Chris Curtis

Everybody's Fine

Oh, how we love New Moon

When the original Twilight movie arrived in the UK last December, it opened with a decent £2.51m – not a bad number, considering Stephenie Meyer's books had yet to achieve blockbuster status. But it was far, far behind the US debut figure for the picture: $69.6m (£42.1m).

What a difference a year makes. With the first Twilight film a huge phenomenon on DVD, and the Meyer books belatedly reaching a wide UK readership, Edward Cullen and Bella Swan have ascended to iconic characters here, and Britain has succumbed to R-Pattz mania. Now sequel New Moon has debuted in the UK with £11.68m, which is a whopping 4.6 times the opening weekend of the original film. In three days, New Moon has already taken more money at British cinemas than Twilight did in its lifetime.

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Absolutely extraordinary and easily arriving in the top 5 movies of the year. How do you begin to describe this film? Show in black and white, in German, over two and half hours long and depicting a small village on the eve of World War 1.... that's enough perhaps to put some off. But this is a gem from the master Haneke. It'll make you uncomfortable and it certainly won't be predictable, but there's nothing better out in cinemas right now.

Reviews here and here.

Main site and trailer here.

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