EIGHT NEW FILMS — COUNT ‘EM EIGHT! — TO OPEN OVER HOLIDAY

Pity the poor studio scheduler. Each one of them knew that if they had opened a movie a couple of weeks before The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was released — never mind the same weekend that it was — their movie would be killed. Their only alternative was to release theirs after The Hobbit‘s opening. […]

ACT OF VALOR TRIUMPHS IN BOX-OFFICE BATTLE

Act of Valor, a movie that started out as a training film, which stars Navy SEALs playing Navy SEALs, was victorious at the weekend theater(s) of operations, seizing an estimated $24.7 million from moviegoers, more than twice what it cost to produce. Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds opened in second place with about $16 million, the […]

BRIDESMAIDS SETS A RECORD

It’s hard to know how many films are included in the category, but among R-rated female comedies, Paul Feig’s Bridesmaids is now the No. 1 moneymaker. On Sunday, its total gross came to $152.8 million domestically, putting it ahead of the $152.6 million earned during its entire release schedule by the original Sex and the […]

BRIDESMAIDS SURPRISES AT BOX OFFICE

Lightning struck for a second weekend in a row as Thor easily held on to its top position at the box office with $34.7 million, bringing its total after ten days to $119.5 million. But the result that surprised most box-office analysts turned out to be the $26.3 million nabbed by Bridesmaids. Not only was […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: BRIDESMAIDS

Critics are going out of their way to assure their male readers that, despite the title, Bridesmaids is not just a chick flick. Writes Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal: “If this is only a chick flick, then call me a chick.” Calling it “an unexpectedly funny new comedy,” Manohla Dargis remarks in the […]

MOVIEGOERS TAKE A BOX-OFFICE DETOUR

The box office performed pretty much the way most forecasters had predicted — that is, pitifully. Shrek Forever After led the field for the third consecutive week as the box office dropped 28 percent from the comparable weekend a year ago. Although four other movies debuted over the weekend, Shrek, with $25.3 million, came out […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: “GET HIM TO THE GREEK”

With a surfeit of sequels in theaters this summer, Get Him to the Greek arrives mostly as a character sequel. Co-producer Judd Apatow, who has more or less cornered the market on raunchy comedies with a heart, revives Russell Brand’s addled rock star character Aldous Snow from Forgetting Sarah Marshall and puts him front and […]