The Weekend Report

Audiences were feeling the pain without any sense of gain as Pain & Gain managed to take the top spot in weekend charts with an estimated $19.7 million. The frame’s other new national release, The Big Wedding, underperformed as well with fourth place ranking of $7.5 million.

The DVD Wrapup

Gangster Squad, Django, Pawn, In the Blood, Central Park 5, G-Dog, Mr. Selfridge, Cold Prey, Electric Button and even more.

Wilmington on DVDs: The Red Menace; Jack Reacher; Gangster Squad

Is The Red Menace really “The Reefer Madness of anti-Communist movies? Or is that flattering it? Too earnest to be funny, too serious to be camp, too boring to be effective propaganda, this Herbert Yates-produced doozy from Republic (for which it stands) is probably one of the worst of the post-war anti-Commie thrillers, entertainment-wise. It isn’t even dumb enough be dumb fun, since writers Albert Demond and Gerald Geraghty know something about their subject. They have dialogue about Hegel, and a Red temptress has a bookcase full of tomes by Marx and Engels.

The Weekend Report

Sci-fi adventure Oblivion took a clear path and glided to the top of weekend box office with an estimated $38.1 million debut. While there were no other national debuts, several entries swung for the niches.

Wilmington on DVDs: My Son John; The Woman on Pier 13 (I Married a Communist); Promised Land.

My Son John; The Woman on Pier 13; Promised Land

Wilmington on DVDs: The Kid with a Bike

The setting is, once again the industrial, largely working class city of Seraing in Belgium: the Dardenne Brothers’ home city and the location for most of their films since La Promesse.

The DVD Wrapup

Future Weather, Save the Date, Kobayashi, Gate of the Ghost, Ringo, Dragon, One Day on Earth… And more.

Wilmington on DVDs: Django Unchained

Waltz is a good guy this time, Django’s mentor, but there’s some high-grade screen villainy by Leonardo Di Caprio and Samuel L. Jackson, both of whom would have stolen the movie if Waltz didn’t already have it stuffed in his back pocket.

The Weekend Report

42 estimates 27. Scary Movie 5 has a scary opening… smallest of the series.

More to come.

DVD Geek: Red Hook Summer

Once Spike Lee made Malcolm X, he seemed to lose all of his relevance as a filmmaker, thus reinforcing the adage about being careful what you wish for. But he really has only himself to blame. His first films were genuinely edgy, exciting, and revelatory. Other than his documentaries, his later films have all been flailing around in the dark, trying to find any kind of edge at all. His 2012 feature, Red Hook Summer, is heartbreakingly bad, because it almost isn’t.

Wilmington on DVDs: Ruthless; Despicable Me; Battleship; Lawless

Who is Edgar G. Ulmer and what is he doing in any pantheon, or semi-pantheon of world classical filmmakers? It’s been a classic nagging anti-auteurist question ever since Andrew Sarris introduced him.

The DVD Wrapup

Down the Shore, Into the Cold, Gate of Hell, Phantom Father, Hong Kong Confidential, We Are Egypt, Crush, Sexcula…. More

Wilmington on DVDs: The African Queen; Casablanca

PICK OF THE WEEK: CLASSIC The African Queen/ Casablanca (Also Blu-ray) (Four Stars) U.S.: John Huston/ Michael Curtiz (Warner Bros.) Here, of course, are two of Humphrey Bogart’s best—and two of the most wonderful shows that American Movies in their celebrated Golden Age, ever concocted. If you don’t have these pictures in some format, or (worse) if you haven’t even seen them at all,…

The Weekend Report

The debut of a re-booted Evil Dead led weekend box office, shocking an estimated $25.8 million. The session’s only other national release was the 3D-enhanced reissue of the venerable Jurassic Park that ranked fourth with $18.2 million.

Friday Estimates

Evil Dead will be Sam Raimi’s second biggest opening ever as a producer… solid mid-20s launch for a horror film. The Jurassic Park 3D re-release launches a little behind Titanic 3D, but like the Cameron, the real money for this Spielberg film is overseas, where theatrical exhibition is significantly greater than it was when JP was first released. In limited release, both Trance and The Company You Keep will be in the $20k-30k per-screen range this weekend… signifying that no one knows how they will do when they go wider.

The DVD Wrapup

Dolly, Lincoln, Bible, John Dies, Sweeney, LUV, Vietnam, Knuckleball, Untouchables, Phillip Roth… and more.

Wilmington on DVDs: Chronicle of a Summer (Chronique d’un Ete)

We watch those people from long ago, and the fact that, in the movie images, they’re still young (or still middle-aged) and that they have still (in the film) not yet met the problems and wars and tragedies and reversals that we know are coming, gives them a privileged position, an immortality conferred by hand-held camera. It’s a more casual immortality, not endowed with any of the painstaking ardor and expense routinely spent in preserving a movie superstar for the ages, or even of a cover girl for a shoot at Cannes. These are people talking about how they live and how to change it for the better, as we all did once, as we sometimes do now. Death is temporarily banished.