I am looking forward to seeing how the weekend box office will unfold with American firecrackers and fireworks popping off this Saturday night.  I have a feeling from the numbers on Wednesday’s opening of Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs indicates the weekend will prove fruitful for the mighty moneymaker of Ice Age franchise.  The kids movie scored the best opening on a Wednesday for an animated feature with $13.8 million, beating the previous holder Shrek 2.

We mustn’t forget Michael Mann’s Public Enemies starring Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, which got off to a promising start. The period gangster movie tallied an estimated $8.2 million as it opened Wednesday, placing third just under Michael Bay’s Transformers 2.

I am pretty sure that come Sunday Ice Age will still be on top while Transformers fights with the John Dillinger movie for second place.

Paramount’s sequel Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen earned $60.6 million at the box office yesterday, clearly scoring the best opening day for a Wednesday at the domestic box office. The former record-holder was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix that brought in $44.2 million in July 2007. I am banking on the fact that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will break Transformers 2 score this July.  Any takers?

Variety sent me a news flash reporting that Paramount’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen earned an estimated $16 million in midnight runs. That makes the robot movie the second best film ever after The Dark Knight, which brought in $18.5 million in midnight showings with the advantage of opening on a Friday.

I wanted to hate this movie.  Believe me, I did.  Going into this thing burned like acid on my soul.  After the colossal cash-grab wreck that Michael Bay and company made out of the first one (Character  development?  Who cares?  More explosions!  Plot coherence?  Who cares? Bigger explosions!  Actually respecting the canon?  Who cares?  More AND bigger  explosions!) I longed to tear this nightmare into quivering bloody stumps.

So why, oh why, did I enjoy the sequel?

Somehow, Michael Bay and company have defied the longest possible odds and made a sequel better than the original.  Okay, it’s not like Bay had a tough act to follow–when you’re throwing more crap than a stadium men’s room on Chili Dog Friday, it’s not exactly hard to do better on your second go-round.  But here it is, and it’s clear–this one is significantly better.

This time, things are looking up for the Witwickys–Sam’s off to college, his dad’s poised to turn his room into a home theatre, his mom is…well…she’s freaking out, badly, but that’s every mom’s right when the baby leaves the nest.    Meanwhile, another scrap of the original Allspark cube has reared its ugly head, and this catapults the college-bound Sam back into the thick of an alien civil war.  The U.S. military’s been working with the Autobots to root out and blast the Decepticons into their component bits and pieces.  But the Decepticons aren’t alone this time around–they’ve got some support in the form of the Fallen, an enigmatic figure that will represent a whole lot of trouble for the Autobot forces.

The first thing you’ll notice is that there are a LOT more Autobots hanging around than there used to be.  And a lot more Decepticons, too–Earth is becoming something of a tourist trap for giant shapeshifting robots.  But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing–it just gives us more room to blow stuff up and knock stuff down.

This is where Bay’s production really shines; they’ll blow stuff up and knock stuff down in really entertaining fashions, and they’ll do it with a kind of insane blind fury that’ll just make your jaw drop.  This is like that episode of Mythbusters where Jamie got a hold of a Vulcan cannon and used it to shoot fish in a barrel.  Only a lot more so.  It’ll be all sorts of fun to watch this, and it’s very engaging even if it’s all really kind of simplistic.  Further, there will be plenty of laughs here– Sam’s mother, played by Julie White, is a particular scene-stealer, and was easily responsible for some of the biggest laughs in the theatre.  She got more than a few guffaws out of me too, and for a Michael Bay movie, that’s no small feat.

That’s not to say that this gets off scot-free.  There’s still plenty of standard Michael Bay problems.  Devastator is not some kind of giant turtle.  He is a giant bipedal humanoid robot.  I don’t even want to know what he was thinking bringing in Mudflap and Skids.  These two are USELESS.

