Box Office: Underwhelming New Releases Run the Show
Sunday, November 3, 2013 at 10:23PM 
Although we've entered awards season, theaters were dominated by new releases that haven't got a prayer in the world to make a dent on any Oscar race. (This might sound unusual for a November weekend, but history tells us it really isn't. Two years ago, this very weekend brought us such unforgettable gems as Tower Heist and A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas.) It was also the first weekend since early August where three different films were released on more than 3000 screens. This can usually be taken as a sign that studios don't believe there's much overlap between the target audiences of those films, and who can blame them. I imagine few people were in a quandary about which of Free Birds, Last Vegas and Ender's Game to watch -- excluding those who were in their 40s when they read Ender's Game, have waited 28 years for an adaptation but now find themselves more attuned to the beat of Last Vegas, but I digress.
BOX OFFICE
01 ENDER'S GAME $28 *new* Previous Discussions
02 JACKASS PRESENTS: BAD GRANDPA $20.5 (cum. $62)
03 LAST VEGAS $16.5 *new*
04 FREE BIRDS $16.2 *new*
05 GRAVITY $13.1 (cum. $219.1) Many Previous Posts
06 CAPTAIN PHILLIPS $8.5 (cum. $82.5) Podcast & Hanks For All Ages
07 12 YEARS A SLAVE $4.6 (cum. $8.7) Slavery in Cinema & Previous Discussions
08 CLOUDY WITH CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2 $4.2 (cum. $106.1)
09 CARRIE $3.4 (cum. $31.9) Previous Discussions
10 THE COUNSELOR $3.2 (cum. $13.3) Previous Discussions
11 ESCAPE PLAN $2.2 (cum. $21.6)
12 ABOUT TIME $1.5 *new* Review
Ender's Game won the weekend with a mild 28 million. This one never looked likely to be a sensation, which is strange given the decades long wait for its arrival. Is the marketing to blame, or are YA fans too young to remember/connect to the source material? Worse yet, things are only going south when Thor drops from Asgard next week. Bad Grandpa beat competition from the new old men on the block and clinched second, one place above Last Vegas. The near universally panned Free Birds (which was originally called Turkeys -- too easy) had a disastrous opening and will be very lucky if it can recoup its 55 million dollar budget. The usual suspects occupied the rest of the top ten, with 12 Years a Slave expanding particularly well. Next weekend sees the film take on more than 1000 screens. Any question regarding the box office potential of McQueen's grueling, but brilliant, film can definitively be answered then.
Meanwhile, in limited release, Dallas Buyers Club opened to a strong reception on only 9 screens. Is the Oscar potential of this film dependent on its box office performance? Two acting nominations appear almost certain at this point, but if the public responds well, can we expect more? That's a question that certainly doesn't apply to Oliver Hirschbiegel's Diana. (Remember when we thought Naomi Watts might be a best actress contender? lulz!) Handicapped by aggressively negative critical response and advance word of mouth from overseas audiences, Diana barely exceeded 1k per screen and will surely fizzle away before long. And while we're on the subject of awards players in limited release, Belgium's foreign film contender, Broken Circle Breakdown, also opened this week. I fall in the range between a thumb up and a shrug, but it's charming.
Anyway, I haven't yet seen any of these new releases. Instead, I made a trip to TIFF Bell Lightbox, where a major exhibition on David Cronenberg's work is taking place and watched Naked Lunch and The Fly, and listened to David Cronenberg, Jeremy Thomas and Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Stephan Dupuis discuss their work. I also caught up with Hong Sang Soo's Nobody Daughter Haewon and rewatched Iran's non-submission to the Oscars, A Cube of Sugar. A good weekend, I'd say. What did you watch?
Reader Comments (14)
My 12 Years a Slave screening (Friday afternoon) was PACKED. The audience ruined a few moments for me (someone--multiple times!!--tried to start a round of applause during the Dano beatdown), but oh well.
Blue is the Warmest Color (Saturday afternoon) didn't fare so well. Maybe 20 people in the audience. Too bad.
Jake -- my screening had an outburst at that point too. but it was fascinatingly half-finished like a gulp. people realizing how f***ed up it was to be cheering givenwhat the scene would lead to.
I saw:
12 Years a Slave: Strong film, emotionally haunting, though I wasn't as obsessed as others. A packed house with applause at the end.
Blue is the Warmest Color: Breathtaking and surprisingly swift-moving film that shifts between standard, solid storytelling and scenes of utter brilliance. Heavy on the iconography.
Father of the Bride: Occasionally funny, great chemistry between Tracy and Blondell, Taylor is all over the place.
Four Weddings and a Funeral: Super funny, great supporting cast (wonderful Kristin Scott Thomas), but Andie MacDowell is wildly flat.
Royal Wedding: Fun, light, and fluffy-Astaire and Powell are magic together.
