Editorial

The Bottom Line: September 8, 2017: IT’s In Your Face But You Can’t Grab IT

Bill Skarsgaard IT

The Bottom Line: September 8, 2017

Fall movie season is upon us, and we’re kicking it off with a highly-anticipated Stephen King adaptation. Find out how IT will do in this week’s edition of The Bottom Line!

Box Office Top Five

The Hitman’s Bodyguard showed that you can stay in first place if you just have no competition. It took in $10.6 million for first, while Annabelle: Creation managed to keep second with $7.6 million. Wind River took third place with $6.3 million, and the animated Leap! took fourth with $4.9 million. Logan Lucky rounded out the top five with $4.5 million.

A Closer Look at Some of this Week’s Films.

IT (R) 135 mins.

Yes, that’s right. IT is happening again.

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The much-anticipated Stephen King adaptation has been met with some skepticism. Original director Cary Fukunaga parted ways with the project during pre-production, and the decision to split the book into two films certainly raised some eyebrows. But, by all accounts, it appears IT is actually pretty good. The film currently holds a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, and word is that it’s scary, intense, and it really nails the dynamics between the kid characters. The trailer gives off some serious Stranger Things vibes (of course, Stranger Things takes a lot of its cues from the original IT, so that might have something to do with it).

Expect this to be big. There’s a ton of hype around this movie, and it has no real competition (I mean, freaking Hitman’s Bodyguard has been number one for three weeks). And there me be some real hunger for a quality Stephen King movie after the dud that was The Dark Tower. This will open at number one, and by a huge margin.

Home Again (PG-13) 97 mins.

I don’t know about you, but I am decidedly not in the targeted audience for Home Again, the new romantic comedy starring Reese Witherspoon and directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer, the daughter of Nancy Meyers, who basically has her own brand of rom-coms at this point. I’ve seen the trailer for this a lot while at the movie theater, and it just looks terrible to me – the exact kind of cloying, faux-sentimental nonsense that I just don’t think I’d be able to stand for 97 minutes.

But hey, that’s just me. I’m sure there’s an audience for this kind of thing, and if that audience makes this movie a success and we can get some quality romantic comedies out of it, then I’ll shut up. This will likely open at number two, and will likely serve as nice counter-programming to IT.

9/11 (R) 94 mins.

Yikes. Also, nope. Nope nope nope nope nope. That’s a big no thank you. No, sir.

There’s room in the cinematic landscape for respectful dramas depicting September 11th; World Trade Center and United 93 are good examples of that. I don’t know who greenlit a 9/11 movie featuring Charlie Sheen trapped in an elevator, but that is the opposite of whatever those movies are doing. The trailer makes it look like a direct-to-DVD Asylum production, which isn’t the best look for what’s meant to be a serious drama. This movie is ostensibly opening wide, but nobody knows it exists, and it’s not going to crack the box office top five. And that’s just as well.

The Bottom Line

IT will take first place by a huge margin, and then Home Again will land in second. From there, The Hitman’s Bodyguard will take third, Annabelle: Creation will take fourth, and Wind River will round out the top five.

Movies To Look Forward To:

Mother!, American Assassin, Brad’s Status (September 15st)

Leave your thoughts on The Bottom Line, IT, Home Again, and 9/11 below in the comments section. Readers seeking more The Bottom Line can visit our The Bottom Line Page. Want up-to-the-minute notification? Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, and Facebook. 


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Michael Smith

Mike Smith is an avid filmgoer from New York who loves to hear his own voice - luckily his work as a podcaster on FilmBook allows him to do just that. Mike graduated from The College of Saint Rose in Albany with a degree in communications, and is ready to dole out critical analysis of all your pop culture fixations. Mike is the host of FilmBookCast and can frequently be seen at his local movie theater, patiently explaining to his friends that Superman Returns is a misunderstood masterpiece.
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