Traditionally, after snoozing their way through late August and early September, Hollywood rumbled back to life halfway through the month, meaning that new films finally start replacing the long-running late summer movies at the top of the charts.
One Year Ago--September 14, 2018: Since 1987, Fox had been trying to figure out how to make sustainable franchise out of Predator. Four attempts to reboot or extend the property had come and gone over the years, to various levels of critical and commercial acclaim, but none had stuck. The early buzz was the Shane Black had finally cracked the code with The Predator, where an all-star cast of soldiers (Keegan-Michael Key, Sterling K. Brown, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen, among others), try to hunt down the Predator while he is hunting them down, as well as an autistic boy (Jacob Tremblay) who has stumbled upon some Predator equipment. Alas, by the time the film opened, the buzz had turned completely toxic, and what had been at one time one of the most anticipated movies of the fall opened to a meager $24.6 million. Reviews and word-of-mouth confirmed the bad buzz, and the film flamed out with $51 million. Opening better than expected in third was A Simple Favor, a blackly comic mystery starring Anna Kendrick as a mommy blogger who investigates after her best friend (Blake Lively) disappears. Solid reviews helped the film open to $16 million, and strong word-of-mouth gave the film legs, as it ended its run with $53.5 million, or more than The Predator, on less than a quarter of the budget. Not doing so hot in 4th is White Boy Rick, perhaps the first failed Oscar bait of the Fall of 2018. The drama told the true story of a white teenager who was simultaneously one of Detroit's most powerful drug dealers and one of the FBI's most important informants. A strong cast, including Matthew McConaughey as the teen's dad, Bruce Dern and Piper Laurie as his grandparents, and Jennifer Jason Leigh as an FBI agent couldn't overcome indifferent reviews, as Rick opened to $8.9 million and could only make it to $24 million. Finally, for the second weekend in a row, a Christian movie opened to almost no business. Unbroken: Path to Redemption followed up the surprise hit 2014 biopic Unbroken, following former Japanese POW Louis Zamperini after the war, as he discovers and embraces Christianity. Needless to say, almost none of the first film's cast and crew came back for this much lower-budgeted production, with Gary Cole being the only well-known name in the cast. Audiences mostly ignored it, as it opened to $2.2 million, and finished its run with $6.2 million, a tad below its predecessor's $115.6 million total.
Five Years Ago--September 12, 2014: For a few years in the early teens, Sony made money in September with a series of modestly budgeted domestic thrillers aimed at the African-American audience. No Good Deed, starring Taraji P. Henson as a homeowner who comes to deeply regret letting handsome stranger Idris Elba in to make a phone call, was dismissed by the critics but was eaten up by the target audience, as the film opened in first with $24.3 million. Like many films of this genre, it burned out quickly, as it finished with $52.5 million. Coming in 2nd is the was the family drama sequel Dolphin Tale 2. The 2011 original, about to struggle to save a dolphin who had lost its tail, was an unexpected hit, and most of the cast, including Harry Connick, Jr., Ashley Judd, Kris Kristofferson, and Morgan Freeman, returned, as they try to find a new companion for the dolphin. Apparently, seeing a dolphin learn to swim using a prosthetic tail was a bit more compelling to seeing if a dolphin would like its new roommate, as Tale 2 opened to $15.9 million and topped out at $42 million, over $30 million off the first one. The weekend's other wide release, The Drop, was mostly a dump. The crime thriller starred Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, and James Gandolfini in his final role. Critics generally liked it, but audiences for the most part ignored it, as it opened to $4.1 million and topped out at $10.7 million. Opening in limited release was the dramady The Skeleton Twins, starring Saturday Night Live vets Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader as estranged siblings who reunite after a suicide attempt. The film would ultimately gross $5.3 million and serve as notice of the two stars' lack of interest in pursuing the kinds of silly comedies that their fellow SNL alumni had frequently appeared in after leaving the show.
