Five Essential... Films of Dario Argento

Dominic O'Brien selects his Five Essential Films of Dario Argento…

Although he has fallen from grace somewhat recently, during the 70s and 80s Dario Argento was the master of suspense and mystery. During this time he managed to craft some of the finest pieces of Italian giallo and genre films. Still, to this day his films are as genuinely eye popping and disturbingly beautiful as they where when first released. These films are respected by both critics and fans alike, and his influence on future filmmakers is evident even now. As the years passed his genre films quickly became more rock n’ roll, particularly with his frequent collaborator - composer Claudio Simonetti - though he never managed to maintain the highs he had all those years previously. With that in mind, I present the essential Dario Argento...

5. Inferno (1980)

An often over looked film, Argento once again strays into the supernatural with his follow up to Suspiria. Although critically attacked and receiving a poor box office when first released, this has gained a steady cult following over the years. Most notable as a video nasty (but later dropped) due to a cat eating a mouse on camera, along with the subsequent drowning of a cat – which was later to be revealed as fake – helped to cement its cult status within the UK until recently. Much like Suspiria this is a mesmerising nightmare, the iconic sequence where the lead's sister finds an underwater passage, is both tense and creepy. Its dreamlike intention and nightmarish quality literally floats into your subconscious. While not up to the same fairytale/nightmare as Suspiria, this is still a supremely under-rated supernatural horror, the dark blues leaving you cold and chilled.

4. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)

Dario Argento’s first feature as director is still as fresh today as it was some 40 years before. Essentially a remake of the Hollywood feature Screaming Mimi and although a little rough around the edges, this is still awe inspiring. Like Deep Red, this film contains what were to be several of Argento’s signature traits within his giallo, such as the black-gloved killer or the character being able to remember previously referenced clues which tie into the identity of the killer. This was the film that would send Argento into the big leagues of Italian giallo and genre cinema. Still provocative and imaginative in its use of kills and scoring, this was and still is one of the best Argento films.



3. Deep Red a.k.a. Profondo Rosso (1975)

This creepy and effective giallo is so beautifully shot and filled to the brim with standout moments; it quickly becomes hard to list them all. With under-rated David Hemmings playing a piano teacher who is drawn into an investigation of a sadistic killer, this would be the forbearer to Argento’s now artistic style. It contains several clever visual touches which foreshadow the deaths of particular characters or moments of threat later on. One shot that specifically stands out is the exact replication of Edward Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks’ diner painting, which is recreated perfectly. Then there are the deaths themselves, which are so gloriously stylised and inventive as to leave you feeling unnerved at their perverse beauty [watch Deep Red here].


2. Opera a.k.a. Terror at the Opera (1987)

With a fantastically haunting and operatic score by Argento regular Claudio Simonetti with Brian Eno (of Roxy Music fame) and some of Argento’s most epically stylised shots, this is probably his last grandiose film and his last which has grabbed my attention. Almost all of the deaths are shown within close-ups, accompanied by electrifying guitar scores which add to the theatricality of it all. It also contains a slew of Argento’s most iconic sequences, the needles under the eyelids of our heroine, which I dare you not to wince when watching. There is the now iconic sequence where actress Daria Niccolodi is shot in the head through a keyhole. Again a sequence which makes superior use of close-ups, the brief shot of the bullet travelling through the keyhole, followed by a fantastically composed wide shot as the bullet exits her head only to destroy a near by phone. This is a film that contains so many standout moments (overly gory but operatic in style) which Argento uses from his extensive oeuvre of magic film tricks, that it almost feels as though it is a greatest hits compilation. And when has that ever been a bad thing?

1. Suspiria (1977)

The first of Argento’s Three Mothers Trilogy, this is quite possibly his most well known and best remembered masterpiece. It is also the most beautiful of supernatural nightmares. Everything present within this film feels expertly crafted to the highest of horror standards. From the very first cleverly orchestrated (and still graphic) double murder through to the stylised use of Technicolor lighting which draws you further into this deranged fairytale/nightmare. There is also the now legendary score by symphonic Italian rock maestros Goblin, whose haunting soundtrack still continues to send shivers down the spines of even the most hardened horror fanatic. Everything within this is pitch-perfect and one of those rare films which feels like it is a new discovery even after previous viewings. I don’t think boarding schools have ever been so terrifying before or since.


