Movie Box Review

Happy Voice/Smash Bowl, everyone!  (And go Giants!!!)

OPENINGS:  CHRONICLE (20th) is claiming bragging rights for the weekend over THE WOMAN IN BLACK (CBS) by $1M.  But both films are assuming almost identical Super Bowl Sunday drops (69% and 67%, respectively), so the win will depend on whether one or the other faces more audience defection today, which we won't know until Monday.  In any case, this is--sorry--a super weekend for both studios (especially CBS Films, with its first real hit), each one's low-budget project now destined for profit.  On the other hand, even to reach its modest $8.5M estimate, BIG MIRACLE (Universal) will have to hit a very low 41% assumption for the Super Sunday drop.  This is based, no doubt, on the idea that kids will still go to matinees today, but since those kids will largely need parents to go with them, we'll see if the estimate holds.

HOLDOVERS:  THE GREY (Open Road) leads the way with a 52% drop to $9.5M.  The picture won't hit the highs of Neeson's previous action hits Taken ($140M) or Unknown ($64M), but considering its harder-to-sell genre, it's a nice success.  After that, UNDERWORLD AWAKENING (Screen Gems/Sony), ONE FOR THE MONEY (Lionsgate/Summit) and RED TAILS (20th/Lucasfilm) are all grouped together with 50+% drops and weekend grosses of $5-5.6M.  MAN ON A LEDGE (Summit/Lionsgate), with a 44% drop that's the best among non-Oscar movies this weekend, will have to hope its good word of mouth translates into VOD and homevideo sales; it's too late for the theatrical boxoffice to mean much.  THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (Sony) is hovering at $99.9M and will hit its milestone Monday or Tuesday.  Other holiday pictures are shedding theatres as new openings arrive in the market, and won't get much higher than they are now.

OSCAR NOMINEES:  THE ARTIST (Weinstein) purportedly has the best hold with a 22% drop, but since it significantly increased its theatre count, the decline is more like 30%.  THE DESCENDANTS (Fox Searchlight), playing at 1500 more theatres than Artist, held very well with only a 28% drop for the weekend.  EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE (Warners) was less impressive with a 44% decline.  HUGO (Paramount) has gotten a bit of a second wind, with only an 8% fall from last weekend (even adjusting for a small theatre expansion, it's down less than 15%).  THE IRON LADY (Weinstein) is slowing down, but $25-30M in the US for a biography of Margaret Thatcher ain't bad (and of course it would be boosted by a Meryl Streep win).

LIMITED RELEASES:  Madonna's W.E. (Weinstein), timed to coincide with its director's halftime show and new album, showed little promise with a $11K per-theatre gross in 4 palaces.  The nomination-less A DANGEROUS METHOD (Sony Classics) lost a third of its theatres, but should still get above $5M, not bad for such esoteric subject matter.  ALBERT NOBBS (Roadside) is having a pretty good hold, down 22% at 245 theatres.  A SEPARATION (Sony Classics) is finding an audience, a 29% increase in theatre count (to 40) almost matched by a 22% weekend increase in gross. PINA (IFC) and WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (Oscilloscope) are both holding fairly well, with $5K averages in 40 and 13 theatres, respectively.  PARIAH (Focus), though, added 30% more theatres (to 19) but was down 20% for the weekend anyway.

Behold Liam Neeson, King of January.

OPENINGS:  THE GREY (Open Road) will easily take the weekend, albeit at a lower level than prior Neeson early-year thrillers.  Given that this one features killer wolves and hypothermia rather than gunfights and car chases, that's not unexpected, and the picture should hit a decent profit.  ONE FOR THE MONEY (Lionsgate/Summit) may have outperformed pre-opening predictions, but its $11-12M opening is still pretty dismal (the lowest of Katherine Heigl's starring career), and because of online discount ticket offers keyed to opening day, its Friday number may prove to be unusually frontloaded.  MAN ON A LEDGE (Summit/Lionsgate) is an out-and-out flop, and yet more proof that "stars" from special-effects-laden franchises can't necessarily open movies outside those franchises.

HOLDOVERS:  Everything is headed for a 45-55% normal range drop, with BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 3D (Disney) and MI4 (Paramount) on the low end, and HAYWIRE (Relativity) on the high.

