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UK box-office July 27-29

When two big blockbusters open against each other on the same date, there’s usually a casualty – and for that reason, it rarely happens. But both Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount will be pleased with the box office grosses for their latest releases, The Simpsons Movie and Transformers, which went head-to-head this weekend. Buoyed by previews on Wednesday and Thursday, the Simpsons flick debuted on an impressive £13.63 million. Also thanks to healthy previews, Transformers opened on £8.72 million.

When you throw in the £2.88 million the latest Harry Potter film pulled in at the weekend, plus Hairspray’s nifty £1.39 million, the UK box office overall is riding high. Box office compiler Nielsen EDI measured the weekend – the top 15 films grossed £28.16 million combined – as the biggest of the last 52. In fact, we’d be very surprised if there has ever been a bigger single weekend at the UK box-office. Trade publication Screen International reports that, stripping out all paid previews from consideration, the weekend is indeed the highest-ever three-day total in the territory.

With such big new entrants into the market, it’s no surprise to see existing blockbusters shedding scores of their screens and plummeting down the chart. Fantastic Four & The Rise of the Silver Surfer crashed from 233 screens to 81, and lost 77% of its box office on the weekend. Ocean’s Thirteen went from 116 to 34 cinemas, and declined 73% in revenue terms. Family film Firehouse Dog managed to fall 75% in terms of box office, despite shedding just four of its 203 sites – ouch!

With blockbusters on the rampage, it was heartening to see specialist releases still fighting their corner. Sherrybaby, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, opened at number eight in the chart, with a decent £36,000 from 13 screens. Hanging in there, still, is a trio of French films occupying places nine to eleven: La Vie en Rose, Tell No One and Molière. Tell No One is still in the top ten, after seven weeks, and has broken the £1 million barrier. It is less than £50,000 away from overtaking The Chorus to become the seventh-biggest French film ever at the UK box office. La Vie en Rose is now at £1.2 million, and is £50,000 behind the fifth-biggest French film, Delicatessen.

I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal opened on just one screen, but the documentary about the legendary Nazi hunter connected with a highly motivated niche audience, and managed over £7,000 from that single cinema. Lonely Hearts, starring John Travolta, James Gandolfini, Jared Leto and Salma Hayek, also opened on a single screen, where it took £3,400. Chad drama Daratt debuted at two sites, and also took £3,400. Family dysfunction documentary Running Stumbled suffered from a lack of positive reviews, which are usually an essential pre-condition for success of an arthouse release, and took a measly £207 from its one screen.

Goldfinger

This summer has been the season of episode threes. Pirates Of The Caribbean, Spider-Man, Shrek, Ocean’s, Rush Hour and The Bourne Ultimatum: even in these sequel-swamped times, we’ve never seen anything quite like this before. Some of those franchises have used their arrival at trilogy status to herald a degree of narrative closure – Pirates, Spidey, Bourne – which is not to say that the series are done and dusted. But there is something about a trilogy that feels right for beginning, developing and ending a story, and it was the preferred format for sagas such as Star Wars (twice!), The Godfather, The Matrix and Lord Of The Rings. Maybe it’s also that consumer appetites don’t often sustain as far as a fourth helping.

On Tuesday, another “episode three” will play in over 130 cinemas nationwide, as part of a series this summer of rereleases of classic British films: 1964’s Goldfinger. The James Bond movies have now reached such a collective mass in the popular psyche, it’s easy to forget that, in the early years, they were feeling their way down a path towards a still-unknown destination. And given that so many third instalments involved satisfying closure of a saga, it’s interesting that in many ways Goldfinger represents a beginning. It was the film in which all the elements of the 007 brand came together for the first time, mapping a template that endured for decades.

US critic Roger Ebert hit the nail on the head when he called Goldfinger “the link between the more modest first two Bonds [Dr No, From Russia with Love] and the later big-budget extravaganzas” and “a great entertainment” that “contains all the elements of the Bond formula that would work again and again”. After Goldfinger, Ebert concluded, producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman “could be certain that 007 was good for the long run”.

Sherrybaby

I wasn’t hugely familiar with Maggie Gyllenhaal’s work before seeing Sherrybaby. Although I vaguely remember her as Donnie’s sister in Donnie Darko, it’s been a while since I saw that film and I must be one of the few people who didn’t really like it (and I’m not prepared to get into an argument about it. Remember the writer Richard Kelly was also responsible for that gem of a film Domino starring Keira Knightley – so let’s say no more). I’d heard good reports about her 2002 S&M film Secretary, but that is still on my LoveFilm rental list.

