The Avengers has come and gone, and now we get to see Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) dealing with the trauma he apparently experienced in New York. He has insomnia, and it strains both his work on the latest Iron Man suit as well as his relationship with Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow). His bodyguard Happy (Jon Favreau) is now head of security for Stark Industries. And, all around the world, there’s broadcasts from a strange terrorist figure named “The Mandarin” (Ben Kingsley).

The movie opens with Stark recounting a New Year’s Eve party way back in 1999. He’s at a conference in Bern, trying to bed a buxom botantist, Maya (Rebecca Hall) before the year’s turnover. He’s interrupted by pimply geek Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), who’s trying to start a think tank and wants Stark’s help. Stark blows him off, and if the use of Guy Pearce didn’t already suggest it, Stark states outright that it was the beginning of trouble.

Thirteen years later, Aldrich shows up at Stark Industries, again seeking support, though he does seem more interested in rubbing everyone’s nose in his success. He has created a new whatsit kind of technology called “Extremis” that allows the brain to regenerate tissue…and, somehow, make the patients melt things with their hands. (Dr. Curt Conners from the latest Spiderman films is going to be smacking his head with his tail when the inevitable crossover comes.)

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This weekend had the distinct feel of a throwback celebration with a Reboot-make, a re-release and a sequel to an 80′s iconic franchise inhabiting three of the top four positions.

Coming in at number one, with $26 Million, was the incredibly well advertised Evil Dead which played very strongly for an extreme horror film aimed squarely at a specific niche. Due, in part, to that specific audience target, the film’s reviews have been mixed and the word of mouth has been less than stellar on the whole. Still, the film plays very well to its target audience and with a big weekend under its belt will go into the books as a big win for all involved.

The next two spots ended up being an estimated tie between last weekend’s top two films. G.I. Joe: Retaliation and The Croods. Both brought in an estimated $21.1 Million, with the tie break going to last weeks number 1 because the Rock is in that one and the main event at Wrestlemania this weekend.

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April Fools Day is usually a day that brings tons of fake news, including trailer releases (like that Legend of Zelda trailer that will never be made into a movie *sadface*). But this year, April 1st was the release date of the red band trailer for the unbelievably star-packed action comedy This Is The End starring James Franco (who has had an already packed 2013 with the release of Spring Breakers and Oz The Great and Powerful), Seth Rogen, Emma Watson, Jonah Hill, Danny McBride, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson, and that’s just the supposed “main cast.” From just watching the trailer, expect appearances by Michael Cera, Rihanna, Kevin Hart, Aziz Ansari, Jason Segel, Paul Rudd, Mindy Kaling, and more. Holy freaking casting!

The main plot of the movie is simple: James Franco is throwing a kick-ass party and invites all his friends (because celebrities always party with tons of other celebrities) to have a crazy good time. Until the apocalypse happens. Los Angeles is engulfed in fire and brimstone, monsters and aliens are running rampant, people are looting and killing, mass hysteria basically.

Eventually, the main cast barricade themselves in what’s left of Franco’s house and try to survive. At one point, Emma Watson breaks in with an ax (a freaking AX) to try her hand at some looting, which looks to be successful based on the apparent self-testimonial video that is shot by the guys who are documenting what’s going on during the end of days.

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The current trend in sequel box office returns is tied to perception. Gone are the days of diminishing returns as a rule, these are the golden times for franchises. How the general public feels about the franchise is now king, and the thing about feelings are, they can be changed.

Case in point, GI: Joe: Retaliation.

The franchise had a below average first film that left a sour taste in the mouths of cinema-goers. It did have a strong opening weekend and final total gross so a sequel was inevitable, but something had to be done to ensure the public perception didn’t bury the new film before it had a shot.

Warming the hearts of movie executives everywhere, GI: Joe Retaliation proved that franchise perception can be fixed and sequels to poorly received films have a shot to come out as strong as its predecessor without waiting on word of mouth or reviews to set in.

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I had a soft spot for 2009′s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and I have a soft spot for this, even with its flaws. If you remember the end of the last film (and never mind if you didn’t), Zartan is impersonating the President of the United States in one step of Cobra Commander’s grand plan for world domination.

I think this is supposed to take place right after the last film, but no matter. All you need to know is that the President is not the real President, and the Joes are not aware of it. They’re busy raiding a nuclear arms facility in Pakistan — a mission devised by Zartan (Arnold Vosloo/Jonathan Pryce) to wipe out the Joes when they call for transport after the mission.

All of them, save for Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palicki), Roadblock (The Rock), and Flint (D.J. Cotrona) are killed. Fortunately Snake Eyes (Ray Park) is away on another mission training with Jinx (Elodie Yung) and quite possibly the worst actor in the entire film, RZA as the aptly named Blind Master.

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There used to be a rule in feature animation. PIXAR was the king of quality and they had a perfect record, Dreamworks had Shrek and a whole train load of Disney and PIXAR knockoffs with star-studded casts. Most of the times those films were turds, and provided a sharp contrast that might have aided in PIXAR’s incredible win streak by providing such horrible comparison.

Well that was the past boys and girls, because the quality gap has been dwindling faster than The Croods just past 100 Million at the international box office. Dreamworks newest animated feature had a solid-to-great opening weekend bringing in over $44 Million. Which puts the film on par with other recent Dreamworks its How to Train Your Dragon and Megamind.

A big weekend was probably expected for The Croods, however, the weekend was not without its shocker. The action flick Olympus Has Fallen surpassed even the most generous of projections to bring in over $30 Million over the weekend. Which is a huge win for an action-centirc film in a year where so many have died horrible box office deaths.

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Die Hard on a White House.

That’s basically it right there. You have your former law enforcer — here his name is Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) and he used to be Secret Service assigned to protect the President (Aaron Eckhart). During a snowstorm, Some Damn Thing hit the Presidential Limo’s windshield and fishtailed the car nearly off a bridge. Banning was able to save the President, but not his wife, and since the President can’t stand to be reminded of that night, he has Banning reassigned.

Okay, then you have your terrorists commandeering a building — here they attack the White House in a cargo plane the same day the President (whose name is Benjamin Asher, and whom I’ll be referring to as Asher for the remainder of this), Vice President, and Secretary of State are meeting with the South Korean Prime Minister.

As the gang retreats to the Presidential Bunker, one of the PM’s aides reveals himself as Kang Yeonsak (Rick Yune), a North Korean terrorist with a backstory that blah, blah, blah. He shoots a lot of people in the head and wants to blow up things. That’s all we need to know.

You have your former law-enforcer invading the building — in this case, Banning storms the White House after Kang’s goons take out every Secret Service man and Marine on the premises.

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Coming as a surprise to no one, Oz: The Great and Powerful has come in first in the weekend box office for a second weekend in a row. The film is performing strong as the first blockbuster of the year, even if it is not reaching Alice in Wonderland or Hunger Games heights.  Still the film should get well over $200 Million domestically and exist as another nice win for Raimi and Disney.

In second place, the Halle Berry thriller The Call had a surprisingly strong debut. The film brought in just over $17 Million and is one of the stronger Halle Berry starring openings in quite a long time. The movie was cheap to make and easy to market so this is a really solid early year win for all of the people involved.

The winning stops at number two as the opening of The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is anything but incredible or wonderful. Apparently the film is less funny than my word play and connected with audiences thusly. Comparing the film to other high concept comedies it falls fall below its peers. In fact it barely made 2/3rds of what the Will Ferrell bomb Semi-Pro made a few years ago.

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If you were looking for someone to fitting take on the role of a character whose last name is “The Destroyer”, it isn’t a shock to see that former WWE Champion Batista will be filling the boots of Drax in the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Late yesterday, the Hollywood Reporter leaked the announcement that Dave Bautista would be taking on this role in Marvel’s 2014 Summer Blockbuster.

Alongside Chris Pratt who will be playing the part of Star Lord, Dave Bautista will be filling the shoes of a team of cosmic heroes fairly unknown to the audience outside of the comic book world. Though having success in the better half of the last decade, the Guardians of the Galaxy are only known to the mainstream audience because of Marvel’s announcements tying them in to the greater Avengers Marvel Studios film universe.

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Sam Raimi sure knows how to make a successful crowd pleaser, his prequel to the most famous movie ever came out with the first blockbuster opening weekend of 2013. Raking in over $80 Million in its debut frame, Oz: The Great and Powerful is well on the way to becoming the first mega hit of the year.

The film didn’t quite reach Alice in Wonderland numbers, but considering the advantages that film had, and the disadvantages Oz faced, the $80 Million haul is a massive win. Expect to see a sequel get rolling very soon as Disney will try to avoid the pitfalls of franchising Alice and put the pedal to the metal on their shiny new franchise-to-be.

Coming in second place on the weekend was last weeks bomb, Jack the Giant Slayer. Jack continues to defy odds by doing  even worse than John Carter at just about every turn. Dropping over 63% from an already weak opening debut and bringing in barely over $10 Million Jack is going to struggle to make $60 Million at the end of its run. Good thing Bryan Singer  has X-Men: Days of Future Past to fall back on, because normally a flop like this is death to a big budget director.

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On the one hand, there’s a revenge thriller with shootouts, car chases, detective work, and a dynamite climax. On the other, there’s a woefully underwritten love story that can’t think of anything else but to have the leads stare at each other. And not the meaningful kind of staring either — Farrell spends about five-eighths of the flick with this sad/confused expression that looks like he caught his mother in bed with a clown.

Farrell plays Victor, an up-and-comer in a gang led by Alphonse (Terrence Howard). What the gang actually does is not entirely clear, but they appear to be connected to a cocaine-dealing group of British-Jamaicans, at least until Alphonse suspects them of assassinating one of his men and orders the whole lot killed. In the ensuing shoot-out, Victor is wounded, and we follow him back to his ramshackle highrise apartment, where he spends his days watching videos of his wife and kid and ogling the girl in the next building over (Noomi Rapace).

The girl, Beatrice, lives with her somewhat hard-of-hearing mother (Isabelle Huppert) and is haunted by the scars on her face left by a car accident with a drunk driver. She and Victor share pregnant waves to each other until Bea works up the courage to ask Vic out.

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The cast list for X-Men: Days of Future Past is starting to get a little ridiculous. Featuring the bulk of the cast from X-Men: First Class and significant portions of the original X-Men trilogy, the film is going to be the most jam-packed mutant spectacular this side of the funny books.

So the most recent casting news should not come as a huge surprise. Deadline is reporting that Bryan Singer has nabbed yet another classic X-Man for his upcoming new film:

Deadline has confirmed the actress will reprise her role as Storm in 20th Century Fox’s X-Men: Days Of Future Past. There had been serious concern this wouldn’t work out, but I’m told it has. The X-Men: First Class will be bolstered by most of the original X-cast, including Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, Shawn Ashmore and Hugh Jackman.

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You know you have had a bad opening weekend when last year’s laughing-stock, John Carter, is looking at your totals and snickers.

Jack the Giant Slayer lead the way of a first week in March box office that came in like a limping lamb. The Bryan Singer directed film made a poor $28 Million over the weekend coming in over two million short of last year’s box office atom bomb.

If the top of the weekend releases was bad, the rest of the top ten was worse. Despite competition from two other new releases, the hit comedy Identity Thief still managed to hold onto second place with $9.7 million. That put the R-rated comedy over $100 million total and setting it on pace to be director Seth Gordon’s biggest hit yet, providing one of the few silver linings from this weekend.

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What the Hell is going on? Who’s in what car? Which one is the bad guy? These are the questions that arose during the first fifteen minutes of A Good Day to Die Hard‘s car chase. That the action confuses more than excites is a bad, bad sign.

The movie opens in a Russian prison where billionaire Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch) is awaiting trial for…um…potentially snitching out the bigwig Chagarin (Sergei Kolesnikov). From the outset, it’s not clear who is actually the bad guy — Chagarin explodes when Komarov refuses to give him a certain file, so maybe he’s the bad guy, but then Komarov is a billionaire — and one who plays chess in prison at that — doesn’t that automatically mark him as the bad guy?

But then we switch to a night club, where Jack (Jai Courtney) assassinates Anton (Roman Luknar). Is Jack the bad guy then? Apparently not, since we’re now in America, where John McClane (Bruce Willis) is at the airport, heading to Russia to bail out Jack, who’s his son. Evidently Jack works for the CIA, which now condones public killings.

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Walter Hill and Sylvester Stallone? I’m in. Walter Hill and Louisiana? Double in. Christian Slater and Mr. Eko as the bad guys and explosions and huge flailing boobies? This is already the best movie of the year.

What’s there to say? Stallone is Jimmy Bobo, a Louisiana-based hitman whose latest job goes south after his partner is taken out. If that’s not enough, the former partner of their target (Sung Kang) heads down to the bayou to find out who set up the hit.

After a brief ruckus in the parking garage, the two team up despite a mutual dislike. The investigation uncovers a web of corruption that apparently everyone in New Orleans is in on, from the jazz bands prowling the filthy streets to the cultural elite, ably represented by Marcus Baptiste (Christian Slater) and Morel (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje).

Add to that Stallone’s incredibly sexy daughter (Sarah Shahi) — the tattoo artist who can kick some tail on her own, an angry, knife-wielding henchman, and exploding houses, and you have the plot of the movie.

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