Box Office: Shutter Island Tops the Cops and the Crazies

The North American weekend box office had to fight off a continent-deep whiteout: another walloping snow storm on the East Coast, a high-rated Winter Olympics and hockey fever in Canada. Yet it looks to surpass last year's end-of-February count by about 7%. Regardless of snow or four-man bobsled races, people still want to go to the movies.

And what they paid to see were dark action pictures with ceiling-high body counts and suppurating psychopaths. Shutter Island, with Leonardo DiCaprio playing a U.S. marshal who is trapped in a remote insane asylum, stayed in first place in its second week, according to early studio estimates. Martin Scorsese's you-dunit claimed $22.2 million, easily besting the $18.6 million registered by the Bruce Willis–Tracy Morgan police-buddy comedy Cop Out, which survived a title change (from A Couple of Dicks) and felonious reviews (a 20% score on Rotten Tomatoes). In third place, with a solid $16.5 million, was the horror remake The Crazies. After months of female-angled hits, the guys returned to dominate the movie market by seeing a bunch of red-meat pictures. This was the first weekend that R-rated films filled the top three slots since Aug. 28-30, when four gorefests reigned: Final Destination, Inglourious Basterds, Halloween II and District 9. (See TIME's review of Shutter Island.)

In fourth place was that hardy perennial Avatar; the eco-epic minted even more green, earning $14 million. James Cameron's smash has passed the $700 million mark in domestic theaters and is nearing $2.5 billion worldwide. But it will soon take a hit in a crucial spot: 3-D theaters. Avatar has had a monopoly on the goggles auditoriums for the past 11 weeks and has lined its pockets with cash from the higher ticket prices; last weekend it made 95% of its North American gross in those specialty rooms. Next weekend, though, the movie will lose most of its 3-D venues to Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. Not that folks will stop seeing the Cameron spectacle, even in 2-D — free publicity from the ramp-up to the March 7 Oscar show will keep it fresh in viewers' minds — but soon it may be time to say ta-ta to Avatar.

Among films in limited release, Roman Polanski's favorably reviewed thriller The Ghost Writer took in $870,000 on just 43 screens. But the big race, not so much at the box office as in this week's Oscar pools, was between two nominees for the foreign-language Academy Award, both of them released by Sony Pictures Classics. A Prophet, Jacques Audiard's French prison drama, opened to a decent $170,000 in nine theaters in New York and Los Angeles, while Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon made $168,000 in its ninth week of limited release. That movie has now passed $1.5 million in North America — not bad for a powerful but super-austere epic about collective madness in a German village on the eve of World War I. (See the 2010 Oscar predictions.)

The two films have been competing with each other ever since they premiered at last May's Cannes Film Festival, where The White Ribbon took first prize and A Prophet came in second. Haneke's picture is high-brow caviar, while Audiard's is more a crowd pleaser. On Saturday, The White Ribbon won the top award from the American Society of Cinematographers, beating Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds and Nine and solidifying its chances to win the Oscar in this category. Ah, but a week ago, at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards, A Prophet beat The White Ribbon for Best Film Not in the English Language. (See the top 10 Oscar-nomination snubs.)

Which of these estimable works will take the foreign-language Oscar? It's a toss-up, and there's always the chance that a dark horse will win. But for the moment, The White Ribbon and A Prophet are the Hurt Locker and Avatar of foreign-language films. And both will be remembered, at least among the cognoscenti, long after Cop Out and The Crazies hit the DVD remainder bins.

Here are the weekend's top-grossing pictures in North American theaters, as reported by Box Office Mojo:

1. Shutter Island, $22.2 million; $75.1 million, second week
2. Cop Out, $18.6 million, first weekend
3. The Crazies, $16.5 million, first weekend
4. Avatar, $14 million; $706.9 million, 11th week
5. Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, $9.8 million; $71.2 million, third week
6. Valentine's Day, $9.5 million; $100.4 million, third week
7. Dear John, $5 million; $72.6 million, fourth week
8. The Wolfman, $4.1 million; $57.2 million, third week
9. Tooth Fairy, $3.5 million; $53.9 million, sixth week
10. Crazy Heart, $2.5 million; $25.1 million, 11th week

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