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

Felix Quinonez: I don't think they really "did" too much to get this performance. As crazy as some of us might think this movie is, there are a huge number of people willing to buy what the documentary is selling. I don't think anybody went in hoping to learn something. I think they went to reaffirm what they "already know." The audience was already there, the movie just gave them something to flock to.

Edwin Davies: By preaching to the converted and playing to their fears. It's a bit of agitprop designed to appeal to a specific audience who flocked to this weekend because it suddenly became available to them, at which point they went along to have their opinions confirmed. Now that they have had that opportunity, I don't think that 2016 Obama's America will have much staying power, or that it will bring in a particularly wide audience beyond the people who have already seen it.

Reagen Sulewski: I think anytime you can get a documentary into the top 10, it's a notable situation. Subject matter wise, it reminds me a bit of things like Fireproof and Courageous -very specifically targeted films where the producers went full court press on making sure they got as much of their audience as they could. That Friday-to-Saturday drop is telling about what kind of staying power it'll have, and I don't think it tells us much politically, since we already knew there were people amazingly passionate about hating Obama.

David Mumpower: This is a tremendous combination of timing and luck in that the film only reaches the top ten due to weak existing titles, pathetic new films and the impending Republican National Convention. Still, we are talking about a weekend that is better than all but two managed by The March of the Penguins. So the scale of this is impressive. No, it is not anywhere near Fahrenheit 9/11, a title that had four consecutive weekends larger than this, but I don't see the point of that comparison anyway. We are eight years down the road in terms of box office behavior. Few other documentaries have performed at this level. To wit, $25 million in final box office would beat An Inconvenient Truth, Bowling for Columbine and Sicko, three movies that many conservatives despise. There is a real chance that this happens, presuming solid box office weekdays during the RNC. I have to hand it to Rocky Mountain Pictures. Their team selected the perfect time frame for expansion.

Kim Hollis: I actually think that Rocky Mountain Pictures pulled off a pretty impressive feat here. This is a movie that needed very little advertising or marketing outlay to arrive at this weekend total. They effectively got free advertising from Fox News and the like. That they were able to convert that into a top ten finish is best-case scenario. Like David, I think this film should play well throughout the week as the Republican National Convention takes place (unless the convention siphons viewers away from the film), and the buzz/afterglow from the convention should carry over to a decent second weekend as well, I'd imagine. If nothing else, it's a good way to build excitement in a campaign that frankly hasn't offered much to energize anyone other than the base.

Continued:       1       2       3