ACT OF VALOR:  Watch It At Home –  Fast Forward When They’re Not Shooting   If there were a genuine national military crisis, and a small group of expert soldiers were needed to protect the interests of the country, would you want George Clooney or Brad Pitt behind the triggers of those […]

Updated international box office chart:

> An eclectic trio of films open wide this weekend.  Cowboys & Aliens (the ultimate genre mash-up) should win the weekend with $41.5 million.  Captain America should drop to second place, while The Smurfs should battle with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 for third place.  Crazy, Stupid, Love should open quietly in fifth […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Fox had a great week worldwide last week ($167 million worldwide), partly from the domestic release of Gone Girl this weekend but also from strong overseas returns for The Maze Runner.  Fox is now over $4 billion for the year worldwide, the #1 Hollywood studio by far, and saddled with surprisingly few duds on its […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #25 of 2014 looks like $143 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, very close to yesterday’s estimate for the weekend ($144 million) and now 12% below the norm for this weekend and a big 39% below the same very successful weekend last year.   Opening at 2,225 […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2017 film slates by studio.   YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2017 to date is now +5% above last year and now +15% above the average for this point the past four years ($1.543 billion).  Over the same period, Hollywood films have […]

  (Almost) everything shot up at the boxoffice on New Year’s Day, but one zoomed more than the rest:  DJANGO UNCHAINED (Weinstein/Sony) challenged THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Warners/MGM) for the daily lead–falling short by only $227K–and rose a mighty 79% from Monday to $9.2M, for a total to date of $77.8M.  That bodes well […]

> Watch It At Home; A circus story that’s not the greatest show in the multiplex. Sometimes even a small moment in a movie can typify how it’s gone wrong.  There’s a scene fairly early in WATER FOR ELEPHANTS–it’s not a major plot point, for those wary of spoilers–where an animal loved by the circus […]