Weekend Box Office (09-23-12): Four new releases cannibalize each other as The Master whiffs in wide release and Importance of Being A Wallflower explodes.

As always, for background and historical context for all the weekend's new movies, check out John Gosling's obscenely detailed weekend preview HERE.

It wasn't so much a 'something for everyone' weekend as it was 'multiple things for the same general audience' as four wide releases aimed at thrill-hungry moviegoers and/or adults debuted on the same day, creating a clear case of mutually assured destruction.  The top three movies are basically tied, but as always rank is irrelevant next to the actual hard numbers (why rank doesn't matter).  For the moment, the top debut of the weekend may be End of Watch, a 'found footage'-style LA cop drama, parlayed strong reviews into a solid $13 million opening, which is the second-biggest debut for Open Roads outside of The Grey ($20 million) back in January.  The $7 million film (purchased for $2 million) had a marketing and distribution cost of around $20 million, so even a $40 million final total will get this film in the black before home video.  It also proves that Jake Gyllenhaal  is a decent mid-range opener.  He's useful when the film you're selling doesn't cost $200 million ala Prince of Persia.  End of Watch is yet another installment in writer David Ayers's 'two volatile men in a car' sub-genre, which includes the likes of The Fast and the Furious, Training Day and Harsh Times (an underrated Christian Bale vehicle which he also directed).  He wrote but did not direct the the LA Riots-set cop melodrama Dark Blue while directing but not writing the frankly mediocre Keanu Reeves cop melodrama Street Kings.  Among films he directed, End of Watch should easily top the $26 million gross of Street Kings while it will be fifth (out of seven) if it can merely surpass the $9 million gross of Kurt Russell's Dark Blue. Fourth place is the $76 million-grossing Training Day, which is too far a bridge to cross at this point.

John Gosling previews the week's new releases (09-21-12)

The House at the End of the Street is the new film from director Mark Tonderai, who made his debut with the 2009 thriller, Hush. The idea for the film actually originated from a short story written by Jonathan Mostow (director of Terminator: Rise of the Machines), which was then expanded for the screen by David Loucka. It sees recently divorced mother Sarah and her teenage daughter, Elissa, move into a new place, unaware that the house next door was witness to a double murder in which a young girl killed her parents while they slept. After the crime was committed, the girl vanished, leaving her brother, Ryan, as the only survivor. Elissa and Ryan (who still resides in the neighboring house) form a relationship but it soon becomes apparent that the evil that was present in the house at the end of the street may still be there. Elisabeth Shue takes on the maternal role of Sarah, with Jennifer Lawrence as Elissa. 

2011 year-end wrap-up part II: The Overrated.

 This is the second of several year-end wrap essays detailing the year in film.  This time, we're dealing with 'overrated' films.  Here is the hardest one to write, merely because it's simply a list pointing out why ten films you all loved are actually either not-that-great or actually pretty terrible.  Most are what I would consider 'bad movies' that are being hailed elsewhere as greats, while a few are merely mediocre movies that are inexplicably being given a critical pass in most circles.  Again, if you've been reading me this year you'll probably be able to guess a few of these.  As always, these will be in alphabetical order. 

Review: Source Code (2011)

Source Code
2011
96 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

This won't be a terribly long review. I went into writer Ben Ripley and director Duncan Jones's Source Code relatively blind, and whenever I'm lucky enough to do that I try to give the readers the same courtesy. And since most of my issues with the film involve specific plot elements, there's only so much dancing around the edges I can do. The film wins points for constructing some original ideas and creating a thoughtful and compelling thriller. But it loses points by creating a narrative where much of the middle hour is a waiting game. And it loses even more points by arbitrarily changing the rules and wrecking its own logic in order to end the film on a happier note than it otherwise would.

Weekend Box Office (11/28/10): Tangled and Harry Potter 7 face off over crowded Thanksgiving. Burlesque, Faster, Love and Other Drugs open soft.

Like a combination of Thanksgiving holidays past, it was a combination of Harry Potter holding down the fort against all newcomers, while a Disney animated property broke out of the gate. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part I still won the three-day and five-day weekend derby, but Disney's Tangled had a smashing debut that set a record for a three-day opening weekend for a standard Disney cartoon (IE - not Pixar). The Disney fairy-tale scored $48.7 million over the Fri-Sun portion of the weekend and amassed a whopping $68.7 million since opening on Wednesday. Inflation and 3D price-bump aside, this best the $42 million opening of The Lion King way back in summer 1994 (which was one of the top-five opening weekends ever at the time). It's also the second-largest Thanksgiving opening weekend in history, behind the $80 million five-day and $59 million three-day opening weekend of Toy Story 2 back in 1999 (that $57 million debut was the third-biggest ever at the time). The lesson here is a simple one: Disney REALLY should have opened The Princess and the Frog in wide release over Thanksgiving last year.