'New Year's Eve' leads a lackluster box office

By Sarah Sluis

The period from Thanksgiving to New Year's is usually filled with good movies, but early December tends to be sluggish at the box office as people focus on holiday gift shopping. This weekend, which totaled just $78 million, posted the lowest numbers since September 5-7, 2008. That's not good news. The leader of the pack was New Year's Eve, a romantic comedy releasing well in advance of its holiday. With just $13.5 million, the star-filled ensemble picture performed short of expectations that had the film inching closer to $20 million.

In second place, the R-rated babysitting comedy The Sitter grabbed $10 million. So-so viewer feedback, as evidenced by the movie's C+ CinemaScore, could have this movie hurting in coming weeks. However, a small budget and healthy returns from younger moviegoers could make the Jonah Hill starrer profitable for Fox.

With no new family films, existing fare posted strong holds. Arthur Christmas dropped just 10% to $6.6 million as the titular holiday approaches. One spot below, Hugo fell 19% to $6.1 million. The Martin Scorsese-directed picture reportedly cost over $100 million, so its U.S. total of $33 million to date is far behind where such movies usually are after three weeks. The Muppets continued its trend of bigger week-to-week drops with a 36% dive to $7 million. Happy Feet Two held on in the top ten, sliding to eighth place with $3.7 million and a 36% decrease in receipts.

New specialty pictures fared much better than wide ones. In eight locations, Young Adult nabbed $40,000 per theatre. The espionage thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy averaged $75,000 per screen in half the locations. Both movies' debuts put them in a good position for expansion and awards season. Finally, We Need to Talk about Kevin, which seemed to inspire a "love it or hate it" critical reaction, had a softer $24,000 debut playing on one screen. The indie The Descendants added 300 theatres to go up .9% from last week and add another $4.8 million to its $23 million total. The push for The Artist is still heating up. Its 38% improvement from last week, as well as its $18,000 per-screen average, show this black-and-white silent feature has a lot of momentum.

This Friday, another family picture, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, will add to the already-saturated kid market. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows will provide some action fun, and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol will have a limited, IMAX-only release.

'X-Men: First Class' takes on 'The Hangover Part II'

By Sarah Sluis

The X-Men series is aging, so the latest film, X-Men: First Class (3,641 theatres) turns back the clock. The series goes back to the time when mutants Charles Xavier and Magneto were friends, in the 1960s during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Director Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass, Layer Cake) moves to big-budget films and wields a "wickedly smart script with a multilayered theme that never wavers...and makes each emotional motivation interlock, often shockingly playing for keeps with its characters," critic Frank Lovece raves. Lesser-known dramatic stars and up-and-comers populate the cast, including Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence and January Jones. Fox is playing it safe and predicting a $40 million opening weekend, but outsiders think the movie could top $50-60 million.

After last weekend's blockbuster opening, The Hangover Part II is expected to drop by half and settle with $40 million its second weekend. Kung Fu Panda 2 should have a stronger hold on audiences, especially since it's the only family film in the marketplace. After two weekends with Midnight in Paris killing it in per-screen averages, the Woody Allen film will expand to 147 theatres, nearly tripling the amount of locations. The Tree of Life is going a slower route, expanding to 20 locations. Roger Ebert gave the Chicago-bound film four stars, remarking that the Midwestern-set story "reflect[s] a time and place I lived in, and the boys in it are me."

The semi-autobiographical tale Beginners (5 theatres) centers on a depressed man (Ewan McGregor) struggling consecutively with his father's recent coming out and his death. FJI critic David Noh complains that the movie is an "overloaded soap opera...obsessed with sadness," and I can't agree more. The McGregor character needs to ditch the soap opera and watch one of "Oprah"'s gratitude episodes, because he seriously has nothing to complain about.

Also on the specialty list is the considerably less annoying emo movie Submarine (4 theatres). The British coming-of-age picture should appeal to "fans of such quirk-meisters as Wes Anderson," according to critic Erica Abeel. She praises both the "magical debut" of director Richard Ayoade and the performance of Craig Roberts, "a sexy charmer who conveys [main character] Oliver's inner world with an intense deadpan."

On Monday, we'll see if X-Men: First Class drew the "grownup" audiences Lovece predicted, and if audiences fell for Beginners or Submarine.