You wouldn’t know it to read me, but when it comes to my language regarding movies, I am careful. It’s not that I’m overly enthusiastic, it’s just that I really do believe that many films qualify as a classic, a masterpiece, or an epic. I’m more than willing to concede that my threshold might be lower than some others, and in that respect I may be a little too enthusiastic, but that doesn’t mean I throw those words around carelessly.

Something you almost never hear from me, though,  is “my top 5″  or “my top 10″ or “my top 25.” That description is used for all-time favorites, and represents a pool of about 50 steady titles that, over the years, have fallen in and out of one of those categories. So when I tell you that Alfred Hitchcock’s 1946 romantic-thriller “Notorious”  has been a perennial top 5 of mine for over two decades now, you understand what this film means to me.

There is no other movie that makes me feel as much as this one does. Thanks to the extraordinary performances of two of the most beautiful people ever to stand before a camera, Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergmann, “Notorious” throws me on an emotional roller coaster of suspense, exhilaration and, most of all, heartache, for the full 101 minutes. And the reasons are many.

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REDBOX VOWS TO ACQUIRE WARNER BROS DVDS ‘THROUGH ALTERNATIVE MEANS’

I love capitalism, and now you get another look into why Hollywood loves Castro and hates liberty:

Looks like Redbox has told Warner Bros to take a hike with its effort to double the waiting period for new rental DVDs to 56 days. When the contract to acquire discs directly from Warner Bros expires today Redbox will “work to provide Warner Brothers’ movies through alternative means[.]” …

(Earlier this morning Walmart agreed to continue housing Redbox kiosks to early 2015.) But Warner Bros also is taking a gamble: There’s nothing to stop Redbox from flooding the market with used Warner Bros DVDs a few weeks after they’re released, when rental demand for the titles lets up. Still, Warner Bros wants to increase the delay before providing discs to low-cost rental companies because it believes that will help to boost sales.

Warners next step is to convince retailers to only sell a limited number of titles to each customer, that way it’s more difficult for Redbox to acquire the number of titles necessary to fill their kiosks. But there are two incredibly stupid points made in this articlee worth pointing out:

Redbox is taking a big risk by choosing to buy Warner Bros discs from outside sources: That could be more costly. What’s more, the company may not be able to buy enough copies of hit films to satisfy its customers[.]

What? A ‘big risk?” As opposed to satisfying NO customers at all by not having any of these titles? But the article’s closer is the real howler:

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Five Best Picture winners in one Blu-ray collection with no shortage of special features is a pretty good deal… if you like the movies. Because I’m a fan of four out five of the titles, this was a real find.

The English Patient (1996)

Director Anthony Minghella’s sweeping WWII romance ranked as #24 in my countdown of the greatest left-wing films of all time:

Filled with poetic dialogue, lush cinematography, some truly extraordinary scenes — such as the sandstorm sequence where Katharine and Laszlo fall in love — and  a charming subplot involving the short-lived but sincere romance between Binoche’s Canadian nurse and Kip (“Lost’s” Naveen Andrews), a brave Indian who defuses bombs, you almost will yourself  not to notice the film’s depraved and shockingly selfish philosophy. The film is seductive, though, and you want to give into it, but in the end the only moral outcome would be to have the cast of “Inglorious Basterds” storm in and beat Laszlo to death with a baseball bat.

If you don’t mind being manipulated by an ingeniously crafted and immoral piece of propaganda (and I don’t), another bonus is the look of the film (the cinematography won an Oscar), which is a jaw-dropper on Blu-ray.

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Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Many will never forgive the fact that director John Madden’s fictionalized account of a passionate but ill-fated love affair between a young, struggling William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes)  and the beautiful young woman (Gwyneth Paltrow) who inspires some of his greatest work, beat out Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” for that year’s top Oscar prize.

This might be heresy, but I think the best film won.

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‘THE HELP’ WINS THREE SAG AWARDS, STREEP AND CLOONEY LOSE

This is a good sign for “The Help,” which is a superb film. SAG is one of the most reliable Oscar bellwethers because so much of the Oscar voting pool is made up of actors:

[T]he big winner of the night was Tate Taylor’s The Help, which took home three of the five SAG film acting awards it was up for with Octavia Spencer winning in the Female Actor in a Supporting Role category, followed by Viola Davis taking the Female Actor in a Leading Role award, solidifying her lead over her primary awards season competition Meryl Streep. …

French actor Jean DuJardin pulled an upset himself by taking the SAG Award for Male Actor in a Lead Role for his performance in The Artist over the favorited George Clooney

Because I haven’t seen “The Artist,” or the films for which Clooney and Streep have been nominated, there’s no way for me to judge if this is fair. What I do know is that Clooney’s improved dramatically as an actor over the last decade while Streep’s become a parody of herself, and the snippets I have seen of “The Iron Lady” tell me nothing’s changed.