And in the biggest kick in the teeth EVER, he brought in the original voice of Soundwave, Frank Welker, to voice Soundwave.   Frank Welker, for the kids at home, was the original voice of Megatron also, who for reasons that STILL escape me is being voiced by Hugo Weaving.  There’s no reason Weaving should be involved.  You have the ORIGINAL MEGATRON!  USE HIM!

Who am I kidding?  Michael Bay can’t understand human thoughts unless they’re written in letters thirty feet high and set on a fire that was started by a car exploding.

But the fact remains.  This movie will do exactly what it sets out to do.  It will knock stuff down and blow stuff up and Megan Fox will still be hot and there’s lots of things to laugh at and plenty of things to make your jaw drop.  For two and a half hours, you will be entertained.  And at the end of the day, isn’t that what we come to the movies for?

The Friday box office said “yes” to Disney’s The Proposal marking the best ever Sandra Bullock film opening day and the best ever romantic comedy opening during June-August since 1999 with Runaway Bride starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere.  Ryan Reynolds also stars in the romantic comedy and a lot of attention has been on him lately,  most likely he deserves some create for Proposal’s record opening as well as the other stellar cast: Betty White, Mary Steenburghen and Craig T. Nelsen.

I’ll preface my remarks today by saying that I’ve never actually ridden in a subway car before.  It’s one of the consequences of not spending a lot of time in big cities, or as I like to call them, giant urban death mazes.  But I DO know at least a little something about how they work, which is why I can easily describe The Taking of Pelham 123, featuring Denzel Washington and, from literally out of nowhere, John Travolta (I was not aware he still had either a. a functioning career or b. sufficient bribe money left to get INTO a movie).

Despite my astonishment at the revelation that Travolta still has a functioning career as an actor, I have to admit that I did like The Taking of Pelham 123, which has only just opened about three hours ago, or  may be just barely opening if you’re on the west coast.

Anyway, this one’s about a dastardly plot to hijack a subway car in New York City, car number 123 on the Pelham Bay route.  After a series of careful and well-executed maneuvers, car 123, now jam-packed full of hostages, is parked in a tunnel in the middle of the subway system.  A cadre of gunmen, aided by a former New York City motorman, is holding onto the train until a sizable ransom is paid for the hostages’ safe release.  A train dispatcher is trying valiantly to keep the hostage takers talking, until something can be done for the hostages, but there are plenty of plots at work here, and the one the police are actively trying to unravel may not even be the MAIN plot.  So can the train dispatcher and New York’s finest manage to save a subway car full of hostages?  And if they do, will it even matter in the long run?

I compare The Taking of Pelham 123 to a subway car for a very good reason.  Both start very slow and take a good long while to fully escalate.  In fact, for about the first hour or so, all I could think was: “When are these two putzes going to stop TALKING so something interesting can actually, you know, HAPPEN??”   I’m not just being facetious there, either–most of the first hour of The Taking of Pelham 123 is going to be Denzel Washington talking into a microphone from his dispatch center while John Travolta responds into what looks like a CB radio from the train.  Just talk, talk, talk–let me take a moment here to address the writers.  You’ve GOT to break up your exposition a little more.  Otherwise you get this thick infosludge that everyone’s got to choke down before they can get to the good stuff.

And there will be good stuff in this movie too–lots of chases and gunplay and plans going wrong and plans going right and twists and turns and chicanery and everything else you want in a good old fashioned suspense / thriller movie.  It’s all here and it’s all nicely done.

Of course, there’s not a whole lot of specific reason to see this one in theatres.  There are a couple of really choice car crashes but nothing so spectacular that your home theatre won’t deliver a satisfying experience.  If you’re not in the mood to hit the theatre, rest assured that you won’t miss much by letting it go to video.  But if you DO go to the theatre, you should have a nice time of it.

The Taking of Pelham 123 will deliver the goods, but expect delays.

I am writing about this weeks box office standings; but I am thinking about the movie Up.  It’s a classic in my heart, already. I saw it today with five of my daughter’s friends, not one of her friends didn’t like it.  Clearly, Up is one of the best stories I have seen in the movie theaters in a long time.  Pixar sets a fine example of how to tell a visual story while placing the appropriate wit and humor here and there.

