WHERE EVERYONE HAS GONE BEFORE

 1. Star Trek Into Darkness/Par                   Wknd/$  70.6            Total/$   84.1

 2. Iron Man 3/Paramount                            Wknd/$  35.2            Total/$ 337.1

 3. The Great Gatsby/Warners                      Wknd/$  23.4            Total/$  90.2

 4. Pain and Gain/Paramount                       Wknd/$   3.1              Total/$  46.6

 5. The Croods/Fox                                          Wknd/$   2.8             Total/$ 176.8

 6. 42/ Warners                                                Wknd/$   2.7              Total/$  88.7

 7. Oblivion/Universal                                     Wknd/$   2.2              Total/$  85.5

 8. Mud/                                                             Wknd/$   2.2               Total/$  11.6

 9. Tyler Perry Presents Peeples/LGF         Wknd?$   2.2                Total/$    7.9

10. The Big Wedding/LGF                             Wknd/$   1.1                 Total/$  20.2

 

INTO DUMBNESS

In the interests of total transparency, I must admit I’m a Trekker from way back. The simple fact I used “Trekker” and not “Trekkie” should tell you that because for hardcore fans, “trekkie” was considered derogatory.  Seriously. People dressed up like Klingons while getting married took offense to that term.  Needless to say a reboot was automatic sacrilege to me and it didn’t help matters that it was being done by a JJ Abrams, who is basically Joss Whedon for stupid people. Seriously, if you think he’s smart, you’re as dumb as a bag of rocks and should let other people handle important decisions in your life like voting and taxes and which color socks to wear.  He freely admitted he didn’t “get” Star Trek and wanted to “broaden the audience” (because you know, after 50 years, 9 films and 5 television shows, it still hadn’t found one without him) which is double-speak for “dumb it down.” The mildly intellectual aspects of Star Trek (and they were mild, let’s not kid ourselves) are what distinguished it and he got rid of them, which is like saying you’re making a Sherlock Holmes film, but he won’t be smart.  Now the reason I’m stressing this is that the number one movie this week, Star Trek: Into Darkness, is one of the dumbest movies you will ever see, even for a summer movie.  We start off immediately with The Enterprise being underwater for no reason other than someone thought it would look cool rising from the waves. That it makes not one lick of sense hardly seems to matter.  This lets you know right then you should have checked your brain, not just the door, but not even bother taking it out of the house. Unlike the first film, this one does try to have an underlying theme besides “be more like Star Wars.”  They seem to finally address the fact that Kirk is in fact too irresponsible to be an actual captain, but it’s a feint because literally ten minutes after he loses his command, he’s back in the captain’s seat and this is done through the time-honored hack convention of making everyone else around him dumb so that he seems smart. He continually “fails upwards.”  While the original James T. Kirk succeeded from balls & bravado coupled with brains, this one is basically balls and not much else and literally has a character tell him, “You’re totally wrong, but I will still reward your failings.”  I can’t really discuss the plot without giving away the twists, but what’s the point in making a new Star Trek if you’re just going to continually recycle the old? For all its problems, the first Star Trek reboot movie had a new villain and dramatic changes to the status quo (Vulcan is gone, Spock’s mother is dead and he’s involved with Uhura), while this basically remakes an old Star Trek episode, part of one of the movies and takes various elements from the last film with the original cast, improving on nothing you’ve seen before while wasting a good cast with solid chemistry and humor that is actually on the level of the original Star Trek.

 

LET THEM READ GOOP

Iron Man 3 finally drops to number two and while she is justifiably mocked for her view of the world which rivals Marie Antoinette’s for sheer obliviousness, I loves me some Gwyneth Paltrow and always have.  Thank goodness Shane Black’s misogyny was reigned in and we get to see her kick a little ass without his original idea that she get publicly humiliated in a sex tape with one of the bad guys. No, I’m not kidding. Remember this is Shane Black, the reason The Last Boy Scout opens with a woman’s head being held underwater by a man who says he won’t let up until she performs oral sex on him. The reason in the same film Halle Berry is not just crushed between two cars but finished off with machine gun fire.  The reason Kiss Kiss Bang Bang stops cold so Robert Downey Jr can deliver a monologue for what’s wrong with women in LA.  You don’t want to be a woman at the table with him, Oliver Stone and Spike Lee.  Or in their movies if you can help it.

 

WAITING FOR AN ALL ASIAN VERSION CALLED “GI”

The Great Gatsby is down to number three and whenever I remember there was a modern day, all-black version of this called “G” I simply cannot stop laughing.  Though it turns out to be tad prescient given its Gatsby was a hip-hop millionaire (in the mode of Sean “Puffy” Combs) and this new one has hip-hop millionaire Jay-Z coordinating the soundtrack. It’s gonna need all the help he can provide given it needs to make $300M to make a profit and the summer onslaught begins en masse next week.

 

GOOD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN; BAD GIRLS GO EVERYWHERE ELSE

Pain & Gain is down to number four and one good thing about the success of this movie is that it continues Rebel Wilson’s rise to success which started with her small role in Bridesmaids, which also kicked off Kristen Wiig’s movie career and rocketed Melissa McCarthy to the comedy A-list. Paul Feig must be drowning in fruit baskets of gratitude.

 

A CLUE AS TO HOW EXPENSIVE BABYSITTERS REALLY ARE

The Croods actually rises to number five and I’d ask why but I look at this top ten and realize parents have no place to dump their smaller children off for two hours yet.  They’re dying for the summer movies to start just like the rest of us.

 

NOTHING SAYS “EVIL” LIKE A BAD REGIONAL ACCENT

42 is down to number six, followed by Oblivion at number seven and the most annoying thing about this movie had to be Melissa Leo’s godawful southern accent. That alone should have let Tom Cruise’s character know something was up.  Though I guess if she’d gone with “Bawston” accent from The Fighter, there’d have been no doubt.

 

ONE STEP FORWARD TWO STEPS BACK

Mud surprisingly hangs around at number eight, followed by Tyler Perry Presents Peeples at number nine, and while I’m delighted any time something with Tyler Perry’s name on it fails, I feel badly for the talent in this movie because there’s so much of it.  Craig Robinson and Kerry Russell at least have other things to fall back on, but poor David Allen Grier needed a win.  Not to mention a minority female directors.  Hollywood is looking for reason to turn them back and this just gave them another.

 

THE END

Finally, the big wedding closes out the top ten at number ten.

