As it often does, this week brings a host of new movies and some great classics hitting Blu-ray for the first time. This week’s releases include the first time on Blu-ray The Time Traveller’s Wife, Couple’s Retreat, The Phantom, Bronson, Drop Zone and The Running Man.

There is also the first season of Stargate: Universe,  a couple seasons of JAG, season three of The Guild and the Blu-ray release of The Coen Bros.’  A Serious Man with Michael Stuhlbarg (pictured above).

Check out this week’s new releases:

Movies

A Serious Man ~ Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind (Blu-ray and DVD)

Bronson (Widescreen Edition) ~ Tom Hardy (Blu-ray and DVD)

Couples Retreat ~ Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Jon Favreau (Blu-ray and DVD)

Dangerous Man ~ Jerry Wasserman, Steven Seagal (DVD)

Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic ~ Mark Hamill, Victoria Tennant, Vanessa Branch (Blu-ray and DVD)

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The real story from the box office this weekend is the non-story of This Is It. Sure, it won the weekend with $21.3 million, but there were some crazy estimates thrown around last week. I know I wasn’t the only person entertaining the notion that this movie would open above $70 million, especially after seeing all the hysterics from frenzied fans on opening day and sold out venues.

So, I have been scratching my head trying to figure out why the movie was a relative dud here in the U.S. Worldwide, it was a smashing success and made over $100 million. Although, I heard more than one estimate say that it could open in the $200-250 million range, and it made less than half that.

Do you think that because Michael Jackson lived here in the States, and we were exposed to more of the controversial aspects of his life? Perhaps fans in Japan, Germany and Australia had a more pristine memory of the King of Pop. At any rate, I was pretty blown away by the movie’s fairly low numbers. This was supposed to be one of the biggest events of the year.

Paranormal Activity enjoyed Halloween weekend, and took in another $16.5 million. It only dropped 22% from last weekend. It stands at a cumulative total of $84.8 million and is all but guaranteed to pass $100 million during its domestic run.

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When it comes to horror,  for the last several years October has been monopolized by the persistent and prolific offerings of a one Saw series. Jigsaw might be smarting a bit this Monday, because he was decidedly trounced by “the little demon that could,” otherwise known as Paranormal Activity.

Based on early estimates from Box Office Mojo,  Paranormal Activity finally claimed the top spot at the box office in its fifth week of release.  This makes it only the second movie this decade to do so after that many weeks in release, the other being Gran Torrino (2008).   Scaring up another $22M, the film played on 1,956 screens and brought its cumulative total up to $62.4M.

Despite playing on over 1,000 more screens than Paranormal, Saw VI brought in only $14.8M for second place.  This is the worst opening weekend for the franchise since the original Saw.

Where the Wild Things Are had a fairly steep dropoff of 55.9% from its opening week, which indicates few repeat attendees, and less than stellar word of mouth.  Still, it made $14.4 bringing its cumulative total to $53.9M for its first two weeks.

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As predicted, Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are seemingly dominated the Box Office with $32.4M.  It played on a whopping 3,700+ screens, including IMAX screens, for a per-screen average of $8,693.  Sounds decent, but figure in the reported budget of $100M, and it looks like it may be a bit of a climb for the movie to be profitable, at least while in theaters.

The ultra-violent thriller Law Abiding Citizen boasted a very respectable $21.25M, and a $7,353 per screen average, which actually shows it performing very close to WTWTA.  It played in substantially fewer screens (2,890), and if  WTWTA had not had the benefit of IMAX prices, this would have been a much closer race.

The unstoppable juggernaut that is Paranormal Activity continued its trajectory scooping up another $20.1M on only 760 screens!  That puts its per screen average at more than $26,000, nearly three times what WTWTA averaged.  Pretty impressive.  It will expand further next weekend.

Couples Retreat dropped off 47.7%, but still made $17.9M, bringing its total to $63.3M over two weeks.

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Here’s your weekly Box Office report. Studio estimates are from Box Office Mojo. Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau should be feeling pretty good about themselves this Monday morning.  Their film Couples Retreat received a critical drumming, but still made $35M over the weekend.  The likability of the two stars helped the film overcome negative buzz, and with no new competition, it easily won the weekend.

Zombieland looks like it will be sticking around for a while.  It only dropped 39% from its opening weekend and made$15M, which is impressive for a horror movie. A month after its release, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is still in the top five, and made $12M. Toy Story and Toy Story 2 continue to pull in audiences, dropping just 38% from last week for $7.6.

The real story of the weekend is the phenomenal performance of Paranormal Activity.  The film only played on 160 theaters in the entire country, and made over $7M! To put that in perspective, Surrogates came in at #6 this weekend. It played on 2,992 screens and made $4.1 million for a per screen average of $1,375.  The per screen average for Paranormal Activity was $44, 163. That’s unheard of.

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Looking for some highbrow comedy? Keep on looking. If you loved the trailer for this movie, go watch it again. There, now you know the entire plot and you have seen all the funny parts of the film. I  just saved you an hour and 47 minutes and at least ten bucks. You’re welcome.

It’s not that this is a terrible film, it just doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Couple’s Retreat tries to be the rom-com version of  The Hangover, and fails. The laughs are there, but they are anemic at best and spread too thin over a far too long running time.

Jason (Jason Bateman) and Cynthia (Kristen Bell) are a tightly wound yuppie couple who pull their friends aside at a child’s birthday party and ask them to attend a quick presentation. Believing that they are going to see another power point presentation about testicular cancer prevention, the friends are stupefied when the couple announces that they are considering a divorce. Seems a year of fertility issues has taken a toll on the couple, and they are ready to part ways.

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As it’s released with prints of Public Enemies, the first trailer for the new Universal comedy starring Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, and Jon Favreau has hit the web. The film is about four couples that are having trouble staying afloat, so they all decide to take a vacation to a wacky tropical island filled with wackier people to help make their relationships work. Laughing yet?

The trailer doesn’t make the film look very good, which isn’t surprising since its the same team that brought us 2006′s The Break Up and 2008′s Four Christmases. The film is directed by Peter Billinglsy, long-time friend of Favreau’s, but we know him more as Ralphie from 1983′s A Christmas Story. Overall, the film kind of looks like a less fun, over 30 version of Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Couples Retreat also stars Kristen Bell, Malin Ackerman, Faizon Love, and Kristen Davis and will hit theaters October 9 of this year. Check out the trailer after the jump.

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