As autumn officially begins and September officially ends, the fall movie season generally has kicked into overdrive.
One Year Ago--September 28, 2018: As franchises take over Hollywood, the number of actors who can dependably draw an audience for nearly anything they star in has dramatically dwindled. One of the few actors who can still claim to have a large, loyal audience is Kevin Hart. Proof positive of his prowess is Night School, which was one of his lesser efforts, but still pulled in a healthy box office. Hart plays a former high school dropout who, after losing his lucrative job, finds he can't get another until he gets his GED. Tiffany Haddish, in her first lead role since her breakout in Girls Trip, plays his teacher. Critics found the film to be rather ramshackle and scattershot, but the comedy still opened at #1 to $27.3 million and grossed $77.3 million, an amount it would have been hard-pressed to make with nearly any other lead. The previous two years, Warner Animation had tried to launch a new animated film in the late September slot that proved so lucrative for rival Sony's Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 1-2 and Hotel Transylvania 1-2. However, both Storks and The Lego Ninjago Movie had flopped hard, leading to much lowered expectations for Smallfoot, a musical comedy about a Yeti (voiced by Channing Tatum) who discovers that humans aren't just a myth, with James Corden voicing the human the Yeti befriends. To its credit, Smallfoot did better than Storks and significantly better than Lego Ninjago, but it still opened in second to only $23.1 million and topped out at $83.2 million. This year, Warner has ceded the late September slot to Universal and DreamWorks, which is opening a movie about the friendship between a Yeti and a human. After last week's champ The House With a Clock in Its Walls, A Simple Favor, and The Nun in slots 3-5, opening in sixth is Hell Fest, a low-budget slasher film about a group of young people who are stalked and killed in a Halloween haunted house. Coming out a month before Halloween was probably a bad idea, even if it was to avoid Halloween, as audiences weren't really primed for horror yet (even with the success of The Nun). Then again, it's hard to imagine Hell Fest really succeding at any point of time, as it opened to $5.1 million and ended the highway to Hell with $11.1 million. Just outside the Top 10, anime import distributor FUNimation had some success with My Hero Academia: Two Heroes, a feature-length version of the popular anime about teenage superheroes in training. It would make $1.4 million in limited release, and would gross $5.8 million by the end of its run. Opening in exclusive release was the documentary Free Solo, chronicling rock climber Alex Honnold as he scaled the sheer face of Yosemite's El Capitan without rope or any other climbing equipment. The doc would be a major success, ultimately grossing $17.5 million and winning the Oscar for Documentary Feature. Also opening in exclusive release was the dramady The Old Man and the Gun, starring Robert Redford as an aging bank robber, with Casey Affleck as a cop on his trail and Sissy Spacek as his girlfriend. The film was announced as Redford's final acting role, though he did pop up in a cameo in Avengers: Endgame. He was in the Oscar conversation though most of the season, though ultimately both he and the film came up empty. It was a minor hit on the art-house circut, though, as it grossed $11.3 million.
Five Years Ago--September 26, 2014: While plenty of TV shows have been adapted into movies, it was still surprising that the somewhat obscure 80s vigilante drama The Equalizer was among them. Then again, when Denzel Washington is interested, any project can be greenlit. Washington steps into Edward Woodward's shoes as a former Marine and government operative who takes on the Russian mob. The Anton Fuqua-directed thriller got largely mixed reviews, with many critics thinking the material was beneath Washington. However, audiences responded, as the film opened at #1 to $34.1 million and ultimately grossed $101.5 million. It also prompted him to do something he had never done previously--star in the sequel, which opened in 2018. Stop motion animation house Laika is known for its critically acclaimed films, which typically get ignored at the box office. Only 2009's Coraline really broke out at the US box office. The performance of The Boxtrolls was more typical of the studio. The story of the fight between a young human boy and his troll friends against a ruthless exterminator, the film opened in #3 behind The Maze Runner to $17.3 million, and eventually grossed a decent but unremarkable $50.8 million. It did get mostly positive reviews and was nominated at the Oscars for Animated Feature.