Honourable mentions...

Phenomena a.k.a. Creepers (1985)
Tenebrae (1982)
Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)

Agree? Disagree? We'd love to hear your thoughts...

Dominic O'Brien is an aspiring writer and filmmaker; he is a cult film fanatic and continues to seek out the weirdest and strangest films committed to celluloid.

Essentials Archive

Understanding Scorsese: A Martin Scorsese Profile (Part 1)

Trevor Hogg profiles the career of legendary American filmmaker Martin Scorsese in the first of a five part feature...

“Marty never gave me much trouble,” stated Charlie Scorsese of his famous filmmaking son. “Marty and his friends used to drink my liquor and fill empty bottles with water and Kayro syrup, but they were good boys. Marty was sickly, though, and couldn’t keep up with the other boys. That’s how the thing with the movies got started.” The elder Scorsese, who earned a living as a clothes presser in the New York City garment district, served as an early cinematic influence for the Academy Award-winning director. “Having asthma,” recalled Martin Scorsese, “I was often taken to movies because they didn’t know what else to do with me.” As for his lack of athletic prowess, Scorsese remarked, “On my block, people took games seriously. If a kid dropped a ball they could get very mad. I wasn’t good at sports; they became anathema to me.” The native of Flushing, New York was not the only one in his family who was drawn to films. “I’d be sitting and watching something on television. My uncles would be in the room. My mother would be there. One of my uncles would say, ‘That would never happen that way.’…They would work out their own versions of the film noir we were watching, and they were actually much better.”

Another strong childhood influence on the young Martin Scorsese was the Catholic Church. “I went into the seminary after grade school, but they threw me out at the end of my first year for roughhousing during prayers. They thought I was a thug.” Scorsese continued to dream about becoming a priest until he came across the film department at New York University. “I was bitten and the whole vocation thing shifted.” The NYU undergraduate had fallen under the spell of the charismatic Professor Haig Manoogian. “When I heard him lecture, all the passion I had for the seminary school was somehow transfused over. I said, ‘I want to be talked about in that way, because my appreciation of the people he’s talking about is so strong.’ I knew I was a director. Other people didn’t know, though.” Long-time collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker was immediately impressed with the talent of her classmate. “It was so clear that he had such strong filmic ideas,” explained the three-time Oscar-winning film editor. “His student film It’s Not Just You, Murray! [1964] was a comic look at gangsters and it was filled with wit and was so clever. Right away, you said, ‘Wow! That’s a filmmaker.’ You were immediately in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing. Which was what my husband [filmmaker Michael Powell] used to say about Marty’s films; he could relax and enjoy them because there was somebody steering the ship.”

Upon graduating as a NYU film major, Martin Scorsese worked as a news editor at CBS, in particular on Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign; he also shot commercials, served as a supervising editor on Woodstock (1970) and edited the rock ‘n’ roll documentary Medicine Ball Caravan (1971). Scorsese had not abandoned his ambition of making a feature film; the project evolved into three different versions: Who’s That Knocking on My Door? (1965), Bring on the Dancing Girls (1967) and I Call First (1970). “The first year, 1965, I cast it,” said the director. “We did all the scenes with the young boys and we had a young lady playing the part of the girl. But later on we came up to an hour and ten minutes and there was no confrontation. The young girl was always seen in flashbacks and asides. It was all between the boys. So you never understood what was happening with the Harvey Keitel [The Piano] character and the girl [Zina Bethune]. The conflict was being in love with a girl who is an outsider, loving her so much that you respect her and you won’t make love to her. Then he finds out she’s not a virgin and he can’t accept it.” Keitel was impressed with the man behind the camera. “One of Marty’s best qualities as a director is the way he deals with actors. Marty lets actors bring their own humanity – their eccentricities, their humour, their compassion – to a role.”