 

SCATTER MY MINE AT OLD NAVY

Never going to break the top ten is Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorfs, a documentary about the eponymous department store on 5^th Avenue in New York.  I saw it continuing my run on documentaries about fashion which have been good for the most part and I think I’ve found the clue that let’s you know whether or not that’s the case: Anna Wintour.  Any fashion doc worth its weight has to have an appearance by the grand doyenne of fashion and this one does not, despite a half-dozen other fashion luminaries from Armani to Lagerfeld to De la Renta to Marc Jacobs to Michael Kors to Tory Burch to…you get the idea. Her absence is conspicuous.  Oh, there’s footage of her, of course, but no interview and methinks it has to with a small rivalry between her and the head buyer for Bergdorf Goodman, Linda Fargo, who unlike Wintour can make a designer’s career in a real world fashion.  Wintour can choose to promote or not promote a designer, but Fargo gives them an actual venue to sell their wares and it’s questionable which truly matters more.  The film is oddly divided between a history of the store, which is genuinely interesting; an observation of a young designer trying to get into the store (Tommy Hilfiger’s daughter and it’s really hard to root for her given the “in” she clearly had) which is also interesting and the creation of the famous store windows…which is not that interesting and when all is said and done, I’d say that at least half of this 90 minute film is devoted to that.  That’s about 30 minutes too long.  That time would have been better spent with a more in-depth history of the store (the stories of Liz Taylor and John Lennon are great) or more in-depth account of the journey of a designer to the store’s hallowed halls.  Instead it wraps that story up far too quickly (Hilfiger’s daughter doesn’t make the cut and it’s really hard to feel sad for her given how much of her career was probably handed to her) and hops around from talking head to talking head gushing about the store, while any deep topic like the importance of wealth to the store or the effect the faltering economy had on it are brought in and out in less than five minutes (that the son of the founder used his position to bang the models who worked there is rushed by as quickly as possible).  The only jolt of life comes from one of the no-holds barred personal shoppers, who when asked what she’d be doing if not that job replies, “Drinking.” More of her, less literal window decoration.

 

RED TRUNKS CAN’T SAVE EVERYTHING

The new Superman is coming and with questionable timing DC’s direct-to-video line releases an animated film about the “old Superman” as in the one who wore bright blue tights and little red trunks and didn’t mope about the world.  Superman: Unbound is based on a storyline from the comic a few years ago that rebooted the character of Brainiac, saying that the one Superman had been fighting for years was only a probe who thought he was Brainiac because the real one never left his ship.  It also alluded (badly) to the idea that Brainiac had been responsible for the destruction of Krypton when it attacked it and stole the city of Kandor, which he shrunk and put into a bottle.  Well, they say bad books make the best movies, so maybe they could turn this lackluster storyline into something interesting the way they did with the flat-out-bad Superman/Batman: Apocalypse which is actually the story of Supergirl, but marketing dictates you can’t tell anyone that. No, I’m not kidding. Supergirl and Wonder Woman are in it and you won’t see them anywhere on the box.  She’s in this too, but again, no box cover, which is sad because her character’s journey is one of the better things about it.  One thing about animation with superheroes is that you get to see them use their powers fully without the restrictions of special effects of budgets. The problem is, once you’ve seen Superman cut loose without his powers it makes no sense when he stops. Brainiac is shown to be as strong as Superman, but clearly cannot fly and has no super-speed or heat vision and given we’ve spent 10 minutes watching Superman use them against his robot army, why is he stopping now?  Because then he crushes Brainiac in seconds and your story is done. That contrivance aside, the best things about the story are the subplots involving the female characters. Clark and Lois and dating but he doesn’t want anyone in the office to know and we find out it took him a year to tell his parents. He wants to create this odd bubble where nothing goes wrong because he controls it all. Also, Supergirl saw Brainiac’s attack on Krypton and was traumatized by how helpless it made her feel. Now that she’s got godlike power on earth she likes smack around anyone she considers a bully, which rubs Superman the wrong way.  Despite her newfound power she’s still so scared (she’s only 17) when she finds out Brainiac is coming to earth she’s prepared to run and let him destroy the planet.  I could have watched more of her and less of Superman smacking Brainiac around a swamp, which somehow messes him up because he gets dirty.  Yes, the weakness of the supervillain is OCD. Like I said, it wasn’t a good story to begin with. Matt Bomer is the voice of Superman which is great because height aside, he looks exactly how you’d expect Superman to look. Stana Katic from Castle is the voice of Lois Lane and Supergirl is Molly Quinn, also from Castle (she plays his daughter).

 

 

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD VS. STAN LEE!

 1. Iron Man 3/Paramount                            Wknd/$  72.5           Total/$ 284.9

 2. The Great Gatsby/Warners                     Wknd/$  51.1            Total/$   51.1

 3. Pain and Gain/Paramount                      Wknd/$   5.0            Total/$  41.6

 4. Tyler Perry Presents Peeples/LGF         Wknd?$   4.9            Total/$    4.9

 5. 42/ Warners                                                Wknd/$   4.7            Total/$  84.7

 6. Oblivion/Universal                                    Wknd/$   3.9            Total/$  81.7

 7. The Croods/Fox                                          Wknd/$   3.6            Total/$ 173.2

 8. The Big Wedding/LGF                              Wknd/$   2.5            Total/$  18.7

 9. Mud/                                                             Wknd/$   2.3            Total/$    8.4

10. Oz The Great & Powerful/Disney           Wknd/$     .8            Total/$ 230.0

 

WHY DO YOU THINK SPIDER-MAN CONSTANTLY LOSES HIS MASK?

Iron Man 3 holds onto the number one slot and there have been a few complaints from some people (aka, geeks and fanboys also known as “my people”) that he spends almost no time in the armor in this film.  Well, duh.  Newsflash, geeks: you’re the only people who want to see a CGI (which what 99% of all armor action is) action hero for two hours.  Everyone else wants to see the movie star playing him and since the basic nature of Iron Man prevents this, we have to find reasons to get him out of it. Not to mention the story itself is about the struggles of the man inside and how he is the hero, not the suit.  The best scenes of the movie are of him coping with bad guys without the armor, using only his wits and some homemade devices he puts together thanks to a trip to Home Depot (actually the store isn’t named and Home Depot missed out big time not getting their name in there). You’d think geeks above all would know if you don’t get the “man” part right then the “Iron” doesn’t matter, but I learned long ago geek pretensions of their intelligence are just that, nothing but pretensions.  The odious Iron Man 2 had him in the armor constantly and it was as tedious as it gets.

 

HEY, I READ MOBY DICK, SO SHUT UP!

The Great Gatsby opens at number two and I must confess that I escaped high school without reading this. In fact, I’m a little ashamed just at how many things I escaped high school and college without reading given I wound up with a freaking degree in English.  But that’s not why I didn’t see this. I didn’t see it because I’m usually less-than-impressed with Baz Luhrmann and giving him over two hours of my life for him to make a classic work feel contemporary (translation: hip-hop and dance music on the soundtrack) while keeping it in a period setting didn’t seem like a good thing to do with my life.  Not to mention it looks horribly…garish, like someone over-using his HDR program.  A lot of brightly colored excess for the sake of brightly colored excess.  It looks like it should have been a musical (I had this idea before Smash and am thinking of suing them) and THAT I would have been down to see. Have them sing the modern songs instead of merely having them in the background. It would have been a disaster to be sure, but a gloriously get-drunk-and-see-it-with-your-friends disaster. Who wouldn’t want to see Leonardo and the cast break out into “Love Is The Drug.” Could he really be worse than Russell Crowe in Les Miz?

