“Taken 2,” the wham-bam action sequel starring Liam Neeson as an ex-C.I.A. agent who must once again save his family from kidnappers, opened with an incredibly strong $50 million this weekend, doubling its predecessor’s first weekend gross. Sweetening the deal: the film made an additional $67m in foreign markets, for a worldwide total of $117m, […]
Weekend Box Office: “Taken 2” impresses Read More »
Hello and welcome back to Box Office Beat, the column in which I predict the upcoming weekend’s box office grosses. Last weekend, the animated family comedy “Hotel Transylvania” and the sci-fi allegory “Looper” opened to unexpectedly high numbers, and this weekend’s new wide releases–“Taken 2,” “Frankenweenie,” and “Pitch Perfect”–should keep the momentum high. Let’s crunch
Box Office Beat: Weekend of October 5 Read More »
As a Southern California resident, I’ve long considered attending the annual Newport Beach Film Festival, but after watching “General Education,” which earned writer/director Tom Morris the “Breakthrough Filmmaker Award” at this year’s event, I think I can safely put that thought to bed. Any organization that would bestow such an honor upon this amateurish production,
Blu-Ray Review: “General Education” Read More »
After many straight weekends of disappointments at the domestic box office, Hollywood finally got to jump for joy again… well, at least Sony, which released both the #1 and #2 grossing movies, did. Those movies were the animated family comedy “Hotel Transylvania” and the high-concept sci-fi film “Looper,” which sold an estimated $43 million and
Weekend Box Office: “Hotel Transylvania” and “Looper” exceed expectations Read More »
“Hotel Transylvania,” the latest piece of CGI animation to be pumped out of a studio that isn’t Pixar, is a so-called family film that will not appeal to any member of the family: adults will be tortured by the unfunny humor and plain-looking animation and children will just want to go home and watch something
Review: “Hotel Transylvania” Read More »
Hello and welcome back to Box Office Beat, the column in which I predict the upcoming weekend’s box office grosses. I may not have been successful across the board last weekend, but I was one of the few prognosticators to correctly predict that “End of Watch” would outperform expectations by a good margin and that
Box Office Beat: Weekend of September 28 Read More »
Paul Thomas Anderson began his career with the story of an older social outcast taking on a younger one as his protégé in 1996’s “Hard Eight,” and now, 16 years later and regarded by many as the leading American filmmaker of his generation, he has returned to the same scenario in “The Master.” Once again,
Review: “The Master” Read More »
The 64th annual Emmy Awards were held last night in Los Angeles and, as expected, the big winners in the major categories were Showtime’s newcomer drama “Homeland” and ABC’s beloved returning comedy “Modern Family.” If you didn’t catch the show–and hopefully you didn’t, as it was a complete and utter snooze, with the exception of
List of 2012 Emmy winners Read More »
As I predicted in this week’s Box Office Beat, Open Road’s cop film “End of Watch” did much better than most prognosticators expected, with receipts of $13m, and took the top slot on the chart for the weekend. It technically tied for first with Relativity’s horror-film-in-marketing-only (as our Timothy Semenza called it), “House at the
Weekend Box Office: “End of Watch” takes #1 Read More »
The bulk of films about white, upper-middle-class, suburban malaise in America–most notably Sam Mendes’ “American Beauty”–are paradoxical in that they explore internalized suffering through externalized, emotive storytelling, wherein even a blank stare comes charged with the assumption of dramatic suffering taking place underneath it. This is a form borrowed from the Douglas Sirk melodramas of
Review: “Hello I Must Be Going” Read More »
