Box Office Sabermetrics is a weekly column that will attempt to apply the statistical analysis Sabermetrics, used in Baseball, to the box office results each weekend. One of my favorite books, and favorite movies of the decade, is Moneyball. Telling the story of how A’s General Manager Billy Beane and his front office used statistical …
‘Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation’ continues to up the ante for spectacular set pieces. More importantly, this is the fourth script penned for Tom Cruise by McQuarrie, who understands how to maximize Cruise’s particular skill set. Their collaboration, along with stunning cinematography and a solid supporting cast, makes this, arguably, the most entertaining entry in the series.
This Friday, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation will be released. It’s the fifth film in the iconic franchise, but sadly stands as only the third film of its director Christopher McQuarrie in 15 years since he got behind the camera. That’s a real shame, because Christopher McQuarrie is Hollywood’s best-kept secret when he really should …
Believe it or not, it’s not easy being Tom Cruise. Over the weekend, Tom Cruise’s latest big-budget scifi-actioner Edge of Tomorrow opened. To be polite, the box office returns left this $178 million picture well over the edge of being a box-office bomb with just over $29 million domestically, coming in 3rd place. In the …
Jack the Giant Slayer Directed by Bryan Singer Written by Darren Lemke, Christopher McQuarrie, and Dan Studney USA, 2013 Perhaps it’s fitting that a literal tug of war is pivotal in Jack the Giant Slayer, a large-scale blockbuster retelling of the famous fairy tale about Jack and the magical beanstalk. The film itself appears to …
Jack Reacher Written for the screen and directed by Christopher McQuarrie USA, 2012 Jack Reacher opens with a point-of-view sniper sequence in which a lone gunman causes panic, killing multiple citizens from afar. This impressive, tense scene, as well as a few immediately following it, adds up to a completely dialogue-free opening stretch of roughly …