In the opening scenes of “Smashed,” Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Kate Hannah immediately reveals herself to be a full-fledged alcoholic. She wakes up hungover, swigs beer in the shower, and sneaks a flew sips from her flask before walking into work… as an elementary school teacher. In the middle of class, Kate vomits, causing a student […]
If it weren’t for the ‘Scope cinematography, one could easily mistake “Alex Cross” for a rejected CBS pilot. Consider the main characters: a psychologist/homicide detective protagonist who has the ability to read body language with near-perfect accuracy, a partner who loves him like a brother, a heinously violent villain whose motivations aren’t made clear until
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As expected, “Paranormal Activity 4” earned the top spot at the domestic box office this weekend, but it did so without grossing anywhere near as much as the previous couple installments. #4’s $30.2m opening was down 42.5 percent from #3’s $52.6m and down 25.8 percent from #2’s $40.7m. Perhaps people heeded the advice of our
Weekend Box Office: “Paranormal Activity 4” tops unremarkable frame Read More »
Hello and welcome back to Box Office Beat, the column in which I predict the upcoming weekend’s box office grosses. After last weekend’s mammoth load of six new wide releases, which resulted in a lot of work for me, I’m incredibly glad that there are only two this time around. One is fairly easy to
Box Office Beat: Weekend of October 19 Read More »
Lee Daniels’ “Precious” was a messy, vaguely impressionistic, swing-for-the-fences coming-of-age film that, against the odds, struck a chord with highbrow awards voters, at least in part due to the perceived social importance of its 1980s Harlem setting and the public support of Oprah Winfrey. Now, Daniels is back with an equally daring work–“The Paperboy”–that will
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“Taken 2,” the ‘Liam Neeson is still a badass, in case you were wondering’-billed sequel, once again topped the North American box office chart this weekend, adding $22.5 million to the till for an $86.8m domestic cume. The revenge pic should easily surpass $100m by the end of next weekend. It probably won’t hit the
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Greeting moviegoers less than two years after the release of the first film in the trilogy, “Atlas Shrugged: Part II – The Strike” comes equipped with a brand new director, cast, and writing team. Unfortunately, this complete creative overhaul results in little improvement over the lumbering, TV-grade original, which took Ayn Rand’s infamous 1957 literary
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Despite the jarring locational shift from the streets of present-day Boston to those of 1980 Tehran, Ben Affleck’s “Argo” is very similar to his previous effort, “The Town.” As he did in that robbery thriller, Affleck here takes a straightforward heist plot and transforms it into a respectable piece of entertainment by distinctly evoking the
Hello and welcome back to Box Office Beat, the column in which I predict the upcoming weekend’s box office grosses. After “Taken 2” dominated last weekend, with nearly $50 million in domestic sales, it’s unlikely that we’ll see another blockbuster-sized opening this weekend, especially with six wide openers vying for ticket-buyers’ money. However, the wealth
Box Office Beat: Weekend of October 12 Read More »
Whenever a film critic writes that a movie “doesn’t know what it wants to be,” the oft-used line is invariably the thesis of an overwhelmingly negative review. The reason for this is obvious: If a filmmaker’s intentions are unclear, then their work can’t adequately convey a message — the fundamental act of storytelling. But there
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