Box Office: The Winner Is Bond... James Bond
Monday, November 9, 2015 at 12:05AM Amir here, with the weekend’s box office numbers. The fourth Bond turn by the sexy but no longer enthusiastic Daniel Craig predictably ruled the weekend, scoring the franchise’s second highest opening weekend gross of all time. The highest number belongs to Skyfall, of course, and there was never any chance, with cooler reviews and less general excitement, that Spectre was going to break the series’ record. All things considered this is a great success for everyone involved.
Box Office Top 5
new Spectre $73m
new The Peanuts Movie $45m
The Martian $9.3m (cum. $197m)
Goosebumps $6.9m (cum. $66.4)
Bridge of Spies $6m (cum. $60)
The Peanuts Movie came second and, again, the numbers can be considered successful when one considers the younger generation’s emotional distance with these characters. Both Spectre and Peanuts have another week to spend at the top before their competitions arrive in the form of The Hunger Games and The Good Dinosaur.
New Limited Releases
Miss You Already $570k
Spotlight $300k
Brooklyn $181k
Trumbo $77k
Peggy Guggenheim Art Addict $22k
In Jackson Heights $15k
Theeb $7k
On the limited side of the releases, Oscar hopefuls Spotlight, Brooklyn and Trumbo all entered the fray. Spotlight has the weekend’s highest per theatre average, which certainly isn’t too shabby for a film many are already considering the frontrunner. Whether these numbers can translate to success when the film goes wide remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Steve Jobs continues its lacklustre run. Is it just too soon for people to be interested in a biopic about him?
What did you see this weekend?
Reader Comments (24)
Saw Brooklyn. Very beautiful and quite delightful.
What Happened, Miss Simone? Not a great piece of filmmaklng, but I'd still recommend it for the compelling subject and her significance in popular music history and international culture.
SPOTLIGHT is such a strange frontrunner. It's solid filmmaking, but it's hardly the sort of rousing crowd-pleaser that, say, ERIN BROCKOVICH was. This one even goes out of its way to mimic that earlier movie's score, but lacks the big emotional end.
The Lobster
really liked it; wonderful ideas, brilliantly executed. Chubby and dreadfully charming Colin Farrell. Loved watching Léa Seydoux play a TOTAL bitch with practically almost zero redeeming qualities.
I hit The Peanuts Movie (super cute, especially the Red Baron sequences), Suffragette (shaky camerawork made me a little nauseous but Mulligan was good), and Sullivan's Travels (funny and occasionally moving, though I fear at this point I will never love Veronica Lake).
I didn't make it to the theatre this weekend but did catch the WWII British morale booster Forever and a Day and loved it! How could I not with a cast that includes Ida Lupino, Merle Oberon, Herbert Marshall, Claude Rains, Edmund Gwenn, Gladys Cooper, Ray Milland, Ruth Warrick and pretty much every other English performer of note at the time.
John T-If you haven't already seen them try This Gun for Hire or especially I Married a Witch. If you don't love Veronica Lake in one of them than you never will.
In honor of Gena Rowlands I watched A Woman Under The Influence for the first time at home and man oh man, what a film. It's one of those 'how did she DO THAT' performances and Peter Falk is just brilliant in it.
Saw Room on Sunday night and haven't stopped thinking about it since, beautiful, heartbreaking and humane, honestly one of the best cinematic experiences I've ever had.
I saw Amy, which I found delightful, and Dope, less so, but lots of positive feelings about both.
Looking forward to November's crop - seeing Brooklyn tomorrow!
Saw Steve Jobs this weekend and quite liked it. Winslet and the score get MVP marks. As always, Sorkin's script sings and I LOVED the three-act structure in more ways than I can possibly say. But overall I didn't love the film the way I thought I might. I think I was hoping for a meatier role/performance from Fassbender which, given who Jobs was, I was probably never going to get. Not that he isn't strong in the role, but I wanted/expected fireworks and only got sparks - from both him and the film as a whole.
I can't stand how many good films that I want to see that are open right now. And not to mention all the amazing revival screenings coming up in NYC this November. It's madness!
Bridge of Spies.
It kept me interested through the whole thing. And yes, Mark Rylance is a great and unusual combination of weary, intelligent, and odd.
Truth. The half hour or so when the story is completely unraveling is riveting, but the rest of the movie is kind of a mess. Trying to do too many things at once - defend the story, resurrect Mapes' reputation, pay tribute to Rather, indict corporate media ownership, etc. It's very well acted - Redford was the standout for me - though I wish someone had told Blanchett to tone it down at times. An interesting, if flawed and ultimately unpersuasive, film.
