THE JOLIE IDENTITY

1. Inception/Warner Wknd/$ 43.5 Total/$ 143.7

2. Salt/Sony Wknd/$ 36.5 Total/$ 36.5

3. Despicable Me/Universal Wknd/$ 24.1 Total/$ 161.7

4. Sorcerer’s Apprentice/Disney Wknd/$ 9.7 Total/$ 42.6

5. Toy Story 3/Disney Wknd/$ 9.0 Total/$ 379.5

6. Ramona & Beezus/Fox Wknd/$ 8.0 Total/$ 8.0

7. Grown Ups/Sony Wknd/$ 7.6 Total/$ 142.4

8. Eclipse/Summit Wknd/$ 7.0 Total/$ 279.7

9. The Last Airbender/Paramount Wknd/$ 4.2 Total/$ 123.3

10. Predators/Fox Wknd/$ 2.9 Total/$ 46.6

HOLY BAD DECISIONS!

Inception holds at number one and clearly Christopher Nolan has a stable of actors he enjoys working with and Michael Caine sits at the top of that list, appearing here as the father-in-law of Leonardo DiCaprio after also being in the Batman films and The Prestige. Also on this list are Cillian Murphy who was the Scarecrow in Batman films and Ken Wantanabe who was also in Batman Begins. Both are here. You have to wonder if Leonardo DiCaprio was even the first choice and only got this because Christian Bale was too busy wasting his time on Terminator: Salvation. Man, would that would really go down in the recent history of bad career choices. Granted, they’re going to reunite for the third Batman movie, but it would explain his rage on the set of Terminator if suddenly he realized midway through filming that he’d passed on working on something good to work on an unbelievable piece of crap for a hack.

NOW SEE, SCARLET JOHANSSON, THIS IS HOW YOU DO A RUSSIAN SUPER AGENT

Salt opens at number two or as I like to call it, “The Salt Identity” because that’s pretty much what it is. Angelina Jolie is a super-agent who spends the entire movie running and beating the living shit out of everyone she crosses, from CIA agents to cops to Secret Sleeper Russian Agents just like Jason Bourne. And yes, it’s utterly ridiculous that someone with her pipe-cleaner arms is beating the shit out of dudes six feet tall and two hundred pounds (not to mention snatching someone off a moving Ducati). As someone who studied martial arts, I’m well aware that there are five-foot-nothing, ninety-pound Asian men who could beat the crap out just about anyone, but they don’t fight toe-to-toe. They can’t do that. But here we have Jolie exchanging punch for punch from guys who should knock her out with one solid shot. It’s not giving anything away to say she dukes it out with 6’4” Liev Schreiber at one point and the last time we saw him fighting he was taking on Hugh Jackman in Wolverine, so you get some idea of how it looks in comparison. It’s not Bruce Lee taking on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar by any stretch of the imagination. In this respect the poorly shot and poorly edited fight scenes work for her because they hide the stunt people doing most of the work. Nonetheless, I enjoyed all 99 minutes of it, despite some preposterous plot twist and holes you could push all three Bourne movies through. This is why short running times work for action movies, because you’re already in a death duel in a White House bunker before you realize how dumb that church bomb sequence was back in NYC after that insane jumping from movie trucks on different levels of a major highway was. And considering it just opened better than the first Bourne movie, you can expect a sequel with equal amounts of silliness.

NICE GEEK IS A BORDERLINE OXYMORON

Despicable Me is down to number three, followed by The Sorcerer’s Apprentice at number four and here as the apprentice is Jay Baruchel, who is the answer to the question, “What if Shia Lebouf were a cute dweeb instead of being utterly obnoxious and annoying?” This is why he was the star of She’s Out of My League from a few months ago. He’s actually from the Judd Apatow group, being the star of the underrated and totally abused, Undeclared and was one of the disgusting roommates in Knocked Up. They also cast his love interest better, going with an actress who is very attractive, but in normal manner rather than the over-the-top looks of Megan Fox, who wouldn’t know someone like Shia Lebouf without getting a check for it. You can actually believe he’d date this girl.

BACK WHEN GENDER ROLES MEANT SOMETHING, GODDAMNIT!

Toy Story 3 holds at number five followed by Ramona and Beezus at number six and I didn’t get why this was the obsession of every woman I know for the past few weeks until I realized this was Ramona from “Ramona The Brave” and that series of books. See, only girls read those books back when girls and boys were seriously separated, so I, as a boy, never read them. Now, her epic work on The Mouse & The Motorcycle, however…

WHAT DO YOU MEAN HALLE BERRY WAS BUSY!?!

Grown Ups is down to number seven and also here keeping the premise borderline science fiction of Adam Sandler being married to Salma Hayek is Maria Bello as the wife of Kevin James. As if we didn’t get enough of this crap after an eternity of King of Queens. You have to wonder if Chris Rock had any say in who played his wife given he got talent over looks in Maya Rudolph or if his wife told him she’d better not see Paula Patton next to him onscreen.

THE LANGUAGE OF NUUUU YAWK

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is down to number eight and I recently had dinner with a friend who is a frustrated writer and after a few drinks she treated me to a ruthless critical analysis of the entire series, which I’m sure was much more entertaining than the books themselves. I doubt any of the extremely devoted fanbase ever considered Edward the vampire “A cunt-tease.” Never really heard that expression before, but this is what makes the people of Queens unique. Their way with words.

FES ON A STICK

The Last Airbender is down to number nine followed by Predators closing out the top ten at number ten and what’s happened to America? Once upon a time this would have been a huge summer hit, but now it was lucky to break even. But it’s up to $95M worldwide and will undoubted do well on video, so there will probably be more. And is anyone aware that Topher Grace is here? Yes, Eric from That 70’s Show is one of those being hunted. Now there’s a movie. The entire cast of That’s 70’s Show vs The Predators. I’m sure no shortage of people would like to see Ashton Kutcher and Wilmer Valderrama skewered and skinned.

NO, THEY DON’T PLAY THE WHO SONG

No longer in the top ten is The Kids Are All Right and it’s embarrassing it took me this long to see it, given it’s from my beloved Lisa Cholodenko, who wrote and directed the note-perfect High Art. Now when you do something that great straight out the box you continually live in its shadow and while The Kids Are All Right is very good thanks to strong performances and an uncompromising script, it’s not perfect. If it were perfect the story of two lesbians who use one man’s sperm to create their son and daughter being forced to connect with him because of those kids would have had at least a token mention of grandparents. It does not, so it’s not perfect. Yeah, that’s my only complaint. Outside of that it’s wonderful. Warm and funny but not in that annoying Hollywood clichéd way where you know the mean boss will either get a comeuppance or soften by the end, which never, ever happens in real life. Here, a source of humor are two lesbian mothers awkwardly explaining to their teenage son why they watch gay male porn to get hot rather than gay female porn. Also, the very things that are virtues are very often the source of great flaws, such as Mark Ruffalo’s “everything’s cool dude” personality. It’s lead to him having a pretty nice life with his own restaurant and very nice social life and initially is what draws the kids to him, is the same thing that ultimately causes problem in with the kids and their mothers who begrudgingly accept him when he begins an affair with Julianne Moore. Between the food and the sex he’s clearly a sensualist, doing what feels good first and thinking it through later and thinking is not what he does best. Similarly, the driving, exacting personality of Annette Benning, which is clearly what led to her being a successful doctor, is ultimately what drives Julianne Moore into his arms. Julianne Moore’s personality is more intellectual the Ruffalo’s, but equally easygoing which makes her likable, but has her still looking for purpose in middle age and leads her to Ruffalo who is the first customer of her new business, which Benning is critical of. The ending is still happy, but happy in a way keeping with the characters. No one makes a 180-degree turn to make it happen.

NEW MUSIC FOR OLD PEOPLE

Because I’m old and slow, I had no idea Chris Isaak released an album last year. It’s not as good as the previous album from 2003, especially given the time he had. Seven years should produce a definitive masterpiece. Also, I just discovered Motorcycle’s “As The Rush Comes” and Kaskade’s “Move For Me” which are at a minimum two years old if not more. They’re very electronic dance and the irony of this is, all this stuff sounds the same to me, but I ultimately like very little of it. Also new to me, The Bird and The Bee and their song “Love Letter to Japan.”