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Brooklyn's Finest
Three cops, each trying to get through the day. Richard Gere plays a veteran of the force just days from retirement, Don Cheadle has been working deep undercover for a long time and Ethan Hawke is a husband and father of seven desperate to provide for his family. I'm not sure I buy Gere as uniform cop at his age, and I kept expecting him to say "I'm too old for this sh*t!" Watch for this one on January 16.

Crazy on the Outside
Tim Allen plays a recently released convict who has spent three years in the big house, though his mother thinks he was in France, and now he needs to get his life back on track. The premise sounds pretty simple, but there are some laughs here and an interesting cast including Sigourney Weaver, Ray Liotta and Kelsey Grammer.

The delicate planning scenario (The Great Train Robbery, Rififi), the humorous spin (Small Time Crooks, Quick Change), the hidden master plan (Inside Man, The Lookout), the crew of hardened professionals (Ronin, Heat), the sexy, over-the-top robbery (Oceans 12, The Italian Job), and the aftermath (Reservoir Dogs); these are the six core orbits almost all heist films fall into. If one were to draw a Venn diagram depicting the overlap between the six circles, Nimrod Antal's Armored would land almost exclusively in the aftermath category. There's no planning involved, no comic relief, no last minute twist, no grandiose kidnapping, no inkling of men with enough skill to count how many exits there are from any room they're in.

No, Armored is a simple story of a group of blue collar workers who ferry millions in cash to and fro for an armored transport escort service and decide one day that they're going to rob themselves during a staged, fake heist, making away with the bank's insured $42 million. As with all heist films, however, things do not go as planned, and so the audience spends the bulk of the picture post-heist in the midst of the bloody consequence stage of what was supposed to be a bloodless operation.

Now to say that Armored has no extended planning sequence or no grand scheme is not to say that it is lacking such machinations, rather they were not required by the story at hand. And though this may turn off viewers who are accustomed to seeing the What, Where, When, and How thoroughly established before hand, it's not a problem for Nimrod Antal, who manages to transform a simple story into an engaging 88 minutes by spending all of his time on the Who and the Why. The trailers may have potential viewers believing Armored is going to be an explosion-packed thrill ride that follows a group of sympathetic Joe Schmoes making off like bandits, but that's not what Antal has delivered; and that is actually a good thing.

One Twilight star is earning a considerable amount of buzz these days, and for once, it's not Kristen Stewart or Robert Pattinson. It's the other corner of the love triangle, Taylor Lautner, who went from being "the kid with the long hair" in Twilight to the young man so determined to keep his werewolf role that he hit the gym big time. He came out of New Moon with a fair amount of praise for his performance, and critics dubbed him the one most likely to succeed post-Twilight.

According to the LA Times, Lautner is being considered for the part of Max Steel. Steel is the latest Mattel toy to be put into pre-production by Paramount. He's a 19-year-old extreme sports star who becomes fused with nanotechnology, and the unholy use of nanos gives him super abilities such as enhanced speed, strength, cloaking and invisibility. But he uses these powers not to win the Olympic snowboarding competition, but for the forces of good, battling a secret terrorist organization. Max began life as an action figure, and became a CGI television show in 2000. Though he only ran for two television seasons and fell out of favor here, Max Steel remains one of Latin America's most popular superheroes, and has a constant stream of direct-to-DVD movies there.

Lautner would certainly be a good pick for Max Steel. He's got some action chops, and has a much more masculine appeal than a lot of stars his age. The studios likes all that and more -- he is being eyed as someone who can lure in that elusive female audience that allegedly won't see action films without a lead like Lautner. What if the gender balance is completely destroyed, and Max Steel has to work to draw in the men? I'm not sure Hollywood would know what to do.

New Moon did 70% less this week but still managed to hold onto first place. Just as interesting is that The Blind Side had an 18% increase from last week while only appearing in 30 more theaters. Old Dogs just didn't have the energy and landed back in fourth with Ninja Assassin taking sixth. Here's the top five:

1. The Twilight Saga: New Moon $42.8 million
2. The Blind Side: $40.1 million
3. 2012: $17.6 million
4. Old Dogs: $16.9 million
5. A Christmas Carol: $15.7 million

Four new releases this week:

Armored
What's It All About: A group of underpaid armored car drivers join forces to swipe a big pile of loot, though of course nothing goes as smoothly as planned. Matt Dillon and Laurence Fishburne star.
Why It Might Do Well: The success of Ocean's 11 and its sequels would seem to indicate there's a market for heist movies.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Unfortunately this movie lacks the flash and star power of the Ocean's series.
Number of Theaters: 1,900
Prediction: $18 million

Brothers
What's It All About: In this remake of a 2004 Danish film Tobey Maguire plays a soldier believed to have been killed in Afghanistan while his brother helps care for his sibling's family back home.
Why It Might Do Well: With Natalie Portman playing Maguire's wife we've got three amazing leads here.
Why It Might Not Do Well: 56% at Rottentomatoes.com isn't a deal breaker but it doesn't fill me with confidence.
Number of Theaters: 2,000
Prediction: $16 million

Back in September, I wondered what Summit would spend their big wad of Twilight cash on. They're primed to rake in a couple billion by the time this is all over. The company made almost $385 mil at the box office with the first installment (having spent only $37 mil), and so far $476,334,668 with the second (having spent only $50 mil). And now they're turning their attention toward assassins.

Variety reports that Summit Entertainment has signed on to bring the comic Alibi to the big screen -- a production that kicked into gear back in August. Written by Joshua Hale Fialkov and illustrated by Jeremy Haun, Top Cow's Alibi focuses on the classic socialite-with-a-secret-job scenario. But instead of just putting on a flimsy mask and getting to work, this assassin's got the perfect cover -- a secret twin brother. See, one is the assassin and one is the socialite, and they both work under the same identity. John Hlavin, who will write the next Underworld installment, has been tapped to pen the script.

