It has been a week since the horrific shooting in Aurora, Colorado that turned what was meant to be an exciting night at the movies into a weekend of grieving and sorrow, and the studios decided to avoid releasing their box office estimates in response so as not to capitalize on the event. It’s hard to discuss going back to “business as usual” at a time when the shooter is still splashed across na...[Read More]
American audiences apparently have decided they’ve had their fill of talking cartoon animals for a little while, as Ice Age: Continental Drift, the fourth in the 20th Century Fox franchise, earned an estimated $46 million, about $14 million shy of DreamWorks’ Madasgascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted’s opening weekend (which landed in tenth place this weekend for an estimated $3.5 million). However, th...[Read More]
Talk about winning streaks…Marvel, already rolling in dough with its major success of The Avengers, opened The Amazing Spider-Man on an off-kilter Tuesday debut. Turns out they may not have needed it: even without that extra cash, it entered at number one on the list with an estimated $65 million. But besides breaking records for Tuesday openers, it actually managed to best its reported $230 milli...[Read More]
In my estimation, Oliver Stone has not made an exceptional film in fifteen years; 1997’s U-Turn was the last worthy one in a celebrated run of controversial classics that helped define 1990’s American cinema. Beginning with The Doors (1991) and culminating in a nasty neo-noir (U-Turn [1997]), the director’s forceful combination of large themes and dynamic cinematic playfulness engendered as much a...[Read More]