The box office report this week has a new champion at the top. Kid friendly animated movie ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ took the number 1 position at the box office this week with a hefty $43.3 Million. The movie has wowed audiences who love the movie, especially in 3D. The movie stars, well voice stars, Gerard Butler, America Ferrera, Craig Ferguson and Jay Baruchel. This movie is also being enjoyed by adults and kids alike so it has a huge audience.

‘Alice in Wonderland’ came in 2nd this week with $17.3 Million. The Tim Burton directed and Disney flick has done extremely well and is well received by most critics. The darker look at ‘Alice in Wonderland’ is a different tale to Lewis Carroll’s beloved book but stars Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter, Anne Hathaway and more help to make this movie a brilliant success.

‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ came in 3rd place this week with $13.6 Million which is very good for a movie a lot of people hadn’t heard of. I personally thought the trailer was OK but not to my tastes but Jim Dixon, the Capital District Movies Examiner, seemed to enjoy the movie. See his review HERE.

Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston’s, ‘The Bounty Hunter’ stayed steady coming in with $12.4 Million to take the 4th spot at the box office. The romantic comedy has been dissed by critics but I thought it was ok it didn’t sizzle sizzle sizzle, but it was cute.

Rounding out the top 5 is ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ which brought in an even $10 Million. I’ve read the books and saw the movie and thought the movie was well done and kids absolutely adore it. I am sure we will see the next ‘Diary’ books made into movies soon. Way to go Jeff Kinney, the author of the series.

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Visit the film’s Official Site

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More Video:
Also see a little bit of the crowd on the Red Carpet. You can see Gerry in his kilt, and posing with his mum. You can watch it here.

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Gerry gave an interview to WJZ TV and at the end of it he announced he will star with Ralph Fiennes in a screen adaptation of Coriolanus. Ralph Fiennes will play the lead. Others connected to the project are William Hurt, Vanessa Redgrave and Jessica Chastain. Filming will begin in 2010 in Serbia.

Watch the interview here.

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ET’s Mark Steines is talking to A-list actors Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx, who star in the new action thriller ‘Law Abiding Citizen.’

In the film, Gerard’s character is out for revenge after his family is brutally killed and Jamie, who plays the lawyer who he believes betrays him, is his No. 1 target.

Gerard, who also produced the film, tells ET that he originally planned to play Jamie’s character: “We originally offered Jamie my character, and I was playing the prosecutor. I’d always been playing the prosecutor but I figured that we heard through the grapevine he was interested in the prosecutor and I thought, well I would like to try my hand at the other role. … We have a great chemistry together, and those scenes between us are gonna be electric.”

Jamie says he found Gerard to be a little bit shy, but that he told Gerard, “Don’t be afraid to let that go because when you do that, you’re gonna be the bad guy that everybody roots for.”

ET also spoke to the stars at the red carpet premiere last week in Los Angeles. ‘Law Abiding Citizen’ hits theaters October 16.

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Review: Law Abiding Citizen
Posted by Dr. Cole Abaius (cole.abaius@filmschoolrejects.com) on October 15, 2009

The opening shot of Law Abiding Citizen swirls around the statue of William Penn, one of the most well-known pacifist thinkers of early American history, as he stands atop the courthouse in Philadelphia. The camera will return to him once or twice more during the film, an interesting reminder amidst the violence and willingness to sink well below the human base and deep into the realm where taking another person’s life seems the only logical recourse on which the film feeds. There are some interesting ideas here – What do you do to fight against a system? How can there be true justice? Was Denzel Washington busy?

Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) loses his entire world when two home invaders kill his wife and daughter. Instead of working the long hours and fighting for justice, rising legal star Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) cuts a deal for a confession and preserves his conviction rate while one of the killers goes free after serving only five years. Ten years later, Clyde goes systematically hunting for the cogs of the system that let him and his family down.

While it may resemble some revenge flicks of the past – most notably Vigilante – it has something far more intellectual going on underneath its slick exterior. Instead of grabbing a shotgun and a van to go blow away the people who done him wrong, Clyde utilizes his background as an inventor (and some convenient time spent in what must be CIA black ops) to set a plan in motion so he can kill people even from behind the cold steel of prison bars. Imagine if a more sane version (and more charismatic version) of Jigsaw got sent up the river, but refused to quit murdering.

