Doc Corner: Documentaries at the Box Office in 2016

Glenn here. Each Tuesday we bring you reviews and features on documentaries from theatres, festivals, and on demand. This week we look at the medium's flatlining box office is a sign of 2016's roster of documentaries.

Looking at Nathaniel’s listing of the highest grossing documentaries list of the year so far and I was – to put it mildly – a bit bummed out. Not surprised, of course.

Certainly, the comfort of one’s home is a perfectly fine place to view many of these films, and a necessary advancement given the general downturn in boutique and arthouse cinema-going. But as a lover of movies, going to the movies, and writing about movies, it is frustrating and a worry that no documentaries other than Michael Moore’s disappointing Where to Invade Next and the Christian-themed Patterns of Evidence have made any sort of impact at the box office (and even then, Moore’s film is a dramatic slide from even his most recent film Capitalism: A Love Story at $14m) in four months of the new year.

The reason the doc box office figures particularly worried me was because the first quarter of the year is peak opportunity to take advantage of a quiet marketplace...

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Box Office Before the Civil War

No, not that civil war. Movies weren't invented yet.

Next weekend Hollywood is steering completely clear of Captain America: Civil War on four trillion screens. Nobody's even trying to counterprogram but just conceding Disney/Marvel's complete dominion over pop culture. Unless of course you are talking arthouse where the sexiest quartet imaginable will be f***ing around in A Bigger Splash. So before Civil War destroys the box office whilst simultaneously ushering in summer movie season and embarrassing its weird thematic twin predecessor Dawn of Justice, here's a look at where the box office for the year stands in four categories along with links to reviews if we did them (though we've been doing a ton more reviews of late the biggest hits seem to have eluded us in most categories).

How many of these pictures have you seen and what did you take in this weekend? I went to Keanu which rustled up just 9 million this weekend. I was sad to feel shruggy about it since I love kittens and Key & Peele but you can only tell the same few jokes so many times...

TOP TEN OF 2016 THUS FAR
01 Deadpool $361+  Reviewish
02 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice $325+ Review
03 Zootopia $323+  Reviewish
04 The Jungle Book $252+
05 Kung Fu Panda 3 $142+
06 Ride Along 2 $90+
07 10 Cloverfield Lane $71+
08 Divergent Series: Allegiant $65+
09 London Has Fallen $65+
10 Miracles From Heaven $59+

TOP TEN (NON-FRANCHISE)
01 Zootopia $323+  Reviewish
02 Miracles From Heaven $59+
03 The Boss $56+ Review
04 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi $52+
05 How to Be Single $46+
06 Risen $36+
07 The Boy $35+ 
08 Dirty Grandpa $35+
09 Gods of Egypt $31+ Reviewish
10 Hail, Caesar! $30+ A Secret Musical?

TOP TEN FOREIGN FILMS
01 The Mermaid $3.2 (China)
02 Ip Man 3 $2.6 on (Hong Kong) 
03 Kapoor & Sons - Since 1921 $2.6 (India)
04 Compadres $2.3 (Mexico)
05 Busco Novio Para Mi Mujer $1.7 (Mexico)
06 Fan $1.6 (India)
07 Neerja $1.5 (India)
08 Embrace of Serpent $1.2 (Colombia) Review | Interview
09 Wazir $1.1 (India) 
10 Ki & Ka $.8 (India)

TOP TEN DOCUMENTARIES
01 Where to Invade Next $3.8 Glenn's Review, Manuel's Review
02 Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus $.9 
03 City of Gold $.5 
04 The First Monday in May $.3  Interview
05 Francophonia $.1 
06 Vaxed: From Cover Up to Conspiracy $.1 
07 Requiem for the American Dream $.1
08 Colliding Dreams $.06 (Colombia)
09 Trapped $.06 Review
10 Los Sures $.06

"Winter's War" didn't find summer-like grosses

Mirror Mirror on the wall who is the fairest of them all?

Oh, Charlize you're gorg but those beasts in Jungle Book are fairest to moviegoers, who plucked down another $60 million to watch dem pixels. And all those other computer generated animals in Zootopia in their eighth weekend were also still going strong. Maybe you should have dissolved into birds more often? (With a budget north of $100 million, the opening of The Huntsman reminds Hollywood of a fairly obvious lesson: not every hit is meant to morph into a cash cow franchise by sequelizing it.)

TOP FIVE
01 The Jungle Book $60.8 (cum. $191.4)
02 The Huntsman: Winter's War $20 NEW Review
03 Barbershop: The Next Cut $10.8 (cum. $36)
04 Zootopia $6.6 (cum. $316.4) Reviewish
05 The Boss $6 (cum. $49.5) Review

Susan Sarandon in The MeddlerTHE NEW RELEASES
09 Compadres $1.3 on 368 screens
11 A Hologram for the King $1.2 on 401 screens Review
20 Elvis & Nixon $450K on 381 screens Review
38 The Meddler $15K on 4 screens Review
40 Tale of Tales $9K on 2 Screens Review
42 How to Let Go of the World and... $6K on 1 screen
43 Men & Chicken $2K on 2 screens 

Outside the top ten and new release Don Cheadle's Miles Ahead and Richard Linklater's Everybody Wants Some!! risked adding a few hundred screens and took in a good $600K+ each while Sing Street and Green Room inched into a couple dozen more theaters with solid per screen averages. 

