'Immortals' rule the box office

By Sarah Sluis

The 3D swords-and-sandals epic Immortals outperformed industry expectations and finished with $32 million. Young filmgoers, who haven't been turning out in force lately, returned for the picture, which may have been perceived as offering more value with all its special effects. 3D, too, did well, accounting for 66% of the total. Distributor Relativity Media pulled off its biggest debut ever, but the expensive film will still have to do well in secondary markets in order to pull in a profit.

Eking out a second place finish, Jack and Jill debuted surprisingly high, to the tune of $26 million. Audiences who grew up with Sandler didn't abandon him. 52% of audiences were over 25. The PG-rated comedy also got 52% of its business from families, indicating that the all-ages rating was a savvy move.

Puss in Boots finished neck-and-neck with Jack and Jill, earning an estimated $25.5 million. In its third week, it dipped just 23%. Despite debuting to just $34 million, the CG-animated movie earned three times that much in three weeks. This is an unusual multiple to achieve, but one that DreamWorks Animation consistently pulls off for its titles. With over $100 million in the bank, Puss in Boots doesn't have a lot to worry about when Happy Feet 2 joins the animated fray this Friday.

Leonardo DiCaprio-starring J. Edgar had a respectable finish of $11.4 million. Releasing in less than 2,000 locations, the biopic's per-screen average of $6,000 strikes an optimistic note. However, this
specialty/awards title has an uphill battle ahead of it. Only 40% of critics rated the movie positive, compared to the 91% positive rating of this Friday's opener, The Descendants. Director Clint Eastwood appears to have hit another double or triple, not the home run it needs for a big Oscar presence.

Melancholia, the end-of-the-world meditation from director Lars von Trier, opened with a $14,000 per-screen average in nineteen locations. Given the large number of theatres showing the drama, the Kirsten Dunst starrer performed well. Werner Herzog's Into the Abyss came up with $4,200 per location in twelve theatres. The documentary, which focuses on the death penalty, may not be as enticing a subject as his 3D spelunking doc Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Paramount Vantage's Like Crazy picked up the pace in its third week, netting half a million and going up 97% from the previous week. Now playing in 70 theatres, the romance wrangled an impressive $7,500 per location.

This Wednesday, The Descendants will get a head start on the weekend. Starting Thursday at midnight The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn (Part One) will ravage audiences, and families will have another animated option, Happy Feet Two.

'Immortals' spars with 'Jack and Jill'

By Sarah Sluis

The swords-and-sandals epic Immortals (3,112 theatres) will have to fight a little in order to top the box office. Jack and Jill, Puss in Boots, and Immortals are all expected to land somewhere north of $20 million, but Immortals' 3D action should make it the biggest crowd-pleaser. 40% of Rotten Tomatoes critics rated the movie positively, and our Maitland McDonagh was one of them. She praised the "old-school epic entertainment dressed up with state-of-the-art effects." The driving force in the plot is the search for a bow that will allow a person to become a "one-man army." The bow sounds an awful lot like the "Macguffin" or "weenie" trope, but hey, at least it's an excuse for "deliriously bloody battle sequences and fetishistic fascination with lightly clad male flesh."

Adam Sandler cross-dresses in Jack and Jill (3,438 theatres), which may be the comedian's most groan-inducing premise yet. "Brains can be checked at the coatroom," critic Doris Toumarkine snipes, but acknowledges that some "Sandler fans may welcome the brainless diversion." After last year's Grown Ups, count me out--I'm a fallen Sandler fan. With an insanely low 2% positive Rotten Tomatoes rating, I doubt even those who count Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison as their favorite comedies will turn out. Ouch. Unlike most of the star's films, Jack and Jill is rated PG, so perhaps it will draw in family crowds and eleven-year-old boys who think Sandler is the funniest guy ever.