Back to the Weekly Box Office, Night at the Museum: Battle at the Smithsonian is the top movie because it’s a family movie and hits a broader audience.  I was surprised to see Terminator Salvation above Star Trek with Angels & Demons following close behind.

This weekend it’s Up all the way.  If you have seen the trailers for Up, they don’t do the film justice.

There’s one thing you can always say for a Pixar movie.  It WILL be a box office smash.  Seriously—considering the performance of like the last eight, about the only way a Pixar movie won’t have an eight-figure opening weekend is in the event of a nationwide power outage.  Though I admit, going into this one I was a bit concerned about a possible new direction as set by the previous Pixar smash, Wall-E.

So what was new release Up going to be?  An action smash comedy in the vein of its earlier hits?  Or would I get yet another preachy monstrosity this time exhorting me to honor the elderly and be a friend to the environment (like Wall-E) and maybe even get plenty of exercise (again like Wall-E).

The answer, I’m happy to announce that the answer is the FIRST one—action smash comedy uber alles, baby.

This time around, we join Carl Frederickson, a quiet young man who falls in love with Ellie, a young firebrand dedicated to the pursuit of adventure, both of which share a common love of the tales of industrialist adventurer Charles Muntz. They marry, to Ellie’s family’s intense shotgun-firing joy and Carl’s family’s…moderate interest.  The two grow old together, sharing a common dream of one day moving the abandoned house in which they met (which they subsequently bought, fixed up, and lived in) to Paradise Falls in the same fashion as their hero Muntz.  Fast forward to the future, Carl, now a widower, finds himself in a position to realize his and his late wife’s dream…but it won’t be anywhere near as simple as he imagines.

This begins a tale of adventure and laughs that’ll easily rank Up among Pixar’s best.

That’s the tough thing about writing about Pixar movies.  You go into them expecting them to be good.  Pixar movies are like pizza—even when they’re bad (A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, Wall-E, I’m looking at you) they’re still pretty good.  You wind up saying much the same things about each: they look spectacular, they sound great, the voice acting is top-notch and even the plots are generally at the very least solid.  Not because you can’t think of anything else to say, mind you, but because it’s true.  Pixar movies are a standard of quality all their own.

That having been said, for a Pixar movie to distinguish itself it must do something unusual.  For instance, my current personal favorite, The Incredibles, went above and beyond in the action department.  It still brought the funny, of course, but it was an action movie unlike anything else.  Up, meanwhile, will distinguish itself too…in comedy.

I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much at a movie, even at a Pixar movie.  The fact that I can laugh this much at a movie means they’ve got a superabundance of fresh, unique jokes that can’t help but provoke laughs.  In much the same way as The Incredibles, sure, Up brought the action, but it was a comedy movie unlike anything else.  Truly, this was a movie to love, and now leaves me with an unsettling question as to just which is my FAVORITE Pixar movie.

In summary, folks…you need to see this movie.  It’s too good to miss.  There are too many laughs and too much action and too many carefully tugged heartstrings and too much sheer fun to avoid this.

Up is one movie that provides EXACTLY what it says on the box.  It is happy in a box.  It is a mood elevator like no other, and a downright chronic Up.

It’s hard not to effuse wildly about a movie like Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.  It contains so much of what we want to see in our movies, it has an excellent pedigree, it even has a special sort of enthusiasm all its own, but sometimes, our own biases must be pushed aside for the sake of a greater truth.

What greater truth, you ask?  Am I just being pedantic and pretentious for fun again?  No, not really–but first, the plot rundown.

