Box Office Dies. Nightcrawler Shoots It.

Amir here, reporting to box office duty. It was a dead weekend at the multiplex, deader than the dead in Ouija, deader than zombies. Though it was not, strictly speaking, the worst weekend of the year – that honor belongs to the weekend of September 5th, when Guardians of the Galaxy, in its sixth week, topped the chart and the biggest new release was The Identical, a musical with Ray Liotta and Ashley Judd!!! – it was still a terrible weekend.

 

TOP DOZEN
01 NIGHTCRAWLER $10.9 NEW
02 OUIJA $10.9 (cum. $34.9)  
03 FURY $9.1 (cum. $60.4) Michael's Review
04 GONE GIRL $8.8  (cum. $136.6)  Jason's Review
05 THE BOOK OF LIFE $8.3 (cum. $40.5) Interview
06 JOHN WICK $8 (cum. $27.5) Michael's Review
07 ST. VINCENT $7.7 (cum. $19.5) Michael's Review
08 ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE... $6.4 (cum. $53.6)
09 THE JUDGE $3.4 (cum. $39.5) 
10 DRACULA UNTOLD $2.9 (cum. $52.8)
11 THE BEST OF ME $2.7 (cum. $21.9) 
12 BIRDMAN $2.5 (cum. $5) Nathaniel's Review

Nightcrawler, the critically acclaimed crime film starring Jake Gyllenhaal, opened at the top spot, but at the estimated $10.9m, it’s the lowest grossing new release to top its weekend in this entire decade so far. By all accounts, the film deserves a bigger audience, but the number isn’t exactly a surprise because a) Halloween weekend is never a great time for non-horror films and b) Gyllenhaal hasn’t really opened a film big on his own. The other new wide release Before I Go To Sleep with Nicole Kidman finished outside the top ten with 2 million. Birdman, still platforming at 231 screens now but almost cracking the top ten, maintained the best screen average for the third weekend in a row. It will surpass Iñarittu's own Biutiful and Amores Perros in total sales sometime today. 

UP NEXT: November will bring us some of the year’s biggest box office hopefuls. Here are each week’s major openings for the remainder of the month: Interstaller and Big Hero 6 (7) ; Dumb and Dumber To (14);  Hunger Games: Mockingjay (21) a sure bet to take Guardians of the Galaxy’s #1 of year throne; Penguins of Madagascar and Horrible Bosses 2 (26) -- oh, c’mon you know you’re waiting for this one! More exciting times are ahead.

What did you watch this weekend?

Record

AHS: Freakshow "Edward Mordrake Pt. 2"

I apologize for the lateness of this piece! AHS's two-part Halloween episode was structured around green smoke spewing evil spirit Edward Mordrake's search for another soul to add to his collection of dead ghouls. This search was something like a B story entirely made up of SAG Ensemble clip reel auditions with several actors getting their own "darkest hour" backstory to tell. I loved the Illustrated Seal's (Mat Fraser) clip reel about his "handsome face" and am pleased to have read that Ryan Murphy, recognizing his talent, wants to give him a non-freak role somehow in a future season, despite his deformed hands and arms.

After completely the sad story roundup, Mordrake decides to take Elsa (Jessica Lange) with him into the afterlife following her grisly tale of her Weimer Era Germany sex club stardom ends in the grisly chain-sawing of her legs. (Yuck -- and that isn't even the grossest image in her story). But, Mordrake stops when he hears distant music.

Where is it coming from?

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Meet the Contenders: Rene Russo "Nightcrawler"

Each weekend a profile on a just-opened Oscar contender. Here's abstew on this weekend's new release, NIGHTCRAWLER, which is a perfectly dark treat for a Halloween opening.

Rene Russo as Nina Romina in Nightcrawler

Best Supporting Actress

Born: Rene Marie Russo was born February 17, 1954 in Burbank, California

The Role: Screenwriter Dan Gilroy (2006's The Fall, The Bourne Legacy) makes his directorial debut with Nightcrawler (which he wrote as well). The film stars a gaunt, crazy-eyed Jake Gyllenhaal (a Best Actor Contender) as Lou Bloom, an unemployed but determined man in Los Angeles that stumbles upon a career as a news journalist. He video records car crashes, home invasions, and bloody crimes, selling the footage to the local news station. Russo stars as a veteran television producer, in charge of the "vampire" shift of the lowest rated station in town. She encourages Bloom's budding career, forming a twisted relationship with him to gain viewers.

The film is also a family affair for Russo who is married to Gilroy (he also wrote two of Russo's previous films 1992's Freejack and 2005's Two for the Money) and her brother-in-law, Oscar nominated writer/director Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton, Duplicity), is a producer on the film.

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HTGAWM: "We're Not Friends" & "Whack-a-Mole"

It's true.  I didn't quit How To Get Away With Murder as intended. The people have spoken and the last writeup was so popular that I kept watching. But writing about it is harder when it's not being porny and forcing my hand and, um, jaw (see: previously on...)

"We're Not Friends" & "Whack-a-Mole"
It's two episodes in one post, a survival tactic. Manuel will be handling the next while I'm in LA, bless him for his sacrifice.

These latest two eppys huff and puff and cry and scream and the first at least is so (typically) hysteric that it has a jury picking montage with frenzied strobelight-editing set to housemusic from the 90s (I half expected Viola Davis to start pivoting and jacking while shouting "excuse" and "accept" and "dismiss for cause" at each potential juror.) Amidst all the heightened emotion the two rawest expression of feeling came in scenes between Annalise and soon-to-be-dead husband Sam. Their scenes together crackle in a way that little else on the show does which does not bode well for Season 2, unless they go supernatural and keep Tom Verica on as a ghost. Pretty please?! You're always jumping the shark when every character is a shark anyway and it's not like they're concerned with Ivy League or Legal accuracy.

These two scenes with have promising Emmy-seeking character moments, though they're a potentia mine field of regressive gender politics. In 'Not Friends' Annalise implies that she was once like the murdered student, a student her husband picked up "weak, broken ... a mess that he had to clean up" and in 'Whack-a-Mole' she delivers a pathetic but wholly human refrain of "I need you"

So...um... [cue Celine power ballad] she's everything she is because he loved her??? 

What the what now,Viola?

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