New at Theaters (Friday): “The Last House on the Left” (2009), “Miss March”, ”Race to Witch Mountain”, “Waltz with Bashir” (new in Grand Rapids at Celebration! North)

 Watch the trailer for “The Last House on the Left” (2009)

 Watch the trailer for “Miss March”

 Watch the trailer for “Race to Witch Mountain”

 Watch the trailer for “Waltz with Bashir”

 CLICK HERE TO FIND A MOVIE SHOWTIME

BEST BET: See another movie listed below, or the family adventure “Race to Witch Mountain”… or maybe “Waltz with Bashir”, the animated drama was an Oscar Nominee for Best Foreign Language film…. but the “The Last House on the Left” is a remake of the 1972 horror movie and “Miss March” is a raunch comedy from two of the guys from “The Whitest Kids You Know”.

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New on DVD (Tuesday): “Battle in Seattle”, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”, “Cadillac Records”, “Happy-Go-Lucky”, “Let The Right One In”, “Milk”, “Pinocchio” (anniversary edition), “Rachel Getting Married”, “Role Models”, “Synecdoche, New York”, “Transporter 3″

BEST BET: This week is full of variety: the best comedy option is “Role Models”, my second favorite “R” rated comedy of 2008 after “Step Brothers”, but “Happy-Go-Lucky” was nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay.   “Milk” won an Oscar for Sean Penn’s performance and screenply.   “Rachel Getting Married”, received an Oscar nomination for Anne Hathaway’s performance.   “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” was good, but a very sad movie set in the holocaust.  “Pinocchio” is a Disney classic, in a 70th anniversary edition, its one of the best animated movies of all time (AFI’s 2nd best animated movie, although I disagree with 2-10 on this list).

YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN: ”Battle in Seattle” is a recent history drama about the events of the WTO riots in Seattle, “Cadillac Records” is a music history drama that got mixed reviews, “Let The Right One In” was a well reviewed horror movie, “Synecdoche, New York” got mostly poor reviews, and “Transporter 3″ got basically all negative reviews.

MY REVIEWS OF OTHER MOVIES CURRENTLY PLAYING IN THEATERS OR AVAILABLE TO RENT: 

(more…)

New on DVD (Tuesday): “Battle in Seattle”, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”, “Cadillac Records”, “Happy-Go-Lucky”, “Let The Right One In”, “Milk”, “Pinocchio” (anniversary edition), “Rachel Getting Married”, “Role Models”, “Synecdoche, New York”, “Transporter 3″

BEST BET: This week is full of variety: the best comedy option is “Role Models”, my second favorite “R” rated comedy of 2008 after “Step Brothers”, but “Happy-Go-Lucky” was nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay.   “Milk” won an Oscar for Sean Penn’s performance and screenply.   “Rachel Getting Married”, received an Oscar nomination for Anne Hathaway’s performance.   “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” was good, but a very sad movie set in the holocaust.  “Pinocchio” is a Disney classic, in a 70th anniversary edition, its one of the best animated movies of all time (AFI’s 2nd best animated movie, although I disagree with 2-10 on this list).

YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN: ”Battle in Seattle” is a recent history drama about the events of the WTO riots in Seattle, “Cadillac Records” is a music history drama that got mixed reviews, “Let The Right One In” was a well reviewed horror movie, “Synecdoche, New York” got mostly poor reviews, and “Transporter 3″ got basically all negative reviews.

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New at Theaters (Friday): “The Last House on the Left” (2009), “Miss March”, ”Race to Witch Mountain”, “Waltz with Bashir” (new in Grand Rapids at Celebration! North)

 Watch the trailer for “The Last House on the Left” (2009)

 Watch the trailer for “Miss March”

 Watch the trailer for “Race to Witch Mountain”

 Watch the trailer for “Waltz with Bashir”

 CLICK HERE TO FIND A MOVIE SHOWTIME

BEST BET: See another movie listed below, or the family adventure “Race to Witch Mountain”… or maybe “Waltz with Bashir”, the animated drama was an Oscar Nominee for Best Foreign Language film…. but the “The Last House on the Left” is a remake of the 1972 horror movie and “Miss March” is a raunch comedy from two of the guys from “The Whitest Kids You Know”.

