'Interstellar' and 'Big Hero 6' to Face Off at the Box Office

After a decidedly lackluster Halloween weekend, studios are finally getting back on track and delivering movies we actually want to see. (Apologies to Nightcrawler. We did actually want to see you.) Christopher Nolan's space porn epic Interstellar and Disney/Marvel Entertainment's Big Hero 6 are expected to do big numbers over the weekend, each probably making over $50 million. Both movies have been getting good reviews (77% on Rotten Tomatoes for Interstellar, 88% for Big Hero 6), and Interstellar, which came out on Tuesday in select theaters, has already earned $1.3 million. For the three-day total, it'll be close, but I predict Big Hero 6 will come out on top. Never underestimate the earning power of a good (or even a bad) kid's movie.

Either way, reigning champ Ouija isn't getting a third weekend at number one, and that's something to be happy about.

For smaller movies, Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything has been generating some major awards season buzz for star Eddie Redmayne. It opens today in five theaters in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto--expect a healthy per-theater average to precede Focus Features expanding the film in the coming weeks. Less critically beloved is Lionsgate's Jessabelle (31% on Rotten Tomatoes), which is going to have to pray that people are still in the mood for spookiness.

Then there are the even smaller films, in most cases debuting in New York and/or L.A. For the history crowd, there are two movies about East German families trying to survive during the Cold War hitting theaters: West and The Tower, the latter a compressed version of a two-part TV movie. Ravi Kumar's docudrama Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain, about the 1984 Union Carbide chemical disaster in India, is coming out as well. And heading back stateside, The Better Angels, a Terrence Malick-esque meditation on the early life of Abraham Lincoln, is debuting in Los Angeles. Despite its appealing cast (Jason Clarke, Brit Marling, Diane Kruger), reviews have been pretty dismal.

For documentaries, the three main movies to keep an eye on are Virunga (opening in New York); Frederick Wiseman's National Gallery; and the buzzed-about Actress. If none of those catch your eye, consider Pelican Dreams, Death Metal Angola, Getting to the Nutcracker, The Invisible Front, On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter or The Only Real Game.

For fans of Italian cinema, there's Viva la Libertà, with The Great Beauty's Toni Servillo. People who want a little mystery in their lives have The Lookalike to consider, while for you dorky genre-heads (I count myself among your number), there are Open Windows, Hangar 10, and the promising-sounding Japanese flick Why Don't You Play In Hell?. Fugly! has the comedy beat on lockdown, Elsa & Fred with Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer is geared towards moviegoers of a certain age, and if you're in the mood for a coming-of-age movie, The Way He Looks is for you. And Sex Ed is for absolutely no one:

If you want to see Haley Joel Osment being funny, I recommend IFC's "The Spoils of Babylon," now streaming on Netflix Instant, instead.