'Unstoppable' up against 'Morning Glory,' 'Skyline'

By Sarah Sluis

Director Tony Scott switches tracks with Unstoppable (3,207 theatres), a runaway train action film that follows up his train-hostage movie, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, which also starred Denzel Washington. According to critic Ethan Alter, it's more of the same--"solid but unexceptional." He pegs Scott as a genre director, who has achieved various degrees of success with his "slick, violent, male-dominated action movies." It may be a formula film, but it's one that's expected to compete for first place this weekend against the animated family film Megamind, which should earn at least $20 million in its second weekend.

Morning Glory (2,518 theatres) opened on Wednesday to $1 million, behind two already-playing films, Megamind and Due Date. That puts the workplace romantic comedy at a disadvantage for the weekend. Critic Rex Roberts lamented the "poorly imagined or undeveloped" characters, "although watching them run through their set-pieces provokes enough chuckles to keep us in our seats until the final telegraphed plot twist sends us off into the sunrise." With its age-diverse cast and friendly subject matter, Morning Glory will live or die by word-of-mouth, so audiences will have to love this movie more than critics have (it's tracking at 55% on Rotten Tomatoes).

The trailer for Skyline (2,880 theatres) is reminiscent of Independence Day, with huge spaceships hovering above America's biggest cities. Though the special effects are impressive, which makes sense given the special effects background of the directors, the story itself appears to never rise above made-for-TV standards. "Don't waste your time trying to work out what's going on. It's clear by the end that the filmmakers had no idea either," THR critic Megan Lehmann advises.

Tiny Furniture, from promising indie filmmaker Lena Dunham, will open in one theatre in New York City. I praised the film back when it played at BAM Cinema Fest. Though not as enthusiastic about the slice-of-life, introspective movie, critic Maria Garcia pointed out the similarities between Dunham and Woody Allen, but also mused that the movie could be considered "a cinematic blog chronicling the nihilism of twenty-something-year-olds."

The anti-global warming documentary Cool It will hit 41 theatres. "Cool It is at its most effective when it stops dwelling on what that film�and the scientific community at large�gets wrong about global warming and instead focuses on what practical suggestions they have to offer," critic Ethan Alter concludes. The documentary's antagonist stance to blockbuster An Inconvenient Truth could either help or hurt the movie.

On Monday, we'll see if Unstoppable was able to unseat its superhero competitor, Megamind, if audiences were lured to Skyline and if Morning Glory was able to get itself back on track. Fair Game will also expand from 46 to 175 theatres, giving the movie a chance to try to repeat its $14,000 per-screen average in more theatres.