Director Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar (expanding to 1,910 theatres) opened in limited release on Wednesday, posting a $7,500 per-screen average. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as famed FBI head J. Edgar Hoover in the biopic. This is the kind of film that thrives on good reviews, but not many are coming. Sure, DiCaprio delivers a "committed performance," according to critic Kevin Lally, but there's also the "old-age makeup [that] isn't always convincing" and a speechy setup. "As agent Clyde Tolson, Armie Hammer says more with a knowing smile than any line of [screenwriter Dustin Lance] Black's wordy dialogue," Lally concludes. Sounds like a classic case of not following "show don't tell." Since the filmmakers can only speculate on certain things--like the exact nature of Hoover's relationship with Tolson, to whom he left his entire estate and spent a lot of close time with--it's often unsatisfying. The scope, too, is so large Black often just brushes the surface. Count this one out of the major Oscar races. At least, I hope there are better films out there this season.

On the specialty front, there's a tiny release of Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (1 theatre), a sequel to the smash Brazilian cops and gangsters hit that's "as intelligent as it is entertaining," according to critic Doris Toumarkine. Also in the mix is director Lars von Trier's Melancholia. Kirsten Dunst stars as a bride who marries just as a planet inches closer to destroying Earth. Critic Chris Barsanti felt the movie amounts to a "trite apocalypse," though he's in the minority of reviewers. Finally, director Werner Herzog mulls over the death penalty by focusing on one heinous crime in Texas in Into the Abyss (10 theatres). Barsanti had kinder words for the documentary, praising it as "essayistic yet visceral"

On Monday, we'll see if Immortals, Jack and Jill, and Puss in Boots all landed above the $20 million mark and if J. Edgar debuts higher than its middling reviews suggest.

Trailer report: 'In Time,' set in a world where money buys immortality

By Sarah Sluis

Now that there's talk of a double-dip recession, movies that touch on class differences and offer revenge fantasies will be perfectly poised to scoop up the people responding to the zeitgeist. Into this environment comes In Time (formerly titled I'm.Mortal and Now), positing a world in which the rich can live forever and the poor die young, to prevent overpopulation. Yes, now is indeed a great time for class antagonism. Andrew Niccol, the auteur behind the most emotinally resonant futurisic movies, Gattaca (writer/director) and The Truman Show (screenplay), writes and directs the futuristic sci-fi tale. Here's the trailer:

Five things to know about In Time

1. It's coming out in a not-so-good time slot, October 28. I can't explain why, since that weekend is usually reserved for horror films taking advantage of the pre-Halloween weekend. Then again, Niccol's movies have a history of being dumped. His best, Gattaca, played for just three weeks, yet it's among the finest sci-fi movies I've seen--watch New York Times movie critic A.O. Scott's revisiting of the film to learn more.

2. Casting! Vincent Kartheiser, who plays "Mad Men"'s Pete Campbell, plays a spoiled villain, a role we already know he's good at. After Justin Timberlake turned in an excellent performance in The Social Network, it's great to see him building his career further. Amanda Seyfried, who's mostly played charming, wields a gun in this flick, a welcome addition to her star image.

3. The creepy opening introduction. Seconds into the trailer, Kartheiser indicates three nearly identical 25-year-old women, introducing them as his wife, mother-in-law, and daughter. It hits just the right unsettling note I look for in my dystopias. And could it be a coincidence that the countdown clocks are located on the left forearm, the same place where the Nazis tattooed serial numbers on their Jewish prisoners?

4. Roger Deakins is the cinematographer. The recepient of the 2011 American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Lifetime Achievement Award, Deakins is known for his longtime work with the Coen Brothers and his mastery as a cinematographer. Gattaca also had a strong visual look, which In Time appears to continue.

5. Niccol as an auteur. As solid as The Truman Show and Gattaca are, I haven't seen Lord of War or S1mOne, which seemed like such a laughable concept--a virtual actress! That was one road I didn't want to go down. But then again, people just discovered that a new member of a Japanese pop band was created by a computer. She will "perform" in concerts via hologram. Could Niccol simply be ahead of his time? After all, The Truman Show released well before reality shows took over our televisions.

Niccol's work also has consistency from film to film, and repetition is one mark of an auteur. Gattaca and The Truman Show both use travel into the unknown space of the ocean as turning points for the characters and powerful metaphors. In Time (what I know from the trailer) and Gattaca both feature suicidal rich people who give what they had at birth to a scrappy poor person who can actually use the gifts. These stories feel personal, a rarity in Hollywood. Though the trailer features gun fights and car chases, which Niccol's previous movies have been light on, I hope his moving insights into futuristic societies shine through. I'll take that over Paranormal Activity 3 any day.