BOX OFFICE 12/27-12/29: 'Hobbit' Tops Again; 'Frozen' Holds On Strong

The Hobbit sequel landed in the top spot for the third weekend, earning $29 million over the three day frame, and bringing its total to $190 million, below the last movie's $221 million total at this point last year. The movie's doing well though, despite its track to become the first Middle Earth film to earn less than the previous one, and is still on course to earn quite a bundle overseas. Meanwhile, Frozen had a very impressive 46% spike in its sixth weekend in release, coming in second with $28 million and raising its total to $248 million, on its way to outgross Gravity ($254 million) and Monsters University ($268 million) before the end of its run. Disney's definitely back in the groove with their Disney princesses, after the success of Tangled and now Frozen- obviously a movie that targets the young girl demographic can make just as much money as the young boy demo.

Anchorman 2 came in third with $20 million for the three day, which raises its total to $83 million and will pass the $85 million gross of the first film in the next couple of days. And in fourth was American Hustle with $19 million, another promising haul for a $60 million gross with plenty more to come after the Oscar nominations come in, which always guarantee a film a boost at the box office. Finally, The new opener Wolf of Wall Street is a bit of mixed bag, coming in fifth with $18 million and $34 million since opening on Christmas Day, but the movie received a pretty bad "C" Cinemascore, which indicates that audiences (at least initial ones) were expecting something very different. Still, with the holiday break and likely awards buzz the movie may hold on despite negative word of mouth.

Top 5:

1. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug- $29.9 million
2. Frozen- $28.9 million
3. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues- $20.2 million
4. American Hustle- $19.6 million
5. The Wolf of Wall Street- $18.5 million

In various other openers this week, the biggest bomb was 47 Ronin, the $175 million Keanu Reeves starring epic, which earned just $9 million over the weekend, and Universal has already announced it will take a writedown for its failure. Ben Stiller's Secret Life of Walter Mitty earned $13 million over the three day frame and $25 million since Christmas, along with a "B+" from audiences, while the Robert DeNiro-Sylvester Stallone movie Grudge Match tanked, opening with just $7 million. Another bomb destined to delight people was the total failure of Justin Bieber's latest concert movie Believe, which took in $2 million, 93% less than the opening of his last one. And we're now in the time of holdovers for the next few weeks, as the studios save only their worst films for the January box office month, which usually belongs to the Oscar movies, as televised awards start rolling in. See you in 2014 everybody!

REVIEW: "Rush" (2013) Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Bruhl. Dir. Ron Howard

I've never been interested in car racing, NASCAR or otherwise, and the good news is, you absolutely don't have to be to love Rush, the story of the epic rivalry between Formula One racers James Hunt and Niki Lauda, during the 1976 season.  Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Bruhl give terrific performances as the lead characters, and director Ron Howard shows he can make a movie that's completely different from anything else he's ever done.

Howard has always been a competent if un-flashy director who's made some good movies but lacked a kind of personal touch on the material. Now with Rush, working from a smart script by Peter Morgan (who wrote The Queen and Frost/Nixon), and more importantly, with Slumdog Millionaire cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, he fashions a thrilling, intensely visceral cinematic experience that's undoubtedly the best movie about car racing ever made (not that the competition's hugely fierce- but let's just say it blows Days of Thunder out of the water). Formula One racing is a sport that's incredibly popular in Europe, but all but ignored here in the U.S. (Americans prefer NASCAR), which may explain why the film didn't do well at the box office in the fall, but it's unfortunate, because the story is universal and exciting, even if you don't know a thing about Fomula One.

In the 1970's, James Hunt and Niki Lauda were the two best drivers in all of the sport, and the 1976 season is best remembered for the rivalry between them and the heated competition for the world championship. It was a perfect story to play up in the press, given that the two men had polar opposite personalities and for lack of a better word, really did hate each other. Chris Hemsworth shows off more range than he normally gets to in the Thor movies as Hunt, the hard-partying playboy who lacks discipline and focus, but makes up for it in raw talent and aggressiveness behind the wheel, while Daniel Bruhl is fantastic as the simmering, complicated Lauda, an antisocial jerk who buys his way into races but is a mechanical genius and a technical master at what makes the cars work best on the track. Both guys are good here, but Bruhl in particular commands your attention every time he's onscreen and has the advantage of getting the more complex character to play.

