The Weekend Report: Tomorrowland Wins Out on Holiday Weekend

In which I run down the big winners (and losers) at the box office this weekend.

So I'm obviously behind for the week as far as blogging goes (which is sadly prone to happening when you pick up a couple extra shifts and have to do what in less reputable circles would be considered hard labor).  I'm hoping to make up for my negligence in what's left of this and next week.  Expect a surge of content in the upcoming week or so, because I have no intention of falling (or staying) behind like this again.

It should really come as no surprise to anybody that this weekend's big winner was Tomorrowland.  Even if the reviews coming out for it were tepid at best, Disney's been giving their latest theme park cum movie a big marketing push.  Just about everybody that I talked to wanted to see what the Hell all of those cryptic trailers were all about, while the rest just wanted something fun to watch with their family over the long weekend.

Having seen it just last night, I have to say that I'm with the general consensus on this one.  It's a fun movie that hits all the right buttons, but ultimately fails to deliver on its intriguing premise.  Visually stunning and thematically uplifting just wasn't enough to save this one from a frenetically unfocused script.

The big surprise for me this weekend was just how good the remake of Poltergeist actually was.  While I'll go into greater detail about this in my actual review of the film, rest assured that it's a strangely good reimagining of the 1982 classic.  I'd even go so far as to say that it's even better than the original (if only slightly).  They templated a modern horror movie over its still solid scriptural foundations and deliberately tried to not show up what was already proven exceptional.

Other than those two, the rest of the top ten pretty much fell into place about where you'd expect them to be.  Far from the Madding Crowd is doing oddly better than I ever thought that it would on this list (although its dollar amount seems about right).  Pitch Perfect 2, Fury Road and Age of Ultron are all still performing admirably, even if their box office grip is noticeably slacking of late.  And Home, against all odds, is still hanging in there like a champ.

Box Office Standings:

1)  Tomorrowland - $33m
2)  Pitch Perfect 2 - $30.8m
3)  Mad Max: Fury Road - $24.6m
4)  Poltergeist - $22,6
5)  Avengers: Age of Ultron - $21.6m
6)  Hot Pursuit - $3.6m
7)  Far from the Madding Crowd - $2.2m
8)  Furious 7 - $2.2m
9)  Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 - $1.8m
10)  Home - $1.7m

So what movie did you see in theaters this last weekend?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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