Moviegoers stay away from multiplexes in worst weekend in more than a decade

The top twelve movies totaled just over $50 million this weekend, a sum so glum it necessitates a sad comparison. The last time this box office sank this low was in the two weeks after the attacks of September 11, eleven years go. What happened? The start of the football season and families busy with back-to-school hubbub help explain part of the slump. There were also no new good films. Gangster Squad was supposed to open this weekend, but was bumped for reshoots because of movie theatre shootout was judged too close for comfort to the Aurora shooting.

Of the two new releases, only The Words made it into the top ten with a paltry $5 million.
Lackluster reviews may sink this movie further, as word spreads this isn't a picture worth the ticket price. Above The Words, horror movie The Possession continued on top with $9.5 million, its 47% fall better than average for the horror genre. In second, Weinstein Co. showed its ability to do well even with a movie with mixed reviews. Lawless earned $6 million in second place, not so bad for the Prohibition-set tale of rural bootleggers.

Opening in 13th place was The Cold Light of Day with $1.8 million. Even with only a couple dozen critics weighing in on the movie, which didn't screen in advance, it only has 8% positive reviews. Audience members were a bit kinder, with
28% of Rotten Tomatoes voters giving it a "fresh" rating.

The Raiders of the Lost Ark re-release in IMAX grabbed $1.7 million. That's paltry compared to Titanic 3D, but in this case the re-release was more about promoting an Indiana Jones box set that will go on sale next week.

Specialty releases fared a bit better. Buoyed by "This American Life" fans, Sleepwalk with Me went up 6% as the comedy expanded from 29 to 73 locations, averaging $4,700 per screen.

Bachelorette was the big test for pre-theatrical VOD release, which after a month supposedly
earned over $4 million. But the comedy came up with just $191,000 at 47 theatres this weekend, a per-screen average of $4,000. People understand the higher rental price for VOD releases, since they "haven't hit theatres" yet, but that same mindset makes people think they are paying too much for a movie ticket when it's available at home.

Also featuring 20 to 30-something female friendships, For a Good Time, Call... gathered steam in its second week, going up 50% as it added 33 locations. Its total of $215,000 beat the debut of Bachelorette, though its per-screen average was slightly lower.

This Friday, the beloved Pixar film Finding Nemo will re-release in 3D. Resident Evil: Retribution will go for the adult portion of the audience with the next installment of the sci-fi action franchise.

 

Whedon-mania comes to Toronto

Film Journal's spring interview with Avengers director Joss Whedon discussed his rabid fan base, stemming largely from the cult adoration of his TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Angel,” “Firefly” and “Dollhouse.” This writer got to witness Whedon-mania up close at the Toronto International Film
Festival premiere of his low-budget, black-and-white modern updating of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. To say the audience at this screening was predisposed to like the film is a vast understatement.

Shooting in a mere 12 days at his own Santa Monica home (nice house!), Whedon cast primarily actors with whom he had previously worked on his TV series. Of the cast, the only ones familiar to me were Clark Gregg (who had a featured role in The Avengers), Reed Diamond (better known to me from “24”), Nathan Fillion (star of both “Firefly” and the non-Whedon “Castle”) and Fran Kranz from Whedon’s recent horror sendup The Cabin in the Woods. But aficionados in the audience could tell you that Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof, in the lead roles of bickering lovers-to-be Beatrice and Benedick, are veterans of “Angel,” “Dollhouse” and “Buffy.” For them, this Much Ado was like seeing the Whedon stock company do summer theatre.

Though the Shakespearean language and L.A. contemporary milieu of the movie can make an odd mix, the actors are all adept, and Whedon adds plenty of slapstick and small sight gags (not at all inappropriate in a classic farce) to make the medicine go down easy for the uninitiated. And Fillion, one of the most adored of the Whedon players, got explosive laughs as the malaprop-prone cop Dogberry. How well this homemade art-house project will go down with an audience who can’t tell Joss Whedon from J.J. Abrams is another question altogether, but Whedon deserves a few bouquets for taking such a left turn from Blockbuster World and preserving his private Shakespeare party on film.

The entire main cast paraded onto the stage to delirious cheers and applause after the screening, and each got to share one reflection on the making of the movie. (The most terrifying aspect for some was having to nail that Shakespeare dialogue in one or two takes.)

As for the black-and-white, Whedon said he always saw more darkness in the material than Kenneth Branagh did in his early ’90s version; for him, Much Ado is more like “romantic noir.” Budget limitations of costume and production design were also abetted by the lack of color. As Whedon noted, “Everything is elegant in black-and-white.”

