Australia Day is a significant time for everyone, of course, but doubly so for the cinema business. It's the end of the busiest month of the year as the glittering Boxing Day movies begin to slip away from screens. Last year's record box office – up 2.7 per cent to $1.25 billion – shows how keen we remain on heading to cinemas despite all the other ways we can watch movies.
But that's a boring statistic. What's much more interesting is looking at the hits and the misses over summer. Yes, we know box office success isn't a reflection of quality. Lousy movies make a lot of money; good ones get overlooked. But ticket sales make and break careers every weekend and influence what movies get made in future.
![Big hit: Buster Moon, the musical theatre impresario koala, in Sing.](/web/20170125033638im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/o/i/k/e/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtxq7u.png/1485312512614.jpg)
First, the hits. Australians could easily have sneered at a film featuring a koala with an American accent but Sing was one of the successes of the summer and surprisingly the biggest animated movie (taking $25.5 million so far). While not up there with Finding Dory (a phenomenal $48 million last year) and well behind Frozen a while back ($35.2 million), it was more popular than Disney's Moana (another hit with $22.4 million).
While the industry saw Rogue One: A Star Wars Story last month, there were doubts it could reach the ambitious box office projections. But never count out Star Wars fans. With $25 million since Boxing Day, it has continued to triumph ($49 million), doing just over half the business of The Force Awakens ($93.8 million).
![Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story which has made $25 million since Boxing Day.](/web/20170125033638im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/d/7/9/u/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtxq7u.png/1485312512614.jpg)
While those who came late to the party have sometimes wondered what all the fuss is about, La La Land has been the most talked-about movie over the holidays. The musical charmer has just kept selling tickets ($13.6 million) with plenty more to come after its record-equalling 14 Oscar nominations.
Australia's Lion opened brilliantly ($5 million) and will continue to roar after its six Oscar nominations and strong word of mouth. And the Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them kept casting a spell on viewers ($32.2 million).
A batch of films fall into the not-really-hits-but-not-exactly-misses category. After Red Dog was so popular, there were high hopes for the prequel Red Dog: True Blue. It has done OK ($6.9 million) but faced intense competition from other family movies over summer. The video game adaptation Assassin's Creed was not well-reviewed but has still done decently ($8.9 million).
The Brad Pitt-Marion Cotillard wartime spy drama Allied was a disappointing movie but still cracked $10 million – the industry benchmark for blockbuster success. While Passengers arrived with high hopes, the Jennifer Lawrence-Chris Pratt sci-fi pic reached a certain height but failed to go into orbit ($12.1 million). The Bryan Cranston-James Franco comedy Why Him? should have been entertaining enough to take $20 million-plus from comedy-starved fans but, hey, it will still take $10 million.
![Head of the jury at Tropfest: Rose Byrne.](/web/20170125033638im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/f/c/n/7/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtxq7u.png/1485312512614.jpg)
And now the misses. A United Kingdom sounded like all those other oh-so-English royal dramas that have worked in past summers, including The King's Speech and The Queen. But the dramatising of a real life romance between an African king and his English bride was too unexceptional to grab a decent audience ($1.9 million). There were low expectations for Monster Trucks and it lived down to them ($3.2 million). The coming-of-age comic drama The Edge of Seventeen should have done better ($3.3 million).
And considering all its stars – Will Smith, Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren, Kate Winslet and Edward Norton – Collateral Beauty should have been much, much more successful ($1.3 million). Not every film that failed to find an audience was a dud though. The gentle drama Paterson has barely sold any tickets ($453,000) but was a small gem about the poetry in everyday lives.
Tropfest has half its finalists with women directors
Tropfest has moved with the times by naming eight films directed by women amongst its 16 finalists next month.
The iconic short-film festival, revived after a near-death experience a year ago, will feature films by some well-known names in its 25th outing. Julia Morris – another one rather than the well-known comic – has a film about a working mother seeking a moment of peace from her hectic life. And actor Matt Day has a comedy about an unlikely subject – three adult siblings assisting their terminally ill mother to commit suicide.
"Over the past 12 months, we've made a major effort to attract women to enter Tropfest – with help from people like Lucy Liu and producer Bruna Papandrea – so it's incredibly exciting to see that effort pay off," festival founder John Polson says.
The festival takes place in a new venue, Sydney's Parramatta Park, on February 10 and 11, with Rose Byrne heading the jury.
Mental health organisation slams Split
![James McAvoy is Kevin, a man with 23 personalities, in <i>Split</I>.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170125033638im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/r/5/h/g/image.imgtype.articleLeadwide.620x349.png/1484984797325.png)
James McAvoy is a man with 23 personalities, in Split. Photo: John Baer
The Hollywood horror movie Split might be winning acclaim for star James McAvoy and director M. Night Shyamalan around the world but it has upset an Australian mental health organisation.
The chief executive of SANE Australia, Jack Heath, has condemned it for trivialising complex mental illness and depicting people living with dissociative identity disorder as violent villains. McAvoy plays a man with what was formerly known as multiple personality disorder, who kidnaps three young girls.
Heath, who watched the film at a preview screening, says Split reinforces the idea we need to fear people living with complex mental illness. "One of the many stigmatising myths about people living with mental illness is they are dangerous," he said. "Both the media and film industry must take responsibility to ensure that depictions are more fair, accurate and balanced."
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