Plus, how "M3gan" found box office success.
In Hollywood, hand-wringing about the box office — or, more precisely, the lack of box office — was endemic in 2022. But the new year has begun on a hopeful note: "M3gan," the horror comedy about a toy robot with a mind of her own, outperformed experts' predictions by a whopping 30 percent last weekend for a take of $30.2 million. ("Avatar: The Way of Water" was still No. 1, adding $45 million to its enormous gross.) |
Why did "M3gan" connect with viewers? My colleague Brooks Barnes explained that the film had a number of factors going for it: a concept infused with humor (he described it as "a comedy disguised as a horror film"); a smart marketing campaign with a strong social media element; and, perhaps most important, a fresh take on the well-worn killer doll plot. Of course it remains to be seen whether it will continue to draw viewers, but as her victims learned in the film, underestimate M3gan at your peril. |
What else is worth seeing at the movies? A.O. Scott made "Saint Omer" a Critic's Pick, writing that the courtroom drama about a woman who has killed her child in France is "an intellectually charged, emotionally wrenching story about the inability of storytelling — literary, legal or cinematic — to do justice to the violence and strangeness of human experience." Manohla Dargis is more mixed on "Beautiful Beings," an Icelandic drama about teenage bullies and victims, but says that the writer-director Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson "persuasively conveys the feverish intimacy of adolescent friendship, with its vulnerabilities and inchoate desires." |
Whatever you decide to watch, have fun at the movies! |
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