Preview and Projections for the Weekend of July 1, 2005

By Edward Douglas -

Greetings and welcome back to the Weekend Warrior, your weekly guide to the weekend's new movies. Tune in every Tuesday for the latest look at the upcoming weekend, and then check back on Friday for any last minute updates and reviews.

WEEKEND PROJECTIONS - final update 6.30.05

The 4^th of July is all about fireworks, barbecues, apple pie and most of all…alien invasions, and this time, when the earth is invaded by creatures from outer space, Will Smith isn’t around to stop them! What do we do? What do we do!? (Okay, calm down, Keanu.) We call in Tom Cruise, the actor presumably born on the 4^th of July who has been everywhere in the last few weeks. Cruise will face alien devastation in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of HG Wells’ War of the Worlds, a special effects spectacular, which has almost as much anticipation as Spielberg’s The Lost World, which held the opening weekend record for many years. Because it opens on Wednesday, many will rush to see it in its first few days, and then use the long weekend to go away, so it likely won’t be breaking any weekend box office records. Oddly, Martin Lawrence wasn’t asked to fill in on alien-hunting duties for his Bad Boys co-star, so instead, he coaches a bunch of kids in basketball for a tried and true career-saving—just ask Vin Diesel!--formula in Rebound. With a last minute marketing campaign, it may get a scattering of Lawrence fans or families that can’t find anything else to see this weekend, but it’s more likely to get lost in the shuffle. Meanwhile, Batman Begin and Mr. and Mrs. Smith should continue to pick up any leftover business. (Note: The last two 4^th of July, I overestimated the #1 movie by $20 million…will this year be any different?)

TW	LW	Title	Weekend (in millions)	Change	# Of Theaters	Average	Week
1	New	War of the Worlds	$62.2*	N/A	3,908*	$15,916	1
2	1	Batman Begins	$15.0	-47%	3,765	$3,984	3
3	2	Bewitched	$11.5	-44%	3,174	$3,623	2
4	3	Mr. and Mrs. Smith	$10.0	-39%	2,985	$3,350	4
5	New	Rebound	$9.5	N/A	2,464	$3,856	1
6	4	Herbie: Fully Loaded	$8.5	-41%	3,521	$2,414	2
7	6	Madagascar	$4.7	-36%	2,526	$1,861	6
8	5	Land of the Dead	$4.2	-57%	2,250	$1,911	2
9	7	Star Wars Episode III	$3.3	-43%	1,759	$1,876	7
10	8	The Longest Yard	$2.9	-39%	1,790	$1,620	6
			Est. Weekend Total $131.90	Est. Avg. Drop-Off -43%		Est. Average PTA $4,041

*Note: With an opening day of $21.2 million, War of the Worlds should come close to my Weds-Thurs prediction, but will probably drop-off for the weekend and be lower than my perdiction. (The predictions above are for the three-day weekend not including the 4th of July.)

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	Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Pre-Weekend Box office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	4th of July Day of Week	Theatre Average	Total Box Office
1	Spider-Man 2	7/2/04	4,152	$64.26	$88.52	Sunday	$21,232	$373.52
2	Men in Black II	7/5/02	3,557	$35.09	$52.15	Thursday	$14,661	$192.40
3	Men In Black	7/4/97	3,020	$33.06	$51.07	Friday	$16,911	$250.15
4	Independence Day	7/5/96	2,882	$11.12	$50.23	Thursday	$17,429	$306.17
5	Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines	7/4/03	3,504	$28.35	$44.04	Friday	$12,569	$150.35
6	The Perfect Storm	6/30/00	3,407		$41.33	Tuesday	$12,131	$182.60
7	Armageddon	7/3/98	3,127	$18.10	$36.09	Saturday	$11,541	$201.58
8	Terminator 2	7/5/91	2,274	$20.54	$31.77	Thursday	$13,971	$204.84
9	The Firm	7/2/93	2,393	$13.07	$30.48	Sunday	$12,737	$158.35
10	The Wild Wild West	7/2/99	3,342	$13.27	$27.72	Sunday	$8,294	$113.81
11	Apollo 13	6/30/95	2,197		$25.35	Tuesday	$11,538	$172.07
12	The Patriot	6/30/00	3,061	$9.32	$22.41	Tuesday	$7,321	$113.30

The 4^th of July weekend is only two of the three holiday weekends that take place over the summer, but it’s not quite the be-all-end-all at the box office that many people might think. It’s certainly not as big a weekend as Memorial Day, despite all schools being out for the summer by the time it comes around. Unfortunately, people start going away more frequently, while kids go off to summer camp, so the success of new movies is often based on which day the movie opens compared to the actual 4^th of July. Four of the top five movies opened on a Wednesday where the 4^th fell on a Thursday or Friday, although the all-time record holder was last year’s Spider-Man 2, which opened on the Wednesday before the 4^th, which fell on a Sunday. (See THIS WEEKEND LAST YEAR) Its success probably wasn’t much of a surprise considering that its predecessor still holds the opening weekend record at the box office.

