The box office has spoken! Jessica Chastain scored the top two weekend spots over Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Last Stand) and the double-whammy of Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe (Broken City) as the Guillermo del Toro-produced fantasy horror Mama scored a #1 debut with $28.1 million and Zero Dark Thirty stepped into second place. (Oscar rival Jennifer Lawrence didn't come out so bad herself as Silver Linings Playbook expanded to #3 in wide release the same weekend she tenderly slammed her fellow Best Actress contenders on Saturday Night Live.) More power to the ladies! But where, oh where, did Arnold land in his big action comeback?
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In Tree of Life, Jessica Chastain played a mother who could float. In Mama, she's attacked by one. Chastain shot this dignified little thriller in fall 2011 during the stretch when literally every arthouse theater played at least two of her pictures—between Tree, Coriolanus, The Help, Take Shelter, Texas Killing Fields and The Debt, she was indie cinema's inescapable new queen. Universal intended to release the Guillermo del Toro-produced Mama last October, but shelved it until the week after Chastain was nominated for an Oscar for Zero Dark Thirty. Is this her reputation-besmirching Norbit? Pshaw — for my money, it's her best performance yet.
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Jessica Chastain's had an incredibly good run of prestige films in the brief span of time that she's been in Hollywood: Take Shelter, Coriolanus, Tree of Life, The Help, and this summer's Lawless have made quite the highlight reel. So it was inevitable that the starlet would pop up in a horror film sooner or later. Might as well be a spooky one like the Guillermo Del Toro-executive produced Mama, right?
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