Takers

Starring: Matt Dillon, Idris Elba, T.I., Chris Brown, Paul Walker, Hayden Christensen

Directed by: John Luessenhop

Plot: A group of bank robbers are planning their ultimate heist but an unrelenting detective is hot on their heels.

Rotten Tomatoes Freshness: 32%

Critic Consensus: n/a

The Last Exorcism

Starring: Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell, Iris Bahr, Louis Herthum

Directed by: Daniel Stamm

Plot: A priest who was made his living performing fake exorcisms invites a camera crew along with him on his last job to reveal that he’s a fraud but it turns out the girl they’re helping might actually be possessed by Satan.

RT Freshness: 66%

Critic Consensus: “It doesn’t fully deliver on the chilly promise of its Blair Witch-style premise, but The Last Exorcism offers a surprising number of clever thrills.”

Centurion

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, Olga Kurylenko, Noel Clarke

Directed by: Neil Marshall

Plot: A Roman legion is dispatched to the northern region of Britain to defeat a vicious tribe of barbarians but are decimated and the survivors must attempt to make the long trip back to Roman territory while being pursued by a group of dangerous hunters.

RT Freshness: 52%

Critic Consensus: “It’s a bloody geyser of Neil Marshall’s typically stylish B-movie action, but Centurion is too focused on hacking and slashing to deliver original dialogue or interesting characters.”

I’m feeling conflicted emotions looking at this week’s box office numbers.  On the one hand, The Expendables held onto the top spot against an onslaught of garbage but Scott Pilgrim (which I saw last Friday and thoroughly enjoyed) is dying faster than Taye Diggs at the end of Equilibrium.  The Expendables took in another $16.5 million over the weekend, bringing it’s two week total to just under $65 million.  Second place went to the “spoof” movie Vampires Suck, from the demon spawn behind Date Movie, Epic Movie, etc.  Eat, Pray, Love dropped down to third place, fourth place went to new release Lottery Ticket and The Other Guys rounded out the top 5.  The three other new releases took the sixth, seventh and eight spots (Piranha 3D, Nanny McPhee Returns and The Switch respectively.)  The tragedy of Scott Pilgrim is that it lost almost 50% from last week and fell from fifth to tenth.  It’s almost guaranteed to become a cult classic but it’s sad to see it lose to such cinematic garbage.  Definitely go see it if you haven’t yet.  This weekend see the return of Avatar, can it make another billion dollars or is everyone fine with watching it on DVD now?

Surpassing expectations, Inception dominated the box office over the weekend.  The latest from Christopher Nolan made just over $62 million, the largest opening ever for Leonardo DiCaprio and the second highest original sci fi film opening behind Avatar.  Also surprisingly strong was last week’s winner, Despicable Me, which made another $32.8 million and taking it’s total for two weeks to over $118 million.  Well below expectations was The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which came in a mediocre third with $17.6 million making it the second Disney/Bruckheimer flop of the year.  Predators, meanwhile, collapsed from last week with an almost 72% drop off and only making another $7 million, good for eighth place.  Near the bottom of the top 10 indie comedies Cyrus and The Kids are All Right look ready to break into the list, both got expanded releases and were big earners for the number of theaters they had.

The Last Airbender

Starring: Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Dev Patel, Jackson Rathbone

Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan

Plot: Four nations, each able to control an element, are at war when Aang, an “avatar” who can control all the elements awakens and could save the world.

Rotten Tomatoes Freshness: 9%

Critic Consensus: “Despite flashy special effects, The Last Airbender squanders the potential of its popular source material on an incomprehensible plot, laughable dialogue, and a joyless sense of detachment.”

Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Dakota Fanning

Directed by: David Slade

Plot: Some evil emo dude is building an army of vampires and the brain dead trio of Bella, Edward and Jacob all stare and mope at each other.

RT Freshness: 49%

Critic Consensus: “Stuffed with characters and overly reliant on uninspired dialogue, Eclipse won’t win The Twilight Saga many new converts, despite an improved blend of romance and action fantasy.”

