Sorry for the two-month hiatus for this column. I don't even have A MarkInTexas Made-For-TV Christmas (returning November 29!) to blame this time around. My original plan was to do two weeks at a time per column, starting with this one, until we get caught up. But the last two weeks of the year are so jam-packed with major new releases that to combine them both into one column would mean said column would approach the length of War & Peace . So we're going to stick to the pre-Christmas weekend releases for this week, the Christmas and post-Christmas weekends for next time, and then start doing two weeks at a time after that, since the number of weekly releases lightens up once the ball drops. Hopefully, we'll be able to get back to one week at a time before summer.
One Year Ago--December 21, 2018: After the conclusion of the Dark Knight trilogy, DC had a rocky start in attempting to create a rival to the MCU. After Wonder Woman was able to right the ship in the summer of 2017, Justice League turned it right back over that Thanksgiving. That meant, to save the franchise, it was up to Aquaman to swim to the top. It did so in style, opening on the pre-Christmas weekend to $67.9 million. Jason Momoa, who had played Arthur Curry in Justice League, returned to the role in the character's first solo film, as he attempted to prevent his long-estranged brother (Patrick Wilson) from wiping out humanity. Led by a strong cast, including Willem Dafoe, Nicole Kidman, and Amber Heard, Aquaman got mixed reviews, but was embraced by audiences. It would eventually swim to $335.1 million. Opening in second, to numbers that Disney was surely disappointed by, was the much hyped, 54-years-later sequel Mary Poppins Returns. Emily Blunt took over the title role from Julie Andrews, returning to help the now grown-up Banks children (Ben Whishaw and Emily Mortimer) deal with an impending personal financial crisis as well as the family's lingering sadness about losing Michael's wife. In place of Dick Van Dyke as Bert the chimney sweep/sidewalk artist/one-man band, there's Lin-Manuel Miranda as lamplighter Jack. Colin Firth plays an evil banker, and there are cameos from Meryl Steep, Angela Lansbury, and Nackvid Keyd. When early reviews started coming out, there was speculation that the film could, like the first film, score a Best Picture nomination, as well as a Best Actress nomination for Blunt. However, final reviews ended up being more mixed (if overall positive), and the film had to settle for 4 nominations for costumes, sets, score, and song for "The Place Where Lost Things Go". It also had to settle for playing second fiddle to Aquaman, as, after a Wednesday opening, it had grossed $32.3 million by Sunday night and would ultimatley earn a not-so-supercalifragilistic $172 million. Spin-offs of popular film series are always risky. Sometimes you have a smash like Minions. Other times, you get The Lego Ninjago Movie (which is actually a much better movie than Minions, but we're talking about box office here, so...). Had Bumblebee came out a few years earlier, before the box office of the parent Transformers series hadn't completely collapsed, it might have been a sizable hit, especially with the reviews, which often much better than the reviews for pretty much any previous Transformer film. Alas, by 2018, audiences were largely over the franchise, as this 80s-set prequel, which sees the titular Transformer in San Francisco befriending Hailee Steinfeld, playing a teen mourning her dead father and trying to avoid both Decepticons and a suspicious government agent played by John Cena. It would open to $21.7 million and transform into DVD and streaming after earning $127.2 million. While it would eventually have a leggy run, the second week of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse didn't particularity hold up well at all, as it fell to fourth, followed by The Mule and The Grinch, which as the one Christmas-themed title in theaters, held up extremely well. Opening in 7th was the Jennifer Lopez romantic comedy Second Act. Lopez played a grocery store assistant manager who gets passed over for a promotion that should rightfully be hers because she never went to college. After her son enhances her resume without her knowledge, she finds herself hired as a consultant at a large company, where her "real talk" proves to be most impressive. Critics liked Lopez, but were unimpressed with the film itself because of its largely recycled plot. J.Lo. would have to wait another nine months for her true comeback vehicle to come out, as Second Act opened to a so-so $6.5 million and topped out at $39.3 million. After Ralph Breaks the Internet in 8th came one of the biggest disasters