Ten Years Ago--September 25, 2009: The second weekend of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs led a quiet weekend. Opening in second was Surrogates, a sci-fi thriller taking place in a world where most of the population stays home and operates robots that go out into the real world for them. Bruce Willis played an FBI agent investigating how some homebound people were murdered when their robots were destroyed, which is not supposed to happen. Critics were largely unimpressed with the movie, and audiences didn't like it much better. It opened to $14.9 million and topped out at $38.6 million. Coming in third was the remake of the 1980 musical drama Fame, a fictional story following a group of students attending New York City's LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. The students were played by a group of unknowns who, ten years later, are still pretty much unknowns, while the teachers were played by familiar faces like Kelsey Grammer, Megan Mullally, and Debbie Allen, who co-starred in the original film. Unlike the gritty, R-rated original, this one was rated PG, and unimpressed critics compared it to High School Musical. Audiences also rejected it, as it opened to $10 million and closed at $22.5 million. Rounding out the Top 5 were The Informant! and I Can Do Bad All By Myself. Coming in 6th was Pandorum, a sci-fi horror film taking place on a spaceship in deep space, where two crew members (Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster) awaken from hyper-sleep with amnesia and discover bad things are happening on board. Critics howled and audiences stayed away, as the film opened to only $4.4 million and would end its run with $10.3 million. Opening in limited release was the Michael Moore documentary Capitalism: A Love Story. The muckraking documentarian examined the toxic effects of capitalism and the roots of the then-current recession. The film received solid reviews, though critics felt it wasn't as strong as his more recent docs, and upon its wide release, did decent business, ultimately grossing $14.4 million, less than Moore's three most recent films, but much more than the typical documentary made (at the time, it ended its run as the 8th-highest grossing doc ever). Farther down the chart, an extremely low-budgeted found-footage horror film, about a couple who realize their home is being haunted by a vengeful spirit, played at midnight screenings to sold-out crowds in college towns. Paramount repeated that strategy for a another weeks before sending Paranormal Activity into semi-wide release with regular, all-day showtimes. Word-of-mouth and solid reviews made the film the horror phenom of the fall of 2009, as the film eventually hit #1 and would ultimately gross $107.9 million, launching a franchise and rivaling only fellow found-footage horror film The Blair Witch Project in terms of return on investment.
Fifteen Years Ago--September 24, 2004: Acclaimed, Oscar-nominated actors and actresses need to eat, which is why they might occasionally appear in a big-budgeted studio film that does not deserve their talents. That probably explains why Julianne Moore chose to star in The Forgotten, a thriller about a woman (Moore) who wakes up one day to discover she is the only one who remembers the existence of her late son. Critics were underwhelmed, but audiences turned it into a decent hit, as it opened in first to $21 million and ultimately earned $67.1 million. Ironically, 15 years later, the film has largely been forgotten. After Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Mr. 3000, and Resident Evil: Apocalypse in positions 2-4, opening in 5th is First Daughter, the second film of 2004 about the president's rebellious college-aged daughter and her romance with a young guy who turns out to be an undercover Secret Service agent. The first iteration of the film, January's Chasing Liberty, starring Mandy Moore as the daughter, Mark Harmon as the President, and Matthew Goode as the secret Secret Service agent. This version had Katie Holmes, Michael Keaton, and Mark Blucas in those roles. The only major differences between this and Chasing Liberty is that the prior film mostly took place in Europe, while First Daughter took place in the US, and First Daughter was directed by, of all people, Forest Whitaker (who hasn't directed a movie since). Given how thoroughly audiences rejected this premise in January, it's actually somewhat remarkable that Daughter managed to open to $4 million and ultimately grossed $9.1 million. After Cellular in 6th comes the film that is by far the most remembered of the Top 10, Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead. The British horror-comedy starred then-unknown-in-the-States Simon Pegg as a slacker who finds himself in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and has to lead his friends to protection. Garnering excellent reviews, the film opened to a decent $3.3 million, and would go on to gross $13.5 million, before a very long afterlife as a cult hit that would begot Hot Fuzz and The World's End. In limited release, the Spanish-language The Motorcycle Diaries, starring Gael Garcia Bernal as the young Che Guevara, as he traveled across South America by motorcycle, observing the abject poverty which led to his radicalization. Critics were positive, and it would gross $16.8 million, outstanding for a foreign-language film. Its screenplay would go on to be Oscar-nominated, and its song "Al Otro Lado Del Rio" would become the first non-English language song to win Original Song.