ANALYST: PAY TV PROVIDERS HAVE ENOUGH MUSCLE TO BLOCK COMPETITION FROM THE WEB

I don’t completely disagree, and there are a few points worth highlighting but also a few to add.

First off, what you’ll read immediately below is why you pay for a ton of crap on cable you don’t watch. Secondly, this is how crap nobody watches stays alive. Finally, and most importantly, this is how a VERY FEW monopolize our popular culture:

Six companies — Disney, News Corp, NBCUniversal, Time Warner, CBS, and Discovery — account for 90% of all viewing hours. They demand that their channels be sold in packages, ”and only that way[.]” …

Well, then what’s to stop an online service from creating a virtual cable company — offering packages of channels via the net but for less than current pay TV providers charge? You’d think there’d be room for someone to do that considering that that consumers pay Comcast about $79 a month for programming that costs the company about $29.

Three reasons follow, and each is valid:

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“It’s almost as laughable as accusing Fox News as being … news!”

The Fox News segment Kermit and Miss Piggy are responding to (in the video below) can be watched here, and you can see it’s a rather innocuous and perfectly valid discussion about the culture. As a response, and nearly a week after the segment aired, the Fox-hating entertainment media (which is all of them) viralized the clip, blew the controversy up into something it really wasn’t, and did so because they find it impossible to turn down an opportunity to prove they’re one of the minions in the club.

What effectively happened, though, is a week-old Fox Business segment was consequently amplified into the news narrative, which turned the new Muppet film into a political and partisan football. Only our wildly out-of-touch entertainment media minions would think this is a good thing, and as a consequence, a well-reviewed film that opened above expectations entered the divisive culture and political wars and didn’t do anywhere near as well at the box office as some had expected and hoped.

That, however, wasn’t the fault of the Muppets.That was the immature, clubby entertainment media. The video below, though, puts the Muppets themselves into this controversy, which will only further alienate a very large segment of their audience:

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The Los Angeles Times (we read it so you don’t have to) is reporting that “The Grey” director, Joe Carnahan, is attached to write and direct a remake of Charles Bronson’s vigilante classic.

As chance would have it, less than 12 hours ago,  I watched a documentary looking back on the “Dirty Harry” films where Carnahan said, and I am paraphrasing, “I’m liberal on a lot of things but very much a law and order right-winger.”

That’s all well and good, but I doubt present-day Hollywood has the maturity to tell this story with the same courage of conviction we saw in director Michael Winner’s 1974 genre-masterpiece. For starters, Paul Kersey’s (The Mighty Charles Bronson) vigilantism is shown to work and is portrayed as a solution to a serious crime problem the ineffectual police and liberal courts can’t solve. For emphasis, there’s a wonderful scene where we see how Kersey’s actions inspire everyday people to finally fight back.

Secondly, the Kersey character (a conscientious objector during the Korean War) is made to see up close and personal the cost of his limousine liberalism and haughty pacifism. Intolerant Hollywood giving a character that kind of arc today is inconceivable. In films like the superb 2007 remake of “The Hills Have Eyes,” we’ve seen it. But if you listen to the director’s DVD commentary, you learn it was by accident.

Finally, this first entry in what would become a fantastic five film franchise isn’t like its sequels. Here, Kersey isn’t exacting revenge on the same punks who blew a hole in his family. He’s simply working through his grief and refusing to be a victim through the awesome act of cleaning up the streets and, in the end, he is not at all repentant for his actions.

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If love really meant never having to say you’re sorry, I’d have enough time on my hands to get a PHD.

Yes, the tagline for director Arthur Hiller’s “Love Story” is unforgivably stupid, no question. Almost as bad is Ali McGraw’s performance as the gorgeous but doomed Jennifer. My wife hates this film and MacGraw’s performance so much that she only agreed to screen the Blu-ray with me so that she could delight in Jennifer’s cancerous demise. My wife’s tagline for the film is, “Marrying the studio head means never having to take an acting class.”