MY REVIEWS OF OTHER MOVIES CURRENTLY PLAYING IN THEATERS OR AVAILABLE TO RENT: 

(more…)

Four Christmases tops box office for second straight week

It was a down weekend for theaters and studios, with numbers down significanty from Thanksgiving weekend.  The weekend’s poorly reviewed new release of Punisher: War Zone and the limited distribution of the other new releases Cadillac Records and Nobel Son and the fact that this wasn’t the big movie watching Thanksgiving weekend all added up to a loss of 50% nationwide and the 3rd lowest total box office since kids went back to school in September.   Twilight and Australia both moved up one spot from last week as they lost less of their audience than Bolt and Quantum of Solace.

TOP MOVIES AT WEEKEND BOX OFFICE (studio estimates)
1. “Four Christmases” – $18.18 million
(2nd week at #1, lost 42% of its audience from last week)

2. “Twilight” – $13.20 million 
(3rd week, was #3 last week, lost 50% of its audience from last week)

3. “Bolt” – $9.70 million
(3rd week, was #2 last week, lost 64% of its audience from last week)

4. “Australia” – $7.00 million
(2nd week, was #5 last week, lost 53% of its audience from last week) 

5. “Quantum of Solace” - $6.60 million
(4th week, was #4 last week, lost 65% of its audience from last week)

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Of the four new movies, the holiday comedy Four Christmases was the highest earner of the new bunch, making more money than the other 3 new movies combined during the 5-day Thanksgiving weekend.

TOP MOVIES AT WEEKEND BOX OFFICE (studio estimates)
1. “Four Christmases” – $31.68 million (1st week)

2. “Bolt” – $26.60 million
(2nd week, was #3 last week, gained 1% more than its audience from last week)

3. “Twilight” – $26.37 million 
(2nd week, was #1 last week, lost 62% of its audience from last week)

4. “Quantum of Solace” - $19.50 million
(3rd week, was #2 last week, lost 27% of its audience from last week)

5. “Australia” – $14.82 million (1st week)

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(UPDATED WITH final numbers)
Well, if I was picking winners of the weekend football games, I would be 5 out of 10 in MY WEEKEND BOX OFFICE PREDICTION: – with 1st, 4th, 7th, 9th, and 10th place right….

The #1 movie – “Madagascar 2″ wasn’t just #1, it was a smash hit with $63 million – that’s a bigger opening than these other family movies: “High School Musical 3″ ($42 million)… more than “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” ($29 million)… “Horton Hears a Who!” ($45 million)… …only “WALL-E” ($63 million) and “Kung Fu Panda” ($60 million) had opening weekends as big !!!!   Its actually the 5th biggest opening of the year!

The weekend’s #2 movie “Role Models” cruised in with a solid showing of nearly $20 million… as the alternative choice to “Madagascar 2″.

TOP 10 WEEKEND BOX OFFICE (ACTUAL results):

1. “Madagascar 2: Ecsape to Africa” – $63.11 million (1st week)

2. “Role Models” – $19.17 million (1st week)

3. “High School Musical 3” - $9.16 million
(3rd week, was #1 last week, lost 40% of its audience from last week)

4. “Changeling” - $7.25 million
(3rd week, was #4 last week, lost 22% of its audience from last week)

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“Role Models” is funny, dirty, and charming all at the same time… this was a fun “R” rated comedy… imagine an older Steve Stifler (”American Pie”) and an unmarried Pete (“Knocked Up”) then mix in two great young actors and a bunch of low-brow but funny jokes and gags with a nice, albeit predictable storyline… and you get your money’s worth (at least for a matinee)…

AGAIN, I HATE TO HAVE TO SAY THIS, BUT THIS MOVIE HAS AN “R” RATING… while this was not as potentially offensive as “Zack and Miri”, it should be noted that I continue to see young kids (under 10) at these movies…. don’t say I haven’t tried to warn you….

“Role Models”

(2008) (rated: R for crude and sexual content, strong language and nudity) (1 hr, 39 min)

Starring: Seann William Scott, Paul Rudd, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Bobb’e J. Thompson, Elizabeth Banks, Jane Lynch

Genre: Comedy/Raunchy-Comedy

The Plot: Wild behavior forces a pair of energy drink reps to enroll in a Big Brother program.

MY TAKE:

Okay, its nice to get back to the funny and less offensive “R” rated comedies… (more…)