TellNoOne Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Oh, us Americans. Even when we turn out for the movies with the words on the screen, we still can't seem to stand those words on the screen. After all, why else would Variety say that an English-language remake in the works for both last summer's art-house hit Tell No One as well as District B13, which kicks ass in any language?

The former was based on a crackling mystery by American author Harlan Coben, albeit one transplanted to a French setting, and was most noteworthy for one sweet foot chase and a fairly loopy denouement. (Here's a thought: have the bi-lingual Kristen Scott Thomas reprise her role here.)

The latter was pretty much one sweet foot chase drawn out to feature length, with some punches and kicks thrown in for good measure, as a cop and a criminal parkour their way through post-apocalyptic Paris. (Don't believe me? After the jump... pun moderately intended.)

You know what? Let's combine the two. A doctor under suspicion for the murder of his wife -- who appears to be very much alive -- goes on the run to clear his name AND deactivate a nuclear weapon. With a plot like that, who needs words?

Slumdog Millionaire
It was a complete Academy Awards smash, winning almost all of its nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. Kim Voynar's review stated: "Boyle, stepping outside the UK to focus his lens on India, seems to have freed himself here to bring his brilliance as a director to its fullest fruition." Really, the praise and awards speak volumes, making the film a definite Buy it. Also, the film absolutely sparkles and shines on Blu-ray, with the vibrant colors of India popping and sizzling like you've never seen before. Seriously, put this one on your must-see list, like, yesterday. (For more, read our interview with Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle.)

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Marley & Me
A heart-warming Christmas feel-good flick -- Marley & Me tells the story of a couple who get a rambunctious dog who might be a handful, but who also becomes a beloved member of the family. It's full of puppy love and all the things you'd expect when following the life of a lovable canine. For the tear-jerker film fiends, this film will be a must, but for the rest, you might want to just Rent it. Also on Blu-ray.

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Seven Pounds
It was beginning to seem like Will Smith was untouchable -- the Hollywood actor whose name would always mean successful blockbuster. At the very least, one would've thought Seven Pounds would be successful, but instead it came and went with little fanfare, and some disappointment. Nick Shager said the film was "misguided mush from the moment go, a deliberately muddled bit of inspirational pap that masks its inherent silliness with structural obliqueness and, worse still, affords Smith scant opportunities to infuse his character with authentic humanity." Skip it. Also on Blu-ray.

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Also out: Ogre, Timecrimes, The Real Ghostbusters, Vol. 1

This week, there's also a bunch of AfterDark Horrorfest releases for you blood and gore fans out there: Autopsy, The Broken, The Butterfly Effect 3, Dying Breed, From Within, AfterDark Horrorfest Vol. 3, Perkins 14, Slaughter, Voices

Was it the controversy over the title? Or the controversy over the bloody tampon scene? Either way, Alan Ball's Towelhead finished the weekend with the best per-screen average of all films, earning $13,250 at four engagements in New York and Los Angeles, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. Neither this flick, first unveiled at Toronto last year, nor Ball's recent return to HBO, Southern Gothic vampire drama True Blood, have drawn unanimous critical praise, but specialty audiences still seem interested in whatever the American Beauty scribe / Six Feet Under creator is doing.

Speaking of directors with a strong following, Takeshi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django expanded to Los Angeles and maintained a healthy $4,200 per-screen average in its third week of release. Also in its third week, comedy I Served the King of England expanded into 37 locations but hasn't picked up much steam ($2,262 per screen), while steady earners Tell No One ($2,263 per screen; 11th week), Frozen River ($2,011 per screen; 7th week), Elegy ($1,948 per screen; 6th week), and Vicky Cristina Barcelona ($1,724; 5th week) all saw somewhat predictable declines in business. After all, sex and thrills only go so far among indie filmgoers.

Our criteria for inclusion in the Indie Weekend Box Office report hinges on the distributor, so here's another shout out to the #1 overall earner, Burn After Reading, from Focus Features. Likewise, soon-to-shutter Picturehouse released Diane English's The Women on the largest number of of screens they've ever handled -- 2,962 -- resulting in a per-screen average of $3,405. The picture earned more than $10 million total.

Is everyone in Toronto for the festival? Has everyone caught up with everything they want to see? Are arthouse movie lovers football fans too? I'm not sure how else to explain the downturn in the indie box office this weekend, in which Takashi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django continued its stay at the top, per estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. Sukiyaki made $5,100 at its single Gotham engagement; now let's see what happens when it expands beyond New York City.

