The Weekend Report

Is Noah a Divergent? Is God dead? Does The Governator have a need for speed? These questions and more will be answered by The Muppets & Peabody & Sherman when they check into The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Wilmington on Movies: Noah

Will Russell Crowe ever again get a part that so suits his special screen persona and gifts — that natural genius he seems to have for projecting awesome tormented heroics and mad obsessions — as the one he plays in his new film: Noah, the Lord’s visionary servant in Darren Aronofsky’s sometimes crazy and often wonderful version of the biblical story of The Great Flood? Or a film that so stupendously sets those gifts off ?

Friday Box-Office Estimates

Hope floats for Noah with a $14.9 million opening excursion; Divergent flaunts its dystopia with $8.9 million for its second weekend and a $77 million cume. The Muppets were soft as felt at $2.6 million. The Grand Budapest Hotel checks into 977 rooms for fourth place, adding $2.3 million to its $17.9 million tab.

The DVD Wrapup

Wolf of Wall Street, King of Comedy, Great Beauty, The Past, Junk, Punk Singer, The Swimmer, Let the Fire Burn and more.

Wilmington on DVDs: Nebraska; Foreign Correspondent; 2 Guns

Nebraska is a great funny-sad road movie full of all-American offbeat lives, oddball comedy and bleak black-and-white landscape beauty

Wilmington on Movies: Muppets Most Wanted

There was never a TV puppet show quite like “The Muppet Show” — or a romantic couple of any kind quite like Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy the hamme fatale — or a supporting troupe like Fozzie the Bear, Gonzo, Animal, the Two Old Curmudgeons, and all their funny, fuzzy friends. And I’m happy to say that the new Walt Disney movie Muppets Most Wanted continues that splendid renaissance of Muppetry we saw in the 2011 Disney picture The Muppets. It’s not necessarily as good, because it doesn’t have the built-in emotional charge of being a Muppet revival movie about the revival of the Muppets — a storyline which, for those of us who’ve been familiar for years with the handmade troupe of the great late muppeteer Jim Henson (and Frank Oz and the rest) quickly became hilarious and touching and something to cheer for.

The Weekend Report

The much-ballyhooed debut of Divergent handily led weekend moviegoing with an estimated $56.2 million.That left newcomer Muppets Most Wanted with poor seconds of $16.5 million. But the session curve ball belonged to the inspirational God’s Not Dead that played largely heartland multiplexes and grossed a significant $8.7 million.

Wilmington on Movies: Divergent

Despite the best efforts of Burger and of his cast and crew, this is an often-dull cliche-fest with unoriginal scenes and terse, unexciting dialogue, embedded in huge gray spaces of predictable plotting and flat dramaturgy. The book, by contrast, is smooth, fast, crisply written and emotional — and it benefits greatly from the fact that it’s dominated by Tris’ voice as the narrator. The story isn’t very original, and it’s basically the same in both book and movie (it may even be the same dialogue). But, in the picture, the moviemakers try to convey Tris’ inner life by focusing on close shots of Shailene Woodley’s face, as she tries to adjust to Dauntlessness, or gets a crush on Four, or jumps off or climbs up another building or reacts to all the dystopian stereotypes. I don’t think it worked — for the often minimally emoting Ms. Woodley or for the movie, which could really use a lot more voiceover.

Friday Box Office Estimates

Divergent took Friday by just shy of 5x the #2 film in the nation, Muppets Most Wanted. One wonders what Disney was thinking, as they had such a nice success with the last Muppet movie by reaching wider than the under-12-year-old audience. A weak market every place else, especially on the indie circuit, where Nymphomaniac Volume 1 delivered a weak launch, though better than the Canadian release of Nymphomaniac 2. The top per-screen launch was Cheap Thrills with a $5,100 Friday, but only on a single screen.

The DVD Wrapup

American Hustle, Frozen, Mr. Banks, Mandela, Swerve, Hidden Fortress, Nuke ‘Em High, Vajra, Monsters and more.

