BOX OFFICE: 9/6-9/8: "Riddick" Tops a Slow Weekend

Vin Diesel's passion project Riddick topped this weekend, with $18.7 million, a decline from the $23 million opening of the last film, The Chronicles of Riddick, back in 2004, and nothing compared to the $39 million opening of Pitch Black in 2000. It also received a "B" Cinemascore, which is pretty unremarkable, so the legs on this one won't be strong, but it's something of an improvement compared to the last movie, which cost over $100 million to produce and bombed harder, while Diesel raised the $38 million for this one himself over the last several years, so it earned back half its budget at least in one weekend.

The Butler took second place with $8.9 million, amassing a total of $91 million and set to cross $100 by next week. It's a decent sized hit, even if it didn't play as well as The Help did a couple of years ago. Last week's surprise hit Instructions Not Included, expanded wider and made $8 million, which gives the film a total of $20 million after only ten days and puts it on track to become the biggest Spanish-language hit of all time in the U.S., likely surpassing Pan's Labyrinth's $37 million total. 

1. Riddick- $18.7 million
2. Lee Daniels' The Butler- $8.9 million
3. Instructions Not Included- $8.1 million
4. We're the Millers- $7.9 million
5. Planes- $4.3 million

You might notice the top 5 has been pretty stable for the last few weeks, with a lot of the same movies showing up over and over again, which usually happens as summer season winds down. It's to the benefit of movies like Planes and We're the Millers (which continues its success story, totaling $123 million so far). Last week's winner, One Direction: This is Us, fell off a cliff this, earning just $4.9 million and proving how frontloaded and limited in appeal those tween concert movies are. Next up it's the new action-comedy The Family, with Robert DeNiro and Michelle Pfeiffer versus Insidious 2, the horror sequel (which I'm gonna guess right now will be the winner in that battle).

25 Best Movie Soundtracks of All Time

Rolling Stone has given their list of the top 25 movie soundtracks ever, and it's pretty good, even if it's missing some classics: 

1. Help! (1965) 
2. Purple Rain (1984)- (*oh come on, this is better than Help)
3. The Harder They Come (1972) 
4. A Hard Day's Night (1964)- (*also better than Help)
   
5. Saturday Night Fever (1977) 
6. Superfly (1972) 
7. Pulp Fiction (1994)- (*unimpeachable)
8. Rushmore (1999) 
9. This is Spinal Tap (1984) (*lol, do people really listen to them for fun?)
10. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2001)
11. Pretty in Pink (1986)- (*great one, the best of the John Hughes soundtracks)
12. Wild Style (1983) 
13. Trainspotting (1996) 
14. Easy Rider (1969)
15. Goodfellas (1990) 
16. The Graduate (1968) 
17. American Graffiti (1973) 
18. Boogie Nights (1997)- (*too easy, way better compilations of 70s hits)
19. Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
20. Singles (1992)- (*yes! grunge at its finest)
21. 24 Hour Party People (2002) 
22. Lost in Translation (2003) 
23. Juice (1992) 
24. Rock and Roll High School (1979) 
25. Head (1968) 

Given that it's Rolling Stone of course, rock from the 60's and 70's and/or The Beatles is bound to take precedence, so here are some other great ones they missed: Garden State, Grease, High Fidelity, Dirty Dancing, The Big Lebowski, Mean Streets, Drive, The Last Waltz, About a Boy, The Royal Tenenbaums, Django Unchained, Empire Records, The Blues Brothers and 8 Mile.

'Diana' Gets Trashed by Critics

Yikes. Looks like we have our first real turkey of the fall season. After its world premiere in London last night, you can cross Diana off the Oscar list, along with any hope for its star, Naomi Watts. I thought it looked Lifetime, but these reviews are pretty savage.

