‘Gone Girl’ bests newcomers

The thriller from David Fincher out-grossed each of the several new titles that opened this weekend. Gone Girl dipped just 29 percent to earn $26.8 million. To date, and after 10 days in theatres, the film has raked in $78.3 million. If it continues to hold strong, Girl should surpass The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’s $127.5 million total to become Fincher’s most successful movie.

In second place, Dracula Untold managed an impressive $23.5 million. The action-horror flick exceeded the expectations of pundits who believed it would open in the mid-teens. Audiences were mostly male (57 percent) and majority Hispanic (31 percent). Overseas, Untold acquitted itself even better: The flick earned $62.6 million for a worldwide total of $86.1 million. These figures appear even more impressive when one considers Dracula’s production costs; the movie was made for $70 million, and thus turned a profit after only one weekend in theatres. Not bad for a flick lacking in marquee-name stars.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day boasts two such celebs in prominent roles, Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner, and performed more or less to expectation with a $19.1 million debut. The weekend’s third-place film proved a hit among families, which comprised 67 percent of its audience. Disney should be pleased; the feature cost just $28 million to make. It may be no Frozen, but Alexander will be profitable.

Although not many were expecting a boffo opening weekend for The Judge, the first film from Robert Downey Jr. and wife Susan Downey’s production company Team Downey opened even weaker than predicted. Instead of clocking in at No. 4, The Judge debuted behind holdover Annabelle to open at No. 5. It earned $13.3 million to Annabelle’s $16.4 million. Unfortunately, The Judge targets the same adult audience as Gone Girl, a film that continues to hold considerable sway among viewers. Those who did purchase tickets to The Judge seemed to enjoy it: They awarded the movie an A- CinemaScore grade, which bodes well for a steady if not spectacular theatrical run.

Finally, the specialty realm experienced a few successes and disappointments of its own. The Weinstein Company’s St. Vincent proved a modest hit in limited release, grossing $121,000 from four theatres, which works out to a per-location average of $30,250. The studio’s One Chance, however, was much harder hit, raking in a weak $32,800 from 43 theatres (per-location average of just $763).

Potential Oscar contender Whiplash appeared to benefit from positive festival buzz, earning $144,000 from six theatres, or an average of $24,000 per location.

It was documentary Meet the Mormons, however, that proved the weekend’s most surprising success story. Screening in just 317 theatres across the country, the film about six Mormon families earned a great $2.7 million.

‘Girl’ most likely to hold strong

Several new films open wide at the box office this weekend, but David Fincher’s Gone Girl is expected to maintain its hold at the top of the charts.

Pundits are predicting a weekend haul of a little over $20 million for the thriller. Second place seems a bit tougher to call: Will vampire fans or families turn out in the larger numbers? Both Dracula Untold and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day are looking at weekend figures in the high-teens to roughly $20 million. Dracula is a popular storyline, but this weekend’s origins flick does not include any popular/recognizable stars. In contrast, Alexander is based on a popular children’s book, and boasts popular actors Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner to boot. That being said, Untold does have the advantage of IMAX screenings, and thus more expensive tickets in several markets. This edge may be enough to help it secure second-place standing, even if it is opening in fewer theatres (2,885 to Alexander’s 3,088).

That leaves The Judge as the third and final major release bowing nationwide. Interest in Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall will likely help offset the harmful effects of lukewarm reviews (the film is trending 48 percent rotten on Rotten Tomatoes); it’s competition from the acclaimed Gone Girl, which targets the same adult audience, that should prove the largest obstacle. Odds are the film will gross in the mid-teens and clock in at No. 4. Even if The Judge does not enjoy a boffo opening, however, its older viewers should help it hold well in the coming weeks.

Seal-worthy kids' films

Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization that publishes reviews of media and tech products for the benefit of parents, educators and policymakers, has awarded its inaugural "Common Sense Seal" to the upcoming Disney film Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Per the organization's website, "the Common Sense Seal recognizes and champions films that delight families with enriching stories and positive messages."