Martin Scorsese is proud of the scene where J.R. (Keitel) makes love to Zina Bethume (Sunrise at Campobello) on his mother’s bed. “It’s a very authentic moment and I love it that at the end of the sequence they are framed only from the back. I had the feeling that if the audience identified with them at that instant, they would identify with them all the way to the end.” In order to secure a distribution deal, the rookie director had to insert a particular sequence. "I had to have a nude scene in it,” revealed Scorsese. “I had Harvey Keitel fly over to Amsterdam. We got a bunch of girls and did this crazy nude scene which was incredible.” The $35,000 project had a habit of being renamed. “Who’s That Knocking? had opened in L.A. under the title J.R.. It kept changing titles because the theatre distributor didn’t like the title… It got good reviews and Roger Corman went to see it.” The legendary B-movie producer was impressed enough to ask Martin Scorsese to do a sequel to Bloody Mama (1970); nine months later Corman called and gave him the script.

“Roger’s films make money because of the speed and the economy with which they are shot,” observed Martin Scorsese. “You learn what’s essential to a scene, and how to get it quickly shot. Roger came down to Arkansas, marched onto the set, made an angry face, stirred up the crew and got them to work a little harder. We shot Boxcar Bertha [1972] in twenty-four days for $650,000 and it made a profit. I got $5,000.” The Great Depression-era tale stars Barbara Hershey (Black Swan) as the title character and David Carradine (Bound for Glory) as a union leader; the two lovers seek revenge against a railroad company by robbing trains. The story is loosely based on the fictionalize autobiography of the radical and transient Bertha Thompson. “In Boxcar Bertha, Barry Primus [Righteous Kill] is trying to pull a fast one with the cards so he’s smiling sleazily, the camera is kind of sleazy, sliding against the edge of the table,” explained the director. “What I was looking for was to give a psychologically unstable feeling to the audience with those characters at those moments.” The struggling director was given a piece of unexpected advice after a private screening of the movie. “I was scheduled to do one more picture for Roger Corman, I Escaped from Devil’s Island [1973]. We were going to shoot in Costa Rica… I showed a two and a half hour rough cut of Boxcar Bertha to a bunch of friends – Carradine, all the people in the picture, Roger Corman and [John] Cassavetes. Cassavetes [Rosemary’s Baby] took me aside the next day and spoke to me for three hours. He said, ‘Don’t do any more exploitation pictures. Do something better.’” When Scorsese told John Cassevetes that he only had one script, Cassavetes encouraged him to rewrite the story.

“I wrote the outline first and then brought it to Mardik [Martin], who used to write all my shorts with me at NYU,” stated Martin Scorsese as to the origins of the project called Season of the Witch. “Mardik worked out the structure for me and I worked out the characters and the incidents. Then we took the script around for years and we could never get it done.” Heeding the advice given to him by John Cassevetes, Scorsese reworked the film with Martin. “The whole idea was to make a story of a modern saint, a saint in his own society but his society happens to be gangsters.” The crime drama that stars Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro (Heat), David Proval (The Shawshank Redemption), Amy Robinson (Julie & Julia), Richard Romanus (The Assassin), Cesare Danova (Tender Is the Night), Harry Northup (The Silence of the Lambs), and David Carradine was subsequently renamed. “Mean Streets [1973] shows that organized crime is similar to big government. They’re both machines. In Sicilian culture, we learned never to expect much from the government, having been trod upon by one government or another for some two thousand years. That is why the family is the unit we always look to for strength.” Elements of the story were drawn from actual events. “One night some of the neighbourhood guys went in [a bar called Foxy’s Corner] with the Johnny Boy character and his older brother; they got into a fight. They tried to settle an argument. That’s exactly and literally what happened in the film.”

