A French master topped an American actress' directorial debut this weekend. Claude Lelouch's Roman de Gare (Samuel Goldwyn) opened at two theaters in Manhattan and grossed $25,500, for a very nice $12,750 per-screen average, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. The French-language thriller scored 73% positive at Rotten Tomatoes, though a number of critics had reservations about its twisty, playful nature.
Helen Hunt's comedy/drama Then She Found Me (ThinkFilm) hauled in $8,266 per-screen at nine locations. Hunt plays a teacher who must deal with an unlikely fiancee (Matthew Broderick), a volatile love interest (Colin Firth), and the unexpected appearance of her mother (Bette Midler). Ryan Stewart felt that the story is "as old as the hills," but that it was "still executed with style."
Standard Operating Procedure (Sony Classics), the latest doc by Errol Morris, has generated controversy not only because of its subject matter -- the story behind the notorious Abu Gharib prison photos -- but because Morris has admitted to paying some of the interviewees. Reviews were mostly positive (79%, according to Rotten Tomatoes). Opening at two theaters in Manhattan, the film averaged $7,450 per screen.
Two holdovers continued to perform well. Tom McCarthy's excellent The Visitor (Overture) expanded into 76 theaters nationwide and averaged $6,684 per screen in its third week of release. Stephen Walker's heartwarming music doc Young @ Heart (Fox Searchlight) expanded from 23 to 56 locations and grossed an average of $4,017 per screen.
A solid handful of indie titles vie for your attention on the DVD shelves this week. I've already written about the marketing for Joe Swanberg's Hannah Takes the Stairs, my pick of the week, but that shouldn't overshadow the intrinsic quality of the film itself. The DVD from IFC includes Thanks for the Add!, a short film by Swanberg, an audio commentary by Swanberg and actors / co-writers Greta Gerwig and Kent Osborne, behind the scenes footage, and SXSW video production diary spots.
I watched Juan Antonio Bayona's The Orphanage (pictured) with expectations set perhaps too high. I thought it would be a thrilling Spanish ghost story; instead it's a rather pallid drama about a mother and a lost son with just a smidgen of suspense and supernatural overtones. Jette Kernion had a response similar to mine, but others liked it much more, including our own Scott Weinberg, who praised it as "entirely captivating from start to finish." The DVD from Picturehouse includes three featurettes and something on the somewhat misleading marketing campaign.
Family dysfunction and elder care may not sound like sexy subjects, but Tamara Jekins "simply takes us into the story of her fascinating characters, and the integrity with which she handles it makes it ring true throughout." That was the reaction of Kim Voynar to The Savages; she was especially impressed by the performances of Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The DVD from Fox Searchlight includes an extended scene, director's snapshots, and a featurette entitled "About the Savages."
College professors rule! Well, at least the one that Richard Jenkins plays so well in Tom McCarthy's The Visitor (Overture Films). The comedy-drama expanded to 18 theaters in its second week of release and averaged $9,055 per-screen to remain in the #1 position, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. Check the film's web site to see where it will be opening in the next couple of weeks (click on "in select theaters now").
Debuting indie films did not fare so well, judging strictly by per-screen averages, but it's notable that Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Rocky Mountain Pictures), opened on more than 1,000 screens and made $2,997 per location for a total of more than $3 million for the weekend. The doc follows Ben Stein as he chases down Ferris Bueller ... oops, wrong movie! This one's about "intelligent design" in the classroom.
Opening on just one screen, Anamorph (IFC Films) grossed $3,000. Willem Dafoe stars as an NYPD detective investigating a serial killer. Critics were not kind: Anamorph scored just 28% positive at Rotten Tomatoes. David Hudson at GreenCine Daily rounds up pertinent quotes.
Two other holdovers did better as they expanded their runs. Young At Heart (Fox Searchlight), the "elderly folk chorus that sings modern rock songs" documentary, increased its theater count to 33 and averaged $4,393 per screen. Hou Hsiao-Hsien's gentle drama The Flight of the Red Balloon (IFC Films) proved its appeal beyond New York City, making $3,572 per-screen at 11 locations.
"A damn fine film with a good heart and some really excellent performances" finished atop the indie weekend box office charts. The quote is from our own Scott Weinberg's review of Tom McCarthy's The Visitor (Overture), and I agree wholeheartedly. The film earned $22,000 per-screen at four theaters, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. Richard Jenkins stars as a college professor who strikes up a friendship with an immigrant couple he finds living in his NYC apartment. It's even better -- and deeper -- than that description might sound.
