THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 2001

''Swordfish'' gulps ``Pearl'' at box office

By Carl DiOrio

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Warner Bros.' cyberspy action film ``Swordfish'' speared an estimated $18.4 million and first place at the weekend box office, as ``Pearl Harbor,'' ``Moulin Rouge'' and other holdovers took punishing hits.

The John Travolta starrer's standout performance was surprising, as late-breaking interest in ``Swordfish'' was indiscernible in pre-release tracking data. The weekend's other wide bow, DreamWorks' sci-fi comedy ``Evolution,'' lagged expectations with $13.2 million in fourth place.

Among pictures already in release, DreamWorks' computer-animated hit ``Shrek'' showed holdover strength only in relative terms, with an estimated 39 percent decline representing the best in a weak bunch.

To maintain even that hold, ``Shrek'' added 54 theaters this weekend for a record 3,715 engagements, grossing $17.1 million to remain No. 2 at the box office.

Disney's mega-hyped ``Pearl Harbor'' sunk 49 percent to No. 3 in its third weekend. The film was once believed to be cruising toward more than $250 million domestically, but some observers now feel the World War II epic may not make it to $200 million.

Consider that cumulative ticket sales for the $140 million production -- standing at $144.1 million -- lag by 18 percent the domestic gross to date for ``Shrek,'' a film far less costly to make and one unfettered by costly back-end participation.

Columbia Pictures' Rob Schneider comedy ``The Animal'' fell two notches to No. 5 in its second weekend with ticket sales of $9.8 million. And Fox's quirky musical ``Moulin Rouge'' dropped 44 percent in its second week of wide release to rank No. 6. Grossing $7.6 million in the latest session, ``Rouge'' pushed its total gross to $27.5 million. But it seems clear that boffo numbers are now out of reach for the much-hyped Nicole Kidman starrer.

MGM's Martin Lawrence/Danny DeVito comedy, ``What's the Worst that Could Happen?,'' suffered the weekend's worst drop at 58 percent to land at No. 7. The film, produced for about $42 million, saw $5.4 million in its second weekend, to gross $22.2 million to date.

Rounding out the top ten for the weekend were ``The Mummy Returns'' at No. 8, ``A Knight's Tale'' at No. 9 and ``Bridget Jones's Diary'' at No. 10.

Industrywide, the weekend was roughly flat with a soft year-ago weekend, at $100 million vs. $99.2 million. Lackluster industry performance -- which distributors blamed on nice weather that kept patrons out of movie theaters -- leaves 2001 7 percent ahead of the same period last year at $3.14 billion in total box office.

The No. 1 debut by ``Swordfish,'' a roughly $65 million co-production with Village Roadshow, represents Joel Silver's second top opening this year (''Exit Wound'' was the other) and the seventh consecutive overall for the veteran producer.

``We beat the odds for the weekend, despite everything, including the NBA finals,'' Warners distribution president Dan Fellman enthused, as competition from Friday's pro basketball telecast proved no more daunting than rival movies.

The ``Evolution'' disappointment stemmed largely from the film's playing much younger than hoped. ``Earlier on, we thought it would play broader,'' said DreamWorks distribution chief Jim Tharp.

The film was rated better than average in exit interviews only by moviegoers under 21 years old, and its best marks came from those under 14.

Sony has foreign rights to the David Duchovny/Orlando Jones starrer, a big-budgeted production inflated by lavish visual effects. Studios will split worldwide box office evenly.

Among limited releases this weekend, Disney's ''Atlantis'' sold out most shows at a single theater each in Los Angeles and New York, grossing an estimated $341,588. The animated feature bows wide in roughly 3,000 locations next weekend.

Fine Line's ensemble drama ``The Anniversary Party'' grossed $186,000 from 11 Los Angeles and New York venues for an impressive average of $15,182 per theater.

Sony Classics ``Divided We Fall,'' a drama about a Jewish couple's struggles under the Nazis, put together $29,222 in five L.A. and Gotham venues for a sturdy $5,844 average.

And Paramount Classics' period drama ``Bride of the Wind'' wed $37,000 after eight L.A. and Gotham engagements for an acceptable $4,625 average.

Reuters/Variety REUTERS

The top movies in North America -- June 8-10

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Following are the final data for the top 10 movies at the North American box office during the June 8-10 weekend, according to studio figures released Monday by Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc.

