What did you see or Smurf this weekend?
Sunday, April 9, 2017 at 3:05PM 
The weekend's biggest new film was Smurfs: The Lost Village... which probably says all you need to know about this mini Spring lull between blockbusters (another Fast & Furious is next).
Audiences weren't of one hive mind with people going to see a little of everything, though The Boss Baby and Beauty and the Beast still dominated as they did last weekend. Beauty and the Beast has been so dominant already that it will surely end the year as the second or third highest grosser. For comparisons sake, if you throw it back into last year's calendar, it would be #3 behind Rogue One and Finding Dory and ahead of Captain America: Civil War...
Among the new releases, isn't it strange the Colossal chose such a limited bow at only 4 theaters. Divisive indies that lean well into mainstream genres despite their idiosyncracies (as this one does being half monster movie) can't normally count on great word of mouth given the lack of adventurousness of mainstream moviegoers. Shoudn't they have tried to make a bunch of money up front with a large limited release or a tiny wide one?
TOP WIDE (800+ theaters)
01 Boss Baby $26.3 (cum. $89.3) Review
02 Beauty & The Beast $25 (cum. $432.3) Review
03 Smurfs: The Lost Village $14 NEW
04 Going in Style $12.5 NEW
05 Ghost in the Shell $7.3 (cum. $31.5)
06 Power Rangers $6.2 (cum. $75.1)
07 Kong: Skull Island $5.8 (cum. $156.5) Review
08 Logan $4 (cum. $218) Review
09 Get Out $4 (cum. $162.8) Review
10 The Case For Christ $3.9 NEW
11 The Zookeeper's Wife $2.8 (cum. $7.6) Review
12 Life $2.4 (cum. $27) Review
TOP LIMITED
(excluding previously wide)
01 Your Name $1.6 NEW 303 screens
02 Gifted $476K NEW 56 screens
03 T2 Trainspotting $275K (cum. $1.6) 157 screens
04 Frantz $151K (cum. $363K) 81 screens Review
05 The Devotion of Suspect X $146K (cum. $569K) 46 screens
06 Personal Shopper $134K (cum. $1.0) 141 screens Review
07 Colossal $125K NEW 4 screens Review
08 Kedi $116K (cum. $2.2) 93 screens Review
09 Their Finest $77K NEW 4 screens
10 The Last Word $60K (cum. $1.6) 120 screens
11 Raw $50K (cum. $400K) 45 screens
12 Truman $25K NEW 3 screens
Reader Comments (24)
Logan
Creative starting-point, but terribly violent and badly developed.
Spoiler:
Professor Xavier knows they are being followed but wants to go to the farmers' house? Really? How irresponsible he would be???
I watched Christine which I thought was excellent. This was my most anticipated film of last year and probably could have been my number 1 overall. Rebecca Hall should have had more citations from awards bodies. she would have been a very deserving Oscar nominee. Nathaniel,Why do you think this film didnt get any traction? was it too small? too dark? This to me seems the type of film that would have been embraced by the actors branch.
The Zookeeper's Wife. It was pretty good. I like and admire Jessica Chastain.
I love the way Chastain is always so completely committed to her work.
I admire her wide repertoire of technical skills, and the intriguing way she applied them, both straightforward and yet unobtrusive. In this one, she makes her body and movements soft and round, as if she was another species of animal. She also uses the direct gaze of animals that the character describes in the film. Many actors have limited body expressiveness, but Chastain always has something new and different.
As to the accent, the character was apparently originally a refugee from Russia, and she spoke Polish with a Russian accent.
I was surprised that the theatre was almost full, on a weekday night.
Samurai Rebellion, The Legend of Tarzan, and the first half of Kenji Mizoguchi's The 47 Ronin.
I finally saw Elle and have to say what an awful film,Huppert and I are never going to be buddies,I did not like the tone,the lousy script or any of the supporting cast,I admired Huppert's dedication,but she never convinced me once she was Games designer,I would have preferred many of the non nominated women Beckinsale,Field,Adams and esp Chastain & Bening who were IMO far far superior.
I liked Christine to,had a real feel for the time period,Hall was excellent but that final scene Maria Dizzia eating Ice Cream and humming has stayed with me,Dizzia was easily my 2nd for supporting last year and J Smith Cameron is great In it to,very undervalued and overlooked.
