Weekend Box Office (05/01/11): Fast Five opens huge, everything else crashes.

Kicking off summer 2011 a little earlier than usual, Fast Five (review) raced into the record books with a massive $86.1 million opening weekend take. The film has the biggest opening weekend of 2011 (opening with more than the second and third biggest combined), the largest Fri-Sun take in Universal history (beating The Lost World: Jurassic Park's $72.3 million opening), the biggest April opening (beating Fast and Furious's $71 million opening two years ago), and easily clinching the record for the biggest opening weekend for a fifth film in a franchise. It bested the $80 million three-day take of Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones and the $77 million three-day take of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but those two films (as well as The Lost World) opened as parts of a four or five day weekend. With all the whining about 'slumps', I've constantly argued that it was merely a case of smaller, cheaper movies playing to smaller crowds. Well a major movie was unleashed this weekend and audiences responded accordingly. An unexpectedly terrific mass-market entertainment just opened unexpectedly well, which is good news all around. Well, Marvel and Paramount probably aren't too thrilled. This may be a case of the summer kick-off film overshadowing the bigger May giants coming around the corner (I wrote about this phenomenon back in 2008), so Thor (which has already grossed $93 million overseas) is now in a pickle for next weekend, as it just went from the summer kick-off film to the often-cursed second-out-of-the gate (it thought it was Iron Man, but now it may be Speed Racer).

Review: Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (2011)

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night
2011
107 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Unlike some critics, I take no joy on trashing the work of other people. A bad film is not an invitation to try to come up with the cleverest or snarkiest way to verbally condemn it. As my readers hopefully notice, I do try to find something nice to say even about the worst films, and I usually can succeed. And it is one thing to openly tear apart the failures of a $150 million Hollywood product and/or the belabored attempts of a once-fine filmmaker gone to pot. But it is another to openly tear into a small picture that may or may not be a labor of love. So with sincere apologies to all involved, it should be noted that Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is one of the worst films I have ever seen in a theater.