Movie Box Review

BREAKING DAWN PART 1:  Running $8M below New Moon at the parallel place in their runs, but with a slower rate of decline (at least until New Year's Eve opens next week).  New Moon earned another $41M after the post-Thanksgiving weekend to end up at $296M in the US; Breaking Dawn 1 could make another $45-50M, which would put it in the same place.

THE MUPPETS:  A disastrously bad second weekend, its 62% the worst decline of the Top 12.  It'll have one more weekend to control the family-film market before Alvin & the Chipmunks arrives, but unless international is strong (so far the film is in only 3 small markets outside the US), this isn't looking like sequel fodder.

HUGO:  So far the unorthodox strategy of starting with a mid-level number of theatres and gradually adding more as awards pour in--is working OK, with a relatively small 33% decline and a per-theatre number almost equal to Breaking Dawn 1's.  The question is how far it can be pushed as holiday movies continue to arrive, both for families and adults.  (And the bigger question is how the film's enormous production cost can ever be earned back, but that's the studio's problem.)

ARTHUR CHRISTMAS:  Word of mouth is clearly good, with a 39% fall from last weekend, but the movie just has nowhere to go--it's already in 3376 theatres and has an anemic $2200 average.  Opening in the flood of family movies over Thanksgiving doomed this one (although holding it to do battle against Alvin wouldn't have worked any better).

THE DESCENDANTS:  Playing the platform release game of increasing theatre count each week so the weekend total stays high while per-theatre shrinks.  Its $9K average in 574  is around the same average Black Swan had, but in a wider release of 959 theatres.

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN:  The Weinstein Company, as is its wont, is apparently going after other awards hopefuls with guns blazing, but they have zero to boast about:  Marilyn, with no awards help so far, has a flat $4800 average at 244 theatres (that average isn't much better than what Hugo is doing in more than 7x as many theatres, and it's far below Descendants' average in more than twice as many).

SHAME:  A good but not great $36K average in 10 theatres.

THE ARTIST:  Increased its theatres by 50% by adding 2 in San Francisco, and could only hold even with last weekend, leaving it with a $34K average in 6 that was lower than the NC-17 Shame's average in 10.

OTHER HOLDOVERS:  J. EDGAR fell 52% and seems unlikely to get beyond $40M unless DiCaprio starts winning some awards.  Sony greatly expanded the runs of MONEYBALL, THE IDES OF MARCH and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS to keep them alive in awards season, and saw per-theatre numbers of $600-900.  MARGIN CALL continues to show real tenacity at the boxoffice with a mere 23% drop--it should get to $5M in US theatres, and that's on top of $2-3M in VOD revenues, very good numbers for a picture with a low budget and very little paid advertising.  LIKE CRAZY, THE SKIN I LIVE IN and MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE all seem likely to stall out at abour $3-3.5M unless they get some awards help.

The New York Film Critics Circle famously (notoriously?), having decided that they simply couldn't wait to announce their 2011 awards until, y'know, they had actually seen all the movies (when Warners couldn't rush them a copy of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close--which doesn't open until December 25--the Circle simply ignored it), has made its late-November proclamations.  After the break, the winners and some thoughts:

Best Picture:  THE ARTIST  It's Oscar time, and that means Harvey Weinstein.  The Artist, with its admirable mix of craft and movie love, has a chance of overwhelming the critical establishment, and while that's no guarantee of Oscar glory (remember The Social Network), it certainly could make for a frontrunner.  Awards like this will also help the picture be seen by a more mainstream audience, which in turn doesn't hurt with the Academy.

Best Director:  Michel Hazanavicius, THE ARTIST  Ditto.

Best Actor:  Brad Pitt, MONEYBALL and THE TREE OF LIFE  Pitt (and Jessica Chastain below) benefit from the fact that critics groups base their awards on a year's body of work rather than for a single film.  Having 2 well-regarded pictures in one calendar year is a big boost.  Also, the fact that there's no tremendous favorite in this category could give Pitt the best chance of his career thus far for a victory.  (Which would probably be for Moneyball.)

Best Actress:  Meryl Streep, THE IRON LADY This race has seemed to narrow quickly to Streep vs Michelle Williams (and possibly Viola Davis), and the first volley goes to The Great One.  Big loser here is Glenn Close, whose Albert Nobbs is currently under the radar and may stay there.

