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The Greatest Game Ever Played
With Transformers still two years away, Shia LaBeouf stars as real life golfer Francis Ouimet, the first amateur to win a U.S. Open, prior to World War I. This is the second film directed by Bill Paxton. Critics generally liked the movie and its visual style. The Greatest Game Ever Played opened at #9 with $3.6 million on 1,014 screens and went on to earn $15 million.

Capote
Opening on only 12 screens, not many saw the movie in theaters this week, but right from the start, this movie was much talked about as an Oscar contender. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as writer Truman Capote, as he develops the true crime genre with his book In Cold Blood. Catherine Keener plays Nelle Harper Lee and Clifton Collins, Jr. plays the killer interviewed by Capote. Reviews were excellent; Philip Seymour Hoffman went on to win the Best Actor Oscar, and the movie received Oscar nominations for Picture, Director, Screenplay, and Supporting Actress for Keener. Expanding slightly to just over 300 screens during its run, Capote eventually grossed $28 million.

Also opening in limited release this weekend: The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (Julianne Moore), MirrorMask (Neil Gaiman), and Little Manhattan (Josh Hutcherson).

15 years ago - September 29, 2000

Remember the Titans
Set in 1971 Remember the Titans dramatizes the true story of an African American high school coach who dealt with racial issues in the white suburbs of Washington, DC. Denzel Washington stars, with Will Patton, Wood Harris, Ryan Hurst, and Donald Faison. Reviews were good, though not stellar, and Washington won awards from BET, the Black Reel Awards, and the NAACP. Remember the Titans dominated the box office, opening at #1 with $20.9 million on 1,865 screens, ahead of the $7.2 million for The Exorcist Director's Cut. It went on to earn a tremendous $115 million, the second best football movie gross to that time (behind The Waterboy, which was a comedy - only the Rocky movies had grossed more than Remember the Titans in the sports drama category.)

Beautiful
Minnie Driver stars in this comedy about beauty pageants, along with Hallie Kate Eisenberg, Joey Lauren Adams, and Kathleen Turner. This was the first (and as of 2015, the only) theatrical film directed by Sally Field. Reviews were dismal, but in limited release on 646 screens, Beautiful did manage to come in at #10 with $1.4 million. It eventually grossed $3.1 million.

Best in Show
When Christopher Guest’s name is spoken it’s usually accompanied by the word “mockumentary,” and Best in Show ranks up there with This is Spinal Tap (which he wrote but did not direct). Eugene Levy (who co-wrote the screenplay), Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, Michael Hitchcock, Jennifer Coolidge, Patrick Cranshaw, John Michael Higgins, and Michael McKean costar as oddball dog owners in this comedy about a national dog show. Fred Willard appears as a hilariously dimwitted TV announcer. Best in Show received excellent reviews and a very strong $31,802 average on only 13 screens. After expanding to just under 500 theaters, it finished its run with a gross of $18 million.

Girlfight
Though not many people saw this movie in theaters, this movie packed a big punch. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and won the Grand Jury Prize. This weekend, it released on 28 screens. Michelle Rodriguez was chosen for the lead role of a girl who takes up boxing against the naysayers in her family and the sport, in her first ever acting role. This was also the first movie from writer-director Karyn Kusama. Both received numerous independent and festival awards along with praise from critics. Rodriguez appeared in The Fast and the Furious the following summer and her career took off from there. Girlfight grossed a total of $1.5 million on a peak of 253 screens.

Also opening in limited release: The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy (Timothy Olyphant, Dean Cain, Zach Braff).

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