Weekend Box Office (01/30/11): The Rite tops, The Mechanic opens well, and Oscar nominees continue to soar.

While there were two major openers over the weekend and both of them opened within expectations, the real news was the performance of the various Oscar nominees that were in a position to capitalize on last week's nominations. Generally speaking, the news was good all around. Topping the weekend was The Rite, as the heavily-advertised religious thriller opened with $15 million. As far as religious horror pictures go, it pales to the $30 million scored by The Exorcism of Emily Rose in 2005, the $19 million earned by The Exorcist: The Beginning in 2004, the $20 million earned in the opening jaunt of The Last Exorcism several months ago (a surprisingly terrific little movie, by the way), and even the $19 million opening weekend of Stigmata from way back in September 1999. Still, The Rite had less overtly horror-ific moments to highlight in the ad campaign, as it mainly had a few fleeting shots of supernatural terror plus Anthony Hopkins to sell. The $35 million Warner Bros/New Line Cinema release will do just fine in the long run, and the film (for what it's worth) is Anthony Hopkins's biggest opening weekend for a top-billed star vehicle where he doesn't play Hannibal Lecter.

The Best Picture nominees: doing the box office math.

By Oscar night, at least five of the ten Best Picture nominees will have crossed $100 million, with The Fighter possibly being the sixth. Ironically, much of The Social Network's momentum was based on how much it had made ($95 million) and how that gross for a purely character-driven drama was a testiment to how well it connected to the public. What will the argument be when it enters Oscar night as the fourth or fifth lowest-grossing nominee in the pack? The ten-nominee thing is new enough to affect the math, and The Hurt Locker was a fluke, as the lowest-grossing Best Picture winner in modern history (had Avatar not been set up by the media as the Goliath of the nominees, The Hurt Locker could not have so easily slid in as the proverbial David). Generally speaking, one of the two highest-grossing nominees amongst the traditional five nominees ends up winning.

Random commentary/analysis on the Oscar nominations.

Is Chris Nolan the new Steven Spielberg? Inception received eight nominations, including Best Picture, but Nolan failed to receive a directing nod this morning. That is arguably the biggest surprise in the otherwise predictable batch of Oscar nominations today. Even as someone who doesn't think it was the greatest genre entry of all-time, it IS a director's picture through-and-through. Of course, since we now have ten Best Picture nominees and only five Best Director slots, there are arguably five other directors who might be a little annoyed this morning. I'm personally saddened (as much as one can be 'saddened' by stuff like this) by the omission of Debra Granik for her direction of Best Picture nominee Winter's Bone. I know we all like the Coen Brothers, but True Grit is a pretty normal western. If True Grit is Oscar-worthy, then so was 3:10 to Yuma and Open Range. There will be much handwringing over Lisa Cholodenko not getting a Best Director nomination for The Kids Are All Right. But since I kinda hate the film, I'm not too personally annoyed by the omission. At least Mark Ruffalo pulled out a Best Supporting Actor nod out of the deal, since he was the best thing about the film (of course, Ruffalo is usually the best thing about every film he's in).

Rooney Mara as Elizabeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

It's no secret that I think the original Millennium Trilogy is vastly overrated, and basically a bit of (literally, it appears) made-for-TV hokum that was elevated to masterpiece status by subtitles, extra kinkiness, and a desperate desire for heroines a bit outside the mainstream. And it's also no secret that I think David Fincher's The Social Network is the most overrated film of 2010. So it is with cautious optimism at best that I await Fincher's adaptation of the first film in the series, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Still, for those more interested than I, here's your first official look at Rooney Mara as the title character. It certainly is a striking transformation, but that's part of the fun of playing a part like this.

Scott Mendelson

2010 in Review: The Overrated.

Let us begin our look back at the year in film with a token acknowledgement of ten films whose reputations did not proceed them. For the record, not all of the films below are bad pictures. But they all generated critical and/or audience esteem that they perhaps did not entirely earn. There is nothing wrong with overpraising a good film. It often emanates from a hunger for quality that often causes we the critics to look at a merely solid and/or competent piece of cinema and hail it as a groundbreaking work of art. The following are in alphabetical order.

The Ghost Writer
The release of this film timed so conveniently with the arrest of director Roman Polanski that the reception of this film seemed to fall into two categories: 'a triumphant thriller from a master artist' and/or 'the new movie by that kiddie-rapist'. Truth be told, the film is a well acted and genuinely old-fashioned would-be thriller. But far too much time is spent on the dull romance between Ewan McGregor and Olivia Williams, at the expense of Pierce Brosnan's terrific turn as 'not Tony Blair'. Furthermore, the climactic revelations are not bone-chilling, but rather silly and comforting. Like most conspiracy theories, it provided a more melodramatic and reassuring explanation behind the last ten years of British politics. Tony Blair wasn't really deceived/tricked/cajoled into following George W. Bush down the post-9/11 rabbit hole, was he? No, there is a far more sinister explanation afoot... right? The ideas offered are far more comforting than the notion that maybe, just maybe, Tony Blair agreed with George W. Bush. If you want a great thriller with Pierce Brosnan, check out The Tailor of Panama.

So what's the lesson of The Social Network? DON'T DATE ROBOTS!

What annoys me most about the flurry of 'best of the year' prizes for The Social Network is the discussion of the seemingly 'revolutionary' idea that much of human progress stems from the desire to impress the opposite sex (or same sex) in an effort to appear sexually desirable. Sorry folks, it's probably a somewhat correct notion, but Matt Groening and the gang hashed this one out way back in May of 2001. The Social Network is a fun and entertaining bit of fiction helped immeasurably by the clever penmanship of Aaron Sorkin. But it's 'groundbreaking' idea isn't as original as the pundits seem to think. Futurama had the right idea nearly ten years earlier.

Scott Mendelson