I think Summit is on the right track -- grabbing a big action film that is in high contrast to the teen-led vampire and werewolf world, and also has the ability to make some good cash. And, let's hope, they continue to find the ways to make big movies cheaply, rather than soaring to new heights with a franchise before seeing it all wash away (yes, I'm thinking about New Line).

Every day, I hope we'll get another big piece of The Green Lantern casting (and not just an open casting call) such as Sinestro or Carol Ferris, or even Abin Sur. This is a movie we're all really eager to see take shape. But for now, we'll have to be content with hints about the script, which Ryan Reynolds gave to the MTV Splash Page.

Reynolds revealed that Hal Jordan won't be the beneficiary of a very intense origin story: "It is [an origin story] to a certain degree, but it's not a labored origin story, where the movie [truly] begins in the third act. The movie starts when it starts. We find out Hal is the guy fairly early on, and the adventure begins." That probably comes as a surprise to anyone even remotely familiar with Lantern mythology, as the intergalactic world Hal comes to inhabit is pretty complex and detailed. It would be an easy thing to bog the movie down in that, though, and maybe giving it a more cursory approach is better. This is intended as a franchise after all, and they can always go deeper with subsequent films.

The man who will be Hal Jordan also stressed that the film won't be just about the green and black suit, but about the man who inhabits it. "I think you walk away from this first film, and the moments that you remember and the moments that mean so much to you, not unlike Iron Man, are the moments where the guy's not in the suit. That to me is the tough thing to get right."

This is getting ridiculous, and I can only assume that James Cameron is shaking his head somewhere and muttering: "Jacka**es." We wondered if the Terminator franchise was in trouble back in August, and then learned that Halcyon -- the company who owns the rights to the franchise -- filed for bankruptcy and was gearing up to auction the whole thing off. Being a stand-up kind of guy, Joss Whedon then offered to buy the rights for ten G's. Now? Still in a crunch for money, IESB reports that The Halcyon Company has teamed up with Hollywood Parts online auction service to sell off all the movie props and wardrobes now that Terminator Salvation is out on DVD (guess we can wave goodbye to any sequel set in this world).

Rather than doing this the eBay way, where awesome props start off cheap and work their way up, these items start with a price of a couple hundred dollars and then work their way up to $10,000 for a full John Connor costume. However, they do allow buyers to make an offer price and see what happens -- but you just know that no person who bids $100 on that Connor costume has a shot in hell of getting it even if no one else bid.

For any fans who like the film enough to fork over some cash, this should be a sweet deal, but it's just an added piece of embarrassment to a franchise that started off so wonderfully. I wonder what's next -- some cult company like Troma or Asylum turning it into cult pulp?

When it comes to films based on board games, folks are immediately inclined to make fun of the idea and trash the project -- which is why Universal decided to get out in front of the negative buzz by sending a group of movie writers down to San Diego to meet with Battleship director Peter Berg prior to production to find out exactly what the man (and studio) have planned when it comes to this particular board game adaptation (which is the first of many in the pipeline). So ... what, are we looking at a film set in 1987 about two 10-year-old kids trying to sink the other dude's Battleship before mom calls them inside for dinner? Not quite. Here's the quickie version:

• Battleship will follow a small fleet of American and international (ie: Japanese) ships (5 in total) that for some reason get separated from the rest of the Navy and must take on an opposing fleet of alien ships that have arrived on earth in order to build some sort of "bridge" that will help their alien race in some way.
• These aliens are called The Regents (which has nothing to do with the High School exam ... we think), and they're not here to destroy earth or humankind -- they're just here to use the planet to help save their own species. However, they will defend themselves if provoked, and, well, what else are we to use our giant massive Naval ships for?
• The aliens will be a mix of human actors and CGI. Berg compared them to Davey Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean.
• The Regents aren't all that superior to us either, as Berg noted that the fight will be a fair one. The story will be more strategic, like the game, in that it will focus on each party (human and alien) using their skills to locate and destroy the other before they themselves are destroyed.
• And yes, someone will say "You sunk my Battleship!" at some point during the film.

For tons more details, head over to read reports from CHUD and Latino Review.

It's a new day at Disney with their new studio chief, Rich Ross, and everyone has been rather eager to see what new direction the studio moved in, and what projects they fast tracked. It turns out that their new vision is a rather old one. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney has dug deep into the vaults and decided to remake The Black Hole. They've put Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski and producer Sean Bailey on the project, hoping that they can make The Black Hole as cool as they've made all things Tron.

I feel terrible, but I have absolutely no memory of this film. I know I probably saw it at some point, but its lovable droids have been wiped out by multiple viewings of Star Wars, so allow me to recap. The 1979 original centered on a group of space explorers discover the lost USS Cygnus, floating dead on the edge of a black hole. Logically they haven't seen Event Horizon, so they happily board the ship to what's become of the crew. There they meet a scientist and his group of robot friends (some cute, and one mean, red, and named Maximilian), and he claims his crew deserted him when he tried to travel through the black hole. Of course, he's not telling the truth. The robots are the former Cygnus crew, and the scientist has no intention of letting them leave. Dun dun dun ...

Naturally, the remake won't be a straight-up retelling, and Disney is keeping the plot a secret. The only thing they're willing to reveal is that the menacing robot Maximilian will return, and that the black hole will be more of a plot point. Science will also be involved, and I imagine a little Star Trek too. Will it inspire the instant excitement of Tron: Legacy? Or will it be an entirely new concept to most moviegoers?