Box Office: 'American Sniper' Shoots Down January Record with $90.2M

1. American Sniper- $90.2M/$93.6M
Reservations about the film and its somewhat controversial depiction of lethal sniper Chris Kyle aside, Clint Eastwood's American Sniper destroyed the January records with $90.2M. The film, which stars Bradley Cooper in a performance that is earning him a great amount of Oscars buzz, had been performing extraordinarily well in limited release for three weeks, but nobody could have foreseen an expansion like this. It not only surpasses Ride Along as the top-grossing January film, but is well on the way to becoming Eastwood's highest-grossing movie of his legendary filmmaking career. Military films have had a rough go about it over the last few years but we've seen that recently that starpower can be enough to trump that. Brad Pitt helped lead Fury to a solid $85M domestically ($201M worldwide), and Bradley Cooper's gruff but emotional turn in American Sniper was clearly a big draw, aided by some truly great TV spots.
2. The Wedding Ringer- $21M
It's another solid early-season comedy for the reliable Kevin Hart as buddy comedy The Wedding Ringer opened with $21M. That's a pretty steep drop from last year's Ride Along (which just lost its January record to American Sniper), but it also doesn't have the benefit of Ice Cube in a supporting role. Nothing against Josh Gad but he's no Ice Cube. The $23M production should finish up as another mid-level hit for Hart, and bodes well for his next film Get Hard opposite Will Ferrell. Expect that one to do much better.
3. Paddington- $19.2M
The Weinstein Company has to consider the $19.2M debut of Paddington sweeter than a marmalade sandwich. The CGI/Live-Action film has been earning some terrific reviews, and deservedly so, both in the US and abroad, having earned $141M worldwide already. It also makes for the most successful Nicole Kidman film in what seems like forever. Remember when she was relevant? Anyway, it looks like moving Paddington from its prior Christmas Day slot was a smart choice as it now becomes the first hit family film of 2015.
4. Taken 3- $14M/$62.8M
Last week's champ Taken 3 took a shot to the body and fell 64% in its second weekend, on the way to $14M and $62.8M domestic. But this franchise, which is apparently wrapping up now (yeah right), has done the most damage overseas. The film has gained an additional $64M internationally and should be enough to keep 20th Century Fox plenty happy.
5. Selma- $8.3M/$25.9M
Here's the thing about getting an Oscar bump: a film has to earn enough Oscar nominations to warrant one. Unfortunately, Ava DuVernay's Selma was largely snubbed by the Academy Awards this week, even though it still got slotted for Best Picture. The controversy surrounding that may be enough to propel it further down the line, but for now the film is bumping along at an underwhelming level. Fortunately, the $20M production has already made back back its budget and should see a bump over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
6. The Imitation Game- $7.1M/$50.7M
7. Into the Woods- $6.5M/$114.2M
8. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies- $4.8M/$244.5M
9. Unbroken- $4.2M/$108.6M
10. Blackhat- $4M
And the first flop of 2015 goes to Michael Mann's techno-thriller Blackhat, which stars Chris Hemsworth as a brawny computer hacker. Apparently nobody wants to watch Thor jabbing away at a keyboard for two hours, and Mann's long since lost his cred as a box office draw. The film does have an international flavor and could perform better internationally, but that is something we'll have to wait and find out. 

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Review: Michael Mann's 'Blackhat' starring Chris Hemsworth and Viola Davis

Hey, who wants to watch a movie about hackers sitting around punching keys on a laptop? Hacking may sound awesome when Anonymous is issuing manifestos in Guy Fawkes masks, but the actual work of it is pretty damned dull. So who wants to watch a movie about hackers sitting around punching keys on a laptop? I do! At least when the director is Michael Mann and he can bring as much energy, flair, and action as he does in the cyber-thriller Blackhat.