In Sherrybaby Gyllenhaal plays a 22-year-old heroin addict (Sherry) who has just been released from prison after serving three years for robbery. Free, sober and motivated to do better, Sherry has two goals: to get a job working with children and to regain custody of her young daughter, who has been living with her brother and his wife. However, Sherry soon realises that life is going to be harder than she thought. Getting and holding down a good job, picking up where she left off with her daughter, finding a comfortable home, staying clean and keeping the parole officer off her back, are just some of the challenges she’ll have to overcome if she’s going to make it on the outside.

Gyllenhaal’s performance is incredibly affecting. It would have been so easy for her to have defaulted to the stereotype of the used-up, hopeless druggie winning the trust of those around her and then disappointing through her weakness. But the subtlety, sensitivity and complexity she brings to the role makes you empathise with her character, even at times when you feel frustrated or annoyed by her actions. Gyllenhaal’s own research with people living in halfway houses, addicts on drug recovery programmes and offenders in parole meetings, clearly aided her understanding of real people in real-life situations struggling to be reintegrated into society.

There were a few minor things that slightly jarred with me in Sherrybaby. One, surprisingly, was the depiction of the meeting Sherry attends for recovering addicts. I was amazed by how hackneyed the entire scene was – from the former addict sitting up front with the organisers and relaying his experiences of getting and staying clean, to Sherry herself who volunteers to stand up and ‘testify’.  Another irritant was Sherry’s relationship with her father. He’s on screen for such a short time, but it’s evident that he has played an important and sordid part in Sherry’s past. However, this is merely hinted at and never revisited.

That said, Sherrybaby is still a very good film. Its writer/director Laurie Collyer, who based Sherry on a close childhood friend, has created both a compelling story and, thanks also to her documentary filmmaking skills, one that feels authentic. For example, in one scene a parole officer waits for Sherry to provide a urine sample for testing. It’s bad enough that she’s not given any privacy from the authorities, but as the camera pans out, you realise that there isn’t even a door to the toilet. This is one of the small but significant examples of how differently you are treated once you’ve committed a crime.

Sherrybaby will have surely paved the way for Maggie G to get her teeth into some major film roles. But let’s hope that her choices will be as interesting as this one.

Sherrybaby is out in UK cinemas from 27 July.

[Reviewed and posted by HC]

See what others are saying:

http://www.timeout.com/film/reviews/84436/sherrybaby.html

http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=162321

UK box office July 20-22

When Entertainment Films picked July 20 as the release date for Hairspray, it’s fair to assume it harboured mild concerns about the competitive environment: opening one week after the latest Harry Potter, and one week before Transformers and The Simpsons Movie. But picking any date in this blockbuster-jammed summer was never going to be easy. Then Paramount announced it was running paid previews of Transformers on Saturday and Sunday July 21-22, essentially going head-to-head with Hairspray.

Which makes the £2,046,000 opening for the musical movie a very creditable result. Marginally ahead of the £1,983,000 Chicago grossed in its first weekend of wide release back in January 2003, Hairspray achieved its total without the benefit of a West End run creating strong brand recognition for the property, and without the awards hoopla that boosted Chicago. True, the original 1988 John Waters Hairspray film created some awareness, but only among highly informed cinemagoers. In comparison, The Producers opened on £1,311,179 at the end of 2005, but this was effectively a seven-day figure since it included four days of previews. Rent debuted with a dismal £25,000 in April 2006.

Hairspray was predictably eclipsed by the Transformer previews, which punched up £3,155,000 on Saturday and Sunday. And both films were convincingly beaten by the second weekend of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which posted £6,638,000 for an 11-day total of more than £30 million. The film is the fastest to crack £30 million so far this year. No 2006 release reached the milestone within two weekends of play. In 2005, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire stood at £29,625,000 after two weekends, and did so without the benefit of the extra day of play (Thursday preview) included in Phoenix’s figure.

French films continue to dominate the specialist sector, with La Vie en Rose, Molière and Tell No One occupying positions 10, 11 and 12 in the chart. The first of those titles has now passed £1 million at the box office, and Tell No One will do so within the week. It is many years since three French titles achieved such simultaneous success in the UK.

The biggest foreign language hit this weekend is Eros’ latest Bollywood release Partner, which posted a stunning opening of £237,000 from 43 screens. The result is in line with last month’s Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, which debuted on £267,000 from 47 venues.

