Entertainment blogging from The Oklahoman's Brandy McDonnell

Box office report for April 15, 2013: “42″ hits a home run, “To the Wonder” debuts modestly

The Jackie Robinson biopic “42″ took in $27.3 million to claim the weekend box-office championship domestically, according to the Associated Press.

Released by Warner Bros., “42″ easily beat the domestic start of an established franchise in “Scary Movie 5.” The Weinstein Co. sequel opened in second-place with $15.2 million, the smallest debut for the horror-comedy series.

Three of the previous four “Scary Movie” installments had debuts of $40 million or more, according to the AP.

On the other hand, “42″ outdid the usual expectations for baseball movies, which usually do modest business at best. Box-office trackers had expected “42″ to pull in less than $20 million.

The film stars Chadwick Boseman as Robinson and Harrison Ford as Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey, who brought No. 42 onto the team in 1947 as Major Leagues Baseball’s first black player. Choctaw native Ryan Merriman co-stars as Dodgers right fielder Dixie Walker, who opposed Robinson joining the team.

The success of the film was even sweeter since today was Jackie Robinson Day, when all big-leaguers wear No. 42 in his honor to mark his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947.

To read my interview with Merriman, click here. To read my review of “42,” click here.

The previous weekend’s top draw, Sony’s horror remake “Evil Dead,” tumbled to No. 5 with $9.5 million, raising its domestic haul to $41.5 million.

In limited release, Bartlesville-bred director Terrence Malick’s drama “To the Wonder” had a modest start, taking in $130,000 in 18 theaters for an average of $7,222 a cinema. That compares to a $9,074 average in 3,003 theaters for “42.”

Filmed in Bartlesville, Pawhuska, Tulsa and France, “To the Wonder” stars Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem in a dreamlike, poetic musing on love.

To read my review of “The the Wonder,” click here.

The film opens April 26 at Tulsa’s Circle Cinema, 10 S Lewis Ave, and May 9 at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive.

1. “42,” $27.3 million.

2. “Scary Movie 5,” $15.2 million ($3.5 million international).

3. “The Croods,” $13.2 million ($25.5 million international).

4. “G.I. Joe: Retaliation,” $10.8 million ($15.6 million international).

5. “Evil Dead,” $9.5 million ($2.9 million international).

6. “Jurassic Park” in 3-D, $8.8 million ($1.3 million international).

7. “Olympus Has Fallen,” $7.3 million.

8. “Oz the Great and Powerful,” $4.9 million ($5.2 million international).

9. “Tyler Perry’s Temptation,” $4.5 million.

10. “The Place Beyond the Pines,” $4.1 million ($2.2 million international).

-BAM

Movie review: “To the Wonder”

Oklahoma-bred auteur Terrence Malick offers up a wondrous cinematic poem that ruminates on the nature of love with “To the Wonder.”

The rare truly experimental art filmmaker to gain mainstream acclaim, the famously mysterious Malick, 69, grew up in Bartlesville, and he filmed “To the Wonder” in and around his hometown, Pawhuska and Tulsa, as well as in France. Per the norm for Malick, it is largely a visual experience, and Oklahoma’s natural beauty, especially the bison herds roaming the golden plain of Pawhuska’s Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, are every bit as beguiling as some of France’s best-known landmarks.

While the film has an autobiographical bent — Malick was once married to a Frenchwoman who moved with him to the United States, where their union ultimately fell apart — “To the Wonder” mulls over universal themes.

But Malick maintains his signature esoteric post-narrative style with the romantic drama. There’s not much story and even less dialogue, leaving it to cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s immersive imagery as well as the movie’s entrancing score, which melds Tchaikovsky, Haydn and Wagner with Hanan Townshend’s original music and nature’s own soundtrack of moaning winds and whooshing tides, to evoke much of the emotion.

Ben Affleck ostensibly plays the main character but utters no more than 20 words in the two-hour runtime, and half of those are muffled. His co-stars Olga Kurylenko and Javier Bardem do most of the talking via rather lofty voiceovers.