Though the tale takes place in the city of the director’s birth, the majority of the principle photography took place elsewhere. “We only shot six days in New York,” revealed Martin Scorsese. “When De Niro’s shooting his gun off the roof, the roof is in New York because you can see the Empire State Building, but the window is in Los Angeles. When David Carradine gets shot in the bar, the guy falling in the street is actually in New York – that was a double – we shot that first. We blocked out his face just right so that he falls and hits the car…The rest of the scene was shot in Los Angeles.” The $670,000 production, which screened at the 1973 New York Film Festival, turned out to be a grueling affair. “It was done in twenty-seven days,” said Scorsese. “I kept pushing the limits of the budget and drove everybody crazy. But that was the only thing we could do because the more we got down, the more fun we had and the more we realized the atmosphere we wanted to get.” For their writing efforts, Martin Scorsese and Mardik Martin received a Writers Guild of America nomination for Best Original Screenplay – Drama. Robert De Niro won Best Performance in a Foreign Film at the Sant Jordi Awards as well as Best Supporting actor at the National Society of Film Critics Awards. Mean Streets was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1997. Responding to the movie being compared to The Godfather (1972), the filmmaker replied, “We weren’t trying to do the same thing at all. Francis Coppola made an epic Hollywood picture, an old-fashion movie in the good sense like Gone with the Wind [1939], only better.”

With the release of Italianamerican (1974), which saw Martin Scorsese interview his parents about their family life in New York and Sicily, the director established himself as a documentary filmmaker. “The film came about through a series called The Storm of Strangers, done by the National Endowment Fund of Humanities,” explained Scorsese. “They were doing one on the Greeks, the Jews, Armenians [and other ethnic groups]. It was for bicentennial T V, 1976. They all had to be a half hour long.” At the premier of the project, Charles Scorsese was not in attendance. “My father didn’t go see the picture at the Lincoln Center at the New York Film Festival because he had a hard time watching Mean Streets; he went through all the palpitations of it’s your movie up there and 2,000 people are seeing it for the first time. He got the same feeling.” Catherine Scorsese had no qualms about attending the event with her son; she embraced her newfound celebrity status by throwing kisses and signing autographs.

“Alice was more rehearsed and improvisational than Mean Streets had been,” stated Martin Scorsese when comparing the making of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) to its cinematic predecessor. “The reason was – Ellen [Burstyn] asked me to do the picture for her.” Burstyn got the script about a would-be nightclub singer who pursues her dream upon becoming a widower from producer David Susskind; taking the advice of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola she approached Scorsese. “Some people have said that Alice is a movie about women’s liberation, but I think that’s the wrong emphasis. It’s about human liberation,” declared Scorsese. “Bea, Lelia Goldoni, is in reality Ellen Burstyn’s best friend so that scene where they say goodbye is all from reality. That’s important. That’s why I like that scene. Dianne Ladd had the same relationship with Ellen over a period of ten years as you see in the picture. So I played on what they knew.” Cast along with the trio of Burstyn (Requiem for a Dream), Goldoni (Shadows), and Ladd (Chinatown) are Kris Kristofferson (Blade), Harvey Keitel, Alfred Lutter (The Bad News Bears), Jodie Foster (Panic Room), and Billy Green Bush (Five Easy Pieces).

“It’s nice when you have six hours, like in Scenes from a Marriage [1973], when you can get different aspects of these people,” reflected Martin Scorsese. “But it was a little too ambitious to try to come up with a film in which you had four or five different relationships going on with eight characters.” Working with film editor Marcia Lucas (American Graffiti), the director made significant alterations to the story to achieve a manageable theatrical runtime of 112 minutes. “The first cut of Alice was 3 hours and 16 minutes. There was so much character stuff thrown out; it was a real pity.” The camerawork added to the atmosphere of the movie. “I was trying to capture a number of characters who were really very much in a state of confusion and never really settling. So the camera is always shifting and moving around… When it does stop, they are usually scenes of stability, like in the bathroom scene between Ellen Burstyn and Diane Ladd.” Being a Hollywood studio production, Martin Scorsese had to appease Warner Bros. executives. “We tried to work truthfully as possible within the conventions of the genre. And within the conventions was the studio chief telling me, ‘Give it a happy ending!’ I said, ‘All right.’ But the last line is the kid saying, ‘I can’t breathe.’” Alice Doesn’t’ Live Here Anymore grossed $19 million domestically and at the Oscars the drama won Best Actress (Ellen Burstyn) and contended for Best Supporting Actress (Diane Ladd) and Best Original Screenplay. The BAFTAs awarded Ellen Burstyn with Best Actress and Diane Ladd for Best Supporting Actress and scriptwriter Robert Getchell for Best Screenplay; not to be left out, Martin Scorsese received a Best Director nomination. Ellen Burstyn and Diane Ladd repeated their BAFTAs success at the Golden Globes and Robert Getchell was honoured with a Best Original Screeplay nomination from the Writers Guild of America. At the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, Scorsese contended for the Palme d’Or.

