Box Office: Street Cats, Kinky Sex, Lego Superheroes
Sunday, February 12, 2017 at 1:03PM 
This weekend's box office charts are deceiving in their rankings. Lego Batman and the Fifty Shades sequels topped the weekend but both opened well below their predecessors while #3 was a huge success. John Wick's second outing doubled its original's opening weekend gross suggesting that the fanbase grew exponentially once the 'first chapter' was available for home viewing. This kind of thing we used to see far more of in the early days of VHS but now in the age of franchises, generally you don't see that kind of word-of-mouth "discovery" growth. You're either a behemoth or you're not.
Three more items of note that don't really show in these charts...
The documentary Kedi about street cats in Istanbul was crazy popular albeit on one screen. It had the weekend's highest per screen average -- an incredible $40,000. As a crazy cat lady I'm dying to see it. I will make time this week, I will!
The now long-running Elle, boosted by its Best Actress nomination, quietly crossed the 2 million mark at the box office this weekend. Sony Picture Classics played it very cool with this one -- while pushing Huppert's campaign hard -- and it paid off. It took the film 9 weeks to eke out 1 million but only 5 more to cross 2 million with the added boost of that key Oscar nomination.
But other arthouse films haven't been so lucky at translating their Oscar nomination into tickets. The Red Turtle ($331K after 4 weeks in theaters) and Land of Mine ($23K in its first week) are still struggling to find their audiences, despite being very good films.
TOP WIDE
01 Lego Batman Movie $55.6 NEW
02 Fifty Shades Darker $46.7 NEW
03 John Wick Chapter Two $30
04 Split $9.3 (cum. $112.2)
05 Hidden Figures $8 (cum. $131.4) Podcast
06 A Dog's Purpose $7.3 (cum. $42.5)
07 Rings $5.8 (cum. $21.4)
08 La La Land $5 (cum. $126) Production Design, Jacques Demy Influence, Costumes, Original Musical Rarity, Podcast, Nathaniel's Top Ten
09 Lion $4 (cum. $30.3) Review, Interview with Brierleys, Cocktail with Kidman, Podcast
10 The Space Between Us $1.7 (cum. $6.5)
TOP LIMITED
01 I Am Not Your Negro $830K (cum. $1.8) Review, Oscar Nominated
02 Jolly Lib 2 $780K NEW
03 Oscar Nominated Shorts $660K NEW
04 The Salesman $261K (cum. $724K) Review, Interview, Farhadi Not Coming to Oscars
05 20th Century Women $233K (cum. $5.1) Top Ten of the Year, Interview, Podcast, Reviewish
06 Jackie $210K (cum. $13.2) Podcast
07 Paterson $178K (cum. $1.2) NEW
08 Un Padre Tan Padre $160K (cum. $1.9)
09 Duckweed $160K NEW
10 Toni Erdmann $130K (cum. $687K) American Remake, Screenplay, Review, The Longest Oscar Nominees
What did you see this weekend?
Reader Comments (21)
Finally watched 20th Century Women and while I think that the acting (especially Bening) was great, Mills has to improve his writing and mostly directing. I love movies with those narrations of what will happen with the characters in the future, but on this one it was lame. See "And Your Mother Too" for a great reference on that. Also the car rides and photo montages looked pretty forced to me.
Anyway, now I can rank my 2016 best actresses:
1) Natalie Portman, Jackie
2) Sandra Huller, Toni Erdmann
3) Emma Stone, La La Land
4) Isabelle Huppert, Elle
5) Amy Adams, Arrival
• More of The Crown: true royalty porn, I'm hooked.
• Many random episodes and clips of The Graham Norton Show: the best TV show ever?
• Split: McAvoy's third or fourth Oscar nomination that won't happen.
• Unbreakable:
spoiler alerted.LSS: I have not seen your 2-4 but, of what I have seen, I agree with Portman at #1 and Adams at #2. Both so great. I did not expect that from Portman at all (!!) and Adams was just so damn good and likable in that part. I expect Arrival will age very very well as a film and her performance in it.
Adams was terrific in the Fighter (SO SO GOOD) but I don't think I've ever fallen for an Adams lead character performance as much as I have for her in Arrival. A true milestone for her I think and makes me look forward to the next films that she will headline. Looking at her filmography, she actually plays a shit-ton of supporting roles. She needs to be center stage more often with good directors at the helm.
I saw " Rings" a pointless scare free reboot of the classic horror franchise. The movie seems to be aimed at teen girls ( or gay men) the hero Alex Roe has plenty of gratuitous shirtless scenes.
The movie lacks the creepy atmosphere of the original
I saw The Lego Batman Movie. Didn't measure up to The Lego Movie as much. But I had an absolute blast watching it!!