of the holiday season. Based on a highly acclaimed documentary, Welcome to Marwin starred Steve Carrell as the victim of a vicious attack who, as part of his healing process, created an elaborate model replica of a French village during World War II, and populated it with doppelgangers of himself and the women he knows, including Leslie Mann and Janelle Monae. Critics found the Robert Zemeckis-directed fictionalized remake to be bizarre and off-putting, particularly in the segments where the dolls came to life inside Carrell's mind. Welcome to Marwin would turn out to be most unwelcome, as it opened to a mere $2.4 million and end its run with $10.8 million. Outside the top ten, the bizarre-sounding Indian romantic dramady Zero, about the on-again, off-again romance between a dwarf and a scientist with cerebral palsy, did well on the Indian film circuit, making $1 million. Presumably, it made more than that during the rest of its run, but the releasing studio only reported grosses for the first three days. Farther down, the black-and-white Polish drama Cold War opened, telling the story of a doomed romance between a Polish singer and a French musician during the 1950s. The film would receive expected Oscar nominations for Foreign Language film and Cinematography, and a completely unexpected nomination for Pawel Pawlikowski's direction. Those nominations helped it to become a moderate art-house hit in the US, as the film thawed out with $4.6 million.
Five Years Ago--December 19, 2014: All not-so-good things must come to an end, as The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies wrapped up the trilogy of movies based on J.R.R Tolkein's relatively slim first book about Middle-Earth. Audiences were apparently ready for Peter Jackson's second trilogy to come to an end, as it opened to $54.7 million, down from the opening of the second part, The Desolation of Smaug, just a year earlier (and that one was down from the opening of An Unexpected Journey in 2012. This contrasts to the releases of The Lord of the Rings trilogy from 2001 to 2003: each successive film had a higher opening than its predecessor). Nevertheless, Five Armies, in which Martin Freeman returned as Bilbo, and many of the actors from the first trilogy made appearances, including Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, and Christopher Lee, in his final film, would top the box office for three straight weekends and finish its run with $255.1 million, which at least was about where Samug had finished a year earlier. Another trilogy came to an end in second place, as Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb opened to $17.1 million, way down from the openings of the first two installments, from 2006 and 2009, respectively. In this entry, Ben Stiller has to go to London in order to restore the magic of the tablet that brings the exhibits to life at night. This was the final wide release of Robin Williams, and the final film of Mickey Rooney. Critics, who had never much liked the series, were especially unimpressed with the third one, and the film ended up being a mild disappointment, finishing with $113.8 million, or less than half of what the first installment had made eight years earlier. The week's third major opening wasn't a sequel, but was a remake. The musical Annie, set during the Depression, had taken Broadway by storm in 1977, and was adapted into a successful 1982 feature film. The new version was set in the present day, and also changed Annie from a red-headed white girl to Quvenzhane Wallis, in her first major role since her 2012 Oscar nomination. The plot remained mostly the same, as little orphan Annie, living in the foster home of Miss Hannigan (Cameron Diaz, in her final film to date), is temporary adopted by mayoral candidate Jamie Foxx in order to boost his campaign. Of course, things don't go according to plan. Many of the musical's iconic songs, including "Tomorrow" and "It's a Hard-Knock Life" were retained, though given a modern, hip-hop beat. Critics were largely horrified, and audiences ended up being rather cool toward the film, as it opened to $15.9 million, and finished with a disappointing $85.9 million. The previous week's top film, Exodus: Gods and Kings, lost 2/3rd of its audience in falling to fourth, followed by The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part I, Wild (getting a big leap after a major expansion), Big Hero 6, and Top Five. Opening in 9th was the Indian comedy PK, about an alien visiting Earth who gets mixed up with a religious guru. It would prove to be a huge hit on the Bollywood circuit, earning $3.6 million, a then-record for the US opening of an Indian film, and would go on to gross $10.6 million.
