Weekend Box Office (02/27/11): Hall Pass edges out Gnomeo and Juliet while Drive Angry crashes.

Hall Pass opened with a modest $13.5 million on its debut weekend, giving the Farrelly Brothers their first chart-topper since Me, Myself, and Irene back in June of 2000. The critically-mixed comedy starring Owen Wilson, Jason Sudeikis, Jenna Fischer, Christina Applegate, and Richard Jenkins was their sixth-largest debut, coming in just at the $13.5 million (fourth-place) opening of There's Something About Mary back in July of 1998. The picture was heralded as a return to form for the once-kings of their genre who had seen their audience move on to the likes of Will Farrell and Judd Apatow. Alas, it was not quite to be. The Farrelly Brothers were the arguable kings of comedy in the mid-to-late 1990s, with crowd-pleasing smashes like Dumb and Dumber ($116 million) and There's Something About Mary, which spent months in the top ten and actually topped the box office in its eighth week of release. The latter ended up with $175 million, a huge number for a comedy, let alone an R-rated one. It's still the twelve biggest-grossing R-rated film of all time, and the fifth-biggest R-rated comedy ever.

Review: Unknown (2011)

Unknown
2011
110 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Jaume Collet-Serra's Unknown is an honest-to-goodness Hitchcockian thriller, a variation on the classic 'innocent man on the run' template. Like William Shakespeare, we discuss Alfred Hitchcock in hushed and overly reverent tones, forgetting that the man made pulpy entertainment for the masses. Hitchcock films, by-and-large, were crowd-pleasing pot-boilers that were intended to thrill, startle, and often amuse. In lesser hands, the filmography of Hitchcock could easily be discounted as a bunch of B-movies. I don't think even Jaume Collet-Serra would argue that his are comparably lesser hands, but the awkward and uneven picture shines brightest when he's willing to engage the audience as a merry prankster.

Weekend Box Office (02/21/11): Unknown leads jam-packed President's Day holiday

It was a crowded weekend at the box office for the second weekend in a row, as three major openers squared off against a surprisingly resilient animated feature from the week before. The top flick of the weekend was the Liam Neeson thriller Unknown (review). The film opened with $21.7 million over three-days and $25.6 million over four days, which is about on par with the $24 million debut of Taken (review) two-years ago over Super Bowl weekend. From a marketing point of view, Taken did have some advantages over this new thriller. The concept of Unknown ("I got into a car wreck and when I woke up someone had replaced me and no one knows who I am") isn't quite as relatible or compelling as Taken ("bad guys kidnapped my kid overseas, and I have to get her back"). While Warner Bros tried to sell Unknown as Taken 2, complete with the ridiculous 'take back your life' tagline and a trailer that climaxed with what little ass-kicking the film has to offer, anyone with a brain could tell that this was more of a goofy Hitchcockian thriller from the guy who directed the cheeky Orphan (review) than a hard action picture (there is a climactic moment of violence that is laugh-out-loud hilarious). Still, the film cost just $30 million, and this again proves Liam Neeson's worth as an action lead. He, Jason Statham, Denzel Washington, and Angelina Jolie really need to make a movie together.

Bad Marketing 101: movie posters that tell me what to do.

You're a movie poster. Your job is to advertise a film and make that film look enticing to me, the ticket buyer. You are not a parent, teacher, advisor, or self-help guru. Therefore, it is not your job to tell me how to live my life. It is not your job to offer theoretically empowering suggestions about how I choose to lead my existence. A moment of scorn for obnoxious movie posters of the last decade or so that saw themselves fit to tell me (and you) what to do. You're a movie poster. You are not the boss of me and I don't need your advice. Your only advice/order should be 'buy a ticket for this movie' and/or 'buy some popcorn and a soda'. Period. Enjoy some examples after the jump.