Clint Eastwood-directed telling of the tough return home by Navy SEAL Chuck Kyle, played in the movie by Bradley Cooper, continued its electrifying run with the best second weekend ever by an R-rated movie and the eighth-best by any film. In the process, “American Sniper” hit the $200 million mark in domestic grosses a little more than a week since earning nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor and four other Oscar nominations.
The grosses for the rest of the weekend’s movies were merely mortal, but fun because of the big names behind the films that opened.



Jennifer Lopez scored with the sexy low-budget thriller “The Boy Next Door,” which was a distant second with $15 million for Universal Pictures. But Johnny Depp’s box-office skid continued as his ensemble comedy “Mortdecai” tanked with about $4 million for Lionsgate Entertainment. And “Strange Magic,” the quirky animated kids musical from “Star Wars” creator George Lucas, never took off and finished with an estimated $5.5 million for Disney.
Last week saw controversy added to the mix of Heartland fervor and Oscar buzz powering “American Sniper,” as critics charged that Jason Hall’s adaptation of the late Kyle’s autobiography wrongly glorified a lethal marksman. The passionate back-and-forth plainly didn’t hurt and may actually have helped it. “Sniper” fell off just 28 percent from its record-breaking debut last week — a 50 percent drop is considered good — and topped the second week showings of films with spandex-clad heroes like “Dark Knight Rises,” “Spider-Man 3” and “Iron Man 2.” And it blew past the $53.2 million take of “The Passion of the Christ,” the previous best second week at the box office for an R-rated movie.

American Sniper's gonna rock