'Hobbit' leads, with 'Django' and 'Les Mis' not far behind

As the holidays start wrapping up, there's plenty of good cheer to share at the box office. The top seventeen films all earned over $1 million this weekend.  Viewers have many great options to choose from and theatres are busy with people on vacation in search of entertainment. Most releases also went up from last week, a rare occasion in the modern, opening-weekend-driven box office.

After dropping by half its second weekend, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey had a second wind, descending just 10% to $32 million. That gives the fantasy a $222 million domestic total to
date, along with nearly half a billion abroad. With many multi-million weekends to come, it looks like J.R.R. Tolkien's novel about Bilbo Baggins will be able to sustain a trilogy.

Debuting in second place, Django Unchained earned $34 million over the weekend and $64 million since its Christmas Day opening. The violent comic Western about a slave's revenge has been an even bigger hit with audiences (93% positive) than critics (89%) positive), and it also earned an "A-" CinemaScore. For many, this movie is a must-see.

Les Misérables had a weekend tally of $28 million, just under Django. However, its $18 million opening on Christmas Day helped propel it to a $67.4 million total, just above director
Quentin Tarantino's violent antebellum picture. Les Misérables received an "A" grade from viewers. I predict Les Misérables will last slightly longer than Django at the box office, since it will likely attract more selective and older viewers who may wait to see a feature until weeks after it opens.

Parental Guidance, a comedy about the clashing parenting styles of different generations, proved a hit with the holiday crowds, earning $14.8 million over the weekend and $29.6 million since Christmas Day. Although This is 40 started out slow, its  $13.1 million total was up 13% from its debut weekend. The $37 million cumulative means the Universal picture has at least made back its reported $35 million budget. The Guilt Trip may be the big loser in the family-oriented comedy race, totaling just $6.7 million for a total of $21 million, with a reported budget that soared even higher, to $40 million.

Silver Linings Playbook, which expanded into over 700 theatres, placed twelfth while posting a per-screen average of $5,500, higher than almost all the movies that earned more than its $4.1 million weekend total. The Weinstein Co.-distributed romantic comedy has earned $27 million to
date as it slowly expands.

The highest per-screen average went to Zero Dark Thirty, which averaged $63,000 per screen while still playing in only five locations. It won't expand wide for two more weeks. A distant (but still decent) second went to Amour, the well-reviewed critics' favorite that averaged $20,000 per screen. The tear-jerker The Impossible, with an $12,300 per-screen average, posted the third-highest total of the week. That movie will expand wide this Friday along with Promised Land. The issue-based drama, which centers on fracking for natural gas and stars Matt Damon and John Krasinski, had a weak ignition, with $7,600 per screen at 25 locations. The documentary West of Memphis also opened soft, averaging $2,700 per screen in five locations.

This Friday,  Texas Chainsaw 3D will splatter horror content into movie theatres, and Promised Land and The Impossible will expand nationwide.

'Les Miserables' and 'Django Unchained' may turn box office from silent to joyful

The weekend box office was softer than usual. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey dropped 57% to lead with $36.7 million, enough to give it a first-place finish by a wide margin. The Peter Jackson-directed epic has already earned nearly $150 million, but since the fantasy adventure is not only big-budget, but the first installment in a trilogy, anything other than a smash hit could portend trouble for the remaining two movies.

In second place, Jack Reacher opened to $15.6 million. The Tom Cruise-led action picture resonated with older male moviegoers, and Paramount believes that the demographic base will expand to teenage males as well. Because the holiday season usually gives releases higher multiples of opening weekend, Reacher may end up with over $60 million, at least four times its first weekend.

Judd Apatow-directed comedy about a family's mid-life crisis, This is 40 followed in third with $12.3 million. That was a lot better than Wednesday release The Guilt Trip, which only earned $5.3  million. Both films, which skewed to older females, only received "B-" CinemaScores. Pre-holiday preparations often prevent the adult demographic from showing up in force pre-Christmas, so there are still plenty of interested viewers who may not have had a chance to see the movie yet--that is, if they still plan on seeing either one if they hear mixed reviews from friends.

Monsters Inc. 3D earned a light $5 million over the weekend. Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away, playing at just noon and 7pm every day, still managed to total $2.1 million. It will up the freqency of showtimes tomorrow, now that it has an "A-" average CinemaScore from its first viewers.

Of all the specialty releases, the one with the most momentum is Zero Dark Thirty. The story of the CIA's hunt for Osama bin Laden averaged $82,000 per screen in five locations, and is picking up incredible buzz and word-of-mouth from those emerging from sold-out screenings. The
heart-wrenching tale of a family that survived a tsunami, The Impossible, opened with a $9,200 per-screen average in fifteen  locations. The modestly successful opening that may pick up speed in weeks to come.

