It's not very often that I see people applauding after a movie, in fact, I think it has never happened to me before. Yes, encores are very frequent at the theater, the opera, and concerts. Last night, for the first time, I watched a movie 'encore'. The movie was Fast & Furious 6. For those who have never heard of the Fast & Furious series, let me just fill in the gaps briefly – and briefly will be more than enough. The series stars Vin Diesel, and in the recent addition another big muscle guy, Dwayne Johnson, and in my humble opinion, it's all about muscles, fast cars and street racing, all spiced up with various heists. It's an easy to watch movie – in the fast everything era, it has fast cars, good action scenes, nice special effects, funny moments and a simple-to-follow story.

A lot of people seem to need this, a sort of brain washing system – myself included, nobody dragged me to the cinema hall, I knew what I was getting into. We try to escape from our lives, which are not always as we want them to be, and movies which feature nice, fast cars trashed around like tin cans, good, muscle guys and beautiful, yet tough girls who always win in fights are sure winners. On a deeper level, we'd probably love to trash some cars ourselves, smash some things in our anger, and feel the adrenaline. And the Fast & Furious franchise is an all time love for not only Americans, but for the entire world it seems.

The film opened in Romania just last week-end so it's a bit early to get the local numbers, but we still see Iron Man III, another franchise playing by similar rules, ranking first in box office cashings – USD 1.1 million so far in Romania, after just four weeks. In the US, Fast & Furious 6 broke the USD 100 million mark in box office after just one weekend. For comparison, Iron Man III is close to the USD 400 million mark after four weeks. It's the era of fast movies alright.

What about our own Berlinale – winning film Child's Pose – Pozitia Copilului? (don't be too quick in passing judgment, I watched that too – here's the story of that screening) After 11 weeks on Romanian screens, its box office gain is of USD 350,000.

Going back to the encore for the Furious 6 film – the story has not ended. In a last scene of the movie – nearly missed as most people were getting ready to leave the cinema hall, we see a new character stepping into the play, which sends everyone into waiting mode for the next part of the series. Luckily, there are many other film franchises to lullaby us in the meantime.

By Corina Chirileasa, corina@romania-insider.com

(photo source: The Fast and Furious official website)