Box Office: Get Hard at Home While We're Young
Sunday, March 29, 2015 at 3:40PM 
Another weekend, more millions in Hollywood coffers for by-most-accounts weak films. The three biggest hits this weekend were all poorly reviewed.
WIDE RELEASE
01 Home $54 NEW
02 Get Hard $34.6 NEW
03 Divergent: Insurgent $22 (cum. $86.3)
04 Cinderella $17.5 (cum. $150) Review
05 It Follows $4 (cum. $4.7) Review
Yup, the big stories were Home wildly overperforming (we all thought it might flop given Dreamworks history, just documented in Tim's fascinating two-part retrospective) and Get Hard doing well and reinforcing that mainstream audiences love Kevin Hart... and rape jokes. Always the rape jokes.
PLATFORM RELEASE
01 Wild Tales (Argentina) 116 Theaters $.2 (cum. $1.5) Review
02 What We Do In the Shadows (New Zealand) 146 Theaters $.2 (cum. $2.1) Review
03 While We're Young (US) 4 Theaters $.2 NEW Review
04 Danny Collins (US) 29 Theaters $.2 (cum. $.3)
05 '71 (UK) 121 Theaters $.1 (cum. $.9) Review
Wild Tales held its theaters but the big story was Noah Baumbach's seventh feature While We're Young, charting a surely-soon-to-be-broken 'best indie debut this year' with a $60,000 per screen average. Meanwhile the long and frankly mystifying journey of Serena, starring two or our most bankable actors Bradley Cooper & Jennifer Lawrence and based on a bestselling novel no less, ended with a whimper. The movie finally ended up in theaters, albeit only 60 of them and grossed just over $100,000 in its first week. Meanwhile Hungary's wildly acclaimed and Oscar submitted allegorical thriller about rampaging dogs named White God (read Jose's interview with the director) stuck its toe into two US theaters for $16,000.
What did you see this weekend? Did any of you see Serena? Was it from morbid curiousity. If you haven't will you please take our advice and seek out Wild Tales or '71?
Reader Comments (14)
I sat through "Insurgent" which makes even less sense than that first movie- during the big action climax I was actually falling sleep. And seriously they are planning TWO more movies?!
SPOILER ALERT
It's never a good idea to kill your sexiest villain - of course this is sci-fi so perhaps he will come back as a clone.
If Tim's (nicely written) pieces explain how suddenly studios can take a downturn, surely Home explains that the converse is true. I have to admit that although I enjoyed his histories, the doomsday declarations about Dreamworks were overstated and premature. We see the exact same thing with movie stars all the time, and as soon as a Reese Witherspoon or a Tom Cruise opens a big movie, the post-mortems seem a bit silly and hysterical.
Meanwhile there are some filmmaking entities that seem impervious to that type of speculation because...I guess they're better-liked by critics?
Cinderella, reluctantly. Lily James is lovely, but that movie was deadly dull. Even Cate the great annoyed me, because her scenery-chewing evil stepmother schitck was just bad; worse than Glenn's Cruella da Ville. As others have commented here, Anjelica Huston owned that part and Ever After was a MUCH better version of a very tired tale. And that Frozen short?! What the heck? I thought it would get meta and become an ad for Kleenex or Purell?!
Saw Second Best Exotic finally, more out of a movie drought than anything else. This spring has been dour, even at the art house.
1. Clouds of Sils Maria: a brilliant work about acting, actressing, aging, coming of age, celebrity, anti-celebrity, Hollywood culture, European culture. Highlight of the first quarter of the year.
2. Cinderella was pretty...well, pretty. "Such a pretty face, such a pretty dress, such a pretty smile, such a pretty" etc. My favorite scenes were two of the iconic ones from the fairy tale: Cinderella arrives at the ball and that first dance; Cinderella exits the ball and the midnight transformation. Like Pam, I wasn't thrilled with Blanchett, and what was going on with HBC's teeth?
The marketing for Home was pretty excellent I have to say. I was certainly aware that the film existed and that Rihanna and JLo did the voices.
Everyone should see It Follows. Great horror movie. Better score.
I saw The Riot Club, which, given its exaggerated story/tone was bound to be divisive, but I liked it for the most part. I'd consider Claflin best in show, but was impressed that a couple of the other guys (Farthing, Schnetzer) were able to create distinct, effective performances from such little parts.
I saw :
--Run All Night - sturdy gangster melodrama disguised as an action movie, but the CGI transitions were super annoying
--Nightcrawler - second time through, loved it just as much this time
--Honeymoon - very effective, very creepy low budget supernatural thriller
--Spring - I'd heard this called a supernatural riff on the Before movies, and I guess it is on paper, but in execution I thought this was pretty half assed and disappointing.
I started watching Going Clear on HBO, too, but it was late and I couldn't make it through.
I'm hoping to catch up on Cinderella, Jauja, and It Follows this week.
Saw "The Tribe" at the MoMA New Directors. Very disappointed. The acting was not very good and both the sex scenes and violence scenes didn't ring true, so there was a serious issue of credibility throughout for me
Also saw "It Follows". A very good idea with a very fun score. Overall, an engaging experience.
Does this mean that we'll never get rid of Kevin Hart?
Going Clear. Poor Nicole!
Was going to see "Do You Believe?" in honor of it being Mira Sorvino's first Top10 box office film in like 12-15 years, but ended up catching "Manhattan Murder Mystery" on Amazon Prime since the indie "Wild Canaries" had just opened in my city and referenced that film (hoping to catch "WC" later this week). Pretty fun movie, and I had forgotten how some of Allen's lighter fare (like "Small Time Crooks") is always a nice time.
Need to catch "It Follows" soon!
Read the "Divergent" trilogy, and I liked the first film. Gonna see the second, but not sure if I'll just wait for it on DVD.