OSCAR NOMINEES:  It was the week for the anointed films to expand their runs (except for Warners' EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE, which had opened wide last week and dropped only 30% in its 2d weekend).  None of the expansions were particularly impressive:  THE ARTIST (Weinstein), still in just 897 theatres, will barely top a $3500 per-theatre average, while THE DESCENDANTS (Fox Searchlight), upped to 2001 houses, won't go much higher than a $3K average.   THE IRON LADY (Weinstein) is similarly unimpressive with a $2500 average at 1244, and HUGO (Paramount) didn't find much interest in its expansion back to 965 theatres with a $2300 average.  Despite Gary Oldman's Best Actor nomination, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (Focus) lost almost half of its theatres and could manage only a $2500 average at 410, and ALBERT NOBBS (Roadside) didn't get much mileage out of its nominations for Glenn Close and Janet McTeer, expanding to 246 theatres for a $2800 average.

LIMITED RELEASES:  No major openings.  WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (Oscilloscope), which couldn't land a nomination for Tilda Swinton, added 3 theatres for a decent $6K average in 10, while PARIAH (Focus) lost a third of its theatres and won't do much more than a $3K average in 14.

Next weekend is the Super Bowl, traditionally a weak moviegoing weekend, so the pickings will be lean.  Fox will pursue teens with the "found footage" sci-fi CHRONICLE, Universal targets kids with the save-the-whaler BIG MIRACLE, and CBS Films will try to gather what's left with the old-fashioned ghost story WOMAN IN BLACK, starring Daniel Radcliffe.

Anyone who thinks the boxoffice isn't in a slump needs a new prescription for bifocals.

Note:  since December 24 is a traditionally deadly day at the boxoffice (closed theatres, family plans)  that would make 3-day weekend estimates look even worse than they are, we'll use 4 day Friday-Monday weekend estimates below.

WE BOUGHT A ZOO (20th):  Its 6th place start with $3M in 3100 theatres (a lousy $952 average for the day) is terribly disappointing, and the picture is unlikely to have any impact at all on the holiday boxoffice.

THE ARTIST (Weinstein):  A crucially important first expansion for a movie that hopes to take the Best Picture Oscar, and it went horribly.  Moving from 17 theatres to 167, the film could only manage a $1400 average on Friday that will probably be around $7500 over all 4 days of the long weekend.  Will it ultimately matter to the Oscar race?  We'll see.

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN (Weinstein):  Another disastrous expansion for an Oscar hopeful, this time from 358 to 602 moviehouses.  The Friday average was a pathetic $280, and it probably won't get to $1500 over the 4-day weekend.

TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY (Focus):  Finally a glimmer of good news, as the expansion from 16 to 53 theatres went well:  Friday's average of $3900 should translate into close to $30K over 4 days.

ALBERT NOBBS (Roadside):  An awards hopeful for Glenn Close and Janet McTeer, this is playing a 1-week Oscar qualifying run in just 2 theatres, and its mediocre $3500 average start probably means less than $25K in each theatre over the long weekend.

IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY (FilmDistrict):  Another Oscar hopeful (this one Angelina Jolie's parade of Bosnian wartime atrocities, already nominated for a Foreign-Language Golden Globe), another weak opening:  in 3 theatres, its $2200 average on Friday probably means $15K over the holiday weekend.

Back to the world of wide releases:

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL (Paramount):  The one and only success story for Hollywood this season (Paramount gets credit for the 2 smartest distribution decisions of the year:  the IMAX "previews" of MI4, and pushing back the opening of Puss In Boots), and yet even this one carries some disappointment:  the picture is unlikely to make as much as MI2's $215M, and may end up only outgrossing the third chapter of the series.

SHERLOCK HOLMES:  A GAME OF SHADOWS (Warners);  Headed for a US gross 20-30% lower than the first in the series.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (Sony):  Although with its hard-R rating and "The Feel-Bad Movie of the Holidays" spirit, this picture has excuses the other disappointments lack, the fact it it's just not doing the business that its pedigree (and $90-100M production budget) promised.  It may not even reach $100M total gross in the US.