Three more wide releases will open tomorrow, on Christmas Day. A celebration of the "redeeming pleasure of musical storytelling," Les Misérables (2,808 theatres) shows all signs of being the darling of this holiday season. Sung live, instead of lip-synced on set,  the vocals sound real, immediate, and occasionally (and appropriately) ragged. Critic Wendy R. Weinstein couldn't help reflecting on the "progressive political and moral concerns" highlighted from the original text by Victor Hugo. "It’s impossible to leave this movie untroubled by the contemporary parallels," she says, all the more reason the musical may end up being both a box-office and awards-show hit.

Controversy surrounding writer-director Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (3,010 theatres) has been light so far, but now the ultra-violent film has its first major dissenter. Spike Lee said he would not be seeing the "disrespectful" movie, which does not honor the memories of
his ancestors who were enslaved. The "spaghetti western/slave vengeance mash-up," as described by critic Chris Barsanti, includes comic bits that "play well throughout," but "at the disadvantage of dulling the edge of the script’s visceral portrayal of the savagery of slavery—a problem that gets more pronounced by the film’s gory climax." Perhaps that's what Lee was intuiting, though he hasn't seen it.

Tomorrow, another family-focused comedy (after The Guilt Trip and This is 40) will enter the mix. Parental Guidance, which centers on the generational clash between touch old-school and new helicopter parenting styles, will open in 3,558 theatres. Some "nice comic points" are scored, especially courtesy of Billy Crystal, according to FJI's David Noh, but an effluence of heartwarming moments and other signs of "commercial family slop" make it less palatable.

Next Monday, we'll evaluate how the Christmas releases fared, and if last Friday's releases benefited from vacation days and positive word-of-mouth.

'Jack Reacher' and 'This is 40' add to holiday movie madness

Two more big presents are under the Christmas tree. Tom Cruise-led Jack Reacher and the comedy This is 40 will both unspool today, joining Wednesday releases The Guilt Trip and Monsters Inc. 3D.

"Action fans and Cruise junkies" will like Jack Reacher (3,352 theatres), predicts critic Daniel Eagan. The "superior genre film" is pleasing, but it also feels old-fashioned. I'm not saying I want
the handheld camerawork of the Bourne films, but the plotting is more pulpy and comforting than truly thrilling or challenging. Call me spoiled by the more realistic Zero Dark Thirty, which kicked off to a $25,000 per-screen average in five theatres on Wednesday.

Judd Apatow returns to the married couple from Knocked Up in This is 40 (2,912 theatres). Leslie Mann, his real-life wife, plays a version of herself, as do their two daughters, and Paul Rudd stands in for Apatow as their father. The "foolproof comic situations mixed with some genuine emotional moments" made Eagan a fan. Some in the industry are worried that the middle-age-centered
subject matter will alienate Apatow's younger fans, while others raise a eyebrow that those who aren't as well off or on the East Coast or West Coast will even care about the elitist problems of a bourgeois L.A. family. The New York Times' A.O. Scott notes that the main characters, "cushioned by comforts that most of their fellow citizens can scarcely
imagine, nonetheless feel as if things were starting to go
pear-shaped." The flawed, funny characters have been garnering the comedy mixed reviews. It's currently tracking a perfect split, 50% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Paramount is releasing Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away with just two showtimes a day in just 840 theatres. The idea is to make the movie feel more like the live events it's recording. Using techniques like "slo-mo, close-ups
and inventive camera angles [smooths] the transition from big top
to big screen," according to THR's Megan Lehmann.

A harrowing, true-life tale of a family separated by the tsunami in Thailand, The Impossible (15 theatres) was one of my picks for the top ten films of 2012. The "extraordinary visceral
experience," as described by Doris Toumarkine, features award-worthy performances from not only Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor, but also "beautifully nuanced performances" from the child actors, directed by Juan Antonio Bayona.

One of FJI editor Kevin Lally's top ten picks for 2012, Amour (3 theatres) is "grim but incredibly poignant," according to Toumarkine. The tale of an aging couple is depressing but accomplished enough that it's one of the finalists for Best Foreign Language Film.

A long-gestating adaptation of On the Road (4 theatres) finally accelerates into theatres. The "honorable, informed attempt
to transcribe an American classic and capture youthful frenzy" fails for critic Erica Abeel. She notes that the "period detail is perfect," but a "literal-minded approach" leads to its downfall.

