After six weeks in which the top ten films' collective grosses lagged behind last year's totals, the star-powered American Gangster and Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie provided the box office with an eleven percent bounce over the same weekend a year ago.  Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe's bravura performances helped Ridley Scott's American Gangster set an opening weekend record for the crime genre with an estimated $46.3 million, easily eclipsing Sin City ($29 million) and The Departed ($27 million).  American Gangster, which has been aided by fusillade of positive reviews (78% favorable on Rotten Tomatoes), did extremely well with the young male audience and muscled its way to a stellar $15,174 per theater average.  American Gangster posted the second best R-rated debut of the year (300 had the best with $70.1 million) and provides further evidence that, a generation after The Godfather, the right sort of crime movies can still grab plenty of box office booty.

Jerry Seinfeld's long-gestating and heavily-promoted CGI animated film, Bee Movie, had been expected to top the weekend box office, and the film's estimated $39.1 million opening has to be considered a little disappointing considering the amount of promotion and the dearth of competition in the family movie category.  Bee Movie, which opened to mixed reviews (54% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), averaged nearly $10,000 per venue on its way to a debut similar to that of another Dreamwork's CGI release, Over the Hedge, which brought in $38.6 million during its first weekend and finished with $155 million domestically.  With the cost of Bee Movie estimated at $150 million, Dreamworks is clearly hoping for a bigger domestic gross than Over the Hedge managed, but Jerry Seinfeld's first foray into the world of animated features will need to demonstrate considerable staying power to make up for its somewhat mediocre opening.

Last week's Halloween-aided box office champ, Saw IV plummeted 65.3% to $11 million, while 30 Days of Night fell 41.7% in its third weekend while earning $4 million and bringing its cumulative to $34.2 million.  Drops of more than 60% during the second weekend are becoming the norm for heavily-hyped horror films.

The 3-D reissue of Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, which is in only 562 theaters, slipped out of the top ten, while adding an estimated $1.5 million and taking its total to nearly $13 million in 17 days.