In recent years, the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film has come to stand for not much more than a fair level of craftsmanship and a comfortable pitch of moral predicament (The Secret In Their Eyes, Departures, and The Counterfeiters are the most recent undistinguished winners).  This year’s winner, Susanne Bier’s IN A BETTER WORLD, […]

  MACHINE GUN PREACHER:  Watch It At Home –  A True Story Rings False   MACHINE GUN PREACHER simply isn’t good enough for the story it wants to tell. And the story, a true one, is remarkable:  Sam Childers (played by Gerard Butler in the film) was a drug addict and violent criminal who found […]

    SHERLOCK HOLMES:  GAME OF SHADOWS:  Watch It At Home – Far Too Elementary   We have to come to terms with the fact that an entire generation may recognize the name Sherlock Holmes not as the template for brilliant amateur crime-solving, but as a moderately intelligent action-comedy hero who dresses up in funny […]

  21 JUMP STREET:  Watch It At Home – High School Meta-Bromance   The meta-ization of contemporary comedy marches on:  Community, of course, is a virtual meta-kingdom, but Happy Endings makes Friends jokes, this week’s 30 Rock undercut what appeared to be its own sentimental ending with jokes poking at viewers who might like sentimental […]

  THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN will begin spinning its midnight webs in just a few hours, so let’s take a quick look at its competition in the midnight screening record books. The Sam Raimi 2002-07 Spider-Man trilogy were successful at midnight, but with $8-10M grosses that have long since been passed. All of the current top […]

Weekend #31 of 2012 looks more like a late August weekend: two films opening with very little excitement.  The top 12 films this weekend should total $116 million, down significantly from last year’s comparable weekend, which featured the surprisingly successful (and good) Rise of the Planet of the Apes.  Total Recall, however, feels like it […]

The big gainers overseas this week were The Expendables 2 (up $36 million to $102 million), The Dark Knight Rises (up another $29 million to $603 million overseas to date), Brave (up $17 million) and Step Up Revolution (up $11 million).  Not reporting yet are Bourne Legacy and Ice Age: Continental Drift. The Words will not be a player overseas, but the other opener this weekend, The Cold […]

The winning streak is over after four straight up weekends.  Weekend #43 will just about match the multi-year average for this weekend and actually under-perform the same weekend last year.  None of the openers this weekend will make an impact on the box office beyond next week, while Argo continues to quietly pack them in […]