UK Box Office Information 26th-28th October 2007

Sacre bleu!! That little French rodent Ratatouille (Disney) is still at the top of the box office charts this week, having taken a total of £17.3m to date and entering the Top 10 films of the year in 10th place. Parents - expect your kids to be demanding rats as pets this Christmas, or alternatively cooking lessons with Gordon Ramsey!

"Trick or treat, trick or treat, give us something nice to eat. If you don't, we won't care, we'll pull down your underwear!" Not the type of Halloween chant you would have been hearing from Tobin Bell a.k.a Jigsaw last weekend as Saw IV (Lionsgate) entered the box office chart in 2nd place with £2.5m. Although Jigsaw and his accomplice Amanda were believed to have been dead at the end of Saw III, their elaborate death games continue in this fourth film of the series.

Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert DeNiro, Sienna Miller and the rest of the merry gang take the 3rd place spot this week as Stardust (Paramount) takes £6.9m to date.

Director David Cronenberg is no stranger to on screen violence as we witnessed in A History of Violence (2005) and his new film Eastern Promises (Pathe), which opened in 4th place with £623k takes this to a new level. Lord of the Rings star Viggo Mortensen plays Nikolai - one of the most ruthless and feared members of the Russian mafia in London and when an innocent mid-wife (Naomi Watts) accidentally uncovers some information which is potentially harmful to the family, Nikolai must set the wheels in motion to prevent any unwanted business coming the way of the family.

Winter is upon us and those cold and flu remedies are starting to fly off the shelves at Boots, but if you ever feel like complaining about our health system, spare a minute to see Michael Moore's Sicko (Optimum). Opening in 10th place and taking £156k including previews, Sicko takes a looks at the American health care system and all of its shortfalls, including some bad cases of patient care.

The last new entry into the chart is Jab We Met (Studio 18) which opened in 11th place (taking £156k including previews) and is a romantic tale of two lovers who finally realise their love for each other after encountering the highs and lows of life.

Interesting film fact of the day: For his role as Nikolai in Eastern Promises, Viggo Mortensen studied the gangs of the vory v zakone (thieves in law), read books on Russian prison culture and the importance of prison tattoos as criminal résumés, and perfected his character's Siberian accent as well as learning lines in Russian, Ukrainian and English.

Carlton Screen - 2nd November 2007