"Poor Princess Diana. I hesitate to use the term 'car crash cinema.' But the awful truth is that, 16 years after that terrible day in 1997, she has died another awful death." (The Guardian) 

"The major problem, predictably, comes with the dialogue, which involves characters telling each other things they already know. 'I am a heart surgeon!' declares heart surgeon Khan. On another occasion: 'You're the most famous woman in the world.' Yes, we get it." (The Telegraph)

"Despite a peroxide hair-job, she looks, sounds, and acts nothing like the Princess of Wales. Wesley Snipes in a blonde wig would be more convincing." (The Mirror)

"Led by a pair of flat performances and featuring some of the corniest dialogue you'll hear all year, 'Diana' is too incompetent even to qualify as hagiography, devoid of insight and- unforgivably- curiosity about its subject." (Digital Spy) 

"There are a number of lines you never, ever want to hear Diana, Princess of Wales say, and they include: 'I love feeling your hand there,' and 'Yes, I've been a mad bitch.' Even when these lines are delivered by the fragrant Naomi Watts, doing her level best with a squirmingly embarrassing script, this film is still atrocious and intrusive." (The Times)

Here's the trailer again, in case you want to remind yourself how bad it looked. One thing I have to agree on- even with a prosthetic nose, this was horrible casting. Naomi Watts looks nothing like Princess Diana.

10 Movies For Back to School Month

Well, it's a new month and it's time for new movie picks to go with it. The theme for September is "Back to School," and we pick ten great school movies to catch up with all this month as the school year begins. Head over to the Movie of the Month page for the description and then check out the list for September (including the recent classic and a personal fave of mine, Juno). Happy Movie Watching! 

TRAILER: "RoboCop"

Hmm. Don't know about this one. Set to come out next year, but I'm very skeptical that it could ever live up to the original 1987 RoboCop, which was a great sci-fi movie that really needed no updating. The only thing I can say is that its cast makes it look just slightly better than last year's remake of another one of my favorite Paul Verhoeven movies, Total Recall. But that's a pretty low bar to set. Here's hoping.

Toronto Starts Today

With Venice and Telluride now over, it's time for Toronto to step up, and with most of the heavy Oscar favorites having already been seen in one of the other festivals (or waiting until the New York and AFI Fests later this month and next), that leaves Toronto pretty much left out in the cold this year, with not a lot to premiere. They have three buzzed about movies set to open for the first time- The Fifth Estate (the Julian Assange movie with Benedict Cumberbatch), August: Osage County (the Meryl Streep/Julia Roberts drama) and Dallas Buyers Club, with Matthew McConaughey as an AIDS victim. I'll be posting the reaction to all of them, along with any new responses from other critics on movies that didn't quite hit with the other festivals (such as Labor Day and The Wind Rises). Still to come later on, the Paul Greengrass action drama Captain Phillips and Ben Stiller's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty at the New York film festival, and Disney's Saving Mr. Banks is set to open the AFI Fest on November 7th.

TRAILER: "Kill Your Darlings"

Daniel Radcliffe stars as Allen Ginsberg in this film about the beatnik poets of the 1950's, including William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. It got great buzz out of Sundance and has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score so far, set to come out Oct. 16th in limited release.

Angelina Jolie and Steve Martin get Honorary Oscars

Today the Motion Picture Academy announced the recipients of several honorary Oscars they bestow at the annual Governor's Awards. In a surprising choice, Angelina Jolie will be receiving the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, while Steve Martin, Angela Lansbury and costume designer Piero Tosi will all receive honorary Oscars. They used to give out these awards on the actual Oscar ceremony of course (they're usually lifetime achievement honors), but a few years back they moved these categories out of the televised ceremony to its own separate show, called the Governor's Awards, which is neither televised nor webcast (as of yet). If you ask me, it's way too early to be giving Angelina Jolie an award that's been mostly intended for lifetime achievement, even if it is the Humanitarian prize, but the others are all good choices.

