TheUnknownWoman Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Indie Weekend Box Office: 'War, Inc.' Continues Its Reign
Filed under: Comedy », Documentary », Drama », Foreign Language », Thrillers », IFC », Magnolia », ThinkFilm », Box Office », Cinematical Indie », Paramount Vantage »
Most critics didn't love it, but for the second week in a row, viewers streamed in anyway. Still playing at just two theaters, Joshua Seftel's comedy-drama War, Inc. (First Look), starring John Cusack, averaged $12,100 per screen to continue its reign at the top of the indie weekend box office chart, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. That gives it a two-week total of $78,700. Among new specialty releases, Leonard Klady at Movie City News reports that Tom Kalin's drama Savage Grace (IFC Films) made $11,150 per screen at the two theaters in New York where it opened. Julianne Moore stars in a suffocating period piece about a twisted mother/son relationship. You can read more about it in the reviews by Nick Schager and Kim Voynar.
Jody Hill's comedy The Foot Fist Way (Paramount Vantage) opened in four theaters and earned $8,550 per engagement, according to Mr. Klady. Patrick Walsh offered up a mostly positive review on this "character study about a character you'd never want to meet," a children's Tae Kwon Do instructor who goes off the rails when his wife cheats on him.
Jeffrey M. Anderson described Giuseppe Tornatore's The Unknown Woman (Outsider Films) as "a restless, panicked, devastating emotional roller coaster, meticulously planned and executed like a razor." The film follows the travails of a woman who leaves the Ukraine to look for work in Italy. It made $6,000 at one theater in Manhattan.
Review: The Unknown Woman
Filed under: Foreign Language », New Releases », Theatrical Reviews », New in Theaters »
The Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore is best known for sweet, touching art house-friendly movies that send people away feeling gooey and cuddly. It's awfully tough to be a human being and resist his delightful Oscar-winning hit Cinema Paradiso (released in 1990). His film Malena (2000) had more detractors, but I found its images of a beautiful woman walking through the streets (with every eye following her every move) quite powerful and affecting. He once even made a movie with the life-affirming title Everybody's Fine. So when I sat down to Tornatore's new film, The Unknown Woman (his first since Malena), I was ready to be charmed. Instead, the film that actually unfurled was a restless, panicked, devastating emotional roller coaster, meticulously planned and executed like a razor.
Thinking back, I realized that there was more to Tornatore than his reputation suggests. In 2002, Miramax released the much longer director's cut of Cinema Paradiso with its rating tellingly changed from a PG to an R. A few years ago I tracked down an imported DVD of the director's cut of Malena, which was also considerably darker and more pointed; the Weinsteins were really the ones responsible for the softness of those films. I also remembered a movie called A Pure Formality (1994) about a police investigator (Roman Polanski) questioning a mystery man (Gerard Depardieu) found stumbling along the road; most of the film takes place in a damp, sinister police station with flashbacks to what might have happened previously. That tone gets closer to what's going on in The Unknown Woman, which starts with a knockout centerpiece performance by Kseniya Rappoport.
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