AMERICANS ARE MAKING A STATEMENT – AT 11:06 A.M. ET:  "American Sniper" is turning into a historic movie phenomenon.  From AP:

LOS ANGELES (AP) — “American Sniper” hit the mark with moviegoers again.

The military drama starring Bradley Cooper as Navy SEAL marksman Chris Kyle topped the box office for a second weekend in a row with $64.4 million in first place, according to studio estimates Sunday.

“American Sniper” is up for six Academy Awards, including best picture and best actor for Cooper. The total haul for the Warner Bros. film now stands at $200.1 million.

“We’ve never quite seen anything like this at this time of year,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at box-office tracker Rentrak. “‘American Sniper’ is helping to propel the box office, which is already 9.3 percent ahead of the same time last year.”

The film, directed by Clint Eastwood, already broke box-office records when it expanded to wide release last weekend, easily surpassing “Avatar” to become the biggest January opening for a movie and immediately becoming the top grosser among best-picture Oscar nominees.

In a distant second place, the saucy Universal thriller “The Boy Next Door” featuring Jennifer Lopez as a teacher who engages in an affair with a younger man played by Ryan Guzman, debuted with $15 million.

COMMENT:  I'm delighted to see a patriotic film become so popular.  We still have in America a population that respects the soldier and what he (or she) does for us. 

I had a chance over the weekend to see "Still Alice" on disk.  (As a Writers Guild member I get the top films sent to me each year.  Members can then vote on awards.)  The movie deals with a relatively young college professor facing Alzheimer's disease.  The performance by Julianne Moore, who's been nominated for an Oscar, is superb.  The movie is worth seeing for that alone.  In the end, Moore's performance is life-affirming rather than depressing.

I also recommend "The Imitation Game," which is the story of Alan Turing, the British scientist and mathematician who was one of the inventors of modern computing, and who was instrumental in breaking the Nazi Enigma code.  Terrific story, and a great performance by Benedict Cumberbatch (yes, that's his name).  One fine thing about the movie is that it explains computing in ways that a layman can easily understand.  Although the action takes place in the early 1940s, you can feel yourself Googling while watching the film.

January 26, 2015