Other new entrants include family film Firehouse Dog, which woofed to a weak £91,000 from 203 screens; Alain Resnais’ Private Fears in Public Places, which opened with a creditable £18,000 from five locations; a re-release of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, also at five venues, with a total of £12,200; and gritty Haiti documentary Ghosts of Cité Soleil, which took £6,000 from its four cinemas. Documentary-drama hybrid Buy it Now failed to make itself heard amid the clutter, despite a controversial subject matter (a 16-year-old auctions her virginity via eBay), and took just over £300 from a single screen.

Eagle vs. Shark

The offbeat title of this film is a good indicator of what you’ll get when you watch it. Head and shoulders above many of the comedies released so far this year, despite tackling bereavement as one of its themes, Eagle vs. Shark is laugh out loud funny.

This gorgeous little tale centres around a young girl called Lily, whose high point every day as a waitress in a food fast restaurant is the arrival of a male customer Jarrod, who is actually attracted to her prettier co-worker.

Fired from her job and armed with her colleague’s discarded invite, Lily decides to go to Jarrod’s fancy dress party. Managing to win his attention, a relationship of sorts begins, but it is clear this will not be a straightforward happy-ever-after coupling.

Lily is delightful and gracious, yet this is no romantic comedy. She is also a little odd, awkward and skinny, but her experiences serve to make the audience warm to her without making her a victim.

Director Taika Waititi deliberated wanted a very different kind of female protagonist for Eagle vs. Shark. Loren Horsley, who plays Lily, devised the character and changed her whole physicality to assume the persona of Lily, becoming shy and slouching.  She then worked with Waititi to come up with Jarrod by imagining the type of man that Lily would fall in love with, and making him “the worst compilation of all male traits.”

Jarrod is a highly dislikeable character. Despite being in his late 20s, he is still obsessed with getting his revenge on a guy who bullied him at school, so much so that it takes over his life. Jemaine Clement who plays him, carries this off so well and with such awkwardness that I saw similarities between him and the other great anti-hero, Travis from Taxi Driver. There are also reasons why Jarrod is the way he is, which redeem him ever so slightly.

The superb comic performances are punctuated by stop-animation sequences, which appear to represent Lily and Jarrod’s relationship - a lovely aside. 

This film is well worth investing an hour and a half of your time. It lifts your mood and will no doubt stay with you.

Eagle vs. Shark is out in UK cinemas from 17 August.

[Reviewed and Posted by KC]

What others are saying:

http://past-the-popcorn.gospelcom.net/index.php/2007/eagle-vs-shark/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/eagle_vs_shark/

UK box office July 13-15

It was predicted to open big and it did not disappoint. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix arrived at multiple screens in more than 500 UK cinemas, and posted an opening weekend gross of £16.5 million, including takings from Thursday. The figure is just behind Shrek the Third’s debut of £16.7 million two weeks ago, but that tally included a full three days of previews against Phoenix’s single one. A better comparison is Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End’s opening salvo back in May. That film also opened on a Thursday, and its four-day figure was £13.4 million – £3 million less than Phoenix’s.

The success of Harry Potter and a couple of other current blockbusters has created one of the most top-heavy box office charts in memory. Of the £22.3 million collectively grossed by the top 15 titles, Potter, Shrek the Third and Die Hard 4.0 accounted for more than 95 per cent of the total. Potter took 1183 times as much as the number 15 film (Are We Done Yet?). In contrast, on the last weekend of April, the top film (Next) took 6.3 times as much as the number 15 title (The Reaping).

A long, long way below Potter, the second-highest new entry this weekend was Molière, which took a mediocre £76,000 from 49 screens. That compares with recent opening weekends for fellow French films Tell No One (£174,000 from 55 screens) and La Vie en Rose (£206,000 from 58).

Bollywood picture Naqaab opened one spot behind Molière, with £75,000 from 30 screens – a result that many distributors of foreign language films would love to have, but no great shakes for this highly lucrative category. The re-release of Last Tango in Paris managed a highly respectable £4,400 from its single cinema. The Australian gangland version of Macbeth was less impressive with £2,100 from two screens, and Hungarian arthouse oddity Taxidermia posted £1,600 from one.

With Harry Potter sucking the life out of the market, it was no surprise to see hefty declines for the other blockbusters, ranging from 45 per cent for Shrek to an alarming 73 per cent for Pirates. It’s now clear that the latter film will top out below £41 million, a full £11 million behind the last installment in the franchise.

Existing specialist releases declined at gentler rates. La Vie en Rose and Tell No One are both still chugging away, hanging in there at numbers 10 and 11 after a month of release. Cumulative grosses for the titles stand at £961,000 and £884,000 respectively. Italian arthouse hit The Golden Door fell 44 per cent on the weekend, but that doesn’t matter so much when the film is performing so strongly midweek. The film took £19,000 at the weekend, but its gross climbed £47,000 over the seven days, to a total of £157,000. In other words, Emanuele Crialese’s film took significantly more over Monday-Thursday than it did Friday-Sunday, and that’s an unusual skew.