Twenty Years Ago--September 24, 1999: For the record, if you are convicted of murdering someone who turns out to still be alive, you do not get a free pass to kill him or her at a later time. Pretty much anyone with any knowledge of criminal law was able to point out the glaring hole in the middle of the plot of Double Jeopardy, a Bruce Beresford-directed thriller starring Ashley Judd who finds herself in that exact circumstance after she is convicted of murdering her husband (Bruce Greenwood), who faked his death. After getting that very bad legal advice, she tracks her not-deceased husband to New Orleans, chased by Tommy Lee Jones, who is apperently in this movie because it was the closest thing to The Fugitive 3. Here, he plays her parole officer, who pursues her to Louisiana, seemingly under the belief that he is still U.S. Marshall Sam Gerard, and like U.S. Marshall Sam Gerard, he eventually comes to realize his quarry is telling the truth. Critics had warm words for Judd's performance, but were otherwise incredulous about the film's plot. Audiences didn't care, as the film became a huge word-of-mouth hit, opening in first to $23.2 million and finishing Final Jeopardy with $116.7 million. Two other films opened wide, but both were huge flops, opening at 8th and 9th, and barely making more than the 9-week-old Runaway Bride. The 8th-place finisher was Jakob the Liar, a drama about Jakob (Robin Williams), a resident of a Jewish ghetto in Poland in 1944, who, to bring hope to his neighbors, pretends he has an illegal radio and reports encouraging news about the war. This is the type of film that desperately needs good reviews to get people into the theater, especially so soon after the similar Life is Beautiful, but reviewers made it clear that they much preferred Roberto Benigni's fantasy. Even with Williams, audiences gave the film a hard pass, as it opened to $2.1 million and finished with $5 million. Faring just as poorly, though with slightly better reviews, was the Lawrence Kasdan comedy Mumford. Starring "Hey, it's that guy!" guy Loren Dean, Mumford, the movie is about Mumford, a shrink who opens a practice in Mumford, a town, where he becomes involved in the lives of his patients. The film had a solid supporting cast, including Alfre Woodard, Martin Short, Ted Danson, and the then young and unknowns Zooey Deschanel and Elizabeth Moss. Moviegoers weren't the least bit interested, as the film opened to $1.9 million and ended with $4.6 million, ensuring that Mumford would not have any sons.
Twenty-Five Years Ago--September 30, 1994: Meryl Streep has not been shy about appearing in numerous film genres during her long and illustrious career, which is why, during the fall of 1994, "Meryl Streep: Action Star!" wasn't just a punchline. Streep's one, and so far only, entry into Schwarzenegger territory is The River Wild, directed by Curtis Hanson, in which Streep plays a former river rapids guide who decides to take her husband (David Strathairn) and son (Joseph Mazzello) on a rafting trip. There, they encounter Kevin Bacon and John C. Reilly, who eventually revel that they are wanted for armed robbery, and take them hostage to force Streep to take them down the river and through a dangerous series of rapids. Critics liked Streep and Bacon, but were more lukewarm about the film itself. Audiences were also mixed, as the film opened in #1, but with just $10.2 million. The thriller had some staying power, though, and ended up grossing $46.8 million. Streep would get her customary Golden Globe nomination, as would Bacon. After Timecop in 2nd, the weekend's other major opening was the romantic drama Jason's Lyric. Allen Payne plays Jason, who falls for Lyric (Jada Pinkett, still a few years away from adding Smith to her last name), but both have issues with their brothers (Bokeem Woodbine and Anthony "Treach" Criss, respectively), who are violent gang members planning a bank robbery. Critics were mixed, but the film did well in the African-American community, earning $5.1 million its first weekend and $20.9 million overall. After holdovers Forrest Gump (in week 13), Quiz Show, Terminal Velocity, and Clear and Present Danger (in week 9) came the week's other new wide release, the baseball comedy The Scout. Albert Brooks plays a down-on-his-luck New York Yankees scout who discovers a pitching phenom (Brendan Fraser) in Mexico, and brings him back to the States where he discovers the