‘Chronicle’ swept the box office narrowly for the #1 position with $22 million in box office recipts. ‘Daniel Radcliffe’s first post ‘Potter’ debut ‘The Woman In Black’ captured the #2 spoot with $21 million as Liam Neeson is still hanging on in the wilderness in the #3 position tacking on another $9.5  million for a total gross of $34.7 in sales  this past weekend at the box office.

If the average superhero movie is all about how with great power comes great responsibility, Chronicle reminds us that it also comes with great temptation. Indeed, to even call Josh Trank’s film a superhero movie seems wrong: Rather, it’s about what the average teenage boy might actually do with superpowers — and there is very little heroism or villainy on display here. Chronicle’s very lack of scope is its strength.

The plot is admirably bare-bones: Much bullied-upon Andrew (In Treatment‘s Dane DeHaan), his smart and popular cousin Matt (Alex Russell), and their boisterous, extremely outgoing friend Steve (Michael B. Jordan, from Friday Night Lights and The Wire) discover a mysterious crater outside a party and, after touching some weird crystalline alien thingamabob, gain telekenetic powers. (We never see or hear from this weird crystalline alien thingamabob again. This is a good thing.) Our heroes then groove on their newfound powers for what seems like an obscenely long time: magically hiking up girls’ skirts, rearranging cars at the parking lot, tormenting unsuspecting shoppers at the grocery store, totally blowing everybody’s minds at the school talent show. They also discover that their powers are growing, and that they can do more than just move stuff with their minds — they can actually lift themselves off the ground, zoom through the skies, and (of course) do horrible things like pull people’s teeth out of their skulls.

For much of the film, our heroes’ obstacles are incidental, temporary: They go overboard with a car on the road and send it into a lake, precipitating a mini-rescue, and they nearly get sideswiped by a jet that flies too close to them while they’re flying around. Occasional nosebleeds might seem to presage some kind of Cronenbergian transformation, but no, the real trouble here comes from within: Andrew, bullied at school by the usual jerks and beaten at home by an abusive father (Michael Kelly), starts to get creative with his tormentors and enjoys it a bit too much. Pure wish fulfillment, it turns out, can go a little too far. When Matt tries to set down some rules for how they should use their powers, Andrew doesn’t seem too into the idea.

Wounded, tragic Andrew is our audience surrogate, recording everything with his camera. (When he discovers that he can make it float, it’s a clever way to both avoid the more egregious aspects of the shaky-cam style and explain away the device’s painful ubiquity.) The film may not be subtle about telegraphing the fact that Andrew is a monster in the making, but it also comes most alive when he’s getting back at the world: There, but for the grace of gravity, go we. An entire city may get totaled by the end, but Chronicle maintains a kind of austere, provincial integrity. In the end, it’s just a movie about the joys and dangers of finally having some power over our fate.

1. CHRONICLE
2. THE WOMAN IN BLACK
3. GREY
4. BIG MIRACLE
5. UNDERWORLD AWAKENING

DVD’S

1. REAL STEAL
2. 50/50
3. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3
4. ABDUCTION
5. KILLER ELITE
6. THE IDES OF MARCH
7. MONEYBALL
8. RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
9. THE HELP
10. COURAGEOUS
11. DOLPHIN TALE

Liam Neeson survives the wilderness securing the #1 position with $20 million in sales this past weekend. ‘Underworld Awakening’ took another bite out of the box office in the #2 spot with an additional $12.5 million for total receipts of $45.1 million as ‘One for the Money’ grabbed the #3 position making $11.8 million this past weekend at the box office.

1. GREY
2. UNDERWORLD AWAKENING
3. ONE FOR THE MONEY
4. RED TAILS
5. MAN ON A LEDGE

DVD’S

1. ABDUCTION
2. KILLER ELITE
3. THE IDES OF MARCH
4. MONEYBALL
5. RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
6. THE HELP
7. CONTAGION
8. COURAGEOUS
9. WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER
10. DOLPHIN TALE

‘Underworld Awakening’ scored the #1 spot with $$25.4 million in sales at the box office.  The highly anticipated ‘Red Tails’ flew into the #2 position with $19.1 million while Mark Walbergh and ‘Contraband’ hi-jacked another $12.2 million for cumulative box office receipts of  $46.1 million  this past weekend at the box office.

