Pulling off a huge upset, Nic Cage’s Knowing easily took number one at the box office, taking in $24.8 million to second-place I Love You, Man‘s $18. Elsewhere, number five Watchmen‘s total climbed to $98.1 million, which is only slightly ahead of number nine Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail (with $87 million total so far).  Yikes.  But perhaps the biggest surprise?  Someone liked Knowing.  And not just Pete Hammond.  Ebert says..

“Knowing” is among the best science-fiction films I’ve seen — frightening, suspenseful, intelligent and, when it needs to be, rather awesome.

…Really?  What does it all mean?  Will I have to go back to living in a world where Nic Cage is a respected actor rather than a guy who wears a bear suit and has ridiculous hair?  Because I won’t do it. WHY ISN’T HE BURNED? WHYISN’THEBURNEDWHYISN’THEBURNED??  …What’s that?  Okay, maybe Ebert’s just smoking dope on this one.  Phew.

(full top ten after jump)

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Opening this weekend (click titles for trailers):

• I Love You, Man: You can see Chodin’s review here.  I agree for the most part.  Rudd and especially Jason Segel are really funny, but god damn the script is formulaic.  And they had to explain every joke twice – I thought it was funny that the dog was named Anwar Sadat.  Not so much 15 minutes later when they had to cut between the dog’s face and a picture of Anwar Sadat to make sure the idiots in the audience were onboard. But nevertheless, funny.
• Duplicity: Julia Roberts and Clive Owen star in a spy comedy that was better when it was called Mr. and Mrs. Smith.  I mean, I guess it was, I haven’t seen either.  Mrs. Smith makes some good cookies though.  Put them in a bowl with some milk and you’ve got what George Lucas calls “cereal.”
• Knowing: Icarus Cage stars in an Alex Proyas film that looks like it was stolen from Roland Emmerich.  This reviewer for the AP calls it “an early contender for worst movie of the year.”  But then, she also says “it literally goes off the rails,” so unless she watched it on a train the AP needs to hire better copy editors.
• Explicit Ills (trailer after the jump): Right now you can only catch this one in New York, Philly, and L.A., but it stars Dookie from The Wire, Rosario Dawson, and the preacher kid from There Will Be Blood.  Plus, the producer emailed me.  See?  The system works.

SITE NEWS: Too much news today, come back tomorrow for Friday Free for All.

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Duplicity (trailer after the jump) stars Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, and Tom Wilkinson, and comes from Michael Clayton director Tony Gilroy (“H.W. calls it Michael Gay-ton.  That’s a burn”).  Judging by the kooky horn music, it’s some kind of screwball comedy, and Clive Owen and Julia Roberts are a spy couple.

What would it take to live like this?
20 million dollars?
I was thinking more like 40.
So what do you have to do to make 40 million dollars?

Well, you could always just have Julia Roberts’ character go undercover as Julia Roberts like in Ocean’s Twelve.  Goddamn that was f-cking stupid.
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