Weekend Box Office: Elvis, Crawdads, Mrs Harris, and more...
Tuesday, July 19, 2022 at 11:00AM by Nathaniel R
Despite a steep drop in sales Thor Love and Thunder held the top spot over the weekend; A nearly 70% drop from mountains of gold still means you're raking it in! Thor was also the only wide release to hold on to all of its theaters since the studios actually released new movies this weekend (GASP) with Where the Crawdads Sing (which did well), Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, and Paws of Fury all arriving in wide release and aiming for different audiences. With Elvis, Minions, and Top Gun still attracting moviegoers, there was really something for everyone at the multiplexes. We need more lineups like that if moviegoing is ever going to be healthy again, regardless of the wildly varying quality of the 10 films in wide release.
| Weekend Box Office July 15th-17th 🔺 = new or expanding / ★ = Recommended links if we've written about it |
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| WIDE (OVER 800 SCREENS) | PLATFORM RELEASES |
 WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING |
 FIRE OF LOVE |
| 1 THOR: LOVE & THUNDER $46.6 (cum. $233.9) |
1 🔺 MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON $567k (cum. $1.6) |
| 2 MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU $26.8 (cum. $263.4) |
2 ★ EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE $147k (cum. $67.9) |
| 3 🔺 WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING $17.2 *NEW* |
3 🔺 GONE IN THE NIGHT $123k *NEW* |
| 4 ★ TOP GUN MAVERICK $12.2 (cum. $618.2) | 4 🔺 GABBY GIFFORDS WON'T BACK DOWN [DOC] $75k * NEW* |
|
5 ★ ELVIS $8 (cum. $106.6) |
5 🔺★ FIRE OF LOVE [DOC] $64k (cum. $118k) |
| 6 PAWS OF FURY $6.3 *NEW* |
6 🔺THE KILLER (South Korea) $49k (cum. $71k) |
| 7 THE BLACKPHONE $5.3 (cum. $72.1) |
7 FIRE / BOTH SIDES OF THE BLADE (France) $40k (cum. $71k) |
| 8 JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION $5.1 (cum. $359.9) | 8 HALLELUJAH LEONARD COHEN... [DOC] $36k (cum. $136k) |
| 9 🔺★ MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS $1.9 *NEW* | 9 ★ OFFICIAL COMPETITION (Spain) $27k (cum. $530k) |
| 10 LIGHTYEAR $1.4 (cum. $115.5) | 10 PHANTOM OF THE OPEN (UK) $13k (cum. $689k) |
Elvis passed the $100 million mark which is a praise-worthy feat in this era of all superheros all the time. If you don't adjust for inflation, it just passed the final global gross of Moulin Rouge! this weekend, too. It's earned $186 million globally thus far. Baz Lurhmann's top grosser is The Great Gatbsy with a final global gross of $353 million)
LIMITED RELEASE
A24's Marcel The Shell With Shoes On has been expanding slowly but it's still doing quite well so expect more theaters soon. The acclaimed documentary Fire of Love about married volcanologists was up 182% in its second weekend thanks to new theaters, solid per screen averages, and, no doubt, strong word of mouth. A new thriller starring Winona Ryder called Gone in the Night opened on 136 screens and though it didn't pack houses that was enough to place it higher up the chart. The Penélope Cruz / Antonio Banderas comedy Official Competition finally ran out of steam, losing a bunch of theaters but it had quite a solid month of popularity at arthouses, which it deserved.
NEXT WEEKEND
The only new wide release this Friday will be Jordan Peele's sci-fi horror film Nope. The huge budgeted action flick The Gray Man hits Netflix on the same day hoping to entice people to stay home.
What did you see this past weekend?
Reader Comments (9)
I saw Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. It was cute but maybe a tad too long. It was still wonderful to see Lesley Manville headline a film. She could be a great fit for the sort of parts Mirren and Dench have long played.
At home, I rewatched Cabaret for the upteenth time (yup, still one of the greatest films of all time) and listened to the Blank Check podcast with Rachel Zegler, who was a great guest. I'm looking forward to this weekend's episode on All That Jazz with LMM.
I watched The First Lady show on Showtime. Btw, you can sign up for 30 days free, which is enough time to watch a Limited Series. Anyway, Michelle Pfeiffer, Gillian Anderson and Viola Davis are all great. It's especially nice to see La Pfeiffer.