 

YOU CAN DO BETTER. WE CAN ALL DO BETTER.

Pain & Gain drops one notch to number three, followed by Peeples opening at number four and yes, I know that Tyler Perry didn’t write or direct this, but his name is on it (it’s also known as Tyler Perry Presents Peeples) and that’s good enough for me to completely ignore its existence, despite the appeal of Craig Robertson.  Dude, you’re part of the Apatow crew. Why are you here?  Not to mention, I didn’t care too much for Meet The Parents the first time around.

 

BIG PRETTY HAIR OF A MAN

42 is down to number five, followed by Oblivion at number six and also in this is Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and how he got in is a miracle given he’s younger, taller, better looking and with better hair than Tom Cruise.  Every time you see him, you wonder, “Why isn’t he the star of this movie again?” He’s best known now from Game of Thrones, but since I don’t watch that (it was up against a new King Arthur retelling on Starz when it debuted and I made my choice WITH NO REGRETS) I know him as Paul Bettany’s best friend in Wimbledon and as the star of the short-lived show, New Amsterdam, where he was an man cursed with immortality by a Native American when he came there with the Dutch in the 1600’s.  He can only die when he finds his one true love.  The problems with this are obvious, starting with if the Native Americans had that kind of power shouldn’t they have been using it to save themselves?  Pretty sure an army of immortal warriors would have solved that illegal immigration problem right quick.  It only ran 8 episodes so I doubt if even he remembers it.

 

SHE CAN TRULY SAY “THINGS WERE BETTER WHEN I WAS YOUNG”

The Croods is down to number seven, followed by The Big Wedding at number eight and you have to wonder what someone like Diane Keaton thinks of these actresses she works with, given when she was their age she was making Annie Hall and Looking for Mr. Goodbar and they’re making…this.  True, Amanda Seyfried does her fair share of indie work and will be the star of Lovelace this fall looking for some edgy Oscar love, but still…she’s here.

 

SURVIVAL OF THE PRETTIEST

Mud is down to number nine followed by the giant herpe of spring films, The Great and Powerful Oz and it’s both ironic yet totally logical that Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher were supporting players on That 70’s Show but have enjoyed the most success compared to stars Topher Grace (he’s in The Big Wedding and she was in a TV show based on Chelsea Handler’s life; nuff said) and Laura Prepon who were ostensibly the stars. However Kunis and Kutcher were easily the most attractive and we kind of expect more success from them, no?

 

 

IRON CLAD MONEY MAKING MACHINE

1. Iron Man 3/Paramount                             Wknd/$175.3            Total/$ 175.3

 2. Pain and Gain/Paramount                       Wknd/$   7.6            Total/$  33.9

 3. 42/ Warners                                                Wknd/$   6.2            Total/$  78.3

 4. Oblivion/Universal                                    Wknd/$   5.8            Total/$  76.0

 5. The Croods/Fox                                          Wknd/$   4.2            Total/$ 168.7

 6. The Big Wedding/LGF                              Wknd/$   3.9            Total/$  14.2

 7. Mud/                                                             Wknd/$   2.2            Total/$    5.2

 8. Oz The Great & Powerful/Disney           Wknd/$   1.8             Total/$ 228.6

 9. Scary Movie 5/Dimension                        Wknd/$   1.4             Total/$  29.6

10. The Place Beyond the Pines/Focus        Wknd/$   1.3             Total/$   18.7

 

DROPPING SOME GEEK KNOWLEDGE ON YOU

Iron Man 3 opens at number one and saying this is better than Iron Man 2 is like saying daylight is brighter than moonlight.  The second suffered from the worst conceits of “sequelitis” and Robert Downey Jr. has all but apologized for it in subsequent interviews. And he should have. It was so bad I can’t even use it as background noise when it runs on cable. You know how awful you have to that to happen!?!  For me!?! I’ve got Sahara on right now! Unlike the second film this has a genuine villain, someone who wants to do bad things for fun and profit, not just someone with a grudge against Tony Stark. The Mandarin is apparently terrorizing the US with random bombings while sending taunting messages to the president.  War Machine is assigned to track him down, but when Happy Hogan is injured by one of these bombings, Iron Man gets involved and apparently bites off more than he can chew. In the comics The Mandarin is THE Iron Man villain. The Lex Luthor to his Superman, the Joker to his Batman, so his appearance is here is due and while they take a potentially sensitive issue (stereotypical Fu Manchu style evil Asian villain) and provide a nice, funny twist, you can still smell the stench of fear of offending the increasingly important audience in mainland China (as well as Chinese debt holders). But he’s not the only threat to Iron Man. In a nice touch we see a superhero suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from dealing with the incredible events of his life, in this case the events of The Avengers movie. He probably should have been suffering from PSTD in the first film due to the abduction (which is mentioned), but better late than never. This actually touches on the core of what has always made the Marvel heroes so appealing: their human feet of clay.  I loves me some Superman more than any other character but I can understand why others find him so difficult to relate to. He’s all-powerful, always right and never has doubts or fails.  Tony Stark might actually have more flaws than virtues, which is what makes him so appealing to so many people. He continually rises above his basic selfish nature to do what’s right and now he has to fighting his own anxieties and fears which are a result of doing just that which makes him a much more interesting character, especially when events land in him Tennessee with a 10-year-old boy as his sidekick.  Their chemistry is easily the best part of this film and I would have sacrificed any number of CGI fight scenes for more of it.  Actually, I would sacrificed most of the overlong climactic fight scene in this near two-hour film, because by the time we get to it the film has just about overstayed its welcome and the plethora of different Iron Man suits, while fun to see just stinks of toy merchandising.

 

IF THEY REBOOT LETHAL WEAPON, HE’LL BE UP FOR MURTAGH

Pain and Gain is down to number two and also in this is Anthony Mackie who a few years back was heralded as the “Hot New Thing – Black Male Version” (not to be confused with “Hot New Thing Male” “Hot New Thing Female” “Hot New Thing Latino Male” “Hot New Thing Latino Female” and “Hot New Thing Asian Female” because there is no “Hot New Thing Asian Male.”) only to fizzle out and fail to ascend and take the place of Denzel Washington, still “the” Black Male leading man in Hollywood, Denzel Washington despite his age.  Unfortunately, likes so man others Mackie has simply wound up basically becoming the first choice in Black sidekicks for the White lead, which he will cement by becoming nothing less than a Super Black Sidekick as Captain America’s partner, The Falcon, in the upcoming Captain America sequel.  Clearly the last few years have taught him that it’s better to serve in heaven than reign in hell and it doesn’t get closer to heaven than being part of a billion dollar movie franchise.  It’s gonna pay for a lot of indie films where he can be the actual lead…or so he (and his agent) keeps telling himself.

