While summer movies are gonna summer movie, the weekend after Memorial Day tends to see the release of films that aren't quite at the blockbuster level of the films that opened the previous weekend--especially if the weekend is at least partially in May. Hollywood takes a bit of a breather before the mega-blockbusters begin arriving again.
One Year Ago--May 29, 2020:
#1 Movie:
Trolls World Tour (unofficial)/The Wretched (official)
New Theatrical Releases:
Max Winslow and the House of Secrets--$0.03 million/224/80%/NA--In this kid-friendly thriller, five teens (Tanner Buchanan, Emery Kelly, Jade Chynoweth, Jason Genaro, and Sydne Mikelle as the titular Max) are invited to the mansion of an eccentric billionaire (Chad Michael Murray), where the house's AI system (voice of Marina Sirtis) puts them through a potentially dangerous contest to win the house and confront their own flaws. This got surprisingly decent (if not overwhelming) reviews.
Director: Sean Olson
The High Note--NA/NA/71%/58--A music industry comedy-drama starring Dakota Johnson as the PA for famous diva Tracee Ellis Ross (daughter of real famous musical diva Diana Ross), who is being pushed toward retirement/Vegas by her label. Johnson, who wants to be a producer, strikes up a relationship with young, unsigned musician Kelvin Harrison, Jr. Bull Pullman, Marc Evan Jackson, Ice Cube, Eddie Izzard, and Johnson's mother Melanie Griffith co-star. Releasing studio Focus declined to release the film's box office numbers, but it is estimated to have grossed about $0.4 million in the US.
Director: Nisha Ganatra
Five Years Ago--May 27, 2016:
New Wide Releases:
X-Men: Apocalypse--1/$65.8 million/$155.4 million/17/47%/52--A big comedown, both critically and financially, after X-Men: Days of Future Past two years prior, this installment has an ancient Egyptian mutant (Oscar Isaac, under about a mile of makeup) who wakes up in 1983 and plots to rule the world, with the unwitting help of Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender). Among the actors returning from prior X-Men adventures was Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne, Lucas Till, Evan Peters, and Hugh Jackman in a cameo as Wolverine. Newcomers to the franchise include Sophie Turner, Alexandra Shipp, Tye Sheridan, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Olivia Munn. This would be followed by the much more successful Logan the following spring.
Director: Bryan Singer
Alice Through the Looking Glass--2/$26.9 million/$77 million/39/28%/34--2010's Alice in Wonderland had been a huge hit, but ultimately, not that many people liked it all that much. That was proven six years later when this sequel became one of the bigger bombs of the year. Alice (Mia Wasikowska) has to travel through time in order to save the life of the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) and uncover the source of the tension between the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and the White Queen (Anne Hathaway). Returning from the first film was Matt Lucas, Lindsay Duncan, and the voices of Alan Rickman (in his final film role), Stephen Fry, Michael Sheen, and Timothy Spall. Newcomers to the production include Sacha Baron Cohen, Rhys Ifans, Ed Speleers, Andrew Scott, and Richard Armitage. Critics panned the film even more savagely than they panned the first one, and for once, audiences listened.
Director: James Bobin
New Limited Releases:
Chevalier--$0.03 million/544/83%/76--In this Greek comedy, six men on a luxury fishing expedition (Vangelis Mourikis, Yiorgos Kendros, Makis Papadimitriou, Yorgos Pirpassopoulos, Sakis Rouvas, and Panos Koronis) spend their time playing a game in which they each come up with contests to see which of them is the "best". Despite the critical acclaim, including an Independent Spirit nomination, it failed to catch on in North America.
Director: Athina Rachel Tsangari
Expanding:
Love & Friendship--9/$2.4 million
Ten Years Ago--June 3, 2011:
New Wide Releases:
X-Men: First Class--1/$55.1 million/$146.4 million/14/86%/65--After X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine disappointed critics, the series rebounded with them with this instalment, which showed the first meeting between Xavier (now played by James McAvoy) and Magneto (now Michael Fassbender) as they team up to stop a former Nazi who wants world mutant denomination (Kevin Bacon) in 1962. Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence, Oliver Platt, Jason Fleming, Zoë Kravitz, January Jones, Nicolas Hoult, Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Till, Matt Craven, Rade Šerbedžija, Annabelle Wallis, Michael Ironside, Ray Wise, James Remar, and Brendan Fehr co-star, with quick cameos from franchise vets Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Romijn. While this would end up the lowest-grossing entry in the franchise to that point, it would set up X-Men: Days of Future Past to bounce back three years later.
