12: 'Gone Girl' Overtakes 'Dracula' for #1

Despite a good showing from the dreadfully reviewed new opener Dracula Untold, Gone Girl repeated at number one this week, dropping just 30% from last weekend for another $26 million and a $78 million dollar total. At this rate, it will likely pass Benjamin Button ($127 million) to become David Fincher's highest grossing movie. Dracula meanwhile, opened in second with $23 million and an "A-" Cinemascore, so that's a pretty good showing for the fantasy, with audiences mostly male and under 25.

In third was Steve Carell's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, which actually came in fairly strong, with $19 million and an audience that was 67% families. Live action family films were once a popular genre, but they don't often get made anymore, so this PG-rated Disney release is something of a rarity these days. Annabelle plunged 55% to fourth place, as all the cheap horror movies tend to do, while Robert Downey Jr.'s The Judge opened in fifth with just $13.3 million, a pretty disappointing number for the poorly received courtroom drama.

Top 5:

Gone Girl- $26.8 million
Dracula Untold- $23.5 million
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day- $19 million
Annabelle- $16.4 million
The Judge- $13.3 million

In limited release, the Sundance winner Whiplash opened with a $24k average from six screens, which is pretty strong (and may have good word of mouth since Oscar buzz is building fast for this critical darling), and The Weinstein Company's Bill Murray starrer St. Vincent also opened well, with an even better $30k avg from just four screens. Next week it's Brad Pitt's Fury and the animated film Book of Life, with a limited release set for Birdman, the first major Oscar contender to debut for general audiences.

TRAILER: "Citizenfour"

One of the probable leading contenders for Best Documentary this year is Laura Poitras's Edward Snowden film, Citizenfour, which premiered at the New York Film Festival last night. It received a standing ovation and early reaction is pretty strong, so look out for this one whenever it comes out in the next few months. Docs are always in very limited release, but this is the kind of activist film that the branch tends to appreciate most.

REVIEW: "The Skeleton Twins" (2014) Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig. Dir. Craig Johnson

Every cast of Saturday Night Live produces its comedy buddies. Those are the guys who become pals on the show, often pair up in sketches, and then go on to be in movies or television together, as the camaraderie that goes on behind the scenes leads to fruitful creative pairings and lifelong friendships in many cases. Seriously, a lot of those cast members probably owe that show for finding their best pals. But the chemistry between real life friends is obvious most of the time, and it's a huge advantage in a movie like this, where the formulaic and somewhat cliched nature of the screenplay means it's entirely up to the actors to bring something more original to the screen. Luckily, Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig are so likable and charismatic together that they elevate this movie head and shoulders above the script and they alone are reason enough to see it.

The Skeleton Twins joins the ranks of family dramedies that are so common with indie filmmakers, and is another entry that explores the dynamic of an adult brother and sister, a relationship that's often proven more interesting and unique ground in film than that of two sisters or two brothers (I'm thinking of other memorable indies which produced pairs like Philip Seymour Hoffmann and Laura Linney in The Savages, or Mark Ruffalo and Linney again in You Can Count On Me). This one is funnier than those, and frankly gives us the most believable brother/sister pairing of all, thanks to the instantly familiar and familial interplay between Wiig and Hader, who are so effortlessly natural together that they manage to make every nuance of affection and dialogue seem genuine.

They play adult twin siblings Maggie and Milo, both deeply troubled since childhood, who've been estranged from each other for ten years despite their seemingly psychic-like bond. That link is displayed by the opening scene where Maggie is gazing in the mirror, about to down a handful of sleeping pills when she gets a call from a hospital in Los Angeles, telling her that her brother's just been admitted for an attempted suicide. Maggie sets off immediately to retrieve him, and though it's a melancholy reunion, it only takes a day or two for the two of them to fall into their old habits of wisecracks and sarcastic rapport, and Maggie takes him back to their hometown in upstate New York to recuperate.