Best Supporting Actor:  Albert Brooks, DRIVE  That perfect combination of a talent that richly deserves reward for decades of superb work with a role that genuinely surprised everyone (and in which he was remarkable ).  Christopher Plummer in Beginners seems to be his main competition.

Best Supporting Actress:  Jessica Chastain, THE TREE OF LIFE, TAKE SHELTER and THE HELP  The It Girl of 2011, and this list of movies doesn't even include her excellent turns in The Debt, Texas Killing Fields or Coriolanus.  The Oscar question is whether so many fine performances will fracture her chances of actually winning.

Best Screenplay:  Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian, MONEYBALL  There aren't writers in Hollywood more A-list than these two, and in Moneyball they successfully brought to the screen a piece of source material as unpromising as anything out there.

Best Foreign-Language Film:  A SEPARATION  Sony Classics isn't opening this Iranian drama until the very end of December, but it's been making the rounds of film festivals for months.

Best Cinematography:  Emmanuel Lubezki, THE TREE OF LIFE  Even people who gave up on the movie had to bow their heads at the spectacular look of the film. 

Best Nonfiction Film:  CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS  Werner Herzog is a figure beloved by critics, and Cave was a film where his fascinations melded beautifully with the subject matter.  Also impressive as one of the first documentaries to make truly effective use of 3D.

Best First Feature:  MARGIN CALL  Yay, NYFCC!  One of the year's very best pictures--first or otherwise--gets a shout-out that will hopefully keep it alive down the awards season trail.

IMMORTALS is claiming the same drop for Sunday as it had on Saturday, so that total may come down in actuals.  Even so, as long as the final amount is over $30M (which it certainly should be), that's a win for Relativity, no matter what the movie's budget actually was.  Immortals also launched widely overseas, including in such important territories as China, the UK, Germany, Italy, Japan and South Korea, and should hit a solid $36M there.  

JACK AND JILL's $26M opening is the lowest for any Adam Sandler comedy vehicle since The Wedding Singer in 1998.  Sony seems to be counting on a multiple like the one that got Bedtime Stories over $100M in 2008, but this picture will likely be long out of theatres before the lucrative Christmas week bonanza kicks in, and J&J will be one of Sandler's lowest-grossing pictures ever.  Is that meaningful, or did audiences just sense what a stinker this one was?  We won't know until Sandler's next movie opens (I Hate You, Dad in June).

If you want to know what "older-skewing" means, look no further than J. EDGAR:  two-thirds of its audience was over 50 years old.  Although an $11.5M opening is nothing to cheer about, that audience is generally in no rush to get to theatres (it takes a while to maneuver those walkers), and Warners is hoping for a slow build that lasts through the end of the year.  Last year's Hereafter dipped 47% in its second weekend, and that was the end of it, as it only reached $33M in total--J. Edgar will need to hold better than that.

PUSS IN BOOTS had another great hold in its final weekend before kiddie movie competition arrives.  TOWER HEIST's 45% drop seals its fate as a money-loser, unless overseas audiences take to it in a big way.  A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D XMAS was, as expected, a one-weekend-and-out proposition, and despite the 3D ticket prices, it may not even get to the $38M grossed by the last picture in the series.  PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 went over $100M, and has a shot at exceeding $108M and becoming the highest-grossing of the franchise.

In limited release, ANONYMOUS plummeted, and is unlikely even to reach $5M on a $35M budget.  MARGIN CALL expanded a bit more to 199 theaters, and should have an average of around $3K.  It could get to $5M in theatrical alone (not counting VOD), which would be a triumph for a picture that cost $3.5M and has spent very little on marketing; in addition, distributor Roadside Attractions has decided to make a well-deserved awards run for the film, so it's all good.  

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE almost doubled its theatre count to 183 and saw little incremental income with a $2700 average.  LIKE CRAZY widened to 70 theatres at a promising $7500 average.  THE SKIN I LIVE IN increased to 91 theatres at a $3400 average.  TAKE SHELTER seems to have reached its limit (barring a strong showing by Michael Shannon in critics' awards) with a $1600 average at 82.  