Molière

In addition to the flourishing industry in biopics about artists (Pollock), musicians (Ray, Walk the Line), poets (Before Night Falls) and historical figures (Amazing Grace), there exists a separate category of films based on real-life subjects, but not necessarily based on true events.

It’s doubtful that Shakespeare really was inspired to write Romeo And Juliet by falling in love with one of his actors who turned out to be a cross-dressing heiress, but that didn’t stop anyone enjoying Shakespeare in Love. The makers of Becoming Jane based their account of Jane Austen’s love affair with Irishman Tom Lefroy on allusions to him in her letters, but as for the dramatic scene where the young lovers run away together only to turn back when Jane realises their actions will result in penury not just for Tom, but also for his many dependent Irish relatives – well, that’s what we call artistic licence.

French director Laurent Tirard takes a similarly playful approach to his film about legendary seventeenth-century playwright Molière. Imagining events that might have inspired him to write popular comedies such as Tartuffe, Tirard and co-scriptwriter Gregoire Vigneron tell the story of a bankrupt playwright (The Beat that My Heart Skipped’s Romain Duris) who, reduced to debtors’ prison, agrees to help a rich, married nincompoop (Fabrice Luchini) woo a young beauty (Ludivine Sagnier). Trapped in his employer’s country house, he falls for the man’s neglected wife (Laura Morante).

UK box office July 6-8

Following the wettest June since records began, sunny weather over the weekend had a predictable result: a huge drop at the box office. Last week’s top movies Shrek the Third, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Ocean’s Thirteen all fell more than 50 per cent, and even popular arthouse hits La Vie En Rose and Tell No One fell 40 per cent.

Shrek the Third clung onto the top spot, with a gross of £5.1 million and a 13-day total of £25.7 million. For comparison, after two weekends Spider-Man 3 had managed £24.4 million and the latest Pirates had reached £29.3 million. Shrek may receive another boost when school holidays begin later this month, although by then it will face additional competition from the new Harry Potter. Transformers and The Simpsons Movie enter the fray on July 27.

This weekend’s highest new entry, by miles, is Die Hard 4.0, which debuted with a very healthy £5.0 million, including previews on Wednesday and Thursday. For comparison, Die Hard with a Vengeance opened in 1995 with £1.9 million. Next highest new entry this weekend is animation The Ugly Duckling and Me! which managed £29,000. Horror film Dead Silence, from the makers of Saw, is not far below with £23,000. Given the latter’s modest 16-screen release and limited marketing support from deep-pocketed distributor Universal, it’s fair to assume that the focus for this title will be on DVD.

The lowest drop in the Top 15 was experienced by Italian film The Golden Door, which fell just 28 per cent. Emanuele Crialese’s well-reviewed drama has taken £109,000 in 10 days, and is on course to become the biggest Italian hit here since Paulo Sorrentino’s 2005 arthouse thriller The Consequences of Love. Sorrentino’s recent follow-up, The Family Friend, maxed out at £131,000.

This week’s top arthouse new entrant is Edmond, which managed an uninspiring £3,600 from three screens, despite the cachet of a David Mamet script and a cast including William H Macy, Julia Stiles, Joe Mantegna and Mena Suvari. Bruno Dumont’s 2006 Cannes contender Flanders was slightly weaker, with £2,500 from four venues. Reviews may not have been strong enough to compensate for what audience members probably surmised to be depressing subject matter – “the most Godless film you’ll see all year,” cautioned Time Out.

Overall, this weekend’s films suffered in comparison with the relevant period in 2006, when the second Pirates exploded with a £13.7 million opening. Receipts for the top 15 movies are 30 per cent down on the same weekend in 2006. However, the UK box office should bounce back in spectacular fashion next weekend when Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix opens on around 1,200 screens.

Paris Je T’aime

Every now and then, someone has another go: a portmanteau film featuring shorts from different directors. One memorably feeble attempt was the London-set Tube Tales – produced by Richard Jobson and others – which suggested that in 1999, at any rate, the likes of Ewan McGregor and Jude Law were not yet set for flourishing careers as filmmakers. Memory may be playing tricks, but I recall that quality was invariably in inverse proportion to the fame of the participants; contributors that were not so well-known were more likely to have earned their place on merit.