The phrase "enriching stories" is open to broad interpretation, but there is unarguably a rich tradition of children's movies with affecting narratives, tales apt to move parents and babysitters as well as (often more than) younger viewers. If we were to compile a truly comprehensive list of kids' films worthy of seals of approval, the endeavor would likely grow to resemble the title of one of our entries, The Neverending Story. From older classics of the Duck Soup variety, to '90s oddities of Rock-A-Doodle's ilk, a passionate case can be made for a wide variety of movies. We can't say whether Common Sense Media would approve of our our by-no-means-exhaustive selection, but there is certainly a wide variety of former and current kids who have felt their lives "enriched" by the stories below:

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

The Snowman

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Peter Pan (Mary Martin version)

Old Yeller

Home Alone

The Neverending Story

The Secret Garden

Heavyweights

Beauty and the Beast

 

Labyrinth

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

 

A Christmas Story

The Goonies

The Dark Crystal

Bye Bye Birdie

 

The Year Without a Santa Clause

 
The Lion King

The Gold Standard: The Princess Bride

‘Gone Girl’ gold

The race for box-office dominance was close this weekend, but Gone Girl managed the victory. The latest from director David Fincher grossed $38 million to horror flick Annabelle’s $37.2 million. These films did the lion’s share of the work helping the domestic box office reach its highest peak in quite some time. This weekend was the most lucrative ever for the month of October, and the combined $141.8 million earned by the top 12 films was up 23 percent from this same spread last year.

Ben Affleck enjoyed the second-best opening of his career with Gone Girl, behind 2003’s Daredevil. It was the largest debut ever for Fincher, whose Panic Room had previously enjoyed the strongest opening among the filmmaker’s movies (Room bowed to a little over $30 million in 2002). Between the cache of a director known for films with twisty plots (see: Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac), a major movie star in a lead role, and material based on a bestselling novel and thus boasting built-in interest, Girl was able to lure a sizable audience. These viewers left theatres with mixed feelings, however; they awarded the movie a B CinemaScore grade, which is all right, but certainly not terrific. Their word-of-mouth might hinder Girl from maintaining a secure hold in the weeks ahead.

Interestingly, and further proving a point made to great effect by summer hits The Fault in Our Stars and Maleficent, female audiences comprised the majority of viewers for both Gone Girl and the weekend’s No. 2 earner, Annabelle. Sixty percent of audience members for Girl were female (75 percent were also older than 25), while Annabelle’s viewership was 51 percent female (and 54 percent 25+). Annabelle, a prequel to The Conjuring and arriving in theatres a smart 15 months after The Conjuring’s debut, enjoyed the sixth-best opening ever for a supernatural horror film. It earned the same CinemaScore rating as the movie that barely beat it to first place, although a B for a horror feature, a genre whose offerings often garner poor grades, bodes much better for the film’s hold than a B for a drama. Still, Gone Girl is expected to top Fincher’s most lucrative film to date, the $127.5 million-grossing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, while pundits are predicting an $80 million or so total for Annabelle.

The Equalizer dipped 44 percent to earn $19 million and a third-place standing. Its downturn is neatly in line with recent and comparable title Non-Stop, which dropped 45 percent its second weekend in theatres. To date, the Denzel Washington vehicle has grossed $64.5 million.

Fourth place went to The Boxtrolls, which enjoyed a fairly steady hold. The kids’ film from Laika Animation raked in $12.4 million, a dip of 28 percent. Its cume, at the moment, stands at $32.5 million.

Younger viewers (though not quite as young as the target audience for Boxtrolls) also continued to turn out for YA adaptation The Maze Runner, which earned $12 million this weekend and clocked in at No. 5. Well on its way toward a $100 million+ total, the action film has so far earned $73.9 million. 

Left Behind failed to match the success of faith-based titles Heaven Is for Real and God's Not Dead, but neither did it disappoint: The remake starring Nicolas Cage grossed $6.85 million and secured the weekend's sixth-place spot.

