Angry Birds, Angrier Superheroes.
Sunday, May 22, 2016 at 7:42PM Team Red took the box office crown this weekend. No, not the metallic team red but the feathery one. Despite an unfashionably late arrival well past the Angry Birds craze that swept phones years ago, the family audience is insatiable these days. Not that the other Team Red, Iron Man and His Amazing Friends had anything to worry about having crossed a billion globally already. Here at home Captain America Civil War leapfrogged both Zootopia and Batman v Superman this past week to become the 2nd most popular film of the year (Deadpool is still #1... for now). Neighbors 2 and Nice Guys weren't as lucky because adults don't go to movies anymore without their children but wait for streaming (sigh). In platform releases, Love & Friendship (which is so damn enjoyable) and The Lobster had successful if minor expansions.
Arrows indicate losing or gaining screens
TOP WIDE RELEASES
🔺01 The Angry Birds Movie $39 NEW
▫️02 Captain America: Civil War $33.1 (cum. $347.3) Review
🔺03 Neighbors 2 $21.7 NEW
🔺04 The Nice Guys $11.2 NEW Shane Black, Review
🔻05 The Jungle Book $11 (cum. $327.4) Articles
▫️06 Money Monster $7 (cum. $27.1) Jack O'Connell
🔺07 Darkness $2.3 (cum. $8.4)
🔻08 Zootopia $1.7 (cum. $334.4) Reviewish
🔻09 The Huntsman: Winter's War $1.1 (cum. $46.6) Review
🔻10 Mother's Day $1.1 (cum. $31.2)
TOP TEN LIMITED
Excluding previously wide.
🔺01 The Meddler $777K (cum. $2) Review
🔺02 Love & Friendship $582K (cum. $780K) Review
🔺03 The Man Who Knew Infinity $550K (cum. $1.6)
🔺04 The Lobster $408K (cum. $1) Reviewish
🔻05 Sing Street $350K (cum. $2.4) Review, Who's the MVP?
🔺06 A Bigger Splash $338K (cum. $787K) Reviewish
🔺07 Weiner $85K NEW
🔺08 Maggie's Plan $66K NEW Review
🔻09 Hologram for a King $65K (cum. $4) Review
🔻10 Compadres $57K (cum. $3.1)
What did you see this weekend?
I caught The Lobster (unmissable in its singularity) and Neighbors 2 (enjoyable if not as funny as the original)
Reader Comments (38)
Love and Friendship, which I found a bit dull. Kate Beckinsale said every single line exactly the same way, and the movie unfortunately revolves around her. It also has some continuity issues with some major plot developments not depicted. The supporting cast were all good and funny, and, along with the set design, they saved the film for me.
Saw Money Monster and The Huntsman: Winter's War today (saw Neighbors 2 Friday and will probably see The Nice Guys tomorrow). Money Monster was entertaining while I was watching it but ultimately forgettable, overall. Huntsman was less boring than the first film but had a severe lack of thrills - not one good action sequence! Not one! - and a painfully slow and convoluted story. Admittedly, though, there were some nice visuals... Those visuals being Charlize Theron, Jessica Chastain and Pre-Elsa Emily Blunt (in all seriousness, Freya's palace and some of the costumes looked good).
The Nice Guys. A bit meh apart from Ryan Gosling. Almost forgotten already.
I saw Maggie's Plan. Flawed but cute and enjoyable. It felt a a little overwritten, especially in the beginning, but it wasn't a fatal flaw. Good performances, with Moore being the highlight. This is another nice little addition to her already super impressive canon. I enjoyed the film more in the second half when the focus shifted to Maggie and Georgia, and less on Ethan Hawke's character. Hawke really seems to specialize in playing pretentious douche-bags these days. He's certainly convincing at it, but there's only so much of it I can take.
I saw A Bigger Splash and Neighbors 2. Both were enjoyable, though I agree that Neighbors 2 isn't as funny as the first one.
I saw " The Avengers: Iron Man Part 4" oops I mean "Captain America: Civil War" in which Chris Evans good Captain seems like almost a guest star in his own overcrowded movie ( the Spider Kid was good but his story intro seemed specially extraneous) And what is really going on with the Captain America - Bucky bromance - it really borders on gay but refuses to go there- yes we did have CA kiss a girl buy we know were his heart really dwells...
It's a long weekend (and it's VERY rainy) so it's not over yet for me, but so far
Far From Men
The Selfish Giant
Skyfall
The Boy and the World
Spy
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet
All for the first time
I saw Neighbors 2 which other than a couple of chuckles, didn't elicit much from me. Vastly inferior to the original.
Saw Mommy finally ... I think(?)I loved it... the performances were electrifying...
I am hoping on second viewing, I will be able to take it all in...
I saw SING STREET and fell in love; THE MEDDLER and fell in strong like; VIVA and fell in friend-of-a-friend-ship.