Since then, we’ve had compilation films relating to the events of 9/11 (11’9”01 – September 11), and Tickets, which depicted different groups of travellers on a European train journey. Eros featured just three short films (from Steven Soderbergh, Wong Kar Wai and Michelangelo Antonioni) addressing the theme of love and sex. Arty assemblage Destricted pushed erotic boundaries further with contributions from the likes of Matthew Barney and Larry Clark.

Which takes us to Paris Je T’aime, a collection of 18 love stories, each taking place in a different arrondissement. It is, of course, a mixed bag – how could it be otherwise? – but there are plenty of gems.

Alexander Payne (Sideways) delivers a corker, with a hilariously unsophisticated American tourist (Margo Martindale) writing a letter home. Fellow countrymen the Coen brothers also show characteristic flair with a nicely judged short featuring Steve Buscemi as a tourist who gets caught up in the dramas of a French couple on the opposite platform of the Metro. But the Americans drop the ball with Wes Craven’s Pere Lachaise cemetery-set tale featuring British thesps Emily Mortimer and Rufus Sewell discussing Oscar Wilde.

My favourite of the shorts is by Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), which was filmed a year or two before the others, presumably as a lure to finance and an inspiration to subsequent contributors. It’s a highly stylised encapsulation of a love affair between two characters played by Natalie Portman and Melchior Beslon.

There were actually meant to be 20 films altogether, but two didn’t make the grade. Uncharitable observers might ponder exactly how bad those two rejects were if they were worse than the incoherent effort from Chris Doyle (the genius cinematographer who shot many of Wong Kar-wai’s films). Others might agree that Paris Je T’aime might have been even stronger had there been a little less Paris to aime. Whichever way you slice it, 18 films feel a lot in one sitting.

The compilation premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year, and may have been the inspiration for yet another collection – this time on the subject of cinema itself – which was unveiled this year to commemorate the 60th edition. With contributions from the likes of Lars Von Trier, Roman Polanski, Gus Van Sant (again), the Coens (again) and Ken Loach, Chacun Son Cinema (To Each His Cinema) may yet show the light of day in theatres over here – in festivals, at least. I believe it is already available on DVD in France.

Paris Je T’aime is out now in UK cinemas.

[Reviewed and Posted by CG]

See earlier blog review

UK box office 29 June – 1 July

Reviews may have labelled Shrek the Third as a slight disappointment after the wittily inventive previous instalment, but the green ogre bestrode the UK box office like a giant. The sequel’s £16.65 million gross compares with a £13.41 million opening for the latest Pirates of the Caribbean earlier this summer, and an £11.83 million debut for the film that kicked off 2007’s blockbuster season, Spider-Man 3. However, Shrek’s figure includes takings from three days of previews, as against just one day’s worth for Pirates and none at all for Spidey.

Overall, takings for the top 15 movies were more than triple the same weekend from 2006 when animated hit Over the Hedge topped the charts. Terror threats and huge ratings for the televised Princess Diana concert on Sunday evidently had a negligible impact on audiences, while dismal weather proved a spur to cinema attendance.

Although Shrek, Fantastic Four, Ocean’s Thirteen and Pirates predictably occupied the top four places, with grisly horror sequel Hostel: Part II landing at number 5, specialist films also held up their end. La Vie en Rose declined by just 12 per cent from the previous weekend to grab the number 6 spot and a total so far of £534,000. Fellow French film Tell No One hung in there with a reasonable 30 per cent decline and a total (after 17 days) of £657,000.

Acclaimed Italian drama The Golden Door opened encouragingly at number 14, with £45,000 from 14 screens. This compares with £52,000 from an over-ambitious 38 screens for director Emanuele Crialese’s previous film Respiro back in August 2003.

Three new Bollywood films also cracked the top 20: Apne at number 7, Aap Ka Surroor at 13 and Awarapan at 19. With recent releases Jhoom Barabar Jhoom holding on at number 15 and Sivaji at 16, that makes one of the most Bollywood-dominated UK box office charts ever.

Other specialist releases enjoyed varying degrees of success. Paris Je T’aime – a collection of 18 shorts set in different Paris arrondissements, from directors including the Coen brothers and Gus Van Sant – debuted respectably with £29,000 from 13 screens. Re-release When a Woman Ascends the Stairs did a tidy £4,000 on a single print. Dixie Chicks documentary Shut Up and Sing was mediocre with £2,000 from three. And poor Les Petites Vacances, Olivier Peyon’s French family drama, debuted at number 91 in the chart with a highly disappointing £73 from its single cinema. Prospects for a successful rollout through the regional art-houses now look discouraging.