Milo is an out of work gay actor with a tendency towards depression (like his sister and their late father), and as he settles in with Maggie and her new husband Lance, we see how he generates those depressive tendencies and eventually learn the traumas they're stemmed from (it partially involves an inappropriate past relationship with a former teacher, played by Modern Family's Ty Burrell in a dramatic turn). The same goes for Maggie, whose seemingly perfect life masks an equally disturbed pathology, as she cannot make herself be happy with the "puppy dog" nice guy Lance (played with welcome and unexpectedly subtle shading by Luke Wilson) and is continuously drawn into affair after affair. The dark past they share haunts their present lives, and this could be some dangerously depressing material as a movie, but Wiig and Hader pull off the dramatic moods as well as the easygoing interplay between their characters with zest and incredible appeal. It's very impressive to see these two comedy vets vacillate between the funny and the dark, and Hader especially is quite the revelation. This character fits him like a glove and allows him to be at turns sad, funny, and self-absorbed, yet remain inherently likable and so charismatic that you could watch him all day and believe everything he does and says, no matter that some of the situations are heavy-handed or dialogue campy. He always feels like a real person, not simply a character on a page.

The scenes between the two siblings make this film worthwhile, and luckily, that's most of the movie. Whether they're cracking each other up, confessing their darkest secrets, or viciously insulting each other in the place they know it'll hurt the most (as often only family can do), Hader and Wiig are dynamite. As for the film overall, there are some interludes that feel straight out of family indie cliche (an awkward dinner with Mom, a ridiculously quirky neighbor, some symbolic goldfish- I get really annoyed by symbolic objects and/or animals), and there's more than a little predictability in the script (you can always tell when two people are going to fight, then apologize, then fight for real and this time it's serious, etc.). But when the actors are this good and this watchable, you tend not to care so much as you simply sit back and enjoy watching them, even during the more formula driven aspects of the story, which is from writer-director Craig Johnson. And we're thankful for the buddies that SNL produces, because chemistry this effortless is a rare and wonderful thing, and it can turn a movie that might otherwise be forgettable into a genuinely affecting experience.

* * *

TRAILER: "Focus"

Margot Robbie seems to have moved very quickly up the ranks since being discovered in last year's Wolf of Wall Street, although admittedly, it's not very hard to see why. I'm going to call it right now, if this and the upcoming Tarzan (where she's been cast as Jane) are any good and/or hits, she's going to be the next Sharon Stone-esque sex symbol. This one looks different than what I would expect from the Crazy Stupid Love directing duo (it seems to be more of a heist/action movie), but who knows, it might work. Despite their 22 year age difference, Will Smith still looks younger than 46 and Margot Robbie older than 24, so this particular young woman/older man pairing works better than say, Emma Stone and Colin Firth. Focus is coming out Feb 27th.

TEASER: "Tomorrowland"

After what seems like years, the teaser for Brad Bird's Tomorrowland has finally arrived. It looks pretty cool here, but one thing makes me hesitant. Brad Bird is the director behind the animated films The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille, and he then made the successful leap to live action with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, so he's completely trustworthy. But this film was co-written by Damon Lindelof, writer of Lost, The Leftovers and Prometheus, and he's really NOT. So I hope Bird was mostly in control on this one. The movie is coming out next May.

A Female 'Ghostbusters' on the Way

After weeks of rumors (and years of speculation involving some kind of third sequel), Deadline has the scoop that Paul Feig, director of Bridesmaids and The Heat, will officially re-team with Heat writer Katie Dippold for an all female Ghostbusters reboot. Bill Murray himself suggested the cast he'd choose for a remake- Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Linda Cardellini and Emma Stone. What do you guys think? I suppose if there had to be a reboot/sequel of some kind, this would be the better way to do it. My guess is McCarthy will very likely be one of them, given her and Feig's history (they have another comedy coming out just next year) but now all eyes are on who fills out the rest of the foursome. And they can't actually make this movie without including cameos from the original cast, right? Look for appearances from Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson, I bet.

Blu-Ray Pick of the Week: "Alien" (1979)

A great anniversary choice, especially for horror movie month, as this is another one of our picks for October in the October movies page. Sigourney Weaver is the take-no-prisoners Ripley, here in the original Ridley Scott film, which is more of a horror movie than any of the more action packed sequels. It really does feel like a totally different experience when you watch it, with all the scenes of quiet dread and chilling atmosphere created by the terrifying silence of space. See it again, and appreciate it for one of the great monster movies that it is.