It’s slightly daunting that not a single movie in the top 10 opened on a weekend where the 4^th of July fell on a Monday, as it does this weekend. The last time this happened was way back in 1994 when five movies were given wide releases and only two grossed over $10 million (and only slightly), those being The Shadow and Blown Away. Julia Roberts’ I Love Trouble bombed that weekend, while Disney’s The Lion King dominated that weekend with $34 million after three weeks. The time before that was in 1988, when Paramount Pictures released Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America, which reigned over the box office with just $21 million. Actually, for those days, that was pretty good.

What is most consistent between the top movies opening over the 4^th of July are that they all were big budget action/effects movies, mostly involving aliens, alien invasions or the complete and total destruction of earth, usually starting with New York City. Besides Spider-Man 2’s $88 million weekend, no other movie has made more than $60 million in the three-day weekend (not accounting for ticket price inflation). The fact that people do have other things to do with themselves besides going to movies might account for a lot of that.

Of course, Will Smith still holds the best track record for opening movies over the weekend, having starred in both Men in Black movies after breaking out in Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day—all three about aliens or alien invasions--and then starring in the disappointing remake of the show Wild Wild West, which had no aliens. 2005 marks the third year in a row where Will Smith doesn’t have a new movie opening over the holiday weekend, but this time, he doesn’t have a movie coming out later in the month either, as he did with Bad Boys 2 and I, Robot in 2003 and 2004.

One important note: there aren’t any family films in the Top 12 for 4^th of July, surprising since it’s the only holiday which takes place after school has let out for the summer. The one “success,” the anthropomorphic comedy Cats and Dogs, made just less than The Patriot its opening weekend.

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REBOUND (20^th Century Fox)
Starring: Martin Lawrence, Steven Anthony Lawrence, Wendy Raquel Robinson, Breckin Meyer, Horatio Sanz, Megan Mullally, Patrick Warburton,
Directed by: Steve Carr (Next Friday, Dr. Dolittle 2, Daddy Day Care)
Genres: Comedy, Family, Sports
Rated PG
Theatre Count: 2,464
Tagline: “A comedy where old school…meets middle school.”

Martin Lawrence plays Roy McCormick, a college basketball coach with a bad temper, assigned to coach a junior high school basketball team after a public meltdown. (Apparently, this option was never offered to Bobby Knight.)

When W.C. Fields warned against working with animals and kids, few actors and comedians listened, probably a good thing, since working with kids has revived careers the likes of Eddie Murphy, Steve Martin and others. And W.C.Fields? Well, he’s still dead.

But comedian Martin Lawrence is very much alive, even if it’s been almost two years since his last movie, the Michael Bay directed sequel Bad Boys 2, teaming him with box office (and 4^th of July) superstar Will Smith. Other than that, most of Lawrence’s solo films have only done middling business, mostly among African-American audiences, an exception being his 2000 cross-dressing hit Big Mama’s House, which should see a sequel released later this year. That movie was the high point of a career that started on television and with small parts in the House Party movies, and he has not been very consistent either in releasing movies or having movies do well. Still, Lawrence’s fans haven’t had much problem believing him as a knight or a security guard or as an old woman, so playing a middle school basketball coach shouldn’t be much of a stretch of the imagination. (And it isn’t.) Since Rebound is a PG family movie, Lawrence will likely have to clean up and tone down his act, so it probably won’t appeal to the young male audience, who turned out to see him in the Bad Boys movies.

