'Apes' summons more moviegoers than 'The Help'

By Sarah Sluis

By keeping its second-weekend fall to just under 50%, Rise of the Planet of the Apes retained its number-one spot and added another $27.5 million to its total. The movie's visual effects played a large part in attracting audiences. Now that this reboot is a success, maybe one of the four sequels the original 1968 film spawned will end up in the works.

The Help put in a strong performance, just barely missing the first-place spot with a $25 million total. Females over 25 comprised the majority of viewers, though the movie played well across all audience segments. The drama, which opened on Wednesday, has performed steadily, with a five-day total of $35 million. The movie's release has been accompanied by some thoughtful, biting commentary. Tulane professor Melissa Harris-Perry dismissed the movie as "The Real Housewives of Jackson, Mississippi," an apt description that explains both why the movie is entertaining and not the best place to look for straight history.

Final Destination 5 finished under expectations with $18.7 million and the lowest attendance of any film in the horror franchise. The last movie, The Final Destination, was billed as the last, so it's possible some of the hard-core fans felt cheated by the franchise's refusal to die when planned.

30 Minutes or Less debuted fifth to a disappointing $13 million. Of the many R-rated comedies that have come out this summer, this one seemed to have the most limited appeal, with teen boys (including ones too young to buy tickets) in the comedy's sweet spot. Indeed, 69% of the audience was under the age of 25 and 53% was male.

Glee: The 3D Concert Movie became a miss in the hit-or-miss live concert category. Despite higher ticket prices for the 3D movie, the concert film grossed just $5.7 million. Perhaps viewers didn't see the value of a movie. The actual "Glee" concerts provided viewers a rare opportunity to see the cast members in real life, but the concert movie was essentially an expensive rerun of the television show.

This Friday, the summer box office will still be in full swing. Spooky remake Fright Night will open opposite action epic Conan the Barbarian, the romantic One Day, and Spy Kids: All the Time in the World, which will have just a week or so to capture young audiences before they go back to school.

'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' summits the top ten

By Sarah Sluis

With little advance awareness, most prognosticators were cautious about Rise of the Planet of the Apes' prospects. The appeal of dystopian futures in movies, and, let's face it, CG primates, drew more viewers than predicted, to the tune of $54 million. Though the opening weekend was less than 2001's Tim Burton remake Planet of the Apes, and both had similar production budgets (around $100 million), most seem to be calling Rise the success. The current release has had better reviews, receiving an 81% positive aggregate rating on Rotten Tomatoes to the 2001 film's 45% positive rating. Warm ratings and a decent box office could make Rise the first of many Planet of the Apes reboots.

The Change-Up, however, was not as lucky as Apes. The comedy's $13.6 million opening weekend was the lowest of any R-rated comedy this summer. Paring an R-rating with the Freaky Friday set-up, which has mainly been used in kid-friendly PG tales, appears to have confused audiences and turned them off. Frankly, the movie's posters made my nose wrinkle in disgust instead of laughter. They were offensive in the most boring, tired way possible, which didn't bode well for the comedy. Surprisingly, 59% of the audience was women, with all ages represented.

Rachel Weisz's star turn in The Whistleblower averaged $8,300 per screen on seven screens, a modest debut for the movie, which will probably grab more viewers once it hits Netflix. Gun Hill Road, which centers on a released prisoner who discovers his son is transitioning to female, boasted the highest per-screen average for a specialty release, $12,600. Oscilloscope's Bellflower, a "stew of dark fantasies and youthful gonzo ambition," according to THR's John DeFore, also did well, averaging $12,000 per screen.

A number of specialty releases gained ground this week as they expanded their releases. The Future rose 213% as it went from one to 17 locations, averaging $5,000 per screen. Sony Pictures Classics' The Guard remained strong, rising 152% and only dropping its per-screen average by half, to $10,000, at each of the 19 locations. Fox Searchlight's Another Earth more than doubled its locations and rose 51% while maintaining a $3,000 per-screen average. Finally, Weinstein Co.'s Sarah's Key enjoyed a 45% boost when it doubled the number of locations, finishing with a $7,900 per-screen average and $532,000, the highest of any of the expanding specialty releases.

