WEEKEND REVIEW

No real surprises this weekend, which is not to say there wasn’t something big out there.

Jurassic Park 3-D… I mean, Jurassic Park III estimated a $50.3 million start, apparently passing $80 million after five days in release.  That would make it the fourth best 3-day opening of the year and probably less than $10 million behind The Lost World: Jurassic Park’s opening numbers, and ahead of The Mummy Returns’ five-day number.  (Note, however, that The Mummy Returns opened on a Friday, so days four and five were a non-holiday Monday and Tuesday.  But as I pointed out with Pearl Harbor, Wednesday openings are risks and when a movie succeeds with one, as JP3 has, the dollars count and shouldn’t hurt the traditional drops coming off the first Fri-Sun.) 

In second place, pretty much where it should have been – and should have been expected to be – was America’s Sweethearts, estimating a $31 million launch.   What would really be interesting is some sort of breakdown indicating how many seats were sold due to interest in anyone other than Julia Roberts (aka Miss 28 Mil).  The Saturday bump wasn’t particularly strong, but I’m not ready to read much into that yet.  The reactions I’ve been hearing are lukewarm, but not quite as aggressively unkind as the critical responses… even from people who don’t really like Julia.  So, it’s up to Sony to capitalize on the opening and get a second weekend out of this movie.  The instinct to start selling it as an ensemble piece and not a star piece might be one worth continuing. 

With roughly $81 million of the weekend box office take going to the new dynamic duo, it’s not too much of a surprise that the holdovers fell a little harder than expected.  The only film that stood out to me was The Score, whose estimated 43 percent fall seemed unlikely.  Word of mouth has been moderately upbeat and it is the only traditional thriller in the marketplace.  I, unfortunately, still haven’t seen the picture.  I hope to remedy that this week. 

A.I was off 60 percent… AGAIN.  And among limited releases, Ghost World ($20,000 per screen) slightly outshined Hedwig and the Angry Inch ($17,000 per screen).  Both films should remain strong for the rest of the summer.  

THE GOOD:  I’m not quite sure how to write about Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World.  The fact that it is so uniquely its own thing means, of course, that all I can seem to do is to compare it to other films.   It’s a film with the kind of smarts about being young that Larry Clark can only try to find in flat stomachs and matted pubic hair.  It’s a film that has all of the counter culture appeal of something from Todd Solondz, but infinitely more generous of spirit. It’s a film that gets the kind of performance out of Steve Buscemi that Buscemi seems to have been trying to create in his own films, the kind of performance out of Scarlett Johansson that makes her seem every bit the gangly legged mare who will either find powerful movie star legs underneath her or a career loaded with directors trying to find the secret behind her perfect imperfect looks and rough hewn voice, and the kind of performance out of Thora Birch that makes it clear that not only wasn’t American Beauty a fluke, but that she could be the bitchy, tough, funny adolescent girl icon of the next five years, able to scorch Britney with a single fiery glance.

But what about the movie? 

It’s ironic that Ghost World was created, in comic book form, by a man (Dan Clowes) and directed and co-written as a feature by another man (Zwigoff), because it feels like we are in the life of a teen girl.  The struggle makes no sense and complete sense at the same time.  The shells are so hard, but the brittle sensitivity is so close to the surface.  The film is completely predictable and completely surprising at the same time. 

This is really one girl’s story in the summer after high school graduation.  Enid and her friend, Rebecca, have become so outside that they are inside… and, then again, maybe they have gone so far that they are outside again.  Ghost World is constantly measuring that kind of thing.  And it is such a small bite of a life that has already been so limited as to inspire enough ambition so as to make the limited state of things seem appealing… see, there is goes again. 

I don’t want to tell you too much more about Ghost World, except to say that Costume Designer Mary Zophres will have reason to be upset if she isn’t nominated for an Oscar this year and if she doesn’t win an Independent Spirit Award (do they do costume design?).  Go see it for yourself.   It is one of those unique experiences that people who love movies love having… even if they don’t love the film, you took a new kind of ride that expands the language of the form.

THE BAD:  Wet Hot American Summer was one of the buzz films at Sundance this last year and seems like a classic summer teen flick with an intelligent undercurrent.  (I didn’t catch the film, but the comments were pretty consistent.)  USA Films, which bought the movie, is smart enough to use a tag like, “High Times. Hard Bodies. Soft Rock.”  And their print ad image is a Jack Davis style cartoon, which will both work for today’s audience and remind some of us old guys of Mad Magazine’s glory days.  (Yeah… I know… didn’t work for Detroit Rock City… point taken.)  Great.   So why is the film opening exclusively on two New York art house screens?  Does USA Films want to limit their income to $4.5 million and a strong life on cable?  I don’t get it!  The other Sundance summer teen flick, Supertroopers, is sure to get a more intense launch from its distributor, Fox Searchlight… and I didn’t think very much of that film.  But I can smell box office and I don’t see how the art house ghetto – even if it’s my neighborhood – is going to be good for Wet Hot American Summer.