Let's get the bad stuff out of the way first: none of it makes a lick of sense. We don't know what the heck these people are doing or talking about because hacking is over most of our heads.  A lesser screenplay and a less experienced director wouldn't know how to connect the audience with all the technical mumbo-jumbo. So Mann draws us in through actions and ever escalating ramifications, both on a global and personal scale. It begins when some kind of virus, shown sweeping through a Chinese computer system, causes a nuclear power plant to meltdown. America was hit by a similar attack but managed to catch it in time, so China's top security analyst Chen Dawai (Wang Leehom) teams up with FBI agent Carole Barrett (Viola Davis) to track down the "blackhat" responsible. To do it, Chen gets his buff hacker pal Hathaway spring from prison to help out. There's also Chen's hot hacker sis Lien (Tang Wei) who we know will hook up with Hathaway because....well, somebody has to. He's a hacker who looks like Thor! Somebody's definitely going to hook up with him and it won't be Viola Davis.

Tracking down the global terrorist takes the team to some of the slummiest hotels all around the world where they set up shop and start mashing keys. But this is Michael Mann and the whole thing is more of a visual exercise than one would expect it to be, and the immediacy he brings to each scene is palpable. Using a grittier digital look than we saw in Public Enemies, Mann works in some intense firefights on the city streets of Malaysia, Jakarta, and Hong Kong. He knows better than to waste a physical force like Hemsworth, putting his character in the thick of every battle and foot chase, and of course the occasional steamy sex scene. It's not a great performance by Hemsworth; he tends to mumble his lines and comes off more enigmatic than charismatic, but he gets to kick ass and crack high-level security codes, sometimes within moments of each other. That's a pretty sweet gig. Davis doesn't get to do as much as she probably should, while Tang Wei and Wang Leehom (both appeared in Lust, Caution) has an appeal that hopefully will cross over to U.S. shores.

The techno-babble Mann piles on is informative yet dull, but he makes up for it with an abundance of beautifully-staged action. Pretty soon Blackhat stops resembling a cyber-thriller and that's perfectly okay. Not everything about Blackhat is designed for us to understand, but like most of Mann's best work it hits you on a gut level. 

 Rating: 3.5 out of 5

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Win Passes to an Advance Screening of 'Blackhat' starring Chris Hemsworth!

Hopefully the whole Sony thing didn't drive you away from movies about cyber-terrorism because Michael Mann has a great one on the way. We're offering our DC readers a chance to attend an advance screening of his next film, Blackhat, starring Chris Hemsworth as a prisoner released to help a joint task force stop a cyber criminal. The screening takes place on Tuesday, January 13th at 7:30pm at Regal Gallery Place.

You now have two ways to enter, which can be done by completing the contest widget below! Winners will be selected and contacted on Saturday, January 10th so enter now!

Blackhat also stars Viola Davis and Tang Wei, opening in theaters on January 16th.

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Travis' 10 Must See Movies of January

Ahhh, January. The year always begins with such promise, and then the first month is generally filled with crapola. Mostly, but not completely. It's an annual argument I tend to have with my pal and WAFCA president Tim Gordon that January never has any good movies in it. That's simply not true. You just have to look a little bit harder to find them, but every month, even January, has stuff to get excited for. And this year in particular there are quite a few; enough that I had to think a little bit about what to include and what to leave off.

Also complicating the process is that many of January biggest films actually opened in December for qualifying Oscar runs. So you won't find movies like Selma, American Sniper, Inherent Vice, Leviathan, A Most Violent Year, Still Alice, or Two Days, One Night on this list. And keep in mind these are simply MY picks for the 10 movies I think will be worth checking out; the kind that I think could be worth plunking down a few bucks to see. I could be wrong. I'll try to do this every month if time allows.

Appropriate Behavior (January 16th)
Director: Desiree Akhavan
Cast: Desiree Akhavan, Scott Adsit, Rebecca Henderson, Anh Duong

I always show a little preference to movies I missed at Sundance (where I spend most of January), and one film I kept hearing about last year was Desiree Akhavan's off-beat rom-com, Appropriate Behavior. She writes, directs, and stars in the film about a politically correct bisexual Persian woman who tries to remain in her family's good graces while dealing with the realities of the Manhattan dating scene. It's been called funny and irreverent, and certainly the film doesn't resemble what we usually get from this tired old genre.