Director: Matthew Vaughn
New Limited Releases:
Beginners--$5.8 million/162/85%/81--In this comedy-drama, Ewan McGregor plays a man whose elderly father (Christopher Plummer) comes out both after the death of his wife and after a diagnosis of terminal cancer of his own. That story is intercut with scenes set a few years later, after Plummer's death, where McGregor struggles to overcome his grief while beginning a new relationship with Mélanie Laurent. Goran Višnjić and Mary Page Keller co-star. Critics liked the film, and it became a moderate art house hit. 82-year-old Plummer would win the Oscar for Supporting Actor, becoming the oldest winner ever in an acting category, a record he would hold until Anthony Hopkins's Best Actor win in 2021.
Director: Mike Mills
Submarine--$0.5 million/256/88%/76--A Welsh teenager (Craig Roberts) is excited to get a new girlfriend (Yasmin Paige), but soon becomes concerned that his parents (Sally Hawkins and Noah Taylor) are heading for divorce, particularly after her ex-boyfriend (Paddy Considine) moves in next door. The directorial debut of actor Richard Ayoade, the film got warm reviews but didn't attract much notice in North America.
Director: Richard Ayoade
Fifteen Years Ago--June 2, 2006:
New Wide Releases:
The Break-Up--1/$39.2 million/$118.7 million/18/34%/45--This anti-rom-com starred Vince Vaughn (coming off Wedding Crashers) and Jennifer Aniston (in her fourth and final film in a seven-month stretch) as a longtime couple who decide to break up, and find that cohabitating in their condo quickly becomes intolerable. Vaughn's frequent co-stars Jon Favreau and Peter Billingsley co-starred, as did Aniston's soon-to-be-frequent co-star Jason Bateman, in their first film together. The film also starred Joey Lauren Adams, Cole Hauser, Judy Davis, Justin Long, John Michael Higgins, Ann-Margret, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Vernon Vaughn, Vince's real-life dad, who interestingly enough played Aniston's father. Critics were largely dismissive of the film, though the star power helped make it an early summer hit.
Director: Peyton Reed
Expanding:
An Inconvenient Truth--9/$1.4 million
Twenty Years Ago--June 1, 2001:
#1 Movie:
Pearl Harbor--$29.6 million
New Wide Releases:
The Animal--3/$19.6 million/$57.7 million/42/30%/43--For one film, at least, Rob Schneider showed that the surprise success of 1999's Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo wasn't a fluke. He plays a hapless police recruit who, unbeknownst to him, has his body parts replaced by animal parts after a car accident by a mad scientist (Michael Caton). This somehow gives him super senses and a desire to catch Frisbees with his teeth. Colleen Haskell, John C. McGinley, Scott Wilson, and Ed Asner co-star, with cameos from Adam Sandler, Norm Macdonald, Cloris Leachman, and Harry Dean Stanton. Critics hated it, of course, but like Deuce Bigalow, it became a modest hit.
Director: Luke Greenfield
What's the Worst That Could Happen?--5/$13.1 million/$32.3 million/73/10%/37--This comedy, starring Martin Lawrence as a thief and Danny DeVito as a seemingly wealthy, actually broke businessman who get into a long feud with each other over a ring, ended up making only a fraction of what Big Momma's House, which had opened exactly one year before, had made. John Leguizamo, Glenne Headly, Carmen Ejogo, Bernie Mac, Larry Miller, Nora Dunn, Richard Schiff, William Fichtner, Ana Gasteyer, and Siobhan Fallon co-star. Critics were uniformly negative, and Lawrence's career, outside of sequels, wouldn't really get back on track until Wild Hogs in 2007.
Director: Sam Weisman
New Limited Releases:
Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte des Loupes)--$11.3 million/143 (in 2002)/73%/57--In this French horror-thriller, based (very) loosely on a true story, a knight and naturalist (Samuel Le Bihan) and his Native American compatriot (Mark Dacascos) arrive in the French pre-Revolutionary countryside to hunt down a mysterious beast that was killing people and terrorizing the area. They are aided by a local noblewoman (Émilie Dequenne) and a young nobleman (Jérémie Renier), whose older self (Jacques Perrin) is narrating the events. Vincent Cassel, Monica Bellucci and a young Gaspard Ulliel, making his film debut, co-star. The film would be a smash hit in France and would open first exclusively in Canada before being released in the United States in early 2002. While hopes that it would do Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon business went unfulfilled, it still performed quite well for a foreign film.
