Author: Sutter Cane

I know it’s hard to believe, but there are still two more Best Picture nominees to pour over here at moviegasm, and less than a week before the awards. I’ll try and get a Juno review up before then, but in the meantime we have Joe Wright’s strangely affecting Atonement to talk about. This isn’t [...]

Our quintuplet of Best Picture nominee reviews continues today with Tony Gilroy’s sharp, solid, and solemn corporate thriller Michael Clayton, a film that, in any other year, would stand a good chance at some awards love, but in this exceptional year seems almost destined to leave the Kodak theatre empty handed. It’s interesting, too, that [...]

Well, folks, our Oscar review extravaganza continues this week with a look at the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men. Like There Will Be Blood, a lot has already been written about this violent little genre film, but I really think it’s so good as to merit a little more discussion, and I’m especially [...]

Well, folks, I’ve put a lot of thought into this, and I think it’s time to switch it up a little bit here at moviegasm. Maybe it’s just the doldrums from the increasingly dull period between the holiday awards contenders and the big summer pictures, or the focus on quality during Oscar season, but after [...]

We tend to think of our lives in terms of ‘good days’ and ‘bad days’, don’t we? It’s just in our nature that when we lay down to go to sleep at the end of the day, we want to sum things up in a simplistic way, break our lives down into measurable units to [...]

Sorry to everyone for the delay with getting this one up. Despite my best efforts, real life continues to demand my attention, and doesn’t seem to listen when I shout, ‘But it’s awards season! My moviegasm readers need me!’ And, in fact, there is much to talk about this week, with the Golden Globes being [...]

National Treasure: Book of Secrets may have topped the weekend box office, but Juno had the biggest jump into second place, and so, since I’m sick of talking about Nicholas Cage and National Treasure, Juno gets the big picture at the top, and most of the opening comments. Let’s hear it for independent movies, good [...]

Well, folks, I held off on posting the column this week not just out of laziness (although surely my hangover yesterday was reason enough to postpone) but also because, with New Years falling when it did, this was basically a long weekend and I wanted to look at the five-day numbers for the box office. [...]

I know what you’re thinking. ‘It’s Christmas Eve, Sutter Cane. What are you doing writing a box office analysis instead of spending time with friends and family?’ Or maybe you’re not thinking that, because maybe you’re checking out moviegasm in an attempt to get a little peace and quiet, which, believe me, I would completely [...]

The title for today’s column is mean to work two-fold. The Will Smith vehicle I Am Legend opened to huge business this weekend (the biggest December opening ever, topping the final Lord of the Rings film, and the biggest of Smith’s financially prodigious career), bringing in $77 million from 3,606 theaters for an equally impressive [...]

Well, my avid readers, every once in a while real life rears its ugly head and forces us to make hard choices. As it happens, I’m swamped this week trying to keep a roof over my head (curse you, day job) and so there will be no box office column this week. Next week, I [...]

Alright, folks, you’re going to have to bear with me this week. You see, this numbers are in, and they are boring. I know, how exciting are box office numbers anyway, and isn’t my job to make them exciting? Maybe so, but this week it’ll be harder than most. So like I said, bear with [...]

Well, folks, it isn’t often we here at moviegasm get to herald the arrival of a new star, but today is just such a day. The monster opening of Disney’s Enchanted is certainly attributable to mostly positive reviews, a family-friendly story and relatively competition-free long Thanksgiving weekend, but agents, producers, and studio heads will all [...]

As most of us expected, Robert Zemeckis’s second motion capture CGI flick (after the family flick The Polar Express) Beowulf took the gold crown at the box office this weekend, but the $27 million total from 3,153 screens ($8.7k average) might not be enough to push the $150 million budgeted flick into the black domestically, [...]

To my adoring fans, I want to apologize for not getting a column up last week. We were experiencing some technical difficulties here at moviegasm, which is to say I was moving and couldn’t get the folks at Time Warner Cable out to install my internet until Thursday. But fear not, for I have returned [...]

It’s always hard to admit when you’re wrong. But writing this column means going out on a limb sometimes, and I found myself teetering on the edge of just such a bough these last few weeks as I proclaimed, over and over, that Saw IV would be the end of the franchise. That it would [...]

Well, after much anticipation by yours truly and what I thought was an exceptional marketing campaign, the vampire thriller 30 Days of Night finally opened this weekend to… well, acceptable numbers. It’s not launching Josh Hartnett back to the A list. Director David Hard Candy Slade is not the next Zach Snyder, as I had [...]

Well, folks, it was a return to box office gold for multi-hyphenate Tyler Perry this weekend, as his latest effort, Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married opened at number one with $21.5 million from 2,011 theatres for an impressive $10.6k average. Perry’s post-Madea prowess seemed in doubt after Daddy’s Little Girls opened to an [...]

That’s it, folks. The Farrelly Brothers are done. Finished. Kaput. I expected, and kind of hoped, that The Heartbreak Kid would buy them a reprieve from director’s jail. But after the underrated Stuck on You brought in just $33 million, followed by Fever Pitch‘s $42 million (the first of their films not advertised as ‘A [...]