 

“DEATH BEFORE APPROPRIATE AGE CASTING!” SCREAMED HIS EGO!

42 holds at number three, followed by Oblivion at number four and also in this is Olga Kurylenko, best known as the female lead in the second Daniel Craig film that no one seemed to like, but honestly was better than Skyfall. Not that it was all that great, but better than Skyfall.  As always, you can chart the ascension of a leading woman by the age of her leading men. As she rises, and works on bigger films, they will get older.  Kurylenko is 34 and her last few leading men have been Mark Walberg, Daniel Craig, Ben Affleck and Tom Cruise. Not one of them under forty and in Cruise’s case, quite a bit above it.  The closest she’s come a peer was Centurion where she spent most of the movie trying to kill a Michael Fassbender.  Of course, this was before he became a star and now that he is, she would have to kill someone to be his female lead.

 

THE HALLE BERRY APPROACH TO DATING APPLIED TO CASTING

The Croods holds at number five, followed by The Big Wedding at number six and also in this is Katherine Heigl, one of the few people in this film under 60 whose name can actually go above the title, though she’s stumbled in her last few choices of Killers with Ashton Kutcher, Life As We Know It with Josh Duhamel and One For The Money with some other pretty boys. Noticing a trend?  Did I mention she and her mother are also producing these lackluster works? Now, as much as I respect the emphasis on the pretty, because god knows that’s what men do to women, if they’d paid as much attention to directors and scripts as they clearly do to the cheekbones of her leading men, they might be able to keep her name above the title. You don’t have to choose one or the other, Kathy. You can have pretty boys and a good script. Just sayin’…

 

BETCHA THAT COP KNOWS WHO SHE IS NOW

Mud jumps into the top ten at number seven proving there’s no such thing as bad publicity as the female lead in this is none other than law enforcement provoker and that girl you don’t want to get drunk with, Reese Witherspoon. Unlike most, I wasn’t surprised because I knew she wasn’t simply a debutante but a freaking southern debutante.  The real wonder is that one of these types of incidents hasn’t happened before.  The unexpected success of this is also another step on Matthew McConughey’s comeback tour after Killer Joe and Magic Mike (I still say he was cheated out of an Oscar nomination).  What’s he coming back from? Being a shirtless exercise fiend and naked bongo playing punchline rather than actual actor.  And again this is from someone who has Sahara on right now.

 

HOW CAN I MISS YOU IF YOU WON’T GO AWAY

An unwelcome return to the top ten is Oz The Great and Powerful to number at number eight, followed by Scary Movie 5 still hanging around at number nine and The Place Beyond the Pines closing out the top ten at number ten.

DUMB & DUMBER WAS TAKEN

 1. Pain and Gain/Paramount                        Wknd/$ 20.0            Total/$  20.0

 2. Oblivion/Universal                                    Wknd/$ 17.4              Total/$  64.7

 3. 42/ Warners                                                Wknd/$ 1o.7              Total/$  69.1

 4. The Big Wedding/LGF                              Wknd/$   7.5              Total/$    7.5

 5. The Croods/Fox                                          Wknd/$   6.6              Total/$ 163.0

 6. G.I. Joe: Retaliation/Paramount            Wknd/$   3.6               Total/$ 116.4

 7. Scary Movie 5/Dimension                        Wknd/$   3.5               Total/$  27.5

 8. Olympus Has Fallen/FD                           Wknd/$   2.8               Total/$   93.1

 9. The Place Beyond the Pines/Focus         Wknd/$   2.7               Total/$   16.2

10. Jurassic Park 3D/Universal                    Wknd/$   2.3                Total/$   42.0

 

HEIDI KLUM AS MRS. MARCH

Pain and Gain opens at number one and these are dark times when Michael Bay can have a success with “real” movie meaning one about people and without copious CGI and explosions.  Next, he’ll be doing period dramas and don’t think they won’t let him. “Michael Bay Presents Little Women starring this season’s line up of Victoria’s Secrets models as Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth.”  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.  This is like feeding a stray cat.  He’ll never go away now.

 

ROTTEN IS AS ROTTEN DOES

Oblivion is down to number two and I’ve got little to add to 21^st Century Movie Buddy’s estimation of this Outer Limits episode dragged out to two pretentious hours and that run time is easily the biggest problem.  There are lots of utterly stupid movies, but so long as they move at an interesting clip you don’t have time to sit back and ask why the cops in Chicago are the worst in the world, which is why Harrison Ford is a fugitive to begin with (basic forensic evidence would have proven there was someone else there). Here, you’ve got far too much time to wonder why because the premise so efficiently set up in the trailers and commercials is needlessly dragged out. You don’t need to show us Tom Cruise going through his routine as a tech then have him tell Morgan Freeman what he does. It’s redundant.  And if we see him going off for introspection in the wasteland once, we don’t need to see it twice.  It shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that this comes from a graphic novel that was never really written to begin with. Seriously. To circumvent the Writer’s Guild strike, this dirtbag writer/director pretty much betrayed his union by pretending he’d written a graphic novel to get around pitching the film, which was prohibited.  The end result: shit floats.  An unethical, untalented writer and director is rewarde with success.

 

LAWRENCE OLIVIER WOULD LAUGH IN BOTH THEIR FACES

42 is down to number three and also in this is Alan Tudyk best known as Walsh on Firefly and now Suburgatory as the wacky dentist/neighbor/best friend Noah. He plays an unrepentantly racist opposing ballplayer and he and the actor playing Jackie Robinson deliberately avoided being friendly due to their roles. Really? Whatever happened to fucking acting!?!  Remember that?  Why does everything have to be method?  Are you unable to use your cell phone too because they didn’t have them?  Do you turn down groupie sex because your character would?  Of course not. And actors wonder why people hate them.

 

PUTTIN’ THE BUSINESS IN SHOW BUSINESS

The Big Wedding opens at number four and have you noticed how all these wedding movies look exactly the same? All having established vets clearly looking for an easy paycheck and younger actors just happy to work with the big guns in multiple storylines centered around a wedding? Know why they keep making them? Because apparently no movie about weddings has ever lost money. It may not be a hit, but you won’t lose anything either.  I’ve no doubt some of them were also suckered into doing this after being told it’s a remake of a French film. Newsflash: the French make crap movies too.  The best thing about this movie will wind up being a drunken Diane Keaton talking about it on Ellen.  Unlike every commercial and trailer I’ve seen, that was truly funny.