Finally, despite major stars in leading roles, specialty films The Good Lie and Men, Women & Children opened soft. Lie raked in $935,000 from 461 locations, while Children fared worse: The latest from director Jason Reitman brought in $48,000, a total that works out to a weak per-theatre average of $2,824. Here’s hoping the film benefits significantly from its national expansion this weekend.

Alain Resnais' "Hiroshima Mon Amour" at the New York Film Festival on October 10th

Emmanuelle Riva and Eijii Okada in a newly restored print of Hiroshima Mon Amour, a Rialto Pictures Release. (Photo courtesy of The New York Film Festival.)

On Friday, October 10th the New York Film Festival will screen a beautiful, newly restored print of Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), a movie which should be seen on the big screen. (It is in French, with English subtitles.)

The first time I saw it, I was in college. It was the mid-1970s, and American troops were coming home from a bitterly contested war in Vietnam. The images of the 1968 Mi Lai massacre of nearly five hundred civilians by American soldiers was fresh in everyone’s mind. That “conflict” in Southeast Asia, which devastated our generation, paled in comparison to what happened in 1945: In August of that year, American pilots dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. We were the first generation of Americans marked by the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and, like every other human being on the planet then, the first to confront the threat of nuclear annihilation.

After the screening, our professor asked us what Resnais' movie had to do with the war. Which war, someone asked, and there was laughter, perhaps to break the tension, as most of us were utterly baffled by the three storylines in Hiroshima Mon Amour. One, the past bombing of Hiroshima, is inferred by Resnais’s setting of the film in that city. The second is about the brief affair between a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) who is there to make a movie about it, and the French-speaking Japanese architect (Eijii Okada) she meets at a party. The third recounts the unnamed actress’s memories of her wartime romance with an enemy soldier, in the village of Nevers, which she confesses to her Japanese lover. While we students were eager to speak about Resnais’s sublime framing and editing, and Giovanni Fusco’s wonderful solo piano theme, no one wanted to venture a guess at what the movie was really about.

Most of us had seen only one other Resnais film, his documentary short about the Nazi death camps, Night and Fog (1955). Like Hiroshima Mon Amour, and many of the director’s movies to come, it is about the nature of memory, and was narrated by a camp survivor. Both films include archival footage. Hiroshima Mon Amour was Resnais’s first narrative feature, although it had begun as a documentary; a producer, impressed with Night and Fog, asked the filmmaker to make a similar movie about Hiroshima. Shortly after he began making the film, Resnais changed course and commissioned the well-known French novelist Marguerite Duras to write a screenplay. That is when it became the French woman’s story.

Hiroshima Mon Amour sometimes leaves viewers confused about whether they are in the “present,” in Hiroshima, or in the French woman’s memory of her affair with a German solider. The movie’s “past” intrudes, visually, upon the “present.” As contemporary viewers, we are more accustomed to this technique than audiences were in 1959, although the edits are still jarring. Perhaps a better example of Resnais’s contribution to the cinematic art form is in the parade sequence, when a banner appears in the bottom left of the frame and slowly moves out of the frame, standing in for the person holding it as he or she passes by and as the lovers look on. Borrowing a term from literature, film critics call the banner a “synecdoche,” a part that stands in for the whole. Filmmaker Robert Bresson is also famous for this shot, especially because he expanded it with the use of sound.

Now to the question of whether Hiroshima Mon Amour is about war: It is, but only tangentially. Resnais’s movie is the story of the French woman’s wartime memory of her first love who was an enemy of the French, and the public disgrace she underwent when the affair was discovered—when the German lay dying, having been shot by a villager, and she kneeled by his side. These characters and that story were conceived by another woman who harbored memories of a forbidden love. Marguerite Duras was born in Vietnam, in what was then French Indochina.

Her parents emigrated when her father secured a job there, but he died soon after their arrival, leaving her mother to raise three children on a teacher’s salary. Duras’s childhood was marked by poverty. Then, as a teenage girl, she met an affluent Chinese businessman with whom she had a secret but rather longstanding affair. In a 1985 television interview, she said her mother was convinced of her “absolute degradation,” and at one point threatened to throw her daughter out of their home. She recounted these memories in her novel, “The Lover” (1984), although she had obviously told her story years earlier in Hiroshima Mon Amour.

