Weekend Box Office (03/20/11): Adult genre fare cannibalize each other as Limitless, Lincoln Lawyer and Paul all open 'okay'.

I often complain about the lack of big-studio adult genre pictures while pointing out that the few such entries generally do well due to the paucity of such things in the marketplace. Alas, this weekend was a comparative embarrassment of riches, with three genre pictures, all starring adults, two rated R, and none costing more than $40 million. Ironically, all three films did moderately well, but at least two of them would likely have done even better without direct demo competition. The number one film of the weekend was Limitless. The Bradley Cooper/Robert De Niro thriller grossed $19 million, and proving a major win for the struggling Relatively. This was a real test of Bradley Cooper's star power and he delivered. The film benefited from an easily-explained high-concept (a pill that makes you the smartest man on Earth). The film played 52% female and 60% over-25. Since the relatively-well reviewed picture cost just $27 million, this is an easy win for everyone involved.

Weekend Box Office (03/13/11): Battle: Los Angeles hits hard, Red Riding Hood lands softly, while Disney's Mars Needs Moms crashes.

As expected, the heavily-hyped Battle: Los Angeles (teaser/review) topped the box office this weekend, grossing an estimated $35.7 million. If that number holds, it will be the twelfth-biggest March opening in history, and a rock-solid start for a would-be tentpole that cost (depending on who you asked) $70 or $100 million. There was talk that the picture would break out and perhaps reach $50-60 million, but that was frankly silly. We've been spoiled the last few years, with massive March openings like 300 ($70 million), Watchmen ($55 million), and the astonishingly-huge Alice in Wonderland ($116 million). But generally speaking, March releases that aren't animated don't reach $35 million. We didn't have a single live-action $35 million opener in March until 2005 (The Ring Two), and there have been only five others since then prior to this weekend (the three above examples, plus Wild Hogs at $39 million, 10,000 BC at $35 million), so getting anywhere close to $40 million in the third month of the year has to be considered a win, especially without any kind of 3D or IMAX advantage.

Review: Red Riding Hood (2011)

Red Riding Hood
2011
100 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Catherine Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood is a picture that works in spite of itself. Much of the acting is overly formal and stilted, the film looks claustrophobic and stage bound, and the narrative flirts with societal relevance but discards it at every opportunity. But the movie has its pulpy charms and a terrifically entertaining star-turn by Gary Oldman. It is not high art, and it suffers from a PG-13 that dampens the grisly violence and periodic sexuality, but it’s rarely boring and often genuinely amusing.

Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood (with Amanda Seyfried) gets a terrible second trailer, with a stunningly stupid musical choice.

On one level, this second look at Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood is a pretty generic trailer, a plot-centric piece that basically gives away the majority of the film in chronological order. It also achieves the impossible, as it makes Gary Oldman boring, as his endless narration explicitly spells out the plot of the film in bland generalities. Two trailers in, and the film doesn't feel the least bit original or inspired behind the all-star cast and a hope for some of the self-depreciating humor that made Twilight so much more fun than its morose sequels. Sleepy Hollow had the visual brilliance of a re-energized Tim Burton, the kooky lead performance of Johnny Depp (back when that was still a bit fresh), and a cavalcade of British all-stars. The Wolfman at least had the promise of grown-up horror fare for adults with adult actors at the helm. Both prior films also had the allure of R-rated violence and gore. The film comes out in just under two months, so we'll see as always.

Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood (with Amanda Seyfried) gets a visually dynamic, but needlessly wordy poster.

I rather liked the first moody, low-key poster for this Twilight by way of Sleepy Hallow variation on Little Red Riding Hood. So while this new poster is also visually appealing, and it gives a full cast roll call (always a plus in my book), I must acknowledge that it is a poster for the unthinking masses. It has a contrived image of Amanda Seyfried running for her life, with about a paragraph worth of needless text to go with it (even more than the double-tagline first poster). I much prefer the first tagline, which merely read 'Who's afraid?'. As it is, the film actually test-screened in Woodland Hills on Sunday, so if anyone wants to chime in, feel free. This one comes out March 11th, meaning that two of the more interesting movies of the spring, Red Riding Hood and Battle: Los Angeles, open on the same day. Nice move...

Scott Mendelson

Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood (with Amanda Seyfried) gets an underwhelming trailer and a snazzy poster.

While most pundits have razzed on this trailer for its similarities to the first Twilight film, the immediate comparison I got was Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. It's an ages-old fairy-tale, redone as an adult horror story with a bit of gothic romance thrown in. Alas, Catherine Hardwicke is no Tim Burton when it comes to visuals, and the initial tease lacks the knowing humor that made the Johnny Depp vehicle such a kick and a half. Still, the conventional sell is not necessarily the movie. Hardwicke has lined up an impressive cast (Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Shiloh Fernandez, Virginia Madsen, Lukas Haas, Julie Christie and Billy Burke) and even said first Twilight film had a gentle self-mockery that the sequels lacked. I do like the sparse and moody poster, along with the low-key tagline 'Who's afraid?'. Click on the poster to enlarge. This one comes out March 11th, 2011.

Scott Mendelson