 

LIKE MY HIPS, NUMBERS DON’T LIE

The Croods is down to number five, followed by GI Joe: Retaliation at number six and this means Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has two films in the top ten this week both apparently hits. I say apparently, because this one didn’t even make budget in the US and even when combined with overseas gross hasn’t reached the 3x budget rule of thumb to be profitable.  Likewise, Scary Movie 5  (down to number seven) didn’t even double its budget. I’d love to say this means the end of the franchise, but everyone knows evil never truly dies. Finally, while Olympus Has Fallen also feels like a hit, a $70M budget with only a $98M worldwide return says otherwise.  This may have been too little, too late for Gerard Butler’s leading man career.  Looks like it’s back to supporting Christian Bale and Angela Jolie.

 

A JOB WORTH DOING…

A Place Beyond the Pines is down to number nine and also in this is Ray Liotta who seems to always be playing corrupt cops. Sadly, when your name ends in a vowel you tend to have only three options: cop, criminal, cop who is a criminal.  Hell, DeNiro and Pacino are still doing it in their 70’s.  That said, watching him in one of a crew of some of the dirtiest cops ever in the movie Phoenix (it’s set in Phoenix, AZ) isn’t the worst thing you can do on late night cable.  Co-starring is Anthony LaPaglia who has played just as many cops, criminals and corrupt cops. I wonder if they joked about it on-set?

 

THE END…AT LEAST UNTIL THE SMELL-O-VISION RELEASE IN 2016

Finally, Jurassic Park 3D closes out the top ten at number ten.

ANOTHER APTLY NAMED DISASTER

 1. Oblivion/Universal                                    Wknd/$ 38.2        Total/$  38.2

 2. 42/ Warners                                                Wknd/$ 18.0        Total/$  54.1

 4. Scary Movie 5/Dimension                        Wknd/$   6.3        Total/$  22.9

 3. The Croods/Fox                                          Wknd/$   9.5        Total/$ 154.9

 5. G.I. Joe: Retaliation/Paramount             Wknd/$   5.8        Total/$ 111.2

 6. The Place Beyond the Pines/Focus         Wknd/$   4.7         Total/$   11.4

 7. Olympus Has Fallen/FD                            Wknd/$   4.5        Total/$   88.8

 8. Evil Dead/Tristar                                        Wknd/$   4.1         Total/$   48.4

 9. Jurassic Park 3D/Universal                      Wknd/$   4.0        Total/$   38.5

10. Oz The Great & Powerful/Disney            Wknd/$   3.0       Total/$  223.8           

 

DEADLIER WIT THAN THE MALE

Oblivion opens at number one and I’m going to turn this one over to my 21^st Century Movie Buddy (who is also one of my geek girls). I shouldn’t because she’s better than I am, but fortunately for me she’s too burdened with an actual social life and career to truly replace me…

 

“I’m going to start by complaining of a small but significant pet peeve: excessive use of horn blares (you know: BRMMMMMM) in sci-fi movies. They’re using these a LOT nowadays to elicit a reaction of foreboding and uncertainty and this movie is no exception. The problem? There IS no foreboding or uncertainty in this movie because it’s utterly predictable. There was not one aspect of this movie that you couldn’t guess if you’re paying minimal attention, or have been watching or reading any sci-fi made in the last hundred years or so. I’m fairly certain that I could go through the Star Trek omnibus (or as Angrygeek suggested The Outer Limits) and cobble this movie together with three or four intersecting plots.  Speaking of the plot, here it is: it’s 2077, sixty years after extraterrestrials referred to as “Scavs” blow up the moon, which caused tectonic devastation and wiped out a huge chunk of the human population. Humans retaliated with nuclear weapons, resulting in a pyrrhic victory. Most remaining humans live on Saturn’s moon, Titan, and on a way station in the earth’s orbit called the Tet.  Tom Cruise is Jack, a technician and one of the last remaining humans on earth. His job is to maintain drones that protect giant sea pumps (they are mining water for the Titan settlement) from Scav marauders. Andrea Riseborough plays Victoria, his comm officer and occasional unsexy pool sex partner. They both report to Sally (Melissa Leo, without crunchy Southie bangs), leader of mission control on the Tet. Tom Cruise often dreams about That One Bond Girl (Olga Kurylenko) meeting him on the Empire State Building, but the timing is off as the Empire State Building has been in ruins for decades, destroyed before he was even born. One day, while out surveying a mysterious signal broadcast by the Scavs (incidentally, from the top of the mostly-buried Empire State Building), That One Bond Girl coincidentally crashes from the sky and everything he knows is now in question (BRMMMMMM REMEMBER HOW COOL THESE WERE IN INCEPTION BRMMMMMM).  I’m not allowed to spoil the movie (which is like drinking lots of water and then being told I have to stand next to a toilet for two hours without being allowed to pee) but let’s just say that a) there’s an obvious twist, especially if you’ve seen the commercials, and b) once you learn the twist, you will ask yourself why Joseph Kosinski didn’t invest in a script doctor. The space villains who want to decimate everything on earth are essentially a MacGuffin…until Kosinsky decides halfway through the story that they aren’t. He doesn’t make this switch effectively because he’s not willing to give any rhyme or reason. Instead, we get an hour of Tom Cruise motorbiking in the desert, taking naps in the grass while listening to Led Zeppelin, falling into obvious booby traps, and replaying a De Beer’s diamond commercial in his head.  The cast isn’t horrible, but they’re also not compelling. As you suspect, Tom Cruise plays Tom Cruise, because his celebrity has transcended his acting.  He and his asymmetrical front teeth pull you out of the action from time to time when you start wondering if he made a space movie so he could put subliminal photos of David Miscavige in the background (I counted seven). Olga Kurylenko is beautiful but literally passive–she spends the movie in stasis, fainting, lying in bed, lying injured, and in stasis again. She’s also there so the studio can fulfill Cruise’s perpetual contractual request to ride a motorbike with a hot chick on the back so that focus is drawn from his height. Andrea Riseborough plays a beautiful, svelte redhead with an accent who only exists to follow protocol and serve Jack forlornly, which is a totally new and not at all familiar direction for Tom Cruise’s love interests. Morgan Freeman and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau play some other surviving humans and are in the film for about five minutes each because they are both taller than 5’7″.  The only good thing Oblivion did for me was remind me to watch Game of Thrones, because Coster-Waldau was like a sexy, brooding Jaime Lannister if he were The Road Warrior. Don’t let the horn blares distract you–unlike Inception, there’s nothing intriguing about this film that hasn’t been done before, and better.”