Blackhat (January 16th)
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, Tang Wei

Dude, it's Michael friggin' Mann! Any time he puts out a new film is a cause to stand up and take notice, and Blackhat couldn't get arriving in a more timely fashion. In the wake of the Sony hacking scandal a film about  cyber-terrorism could resonate with audiences in a major way....or they could be burned out on the subject and avoid it. We shall see. The film stars Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth, as a prisoner released to aid a joint American/Chinese task force in taking down a global cyber-criminal.

Taken 3 (January 9th)
Director: Olivier Megaton
Cast: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Forest Whitaker, Famke Janssen, Sam Spruell, Jonny Weston, Dougray Scott

I'm only putting this on here because I'll happily pay to see this franchise end. Liam Neeson bashes in a few or skulls as ex-black ops dude Bryan Mills, and this time he'll need his particular set of skills to get out of a bum murder rap. Forest Whitaker joins the cast as the clueless top cop on his tail, proving once again that Whitaker is good for about one decent role per year surrounded by forgettable supporting performances like this.

Black Sea (January 23rd)
Director: Kevin MacDonald
Cast: Jude Law, Scoot McNairy, Michael Smiley, Ben Mendelsohn

Speaking of Forest Whitaker, his The Last King of Scotland director Kevin MacDonald returns with Black Sea, a submarine thriller some have likened to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Cool deal, sign me up. I love a good submarine flick because they always come with a certain degree of paranoia and claustrophobia, which should be heavy with a cast like this. Jude Law stars as an unemployed ship captain who takes a job with a mysterious backer and motley crew to locate a stash of sunken gold, and of course things don't go according to plan.

The Taking of Tiger Mountain (January 2nd)
Director: Tsui Hark
Cast: Tony Leung, Lin Gengxin, Zhang Hanyu

Chinese director Tsui Hark (Once Upon a Time in China, A Better Tomorrow) may no longer be making the classics he used to, but I still hold out hope for the massive 3D epic, The Taking of Tiger Mountain. It tells the true and oft-adapted story of a Communist soldier who infiltrated a group of bandits during the Chinese Civil War and helped destroy them from within.

The Humbling (January 23rd)
Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Al Pacino, Greta Gerwig

Basically this one had me with "Greta Gerwig", but the film is actually pretty good. I saw it at the Virginia Film Festival a couple of months back and enjoyed the comedic power play between Al Pacino, who plays an aging actor trying to reclaim his mojo, and Gerwig as the flighty and much younger lesbian woman he falls in love with. Pacino hasn't been this tuned in to a role in a very long time, and I can honestly say this is the first adaptation of a Philip Roth novel that I've enjoyed. Perhaps Pacino and Levinson, who worked together on HBO's You Don't Know Jack, should make their partnership a recurring one.

Still Life (January 16th)
Director: Uberto Pasolini
Cast: Eddie Marsan, Joanne Froggatt, Karen Drury

Full confession: I had never heard of this film until a friend saw it at Filmfest DC last year and wouldn't stop raving about it. It stars Eddie Marsan, a wonderful character actor you probably know from The World's End and the Sherlock Holmes movies, and it centers on a lonely man whose job it is to prepare funerals and eulogies for those who have died alone. Fun stuff, eh? The film is directed by Uberto Pasolini and has won awards at the Venice and Abu Dhabi film festivals, with many noting its depth of humanity when dealing with the subject of grief. I'm merely hoping it's another fine showcase for Marsan, an actor who deserves more time in the spotlight.

Red Army (January 23rd)
Director: Gabe Polsky

Rare that a documentary ever enters my radar as a must-see film, but there has been so much strong buzz about Gabe Polsky's Red Army that I can't ignore it. Polsky caught my attention in 2013 with his stirring adaptation The Motel Life (starring Stephen Dorff, Emile Hirsch, and Dakota Fanning) and now he turns his attention to the Soviet Union's hockey dominance during and just after the Cold War. While I could care less about the sport itself, the politics of the time are what fascinate me and how the team's performance was such a huge part of Soviet propaganda. Plus I've heard the team members interviewed absolutely rip into former coach Viktor Tikhonov, who was known for being a ruthless dick.