'Silver Linings Playbook' and 'Frances Ha' charm in Toronto

Due to a looming Film Journal deadline, this editor’s time at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is limited to three and a half days. Which is especially regrettable, since this year’s lineup of films appears especially strong. By the time I leave Tuesday morning, I’ll have seen 19 selections, but there are at least two or three times that number on the schedule that are oh-so-tantalizing.

Of course, no one can catch all that TIFF has to offer, with its program of 289 features and its status as the launching pad for so many of the fall’s prestigious new movies. Two of my personal highlights so far are highly satisfying new comedies from proven indie auteurs: David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook and Noam Baumbach’s Frances Ha.

Following his Oscar-nominated dramatic success with The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook finds
Russell returning to the screwball ensemble territory of his early gem Flirting with Disaster. (I’ll refrain from mentioning the one Russell film I actively dislike, I Heart Huckabees.) Bradley Cooper, in surely his best role to date, plays Pat Solatano, a former high-school teacher just released from a psychiatric facility where he was committed after violently beating a colleague he discovered naked in the shower with his wife. Pat is struggling with bipolar disorder—not the usual source of comedy, but there is something undeniably droll about a grown man waking up his parents at four a.m. to vent when he discovers Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms has an unhappy ending. It runs in the family, as they say: Pat’s dad (Robert De Niro gifted with his best part in years) has OCD and a panoply of superstitions tied to his illegal football betting operation.

At a dinner party, Pat meets someone who seems almost equally troubled: Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), an outspoken, mercurial young woman who went into a messy tailspin after the death of her cop husband. The chemistry between Cooper and the comically agile Lawrence is sensational, but their emotional wounds make a very persuasive obstacle to the inevitable, especially in light of Pat’s obsession with winning his wife back despite a restraining order.
The humor here is as quirky as anything in Flirting with Disaster, but the diverse characters (from a well-reviewed novel by Matthew Quick) are never less than engaging, the entire cast is on their game, and the sleek comedic structure (culminating in a dance competition and major football game happening simultaneously) is worthy of Billy Wilder. The unwieldy title may be a marketing challenge, but Silver Linings Playbook is a rare delight.

Also utterly disarming is Frances Ha, co-written by new indie couple Noah Baumbach and his star, Greta Gerwig. Traversing much the same territory as Lena Dunham’s hit HBO series “Girls,” this comedy is nonetheless a winning look at a 27-year-old New York woman whose penchant for faux pas and bad decisions makes her, in her own self-deprecating words, “undatable.” The movie begins with a montage of scenes depicting Frances’ warm relationship with her best friend and roommate Sophie (Mickey Sumner), a bond that is severed when Sophie moves in with her boyfriend. A struggling apprentice in a dance company, Frances can’t get through a dinner party without putting her foot in her mouth and even turns an impulsive weekend in Paris into a mournful occasion. But Gerwig is so adorable, and her observations so on-target and amusing, we root for this neurotic, vulnerable heroine to succeed. Shot in black-and-white and punctuated by music from the French New Wave, Frances Ha is a breakthrough for indie darling Gerwig and Baumbach’s best movie since The Squid and the Whale.

A Hot Moto-Man and A Rebooted Classic at Toronto 2012

In earlier decades the blonde bombshells in movies were women.  In this year's edition of the Toronto Film Festival at least two of the more visible ones are men.   Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a golden-maned blue-eyed vision as Count Vronsky in Joe Wright's adaptation of "Anna Karenina."  While Ryan Gosling's peroxoide job adds allure to his turn as a badboy stunt motorcyclist in Derek Cianfrance's "The Place Beyind the Pines."

Following on the heels of Cianfrance's glowingly received "Blue Valentine" -- also starring Gosling -- "Pines" has been one of the fest's most anticipated titles (and was just picked up by Focus
Features after reported interest from TWC).   Clocking in at well over two hours and pursuing at least three separate plot strands, the film initially struck me as overlong and uncentered.  Could have been that the morning of the screening it was pouring rain and the escalator at the Scotia Bank Theater (rising to daunting heights) was out of order.   On reflection, I've found the film more to my liking.

Gosling reprises his portrayal of a cash-poor, marginalized dude who not only can't find, but wouldn't know how to look for the path up.   In our current under-employed land Cianfrance has hit on a kind of loser/loner emblematic of the times.  And since he's played by ultra-charismatic Gosling we root for him even as he makes disastrous choices.   

The film's riveting first scene ogles Gosling's naked, tattooed midriff -- openly fetishizing the star's famously ripped body -- as he's about to perform a death-defying motorcycle stunt at a fair.   Some past baggage surfaces in the form of Eva Mendes as a girlfriend he more or less abandoned in his wanderings.    "Who's that guy?" he says of the baby in her arms.

