In 2008, only one movie got a perfect score in the Box Office Power Rankings: Iron Man, twice in May. In the second weekend of January, we already have our first perfect score of 2009: for Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino.
The consensus that Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno and Clint Eastwood’s Changeling were poor performers – the weakest Halloween weekend in a decade! – certainly isn’t based on the track records of the filmmakers. Smith’s bawdy comedy debuted with a little more than $10 million, while Eastwood’s missing-child drama brought in $9.4 million in expanded release. Those numbers might not be good for that particular weekend (compared to previous years), but they’re in line with Smith’s and Eastwood’s recent careers.
Mystic River is a prime example of the danger of adapting rich novels for the screen. When screenwriters fall a little too much in love with source material, they become afraid to pare it down, and the result is often unwieldy. What’s curious with Mystic River is that the novel was adapted by Brian Helgeland, who took a meat cleaver to James Ellroy’s sprawling L.A. Confidential and miraculously produced a work that captured the spirit of the book without much fidelity to the plot.