1. UNDERWORLD AWAKENING
2. RED TAILS
3. CONTRABAND
4. EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLE CLOSE
5. HAYWIRE

DVD’S

1. KILLER ELITE
2. MONEYBALL
3. RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
4. SCORPION KING 3: THE BATTLE FOR REDEMPTION
5. COLOMBIANA
6. THE HELP
7. CONTAGION
8. THE HANGOVER PART 2
9. DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK
10. WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER

Mark Walbergh and ‘Contraband’ smuggled $24.1 million out of the box office while securing the #1 spot this past weekend. Beauty & The Beast took the #2 position with $18.5 million while   ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’ is still taking a share of the sales in the #3 position  adding $11.5 million for a cumulative sales receipts of $187 million  this past weekend at the box office.

mxoentertainment.com

By Ms. Osupa Nia

Posted January 16th 2012

Todd Graff has written suspense drama ‘The Vanishing’, Black Satirical Comedy ‘Used People’, and now looks like he’s trying his hand at ‘Gospel Comedy. a new genre I have created. I also have a piece of land in Florida if you buy that…LOL

‘Joyful Noise’ has an array of talent. Dolly Parton who is sixty-six years old and  is still looking good. She has the only designer tapered robe in the movie’s choir. Queen Latifah’s matron role is workable but she portrayed that role much better in ‘The Secret Lives of Bees. ’Parton and the Queen’s ongoing rivalry are very entertaining and the underlying plot of the film.

Sure the main plot is for their church choir to win the national competition yet ’Joyful Noise’ also touches upon interracial relationships, autism, the southern gospel church, traditional parental discipline and a host of slice of life parodies.

Yes I found myself rolling with laughter and for some brief periods of time fighting back tears. It is basically a musical comedy and the performances are outstanding. I believe that it is Keke Palmer and Jeremy Jordan who make this film happen. The two are young phenomenal actors and singers that are definitely ones to watch as their careers blossom.

So do they win the competition?  You’ll have to see for yourself. ‘Joyful Noise’ is in theaters now. Take the kids it’s fun entertainment the whole family will enjoy!

JOYFUL NOISE OFFICIAL WEBSITE MOVIE TRAILER, PHOTOS AND MORE

Alcon Entertainment, Farrell Paura Productions, Gospel Truth Pictures

Warner Brothers Distribution

Writer/Director: Todd Graff

Cast:

Queen Latifah 

Dolly Parton 

Keke Palmer 

Jeremy Jordan 

Dexter Darden 

Courtney B. Vance 

Jesse L. Martin 

Kirk Franklin 

Angela Grovey 

Andy Karl 

Dequina Moore 

Kris Kristofferson 

Paul Woolfolk

Francis Jue

Roy Huang

1. CONTRABAND
2. BEAUTY & THE BEAST
3. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE:GHOST PROTOCOL
4. JOYFUL NOISE
5. SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS

DVD’S

1. COLOMBIANA
2. RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
3. COWBOYS AND ALIENS
4. THE HANGOVER PART II
5. THE HELP
6. CONTAGION
7. DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK
8. APOLLO 18
9. I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT
10. KUNG FU PANDA 2

‘The Devil Inside’ possessed the #1 spot with $34.5 million in box office sales. ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’ slid to the #2 position and adding

$20.5 million for a cumulative sales receipts of $170 million as Robert Downing Jr. and  ‘Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows’ took the #3 spot  tacking on another $14.1 million for a total gross of 157 million in total sales this past weekend at the box office.

A meditation on the humiliations inherent in growing older, “Roadie” features some wonderful performances and a powerfully evocative sense of place, all the stuff you want in a small, independent film.

Directed by Michael Cuesta, who co-wrote the script with his brother Gerald, “Roadie” is set in blue-collar Queens where the protagonist Jimmy Testagross returns after being dumped by Blue Oyster Cult, the band he’s been working with for 20 years as a roadie. Jimmy is middle-aged, overweight, and desperate. He has little education, no marketable skills, and no place to go when the band leaves him literally by the side of the road. Ron Eldard, who fans may recognize from “E.R.,” fully inhabits Jimmy, even gaining weight to play a guy who can’t quite believe that he’s not a kid anymore and that his future is behind him.