The only notable indie opening was Lars Von Trier's MELANCHOLIA (also on VOD and HDMovie Net), which did a very nice $14K in each of 19 theatres.  Werner Herzog's death-penalty documentary INTO THE ABYSS had a $4200 average at 12.  These will likely be dwarfed next week by the arrival of THE DESCENDANTS, which will open in 5 theatres on Wednesday and then go to 27 on Friday.

The tiny 3% drop in PUSS IN BOOTS' second weekend is truly remarkable, and could well lead to studios adopting DreamWorks' strategy in the future of opening an animated movie on Halloween weekend and then having a de facto 2d opening the following week.  (However, the picture is still running $13M below Megamind's 10 day total.)

Despite all the money Universal spent to turn TOWER HEIST into an event, audiences just weren't buying.  The initial overseas numbers of $9.5M in 23 territories aren't terribly promising either.  Interestingly, exit polling showed the audience for the picture skewing rather old; this could be a byproduct of Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy's decisions to spend much of the past decade in family movies--they're now perceived as stars only by little kids (not the audience for this one) and their parents.  

A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D XMAS, even with 3D ticket prices, couldn't match the opening of the series' second installment, and with an Adam Sandler movie opening next week, it's unlikely to get much beyond a $30M gross.  Warners would probably have been better off using it as counterprogramming during the real holiday season.

In the absence of compelling new openings, holdovers mostly did very well, although the only Fall opening (besides Puss) likely to get to $100M is PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3.

With the exception of ANONYMOUS (a dull $2500 in each of 513 theatres), most of the weekend's indie expansions were fairly successful.  MARGIN CALL, now in 178 theatres, should be close to $4500 in each, just slightly below its average last weekend.  MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE went to 98 theatres with about a $5K average, a notch above THE SKIN I LIVE IN, which is in 78 with about $4K in each.  TAKE SHELTER is in a holding pattern with an OK $2K or so in each of 91 theatres.  LIKE CRAZY is still in very limited distribution, but widened to 16 with about a $16K average.

TOWER HEIST hurts Universal on several levels.  It's a big-budget movie (with marketing costs included, the total is likely $200M) in a genre that doesn't necessarily travel well, and it was the studio's big year-end release.  And just to make things worse, next week its pair of Stiller and Murphy have to face off against Adam Sandler's Jack & Jill.  (Incidentally, the idea, floating online, that the movie's $25M opening shouldn't be considered soft because on this particular weekend of the year, other comedies not aimed at families haven't done better, is beyond inane--it seems to assume that moviegoers check the calendar before heading out to the multiplex, saying "Hey, I don't care what's opening--if it's the first weekend in November, I don't want to see any damn non-family comedy!  Everyone knows I only go to those in the second weekend in November or the third weekend in September!")   

PUSS IN BOOTS got the second weekend it needed, with a superb drop of only around 20%.  Not to be churlish, though, but while that's a far better hold than Megamind had last year (37% drop), it's still likely to make for a second weekend lower than Megamind's $29M, and a 10-day gross 20% lower than Megamind's $88M.  (Megamind wound up with $148M in the US.)  Next week Puss also has to contend with the Sandler movie, which is PG and being pitched to a family audience, and the following week a deluge of animated competition begins with Happy Feet 2.  

A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D XMAS looks to be on par with the last picture in the series, Guantanamo Bay, which opened with $14.8M (although the Xmas number is boosted by 3D ticket prices).  It's doubtful that Warners expected much more, so presumably these economics work for them.

With little excitement generated by the new arrivals, holdovers again did very well:  other than the post-Halloween PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3, none of the Top 10 appear likely to decline more than 40% (not even THE RUM DIARY).  This developing pattern of strong holdover business may also suggest an aging of the theatrical movie audience, as older audiences have long been likely to wait a week or 2 before heading out to see films.

There weren't any major indie openings this weekend, but several expansions are worth noting.  ANONYMOUS (which isn't technically an "indie," but has the subject matter of one) doubled its theatre count to 513 but only increased its gross by 20%, meaning an anemic per-theatre number that may not reach $2500.  MARGIN CALL continued its quiet success, adding 38 theatres for a total of 178 and holding to a fine per-theatre number over $4K (it continues to be available as well on VOD)--the film now seems capable of reaching $5M or more at the boxoffice, which would make it a solid low-budget success.  MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE almost tripled its theatres to 98, and is finding an audience, with a per-theatre that should be at least $4500.  LIKE CRAZY took a smaller leap to 16 houses, and should be a very good $15K in each.

