Movie + DVD News

Filmzee Movie Box Office Top 10 - Mon May 12, 2008

Here is Filmzee’s box office top 10 list for the weekend starting Fri May 9, 2008. Titles in bold link to either a preview page on this site, a review at Film Pundits, or a profile page at IMDB. Numbers in brackets represent the previous week’s rank. (A hyphen, “-”, means a movie just opened. A tilde, “~”, means that the movie opened before this past weekend but was not in the top 10 the previous week.)

1. [1] Iron Man. Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard.
2. [-] Speed Racer. Emile Hirsch, Matthew Fox, Christina Ricci.
3. [-] What Happens in Vegas… Cameron Diaz, Ashton Kutcher.
4. [2] Made of Honor. Patrick Dempsey, Michelle Monaghan.
5. [3] Baby Mama. Tina Fey, Amy Poehler.
6. [4] Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Paul Rudd, Bill Hader.
7. [5] Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. John Cho, Kal Penn.
8. [6] The Forbidden Kingdom. Jackie Chan, Jet Li.
9. [7] Nim’s Island. Jodie Foster, Gerard Butler, Abigail Breslin.
10. [~] Redbelt [limited]. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tim Allen, Emily Mortimer.

Of the new releases for this past weekend, Speed Racer does not deserve its #2 spot by any stretch of the imagination. (I’m surprised by the total lies positive reviews that Richard Roeper and his guest gave about Speed Racer on Ebert & Roeper on Sunday night.)

I’m expecting it’ll be dropping down the list by next week, especially since The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian will be out. Or you could take the kids to see The Forbidden Kingdom, which is more deserving of a better ranking. (While martial arts might be considered violent by some parents, it’s almost comical when it’s not artistic, in this movie.)

What Happens in Vegas…, while not a great film, is entertaining. It only missed #2 by about US$200K. One reviewer said that guys just don’t like Ashton Kutcher, and it’s true. At least, I despise him and his Kelso role from the TV sitcom That 70s Show. I’d also like to punch him out everytime I’ve had the misfortune of seeing Punk’d. But he was a surprise in this movie. The trailers make it look as if he’s kind of like Kelso, but he’s not. At least not through the film. In fact, I think he’s starting to mature as an actor.

Once again, living in a small city means not getting to see limited-release films. I really wanted to see the horror thriller Frontieres, which just opened. David Mamet’s Redbelt, which opened May 2nd, is another limited release movie I wanted to see but couldn’t. The latter placed at #10 this weekend, taking in only $1.14M - a lot more than the $100K or so that it took in on its opening weekend. (Note that it earned more per theater, on average, in week 1.) So that shows you how bad a weekend it was for movies that weren’t either Iron Man, Speed Racer, or What Happens in Vegas. The top three movies took in the lion’s share of box office receipts. Heck, Iron Man alone took in almost as much as movies #2-10, collectively.

So I pity the non-blockbusters that’ll be opening against Prince Caspian this weekend and Indiana Jones next weekend. (Fact: It doesn’t matter how crappy a movie is if you can use the trailers to lie and get people out on opening weekend. It’s not like movie theaters issue refunds if we hate the product.)