Collaborating with screenwriter Paul Schrader (Affliction) and actor Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese produced a film which would define their careers.

Continue to part two.

For more on the director be sure to visit the Martin Scorsese Fansite and ScorseseFilms.com, along with the BFI documentary A Personal Journey with Scorsese Through American Movies.

Short Film Showcase - What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
Short Film Showcase - The Big Shave

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

After Dark Originals: Horrorfest hits the UK this weekend

The popular US genre festival After Dark Originals: Horrorfest comes to the UK this weekend as Empire Cinemas plays host to seven brand new horror films across the country. Participating Empire cinemas include London's Leicester Square, Basildon, Newcastle, Poole, Sunderland and Swindon, and will give fans the opportunity to get dressed up and participate in exciting in-cinema activities and competitions.

The festival runs from Friday March 4th to Sunday March 6th - take a look at what's on...

Husk (dir. Brett Simmons)

When a murder of crows smashes into their car windshield, a group of young friends are forced to abandon the vehicle, leaving them stranded beside a desolate cornfield. Hidden deep within the cornfield they find a crumbling farmhouse – but they soon discover that instead of a sanctuary, the house is actually the centre of a terrifying supernatural ritual that they are about to become a part of…

Prowl (dir. Patrik Syversen)

Amber dreams of escaping her small town existence and persuades her friends to accompany her to find an apartment in the big city. When their transportation breaks down, she and her friends gratefully accept a ride in the back of a semi. But when the driver refuses to stop and they discover the cargo is hundreds of cartons of blood, they panic. Their panic turns to terror when the truck disgorges them into a dark, abandoned warehouse where blood-thirsty creatures learn to hunt human prey, which, the friends realize, is what they now are...

Seconds Apart (dir. Antonio Negret)

Seth and Jonah are murderous twins who share an evil kinship. Damned from the moment of their births, the brothers possess a gruesome talent for telekinesis – a power they use in the most horrific ways imaginable. As their fellow students meet gory fates, the local law enforcement begins to suspect the twins’ connection to the depraved murders. What started as a jealous rage escalates into a supernatural showdown – pitting brother against brother, evil against evil.

Scream of the Banshee (dir. Steven C. Miller)

When a college Professor opens up a strange, ornate box discovered in the basement of a University, she and her students hear a horrifying scream belonging to that of a bloodthirsty banshee. They think nothing of it, until that scream begins to haunt all that heard it in strange and surreal ways. According to Irish lore, if you hear a Banshee scream, you will die – which is what starts happening to them one by one, as the creature starts taking their lives…

Fertile Ground (dir. Adam Gierasch)

Emily and Nate Weaver leave the city for the rural comfort of Nate’s ancestral home in the country. Once there, Emily is plagued by horrifying visions and haunted by the ghosts inhabiting their isolated new home. When Nate’s behaviour undergoes a strange and fearful metamorphous, Emily fears she might be the latest target in a murderous tradition.

The Task (dir. Simon Fellows)

Something diabolical is taking place on the set of “The Task” a new reality show in which players complete terrifying missions within the confines of an abandoned prison hoping to win a hefty cash prize. As six young students explore their new environment, malicious spirits make their presence known in the most gruesome ways imaginable, unable to escape the labyrinthine prison, the contestants become unwitting pawns caught at the centre of a blood-soaked night of terror.

