News

Daredevil had nothing to fear in its opening weekend but bad weather. Ben AffleckJennifer Garner

(Awards telecast: Sunday, March 23, 5:30 p.m. Pacific/8:30 p.m. Eastern on ABC)

(Awards telecast: Sunday, March 23, 5:30 p.m. Pacific/8:30 p.m. Eastern on ABC)

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers' 48-21 routing of the Oakland Raiders wasn't the only decisive victory on Super Sunday. The big game served as the opening salvo in the battle of the 2003 tentpole pictures, and the highly anticipated Matrix sequels may have emerged the winner over the likes of The Hulk and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Bruce WillisEric BanaLaurence FishburneAdam SandlerJack NicholsonSteve MartinEddie MurphyRobin WilliamsBen AffleckJennifer GarnerMartin LawrenceWill SmithJerry BruckheimerMichael BayArnold SchwarzeneggerLuke WilsonVince VaughnWill FerrellJim CarreyBill MurrayBernie MacColin FarrellAl Pacino

Black Hawk Down is a docu-drama depicting a mission-gone-wrong during the U.S.'s 'peace keeping' mission in Somalia in 1993. This is the story of a planned 30-minute mission that turned into 15-hour blood bath when American troops were sent unprepared into Mogadishu to capture the ruling warlords.

It's understandable why Antwone Fisher was an angry young man, prone to fight with his Navy shipmates. Born in a woman's correctional facility, abandoned by his convict mother and his father murdered two months before his birth, Fisher was raised in the abusive home of a storefront preacher and his wife where he was beaten and sexually abused on a regular basis. Abandoned by friends, family and caregivers, Fisher turned to the Navy for a sense of both himself and family—a goal put in jeopardy by his frequent outbursts of violence.

There may only be one ring to rule them all, but there are at least two movies to utterly dominate the holiday box office: the first was last year's The Fellowship of the Ring with its $313,364,114 final haul and now it's The Two Towers if its first day in theaters is any indication.

Warren Schmidt is facing his twilight years with the knowledge that he has lived a productive life. He spent 32 years with the same insurance company, becoming a vice president and chief actuary. He has a devoted wife and daughter, a house, a new Winnebago—all the things conventional society says is needed for a fulfilling life. Unfortunately, Warren Schmidt finds no meaning, no importance in any of these things. It is Warren Schmidt's resulting philosophical quest for the meaning of life that frames writer-director Alexander Payne's About Schmidt.

HOLLYWOOD (Box Office Mojo) - Pierce Brosnan takes his fourth turn as James Bond in the heavily hyped Die Another Day this weekend, which opens against the urban comedy Friday After Next and the inspirational Kevin Kline drama The Emperor's Club. These three releases are meant to satisfy a broad spectrum of movie appetites, but according to the nation's top critics any one of them will give you indigestion.

Attendance at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy may be down 3% from last year, but the classrooms are still overcrowded. Chris Columbus

HOLLYWOOD (Box Office Mojo) - J.K. Rowling's beloved boy wizard returns to theaters this weekend in the highly anticipated follow-up to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the No. 1 movie of 2001 that conjured nearly $1 billion in ticket sales worldwide. Opening in Potter's shadow is the Steven Seagal starrer Half Past Dead. Is the Potter sequel worth your hard-earned Galleons? Is Seagal destined for another critical beating? Yes is the answer to both these questions, according to the nation's top critics.

More people saw the big screen debut of Eminem in its first weekend than have purchased his last blockbuster CD as the controversial rapper achieved that rare feat—he made the transition from music superstardom to movie superstardom. What's more, he did it in a spectacularly unprecedented way. Kim BasingerCurtis Hanson

When I saw the teaser trailer for 8 Mile a few months back, I was skeptical. Despite his popularity, I thought Eminem wouldn't be able to make the leap from music to movies just as others have failed before. I was wrong. As far as music artists-turned actors go, Eminem might as well be Orson Welles.

HOLLYWOOD (Box Office Mojo) - Ambiguity is the appeal of America's newest box office leader, The Ring, according to the filmmakers. What you see isn't necessarily what you get -- which is exactly what moved the director, writer and producers to make The Ring.

I remember when Bob Crane was murdered in 1978. It probably had about the same effect on me that Elvis' death the year before had on my dad. I had grown up watching the exploits of Crane's Col. Robert Hogan and his heroes, watched his short-lived Hogan's follow-up The Bob Crane Show and even saw his last two Disney efforts SuperDad and Gus and remember them with great nostalgia. To this day, I'm a Hogan's Heroes fanatic always up for catching a rerun on TVLand. I liked Bob Crane, and still do, because he came off as a likeable guy. And, by all accounts, he was a likeable guy except for one ugly, sad fact: he was a sex addict, an addiction that probably cost him his life.

It's sink or swim for the cast of Abandon, a thankless thriller fashioned by writer Stephen Gaghan in his directorial debut. Gaghan won an Oscar for his Traffic screenplay. He'll never win such acclaim for this story that despite solid performances ends up feeling like one big lie.

The Tuxedo opens with a shot of a mountain spring. Jackie Chan and Jennifer Love Hewitt's names appear in a waterfall and trickle away. Then a deer walks into the stream, and the camera shows a close-up of it urinating. Then the camera follows that urine as it flows through the stream, through murky pipes and filters, ultimately ending up in a factory where it's poured into a plastic bottle. It's supposed to be a joke about the source of the trendy bottled waters people drink, but it's an off-putting opening that the movie never quite rises above.

Finally! The Mary Tyler Moore Show for home viewing. This is where "it all began." Not—like Ted Baxter's career—on a 5,000 watt radio station in Fresno, CA, but on CBS, September 19, 1970.

I have always seen chick flicks as "feel good" movies, and The Banger Sisters is no exception. While a mediocre spectacle at best, Bob Dolman's film is laugh-out-loud funny at times and shares some important life lessons with its audience.

For a sports picture to work it isn't enough to have beautiful and exciting shots of the contest. It is imperative that the audience understands the underlying passion driving the contestants. And this is why Blue Crush fails on all counts after setting up an intriguing first few minutes.