An elderly chorus sings a repertoire of modern pop and rock songs in Stephen Walker's documentary Young @ Heart (Fox Searchlight); audiences responded to the tune of $13,075 per screen at four locations. Cinematical'sJames Rocchi wrote: "Even for all its flaws and failures it still succeeds in showing us friends who -- through song and art and community and, yes, love -- are doing their best to face it with everything that they've got."
David Ayer's Street Kings (Fox Searchlight) should be included, I suppose, because it's distributed by an studio specialty division known for its indie releases, though not much about the police drama screams "indie." By the per-screen numbers, it finished third, earning an average of $4,864 at each of 2,467 engagements. "As yet another tale of dirty criminals and even dirtier cops," Scott Weinberg opined, "Street Kings works well enough, albeit strictly in a 'been there, seen that' sort of way."
It's not very often that the "credits line" in a movie poster will cause you to look twice, but I was both curious and intrigued when I read that David Ayer, Kurt Wimmer and James Ellroy were collaborating on a movie called Street Kings. Ayer is a prolific screenwriter who digs cop stories (he wrote Dark Blue, Training Day, S.W.A.T., and The Fast and the Furious) and recently directed his debut effort: the seriously underrated Harsh Times. Kurt Wimmer, on the other end of the genre spectrum, is the writer / director of sci-fi flicks like Equilibrium and Ultraviolet. And James Ellroy? A very respected novelist making his screenwriting debut. (His works have spawned movies like L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia.) And weirdly enough, although Street Kings is very similiar in theme and content to Ayer's earlier works, he's not credited as a screenwriter. Just Ellroy and Wimmer.
Anyway, I thought it was pretty interesting, but that was before I spelled it all out in a large paragraph. Now I just realize it was a cheap way to kick off a review of a film I don't really have a whole lot to say about. As yet another tale of dirty criminals and even dirtier cops, Street Kings works well enough, albeit strictly in a "been there, seen that" sort of way. (Heck, if you've seen Training Day then you've already seen much of what this new film has to offer.) It's a well-constructed piece filled with colorful actors doing fine work -- but much of Street Kings offers that weird vibe that occurs when someone's in the middle of telling a joke you've already heard two or three times: The new presenter might be a fine joke-teller, but as a listener you're left with little response but to smile and nod politely.
Young @ Heart begins with a vast crowd on their feet, cheering a performance we haven't seen. The crowd is exultant, young, excited; the performers are a group of senior citizens called the Young at Heart Chorus. Their repertoire is varied; their average age is 80. Over the past several years they've toured internationally, acclaimed for their renditions of modern pop and rock songs, all under the guidance of their musical director Bob Cillman.
Directed by Stephen Walker, Young @ Heart follows the chorus through the rehearsals and gigs leading up to the chorus's new big show -- which they have just seven weeks to prepare for. And at once, Young@Heart takes all the standard-issue concerns of the touring band documentary -- creative differences, struggles with the material, preparation and publicity -- and reframes them all in a very different context. The members of Young at Heart aren't looking to become stars or even make a living with their music -- so why exactly are they doing it? And, more bluntly, are the crowds that come out to their shows and tours -- as they cover material from The Clash and Coldplay and Outkast and more -- laughing with the chorus, or at them?
Nearly a year after its international premiere at Cannes, My Brother is an Only Child (ThinkFilm) opened at the top of the indie weekend box office returns, according to Box Office Mojo. Playing at just one theater in Manhattan, the film grossed $10,500. My Brother "follows two brothers through years of Italian history, with their personal and political travails echoing down the years," Cinematical'sJames Rocchi wrote last year. "Even with it's merits as a light-but-sentimental story of family in 1960's Italy, it also reminded me of the soaring, sweeping, astonishing La Meglio Gioventù (The Best of Youth) -- and wound up completely winning me over." The film will roll out to other cities over the next three weeks, per the distributor's web site.
Immigration family tale Under the Same Moon (Fox Searchlight / The Weinstein Co.) continues to perform well, earning $5,771 per screen as it expanded to 390 theaters in its second week. Leonard Klady at Movie City News commented that the film is "playing in a mix of Hispanic, art and mainstream locations but with rare exception is working best in the former venues." Also in its second week, Love Songs (IFC), Christophe Honoré's French-language modern musical, held onto most of its audience, averaging $6,800 at two Manhattan theaters.