So what was it about this fairly mediocre 1970 tear-jerker that made it, not only the highest-grossing film of the year, but also the 6th highest grossing film of all time — the “Titanic” of its day?

Believe it or not, I saw this “chick flick” classic for the first time ever when the Blu-ray screener arrived last week, and thankfully I’m secure enough in my masculinity to admit that the story got to me. You can’t disagree with the film’s critics and their many criticisms, but in the end I’m not completely ashamed to admit that Jennifer’s death choked me up and that I found the third act a little gut-wrenching as that reality became increasingly inevitable.

For everything the story does wrong, it does two key things so right that those moments help to overcome the rest. When, in the middle of a perfect day, Jennifer tells her husband, Oliver (Ryan O’Neal), that she has to go to the hospital, it’s a real kick to the gut. Laugh all you want, but just thinking about it gets to me. And then there’s how we learn that she’s died. (No spoiler warning necessary. We’re told Jennifer will die in the opening scene.)

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In Billy Wilder’s Academy Award-magnet, “The Apartment,” winner of Best Picture, Director, Editor, Screenplay and Art Direction, there’s an unforgettable moment about halfway through that perfectly pays off everything that came before and beautifully sets up the unexpected to come.

The Mighty Jack Lemmon is C.C. Baxter, a worker-drone in the Kafkaesque office located on the 17th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper that’s home base for the insurance company Baxter works for and is desperate to get ahead in. With thousands of employees competing for a very few executive positions, Baxter decides to stand out by joining the good-ole-boys club. The awful men who can help to promote Baxter are a gaggle of adulterers in need of a place for their trysts. Believing the inconvenience is worth the eventual payoff, Baxter lends out the key to his bachelor pad a few nights a week.

As smitten as he is with the idea of becoming an executive, Baxter also has his head turned by one of the building’s many elevator operators, Fran Kubelik (a delightful Shirley MacLaine), who on the outside stands out as a confident, composed, and charming young woman who has it all together. The opposite, unfortunately, is true, but by the time Baxter figures this out he’s already in love with her.

The key to Baxter’s executive dreams is held by the company’s powerful personnel director, Jeff Sheldrake (a superb Fred MacMurray), and Baxter’s cynical plans all appear to come together when Sheldrake agrees to his promotion… in exchange for the key to Baxter’s apartment. It seems the very-married Sheldrake is just another good ole boy, but that’s no skin off Baxter’s nose, until the perfect moment I mentioned above arrives.

You see, it’s Fran Kubelik Mr. Sheldrake is trysting with, and it’s at the company’s wild Christmas party (a clothed Roman orgy) where Fran finally learns she’s being used — that she’s not the first subordinate Sheldrake’s conned into bed with the promise of a future together. This is also where Baxter learns the truth about Fran.

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With six feature credits already under his belt, some of them classics, co-writer/director Woody Allen finally became Woody Allen with the brilliant “Annie Hall,” and in doing so would be rightfully rewarded with four major Academy Awards: Best Picture, Original Screenplay (co-written by Marshall Brickman), Director and Actress (Diane Keaton). 35 years later, the simple story of Manhattan neurotic Alvy Singer (Allen) and his years-long romance with the delightfully ditzy Annie Hall (Keaton) still delights in ways that few romantic comedies ever come close to.

Told with a scattershot timeline (that somehow works) and through an endless number of short scenes that could stand on their own as insightful, amusing, and romantic skits, “Annie Hall” is a story told to us in the first-person by Alvy, a famous New York comedian. His story isn’t so much about his romance with Annie; it’s more about what he’s learned from the experience — not only about himself but human nature in general. And if you judge the film by its touching closing scene (as I do), you can count this among Allen’s rare optimistic offerings.

Keaton’s performance is a wonder to behold. When you compare the “la-dee-da” Annie Alvy first meets to the more worldly and composed Annie she eventually becomes (much of it due to Alvy pushing her in that direction), Keaton’s Oscar win is a no-brainer.  Right along with Alvy, we fall in love with Annie at first sight and, in the end, long for the innocence she loses. And this, of course, is also why the film is so bittersweet. With the best of intentions (mostly), Alvy helps Annie grow up, and she ends up outgrowing him.

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The producer is the legendary David O. Selznick, the director is Alfred Hitchcock, the writer is Ben Hecht, the score is by Miklos Rozsa, Salvador Dali designed the film’s key sequence, and the stars are Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. To say this was the A-Team of 1945 is an understatement, so what went so terribly wrong?