Also holding up decently in its second weekend was I Served the King of England, which increased to 17 theaters and earned $4,241 per location. Everyone Wants to Be Italian was the only debuting indie to crack the Top 10, but its tepid $2,224 per-screen average at 98 locations indicates that not everyone wants be Italian. No word on what happened with The Pool (which I loved), August Evening, Ping Pong Playa, Mister Foe, or the other new indies.

Speaking of poor performances, Hamlet 2 earned just $520 per screen at 1,575 theaters. Yikes! That's a lot of empty auditoriums. The film's cumulative total is $4.3 million, though, so perhaps it can break even on the DVD release.

Among the holdovers, Frozen River and Transsiberian pushed past $1 million dollars in earnings, Elegy broke past $2 million dollars total, Tell No One reached $4.7 million dollars, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona soared past $16 million in its fourth week.

The dog days of summer hit the indie box office this weekend, as the top earner was a film in its third week of release. Elegy, directed by Isabel Coixet and starring Ben Kingsley and Penélope Cruz, expanded from six to 92 theaters and grossed $5,546 per screen, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. The adaptation of a novel by Philip Roth has not been universally praised, but maintains a strong 74% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes. I can't help but conclude that Penélope Cruz is the art house crowd's answer to Megan Fox, because . . .

. . . Cruz also stars in Vicky Christina Barcelona (pictured), which made $4,339 per screen in its fairly wide (692 theaters) second week. Woody Allen's latest features other pretty people such as Javier Bardem and Scarlett Johansson, of course, and has very good reviews behind it, yet it's silly to ignore the current Cruz heat factor.

As Eugene has already noted, Andrew Fleming's Hamlet 2 got a jump start on its wide release by opening on 103 screens, but its average of $4,223 "doesn't inspire confidence for the expansion." Will this slow down star Steve Coogan?

Suspense drama Transsiberian ($4,157 per screen, 38 theaters, 6th week), tense drama Frozen River ($4,048 per screen, 41 theaters, 4th week), and mystery thriller Tell No One ($3,643 per screen, 101 theaters, 8th week, $3.8 million total) continued to draw well, while debuting debt doc I.O.U.S.A. made $3,461 per screen at 18 locations.

With all due respect to my esteemed colleague Elisabeth Rappe, geeks are not the only ones who learned important lessons from watching movies this summer. Herewith is my personal, arthouse summer school summary.

Werner Herzog cast a disapproving eye on the ugliness he discovered at Antarctica's McMurdo Station ("they even have a yoga studio and an ATM!") and was skeptical about the sanity of some of the real-life characters he met, which is partly why Encounters at the End of the World was so entrancing. What I learned: Evidence for gay penguins is skimpy, but they have been known to have threesomes.

The Wackness (pictured) didn't became the breakout hit that some had hoped for, but it did showcase the talents of rising star Olivia Thirlby and director Jonathan Levine. What I learned: Never kiss Ben Kingsley in a telephone booth.

Nanette Burstein's filmmaking techniques were much more off-putting than her ultimately winning subjects in American Teen, another would-be smash that didn't live up to box office expectations. What I learned: Never break up with your girlfriend via text message, especially when a documentary filmmaker is interviewing her.

Unexpectedly, Tell No One became the breakout limited-release mystery thrill ride of the summer, and Man on Wire proved that impassioned high wire walkers can make dreams come true and enthrall audiences to boot. What I learned: It's good to be French.

Now it's your turn, all you indie-loving, doc-devoted, world cinema aficionados: what did you learn from the movies this summer?

The French are at it again! After last month's unexpected breakout success of French thriller Tell No One, surely it's no surprise that French thriller A Girl Cut in Two opened on top, grossing $9,750 per screens at the two theaters in New York where it opened, according to Box Office Mojo. Claude Chabrol's latest (and perhaps last) has delighted critics, including our own Jeffrey M. Anderson ("superbly made ... highly enjoyable").

Amidst a hailstorm of reviews, interviews, and offers of threesomes, Woody Allen's Vicky Christina Barcelona debuted to $5,361 per-screen at 692 engagements, while would-be inspirational drama Henry Poole is Here failed to inspire much box office, drawing just $1,518 per screen at 527 theaters. People were evidently more interested in sin than salvation this weekend.