Ten Years Ago--December 18, 2009: After the humongous success of Titanic, James Cameron stepped away from narrative filmmaking, directing only two documentaries over the next 12 years. Ghosts of the Abyss was about the real Titanic, and Aliens of the Deep was about unusual sea creatures (anyone notice a pattern in the docs' titles?). Even before Titanic's release, however, Cameron had started work on his next project, a sci-fi drama about an Earthling who visits an exotic planet and is able to possess the body of a human/alien hybrid, and eventually starts to identify with the nature-loving natives more than the humans who want to exploit their homeworld. It took years for the technology to catch up with Cameron's vision, but when it finally did, people turned out to see Avatar in droves. The film opened to a strong, if hardly eye-popping, $77 million, but like Titanic 12 years earlier, it just kept putting up humongous grosses for weeks on end. Avatar would decline faster than Titanic (it would only be #1 until February), but by the time it fell to second, it had done what no film had been able to do--dethrone the sinking ship drama as the highest-grossing film of all time. It would ultimately go on to earn $749.8 million, and would reign at the top of the all-time chart until 2015, when another space adventure, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, claimed the throne. The film was also a critical darling and would win 3 Oscars, for Cinematography, Art Direction, and Visual Effects, was nominated for six more, including Best Picture and Best Director for Cameron. Though its reputation has faded in the decade after its release, that isn't preventing Disney and Cameron (who hasn't directed another feature film since) from planning at least two upcoming sequels. Well behind Avatar, The Princess and the Frog and The Blind Side held down positions #2 and #3, ahead of the weekend's other wide opening, Did You Hear About the Morgans?. The comedy starred Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker as a New York power couple on the verge of divorce, until they accidentally witness a mob hit and have to go into Witness Protection together in rural Wyoming. Sam Elliott, Mary Steenburgen, Wilford Brimley, and Elisabeth Moss co-starred. Critics largely felt it was a bad rip-off of Witness, and audiences were too enamored with giant blue aliens to notice it. Morgans opened to a mediocre $6.6 million and, while the muscular Christmas box office propelled it to a higher gross than an opening like that would typically secure, it still finished with only $29.6 million. Opening in limited release, The Young Victoria was a biopic about the first years in the reign of who at that time was the longest-reigning British royal (Queen Elizabeth II has since surpassed the length of Victoria's reign). The film received generally good reviews, and Emily Blunt, in the title role, got a Golden Globe nomination, but at the Oscars, it only was nominated in three technical categories, winning for its costumes. The film only did moderate box office, finishing with $11 million. The highly anticipated musical Nine, an adaption of the hit Broadway musical (itself a loose adaption of Fellini's 8 1/2) cast Daniel Day-Lewis as an acclaimed Italian filmmaker who has a massive creative block as he juggles his wife, his mistress, his muse, and his confidant, all women (and all played by Oscar winners--specifically Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, and Judi Dench, respectively). With six Oscar winners in the cast (Sophia Loren played Day-Lewis's mother), expectations were sky-high. Unfortunately, they crashed and burned as soon as critics saw the film, which they thought was muddled and confusing. It still earned four Oscar nominations, including for Cruz for Supporting Actress, but would lose them all. It also stalled out at the box office, making only $19.7 million. Actually ending up with a major Oscar win was Crazy Heart, a vehicle for Jeff Bridges as a washed-up, alcoholic country singer whose new relationship with a much younger journalist (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and her young son isn't quite enough to get him to stop drinking. Colin Farrell played Bridges's former protege, who is now a country superstar, and Robert Duvall, who won his own Oscar for playing an alcoholic country singer in a relationship with a young woman and her young son in Tender Mercies, played his best friend. The film was nominated for three Oscars, including a surprise nod for Gyllenhaal for Supporting Actress, and won two of them, for the Original Song "The Weary Kind" and for Bridges for Best Actor. Box office wise, the film wasn't a huge smash, but it did make a very profitable $39.5 million.