Next weekend is all Adam Sandler, in fact 2 of him, since as everyone now knows, he plays both himself and his twin sister in JACK & JILL. His last non-summer opening was $30M for Just Go With It, so that will presumably be a target number for the picture.  Sandler's competition will be limited to the R-rated 300 rip-off IMMORTALS and Clint Eastwood's very serious J. EDGAR, also an R. 

DreamWorks Animation can blame the weather for diminishing its PUSS IN BOOTS number--although there seemed to be little effect on the weekend's other openings--but $34M is awfully low for a major animated release.  (And no one will be surprised to see the actual figure fall tomorrow by $400K or more, which is the margin by which it's claiming a Halloween weekend record.)  With only 2 more weeks until Happy Feet 2 arrives to take over the market, there's even the possibility that it won't get over $100M in the US. It's off to a good start overseas, though, with $17M in only 3 territories, mostly from Russia, enough to tie PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3's take from 48 territories.

Overseas, in fact, was where all the action was this weekend.  The most impressive boxoffice number this week was  Steven Spielberg's ADVENTURES OF TINTIN, which won't open in the US for almost 2 more months.  It had a splendid launch in 19 territories with $55M. (Those are major territories, so the estimate is that they come to over 50% of the film's international potential.)

Meanwhile, IN TIME was also more of a success story overseas ($14M from 35 territories) than in the US, where it only managed $12M.   THE RUM DIARY doesn't seem to have opened overseas yet, although it would take quite a bit to offset its dismal US performance.

Back in the US, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3's weekend hold was unexceptional, but its opening was so huge that it's still running well ahead of the second chapter in the series.  MONEYBALL, THE IDES OF MARCH and DOLPHIN TALE all lost large chunks of their theatres, accounting for their largest weekend declines to date, while REAL STEEL was battered by the arrival of Puss In Boots into the family market. (Real Steel has gone over $100M overseas, only a moderate number these days.)

PUSS IN BOOTS will have 3 weeks in theatres without serious competition for its target audience (until Happy Feet 2 opens on November 18), which is why DreamWorks moved the opening back a week.  The picture can use the help, since its $35M opening is far from overwhelming.  However, it should perform well overseas--especially in Spanish-speaking territories--so it's likely to end up in decent shape. Whether it will be strong enough to launch a new franchise, as the studio had hoped, is less clear.

Not much to say about IN TIME and THE RUM DIARY.  Neither has much chance of earning back its production and marketing costs.  In Time is a step back for Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, neither of whom seem able to carry a movie that doesn't have something else to sell.  Rum Diary was basically a vanity project for Johnny Depp, undertaken because of his veneration for Hunter S. Thompson (Depp is also a producer of the film), and studios that finance vanity projects do so at their own risk.  (After Rum Diary and The Playboy Club, Amber Heard should probably avoid projects set in the 1960s.)

With Puss In Boots in the market, all the holdovers took major hits, although considering the front-loaded nature of the horror genre, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3's hold was fine, and it's running far ahead of  Paranormal 2's pace. 

Sony's cut-back opening of ANONYMOUS was unimpressive, with perhaps $3500 in each of 265 theatres. Paramount launched LIKE CRAZY well in the traditional 4 theatre NY/LA prestige film pattern, and should hit just about the same $35K per theatre that THE SKIN I LIVE IN and MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE did in the past 2 weeks.  

Both of those movies expanded their runs this weekend to 32 theatres, which represented a tripling of Skin's release and a jump from 4 for Martha.  Martha is doing somewhat better, with probably $7K in each, while Skin isn't too far behind with $5500.  Additional widening in the next few weeks will tell the tale on both.  MARGIN CALL has had a more aggressive release strategy than either, and broadened to 140 theatres this weekend while remaining available on VOD.  It's headed for a healthy $4500 per theatre and has already grossed $1.4M (not counting VOD revenues) and seems able to get to $3M+.

Next weekend brings comedies of different stripes:  Universal's all-quadrant TOWER HEIST and A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D XMAS.  The latter is likely to be more front-loaded, which could make for an interesting first couple of days.