 

NO MOVIE THEATER FOR OLD MEN

42 is down to number two and also in this is Harrison Ford who long ago reached the “Sean Connery” portion of his career—the realization that he can no longer open or carry a film despite his permanent A-list status and now needs a young actor to do the heavy lifting—but this is the first time it’s worked out.  The key is a “young” actor, not merely “younger.” Ford is in his 70’s. EVERYONE is younger than he is!  Arnold Schwarzenegger is younger than he is!  The entire cast of The Expendables is younger than he is! Not to mention Daniel Craig who was his co-star in Cowboys & Aliens and Brendan Fraser who was his co-star in Extraordinary Measures.  40-something is not a “young” co-star. Only Rachel McAdams was truly younger in Morning Glory but most people stayed away from that for fear that he might kiss her and they’d be vomiting in their popcorn after watching Grandpa Solo make out with her (for the record they are not love interests, but it doesn’t make that movie any better).  Only Josh Harnett truly fit the bill in Hollywood Homicide, which tanked, but hey, Connery stumbled at first too with Miles O’Keefe as his young co-star. Don’t remember Miles O’Keefe? Exactly.  I’m thinking Harrison Ford and Channing Tatum is about five seconds away from happening.

 

AIN’T GONNA BE NO GREEN LANTERN 2

The Croods holds at number three and none is more grateful than Ryan Reynolds as this continues the illusion that he has hit movies.  He’s just a voice, but his agent would be the first to remind you it still counts.

 

YOUR MOVE, RAYLAN

Scary Movie 5 is down to number four, followed by GI Joe Retaliation at number five and also in this is none other than Boyd Crowder hisself, Walton Goggins, who is ratcheting up a nice little resume from Oscar-winning quality (Lincoln, Django Unchained) to big-budget popcorn fare like here.  Of course in two out of the three he doesn’t live to see the end, but it’s a small price to pay to be in two Best Picture nominees in one year.

 

BLACK DON’T CRACK BUT BROWN HANGS IN THERE PRETTY GOOD TOO

The Place Beyond the Pines jumps to number six thanks to an additional thousand theaters added to its release and also in this is Eva Mendes making it clear that Ryan Gosling is one of those actors who hooks up with his single co-stars, going back to Sandra Bullock in Murder By Numbers. Or it could just mean he likes a swing on that back porch because there’s only one common denominator between Blake Lively (though he didn’t work with her and tried to keep it under wraps to no avail), McAdams and Mendes and Sir Mix-A-Lot would understand. Now, in a business where women are marginalized once they’re over 30 Mendes is not only working, but regularly as the love interest to male co-stars who are actually younger than she is.  I’ve no doubt it’s because like many minorities the usually white people doing the casting have no idea how old she really is and their liberal guilt won’t let them admit it (thank you 30 Rock for showcasing this expertly).

 

PUTTIN’ THE GREEN IN THE RED, BLACK AND GREEN

Olympus Has Fallen holds at number seven and this was directed by Antoine Fuqua, who actually directed Eva Mendes in her big breakthrough role in Training Day over a decade ago.  This is semi-important because along with GI Joe Retaliation director, Jon Chu, he proves that minorities can direct successful big budget action movies.  Of course given how utterly stupid both movies are, it’s a dubious honor to be added to a list alongside Michael Bay.  It’s like the first time you see a minority cop being accused of police brutality.

 

OR HE’S JUST STONED ALL THE TIME

Evil Dead is down to number eight, followed by Jurassic Park 3D at number nine and Oz The Great and Powerful closing out the top ten at ten and you have to wonder if the producers are now a tad pissed at James Franco when he clearly gave them nothing for their $215 budgeted film, but was invested in the micro-budgeted Spring Breakers and even the opening sketch on last week’s MTV Movie Awards (aka, Stars Turn Out To Push Their Summer Movies On The Kids).  On one hand you have a hit and you can’t prove he wasn’t part of it, but on the other hand he could give a crap and doesn’t care if anyone knows it.

 

NOT JUST A PLACE TO READ THE PAPER FOR FREE ANYMORE

So, I’ve recently rediscovered the public library. Granted, it’s due mostly to money issues (I’m still paying for ’12) but I’ve no regrets, especially given it’s allowing me to take home super expensive photography books that I could never afford otherwise. I mean I could, but I have a hard time rationalizing forty fucking dollars for a book of pretty pictures.  I say this with full awareness of the fact I now have a full Funko Pop Justice League collection, which is 8 figures at no less than $10 a pop.  I think this fully explains the money issue that brought back to the library in the first place, no?  No I used to have a card a million years ago but mostly would the library as a place to crash between job interviews when I was living in Brooklyn right after college (Sunset Park, bitchez!).  But my pit stop of the Mid-Manhattan Library (right across the street from THE New York Library with its two famous guardian lions on 42^nd Street) bears little resemblance to that place.  Aside from the goddamn Dewey Decimal system (yes, I’m old enough to remember it) being wonderfully replaced by computers, which even tell you what floor you can find your book are the freaking comic books. Oh, sorry. As a geek I should be the first to call them “graphic novels” but who are we kidding?  They are comic books and you can actually take them out.  The only thing sadder than that is that I was tempted to do so, but then remember the stack of unread comics on my floor at home (and we’re back to the money issues that have me there in the first place). Honestly, I only meant to look around that first time because there was no way I could take home massive, expensive coffee table books, could I? You bet your ass I could. Herb Ritts’ Notorious is gigantic and out of print but it was in my backpack and out the door. Of course, there’s a price and in this case some of the pages were clearly ripped out (this is why you can’t have nice things!) but the fact it was even there to be borrowed was stunning.  So was Annie Lebowitz’s tome about her entire career!  This is crazy! Don’t you know you can’t trust people!?!  Why would you let them take these things!?!  But they do, and I have every weekend since.  Also, because I have to take it back, it forces me to actually read the books, unlike say the books I’ve bought which sit unread, gathering dust (and one more time, back to money issues).  Of course it’s not all peaches and cream.  It is public and by definition that means anyone can go there, making it an oasis for the homeless and those damn near, judging by the smell and it’s debatable if the Library’s attempt to mitigate with air fresheners makes it better or merely combines with it to make it worse.  And I’d avoid the bathroom if I were you.  They befall the fate of any public toilet.  But again: FREE BOOKS AND MOVIES (that technically you pay for with your tax dollars).

 

AND AN HOT TUB INTERROGATION SCENE?

Drea DeMatteo is a tough cop who doesn’t play by the rules.  Jodi Lynn O’Keefe is a beautiful assistant DA fighting politics for justice and Mena Suvari is the lesbian stalker they’re after in Stalkers, a Lifetime Movie, which was clearly a pilot for a series. What wasn’t clear is how it wasn’t little more than porn and the three of them didn’t end up in a naked sweaty heap.  But again, it was Lifetime and their insistence on seriously looking at how women’s complaints against their male stalkers are devalued in society until its too late wouldn’t allow this cliché-ridden TV movie to be the softcore porn camp fest I so wanted it to be.  Come on, I can’t be the only one who was waiting for DeMatteo or O’Keefe to be “forced” to go undercover to try and get Suvari to seduce them and have “feelings awakened.”  Fine, then. But it’s good to see DeMatteo again. After her most recent appearance on Californication where she was a sight more “full-figured” than her days on The Sopranos, I thought she was going to be one of those actors who frankly didn’t give a fuck and wasn’t going to diet to make Hollywood happy, but the weight is gone and she’s back into fighting shape and clearly down for a series of her own.  O’Keefe’s icy beauty best known from her turn as the bitchy prom queen in She’s All That has aged nicely into the embodiment of what Goldie Hawn referred to in The First Wives Club as the “The Three Ages for Women in Hollywood: Sexy DA” which comes after “Babe” which she clearly was.  So was Suvari after American Pie and American Beauty, so I guess there’s a DA role for her somewhere as well.

