Movies With Butter

Shia LaBeouf, one of leads in John Hillcoat's crime drama Lawless, made news the past two weeks for another movie he's working on: Lars von Trier's erotic drama Nymphomaniac.

He said he's prepared to do whatever is required of him, even performing real sex acts for the movie. He also said, probably tongue-in-cheek, that he auditioned for the role by sending in a sex tape to von Trier.

Sorry to disappoint those who are looking forward to seeing LaBeouf and others, ahem, perform in the forthcoming movie, but the producers have said all sex scenes are going to be done “with the help of body doubles and visual effects,” whatever that means.

Getting back to Lawless, the movie stars LaBeouf as the youngest of three Bondurant brothers, who peddle in some high quality moonshine. Since the movie takes place during the Prohibition, the brothers are performing a much welcomed, if illegal, service.

Obviously, acts of this nature are going to attract lots of bad elements on both side of the law, but since the movie focuses on the moonshiners, the main bad guy in the movie is a sadistic federal agent played by Guy Pearce.

Critics say the movie looks great and, with a such a cast, well-acted, but the characters themselves are not well drawn, with some of their stories seemingly on the cutting room floor.

Lawless has a Tomatometer of 65% and is projected to bring in $7-$13 million this four-day weekend.

Not to be confused with last week's opener The Apparition, The Possession is an evil-spirit-trapped-in-a-box movie about a fractured family who is trying to adjust to a recent divorce. With the arrival of the said box, the movie basically turns into The Exorcist.

And that's what is wrong with The Possession, critics say. The movie is so filled with genre conventions that it fails to differentiate itself from all other possession movies.

The Possession has a Tomatometer of 36% and is projected to bring in $13-$15 million over four days.

The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure kind of came out of left field. Normally, a children movie like this build an audience on TV first and then make the jump to the big screen. With The Oogieloves, it skipped the first step to its detriment.

The movie opened on Wednesday in 2, 160 locations and only made a little over $100, 000. With a production budget of $20 million, someone isn't sleeping well these past couple of days.

The Oogieloves has a Tomatometer of 33% and, according to Boxofficemojo, the movie will make $1 million by Monday but won't make much more after that, making it probably the worst performing movie ever to open in over 2, 000 locations.

• Prev:  'God of War' Movie Will Be Like 'Clash of the Titans' Without Being Like It
• Next:  Second Hobbit Movie Changed to 'The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug'; Third Hobbit Now Called 'The Hobbit: There and Back Again'