Jimmy shows up at his childhood home, where his widowed mother still lives, and almost scares her to death. She hasn’t seen him in 10 years, and it doesn’t seem that he calls that often either. Lois Smith, who plays Jimmy’s mother, hasn’t lost any of her luminosity. As a woman who is slipping into dementia but struggling mightily to hold on to her dignity, she’s amazing. She can’t quite grasp why Jimmy has come back, but she wants to welcome him and make him a sandwich. Of course, he doesn’t tell her that he’s been fired, just as he never told her exactly what he did on the road. He’s trying to hold on to his dignity too, just as we all are.

It’s impossible not to see “Roadie” against the backdrop of the American economy’s long diminution of men like Jimmy. The factories they once worked in are closed, their skills are under-appreciated, and smarter, softer men have outstripped them. Millions of men have arrived at middle-age with little hope for the future and bewildered at how this happened to them. The mood of sadness, regret, and disorientation that suffuses the movie seems the general tenor of our time.

When Jimmy goes out to the bar, he runs into Randy Stevens, a guy he knew in high school. Randy reminds him of his old nickname Jimmy Testicles, and it’s clear from the way Jimmy stiffens that he hated Randy then, and hates Randy now. It only gets worse when he learns that Randy has married Jimmy’s old girlfriend, Nikki.

As Randy, Bobby Cannavale gives one of his best performances–oily and mean, but with shadings of the frightened, insecure man within. Randy has inherited his father’s used-car lot, and he has the salesman’s fake friendliness. Insisting that Jimmy come and hear Nikki sing at a local place, they make plans to get together.

When Jimmy and Nikki spend some time in his old bedroom, which looks just as it did when he was 16, the weight of the decisions they’ve made presses down. Jill Hennessey as Nikki is the weakest actor in the cast, not surprisingly, and is never quite convincing as the girl who stayed in Queens. A later climactic scene in a motel room where the three of them convene to play rock star before one of her sets doesn’t have the emotional punch it needs, but there’s more than enough that works in “Roadie” to satisfy.

David Margulies plays Jimmy’s mother’s neighbor, someone who knew Jimmy when he was a boy. To watch Margulies and Smith on screen is to appreciate the extraordinary depth and respect they bring to their characters, who could easily have been the stereotypical doddering old coots. They bring great warmth to a film that treats all its characters with respect, no matter how foolish and self-pitying they may be at times.

1. THE DEVIL INSIDE
2. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE:GHOST PROTOCOL
3. SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS
4. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
5. ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: CHIPWRECKED

DVD’S

1. COLOMBIANA
2. RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
3. COWBOYS AND ALIENS
4. THE HANGOVER PART II
5. THE HELP
6. DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK
7. APOLLO 18
8. WARRIOR
9. I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT
10. KUNG FU PANDA 2

Ditto….Ditto…..Ditto….Again same top three titles at the box office this  weekend….just more money! ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’ in the #1 position and adding $ 30million for a cumulative sales receipts of $133 million.  Robert Downing Jr. and  ‘Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows’in the #2 spot  tacking on another $22.1million for a total gross of $132 million as   ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked’ maintained the #3 position with   $94.6 million in total sales this past holiday weekend at the box office.

Don’t be put off by the harsh title of “Pariah,” the stirring coming-out story of a virginal 17-year-old African-American lesbian living in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. The teenager, Alike (pronounced ah-LEE-kay), dresses like a boy when out of her parents’ sight and endures a fair share of barbed, homophobic remarks, but she is not viciously persecuted.

1. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE:GHOST PROTOCOL
2. SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS
3. ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: CHIPWRECKED
4. WARHORSE
5. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

DVD’S

1. COLOMBIANA
2. RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
3. COWBOYS AND ALIENS
4. THE HANGOVER PART II
5. THE HELP
6. WARRIOR
7. KUNG FU PANDA 2
8. WARRIOR
9. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
10. SUPER 8

Same top three titles at the box office this  weekend….just more money! ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’ invaded the box office securing the #1 position and adding %26.5 million for a cumulative sales receipts of $58.9 million.  Robert Downing Jr. and  ‘Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows’ ralliead to the #2 spot but not before tacking on another $17.8 million for a total gross of $76.5 million as   ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked’ maintained the #3 position with   $50.3 million in total sales this past holiday weekend at the box office.

