Honorable Mentions: “Argo” – Ben Affleck continues his career resurgence in front of and behind the camera with the year’s best crowd-pleaser. Centering on the true story of how the C.I.A. extracted several Americans from Tehran during the Iran Hostage Crisis posing as a film crew, “Argo” manages to be an affectionate satire of Hollywood […]
James Frazier’s Top 10 Films of 2012 Read More »
“The Amazing Spider-Man” was number 1 at the box office this weekend, with $65m Friday through Saturday and $140m since its Tuesday opening. But you knew that would be the case. The real winners of the weekend were Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom” and Woody Allen’s “To Rome With Love,” both in modestly wide bows of
With $54.1 million in box office receipts, Seth MacFarlane’s R-rated teddy bear comedy, “Ted,” won the weekend by a wide margin. Clearly, far more than MacFarlane’s “Family Guy” following showed up, as the movie coasted to the biggest opening for an R-rated comedy ever. If “Ted” manages to have the legs of past summer comedies
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As nearly every prognosticator predicted, “Madagascar 3” went on to take the weekend away from Friday’s #1, “Prometheus,” by a wide margin. Chalk it up to the kid-friendly Saturday and Sunday matinees, but both films dropped more than expected on Saturday and Sunday. “Prometheus” was bound to be front-loaded given that hoards of fanboys showed
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“Moonrise Kingdom” begins with a narrator informing the viewer—among other geographical details about a small New England island—that a cataclysmic storm once hit this idyllic coastline in the summer of 1965, around the time the story takes place. This coming storm creates a sense of impending doom that permeates Wes Anderson’s latest film, as if
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Just as I predicted in this week’s Box Office Beat, Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” and DreamWorks Animation’s “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” both opened well yesterday, separated by a margin of less than a million dollars. “Prometheus” took the day, but it’s clear now that “Madagascar” should take the weekend, being that kid-oriented films perform best
Friday Box Office: “Prometheus,” “Madagascar” neck and neck Read More »
“Snow White and the Huntsman” reigned supreme at the box office this weekend, with nearly double the gross of its closest competitor, but you could have guessed that had you read our Friday report. The real news worth mentioning is that Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom,” after setting the per-theater-average record for a non-Disney release last
“Men in Black 3” may have won the weekend, but its $70 million four-day take was not anywhere near what studio Sony was hoping for. Thus, the real box office story this weekend is “Moonrise Kingdom”, which managed to be the 14th biggest movie of the Memorial Day Holiday despite playing in just four theaters. Wes
After I personally doubted that a third big summer blockbuster in a row could fizzle, Men in Black 3 has managed to do it. Don’t get me wrong: this is nowhere near as bad a horror story as Dark Shadows or Battleship. Men in Black 3 managed to take in $17.7 million on opening day, which should compute
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The prestigious Cannes Film Festival, which runs May 16 to 26 on the French Riviera, announced its complete lineup at a press conference early Thursday. Joining Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, previously announced as the Opening Night Film, are the following hotly anticipated films spanning 26 different countries (list after the jump)…
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