At the time, screenwriter Hecht was engaged in heavy psycho-analysis and understandably fascinated with the subject, and Hitchcock wanted to adapt  the novel “The House of Dr. Edwardes.” Uber-producer Selznick had almost all of them all under contract, and the alchemy came together to create Hitchcock’s silliest film.

Though the film improves dramatically in the second half, nothing about “Spellbound,” the story of spinster psychiatrist (Bergman) and a possible murderer suffering amnesia (Peck) in love and on the run from the law, is in the least bit believable. And nothing is sillier than her trying to cure him using the latest Freudian techniques along the way.

Bergman plays Constance Petersen, a doctor at a Vermont mental hospital who fills her lonely life with work. When the story opens, the new director is due to arrive and does in the form of the impossibly young and handsome Dr. Anthony Edwardes (Peck). The attraction between Constance and Edward is immediate, and by the end of the day, they are hopelessly in love. There’s just one problem. Edwardes is an imposter who may have murdered the real Edwardes.

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Directed by the great William Wellman, “Wings” is the not only the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture (it was technically declared “Best Production“), it’s also the only silent movie to ever hold that honor (though “The Artist” could very well bookend that honor this year).

Back in 1927, “Wings” delivered spectacular aerial photography that must have blown the customers out of their seats. But in 2012, thanks to over a decade of Hollywood’s over-produced CGI, you’re still going to be blown out of your seat. To experience, in high-definition, no less, the spectacular in-camera flight and battle scenes, is a wonder to behold. The aerial shots are nothing short of spectacular, as are the expertly choreographed sequences involving armies and explosions. If “Wings” were produced today in the exact same fashion, people would marvel at the achievement.

“It Girl” Clara Bow, a star so popular in the mid-to-late twenties there’s no actor working today who compares (think Marilyn Monroe in 1959), is listed as the film’s star, but she’s really a supporting player — a crucially important one, though. For she symbolizes all that is pure and decent and why our young, brave men fought and died in World War I.

All Jack Powell (Charles Rogers)  has ever wanted was to fly, and all Mary Preston (Bow) has ever wanted was Jack. In their small, very American town, Jack and Mary live next door to one another, but Jack only sees Mary as a friend, a pal. You see, Jack’s in love with the more sophisticated Sylvia (Jobyna Ralston), but unfortunately for him, she’s in love with David (Richard Arlen). It’s a complicated love rectangle, further complicated by class distinctions. Jack is working class, Davis is wealthy, and it will take the outbreak of a long and heartbreaking war to sort it all out.

Though rivals for the same girl, Jack and David both want to be combat pilots and end up in the same squad together. Soon they become friends, the very best of friends in the knowledge (brought to them by a shockingly young and undeniably charismatic Gary Cooper) that the very real prospect of death is a constant companion.

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The price those the left label as apostates pay is always a high one. Their very identity is questioned, and these attacks are always ignored by the same MSM that labels facts, such as the record number of food stamp recipients under President FailureTeleprompter, as racist. Moreover, heaven help a comedian who aims a little satire at the gay community, but once again, openly sexist, racially-charged attacks against leftist apostates are always met with the media’s approval in the form of complicit silence.

Crystal Wright is an accomplished commentator and writer who holds a  Masters from Georgetown. But she just happens to be black and female and Republican, so therefore …. this gets fired out to nearly a quarter of a million people:

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Ms. Wright wrote about what happened at Freedoms Journal:

What’s curious is no other race, White, Hispanic or Asian, gives over 90% of their vote to one party but blacks. In exchange for this block vote, Democrats, including President Obama, our first black president, take the black vote for granted each election cycle because they don’t have to work for it.

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NEW ‘TERMINATOR’ FILM TO BE R-RATED

That’s the ONLY news on ‘Terminator 5.’ Nothing else is really happening, just a tweet from the woman funding the film.

This might be heresy, but I thought “Terminator 3″ was damn good and could care less about the rating. The story was tight, held my attention, surprised at the end, and contained all kinds of superb action scenes. “Terminator: Salvation,” on the other hand, was utter crap; a third act right out of a Sy-Fy Channel movie.

Worry about the storytelling. Let that process take you to the rating, not the other way around.