Original 1979 Trailer:

BOX OFFICE 10/03-10/05: 'Gone Girl' and 'Annabelle' Neck and Neck

It was a big weekend at the box office, as both new releases vied for the top spot, pulling in similar numbers. So similar in fact, that even though early estimates suggest that Gone Girl might have taken the crown, we'll have to wait for official numbers to come in on Monday to see which movie really eked out the number one. Gone Girl opened above expectations, pulling in $38 million, but it has a ways to go to make up its $61 million budget, while Annabelle has already scored enough to be a success, since it cost just $6 million and made over $37 million. Oscar buzz should help Gone Girl out in the next few weeks, as adult dramas that open in the fall generally tend to have leggy runs, although word of mouth may be mixed, as both films got an underwhelming "B" Cinemascore from audiences. The crowds were also very different, with Annabelle's audience skewing younger, while the demo for Girl was mostly female and 75% over age 25.

The rest of the top five were holdovers, with The Equalizer holding up very well despite direct competition, falling just 44% from last week, and The Boxtrolls dropping a miniscule 28% to land in fourth place. The Maze Runner rounded out the top five with another $12 million, bringing the movie's total to just under $74 million. In other news, Nicolas Cage's dismally reviewed faith-based thriller Left Behind opened with only $6.9 million, while Reese Witherspoon's The Good Lie also underwhelmed in limited release with just under $1 million from 461 screens.

Top 5:

Gone Girl- $38 million
Annabelle- $37.2 million
The Equalizer- $19 million
The Boxtrolls- $12.4 million
The Maze Runner- $12 million

Next week it's Robert Downey Jr.'s The Judge, with Robert Duvall, which is really going to test RDJ's box office powers, since the movie has gotten some very weak reviews since opening at Toronto in September. Other than that it'll be limited release openings for some other buzzed about indies, including Bill Murray's St. Vincent and the Sundance hit Whiplash.

REVIEW: "Gone Girl" (2014) Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike. Dir. David Fincher

WARNING: This review contains plot spoilers

Gillian Flynn's best-selling novel Gone Girl always had the makings of a great trashy thriller, since the book itself was mostly an airport read- a potboiling page turner with plenty of twists, gore, mystery, and spoiler alert- a fantastic femme fatale, so villainous as to rival any of the women in a classic film noir. Yes, Amazing Amy herself is what really sold the book- she holds her husband and the audience in the palm of her hand, manipulating every word, action and event in what turns out to be her story from start to finish.

That doesn't necessarily mean that you're on her side though, and the book was told in equal part (at least during the first half) from Amy's dunce of a husband Nick's perspective, which lets us in on the reality of what's happening from that first, surreal day that Amy went missing. Amy and Nick Dunne were once a happily married couple who met in New York but moved to his hometown in Missouri when Nick's mother got sick and they both got laid off from their jobs as magazine writers. The blissful happiness they once shared then began to fall away bit by bit, as resentment, frustration, money problems, and eventually infidelity took a toll on the marriage, as it does with so many couples. The marital troubles should be recognizable to most, but this film only wants to skim the surface of what makes marriage viable or not for these two people, and the real heart of the story lies in the pulpy thriller material, which director David Fincher so excels at.

In a way, genre material like this is perfect for the meticulous technician, who draws comparison to Alfred Hitchcock in the way he controls his shots and actors, and who creates an effective atmosphere of dread that permeates every frame. That's all done as well here as it is in his best movies, which include Fight Club, Zodiac, The Social Network, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The first half of the movie follows the procedural aspects of the early days when Amy went missing, as we see the little Missouri town begin to turn on Nick as the prime suspect, due in no small part to the uninviting way he acts in the face of mass media scrutiny. This would require a tricky performance from Ben Affleck, as he needs to play a guy who's not that smart but also convey the shiftiness of a potential killer- we in the audience need to suspect him as much as the local cops do. He mostly pulls it off, although I've never seen a whole lot of range from him as an actor and that perception has not been changed by this movie. It may just be a case of his having been well cast, as he comes across as both a nice guy and kind of a jerk at different times in reality as well as on film.