Gosling wants back as a father and husband -- even though Mendes has made a home with a different man.   Convinced he can win her over with money, he takes to robbing local upstate banks with an accomplice, using his motorcycle skills to pull off the heists.  Gosling ends up on the wrong end of the gun of a rookie cop (Bradley Cooper) and -- whammo, the story then sprints off on another track to tell the story of the  cop -- who also has a baby son -- and who crusades against the police corruption in his own backyward.  Finally, the story jumps 15 years forward to wrap up the fate of the two now teenage boys.

Cianfrance is juggling many themes here, chief among them retribution for past acts that ripple outward and poison future generations.  There's a sort of mythic feel to how Gosling's son feels impelled to honor his father.    Like few other American filmmakers, Cianfrance conveys empathy for folks on the lower economic rung who are struggling, even if misguidedly, to find their footing.

The beauty of Toronto's sprawling sprocket opera is that you can turn on a dime and find yourself in a totally different universe -- that of "Anna Karenina" and the toniest circles of Imperial Russia in 1874.   Tolstoy's novel famously portrays the epic love story of Anna, an elegant beauty married to a government official, and
dashing cavalry officer Count Vronsky.  It's a work of
penetrating psychological insight with characters so true-feeling you could reach out
and touch them.

Yet Wright has daringly  given Tolstoy's masterpiece of realism a heavily
stylized re-do by camping it in a vast decaying theater. Periodically
the action jumps the artificial theater space to embrace the natural
world beyond.

The film opens with the babble of an orchestra tuning up, as various
players of the story enact
disjointed scenes from their daily routines -- often in balletic fashion -- on a stage fronted by

footlights. The synchronized movements of a herd of government
bureaucrats (the world of Anna's husband Karenin, played by Jude Law)
are as stylized as the performance art of Pina Bausch.

We're given fair warning: this is no conventional costumer/period
piece. You either buy into it right away. Or say, What the... ? Or get
seduced into Wright's daring vision, a bit the way virtuous Anna (Keira
Knightley) gets worn down by Count Vronsky.



True to the novel, the fevered theatricalized world of Anna and Vronsky
is interwoven with the narrative of Kitty and Levin, an idealistic
landowner attached to the soil, whose belief in lifelong marital
commitment acts as a foil to Vronsky and his roistering cavalry officer
comrades; and as a counter-view to the
ill-fated Anna and Vronsky, who are ostracized by a hypocritical
society for flouting the rules.



What overrides the formal challenges Wright throws at the viewer is the visual splendor of the film's many set pieces -- like the
ball where Vronsky (in white) and Anna (in black lace) unite as lovers
in a rapturous waltz that makes entirely explicit the erotic content of
the male/female pas de deux in ballet.  Knightley has said that a later
sex scene shot in closeup was quite literally a choreographed dance, which would be
evident in a wide shot.  With its ravishing visuals, "Anna" is seldom less than enthralling.

Wright, with his background in the visual arts, has clearly looked at a
lot of theater, dance, and art to create this adaptation. Count among
his influences "The Red Shoes," Lars Von Trier, Robert Wilson, Brecht, along with ballet
and avant garde dance.  His stagey take on Tolstoy's epic novel is hardly a gratuitous choice; rather, it brilliantly captures  Russian society of the period, which
sought to imitate and act out French styles.



A couple of cavils concerning casting. Jude Law is pitch-perfect as
poor cuckolded Karenin. In some ways Knightley -- who's become Wright's
muse -- seems born to play Anna. Yet her 21st century girlish slimness
runs counter to the more Rubenesque ideal of feminine beauty in
Tolstoy's day. Domhnall Gleeson's Levin comes off too buffoonish, while
Alicia Vikander's Kitty invites wonder at what he sees in her -- the
pair don't do justice to one of literature's great love affairs.



As Vronsky, Aaron Taylor-Johnson moves with virile assurance; this is a star-making turn. Also, for the gawkers among us,
the actor (22) has added the name Taylor to reflect his union with
director/artist Sam Taylor-Wood (45) with whom he has two daughters.
Now there's a movie in itself.

Slow weekend ahead with 'The Words,' 'Cold Light of Day'

This weekend should be one of the slowest of the year. Both new wide releases, The Words and The Cold Light of Day, should finish under $10 million.

The Words (2,801 theatres) is the story of an aspiring writer (Bradley Cooper) who passes off a
found manuscript as his own. "Hardly as deep as it pretends to be," critic Kevin Lally notes, the movie is the "middlebrow" result of an "ambitious tri-level narrative of stories within stories."

