BOX OFFICE REPORT: 22 JUMP STREET GETS JUMP START ON DRAGON 2

Two major comedy sequels opened over the weekend, with expectations as to each film's individual success reversed between the two. Despite two such high profile openers, box office was nevertheless down on the same weekend last year, when Man of Steel and This Is the End proved a more compelling pair for audiences.

1) 22 Jump Street ($57,071,445)

This is a terrific improvement on 21 Jump Street, with the move to a summer release resulting in a 57% increase in opening weekend gross. Comedies, particularly well-received ones like this, tend to hold fairly well, though signs are that this may take a tumble: Thursday evening earnings placed the film in line for an opening around $80 million, while Friday earnings had it at around $67 million. It will certainly outgross its predecessor, however.

2) How to Train Your Dragon 2 ($49,451,322)

Chalk this disappointment down to the strong recent performance of Maleficent and to action-focused marketing, never a good ploy for animation. Only a mild improvement over the first Dragon, this small gain far from represents the goodwill toward DreamWorks' tentpole franchise, nor the positive responses to this sequel. If this holds up like its predecessor, it ought to end up the summer's highest grosser, as expected, though not by the margin many predicted. It won't, however, despite the lack of competition over the coming weeks, due to its summer release (the first film opened in March 2010). Still, with this moderate take and an A Cinemascore, this will likely end up topping 22 Jump Street when both films close.

3) Maleficent ($18,504,997)

4) Edge of Tomorrow ($16,527,215)

5) The Fault in Our Stars ($14,791,933)

6) X-Men: Days of Future Past ($9,816,449)

7) Godzilla ($3,311,185)

8) A Million Ways to Die in the West ($3,246,400)

9) Neighbours ($2,369,250)

10) Chef ($2,187,526)

FIRST IMAGES FROM JURASSIC WORLD

Because it can't be just a park any more. It has to be a fucking world. We need sequels! We need reboots! We need spinoffs!

REVIEW - OCULUS (MIKE FLANAGAN)

The most effective horror movies tend not to be the ones which make us fear the other, nor the ones which make us fear our environment. They're the ones which make us fear ourselves. The niftiest thing about Oculus' conceit is how it plays on the classic horror device of the protagonist questioning their frame of mind. Here, though, it's not fatigue nor alcohol nor even the most common excuse, insanity, but the very element of the film that also serves as its central force of evil. In condensing these two components into one, Mike Flanagan has devised a film with a singularly impressive structure - it's thoroughly dense, with storylines from separate time periods occurring simultaneously, strategies, reasons and consequences explicated, sometimes at length, yet straightforward in its outcome and direct in its impact. Flanagan reverses the standard order of similar films, establishing a physical space that's plain and simple, fertile ground on which to grow a more complex psychological space. This is where he excels, exploiting the vast capabilities of the mind to interpret, to manipulate and to be manipulated. As seen through the experiences of two individuals, both past and present, both in real time and in recollection, influenced both by memory and by medicine, Flanagan is able to explore an immense amount of possibilities in narrative structure. In keeping us aware of our lack of awareness, he also keeps us on edge throughout, without ever needing to deceive us; in keeping his characters in the same state, he makes them much more likably level-headed than most horror heroes, important if we're to care about their cause, and we do. In the level of technical detail devoted to it, Oculus is an extremely admirable endeavour; in that it is, as aforementioned, straightforward in its outcome, it's less so. Mike Flanagan has taken a simple scenario and trussed it right up, and to spectacular ends, but the function of the film as a whole remains formulaic. He evinces excellent performances from his young actors, which is one among many reasons why Oculus' flashbacks are stronger than its present-day scenes, but their adult counterparts are less convincing.

REVIEW - BELLE (AMMA ASANTE)

A costume drama that manages to remain stiff, rather than just stately, despite the passion it manufactures from its historical setting. This gravely didactic film is directed by Amma Asante with alternate delicacy and vulgarity, though she elicits some nice emotive moments from Belle's more animated passages. The film is, alas, blighted with a heinous screenplay, insistent on undercutting each of Asante's pleasingly empathetic directorial touches with some clumsy declaration that frequently renders Belle a particularly glossy, particularly improbable, history lesson. This only makes sense in the guise of melodrama, a genre which Asante seems reluctant to court yet unable to resist. Like her subject, she is bound to convention, but willing to acquiesce to impropriety in the name of love. That'd be a worthy pursuit were it not for the laughable casting and ponderous plotting, which sees this intelligent, inspiring heroine's story largely reduced to a romantic dilemma between two square-jawed hunks. All in all, it's the kind of approach that belittles its characters and its audience equally, while we sense that a more complex story, a more ambiguous one yet actually sturdier for that, lies beneath all this bathetic hyperbole. Asante does have a natural feel for the story's emotional landscape, and though the intention and the conclusion alike may stink of crass Hollywood cosiness, she's able to induce a sizeable degree of care and concern in her viewers, not least due to able performances from her accomplished ensemble of actors. Handsome production values are exploited with a deal more sense and sensitivity than in many similar period films. Would that I could comment similarly on the film's themes, which, though noble, are nonetheless tiresome the umpteenth time over.

