The real weekend box office champ

If you read the conventional news stories, you will be told that Escape to Witch Mountain was the biggest box office winner this past weekend. I'm not so sure that's true. A little independent film called Sunshine Cleaning played in only four theaters this past weekend, but collected an astounding $54,000-per-theater average (Witch had a $7,657-per-theater average). The film stars Amy Adams and Emily Blunt as sisters who try to turn their lives around by starting a crime scene cleaning business. It opens this Friday at the Angelika.

I gotta admit: I have yet to see an Amy Adams performance that I haven't thoroughly enjoyed. I first noticed her about six years ago in Catch Me If You Can, but it was in Junebug that she really captured my attention and my fancy. Since then I have relished her performances in Enchanted (any other actress possibly destroys that film) and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. She was also one of the few things I liked about Charlie Wilson's War. To see her in those four films shows her excellent range (I have yet to see her Oscar-nominated performance in Doubt, but am looking forward to it).

I am less familiar with Emily Blunt, although she was also in the aforementioned Charlie Wilson's War. Her role as a sex foil for Wilson didn't do much for me, but I thought she was marvelous in The Devil Wears Prada. I know she appeared in Dan in Real Life and The Jane Austen Book Club, but since I quickly forgot both films soon after seeing them, her performances obviously didn't register either.