The Cold Light of Day (1,511 theatres) hasn't yet screened for critics, and the Summit-distributed picture should end up with a blip-on-the-radar $2 million, despite a
recognizable cast list that includes Sigourney Weaver, Bruce Willis, and Henry Cavill. The thriller centers on a regular guy who becomes a wanted man all over a missing briefcase. Pretty familiar plotline, if you ask me. Early Rotten Tomatoes reviews for this movie don't look good.

"As toxic as a Drano cocktail," Bachelorette (47 theatres) released on-demand a month ago, so its theatrical performance will serve as a test for the pre-theatrical VOD release plan. Reviews have generally been giving the
comedy unfavorable comparisons to Bridesmaids, another wedding-themed movie revolving around female friendships. Our critic David Noh is one of the comedy's detractors, complaining that the "bitchiness" of the characters "becomes exhausting and airless," and just seems like an "increasingly
forced attempt to shock." Still, this movie has plenty of buzz behind it, which could help its opening weekend.

On Monday, we'll see how the wide releases fared, and if Bachelorette does well in spite of its mixed reviews and on-demand pre-release.

Screaming fans make a Bollywood movie look more like a soccer match

 

Can you tell from this video that India has the highest movie theatre attendance in the world? Taken during a screening of Billa 2 in Tamilnadu, a particularly movie-crazy region, this YouTube video of the audience looks more like a soccer match.

With the U.S. suffering from declining movie attendance, maybe there's something to say for these fans, who make Twilight devotees look tame in comparison. Of course, not all Indian moviegoers are this passionate. There's a subset of fans who turn out the opening day of a release and make it a noisy, enthusiastic, communal experience. But still, for every screaming Twilight or Billa 2 fan there are many more people who display their fandom in a less noticeable way. The screaming people simply convey one extreme of fandom--they're the part of the iceberg that's visible, above the water.

One of the best parts about seeing a movie with an audience is hearing the audible responses to the work--laughs, sniffles, and maybe even shouts at the screen. Of course, when you're not in sync with the rest of the audience (Think: People laughing at a horror movie, guffawing at a cheesy romcom), those reactions can be distracting. But for a movie like Billa 2, in which "an ordinary man from the slums enters an underworld gang and becomes the most feared underworld don," the screaming kicks up what appears to be a ho-hum fight scene to a whole new level of awesome.

Telluride Film Festival brings early reviews of 'Argo,' 'Hyde Park on Hudson'

Known as the festival for film lovers, the small Telluride Film
Festival, which took place over Labor Day weekend, included screenings
of Argo and Hyde Park of Hudson, two high-profile movies set to release later this year. Hyde Park is clearly Oscar bait, while Argo has been flying under the radar. Expectations appear to have helped Argo (they were low to begin with) and hurt Hyde Park on Hudson. Here are some of the critical responses coming out of the festival.

Argo: On its way up. Sure, Ben Affleck won a screenwriting Oscar for Good Will Hunting, but he's done mostly mainstream commercial work as an
actor since then. But he also won
praise as a director with 2010's The Town and has an acting role in
Terrence Malick's To the Wonder. His
third directing effort, Argo,
a fact-based thriller about the Iran hostage crisis, should do well at
the box office when it opens wide on October 12. However, it's now also
being talked about as a serious Oscar contender.  A surprise pick at
Telluride, Anne Thompson of Indiewire declares that "multiple Oscar nominations are in order as this movie surges to the top of the current Oscar contenders list." THR lauds the "crackerjack political thriller," and praises the "confidence and finesse" of Affleck's directing.

Holding position: Hyde Park on Hudson. A personal story of a historical figure, FDR, Hyde Park on Hudson appears to be taking a note from The King's Speech,
2010's success story. However, early notices indicate it doesn't rise
to
the heights of the Oscar winner. Jeff Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere
was rather dismissive of the "well-finessed historical parlor piece." Eric Kohn of Indiewire manages expectations,
deciding that the historical pic has "enough momentum to keep its lead
actors (including Laura Linney as the president's temporary love
interest) in the awards race." From a commerical perspective, THR pegs it
as a "refined treat that nonetheless will appeal to a wide audience." 
Maybe the Focus release, which opens on December 7, will be more like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a box-office hit that will likely be recognized at the Oscars, but not overwhelmingly. Surely Hyde Park on Hudson
will gather more nominations than that movie, but the FDR-centered love
story may be too reminiscent of its more successful predecessor, The King's Speech, to come close to the 2010 film's success.