The weekend of the Super Bowl is generally a pretty quiet one at multiplexes across this great and strange nation of ours, as the annual NFL championship game completely hijacks national attention.  Nobody's really thinking about movies, since there's too much anticipation for commercials interrupted by spurts of football.  Accordingly, with the New England Patriots and the New York Giants squaring off in Indianapolis, nobody expected much from this weekend's new releases, but lo and behold, two of the three newbies surprised.  Both Chronicle and The Woman in Black debuted to over $20 million, with the former edging out the latter for first place.

"If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."  With those lines in 2008's Taken, Oscar-caliber actor Liam Neeson began a new phase in his career as a leading man who can carry and action movie.  With his gravitas and imposing 6' 4" physicality, he'd played formidable figures before, but now he's a straight-up actionhero.  The Grey, which is more commonly known as "That movie where Liam Neeson fistfights wolves," continued his strong showing, debuting in first place this weekend.

Traditionally, January is seen as a time of box office doldrums during which there's little scratch to be made after the orgiastic movie-going of the holiday season.  As such, it was generally a time when studios would dump less-than-exciting fare.  This year, however, has seen a bunch of bigger releases that have pretty consistently exceeded expectations, and so the last three weekends have consistently seen busier business than comparable weeks in years before.  Leading the charge this weekend is Underworld Awakening, the latest sequel to follow the tried and true formula of Kate Beckinsale + pleather catsuit + guns, guns, guns = profit.

The first full weekend of January saw only one major new release, a critically reviled faux-documentary horror film that performed quite spectacularly despite eliciting a vitriolic reaction from damn near everyone who saw it.  The second weekend was considerably more competitive, however, with a number of titles with very different audiences.  In that environment, the Mark Wahlberg-led crime drama Contraband surprised many by easily winning the number one spot, while the 3D reissue of a twenty year old Disney movie came in second place, a third sequel passed an important mark, and a music-centric comedy-drama opened in fourth place.

A phenomenon swept the nation over this past weekend, and it involved audiences uniformly and venomously booing The Devil Inside as soon as the credits rolled on the found footage horror movie.  The film's mediocrity has now been well documented by audiences on Twitter, accompanied by almost unanimously terrible critical reviews and a rare "F" score collected by market research firm CinemaScore.  Being pretty much objectively a really, really crappy movie didn't stop The Devil Inside from making a fairly ridiculous amount of money in its debut weekend and easily topping the domestic box office.

2011 is in the bag and the bag is in the river, folks.  It was a year that saw ticket prices continuing to increase and attendance continuing to decline at multiplexes all over this nation of ours.  Overall, the year that was saw a decline of roughly 3% from the cumulative box office of 2010, the year in which Avatar rolled around in a money pile.  The last weekend of 2011 saw no new major releases, leaving the heavy hitters from last week's holiday onslaught to stay strong over New Year's weekend.  Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol once again stood atop box office mountain, with fellow sequels Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked rounding out the top three.  Additionally, War Horse built momentum and New Year's Eve got a bump for obvious reasons.

For a long, long time, the conventional wisdom regarding sequels was that they were inherently endeavors of diminishing returns, with each entry making less money than the one before.  Of course, these days juggernaut franchises have proven that to no longer be the case; the seven biggest movies of 2011 have all been sequels, starting with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and down through Cars 2.  The two widest releases this weekend made a case that certain properties lead to franchise fatigue faster than others, as both Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, couldn't equal the debuts of their predecessors.  Still, the limited released of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol could indicate that, after fifteen years, the Mission: Impossible franchise could still have some kick.

Over the next few weeks, we'll treated to an onslaught of big event movies in time for Christmas, while the prestige pictures currently in limited release will expand and be joined by more.  It'll be a veritable moviegoing cornucopia, with all manner of variety to suit anyone's holiday tastes.  For now, though, the number one movie in America is New Year's Eve, a film that is basically the cinematic equivalent of KFC's Famous Bowl: a calculated yet sloppy mash of starch and heart disease.*  The mega-ensemble debuted in first place, followed by The Sitter, and, in third place, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1, which sat atop the box office heap for three consecutive weeks.

Traditionally, the weekend following Thanksgiving's extended vacation is one of unremarkable box office performances, as the nation is content to unbutton its collective top button and sit back to the let the turkey settle in its system, while also lamenting the loss of delicious leftovers.  This year is no different, with no major wide releases in multiplexes to truly shake up the dynamics of last weekend.  With no new competition and generally tame showings from existing competitors, then, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 continued its dominance of the domestic box office, accomplishing a couple of franchise feats in the process.  The Muppets, meanwhile, slowed down considerably, and Hugo hopped up to the third place after rolling out in more theaters.

When we're not mercilessly trampling helpless employees or pepper-spraying our fellow citizens in order to ensure that we get the cheapest possible consumer goods, the citizens of this great land are wont to see movies during their Thanksgiving holiday away from work. This is doubtlessly owed, in large part, to the fact that Thanksgiving is a holiday that necessitates much familial contact, and going to the movies is an efficient means of spending two hours in the dark without actually having to talk to your family.  A preponderance of new family-oriented releases over the holiday couldn't derail The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1, with the sequel dominating the American box office in its second weekend, outgrossing The Muppets, Hugo, and Arthur Christmas.