Friday already?! Kidding. This week couldn't end soon enough, if only to get all our questions answered about Super 8's opening-weekend promise and get all our second-guessing and Monday-morning quarterbacking games in order. I have my predictions, though, and I'm standing by them; let's hear yours after the latest installment of Weekend Forecast.
[Click the highlighted titles for Movieline's reviews.]
NATIONAL OUTLOOK
· Super 8: I don't have a whole lot more to say than I've already said about J.J. Abrams' homage to the sci-fi/adventure/friendship flicks of the '70s and '80s. There seem to be three schools of thought on this one, at least when it comes to box-office projections: The modernists (unless we see everything in the trailer, no movie can succeed), the classicists (screw overexposure; let's reward discretion), and the pragmatists (box-office wonks who basically regurgitate whatever tracking data/studio projections are thrown at them). And of course, in the spirit of modern rhetoric, everyone believes they are infallibly wrong and/or laughs at anyone who dares to think maybe there's a fourth way -- which is just to look at what else is playing at the multiplex and hypothesize as to the strength of its competition. That's proven as reliable and down-to-earth a box-office metric as any over the years, and surveying some of the soft, overblown titles in Super 8's orbit -- even X-Men: First Class is set to drop between 55 and 60 percent in its second week -- I can't see it disappointing. Unless you expected a blockbuster opening, that is, in which case you haven't been paying much attention to Super 8's low-key, word-of-mouth-friendly campaign in the first place. FORECAST: $38.7 million
· Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer: The good news: The family-ready summer-vacation movie fills a niche for girls, who've generally been ignored this season to date. The bad news: Even girls may still prefer Kung Fu Panda 2, Super 8 (hello, Elle Fanning!) or crashing Bridesmaids before seeing Judy Moody, which, not for nothing, critics seem to hate. So parents will run the other way, too. That is a bummer. FORECAST: $7.1 million
Like Midnight in Paris before it, Michael Winterbottom's The Trip is a dazzlingly light yet poignant, handsome yet stark, hilarious but grounded chronicle of UK comics Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's culinary road trip through England. Or at least two guys like Coogan and Brydon, who traverse the countryside in seemingly endless tiffs, snipes and the occasional octave-counting contest. Winterbottom hasn't proven this sure-handed since his 2006 Mariane Pearl biopic A Mighty Heart or, if you really want to split genre hairs, maybe even since the criminally underrated Coogan/Brydon triumph Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. This one's only in limited release for now, but like its subjects, The Trip will creep into more cities next week and on to VOD by June 22. You should take it.
REGIONAL OUTLOOK
The festival-circuit darling Trollhunter is finally making its way into limited release; unlike Super 8, this film has shown us all the creatures we're set to encounter once we fork over our money. Does it make it any more compelling? (Seriously, I'm asking.) Elsewhere, Two-Lane Blacktop helmer Monte Hellman is back after a long, long feature hiatus with the fascinating, frustrating noir-within-a-noir Road to Nowhere. Among this week's recommended nonfiction selections are the fine documentary One Lucky Elephant (it kind of is what it sounds like, but in a good way) and comedian Ahmed Ahmed's directorial debut Just Like Us, which follows him and a group of comics on their tour through volatile, yet warmly receptive, Arab and Muslim cultures.
So! That's where we stand. Any picks, predictions or preferences?