More importantly, the movie features Steven Anthony Lawrence, who unless there’s something we don’t know, is not related to Martin. I know what you’re wondering: “Who?” The younger Lawrence is the child actor who tends to play the annoying kid in these movies. Seriously, go back and watch Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat or Steve Martin’s Cheaper by the Dozen—and I apologize for asking you to do that--or his most recent film, Will Ferrell’s Kicking and Screaming, and you won’t be able to avoid him. He always plays the geeky kid or the brat or the guy who mouths off to the star, and in this case, he’s featured in the commercials getting lessons in being black from his possible relative Martin Lawrence. The movie also features Megan Mulally from “Will and Grace”, Horatio Sanz from “Saturday Night Live”, Patrick Warburton from “Seinfeld” and Breckin Meyer from last week’s Herbie: Fully Loaded, but they’re not in the commercial and Steven Lawrence is, so you know that Fox is banking on him being the male equivalent of Lindsay Lohan. That should be worth about $20 right there.

After directing the urban comedy sequel Next Friday--the most successful in the series--director Steve Carr earned a bit of credit with his back-to-back Eddie Murphy family hits, Dr. Dolittle 2 and Daddy Day Care. With that in mind, he comes to Rebound with enough weight to actually get the movie listed as “from the director of Daddy Day Care.”

It makes sense that the movie is being sold as a family comedy, since the urban comedy genre has been taking a nosedive with bombs like Cedric the Entertainer’s The Honeymooners and Queen Latifah’s Beauty Shop not doing as well as expected. At least the family sports genre has a respectable history of bringing people into theatres with everything from The Mighty Ducks to Kicking and Screaming being semi-successful. That said, family films don’t always do well over the holiday weekend, despite the basketball aspect of the movie warranting comparisons to the formerly little Bow Wow’s Like Mike, which opened over the holiday weekend three years ago with just over $12 million. It went on to do decent business over the course of July.

Unfortunately, Fox has waited until the very last minute to start promoting the movie after moving it forward three weeks, so not that many people will know that the movie is coming out this weekend, compared to the more high profile War of the Worlds. Sure, they’re very different audiences, but there’s very little that will sell people on seeing another family sports comedy when there are so many other choices in theatres.

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Bad Boys II	7/18/03	3,186		$46.52	$14,602	$137.26
National Security	1/17/03	2,729		$14.37	$5,266	$36.29
Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat	8/2/02	752		$7.37	$9,806	$19.18
Black Knight	11/23/01	2,571	$4.31	$11.10	$4,317	$33.41
Big Momma's House	6/2/00	2,802		$25.66	$9,158	$117.48
Bad Boys	4/7/95	2,132		$15.52	$7,280	$65.65
Kicking and Screaming	5/13/05	3,455		$20.16	$5,835	$49.62
Are We There Yet?	1/21/05	2,709		$18.58	$6,857	$81.36
Daddy Day Care	5/9/03	3,370		$27.62	$8,197	$103.55
Like Mike	7/5/02	2,410	$6.84	$12.18	$5,054	$51.41
The Mighty Ducks	10/2/92	1,280		$6.04	$4,719	$50.75

Why I Should See It: Pairing Martin Lawrence with a bunch of kids is the most inventive and original idea since Tivo! Really, it is! No one has ever thought of having a comedian coach kids’ sports! Ever!
Why Not: Because you and your kids already saw that same “inventive and original idea” when it was called Are We There Yet?, Daddy Day Care, The Pacifier or Cheaper by the Dozen….or Kicking and Screaming. (Did I miss any?) Obviously, Coach Carter this is not.

Bottom Line: Although urban comedy has not fared well as a genre this year, the long awaited return of Martin Lawrence--oh, c’mon! Someone must have been waiting for it!—should help this do slightly better than it normally would have done otherwise. The lack of marketing combined with the odd placement of the 4^th of July compared to the weekend might give Rebound a slightly softer opening compared to Lawrence’s previous films, but it might make up for it with decent legs.

Projection: $10 to 12 million over the four-day weekend on its way to around $35 million.

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WAR OF THE WORLDS (Paramount Pictures/Dream Works)
Starring: Tom Cruise, Tim Robbins, Miranda Otto, Dakota Fanning, Justin Chatwin, Rick Gonzalez, David Alan Basche
Directed by: Steven Spielberg (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, AI: Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can, Jaws and dozens more)
Genres: Action, Adventure, Science Fiction
Rated PG-13
Theatre Count: 3,908
Tagline: “They’re already here.”
Mini-Review: Possibly one of Spielberg's most harrowing works, War of the Worlds does for alien invasions what Jaws did for sharks, and it's as powerful a film as Schindler's List in its realism at depicting human tragedy. The amazing special effects often take center stage but rarely take away from the strong performances by Cruise, Robbins and especially Dakota Fanning. Sadly, the last five minutes of the movie immediately kills any realism or credibility. Rating: 8 out of 10

Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is a divorced father, who is taking care of his two kids (Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin) for the weekend, when strange occurrences like lightning storms and blackouts pave the way for a full-scale alien invasion.