The script is fast-paced and smart enough to take the rivalry seriously between the two men, with Morgan throwing in enough intelligent dialogue about the nature of these drivers to make his points, while whipping back and forth from one insanely exciting race to another as the season progresses. The camera puts a soft focus on the atmosphere of 1970's Europe and projects a perfect sense of time and place, while the racing scenes are filmed with a kind of pulsating energy to make us feel as though we're right there in the car with them. I have a feeling the effectiveness of these scenes is mostly owed to Mantle, although it'd be unfair to cheat Ron Howard out of the credit, but this is so different from his past work that you wonder where the sudden energy and vivid realism came from. Whatever the collaboration, the movie is a tremendously entertaining, visceral piece of work, and one of the most exciting times at the movies all year.

***

Movie of the Day: "About a Boy" (2002)

A perfect choice for the week between Christmas and New Year's, this movie is a delightful comedy about a thirtysomething man who befriends a 12-year-old kid, and one teaches the other one how to grow up (hint: it's not the kid who needs the lesson). Hugh Grant plays Will, the single, irresponsible adult in what's probably his best performance ever, and Nicholas Hoult is Marcus, who's a bit of an outsider and plagued by a manic-depressive single mother (Toni Collette), nursing suicidal tendencies. That sounds depressing, but the movie's both funny and poignant, and qualifies as a New Year's/Christmas movie because of several holiday party scenes. One of my favorites.

Trailer:

Movie of the Day: "Holiday" (1938)

This is a lesser known classic from the 1930's, starring two of the greats, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. It's often overshadowed by their other famous pairings in Bringing Up Baby (1938) and The Philadelphia Story (1940), but this one is just as good, a classy family get together on New Year's Eve. Cary is engaged to Kate's sister and comes home to meet her folks, but of course the sister is all wrong for him and he falls for Kate instead. Lew Ayres is hilarious as her drunken brother Ned, and Edward Everett Horton is another standout in support (he was kind of like the Paul Giamatti of the 30's). George Cukor was Katharine Hepburn's favorite director, who helmed several of her other classics, including The Philadephia Story, Adam's Rib, and Pat and Mike. Check this one out for New Year's, it's as sparklingly fizzy as a glass of champagne.

No trailer for this one, so here's a scene from the movie:

REVIEW: "Saving Mr. Banks" (2013) Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks. Dir. John Lee Hancock

Saving Mr. Banks is a fine family film hampered by some very clumsy flashback structure, and a story that may hold more resonance for students of film history and devotees of Mary Poppins than for average moviegoers. Since I happen to be among those Mary Poppins fans, I did enjoy the behind the scenes re-telling of the work that went into putting the movie together, but the main thread of the film simply isn't interesting enough to warrant being put on screen in the first place. Emma Thompson plays P.L. Travers, the author of the original Mary Poppins books, who in 1961 was courted by Walt Disney for two weeks in Los Angeles, in a struggle to obtain the film rights in order the make the 1964 classic. It was a fight they'd been having annually for the past twenty years, with Travers simply refusing to hand over her art for someone else to recreate. But in the early 60's, she was running out of money and finally forced to reconsider for financial reasons.

While in L.A., she put up quite a fight to make the film come out the way she wanted, barking orders at the writers, dismissing just about every idea that did make it into the movie (music, animation) and generally making everyone's, including Disney's, life miserable for a short time. The internal struggle she's going through over giving up the rights comes back to the source of her inspiration for the story, her own father's troubles when she was a child growing up in Australia. And this is where the biggest hurdle of the film comes in, as almost half the movie is made up of extended flashback scenes to Travers' early 1900's childhood in the outback, almost all of which are tedious and emotionally thin. Colin Farrell is her troubled, alcoholic father, the inspiration for the character of Mr. Banks in Mary Poppins, and he does a fine job in the role, but these scenes have the unfortunate occurrence of interrupting, nearly without fail, something far more interesting going on in the present.

The best scenes in the film are Travers' clashes with the screenwriter and songwriters of the movie, where they attempt to hash out the concept of the film and first introduce the memorable songs that will be soon be immortalized in our memories. Disney's in-house songwriters, the Sherman Brothers, played by B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman, are key to the humor and tongue-in-cheek playfulness of these scenes, and the battles with Travers can be humorous, but every time you start to become invested in this part of the film you're suddenly thrown back to Australia, where the movie falls flat for a pretty good length of time. Less flashbacks would have greatly improved the pacing of the movie and director John Lee Hancock should be blamed for failing to iron out the kinks in the screenplay (as well as the unconvincing, clear as day California backgrounds standing in for what's supposed to be turn-of-the-century Australia).