"Love and Friendship" is a mild recommendation, but finds a nice rhythm in the second half. Takes a while to find stakes, takes even longer to locate causality. The characters are mostly too polite to react to the wilder characters, which gives some scenes sort of a "shouting into the void" feel.
"The Lobster" is indeed great, uneven and with some slow patches but the rate of success is still quite high. I think it helps to not expect a perfect allegory - once the premise is set up the story takes on its own weird logic, not always concerned with us "decoding" everything. Future Film Bitch Award nominee for best musical sequence in a non-musical?
I saw:
Jules and Jim - pretty funny and sexy Truffaut gem
No Way Out - Kevin Costner at his sexyest versus a enajoyable queer villain
Right Now, Wrong Then - A Korean romcom with a heart of gold. Way better then millenial Woody Allen
Brief Encounter - the most romantical movie of all times!
Saw THE NICE GUYS. I need Ryan Gosling doing more comedies.
I went with entries of Cannes and Venice past this weekend with The Lobster, Young & Beautiful, and Post Mortem.
The Lobster is a step up from Dogtooth and stands out simply because it's premise is so absurd and yet is immediately accepted by the audience within 15 minutes. Also, when is Rachel Weisz going to get greater recognition? She makes every role she's in look effortless.
Ozon's Young and Beautiful is yet another coming of age film where in this case it leads to prostitution. Outside of a few moments, technical aspects, and a Charlotte Rampling cameo, there's not much there.
Pablo Larrain's Post Mortem was aesthetically and narratively as grim as you can get with the fall of Salvador Allende reduced to the life of an autopsy recorder. Deliberately paced is generous, but the end is quite powerful. Interesting to see what he'll do with Jackie O biopic
"The Lobster," deliciously demented. The second half in the forest definitely feels diffuse in relation to the very methodical forward movement of the first half, but I suppose that also makes sense in the scheme of it. Lanthimos can be grouped with Roy Andersson and Michael Haneke as contemporary filmmakers who pitilessly denude that construct we call "civilization."
It's been raining here for 40 days and 40 nights. I can't NOT watch movies:
"Love and Friendship." Kate Beckinsale really missed a golden opportunity to give a delicious performance. She's really not very good in it. The movie was not bad, but it needed to be paced just a bit slower so that it could take on more nuance (it needed an Emma Thompson "Sense and Sensibility" touch).
Everyone can take turns punching me in the face, but I went with a friend and her kids to see "Angry Birds" (again, it's been raining here for like 125 days). It was not that bad. I'm not 100% embarrassed that I saw it ... only like 94.875% embarrassed.
"The Lobster." It had some great moments and is so original. But there were some slow moments too. Maybe my expectations were too high?
I watched "Summertime" for the 900th time. Maybe I am missing the sun, but only communists can't like this movie. It's so lovely. I think it is Hepburn's best performance.
I saw The Nice Guys in a sold out show. The multiplex apparently didn't realize how popular it would be and only booked it into one theatre.
I liked the rapport between the three leads, two actors who have been acting since they were teenagers, and one working actress who is a teenager (Angourie Rice). There's a great sense of them being at home in the workplace and sharing a similar approach.
I was taken aback by all the deaths of bystanders. When I watch some of those old action pictures, I'm always surprised at how violent they are.
Dave S -- i have to know which musical number you're talking about? the dance with Olivia Colman singing or the string instrument duo or...maybe i'm forgetting something because i feel like i hallucinated the whole movie.
Home for the weekend, so I saw Money Monster with my parents and siblings. Solid, middle of the road thriller. Perfectly enjoyable, if a little thin. The whole family generally liked it, which is rare (I'm sadly the only cinephile of the group).
Nathaniel - Colman singing! Such an atonal, shapeless farce of a love song it felt like the whole movie in concentrated form. A rictus set to music.
The Seattle International Film Festival started. I went to screenings of:
Closet Monster - reminiscent of Xavier Dolan without copying. Isabella Rosselini produces the most affecting rodent performances of all time. Wonderfully edited, and Connor Jessup is fantastic in it.
Indignation - great directorial debut from James Schamus (longtime collaborator with Ang Lee). Logan Lerman, Tracy Letts, and Linda Emond are fantastic, but Sarah Gadon (the love interest) felt misdirected. Adaptation was great. Pulled in the Philip Roth-ian nature and humanized Lerman. Schamus was in attendance
Miles - LGBT drama about smalltown high school senior who joins a girl's volleyball team to attempt to get a scholarship to a Chicago school after it's discovered his late father squandered his college fund. Molly Shannon stars as his mother, and where she was good, the role was not. The title character played by Tim Boardman was charming. Missi Pyle gave the best performance. Was a coming of age story without also being a coming out story.
Nathaniel
I love that you are using Natalie Wood pics....
Chris K
The "reveal" and Rossellini's delivery thereof was hilarious.