Film Three-day Cumulative

Title Gross Gross

1. Swordfish .......... $18,145,632

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $18,145,632

2. Shrek .......... $16,520,052

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $176,069,428

3. Pearl Harbor .......... $14,721,419

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $143,987,500

4. Evolution .......... $13,408,351

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $13,408,351

5. The Animal .......... $9,607,627

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $35,651,090

6. Moulin Rouge .......... $7,649,148

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $27,569,224

7. What's the Worst That Could Happen? .......... $5,476,007

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $22,397,310

8. The Mummy Returns .......... $4,700,130

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $188,749,560

9. A Knight's Tale .......... $1,702,336

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $52,660,994

10. Bridget Jones's Diary .......... $1,145,298

BOX OFFICE SO FAR:  $67,350,448

Reuters/Variety REUTERS

John L.:  It was a below par week for the box office as no movie made over $20 million for the first time in a while.  Swordfish and Evolution are the new entries this week and I have full reviews.  Also, the American Film Institute (AFI) came out with their Top 10 Thrillers of All Time list.  Psycho was the top choice.  The complete list is later in the report. 

SWORDFISH - FULL REVIEW

Swordfish is about a crazed anti-terrorist terrorist who needs an ex-con computer hacker to break into a government system and steal 9 billion dollars to finance future anti-terrorist terrorist activities to save the United States from our enemies.  Along the way we get explosions, car chases, foot chases,typing on computer keyboards, oral sex, topless sunbathing, big guns, a rant on the movie "Dog Day Afternoon," a flying bus, and a very bad Travolta haircut.  Overall, a pretty standard time at the local cinema.  Swordfish is not a good movie in the true definition of the word,  but it is somewhat fun.  John Travolta plays the crazy ex secret agent type who goes rogue and decides to save the world by killing a few to save millions.  His logic is completely off center, but he thinks he is doing the right thing.  The point of a character like that is to learn his motivations so there is a reason for the mayhem he causes.  You are even supposed to sympathize with his schemes to a certain extent, but the lack of value for innocent life makes you want to see Travolta get his comeuppance.  Hugh Jackman, from "Someone Like You," plays the hacker forced to work for Travolta in order to regain visitation rights with his 10 year old daughter.  Jackman is the best computer hacker in the world, but if he is caught within 10 feet of a laptop, he will get thrown back in jail.  It takes the feminine ways of Halle Berry to make him risk his freedom to hack the computer files.  Berry is getting the most publicity for this movie for flashing her breasts for the first time in a movie.  If you are going to see this movie for this 5 second bit, then don't.  They are not really worth the price of admission.  That is not to say that Berry's berries are not nice, they are.  The problem comes in the context in which they are shown.  The gratuitousness of the scene is too blatant and had nothing to do with the film.  If she wanted to make some grand nude scene, then it should have been during a romantic encounter, or some seduction used to entice Jackman into joining the group.  None of that occurs.  Basically, all she does is bend over when she practices a golf shot.  He is already well into the thick of things when she puts down her book to show her topless chest as some sort of psychological tease.  The other thing that bothers me is that there is a moment where 3 girls are supposed to go skinny dipping and they take off their tops, but all you see are their backs and the bikini bottoms they are wearing.  Why no nude scene there, but it is okay somewhere else.  The filmmaker is wasting the audience's time when they do pointless shots like that in an R-rated movie.  Make the movie PG-13, and those moments are cool, but when your rating allows sexual situations and nudity, show it or cut it out completely.  Okay, back to the plot.  The movie's story is just an excuse to have things happen.  There is no logic to what goes on.  There is a car chase in the middle of the city in which Travolta stands up and shoots at 2 cars on either side of him.  After the chase, it is on to the next scene with no consequences shown of what has just happened.  It is like he lives outside of this world's laws.  There is nothing more annoying than Travolta playing the  bad guy.  Ever since "Broken Arrow," I have been unable to tolerate his "aint it cool" attitude.  He tries to hard to sound evil and it comes off silly and non threatening.  Another problem is that the director has him channel his "Pulp Fiction" character in look and mannerisms without the subtle charm he had in the older film.  He comes off as a cheap imitation.  Hugh Jackman is the best thing in the movie, but he too is channeling Mel Gibson circa 1987.  He is a little too wide eyed, but he has a nice screen presence that he started showing in "X-Men" and he still has it here.  He is Australian, like every other actor in Hollywood, and he too is not allowed to use his accent in movies.  I think someone should make a film with Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, and Heath Ledger and have them all battle Mel Gibson to the death.  Also, Jackman is the worst computer typist I have ever seen on film. He never looks like he is really typing what is on the screen.  He just hits keys as fast as he can, but it just looks fake.  The last movie to make typing on a computer interesting was War Games and that was some 18 years ago.  Halle Berry is okay in the movie, but her role becomes less important as the film goes on.  She gives a much better performance here than she did as Storm in X-Men.  It is sort of fun to see Storm and Wolverine together again and more sexual in their interactions.  In fact, every character in the movie is pretty pointless.  The most pointless may be Don Cheadle as the FBI agent trying to catch Travolta.  Cheadle is fine, but he is a much better actor than the roles he has been given.  His agent character never makes the right move and is pretty much Travolta's bitch the whole time.  Swordfish is okay, and entertaining enough to satisfy people going to see a popcorn film.  There are no big twists or surprises, and the final action sequence on the bus is one of the more ridiculous ones of the year.  The best you can say about the movie is that it is much better than Battlefield Earth.  Final Review:  2 stars out of 5; 5 1/2 out of 10; C+; thumbs down.

