Another week down, another battle for box-office supremacy. However, as is becoming a trend, the movies that reach the top aren’t necessarily the best of the bunch.
Resident Evil: Afterlife received the coveted #1 spot, earning $27,700,000 this past weekend. However, its rating on Rotten Tomatoes is a stinging 17% rotten. The critics, on the whole, deem this movie unnecessary and as undead as the zombies Alice is trying to kill:
“Afterlife is very likely to please at least most of the fans of the series, but don’t expect too much aside from Milla looking great and a groovy visual style.”–iamROGUE
“All in all, it’s not particularly smart or original, but it’s also not all that bad.”–Common Sense Media
“More insulting than the stereotyping and the horrifying horror clichés is the fact that the formulaic tale even has the nerve to end on a cliffhanger, setting us up for yet another sequel. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me five times? I don’t think so.”–NewsBlaze
The Romantics is not even in the running for the top five spot. It made $44,400 and came in at 14% rotten. The critics felt put out by its pretentiousness:
“Flimsy melodrama, filled with clumsy, hand-held camerawork and turgid, pretentious literary prattle, signifying very little.”–SusanGranger.com
“Neo-screwball small talk cinema, Katie Holmes on doormat duty, and Candice Bergen as a neurotic, sour conventional mom setting back women’s lib way into the last century, when she conversely reigned as leading small screen feminist on Murphy Brown.”–NewsBlaze
“The Romantics is a misnomer. “The Spoiled Melodramatics” would be more accurate. Or better yet, “The Pretentious Ones.”–USA Today
I’m Still Here, the Joaquin Phoenix “documentary”, is also completely out of contention of the top five, raking in $104, 500 and at 52% rotten. Oddly enough, it’s the highest rated movie in this list. The critics felt that while some legitimate questions were raised about the status of being a celebrity, the film fails to answer any of them:
“Real documentary or hoax it’s pathetic; there are definitely only losers here, in the film, behind the camera, and in the audience.”–ReviewExpress.com
“To what end did Phoenix go to all this trouble, creating this bizarre false persona? What emerges in the film is an angry attack on the media, and an intermittently fascinating examination of the way celebrity flameouts are publicly & privately treated.”–DCist
“[It] may or may not be a put-on. If it is, it’s done with a visceral edge that is as difficult to watch as it is morbidly fascinating.”–Killer Movie Reviews
This week’s top five movies are:
- Resident Evil: Afterlife: $27,700,00
- Takers: (this weekend) $6,100,000, (overall) $48,105,000
- The American: (this weekend) $5,896,00, (overall) $26,731,000
- Machete: (this weekend) $4,200,000 (overall) $20,822,000
- Going the Distance: (this weekend) $3,835,000 (overall) $20,822,000
All stats by Rotten Tomatoes, all monetary stats by Box Office Mojo
