The winner
Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno overcame the handicap of an 18 certificate to take the UK box-office crown at the weekend. Its haul of just over £5m did not quite match the opening salvo of Borat, which began life in November 2006 with £6.24m. However, strip out Borat's previews of £910,000 and it's clear Bruno gave the earlier Sacha Baron Cohen hit a pretty good run for its money. And the flamboyant fashionista looks poised to run and run: Universal yesterday announced that a 15-certificate version of the film will be released on 24 July for the benefit of Bruno's hordes of teenage fans. Bruno's debut is the second best ever for an 18-certificate film in the UK, behind Ridley Scott's Hannibal, which debuted with £6.4m (including £781,000 in previews) in February 2001.

The runner-up
Although Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs lost its throne to Bruno, it's worth considering the highly uneven playing field on Friday, when Fox's animated hit took less than half of Bruno's first-day receipts. Family films always perform badly on weekdays outside of school holidays, since children are stuck in class and tend not to attend evening showtimes. On both Saturday and Sunday though, Ice Age 3 was a convincing winner, and its three-day tally of £4.75m represents a slim decline of 18% from its opening weekend. Although Ice Age will face significant competition from tomorrow with the arrival of the new Harry Potter, it will also benefit from schools breaking up for the summer on Friday.

The dark horse
For the second week running, the film with the smallest decline in the chart is My Sister's Keeper, down just 11% on the previous weekend, for a total to date of £4.08m. Nick Cassavetes's big-screen adaptation of the Jodi Picoult weepie is facing very little direct challenge for female and older cinemagoers, and is a piece of perfectly positioned counter-programming in the blockbuster-dominated summer period. It did see modest competition from Rebecca Miller's The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, which took £45,000 from 25 screens, but both films should hold up fine midweek.
The loser
Cinema lore dictates that the audience sector that is most loyal and least discerning comprises males under 25, but this allegedly easy-to-please demographic evidently did not embrace Fired Up, which stumbled out of the gate with less than £31,000 from 82 screens for a dismal site average of £374. In fairness to backers Sony, the US teen comedy – about two high-school lads attending cheerleading camp in order to hit on girls – did not benefit from star names, and marketing spend was presumably reined back in line with the film's modest UK commercial expectations.

The critical favourite
Excluding a couple of Bollywood titles, new entrant 35 Shots of Rum is the biggest foreign-language film in the market, with just under £27,000 from 15 screens. The arthouses will be glad to have it as an option, but Claire Denis's film hardly represents salvation for a sector that has lacked obvious contenders this summer. And considering the glowing reviews and wide coverage in the upscale press for 35 Shots, the figure is nothing special. Independent exhibitors still look back fondly on summer 2007, when Tell No One and La Vie En Rose provided genuine foreign-language crowdpleasers. If your local arthouse is showing Bruno, don't be surprised.

The future
The arrival of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince tomorrow should provide a big jolt of energy to a relatively lacklustre summer market – revenues have been trailing behind 2008 levels for a couple of weeks now. Half-Blood Prince was delayed from last November in order to give backers Warners a smoother revenue curve: the current fiscal year needed a surefire hit more than the previous one, which had already enjoyed a Dark Knight-size boost. The decision pushed the sixth Potter flick into the more-competitive summer period, but a July release for 2007's Order of the Phoenix hardly proved a commercial hindrance: it opened on £16.49m, on its way to over £49m.

UK top 10
1. Bruno, 456 sites, £5,000,229 (New)
2. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, 522 sites, £4,750,720. Total: £15,421,531
3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, 469 sites, £1,449,282. Total: £23,580,163
4. The Hangover, 402 sites, £1,228,918. Total: £16,493,961
5. Public Enemies, 455 sites, £1,048,359. Total: 4,609,567
6. My Sister's Keeper, 351 sites, £675,948. Total: £4,075,837
7. Year One, 299 sites, £242,950. Total: £2,637,356
8. Night at the Museum 2, 283 sites, £106,420. Total: £19,475,421
9. Kambakkht Ishq, 52 sites, £104,849. Total: 551,294
10. Shortkut, 34 sites, £80,488 (New)

How the other openers did
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, 25 screens, £44,511
Fired Up, 82 screens, £30,691
35 Shots of Rum, 15 screens, £26,767
Cloud 9, 6 screens, £3,680
Soul Power, 7 screens, £2,246
Mishima, 1 screen, £946
Ichi, 1 screen, £615 (including £232 preview)
Echoes of Home, 1 screen, £134