Another look back at decades past, via an unsuccessful rock band started by a group of New Jersey teens, is Not Fade Away (3 theatres). Directed by David Chase ("The Sopranos"), the movie succeeds as an "engaging time capsule" of the '60s, according to Lally, offering "a vivid reminder of how thoroughly the ’60s shook up the
culture, reverberations that are still felt and remain unsettled
five decades later."

On Monday, we'll check in on the Wednesday and Friday releases and weigh in on the prospects of Les Misérables, Parental Guidance and Django Unchained, which will open on Christmas Day.

From 'Amour' to 'Zero,' Kevin Lally's top ten of 2012

Even the toughest critics are acknowledging that 2012 was an exceptional year for movies. I saw several dozen films—from satisfying escapist entertainment to more demanding arthouse fare—that were well worth my time. And my personal top ten is so varied, this year it was simply too difficult to rank them in order of preference. Here, in alphabetical order, are this editor's favorite films of 2012.

Amour: Michael Haneke's drama about an elegant, long-married French couple facing debilitating
illness is an uncompromising portrait of the inevitable challenge we all must face: our own mortality. You need to brace youself for its painful intimacy, but you'll be dazzled by the brave, breathtaking performances of its two leads, French cinema icons Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva.

Argo: Yes, Virginia, Ben Affleck can direct. Although its climax breaks with the real story to ratchet up suspense, this account of the improbable scheme to rescue six Americans hiding in the residence of the Canadian ambassador during the 1979-81 Iran hostage crisis retains a vivid "You Are There" power. The plan involves a fake movie called Argo, so this nail-biting tale also includes some hilarious swipes at Hollywood.

The Avengers:  The year's best popcorn movie. Cult TV auteur Joss Whedon scored a massive blockbuster with this gathering of Marvel superheroes including Iron Man, Thor and Captain America that delivers all the thrills and sly humor a comic-book fan could want.

Les Misérables: King's Speech director Tom Hooper made the bold decision to have his cast sing
live in the long-awaited movie version of the beloved stage show, and the gamble pays off with an immediacy that prerecording could never deliver. Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne and newcomer Samantha Barks all have standout numbers in this handsomely produced and enthralling translation of the Victor Hugo classic.

Lincoln: Daniel Day-Lewis is the man to beat for the Best Actor Oscar for his remarkable incarnation of our 16th President. The screenplay by acclaimed playwright Tony Kushner offers a fascinating inside look at the deals, deceptions and compromises behind the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment which finally ended our country's abhorrent embrace of slavery.

Miss Bala: Based on a true story, Gerardo Naranjo's pulse-quickening drama charts the nightmarish odyssey of a naive beauty queen who has the misfortune to cross paths with a Mexican drug cartel. Her journey is harrowing, unpredictable, and streaked with moments of dark humor. This movie truly deserved a wider audience.

Moonrise Kingdom: The inimitable Wes Anderson does it again, but this time with more heart. His tale of two 12-year-old runaways experiencing first love is filled with the director's trademark quirkiness and meticulous design detail, but those determined kids gave his latest movie an accessibility that made it one of the year's top arthouse crossovers.

Searching for Sugar Man: A documentary that unfolds as a mystery story, Malik Bendjelloul's film introduces most of the world to Sixto Rodriguez, a well-reviewed folksinger who dropped out of sight after his two albums flopped in the early 1970s. But amazingly, his records became huge in South Africa, buoying the spirits of the anti-apartheid community. Sugar Man not only chronicles Rodriguez's enigmatic life, but has brought long-overdue recognition to this woefully undervalued musician. (And yes, I now own his CDs.)

Silver Linings Playbook: David O. Russell delivered the most engaging and satisfying comedy of the year, centered on an unlikely romantic duo consisting of a recently institutionalized manic-depressive and a highly volatile young widow. Bradley Cooper has his best movie role to date, and 22-year-old Jennifer Lawrence is simply a revelation as the screen's brightest new comedienne.

Zero Dark Thirty: Kathryn Bigelow follows The Hurt Locker with an even more impressive
achievement, a thoroughly detailed account of the ten-year pursuit of Osama bin Laden which tells us something we didn't know: A persisent, single-minded female CIA agent was key to the discovery of his compound in Abbottabad. The film's events are so recent, it borders on documentary, and the lengthy recreation of the raid on bin Laden's hideout sure feels like the real thing.

This strong movie year demands a list of ten runners-up, and here they are: Anna Karenina, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Farewell My Queen, Flight, Hope Springs, In Darkness, Looper, Skyfall, The Well Digger's Daughter, and Wreck-It Ralph.

