With the Academy Awards almost upon us — the Oscarcast begins at 4 p.m. Sunday on KOMO-TV — the question arises:
Which were 2014’s most popular movies on the North Olympic Peninsula?
Turns out, they included some Oscar contenders, cuisine-rich movies — and Marvel-comic superheroes.
“Chef,” the story of a fancy-restaurant worker’s arduous renaissance as a food-truck driver, was No. 1 at the Rose Theatre in Port Townsend, where it set an all-time record for the length of its run.
“I had never before played a movie for 10 weeks,” owner Rocky Friedman said. He added that there’s been a theme: “food and senior citizens,” for the top three films at the Rose last year.
No. 2 was “The Hundred-Foot Journey,” the tale of an Indian family’s restaurant across the road from a French fine dining establishment. And the third-best seller was “Philomena,” starring Dame Judi Dench in the title role as a woman searching for the son she had surrendered for adoption.
At Port Townsend’s Uptown Theatre, “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” one of the eight nominees for the Best Picture Oscar, brought the biggest numbers in to Port Townsend’s Uptown Theatre, added owner Rick Wiley.
And at Wiley’s Wheel-In Motor Movie, “Guardians of the Galaxy,” that Marvel comic-inspired picture, was No. 1 — “a gigantic hit,” he said.
Wiley opens the Port Townsend drive-in typically from May through September, though last year fair weather kept it going through October.
Meanwhile, at the Deer Park Cinema in Port Angeles, “Guardians” rode to the top, rescuing the theater from a slow summer, said Sun Basin Theatres manager Brian Cook.
“Chef” played at the Deer Park, too, but though “it was a great movie,” Cook said, it didn’t bring impressive ticket sales.
“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1,” though, filled plenty of seats from Thanksgiving weekend forward, he said.
The Academy Awards influence local theaters, the three theater operators add — but customers have at least as much pull.
They’ve been asking for “Selma,” for example, said Cook; the movie opens today at the Deer Park. It’s up for Best Picture, yes, but regardless of whether it wins the Oscar, “Selma” will stay at the Port Angeles theater for one week only.
A flock of winter releases are waiting for Deer Park’s screens, Cook said, so he can’t keep even the acclaimed films for long.
At the Uptown, Wiley has just one screen, so he’s had to kick out well-attended films like “Birdman,” another Best Picture nominee.
That film has flown into the Rose Theatre too, last year and this year. Friedman has brought “Birdman,” the saga of a movie star who seeks to reinvent himself as an actor and as a man, back for yet another run. It sold out several times at the Rose’s Starlight Room in late 2014; now it’s at the Rose itself.
The Best Picture hopefuls — “Selma,” “The Imitation Game,” “Boyhood,” “The Theory of Everything,” “Birdman,” “American Sniper,” “Whiplash” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” — have all come to the Uptown, the Deer Park, the Rose or all three. And Wiley, for his part, said a big Oscar winner, even if it’s long after its first release, could reappear on a screen near you.
“There might be a dark horse,” he said. “We would grab it and give it a week.”