EVOLUTION - FULL REVIEW

Evolution is not "Ghostbusters."  Evolution is not "Men in Black."  Evolution is not "X-Files."  Evolution is not even "Abbot and Costello meet the Aliens."  Evolution is a sci-fi comedy that falls short of being something that you might compare to other movies made in the future.  This movie tries to imitate the style of those movies, but the script never lets anyone go beyond the surface appearances shown.  The movie is about a meteor that crash lands on Earth full of little bits of alien life that once it hits our atmosphere begins to evolve at rapid rates.  Soon, if not stopped, they will become the dominant species on the planet.  It is up to 2 college professors, a wannabe fireman, and a clumsy scientist to save the world.  Along the way, the United States military screws up a lot and Dan Aykroyd shows up as the Governor.  The main problem with the movie is not that it is less funny than it thinks it is, but that it never follows up on its pretty good premise.  These aliens are evolving into life forms similarly to the way that life evolved on Earth.  Slugs, crabs, insects, dinosaurs, and apes are all part of the evolutionary cycle of these creatures.  However,the logical payoff would have been a creature that resembles a human being, but that never happens.  We also never get any suggestion that this may be how life began on Earth and that these aliens may be more like us than we thought.  The aliens are just monsters that have to be killed.  The final alien boss is so pathetically realized that any hope of there being a thought provoking or interesting payoff is gone and you just wait for it to explode.  Evolution was originally conceived as a drama and I think it would have been a better film if it had been.  There could have been more science thrown in and not as many bugs in the ass jokes.  A forced chemistry is put together between David Duchovny and Orlando Jones as the college professors who try to stop the invasion.  Duchovny is a dry understated comedian who can be funny in a Steven Wright sort of way.  He is fine here but his acting style is so laid back it seems like he is not even trying.  On X-Files, Duchovny plays it completely straight and rarely smiles.  In this movie he smiles too much and tries too hard to look like he is having a good time.  It is distracting and causes the viewer to wait for the next bug eyed scream from Orlando Jones.  The "make 7Up Yours" guy is good and almost steals the movie.  His comedic barbs with the whole cast are funny to a degree, but it seems like it is forced and just thrown in to tell the audience that this is a comedy.  The running gag with him is that he is a black guy.  Many of his jokes are based on the fact that black guys have trouble surviving movies like this.  The racial humor is not offensive, but gets tiresome when that seems to be the whole method of developing a partnership between him and Duchovny.  His best lines are in the preview and little else.  Seann William Scott from "American Pie" steals the movie like he tends to do much of the time in his other films.  He plays the same Stifler type dimwit he made famous in American Pie and "Dude, Where's My Car."  He is like a live action Beavis.  He is endearing as a guy trying to pass his fireman's test and finally be someone important, and when he falls into the mix of trying to battle the aliens, his various actions show that he has the chance to become a real hero.  His best scene is in the mall where a flying dinosaur is running rampant.  Scott's character is the only one who gets any real development and his humor is not as over the top as Orlando's.  The weak point of the film comes with the character of Allison Reed, played by Julianne Moore.  She is a scientist who works more for the military but then ends up helping out the fellas when the threat becomes more than the army realizes.  The problem with her character is that they force a character trait on her with no payoff.  You see, she is clumsy and falls down a lot. That's it.  The clumsiness is just a thing to add more comedy and it is never really funny.  Her clumsiness never inadvertently gets her out of a jam, it is just there.  In real life, clumsiness is just being a stumble bum with no real meaning, but if you put it in  a movie there has to be a moment when it can be used in your favor or has some relevance.  An example of poor clumsiness in a movie is Jar Jar from Phantom Menace.  There was no proper payoff for it.  An example of clumsiness that meant something to the plot would be like in Miss Congeniality where Bullock was a clumsy to show how she needed a lot of work to eventually play a beauty pageant contestant.  Moore, like Duchovny, tries to be funny, but it just seems too forced.  Her relationship with Duchovny is very poorly written and you never get a moment where you believe this is when they fell in love with each other. It just sort of happens.  In fact the one scene that might have shown that is cut from the film but shown in the trailer.  The part where she shoots the gun in the air and Duchovny says that looked hot was edited out.  Just a little moment like that could have helped.  Ivan Reitman is being criticized for making a movie that is too similar to his "Ghostbusters" classic.  The formula is here, but Evolution deviates from it to a degree.  Instead of ghosts there are aliens.  Instead of 4 guys, there are 3 guys and a girl.  Instead of guns where you can't cross streams, you have shot guns and shampoo.  Instead of the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man, you have a big gob of goo.  You see, completely different.  Reitman does need to find some new material.  I don't know what that is though.  He has been having trouble lately repeating the success of his time in the early 1980s.  Evolution was supposed to bring him back, but it looks like it is going to fall way short of box office hopes.  A little trivia here.  Ted Levine shows up as the evil military leader and he played Buffalo Bill in "Silence of the Lambs."  Julianne Moore played Clarice Starling in "Hannibal" the sequel to Silence of the Lambs.  In Evolution, they are sort of at odds with each over on what to do about the alien menace. It's sort of like Clarice and Bob are together again.  Evolution is okay, but with weak special effects, weak script, overacting, underacting, too much product placement, and a big sense of deja vu,  the movie falls way short of what it could have been.  Final Review:  2 stars out of 5; 5 out of 10; C; thumbs down.  Played a little straighter with more science, this could have been a huge hit.