guy is deeply troubled. Dianne Wiest plays a psychiatrist who tries to help him get over his issues before his Major League debut. Releasing a baseball film in the middle of the devastating, World Series-cancelling baseball strike of 1994 was probably ill-advised, but with the film's largely awful reviews, it probably would have flopped anyway. It opened to a mere $1.5 million and struck out at $2.7 million. Opening in limited release, and earning across the board raves--something its subject never came close to getting--was Tim Burton's black-and-white biocomedy Ed Wood. Johnny Depp plays Edward D. Wood, Jr., a man who wants to be a filmmaker in the worst way--and succeeds at doing exactly that. The film chronicles the making of three of Wood's "masterpieces", the cross-dressing drama Glen or Glenda, the sci-fi horror film Bride of the Monster, and his most spectacular achievement, Plan 9 From Outer Space. It also tells about the relationship between Wood and Dracula star Bela Legosi (Martin Landau), by then washed up, nearly broke, and addicted to drugs. While critics loved it, audiences were much cooler, as the movie ultimately grossed just $5.9 million. It did get two Oscar nominations, for Makeup and Landau's supporting performance, and won both.
Thirty Years Ago--September 29, 1989: A very quiet weekend, as the top 4 of Black Rain, Sea of Love, Uncle Buck (in week 7) and Parenthood (in week 9) finished in the exact same order as the weekend before. The only newcomer (other than the wide release of In Country, which finished 7th) was the neo-noir thriller Johnny Handsome, directed by Walter Hill. Mickey Rourke plays Johnny, a disfigured low-life criminal who gets plastic surgery while in prison that restores his appearance. Unfortunately, this being a neo-noir, his attempts to go straight predictably fails. The film boasts an impressive cast, including Morgan Freeman as a cop, Ellen Barkin and Lance Henriksen as fellow lowlifes who double-crossed Johnny, and Elizabeth McGovern as Johnny's love interest. The film only got so-so reviews, and opened in 5th to $2.4 million and would top out at $7.2 million.
Thirty-Five Years Ago--September 28, 1984: All of Me repeated at #1. Opening in second was The Wild Life, a comedy written by Cameron Crowe that was largely seen as a spiritual sequel to 1982's Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Eric Stoltz starred as a recent high school graduate who had just moved out of his parents' house and into his own apartment. Christopher Penn (who more than one critic noted was made up to look like how his brother Sean looked in Fast Times) played his best friend, and Lea Thompson played Stoltz's ex-girlfriend. Rick Moranis, coming off Ghostbusters, had a smallish supporting role. Critics largely compared the film negatively to Fast Times, and audiences were considerably less enthusiastic about this one, as it opened to $4 million and finished with $11 million. Opening in third is the comedy-drama Irreconcilable Differences. 9-year-old Drew Barrymore played a young girl suing her neglectful Hollywood parents (Ryan O'Neal and Shelley Long) for divorce. A young Sharon Stone played a starlet. The film, which marked the directorial debut of Charles Shyer, earned OK reviews, but wasn't a big success, making $3.1 million for its opening and ultimately grossing $12.4 million. Opening in 9th is the biopic The Bear, about then-recently-deceased college football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, played by Gary Busey. The film was probably a huge hit in Alabama, where Bryant coached for a quarter-century, but met lukewarm responses elsewhere. It opened to $1.2 million and the game ended at $2.7 million. Opening just outside the Top Ten is the horror film Impulse, about a town where a toxic waste leak causes the inhabitants to become increasingly violent. Meg Tilly plays a visitor who is the only one not affected by the leak. Critics were largely dismissive, and so were audiences, as it opened to $1 million and would ultimately make $2.8 million. Opening in limited release was the drama Country, starring Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard as struggling farmers. Critics liked it, but audiences ended up preferring the similar Places in the Heart, as Country topped out at $9.6 million. Lange would be nominated for Best Actress at that year's Oscars.
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