Paul Outlaw: So, what would the fourth, potential, be? Atonement (Lead Actor 2007), Filth (Lead Actor 2013) and Split (Lead Actor 2017), seem obvious. Of the rest of his career, I'd narrow the guesses for the fourth down to either Narnia (Supporting Actor 2005), Last King of Scotland (Lead Actor 2006) or Arthur Christmas (Lead Actor 2011).
I Am Not Your Negro, the James Baldwin meditation on race in America. Very smart film and weaves in his love of cinema to help make points about our ongoing race divide. I hope America can pull it together. We always seem doomed to repeat past.
Peaky Blinders with English subtitles. Now I can understand every word. Also excellent.
I read the text of Streep's speech to HRC. Very effective. Great lady.
I went back for a 2nd viewing of 20th Century Women and loved it all over again. This time around I was really taken by the lead performance of Lucas Jade Zumann, who is such a natural, and so soulful and manages to be such a perfect scene partner for the powerhouse performance of The Bening. I wonder if he has a real acting career ahead -- in an interview I read it sounds like he's not quite committed to it for the long haul. But what a performance to remember!
The Crown and Natalie Portman in Jackie are both so good, I'm glad to see some more praise for them here.
The only film I saw this week was Hirokazu Koreeda's Our Little Sister, which was a great naturalistic domestic drama, lighter than his other films, with terrific performances from four young actresses.
@ Volvagia
I was also thinking Last King given the little bit of awards attention he got for that one.
"Lego Batman" was nerdy fun, and I appreciate that it was willing to be kind of frivolous rather than straining for profundity. The various children at my screening seemed particularly restless, though - not sure if it didn't play well or if it just seemed notable because I'm not around kids often.
Saw LEGO BATMAN. Was a fun film. And it's not saying much, but certainly better than the past few DC films released.
"The Lego Movie" humor was not aimed at kids- I doubt they understood all the corporate satire jokes- but it was bright and colorful enough to please them
HIDDEN FIGURES, which is finally out in Australia and it is a pure delight as well as very topical. All the women in the audience were vocal about their enjoyment throughout, which is telling. No surprise it won the SAG - what actor wouldn't want to be a part of that ensemble?!
Also saw TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME on the big screen and that movie is never not fascinating and traumatic and strangely funny and probably the closest to a genuine nightmare ever filmed.
I saw Elle again on Friday. (Elle-oh-elle) I am so happy being the chaperone to that film and performance. It's just outrageous how much better she is than her other nominees. How can they pass this up??
And then on Saturday I saw Coffy! They screened it in 35mm, a print belonging to Quentin Tarantino! Aaaaaaand --- PAM GRIER WAS IN ATTENDANCE! It was the most open, personable, and even vulnerable Q&A I've ever attended. She is just a wonder! She wants to be on Portlandia and wants all the Meryl Streep roles.
I was gonna see Tilda Swinton's Orlando in 35mm, but instead my sister woke me up to the Sight & Sound with Isabelle Huppert on the cover and a seven-week old kitten!
John Wick 2, of course!
Keanu is awesome, and the supporting cast has great fun.
I love Ruby Rose. The way she slinks downstairs, I wanted to put her in a 1930s evening gown and play a Nora Charles.
Suzanne: So good, right? I wish more people saw Our Little Sister - it was a low-key favorite of mine last year.
I hadn't heard of Kedi before, thank you so much for bringing it to my attention!
Did anyone who saw the 50 Shades sequel catch the WORKING GIRL quote?? That made me smile / cringe. lol.
Also, I loved the literal Supporting Actress "Smackdown" between winners Kim Basinger and Marcia Gay Harden... probably the only scene in the film worth viewing!
Went to see John Wick 2 with hubby in exchange for making him go see Toni Erdmann last weekend. I think I got the better end of the deal, as I enjoyed JW much more than he enjoyed TE (which was not at all). Some truly amazing set pieces and if you're into well choreographed action sequences, this one's actually worth seeing in a theater. Also, who doesn't love the assassins' hotel? Who knew it was an entire worldwide chain?
Down side: didn't care for the ending, or rather the precipitating event that led to the ending; was a bit anticlimactic and clearly designed to set up movie #3.
Saw Florence Foster Jenkins and, not to start another round of Streep fights, I liked her but wouldn't nominate her. She does some lovely work, especially when she's singing - she's not just making easy, "i'm a bad singer" choices, there's real thought behind everything she's doing. But otherwise she often gets to coast on "charming old lady" fumes and I think there's a lot of more complex, challenging, rewarding performances out there. Hugh Grant was great, though.