AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!

1. Taken/Fox Wknd/$ 24.6 Total/$ 24.6
2. Paul Blart: Mall Cop/Sony Wknd/$ 14.0 Total/$ 83.4
3. The Uninvited/Paramount Wknd/$ 10.5 Total/$ 10.5
4. Hotel for Dogs/Paramount Wknd/$ 8.7 Total/$ 48.2
5. Grand Torino/Warner Wknd/$ 8.6 Total/$ 110.5
6. Slumdog Millionaire/Fox Searchlight Wknd/$ 7.7 Total/$ 67.2
7. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans Wknd/$ 7.2 Total/$ 32.8
8. New In Town/Lion’s Gate Wknd/$ 6.8 Total/$ 6.8
9. My Bloody Valentine 3-D/Lions Wknd/$ 4.3 Total/$ 44.6
10. Inkheart/Warner Wknd/$ 3.7 Total/$ 12.8

LOGIC WENT OVERSEAS AND WE HAVEN’T SEEN IT SINCE
Say, do you dislike the French? Albanians? Arabs? Women who don’t appreciate your service to your country? Do you love America and the Irishmen who helped make it great? Then, brother, I’ve got a movie for you and it opens at number one. Taken surprisingly captures the top spot this week, given it’s an action movie released Super Bowl weekend. If you haven’t seen the very effective commercial, it’s about a former secret agent of some sort whose daughter is kidnapped by sex traffickers in Paris and he goes there and kicks the shit out of everyone. And I mean, everyone. The Albanians who kidnapped her, the French who are getting paid off and the cherry on top, the very Jabba-the-Hut Arab who buys her. Gee, you think this movie was conceived post 9/11? We learn that Liam Neeson is an ex-government agent who gave up his career to be closer to his daughter in LA. We also know that he’s so good, they’d take him back in a second. Needless to say, he turns to his old buddies for help the moment his daughter is taken (she didn’t listen to him in the first, so of course she had it coming) and they give him some intel---and that’s it. Now, if I wanted some top operative back I’d offer him a little more than that to grease his return, but the camaraderie displayed in the first ten minutes to establish the character is nothing more than that: a scene to establish a character. Not that anyone looks for reality in an action film, but the abject stupidity can detract from the fun. His first target is the “spotter” at the airport who locates the girls. When he attacks the spotter, another henchman attacks him and the spotter runs away. Now, do you really need the spotter when you’ve now got the other henchman? Apparently so, because Liam Neeson just leaves the unconscious thug in the hand to pursue the one in the bush only to wind up with nothing. You say this guy was a top agent? But it is great fun watching him kill and maim bad guys through Paris and he does it all in little more than 90 minutes, which is exactly how long a dumb action movie should be. To make sure you know they deserve it, almost every action scene is preceded by some poor girl drugged up and forced into prostitution. The only truly original moment in the film is when Liam Neeson shoots an innocent in order to obtain information. It’s perhaps the first time in the history of secret agent action movies where the secret agent is as ruthless as he’d need to be in order to be successful in that line of work.

IMMOVABLE FORCE MEET IRRESISTIBLE OBJECT
Paul Blart: Mall Cop is down to number two because mouth breathers of the world got the one thing they love more than dumb comedy: dumb action.

WHAT WASN’T INVITED WAS A ONE PIECE
The Uninvited opens at number three and this is yet another adaptation of an Asian horror film. I don’t do the scary and I surely don’t do what is certain to be the latest in a long list of disappointing remakes. And they get no points for dangling the two lead actresses like so much bikini-clad bait in the commercials. Funny how a movie about a potentially murderous stepmother requires the stepdaughters to bare so much skin. It’d be different if she were slaughtering their entire class in a camp by the lake.

DADDY LOVES HIS PUPPY WUPPY
Hotel for Dogs holds at number four and its inexplicable success proves two things: 1) we love dogs and 2) actors on the downslide can’t go wrong with kids films. You get paid either way and if it’s a hit you’ve got a gold star on your record. But mostly it’s how much we fucking love our dogs.

CHAMPAGNE AND FRENCH FRIES
Grand Torino is down to number five, followed by Slumlord Millionaire at number six and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans at number seven, and yes, Lucian the Lycan leader (say it three times fast) is also David Frost in Frost/Nixon and Tony Blair in The Queen, and Michael Sheen’s willingness to do these movies ever after such arthouse prestige makes me a fan. Especially when you realize that he was with Kate Beckinsale for years until they made the first Underworld together and she left him for the director during filming. He must have really enjoyed shooting this without either one of them around.

YOU KNOW HOW SOME MOVIES HAVE TITLES THAT ARE JUST ASKING FOR IT?
New In Town opens at number eight and bears the distinction of being perhaps the worst reviewed movie of the New Year and I cannot say it looks as if it doesn’t deserve it. I am an unabashed romantic comedy whore and even I turned my nose up at this. It doesn’t have an original thought in its head and the participants involved couldn’t be whoring themselves more if they were in Hotel For Dogs 2: Puppy Suites (oh, you know it’s coming). I for one have never understood how Harry Connick Jr. has carved out a career in movies. He’s awful. He gives the same wooden performance in everything he does. He’s like a male Andie McDowell.

NOW, CRASH YOU CAN APOLOGIZE FOR
My Bloody Valentine is down to number nine and closing out the top ten is Inkheart. So basically every freaking kid’s fantasy novel every written is going to be made into a movie until studio heads realize that Harry Potter was the exception and not the rule? And how is it with all our technology we still can’t make better toupees than the kind seen on the head of people like Brendan Fraser? There’s an article in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly about how he can’t get any respect. Are you fucking kidding me? He puts out this, Journey To The Center of the Earth and Mummy 3 in a year and wonders why he gets no fucking respect? It’s not just that they’re bad, but they’re so obviously B-list bad and not A-list bad like something like Hancock. And he doesn’t need to apologize for Monkeybone. Chris Columbus needs to apologize for fucking up Monkeybone and only leaving behind the traces of the film it could have been.