Box offices binges on "The Purge"

It's Tim, taking over Monday box office duties for Nathaniel while he's away, so if I've made some little formatting mistake, apologies in advance.

It says all there is to say about the cool state of the box office right now (nobody wants to put something out just in time to have Man of Steel cut its legs off next week) that the big story is a horror movie with toxic word of mouth hugely outperforming expectations. Truthfully, though, $34 million for the Ethan Hawke home invasion thriller The Purge is pretty impressive: it more than doubled the open weekend of Hawke's last horror picture, Sinister, while blasting past pretty much every comparable film in recent memory. That's what a drought in the marketplace will do for you: horror fans will turn out to see new wide releases if it's been a long time, even if the new release in question looks completely awful. I know whereof I speak.

Meanwhile, Wedding Crashers reunion/feature length Google ad The Internship has made exactly the non-splash that could be predicted based on how much nobody in the entire world was talking about the movie, though it's worth pointing out that it's not particularly out of line with the recent films Vince Vaugn and Owen Wilson have made seperately in the past few years. Also, Fast & Furious 6 broke the $200 million mark before Star Trek Into Darkness, which is a statistic that I don't think anybody would have willing to predict at the start of the summer.

BOX OFFICE TOP TEN
01 THE PURGE $34.1 *NEW*
02 FAST & FURIOUS 6  $19.2 (cum. $202.8)
03 NOW YOU SEE ME  $19.0 (cum. $60.9)
04 THE INTERNSHIP $17.3 *NEW*
05 EPIC $11.9 (cum. $83.9)
04 STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS  $11.4 (cum. $199.9) The Dumbing Down of Star Trek
07 AFTER EARTH  $10.7 (cum. $46.1) M Night Shyamalan's Fall
08 THE HANGOVER PART III $7.3 (cum. $102.3)
09 IRON MAN THREE $5.8 (cum. $394.3) Reviewed & Podcasted
10 THE GREAT GATSBY $4.2 (cum. $136.1) Reviewed & Dreamt About

In limited release, Frances Ha and Before Midnight are both purring along nicely (both were up from last weekend, in fact!), though neither they nor anything else came close to breaking into the top 10. The only prominent new film, Joss Whedon's modern-dress version of Much Ado About Nothing, put up a strong but not mind-blowing $34,388 per-screen average at five theaters, and didn't even crack the top 20, though its nationwide expansion on June 21 ought to improve its fortunes considerably, while giving all of us who don't live on the coasts a chance to see what Whedon's post-Avengers palette cleanser plays like.

Did you see anything this weekend? I didn't, taking advantage of the weather to do yardwork, though a friend and I are catching The Purge tonight. Like I said, horror fans are used to seeing things that we know are going to be utterly worthless.

Why, O Why, Don't I Love "Paris"?

Hallo folks! Ester here. You might remember me from such previous forays into Film Experience as my "Reader Spotlight" and my Two Stars, One Slot tribute piece, "Waif vs. Waif: Mia Wasikowska vs. Saoirse Ronan." Today I come to you with a feminist chip on my shoulder and a spark of rage in my eye, and my target is Woody Allen -- specifically his tepid time-travel fantasy, Midnight in Paris.

It's not surprising that Hollywood, the quintessential vehicle of nostalgia, is obsessed with landmarks. Jack Nicholson has only to get up in the morning and put his shoes on the right feet four shooting days out of five to get nominated for an Oscar, because Hollywood is just so gosh darn grateful an old-school movie star like him is still gracing films with his presence. Similarly, Woody Allen has only to make a movie that is not truly godawful terrible to make every film critic in the US sigh happily about how the maestro has done it again. 

Even then, by the way, he still makes several insufferable stabs at cinema for every Vicky Cristina Barcelona (or Scoop, which I actually kind of enjoyed).  

I understand the impulse to make ourselves hoarse praising the man. After all, we're talking about Woody Allen, auteur extraordinaire, Oscar-winner, redefiner of comedy, granddaddy to a thousand less-talented copy-cat narcissists. He's so prolific he probably doesn't even remember making one of my favorites of his films, the wistful and imaginative Purple Rose of Cairo. (Such small, delightful movies are often called "gems," which confuses me as gems come in all sizes; in fact, a woman I know recently received one that may weigh more than she does. But that's neither here nor there.)

Friends, a mediocrity is a mediocrity, whether it comes from Shakespeare or Dan Brown. Why do we insist on grading Woody Allen on a curve?

Click to read more ...

Yes, No, Maybe So: "Midnight in Paris"

It occured to me yesterday while writing up the Crazy Stupid Love trailer that we hadn't yet discussed the new Woody Allen trailer for Midnight in Paris. Despite the occasional Vicky Cristina Barcelona or Match Point the Woodster has been dwindling creatively for some time. Let us not speak of last year's obnoxious and unfunny Woody. So let's break this one down like we do: yes, no and maybe so.

I have to admit that that "But Paris after midnight... is Magic" beat, got me. Especially because the staccato images included Owen Wilson dancing. I am a firm believer that dancing makes most any movie better, no matter who is doing it and it also brought back warm memories of Woody's 1996 musical Everyone Says I Love You which I really loved at the time (I haven't seen it since. Does it hold up?). In fact pretty much everything in that little sequence of the trailer looked promising, though Marion Cotillard as Ideal French Woman is a bit...expected at this point. There are other French actresses you know. France churns out awesome gorgeous talented actresses with pretty much the same speed that Australia manufactures movie stars.

For all the surface excitement of the new "Woody Allen, World Traveller" film series (it kicked off with The Blondes in London Trilogy), he's still making pretty much the same movie every time: Unhappy well educated couples cheat and even the cheating doesn't make them happy. This happens whilst Woody philosophizes either through the characters or a narrator. The samey-sameyness of the filmography didn't used to be a problem when the films were as perfect or as imaginative or as funny as they once were. To be honest, I'd rather he stopped switching countries and experimented with switching genres. Lately he seems to just be doing dramedies that aren't fully dramatic or comedic. One of the reasons Match Point worked so well was that it was quite a serious darkly dramatic picture.

But I guess I am interested in seeing Owen, Rachel McAdams, Michael Sheen and especially In the Loop's Mimi Kennedy act within his universe.

The most promising aspect of the trailer is that it does not in fact, tell you the plot. It does what all trailers should do instead: set up the premise, leave said premise dangling in the air, allow audiences to wonder about What Happens.

Most of the trailer is familiar but then we get the sense that Something Happens and a P.I. is brought in but that P.I. disappears? This doesn't seem to be the same movie unless it's a red herring.

Are you a Yes, No or Maybe So?

I guess I'm a soft No based on what I see here -- and how much I actively disliked You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger -- but my vote matters less than yours. See, I religiously see Woody Allen pictures even if I don't want to. It''s kind of my personal annual thank you for him being such a crucial figure in how I came to love the movies.