Fifteen Years Ago--December 17, 2004: The 13-volume series of children's books by Daniel Handler, writing under the pen name of Lemony Snicket, came close in the early aughts to rivaling the Harry Potter series in popularity. A series of movies based on the books, recounting the adventures of a trio of orphans as they continually have to flee from both the evil Count Olaf, who is determined to steal the orphans' fortune for himself, and idiotic authority figures, who are unable to see through Olaf's disguises, seemed like a natural, especially once Jim Carrey signed on to play the count. Alas, the first film in the series, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, would also prove to be the last film in the series. An adaption of the first three books, stuffed full of cameos (including Meryl Streep, Billy Connolly, Catherine O'Hara, Dustin Hoffman, and Jude Law, in his fifth movie of the fall, as Snicket), the film ended up getting decent reviews, but holiday season audiences proved to be surprisingly uninterested. The film opened in first to $30.1 million, but would only end up grossing an unfortunate $118.6 million, not nearly enough to justify adapting the rest of the series. The film's impressive sets and costumes would get Oscar nominations, as would the score, and the makeup would win. But fans of the books would have to wait until 2017 and the Netflix series starring Neil Patrick Harris as Olaf for the rest of the stories to be adapted. Ocean's Twelve came in second, despite losing half of its audience. Opening in third was Spanglish, a dramedy starring Adam Sandler, in one of his occasional "serious" films, playing a celebrity chef who is married to a dominating wife (Tea Leoni) who is borderline abusive to their overweight young daughter. They hire a new housekeeper/nanny, whose own preteen daughter serves as her translator. Drama ensues. Despite direction from James L. Brooks, Spanglish didn't impress many critics, and it ended up being shut out by the Oscars. It would also prove to be a box office disappointment, opening to $8.8 million, and finishing with $42.7 million. The Polar Express, Blade: Trinity, National Treasure, and Christmas With the Kranks occupied positions 4-7. In 8th was one of two new movies this weekend involving airplane crashes (Merry Christmas!). Flight of the Phoenix was a remake of a 1965 James Stewart vehicle, with Dennis Quaid taking over Stewart's role as the pilot of a charter airplane ferrying several oil workers away from an isolated Gobi Desert base back to civilization. When the plane crashes in a dust storm, the survivors (including Hugh Laurie, Giovanni Ribisi, Miranda Otto, and Tyrese Gibson) discover they're hundreds of miles off course with no communications equipment and a limited supply of food and water. The only solution is to build a new plane out of the remains of the old plane and the spare parts they were hauling, and hope to fly it out of the desert. Critics were mostly underwhelmed by the remake, and audiences found better things to watch during the holiday. It opened to $5 million and would crash land with $21 million. Opening in limited release was Kevin Spacey's longtime passion project, Beyond the Sea. A biopic of popular singer Bobby Darin (best known for his version of "Mack the Knife" and the title song), he was portrayed by the 44-year-old Spacey, even though Darin had died at 37. Kate Bosworth played Darin's wife, Sandra Dee. Critics thought Spacey had miscast himself as both the star and director, and the film failed to make any impact on the Oscar race. It didn't do too much better at the box office, earning only $6.3 million total. On the other side of both the awards and box office scale, two films that would ultimately compete for Best Picture also opened in limited release. Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, the other new film involving a plane crash, was a portrait of the billionaire Howard Hughes as a young man, when he was obsessed with airplanes and moviemaking, and before the OCD and other eccentric behavior completely overwhelmed him. Given that this is a Scorsese film made in the aughts, Hughes is played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and supported by an all-star cast, including Alan Alda, Alec Baldwin, Jude Law (in his sixth movie of the fall), John C. Reilly, Willem Dafoe, Gwen Stefani (yes, that Gwen Stefani), and Cate Blanchett as Katherine Hepburn, who dated Hughes during the 30s. While critical response was good, most critics didn't place it in the top tier of Scorsese's pictures, but it looked like a favorite to sweep the Oscars anyway and giving the legendary director his first Oscar. However, that was stymied by the other Oscar contender opening, Million Dollar Baby. Clint Eastwood both directed and starred in this drama, playing a crusty boxing trainer who reluctantly takes on Hillary Swank as a new client, despite his general aversion to female boxers. As she proves very talented, the two of them become close as a surrogate father and daughter, until tragedy strikes. Critics were generally high on the film, but there was much controversy over that third-act twist and the subsequent denouement. Still, in what turned out to be a weak year, a second-tier Scorsese and 2/3rds of an excellent Eastwood was enough to dominate the Oscar nominations. The Aviator got 11 nominations, while Baby got 7. Both DiCaprio and Eastwood were up for Best Actor, though they both lost to Jamie Foxx for Ray. Swank won Best Actress, her second Oscar, and Blanchett won her first Oscar for Supporting Actress. For Supporting Actor, Baby's Morgan Freeman, playing Eastwood's best friend, finally won, beating Aviator's Alan Alda. In addition to Blachett's prize, The Aviator would win four technical awards. Baby was largely shut out of the technicals, only being nominated for Film Editing, but dominated the above the line awards. In addition to Swank and Freeman, Eastwood picked up two Oscars for directing and producing the Best Picture. Box office wise, both movies would do decent business when they went wide, though given the star power and the awards attention, it could also be said both films underperformed. Aviator would gross a total of $102.6 million by the end of its run, while Baby took in $100.5 million.