I saw
Catfight - good premise with good performances and visceral fight scenes. But too repetitive and boring by the end
Theo e Hugo - the opening scene is a fucking glorious, but french people are so boring. I didnt care at all for the characters
Friday the 13th - very good slasher film
Friday the 13th Part 2 - a masterpiece
the transfiguration! while i wasn't in love with the pacing or its dour tone, it won me over in the end. i admire its ideas.
I saw The Zookeeper's Wife. Jessica Chastain was excellent as she always is. But the film itself didn't fully deliver.
Got tired during a conference so I watched parts of "This is 40" in the hotel. It was generally engaging but also seemed to go on forever. And was Leslie Mann's character's main struggle about her ability to be hot? Hmm.
Your Name was really fantastic and arresting. It is also the exact type of film that would've gotten an animated feature nomination in the past years until the rule change.
I watched 'The Discovery'. Rooney Mara carries that film on her exquisite cheekbones.
Saw SONG TO SONG which was pretty and had some good scenes, but dragged on a lot for me plus YOUR NAME which I really loved a lot. Wish it had gotten a nom at the Oscars!
Before Sunset/Before Midnight.
Yeah, this sequence of films is masterful.
I'm still playing catch up on movies I missed last year and work has been preventing me from going to the movies. In all honesty though the only movies in wide release that I want to see that I haven't seen yet are Power Rangers and Get Out, but I'm such a wimp with horror that I'm probably better off seeing Get Out at home when it's available on iTunes. I finally saw Arrival which my boyfriend bought on iTunes and it was such a wonderful film. I'm not surprised by its Oscar nominations at all. I'm hoping Colossal eventually makes its way to a a city near me.
I saw Your Name, really sweet and smart and funny. I don't know why they didn't release wider or push harder last year. It should have been a contender.
Personal shopper. Unsettling, and wears a tortuous premise so lightly. Film of the year so far - and Stewart is astounding.
Zookeeper's Wife - meh
Personal Shopper - GLORIOUS. So captivating and we'll made. Seeing it again on Tuesday.
I also went to a local film festival over the past week where I got to see:
Frantz (great), A Quiet Passion (excellent first half, got too claustrophobic and slow for me), Person to Person, Neruda, The Hero, The Salesman, Things to Come (ISABELLE. LOVE) and The Lost City of Z
I saw Frantz, which was pretty good!
Saw Ghost In The Shell: garbage.
And Scarlett's acting was wooden... robotic!
I bing watched Big Little Lies and what a thrill it was to witness Witherspoon delivering such a masterful performance, Kidman being at her top Kidman form, Laura Dern on fire, Skarsgard proving what a terrific, magnetic actor he can be with the right material, etc.... I could go on and on with this mini-series. It was so surreal that all i ever dreamed about was actually on the screen for seven unforgettable hours.
I also saw Brimstone in theaters, and what a flawed, intense, fascinating movie it was ! Dakota Fanning remembered me how subtle an actress she can be.
On the "catching up with the classics" side, i finished the fifth season of The Sopranos and understood why this show is worshiped all over the world. Gandolfini and Falco are beyond excellent in it.
Personal Shopper - The first great film of the year! Kristen Stewart is becoming one of my favorite contemporary actresses.
Rules Don't Apply - Wow, this was bad. I'm not sure what era this film belonged in, but it isn't this one. I spotted Steve Mnuchin - Trump's Treasury Secretary - in a wordless cameo, and he actually had more screentime than half the stars featured in the trailer.
Sudden Fear - I only know the major highlights of Crawford's filmography, so it was fun to see her in something from this period. Suspenseful early '50s thriller.
High-Rise - what a mess. Too much style over substance.
Laura - the whole time I was staring at Gene Tierney's face I just kept thinking 'oh. my. god.' she's flawless. a goddess. she's just insane. the film itself is fine, although i can't wait to dig into think-piece's about Clifton Webb's thinly veiled gay villain role.
Danny Collins was such a pleasant surprise. Very funny with fully formed human characters inhabiting an outrageous story. I adored it and it was so great to see Pacino give another great performance after all these years.