The Wedding Ringer (January 16th)
Director: Jeremy Garelick
Cast: Kevin Hart, Josh Gad, Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting, Olivia Thirlby

I'll be honest with you, I think The Wedding Ringer looks pretty terrible, but I thought the same thing about Kevin Hart's other early-season comedies and they turned out okay. This one has him as a guy paid to be the best man for loser grooms with no friends. So it kind of looks like Wedding Crashers meets Hitch as Hart buddies up with Josh Gad, no doubt teaching him some kind of life lesson in-between the hijinks, dance-offs, and so forth. There will be more meaningful movies coming out this month but this one has the potential for the most laughs.

Mommy (review here, opens January 23rd)
Director: Xavier Dolan
Cast: Antoine Olivier-Pilon, Anne Dorval, Suzanne Clement

Duh, you knew this had to end up here somewhere. It made my top 10 best movies of the year and was a film I called "electric" and "life-affirming" with emotions too big for the screen to handle. Xavier Dolan's best film yet features a trio of incredible performances, led by Anne Dorval as a single mother who finds her world turned upside down when her violent son (Olivier-Pilon) returns home. What begins as a tense, potentially dangerous soap opera evolves into a unique, hopeful story (with a wonderfully eclectic soundtrack) about the power of maternal love.

A few honorable mentions: Jennifer Aniston's gaining some buzz (and a Golden Globes nomination) for her dramatic performance in Cake, and I would say she's the only reason to see it. Fans of cuddly bears who don't go into profanity-laced tirades may want to check out the CGI/live-action Paddington, starring Nicole Kidman and featuring the voice of Ben Whishaw. Ewan McGregor, Brenton Thwaites, and Alicia Vikander pull off a heist in the crime thriller, Son of a Gun. Hey Star Wars fans! George Lucas has a new movie coming out but it's the animated fantasy, Strange Magic. Sorry. Those looking for a scare may want to check out The Woman in Black: Angel of Death, a sequel that unfortunately features 100% less Daniel Radcliffe. And Benicio Del Toro is more than worth the price of admission as notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar in the kooky action flick, Escobar: Paradise Lost (review here), which also stars Josh Hutcherson.

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Chris Hemsworth Takes On Cybercrime in Trailer for Michael Mann's 'Blackhat'

Internet hacking has been a popular discussion lately, what with Sony in the midst of one of the worst (and embarrassing) scandals in recent memory. And while we can't help but laugh at some of the stuff that has been exposed, it's important to remember that cybercrime is a serious deal, one that Michael Mann hopes will make for a pretty good thriller with Blackhat.

Starring Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, and Tang Wei, Blackhat follows a convict recruited by American and Chinese agents to help take down a global cyber-terrorist. Mann's been building this one for a long time, digging deep into the history of cybercrime and the tactics used to combat it, and that level of research is apparent in this newly-released trailer.

Blackhat logs in on January 16th 2015.

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First Trailer for Michael Mann's 'Blackhat' starring Chris Hemsworth

Michael Mann's cyber-thriller Blackhat has been one of the more secretive projects the director has undertaken. Perhaps he's just getting into the espionage spirit of the story, which deals largely with matters of information security in the face of powerful hacker groups with an less-than-noble agendas. At Comic-Con the curtain was lifted a little bit (that was when the title was revealed), but now the first trailer has been released and it looks like the most promising film he's done in years, at least since Collateral.

Starring Chris Hemsworth, Tang Wei, Viola Davis, and Wang Leehom, the film centers on a fourloughed convict working with the Chinese and American government to stop a global cybercrime network. You won't be able to pull much else from this footage, but what's clear is the years Mann spent investigating hacker groups and our structural insecurities is being put to good use.

Blackhat opens January 16th 2015 which would put it out of Oscar contention, but it's possible we may get a qualifying run before the year is up.


Blackhat Trailer by Stuff We Like

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