December 29, 2004

Movies You Should Have Seen But Didn't

It's kind of remarkable to look at the bottom of the box office charts for the year. There are so many titles that grossed less than $5000… yes, $5000 total not per-screen… in their release. Of course, these numbers may be a bit off because their distributors stopped sending in numbers, and quite a few of these made more that this on the festival circuit. But still…

Jesus, You Know, Alex de la Inglesia's 80 Bullets, Free Radicals, Persons of Interest, The Green Butch them.

Merci Docteur Rey, Orwell Rolls In His Grave, Easy, Weapons of Mass Deception, S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine, Goodbye, Dragon Inn, Stander, Blind Shaft, Brother to Brother and Born Into Brothels all grossed under $50,000.

Time of the Wolf, Bright Leaves, The Inheritance, James' Journey To Jerusalem, Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst, Reconstruction, Warriors of Heaven & Earth (the lowest ranking film from any Dependent, assuming that Imaginary Heroes does some more business), Ned Kelly and Infernal Affairs were all between $50,000 and $100,000.

This means that none of these films were seen by as many as 20,000 paying customers. You want to know why people pay so much attention to the thumbs of Roeper & Ebert? Their ratings are weak, but more people in Los Angeles saw their show last week than paid to see any of these films… many of them among the best of the year.

Mr. Ebert put David Gordon Green's Undertow on his Top Ten list but, barring a re-release, the film will never pass $150,000 domestically. Two of my Top Three for the year have also failed to gross as much as $250,000. Painful

James Toback's When Will I Be Loved and the Chris Walken/Michael Caine starrer Around The Bend were quite bad, but failing to gross $250,000 was even uglier. Sony Rep's The Lost Skeleton of Cadavera was a goof and a hoot, but never found its way out of a small, appreciative closet.

Among the fairly high festival profile films that have gotten a lot of play on Top Ten lists and are unlikely to crack the $250,000 mark are DIG!, The Five Obstructions, Crimson Gold, P.S. (yes, the Laura Linney P.S.), The Yes Men, Code 46, Carandiru, The Agronomist, Remember Me, My Love and Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself.

I'm guessing that the titles are becoming more familiar to those of you who do not bury your heads in alt weeklies every week. If you live in a big city, all of these films have played at your local arthouse. But you and/or your friends did not go.

The $250,000 to $1,000,000 group represents a dollar figure that begins to feel like success for some of the distributors. So the demands of quality to make this list go up, but the success still remains with audiences of less than 150,000 people… less than half of those who saw Clifford's Really Big Movie. These are films with a lot of support from critics and their distributors or both.

Enduring Love
Badasssss!
Head in The Clouds
Primer
Tarnation
Shaolin Soccer
Mean Creek
Young Adam
Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman
Intermission
The Machinist

To give you some idea of how segregated the arthouse market is these days, there are only 56 films that have grossed between $1 million and $5 million and only 70 total between $1 million and $10 million this year. That's with 550 films charting and 415 of those grossing less than $10 million.

So, only 25% of films released in the domestic market will gross more than $10 million. And 69% will gross under $1 million. That leaves only 6% where distributors of smaller movies can make enough money to be considered very successful and not just be break even businesses with a few very good salaries.

The gentrification of the film business is not just between the giant action movies and quality studio films. And when you see a Tom Freston looking to "upgrade" Paramount Classics or Warners getting into the indie game, they don't seem to see how very unusual Miramax has been.

Of course, these Dependents are all better than break even because of low prices on domestic distribution for most of these pictures and home entertainment. But when Reese Witherspoon earns more per picture than 75% of films grossed domestically this year, you have to shake your head.

But I digress…

The lowest grossing film from a major was Disney's The Last Shot, the little seen 40 screen release starring Matthew Broderick. The film grossed $465,000. Warner Bros. went out with the aforementioned Clifford's Really Big Movie on 471 screens and grossed $2.8 million… which was about the price of actually making those 471 prints, before any advertising. (The happy studio punchline is that the theatrical probably kicked the film into status for home entertainment minimum buys and a spot in the company's cable placement deals.)

But now you're getting into titles that are quite good and have the potential of having much bigger audiences. New Line/Fine Line are relying on Oscar nominations to push along The Sea Inside and Vera Drake, but they probably aren't going to get much help with pushing Birth past $5 million, even with Nicole Kidman. Focus' The Door In The Floor died in July, with less than $4 million in its coffers. Warner Indie's Before Sunset continues to get a great push from critics (it currently live comfortably in the Top Five on the Top Ten chart on MCN)… but still, $6 million seems out of reach. Fox Searchlight has left Kinsey in stasis, hoping for the kind of Oscar nods that Sideways will surely get, but unlikely to end up getting too much help. And New Line's Maria Full of Grace seems destined to be better remembered than attended.

Breaking into the Over $10 Million group - and into a lot of studio movies there - underseen films include (from lowest grossing, up) Super Size Me, Alfie, The Motorcycle Diaries, Win A Date With Tad Hamilton and Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle.

Over $20 Million and still underseen are Sideways, Open Water, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Home on The Range.

Once you get over $52 million, you are talking about the elite. This represents the top 10% of the theatrical releases this year. And you're looking at audiences that are in numbers of more than 7 million. That's a lot of people. And it is more than enough people to sample a film so that if the audience loves it, word will spread.

Yes, there were 10 films this year that opened to more than $50 million, representing about 20% of this elite that made it without anything but marketing assuring that status.

But even in the ether, there are films that deserved to be better seen, including Dawn of the Dead, Hellboy, Friday Night Lights, The Manchurian Candidate, Man on Fire and Mean Girls.

There was also films that were seen by unexpectedly high numbers, suggesting that word of mouth outpowered marketing: The Passion of the Christ, The Bourne Supremacy, Fahrenheit 9/11, DodgeBall, Mean Girls, The Notebook, Hildago and Without A Paddle.

How can Mean Girls be a word of mouth success and an underseen film? This is the nature of big film life. While The Notebook, even for all its success, filled a niche, a film like Mean Girls hit right at the heart of the core moviegoing audience... smart girls for girls, hot girls for boys. But the film had to do too muhc work on its own, like Election and School of Rock before it.

What really strikes me in doing this column is that there are categories for everyone... the biggest niche to the smallest. Not everyone needs to see The Green Butchers and not everyone could stomach Mean Girls. But this column should be, I hope, a guide to the films that were worth the trip, in various niches, but were stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire.

E-ME: What did you miss this year that you really know you should have supported?

December 30, 2004 - The Ten Worst
December 29, 2004 - Movies You Should Have Seen, But Didn't