Jeff is a jobless 30-year-old slacker man-child who does indeed live in the basement of his mother’s house. He is an expert at marijuana smoke rings, daytime television and pickup basketball but whines and protests when asked to perform a simple household errand for his mother (a wonderful Susan Sarandon). Lost and paralyzed, he casts desperately about for clues on what to do with his life, as per a favorite movie, 2002′s Signs, M. Night Shamalayan’s ridiculously self-serious examination of the eerie and paranormal.

So far the title character sounds like a cliché of the zeitgeist, but as played by the shambolically charming Jason Segel, and in the witty, expertly paced hands of the Duplass brothers, this movie is joyful entertainment from start to finish. Jeff is earnest and open-hearted. When the universe sends a sign, he follows. Never mind that every step ends in folly and humiliation. It is enough for him that there is a path.

That path merges him directly into the way of his distant, scornful brother, Pat (Ed Helms, channeling a lower-runged, far angrier version of his uptight corporate drone in The Office). Pat is an underling who has to spend his days in a hideous paint company shirt and tie, lives in a low-end apartment complex with his sweet and pretty wife (Judy Greer) and is suffering an early midlife crisis manifested by the purchase of a Porsche he can’t even begin to pay off, but hey, at least he has a job.

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As technology gets smaller and cheaper, making films is getting easier and easier. But in a market lousy with low-budget indies, it’s not always easy to score well known actors. This wasn’t a problem for Mark Vadik.

The writer/director of Cyrus: Mind of a Serial Killer somehow managed to wrangle several seasoned actors for parts of various size, including Brian Krause (Charmed), Danielle Harris (multiple Halloween films), Doug Jones (Hellboy), and the irreplaceable Lance Henriksen. As you watch the film, the obvious question that comes to mind is, How?

Cyrus is a frame story in which TV journalist Maria Sanchez, looking for fodder for her tabloid news show, interviews a man who claims to know the identity of a local serial killer. He tells her and her cameraman the sad tale of Cyrus, a former soldier who, when his marriage and business fell apart, turned to murder and cannibalism.

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Cerebral movie lovers can rejoice.  Christopher Nolan’s Inception handily won at the box office over the weekend, raking in over $60 Million. The film made over $3 Million on midnight showings Thursday night, and netted $20 Million on Friday, a true testament of the loyalty of Nolan’s fans.  Marketing a cryptic plot is no easy task, so Warner Brothers has to be happy about the opening weekend.

On the other hand, it might be a long climb to recoup the $160 Million budget.  The film will have to rely on repeat business from fans to maintain box office legs.  Everyone I know who really liked the movie has said they want to see it again, but it remains to be seen whether people actually follow through with those intentions. At any rate, it is nice to see an original film have a good opening weekend.

Despicable Me came in at number two, dropping about 42% from its opening weekend, which was a little higher than I would have anticipated.  It still earned a healthy $32 Million, and has grossed $118 Million in ten days. Disney’s wide release The Sorcerer’s Apprentice earned a paltry $17 Million, far below most industry expectations. The film opened last Wednesday, so its cumulative stands at $24 Million.  The film had a budget of $150 Million, so unless it performs well overseas, it stands little chance of recouping its budget.

Twilight: Eclipse dropped off 57% from last weekend, which is a fairly significant drop.  It managed $13 Million, and has made almost $265 Million in three weeks. Toy Story 3 is still doing well after five weeks, earning $11 Million over the weekend.  Its cumulative now stands at $362 Million.

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Cyrus is the kind of independent movie that makes me love independent movies, so it might seem paradoxical that I don’t want to write this review. I just want to tell you to go directly to your nearest theater and see it, without knowing anything about it beforehand. But I do have to write something, so as much as possible, I will eschew plot summary, and only endeavor to persuade you to go see it, right away.

Cyrus is made by the Brothers Duplass (Mark and Jay), who have climbed into Hollywood by way of the Mumblecore trapdoor. The Duplasses made their name with their first two features, Puffy Chair and Baghead, but they’ve matured with incredible speed, and Cyrus is a big step up.

A love triangle such as you’ve never seen before, Cyrus is the story of John, a shambling mess of a man (John C. Reilly) who describes himself as “like Shrek,” Molly, the lovely woman who accepts him as he is (Marissa Tomei), and Cyrus, the twenty-one-year-old son (Jonah Hill) who still lives with her.

Those are capsule character descriptions, and as such, they are wholly inaccurate. For this movie is all about character, and the ways character can manifest and change, all in an instant. You would think this movie was a thriller, the way it places you on alert. The tone is so wobbly (which is not to say inconsistent, or uncontrolled) that from moment to moment, scene to scene, I literally had no idea what was going to happen next. It made me realize how formulaic almost all scripts are. They follow the three-act or five-act rules and the audience obediently holds on for the predictable ride.

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Animated films are having a pretty stellar summer. This weekend, Toy Story 3 just became the highest grossing Pixar film of all time (surpassing Finding Nemo.)   Illumination Entertainment just released their first film, Despicable Me, and cleaned up at the box office.  Despicable made over $60 Million during its opening weekend, earning the distinction of being the highest opening weekend for an animated film not made by Pixar or Dreamworks.  Just like that, we have some serious competition for the animation studios.   Not too bad for a movie with no built in audience.

Illumination spent about $69 Million for the animation in Despicable Me, which is well beneath the average for a Dreamworks or Pixar film.  The film enjoyed a healthy “A” cinemascore rating by exiting audience members, which typically indicates long legs and good word of mouth.  Despite the fact that the movie played in 3D, it was limited in its amount of theaters, because Toy Story and The Last Airbender are both still playing in quite a few 3D venues.  There is no doubt that Despicable take would have been higher had it been able to capitalize on more 3D screens.

Twilight: Eclipse was bumped down to the number two spot this week.  It had about a 48% drop from opening weekend, typical of the franchise that is historically heavily front-loaded.   It still managed to make about $33 Million, hardly a number to scoff at.  This brings the 12 day total to $237 Million, which is pretty astounding, and topped the total for New Moon in the same time period ($235 Million.)

Predators scared up a decent $25 Million over the weekend.  With a modest budget of $40 Million, this bodes well for the film. Toy Story 3 nabbed the fourth spot with $22 Million.  Its four week total is $340 Million.

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*Note: this column was written on Sunday, so four-day totals that include Monday’s receipts will differ from these numbers.

It was no surprise that The Twilight Saga: Eclipse dominated the weekend box office. The film made $69 Million over the weekend.  Add in a record breaking $30M midnight take on Tuesday night,  and Wednesday and Thursday’s totals, and the movie has made $161 Million as of today.

It did fall short of breaking the all-time opening day record set by its  predecessor New Moon, which made $72 Million on its opening day. Eclipse came awfully close, making about $68.5 in the same time frame.  At any rate, Eclipse recouped its budget of $69 Million in one day.

We can expect the film to drop off quite a bit in upcoming weeks, as the series historically has been very front loaded, but this film does seem to be getting good word of mouth, so the drop off might not be as steep.

The Last Airbender did a lot better than I expected it to.  Obviously the built in fan base helped elevate the critically reviled film to an okay opening weekend.  Airbender made $40 Million over the weekend, but since it opened on Thursday, its total is now $56 Million.

That’s still a long way from its $150 Million budget, though, and word of mouth has been brutal, so the movie may fall off considerably after this weekend.  If so, it will be a disaster for Paramount, which has sunk about $280M into the film between the budget and marketing.  It also leaves the future of the franchise, and the career of director M. Night Shyamalan hanging in the balance.

Toy Story 3 is still going strong in its third week in release, making another $30 Million.  This brings its total to $289 Million.  Finding Nemo is Pixar’s highest grossing movie of all time, with $339 Million in ticket sales. It is looking highly likely that Toy Story 3 will exceed that during its theatrical run.

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By Shannon Hood

Reprinted from the SXSW Film Festival, 3/17/2010

Mark and Jay Duplass caused a bit of a commotion at Sundance and SXSW in 2005 when their feature film The Puffy Chair debuted to rave reviews and serious buzz. The brothers’ approach to filmmaking was so innovative that they had a new genre of film named after them: mumblecore.

Mumblecore is an indie genre characterized by low budget, improvisation, “non-actor” actors, and plots dealing primarily with personal relationships. The brothers followed up The Puffy Chair with Baghead (2008.)

Even though Cyrus cannot be categorized as pure mumblecore, it is certainly heavily influenced by the Duplass brothers’ earlier films. The movie stars well known comedic actors Jonah Hill (Superbad) and John C. Reilly (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story), as well as Oscar winner Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler.)

John C. Reilly is wonderful as John, a downtrodden divorced man who finds out that his ex-wife Jamie (played by Catherine Keener) is getting remarried, and wants him to attend an engagement party. Humiliating stuff for even the most confident of men, and John is far from confident.

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In the past week, I got a chance to sit down and talk to Mark and Jay Duplass about their movie Cyrus with a handful of journalists at the SXSW Film Festival.  Cyrus stars Jonah Hill, Marisa Tomei, Catherine Keener,  and John C. Reilly.

How long had you guys been working on the script?

Mark Duplass: Good question. You know, we normally write our scripts pretty quickly when it’s just us producing them, because we know we’re going to improvise the dialogue a bit, so once their structure is rock solid, we are production ready. But you know, this was a script where you have to write it well and make it attractive to writers and to the studios so that they want to green light it. So we did spend a little time making it look pretty. I think we worked on it maybe a year or so.

Do you have any experience as children of single parents dating again or knowing people in that situation?

MD: None, really. We are good little Catholic boys and our Catholic parents have been married for 42 years and they are still together.

Jay Duplass: What we do have a lot of experience with is desperation.

MD: and interpersonal dysfunction, we’re good at that.

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I got a chance to sit down for a round table discussion with Jonah Hill and John C. Reilly, two of the stars of Cyrus, which premiered at the 2010 SXSW festival. Hill plays Cyrus, a 21 year old living with his mother (Catherine Keener) who develops an antagonistic and competitive relationship with his mom’s boyfriend played by Reilly.

So do you think the John C. Reilly era of a romantic lead in a comedy is finally here?

John C. Reilly: I hope so. I’m a very romantic type person. I like doing parts like this, and I think that there are a lot of people out there who are not represented in movies, whose stories don’t get told.

You know what I’m talking about (to a male journalist.) Neither of us look like Brad Pitt, let’s not fool ourselves.

Your characters had some similarities and some differences, you both have a co-dependence thing, did that come into play when you preparing as far as how your characters related to each other?

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Mark and Jay Duplass caused a bit of a commotion at Sundance and SXSW in 2005 when their feature film The Puffy Chair debuted to rave reviews and serious buzz. The brothers’ approach to filmmaking was so innovative that they had a new genre of film named after them: mumblecore.

Mumblecore is an indie genre characterized by low budget, improvisation, “non-actor” actors, and plots dealing primarily with personal relationships. The brothers followed up The Puffy Chair with Baghead (2008.)

Even though Cyrus cannot be categorized as pure mumblecore, it is certainly heavily influenced by the Duplass brothers’ earlier films. The movie stars well known comedic actors Jonah Hill (Superbad) and John C. Reilly (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story), as well as Oscar winner Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler.)

John C. Reilly is wonderful as John, a downtrodden divorced man who finds out that his ex-wife Jamie (played by Catherine Keener) is getting remarried, and wants him to attend an engagement party. Humiliating stuff for even the most confident of men, and John is far from confident.

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Even though Mark and Jay Duplas’ Cyrus was already a hit with audiences at Sundance this year, Fox Searchlight is taking the film to SXSW as well to help build awareness and excitement for the film. Seeing as we’re big fans of the entire creative team involved with Cyrus, we’re happy to bring you info about it right here.

Basically, the film follows the life of John (John C. Reilly) a depressed, recently divorced guy who is pretty much a complete loser, desperate for attention. At a party, he manages to hook up with the hot Molly (Marisa Tomei) who, it turns out, has an adult son: Cyrus (Jonah Hill).

Cyrus and his mom have a somewhat interesting and open relationship and he will go to pretty much any lengths to protect her from anyone, especially John. Before long, the two are locked in a battle of wits for the woman they both love and only one man can be left standing when it’s over.

Everyone involved with this film seems to be at the top of their game, even Hill who seems to finally be coming into his own opposite two fantastic pros like Reilly and Tomei. Plus, it just looks really funny — which, sadly, you can’t always say about some “comedies” these days.

Be sure and check out the trailer after the jump. Fox Searchlight releases Cyrus on July 9th.

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It’s debatable, but many say that John C Reilly is one of the funniest working actors today. His range from such films as Chicago and Magnolia to Step Brothers or his recurring role as Dr. Steve Brule on Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! proves that the man has the chops to pull off just about any role — as long as that role can be a middle-aged man with curly hair.

He’s now taking on something else humorous, with a bit of a darker tone: the Duplass Brothers’ Cyrus. The film is about a rundown guy who meets and falls for an attractive older woman, played by the new indie queen Marisa Tomei. Things are going well until he finds that she’s got a 30 year old son, played by Jonah Hill.

The synopsis reads like a different take on Step Brothers, but after watching the trailer, you can be assured that this film actually has a script, rather than Ferrell and Reilly riffing off of each other for 90 minutes. It also sounds a bit like science fiction, if we are to believe that Marisa Tomei birthed Jonah Hill, but we can suspend disbelief for this one.

The film is currently screening at Sundance and turning quite a lot of heads. Check out the official trailer after the jump, and we’ll be sure to have more on a release date and distributor as they happen.

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