Surprise! Jason Reitman's Juno, the most buzzed about teen pregnancy comedy of the fall, hauled in an overwhelming take of $60,000 per screen at seven theaters in New York and Los Angeles, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo, easily topping the indie box office chart. It got a head start by opening on Wednesday, but it actually began building momentum when it screened at Telluride more than three months ago. Critical response has been nearly unanimous (93% positive per Rotten Tomatoes), with our own Kim Voynar leading the hosannas. Juno will be opening wide soon, so it will be interesting to see if it can cross over to mainstream acceptance.

Also widely praised since its debut at Venice, Atonement scored very well with a per-screen average of $25,531 at 32 theaters in major markets. Keira Knightley and James McAvoy star in director Joe Wright's adaptation of the Ian McEwan novel. Christopher Hampton scripted the screen version of an epic period romance. Cinematical's James Rocchi participated in a roundtable interview with McAvoy; you can read McAvoy's thoughts on Atonement and much more.

Other indies struggled to find audiences. Grace is Gone, starring John Cusack as a father having trouble telling his daughters that their mother has been killed, had the highest profile, but earned just $3,500 per screen at four theaters. Long on the shelf, The Amateurs may be heading quickly to DVD; despite the presence of Jeff Bridges and Ted Danson, it managed to earn only $4,000 per screen at three theaters in Los Angeles and Dallas. Bridges did all he could to publicize the film; he and Danson participated in a junket, which our own Patrick Walsh just wrote about, and was present for a post-screening Q&A on Friday night in Dallas.

Also debuting over the weekend: Maurice Jamal's comedy Dirty Laundry ($7,700 per-screen at two theaters), Paul Schrader's Washington drama The Walker ($5,533 per screen at three theaters), Guy Ritchie's crime drama Revolver ($2,316 per screen at 18 theaters) and David Wall's religious drama Noelle ($802 per screen at 203 theaters).

The Amateurs (formerly The Moguls), the directorial debut of writer/director Michael Traeger, is an underdog comedy about a group of small-town losers who decide to raise money by making a porno film. It's got a wonderful supporting cast that includes Joe Pantoliano, William Fichtner, Tim Blake Nelson, and Lauren Graham. Cinematical recently attended a press junket with the film's stars -- Jeff Bridges and Ted Danson, who were interviewed separately. Needless to say, meeting The Dude and Sam Malone in the same day was kind of a big deal! First up was Mr. Bridges...

What attracted you to the The Amateurs and the role of Andy?

Jeff Bridges: Like most of the movies I get involved with, I resisted it as long as possible. I always try to figure out why I shouldn't do it, and with this one there were plenty of reasons not to do it. What attracted me to it in the first place is that it was so unusual. It put this porn aspect and this Frank Capra aspect together, and I thought that was really interesting, very ambitious. But I didn't know if this guy who had never directed a film would be able to pull it off. Also, I've done movies in the past that have a lot of characters, and I find them hard to follow and you wind up not caring about any of the people, and I thought that might be the case with this one. But my representatives kept telling me I should do it, so finally I said "Alright. I want you guys to organize a reading, and I want you to see that this thing's not going to work at all." So we had a table read, and it just flew, it was just great. I think it works very well.

When the release started to get delayed, did any of that old skepticism start to come back, like maybe something did go wrong?

JB: No, I didn't really get all the ins and outs of why it didn't get released, it's very convoluted and I haven't heard all the sides and the stories, but it wasn't because of the nature of the film or anything like that. I think it was more business type stuff.

Filmed in the summer of 2004, The Amateurs has been in the can for over three years. The movie's title has gone through several changes, and imdb still lists it as The Moguls. The film has had a whopping six release dates going back to 2005, but it finally sputters into theaters today -- in Los Angeles and Dallas, anyway. Movies often have distribution trouble (you can read more about the problems this one faced in the Los Angeles Times), but the struggle of The Amateurs surprised me because it had all the makings of a sleeper hit. It's got a killer premise (think The Full Monty with porno) and an amazing cast. The film's struggle surprised me...until I saw it.

A queasy mixture of Boogie Nights sleaze and Patch Adams sentimentality, The Amateurs takes place in the small town of Butterface Fields (ho-HO!). That's where you'll find Andy Sargentee (Jeff Bridges, in shaggy dog Lebowski mode), a divorced dad who is down on his luck. His son (Alex D. Linz) is now living with a wealthy stepfather (the typically solid Steven Weber), and this makes Sargentee insecure. He's got to make some money, and fast. So, naturally, he decides to enlist the help of his friends and make an amateur porno flick.

Finding a theme to bind together five trailers for this column every week can be tricky. Sometimes a common element jumps out at me, and other times I have to spend some time searching before I find one. Still other times there's no similarity to be found, which leads us to this week's topic. We're firing a barrel of buckshot (metaphorically speaking) at some new trailers, and we'll talk about the first five we hit. Ready? Lock and load.

Starting Out in the Evening
Frank Langella plays an aging novelist who can't get publishers to even look at his new book, but a young female grad student thinks she can revive people's interest in his work. Langella's character is so old school he actually uses a typewriter, and this looks like a truly great performance. The plot reminds me a bit of Finding Forrester, but only on a superficial level. James reviewed the film at the Toronto International Film Festival, and you can read that right here.

I am Legend
There's a new full-length trailer for this third adaptation of Richard Matheson's classic novel about a lone human in a world overrun with mutated survivors of a global plague. I'm not clear on whether the plague victim's in the movie are actually vampires like they are in the book or some other kind of mutation, but you finally get a peek at them here, as well as some mutant dogs. Beyond the basic premise, this doesn't look like it's going to be a particularly faithful adaptation, but I've always felt a film should judged for what it is and not how similar it is to the source material. This should be good.

Whether it's an emotion, a memory, an event or another person, we often find ourselves unable to move past certain things and get on with our lives. We constantly question our thoughts, our actions -- how do we make this work? Is therapy the answer? Meditation? A hot bath? Perhaps packing up and shipping yourself halfway across the country will solve everything ... or not.

The following films all feature characters who either need help moving past their insecurities, or are brought in to help others deal with a heavy load of emotional baggage. From simply talking to a girl or fixing a marriage to nurturing those coming to terms with a horrific tragedy, sometimes, with only a nudge or a push, the grass can be green on both sides of the fence. Welcome to this week's Trailer Park: