The crotch bulge is from his knuckles, you pervert.

Good news! After last week’s abysmal releases, this week we’ve actually got some decent flicks hitting DVD. Besides Skyfall, there’s The Sessions and The Man With The Iron Fists.  We’ve got movies starring Helen Hunt, Emma Watson and Russell Crowe.  We’ve got films with robots, thieves, bullies, and cartoons about Monty Python.  There are films about perky wallflowers and 28 hotel rooms. We’ve got gigantic Dutch teddy bears and even a hard-partying Bigfoot.

The DVDs:
Skyfall
The Sessions
The Man With The Iron Fists
The Perks Of Being A Wallflower
Robot & Frank
Bully
Silent Hill: Revelation
A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story Of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman
28 Hotel Rooms
The Thieves
Teddy Bear
Vigilante Vigilante: The Battle For Expression
Kill For Me
Smiley
Mimesis: Night Of The Living Dead
Bigfoot’s Wild Weekend

Streaming: Check out your choices here.

At least one of these films includes Oscar-nominated full-frontal nudity.  Want to know which one?  Continue reading and I promise you’ll find out.  Two of these films are about thieves.  One of them is Robot & Frank, to find out what the other one is, continue reading. As always, you can simply skip the DVDs altogether by clicking the streaming link above, but if you do that you’ll never know which film shows flopping dong. Read the rest of this entry »

Please break, dock.

It didn’t take very long for a “respectable” and “legitimate” film critic to finally “like” Gerard Butler’s new epic flop Playing for Keeps, but the film has taken a step forward from a 0% Rotten Tomatoes score to 2%. The critic in question is Leonard Maltin, who wrote this of Jessica Biel’s latest paycheck:

It won’t be up for any Oscars, nor will it score points for originality, but it’s harmless enough fare for its target audience.

Translated: “It sucked, but not enough that bored single women and housewives wouldn’t kill themselves if they had to sit through it.”

That said, enough people were either scared away by that horrible RT score or they just had enough common sense to watch the commercial or trailer and know that this paint-by-numbers romantic comedy probably isn’t even worth waiting for on Netflix. (I’ll let you know the answer to that soon enough, as Playing for Keeps is the only movie remaining on my Must Watch list for the 2012 Worst Movies feature, and thank God. I’m seriously in pain from this year’s awful mess.)

The incredible latest edition to the James Bond franchise, Skyfall, remains at the top of the box office this week, as it earned another $11 million, bringing the grand total to $261 million. Playing for Keeps was the top earner for new films with a lousy $6 million earning it the sixth best gross of the weekend overall. Meanwhile, Hyde Park on Hudson earned $83,300 on 4 screens, giving it a meaningless but awesome per screen average of $20,825. Hey, I’m just trying to find anything positive in an otherwise goober of a weekend.

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“Here, you be Killing Them Softly and I’ll be the audience.”

This week in humanity disappointing me, Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2 held the top spot at the North American box office, while Killing Them Softly (my review) opened softer than a panda bear’s dong. Softly, which (luckily) cost just $15 million to make, was one of Brad Pitt’s worst openings ever, worse than Fight Club, Meet Joe Black, and The Devil’s Own, though still twice as much as The Assassination of Jesse James‘s entire run, which was Pitt and director Andrew Dominik’s last collaboration. Aw, poor Andrew Dominik. Aussie can’t catch a break.

To make matters worse, Killing Them Softly’s audiences gave it an “F” cinemascore, and keep in mind that these same audiences gave “A”s to Alex Cross (Laremy’s review) and Here Comes the Boom (my review). My simplistic response to this would be “this is why we can’t have nice things,” but I’d also point out that audiences for Alex Cross and Boom are going to be self-selecting groups (read: dipshits) for movies that give you exactly what you’d expect (i.e., crap). And as much as I enjoyed Killing Them Softly, it was basically one big, oppressively cynical F-you to America and everything you stand for. It’s a heavy-handed, angry, snot-nosed movie meant to piss people off – that’s what it did, and that’s a big part of why I enjoyed it. Argo (my review) was just as good, but it portrays America as we like to think of ourselves, and it got an A+ cinemascore. Which is to say, Joe Sixpack and Charla Cheesesnack aren’t hostile to quality, but they are a bit sensitive when it comes to criticism (you can have their EZ cheez when you pry it from their cold, partially-amputated diabetes fingers).

All told, with Twilight, Skyfall, and Lincoln (my review) still cleaning up, the overall box office was up 46% from last year. Long story short, people will continue to make movies, and studios will continue to be rightly scared of interesting ones.

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I will never get tired of this gif.

Damn near every new movie outkicked their coverage this weekend, even the

Rise of the Guardians opened to a poor $24.03 million over the three-day weekend, which added up to a $32.6 million five-day start. That’s way less than The Muppets ($41.5 million) last year or Tangled ($68.7 million) two years ago. More importantly, though, the movie’s five-day start is lower than any three-day opening for a DreamWorks Animation movie since 2006′s Flushed Away.

The movie’s audience was 57 percent female and 53 percent under the age of 25. They largely rejected 3D showings, as that format only accounted for 35 percent of the movie’s box office. [BoxOfficeMojo]

By comparison, 3D accounted 68 percent of Life of Pi‘s box office. It just goes to show, Tiger Jesus beats Santa Claus every time.

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Listen on the player above, or download this week’s episode as an mp3 here (right-click, “save as.”)

Hooray, it’s everyone’s favorite time of the week! New Frotcast time! This week, we brought on Joe Sinclitico (the comedian formerly known as Joe King) to give us that feeling of fear mixed with delight and anticipation that we get every time Joe opens his mouth. On the space docket this week: our new favorite news personality, GustAHvo Alma-DOE-var (see below), Peter Dante and the epic existential buffoonery of his LAX bro video, Skyfall, Lincoln, Joe’s movie pitches (such as “Dalai Lamas,” starring Lorenzo Lamas and his special needs son who’s the reincarnation of Tibetan royalty), and how Taylor Lautner seems like a malfunctioning robot. No rules, just right. (What? That is an original slogan that I came up with on my own).

Check out the brand-new Frotcast.com to buy the Chicago Frotcast download ($1) or Ben’s limited-edition t-shirt featuring Bret’s squirrel painting.

Subscribe on iTunes (PLEASE RATE THE PODCAST!). My favorite review so far: “Of all the podcasts, this is the best. Take it from me, your old pal Hitler!”

Email us at frotcast@gmail.com. Voicemail us at 415.275.0030. Follow me on Twitter (COME ON, JUST 10 MORE TO THE NEXT MILESTONE!). Follow Joe on Twitter. Follow Ben on Twitter. Follow Bret on Twitter. Download the Stitcher App and stream the Frotcast to your iPhone or Android device. Fan us on Facebook.

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