The Blind Side pulled off a pretty nifty feat this weekend. After three weeks in wide release, it finally nabbed the top spot at the weekend box office, making about $20 Million and standing at about a $129 Million cumulative total. It is on track to become the highest grossing movie of Sandra Bullock’s career.

In second place, New Moon looks like it is finally cooling off a bit. In its third week, the movie made about $15.7 Million, and dropped another 63% (after a steep drop off of 70% last week.) Domestically, it crossed the $250 Million mark.

Newcomer Brothers made a modest $9.7 Million. Starring Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhal, and Tobey Maguire, I thought the movie about an Iraq War veteran returning home would fare better. Holdover A Christmas Carol hung in for the number four spot, and made an additional $7.2 Million.  Its cumulative take now stands at about $115 Million. Old Dogs managed to land the fifth spot in the top  five.

Star-laden Everybody’s Fine (Robert De Niro, Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, and Kate Beckinsdale star) failed to find an audience, and brought in an anemic $4 Million. George Clooney’s critically hailed Up In The Air only played on 15 screens. but made over $1.1 Million, for an impressive $79,000 per screen average.

As far as I know, Paramount is testing the waters for this film, and they should be pleased with the weekend performance. Hopefully they will go ahead and open wide now rather than roll it out slowly. Overall, it was a soft weekend, which is typical of the after-Thanksgiving weekend box office.

Everybody who has been fretting over Robert De Niro’s career of late can collectively exhale a sigh of relief. After carpet bombing the cinematic landscape with stinkers like The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Hide and Seek, Godsend, and Righteous Kill, De Niro finally settles into a nice little film devoid of gimmicks and action. Playing the widowed patriarch of four grown children, De Niro gives a quietly nuanced performance that grounds the film, and makes you remember why you liked him to begin with.

Everybody’s Fine tells the story of a very ordinary family and the events surrounding a holiday gathering. Frank Goode (Robert De Niro) is recently widowed, and has made plans to have all four of his grown children visit him for Christmas. He prepares the house, buys the groceries, purchases a new grill, and awaits their arrival. One by one each child calls and cancels with generic excuses-”something’s come up”, etc.

This is where De Niro first starts to reel you in. His face drops with each phone call, and you just want to go give him a hug, and go give his kids a good tongue-lashing for abandoning their poor, lonely dad on Christmas.  After contemplating the circumstances, he decides to travel to each one of them, against his doctor’s orders (he takes medication for fibrosis of the lung.)

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