Films that concern themselves about the 9/11 attacks have had mixed results, not only in box office, but in their ability to capture the unthinkable and put it in an emotional and historical context. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, starring Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks, frankly stands alone in its ability to tell a compelling story, while still reminding us of the fallout from what the lead character in Extremely Loud calls “The Worst Day.”
Thomas Horn is Oskar Schell, who is a good-natured young boy before his entire world explodes when two planes crash into the World Trade Center where his father (Hanks) happens to be for a meeting on that fateful Tuesday morning. Not only did Oskar lose his father, he lost his best friend, mentor and his innocence.

His mother (Bullock) deals with her own grief while trying to raise her son who becomes more and more distant as the days pass into a year since the attack. Some days she can’t even get out of bed. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close holds its focus far from the buildings that fell and establishes its center clearly on one family and how that day changed everything in a way that they may never recover.

About a year after the attack, Oskar finds a key left behind by his father. He is convinced it is a clue to a massive scavenger hunt that his father had mentioned doing with his son before losing his life. Oskar sets out on a journey across Manhattan’s five boroughs. As such, the film is equally a love letter to the city of New York as it is a remembrance to those whose lives were lost and most powerfully, those who survived.

Through Oskar’s journey, the audience gets inside the mindset of the thousands of children who lost parents on that horrible day. How do they process such horror? What do they cling on to in order to move forward? And most importantly, how is their emotional state long after the ashes have blown away from Ground Zero?

In Oskar we have a clue how one fictional child was affected. It is extremely complicated to be honest. He has good days and bad days. But during one sequence where all his questions, insecurities, loss, depression and anger come through in a tirade to a mute neighbor (an incredible Max Von Sydow), we see the complexity that is the reality of the children of 9/11. It is one of the most powerful scenes exhibited on film in 2011.

Movie Fanatic saw Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in New York City and we are forever thankful that the city that survived those attacks served as the locale for our screening. It was difficult. The theater was filled with tears, wails and sobbing so strong, you could hear the individuals gasping for air. But, don’t be thrown by thinking this is one depressing experience at the movies. The film is powerful, yet also possesses humor and is at its core one fantastic film, regardless of subject matter.

Those who lived through New York’s darkest day must see the film. And honestly, will most likely never be able to witness it again. Those of us that knew people who perished that day, but lived in other cities, will appreciate the candor which director Stephen Daldry has exhibited with his film. All Americans, and people of all nationalities for that matter, will treasure the time spent witnessing Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. It is priceless the way it shows how the nuances from one horrible event can reverberate through lives.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close may feature two huge movie stars in Hanks and Bullock, but the true star is Horn. Through his eyes, we see a hurt caused by 9/11 that has never been fully captured on screen since “The Worst Day.” The film is a must-see for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is it allows us an understanding of the true price we paid that day as a human race, not simply as a country.

Read more <a href=”http://www.moviefanatic.com”>movie news</a> at: http://www.moviefanatic.com/2011/12/extremely-loud-and-incredibly-close-movie-review-incredibly-movi/#ixzz1hkwUAw6I

1. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE:GHOST PROTOCOL
2. SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS
3. ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: CHIPWRECKED
4. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
5. THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN

DVD’S

1. RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
2. COWBOYS AND ALIENS
3. THE HANGOVER PART II
4. THE HELP
5. KUNG FU PANDA 2
6. MR POPPERS PENGUINS
7. SUPER 8
8. 30 MINUTES OR LESS
9. FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS
10. THE SMURFS

My baby’s daddy Robert Downing Jr. in ‘Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows solved the box office mystery of who will be in the #1 spot with $40 million in receipt.  ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked’ managed to find their way to the #2 position with $23.5 million as Tom Cruise and the gang embark on another ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’ with $13 million in sales this past weekend at the box office.

Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law bicker and banter and bob and weave with significantly diminishing returns in this sequel to the 2009 smash hit “Sherlock Holmes.”

