Box Office: Melissa Shows Batman Who is 'Boss' (and Other Female Hit Stories)

To keep ourselves entertained, we like to spin the box office charts so it's not just "copy/paste" from week to week. So let's look at the box office top ten through the lens of current movies with female leads. Melissa McCarthy (in a photo finish for #1 with superheroes) and Helen Mirren keep proving their box office consistency over and over again, don't they? We're also happy to see Sally Field doing so well in what could have been a blink and you'll miss it VOD movie. Field's already outperformed last year's senior female sleeper indie hits Grandma and I'll See You In My Dreams.

But the 10 female names below make up such an odd odd sorority you must admit...

TOP TEN FEMALE LEAD MOVIES THIS WEEKEND
01 The Boss (Melissa McCarthy) $23.4 NEW Melissa McCarthy
03 Zootopia (Ginnifer Goodwin) $14.3 (cum. $296) 
04 My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (Nia Vardalos) $6.4 (cum. $46.7)
06 Miracles From Heaven (Jennifer Garner) $4.8 (cum. $53.8)
07 Gods Not Dead 2 (Melissa Joan Hart) $ 4.3(cum. $14.1) 
08 Divergent: Allegiant (Shailene Woodley) $3.6 (cum. $61.8) 
09 10 Cloverfield Lane (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) $3  (cum. $67.9)
10 Eye in the Sky (Helen Mirren) $2.8 (cum. $10.4) 
13 Hello My Name is Doris (Sally Field) $1.6  (cum. $9.3) 
21 Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (Tina Fey) $.2 (cum. $22.7) 

As for the films we aren't including in this spun chart, Batman v Superman: Birth of Manic Depressive Anti-Heroes  at #2 is still a ginormous money-devourer even if with $296.6 domestically and $780 globally it's underperforming given it's behemoth budget and its launch pad to dozens of other proposed movies (there's already a huge crack in the foundation? Yikes). Meanwhile the latest stop on Jake Gyllenhaal's 'look what i can do on screen -- anything!' tour flopped coming in 15th for the weekend atnearly 900 screens. While it's true that Jake runs circles around his movie Demolition the fact that his starpower alone couldn't wallop what looks like the most unpleasant movie-watching experience of all time (Hardcore Henry took $5 million finishing at #5 for the week) is just f***in' depressing.

This is why we can't have nice things.

tfw you won the internet pic.twitter.com/BuOykvPiyB

— JASON (metalmeatwad) (@MichaelNotCera) April 7, 2016

Anyway -- What did you see this weekend?
I mean, other than WITNESS (1985) on Netflix which you surely watched for Tuesday Night's Best Shot. (Can't wait for this one since that movie is such a beauty.) I personally couldn't take in any movies people have heard of because I'm cramming for my upcoming "New Directors" jury duty at the Nashville International Film Festival which kicks off this weekend.

Interview: Chris Cooper on 'Demolition', Creating Characters, and His Favorite Actors

April is Actor Month at TFE. Here's Jose in conversation with one of our best.

In person, Chris Cooper exudes the same suave charm he has onscreen, when we sit down to discuss his work in Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition and I refer to him as “Mr. Cooper” he shakes his head and says “call me Chris”. From his oddly approachable John Laroche in Adaptation, to his tough but sensitive Tom Smith in Seabiscuit, Cooper has perfected the art of creating “the memorable everyman”. In Demolition he plays Phil, a man who must cope with the death of his daughter in an accident, and has to learn how to forgive his son-in-law Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal) for having survived. Most of Cooper’s scenes involve harsh encounters with Gyllenhaal’s character, who has lost all sense of societal propriety rather than paying tribute to the legacy of his wife.

When I speak to Vallée about the qualities his cast brought to the film, he explained “I observe and try not to interfere with the actors, they use all the space around them, they put stamina and spirit into it”, you can see this in the way with which Cooper in particular moves as if he’s completely unaware that his character exists at the service of a story. He couldn’t seem more comfortable in this fictitious man’s skin if he tried. I spoke to Chris about his process, how he uses external elements to discover the men he plays, and to celebrate Actor’s Month we ended up discussing his favorite thespians.

Our conversation follows...

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New Poster & Trailer: Jake Gyllenhaal in "Demolition"

A rather simple deconstruction concept for this poster but it works. You can't really go wrong with that face.

You may recall I was wild about Jake Gyllenhaal's performance when this played at TIFF in September, if less wild about the film surrounding it. It's now scheduled to open on April 8th.

The real question is how many more great star turns does this man have to give before The Academy gives it up for him? He hasn't even been able to snag a second nomination despite running circles around other Best Actor nominated performances. 

Here's the new trailer which is a fairly accurate representation of the movie without being excessively spoilery. His wife dies at the very beginning of the movie which is the catalyst for the plot as you can see...

Are you a Yes No or Maybe So? I suspect it depends on how much of a Gyllenhaalic you are. 

TIFF: Jake Gyllenhaal in "Demolition"

This review originally appeared in abridged version in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

All throughout Demolition, which opened the 40th annual Toronto International Film Festival which closes this coming Sunday, new widower Davis Mitchell (Jake Gyllenhaal) is putting the title into action. His wife has just died, he is convinced he feels nothing about it, and he begins to tear things down and scatter their parts about. The general idea is ‘take something apart to see how it all fits together’ but he doesn’t bother with the fitting back together part.

He’s also demolitioning his own life, of course, in the process. This peculiar destructive streak starts out small with his morning routine. At first, in montage, this includes lots of preening and shaving (including his chest. *sniffle*) to turn him into a smooth starched and well dressed executive but it’s quickly abandoned. Cue: sexy scruff and increasingly erratic behavior. (Unfortunately we are not shown the return of the chest hair. Stingy move, movie!)

Everything has become a metaphor…”

…Davis intones in the middle of the picture to his confused and impatient boss and father-in-law (Chris Cooper), as an attempt to explain his new and frankly worrisome headspace. But he’s right. Everything is a metaphor in Demolition and thus, apart from Gyllenhaal’s work, the movie sparked polarized reactions. More...

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Imaginary Couples: Villeneuve & Vallée

An unexpected treat from our neighboring country to the north and a hat tip to Kevin LaForest for sharing it with us.

Two of Canada's greatest directors Jean-Marc Vallée (Wild) and Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners) recently posed for the photographer Olivier Ciappa's anti-homophobia series which photographs heterosexual celebrities as gay couples. (For a long time I actually thought Vallée was gay because his breakout hit C.R.A.Z.Y., which Canada submitted for the Oscars back in its day a decade ago, was a fine LGBT coming out drama in addition to the other things it was good at, but it turns out he's straight.) 

Vallée is riding quite an Oscar wave at the moment post The Dallas Buyers Club and Wild and his next film Demolition with Jake Gyllenhaal premieres at TIFF. (It's planning on 2016 for its US release but don't expect that plan to stick if reviews are sensational.) Villeneuve's career has been building for some time as well. Canada has actually submitted his work three times in the foreign language film category and the last of them Incendies (2010) was nominated for the big show. His newest feature Sicario (see that intense trailer) stars Emily Blunt and Benicio del Toro in a drug trafficking drama and could be one of the fall's mightiest films and a possible Oscar player. We shall see. 

Do you like these directors?