The actors themselves are very good though, and the performances of Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks do make the movie come alive in the present day setting. Thompson plays Travers very well as the cranky, fussy, uptight British woman she is, but the problem is that this character is almost impossible to make likable in any way. Some of her fussiness is amusing, but over time she becomes downright unpleasant and a pain to spend time with, even as a member of the audience. The only reason she's at all relatable is due to Emma Thompson's acting, which reveals the depth of her emotional pain as plainly as possible. And Tom Hanks is terrific as Disney, portrayed as a plainspoken midwesterner who seems to put on an act of cheeriness and charm when he's trying to get what he wants, but later shows off the hidden depth and manipulative nature of Walt as a businessman above all else. It's a clever angle to play up in order to humanize a man who's ultimately become more of a symbol and a brand, even by 1961.

The screenplay does try to make some points about the clash between art and finance, and brings up questions about whether the price of a person's integrity over their artistry is really ever worth it, and for those reasons this is worth seeing. But the awkward structure and fairly boring direction do not allow the movie to rise above merely serviceable in the end, despite the potential in the script and good performances from the actors.

* * 1/2

Movie of the Day: "While You Were Sleeping" (1995)

Merry Christmas everyone! On Christmas Day, we continue our Movie of the Day series with films that celebrate not only Christmas, but the week between Christmas and New Year's, as the holidays roll on through the end of the year. There are some good New Year's Eve movies to get to, but for today While You Were Sleeping is the perfect, old-fashioned romantic comedy that happens to take place on Christmas and then through the rest of the holiday season, including New Year's Eve. The adorable Sandra Bullock is at her most loveable here, as Lucy the lonely ticket taker at a Chicago tollbooth. In a mix-up requiring a little bit of sustained disbelief, when the man she rescues from a mugging fall into a coma, his family believes her to be his fiance and adopts her as one of them. But then of course, she falls for his older brother (Bill Pullman). It's a perfectly charming, wistful romance, carried by Sandra Bullock's innate likability and essential niceness- perfect for the holiday season.

Trailer:

Movie of the Day: "A Christmas Carol" (1951)

This Christmas Eve, I recommend the all time best version of A Christmas Carol, the film from 1951 starring Alistair Sim (known as simply Scrooge in the U.K.). To me there are two reasons this is the very best filmed version of the classic story- one, it includes the most from the actual book, and two, Alistair Sim's Scrooge really is the screen's greatest. I think that Sim is the main reason that most who watch this movie think it stands the test of time so well- he's so nasty, so mean, so very miserable at the beginning, that you wonder how this man could ever win you over with his transformation, and then he does it. Somehow, Sim makes that transformation real and more wondrous than in any other telling of A Christmas Carol. You believe his joy and his total conversion to a charitable, giving man through all the little nuances in his performance- once you see this film, you realize having that character down so completely is the most important part of telling this story, no matter how it's done. The ghosts, the Cratchits, all the rest of it isn't nearly as essential as having the perfect Scrooge- he's the essence of this tale, and Alistair Sim captured him in a way that had never been done, before or since.

Original 1951 Trailer:

Movie of the Day: "A Christmas Tale" (2008)

A Christmas Tale is a complicated, sprawling, ambitious movie about a dysfunctional family coming back together for Christmas, some members of whom are estranged from each other, and others who are in decades old love triangles with their various spouses. The great Catherine Deneuve plays the aloof matriarch who is dying of cancer and needs a bone marrow transplant from one of her grown children, but the movie's not really a downer at all. There are plenty of comedic elements, some morbid for sure, but the film's not interested in wrapping everything up in a bow- the message is that families are complex, simultaneously hard and easy to get along with, and people can change all the time from hatred and fist-fighting one minute, to laughter and tears in the next. The movie encompasses all these tonal shifts, and the standout in the cast is Mathew Amalric as the nutty black sheep middle child. Our last alternative Christmas movie this week, as tomorrow's recommendation will be a more traditional choice for Christmas Eve.

