Debut of 'Resident Evil: Afterlife' marks new high for franchise

By Sarah Sluis

The franchise responsible for Resident Evil: Afterlife is alive and well. The fourth installment of the video game adaptation debuted higher than all three previous movies, finishing the weekend with a robust $27.7 million. Consistent with many action/horror/sci-fi genre films, the movie had its biggest night on Friday, to

the tune of $10.8 million, before slowly declining over Saturday and Sunday. Afterlife inched out the last Resident Evil film by $4 million. The reason for Afterlife's stunning performance, however, may not be the health of the franchise but the profitability of 3D. The 141 IMAX screens (compared to 3,000 regular screens) contributed $2.6 million to the box office, and over two-thirds of the screens were shown in 3D theatres charging premiums for seats.

The race for second place between holdovers Takers and The American ended with Takers on top with $6.1 million. Though the slick heist movie finished below The American last week, it declined just 43% to The American's 55% fall. The latter film, starring George Clooney, was expected to have a more leggy run due to its appeal among older audiences, so its second-week slump to $5.8 million could be telling.

Joaquin Phoenix's sorta-documentary I'm Still Here just surpassed $100,000 over the weekend, playing at 19 locations with a $5,500 per-screen average. Phoenix is expected on "Letterman" Sept. 22, a

year after his bizarre interview with the late-night host that circulated virally, so that added publicity could be a boon to its box-office take two weeks from now.

The all-star cast of The Romantics helped earned the film a stellar $22,200 per-screen average during its opening weekend at two screens in New York and Los Angeles. Leading lady Katie Holmes hasn't been seen much on screen lately, but if that wasn't a draw, "True Blood" star Anna Paquin, Elijah Wood, Josh Duhamel and Malin Akerman gave this movie an above-average roster.

The re-release of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse failed to do much--including to push the movie over the $300 million vanity mark. Its $745,000 was far below the low single-digit millions predicted, but represented a 71% boost from the previous week. That's right, this "re-release" is actually still playing in select theatres.

Specialty releases showing big increases included director Rob Reiner's Flipped, which went from 28 to 442 screens and boosted its gross 863% to $490,000. Its $1,000 per-screen average is a less promising figure, but positive reviews from critics like Roger Ebert and its family-friendly reputation could propel this film further.

In its fourteenth week, Winter's Bone rose 21% to $143,000, adding to its over $5 million gross. When I saw the movie, I was surprised by the representation of Ozark life, sensing the authenticity of its realism; apparently the movie has played quite well in the Ozark region, where audiences have responded to its mirror-like realism and thriller feeling.

Another mover-and-shaker in the specialty market is Animal Kingdom, which has amassed almost $750,000 in five weeks. The Australian crime drama rose 9% this week, and the 61-screen release accumulated another $122,000.

This Friday, four wide releases enter the mix: Warner Bros.' Boston crime drama The Town, the 3D animated Alpha and Omega, teen sex comedy Easy A, and horror picture Devil. The much-buzzed documentary Catfish and the spare but heart-wrenching Never Let Me Go will also make their debut on specialty screens.

'The Other Guys' set to unseat 'Inception'

By Sarah Sluis

It's time for The Other Guys to have a turn. Inception has been at the top spot at the box office for three weeks running, which should end once the Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg cop comedy hits 3,651

theatres today. Last June, Ferrell took a nosedive with Land of the Lost, a huge bomb that also happened to release the same weekend as the surprise comedy hit of the summer, The Hangover. With The Other Guys, Ferrell will have a shot at redemption. The movie's currently posting a 78% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and FJI critic Frank Lovece called the comedy a "surprisingly witty satire of buddy-cop movies" that "punctures the testosterone bags of a zillion buddy and even lone-wolf cop movies."

Kind of like an urban, older version of High School Musical with frenetically paced professional dancing, Step Up 3D steps into 2,435 theatres this weekend. The "dynamite" dancing, according to critic Maitland McDonagh, also includes a sequence

with two characters dancing through the New York City streets, staged using "a series of extended long shots," "incorporating taxis, brownstone steps and various props," and taking a little bit of inspiration from the 1949 Gene Kelly/Frank Sinatra musical On the Town. Bet that'll sell the movie to today's teenagers.

Opening in 252 theatres, Middle Men stars Luke Wilson as a good guy caught in the sordid side of the Internet boom days. For all the crimes that take place in the movie, however, "the film is no more salacious than an average Lady Gaga video," according to critic Daniel Eagan. Director George Gallo's focus on the "remorse and repentance side" of the "combustible premise," instead of using it for satire, left him cold.

Kind of like a feature-length version of "Gossip Girl" (as if teens needed anything more than that to rush to the theatres), Twelve debuts in 300 theatres. Chace Crawford (a "Gossip Girl" heartbreaker) stars in the tale of glamorous rich kids getting tied up in drugs, violence, and sex. Director Joel Schumacher (age 70) turns out to be handy at the job, to a point, according to critic Kirk Honeycutt, "[giving] enough texture to the tale that one might overlook its soap-opera aspects until the film implodes in the end from an excess of

overheated elements." It's not clear how well this film was marketed, so its success may come down to its ability to get the word out among teenage audiences.

Rob Reiner, who last directed senior-friendly The Bucket List, will hit the same demographic with Flipped. Set in the 1960s, the movie centers on a cute tale of young love that will be sure to inspire nostalgia. Rated just PG, this suburban-set movie looks like an extended version of "The Wonder Years," and is releasing in 45 theatres--but not New York City, which may be too hardened to appreciate the tale.

There's an unusually high number of well-regarded specialty films coming out this weekend, so there's

room to put a few on your to-see list. The highly praised Lebanon, which will make you never, ever want to go to war, much less be confined in a tank, opens in NYC and LA. The war drama is so unlike the usual American approach, free of the patriotism, bravado, and never-let-you-downs that appear in U.S. war movies, even anti-war ones. Pretend you're climbing Everest in the documentary The Wildest Dream (12 theatres), a "gorgeous adventure film" and "suspenseful quest" according to critic Erica Abeel. To see a romance set in the Arab world that's not Sex and the City 2, seek Cairo Time (5 theatres), which drew raves at the Tribeca Film Festival this year. Or, if you're in the mood for some English-accented intrigue, there's The Disappearance of Alice Creed (12 theatres), a "nifty little Brit thriller" that centers on a kidnapping.

On Monday, I'll assess Will Ferrell's market value and the performance of The Other Guys, see if teenage audiences were wowed by Step Up 3D or Twelve, and see which of the specialty releases did well enough to warrant a broad expansion.