Cadillac Records opened this past weekend with a respectable $5,023 per theatre, and got good reviews. It came in second place in this week's Box Office Power Rankings behind only Bolt, the unstoppable force that nobody cares about.

But because it was only in 686 theatres, it couldn't make a box-office splash, earning $3.4 million overall and landing in ninth place. And because it was in 686 threatres, it was too big to be one-of-those only-in-major-cities movies that generate buzz and huge per-theatre numbers. (Think Milk.)

As we all expected, Bolt ran away with this week's Box Office Power Rankings ... .

Hmmm.

Let's step back a second. That Disney's computer-animated dog won isn't an upset, but its five-point margin is surprising. Even after I began plugging in the numbers, I was anticipating something close to a three-way tie between Bolt, Twilight, and Quantum of Solace. What I didn't process was the effect of the bunching of critical scores ? and the bunching of critical scores higher than we've seen for a few months.

On Role Models:

"[T]he kind of movie you don't see every day, a comedy that is funny. The kind of comedy where funny people say funny things in funny situations, not the kind of comedy that whacks you with manic shocks to force an audible Pavlovian response."

On Slumdog Millionaire:

"[O]ne of the rare 'feel-good' movies that actually makes you feel good, as opposed to merely jerked around.

The latter movie opened in a handful of theaters on November 12, so it doesn't show up in this week's Box Office Power Rankings, but Role Models does, and debuts at the top along with the Madagascar sequel.

High School Musical 2, after all, got 17 million pairs of eyes with its American television premiere. Maybe it was about building the brand, but that seems like a lot of ticket cash foregone to me.