51 (dir. Jason Connery)

Due to political pressure from the American public, the Air Force has decided to allow two well-known reporters limited access to the most secretive base on the planet. But when one of the base’s "long-term visitors" exploits this unprecedented visit as a chance to liberate himself and his fellow alien captives, Area 51 turns from a secure government base to a horrifying destination of terror.

After Dark Films was formed in 2006 by director/producer Courtney Solomon (An American Haunting, Captivity) and Hong Kong based real estate magnate, Allan Zeman. In November of that year they launched Horrorfest, playing eight never seen before acquired horror films in an annual weekend-long theatrical event in 500 theatres across the US. After Dark expanded its grasp on the horror genre in 2010 creating After Dark Originals, tapping into the vast and innovative talent of directors and filmmakers from Horrorfest’s four years and producing new features themselves.

For more information visit the official site and Facebook page.

Nicholas Hoult lands the lead in zombie romance Warm Bodies

Nicholas Hoult, one of Britain’s best young talents in Hollywood at the moment, has signed on to yet another project. Last month it was announced that the star had been chosen as the lead in Bryan Singer’s take on the Jack and the Beanstalk tale, Jack the Giant Killer.

Now, it has been announced that he has the role of the protagonist in Summit Entertainment’s adaptation of Isaac Marion’s forthcoming novel, Warm Bodies. A script has been written by Jonathan Levine (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, The Wackness) who will also direct.

Warm Bodies tells the story of a zombie known as R, who starts to fall for the girlfriend of one of his victims and stops himself and his undead brethren from attacking her. This zombie apocalypse love story could be an interesting, darkly comic, existential film with hints of Edward Scissorhands, or it could turn out to be Twilight with zombies.

Since starring in About a Boy alongside Hugh Grant, Hoult has appeared in the UK TV series Skins, Tom Ford’s film A Single Man with Colin Firth, and last year’s Clash of the Titans. As well as Jack the Giant Killer, he is due to star in George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road and can next be seen in this summer’s hotly anticipated X-Men prequel X-Men: First Class as a young Hank McCoy/Beast, which opens in the UK on June 2nd.

DVD Review - Cuckoo (2009)

Cuckoo, 2009.

Directed by Richard Bracewell.
Starring Laura Fraser, Richard E. Grant, Antonia Bernath, Adam F. and Tamsin Greig.


SYNOPSIS:

Trapped in a dead-end job and with her relationship falling apart, a young woman finds herself questioning her grip on reality and turns to her boss for support, but he has a dark secret of his own.


Cuckoo is a thriller that tries to play on the fact that a professor gradually becomes more obsessed with his star pupil. Unfortunately for me I didn’t believe in that element of the story and if I’m honest I think the focus of the plot was shifted too much for the film to be enjoyable.

One of the main problems I personally had with the film was that the characters were very one dimensional. They each had problems and issues but I neither believed or cared about any of them. Richard E. Grant is a well respected actor but I wasn’t convinced with his performance in this movie.

I also thought the film was very slow paced. It reminded me of Andrea Arnold’s film Red Road in the fact that I was bored senseless while watching it. I was frustrated by Red Road, not because of how dull it was but because it was critically acclaimed and won awards. Thankfully this wasn’t the case with the this film too.

Having struggled to find the main focus of the story of this movie (and there were a number to choose from, such as a relationship break up, a sibling relationship and the apparent main plot) it seems that all synopsis of this film I’ve read point to the obsession between Richard E. Grant’s professor and his model student Polly (Laura Fraser). I didn’t pick up on this element of the narrative until the final act when Polly herself discovers her Professor's problem so I feel that the story should have focused on this a lot more, which would also entice the audience to feel more involved in the drama of a potentially very interesting issue. One of the best films I have seen that focuses on unhealthy obsession is One Hour Photo - this film could learn a lot from that movie.

