“Life of Pi” is based on a beloved, bestselling novel, so the process of adapting it for the screen clearly came with a great deal of pressure to satisfy the existing fan-base by following the text to a tee. But most viewers who have no attachment to Yan Martel’s 2001 book will wish that director […]
Review: “Life of Pi” Read More »
Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” flooded megaplexes this weekend in a bevy of formats, from 2-D to 3-D to High Frame Rate 3-D to IMAX 3-D to IMAX High Frame Rate 3-D to… ah, you can figure out the other potential permutations on your own. Anyhow, it claimed the top spot at the
Weekend Box Office: “Hobbit” an expected victor Read More »
Hello and welcome back to Box Office Beat, the column in which I predict the upcoming weekend’s box office grosses. Once again, there is only one new wide release, but this time, it’s a big one. Let’s crunch some numbers… “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” the first part of Peter Jackson’s trilogy based on J.R.R.
Box Office Beat: Weekend of December 14 Read More »
Another calm weekend at the box office before the Christmas madness sets in. “Skyfall” took back the top slot from “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2,” which slid to third place. The DreamWorks animated film “Rise of the Guardians” rose to second. The only newcomer was the FilmDistrict dump “Playing for Keeps,” which
Weekend Box Office: “Skyfall” reclaims lead Read More »
Hello and welcome back to Box Office Beat, the column in which I predict the upcoming weekend’s box office results. It’s going to be a very short piece this time, because there is only one new wide release and it’s destined to bomb. (Though, you should note that the terrific cop drama “End of Watch”
Box Office Beat: Weekend of December 7 Read More »
Perhaps the biggest problem with Sacha Gervasi’s “Hitchcock” is its title, which suggests that the film is something more ambitious and substantive than it actually is. The singular surname suggests a definitive biopic–in the tradition of “Nixon,” “Patton,” “Chaplin,” and so on–full of insights about the life and career of the man who many consider
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Andrew Dominik’s “Killing Them Softly” is a gangster film that presents the world of the Mob as a microcosm of the 2008 economic collapse that sent the United States into a tailspin. Its characters inhabit an underworld that resembles the mainstream in that there’s an economy, laws to regulate it, and men to enforce the rules. As
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It wasn’t entirely unexpected that “Killing Them Softly” with Brad Pitt opened poorly at the box office (I predicted the gross within a half a million dollars in this week’s Box Office Beat column), but any time a major movie star’s film tanks in wide release, it’s news. “Killing Them Softly” raked in a measly
Weekend Box Office: Pitt and Dominik’s “Killing” opens softly Read More »
The second most memorable image in Al Gore’s popular global warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”–bested only by the former Vice President operating a mechanical lift in order to stand at the top of a big-screen line-graph demonstrating the exponential growth of CO2 in the atmosphere–was the slide in his presentation that showed the dramatic receding
Review: “Chasing Ice” Read More »
Hello and welcome back to Box Office Beat, the column in which I predict the upcoming weekend’s box office grosses. It has been awhile, as I decided to forgo the column last week due to the fact that all the new films opened on Wednesday, making the Friday through Sunday figures pretty foreseeable. But I’m
Box Office Beat: Weekend of November 30 Read More »
