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The Cagneys
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Something to Sing About (1937)
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
A Lion Is In the Streets (1953)
Man of a Thousand Faces (1957)
Never Steal Anything Small (1959)
Shake Hands With the Devil (1959)
Sunday September 28, 2014
Weekend Box Office: Denzel Rocks, Liam Drops
Denzel gets the drop on the bad guys while doing his Bill Murray impersonation.
Denzel Washington had the third-biggest opening of his career with “The Equalizer,” $35 million, behind only “American Gangster” ($43 million in 2007) and “Safe House” ($40 million in 2012), as the Antoine Fuqua-directed action film led the domestic box office this weekend.
If a $35 million open doesn’t seem like much for a star of Denzel’s magnitude, well, that was my thought yesterday when I wrote up a post on Denzel’s all-time box office numbers. His highest-grossing movie is still “American Gangster,” with Russell Crowe, at $130 million. Adjusted, it’s “The Pelican Brief,” with Julia Roberts, at $197 million. But folks still come out for him. Would I have seen “The Equalizer” if it had starred, say, Michael Caine? Not bloody likely. I barely saw it, as is.
“The Maze Runner” dropped off only 46% to finish second, with $17.5 million. The animated “Box Trolls” opened at $17.2 million for third.
The big dropoff? There’s two: “Tusk,” which opened poorly and fell off 67.3% in its second weekend, to which I say good riddance; and “A Walk Among the Tombstones,” the more serious Liam Neeson thriller, which apparently isn’t thrilling fans of the genre too much. I guess they want more sugar in their bowl. Don’t we all?
Hanging on in the top 10? At No. 8, the ninth weekend of “Guardians of the Galaxy” (now at $317 million domestic); at No. 10, the eighth weekend of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (now at $187 million); and, surprisingly, at No. 9, the seventh weekend of “Let’s Be Cops,” which got abyssmal reviews (20%), opened at a not-exactly humorous moment for cops (Ferguson, et al.), and yet keeps on hanging on. It’s grossed $79 million domestic.
There are still good movies to see if you’re looking for one: “The Skeleton Twins” finished at No. 11 with $1.2 million, “The Drop” finished twelfth with $1.05 million, while “Boyhood” finished twentieth with another $279K. Further down, “The Trip to Italy” grossed $230K while “Love is Strange” bested “Hercules” for 27th place with $200K.
Let’s buoy some of these movies up, people. They’re the good ones.