REVIEW - THE FACE OF LOVE (ARIE POSIN)

Among a generous number of classic moments in Arie Posin's The Face of Love is the unforgettable sight of Annette Bening's stunt double bounding into an oncoming wave on the Mexico shore, literally throwing herself at the barrage of mediocrity heading her direction. She displays a rousing abandon that ought to have been employed elsewhere in this tepid romantic drama, which is sustained solely by its sensitive lead actors, and the occasional fit of cinematic hysteria, as aforementioned. Posin dials back on the overblown suburban ennui he explored in his debut, The Chumscrubber, though not nearly enough, and betrays only that he remains inexplicably fascinated by these trite theatricalities, and also with his own case of artistic arrogance. The sub-Hitchcockian vibe is mercilessly exploited by a shrill orchestral score, while Posin's efforts toward Douglas Sirk style melodrama lack care for his characters. Instead, he lavishes care on the thick layers of superficial sheen he applies to The Face of Love, with its chic, modern interiors and painfully blunt allusions to better filmmakers (actual posters for Hitchcock and Tarkovsky films appear at one point). How nauseatingly indulgent of a director to fawn over his film's vapid visual design, when it could have been utilised as a narrative device of enormous capabilities. As a widow obsessed with her dead husband's doppelganger, Annette Bening is marvellous, excavating from her thinly-written role a method behind her madness, a reason for every action and emotion, no matter how difficult, how varied nor how numerous. She and Ed Harris have strong chemistry, against all odds, since I doubt I could find a trace of inspiration in Posin's and Matthew McDuffie's limp screenplay.

FIRST TRAILER AND POSTER FOR ALEJANDRO GONZALEZ INARRITU'S BIRDMAN

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu applies his mildly-magical realism to dark comedy, with results that look dazzling in this smartly-packaged trailer. The filmmaking style, with Emmanuel Lubezki doing the photography, is what immediately attracts you, but I find myself more enthused now about the film's performances. Michael Keaton looks excellent, and the brief glimpses we get of his co-stars, such as Edward Norton and Naomi Watts, look very promising too. If the reviews are good, awards success beckons for Fox Searchlight's big 2014 Oscar hopeful, which comes out in the US on the 17th of October, and in the UK on the 2nd of January 2015.

FIRST FULL TRAILER FOR DREAMWORKS' HOME

DreamWorks is seemingly planning a bizarre international rollout strategy for Home, the story of a girl who meets a member of a nomadic alien race on Earth. It's unclear exactly what they've got in mind for the film release-wise, which is the first studio animated film to feature a black female in the lead role. Here's the trailer.

A CO-DIRECTOR FOR ANDREW STANTON ON FINDING DORY

I wasn't quite as enamoured with what Andrew Stanton did on Finding Nemo as most, and was even more enamoured with what he did on WALL-E than most! Then he made John Carter, and so Pixar has reigned him back in for a fucking sequel. Like many of that studio's features, this one will be co-directed. Angus MacLane, who has helmed popular shorts for Pixar such as Toy Story of Terror and BURN-E, will join Stanton at the helm. It's due to be released in the summer of 2016.

OBIT - RUBY DEE

One of the icons of African-American cinema and of American cinema as a whole, actor Ruby Dee has died. She was aged 91 when she passed away peacefully in her sleep. An acclaimed and groundbreaking actor on stage, in film and on TV, Dee broke through barriers for black women in the entertainment industry, including prominent work in theatre as a renowned Shakespearean performer. The star of many classic films, she will be remembered for her powerful turns in A Raisin in the Sun, Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever and her SAG award-winning role in American Gangster. Additionally, she and her late husband Ossie Davis, with whom she was married for 56 years until his death in 2005, were key figures in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, standing alongside Martin Luther King at the 1963 March on Washington, and also participating in social causes such as opposing the Vietnam War and South African apartheid. She leaves behind three children, Guy, Nora and Hasna.

FULL TRAILER FOR THE BOXTROLLS

Laika Entertainment is one of the most trustworthy animation companies in the worldwide movie industry. Known principally for Corpse Bride, Coraline and ParaNorman, their latest feature is The Boxtrolls, featuring the voices of Elle Fanning, Isaac Hempstead Wright and Ben Kingsley. It will be released in the British Isles on the 11th of September and in North America on the 26th, because they didn't wanna dampen its opening by releasing it on my bday natch. I mean, who'd go?