Arrival is here to take your money, it’s not Almost Christmas, Shut In gets shut out, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk to the bank, and Other Box Office News.

Well, that was a fucking week, wasn’t it?  Just… Christ, how are you supposed to put it into words and do it adequate justice?  It’s a sentiment that I am pretty sure all of us have experienced to some degree this past week, just a sort of crushing bewildered horror.  Reality blows right now, so the parts of America that weren’t organising mass protests and demonstrations, or condemning said protests whilst insisting we give those who have spent the past 18 months preaching that anybody who is not a cis White hetero man doesn’t deserve to exist a chance to see if they really do mean the horrifying rhetoric they’ve been spouting… those parts of America not doing any of that stuff were at the cinema, begging for some kind of escape from the incoming existential apocalypse.

Holding firm at the top spot was, what else, Doctor Strange with a drop of only 49% between weekends.  In fact, possibly because people would now like some semblance of stability in this bleak uncertain time, any holdovers from previous weeks actually did tremendously, with only one film in the Top 10 dropping more than 50% – Boo! A Madea Halloween, since another, totally different seasonal Black ensemble comedy dropped this week and we all know that only one of those can exist at a time, otherwise there would be total chaos.  I am, of course, referring to Almost Christmas, which is totally not too early a release because the John Lewis Christmas ad first premiered this past week so Christmas is definitely happening right now in the middle of November.  Anyways, perhaps as a result of that and maybe also because Black people were too busy protesting a racist demagogue and his White supremacist party, Almost Christmas was one of the weekend’s few underperformers, closing out the weekend in fourth with $15.5 million.

But enough delaying the news you really care about.  You’re curious as to how EuropaCorp’s horror-thriller Shut In did, aren’t you?  I can tell, it’s the kind of big ticket name-brand movie with a massive twist that just demands the attention!  Well, in a shocking turn of events, the film that’s been kicking around in Release Purgatory for ages, has had no marketing, and looks like (and is by all accounts) absolute shite bombed majorly!  Shut In could only make $3.7 million for seventh place, the weekend’s only real full-on failure.  Ha, and ha!  Meanwhile, some little film called Arrival that’s not worth talking about in great detail opened in third with $24 million and the second-biggest per-screen average in the Top 10 this weekend.  But, like I said, who cares about Denis Villeneuve, eh?  It’s not like that guy’s going places!

In Limited Release Land, things are really starting to heat up as the big wannabe Awards Season heavy-hitters prep their attempts to distract us from the fact that we are almost definitely going to suffer through a full-on reboot of The Great Depression at some point in the next four years where many people are going to die.  …  …  …hey, everybody!  Ang Lee’s back!  And he’s brought gimmicky bullshit that very few people will be able to personally experience and almost definitely won’t be able to distract from failures in storytelling and narrative!  Woo?  The 120fps 4K 3D version of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk debuted in, where else, New York and Los Angeles this weekend to sell-out shows before expanding next week to cinemas that will be showing the crummy standard-def version cos cinemas ain’t made of money!  As for this weekend, though, it’s a roaring success, pulling in $120,000 from its 2 theatres.  Elsewhere, Paul Verhoeven’s long-overdue return with the outstanding Elle got its debut in 2 similar theatres and banked $56,012, whilst Jeff Nichols’ Loving expanded to 46 screens and earned a very strong $532,000 for a per-screen average of $11,565.

If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to refrain from making any political gags involving either of those two movies.  Great.

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Now that was a proper introduction for this Full List.

US Box Office Results: Friday 11th November 2016 – Sunday 13th November 2016

1] Doctor Strange

$43,032,000 / $153,014,169

For the record, I am super happy that I really like Doctor Strange cos now I don’t have to be That Guy who puts all of the year’s superhero movies on his Bottom 10 list whilst ranting and raving about the genre’s many failings and stagnation like the out-of-touch snobby elder film critic who doesn’t think a film’s worth his time unless there are at least 30 combined minutes of somebody staring pensively out of a window for no reason in particular.  Everybody wins!

2] Trolls

$35,050,000 / $94,014,315

In case you missed it, or forgot about it, due to this black hole of a past week, my review of Trolls did actually go live last Tuesday.  Ugh, of course the first DreamWorks film I properly do not like and is really bad in an age is the one that makes a crap tonne at the box office.  Heaven forbid people actually went and saw Penguins of Madagascar or anything!

3] Arrival

$24,000,000 / NEW

You can get my thoughts on this back from the London Film Festival piece featuring it because, as proven when I saw it again on Friday and this time with Lucy, they haven’t changed one bit.  What a beautiful, astonishing, uplifting, life-affirming film.  See it immediately.  No snark, just see it immediately.

4] Almost Christmas

$15,564,000 / NEW

In similarly loose ideas of when seasonal events are supposed to start, Amazon UK are running their Black Friday sales from now through to next Friday.  Any other week, this would be the most aggravating thing to happen, but it doesn’t even rank in the Top 20 of this one.

5] Hacksaw Ridge

$10,775,000 / $32,264,321

Since I have got absolutely nothing for this, allow me to use this space to vent over my inability to sleep decently since I started taking these anti-depressants.  I don’t sleep well anyway, but now I’m sleeping less than six hours a night, in a really awful restless manner, and am then endlessly tired and feel like shit for the following day.  I also can’t stop shitting or farting, too.  If this keeps up, I’m just gonna pass my state off to other people as an elaborate cosplay of Daniel Radcliffe in Swiss Army Man.  Yes, that also includes the- *moves right along*

6] The Accountant

$4,570,000 / $77,725,755

I would like Anna Kendrick’s new book.  Somebody buy me Anna Kendrick’s new book.  Please.

7] Shut In

$3,700,000 / NEW

The twist for this is super amazingly stupid in the most glorious of Bad Movie ways, dear God!  I read it on The AV Club’s comment threads for their review and… hoo, boy!  Maybe we should just retire The Black List for good.  Save a lot of studios and a lot of moviegoers a lot of time, cash, and trouble.

8] Boo! A Madea Halloween

$3,550,000 / $70,408,079

Now, sure, that’s the biggest drop in the Top 10, however I highly doubt Tyler Perry is particularly bothered by that since this is, by far, his second highest-earning movie as a director ever, behind only Madea Goes to Jail.  But, yeah, I’m sure he’s weeping profusely into his fat stacks right about now.

9] Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

$3,325,000 / $54,586,711

And never come back, ya hear!

10] Inferno

$3,250,000 / $31,582,015

…yep.  Even with the world being such a miserable, hateful Hell-scape right now in such a way as to make one wonder whether it’s even possible to laugh anymore, everything to do with this is still funny.  Glad there’s that constant.

Dropped Out: Ouija: Origin of Evil, The Girl on the Train, Miss Peregrine’s School for Peculiar Children

Callie Petch thought they had you on hold.