Two films in their second week of release continued to draw well, with literary adaptation Elegy scoring $9,000 per screen at six locations and music doc Patti Smith: Dream of Life drawing $7,000 at its sole Manhattan engagement. Meanwhile, the quiet thriller Frozen River saw an uptick in business as it expanded to 15 theaters in its third week of release, earning $4,086 per screen.

American Teen withered on the vine in its fourth week, its per-screen average shrinking to $980 as it further expanded into 105 theaters, with a cumulative total of $656,000. Brideshead Revisited slowed to $1,489 per screen during its expansion into 501 theaters, though its total has passed $4.6 million.

Out of all the specialty releases that have appeared in theaters -- including American indies, docs, and world cinema -- why is one standing out this summer as a "word-of-mouth" hit? That's how Steven Zeitchik in The Hollywood Reporter descibes Guillaume Canet's terrific French thriller Tell No One, which has grossed nearly $1.7 million since opening in New York and Los Angeles at the beginning of July.

Zeitchik provides background on distributor Music Box Films and its founder William Schopf and then says that strong reviews in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The New Yorker "certainly helped, particularly with the film's older demo." (Hmm, did someone take a poll?) He also speculates that press days for director Canet, its mystery/thriller genre, and timing -- an indie slipping between the cracks of the big summer movies -- may have been factors.

Tell No One opened the same July 4th holiday weekend as Hancock, and the mixed reviews for the Will Smith picture may indeed have pushed some folks to try the French flick. But The Wackness also opened that weekend, and despite some very good reviews and a smashing opening weekend, its per-screen average has declined as it has expanded across the country. More than one million dollars at the box office is a decent return for a rather desultory stoner period comedy-drama, in my opinion, though it's far less than others thought it could achieve. Still, why did Tell No One -- with, evidently, a substantially smaller marketing budget -- catch on and not The Wackness?

As always, we seek to highlight indie films with this weekly post, so let's pause a moment and celebrate the success of a good, old-fashioned railroad movie. Brad Anderson's Transsiberian opened on two screens and earned a very tidy $17,600 at each, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. That has to be considered a triumph in the face of "The Bat Effect." Perhaps Transsiberian will get to a few more cities before its eventual landing on DVD shelves.

In a very welcome upturn of events, French thriller Tell No One expanded from 19 to 55 screens in its third week of release and averaged $9,725 per screen. More people will have a chance to catch this word-of-mouth success when it expands again this coming Friday.

Also in its third week out, The Wackness expanded by three theaters and kept a decent $4,441 per-screen average. It finally opened where I live and, while I loved Olivia Thirlby more than I should and was convinced that Jonathan Levine has good instincts as a filmmaker, I'm amazed it's done as well as it has, considering how drab so much of it feels. But that's just my minority opinion. I would still encourage you -- especially you 90s kids -- to consider checking it out when it expands wider this Friday.

Finally, Lou Reed's Berlin earned a per-screen average of $3,825 at the two theaters where it opened. Must be more Lou Reed fans out there than I thought.

Maybe you've seen them, maybe you haven't, but French thrillers are making a comeback in North America. That's good news for people uninterested in art houses solely for the sake of watching foreign films: You don't have to be a Francophile to appreciate smart, meticulously generated suspense, and that's exactly the appeal of several French movies hitting American theaters this year. A steady mixture of warm reviews and positive word-of-mouth appears to have helped Guillame Canet's breathlessly entertaining drama Tell No One land an impressive $240,858 at 18 locations. Earlier this year, veteran auteur Claude Lelouch, long known for his cinematic explorations of eroticism and lawbreaking, remained thematically consistent with a delightfully complex story of double-crossing novelists and dysfunctional families called Roman de Gare. The movie made over $25,000 on two New York screens when it opened in late April, and eventually pulled in more than $1.5 million after expanding to theaters around the country. It's not hard to argue that Tell No One and Roman de Gare put most recent American thrillers to shame. North America, once the haven of film noir, appears to be outsourcing.

As journalist Erica Abeel recently observed in an interview with Canet, "French filmmakers are currently making the best old-style Hollywood thrillers." It's not the first time for a country that has a long history of borrowing from American cinema, and often improving on it. At the beginning of the French New Wave in the early 1960s, former Cahiers du Cinema critics like Jean Luc-Godard discovered Hollywood genre films and decided to make their own loopy versions. The results were often strangely philosophical and experiment works, ranging from Godard's Breathless to François Truffaut's ambitious Shoot the Piano Player.