WHERE ARE YOU, CRASH DAVIS!?!

 1. 42/ Warners                                           Wknd/$ 27.3           Total/$  27.3

 2. Scary Movie 5/Dimension                  Wknd/$ 15.2            Total/$  15. 2

 3. The Croods/Fox                                    Wknd/$ 13.2            Total/$ 142.5

 4. G.I. Joe: Retaliation/Paramount       Wknd/$ 10.8           Total/$ 102.4

 5. Evil Dead/Tristar                                  Wknd/$   9.5            Total/$   41.5

 6. Jurassic Park 3D/Universal                Wknd/$   8.8           Total/$   31.9

 7. Olympus Has Fallen/FD                      Wknd/$   7.3            Total/$   81.9

 8. Oz The Great & Powerful/Disney      Wknd/$   4.9            Total/$  219.4           

 9. Tyler Perry’s Temptation/LGF           Wknd/$   4.5            Total/$   45.4

10. The Place Beyond the Pines/Focus   Wknd/$   4.1            Total/$     5.5

 

OF ALL THE SPORTS MY DAD MADE ME PLAY, THE ONE I HATED THE MOST…AND I HATED THEM ALL

42 opens at number one and I do realize there may be a bit of a moral obligation for me to see this (you know, being a person of color and all), but despite the tremendous historical and social significance there’s just one small thing I can’t overcome: I can’t stand baseball! Seriously.  It’s sooooo freaking boring!  And the only thing that’s duller than baseball is a well-intentioned bio-pic and this is a combination of both.  Yes, I know the reviews have mostly positive, but I doubt if any of those people possesses my level of disdain for the sport.  It’s like telling me you’ve made the best piece of liver on earth. It’s still freaking liver! There’s only one baseball movie I like and it’s Bull Durham, which has as its subtext the fact Crash Davis is in fact too smart to succeed at the game he so loves.  That says it all.

 

SO UNFUNNY IT’S NOT EVEN FUNNY

Scary Movie 5 opens at number two and I will confess to have seen at least three of these and actually laughed, but even though the famed ZAZ team (Zucker Abrams Zucker)—the people who basically created this type of comedy—took over with number three it was clear that this series was running on fumes. It was also clear that the ZAZ team were simply were not what they once were.  When your jokes are playing on the real-life troubles of Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan, you’re in trouble. Not simply because those jokes are weak, but they’re two years out of date.  The sad thing is Charlie Sheen’s clenched jaw form of acting suits this type of humor very well, as he proved in the two Hot Shots movies….and ten years of it utterly failing to be even remotely funny on the sitcom Two & A Half Men.

 

DON’T FEED THEM!

The Croods is down to number three and at $385M worldwide it’s a clear success meaning it’s your fault there’ll undoubtedly be a Croods 2 in about two years. Hope you’re happy.

 

WHAT WAS THAT WE WONDER, WONDER WOMAN

GI Joe: The Retaliation is down to number three and probably the only person more grateful than The Rock to be in this is Adrianne Palicki, she of the very unfortunate attempt at a new Wonder Woman show last year.  Arrow is one of the biggest hits on TV this year, Smallville (where she appeared on one episode) just finished a decade long run and other superheroes are cleaning up at the box office, but she was sadly thrust into the spotlight as the star of a massive, very public disaster playing the most famous female superhero on earth.  You should have known it was doomed the moment you saw David E. Kelly’s name attached to it and he gave you the super-powered Ally McBeal you feared.  The horrific pilot is online, though I’m sure she’d prefer if you didn’t watch and instead watched some Friday Night Lights reruns.

 

IF IT HAD BEEN A SNAKE…OH, IT WAS.

Evil Dead is down to number five, followed by Jurassic Park 3D and I mentioned little last Timmy was now playing a soldier in GI Joe: Retaliation, but what I left out was a) his name (Joseph Mazzello) and b) he was also on Justified this year as a rattlesnake handling preacher.  How’d that work out?  Well, let’s just say his character won’t be returning next season…or the one after that…or the one after that.

 

YOU JUST CAN’T JUST BE PRETTY, SMART AND A GREAT ATHLETE ANYMORE

Olympus Has Fallen is down to number seven and you have to pity Rick Yune who is a Wharton Business School Grad, a former model for Versace and Ralph Lauren and who qualified for the Olympic Trials in taekwondo.  He’s basically perfect in real life but all he does in movies is play villains.  He was a bad guy in The Fast & The Furious, Ninja Assassin, Die Another Day and here once again.  What’s really gotta hurt is watching Sung Kang come up right behind him and not only get good guy roles, but in the same franchise even though his character technically died in Fast & The Furious Tokyo Drift!

 

IT’S ALL RELATIVE

Oz The Great and Powerful is down to number eight, followed by Tyler Perry’s Temptation at number nine and The Place Beyond the Pines opens here at number ten and while this may seem like another disappointment for Ryan Gosling, it’s actually pretty good considering its only in 500 theaters.  Let me put it this way: The Host is in 2000+ theaters and made less.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_blOQEu9ws

AIN’T NOTHING LIKE THE REAL THING

 1. Evil Dead/Tristar                                    Wknd/$ 26.0           Total/$  26.0

 2. The Croods/Fox                                      Wknd/$ 21.1            Total/$ 125.8

 3. G.I. Joe: Retaliation/Paramount         Wknd/$ 21.1            Total/$  86.7

 4. Jurassic Park 3D/Universal                  Wknd/$ 18.2           Total/$  18.2

 5. Olympus Has Fallen/FD                        Wknd/$ 10.0           Total/$   71.1

 6. Tyler Perry’s Temptation/LGF             Wknd/$ 10.0           Total/$  38.4

 7. Oz The Great & Powerful/ Disney        Wknd/$   8.2           Total/$ 212.8

 8. The Host/ORF                                         Wknd/$   5.2            Total/$   19.7

 9. The Call/TriStar                                       Wknd/$   3.5           Total/$   45.5           

10. Admission/Focus                                    Wknd/$   2.1            Total/$   15.4

 

YES, THE TREE IS STILL IN THE MOVIE

Evil Dead opens at number one and as we all know I don’t do the scary, not even when it’s the deliberately “campy scary” of the Evil Dead series, which came to a wonderful climax in Army of Darkness aka Medieval Dead aka Evil Dead 3 (which I actually did see).  It doesn’t help matters that the creators behind this remake have gone all torture porn gory on it, so rather than scare you and make you laugh they’ve just gone bloody.  Yeah, you can keep it.  But this is a smart move by the little redheaded girl from Suburgatory (Jane Levy, and it’s a good show you’re not watching) to transition into films.  Like children’s films there’s a built-in audience for horror so chances of success are high and when it fails no one blames you.  It’s a win-win scenario and she won.  Unlike her appearance in Fun Size earlier this year, which was a loss, but Victoria Justice took the rap for that since she was the draw. Even tweens saw the ridiculousness of two girls so pretty somehow not being in the popular circle or being invited to hot parties.  It required more suspension of disbelief than a book of evil.

