As I predicted, Knocked Up retained its Power Rankings crown this past weekend. Although Ocean’s Thirteen ruled the box office and got decent reviews, it was no match for the stellar notices and the strong overall and per-screen performances that buoyed Judd Apatow’s comedy. And with the Fantastic Four sequel the biggest thing opening this weekend, another Knocked Up victory is all but inevitable.
Box Office Power Rankings: June 8-10
(Rank) Movie (last week; box office, per-screen, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic: total)
(1) Knocked Up (1; 8, 9, 10, 10: 37)
(2) Ocean’s Thirteen (-; 10, 10, 7, 7: 34)
(3) Surf’s Up (-; 7, 7, 8, 8: 30)
(4) Waitress (2; 2, 4, 9, 9: 24)
(5) Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (3; 9, 8, 2, 3: 22)
(6) Shrek the Third (6; 6, 6, 1, 4: 17)
(7) Spider-Man 3 (4; 3, 2, 5, 5: 15)
(7) Hostel: Part II (-; 5, 5, 3, 2: 15)
(9) Disturbia (8; 1, 1, 6, 6: 14)
(10) Mr. Brooks (7; 4, 3, 4, 1: 12)
Methodology
Culture Snob’s Box Office Power Rankings balance box office and critical reception to create a better measure of a movie’s overall performance against its peers.
The weekly rankings cover the 10 top-grossing movies in the United States for the previous weekend. We assign equal weight to box office and critical opinion, with each having two components. The measures are: box-office gross, per-screen average, Rotten Tomatoes score, and Metacritic score.
Why those four? Box-office gross basically measures the number of people who saw a movie in a given weekend. Per-screen average corrects for blockbuster-wannabes that flood the market with prints, and gives limited-release movies a fighting chance. Rotten Tomatoes measures critical opinion in a binary way. And Metacritic gives a better sense of critics’ enthusiasm (or bile) for a movie.
For each of the four measures, the movies are ranked and assigned points (10 for the best performer, one for the worst). Finally, those points are added up, with a maximum score of 40 and a minimum score of four.