What did you see this weekend ?? The extra question mark is in homage to Everybody Wants Some !! for which we've published both negative and positive reviews. I saw it this weekend and was so glad I finally got around to it.

Box Office: 'Jungle Book' and 'Green Room' Get Vicious

This weekend's box office winners were all about the thrills - one for the whole family, and the other decidedly not. It's like summer is already upon us!

Especially after the deflation of BvS, everyone was expecting The Jungle Book to be a big hit this weekend, though perhaps not quite as massive as the end result. The live action / performance capture retelling from director Jon Favreau (Iron Man and Chef) closed out the weekend above $100M, becoming the second largest April opening behind last year's Furious 7. Maybe the unexpected boost came from interest in 3D (I've seen comments on Twitter calling it second to Avatar for stellar use of the medium).

But Jungle's huge success isn't the only thing that will have the folks at Disney celebrating: their spring animated sensation Zootopia also crossed the $300M mark. This year is going to be one of the tightest races ever Best Animated Feature Oscar, and Zootopia should have a good shot with this level of success despite its spring release disadvantage.

In limited release, fashion documentary The First Monday in May was the highest among the debuts, but A24's Green Room took the weekend's highest screen average on only 3 screens. The indie label has used this strategy before and almost without fail, turning niche films like the uber-violent Green Room into a miniature, must-see event. Oscar is certainly out of the question and the film's reported brutality will likely keep it from trouncing Ex Machina's grosses, but it looks like A24 has another hit on their hands.

TOP SIX
01 The Jungle Book $103.6 NEW
02 Barbershop: The Next Cut $20.2 NEW
03 The Boss $10.2 (cum. $40.4)
04 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Just More Superheroes $9.0 (cum. $311.3)
05 Zootopia $8.2 (cum. $307.5) 
06 Criminal $5.8 NEW

LIMITED HITS AND NEWBIES
16 Everybody Wants Some!! $.4 (cum. $1.5) 134 screens Review & Review
20 Miles Ahead $.2 (cum. .6) 47 screens Review
23 The First Monday in May $.1 NEW 20 Screens Interview
26 Green Room $91K NEW 3 Screens
28 Sing Street $69K NEW 5 Screens
48 The Measure of a Man $11K NEW 2 Screens Review

What did you see this weekend??

Box Office: Melissa Shows Batman Who is 'Boss' (and Other Female Hit Stories)

To keep ourselves entertained, we like to spin the box office charts so it's not just "copy/paste" from week to week. So let's look at the box office top ten through the lens of current movies with female leads. Melissa McCarthy (in a photo finish for #1 with superheroes) and Helen Mirren keep proving their box office consistency over and over again, don't they? We're also happy to see Sally Field doing so well in what could have been a blink and you'll miss it VOD movie. Field's already outperformed last year's senior female sleeper indie hits Grandma and I'll See You In My Dreams.

But the 10 female names below make up such an odd odd sorority you must admit...

TOP TEN FEMALE LEAD MOVIES THIS WEEKEND
01 The Boss (Melissa McCarthy) $23.4 NEW Melissa McCarthy
03 Zootopia (Ginnifer Goodwin) $14.3 (cum. $296) 
04 My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (Nia Vardalos) $6.4 (cum. $46.7)
06 Miracles From Heaven (Jennifer Garner) $4.8 (cum. $53.8)
07 Gods Not Dead 2 (Melissa Joan Hart) $ 4.3(cum. $14.1) 
08 Divergent: Allegiant (Shailene Woodley) $3.6 (cum. $61.8) 
09 10 Cloverfield Lane (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) $3  (cum. $67.9)
10 Eye in the Sky (Helen Mirren) $2.8 (cum. $10.4) 
13 Hello My Name is Doris (Sally Field) $1.6  (cum. $9.3) 
21 Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (Tina Fey) $.2 (cum. $22.7) 

As for the films we aren't including in this spun chart, Batman v Superman: Birth of Manic Depressive Anti-Heroes  at #2 is still a ginormous money-devourer even if with $296.6 domestically and $780 globally it's underperforming given it's behemoth budget and its launch pad to dozens of other proposed movies (there's already a huge crack in the foundation? Yikes). Meanwhile the latest stop on Jake Gyllenhaal's 'look what i can do on screen -- anything!' tour flopped coming in 15th for the weekend atnearly 900 screens. While it's true that Jake runs circles around his movie Demolition the fact that his starpower alone couldn't wallop what looks like the most unpleasant movie-watching experience of all time (Hardcore Henry took $5 million finishing at #5 for the week) is just f***in' depressing.

This is why we can't have nice things.

tfw you won the internet pic.twitter.com/BuOykvPiyB

— JASON (metalmeatwad) (@MichaelNotCera) April 7, 2016

Anyway -- What did you see this weekend?
I mean, other than WITNESS (1985) on Netflix which you surely watched for Tuesday Night's Best Shot. (Can't wait for this one since that movie is such a beauty.) I personally couldn't take in any movies people have heard of because I'm cramming for my upcoming "New Directors" jury duty at the Nashville International Film Festival which kicks off this weekend.