REST OF THE TOP 10 IN 10:

1.    Shrek is dominating the box office this Summer.

2.    It will be very interesting to see if Atlantis can beat Shrek in total grosses.

3.    If Pearl Harbor had more about the soldiers who died and less about the overly dramatic love triangle, the movie could have been the monster hit it wanted to be.

4.    Pearl Harbor would have been a lot cheaper to make if the movie hadn't added another 45 minutes of the Doolittle campaign.

5.    The Animal looks like it will fall short of Rob Schneider's "Deuce Bigelow" hit.

6.    Looks like Moulin Rouge will be singing a sad song to commemorate its poor box office performance.

7.    The worse that could happen is that Martin Lawrence is allowed to make another movie like his new one.

8.    The Mummy is soon to be out of the top 10, but here is another pic of Rachel Weisz while we still have her:

9.    Knight's Tale did not make Heath Ledger a star, but watch out, Hollywood is not that easily defeated.

10.    Bridget Jones' last entry in her diary says "take it, Jim, just take it."

AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTES TOP 100 MOST THRILLING MOVIES OF ALL TIME:

The American Film Institute (AFI) picked Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" as the most thrilling movie ever.  Uh, no.  Psycho is okay, but there are like 3 scenes of shock that last for less than 2 minutes of total screen time.  Psycho is sort of boring and does not play as well as it may have in 1960.  The first 45 minutes of the movie are a chore to sit through.  Those 3 moments are well done and it does deserve to be on the list, but it is no where near the most thrilling movie ever.  So, what is the most thrilling movie of all time?  That answer can never really be properly answered.  Some of the movies made in the last 25 years have been really exciting because special effects and stunts have become outstanding.  The older movies had their thrilling moments, but it was harder to keep the movies exciting all of the time.  I would have to say that the most thrilling movie made before 1970 was King Kong (1933) and post 1970 Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Everything else can fall anywhere else on the list. I will say that any of those Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton stunt spectaculars from the silent age are fantastic stuff.  Those guys were nuts and did things for real that would only be attempted now with computer generated images.  Here is the list.  I have seen most of these movies and most are pretty entertaining and thrilling.  You won't go wrong checking them out on video.  If you click the titles, you will be sent to the AFI site where they tell you what are some of the films more thrilling moments.