The Weekend Report: San Andreas Topples the Competition

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

So the Rock punching an earthquake for 90 minutes was enough to handily beat out every other movie this weekend.  None of last week's movies were able to recover from the hit that they took over the holiday weekend and Aloha was never playing on the same level as the typical summer fare.

As I will shortly elaborate upon in much greater detail, however, that's a perfectly fine way to spend your weekend.  As far as disaster movies go, San Andreas is one of the greats.  It's scientifically sound, emotionally resonant and as a likable cast of characters (one obvious douche bag aside).  The disaster scenes were riveting and there was just enough story to string them together with.  It's even obvious that the Rock is starting to get this whole acting thing down by now.

The weekend's other new offering, Aloha, turned out to be something more of an enigma than I would have ever guessed.  It's not a bad movie by any means, just not the one that it was being advertised as.  Despite all evidence to the contrary in the trailers, Bill Murray is the villain of the piece, and he's just a few henchmen away from being a supervillain.

For as much as the movie tries to be a romantic comedy, the plot proper is about Bill Murray trying to get a nuclear arsenal in space.  Seriously.  Bradley Cooper's job is to make it happen, Emma Stone is there as his military handler and Amy Adams is the one that got away.  It's basically what would have happened if The Cooler had starred James Bond.

For all of its... weirdness... it's really not that bad of a movie.  It's understandably better than most early-year movies, worse than most end-of-year movies and not as fun as most summertime movies.  It scratches a certain itch that most movies don't hit at this time of the year, just not especially well.

Other than that, everything mostly looks the same as it did last week.  Home REALLY does not want to let go of its #10 slot, though, which its clung to now for weeks.  Still, I think that this upcoming weekend is going to be its last on the top ten, as the latest Insidious, Spy and probably Entourage all look to shake up the box office standings.

Box Office Standings:
1)  San Andreas - $53.2m
2)  Pitch Perfect 2 - $14.3m
3)  Tomorrowland - $13.8m
4)  Mad Max: Fury Road - $13.6m
5)  Avengers: Age of Ultron - $10.9m
6)  Aloha - $10m
7)  Poltergeist - $7.8
8)  Far from the Madding Crowd - $1.4m
9)  Hot Pursuit - $1.3m
10)  Home - $1.1m

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

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