Audiences go to 'Town' with Ben Affleck

By Sarah Sluis

In just three days, Ben Affleck's The Town managed to outperform the entire run of his first directorial effort, Gone Baby Gone. Ringing up $23.8 million, the Boston-accented bank robbing tale tapped older

male audiences eager for thrills. The pairing of Boston townies and crime hearkened back to 2006's The Departed, but The Town was a few million shy of beating that film's opening weekend.

In second place, Easy A amassed $18.2 million, on the high end of openings within the teen comedy genre. It couldn't beat Mean Girls or Superbad, but the Emma Stone picture wowed a primarily young, female audience. Word-of-mouth could propel this movie further, so its

week-to-week drops will be a number to watch. Stone herself is an up-and-coming actress: She has roles in upcoming comedies Friends with Benefits and Crazy, Stupid, Love (both in post-production), and will host "SNL" on Oct. 23. Her biggest coup is landing the lead in The Help, a popular book club selection that has a huge built-in audience.

M. Night Shyamalan's blockbuster cred weakened with the $12.5 million debut of Devil, his lowest yet. Horror movies usually drop 50-60% in their second weekend, so this movie will be unlikely to top $25 million during its run. However, how expensive could a movie that takes place almost entirely in an elevator be? With an unknown cast, it couldn't have cost that much--right?

The animated feature Alpha and Omega made a respectable showing with $9.2 million. It was no match for last year's Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which opened to $30 million at this time last year. Given the movie's so-so animation and measly 15% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it fared well.

With the highest per-screen average of the week, Never Let Me Go earned a stellar $30,000 per screen playing in four theatres. Leading the pack of potential Oscar contenders, this movie may remain fresh in the minds of Academy voters--it seems likely to pick up a couple of nominations. Social networking documentary-thriller Catfish, which opened to a $21,000 per screen on twelve screens, debuted lower but arguably better. It's tough to carry that high of a per-screen average across so many screens. Though this movie was a Sundance Festival pickup, Rogue is marketing it as a mainstream, hyper-relevant mystery, a tactic that seems to have appealed to the YouTube generation.

This Friday will be another crowded one. Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps leads along with romcom You Again, 3D animated feature Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, and a limited release of teen sex comedy The Virginity Hit. Specialty releases (take a deep breath) making their debut will include Waiting for "Superman," Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Howl, starring James Franco, and Ryan Gosling in a coffin in Buried.