Twenty Years Ago--December 17, 1999: E.B. White's Stuart Little is, to be honest, one of the stranger books in the classic children's canon, if only because it's about an ordinary human couple who give birth to a mouse. Apparently not wanting to make parents spend their holiday season explaining the ins and outs of genetics to their kids, the filmmakers behind the adaption (co-written by, of all people, M. Night Shyamalan) simply had the Littles (Geena Davis and Hugh Laurie) adopt Stuart (voiced by Michael J. Fox). Indeed, other than the character names and basic situation, Stuart Little the movie bore little resemblance to Stuart Little the book. Audiences didn't care, as Stuart opened to #1 with $15 million, and would prove to be a strong performer over Christmas and New Year's, eventually finishing with a big $140 million, plus an Oscar nomination for Visual Effects. Not faring so well were the other two wide releases, with both finishing below holdovers The Green Mile, Toy Story 2, and, rather embarrassingly, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo. On paper, Bicentennial Man seemed to be a sure thing, as Robin Williams reteamed with Mrs. Doubtfire director Chris Columbus in a dramedy about a robot who, over the course of 200 years, becomes more and more human. Critics found the film to be mawkish and saccharine, and audiences agreed, mostly staying away even though just a year earlier, Williams had had a huge hit with Patch Adams, which was even more mawkish and saccharine. Bicentennial opened to $8.2 million and didn't even come close to the centennial mark, finishing with $58.2 million, It did, however, earn an Oscar nomination for Makeup. Opening in 6th was Anna and the King, the second film of the year to retell the familiar story of teacher Anna Leonowens and her service in the court of the King of Siam in the 1860s, after an animated remake of The King and I had come and gone quickly during the spring. Anna and the King, which starred Jodie Foster as Anna and Chow Yun-Fat as the king, was not a musical, and more than one critic remarked that "Hello, Young Lovers" or "Shall We Dance" might have enlivened the rather dull proceedings. The film was Oscar-nominated for its costumes and sets, but audiences decided that they didn't want to get to know the film, as it opened to $5.2 million. Its final gross was something less than wonderful as well, making only $39.3 million. Opening in limited release, Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson's much-anticipated follow-up to Boogie Nights, was a sprawling epic following the interconnected lives of a number of Los Angeles residents, including John C. Reilly, Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Jason Robards (in his final film), and Tom Cruise. Critics mostly liked the film (though some compared it negatively to Boogie), and it would earn three Oscar nominations, for its Screenplay, for the Aimee Man song "Save Me", and for Cruise's supporting performance. It would ultimately earn $22.5 million, somewhat of a disappointment, given its cast and hype. Mike Leigh, whose films are usually domestic dramas set in the present day, tried a change of pace with Topsy-Turvy, a historical comedy-drama about how famed operetta writers William Gilbert (Jim Broadbent) and Arthur Sullivan (Allan Corduner) repaired their frayed relationship while working on The Mikado. Critics utterly adored the film, which was nominated at the Oscars for its screenplay and sets, and won for its costumes and makeup, but it didn't really break out of the art houses, finishing with $6.2 million.
