The Bottom Line: January 24, 2020: Will THE GENTLEMAN topple BAD BOYS FOR LIFE this weekend?

The Bottom Line: January 23, 2020

It’s the Bad Boys For Life versus The Gentlemen for box office dominance this weekend, while two horror movies battle it out for scare supremacy. Hanging around the Top 10 for the weekend will be a few family-friendly movies and a great war picture.

Box Office Top Five

Since last Friday’s destruction of the box office by Bad Boys For Life, the top five hasn’t really moved much. Bad Boys has dominated with $83,133,253 domestically and has made more than $118 million worldwide as of January 21. 1917 ($86,310,654) stayed in second place through Friday and Saturday but was bumped down to third place on Sunday by Doolittle ($31,289,690). Both movies played box office musical chairs on Monday and Tuesday (Doolittle taking second on Monday and 1917 taking it back on Tuesday). In an interesting twist that could probably be attributed to the long holiday weekend and the kids being home from school, Little Women ($88,385,078) got a boost from sixth to fourth place on Tuesday, knocking Jumanji: The Next Level ($275,035,732) and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker ($495,816,498 down a notch.

A Closer Look at Some of This Week’s Films

The Turning (PG-13) 94 minutes: I’ll be turning away, but you can all sit and enjoy this dramatic horror mystery, which is an adaptation of Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw.” Directed by Floria Sigismondi, who has also directed two episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale and American Gods, it was also produced by Stephen Spielberg. The premise of The Turning is simple — a nanny (Mackenzie Davis as Kate) takes care of two orphans (Finn Wolfhard as Miles and Brooklynn Prince as Flora), but she discovers that the children and the house have dark secrets.

Horror movies do pretty well at the box office, so it will be interesting to see if this one follows suit. I think it’s going to have a strong Top 10 showing for sure, but I don’t see it toppling Bad Boys for Life.

Color Out of Space (NR) 130 minutes: Fans of horror movies have another option (or you can see both),  Color Out of Space, directed by Richard Stanley and based on the short story “The Colour Out of Space” by H. P. Lovecraft. The premise follows the Gardners who traded city life for the country and struggling artist Nathan (Nicolas Cage) tries his hand at gardening but has a green thumb. One night, a meteorite crashes in his yard, dissolves and infects the local water supply. Then, of course, there are aliens that happen after that. The movie also stars Joely Richardson, Madeleine Arthur, Q’orianka Kilcher and Tommy Chong. In my opinion, you’ll find this movie at the bottom of the Top 10 list. There’s just too much competition at the top of the charts and Nicolas Cage doesn’t really pull in the box office profits like he used to.

The Gentlemen (R) 115 minutes: Will the cast of Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Henry Golding, Jeremy Strong, Colin Farrell, and Hugh Grant be the one to dethrone Bad Boys For Life this weekend? I still don’t this will be the weekend that the Will Smith and Martin Lawrence movie loses it’s number one slot, but I think The Gentlemen will arrive at number two. This is directed by Guy Ritchie, who directed other crime films such as Revolver (2005) and RocknRolla (2008). The plot is about Mickey Pearson (McConaughey) who was born in poverty but wins a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University,. Here he begins selling marijuana to privileged students, builds an empire beyond university and then wants to sell his empire for $400 million to retire when things get way out of control (to say it mildly).

The Last Full Measure (R) 115 minutes: Rounding out the debuts this weekend is The Last Full Measure, based on the true story of Vietnam War hero William H. Pitsenbarger, a USAF Pararescue medic who saved over 60 men. When the government decides to honor him with a Congressional Medal of Honor, a Pentagon staffer finds that there’s more to this battle than there seems to be and needs to decide if the truth must be told. Man, I hope this is as good as the trailer looks. I hope this is a dark horse to the rest of the feature films and with the success of 1917, there is a big audience for war films, but again, I think the competition is too stiff to see it making any headway on the top of the charts. It should make a respectable showing though.

The Bottom Line

The good news is that February isn’t that far away for a bigger selection at the movies. In the meantime here’s what we have coming up next weekend.

Movies To Look Forward To

The Rhythm Section (January 31), Gretel & Hansel (January 31). 

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