The other lead is Rosamund Pike, the British actress from bit parts in movies like Pride and Prejudice and Die Another Day, who's now been given the role of a lifetime in Amy Elliott Dunne, one that any actress who read the book would certainly relish the chance to sink her teeth into. Even though I ventured into spoiler territory early on by explaining aspects of her role in this, all I'll say now is that she gets a couple of great moments by virtue of the screenplay and Fincher's mesmerizing direction- the iconic "Cool Girl" monologue from the book and a pivotal scene with Neil Patrick Harris as ex-boyfriend Desi are two of the best directed scenes I've seen in any movie so far this year. As to the rest, I have to say that Pike does a serviceable job, but many of Amy's best moments are as much due to the part as to the performance itself. I'm not sure that she has the dynamic screen presence of some of the more memorable female villains in modern movie history, like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct or Nicole Kidman in To Die For. Pike's Amy is much more of an ice queen in the film than she was in the book, and the movie version lacks Amy's sick sense of humor and gleeful narcissism that I took from almost every page of her inner monologues in the second half of the novel. She remains an illusive mystery in the movie, and we are far less privy to her thinking and personality than we are on the page- but for what it is, it does work in terms of the film as a thriller.

Every part of the movie that does work so efficiently is to Fincher and Flynn's credit (Flynn adapted the screenplay herself), more so than the actors. You can't help but be drawn into the story, which to an audience that is not familiar with the book, will seem unpredictable, funny in parts, and even campy by the surreal end that awaits its doomed characters. The supporting cast is terrific, especially Carrie Coon as Nick's wisecracking and sympathetic sister Margo, and most surprisingly, Tyler Perry as the hotshot lawyer Tanner Bolt, whom Nick must hire to defend him. They provide the warmth and likability that the leads are written to repel. As I said earlier, the satire and commentary the movie may want to make about marriage is touched on at best (those themes were also explored in more depth in the book), but for the entertaining and precise way Fincher brings this mostly faithful adaptation to the screen (which includes those great scenes on par with his best work, which is still for my money, Zodiac and The Social Network), it's a pretty fun night out at the movies.

* * * 1/2

TRAILER: "Leviathan"

This movie made a really big splash in Cannes for being a Russian film that completely tears apart Russia's corrupted system of government. Even though it was raved about at the festival (many believe it should have won the Palme D'Or, but it was awarded with the Screenplay prize instead) no one thought it would ever be submitted by Russia as their Foreign Film entry in the Oscar race, and just this week it was announced that lo and behold, it will be (after the director of the committee's first choice withdrew his film from consideration, saying he doesn't believe in competition). It's pretty shocking of them to do this, but perhaps they're trying to make themselves look good by being able to point to it as an example of Russians having free speech after all. Right. Well, at least we'll be able to see it here eventually (probably early next year).

REVIEW: "Obvious Child" (2014) Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy. Dir. Gillian Robespierre

It's awfully depressing to have to write about how appreciative you are that a movie was made that has the "guts" to tackle the issue of abortion in a frank, genuine and unfearful manner- let's be honest, this is 2014 and the fact that a movie like Obvious Child is considered controversial speaks to a sad and terribly regressed state of affairs. But if I'm being honest in another way, I don't think I've ever seen a movie that speaks so candidly and truthfully, and communicates the way real women actually talk about abortion, than this one, which is in many ways a light coming of age comedy. It's even sadder to say this is a film that needed to be made, but it did, and it makes all manner of sense that it was written and directed by a woman, who knows and is familiar with how this issue is confronted in reality, as opposed to the bizarro way abortion is treated in movies, where it's so obvious that the subject is broached with so much fear and trepidation that you can't make any statement at all.

