Nearly a year after its international premiere at Cannes, My Brother is an Only Child (ThinkFilm) opened at the top of the indie weekend box office returns, according to Box Office Mojo. Playing at just one theater in Manhattan, the film grossed $10,500. My Brother "follows two brothers through years of Italian history, with their personal and political travails echoing down the years," Cinematical's James Rocchi wrote last year. "Even with it's merits as a light-but-sentimental story of family in 1960's Italy, it also reminded me of the soaring, sweeping, astonishing La Meglio Gioventù (The Best of Youth) -- and wound up completely winning me over." The film will roll out to other cities over the next three weeks, per the distributor's web site.Immigration family tale Under the Same Moon (Fox Searchlight / The Weinstein Co.) continues to perform well, earning $5,771 per screen as it expanded to 390 theaters in its second week. Leonard Klady at Movie City News commented that the film is "playing in a mix of Hispanic, art and mainstream locations but with rare exception is working best in the former venues." Also in its second week, Love Songs (IFC), Christophe Honoré's French-language modern musical, held onto most of its audience, averaging $6,800 at two Manhattan theaters.
Two other movie had less success than perhaps was anticipated. Bank heist flick Flawless (Magnolia), starring Demi Moore and Michael Caine, opened at 35 locations and earned an average of $5,142 at each. Our own Eric D. Snider found it to be "generally satisfying." French gold-digger amusement Priceless (Samuel Goldwyn), starring Audrey Tautou, followed close behind, with a per-screen average of $4,875 in 24 engagements. We don't have a review of that one, but Erik Davis wrote about the poster, in which Ms. Tautou looks quite scrumptious.
Mr. Klady also has figures for other debuting pictures which scratched out very decent returns in single engagements: documentary Hats Off (Abramorama) made $5,720, while mockumentary American Zombie (Cinema Libre) earned $3,650. The latter was described as "entertaining but inconsistent" by our own Jette Kernion when she saw it at SXSW last year.