Sarah Sluis' Top Ten Movies of 2012

2012 has been a great year for big Hollywood films. In 2009, 2010 and 2011, my top ten lists were stocked with underdogs and the kind of specialty fare that only sometimes made it big at the box office. This year, most of the "specialty" releases I selected are destined for expansion and great play in theatres, so I'm a little light on the underdogs. The list reflects only the movies I saw in theatres this year: 70, a number many critics could easily double. In no particular order, here are my top ten:

1. Zero Dark Thirty. The biggest surprise for me was that the film's protagonist, Maya, was female, "a woman clothed, like Athena, in willful strength and intellectual armor," as described by The New Yorker's David Denby. She's the kind of female protagonist you don't realize is rare until you see her up on the screen. Beyond Maya (played expertly by Jessica Chastain), director Kathryn Bigelow lays out an incredibly detailed account of the years leading up to Bin Laden's death that feels real, immediate, and important. It's a cinematic (and partly fictional) version of reading The 9/11 Comission Report.

2. Next to Maya, Gina Carano was the second most awesome female protagonist of the year in Haywire. The lean spy actioner had some of the most riveting, realistic fighting I've ever seen. Like Zero Dark Thirty, there's a lot that director Steven Soderbergh didn't bother to explain. I like a story where a filmmaker or actor has the courage or confidence not to show something, and this movie was one of them.

3. Flight showed little restraint. The final minutes added a moralizing touch that felt old-fashioned and uncomfortable. Like the car crash scene in Adaptation, Flight has one of the best action sequences ever appearing in a drama. It stays with you for the rest of the film. Another great movie about alcoholism that didn't quite make the list, Smashed, is an interesting companion piece: substitute a plane crash for a faked pregnancy and you end up with a quite similar character arc.

4. Argo was so much fun to watch. Even though I had read the magazine article that was the source material and knew the end plane sequence didn't really happen, it managed to combine real drama with comedy in a way that so few others have. I think this is why audiences finally returned to the "box-office poison" of Middle East-set features. This one had you clapping and gasping in suspense, but it also had great laughs and didn't take itself too seriously.

5. The documentary Searching for Sugar Man centered on folk musician Rodriguez, a man so befuddling and enigmatic it was hard to wrap your mind around him. But that's why I like documentaries: They can offer character portraits that would never work in fiction films, because audiences would find them too frustrating. Some key would need to be provided to the audience to unlock his or her motivations. But we never get one for Rodriguez, whose life as both a star and an aesthete becomes a koan on character and fame for the audience to meditate on. In one forest, Rodriguez's music fell on deaf ears. In another (South Africa), it became a symbol of cultural revolution.

6. Les Misérables promises to shake up the way musicals are filmed for the screen. The live recordings of the actors strip away the distance that always seems to crop up in musicals. Sure, Les Misérables is one of my favorite musicals, but that only raises expectations. Mine were met, and then some.

7. Beasts of the Southern Wild may also change the world of indie film. I'd rather have a crop of indie imitators try to tackle a project like this than sit through another Mumblecore, but given the immense resolve required of those who soldiered through the bayou-set production, I doubt there will be too many. Beasts opened up dialogue about New Orleans and Katrina and made the experience of seeing a movie feel new again. For that, it gets a spot in the top ten.

8. I'm still not quite sure what to think about Django Unchained. I admire director Quentin Tarantino for traversing into the quicksand territory that is race relations and America's history of slavery. So far, people have only taken issue with small things, like the use of the N-word. Surely more thoughtful cultural critiques are to come. What I remember most about Django is its use of guided awe. Django (Jamie Foxx) rides into town on a horse, prompting head-turning stares from every person in town. A black person on a horse? Tarantino draws attentions to anachronisms, but the emotions of hatred and revenge never feel far removed from the present.

9. I don't ever want to see The Impossible again, but its account of a family torn apart by the tsunami in Thailand was harrowing and intimate. It was essentially a two-hour ordeal of getting choked up and holding back tears. Those in search of an emotional ravaging need to look no further.

10. Everyone seems to be hating The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey but I thought it was a nice solid Hobbit meal. Suddenly, Lord of the Rings made sense to me. With fewer deaths and a lighter tone, this is the kind of fantasy adventure that would have been a great kickoff to the film series. The Harry Potter books started off light and got darker and darker, and the same holds true for The Hobbit. This one was actually still close to the Prisoners of Azkaban-level in terms of darkness, but the movie makes my list just because it's such a relief to finally get a series I never really latched onto.

 

Holiday rush begins with 'Guilt Trip,' 'Monsters, Inc.' and 'Zero Dark Thirty'

With two wide releases opening today and another three on Friday, the pre-Christmas rush is reaching its apex.