Ten Years Ago--September 11, 2009: Coming off her Oscar nomination for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Taraji P. Henson landed her first starring role. Unfortunately, it was in a Tyler Perry movie. Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself had Henson as an alcoholic singer who has to take in her niece and nephew after the death of her mother. Perry appeared as Madea, though that character was only in a supporting role. Also in the film were several famous singers in supporting roles, including Gladys Knight and Mary J. Blige. As melodramatic as it was, it got pretty good reviews, especially for a Perry film, and, like most Perry movies at that time, opened at #1 to $23.5 million. Like most Perry movies, it burned out very quickly, and ended with a final gross of $51.7 million. Coming in second was the animated sci-fi film 9 (not to be confused with the musical Nine, which would come out at Christmas that year). Based on an Oscar-nominated short, 9 told the story of living dolls, the only remnants of life left on Earth, as they battle the soulless robots that wiped out life on the planet. 9 got generally good reviews and OK box office, taking in $10.7 million over the weekend and finishing at $31.8 million. Opening at 6th was slasher remake Sorority Row, which recycled the age-old plot of a bunch of people (in this case sorority sisters) who cover up a death they were responsible for, only to have someone know their secret and start killing them off one by one. Of the various potential victims, Rumer Willis is the only one who has had much success after this, though Carrie Fisher does appear as the sorority's housemother. Audiences were more interested in another slasher flick, as the three-week-old The Final Destination finished one spot above Sorority Row, which opened to a meager $5.1 million and died an ignoble death at $12 million. The dead sorority sisters fared a bit better than the weekend's other slasher movie, the Antarctica-set Whiteout, in which US Marshall Kate Beckinsale investigates a series of murders at the bottom of the world. Whiteout was pretty much a blackout, as it opened to $4.9 million and ended its run with only $10.3 million in its snow bank.
Fifteen Years Ago--September 10, 2004: Milla Jovovich played one of the very few major characters who survived the events of Resident Evil, the 2002 video game adaption, which allowed her to be promoted to undisputed star of the sequel, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, in which she and a small band of survivors attempt to fight their way out of the zombie-infected city. Apocalypse improved upon its predecessor, opening in first to $23 million. Like most horror movies, it burned out quickly, but not before racking up $51.2 million, over $10 million more for the first film. Jovovich would stick around for the next four sequels, as well as marrying the series's writer, producer, and occasional director, Paul W.S. Anderson. Coming in well back at second was Cellular, an action thriller starring Kim Basinger as a woman who has been kidnapped, Chris Evans as the ordinary guy who she randomly calls for help, William H. Macy as the initially skeptical cop who comes to believe Evans's story, and Jason Statham as the villain. Despite this impressive cast, critics were underwhelmed, as were audiences, which opened to $10.1 million and got hung up on at $32 million.
Twenty Years Ago--September 10, 1999: It was a horror movie trifecta at the top of the box office, as, after five weeks, The Sixth Sense was dethroned in favor of Stigmata, which starred Patricia Arquette as a woman who, after receiving a rosary as a gift, suddenly stars sporting the wounds of Christ. Gabriel Byrne played the priest trying to figure out what was going on with her. It all turned out to be an Exorcist ripoff, which led to critics howling, but audiences seemed to enjoy it, as it opened to $18.3 million and had not-bad legs for a horror film, finishing its run with $50.1 million. After Sense in second, opening in third was Stir of Echos, starring Kevin Bacon as a man who, after being hypnotized, starts having visions of a local missing teenage girl. Even though the David Koepp-directed thriller was based on a book first published in 1959, its plot bore more than a passing resemblance to The Sixth Sense, which proved to be unfortunate to its box office chances. The film opened to $5.8 million. Good reviews and word-of-mouth helped it have even stronger legs than Stigmata, but it still topped out at $21.1 million. The weekend's third new film wasn't a horror movie, but it was a horror for its financiers and for those who sat through it. Love Stinks, the long-awaited starring vehicle for alien sitcom 3rd Rock From The Sun's fourth banana French Stewart, was a comedy about the dissolution of the relationship between Stewart and Bridgette Wilson. It ended up playing like a broad comedy version of The War of the Roses. Critics agreed with the second half of the title, and audiences stayed far away, as the comedy (directed by, of all people, Full House creator Jeff Franklin) opened in 11th to $1.3 million and finished its short run with $2.9 million.