“Newborn. I open my eyes. I melt. Into the eternal night. A spark. You got me out of the darkness. You gathered me up from earth. You’ve brought me back to life,” Kurylenko intones in the opening moments, setting the scene for Malick’s meditative musings while seemingly pleading with viewers to zero out their expectations.

Admittedly, I’ve not always been open to the director’s cinematic meanderings, but “To the Wonder” delves into a topic I find fascinating: romantic love in the context of the mundane.

After all, it’s easy to fall and feel transcendentally in love amid the ancient monastery and vast beaches of Mont Saint-Michel, the island off Normandy, France, considered “The Wonder of the Western World.” That’s where we first meet Neil (Affleck), a taciturn American tourist who has embarked on a passionate affair with Marina (Kurylenko), an Eastern European single mother living in Paris.

Since he also has an effortless camaraderie with Marina’s 10-year-old daughter Tatiana (Tatiana Chiline), Neil invites them to come and live with him in Bartlesville. But the idyllic love that came so easily while on holiday becomes much harder to hold once it is uprooted to a subdivision in a strange land where Marina and Tatiana have no connection besides the inscrutable Neil.

The perpetually muted Neil doesn’t really live in his sparsely furnished suburban home. His passion, pale and understated as it is, apparently resides in his work as an environmental inspector, determinedly slogging around dreary oilfield sites and the dismal neighborhoods around them.

Marina finds some solace worshipping in the sparkling new Catholic church, where Father Quintana’s (Bardem) faith feels old and uninspired. The priest dutifully tends the poor, sick and imprisoned while desperately struggling and praying to feel a renewed connection to God.

As his relationship with Marina and her daughter falters, Neil reconnects with a bright old flame, Jane (Rachel McAdams), a flaxen-haired rancher who has recently been widowed. But he again finds it difficult to keep the hot spark of new love kindled.

Like Marina’s repeated free-spirited spins through the green and golden Oklahoma grasslands, love can be soul-altering, if it can survive the monotony of life.

On Friday, “To the Wonder” opens in select theaters and becomes available via video on demand. It will be screened at 7 and 10 p.m. Friday night at the Bartlesville Community Center. The film opens April 26 at Tulsa’s Circle Cinema and May 9 at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.

The Oklahoma-made film “To the Wonder” opens in select theaters and becomes available on video on demand Friday.

In Bartlesville: The film is showing at 7 and 10 p.m. Friday at the Bartlesville Community Center, 300 SE Adams Blvd. Information: www.bartlesvillecommunitycenter.com.

In Tulsa: The film opens April 26 at Tulsa’s Circle Cinema, 10 S Lewis Ave. Information: www.circlecinema.com.

In Oklahoma City: It opens May 9 at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive. Information: www.okcmoa.com.

— BAM

Video: New clip and trailer for “To the Wonder”

Check out the new clip and trailer for “To the Wonder,” a film directed and written by elusive “The Tree of Life” helmer Terrence Malick, who has Bartlesville ties.

Filmed in and around Bartlesville, Pawhuska and Tulsa as well as Mont Saint-Michel, Manche, France, “To the Wonder” began principal photography in the fall of 2010. It stars Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Olga Kurylenko and Javier Bardem.

The romantic drama tells the story of Marina (Kurylenko) and Neil (Affleck), who meet in France and move to Oklahoma to start a life together, where problems soon arise. While Marina makes the acquaintance of a priest and fellow exile (Bardem), who is struggling with his vocation, Neil renews a relationship with a childhood sweetheart, Jane (McAdams).

As previously reported, Malick’s film made its world premiere at the 2012 Venice Film Festival, followed shortly by its North American premiere at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival in September. It is due in theaters April 12.

A Magnolia Pictures release, “To the Wonder” was produced utilizing the 37 percent Oklahoma Film Enhancement Rebate Program administered by the Oklahoma Film & Music Office.

-BAM