29: 'Home' Tops with Strong Debut; 'Get Hard' Follows in Second

DreamWorks' animated Home took the box office crown this weekend, overperforming expectations with $54 million, but perhaps it's not so surprising given the lack of family fare at the box office this year. The last animated hit was the SpongeBob movie, and despite lackluster reviews, Home managed to attract that family audience. In second place was Get Hard, which had even worse critical approval and still earned $34.5 million for the weekend, making it Will Ferrell's biggest debut since 2010's The Other Guys, and his second biggest ever after Talladega Nights (which opened back in 2006 with over $50 million). It's also more than Kevin Hart's last opener The Wedding Ringer, which pulled in $20 million in January.

Insurgent fell 57% for $22 million, but the buzz continues to die real fast (I can't help but wonder if every single studio's decision to split the last book in a trilogy into two movies, solely to earn more money, finally looks set to backfire in this case), while Cinderella fell another 50% for fourth place, still performing well for Disney with the majority female audience. Rounding out the top five was the indie horror flick It Follows, which expanded to over 1,000 theaters and managed to earn over $4 million for the effort. That would already make it Radius-TWC's highest grosser ever, after last year's Snowpiercer, and shows that had it expanded sooner or even opened wide, may have been a big hit, at least on the level of other cheapie horror films (which would have been nice for one that's actually supposed to be good).

Top 5:

Home- $54 million
Get Hard- $34.6 million
Insurgent- $22.1 million
Cinderella- $17.5 million
It Follows- $4 million

In limited release, Serena, the long delayed Bradley Cooper/Jennifer Lawrence period drama, fell flat on its face as expected, after desperate attempts by the studio to hide the movie as long as possible in order to minimize the damage to its stars, who were both reported to be terrible in this. Suffering bad buzz and horrific reviews for over a year now, the turkey was finally released on VOD and put in just 60 theaters, earning a pitiful $1k per screen average. Meanwhile, Noah Baumbach's While We're Young, starring Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts and the only critically acclaimed new release in theaters this week, did very well, earning a $60k per screen average on just 4 screens, making it Baumbach's highest limited debut ever. Next up it's Easter weekend, which should mean some solid holds, and a likely massive debut for Furious 7, the latest in the popular franchise and the last to feature the late Paul Walker. See you then!

TEASER: "Spectre"

Yay, the teaser for Spectre's here! It actually shows more than I thought it would, even though it's definitely still a teaser in every sense. Christoph Waltz only barely shows up for a second in the shadows, but he looks to be the head of SPECTRE, the evil organization finally being brought back to the Bond movies because the studio regained the rights after all these years. Do you guys think he's Blofeld? He has to be, right? Supposedly his character's name is something else, but I suspect that's misdirection. Spectre's coming Nov 6th- I can't wait!

TRAILER: "Southpaw"

This movie looks mostly like an acting showcase for Jake Gyllenhaal, who obviously bulked up quite a bit for the part. I guess it's been a while since we had a good boxing drama, but it looks pretty melodramatic and obvious to me. I guess that can be overcome by the acting in movies like this though. Southpaw's coming out July 31st.

TRAILER: "Slow West"

Now this looks cool. Another Sundance movie, this one coming out May 15th, starring Michael Fassbender in a kind of absurdist western that got praise for its ability to mix different genres- as you can see it goes from violence to humor and melancholy, etc. There's never enough good westerns anymore though, so I'll be checking it out (it's coming out on Itunes the same day as the theatrical release). You can also spot Aussie actor Ben Mendelsohn in this, currently getting a lot of attention for his role on Netflix's Bloodline.

TRAILER: "Maggie"

Arnold Schwarzenegger keeps looking for his comeback, this time in a story about a dad who has to protect his daughter, who's dying of the infectious disease of zombie-ism. I have to admit, I didn't see that part coming, but it looks mostly standard aside from that. Apparently it is supposed to be more of a dramatic rather than action role for Arnold, but I'm sure there's going to be some blood spilled in a movie with zombies in it.

TEASER: "Dope"

This look back at life and hip-hop in the 1990's was big hit at Sundance, and was picked up by Open Road Films for release on June 12th. It's got a good cast, including Forest Whitaker and Zoe Kravitz as part of the ensemble, although it's kind of hard to see from this trailer (what a strange way to cut your teaser).

FIRST LOOK: Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor

So, EW.com has dropped the first look at a bald Jesse Eisenberg as Superman nemesis Lex Luthor- what do you think? I'm having a hard time picturing him as threatening, to be honest. I keep imagining a borderline Aspergers-ish Mark Zuckerberg-style Lex, menacingly plugging away at his plan to hack into the world banks or something. That might be kinda funny- a new approach for Lex. To me, the best Lex Luthor to date was Michael Rosenbaum on Smallville- cool, calm, smoothly intelligent yet devious and subtly manipulative. They should have gotten him to do it for the movies.