Overall I would say I’m disappointed with the way the narratives were delivered in this film as they do have a lot of potential. Maybe next time they should be portrayed a way that is not so mind-numbingly boring.

Jason Oliver

Movie Review Archive

Will Smith to star in biblical tale Joe

Movie star Will Smith hasn’t starred in a film since his 2008 offerings Hancock and Seven Pounds but he seems set to make a comeback. Currently filming Men in Black III, he is now attached to the forthcoming project Joe.

The film is an updated version of the biblical story of Job, written by screenwriting duo Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson (The Fighter) who have sold the script to Sony Pictures and Will Smith’s production company Overbrook Entertainment. The writers are said to be keen to sign David O. Russell as director (who received an Oscar nomination for The Fighter) and Smith is to star as the protagonist.

The Book of Job in the bible tells of Satan being granted God’s permission to test Job’s faith and loyalty. Job loses his family, wealth and health but remains devoted to God even though others insist his suffering is punishment for his sins. Job questions God and learns valuable lessons before his health, happiness and prosperity are restored.

Despite his three year break from starring in films, Will Smith has been keeping busy. He has produced films like The Karate Kid for his son Jaden and has been looking into opportunities for his daughter Willow, including the proposed remake of the musical Annie. This year we will see him return to our screens, reprising his popular role as Agent J in the third Men in Black film, which is due for release on May 23rd here in the UK.

Gnomeo and Juliet reclaims the UK box office crown

UK box office top ten and analysis for the weekend of Friday 25th - Sunday 27th February 2011.

The half-term school holidays meant that it was a bumper weekend for family films at the UK box office; leading the way was CG-animation Gnomeo and Juliet, which leapfrogged the Simon Pegg / Nick Frost comedy Paul to reclaim the number one spot in its third weekend, banking £2.5m to push its cumulative gross to £12.9m. Meanwhile Paul dropped over 60% from last weekend's hefty opening, adding another £2.1m to take second place ahead of D.J. Caruso's I Am Number Four, the highest-placed newcomer in third with £1.6m (including two days of preview screenings).

Along with I Am Number Four two other new releases placed in the chart, the highest of which was rom-com No Strings Attached, which only manages to claim eighth despite a decent return of £978k. Brit comedy sequel West is West also enjoyed a solid opening of £758k in tenth, but less fortunate was Drive Angry 3D, with the Nicolas Cage actioner placing outside of the top ten with takings of £651k.

This week's chart also saw a couple of films moving up the table with Yogi Bear and Tangled climbing two places apiece to fourth and fifth, while Best Picture winner The King's Speech fell three places but could rebound well next time out in the wake of its Oscar glory. Other films looking less likely to halt their declines are Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (down two to seventh) and the Coen brothers' True Grit (tumbling five to ninth).

Number one this time last year: Avatar

Pos.	Film	Weekend Gross	Week	Total UK Gross
1	Gnomeo and Juliet	£2,502,806	3	£12,901,447
2	Paul	£2,073,462	2	£10,110,433
3	I Am Number Four	£1,682,523	1	£1,682,523
4	Yogi Bear	£1,465,863	3	£7,635,574
5	Tangled	£1,352,104	5	£19,130,723
6	The King's Speech	£1,207,963	8	£39,850,419
7	Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son	£993,485	2	£4,080,907
8	No Strings Attached	£978,974	1	£978,974
9	True Grit	£862,260	3	£6,426,424
10	West is West	£758,226	1	£758,226

Incoming...

The big release this coming Friday is Gore Verbinski's Rango (cert. PG), the first CG-animation from Industrial Light & Magic which features the voice talents of Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher and Bill Nighy. Meanwhile alternatives include Philip K. Dick adaptation The Adjustment Bureau (cert. 12A) starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, action-thriller Unknown (cert. 12A) with Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger and January Jones, and Ironclad (cert. 15), a medieval actioner featuring James Purefoy, Paul Giamatti, Brian Cox and Jason Flemyng.

U.K. Box Office Archive