Emmanuelle Riva’s character had never told anyone, not even her husband, about her bittersweet memory of that wartime romance, but in Hiroshima, she confesses it to a stranger, a wonderful man who believes he is lucky to be entrusted with such a reminiscence. At some point, she asks: “How could I have forgotten so much love?” Actually, Duras and her character have too long lived in the past. Hiroshima, the ruined city, and the Japanese architect who is rebuilding it, are metaphors for the French woman’s process of reclamation, of her quest to heal her younger self. That verboten love was her initial encounter with the Other, a first step to claiming her identity. This time, instead of despair over the betrayal of her family, who hid her in a basement after the war, she feels happy. She speaks to her Japanese lover as though she were once again conversing with the German soldier. Maybe, she ruminates, she will return to Nevers. It is another name for the place where the bittersweet memories reside that, at some point in the course of one’s life, must be reclaimed.

Maria Garcia

NYFF 2014: Highs and lows thus far

With a little over a week remaining of The 52nd New York Film Festival, two of the event's most anticipated movies have yet to screen: The new Paul Thomas Anderson film and the first adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel, Inherent Vice; and the latest from Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Birdman (Or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), a film that has many crying "Oscar!" and hailing as a comeback vehicle (what awards season would be complete without such a story?) for Michael Keaton.

Yet even without these titles, NYFF has already offered a strong, eclectic, and occasionally polarizing slate of films. From documentaries to modern thrillers and period pieces, here's a brief overview of some of the festival highs and lows thus far:

One can never glean much of use from breathlessly laudatory reviews, so in the interests of understatement, there is little to be said concerning Joshua Oppenheimer's The Look of Silence beyond the following: It is a documentary that first justifies then elevates the format, that affectingly proves why documentaries should be filmed. Silence is the companion piece to Oppenheimer's Oscar-nominated The Act of Killing. Whereas Killing focused on the perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide, men who are still in power and (perhaps therefore) are more than happy to reenact their homicidal deeds before the camera, Silence turns about the brother of a young man who suffered one of the era's most gruesome deaths. Throughout the film, we watch as this man, who never knew his sibling, confronts those responsible for his brother's murder and the deaths of countless others. Using his trade as an eyeglass salesman as well as his affiliation with Oppenheimer, who many of the perps know from their involvement in Killing, as his "in," the documentary's subject quietly yet insistently engages these men of power and Earthly consequence in conversation about their pasts. It is a display of the baldest courage. The Look of Silence is important as historical record, as human testimonial, as a testament to documentary achievement. Oppenheimer should be nominated for his second Academy Award, of course, but that is the lesser of the necessities facing the filmmaker; he should simply continue to film.

The documentary Red Army likewise tells the story of a foreign nation in the modern era, though it lacks the incisiveness of Silence. The movie from Gabe Polsky is a nonetheless entertaining look at the former Soviet Union's Red Army hockey team in its heyday. Team captain Slava Fetisov recounts his rise to national than international fame as one of the top Soviet players, describing as well the Spartan and harsh conditions under which the squad lived, and the deceit, corruption and cruelty that characterized the government's close involvement. Fetisov is engaging and oh-so Russian in the bluntness of his delivery. What he is not is always forthcoming, and while Polsky displays an enjoyable sense of humor, choosing to include several unguarded moments with Fetisov and others (notably a former KGB agent, whose outdoor interview is twice interrupted by a local girl), the filmmaker fails to  crack his interviewees' carefully buttressed, or naturally calloused, exteriors. Granted, these are imposing figures with whom he's speaking, but one does wish he had prodded a bit harder.