In 1898, Steven Spielberg hadn’t been born and he wouldn’t be for almost fifty more years, yet a novel written by Herbert George Wells would forever change the path of Spielberg’s life, influencing much of his most successful work. “The War of the Worlds” was a powerful wake-up call for Victorian England, which had begun its industrial revolution, and forty years later, a radio broadcast by actor/director Orson Welles would create a countrywide panic when listeners mistook it for an actual broadcast of an alien invasion. In 1953, George Pal produced a big screen version of Wells’ classic, bringing it into the modern day, and over the next fifty years, it spawned everything from video games to a television show to a concept album by prog-rocker Jeff Wayne.

Meanwhile, Steven Spielberg followed his 1975 summer smash Jaws by exploring his boyhood love for science fiction, first with the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind and then with E.T.: The Extraterrestrial in 1982. The latter became Spielberg’s biggest hit, remaining in theatres for months, usually at #1, as it grossed $400 million and earned a place alongside his pal George Lucas’ Star Wars as one of the highest grossing films of all time. Spielberg has often returned to science fiction with movies like AI: Artificial Intelligence--finishing the work started by another sci-fi vet Stanley Kubrick--and Minority Report, an adaptation of the Philip K. Dick short story starring one Tom Cruise. (More on him later.)

Obviously, people should have let E.T. call home, because his relatives are not happy about it, and they’ve decided to unleash their anger on an unwitting earth, as Spielberg returns to science fiction with his own modern version of Wells’ venerable War of the Worlds. Not counting the creatures in AI: Artificial Intelligence, Spielberg hasn’t done an alien movie in over twenty years, and Spielberg brought his Minority Report star Tom Cruise along for this dark realistic tale of aliens arriving on earth. To brush up the script by Josh Friedman, Spielberg called upon his screenwriting ringer David Koepp, who wrote Jurassic Park and The Lost World, as well as Mission: Impossible for Cruise and the mega-blockbuster Spider-Man.

Cumulatively, Spielberg’s films have grossed over $3 billion in the United States alone, but his career hit a bit of a trench when last year’s romantic comedy and his third film with Tom Hanks, The Terminal, failed to do as well as expected. Their previous film together Catch Me If You Can did decently, coming out in the same year as Minority Report, but it wasn’t nearly the success as their earlier film Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg has opened many movies in mid-to-late June, but never over the July 4^th weekend, while Cruise’s Independence Day offerings have included The Firm and Days of Thunder, of which only the former did well. (See above.)

Although Cruise is also considered a box office draw with movies which have grossed over $2.3 billion, his last few movies have all opened around the $25 million mark, which isn’t too impressive by today’s box office standards. Most of those movies have gone on to gross over $100 million--the same can’t be said for Spielberg’s recent films. Besides the Mission: Impossible movies, Cruise hasn’t been able to open a movie over $40 million, so the success of War of the Worlds may depend on whether moviegoers want to see him working with Spielberg again.

Their last collaboration Minority Report didn’t perform as well as expected opening weekend, only making $36 million, and after spending the next four weeks fighting it out for placement with Disney’s Lilo and Stitch, it ended up with just over $130 million. War of the Worlds has a lot more anticipation then Minority Report, because its more straightforward in that it’s about aliens coming to earth and killing all humans, something which has worked well with audiences over the 4^th of July in the past (see above). By comparison, Minority Report was based on a little known sci-fi work that had a rather confusing storyline.

Spielberg and Cruise
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Minority Report	6/21/02	3,001		$35.68	$11,889	$132.01
Collateral	8/6/04	3,188		$24.70	$7,748	$101.00
The Last Samurai	12/5/03	2,908		$24.27	$8,346	$107.46
Vanilla Sky	12/14/01	2,742		$25.02	$9,123	$100.40
Mission: Impossible 2	5/26/00	3,653	$21.00	$57.85	$15,836	$215.35
Mission: Impossible	5/24/96	3,012	$18.10	$45.43	$15,083	$180.98
Born on the Fourth of July	1/5/90	1,310	$1.16	$11.02	$8,412	$70.00
Catch Me If You Can	12/27/02	3,156	$18.60	$30.08	$9,532	$144.96
A.I. Artificial Intelligence	6/29/01	3,242		$29.35	$9,054	$78.56
The Lost World	5/23/97	3,281	$2.57	$72.13	$21,984	$229.09
Jurassic Park	6/12/93	2,404		$50.16	$20,865	$356.78
E.T. the Extraterrestrial	6/11/82	1,103		$11.84	$10,730	$435.11
Close Encounters of the Third Kind	11/16/77	272		$5.38	$19,777	$132.08