The Saturday drop for PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 turned out to be very much in line with Paranormal 2's.  Paramount is estimating a better Sunday hold than the second installment had; if the result is instead the same as last time, the weekend gross will dip below $54M, but to a still-giant number.  Paranormal 3 also took in $26M overseas, so it's already in profit (including global marketing costs) 3 days into its run.

THE THREE MUSKETEERS began its overseas run in September, and has grossed $49M to date internationally.  Even if that doubles, though, with a US total likely to be under $30M, the picture isn't going to make back its $90M production cost plus marketing.

The worldwide outlook is brighter for JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN.  It's a throwaway in the US, but like the first film in the series, it's a genuine hit overseas with over $100M in the bank.

REAL STEEL, FOOTLOOSE and DOLPHIN TALE have been holding well, but PUSS IN BOOTS will be a real challenge for all of them next weekend.

MARGIN CALL had a strong $10K average in 56 theatres, a release that went well beyond the usual limited release territories--and that's not counting the film's VOD revenue.  Worth noting:  the Margin number included $32K at its main NY theatre, which made it more or less even with the weekend's showcase limited release, Fox Searchlight's MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE, which had a $35K average in 4 NY/LA houses. 

Sony Classics expanded 2 of its fall openings with decent results:  THE SKIN I LIVE IN averaged $12.5K at 21, and TAKE SHELTER averaged $3500 at 55.  In less high-visibility openings, LE HAVRE and ORANGES AND SUNSHINE both averaged about $4500 at 6 and 4 theatres respectively.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 continues Paramount's license to print money--it'll soon be in profit even with worldwide marketing costs calculated in.  Yesterday will probably prove to be by far the biggest day of its front-loaded run, but at those prices, who cares?

Sometimes it's not about the marketing--it's about the movie.  It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find 30 seconds of the godawful THREE MUSKETEERS remake that could be cut into a promo that would make anyone want to see it.  The movie reportedly cost $90M, and even though Summit seems not to be on the hook for much of the production cost, they won't even recoup their prints and marketing expenses.  The best thing about this is that it should mean the sequel threatened in the final scene won't actually be made.

If not for relationship issues, Universal would probably have let JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN slip quietly to direct-to-homevideo in the US, since there was already plenty of evidence that Rowan Atkinson has no boxoffice appeal on American soil.  As it is, they gave it a stealth opening in only 1500 theatres and with little marketing behind it.  Now that it's over, they'll continue to pour cash into TOWER HEIST, opening in 2 weeks.

With the exception of horror movies THE THING and DREAM HOUSE, there was no competition for any of the holdovers, and they all did very well, with 20-30% weekend drops.  (Well, all but THE BIG YEAR, which continued to be a movie no one wanted to see.)  The free ride for the family movies, however, ends this week with Friday's arrival of PUSS IN BOOTS.

There was no audience for the G-rated sports movie THE MIGHTY MACS, which will be lucky to hit a $1K average in almost 1000 theatres.  Emilio Estevez's spiritual-themed THE WAY almost tripled its count and did passably, with about $1750 in each of 280 theatres.

Two excellent indies made their debuts this weekend with very different release strategies.  MARGIN CALL opened at a surprisingly wide 56 theatres, and is also available on VOD, meaning its theatrical numbers are only part of the picture (studios don't release their VOD figures).  Despite that, it's headed for a very impressive $10K per theatre, which puts it on track to be one of the relatively few VOD titles to also exceed $1M in theatre revenues.  Meanwhile, Fox Searchlight gave MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE a more conventional showcase opening in NY/LA only, and is headed for a superb $35K in each of its 4 theatres.  That's roughly the same per-screen as THE SKIN I LIVE IN had last week in 6, but as often happens, when that film expanded this weekend to 21 houses, its per-theatre number went down to a still-good $11K.

Halloween weekend is a soft one for teen business, due to all the social events the holiday brings with it, and consequently the only major opening on Friday is DreamWorks' Puss In Boots for the kiddies.  Fox's IN TIME features a host of young actors who are trying to prove they can carry an action movie (Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Olivia Wilde), and the studio is putting some marketing cash behind it.  RUM DIARY is getting a wide opening, but it's more like the kind of indie Johnny Depp used to make in his pre-Captain Jack Sparrow days.  Also, Sony will open the Shakespeare-themed ANONYMOUS in around 250 theatres, having backed off their wacky initial notion of opening it wide.

