On Homevideo and VOD:  Still Not Worth Seeing. James L Brooks is legendarily responsible for some of the great comedies and comedy-dramas of his generation, with a record that stretches from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” to “The Simpsons” on TV, and Terms of Endearmentto Broadcast News in film. Recently, though, he’s stumbled as a […]

    FRIGHT NIGHT – Watch It At Home:  At Least Farrell Had Fun   The new remake of Tom Holland’s 1985 FRIGHT NIGHT has a great set of credentials.  Craig Gillespie, the director, was behind the well-regarded indie Lars and the Real Girl, and has since been house director of United States of Tara […]

  HUGO:  Worth A Ticket – If Only For the Visual Splendors   Paramount doesn’t have much choice but to market Martin Scorsese’s HUGO as a family movie:  it’s got a PG rating, a young boy and girl as the hero and heroine, a children’s book (“The Invention of Hugo Cabret” by Brian Selznick) as […]

      WANDERLUST:  Watch It At Home – Hippy Jokes Thawed Out From 1966   The new WANDERLUST demonstrates the strengths and limitations of amiability in movies.  Its stars, Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd, have made very profitable careers out of being professionally likable.  Unlike, say, Tom Hanks, who also began his career in […]

  OPENINGS:  BRAVE (Pixar/Disney) opened right in the Pixar range at $66.7M.  That’s better than WALL-E ($63.1M), not quite as good as Up ($68.1M).  Those 2 movies ended up with $224M and $293M, respectively, so the magnitude of Brave‘s success has yet to be determined.  The film is in only 10 overseas territories, where it grossed $13.5M for […]

    The midweek boxoffice path of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES has been oddly up and down.  Compared to the trajectory of The Dark Knight, it’s had a worse Monday, a better Tuesday, a worse Wednesday, and now a better Thursday, as Rises took in an additional $13.2M yesterday for a 7-day total of $225M.  Rises […]

Like last week, Saturday was somewhat stronger than anticipated yesterday — the weekend now looks like $84 million instead of $81 million for the top 12 films.   The Possession and Lawless both look like they will be about one million dollars higher for the Friday-Sunday portion of the long weekend.  Oogieloves and the BIG […]

Updated tracking of overseas box office.  Taken 2 is really starting to pick up steam overseas (up $65 million overseas since last week’s report), while Argo and Sinister open this weekend in the middle of the worldwide pack (with limited overseas prospects).