Argo
Box Office Weekend: Identity Thief Swipes Top Spot from Warm Bodies
As Valentine’s Day nears, you would expect to see more romantic movies hitting the cinema. Instead, the big winners of the weekend turned out to be an off-kilter comedy and a decidedly unconventional love story. Identity Thief debuted as the top spot taker, the Jason Bateman/Melissa McCarthy comedy earning back its entire budget in a single weekend with an estimated $36.6 million, though critics a...[Read More]
Detroit Film Critics Society Announces the Best of 2012 Winners
The Detroit Film Critics Society (of which CinemaNerdz Editor in Chief Mike Tyrkus is a member) is pleased to announce the Best of 2012 winners in ten categories. The society was founded in spring 2007 and consists of a group of seventeen film critics who write or broadcast in the Detroit area as well as other major cities within a 150-mile radius of the city including Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Kal...[Read More]
Detroit Film Critics Society Announces Its 2012 Nominations
The Detroit Film Critics Society (of which CinemaNerdz Editor in Chief Mike Tyrkus is a member) is pleased to announce the Best of 2012 nominees in ten categories. The society was founded in spring 2007 and consists of a group of seventeen film critics who write or broadcast in the Detroit area as well as other major cities within a 150-mile radius of the city including Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Ka...[Read More]
Box Office Weekend: Thanksgiving Weekend Grateful for Some Big Hits
Note: Any estimate given in brackets represents how much the movie made over the five-day weekend; all other estimates represent the three-day weekend. While revenue over the three-day weekend may have been down from last week overall, Thanksgiving added a nice bit of revenue to the box office, with both The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 and Skyfall helping this weekend to be the highest ear...[Read More]
Box Office Weekend: Breaking Dawn Part 2 Rides Off Into the Sunset With Big Opening Weekend
What more can be said? While The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 did not rise to the opening weekend numbers of New Moon, it certainly came close: the latest (and last) film in the series earned an estimated $141.3 million, more than enough for the series to end on a financial high note (having cost $120 million to make and $199.6 million in foreign box office alone). Critics may have been kin...[Read More]
Box Office Weekend: Sky’s the Limit for Skyfall as Bond Gets Big Numbers
It has been four years since James Bond last appeared in Quantum of Solace, and while it could not be said the last entry was any less than a box-office smash ($586 million worldwide) and got generally good reviews, MGM’s bankruptcy put the future of the franchise on hold for quite some time. However, it appears it was worth the wait…amid a flurry of good reviews, Skyfall also made good at the box...[Read More]
Box Office Weekend: Wreck-It Ralph Punches Up Box Office
After last weekend’s lull, the box office returned to the sort of numbers typical for the year, thanks in part to a solid debut for Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph. The animated film brought in audiences in a way that the likes of Cloud Atlas (which landed at sixth this week and an estimated $5.3 million) and Silent Hill: Revelation (which came in tenth with an estimated $3.3 million) failed to do a week ...[Read More]
Box Office Weekend: No Films are New Films; Newcomers Can’t Topple the Favorites
With three major new releases, it is a little surprising that only one ended up in the top three, and barely at that. Cloud Atlas, with an estimated $9.4 million, was the highest grossing of the new releases, but the ambitious multi-era epic only placed third overall, behind the current favorites Argo (an estimated $12.4 million) and Hotel Transylvania (an estimated $9.5 million). While grosses ar...[Read More]
Box Office Weekend: Paranormal Activity 4 On Top, But Only Finds Ghosts of Its Former Success
For a movie costing only $5 million, a weekend estimate of $30.2 million would normally be a phenomenal thing…and to be fair, it still is…but for Paranormal Activity 4, that is a drop from the record-setting October release of the previous film, which did $52.3 million during the same weekend last year. Despite the lackluster reviews and diminished returns, the fourth film in the franchise stood a...[Read More]
Weekend Box-Office: Taken 2 Holds Box-Office Captive for Second Week
The critics say Taken 2 is a simplistic rehash, but that has not stopped the movie-going public from making the Liam Neeson-helmed actioner top at the box office for a second week in a row. Its estimated $22.5 million puts the film into a domestic total of $86.8 million, a strong performance not only over its reported $45 million budget, but against almost any film during this quarter…with the exc...[Read More]
Movie Review: Argo
Continuing with the dual director-actor role that brought him success with The Town (2010), Ben Affleck has hit another home run with Argo, a drama-thriller that recounts the daring CIA-backed rescue of six Americans who managed to escape the U.S. Embassy in Tehran as Iranian militants loyal to the Ayatollah Khomeini stormed the embassy on November 4, 1979, and ended up holding 52 Americans hostag...[Read More]