At least Cruise doesn’t have to go this one alone like his past few movies. He’s joined by a young Dakota Fanning, who has much more experience than Drew Barrymore did when she starred in Spielberg’s E.T. Fanning has already starred in movies opposite three Oscar winners—Sean Penn, Robert De Niro and Denzel Washington (we’ll forget about the movie she did with Brittany Murphy)—so playing opposite Tom Cruise, who has only been nominated but never won, should be a piece of cake. Fanning’s last two movies, Hide and Seek (with DeNiro) and Man on Fire (with Washington) both well enough that one can’t discount the fact that she’s already a name star at the age of eleven.

They’re joined by Tim Robbins, whose last venture was Michael Winterbottom’s sci-fi film Code 46, although Robbins is still reveling from his Oscar, received for his supporting role in the Clint Eastwood directed Mystic River. His next film is also science fiction of sorts, being the adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg’s Zathura, also penned by David Koepp. War of the Worlds also has an appearance by the beautiful Miranda Otto, best known for her role as Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings saga, but she only has a small part as Cruise’s pregnant former wife.

War of the Worlds follows the 4^th of July tradition by being a movie about aliens and the destruction of earth, the best examples being Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day and Michael Bay’s Armageddon, both of which opened over Independence Day weekend. (See Above.) Then again, Spielberg’s vision might be better compared with movies like Signs or Mars Attacks!, both films showed alien invasions through the eyes of popular directors M. Night Shyamalan and Tim Burton, respectively.

While Spielberg’s War of the Worlds was able to get a PG-13 rating, it’s much darker than other alien invasions with none of the wisecracking one-liners some expect to lighten up the dark tone. The serious nature of the movie might lessen the amount of long-term business it brings in, especially repeat business. Then again, the dark nature of the Jurassic Park movies did very little to stop younger moviegoers from seeing them.

The trailers have been well placed, with a variety of commercials playing almost non-stop everywhere, each one showing just a bit more of what to expect, but never giving away what the aliens or their vehicles look like. It’s the type of strong marketing campaign that insures everyone and their mother knows that the movie is coming out this weekend. Likewise, Tom has been everywhere promoting the movie, but that might not be as good for the movie. Cruise’s appearance on “Oprah” turned into a bit of a spectacle when his attempts to promote the movie were overshadowed by talk of his new romance with actress Katie Holmes. Ever since it was learned that they were together—and recently engaged—focus has been taken off the movie and people may already be getting sick of Cruise with all of the TomKat “news” everywhere. (Let’s not even get into his latest blow-up with Matt Lauer or the connections people are trying to make between the aliens in this movie and Cruise’s chosen religion of scientology. Battlefield Earth, this is not.)

Usually, this stuff wouldn’t matter much to moviegoers, since this is a big budget action and effects movie that most of them will want to see in a theatre rather than waiting for DVD. That stuff can’t be helping though, and you have to wonder if people will avoid the movie because of it. Entertainment Weekly ran a poll asking this very question, and 61% of those asked said that they liked Cruise less now that his private life has been made more public. 41% of them said that they wouldn’t see War of the Worlds. Fortunately, the other 59% still wanted to see it or were undecided, but the info is about as useless as election-day exit polls. On the other hand, the tabloid press may have already affected the judgment of critics and other journalists, many of whom weren’t allowed to see the film until Monday. While critics were thrilled to see and review Star Wars and Batman Begins early, there have been many vocal complaints about the stipulations put on them by Spielberg and Paramount. War of the Worlds may also not be getting midnight showings on Tuesday night, which would be a rarity these days, because they tend to help a movie’s opening day.

Oddly, two other filmmakers got the same idea as Spielberg and Cruise, releasing lower budget movies based on Wells’ novel, timing them to capitalize on the success of Spielberg’s high-profile movie. One is set in the same period as Wells’ original story, while the other by David Michale Latt will be released straight to DVD. Few people will know about these, so it’s doubtful that anyone will be confused about which movie they want to see. (If Spielberg’s version is successful, it can only help both of these find larger audiences.)