Taking advantage of the light animated offerings this season, Disney will re-release Monsters Inc.
in 3D in 2,618 theatres. Disney has had mixed results with its re-releases when it comes to theatrical box office. The Lion King 3D was a huge hit ($94 million), but Finding Nemo 3D ($40 million) Beauty and the Beast ($47 million), the combo release of Toy Story/Toy Story 2 ($30 million) had much softer responses. But when you're talking about Disney, box office is just one slice of a very big pie. Disney expects an opening in the teen millions for the re-release, which should make theatre owners happy. Any work the studio does marketing the release will also serve as advance publicity for Monsters University, the prequel to the original which comes out in June.

Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand have nice chemistry together as son and mother in The Guilt Trip (2,431 theatres), but it ends there.  Expectations for the comedy are not high. It may only
earn around $10 million over its five-day opening, less than the re-release of Monsters Inc. The mother-son pairing, which aims to "capture the three key demographics of 30-year-old stoners, over-40 gay males and sexagenarian moms," doesn't pay off according to Time Out's David Frear. "You’d swear you were actually watching a 95-minute pitch for a mild cross-generational cringe comedy rather the film itself, " an assessment I wholeheartedly agree with.

A frontrunner in the awards race, at least by my estimation, Zero Dark Thirty will roll out in just five theatres today. A wider release is planned for January. FJI's Chris Barsanti was a fan of director Kathryn's Bigelow creation: "a hybridized spy procedural and behind-
enemy-lines war film" that "inaugurates a new genre," the "war procedural." Jessica Chastain stars as a CIA agent who spends years tracking down Osama bin Laden  as her "worldview narrows down to a millimeter-wide slit." The account is "precise to a fault, verging on clinical," and culminates in a "riveting and sharply framed sequence of near-perfection" that reveals how the elite team helicoptered to the compound and finally killed bin Laden. With a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 94%, this drama is clearly a critics' favorite.

Director Michael Haneke's meditation on aging, Amour, has many critics predicting it will win the Best Foreign Language Film award at the Oscars. But how it plays with audiences is a different story. "Haneke is always fearless in what he presents (there’s no pampering
to the crowds) and audiences who take pleasure in great work
shouldn’t be fearful," critic Doris Toumarkine encourages, before wondering "if positive
word of mouth performs its magic, or if older mouths too close to
the material do some damage."

By Friday, the Wednesday returns should be in for this batch of new releases, and This is 40, Jack Reacher, and Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away will be added to the oven.

Prediction: 'Les Miserables' is going to be a revolutionary hit

The two hour, forty minute screen adaptation of Les Misérables is even more epic on screen than seen live in a theatre. At least the musical has an intermission, something that would have helped the bladders of some of the younger guests at the press screening last week in New York City (we let the eleven-year-old cut in line). The press for the Christmas Day release is approaching a fever
pitch. After seeing the movie last week, I've been busy finding YouTube videos of the 25th anniversary performance and listening to the soundtrack on Spotify. Hearing the musical on other mediums made me realize just how good the screen version is.

On the screen, Les Misérables lives up to the intimate promise of movies. You can see the characters in close-up. Director Tom Hooper's decision to have the actors sing live instead of with playback makes their voices sometimes haggard and strained. For such an tragic, epic story, that realism adds poignancy and revs up the emotional impact. While the London version of Les Misérables features the cast singing in front of a microphone, which I don't particularly like, in the screen version the characters move within their environments--but not too much. It's almost the cinematic equivalent of an actor on a mike. They're shot in close-up, removed from their surroundings, with such a narrow depth of field the background is almost always blurry. Les Misérables has done the impossible: It's just as good as the musical, albeit in different ways. I can't speak for the book yet, though a copy of the thousand-plus-page tome is now downloaded on my Kindle.

While the creative choices are really what make the screen version shine, if the actors couldn't sing, it would have been for nothing. Les Misérables is also a triumph of casting. Who would have thought that so many A-listers could also sing? Anne Hathaway as Fantine and Amanda Seyfried as Cosette? Broadway veteran Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean is no surprise, but Russell Crowe as Javert? Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen as the Thenardiers? The biggest surprises, however, are the two characters who were unknowns. Samantha Barks, who was playing Eponine in the London musical, landed the role for the film. Eddie Redmayne, freckled and barely scruffy as Marius, is certainly destined for stardom. In last year's My Week with Marilyn, he played an admirer of the blonde sex symbol. With this role, he may be the heartthrob everyone is ogling. This year's Oscar race will be interesting with Les Misérables in the running. The Academy has a soft spot for musicals, but this is a year of many strong films. After a few years where the victor seemed preordained, this year there are other frontrunners: Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln, and Argo.