FINAL TRAILER: "Gravity"

Finally! The first full trailer for Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity, and it looks crazy intense. I can't wait. Out Oct. 4th

FEATURETTE: "12 Years a Slave"

A behind the scenes look at the movie featuring interviews with the cast and crew. This film was extremely well-received in Telluride and set to be a surefire Oscar contender throughout the fall. 

TRAILER: "Under the Skin"

The appropriately creepy and weird teaser trailer for Under the Skin, which received comparisons to David Lynch's Eraserhead after its debut in Venice.

More From Venice: Reaction to 'Philomena,' 'Under the Skin' and 'The Wind Rises'

More reactions have come in from the Venice Film Festival, and starting with Philomena, the consensus seems to be that director Stephen Frears (of countless good movies over the years, including Dangerous Liaisons, Dirty Pretty Things and The Queen) is back in form with the heartwarming story of an old woman who teams up with a journalist to find her long lost son. Judi Dench delivers a knockout performance (of course) and is likely to get her seventh Oscar nomination, while Steve Coogan charms with a script he co-wrote. The crowdpleaser is slated for limited release by the Weinstein Co. on Christmas Day, but set to expand nationwide in early January. I'd watch out for this one, because the Oscars have a long history of embracing feelgood, funny, yet emotional movies that will make you laugh and cry, and this seems to fit that slot this year.

"Coogan and Pope's script tenderizes you with keenly judged comic asides before landing its big, emotional body-blows...This is a heartbreaking story- how could it not be? But Frears' film breaks your heart and then repairs it." (Daily Telegraph)

"Frears gives the story a slick makeover, blending melodrama and comedy with brisk professionalism and a hearty helping of schmaltz. But Dench and Coogan sell it well." (The Atlantic) 

"Its main focus is the sparky, shifting relationship between its two protagonists and its trump card the startling chemistry between its two main stars. 'Philomena' is an ongoing, confounding delight of a film." (The Guardian) 

Meanwhile, Under the Skin debuted to very divisive reaction (half the audience booed) but early reviews indicate rapturous reception from some critics at least. Jonathan Glazer has been polarizing before (his last film was 2004's creepy Birth), but this one is drawing comparisons to the surreal images of artists like David Lynch. Starring Scarlett Johansson, it's based on the novel by Michael Faber, where an alien in the body of a woman comes to Scotland to hunt men for dark purposes. Oscar seems unlikely to go for this, given the weirdness of it, but I'm sure curious.

"Glazer's astonishing film takes you to a place where the every day becomes suddenly strange, and fear and seduction become one and the same. You stare at the screen, at once entranced and terrified, and step forward into the slick." (Telegraph)

"It's an intoxicating marvel, strange and sublime: it combines sci-fi ideas, unusual special effects, and a sharp atmosphere of horror with the everyday mundanity of a woman driving about rainy Scotland in a battered transit van." (Time Out) 

Finally, the arrival of The Wind Rises came with some sad news for fans of the great Hayao Miyazaki, who announced his retirement practically concurrent with the film's premiere. His last feature seems to have received respectful but fairly muted reaction so far, so we'll have to wait until further screenings have occurred to get a handle on the response. Still, there are some admirable notices of this first Miyazaki film set in the real world (in this case, pre-WWII Japan) which dramatizes, in partly fictionalized fashion, the life of Jiro Horikoshi, the engineer who designed the A6M Zero, one of the deadly fighter planes used in the second World War. Unfortunately, the film's subtitled release will only be seen in NY and LA this December, while Disney re-dubs the film for wider release some time next year.  

 "There are visual flights of fancy here as glorious as anything Miyazaki's studio has created, but the story is rooted in a country trudging towards its own destruction...the real love story here is between a creator and his creations, which Ghibli's team of animators render in head-spinning detail." (Telegraph) 

"The ambitious 'The Wind Rises' is something of a special case that will divide audiences into two camps, those who find it an unforgettably beautiful and poetic ode to life, and those who tune out to its slow moving second act, which can wear down the patience of even the well-disposed." (Hollywood Reporter)