box office 8-4-13

Damn.  One more week until Breaking Bad starts up again.  Speaking of things slightly new, we're knee-deep in the summer movie season hoopla, and there sure are a hell of a lot of sequels in theaters right now!  I was thinking about making the case that all ten movies in the Top 10 are sequels, but a) I'm not that good, and b) only five of them are actual sequels: The Wolverine at #2, The Smurfs 2 debuting at #3, Despicable Me Too at #5, Adam Sandler's Grown Ups 2 at #6, and Red 2 slinking down to #8.  Pacific Rim, while it's Shakespeare in giant robot suits, still can't help but feel like Transformers 3.5.  Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy in The Heat can't help but feel like either Bridesmaids 1.5 or Miss Congeniality 2.5.  Turbo just feels like a sequel, even though the idea of a speeding snail is arguably new.  The Conjuring feels like... I dunno.  I haven't been into the latest horror movies in a while, but it seems like there's at least three of these a year anyway.  And 2 Guns, well, it feels like Tony Scott already made this movie.  Several times.  And Mark Wahlberg probably feels like he made this movie.  Several times.  But Denzel?  Really?  Well, at least he's not going the routes that Martin Lawrence and Ice Cube have gone lately.  They're going childish PG, Denzel's going childish R.