Wilmington on Movies: Catherine Deneuve — The Umbrellas of Cherbourg; On My Way

I met her finally at Cannes, as part of a roundtable discussion interview, and I sat next to her, and, for an hour, the beggared the college fantasies instilled by that face in the poster. At the end, I talked to her for a few more moments, and she smiled her smile, the one I never saw on my wall, and I left, happy for that brief moment. God, what a lovely smile!

The Weekend Report

There may have been a Need for Speed in the marketplace but the cross country carnage came up short of top gear and finished with the bronze and an estimated $17.7 million. The session’s top dog was in fact the animated canine Mr. Peabody & Sherman that posted $21.4 million.

The frame’s only other national deb was the urban comedy The Single Mom’s Club that performed to expectations with an $8.4 million box office. Among the limited openings the big screen version of TV cult favorite Veronica Mars was off to a good start with a $2 million tally from 291 locations while the psychological thriller Enemy grossed a fair $233,000 from 53 playdates.

Friday Box Office Estimates

I feel the need… the need for a bit of good fortune to get to a $20 million opening. And is Tyler Perry’s The Single Mom’s Club The Chicken (a movie being opened after the studio bailed on an ongoing relationship) or The Egg (a clear signal of the end of a long-running success story)? That is the question.

Wilmington on Movies: Need for Speed

Need for Speed—a movie based on a popular video game about outlaw street-and-highway racing—is a big, bad, flashy, terminally dopey muscle car of a movie, which tries to be a Fast and Furious-style actioner and ends up being Rushed and Ridiculous instead. Not that I’m filing any briefs for the Fast and the Furious movie franchise, an overwrought high-octane saga in which scowling, fiercely intent super-drivers whiz and careen and roar past each other in unlikely and dangerous racing locales and outrageous CGI-enhanced stunts. Smash hit as it may be, that is a movie series which has given me no pleasure at all despite its vast expenditures of cash, blistering road action, and apparently well-satisfied audiences.

The DVD Wrapup

Inside Llewyn Davis, Book Thief, Patience Stone, Mademoiselle C, Homefront, Ozploitation, Rogue, Vikings and more.

Wilmington on Movies: The Grand Budapest Hotel

The Grand Budapest Hotel is about trying to be a human being in a world that turns people into puppets and prisoners and corpses. It’s about trying to survive in a world teetering on oblivion and the brink of apocalypse. It’s about how all we admire most can be destroyed or lost, and how we may survive despite it all. And it’s about little pink and green pastries with saws inside, and how to keep the customers happy and how to remember your friends. It’s about how books and movies can preserve what we love.

The Weekend Report

Liberty, mostly in terms of historic fact, could not withstand the charge of 300: Rise of an Empire as it debuted at the top of the charts with an estimated $44.9 million. The frame’s other incoming national freshman Mr. Peabody & Sherman received the bark of approval in second spot with $32.3 million. But the big noise among new entries belonged to The Grand Budapest Hotel that bowed with $828,000 on just four screens following last weekend’s potent international debuts in France and Switzerland.

Friday Box Office Estimates

300: Rise of An Empire opened strong to $17.3 million, which is the best opening day of 2014, even better than The Lego Movie. But Lego went on to a $30m Saturday and 300-2 should be expected to drop to about $15 million on Saturday and $11m on Sunday for an opening in the mid-40s for the 3-day. Still a strong opening. Also opening is Mr. Peabody & Sherman, which should hold the family trajectory, landing in the mid-20s for the weekend… a bit of a disappointing number for DreamWorks Animation.

Wilmington on Movies: 300: Rise of an Empire

It may be preposterous–hell, it is preposterous–but it’s never boring.

Wilmington on DVDs: Breathless; The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

A guy named Michel Poiccard steals a car, drives from Marseilles to Paris, ecstatically sings of a girl named Patricia (“Pa-Pa-Pa-Patricia!“), finds a gun, shoots and kills a cop on the road, tries to cash an uncashable check, stares at and mimics a Bogart still in front of a cinema, finds Patricia hawking New York Herald Tribunes on the street, goes to her room, bandies with her about love, art, philosophy and William Faulkner (“Between grief and nothing I will take grief“)…