What I love about this film is its unwillingness to compromise, for the most part, on what one man might do if his loved ones were taken from him in vain. The opening scene of him tinkering with a motherboard alongside his daughter as she makes a bracelet is short, sweet, and creates all the bond you need to know before the catalyst sets the rest of the movie in motion. From that point, and while Clyde gets his revenge, the film does two things incredibly well. The first is making you question what you would do, staring down on your wife and daughter’s killer, helpless as he struggles against the table you’ve strapped him down to. The second is making you root for a man about to commit murder, a theme which continues, without you really being fully conscious of it.

Clyde loses it, and this film is unafraid of what that has to mean.

Filling the ethical gray area is Gerard Butler who nails his character about as completely as someone could. He chooses to play the darker parts under the surface, so he’s more method than outburst, but there’s something intensely scary about someone who knows they have the upper hand but chooses not to broadcast it. After all, finding out you’ve been bested is far more crushing than being told you’re outgunned. On the other side of the fence, Jamie Foxx continues to Denzel his career, and delivers a passable performance, but the deficit there comes more from problems in the third act than it does from Foxx himself.

So there’s that. While the movie delivers an ethical monologue hidden in tense writing and situations (and a little bit of the ultra-violence), it suffers in the third act mostly from the inactivity and idleness of Attorney Rice throughout the other acts. He’s more reactive than anything else, indicative of his character flaw of being generally lazy (or simply unwilling to fight all that hard), but while the character flaw adds a lot to the story, it also hurts the third act when it doesn’t exactly play out in an organic way. Ultimately, it’s disappointing, but it’s not enough to sink the movie altogether. It drags it from great to good, certainly, but the movie is still a great ride for the first bulk of its sleek 108 minute run time.

There are some great thrills and kills here for action fans – especially a jaw-droppingly awesome one that teaches an important lesson about answering your cell phone during a meeting. Law Abiding Citizen does not shy away from either displaying some harsh justice or hinting at it strongly enough to let the audience’s imagine spill the blood itself. To match, it has some great moments where shitty people get just as much damage to their egos as their bodies. The best is a courtroom scene, that seems to homage Vigilante directly, where Butler’s character (representing himself) argues successfully that he should be let out on bail, and then reprimands the moronic judge for agreeing with him considering he’s wanted for a double murder. It’s a solid segment that takes the frustration of the system, and the trusted people of that system, destroying Clyde’s life and shoves it right back in the face of an idiotic public official in front of a court room of members of the public and press.

In fact, that’s probably what this movie does best – balancing out all of its elements. Whereas most revenge films are fairly stupid, here is one that fits somewhere in the center of a Venn diagram between revenge, drama, and murder mystery. It’s smart and smartly acted, and only really suffers from what seems like a studio-written ending.

The Upside: A little bit to think about in an action flick, great acting, some smart dialog and cathartic moments.

The Downside: A third act that seems tacked on and drags the success of the film down considerably.

On the Side: Law Abiding Citizen director F. Gary Gray also has an MTV Music Award for Best Video of the Year for T.L.C.’s “Waterfalls.”

Grade: B-

Law Abiding Citizen: A serial killer in solitary with oddly unlimited resources
Oct 13, 2009
by Roger Ebert

Ebert Rating: *** (3 stars)

“Law Abiding Citizen” is a taut thriller about a serial killer in reverse: He’s already in prison when he commits all but one of his many murders, and in solitary for most of that time. So the story is a locked-room mystery: How does he set up such elaborate kills? Does he have an accomplice outside the walls, or what?

Jamie Foxx stars as Nick, the Philadelphia district attorney, and Gerald Butler is Clyde, the ingenious killer. Clyde begins the film as a loving husband and father, but then his wife and daughter are savagely murdered. Nick arranges a plea bargain: One of the guilty men will be executed; the other, in return for his testimony, will get a murder conviction but not death.

Clyde can’t believe this. He saw his family murdered. Both men are guilty. On this everyone agrees. Why is one allowed to live? Because, Nick explains, the case isn’t airtight without the testimony, and if they lose, both men walk free. That’s not good enough for Clyde, who has 10 years to plot, plan and simmer in his hatred. That’s the prologue. I won’t go into detail about what happens next, except to observe that Clyde’s first killing involves his penetration of the Death Row execution chamber itself — and that’s before he’s in prison. Is this guy Houdini, or does he have supernatural powers?

As his methods are uncovered, it’s clear he’s a non-magical human being, but a clever one with remarkable resources. So remarkable, in fact, that they fly in the face of common sense. Movie supervillains have a way of correctly predicting what everyone will do and making their plans on that basis. The explanation of Clyde’s methods is preposterous, but it comes late enough that F. Gary Gray, the director, is first able to generate considerable suspense and a sense of dread.

Foxx and Butler make a well-matched pair in their grim determination. Colm Meaney is underused as Nick’s police partner; we suspect he might be the accomplice, given the Law of Economy of Characters, but perhaps he has a different role to play. Leslie Bibb works well as Nick’s prosecutorial partner, with Regina Hall as Nick’s wife, Annie Corley as the judge who experiences some surprises in her courtroom, and the powerful Viola Davis as the city’s mayor.

“Law Abiding Citizen” is one of those movies you like more at the time than in retrospect. I mean, come on, you’re thinking. Still, there’s something to be said for a movie you like well enough at the time.

By Martin A. Grove

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – So many films take tortuous years of dealmaking to reach the screen that it’s reassuring to find a project that came together practically overnight.

Such is the case with “Law Abiding Citizen,” a psychological thriller starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler opening Friday via Overture Films.

“It was a call from Jamie Foxx,” said director F. Gary Gray (”The Italian Job”), when asked how he got involved. “We’ve always wanted to work with each other. He told me it was a project he thought I should strongly consider.”

After Foxx called last October, Gray read Kurt Wimmer’s screenplay. “I loved the concept and thought it was really unique.”

Next step: Meeting with Mark Gill, the CEO of indie production company Film Department, and “Citizen’s” producers, including Lucas Foster (”Mr. and Mrs. Smith”).

Gray (explaining): “The rest is history. We had a lot of meetings in-between. I put together my visions for the material. It was relatively simple.”

Butler plays the title’s upstanding citizen who’s terrorizing Philadelphia from behind prison bars to avenge his family’s murder 10 years ago. Foxx is the assistant D.A. who gave one killer a plea bargain deal and now finds his own life in danger.

Read full article here.

(UKPA) – 1 day ago

Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler were feeling the love as they hit Hollywood to premiere their new action flick Law Abiding Citizen.

After signing autographs for the hundreds of fans who packed out Hollywood Boulevard, Jamie told reporters: “The movie is absolutely incredible, Gerard Butler is absolutely fantastic in the movie and it was great working with him… It’s a great popcorn, sit-down-have-a-good-time movie.”

Scottish star Gerard seemed to enjoy himself on the red carpet, grabbing one admiring female photographer’s camera to pose with her for pictures.

The handsome heartthrob even joked about leaving the only woman in his life at home for the night – his little pug Lolita.

“My leading lady, she’s at home,” he laughed. “I couldn’t find her a dress.”

Despite his upbeat demeanour, The Ugly Truth star said in the movie we see his darker side.

“It’s not a usual role for me. I play a father, I play a killer, I play a bit of a sociopath; he’s a master of disguise, calculating and a genius but I can’t give any more out!”

The actor added that working with Jamie had been a joy.

“Jamie is the most incredible guy, an incredible actor. He’s a true gent.”

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Gerard Butler says he doesn’t mind showing off his butt — and neither do we!

In his new film, Law Abiding Citizen, the Gerard’s character is arrested… in the buff! Gerard tells Extra that, “It’s always nice to show a bit of butt,” while he attended the Hollywood premiere of his film on Tuesday.

“I don’t think it was gratuitous. I think there is a good reason for my nakedness in this movie,” Gerard added. Does there really need to be any reason at all? After seeing 300, we vote no.

Jamie Foxx, Gerard’s co-star said, “He has to do his whole thing for the ladies, which is great. But that’s when we men go to the concession stand.”

Probably not a bad idea, just make sure to bring back some water for the ladies to cool them down after!

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