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Hide and Seek	1/28/05	3,005		$21.95	$7,307	$51.10
Man on Fire	4/23/04	2,979	$0.04	$22.75	$7,637	$77.86
Mystic River	10/17/03	1,467	$3.09	$10.45	$7,121	$90.14
The Time Machine	3/8/02	2,944		$22.50	$7,609	$56.68
Evolution	6/8/01	2,611		$13.41	$5,135	$38.31
The Day After Tomorrow	5/28/04	3,425		$68.74	$20,071	$186.58
Signs	8/2/02	3,264		$60.12	$18,418	$225.77
Mars Attacks!	12/13/96	1,955		$9.38	$4,798	$37.77

Why I Should See It: Seeing Spielberg working with aliens again is actually cooler than the fact that he’s working with Tom Cruise.
Why Not: The movie is dark, scary and most certainly not for kids. The last few movies by Spielberg and/or starring Cruise have underperformed compared to expectations, showing that their fans won’t go to see any movie just because they’re involved.

Bottom Line: Trying to avoid the stigma of Tom Cruise’s relationship overshadowing the movie while opening on a holiday weekend where movies have been hit or miss, War of the Worlds is certainly trying to play against the odds. Then again, this being the first movie about aliens from Steven Spielberg in over twenty years, opening on a holiday weekend where aliens, invasion and destruction are expected, should help it bring a lot of people into theatres its opening weekend, although it might have trouble keeping that business up after that.

Projection: $30 to 33 million on Weds/Thurs with another $69 to 71 million over the four-day 4^th of July weekend. With close to $100 million in its first six days, it shouldn’t have a problem making at least $200 million over the course of the summer.

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UNDER THE RADAR

Do you live in a major North American city? If so, there are a number of limited release movies worth checking out. And if you don't live in one of the cities in which these movies open, look for some of them to hit your area sometime in the next few months.

This week’s WARRIOR’S PICK is THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED (Wellspring Media), the new film from Jacques Audiard (Read My Lips), opening in New York and L.A. It’s a remake of James Toback’s “Fingers” in which a criminal (Romain Duris) tries to get out of the loan shark and protection business to become a concert pianist. MY REVIEW

Opening in a single theatre in New York and Los Angeles, the Australian zombie film UNDEAD (Lions Gate Films), written by Peter and Michael Spierig, is about a young woman who finds herself facing the living dead after a meteorite shower hits her small fishing town home. MINI-REVIEW: No, Undead is not the greatest zombie movie ever made, but if you can get past the weak acting, cheesy script and lame canned music, you may actually find yourself being entertained by a very unique twist given to the genre in the form of aliens. Despite the problems, there's no question that the Brothers Spierig are quite talented and inventive, particularly in their use of gore and special effects. Rating: 4 out of 10

TWIST OF FAITH (Artistic License Films) is a controversial religious drama about a firefighter, a devout Catholic who was sexually abused by a Catholic priest as a youth, creating a lifelong inner conflict in himself and in his community. It plays in theatres in New York and San Francisco after airing on "HBO Undercover."

Opening in New York are two films that were featured at last year’s New York Film Festival: Winner of a special jury prize at Cannes, the Thai film TROPICAL MALADY (Strand Releasing) from filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, chronicles the love story between a soldier and a country boy, who then mysteriously disappears. THE WORLD (Zeitgeist Films) from China’s Jia Zhangke (Platform, Unknown Pleasures) is also about the romance between a dancer and her security guard boyfriend who work at World Park, a recreation center where visitors interact with smaller replicas of international monuments. The former opens at the brand new IFC Film Center, while the latter opens at the Cinema Village.

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THIS WEEKEND LAST YEAR

Last 4^th of July was all about Spider-Man 2, sequel to the record-setting superhero movie directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst. After grossing $40 million its opening day—setting a new opening day record--it made another $20 million on Thursday and then over $88 million over the weekend to set a new 5-day record of over $150 million. (Both records were beaten this year by Star Wars: Episode III.) Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 expanded into over twice as many theatres as its record-breaking opening weekend, and it added another $16 million to its box office. Most of the other movies took huge drops from the previous weekend—Garfield got hit the worst with a 60% drop--as they made way for Spider-Man 2 to dominate the weekend. It earned more than the rest of the Top 10 combined.

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Next week, Marvel’s Greatest Comic Fantastic Four comes to the big screen, as does an American remake of Hideo Nakata’s Dark Water, featuring the return of Jennifer Connelly.

Copyright 2005 Edward Douglas