What's the formula for success? Teens, drugs, Ben Kingsley kisses and 90s nostalgia, evidently. Jonathan Levine's The Wackness scored the best per-screen average of the weekend -- $24,166 -- at six theaters in New York and Los Angeles, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo.

On the other hand, French thriller Tell No One packed them in without any of those elements, earning $20,120 per-screen at eight theaters, according to Leonard Klady's estimates at Movie City News. As somebody once said: C'est la vie.

At the one theater in Los Angeles where it opened, the box office went Kabluey for the film with the same name ($7,900 in receipts) while Alex Gibney's entertaining, if schematic, doc, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, made $7,307 per screen at 26 theaters celebrating independence across the nation.

Not as many were interested in Holding Trevor ($3,400 per-screen at 2 theaters) and audiences declined interest in Diminished Capacity ($2,830 per-screen at 4 theaters). You can read more about all these releases in Indie Spotlight, the new column by Eric D. Snider.

Notable holdovers include Trumbo ($4,233 per-screen average, 6 theaters, 2nd week of release); Mongol ($3,490 per-screen, 253 theaters, 5th week); Brick Lane ($3,451 per-screen, 31 theaters, 3rd week); Roman de Gare ($2,400 per-screen, 37 theaters, 11th week), and The Visitor ($2,017 per-screen, 176 theaters, 13th week).

Kit Kittredge: An American Girl broke into the overall top 10, expanding to more than 1,800 theaters and drawing $1,953 per screen -- but that's a very disappointing figure after the gangbusters box office of its very limited first two weeks of release. The film has grossed more than $6.1 million so far.

Despite dropping more than 50% in its second week of release, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (Picturehouse) outdrew all other specialty releases over the weekend, earning $21,200 per screen at five theaters, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo.

Directed by Canadian indie veteran Patricia Rozema (I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, When Night is Falling), Kit Kittredge has clearly benefited from a devoted fan base that convinced thousands of their parental units to fork over $20 per ticket -- which, to be fair, includes a limited-edition t-shirt -- to see the movie in advance of its wide release tomorrow. That's a very good performance when you consider its main competition was not, actually, a French-language flick that skewed very adult, but actually a heavily-advertised animated film.

Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress (IFC Films), starring Asia Argento, took in $17,600 per screen at two locations, which probably owes as much, if not more, to the name recognition of Argento as that of the often-confounding Breillat.

Trumbo, director Peter Askins' new documentary about the life and work of blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, began life as a series of letters archived by Dalton Trumbo's son Christopher; it then became a two-person play. On-screen -- where it's become one of the breakout documentary surprises of this year's Toronto International Film Festival -- the story mixes archival footage and interviews with brand-new readings of Trumbo's letters by a cast of true talents -- Paul Giamatti, Joan Allen, Donald Sutherland, Michael Douglas, Josh Lucas, Liam Neeson, Nathan Lane, David Strathairn, Brian Dennehy and Donald Sutherland. Trumbo isn't just a misty look back at a long-past Hollywood -- the issues of free speech it raises are relevant today, as demonstrated at the public screening where an audience member asked if, in light of the actions of Stalin's Russia, the House Un-American Activities Committee was perhaps justified in their attack on 'The Hollywood Ten.' ... Cinematical spoke with Askin in Toronto about the transition between stage and screen, finding his film's impressive cast, his thoughts on the blacklist and much more. You can download the entire interview right here.

Many of the documentaries you tend to see at film festivals represent one of two polar extremes. One is the trenchant, heartfelt exploration of some issue of politics -- which, while fascinating, can be a bit of a slog. The other is the breezy, buzzy exploration of some aspect of show business -- which, while fun, can be a bit light. Trumbo -- directed by Peter Askin and based on Christopher Trumbo's play taken from his father Dalton Trumbo's letters -- manages to hit a perfect sweet spot between those two extremes. It's informative, impassioned, insightful; it's funny and fabulous and filled with film-love.

Dalton Trumbo was a novelist and screenwriter -- one of the highest-paid writers in Hollywood -- before the House Un-American Activities Committee came calling. Trumbo's brief time in the Communist Party was motivated by what would come to be called "premature anti-fascism" -- double-speak for not liking Hitler before not liking Hitler was national policy. He was called before Senator Joe McCarthy and the HUAC hearings, and found guilty of contempt of Congress for not naming names. Of his communist past, we hear Trumbo explain that "At its peak, the party had only 80,000 members; that's less than The Elks. And they had a lot more guns." Of his court sentence, he noted "As far as I'm concerned, it was a just verdict; I was in contempt of that congress. ..."