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN (Paramount):  It's very nice that the film did well overseas, but it was wildly expensive, and its likely $80M US gross won't even pay for its domestic marketing campaign, let alone any of the production cost.  With a global outlook little better than break-even, Spielberg and Jackson certainly have to do some thinking before launching the projected Jackson-directed 2d chapter in the planned franchise.

ALVIN & THE CHIPMUNKS:  CHIPWRECKED (20th):  Another damaged franchise, with a total that could end up at half or even less of its predecessors.

OTHER HOLDOVERS:  Even with an extra holiday in the weekend, most will be lucky to break even from last weekend, and some (NEW YEAR'S EVE, HUGO) are falling considerably more.  YOUNG ADULT (Paramount) is in particularly dire straits, finding no audience at all with what may be a 40% slide despite the long weekend.  

And then there were 2, or really 1 1/2:  on Christmas Day, Steven Spielberg's WAR HORSE (DreamWorks/Disney) will attempt to ride in and save the holidays, while Summit's THE DEADLIEST HOUR gathers up what small change remains in the sofa cushions.  Also opening is the bizarrely controversial EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE (Warners), in an exclusive 6-theatre run.

Rodrigo Garcia's film ALBERT NOBBS (he shares auteurship with Glenn Close, who served as screenwriter with John Banville and Gabriella Prekop and as a producer as well as star) caters to what used to be called the James Ivory audience, when he was still churning his films out. In NY, these are the audiences at the Paris Theatre; in LA, they're at the ArcLight and (even more) the Landmark. They like their intelligent historical dramas with a social theme; they were starting to be neglected in recent years, until The King's Speech came along, and this year, Albert Nobbs is there for them.

As is widely known, getting Nobbs made has been a crusade for Close, who played the title role off-Broadway more than a decade ago. Nobbs the character is an ordinary butler in a late 19th Century Irish hotel--ordinary, that is, except that he's actually a woman pretending to be a man, it being a time when women weren't permitted to hold such jobs. He/she's succeeded in fooling those around him for decades, but an accidental meeting with another cross-dressing worker (a house painter played by Janet McTeer) who has actually married another woman and lives with her as man and wife, broadens Albert's horizons and eventually leads to dire consequences. 

The main point of Nobbs the movie, of course, is Close's performance, and it's a model of restraint--so much so that it could put a dent in her Oscar hopes, as voters tend to favor the flamboyant over the repressed (think Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs versus Hopkins in Remains of the Day).  The performance makes sense, as Albert (we never learn the butler's original female name) has been hiding his/her whole life, but it's also somewhat problematic dramatically, because Albert is apart from anything else a completely blank slate, utterly naive about love, sex and just about everything else--which, after a life spent in hotels, among staff and guests, seems somewhat contrived.  Also problematic is Close's make-up, which is so extreme as to make her appear robotic in certain shots--not, it seems, because of the gender-switching (McTeer has a far more naturalistic look), but because Close, in her early 60s, is really far too old to be playing Nobbs, who's meant to be 20 years younger.  Close's age, which is never effectively masked despite all the effort, is a mixed blessing, in that it helps to confirm how out of touch Albert is with everyone else at the hotel, but on the other hand makes Albert's fumbling attempts at romance seem inappropriate for reasons having nothing to do with gender.

Despite these troublesome issues, Albert Nobbs is fairly consistently entertaining.  Much of it has to do with our endless fascination with upstairs/downstairs stories of the British well-to-do and their servants, as evidenced by the runaway success of the recent (and far superior Downton Abbey).  In some ways, the sections of the script having to do with the rest of the staff at Albert's hotel are more engaging than Albert's own story.  The cast includes Mia Wasikowska as the pretty maid everyone desires, Brendan Gleeson as the (naturally alcoholic) doctor, and Aaron Johnson as the new handyman who ends up central to Albert's difficulties.

Garcia's direction is considerably more varied than in his earlier films like Nine Lives and Mother and Child, which tend to play out as set-piece scenes for his actors.  Nobbs, while no one will mistake it for a Michael Bay picture, has some sense of pace, and an ability to build plot urgency.  As always, Garcia is wonderful with the performers, and here he has effective photography (by Michael McDonough, who also shot Winter's Bone) and production design as well.