I'm delighted to say that Laremy got it all wrong on Friday with his box-office predictions ... though since he was clearly terrified that Flicka would take the weekend, I'm sure he's delighted he was wrong too. The horse movie managed only a poor showing at $7.7 million, fifth for the weekend -- perhaps several million disappeared from its take along with the "My" and the "Friend" that should have been in its title. Or perhaps My Friend Flicka simply doesn't have the name recognition among today's audiences needed to draw in families. Frankly, seeing the animated Open Season [my review] a second time would have been more appealing to me than catching Flicka even once, and maybe I wasn't alone in feeling that way: Season, which has been playing for a month, did better than Flicka.

Happily, Laremy's favorite new movie of the week -- and mine, too -- won the show. The Prestige [my review] clocked in at $14.8 million, not a huge number by any means, but very nice for a film straddling a line between genre summertime blockbusters that make the really big bucks and the more considered fare we expect to see in autumn. I tend to dislike making box-office predictions, but I'll indulge this once: I bet this film holds up well over the next few weeks as word of mouth brings in new audiences and it garners repeat viewings from moviegoers trying to unravel the twisty structure of the story ... and trying to see at which points director Christopher Nolan slips the aces up his sleeves.

Clint Eastwood's assault on the weekend didn't capture the flag from Martin Scorsese: Flags of Our Fathers [my review] ran up against the juggernaut that is The Departed [my review], but the wishy-washy war story couldn't prevail, coming in at No. 3 to earn $10.2 million to the $13.7 million payday for the riveting and intimate crime drama, this week at No. 2. Scorsese's flick's got perspective and personality, something sorely lacking in even the powerful moments of Eastwood's film. Effective movies are always about people, and the human stories take a back seat to speechifying about human stories in Flags.

In limited release, on only 168 IMAX screens, the new 3D version of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D hauled in $3.3 million, a spectacular showing even given the generally higher price of IMAX admissions. Still, this is hardly a surprise, given the flick's appropriate seasonal arrival; it's as much a Halloween film as a Christmas one, and Disney is reportedly planning to bring back Jack Skellington annually, according to Box Office Mojo. Running with Scissors [my review] is less scary than it intends to be -- it's not a splatterfest but a kind of domestic horror film, about one boy's outlandish adolescence -- though it nevertheless managed a healthy $225,000 on only eight screens. But the box-office fairy tale is still The Queen, which doubled its venues to 99 this weekend and almost doubled its take to date, adding another $1.5 million to its coffers. Long live the Queen, indeed.

(Box office numbers via Box Office Mojo.)

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MaryAnn Johanson
author of The Totally Geeky Guide to The Princess Bride
minder of FlickFilosopher.com

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