Well it’s awards season again and thus this week’s top ten is an entirely polarising affair. We’ve got the great and the good of awards season doing well for themselves but it’s the shouty, awards hungry, For Your Consideration! failures that litter the outskirts of the chart that are the real news this week. But I guess that comes with the territory at this time of year. January releases always have to deal with the post-Christmas lull, add to this that the box-office is currently running 9% below January 2011 and it becomes abundantly clear that it’s currently quite hard out there…

The Winner – War Horse

After last week’s solid showing at the Battle for the Box-Office, War Horse has notched up another top spot absolutely demolishing this weekend’s poorly performing offerings. With a cast staffed by promising newcomers and a solid but not remarkable ensemble of plucky British stalwarts, War Horse was a bit of a financial risk. However with Spielberg at the helm the money is surely never that far away. This week’s most shown film screened at an impressive 513 sites and is now pushing the £10 million mark with an impressive weekend haul of £3,202,493. Almost equal to last week’s takings it suggests a strong word of mouth for a film that reviewed well if not spectacularly. It may be like watching a superbly produced bomb blast in a sentiment factory but people have voted with their wallets and if sentiment’s what the audience wants it’s sentiment they mostly got this week.

The Loser – J. Edgar

On the flipside, it’s been a weekend of losers really. Every year, come awards season, you often get some rather respectable figures on their knees begging for awards consideration, hitting audiences with grandiose performances of ‘great commitment’, often in the guise of some famously controversial figure. They sometimes hit big but all too often they fall by the wayside with calls that they try too hard and forget that an audience is there to be entertained rather than purely impressed. Out of the myriad underperformers Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar is taking the win here. Snubbed at the Oscars today the film has taken a staggeringly bad £413,210 over the last weekend from a supremely generous 259 sites. The Artist made almost double that with £770,403 from 141 sites after almost a month of release. Awards season can be cruel. It can be feast or famine and in J. Edgar’s case failure as well.

The Rubbish – The Sitter

According to the all-seeing critical eye (by which I of course mean the slightly flawed review hoarder) at Rotten Tomatoes, this week’s worst reviewed newcomer was David Gordon Green’s The Sitter. Racking up an adequate £910,382 from 355 cinemas it’s done okay for its apparently sorry self with Jonah Hill trying to make everyone forget his sterling work in Moneyball by reverting back to his less auspicious revenge of the nerds roots. Green, on the other hand, after starting out being hailed as the new Terrence Malick, seems to have fallen in with the wrong crowd and is now churning out Apatow-produced rent-a-stoner movies at an alarming rate of knots. Pineapple Express was all well and good but it’s time to come to your senses now, okay, David? You’ve literally made a worse reviewed film than Madonna this week (as Metacritic agrees). And let me tell you now, W.E. is appalling. The fact that it grossed a terrible £163,783 since release is unfair. That’s £163,783 more than it’s due. At least Riseborough is good though.

Also Ran – Haywire

In other news Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire has done fine. It may essentially be a B-Movie Bourne film trussed up in the fine tinsel of A-list credibility but it’s an awful lot of fun with Gina Carano proving more than a match for the superstar men that surround her. It performed adequately in both the US and UK so far with a British haul of £1,197,866 over the weekend and I hope it shows strong next week as well. It deserves better.

Next Time

Next week I’ll be pawing over the what will surely be a box-office low for year thus far.

I’m really looking forward to The Descendants (pictured) as are many but I can’t see it setting the multiplexes alight with the fire of a million Avatar’s. That said, it has got Clooney and a heap of awards hype so then again I might be proven slightly wrong.

At the other end of the awards spectrum there’s The Grey which will surely perform adequately starring as it does Liam Neeson who has proven to be a reliable draw for fans of all things action in the last few years. But yet again plane crash surviviors vs. wolves doesn’t really inspire massive confidence does it?

Like Crazy might get a decent showing as might Clive Owen’s Intruders, but the sleeper success here might be A Monster in Paris which looks set to fill the children’s entertainment drought of recent weeks with Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked and Puss in Boots petering out of the chart after being released way back in early December.

UK Top 10 Films:

  1. War Horse, £3,202,493 from 513 sites. Total: £9,639,624
  2. Haywire, £1,197,866 from 379 sites (New Entry)
  3. Underworld: Awakening, £1,114,327 from 297 sites (New Entry)
  4. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, £956,434 from 409 sites, Total: £24,627,233
  5. The Iron Lady, £949,517 from 473 sites. Total: £7,162,492
  6. The Sitter, £910,382 from 355 sites (New Entry)
  7. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, £815,330 from 380 sites. Total: £16,686,503
  8. The Artist, £770,403 from 141 sites. Total: £3,205,883
  9. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, £568,758 from 489 sites. Total: £13,111,689
  10. Puss in Boots, £568,590 from 473 sites. Total: £13,645,623

Other New Releases:

  • J. Edgar, 259 sites, £413,210
  • W.E., 172 sites, £163,783 (+ £19,131 previews)
  • Coriolanus, 124 sites, £157,764 (+ £11,544 previews)
  • L’Atalante, 4 sites, £11,406
  • The Nine Muses, 1 site, £1,366 (+ £1,048 previews)

Top Film This Time Last Year: The King’s Speech

Source: DCM