Well, Gillian Robespierre, who adapted this movie from her own short film on the topic (which won recognition at Sundance), knows how to deal with it, and that's to simply make it personal. When you tell a personal story, they often wind up universal because the honesty shines through it in every instance. That's certainly the case here, where we are introduced to Donna Stern, a 28-year-old aspiring stand up comic played by Jenny Slate in a fully realized, specific, lived in performance that makes us feel who she is in all her struggles, desires, shortcomings and sense of humor, almost from her first five minutes on screen. Donna is a dorky, ambitious, yet not at all settled in life millennial, whose boyfriend cheats on and dumps her after a set one night, and who is then let go from her part-time job at a failing local bookstore. So right away, we see that things aren't exactly going smoothly, although they could certainly be worse. Donna lives with a roommate who's more like a sister (Gaby Hoffmann) and has a good relationship with both of her parents, who are divorced but have her over for dinner all the time, so they can gently needle her about getting her life in order, but also joke about their own time as a struggling young adult.

We see that Donna's not in a great place, but it seems more like one of those occasionally troubled moments in life before suddenly, on top of everything, she finds out she's gotten pregnant from a rebound one night stand. Now, what was just a bump in the road becomes a potential rest of your life mistake, and Donna knows immediately that she's not going to have a baby. There's no conflict of decision-making here, we know and she knows that it was a mistake that she doesn't deserve to be saddled with from now until forever, and the situation is written so naturally in the conversations that jokester Donna has with her friends, her mom, and eventually the would be father of her child that everyone will recognize the swing of emotions. Donna's of course upset, worried, and regretful of her own mistakes, but she never waivers or thinks she ought not to go through with it. Like millions of women who've dealt with this issue, she knows what has to happen and only wants to go on with her life.

The conflict after that comes from the object of the ill fated hookup, a guy named Max (Jake Lacy) whom she literally just met, but who, when he turns up at her store and wants to take her out to lunch, she realizes she might actually like. The potential awkwardness and the question of whether you can begin to date a guy whose abortion you're going to have raises some strange questions that you might ask yourself if you were ever to be in Donna's shoes. She attempts to field out these unknown areas with a little bit of stumbling, her ever present stable of wisecracks, and the luck that the too good to be true Max actually does turn out to be almost saintlike in his supportiveness and affability. Through all this meandering, the movie drifts between Donna's varying mental state as she continues to forge ahead with life, even though the time between being pregnant and not being pregnant leaves her in an awkward in-between zone as pertains to whatever burgeoning relationship she might want to have with this guy.

There are moments of filler in the movie (a scene with comedian David Cross, who shows up as someone akin to himself, is unnecessary and doesn't work at all), and you can feel that it was lengthened from what was obviously a more focused short film on the clear subject at hand, but the formulaic nature of the screenplay does not prevent it from packing the punch of finally addressing a topic that mostly male filmmakers and writers have been unable to get right. I'm sorry, but I can only hope that Judd Apatow sees this film and wishes he had never written that awful scene in Knocked Up where a bunch of horrified guys sit around gasping at the idea that any reputable woman would ever really consider having a "shmashortion." Yes, it does happen, gentlemen, and it's usually not in a dirty, no good clinic (see Juno for the reference), but in an actual well-lit professional doctor's office, if you can imagine it. And women do this and they're not ruined and they're not miserable and they're not forever scarred with shame. It's unfortunate that this little well-meaning (and very funny) comedy was something that got labeled as controversial for even discussing and portraying this common legal procedure as an option that actually works out, but it's a fact of life that is way too often ignored in both film and television. In spite of that, sometimes movies come along that do reflect life the way it really is for millions of women, and while Knocked Up and Juno were fantasies, this is the one that finally rings true. It's too rare a sight to see.

* * *

TRAILER: "American Sniper"

Here's hoping that Clint Eastwood's latest turns out better than Jersey Boys did earlier this summer. Bradley Cooper stars as Chris Kyle, the Navy Seal whose autobiography the film is based on, and even though this teaser is pretty good, it could always turn out to be this year's Lone Survivor. It's coming out on Christmas Day, but not expanding until January 16th, so it even has that previous film's release date. I don't have a lot of faith in Eastwood as of late and his last really great movie was Letters From Iwo Jima back in 2006, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see if this one turns out okay.