How was your holiday weekend at the movies?
Tuesday, September 5, 2023 at 8:56PM by Nathaniel R
Labor Day weekend is not traditionally big box office though people almost always turn out for Denzel Washington and his third Equalizer film did very well given how Labor Day usually goes. Instead people head outdoors historically this weekend, desperate to catch the last rays of summer. Accidentally I was the latter this time even though I am decidedly not a summer person and avoid the sun like a vampire much preferring the dark cold of the movie theater. I was miserable on Monday with the heat but my friends wanted a picnic. So my moviegoing was home-bound. How about you?
| Weekend Box Office Sept 1-4 Holiday Weekend 🔺 = new or expanding / ★ = Recommended |
|
| WIDE (Over 600 Screens) |
LIMITED / PLATFORM (spotty reporting this holiday week from the indie set) |
 EQUALIZER 3 |
 THEATER CAMP |
|
1 🔺 THE EQUALIZER 3 $42.8 *NEW* 3965 screens |
1 🔺 THE GOOD MOTHER (US, drama) $367k *NEW* 423 screens |
|
2 ★ BARBIE $13.4 (cum. $612.3) 3586 screens |
2 ★ THEATER CAMP (US, comedy) $122k (cum. $3.8) 92 screens |
|
3 BLUE BEETLE $9.4 (cum. $58.7) 3,316 screens |
3 🔺 ZOMBIE TOWN (Canada, horror comedy) $111k *NEW* |
|
4 GRAN TURISMO $8.7 (cum. $30.8) 3,856 screens |
4 ★🔺 OLDBOY (South Korea, re-release) $83k (cum. $1.6) 71 screens |
|
5 ★ OPPENHEIMER $7.6 (cum. $310.6) 2543 screens |
5 ★ THE MIRACLE CLUB (Ireland/UK, drama) $75k (cum. $2.2) |
|
6 TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES MUTANT MAYHEM $6.2 (cum. $107.9) 2955 screens |
6 ★ ASTEROID CITY (US, comedy) $53k (cum. $28.1) |
|
7 🔺★ BOTTOMS $3.8 (cum. $4.5) 715 screens |
7 ★ FREMONT $44k (cum. $78k) 9 screens |
 BOTTOMS |
 FREMONT |
|
8 MEG 2 THE TRENCH $3.6 (cum. $79.1) 2371 screens |
8 ★ BIRTH / REBIRTH (horror) $25k (cum. $102k) 18 screens |
|
9 STRAYS $3.2 (cum. $21.4) 2486 screens |
9 CAT VIDEO FEST 2023 $24k (cum. $397k) 18 screens |
|
10 TALK TO ME $2.2 (cum. $44.5) 1,075 screens |
10 SCRAPPER (UK) $12k (cum. $53k) 7 screens |
|
11 THE HILL $2.1 (cum. $5.4) 1703 screens |
11 AFIRE (Germany, dramedy) $7k (cum. $217k) 10 screens |
|
12 HAUNTED MANSION $1.9 (cum. $64.6) 1180 screens |
12 THE UNKNOWN COUNTRY $6k (cum. $50k) 10 screens |
|
13 🔺 ★ ELEMENTAL (ReExpanding) $1.8 (cum. $153.6) 2155 screens |
13 WINTER KILLS (US, rerelease) $6k (cum. $59k) 2 screens |
|
14 MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE -DEAD RECKONING PART ONE $1.7 (cum. $170.5) 965 screens |
14 ★ LAKOTA NATION VS THE US (doc) $5k (cum. $83k) 9 screens |
|
15 RETRIBUTION $1.4 (cum. $6.2) 1727 screens |
15 RANSOMED $5k (cum. $133k) 2 screens |
|
16 GOLDA $1.1 (cum. $3.5) 791 screens |
16 OUR FATHER THE DEVIL $4k (cum. $10k) 5 screens |
|
17 SOUND OF FREEDOM $762k (cum. $181.9) 1100 screens |
17 CLOSE TO VERMEER (Doc) $4k (cum. $164k) 3 screens |
|
18 ★ JURASSIC PARK RE-RELEASE $546k (cum. $2.8) 721 screens |
18 DREAMIN' WILD (US, drama) $4k (cum. $285k) 13 screens |
|
18 movies are in wide release which is the most we've seen in a long time. |
19 ★ JOYLAND (Pakistan, drama) $3k (cum. $306k) 16 screens |
What did you see this past week? At home I watched a documentary on Steven Spielberg, the Paul Newman classic The Verdict, the Taiwanese Oscar submission Marry My Dead Body (more on that soon), and a Wong Kar Wai I somehow hadn't seenFallen Angels. That plus catching up on some TV shows like The Uncanny Counter (an obsession - sorry, not sorry), What We Do in the Shadows, and Dark Winds.
Next weekend at the movies?
The new releases are Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, The Nun II, the Armenian film Amerikatsi, the Chilean film Rotting in the Sun from the often interesting auteur Sebastian Silva, and a brief theatrical run for a much buzzier Chilean film El Conde (which comes to Netflix soon) from Pablo Larraín which Elisa reviewed at Venice.
Denzel Washington, box office
Reader Comments (4)
I just largely re-watched a couple of 90s straight-to-video films in Point of Impact with Michael Pare, Barbara Carrera, and Michael Ironside and Raw Justice with Pamela Anderson, David Keith, Robert Hays, Charles Napier, Leo Rossi, and Stacy Keach plus a Europop video directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and yesterday as a first-timer, Under the Sun of Satan by Maurice Pialat.
Afire: Maybe my least favorite Petzold film, but still decent. A couple of character beats really nagged at me, though - it was hard for me to believe Leon and Felix were close friends, and I didn't understand why someone with such obvious body dismorphia would choose to go to the beach for a vacation. Mainly, I just wish Petzold would work with Nina Hoss again.
Bottoms: I did laugh out loud during this quite a bit, but so much of it made so little sense, and it felt like a little effort could have made it much better. Marshawn Lynch was the MVP.
Noir by Gaslight on Criterion Channel: I've been sampling all Criterion's various film noir collections as they've programmed them. This weekend, I watched Madeleine, So Long at the Fair, and Ladies in Retirement. Ladies in Retirement was the best of the three, featuring a great Ida Lupino lead performance.
BOTTOMS -- Hilarious, great performances, and fantastic world-building (through the script, production design, and costuming). It gets derailed a bit when it focuses on the relationship issues but is among the best comedies that we've seen over the past few years. I'm very excited to see where Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott go from here.
RAISE THE RED LANTERN (rewatch) -- I hadn't seen this in a while but it's somehow always better with each rewatch. Gong Li is truly the most underrated living actor.
I thought Bottoms was atrociously bad. Like a 14 year old without any guidance or limitation was allowed to write a rough draft of a screenplay on a 90 minute time limit and then it was filmed, o questions asked. Aggressively, egregiously painful.