TRAILER #2: "Entourage"

This new longer trailer for the Entourage movie kind of shows why it was easy to get sick of this show real fast. Aside from Jeremy Piven, who won three Emmys for it, the rest of it's not much of a comedy, but a chance to hang out with three douchebags who marvel in a Hollywood lifestyle you're supposed to wish you could be part of. It kinda gets icky when you realize you're rooting for no one on this show to succeed, ever.

Blu-Ray Pick of the Week: "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972)

Werner Herzog's trippy mindbender of a movie was released on blu-ray recently, and it's definitely worth seeing if you've never taken the ride. Herzog has always been known for his punishing shoots, but here he was working with an actor in Klaus Kinski, who many say was even crazier. Supposedly his manic behavior terrorized the cast and crew on set, but it led to a mesmerizing performance as the man who leads a group trek through the Andes in the 1500's on a pointless search for El Dorado. Over the course of the journey he's slowly driven mad and drives the others to ruin as well. This movie clearly had a major influence on Apocalypse Now and it's a cinematic experience you'll never forget, trust me.

Trailer:

REVIEW: "Wild Tales" (2014) Dir. Damian Szifron

Wild Tales is a raucous collection of outrageous shorts whose only common theme seems to be to strip down the oppression of society's expectations. Society in this case, refers to modern Argentinian society, which can inform some of the specifics of an occasional short, like the one about a guy enraged with the city's public parking policies, but many others are universal in nature, and always place the moviegoer in the shoes of the victim.

Damian Szifron wrote and directed this anthology movie, and the short stories he has come up with are always extreme, exaggerated, violent and utterly hilarious- this is essentially a black comedy, as all but one of the shorts wind up in various iterations of murder and gore, after a person who just "can't take it anymore," gives up on what they're expected to do and just goes with his/her gut, does what feels right, consequences be damned. In a funny way, that's the kind of thing that makes this film (which is the highest grossing in Argentina's history) the ultimate crowdpleaser- every action ultimately taken by one of the parties in a corresponding short ends up in a cathartic burst of wish fulfillment. Don't we all fantasize about lashing out in the most extreme way possible against the people who've wronged us, be they friends, acquaintances, lovers, or the government itself?

It may be unnecessary to describe the shorts individually- they are all less than twenty minutes and endlessly re-watchable in nature (you could even think of them as comedic Twilight Zone episodes). They each set up a scenario that leads to an overtly extreme reaction by a wronged party, a reaction so over the top and yet understandable, that by the time the segment reaches its conclusion you're laughing and cheering along in both horror and sympathy for what led to the decision made. There are elements of the surreal or sci-fi, thriller and coincidence in each perfectly crafted sequence, and yet the biggest favorite will likely prove to be "The Wedding," the climactic final segment in which a bride from hell gives Rosamund Pike's "gone girl" a run for her money in the psychopath department.

As outrageous as each short is, the movie as a whole is a finely tuned, well acted piece of uproarious entertainment that you can sit anyone down in front of and they'll enjoy it immensely. It's not hard to see why the film proved so popular in Argentina, and further, why it's done so well in limited release here in the U.S. despite losing the Foreign Language Film Oscar to Poland's Ida. Word of mouth will work its magic with this one for years to come, and so here's me doing my part to get the word out in what little way I can. See this movie and take some friends with you. It's the kind of film the phrase, "a great time at the movies" was made for.

* * * 1/2

TRAILER + POSTER: "Mission: Impossible- Rogue Nation"

So I guess I jumped the gun yesterday with that teaser, because here comes the full trailer now, complete with the poster and everything. Looks kinda cool though, especially that last plane stunt, which you know is going to be awesome. Kinda funny how everyone from the last film is back except for Paula Patton. I guess the women in this series are as disposable as Bond Girls.

Poster:

TEASER: "Mission: Impossible- Rogue Nation"

So, the new Mission: Impossible movie comes out with a teaser and a title today- looks just as nuts as ever, but will it be as big a hit as Ghost Protocol was a few years ago? The M:I movies seem to be the only ones audiences still accept Tom Cruise in these days, which is why he keeps making them. So he can't be thrilled that the new, critically raved Sundance documentary Going Clear, set to air on HBO at the end of the month, portrays him as a raving loon in its expose of Scientology. That's bound to see the whole "crazy/brainwashed Tom Cruise" story bubble up to the surface again. Rogue Nation comes out July 31st.