One likewise wishes Bruce Wagner, the screenwriter of Maps to the Stars, displayed the tiniest fraction of Polsky's  levity. The latest film from David Cronenberg is a satire of Hollywood in the vein of The Player, although it isn't particularly funny, nor, more importantly, does it have much to say: many in the film industry are superficial, narcissistic, unfulfilled, spiritually bereft, adrift, unhinged...etc. Julianne Moore is wonderful at playing a terrible person, Mia Wasikowska is, as always, greatly watchable, and Evan Bird ("The Killing") is very, very convincing as a bratty child star and walking warning against the procreative habits of greedy people. But the film is all performance, little substance. Much like the Bret Easton Ellis works it appears to ape, it makes its satiric point right away. Everything that follows continues to hammer away at this single locale, until the wall against which the film's Hollywood "types" (that they are) are being pinned crumbles beneath the weight of blows aimed at the same darn spot. Melodrama can be great fun. This is not that.

Gone Girl, on the other hand, is quite fun. David Fincher's most recent work also follows several unlikable people, but their story has enough twists to distract from the film's dearth of character insight. You may not like the men and women of Gone Girl, but, unlike the titular stars of Maps, there's pleasure to be had in the tracking.

Of the festival's selection of characters who pose a challenge to viewer sympathy, the most interesting, featured in one of the event's best entries, are the two leads of Whiplash. The second feature from Harvard grad Damien Chazelle chronicles the relationship between an ambitious college drummer and his hard-ass, drill sergeant of a conductor. The film can prompt physical reactions: shrinking in one's seat, covering one's eyes, wincing. It is not a thriller, but it plays like one. Both the film and J.K. Simmons, the conductor, have been receiving Oscar buzz; let's hope such noise only continues to mount.

Mike Leigh's's Mr. Turner is a fine alternative to the aforementioned films. Its titular painter isn't so much unlikable as irascible. Not much happens in Mr. Turner, but the costume and set designs are so lovely many may not mind its distinctly un-Gone-Girl lack of plot at all.

Box office poised for a bounce-back

Both Gone Girl and Annabelle enjoyed strong bows Thursday night, suggesting a welcome return to healthy box-office numbers this weekend. Girl, the latest from The Social Network director David Fincher and an adaptation of the incredibly popular Gillian Flynn novel, raked in $1.25 million to Annabelle’s $2.1 million. Chances are slim, however, horror-film Annabelle will retain its lead over Girl through the weekend. Both movies boast significant fan-bases (in the case of Annabelle, these would be fans of The Conjuring, to which Annabelle is a prequel), but the audience for Girl is larger: It includes fans of the novel, fans of director David Fincher, and fans of the film’s star, Ben Affleck. Additionally, horror devotees often rush to view a feature its first weekend in theatres, resulting in totals that are often front-loaded. Older viewers, on the other hand, such as the target audience for the R-rated Girl, are able to, and often do, wait a bit longer to watch a film in theatres. In other words, Gone Girl not only enjoys the larger fan-base, but will likely hold better over the course of its theatrical run.

The two films should debut relatively close to one another (within $10 million or so), but Gone Girl should have stronger legs. Look for Girl to debut between $30 and $40 million, while Annabelle should rake in returns closer to $30 million.

The aforementioned films are not the only new releases opening this weekend, however. In fact, several movies featuring big-name stars are bowing today. Left Behind, a remake of the Christian-themed film, is headlined by Nicolas Cage. (Kirk Cameron starred in the original.) The film bows in 1,800 locations, and is likely looking, as so many features have tried over the past several months, to replicate the success of faith-based films God’s Not Dead and Heaven Is for Real. Unfortunately, recent attempts to tap the viewing faithful have failed rather spectacularly (see: Moms' Night Out and The Identical). Left Behind is based on a popular book series, however, meaning its established fan base should help it avoid the fate of recent genre entries.

The Good Lie, starring Reese Witherspoon, opens in 461 locations, while Men, Women & Children, starring a host of celebrities (Jennifer Garner, Adam Sandler, and Ansel Elgort are just a few players within the buzzy ensemble), expands to 17 theatres from the five in which it opened on Wednesday. The former has been receiving positive reviews, while the latter, the latest from Up in the Air director Jason Reitman, has been taken to task by critics, and is currently clocking in at 35 percent rotten on Rotten Tomatoes. Neither film is expected to do bang-up business this weekend: totals in the low millions for each seem likely.