Box Office: Lord & Miller Slay the Dragon

Amir here with the weekend’s box office report. There was a huge surprise as How to Train Your Dragon 2, a critically acclaimed sequel to a massive box office success started at second place, a full $10m behind. Who’s the dragon slayer? Another critically acclaimed sequel to a massive box office success, 22 Jump Street. Still, despite the popularity of the first film and both Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, few imagined the animated family option would fall behind the raunchy comedy, but so it is. This is all the more impressive considering the screen count of Dragon was one of the highest ever.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE
01 22 JUMP STREET $60 NEW
02 HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 $50 NEW
03 MALEFICENT $19 (cum. $163.5) Podcast
04 EDGE OF TOMORROW $16.1 (cum. $56.6) Capsule
05 THE FAULT IN OUR STARS $15.7 (cum. $81.7) Review

Still, despite the early receipts, I think the animated film will come out on top in the end, both because family films have better staying power and because competition in the next few weeks is non-existent. Of course, Lord & Miller, the filmmaking team behind the Jump Street franchise are no strangers to animation success. Earlier in the year, they opened The LEGO Movie to a $60m-plus opening as well; a double achievement that I believe is unique for any director in one calendar year. Correct me if I’m wrong on that count.

The top five list is rounded out with Maleficent, the unfortunately underselling Edge of Tomorrow and The Fault in Our Stars. Further down the list, The Rover, which played Cannes in May opened to respectable numbers on five screens – it had the second best per screen average of the weekend after Jump Street. (Glenn reviewed The Rover here.)

I haven’t yet seen any of the above films, because, Football people! Football! It’s the World Cup and the World Cup trumps all. What have you watched this weekend?

Happy Father's Day! What's Your Favorite Dad Movie?

My dad died two years ago so Father's Day is a melancholy abstraction now. I don't have my own kids but I love being a godfather, an uncle, and an honorary uncle. If you're father is still with you, take him to a movie or out somewhere for culture!

My point is this: Our parents aren't with us forever. Cherish them while they are.

What's your favorite dad movie? Mine just might be Beginners (2011) though my own dad certainly would not have liked it - we were very different people. I just find it so moving in its depiction of forging new more loving relationships adult to adult with your aging parent (and others). Christopher Plummer amply earned that Oscar.

There are so many memorable dads in movies, though. Two other semi-recent paterfamilias that really affected me were Donald Sutherland in Pride & Prejudice (2005) and Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life (2011).

How about you?

"A Matter For James Bond"

Have you watched Goldfinger (1964) for the Hit Me With Your Best Shot mid season finale on Tuesday night?

a Life cover 50 years ago... in a verybig year for Bond with two movies in US release

Auric Goldfinger, Pussy Galore, Jill Masterson and 007 himself await your curious eyeballs in what is surely one of the most definitive of Bond films on Amazon Instant or Netflix Instant.

Two Quickies: "Test" and "Edge of Tomorrow"

Two movies you should see: a buzzy queer indie and a struggling would be blockbuster...

TEST
Chris Mason Johnson, a former dancer turned writer/director, really comes into his voice with his second feature. (He previously directed The New Twenty). Test is about a young dancer named Frankie (Scott Marlowe) in San Francisco in 1985 who, like most gay men at the time, fears he might have AIDS. He learns of a new test he could take to find out. The surprise of Test is that it's not really about AIDS despite the setting and time period so much as a slice of life drama about a young man struggling to face his fears and live his dream. Frankie is an understudy learning a dance he might never get to perform. And a young gay man beginning a life he might never get to live. Test is beautifully lensed for a micro-budgeted indie (I was shocked to hear that the cinematographer is a first timer) and though the pacing and subplots are hit and miss the dancer/actors are endearing and the centerpiece performance is just completely electric stuff. B+

P.S. Here's my interview with the director at Towleroad
I'll share excerpts that I didn't use for that piece soon that I think you cinephiles/musical addicts will enjoy. Test is playing in New York and available OnDemand and at iTunes.

EDGE OF TOMORROW
I had planned on avoiding this but the reviews, which I didn't read but gleaned were raves, caught me off guard. If you've also planned to skip, reconsider. I thought a movie that absorbed the very soul and structure of a video game (repeat until your kinetic memory gets every move right) would be highly annoying but I was wrong. It's sharply written, well acted and often exciting even if some of its moves are familiar (Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day meets Aliens?). Tom Cruise is extremely well cast as a smarmy coward who is all surface and has to actually work his way towards heroics and soul. And Emily Blunt, memorably dubbed "Full Metal Bitch" is approximately 1000% believable as an action heroine, proving yet again that she should be a much bigger star. 

I can't say that I necessarily believe this would hold up to repeat viewings and, like every current action movie, there's too much CGI, too much generic dystopian destruction, typical color palette, but it was so entertaining and cleverly structured that I feel too generous towards it to quibble. But... I am not a fan of the ending which makes no damn sense whatsoever, even given the elaborate suspension-of-disbelief conceit. B+

"See the whole world in a grain of sand"