The big story of the weekend was the success enjoyed by Under the Same Moon (Fox Searchlight / The Weinstein Co.), which earned $8,910 per screen playing on 266 screens, according to estimates compiled by Leonard Klady at Movie City News. Our own Jette Kernion described it as "essentially an old-fashioned family melodrama." She pointed out that the film has an "overt agenda" in its message about U.S. undocumented workers, but concluded: "Despite its flaws, Under the Same Moon is an entertaining film that knows how to charm an audience."
Playing at one theater in New York and one in Los Angeles, Planet B-Boy (Elephant Eye Films) made $14,500 per screen, giving it the highest per-screen average. Benson Lee directed the documentary, "which weaves the stories of numerous crews from 18 nations vying in the Battle of the Year championship in Braunschweig, Germany," in the words of Ed Gonzalez in The Village Voice. "What most sticks is Planet B-Boy's aesthetic, which feels jocked from the school of Michael Moore."
Some movie plots are so basic that they "seem to write themselves," and in the case of the simple-yet-charming Young @ Heart, we have a documentary that pretty much writes itself. It's such a basically appealing concept -- a choir full of (very) old people spend their free time singing rock tunes for some very appreciative crowds -- that all you'd need is a guy with a camera and some sound equipment to capture the footage. And that's pretty much what Young @ Heart is: a slight but well-polished documentary about an inherently worthwhile story.
Northampton, Massachussetts is where you'll find the Young @ Heart crew singing their hearts out. Under the guidance of choir director Bob Cilman, the Y@H chorus is comprised of some seriously sprightly senior citizens. Even the ones who can't move around all that well are so passionately devoted to the group that just their participation is slightly inspiring. As the films opens, we're invited to meet some of the choir's more colorful singers, and we tag along as the crew gets ready for a big-time concert at the Academy Theater.
Analyzing the weekend box office returns, Leonard Klady of Movie City News saw "no great Oscar box office surge," though No Country for Old Men enjoyed an upward swing; based on his estimates, Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar winner The Counterfeiters(Sony Pictures Classics) topped the indie charts. Hailing from Austria, The Counterfeiters tells "one of the most interesting stories to come out of World War II," wrote Christopher Campbell, though he felt it was "not quite a great film." The Counterfeiters averaged $12,330 per-screen at the seven locations where it played.
French master Jacques Rivette's latest, The Duchess of Langeais(IFC Films) struck Ryan Stewart as similar to La Vie en Rose "in that it works just well enough to support a dynamic performance but contains too many structural oddities, fights too many directorial idiosyncracies and stifles its own momentum too much to succeed on the whole." Rivette's fans came out at both theaters where it opened, averaging $11,250 per screen, according to Box Office Mojo.
Jeff Wells is beating his drum again about Jason Reitman casting Ellen Page in the role of Juno, asserting that most high school guys -- even the dorkerific Michael Cera -- wouldn't find her attractive, much less want to have sex with her. Wells first brought this up back in December, calling Page "great but miscast," and got ripped a new one by many of his readers for it, but maybe he just likes the abuse ... or stirring up a little controversy.
Having just interviewed a pack of highschoolers for their Oscar predictions (more on that later) and hearing what they have to say about Juno, the film, and Ellen Page as Juno, the character, I think Wells must be smoking something, or else he's just been living out there in La-La Land for way too long. If it's believable that women would find Seth Rogen's character in Knocked Up sexually attractive, it's certainly plausible that high school guys would be hot for a smart girl like Juno, even if she's not a blond cheerleader with big boobs. What do you folks think? Do guys go for the smart, sassy, somewhat dorky chicks, even if they're petite and perky rather than Hollywood-hot (whatever that is)? Discuss away ...
So while I seriously doubt that most people were actually going to confuse the crime drama, The Night Watchman with Zack Snyder's Watchmen at the box office, the similarity in titles probably wasn't helping much in the marketing department. It looks like someone at Fox Searchlight thought the same thing and Slashfilm is now reporting that the studio has decided it was time for a name change. The title of James Ellroy's The Night Watchman will now be known as Street Kings. Frankly, neither of these titles are 'rocking my world,' but at least now it's going to clear up a lot of confusion.
Street Kings stars Keanu Reeves as Tom Ludlow; an LA cop who has recently lost his wife. With his life already in shambles, it gets even worse when he is framed for a murder and his abandoned by his fellow boys in blue. Ellroy wrote the script along with John Ridley (U Turn and Three Kings) and David Ayer (writer for Training Day) is at the helm. The cast also includes Forest Whitaker as Reeves' supervisor, Amaury Nolasco (Prison Break) and TV's infamous Dr. House, better known as Hugh Laurie, will play another cop on the force.