Larry Daley, played by Ben Stiller, is back for more late-night museum fun, but it’s not all about the museum for him any more.  His inventions have finally taken off, and Larry finds himself in the position of men like Ron Popeil and Billy Mays and that loud schmuck Vince from those ShamWow! commercials.  He’s even hosting his own infomercials for his newest product, the Glow in the Dark Flashlight, with help from George Foreman, who himself has hosted infomercials. But Larry doesn’t quite seem satisfied–considering that his LAST job had him tearing around a museum trying to keep peace with the exhibits who became animated after dark thanks to Egyptian magical artifacts and also busting a ring of corrupt guards, it’s easy to see where “hawking gadgets” might be considered a step down.  Even if they’re your OWN gadgets and you own the company.  Anyway, the last museum, filled with the living exhibits, is being transferred to the National Archives following a restructuring and renovation of the old museum.  But the Egyptian artifact manages to follow them thanks to Dexter the capuchin monkey, and a whole new kettle of worms is opened as the artifacts ORIGINAL owner is out to take it back, and he’ll be nowhere near as benevolent about it as its current owner.

Like I said, there’s a lot to like here for virtually everybody.  There are jokes created by two guys from Reno 911, for crying out loud.  Those guys can write jokes like no freaking tomorrow.  There’s action and suspense and thrills and comedy and fully TWICE the monkey action of the original (yes, there are TWO capuchin monkeys in this one) and a downright celebration of the American can-do get up and go spirit that made this country what it is today…but somehow…somehow….

Maybe the biggest problem with this movie is that it’s so very similar to the last one.  Bigger museum, sure.  Bigger evil plot, yes sir.  Much bigger, in fact.  Bigger laughs, bigger jokes…but somewhere, in all the drive to go and make the movie bigger they forgot to include much of anything that distinguishes it from the FIRST one.  Oh, look–there are the Mongols, grunting and gesticulating wildly…and there’s the Moa head still asking about gum-gum from every dum-dum that passes by…yeah…that’s not old or nothing.

I spent most of Night at the Musuem: Battle of the Smithsonian convinced that I was actually just watching the first one again, only without the funniest part of all, watching Larry try to get adjusted to his new environment.

But maybe I’m being too harsh.  Maybe I’m not taking notice that this movie is still great, despite the fact that it’s not really that original.  It’s a retread, but it’s still a pretty good retread.  I laughed, I nodded, I understood and followed.  The only real downside is that they spent a whole lot of time going over ground they’d already gone over.

It’s like a joke you’ve already heard–still funny, but nowhere NEAR as funny as the first time.

No one really sees a movie like Terminator: Salvation coming.

I know, that’s a baffler—who didn’t see this one coming? Hollywood’s frantic and desperate for cash in the worst economy since the seventies, quite possibly since the Great Depression itself. Of COURSE they’re going to exploit every single property they have in their arsenal in the insane search for More Money.

But where the unexpected part is when one of these insane cash grabs actually turns out to be good. That’s just unaccountable. Downright unfathomable, even.

In this installment, we’ve gone ahead to the not-too-distant future (nine years away, folks!) of 2018. A military installation called Skynet, an artificial intelligence designed to run the military has become self-aware and decided that humanity may be the greatest threat to its existence. So, with its control of the vast American nuclear arsenal, Skynet took care of the problem the only way it knew how—it enacted the Bush Doctrine and freed the hell out of us.

Now, a ragtag human resistance wages a continuous war against the machines, Skynet’s android soldiers, each a part of Skynet’s vast network. A series of time travel efforts and such have put us to the ultimate position where Skynet’s out to kill a thirteen year old boy before he can be sent back in time to have sex with a waitress in the 1980s so that she can give birth to the greatest military figure the world has ever known. Yeah, I know—it’s a bit confusing, but factor out the time travel and things work out a LOT better, trust me. To that end, Skynet’s out to kill both John Connor, the greatest military figure guy, and Kyle Reese, the thirteen year old time traveler and Connor’s daddy by using an android so sophisticated that it seems to leapfrog all of Skynet’s current advances (the prototype is the superior model? Huh?) that it manages to even keep its android nature a secret from itself.

I’m personally glad to see a Terminator that’s actually set in the future. Usually all we get to see of the future war is brief, and dark (like at night dark) before they jump back to present-day Los Angeles. Though looking at the movie leaves me with a whole lot of questions—why the massive technological disparity between Skynet’s forces and human forces, for one? Humans are basically using twentieth century tech whilst Skynet’s running around with superhuman vertol aircraft with hover capabilities, giant robotic soldiers easily four times the height of a Seven-Eleven, and plasma cannons. Meanwhile, humans have…um…machine guns? Unusually small grenade launchers? Nothing that wouldn’t have already been found in the Gulf War?

Wow…we SUCK. Seriously, didn’t anyone even think to grab one of those Terminators they shut down and try and at least figure out how they’re so clearly bulletproof?

And don’t even get me started on how Marcus Wright is the first significant Terminator infiltrator, but he’s clearly superior to even Skynet’s latest version despite the fact he was made BEFORE SKYNET ITSELF.

But when I ignore the massive array of downright impossibilities that this movie represents, and all the weird plot holes, what I get is a fun little action movie / popcorn romp that’s fairly watchable when taken by itself. This is downright tailor-made for summer movie season, and even though it represents a canon-wrecker on par with anything we’ve ever seen, it does at least prove entertaining.

I like these numbers and have a strong feeling that Star Trek will continue to soar this weekend even though there might be heavy competition from Angels & Demons.  The reason I am speculating Star Trek will hold its position is because it’s turning out to be a family movie where Angels & Demons, although is a very good movie,  is not a family movie, which limits the audience numbers.

Okay, a confession before I start off today’s romp, folks–I never got around to seeing The Da Vinci Code.  Frankly, I never had a huge interest in doing so–from what I DID see of it, mostly some trailers and bits on the news and such, it looked spectacularly dull.  Tom Hanks running around solving puzzles while being chased by a psychopathic albino?  Great…sounds like Myst, only I don’t get to play.

Though I had to admit, Angels And Demons, the sequel to The Da Vinci Code (which was technically first in the series of books) looked a lot more exciting than its predecessor.  And indeed, it performed as advertised.

Professor Robert Langdon, played once again by Tom Hanks, has been called to Rome following a bizarre death threat–someone’s going to start killing cardinals in the wake of the recent death of the sitting Pope.  And in a bid to stop it, Langdon’s going to have to unravel a mystery that’s now several thousand years old–who are the Illuminati, and where did they keep their churches?  Along the way, he’ll run afoul of intrigue both within and without the Vatican, and no one is anywhere near as trustworthy as you’d hope men who purport to be of God would be.

There’s one further complication: the entirety of Vatican City is under the threat of annihiliation by, get this, a CHUNK OF ANTIMATTER created by the Large Hadron Collider. And, as everybody who’s seen an episode of Star Trek in the last thirty years probably knows, when antimatter comes into contact with REGULAR matter, it goes plooie.  A LOT.

Everyone was afraid these guys were going to rip open a black hole right in the middle of Europe, but no one really saw THIS coming.

Anyway, like I said, I really never got to see The Da Vinci Code, and frankly, that’s a good thing because Angels and Demons really doesn’t depend on the first story much at all.  Oh, sure, there’ll be some bad blood between Langdon and the Vatican, but it’ll be only mentioned in passing before the whole thing is swept under the rug while they try to keep themselves from not dying in a massive fiery explosion.  And indeed, as thrillers go, this sucker is a beauty.  Some scenes are sufficiently gruesome to elevate them to horror status, and there will be plenty of twists, turns, and second-guesses to keep everybody well in suspense until the very end, and chances are, no one will really see the end coming unless they’ve read the book, which again, I have not.

It’s a beautiful movie, with lots of great sights to see and lots of wild action going on all around.  There was one strange moment where the audio sounded a bit off, while Langdon’s in a spiral staircase, but your mileage may vary on that and chances are you’ll barely notice.

The way they’ve set this up is especially worthy of mention, as it’s basically set on a series of timed events–a new cardinal is going to get killed in a new and surprisingly messy fashion once an hour, every hour, until Vatican City goes up in a fire of antimatter.  This ensures that there will be very few moments for the audience to catch its breath and for Langdon to demonstrate his mastery of thoroughly useless information (except of course in situations like this exact one) long enough to figure out where to go next.

One thing is perfectly clear, however: Angels and Demons is a thriller par excellence, and if you’re even vaguely into this kind of jacked-up mystery movie, then there’s no doubt that you need to get out and see this one.  Like today, if you can.

J.J. Abrams lassoed the stars yesterday with an obvious reboot of the Star Trek franchise. Here are the stats: Star Trek is the second highest opening for a Paramount live-action film. Star Trek is the top opener for J.J. Abrams and the film is an all-time opening day record for any Star Trek film. Go see it folks - it’s spectacular.

With Star Trek in the theaters and already drawing $7 million earlier today, I doubt Wolverine will dominate the box office much longer.  Feedback and reviews favor Star Trek over Wolverine, I guarantee the box office will be as high as Arcturus with Star Trek  in the stars come Sunday.

I begin today’s piece with a confession, folks.  When I first heard there was going to be a Star Trek movie, rather, ANOTHER Star Trek movie, I cringed.  And then I got angry–how desperate was Hollywood that they would drag the carcass of Star Trek, a series whose quality had been steadily plummeting for years with the lone exception of Star Trek: First Contact, and only because it was so Borg-heavy that you couldn’t help but pay attention.  That and Patrick Stewart is sixteen levels of awesome.  But I digress.

Young Kirk?  I muttered derisively.  Young Spock?  How desperate is THIS?

And then I saw it.

Well, savor the flavor, folks, because I’m about to admit I was WRONG.  This movie was just plain fantastic.

The plot is, basically, what it says on the box–it’s Star Trek.  Specifically, a strange sort of prequel / alternate history featuring the Star Trek cast before they were the Star Trek cast.  This time, they’re taking the original Enterprise out on a grand tour to destroy an enemy that’s far more fearsome than anything they’ve taken on yet.  This isn’t hard because, technically, it’ll be their first enemy.  Technically.

See, this sucker is going to fracture the canon six ways from Sunday and it’s going to have the single best explanation ever.  While I was watching it, I gave a small cluck of disapproval and thought, they shouldn’t have called this Star Trek.  They should’ve given it some fig leaf to differentiate itself–Star Trek: Origins or Star Trek: Beginnings or some such.  But then, when I realized what they were doing–which I actually can’t tell you without spoilering–it made absolutely perfect sense.

I’ll tell you this much: this IS Star Trek.  Or…at the very least…A Star Trek.

Yeah.

This is why I love this movie so much.  Instead of just walking up and slapping established canon in the face and saying “Run along grandpa, this is OUR show now and this is how it all REALLY happened”, they actually created a perfect explanation for how they spawned their own Star Trek universe.  They could do sequels now, and I’d probably be there to watch, because they have made their own Star Trek out of it.  This IS Star Trek, and it coexists perfectly with the original.  In fact, it’s actually impossible to compare it to any other Star Trek installation because it is its own entity.

However, if you WERE to make that comparison, you’d find that this is the new best Star Trek movie ever.  Seriously, this beats First Contact, and for me, that’s saying a lot.  Why?  Because there’s everything here.  There’s space opera, ship battles, comedy, great performances (getting Simon Pegg to do Scotty was an absolute stroke of GENIUS) and the kind of great rip-roaring adventure that makes science fiction SCIENCE FICTION.

It’s. Just. THAT. GOOD.

It is an adrenaline rush unlike many movies I’ve seen recently.  I can’t remember the last time I left a theatre still buzzing fully an hour later.  I am STILL feeling my Trekkie, an hour later.  I may not sleep tonight.  I am writing this sucker at one in the morning Eastern Daylight Time and I am STILL feeling it.

I don’t issue wholesale blanket recommendations very often, but seriously, if you can stand science fiction even vaguely, and you want to see a really shining example of really shining science fiction, then go.  Boldly go, in fact.  Go out and see this.  It’s really too good to miss.