Twenty-Five Years Ago--September 16, 1994: By 1994, Jean-Claude Van Damme had become popular enough to start landing leading roles in more mainstream, bigger-budgeted action movies. The pinnacle of his career was Timecop, a sci-fi thriller in which Van Damme played, well, a time cop. In a world where time travel was possible, it was his job to ensure that the events of time continued to flow as they should, and not be changed by people from the present traveling to the past. Ron Silver played an ambitious senator who decides to do exactly that. As silly as all that sounds, Timecop actually got largely decent reviews, and opened in first place with $12.1 million. The film would prove to be Van Damme's most successful, as it finished with $44.9 million. The only other film to open wide that weekend was the true story-based Princess Caraboo, a historical comedy-drama about a mysterious woman who turned up in England in the early 19th century, claiming to be a princess from a faraway land. Phoebe Cates, in her final starring role and next-to-last role overall before retiring from acting, played the maybe-princess, and a solid supporting cast, including John Lithgow, Stephen Rea, and Cates's real-life husband Kevin Kline, attempted to figure out if she was real or a fraud. Audiences were less keen on finding out, as the film would open in 14th place (the second consecutive weekend an ensemble comedy co-starring Lithgow opened in that slot) with only $1 million, and the film would ultimately fade out with $3.1 million). Opening in limited release would be two movies that would play a major role in that year's Oscar race. Blue Sky, a drama starring Jessica Lange as a free-spirited woman and Tommy Lee Jones as her much-more-straitlaced military husband in the early 60s, was shot in 1990, but sat on the shelf for four years after distributor Orion Pictures went bankrupt. It finally opened three years after the death of its director, Tony Richardson. Despite good reviews, the film was not a financial success, as it only grossed $3.4 million during its run, but critics raved about Lange, who would ultimately win her second Oscar for her performance. Somewhat more successful was Robert Redford's Quiz Show, a drama about the quiz show scandals of the late 1950s. Ralph Fiennes, coming off Schindler's List, played Charles Van Doren, an adjunct professor at Columbia University who becomes a national sensation on the game show Twenty-One, answering a series of seemingly impossibly hard questions and accumulating a huge amount of money doing so. What no one watching at home knew, of course, was that the show was rigged, and Van Doren had been given the questions and answers in advance. John Turturro played a bitter former contestant-turned-whistle-blower, and Rob Morrow played a federal investigator. Critics raved about the film, and audiences showed up at first, but ultimately, the film would fizzle out with a mere $24.8 million. It would still go on to earn 4 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and would be one of three Picture nominees that year whose posters inexplicably focused on the backs of their leading men (at least the Forrest Gump poster had Tom Hank's face in profile. Quiz Show's was a closeup of the back of Fiennes's head).
Thirty Years Ago--September 15, 1999: Al Pacino had a lousy first half of the 80s. Sure, there was Scarface in 1983, but there also critically lambasted flops Cruising and Author! Author!. The nadir, however, was the would-be epic Revolution, which was such a critical and commercial disaster in 1985 that Pacino took the next four years off. He returned in the neo-noir thriller Sea of Love, as a cop investigating a series of murders of men who placed single ads. John Goodman played his partner, and Ellen Barkin played a suspect Pacino becomes involved with. The thriller got generally good reviews and even better box office. It opened at the top of the chart to $10 million and would go on to gross $58.6 million. It would also spark a huge comeback for Pacino, who would be one of the 90s more bankable actors, and who would finally win an Oscar and get nominated for two others (and probably should have been nominated for even more) that decade. Opening in limited release was Norman Jewison's In Country, part of the late 80s spate of Vietnam movies. This one took a different track than most of its brethren, focusing on the effects of the war on veterans and their families nearly 20 years later. British actress Emily Lloyd, at one time heralded as the next big thing, played an American teenager wanting to know more about her father, who died in Vietnam before she was born. Her uncle, another Vietnam vet who is content to drink his days away, was played by Bruce Willis, who to this point had only done comedy or action work. Joan Allen played her mother. The film was not well received by critics, and was largely ignored by audiences, as it ultimately only made $3.5 million. Willis did get a Golden Globe nomination for his change-of-pace performance, but the film was shut out at the Oscars.
Thirty-Five Years Ago--September 14, 1984: The four-week reign of Tightrope at the top of the box office came to an end as the Clint Eastwood thriller was disposed by the brand-old Ghostbusters, topping the box office for the final time in its 15th weekend of release. Ghostbusters was able to pull off that feat because Hollywood took one more week off. The only wide releases were a pair of low-budget action sequels from Cannon. The higher-grossing of the two was Ninja 3: The Domination, about an aerobics instructor who gets possessed by the ghost of an evil ninja (yes, really). It opened in 7th place to $1.7 million, and had decent legs on the drive-in circuit, ultimately earning $7.6 million. Opening in 10th was Exterminator II, about a flame-thrower-using vigilante taking on an evil gang led by Mario Van Peebles. That film opened to $1.2 million and ultimately grossed $3.7 million. Opening in limited release--probably not in any theaters also showing Ninja 3 or Exterminator II--was A Solder's Story. The drama, based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, starred Howard E. Rollins, Jr. as an army captain in 1944, who is sent to a segregated military base in Louisiana to investigate the murder of a hated African-American sergeant (Adolph Caesar). Among the suspects were up-and-coming actors Robert Townsend, David Alan Grier, and Denzel Washington (Grier, incidentally, will be starring in the overdue first Broadway production of the original play next year, playing the murdered sergeant). Director Norman Jewison had much better luck with this film than he would 5 years later with In Country, as it proved to both be a modest hit, grossing $21.8 million and earning three Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for Caesar.
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