Filming began back in July and we got our first look at Reeves in his 'blues' when Erik brought us over 20 photos of the actor hard at work on the set. The flick is now in post production, so I guess Fox figured that it was now or never if they were planning on a change -- and personally I think they made the right decision. Street Kings arrives in theaters this spring.
A lot of my colleagues seem to bepractically empurpled lately over the fact that Juno is being feted as not merely a success, but an indie/crossover success. This seems like a moot argument to me -- more on that in a second -- but first I will say that whether you think it is or isn't, you shouldn't overstep and give the PR machine too much credit here. Any studio shingle PR team worth its salt obviously has a 'media manipulation/other shenanigans' Trapper Keeper ready to be opened at a moment's notice if the clouds part and a movie actually connects with the public, but that's the point -- it has to connect first. Juno is a quadrant pimp and Once isn't -- that's why EW isn't piling on the plaudits for Once, even though it's currently enjoying 98 percent positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. If your response to this is "Um, yeah, I'm sure Once would love to have Fox Searchlight's Scrooge McDuck-swimming pool of money to buy some ads with" I would say, first, it does, and second, I'm increasingly of the opinion that most of that money is wasted on an ad-saturated public anyway.
All the marketing in the world and a bevy of A-list stars couldn't push a big movie like The Golden Compass even to $70 million, nor keep a crazy-hyped film like Cloverfield from swan-diving in its second weekend, so Juno clearly has legs, which is a rare commodity these days for any film, big or small. And to suggest that Juno's success rests on its popularity with teens, as some have, is wishful thinking. The scary reality is that today's 16 year-olds would probably like to see Step Up 2 in the Oscar race, not a Jason Reitman movie.
On a quiet weekend for new indie films, several stories merit attention. Let's begin with Caramel, a film from Lebanon that our own Kim Voynar quite enjoyed, calling the comedy/drama set in and around a Beirut beauty salon "funny, heartwarming, and sensitive." Distributor Roadside Attractions opened the picture at 12 locations, where it earned a tidy $6,210 per screen, according to estimates compiled by Leonard Klady at Movie City News. That was tops among new limited releases.
Kim also recommended Eric Byler's Tre, a relationship drama. I haven't seen Byler's latest, but I agree with Kim that he's a very talented filmmaker; she says that he's "at the top of his game" with Tre. Playing on just two screens in Los Angeles, the film grossed $1,800 at each for distributor Cinema Libre. I'm hoping more people will get to see it as it opens in other cities in the coming weeks. The official site has a trailer and more information on future engagements in Chicago and San Francisco.
U2 3D got thoroughly dusted by the Hannah Montana phenomenon, but I would imagine there was no crossover in the audiences. And earnings of $12,620 per screen at 61 engagements is nothing to sneeze at -- that's good enough for second place in the overall per-screen standings, though far behind Hannah's $43,550 per-screen juggernaut. Have two G-rated 3D concert documentaries ever been 1-2 like that before? I think not!
Speaking of face-offs, Junocontinued its remarkable run, dropping just 28% in its ninth week of release while playing on 2,475 screens. Its cumulative total is $110 million for distributor Fox Searchlight. Meanwhile, IFC Films expanded Romanian abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days into 17 theaters where it made $7,176 per engagement, according to Box Office Mojo.
Every film festival, there are so many films from which to choose that I inevitably miss seeing something I really want to see, and this year at Sundance was no exception. One of the films I kept hearing positive buzz on, both from other critics and on the shuttles from fest-goers, was Young@Heart.
The doc chronicles a chorus of senior citizens who, since 1982, have been entertaining audiences with their unique renditions of rock songs -- and this isn't your granny's music. These seniors learn and perform songs from The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" to Sonic Youth, to James Brown.
A French master topped an American actress' directorial debut this weekend. Claude Lelouch's Roman de Gare (Samuel Goldwyn) opened at two theaters in Manhattan and grossed $25,500, for a very nice $12,750 per-screen average, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. The French-language thriller scored 73% positive at Rotten Tomatoes, though a number of critics had reservations about its twisty, playful nature.
A solid handful of indie titles vie for your attention on the DVD shelves this week. I've 
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Full 'G.I. Joe' Cast Photos!
