Boo! A Box Office Halloween

...oh, I thought Doctor Strange was coming out this week.  That's next week.  And if it doesn't make more than $100 million its first weekend, well... the new Marvel Studios will be very disappointed.  They might question the wisdom of doing a worldwide junket.  You know, really get the word out in Hong Kong and the Philippines.
But once again, Tyler Perry's Madea proves that (s)he can take charge of the box office in a down week.  This time, because it's near Halloween and all, (s)he offers us Boo! A Madea Halloween.  I guess writing three or four shows for TV just isn't prestigious enough at times.  But just like the VeggieTales, Madea knows that taking a break for a song and a prayer helps to pad things out a lot.  I checked Boo!'s cast list to see if Perry scored any major casting coups.  You know, like Kim Kardashian in 2013's Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor or Kathy Bates and Alfre Woodard in 2008's The Family That Preys. (what better way to close out the Dubya administration, am I right?)  And who can forget BOTH Stephanie Ferret and Stephanie Ferrett in Madea Gets a Job?
Anyway, on to the next.  While Madea's latest isn't exactly a sequel, seems like everything else is.  Tom Cruise is still ashamed of the now dreaded Roman numeral with Jack Reacher: Never Go Back.  Um... isn't this guy some kind of a detective?  Isn't going back kind of a big part of the detective's JOB?!!!!  Taking over directorial duties from The Usual Suspects maven Christopher McQuarrie is Cruise's pal from The Last Samurai director Edward Zwick.  I hate to say it, but no wonder this debuted only at #2.  People don't want too much sentimentality from their Jack Reacher movies.  Sure, Zwick takes on the tough subjects, but with kind of a light touch... to be fair, the brutha's not afraid to get thrown into his own police van!  That was him, right?
Our third debut (in third place, no less) is the sequel to 2014's Ouija and it's called Ouija: Origin of Evil.  I guess the dreaded Roman numeral is more scary than Ouija boards themselves... damn Gypsies.  A brief scanning of the cast and crew reveals that, well... as with Atlas Shrugged Parts 1 and 2, the casts of the two Ouija sequels seem to have no common threads.  The first one takes place apparently in photogenic present day, the sequel in 1965, just south of that new golden age of nostalgia that we all seem to be pining collectively for, the 1970s.  There's a reason that Itchy used his time machine to go to a '70s disco, you know!  No, the only common thread seems to be Michael Bay as producer.  So it's true, he really is going through the whole Hasbro product catalog... they own the Ouija board, right?  I guess 1965 is when the Ouija board first made contact with the underworld, thereby setting off the controversy that lives to this day... dayamn!  Got the Hasbro part right!
And finally, America's stoner uncle Zach Galifianakis makes another bomb, this time with Jon Hamm, who just can't get a non-"Mad Men" break in the biz.  It's tough, it's rough, I tell ya!  It's called Keeping Up with the Joneses... it's a little bit like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but the filmmakers promise it won't be spawning a new Brangelina-type thing for the tabloids!  No sir.  Actually, it might be more like The Whole Nine Yards, but really... who wants to look back that far, am I right?