Twenty-Five Years Ago--December 23, 1994: With Christmas falling on Sunday, an avalanche of movies came out on three different days that weekend, though audiences mostly stuck to the tried and true, as Dumb and Dumber stayed in first, and The Santa Clause came in second. The weekend's best start went to Friday opening Street Fighter, an adaption of the video game starring Jean Claude Van Damme, leading the forces of peace against evil drug lord-turned dictator Raul Julia (his last film, as he had died two months prior). At the time, the film was barely reviewed, as it opened without critical screenings two days before Christmas, but the critics who did see it were largely negative. The film is more appreciated today, for Julia's genuinely good performance and what would turn out to be a pretty good, memeable line. Street Fighter opened to $6.9 million and would fight its way to $33.4 million. After Disclosure in 4th came Wednesday opening Richie Rich. Based on the comic books and cartoons, Richie, the world's richest kid, was played by Macaulay Culkin, the world's richest kid (at least the richest who earned his money himself), who really wants to have friends his own age. He is able to find some, just in time for them to help him save his parents and the family fortune from the company's evil CEO (John Laroquette). After four whirlwind years as the youngest superstar in the world, Culkin retired after this film, not making another movie for 9 years and acting sporadically ever since. The rather generic comedy got largely negative reviews, but did OK at the box office, opening to $5.8 million and cashing out at $38.1 million. Opening in sixth was Sunday release Little Women, another adaption of Louisa May Alcott's evergreen novel about four sisters growing up in Civil War-era Massachusetts. Winona Ryder played Jo, with Kristin Dunst and Samantha Mathis splitting the role of Amy, and Claire Danes, in her first major role outside My So-Called Life, as Beth. Christian Bale played Laurie and Susan Sarandon played Marmee. This was as well-received by critics as Greta Gerwig's recent adaption, which opened exactly 25 years later, though it wasn't as financially successful. However, it was still a solid success. It took in $2.4 million on its opening day, and went on to gross $50.1 million. It was also up for three Oscars, for Costumes, Score, and Rider for Best Actress, all categories the 2019 version was also nominated in. Also opening on Sunday was another remake that would be remade itself 20-some years later. Despite being made by Disney, The Jungle Book was very different from the animated film from nearly 30 years earlier, or the studio's live-actionish remake of 2016. In this version, Mowgli is an adult, played by Jason Scott Lee. The animals don't talk (and are real animals), nobody sings, and the plot has little to do with the source material, as Mowgli has to protect King Louie's treasure from an evil British soldier (Cary Elwes) while falling in love with the soldier's girlfriend (Lena Headey, in one of her first major roles). Critics were largely kind to this version, and it did decent business over the holidays, opening on Christmas Day to $5.1 million and ultimately grossing $43.2 million. Speechless, Drop Zone, and Nell rounded out the Top 10. The weekend was so jam-packed that three wide releases didn't even make the Top 10. Opening in 11th was Sunday release I.Q. The rather improbable romantic comedy starred Walter Matthau as Albert Einstein--yes, that Albert Einstein--who decides to help a kind-hearted mechanic (Tim Robbins) win the heart of Einstein's niece (Meg Ryan). This was not a good holiday for romcoms, as this barely outperformed flop Speechless, despite better reviews. I.Q. opened to $3.1 million on Christmas, and ultimately grossed $26.4 million. Nora Ephron had a lot of goodwill stored up after making Sleepless in Seattle. She blew almost every bit of it with Mixed Nuts, a black comedy set at the offices of a suicide hotline on Christmas Eve. Despite an impressive cast (including Steve Martin, Rita Wilson, Madeline Kahn, Liev Schreiber in drag, and Adam Sandler two months before Billy Madison opened), audiences were understandably not eager to see a comedy involving suicide over Christmas weekend. The poorly reviewed film opened on Wednesday and made $2.3 million over the weekend and $6.8 million overall. Another acclaimed director blowing it with an all-star comedy was Robert Altman, whose Ready to Wear was one of the most anticipated films of the holidays, at least until people saw it. Revolving around the mysterious death of a fashion bigwig just as Paris Fashion Week is getting started, the comedy featured, among many others, past or future Oscar winners Sophia Loren, Julia Roberts, Tim Robbins (again), Kim Basinger, Forest Whitaker, and Linda Hunt. Despite the cast, and Altman's back-to-back Best Director nominations the previous two years, critics found Ready to Wear rather pointless, and audiences agreed. It