Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince handily wins the weekend box office race.

It’s true what they say: absence really does make the heart grow fonder.  Even though the last Harry Potter flick came out two full years ago–July 11, 2007, only a week before the final book in the series hit shelves–audiences showed up in droves to check out the latest installment, which has banked $159 million since its midnight launch last Tuesday.  Expect a similarly strong turn-out for the last two movies in the franchise, which are set to launch in Fall 2010 and Summer 2011 respectively.  Those families that couldn’t score a ticket on the Hogwarts Express settled for the continuing animated adventures of a trio of pre-historic creatures.  Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs collected another $17 million in its third week in release, putting its total gross at $152 million.  Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen continues to print money for Paramount, closing in on the $400 million mark, which would put it in the lower rungs of the Top Ten of all-time box office champs.

Elsewhere, Sacha Baron Cohen might need to start looking for a traditional romantic comedy stat.  His sophomore star turn Bruno took a big second-week hit, collecting only $8 million for a total to-date gross of $50 million.  At this point, the movie has little chance of catching up to its predecessor Borat, which finised its run with $130 million.  On the other hand, director Todd Phillips is rolling in dough now that his low-budget comedy The Hangover has officially become one of the biggest comedy smashes ever, with $236 million and counting.

Looking at the bottom half of the chart, Sandra Bullock and Johnny Depp took the #6 and #7 spots respectively and Pixar’s Up–still the best film of 2009–finished eighth as it approaches $300 million, which makes it the company’s second biggest hit behind Finding Nemo.  A pair of blondes–Cameron Diaz and Hayden Panettiere–round out the Top Ten.

Full figures are below, courtesy of the-numbers.com.  Next week, Katherine Heigl will attempt to seduce moviegoers with her charms in The Ugly Truth and Jerry Bruckheimer tries his hand at making a kiddie blockbuster in the action comedy G-Force.

The Top Ten: July 17-19, 2009
1. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: $159.7
2. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: $17.7/$152
3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: $13.8/$363.9
4. Bruno: $8.3/$49.6
5. The Hangover: $8.3/$235.8
6. The Proposal: $8.2/$128
7. Public Enemies: $7.5/$79.4
8. Up: $3.1/$279.5
9. My Sister’s Keeper: $2.8/$41.5
10. I Love You, Beth Cooper: $2.6/$10.2

Reviews of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and The Hurt Locker

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Directed by Michael Bay
Starring Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro
**

I’ll say this about Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen—it’s the closest we’ll ever get to seeing what an entirely unfiltered Michael Bay picture looks like.  Over the course of his career, the divisive director has established his own distinct (some would say, obnoxious) brand of visual pyrotechnics, but he’s always operated under the firm hand of experienced producers, including Jerry Bruckheimer and Steven Spielberg, who reined in some of his baser impulses.  With the second Transformers flick though, the parents have gone on vacation, leaving their teenage son with the keys to the family car, which he promptly drives into a cliff where it explodes in an enormous fireball.

If it weren’t for the fact that its guaranteed to become the summer’s biggest hit, Revenge of the Fallen is the kind of bloated, juvenile career-killer that would send its director from the blockbuster big leagues to the made-for-TV minors.  (Don’t believe me?  Just ask Jeremiah Chechik and Danny Cannon, the former big shots responsible for The Avengers and Judge Dredd respectively.)  Instead, Bay will live to direct another day, especially with Transformers 3 already slated for a 2011 release.  But you can bet that Papa Spielberg will be holding his son’s hand a lot more firmly on that installment.

In a strange way, you almost have to admire Bay for abandoning any pretense of producing a coherent three-act film.  So many blockbusters make cursory nods towards things like character development and thematic complexity when you can tell all they really want to do is just blow lots of shit up.  Bay gleefully bypasses all that nonsense about cinematic storytelling and cuts right to the (literal) chase…to say nothing of explosions, shoot-outs and giant robot brawls.  It would be easier to dismiss Revenge of the Fallen as mindless spectacle if you didn’t get the sense that Bay would wear that criticism as a badge of honor.  In fact, if he had his way, every film he made would undoubtedly be exactly like this one.

Rushed into production just as last year’s writer’s strike got underway, Bay started working on Transformers from an outline that was only turned into a proper script three months before the first day of shooting.  That abbreviated schedule explains why the film’s narrative makes little to no sense; returning screenwriters Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman (the scribes behind this summer’s other big hit, Star Trek) famously pitched the first Transformers as a simple “boy and his car” story embellished with lots and lots of rock ‘em, sock ‘em robot action.  Revenge of the Fallen, on the other hand, begins with a fairly straightforward premise—that boy Sam (Shia LaBeouf) going off to college, leaving his annoying parents (Kevin Dunn and Julie White, even more grating than they were in the first film), porn-star ready girlfriend (Megan Fox) and excitable automobile (the Autobot known as Bumblebee) behind—and then goes out of its way to make the narrative as unintelligible as possible.