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Dreams by Akira Kurosawa.
Finally saw Turning Red this weekend and really adored. Not as much as Luca, although they share some DNA.
And it, weirdly, has a lot of surprising parallels with EEAAO, too. (It even gets a little Petite Maman, there for a second.)
I got to see WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY which I have to say I liked even more than DRIVE MY CAR.
I also saw (at the other end of the spectrum) the inaccurately titled DASHCAM - very derivative but madcap fun nevertheless.
Gillian Armstrong's High Tide (1987)
This film is a paradox. It gains strength and power through a diminished economies of scale. The film can be underwhelming - no big scenes, just tiny scenes of life unfolding before you. The acting is uniformly excellent with Judy Davis as first among equals: her subtle shifts in gestures, facial expressions, posture all conjure a universe of fleeting and ever-shifting emotions. But then there's also Jan Adele, Claudia Karvan and Colin Friels and the superb support characters who never grandstand. This quiet film makes you care for these imperfect characters and what happens after the credits roll. It is as though you were eavesdropping and witnessing tiny drama unraveling and unspooling before you. The film is also suspenseful not in the Hitchcockian sense but one where you wonder what Lilli does next, will she gain custody of her daughter, will she abandon her eventually, will she end up with Mick, will she and Bet make up? While this may not be considered as Armstrong's strongest, I like it precisely because of that - a quiet film from a brilliant career as auteur.
Bonus: Judy Davis singing a downhearted blues version of Bob Dylan's 'Dark Eyes' under the sink, unable to stand. Reminds me of the unrehearsed quality of Mary Margaret O'Hara singing "Never, no" in the largely unseen Museum Hours.
I watched “Confidentially Yours” with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Fanny Ardant, to remember Trintignant who recently died. It was the last film of director Francois Truffaut who died of a brain tumour at age 52. (Truffaut and Ardant were a couple and had a baby daughter Josephine).
It was kind of an odd film, based on a novel by American noir writer Charles Williams (“Dead Calm”). The actors seemed to like each other more than the characters did. The characters were prickly and rude to each other, but the actors seemed to have an easy camaraderie and loved working together. A mix of comedy and murder.
I also saw the new Thor film. I like almost all the actors in the film. I would find myself thinking, how pleasant it is to watch this performer that I like. Yes, they really are good. But oddly, I have no opinion about the film itself. At all.
Not that anyone was asking, but here's a roundup of things I've seen in the last month or so:
* Saint Maude--One of my favorite horror films in the last several years. This was excellent and thoroughly creeped me out.
* Nightmare Alley--I thought this was solid and enjoyable, but it didn't stay with me. The cast was good and Cooper was an effective lead, but I thought Blanchett was actually kind of terrible in this. It felt like she was in a different movie than everyone else. And I'm a a big fan of hers!
* Elvis--Just OK. I wish it tried to do a little less? It covered so much of his life that it understandably glossed over quite a bit, but that ended up feeling really ... underwhelming, We didn't rest on many moments long enough to feel much of anything. Also, the scenes with Priscilla felt like they were straight out of a TV movie and Hanks was shockingly bad. That said, Austin Butler was EXCELLENT and this must have been a tough assignment.
* Jagged--The Alanis Morisette doc. It was fine. I was a huge fan of Jagged Little Pill in high school but her later work didn't resonate with me--I felt like she increasingly leaned into psychobabble and didn't really develop much as an artist. The documentary was interesting in terms of learning about some of the pressures she experienced at the time and re-contextualizing the album's (and her own) success. Nice to see Shirley Manson pop up--her commentary was very thoughtful.
* Sheryl--The Sheryl Crow doc on Showtime. This one I quite enjoyed. It didn't hurt that Crow was loose, funny, and seemingly open, and that she seems like she's lived a thousand lives (that Cop Rocks scene!). Also, she really has a wonderful and varied catalog which deserves a bit of a reappraisal. Glad to see her getting some flowers, so to speak.
* Petite Maman--I LOVED this. It was so tender and poetic. I don't remember the last time I watched a film twice in one weekend, but I rented and watched this on a Friday and then watched it AGAIN that Sunday.
* The Lost City--Kind of "meh" to me. Bullock sleepwalked through the role, and you really need both parties to be bringing something to the table for a romantic comedy to really set off sparks. Tatum was very winning in this, though.