Much to my, and I think many other analysts’ (man, it’s fun to think of myself as an ‘analyst’), surprise, the family comedy The Game Plan dominated the box office this weekend with $22 million from 3,103 theatres for a $7.3k average. Numbers like this baffle me. I know that parents want a movie they [...]

Resident Evil: Extinction set an opening weekend record for its franchise this weekend, bringing in $24 million from 2,828 theatres for an $8.4k average. Mysteriously, this critically maligned franchise (Extinction rolled into theatres with a 28% rating on rottentomatoes.com) has gained financial steam with each successive entry, in spite of being headlined by box office [...]

What a relatively lackluster weekend at the box office. Neil Jordan’s Jodie Foster vehicle The Brave One took the top spot with an unimpressive $14 million from 2,755 theatres for a $5k average. Those numbers are virtually identical to 3:10 to Yuma‘s from last week, signaling that we have unquestionably moved into that dull grey [...]

Maybe I’m just getting lazy, but as I sit down to write this, I find I’m drawing a blank on clever titles, so feel free to improve on this one in the comments section. Needless to say, director James (Walk the Line) Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma captured the box office crown this weekend with $14 [...]

Okay, technically it opened in August, but that just wasn’t as catchy. And it doesn’t change the fact that no sooner do I run a bit about the critical and financial woes of the brothers Weinstein than their very next pic opens at the top of the weekend box office with $31 million over four [...]

Things are still looking great for the whole Superbad crew, whose names you no doubt know by now. The raunchy teen comedy remained atop the box office for the second week in a row with $18 million, a modest 45% drop, for a $68 million total off just a $20 million budget. Exec producer Judd [...]

Well, folks, the big news this weekend was the $31 million opening for Greg Mottola’s Superbad, although all the talk and praise is being showered on writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, stars Jonah Hill and Michael Cera, and most especially on exec producer Judd Apatow, who’s batting a thousand lately with anything that has [...]

The summer of three-quels concludes with the release of Rush Hour 3, which opened to $50 million from 3,778 theatres for a $13k average. These are perfectly acceptable numbers, putting it squarely between the $33 million opening of the first entry and the $67 million opening of the second. And yet, if you ask me, [...]

Is it just me, or has Matt Damon really made all the right moves as an actor? Coming into this weekend, he was already riding the reasonable critical and box-office success of Ocean’s 13. Prior to that, he had terrific success in The Departed, and his tightly-wound and intense performance there juxtaposed nicely with his [...]

You know, I started writing today’s piece talking about The Simpsons Movie‘s better than expected take of $71.8 million for the weekend (3,922 screens for an $18k average), and then criticizing Fox and director David Silverman for spending $75 million to bring it to the big screen. I had figures lined up from South Park: [...]

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry edged out Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for the top spot this weekend, bringing in $34.7 million from 3,495 screens for a $9.9k average in it’s opening frame. And I’m really conflicted by this news.

Well folks, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix opened to predictably spectacular numbers this weekend, bringing in $77 million from 4,285 theatres for an $18k average and $140 million domestic since its Wednesday premiere. With foreign cumes, it’s already topped $300 million in just five days. And I think we can say unequivocally [...]

Well, my moviegasm faithful, as if you haven’t gotten used to indulging my movie obsessions already, today you’re going to have to indulge me in some hero worship as well. You see, as those of you who have kept up since day one might already know, I am not just an ardent fan of horror [...]

Was there any doubt that Michael Bay’s Transformers would dominate domestic and international box office this weekend? The short answer is ‘no’, and with a worldwide 6-day haul of nearly $250 million, it may have already recouped it’s reported $150 million production budget (prints and advertising were no doubt costly, but they’ll make that up [...]

As expected, Disney/Pixar’s Ratatouille topped the weekend box office with a very good (but not spectacular) $47 million from 3,940 theatres for a $12k average. The good news for John Lasseter and company is that reviews and word of mouth on Ratatouille are sure to be excellent, meaning typically great legs for the kidpic in [...]

I spent a good bit of time over the last few months talking up the new trend of studios using big-budget comedies as their summer tentpoles, mostly as evidenced by the astounding amount of money Universal was pouring into the Jim Carrey-less sequel Evan Almighty. Carrey’s absence didn’t seem like such a big deal, since [...]

Well, folks, it was bound to happen at some point. I called in a few favors, pulled some strings, greased some palms, and stopped just short of blackmail to land our first-ever interview here at moviegasm. But I must say it was worth it, because I got the chance to chat with director Michael Katleman, [...]

Well, folks, much as I expected, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer topped the weekend box office with a healthy $57.4 million opening from 3,959 screens for a $14.5k average, in spite of withering reviews. You know, there was a time when I was one of those comic book geeks who would have been [...]

I was going to open by talking about Hostel II‘s opening, and what it might mean for the horror genre, but there’s already much talk about that floating around. So just for a change of pace, why don’t we actually start with the weekend’s number one movie and talk about Ocean’s 13?

There is really only one absolute in the movie business, and that is that studios and their accountants will do just about anything to cut as many people out of the profits as possible. A great example of this is called ‘net points’, which means that a person will get a percentage of the film [...]