 

THE BRUCE LEE RULE: IT AIN’T KUNG FU IF EVERYBODY’S GOT THEIR SHIRTS ON

The Croods Hold onto number two, narrowly beating out G.I. Joe: Retaliation and by the way, that line was cut from the movie and only shows up in the commercials.  Not in the commercials but the highlight of the film for me is none other than The Rza, appearing as a ninja master in the most enjoyable part of the film which is the ninja war storyline.  It was almost 1987 all over again!  As the ninja GI Joe, Snake Eyes, is Ray Park, who shot to immediate fame as Darth Maul in the first Star Wars prequel and later turned up as Toad in the first X-Men movie.  But more interesting than him is pretty boy Byung-hun Lee as his lifelong ninja rival, Storm Shadow.  Lee has basically been “the girl” in both movies in that they both find some ridiculous reason for him to take his shirt off.  They like it so much he survived his apparent death in the first film to come back and disrobe here.  Even Channing Tatum doesn’t even have to do this.  Lee’s going to reunite with Bruce Will in Red 2 later this year, so we’ll see if they pull off the hat trick.

 

COULDN’T WAIT ONE MORE YEAR FOR THE 20^TH ANNIVERSARY?

Jurassic Park returns in 3D format at number four and given this is running every other weekend on cable I can’t see why anyone would bother. Then again I can’t stand 3D so it’s not for me anyway. I’ve no doubt it’s still fun to watch because it’s still fun to watch every other weekend on cable.  Oh, the kid who plays Timmy?  He’s all grown up, playing a soldier in G.I. Joe Retaliation.  Yes, you’re old.

 

IT’S ALL POLITICS

Olympus Has Fallen is down to number five and also in this are Angela Bassett and Morgan Freeman as the Secret Service Director and the Speaker of the House, respectively speaking and in movie world, it’s demotions for both.  First of all, Glenn Close got to at least be Vice-President in the last time a Die Hard type of storyline was applied to the president in Air Force One.  And Bassett herself was White House Chief of Staff in Contact.  Though important, Secret Service Director (the first female director was actually appointed only a week ago, by the way) is still a massive step down.  Not to mention Morgan Freeman has been both The President and God and now he’s just Speaker of the House?  Please.  At least let him be the trigger happy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that Robert Forester gets to play.  But if Martin Sheen has taught us anything, it’s that you can always come back.  He started off playing JFK, later showed up as Chief of Staff in The American President but returned to Commander in Chief on The West Wing, because if there’s anyone you can buy as the First Female President, much less the first Black Female President, it’s Angela Bassett.

 

SPOILER WARNING: IT SUCKS!

Down to number six is Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor and it’s time so for spoilers to let you know how horrible Perry can get with the hardline Christian dogma that runs through all his films.   The female protagonist winds up with HIV. Yes, the price of infidelity is an incurable disease and that’s only probably only because someone told him that contracting it is no longer the death sentence it once was.  Clearly that whole “love and forgiveness” message from Jesus was lost on Mr. Perry. What makes this particularly offensive is that Black women make up 2/3 of all new HIV transmissions among women.  Clearly they are all cheating whores who aren’t there for their men and need to find themselves some Jesus.  Did I mention the first time she actually gets raped?  Or that she not only goes on to have a relationship but he beats her and gets her addicted to cocaine?  None of which would have happened if she’d just resisted temptation. Or should I say “Tyler Perry’s Temptation.” Hey, isn’t pride a sin too? Or in this case “Tyler Perry’s Sin.”

 

ETC

Oz The Great and Powerful is down to number seven, followed by The Host at number eight and The Call at number nine.

 

SINS AGAINST COMEDY

Finally closing out the top ten at number ten is Admission and I do think there’s something amazingly appropriate in comedy legend Lily Tomlin playing Tina Fey’s mom.  Not enough to make me see it, but it is nice. Oh, and Michael Sheen who played Wesley Snipes on 30 Rock is also here as Fey’s cheating boyfriend. My god, how much talent did this film freaking waste?

 

CEREAL KILLER

I can’t stress enough how much I love that new TV shows never stop coming.  When I was kid we had to wait once a year. You people are freaking spoiled. This week Hannibal—which I thought was coming next fall—debuted and this should be of great concern to The Following given it was a thinly veiled rip-off of the entire relationship between Hannibal Lecter and the man who caught him, Will Graham as best shown in Manhunter (we’re going to pretend Red Dragon just never happened, like most of Brett Ratner’s career).  Charming, college professor contacted by FBI agent while researching killings turns out to be the serial killer.  They even had James Purefoy give Kevin Bacon near fatal wounds during his apprehension, just as Lecter gave to Will Graham.  Needless to say, it’s infinitely better. Better writing, better cast, better direction, better everything.  Maybe a bit too stylized which is easy for a pilot, but more difficult to maintain on a weekly basis since it has to fit the murders. One significant change is that Will Graham isn’t an FBI Agent due to the fact he’s suffering from Asperger’s/is autistic and is just a consultant (but he still gets a gun like Kevin Bacon it seems).  Again, this seems a pile on of “hey, let’s make him more interesting with a trendy disorder.”  Add to this he suffer from nightmares that make him sweat through sheets and collects stray dogs and you wonder what eccentricy they actually left behind. I’m waiting on him being a virgin to come up.  Of course the first time we meet Hannibal he’s eating. Right after we’re told the killer in question is eating the liver of the girls no less.  And because you can’t have a show named after him without him doing what he does best, he kills one poor girl and eats her lungs.  It’s actually short of gore, but infinitely more disturbing than the bloodletting on The Following.  The problem with this show is that how long can Will see Lecter every week and not see he’s a serial killer? We know the endgame and will only wait so long and can only endure so many “close calls”—not to mention the inevitable deaths of people who stumble onto the truth—before we get there. Yeah, I know they stretched out Clark Kent becoming Superman to ten years on Smallville, but you don’t want to have that be your example. Then there’s elephant in the room: an appearance by Clarice Starling? I honestly think the nothing lets you know how good a show is than feeling it should have a definitive beginning, middle and end and not go on forever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFwR9ZYt6xc