Director Guy Ritchie once again applies his revisionist approach to Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic literary character, infusing the film with his trademark, hyperkinetic aesthetic and turning the renowned detective into a wisecracking butt-kicker. But what seemed clever and novel the first time around now feels stale and tired; a lot of that has to do with the grimy, gray color scheme, which smothers everything in a dreary, suffocating sameness and saps the film of any real tension or thrills.

While Downey is more than capable of tossing off impish quips – he’s based an entire career on being charmingly subversive – his heart just doesn’t seem to be in it. Sure, he gets a couple of funny lines here and there, and some of his wardrobe changes are good for a laugh, but it’s as if the material just isn’t challenging him. And that’s a shame, since this time we meet Holmes’ most famed foe.

“Game of Shadows” finds Downey’s Holmes facing off against brilliant super-villain Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris), who’s cooked up a scheme to pit various European nations against each other in hopes of benefiting from the demand for arms. (This is more than a couple decades before World War I, by the way. So not only is Moriarty dastardly, he’s also prescient.)

Holmes must stop him with the help of his trusty sidekick, Dr. Watson (Law), who’s newly married and not nearly so gung-ho about such wild antics anymore. And it shows in the script from Michele and Kieran Mulroney as well as in the performances; Law gets little to do beyond functioning as the skeptical straight man, and the chemistry just isn’t there this time.

Noomi Rapace tags along for some reason as a Simza, a gypsy fortune teller looking for her missing brother. Ostensibly this is because the filmmakers felt the need to inject a female figure as part of their adventures, and the saucy Rachel McAdams, who played Holmes’ love interest in the first film, gets knocked out of the picture early. But the formidable presence Rapace displayed in the original Swedish “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and its sequels goes to waste. In a mound of wavy hair and gaudy jewelry, she’s asked to run and look worried, and that’s about it.

Again and again, though, Ritchie falls back on the same super-slow-motion visual effects he used in the first film: sequences in which Holmes can foresee how a physical showdown will play out, narrate it blow-by-blow, then take part in it in sped-up fashion. It’s cool-looking the first couple times; Ritchie trots out this trick about eight times too many, to the point where you begin to wonder whether that’s all he’s got left in his bag. But even straight-up chase scenes and shootouts are so amplified and over-edited, they become incomprehensible.

Not that any sort of criticism matters: The ending of “A Game of Shadows” clearly sets up a third film in the series. And so Downey can trot out that British accent and don his dapper Victorian duds once more.

1. SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS
2. ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: CHIPWRECKED
3. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL
4. NEW YEARS EVE
5. THE SITTER

DVD’S

1. COWBOYS AND ALIENS
2. THE HANGOVER PART II
3. THE HELP
4. MR POPPERS PENGUINS
5. SUPER 8
6. 30 MINUTES OR LESS
7. FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS
8. THE DEBT
9. OUR IDIOT BROTHER
10. THE SMURFS

The holidays are in full swing as ‘New Year’s Eve’ takes control of the box office in the #1 position with $13 million in receipts at the box office. ‘The Sitter’ ‘hit the #2 spot with $$9.85  million as the The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part is still hanging in there sliding to the  31 position adding $7.82 million for a total gross of  #259 million  in total receipts  this past weekend at the box office

1. NEW YEARS EVE
2. THE SITTER
3. THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 1
4. THE MUPPETS
5. ARTHUR CHRISTMAS

DVD’S

1. SUPER 8
2. 30 MINUTES OR LESS
3. FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS
4. OUR IDIOT BROTHER
5. THE SMURFS
6. CONAN THE BARBARIAN
7. THE CHANGE UP
8. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER
9. CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE
10. HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2

‘The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1′moves into week three in the #1 position adding $16.5 million for a total gross of  #247 million ‘The Muppets are still  running ramped for week two in the  #2 spot with an additional $11.1 million for a cumulative total of  $56.4 million while ‘Hugo steps the pace up to the  #3 position with $25.1 million in total receipts  this past weekend at the box office

1. THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 1
2. THE MUPPETS
3. HUGO
4. ARTHUR CHRISTMAS
5. HAPPY FEET 2

DVD’S

1. SUPER 8
2. CONAN THE BARBARIAN
3. THE CHANGE UP
4. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER
5. CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE
6. HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2
7. LARRY CROWNE
8. WATER FOR ELEPHANTS
9. CARS 2
10. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES