'Black Hawk Down' Tops Box Office for Third Straight Week

Feb. 4 -- With few new films in the market and Super Bowl hype distracting plenty of potential moviegoers, Black Hawk Down had no trouble racking up its third weekend as the No. 1 movie at the North American box office.

With Nicole Kidman's thriller Birthday Girl opening outside the top 10, this week's list was virtually identical to last week's — the only new movie to make anything resembling an impact was the horribly-reviewed campus grossout Slackers, which tied for 10th place with Orange County.

As often happens on weekends this slow, some films rose in the standings while taking a percentage drop: The Count of Monte Cristo rose from No. 6 to No. 3, while The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring climbed from No. 8 to No. 7.

Notwithstanding the general torpor at the box-office, A Beautiful Mind (which looks more and more like the Oscar frontrunner) pulled in enough to cross the $100 million mark. Tune in next week for the battle of the long-delayed action movies, as the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Collateral Damage squares off against the Chris Klein/LL Cool J Rollerball remake.

Andrew Johnston is a film critic and associate editor at US WEEKLY magazine.