MONTY PYTHON MEMBERS SET TO REUNITE FOR SCI-FI COMEDY ‘ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING‘

“Life of Brian,” “Meaning of Life,” and “Holy Grail” are all brilliant, but something happens to these guys as they get older. They lose their comedic edge and just get meaner towards “safe” targets, and an obvious political correctness seeps into their work:

“a group of aliens who endow an earthling with the power to do ‘absolutely anything’ to see what a mess he’ll make of things — which is precisely what happens. There’s also a talking dog named Dennis who seems to understand more about the mayhem that ensues than anyone else does.”

Who knows where this could lead, but let’s hope that self-importance is off limits. As a Christian and Catholic, it’s an honor to get my butt kicked by the boys in the trio of films listed above because the films are clever, not mean-spirited, avoid preaching, and come from a  less fascist time when it was still okay to make fun of everyone.

Because liberals ruin everything, that’s just not the case today.

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Yes, the Woody Allen screen persona is well-known and established, but the actor does play different characters within that persona. Sometimes it’s just a few degrees off and hardly perceptible to the naked eye, but his Isaac Davis in “Manhattan” is noticeably unique. Isaac is something of an innocent, an unassuming man whose unwavering integrity comes naturally.

In a city like Manhattan, this, of course, might lead to his downfall, and the genius of Allen’s absolutely brilliant screenplay (Marshall Brickman co-wrote) is how this story is all about driving towards the film’s final line, a beauty of a closer that perfectly hits every cinematic sweet spot right before the fade:

“You have to have a little faith in people.”

Another of Isaac’s weak spots (and much of the film’s humor) comes from his inability to suffer pretentious, elite, liberal intellectuals. This is what likely cost him his first two wives, both of whom were pretentious, elite, liberal intellectuals. Overall, though, when we first meet him, Isaac is doing just fine. He’s making good money as a television comedy writer, is a loving father to his son, and his close friends — the married Yale and Mary (Michael Murphy and Anne Byrne Hoffman) — have taken him under their wing like a kid brother.

Isaac isn’t perfect; he is involved in a love affair with Tracy, a 17 year-old high school student. In his defense, she is more mature than he is and he refuses to lie to her. He’s very open about the fact that eventually she will have to move on with her life, that she has to experience life without him, and that what they have together isn’t permanent.

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STEVEN SPIELBERG MIGHT PART RED SEA FOR WARNER BROS.

Which Spielberg will show up to direct this one? If it’s the “Munich” Spielberg, the moral illiterate who sees an equivalency between Islamists who target the innocent and Israelis who target those who target the innocent — no thanks.  If it’s the “Saving Private Ryan” Spielberg, the moral illiterate who told us saving a single man was  ”the one decent thing we were able to pull out of this whole godawful, shitty mess” also known as World War II — no thanks.

RUSSELL BRAND WILL STAR IN ANOTHER MOVIE — A FAMILY COMEDY

After the remake of “Arthur” flopped rather spectacularly, Hollywood is proving once again they are just about tapped out of stars. Brand is THE most unlikable, charmless, and creepiest guy Hollywood has ever tried to turn into a leading man. And not creepy in a Karloff, Lugosi, Lorre kind of way — not creepy in a way that delights. You wouldn’t let him near your daughter. He should be doing extra stand-ins as Prisoner Number Five in insane asylums.  But here we go again.

EVANGELINE LILY CHATS ABOUT ‘THE HOBBIT’

If she manages her career well, Evangeline Lily has, in my humble opinion, what it takes to be a genuine star, a real box office attraction like Sandra Bullock. She’s undeniably talented, looks great on the big screen (see “Real Steel”), and her presence has the exact right qualities: strong, intelligent, sexy, womanly, approachable, and she carries herself with dignity.

She reminds me of Elizabeth Banks before she did the sleazy “Zack and Miri Make a Porno.”

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HOLLYWOOD’S NEWEST CRYBABIES: LEPERS … AND INDIA

It doesn’t bother me when crybabies crybaby. That’s what crybabies do, especially GLAAD and CAIR — two of the biggest, fascist crybabies in the history of crybabying.

What bothers me is that the politically correct cowards that run Hollywood only listen to certain crybabies. Southerners, Christians, stay-at-home-moms, Republicans, and pro-lifers continue to take hellacious beatings in all things pop culture. Everyone else is hands off at the first sound of a crybaby.

Those of us on the right can take a joke better than anyone; it’s being singled out by Hollywood cowards who pose as “edgy” that’s galling — the double standard.  Take us back to the good old days of “Blazing Saddles,” and we’ll never complain again.

It’s not satire when you’re singled out. It’s bigotry.