From what I could discern, Sam comes into contact with a shard of the All Spark—the cube that all of the characters spent the previous outing chasing after—which downloads crucial information about the origin of the Transformers into his brain and makes him a fresh target for the Decepticons, led by a newly resurrected Megatron.  After running away from various waves of enemy robots, Sam eventually winds up in Egypt where he has to stop Megatron’s army from activating a machine that blows up the sun.  Or something like that.  Oh, and every now and The Fallen—the villain name-checked in the title—shows up to deliver some vague threat, but consistently avoids getting involved himself.  He’s so lazy and ineffectual, this flick should have been called Revenge of Megatron or, even better, Big Ass Robot Smackdown.

I know, I know—who goes into a Transformers movie expecting a good story, right?  Fair enough, but in that case, why even bother with the human characters?  Why doesn’t Bay just go whole-hog and release a movie that consists of 90-minutes worth of Transformer on Transformer brawls?  Those are the only scenes that the movie’s target audience—teenage boys and adults who still think like teenage boys—cares about anyway…well, that and many, many shots of their current masturbatory object Megan Fox running, jumping and bending over in super slow motion.  (Maybe in this alternate, human-free cut of Transformers Fox could stride around in a barely-there bikini between robot bouts.)  But no, Revenge of the Fallen insists on dragging the proceedings out to an insane two-and-a-half hour length, so that when the film finally ends, the audience doesn’t feel so much elated as beaten into submission.

I’d be lying if I said there weren’t moments during Revenge of the Fallen that made me say “Woah…cool!”  A forest fight between Optimus Prime and Megatron is brutally bad-ass and a cameo appearance by the gigantic Decepticon called The Devestator might make your eyes pop, particularly when seen in IMAX (the real thing—not those smaller, faux-IMAX screens Aziz Ansari has been tweeting about).  But the majority of the action sequences are edited so quickly and chaotically, it’s virtually impossible to discern which robot is being reduced to scrap metal or which flesh and blood soldier just got blown up real good.  The only Transformers that do stand apart from the rest of the cannon fodder—and not in a good way—are Mudflap and Skids, who have already correctly been ID’d as the film’s Little Black Sambots.  Sporting crooked metal teeth and talking like refugees from a UPN sitcom, these Autobots are such brazen, breathtaking caricatures, you gotta wonder if Bay has lost his damn fool mind.

Look, I’m not panning Revenge of the Fallen because I think it’ll have an impact on the movie’s bottom line.  In the time its taken you to read this review, the flick has already grossed a gazillion dollars.  All I can do is make a plea to DreamWorks, Paramount and the all-powerful Steven Spielberg to stop Bay before he can produce a movie this overlong and overblown again.  You wouldn’t hand your teenager $200 million with no strings attached and, based on Revenge of the Fallen, the studio shouldn’t have given Bay the same freedom either.

Verdict: Skip It

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Also in Theaters:

The Hurt Locker
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
Starring Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty
***
Most Iraq War-themed films focus on veterans’ experiences back home following their tours of duty abroad.  Not The Hurt Locker, which takes place almost entirely in Iraq and plays more like an action movie than an emotional drama such as Stop-Loss or Home of the Brave.  Written by embedded journalist Mark Boal, the story follows the exploits of an elite bomb disposal team.  While the film’s episodic structure causes it to drag at times, director Kathryn Bigelow stages some of the most tense and thrilling moments you’re likely to see this year.
Verdict: See It

Afghan Star
Directed by Havana Marking
***
Every nation has its own variation on American Idol, but few come with has much inherent real-world drama as Afghan Star, a talent competition broadcast on one of Afghanistan’s few television stations, Tolo TV.  Havana Marking’s insightful documentary follows four of the competitors vying for the title of Afghan Star, including Rafi, a 19-year-old crooner with matinee-idol good looks, and Setara, one of the show’s few female contestants who causes a major ruckus when she dances along to one of her songs.  (Public dancing is still frowned upon in Afghanistan’s strict Islamic culture.)  While Marking glosses over some of the current realities of life in Afghanistan—you never see American forces patrolling the streets of Kabul, for example—Afghan Star shows how far the country has come since the overthrow of the Taliban…and how far it still has to go.
Verdict: See It

The Stoning of Soraya M.
Directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh
Starring Shohreh Aghdashloo, Mozhan Marnò, James Caviezel
**1/2
With all eyes on Iran right now, this dramatization of a real-life incident from that country’s past acquires some unexpected resonance.  In the early ’80s, a young woman in a remote Iranian village was stoned to death after her estranged husband successfully framed her as an adulterer.  The town’s elders attempted to cover up the case, but her aunt was able to recount the story to a foreign journalist who turned it into a best-selling book that serves as the basis for the movie.  The story itself is undeniably tragic and the film is at its best when it simply lets events unfold, building slowly and inevitably to the bloody conclusion.  Unfortunately, director Cyrus Nowrasteh too often lays a heavy hand on top of the proceedings, most notably in the stoning sequence, which is filmed like an outtake from Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ.  Nowrasteh has said that he wanted to communicate the full horror of a stoning, but his excessive use of slow-motion at times borders on comical.  The Stoning of Soraya M. tells an important story—it just doesn’t tell it well.
Verdict: Rent It

At this point, we all know that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is going to this summer’s blockbuster. That is, unless Harry Potter works his magic.

