Manhattan may be famous for its plummeting crime rate (Oslo has four times as much crime as New York this year!), but it's clear its residents still have a taste for violence — that, or they prefer Angelina Jolie's slender arms and James McAvoy's glistening chest to a dented metal-box with eyes. Either way, last weekend New Yorkers resisted the calls of ecstatic critics and chose Timur Bekmambetov's kill-fest Wanted — in which Jolie and McAvoy star as members of a secret gang of assassins — over Pixar's Wall-E. Wanted raked in just over a million dollars locally during its opening weekend, making it the city's no.  read more »

Wanted
Running Time 110 minutes
Written by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan
Directed by Timur Bekmambetov
Starring James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Terence Stamp

Even in the summer garbage dump of bloated bilge aimed at computer hackers and sleepwalkers with I.Q.’s under 40, a bucket of swill called Wanted reaches the bottom of the waste heap. There are so many things wrong with this cabbage-headed comic book that I don’t know where to begin. I guess it doesn’t matter. Since none of it makes one word of sense, you can just jump in anywhere.

From what I understood of the alleged “plot,” it seems that 1,000 years ago a secret group of assassins called “The Fraternity” went around ridding the population of bad guys.  read more »

Hey, how about those Oscars? We doubt it was just the DayQuil that had us thinking this was one of the best shows in ages … it had more to do with the fact that this year the movies were just so darn good and deserving (all those sweet foreigner acceptance speeches really helped, too). Isn’t it hard to come back to reality and realize that it’s still just February and we’ve got some time to kill before we see anything new that will be worthy of an Oscar?  read more »