AMAZON PONDERS NEW CHALLENGE TO NETFLIX IN STREAMING MARKET

There’s a bigger story here than just this:

Ever since Netflix first alienated its consumers last summer with a price hike – ruining a perfect record of consumer satisfaction – the market seemed to open for new challengers. That door swung a bit wider after Netflix and Starz failed to agree to terms, further limiting the service’s movie offerings.

At the moment, Amazon has deals with the likes of CBS, Fox, Disney and NBCUniversal.

Hollywood is fighting streaming harder than they would ever fight terrorists and yet you have two of the biggest entertainment retailers on the planet — Netflix and Amazon — expanding this service. It was only a matter of time before someone stepped in to challenge Netflix Streaming, and Amazon is the perfect choice.

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Both articles linked below make excellent points about how indifferent the public was to this year’s nine Best Picture picks. Other than “The Help,” which was a smash, none came close to reaching $100 million at the domestic box office. So unlike the last two years, where the nominations contained more than a single film people had actually seen, we have eight films practically no one did.

Yes, that’s a problem.

But here’s the bigger problem: 29 films topped the $100 million mark last year, but how many of those are worthy of an Oscar? “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and ”X-Men: First Class”  were certainly good movies, but they’re not Best Picture material.

The problem isn’t so much that the Academy is out of touch (which it is), it’s that the product the industry created was so lousy last year, there really are no crowd-pleasers good enough to add to the list of nominations. And as someone who has seen the middling “Midnight in Paris,” the pretentious and impossibly dull “Tree of Life,” and the just pretty good “War Horse” — none of which is better than “Rise of the Apes,” “X-Men,” or “Resident Evil 4,” for that matter – the Academy is still guilty of stacking the deck with brand-tarnishing mediocrities.

Box Office Mojo:

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STARS DISS HOLLYWOOD: CLOONEY, EDGERTON & MORE SWIPE AT COMMERCIAL MOVIE BOMBS

Let me sum up the thoughts of the stars quoted in this article in five words: Me, me, me, me, me.

None of the so-called stars quoted here are talking about the customers. They are talking about themselves, especially George Clooney, who’s likely scared to try something openly commercial for fear if it flops, even the Huffington Post won’t call him “Hollywood’s pre-eminent A-lister,” as they laughably do here.

…and I hate it when a shit movie comes out that’s obviously made just to make money[.] – Joel Edgerton

At least those shit movies are trying to please the customers, and there actually is something worse than a shit movie designed to make a lot of money and that’s pretentious, self-important shit movies designed to make no money at all.

In related news….

ACTORS EGOS REQUIRE MASSAGING TO FORGE AHEAD WITH VOD

Ongoing discussion at WankFestDance:

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You would think Piers Morgan would follow up with a question about Sean Penn’s admiration and support of Hugo Chavez, but instead, Morgan ignores this glaring opening and uses the opportunity to attack Mitt Romney as a flip-flopper.

Obama’s Palace Guards are … everywhere.

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How old do you think Sean Penn is in drug years?

Via Fox News:

If Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum ends up in the White House, Sean Penn won’t be happy about it.

“I don’t want to see Rick Santorum be president because I would like to see people in trouble in this country getting out of it,” the actor and liberal activist said on CNN  Monday night. “I don’t want to see a narrow-minded leadership encourage a narrow-minded Congress.”

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BOX OFFICE ANALYSIS

According to Box Office Mojo, this weekend’s box office is up 26% over last year, which is great news.

1. Underworld Awakening: $25.4m — No one’s ever accused me of being too highbrow to enjoy vampire/werewolf flicks, especially dumb ones, but this is a franchise I could never get into. All camera moves, hyper-editing, and atmosphere. This is a good opening weekend for the fourth in this franchise and for the return of star Kate Beckinsale, who took the last film off.

2. Red Tails: $19.1m – George Lucas should be very happy. If my twitter feed is any indication, people are enjoying this old-fashioned crowd-pleaser.

3. Contraband: $12.2m – After two weeks, Mark Wahlberg’s smuggling actioner has already pulled in $46 million. This is not high-concept driven, and it’s not even a very good movie (saw it last weekend). Maybe it’s time to add Wahlberg to the short-list of those who can actually open a film these days. Good for him.

4. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: $10.5m – Disaster. People are going to blame the reviews, but the film stars Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, which means it should be critic-proof. This is Hanks’ second flop after “Larry Crowne,” and I think it’s time for Mr. Hanks to start wondering if his indefensible comments about WWII might have come home to roost.

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