New Spider-Man Movie To Top Box Office For 5th Weekend

 Until just a few weeks ago, Spider-Man: No Way Home was set to face Spidey nemesis Morbius at the box office this weekend. Sony decided to push its “SSU” (Sony’s Spider-Man Universe) film starring Jared Leto back to April, and nothing has come to fill the vacated slot. Without any new wide releases, the webslinger will have yet another weekend where it rules the box office. After reclaiming the top spot from Scream last weekend, the MCU film is set to have its fifth number one weekend, a feat only a few films in recent decades have achieved.

If Spider-Man continues with its 30-40% drops, it will fall below $10 million in a weekend for the first time, and on Monday it fell below $1 million in a day for the first time. Of course, this is nothing to fret about for the fourth top domestic grosser ever, currently at $723 million. It will continue to inch closer toAvatar’s $760 million cume, and in the coming weeks we will see whether it has enough gas left in it to hurdle past that milestone to become the third biggest film of all time. It may get there slowly but surely, just as SSU film Venom: Let There Be Carnage passed the first Venom’s $213.5 million gross on Tuesday, the 117th day of its release.

Despite No Way Home’s still impressive numbers, last weekend’s overall box office ($45.7 million) was the third lowest since last May before the summer blockbuster season started with Cruella and A Quiet Place Part II. This weekend could end up with the lowest overall box office since then if it falls below September 24-26’s $38.8 million overall gross, and it may even end up as the lowest grossing weekend of the year.

Scream should end up in second place again, and we shall see if it holds pace with the successful sequels Scream 2 and Scream 3. It is currently less than 10% behind both films when looking at their cumes after weekend two, and it is already around 40% ahead of the disappointing fourth installment’s final gross.

Notable among the new limited releases is Sony Pictures Classics Compartment Number 6, which shared the Grand Prix award at Cannes last year. The acclaimed film (88% on Rotten Tomatoes) from director Juho Kuosmanen (The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki) is in Russian and Finnish and takes place largely on a train, telling the story of a Finnish student who bonds with the Russian miner she is sharing a sleeping compartment with. Compartment No. 6 is Finland’s Oscar entry and it has made the short list to become a potential nominee.

Also releasing in limited is Clean from IFC. Adrien Brody stars and Paul Solet directs. Solet wrote the script with Brody, who is making his screenwriting debut in this crime tale of a garbage man with a dark past. Reviews thus far are mostly negative (38% on Rotten Tomatoes). Better reviewed are Charli XCX: Alone Together (92% on Rotten Tomatoes), the documentary from Greenwich about the pop star, and Sundown (73% on Rotten Tomatoes), the drama from Bleecker Street starring Tim Roth and Charlotte Gainsbourg and directed by Mexican auteur Michel Franco.

While uncertainty remains about both the box office and the pandemic, January will likely go down as one of the year’s lowest grossing months, if not the lowest grossing month. Between the Omicron wave, only a single significant new release, and all December releases other than Spider-Man No Way Home Movie and Sing 2 running out of steam before the new year, January hardly stood a chance. However, February is looking brighter, and 2022’s box office should finally get under way as the next month sees the releases of Jackass Forever, Moonfall, Marry Me, Death on the Nile, Dog, Uncharted, and Cyrano, among others. The box office fate of these titles is unknown, but the consistent slate of promising wide releases should push us well beyond the doldrums of January and ferry us to The Batman, which awaits in March, with a blockbuster packed summer to follow.

Willem Dafoe Says Keeping Spider-Man: No Way Home Role Secret Was a 'Fun Little Game'

Willem Dafoe didn't stress about keeping his Spider-Man: No Way Home cameo under wraps. In fact, Dafoe, 66, said he created "a fun little game" out of his secret.

The actor, who returned to the Spider-Man franchise in 2021 to reprise his role as the Green Goblin, told Variety he was impressed by how well No Way Home kept his appearance a secret.

Dafoe, who professed he's "a bad liar," told the outlet he didn't have to fib about his involvement in the superhero flick, explaining, "Often I go off and people don't ask where!"

Dafoe first appeared in a Spider-Man film as Green Goblin/Norman Osborn in 2002. The actor told Variety that his character in the original film had "a split personality," not unlike Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

"It's a split personality, a guy that's conflicted," he said. "It's that classic thing of a devil on the shoulder and an angel on that shoulder."

When it came to reprising his complicated character, Dafoe said he was initially confused, pointing out that his character had previously been killed off.

"It's always a little difficult when you die in a movie to come back in any sequels," he said. "I thought I was finished. When they initially said, 'Would you like to reprise this role?' I thought, 'Really? How does that happen?' I was kind of stupid about it."

Still, he enjoyed returning to the franchise, Dafoe said, telling Variety, "I can say, and maybe drank the Kool-Aid, but these are people that really are believing in what they're doing and giving themselves to it in a very full way."

He added, "I'm not just talking about really good actors. I'm talking about the effects people, the camera department – they're all very top level. And then when you have the resources and possibility of making a popular film, that's all pretty attractive."

Dafoe wasn't the only star to reprise his role in the latest Spider-Man film. Two actors who played Spider-Man/Peter Parker previously — Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire — also returned, and Alfred Molina reprised his role as Dr. Otto Octavius for No Way Home.

Like Dafoe, Garfield, 38, also had to keep his role under wraps. The actor said he even kept his involvement a secret from his ex-girlfriend, Emma Stone, who starred in two Spider-Man movies with him as Gwen Stacy.

"Emma kept on texting me. She was like, 'Are you in this new Spider-Man film?' " Garfield told Josh Horowitz's Happy Sad Confused podcast earlier this month. "And I was like, 'I don't know what you're talking about.' "

He added, "She was like, 'Shut up. Just tell me.' I'm like, 'I honestly don't know' — I kept it going, even with her. And then she saw it. She was like, 'You're a jerk.' "

Other movie reviews ‘Tazza: The Hidden Card’ more tedious than fun

Tazza: The Hidden Card Movie follows up on the 2006 South Korean blockbuster “Tazza: The High Rollers,” adapting the second installment of illustrator Huh Young-man and writer Kim Se-yeong’s graphic-novel series.

Aside from their shared source material and underworld setting, only one character, Go Gwang-ryeol (Yu Hae-jin), links the films. But it’s Choi Seung-hyeon — better known as the rapper T.O.P. from K-pop supergroup Bigbang — who stars as Han Dae-gil, who develops a gift as a cardsharp at a tender age and goes on to become Gwang-ryeol’s apprentice.

After rescuing his grandfather, who has lost their entire family savings in a bet, Dae-gil goes on the lam and lands work at a card parlor. But all bets are off when he unwittingly helps a customer take the house to the cleaners and then gets left in the lurch by big-time criminal Jang Dong-shik (Kwak Do-won).

Hwatu — the Korean card game played here — is nearly impossible for the uninitiated to follow, but the film itself has so many plot maneuvers that it often feels like a televised chess tournament. Despite its 13 major and minor players systematically double-dealing and double-crossing one another, the film never manages to raise the stakes. The film seems to have an entire deck of cards up its sleeve, and they’re dealt out with more tedium than fun.

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