New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Bruce Hall: Matthew I hope you're on to something but from my experience, everyone says they want something different until they get it, and then they miss being bored. I do think it also helped that the competition wasn't exactly heavy this week. Hall Pass, Gnomeo and Unknown are now known quantities, and even the people who loved it are tired of The King's Speech. And the other significant new release looks...well...kind of stupid. But that's just me. Considering everything that The Adjustment Bureau had going against it, it had more luck than it might actually deserve. I think that the piece of the pie they got was a good one.

Reagen Sulewski: I don't know how people could say watching Damon running around is a bad thing - that's all three Bourne movies. That said, hard sci-fi like this is a notoriously difficult sell - once you start getting beyond a couple sentences in the description, people tune out. While it's not up to the standard of some of Damon's other stand alone films, the fact that it's apparently not all that good has to balance that somewhat. And maybe it'll bring back the fedora.

Max Braden: I'd call it a lucky start. With a lesser star than Damon, and lacking the at least eye-catching special effects and teen romantic angst of I Am Number Four, this would have opened significantly lower and died off more quickly than I expect it will.

David Mumpower: The Adjustment Bureau is a project I thought had a chance to be something special but since it's not, $21 million feels like a win. To the larger point, I think Matthew's question is a good one in that we have had an extended run of known commodities at the box office, going all the way back to Thanksgiving. There has been a paucity of originality in terms of genre-stretching releases. Both of these titles, for all of their other struggles, stand out as novel. Ordinarily, Bruce is correct that this is not a positive as mainstream products sell better. With this vacuum of creativity, we are looking at a pair of projects that stood out at just the right moment.

Continued:       1       2       3       4