conforte, who were the proprietors of the Mustang Ranch.

Charlie and Grace’s marriage is primarily a business arrangement in which it is understood that Charlie can have free sex with the prostitutes whom Grace, the house den mother, keeps on a very short leash. She is not happy about the arrangement; the screenplay unconvincingly portrays her as still in love with the rat she married.

Mr. Pesci’s Charlie is a slightly softened variation of the monstrous thugs he portrayed in “Casino” and “Goodfellas.” A little guy with a big ego, he likes to smoke cigars with hundred-dollar bills wrapped around them. He has the local sheriff in his pocket and goons to do his dirty work. Charlie’s soulless rat-a-tat-tat delivery acquires a semblance of feeling only when he is wheedling Grace to follow his wishes. But as the movie drags along, any sympathy you might have had for him melts away as he gives in to his worst instincts.

Grace, who keeps the books and manages “25 psychotic whores” (her words), knows the territory, being the daughter of a prostitute. At a young age, she realized that she could have a better life as a madam. And a scene in which Grace uses her cane to discipline her flock is among the film’s liveliest.

When religious protesters picket the ranch, Charlie trots out Grace to defend the prostitutes. But “Love Ranch” gives you only a superficial, clichéd picture of brothel life. The HBO series “Cathouse” offered a truer, much more complex portrait.

The heart of the story is inspired by the Confortes’ relationship with Oscar Bonavena, an Argentine heavyweight boxer brought to the United States by Mr. Conforte. In the movie the prizefighter is renamed Armando Bruza and played by Sergio Peris-Mencheta as a dumb, doglike lug who Charlie fantasizes is his ticket to becoming a Las Vegas big shot by matching him with Muhammad Ali.

Charlie, because of his criminal record, appoints Grace as Armando’s manager. After they begin training, Armando conceives a fantasy of wooing Grace and taking over the ranch. It is only after she sees through his crude overtures and calls his bluff that she and Armando unexpectedly fall in love.

“Love Ranch” aspires to give a tragic dimension to the triangle by portraying the affair as the last and deepest connection of two doomed lovers. Early in the film Grace’s doctor tells her she has cancer and has six months to live, a fact she keeps from Charlie.

Armando, who has his own secret medical history, isn’t quite the invincible “wild bull of the pampas” that his hype proclaims. Each is living on borrowed time. The moment they run away together, the already flaccid film deteriorates into sudsy hokum that not even Ms. Mirren, with all her wiles, can redeem.

LOVE RANCH

Opens on Wednesday nationwide.

Directed by Taylor Hackford; written by Mark Jacobson; director of photography, Kieran McGuigan; edited by Paul Hirsch; music by Chris Bacon; production designer, Bruno Rubeo; costumes by Melissa Bruning; produced by Mr. Hackford, Lou DiBella and Marty Katz; released by E1 Entertainment and Aramid Entertainment Fund Limited. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Helen Mirren (Grace Bontempo), Joe Pesci (Charlie Bontempo), Sergio Peris-Mencheta (Armando Bruza), Gina Gershon (Irene), Taryn Manning (Mallory), Scout Taylor-Compton (Christina), Bai Ling (Samantha), Elise Neal (Alana), Melora Walters (Janelle), Emily Rios (Muneca), M. C. Gainey (Warren Stamp), Bryan Cranston (James Pettis), Raoul Trujillo (Hernan Prado) and Gil Birmingham (Johnny Cortez).

Attraction and Possibility When Sex Is Just Business

WEEKEND STARTING  JULY 2ND 2010

BOX OFFICE

1. THE TWLIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE
2. THE LAST AIRBENDER
3. TOY STORY 3
4. GROWN UPS
5. KNIGHT AND DAY

DVD’S

1. BOOK OF ELI
2. WHEN IN ROME
3. FROM PARIS WITH LOVE
4. SHUTTER ISLAND
5. THE WOLFMAN
6. UNTHINKABLE
7. PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEFS
8. DAYBREAKERS
9. EDGE OF DARKNESS
10. INVICTUS