Box Office Trends: September

So for some reason, people always seem to be obsessed with comparing the box office numbers of this year to other years, as if that's somehow relevant. Box Office Mojo, one of my favorite resources/time wasters, always makes it a point to say whether business is up or down from the same weekend last year- because we all know the third weekend in September never changes in national movie-going affinity. Duh.

So I figure I'll only recap the months-that-were by relating the performances of one movie to another: inflation and changing economics in Hollywood will probably render these numbers meaningless in a couple years, but the relative grosses of different movies is a good indicator of contemporary taste, if nothing else.

1. Staying Power

3:10 to Yuma has to feel good about its long-term chances. It opened with a modest $14 million, but never dropped more than 36% week to week, which is pretty extraordinary, no matter the release pattern.

Consider this: 3:10 and Shoot 'Em Up both opened on September 7th- Shoot 'Em Up pulled in a lower than expected $5.7 m. But while 3:10 only took modest hits and stayed in the top five all month long, Shoot 'Em Up dropped 54, 69, and 80 percent in consecutive weeks, and will probably stop being tracked before October's out with a meager $17 million.

Hopefully James Mangold's winning western will continue to stay around this fall, and make a Million Dollar Baby-style push over $100 million after Oscar nominations are announced.
2. The Game Plan vs. The Kingdom

I wasn't really sure which one of these to root for last weekend, which is to say I was rooting for neither, but America has decided: we'd rather see The Rock have an allergic reaction to strawberries than see some hypothetical Saudi Arabian terrorists get blown up. The Game Plan made $22 m to The Kingdom's $17 m. This almost makes me feel better, in a way.

Also, as I said I love b.o.m. for reference, but they employ the worst professional film critic I have ever read on the internet. Ever. Most of the reviews for The Kingdom felt uneasy about the sort of xenophobic, country-full-of-terrorists undertones, but this guy (Scott Holleran) thinks it wasn't racist enough. The title of his review? "The Kingdom: Action Blaster Suggests Osama was Right."

3. Good Luck Chuck opened higher than Stardust

Yep. And people ask me why I'm an atheist.

Other than that, people liked zombies, and sort of liked Jodie Foster shooting people, but September is traditionally a slow month, I hear. A bunch of award hopefuls did okay on a handful of screens, but October will be the big test, when everything goes wide.

3:10 To Yuma Review

With all the goodwill that Christian Bale has built up among discerning movie-goers between Batman Begins, The Prestige, and generally having an anti-Affleckian ability to choose good scripts, it’s easy to root for him in 3:10 to Yuma as soon as he appears onscreen.

His sunken-eyed, world weary portrayal of a Civil War veteran is already so emotionally bare that we don’t even need his wet-blanket wife (Gretchen Mol) or his annoying puissant son (Logan Lerman) to get us on his side, and this is even before the local railroad company burns down his barn to drive his family off their small plot of land.

And just in case your heart is made of stone, he’s got a wooden leg from the war, too.

Russell Crowe, however, is immediately likeable as a psychotic outlaw. He sketches things, he woos the ladies, he cracks jokes, and he’s not quite as nuts as his uber-psycho right hand man (Ben Foster), so we warm up to him quickly as well.

So when Bale joins the posse bringing Crowe to justice, justice being a train to Yuma prison, it’s hard to not to cheer as the other members begin to get knocked off along the way, victims of Crowe’s ruthlessness or troublesome Apaches, and the film begins to focus more on the interplay between the two.

Don’t get me wrong- all the supporting turns in this movie are good, especially Foster and a very grizzly Peter Fonda. It even has one of my favorite things in the world- the unexpected appearance of Alan Tudyk! (Seriously, I had no idea. Even Luke Wilson shows up for about two minutes. Surprisingly convincing as a yokel, too). But it’s Bale’s browbeaten determination and Crowe’s casual malevolence that eventually get your heart to jump with every gunshot in a finale that has hundreds of them.

The journey to bring Crowe to justice soon becomes Saving Private Ryan-like, in that you question the logic of a near-suicidal mission just on account of one man (why not just shoot him, and be done with it?) But it becomes quickly clear, as other characters find ample reason to turn back, that it’s about one man just trying to get something right for a goddamn change.

Bale is amazing, and he holds the movie together where it could falter. Before he leaves, in an impassioned speech to his wife, he drops lines a lot like “I’ve been running for three years, on one leg, and I’m tired of it.” It’s a speech that could have been awful and schmaltzy in a lesser actor’s hands, but he absolutely sells it.

Crowe is excellent, of course, but takes the background to Bale despite first billing, at least for me. Ultimately his character’s struggle is to balance his gradually growing respect for this tired, put upon rancher trying to bring him in against his own self interest.

When to See it: As Soon As Humanly Possible*

*Note: In lieu of things like stars, thumbs, grades, whatever, I’m going with a level of When to see it. The different levels:

As Soon As Humanly Possible
Before It Leaves Theatres
If You Get Around To It
On DVD
On Spike TV
When Hell Freezes Over

Weekend Box Office

Just for the record, my friend Dave, who'll be contributing a bit to this blog in the near future, emailed me this at 3:42 pm on Wednesday:

"3:10 to Yuma and Shoot 'Em Up are getting good reviews. I'll go with 3:10 to Yuma to win the Box Office battle this weekend with about $14-16 million."

Well, Box Office Mojo is estimating it at number one with $14.1 Million.

So let that put to rest any doubt about Dave's credibility. Personally, I sort of wondered if Shoot 'Em Up might replicate the success of 300, which made $27 million on a traditionally slow weekend in March with a similar all-violence ethos, but I guess people want there to be a little bit of a plot after all. It was a distant sixth with $5.45 mill.

So, let that raise doubts about my credibity.