But, if there’s one thing we’re sure of, it’s that Potter doesn’t have Megan Fox sporting short-shorts and bent over a motorbike.

Check the all new ROTF trailer above featuring Optimus Prime, Megatron, Devastator, Bumblebee, Megan Fox and some humans.

Did we mention Megan Fox is in it?

Now this is more like it.

I wasn’t a big fan of that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen spot that aired during the Superbowl a few weeks back–in fact, I put the 30-second teaser in my “Losers” column.  It was cut together so chaotically, I couldn’t tell who anyone was or what they were supposed to be doing.  After watching this two-and-a-half minute sneak peek, I still don’t know for certain what the movie is actually about, but at least I can tell that it involves robots blowing a lot of s*&t up.  Also Optimus Prime totally gets his face punched in at one point.  Hmmm…are the filmmakers going to hearken back to the animated Transformers movie and kill off the Autobots’ fearless leader?  Maybe fanboys should get their Transformers-themed hankies ready.

And check out Prime’s last stand and death scene from Transformers: The Movie here:

Recapping the best and worst movie trailers from Superbowl Sunday.

So I hear there was some kind of football game on TV last night.  I wouldn’t know–I was busy refreshing my web browser every few minutes to see what new movie trailers were premiering on Hulu.com.  That’s right–Superbowl night is also prime trailer-watching time as Hollywood unspools peeks at upcoming blockbusters for the booze-and-wings addled folks at home.  Once upon a time, you had to watch (or, if you had a DVR, fast-forward) through the game in order to see these 30-second teasers, but NBC made it easy for movie buffs to get their fix by uploading all of the trailers (along with the rest of the night’s commercials) to Hulu as they premiered.  Here are my picks for the ones that scored touchdowns, the ones that got sacked and the ones that never got off the bench.

The Good:

Monsters vs. Aliens (March 27)
In the past, I haven’t been a huge fan of some of the animated features produced by Dreamworks (let’s just say I want the next Shrek movie to end with the green ogre drowning in his swamp) but hats off to the studio for creating the best clip of the night.  This minute-and-a-half peek at their upcoming sci-fi throwdown between monsters and aliens offered a potent mixture of action and humor.  Bonus points for the corny, but appropriate 3-D gimmick.

Star Trek – May 8
A much shorter version of the trailer that premiered late last year, this spot was a bit rushed, but still showed off the new Trek‘s epic scope and relentless action.

Race to Witch Mountain (March 13)
Believe it or not, this FX-heavy update of the ’70s cult kids’ flick Escape to Witch Mountain actually looks like fun.  Disney’s doing the smart thing by putting Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson front and center in the trailer.  He’s a born movie star and I would say that even if he wasn’t on the cover of GIANT’s March issue.

Fast and Furious (April 3)
I’m still not convinced the movie itself will actually be any good, but the trailer for the fourth entry in this stalled franchise just makes the cut for that killer shot of Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez speeding under a flaming truck.

The Bad:

Year One (June 19)
I grew up on Harold Ramis’ comedies and would love to think that the once and future Egon Spengler (if Ghostbusters III ever gets off the ground) has another Caddyshack or Groundhog Day in him.  Unfortunately, this 30-second spot for his pre-historic comedy more closely resembles a dinner theater production of Monty Python’s Life of Brian.  Prove me wrong Dr. Spengler!

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (August 7)
If the words “From the Director of The Mummy” doesn’t strike fear into your heart, how about those silly-looking leather costumes and the CGI-ninjas?  I’ll just haul my action figures out of storage, thanks very much anyway.

Angels & Demons (May 15)
Because The Da Vinci Code wasn’t boring enough!  At least Tom Hanks listened to his stylist and got a different hair cut for this sequel that nobody demanded.

Land of the Lost (June 5)
That hissing sound you hear is Will Ferrell’s comic mojo continuing to dissipate.  But hey, at least this isn’t another sports comedy.

The Huh?:

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (June 26)
I’d love to tell you what I thought of the teaser for what will most likely be the summer’s biggest blockbuster, but I’ve watched it three times now and I can’t even begin to make sense of this chaotic jumble of CGI-enhanced images.  From what I can make out, Shia LaBeouf still looks 12, Megan Fox is still hot, Josh Duhamel is still in it for some reason and the robots still into cars and stuff.  But who is the Fallen?  And why does he want revenge?  And why do all the Transformer still look the same?

Up (May 29)
Really Pixar?  This is the way you follow up Wall-E?  I trust you guys because of your stellar track record, but a big part of me is wondering whether this would have worked better as a short film than a feature.

Duplicity (March 20)
I’ll see Clive Owen in virtually anything, but I can’t get a bead on this new flick, which has him teaming up with Julia Roberts to rip off a giant corporation.  Is it a comedy?  A thriller?  A romance?  Couldn’t tell you based on this all-over-the-place spot.