This Wednesday, female-dominated historical pic The Help will release, offering a breath of fresh air in a summer market dominated by broad comedy and action. The comedy 30 Minutes or Less, horror sequel Final Destination 5, and Glee the 3D Concert Movie will round out the offerings on Friday.

'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' heads off against 'The Change-Up'

By Sarah Sluis

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (3,648 theatres) bills itself as an origin tale. The "primate revolution" alluded to in the 1968 film gets the full treatment here. Unfortunately, the unraveling of this mystery is a hollow experience, says our critic. "Whereas the first films...[held] a mirror up to human society's failings like slavery, war-mongering and intolerance, this one reflects nothing but a failure of the imagination," Chris Barsanti concludes, calling it a "by-the-numbers prequel" with James Franco's performance limited to a furrowing of the brow and occasional confused looks. Older males are showing the most interest in the film, which should earn in the $20 millions. You can count me out. I don't want to ruin the feeling of the 1968 original's spectacular ending, one of the best, most satisfying conclusions of all time.

I'm pretty sure the pitch for The Change-Up (2,913 theatres) went something like this: Let's do Freaky Friday, but R-rated! With guys! Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman play two guys, one a single player, the other married with kids, who switch bodies. Critic Marsha McCreadie rejoiced in the "somewhat sadistic fun [watching] guys obsessing over stuff that used to worry cinematic women," like "parenting, how to treat women, handle sex, fulfill career commitments and keep it all in balance." The Change-Up may not be too original, but there are "amusing bits" amidst the "gross-out humor."

Starring Rachel Weisz as a "a working-class Nebraska cop turned U.N. law-enforcement monitor in Bosnia," The Whistleblower "eschews light escapist touches to deliver a hard-hitting message of man's inhumanity writ large." That inhumanity involves Weisz's character's discovery of sex slave trafficking, with young women tricked into thinking they will find work in such innocent occupations as waitressing.

Magic Trip (4 theatres), from prolific documentarian Alex Gibney (who co-directed with Alison Ellwood), covers Ken Kesey's famous 1964 road trip on a bus loaded with LSD and the very first hippies. The footage, culled from their amateur efforts, didn't have sync sound and "shots are blurry, shaky, often poorly exposed, and almost never long enough to understand what is going on." That didn't stop critic Daniel Eagan from declaring that "Kesey may have had some wrong-headed notions, but in Magic Trip at least he comes off as a true adventurer with noble goals."

On Monday, we'll see if The Change-Up continues the trend of overperforming R-rated comedies, and if Rise of the Planet of the Apes attracted a $20+ million opening.

Really? PETA gives award to 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes'

By Sarah Sluis

A standard part of ending credits on a movie is the American Humane Association's seal of approval: "No animals were harmed during the making of this movie." Since Rise of the Planet of the Apes uses CG monkeys, it's unclear if the AHA even had to give the movie its seal of approval. Yet PETA is giving an award to this Fox pictures. The animal-loving organization's strategy is trying to encourage the use of CG animals, so they've made a special fuss and given the movie a "Proggy" award (that's progress + award). I wouldn't be rolling my eyes so much, except I doubt that the movie would have used live-action apes anyway. The first movie was famous for having humans in ape suits with makeup. Even the 2001 remake of the 1968 film used makeup, not CG. The only primates being helped out by the CG are the human actors who no longer have to sweat in ape suits.

The things is, most of the time there isn't really a choice about whether a production goes with CG or live-action. If it's possible to film animals in live-action, like with domesticated animals, most productions choose that route. Should Lassie be CG? No. Should Mr. Popper's Penguins use CG animals? Probably. Talking animal films/TV shows used to be achieved by training horses to randomly flex their mouths, and it actually looked pretty good. Oh man, did I love watching "Mister Ed" on Nick at Nite. Instead of creating CG horses, the technology is used to employ weirder, non-trainable animals like the guinea pigs in G-Force. Movies like Beverly Hills Chihuahua will still use real dogs (maybe with CG lips) because audiences know it is possible to shoot a film like that live-action, and they demand it.

However, I also admire PETA for going the positive route. The organization gets most of its press attention from its protests, like the one it did for this summer's Zookeeper after a giraffe died shortly after filming. By singling out movies that do a better job, they can be associated with the maintenance of good practices instead of constantly having to act as a police officer.