American Sniper

Mustafa, the unseen sniper villain of the 2014 film, would be the hero this time around.

One of the biggest questions a director or a screenwriter asks him or herself before starting work on any kind of “true story” movie is: how much of the truth do I keep, how much do I toss, and how much do I tweak a little bit? Real life, as you may know, isn’t like the movies, and sometimes stuff just… happens. While it may be full of good stories, life isn’t subject to neat plot arcs, which can be pretty irritating when you’re trying to fit it into a two-hour movie. Which is why, sometimes, moviemakers like to fudge things a little bit. Have you ever been to the movies and asked yourself, I wonder if it actually happened this way? Now, with a handy new infographic, we can know for sure.

It’s a pretty objective assessment that most Americans don’t give half a damn about foreign film. Hardly any imports make it into neighborhood cineplexes, and the films that do score a theatrical run in major cities are lucky if they make enough money to break even...

The end of the year brings a surplus of ranked lists enumerating the best offerings of film in the past twelve months. Some come from huge samplings of voters, such as the annual Village Voice poll of American and international film critics, and others still reflect the tastes and preferences of one person or publication, such as the idiosyncratic rankings that John Waters publishes every December

It’s a big month for new releases on HBO’s new streaming service, HBO NOW. They’ve got 2014’s box-office champ, American Sniper, along with Liam Neeson in Taken 3 and Will Smith in Focus (which was an underrated movie). Plus it wouldn’t be October without some scary movies; HBO NOW’s adding The Purge: Anarchy, Trick ’R Treat, House on Haunted Hill, and, for those who need additional houses on haunted hills, Return to House on Haunted Hill.

There are moments that define a nation. Moments that show us the kind of Americans we really are. Today, we’ve brought shame on our great nation: Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper has surpassed The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and Guardians of the Galaxy as the highest-grossing film of 2014. How did we let this happen? How did we let a robot baby with an uncanny valley where its face should be defeat Katniss Everdeen and Baby Groot? How?

Ready for the Academy Awards this Sunday? Need help winning your Oscar pool? ScreenCrush Editor-in-Chief Mike Sampson and Managing Editor Matt Singer are here to help. Or potentially make things worse. Honestly, they’re not great at guessing the winners. But they’re going to try their best.

In most years, January tends to be the most boring month of the year for the box office. This is where Hollywood typically sends the movies in which it has the least faith. This is the dumping ground, the place where movies go to die so the studios can concentrate on their Oscar campaigns. However, thanks to ‘American Sniper,’ this January has bucked every trend. It may technically be a 2014 release, but Clint Eastwood’s war film has made the first chunk of 2015 interesting, shattering expectations and threatening to become the highest grossing film of last year in only a few weeks.

Last week, ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1’ squeaked past ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ to become the highest grossing film released in 2014. Now, it’s starting to look thing ‘American Sniper’ may clobber them both. With a massive second weekend in wide release, the Clint Eastwood war film looks practically unstoppable at this point. With little to no major competition for the next few weeks, it should easily crack $300 million.

‘American Sniper’ had a record-shattering weekend at the box office, grossing an astounding $105 million from Friday to Monday. It’s already the second biggest earner of Clint Eastwood’s entire career after ‘Gran Torino,’ and with six Academy Award nominations (and great word-of-mouth) behind it, it’s posed to become his biggest hit ever.