One final note:  whether for ego, relationship or contractual minimum guarantee reasons, Universal has been utterly determined to get COWBOYS & ALIENS to the $100M mark, leaving it in hundreds of theatres long after much bigger hits have gone away.  Well, mission accomplished!  The picture has scratched its way to the goal, so everyone associated with the movie can be very proud.

MARGIN CALL is smarter and more gripping than Moneyball and The Ides of March combined--and those are two smart, gripping movies.  However, the superb ensemble cast of Margin Call doesn't boast a name as instantly bankable as Brad Pitt's or George Clooney's, so the film needs--and deserves--to be sought out.

The place is Wall Street, and the time is that precise moment when it suddenly became clear to a very few people that the world financial system had a staggeringly serious problem.  Margin Call isn't a documentary about the crisis (for that, see the excellent Inside Job), and it's not, unlike HBO's recent Too Big To Fail, based on a specific true story.  It's triumphantly fictional, with a brilliant script by first-time writer/director J.C. Chandor that illuminates the situation without ever slowing down to plod through the specifics (it's a running joke in the movie that even the people who make their living from these complex financial products don't remotely understand them).

Although Margin Call is clearly inspired by the stories of Lehman Brothers and the other investment banks that packaged high-risk mortgage debts for sale to buyers who were too greedy to stay away, it's largely about the process of crisis itself, the ways people react to the end of their particular world, and how they behave when they have a chance to save themselves at the expense of others.   In Chandor's script, a fired bank executive (Stanley Tucci) gives a low-level analyst (Zachary Quinto, also one of the lead producers) data showing that the bank's bubble of assets is about to burst.  The movie traces how, in the course of a single long night's journey into day, this information makes its way up the chain of command, to successively higher executives played by Paul Bettany, Simon Baker, Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, and ultimately the master of this universe, Jeremy Irons.  First, there is the stumbling attempt to comprehend what's happening--then the focused, ruthless hunt for a way to, above all, survive.

With its harsh, eloquent speeches about loyalty and greed, and its largely male environment of players who sardonically and savagely scheme against each other, Margin Call begs comparison with David Mamet, and specifically with Glengarry Glen Ross.  The comparisons are apt, and Chandor's dialogue stands up to the competition, but Margin doesn't have Mamet's agenda of describing manhood (or, despite some four-letter words, his spectacular flair for profanity).  These men are less overtly desperate than Mamet's; they're friendly, even courtly, as they slash each other's throats.  These are the guys who did get the good leads, and now they'll do virtually anything to hold on to them.

The cast is the ensemble of the year, handled by Chandor with perfect balance.  Kevin Spacey, as an old hand at the bank who understands both convenience and conscience, almost redeems the terrible movies he's done over the past decade--he leaves behind all his glib mannerisms and cuts down to his character's bone.  Irons, on the other hand, is fabulously superficial; he's the man who is not, under any circumstances, going to lose his private helicopter.   Bettany, Baker and Moore provide other steps on the road to corporate hell, while Quinto and Penn Badgley, as a young man less smart than he thinks he is, represent the newcomers almost instantly out of their depth.  Tucci has the emotionally richest part (none of these people have private lives, not because they're thinly drawn, but because in this context it just doesn't matter), and he manages to goes to town with it and yet not chew the scenery.

The film is low-key and low-budget, but beautifully put together.  Frank G. DeMarco's photography captures the increasing wear and tear of that endless night within the bank's elegant surroundings, while Pete Beaudreau's editing knows when to allow the characters some space and when to leap into the hurtling pace of a thriller.  

Margin Call originally premiered at Sundance in January, and against the odds, it's become only more topical in the last few weeks:  it lays bare the mindset that Occupy Wall Street and its brethren are furiously opposing.  With any luck, that will help the fortunes of a movie that might otherwise be dismissed as a bunch of well-dressed, well-educated, well-spoken people exchanging snappy dialogue in board rooms.  Margin Call has earned the luck; it's an extraordinary piece of work.