I travelled to Europe during Cannes week so I arranged a personal Cannes (2015) showing from in-flight entertainment. How glamorous!
I saw 2 from Main Competition (Mon Roi, Mountains May Depart) and 3 from Un Certain Regard (An, Disorder, Journey to the Shore). They seem to have a common theme of coming to terms with regretful past. I enjoyed Mon Roi more than expected.
Glad to see The Lobster find success in the US. I LOVE that movie.
I mostly stuck to watching UnReal, but I did watch HUSH - the Netflix horror movie - which was really quite good and well-executed.
Nathaniel, I wish I *could* go to the cinema more without my children, we do quite well, but we have to be a bit more selective about what we go and watch these days.
All I managed to watch this weekend was Dumbo, for the umpteenth time, with my 3 year old who right now cannot get enough of it. He shows no interest in the quality Pixar films I try to get him interested in, but Dumbo and The Aristocats he loves ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@ Joe
THESE days?
It's a bit dismissive to assume that The Nice Guys and Neighbors 2 didn't do as well because adults wait for movies to stream now.
It was a crowded weekend, for starters; Neighbors 2 didn't get as good reviews as is predecessor; and Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe don't exactly scream box-office success. It didn't help that The Nice Guys' marketing campaign was excessive to the point where it became a turn-off.
The bae and I saw Eye in the Sky in the theater on Saturday, which nearly put me to sleep (literally) in the first, maybe, half hour but dramatically picks up thereafter. I absolutely fell in love with Monica Dolan watching her performance, while I remain largely apathetic towards Helen Mirren: Actress -- though as a personality I adore her.
Chris K -- ooh i wanna see that. i haven't even heard of it!
George - i'm just discouraged is all. it seems like every year there are less and less hits aimed at adults and more and more homogeny in the success (superheroes + animated films)
Went with a friend to see Money Monster - and the showing was practically sold out! I was NOT expecting this given the film's mediocre grosses, but, I guess when there are so few mainstream films for adults around... Anyway, it was good but not great. Works better as a critique of the current state of news-as-entertainment/entertainment-masquerading-as-news than as a thriller, which I wasn't expecting. It was also funnier than I expected, in a dark way. It does feel like it's about four-to-five years too late, though, which I think may explain the apathy from audiences.
In other news, I keep recommending Sing Street to people and they keep coming back to me with how much they love it, so YAY! for small victories.
I think The Nice Guys may have done better if it were released during a less crowded time of year. I would be interested in seeing it, but there is just too much else out now (take a look at that limited release list), and I usually only see a movie a week in theaters..
I saw Money Monster and thought it was a very effective thriller with, as denny said, a lot of dark humor. George Clooney was probably the best in show although it had a very good supporting cast of familiar character actors. It held my attention the whole time.
I also saw Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog for the first time and loved it. Looking forward to Paterson!
denny - yeah, in ye olden times SING STREET would have clearly blossomed into a major sleeper hit. but it's much harder to have that happen now with the lack of interest from the media in small films and the competition for screens and the sheer amount of product out there.
I saw The Lobster and mostly liked it, I think? Still processing it and it's weird rules and tones. I was so uncomfortable the whole time, I felt like my body was tense for two straight hours. I'm not sure I understood some of it (I get the rules in the hotel and "society," but why does the band of radical, rebellious loners also follow some of those same rules? Why are they all also talking in monotone? And if they do, why is Weisz the only person who talks relatively normally?). Loved the cast overall, loved the costumes, the music, the dark humor and the ending.
Also started season 2 of Transparent and my god is that first episode so good.
Yeah, so I came back from Sing Street and wholeheartedly love it (it makes me want to revisit Once, which I loathed). It's relatively quiet performance is quite disappointing. While I'm not one to link box office performance with quality, it's weird to believe, confidently, if you forced everyone to watch Batman v Superman and Sing Street, more people would derive more pleasure from the Carney film, but that the former will gross over 100x the latter. I get that more and more distributors have to think of movie grosses differently and with the rise of Netflix and Amazon, the idea of a movie having a box office gross will be more theoretical. I get that shift in movie culture, but I can't help but be disappointed.
Ant-Man (because I wanted to see it before Civil War) and I enjoyed it. Now on to Deadpool and the first Neighbors.
Been completely swamped at work, but did come up for air to catch LOVE & FRIENDSHIP with the hubby this past weekend. Was reasonably pleased. I read Lady Susan (the novella it's based on) ages ago but remembered almost nothing about it, which is odd for someone who loves all of Jane Austen's "canon" novels...or maybe telling. I think the under-development of the source material shows a bit, though the raw promise is there, too. I am not a big fan of Whit Stillman but I think he put his talents to good use here.
Kate Beckinsale was fine. Someone else would/could probably have been better. I did rather enjoy seeing Chloe Sevigny again, though.
Could you imagine teaming up the Angry Birds and the Avengers and cracking some serious heads pig or human