Trailer:

TRAILER: "Tim's Vermeer"

A new trailer for Penn and Teller's Oscar shortlisted documentary Tim's Vermeer, about an inventor's quest to recreate the 16th century paintings of Johannes Vermeer:

BOX OFFICE 12/20-12/22: "The Hobbit" Tops "Anchorman," "American Hustle" Scores

This weekend The Hobbit beat out Anchorman 2 for the #1 spot, but almost everything that opens on this particular weekend of the year has crazy strong legs over the next couple months, so it's pretty much good news for every movie. The Hobbit fell 61% and pulled in $31 million, while the heavily promoted Anchorman 2 scored $26 million over the weekend, but $40 million since opening on Wednesday. The movie got a "B" Cinemascore, which isn't terrific, but probably not very meaningful in this case, since the movie will play very well over the holidays as the only comedy in release, and the Anchorman movies tend to benefit from repeat viewings in the first place. In any case, it's already made half of the original's total domestic gross ($85 million).

In third was Frozen with $19 million, which is holding on insanely well, and set to pass $200 million in the next week (and likely to continue on strongly, as winter break for the kids is here and there are still no other viable family films in release). American Hustle took fourth with $19.1 million, which is almost identical to Argo's wide release opening last year. The movie also got a fairly average "B+" Cinemascore, but time will tell if that's meaningless as well, considering the holiday season. It's a major Oscar contender with outstanding reviews, which will likely drive its box office high in the coming weeks, especially after the nominations come in in January. It's a similar story for Saving Mr. Banks, which opened wide to about $9 million, not very impressive, but still on course to do well with Oscar buzz and the Christmas break. It also got a better rating from audiences, with a solid "A," and played to an older crowd (over 35), which comes out for movies at a slower pace, so for now it's on a pretty good track.

Top 5

1. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug- $31.5 million
2. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues- $26.8 million
3. Frozen- $19.2 million
4. American Hustle- $19.1 million
5. Saving Mr. Banks- $9.3 million

Walking With Dinosaurs bombed this weekend, with just $7 million from over 3,000 theaters, so the audience just was not there for this intended family film, which also got terrible reviews. Meanwhile, Inside Llewyn Davis expanded to 148 theaters and took in an impressive $1.1 million. Next week it's Christmas, which means a LOT of new releases, including The Wolf of Wall Street, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, 47 Ronin, and Robert DeNiro and Sylvester Stallone in Grudge Match, with limited releases for August: Osage County, Lone Survivor, and Labor Day. See you next week!

Movie of the Day: "Batman Returns" (1992)

Another Tim Burton choice, but believe it or not, this one is entirely appropriate because Batman Returns is a full on Christmas movie. Set during the holiday season, Batman battles both Catwoman and the Penguin while Gotham rests under a heavy snowfall. This sequel is actually more of Tim Burton's unique style than the first Batman, as the director put all his focus on the villains, with Danny DeVito playing up the Penguin in grotesque fashion while Michelle Pfeiffer gives us a Catwoman for the ages. Catwoman pretty much owns this movie as the best and most memorable version of the character ever put to screen (sorry, but Anne Hathaway's doesn't hold a candle to her), and Burton's gothic-horror-noir vision of Gotham City is on full display. It's all eye candy and darkly twisted desires, Tim Burton's idea of true Christmas cheer.

Original 1992 Trailer:

9 Foreign Films Shortlisted for the Oscar

The Academy has narrowed down the 76 submissions in the Foreign Language film category to just 9, from which the five nominees will be selected:

• The Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium)
• An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
• The Missing Picture (Cambodia)
• The Hunt (Denmark)
• Two Lives (Germany)
• The Grandmaster (Hong Kong)
• The Notebook (Hungary)
• The Great Beauty (Italy)
• Omar (Palestine)

Some surprising snubs here, including Asghar Farhadi's The Past, and Wadjda, from Saudi Arabia. Most thought those films were locks to be nominated, and with the year's biggest foreign film, Blue is the Warmest Color, ineligible for submission because of its release date in France (bet France is kicking themselves for that), this is a pretty open category. My guess is the five will be The Hunt, The Great Beauty, The Grandmaster, The Missing Picture and Omar. But that's kind of a stab in the dark- I'm only confident about The Hunt and The Great Beauty, which I think are the only real contenders for the win.

Trailer for Italy's The Great Beauty, which is getting a lot of attention lately from various European awards: