The remake none of us were waiting for, and that has been rumored for a year, has finally been made official today. You will soon once again be seeing Total Recall at a movie theater near you.

Columbia Pictures officially announced Len Wiseman (Live Free or Die Hard, Underworld films) as the director for the project. It has been report that he will be working off a script written by Kurt Wimmer, who recently wrote Salt and Law Abiding Citizen. Doug Belgrad and Matt Tolmach, presidents over at Columbia Pictures, stated that negotiations are almost finalized.

The original Total Recall, was based on the immortal Philip K. Dick’s story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale. The original follows Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Quaid who is a seemingly unsophisticated construction worker, who is haunted by a recurring dream of journeying to Mars.

He buys a literal dream vacation from a company called Rekall Inc., which sells implanted memories. It turns out he is a freedom fighter from Mars who has been relocated to Earth, and he must restore order, and reverse the corrupt influence that commercial powers had over the red planet.

Continue Reading →

There are many things to like about Law Abiding Citizen including both Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler’s performances, direction by F. Gary Gray, cinematography by Jonathan Sela and a rather taught and suspenseful screenplay by Kurt Wimmer.

The movie follows Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler), a family man whose wife and daughter are brutally murdered in front of him while he lies helpless during a home invasion. When the killers are caught, Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), an ambitions Philadelphia prosecutor, is assigned to the case.

Nick offers one of the suspects a light sentence in exchange for testifying against his accomplice. Sadly, it’s not the guy who did the actual killings but his accomplice that goes to jail. The real killer goes free.

Cut to 10 years later, the man who got away with murder is found dead and Shelton, without remorse, admits his guilt. Then he issues a warning to Rice: Either fix the flawed justice system that failed his family, or more people will die in the name of real justice.

Continue Reading →

The real story from the box office this weekend is the non-story of This Is It. Sure, it won the weekend with $21.3 million, but there were some crazy estimates thrown around last week. I know I wasn’t the only person entertaining the notion that this movie would open above $70 million, especially after seeing all the hysterics from frenzied fans on opening day and sold out venues.

So, I have been scratching my head trying to figure out why the movie was a relative dud here in the U.S. Worldwide, it was a smashing success and made over $100 million. Although, I heard more than one estimate say that it could open in the $200-250 million range, and it made less than half that.

Do you think that because Michael Jackson lived here in the States, and we were exposed to more of the controversial aspects of his life? Perhaps fans in Japan, Germany and Australia had a more pristine memory of the King of Pop. At any rate, I was pretty blown away by the movie’s fairly low numbers. This was supposed to be one of the biggest events of the year.

Paranormal Activity enjoyed Halloween weekend, and took in another $16.5 million. It only dropped 22% from last weekend. It stands at a cumulative total of $84.8 million and is all but guaranteed to pass $100 million during its domestic run.

Continue Reading →

When it comes to horror,  for the last several years October has been monopolized by the persistent and prolific offerings of a one Saw series. Jigsaw might be smarting a bit this Monday, because he was decidedly trounced by “the little demon that could,” otherwise known as Paranormal Activity.

Based on early estimates from Box Office Mojo,  Paranormal Activity finally claimed the top spot at the box office in its fifth week of release.  This makes it only the second movie this decade to do so after that many weeks in release, the other being Gran Torrino (2008).   Scaring up another $22M, the film played on 1,956 screens and brought its cumulative total up to $62.4M.

Despite playing on over 1,000 more screens than Paranormal, Saw VI brought in only $14.8M for second place.  This is the worst opening weekend for the franchise since the original Saw.

Where the Wild Things Are had a fairly steep dropoff of 55.9% from its opening week, which indicates few repeat attendees, and less than stellar word of mouth.  Still, it made $14.4 bringing its cumulative total to $53.9M for its first two weeks.

Continue Reading →

As predicted, Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are seemingly dominated the Box Office with $32.4M.  It played on a whopping 3,700+ screens, including IMAX screens, for a per-screen average of $8,693.  Sounds decent, but figure in the reported budget of $100M, and it looks like it may be a bit of a climb for the movie to be profitable, at least while in theaters.

The ultra-violent thriller Law Abiding Citizen boasted a very respectable $21.25M, and a $7,353 per screen average, which actually shows it performing very close to WTWTA.  It played in substantially fewer screens (2,890), and if  WTWTA had not had the benefit of IMAX prices, this would have been a much closer race.

The unstoppable juggernaut that is Paranormal Activity continued its trajectory scooping up another $20.1M on only 760 screens!  That puts its per screen average at more than $26,000, nearly three times what WTWTA averaged.  Pretty impressive.  It will expand further next weekend.

Couples Retreat dropped off 47.7%, but still made $17.9M, bringing its total to $63.3M over two weeks.

Continue Reading →

Well, I’m  humbled and a little embarrassed to admit how much I enjoyed this movie. You see, before I actually started reviewing movies, this is exactly the type of film that would cause me to turn up my nose. I’ve made an earnest attempt to go outside my comfort zone, and damned if I am not pleasantly surprised every once and a while. All I knew about this film was that it starred Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. I’m not exactly a big fan of either.

Law Abiding Citizen is a bloody, sick, and twisted tale of revenge. What if you crossed a gruesome revenge movie like I Spit on Your Grave with a implausible, tech-savy caper like Mission Impossible? Why, you would get something like this film.  Suspend your logic and enjoy the ride. Wholly original, Law Abiding Citizen had me on pins and needles, and there are enough twists and turns to make even the most jaded movie-goer giddy.

Let’s get my disclaimer out of the way so we can get down to the business of reviewing the movie:

Continue Reading →