Director: Christophe Gans
Expanding:
Moulin Rouge!--4/$13.7 million
Twenty-Five Years Ago--May 31, 1996:
#1 Movie:
Mission: Impossible--$21.6 million
New Wide Releases:
Dragonheart--3/$15 million/$51.4 million/30/50%/49--In medieval England, the last surviving dragon (played by then-cutting edge CGI and voiced by Sean Connery) teams up with a disillusioned dragon slayer (Dennis Quaid) to save the kingdom from a tyrannical king (David Thewlis). Dina Meyer, Pete Postlethwaite, Jason Isaacs, and Julie Christie co-star. Reviews were mixed for this fantasy, and while it didn't do too badly box office-wise, it did, to some extent, get drowned out by the bigger summer competition (including another Sean Connery movie that opened the next weekend). The Visual Effects would be Oscar-nominated, and it would be followed by several straight-to-video sequels.
Director: Rob Cohen
Eddie--4/$8 million/$31.4 million/52/18%/NA--Not to be confused with the woebegone March baseball comedy Ed, this was the second film of the year (after Sunset Park, which had come and gone a month earlier) about a woman hired to coach a men's basketball team. The woman is Whoopi Goldberg, as a superfan of the New York Knicks, who gets hired by new owner Frank Langella essentially as a publicity stunt, but because this is a comedy starring Whoopi Goldberg, she ends up turning the struggling team around. Dennis Farina, John Benjamin Hickey, and Richard Jenkins co-star, and there are numerous cameos from numerous NBA players and coaches, as well as several famous New Yorkers (including you-know-who). This one at least got (slightly) better reviews and box office than both Ed and Sunset Park, though like Dragonheart, it got lost amid the summer blockbusters.
Director: Steve Rash
The Arrival--5/$4.8 million/$14.1 million/106/65%/56--The summer's first alien invasion thriller, this one was already forgotten by the time Independence Day arrived a bit over a month later. Charlie Sheen plays a radio astronomer who uncovers a giant conspiracy by aliens to raise global temperatures to make Earth more hospitable for them. Lindsay Crouse, Teri Polo, Richard Schiff, and Ron Silver co-star. This somehow got the best reviews of the weekend, but audiences largely decided to wait until Will Smith arrived to save the day. It was still followed by a direct-to-video sequel.
Director: David Towhy
Thirty Years Ago--May 31, 1991:
#1 Movie:
Backdraft--$9.1 million
New Wide Releases:
Soapdish--2/$6.7 million/$36.5 million/35/71%/65--This wacky soap opera spoof, set behind the scenes of a popular daytime drama, stars Sally Field as the show's reigning diva, who finds her life becoming about as insane as her character's when her ex-boyfriend and co-star (Kevin Kline) is rehired by the show's producer (Robert Downey, Jr.), who is secretly working with supporting actress Cathy Moriarty to get Field off the show. Meanwhile, Field's niece (Elisabeth Shue) gets hired on in an ingenue role, and seems to be getting close to Kline, much to Field's chagrin. Whoopi Goldberg, Carrie Fisher, Garry Marshall, Teri Hatcher, and Kathy Najimy co-star. The film got solid reviews, but was a bit of a box-office underperformer, as it ended up being outgrossed by competing comedies What About Bob? and City Slickers.
Director: Michael Hoffman
Thirty-Five Years Ago--May 30, 1986:
#1 Movie:
Cobra--$7.5 million
New Wide Releases:
Jake Speed--6/$1.1 million/$1.9 million/150/20%/42--Wayne Crawford decided to try to follow Sylvester Stallone's path to movie stardom by writing his own titular starring vehicle, in which he plays a 1940's-style adventurer who, along with sidekick Dennis Christopher, agrees to help a young woman (Karen Kopins) rescue her sister (Becca C. Ashley) from the clutches of the evil John Hurt. Leon Ames, Donna Pescow, Monte Markham, and Millie Perkins co-star. Seemingly a blatant ripoff of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with a big dash of Romancing the Stone thrown in for good measure, this action comedy was not exactly Rocky, and Crawford remained obscure after this film's brief, poorly received run.
Director: Andrew Lane
New Limited Releases:
A Great Wall--NA/NA/56%/NA--Like Jake Speed, this culture-clash comedy was also written, and in this case, directed, by its star, Peter Wang, who plays a successful businessman in the Silicon Valley who decides to take his Americanized family back to China to visit relatives. This is notable for being the first American feature film allowed to shoot in that country, and while it was received better than Jake Speed, it didn't do any better at the box office.
Director: Peter Wang
Forty Years Ago--May 29, 1981:
No new wide or limited releases, nor any wide expansions this weekend.
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