THE UGLY:  On Friday, there was no good.  Today, no Ugly.  I guess it was an okay weekend.

BAD AD WATCH:  This is not a bad ad.  Fox Searchlight, which has persisted with the “real reviews” campaign for Sexy Beast, despite getting caught in a deception over Waking Ned Devine, is trying yet something else unprecedented.  While guild memberships can get you a free seat at almost any movie come awards season, Searchlight is giving Academy and guild members access now, in the middle of a solid run for Sexy Beast.  But that’s not all the fun.  They have a small banner at the bottom of their Beast ads pitching The Deep End, another Sundance film, as “Coming In August.”  That might not seem like much, but for an art house company to be spending anything early to promote a small, quality film like The Deep End is something that makes my heart sing.   Bravo and brava to the team over there.

JUST WONDERING:  Did anyone else get an e-mail sending them to “usafilms.com” only to find it was a porno site?   I was trying to figure out how to mention this without sending you all to a porno site, but when I checked it out again as I wrote this column, I found that it was, indeed, now the site of USA Films and not a porno site.  I don’t know what went down – so to speak – but the web continues to be loaded with curiosities.

READER OF THE DAY:  The Coxman is one of the hardest working ROTDs I’ve read in a while:  “This past summer, to kill time I have been collecting statistics on summer movies. I am a number junkie, so I was comparing the popularity of the summer movies with their critical acclaim.

I gave each movie a popularity score, which was basically the per theater average box office of the movie's second weekend (in thousands of dollars).

I also gave each movie a Critical score, which is basically the "cream of the crop" percentage from Rotten Tomatoes divided by ten. The total list (so far) looks like this:

Title	Popularity	Critics
Shrek	10.0	8.6
The Fast and the Furious	7.4	6.7
The Mummy Returns	9.4	3.3
Pearl Harbor	9.3	2.5
Baby Boy	3.2	8.6
A.I.	4.4	7.0
Moulin Rouge	3.5	7.1
Dr Doolittle 2	5.1	4.1
A Knights Tale	3.6	5.7
Atlantis: The Lost Empire	4.4	4.4
Kiss of the Dragon	2.8	5.7
crazy/beautiful	2.2	6.0
Tomb Raider	6.1	1.5
The Animal	3.6	3.8
Swordfish	4.5	2.5
Cats and Dogs	4.0	2.7
Angel Eyes	1.6	4.3
Evolution	2.5	2.8
Scary Movie 2	3.0	0.8
The Worst /Happen?	2.1	0.5

The movies are listed in order of their combined scores. The interesting thing is when a statistical correlation is calculated (in other words, how much does critical acclaim affect popularity) the result is 13%. That is a very low number statistically speaking. And, this percentage is due to movies on the low end of both scales that were universally panned and rejected by audiences. In fact only two movies, Shrek and The Fast and the Furious could qualify as both popular and critically acclaimed. Note, I am only including movies that were released universally, art house and foreign films would no doubt demonstrate a negative correlation.

So, while not scientific, this snapshot poll demonstrates that critical acclaim has almost nothing to do with a movie's popularity. Statistically, Patrick Goldstein is right. Movie critics are out of step with the viewing public. Surprise! Surprise!

I was thinking of making a big deal about this until I read your column on thursday, I think it said it all: "Criticism that is reduced to a statistic is worthless, with due respect to Rotten Tomatoes.  The job of a critic, it seems to me, is to add some serious thought to the conversation of films."

That in a nutshell is the difference between us movie buffs, and the general population. Most see movies as a form of entertainment, thus the general public goes to the movies to be entertained. We movie buffs, and all movie critics fit into this category, understand that movies are the dominant medium of artistic expression. Entertainment value is just an added bonus.

A.I. is a box office flop, and garnered only minor critical acclaim, but it is a success in generating conversation. I think A.I. has generated more interesting conversations, and lively debates than any movie in recent memory. This is a quality real movie buffs look for in their entertainment. Too bad we can't keep statistics on this.

Criticism has little to do with box office success, except where it provides pull quotes for advertisers. Marketing is everything, and we movie buffs know it. I knew I would not like Pearl Harbor before I saw it, so why did I? So I could join my movie snob friends in conversations about how bad it was. The real joy of sites like Rotten Tomatoes is to read the full length reviews of movies you have just seen, especially the ones that disagree with your view.

The question Goldstein should be asking is not "Are critics out of touch?", it should be "What are critics for?"

E ME:  How does that stack up for you?