I also saw a couple Seijun Suzuki movies at Lincoln Center - The Sleeping Beast Within and Gates of Hell - and those were both aces.
Room - The best film I've seen this year.
I saw Brooklyn on Wednesday and thought it was terrific. The whole thing is full of amazing actressing, particularly in all the small roles.
This weekend I stayed in and saw Don Jon which was very well done. JGL showed a lot of promise and he and Scarlett both did good work. And how interesting that Julianne Moore gets such a plum sexy role.
I also saw Edge of Tomorrow which was junky fun with an ending that had me scratching my head a bit.
And then I saw My Old Lady. A terrible waste of Kristin Scott Thomas and Maggie Smith. Pretty awful actually.
Spectre. Amazing how little characterization, plot or theme the Bond movies can get away with and still fill a feature length action picture. It's like minimalism, but with fistfights and car crashes. And then it just evaporates as soon as it's done.
I finally got around to seeing Bridge of Spies and was surprised at how much I liked it, it's my favorite fall movie so far. The dry wit of the Coens' script nicely balanced Spielberg's tendencies toward sentimentality; they should work together again. Mark Rylance, who I've never seen in anything before, was quite wonderful, and I hope Hanks gets a nomination even though his was far more low-key than the typical Oscar performance.
I also rented Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and it was so bad I couldn't even finish it. So much about that movie was so off-putting, even the production design seemed inconsistent from scene to scene (why did some rooms in the school look like the Library of Congress, and other rooms look like a typical high school)? There was some really obnoxious gender/racial stereotyping at work in the film as well. I guess it won Sundance because a lot of voters could relate to the protagonist, but yuck.
I also saw Room-- best movie I've seen all year. Gripping, hear-wrenching, and ultimately life affirming. Sadly, the theater was maybe half full. I've been talking it up to anyone who will listen, but most people seem put off by the premise.
So many great films out there now, but just anecdotally my friends' reactions when I try to convince them to see the following movies with me...
Steve Jobs - "But why is there a movie about him already? No thanks."
Room - "God, that looks absolutely depressing. No thanks."
Brooklyn - "So an Irish girl moves to Brooklyn and then falls in love. That's it? No thanks."
Spotlight - "A film about the Catholic priest child abuse scandal?! Well THAT'S cheery. No thanks."
Hunger Games - "Yes! Let's reserve seats now!"
I saw The End Of The Tour and it is easily one of my favorite films of the ear. Jason Segel is excellent in it and it is such a beautiful piece of acting. I hope he gets some critical attention. Nathanial do you think Segel has a shot still at an Oscar nod or will his chances be limited to just the Spirit Awards? I also rewatched one of my favorite films Prizzi's honor and Anjelica huston is so good in it. very deserving winner in my opinion.
Ryan T. - had a similar conversation last month with one of my best movie-crazy friends. He'd just seen The Martian, and claimed there was "nothing worth seeing until Spectre." I ran down a bunch of other October titles, and he just shrugged them all off.
"Bridge of Spies" which I liked- Spielberg , Hanks and the entire cast are excellent. A modern classic Hollywood studio picture
re: Ryan T and Roark
And this is why I go to movies by myself.
Saw DuVernay's Middle of Nowhere, which was thorny and fascinating. Toussaint, Corinealdi and Oyelowo were terrific.
I watched two at home:
1960's "From The Terrace." I was expecting a great guilty pleasure: author John O' Hara and director Mark Robson, high-class soap schlock, with a great cast, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Myrna Loy, etc. Right? WRONG! It was just plain bad. Episodic to the point of reminding me of MAD magazine's 1 page Reader's Digest parody of "Gone With the Wind." The acting was cartoonish, but not in a good way, except for Woodward, who obviously relished her rich bitch wife role. Unfortunately, it's another of those Fox movies where they try to make Joanne look like Marilyn Monroe, but the results are more drag queen instead of movie queen. So there WAS that...
The other was "La Dolce Vita." Also 1960. What can I add? I was struck by how it predicted the mindless cult of celebrity that exists today.
Amy--Sad, terrific. Lots of great early footage showing what a gifted and moving singer Winehouse was. I thought it was very well-done.
Queen of Earth--I thought this would be right up my alley, but I honestly couldn't stand it.
Trainwreck--I like Schumer a lot, but this was so-so. The funniest parts were reserved for the trailer, and I don't think she's "there" yet as a movie star. The great supporting cast really helped carry the movie.
Jem and the Holograms. I'm expecting it to sweep all the major Oscars.
Just kidding. Seeing Suffragette tonight and something else tomorrow.