Michael Mann's Heat- The sprawling epic crime movie that lives up to its reputation. Also, the only recognizable trait of Val Kilmer from that movie is he still has that hair.
Wake in Fright- Holy mother of Moses. This is a movie. The 70s Australian drama oozing with homoeroticism (until it is hinted that something has gone down with the protagonist played by Gary Bond and **wait for it** Donald Pleasance) heightened in the fog of drinking and game hunting kangaroos. Nathaniel, I know you're scared of kangaroos but the stuff down to them in this movie is so disturbing- to the point the director had to put out a statement explaining how the portrayal of the kangaroo slaughter was not actually really captured on film.
Drug War- Great Johnnie To action film. Although I was with it up until that point, the 3rd act action sequence really elevates the whole movie.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller- Superb Western. Maybe be anti-Western or revisionist but it is so beautiful and surprisingly more talky than I expected. Those Leonard Cohen tracks and the set design really make the movie. I am surprised Julie Christie scored a nomination with this, specifically as a lead. She may be in the title but I felt that was a supporting performance, and a good one at that.
Jake D and Nathaniel- That happened at my screening too. It even continued when it appeared that Ejiofor and Fassbender would come to blows. It was like I was suddenly at a boxing match. And then there was a break in applause when the man came to claim Solomon's real identity of a free man. I could understand that but I just never experienced applause in the middle of a movie- except when Yoda got in his first lightsaber fight in the Star Wars prequels (I know, I know there is a first for everything).
Yeah what is with people wanting to clap at that moment??? That happened to me too! So uncomfortable.
Also omg @John T, I know you did not just throw shade at La Liz in Father Of The Bride. Totally love your movie weekend though. Not a loser in the bunch.
I watched Thor 2 (please don't ask me to name its full title, I don't usually care about anything after colon). I don't quite remember how's the movie now (after just two days). Or in another word, typical superhero movie that does not impress much.
A Blueprint for Murder - Heavily-narrated Joseph Cotton-Jean Peters non-thriller. Cotton is completely wasted. Jean Peters has one decent scene towards the end, but it never really goes anywhere. It's kind of sad that she never really got any decent roles.
Manhattan Murder Mystery - Anjelica Huston really steals the show in one of Woody's most underrated works.
Our Very Own - Surprisingly good 50s adoption melodrama with Ann Blyth, a super delicious Farley Granger (he and Ann have a pre-From Here to Eternity embrace in the surf), Ann Dvorak, Joan Evans, a young and fun Natalie Wood, and Phyllis Kirk as a girl named Zaza!
My man REALLY wanted to see Last Vegas and the trailers made me chuckle, so that's what we saw this weekend. It was fun, and it was nice to see Mary Steenburgen on the big screen again (even if she is kind of wasted, but at least she gets to sing!), but it's REALLY sketchy material. The four old pros elevate the material like the movie stars they are, but it's immensely clear that they had much more fun making the film than anyone in the audience did watching it.
I could have seen 12 Years a Slave yesterday, but I would have had to go alone, and I just didn't think I would be able to handle that. And that's okay. But someone is getting dragged to it with me this weekend. I don't care who.
12 years a slave & to think that Sarah Paulson if (and it's a BIG if) she's nominated for Best Sup. Actress (as she should) will loose to the Big O...Every year, EVERY year I do that to myself...
Friday: 12 Years a Slave for a second time. No one applauded at any point, thankfully. I still prefer the film's relentless first hour to its more meandering second half, though I suspect the hopeless, repetitive horror of the second half is more or less the point.
Saturday: The Counselor. Talk about a cookie fool of arsenic! Everything wraps up a little too neatly, but overall I found the whole thing very well made, very sharp, very cynical, and very true, in its way. A simple morality tale told in that great, high McCarthy style.
Sunday: Nothin'.
People laughed during those Dano and Fassbender fights at my 12YAS screening. Ah, whatever, maybe they needed the release.
I went to see "12 Years a Slave," and I am still reeling from it. Ejiofor, Nyong'o and Fassbender are shoo-ins and could be winners. Sarah Paulson was great in a wicked way.
At home I watched WNET'S Saturday night film, "Hawaii." I hope Max Von Sydow was paid very well. Now there is a year I'd love to see a supporting actress smackdown on. I wish someone could explain why Jocelyn Lagarde received a nomination.
I saw Diana. For shame.
I saw "Torch Song" with Joan Crawford, and wish I could start smoking again just so that I could smoke a cigarette with such ferocity! Otherwise, boring and I guess the Mother got an Oscar nomination for breathing the only oxygen Joan doesn't inhale with her cigarette smoke. At least I'm 1/5 ready for that year's Smackdown.
i also saw "Ender's Game" because I think I liked the book, and I feel the same way. I guess i liked it...?