Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the worst opening weekend of the year! Granted, it's only the first weekend of the year but with a mere one movie opening--one!--I think it may hold the title for the next 51 weeks. That movie, of course, is One Missed Call. It's your typical, 'let's trick bored teenagers into seeing another bad re-make of a better Japanese horror film.' I thought that trend had run its course, but......

Like American Gangster earlier in the fall, Charlie Wilson's War tells a fascinating and (mostly) true story that's so improbable you wonder what's taken it so long to reach the big screen. If you don't already know, Charlie Wilson was a fairly nondescript Congressman from Texas (known more as a hedonist than a legislator) who almost single-handedly provided the money and weapons that the Afghan Mujahideen used to defeat the seemingly invincible Soviet Union.......

I'm ashamed to admit how long it took me to finally catch Sidney Lumet's latest film, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. After all, Lumet is one of the true grandmasters of the craft (he directed his first significant film, 12 Angry Men, over fifty years ago!). What's more, the cast he brought together for Devil is absolutely top-notch: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney and Rosemary Harris. Worst of all,......

To no one's surprise, Saw IV handily topped the box office this weekend with a haul of 32.1 million dollars. It's the third consecutive year that a film from the Saw franchise has won the Halloween weekend. I'm sure we all know what to expect next year. Dan in Real Life had a reasonably good debut, taking in $12M and re-establishing Steve Carell as a box-office force after the disaster that was Evan Almighty.......