New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Felix Quinonez Jr.: I don't think a much bigger opening should have been expected from this movie. It's a terribly reviewed, generic action movie that follows two equally generic action movies. There is really nothing distinguishing any of these movies or any reason to see it in theaters. The only "draws" here are the stars. Statham has never been a huge draw anyway and it was only a matter of time before people began to lose interest in seeing him do the same thing in every movie. As for the other two...well, I think it's time to face the fact that their star power isn't what it used to be (putting it kindly). I also think that they underestimated how much the novelty factor helped the box office performance of The Expendables movies. It seems that they really thought they were going to be huge action stars on their own again and... they were wrong.

Shalimar Sahota: The way I saw it, the unique selling point with this, and The Last Stand, was old school action stars delivering old school action thrills. I'm all for real stunts and carnage, but Bullet in the Head looked like a trip to the 1980s for me. I guess to some people that might be appealing, but since there are already films out there that have done the action-buddy movie and done it better, then was there really any reason to go see this?

Max Braden: This number *shocks* me. I mean, look, I'm not expecting a $30 million opening. But come on! Stallone is 66-years-old. That's retirement age, and he looks as ripped as he did 30 years ago. He looks like he could kick Jason Statham's ass, to say nothing of mine. I would seriously consider putting him in Fast & The Furious 7 with The Rock and The Dome. Consider that Mel Gibson and Bruce Willis, who started their careers well after Stallone, are appearing in more straight-to-video titles than wide releases. Not counting the extremely limited we-hope-nobody-notices-this Driven in 2001, the last time one of Stallone's movies opened to under $10 million was Get Carter, and the last time one of his movies did nominally worse than this was all the way back in 1981: Nighthawks. In the past year, Haywire, Gone, Lockout, Safe, Dredd, Hit & Run, and of course The Last Stand all beat out Stallone. So soon after the presidential election, I imagine a scene where Stallone and Schwarzenegger called each other up and conceded defeat to each other. I blame Beyonce.

Kim Hollis: What were your favorite and least favorite Super Bowl commercials? Did any movie trailers catch your notice?

Bruce Hall: My favorite is obviously Fast & Furious 6, because I am an immature person, easily swayed by fast cars and explosions. I'm not sure what Iron Man 3 was going for. Also, I see Don Cheadle's armor and assume its greatest power is to paralyze enemies with laughter. Snitch could have been the trailer for 20 other generic looking films. With all the talk of J.J. Abrams directing the next Star Wars film, nobody's mentioned Jerry Bruckheimer's obvious influence on Star Trek: Into Darkness, where apparently everything in the universe explodes. Speaking of Mr. Bruckheimer, Disney's The Lone Ranger sure uses a lot more napalm than the TV show did. And the only thing I can tell from World War Z is that it's about the zombie apocalypse, which I already knew. The one that grabbed me was Oz the Great and Powerful. Putting aside my childish love of exploding sports cars, this was the only trailer that truly left me wanting more.

Continued:       1       2       3