The longest summer movie season ever unofficially kicks off today with the release of the critically lauded Sin City. Although it scores a healthy 75% positive rating at rottentomatoes.com, its real strength lies in not just positive but often stellar reviews it’s receiving from many mainstream critics. Roger Ebert has given it four stars, and calls it a work of “cinematic genius.” Three and a half and four star reviews for the film abound. It’ll be interesting to see just how good this one does.
The similarly well-reviewed romantic comedy for adults The Upside of Anger goes wide this week. It’s done well in limited release, and don’t underestimate Kevin Costner’s appeal when he’s in the right part. I don’t think anyone expects this to shatter box office records, but it should post healthy numbers.
Wednesday saw the mid-week release of Beauty Shop, a spin-off of the popular Barbershop movies. Queen Latifah headlines, and given the success of such recent ‘urban’ (i.e., black-skewing) titles as Diary of a Mad Black Woman, expect this one to post decent numbers and then clean up on home video.