opened on Christmas to $2 million, and fell out of style quickly, grossing just $11.3 million. Opening in limited release was Legends of the Fall, the second move in three years (after A River Runs Through It) in which Brad Pitt played a rebel from rural Montana around the turn of the century. Pitt is the middle son of rancher Anthony Hopkins, whose numerous adventures include him fighting in WWI and bootlegging during Prohibition. The Edward Zwick-directed drama got mixed reviews, but did well when it went wide in January, eventually earning $66.6 million and earning 3 technical Oscar nominations, winning for Cinematography. Another eventual Oscar nominee was Nobody's Fool, starring Paul Newman as an aging ne'er-do-well who gets a chance to reconcile with his son. The Robert Benton drama had an all-star cast, including Bruce Willis as Newman's frenemy, Melanie Griffin as his flirtatious wife, a young Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a local cop, and Jessica Tandy, in her final role, as Newman's landlady. Newman would be nominated for Best Actor, and the Adapted Screenplay would also get a nomination. Fool wasn't a big hit, but did earn a solid $39.5 million after its January wide release. Neither making much money nor getting any Oscar nominations was Death and the Maiden, a Roman Polanski-directed thriller set in an unnamed South American country. Sigourney Weaver starred as a victim of the former regime who becomes convinced that new neighbor Ben Kingsley is the man who tortured her, so she ties him up and tries to torture the truth out of him. Critics liked the film, but audiences chose to give it a pass, as it earned only $3.1 million.
Thirty Years Ago--December 22, 1989: America decided to spend Christmas weekend with the Griswolds at their holiday celebration, as National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation topped the box office, for the second weekend in a row. Opening in second was the action flick Tango & Cash, starring Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell as, respectively, Tango and Cash, two polar opposite narcotic cops in LA, with only their ability to bust open drug-running crime rings in common, at least until drug kingpin Jack Palance has them framed for murder and incarcerated. Critics scoffed at the film, but audiences made it a solid Christmas hit, as it opened to $6.6 million and tangoed away with $63.4 million in cash. After holdovers The War of the Roses and Back to the Future, Part II came the weekend's other wide newcomer, Always. Steven Spielberg, coming off the summer success of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, could afford a flop, and he got one with this remake of the 1943 fantasy A Guy Named Joe. Richard Dreyfuss played a reckless but heroic aerial fire-fighter who gets himself killed, but is able to return as a ghost to watch over his girlfriend, played by Holly Hunter, and guide her and a new pilot, played by Brad Johnson. Audrey Hepburn, in her final film appearance, played the angel helping him transition. Critics were mixed-to-negative, and audiences largely found other ways to spend the holidays, as Always opened to $3.7 million and finished with a disappointing $43.9 million. Depsite being best known for fluff like Top Gun and Cocktail, Tom Cruise had proved his dramatic mettle by co-starring in The Color of Money and Rain Man, watching both his senior co-stars in those films win Oscars while he was wasn't even nominated. His time finally came with Born on the Fourth of July, opening in limited release. Cruise played Ron Kovic, an all-American kid who is eager to serve his country in Vietnam. After witnessing atrocities committed by Americans, he gets shot and is paralyzed. Disillusioned, he returned to the US and becomes an anti-war activist. The film would be a sizable critical hit, and would earn eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Cruise. It would win for its editing, and for Oliver Stone's director, his second Oscar in four years. It would also do extremely well after opening wide in January, earning $70 million. Also opening in limited release was the French drama Camille Claudel. Isabelle Adjani played Claudel, a young sculptor who becomes the assistant, and then the lover, of renowned artist Auguste Rodin (Gerard Depardieu). The biopic did decent arthouse business, grossing a total of $3.3 million, and earned Adjani a Best Actress nomination, and the film was also nominated for Foreign Language Film. Also getting a Best Actress nomination was Jessica Lange, for the courtroom drama Music Box. Lange plays a successful attorney who is horrified when her father (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is accused of war crimes dating back to World War II. As she defends him, she finds herself beginning to doubt his innocence. While Lange was praised, the drama received mixed reviews, and didn't make much of an impact when it went wider in January, as the film ended up grossing only $6.3 million.