I thought that most people enjoyed Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland but I didn’t think it would do the apparently insane amount of business it did overseas.  The movie has, as of today, made $667 million at the international box office and $332 million domestically, making it the sixth film to earn $1 billion dollars worldwide.  It joins the ranks of The Dark Knight, Avatar, Titanic, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

This week the trio of Zach, Brian and Charlie have the cobwebs and first show jitters shaken off and the audio problems mostly solved.

• Show and Tell: Brian tells us what he thought of Kick Ass, Charlie and Zach discuss the first seasons of Human Target and Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Charlie sees John Woo’s The Killer for the first time and Zach checks out the insanity of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.
• News: We give our thoughts about the Ong Bak 3 trailer, a Masters of the Universe movie, a reboot of the Jack Ryan series and Joss Whedon directing The Avengers.  We also talk about New Releases including Avatar.
• Nicolas Cage!: With Kick Ass and Bad Lieutenant, Nicolas Cage seems to be making a comeback.  We talk about our favorite (and not so favorite) Nic Cage movies.

If you have any comments/feedback/ideas for a third segment discussion, drop us a comment or e-mail us at contact@everythingaction.com

Avatar

Crazy Heart

The Lovely Bones

Transformers Seasons 3 and 4

Minority Report (Blu Ray)

Fist of Legend (Blu Ray)

Batman (Blu Ray) (Also Batman Returns and Batman Forever)

Battleship Potemkin (Blu Ray)

Red Letter Media’s Mike has already given his in depth reviews of The Phantom Menace and Avatar and now he returns for his most epic review to date, a 9 part dissection of Attack of the Clones.  Although he might be a mentally unstable serial killer, he also gives an extremely detailed review of all the reasons why Attack of the Clones is terrible, including the plot, horrible love story, lack of characters and overuse of CG.  Check out the first part below and then head over to youtube to watch the rest if you have a spare hour and a half.

A huge night for Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker as she took home Best Director and the movie took home both Sound awards, Best Screenplay and Best Picture.  Avatar won most of the other technical awards like Visual Effects and Cinematography.  The acting categories were not really that surprising except for Sandra Bullock, who won Best Actress, but she’s also the Worst Actress as well so I guess they cancel each other out.  Check out all the winners below and definitely check out the transcript of our live blog for more thoughts.

Best Supporting Actor- Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

Best Animated Film- Up

Best Original Song- “The Weary Kind” from Crazy Heart

Best Original Screenplay- Mark Boal, The Hurt Locker

Best Animated Short- Logorama

Best Documentary Short- Music by Prudence

Best Live Action Short- The New Tenants

Best Make Up- Star Trek

Best Adapted Screenplay- Geoffrey Fletcher, Precious

Best Supporting Actress- Mo’Nique

Best Art Direction- Avatar

Best Costume Design- The Young Victoria

Best Sound Editing- The Hurt Locker

Best Sound Mixing- The Hurt Locker

Best Cinematography- Avatar

Best Original Score- Michael Giacchino, Up

Best Visual Effects- Avatar

Best Documentary Feature- The Cove

Best Film Editing- The Hurt Locker

Best Foreign Language Film- El Secreto de sus Ojos

Best Actor- Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart

Best Actress- Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side

Best Director- Kathryn Bigelow

Best Picture- The Hurt Locker

It was a fairly easy win at the box office this weekend for Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island. The movie took in $40.2 million, easily more than doubling second place. Speaking of second place, Valentine’s Day, with it’s titular holiday over, suffered an almost 70% drop off, bringing in only $17.2 million. Avatar benefited from these drop offs and came in third place with $16.1 million and only a 31% drop off from the previous week. Percy Jackson and The Wolfman are on their way to Bombville as they both dropped more than 50% from last weekend. Percy took in $15.3 and The Wolfman took in only $9.8 million. Considering their budgets they are pretty far away from making any money back. The only other big mover is Crazy Heart which continues to gain theaters and went from ninth place to eighth place.

Note to movie studios, release your holiday named movies around the time of the actual holiday (I’m looking at you Halloween). It certainly worked for Valentine’s Day, which dominated the box office with $52.4 million. Following in second and third were the other two new releases, Percy Jackson and The Wolfman. Percy took in a little over $31 million while the Wolfman just over $30 million. It’s underwhelming for those two as Percy’s budget was $95 million and The Wolfman had a whopping $150 million budget. Avatar lost about 300 screens over the weekend but only dropped about 4% from last weekend, pulling in another $22 million and bringing it’s domestic total to over $660 million. Last week’s big winner, Dear John, buckled under the pressure from Valentine’s Day and dropped 50% to just over $15 million. Will audiences still be feeling romantic next weekend or will they be ready to be freaked out by Shutter Island?

It was pretty disappointing last night in terms of Super Bowl movie trailers.  The Wolfman, Alice in Wonderland and Prince of Persia all had ads but there was nothing really new about them compared to previous trailers.  The only new trailer was for The Last Airbender.  The movie is based on the extremely popular Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender but they had to drop the Avatar in order to avoid confusion with a certain other movie.  I’ve never seen the show but from what I gather there are different warring nations that control different elements such as water and fire.  Our hero is the only person in the world who can control the power of wind and air.  The movie is being directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who I don’t trust as far I can throw him but it might be interesting to see how he fares with an adaptation of an established franchise instead of his rapidly diminishing original fare.  Check out the trailer below and the movie is coming out this summer.

The king has been overthrown everyone. After seven weeks of domination, “Avatar” was finally beaten at the box office this weekend by, of all things, the super sappy teen girl bait that was “Dear John”. The movie pulled in $32.4 million while “Avatar” managed another $23.6 million. “From Paris with Love” opened at a distant third with just over $8 million. “Edge of Darkness” had an almost 60% drop off from the previous week and dropped down to fourth with a little over $7 million. The only other big change this week was “Crazy Heart”, which expanded to 819 theaters and came in eighth place with $3.7 million and will probably continue to rise with it’s excellent award buzz. There’s some potentially big hitters coming out this weekend so we’ll have to see if “Dear John” can hold them off or if this was a one week fluke.

Earlier today the Oscar nominations were announced and it was pretty much what everyone was expecting.  Avatar and The Hurt Locker are the leading contenders and they’re going head to head in Best Picture and Best Director.  Inglourious Basterds and Precious also got a bunch of nominations and the expanded Best Picture category brought in fan favorite District 9 and the shoe in for Best Animated Picture Up.  Check out the complete list of nominees below and be sure to join us on March 8th for our live blog.

BEST PICTURE:
Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

DIRECTING:
Kathryn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker
James Cameron – Avatar
Lee Daniels – Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire
Jason Reitman – Up in the Air
Quentin Tarantino – Inglourious Basterds

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE:
Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart
George Clooney – Up in the Air
Colin Firth – A Single Man
Morgan Freeman – Invictus
Jeremy Renner – The Hurt Locker

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE:
Sandra Bullock – The Blind Side
Helen Mirren – The Last Station
Carey Mulligan – An Education
Gabourey Sidibe – Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire
Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE:
Matt Damon – Invictus
Woody Harrelson – The Messenger
Christopher Plummer – The Last Station
Stanley Tucci – The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE:
Penelope Cruz – Nine
Vera Farmiga – Up in the Air
Maggie Gyllenhaal – Crazy Heart
Anna Kendrick – Up in the Air
Mo’Nique – Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:
Neill Blomkamp and – District 9
Nick Hornby – An Education
Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci and Tony Roche – In the Loop
Geoffrey Fletcher – Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire
Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner – Up in the Air

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:
Mark Boal – The Hurt Locker
Quentin Tarantino – Inglourious Basterds
Oren Moverman and – The Messenger
Joel and Ethan Coen – A Serious Man
Pete Docter and Bob Peterson – Up

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM:
Ajami  – Israel
El Secreto de sus Ojos – Argentina
The Milk of Sorrow
Une Prophéte  – France
The White Ribbon – Germany

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM:
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of the Kells
Up

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Maurio Fiore – Avatar
Bruno Delbonnel – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Barry Ackroyd – The Hurt Locker
Robert Richardson – Inglourious Basterds
Christian Berger – The White Ribbon

FILM EDITING:
Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua and James Cameron – Avatar
Julian Clarke – District 9
Bob Murawski and Chris Innis – The Hurt Locker
Sally Menke – Inglourious Basterds
Joe Klotz – Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire

A few weeks ago we posted the epic 70 minute review of the Phantom Menace by Milwaukee critic/filmmaker/crazy person Mike Stoklasa and now Mike is back to dissect the biggest movie of all time, Avatar.  It’s only 18 minutes but Mike still manages to make some good points about the plot and characters.

I’m running out of Avatar related pictures and commentary. In it’s seventh week, Avatar is still number one, pulling in another $30 million and putting it’s worldwide box office over $2 billion. Isn’t it weird that we were all wondering if it was barely going to break even? Mel Gibson and Edge of Darkness put up a fairly good fight but made a little over half of Avatar’s weekend total with $17 million. When in Rome came in third with a little over $12 million as the de facto romantic comedy. The Tooth Fairy held onto the fourth place spot as the top kid’s movie and everything else continues to slide down and out of the top 10. Will anything ever take the top spot from Avatar?

Avatar continues its dominance at the box office, pulling in another $36 million and it’s pretty much guaranteed to become the highest grossing movie of all time. Coming in at second was Legion with a little over $18 million and taking the spot away from fellow apocalyptic actioner The Book of Eli. The Tooth Fairy took home the fourth spot with $14.5 milliion. Not surprisingly Extraordinary Measures failed to do much at the box office, coming in seventh with $7 million. It probably didn’t help that most people didn’t know it existed until a week before it opened.

Avatar continues to dominate the box office, pulling in another $41 million this past weekend. It has almost as half a billion in just domestic gross and well over a billion internationally. The Book of Eli put up a good fight at number two, pulling in $31.6 million. With it’s new wider release, The Lovely Bones came in at third with just over $17 million. Sherklock Holmes and Alvin and the Chipmunks rounded out the top five, both losing around 400 theaters. Jackie Chan’s latest, The Spy Next Door, came in at a lackluster sixth place. Reviews were terrible so it’s not a surprise. What is kind of surprising is that all the movies the came out last week are already in their death throes, Leap Year is the only one that managed to stay in the top 10 while Daybreakers and Youth in Revolt both fell off.

It was pretty much an exact copy of the previous weekend at the box office. Everything stayed exactly where it was with the exception of Did You Hear About the Morgans and Nine, which swapped eighth and ninth place. The major story however is that Avatar has crossed the $1 billion dollar mark with it’s worldwide total and is currently fourth in the all time box office totals behind Titanic, The Dark Knight and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Analysts are predicting it will likely jump up to second all time if it continues to perform as well as it has. Oh, and it made $1 billion in 17 days as well. I think the lesson we all should take from this is that no matter how much James Cameron spends on a movie, if you double it, you’ll get it’s box office total.

A huge holiday weekend at the box office which Avatar managed to win for the second week in a row.  It pulled in another $75.6 million and put it’s domestic box office over $200 million.  Three of the new movies came out strong this weekend as well.  Sherlock Holmes came in second place with $62.4 million, Alvin and the Chipmunks came in third with $48.9 million and It’s Complicated came in third with $22.1 million.  The Blind Side was pushed down to fifth, taking in another $11.4 million and is just shy of $185 million in total.  Up in the Air and Nine benifited from their wider releases with Nine jumping up from twentieth to eighth and Up in the Air going from eight and sixth.