Thirty-Five Years Ago--December 21, 1984: Beverly Hills Cop continued to reign supreme in its third weekend, with Dune, City Heat, and 2010 following. The biggest opening was for the re-release of Disney's 1940 classic Pinocchio. The tale of the wooden puppet who longed to be a real boy enchanted kids and adults alike once again, as it opened to $3.8 million and would earn $26.4 million this go-around. After Starman in 6th, Goldie Hawn had a mild disappointment with her vehicle Protocol. She played a waitress who manages to foil an assassination attempt against a visiting dignitary, and finds herself thrust into the spotlight, for better and for worse. Even critics who liked Hawn mostly disliked the film, and it opened to a middling $3.4 million and finished with $26.2 million. After The Cotton Club in 8th came flop comedy, Johnny Dangerously. Michael Keaton plays a reluctant crime boss trying to hide his true identity from his brother, who just happens to work in the district attorney's office. Critics didn't like this one much, either, and with period crime comedy City Heat and period crime drama The Cotton Club already in release, audiences decided to play it safe and skip this one, as it opened to $3 million and finished its run with $17.1 million. Despite the original only opening in May, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo (which wasn't even greenlit until Breakin' became an unexpected hit) arrived in one of the quickest turnaround times for a sequel in history. They needn't have bothered to go so fast, as this dance flick, in which the characters try to save a rec center from an evil industrialist who wants to build a mall on the land, was largely ignored by audiences, despite the immortal subtitle and plot. It opened to $2.9 million, or less than half of what Breakin' had opened to in May, and danced away with $15.1 million. Opening outside the Top Ten was the Blake Edwards-directed comedy Micki + Maude, which starred Dudley Moore as a man who, tired of being neglected by his workaholic wife Micki (Ann Reinking), begins an affair with Maude (Amy Irving). When they both become pregnant at the same time, Moore decides to not divorce Micki like he had planned, but goes ahead and marries Maude anyway, and now has to keep his two wives from finding out about each other. The film got decent reviews, but, like nearly everything else opening wide Christmas weekend, was a disappointment, opening to $2.7 million and finishing with $26.1 million. Yet another disappointment was the Garry Marshall directed comedy-drama The Flamingo Kid, opening in 12th. Kid starred Matt Dillon as a recent high school graduate unsure about what to do next, who falls under the spell of a charismatic car saleman whose a member of the club Dillon works at. This one got solid reviews, but still only opened to $2 million and finished with $23.9 million. Arriving in limited release was The River, the third movie of the year about the plight of the small American farmer. This time around, they were played by Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek, struggling to keep their flood-prone farm from going under, both figuratively and literally, as the powers that be want to build a dam that would permanently make their land the bottom of a lake. Spacek would receive an Oscar nomination for Best Actress (as would fellow farmers Jessica Lange and Sally Field), and the film would receive three other technical nominations, and would win a special award for Sound Effects Editing. After the two previous farm films, however, audiences weren't wanting to head back to the sticks again, as The River floated away with $11.5 million. Also opening in limited release (but receiving no Oscar nominations) was Birdy, starring Matthew Modine as a Vietnam vet who becomes obsessed with flying like a bird, and a young Nicolas Cage played his best friend, a fellow vet. Despite good reviews, Birdy never took off, falling out of the sky with only $1.5 million.
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