Channing Tatum, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Rooney Mara and Jude Law (Patrick McMullan)

“Tickets out!” they barked. “This area is not cleared for standing!” It was as if the AMC Lincoln Square had been converted into an international airport and Shindigger was preventing aircraft from landing.

The multiplex was bursting with the arrivals of Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jude Law, Rooney Mara and Channing Tatum for the premiere of Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects, hosted by Open Road Films, The Cinema Society and designer Michael Kors.

Turns out no area was cleared for loitering, and Shindigger wound up in a circling pattern—up and down the escalators—trying to take it all in. When even Donna Karan was told to keep moving and make her way promptly to her seat, we finally surrendered to the cineplex goons and followed suit.

“I’m on a beta blocker right now and I feel fine,” joked Mr. Soderbergh before the movie began. “The less I say the better!”

His pharmaceutical humor was very apropos for a psychological thriller that tells the murderous tale of a seemingly depressed young woman (Ms. Mara), who struggles as her husband (Mr. Tatum) is released from prison following a white-collar banking crime. After an alleged suicide attempt, she begins to see a psychiatrist (Mr. Law) who prescribes Ablixa, a powerful, fictitious antidepressant, to combat her illness. The movie was The Cinema Society’s trippiest in recent memory, and we weren’t the only ones wandering about in a daze afterward.

“Are you on medicine? Are you having a vision?” Shindigger overheard Ms. Karan saying to her daughter Gabby Karan De Felice with a laugh. “Oh my God, I can’t believe how old I am!”

We dashed through the wintry chill to the Stone Rose Lounge in the Time Warner Center, wondering if we were still hallucinating when we spotted Liza Minnelli—face aglow—as she preened herself in the back of a black Lincoln Navigator SUV. Shindigger sidled up to knock on her window and say hello, but the driver shot us a look of “don’t you dare.” (My, how security people get crankier the farther north you travel.)

Ten minutes later, we had nestled into the warmth of Stone Rose with a medicinal glass of rouge.

“I love, love, loved it!” Ms. Karan screeched over the deejay’s music as Cinema Society founder Andrew Saffir escorted her behind Mr. Kors, who had designed the dress Ms. Zeta-Jones just happened to be wearing. We shuffled over to Ms Zeta-Jones and exchanged a few words, unbeknownst to her just-as-cranky-looking gatekeepers.

“The script was so well-written—it just jumped off the page,” the Oscar winner explained. “With Steven Soderbergh at the helm, it was just a dream.” Shindigger leaned in for a bisou-bisou, but she had already moved on.

We grabbed some fiery libation off a passing tray and darted toward Ms. Mara. The Vogue February cover girl was mum. Had she signed some exclusive with Anna Wintour not to talk to the press? Or was she simply too big for words these days? Shindigger played nice and tried to butter her up with a compliment. “Your couture is phenomenal,” we said.

“I’m wearing Alexander McQueen,” she replied sharply, then slunk away.

We surveyed the crowd and came up with what looked like a Baldwin. “Which one is that?” we asked a pair of friends. “It’s Stephen,” one ventured.

Unconvinced, we wound up chatting instead with Richard Kind, who plays screenwriter Max Klein in Argo. He went on for a bit about the upcoming Clifford Odets play he’s starring in at The Roundabout, but we had more pressing matters to discuss. “Will Argo win the Oscar for Best Picture?” we asked.

“If I say yes, I will put the kibosh on it. But I do believe—and this is the honest to God’s truth—and not just ’cuz I’m in it and not just ’cuz I know the producers ... I do believe that it should be Best Picture. I feel it fills every category that a Best Picture should.”

Shindigger nodded in agreemnt. “We have the SAG copy at our house,” we confessed.

“So you didn’t pay your 11 dollars? That’s money out of my kids’ mouths!” he yelled with a smile before we departed for a refill.

Over by the bar, we found Laila Robins and complimented her performance in the movie as one of Jude Law’s psychiatry associates. “He was so lovely to work with. He had seen me in a play. I showed up on set, and he was so nice to me,” the delightful Ms. Robins explained. “We had this nice little icebreaker about all the things he wants to do in the theater. I think he wants to do Henry V. It was a nice way to even the playing field!”

“I don’t know if he’s here tonight,” she continued, looking around.

She apparently missed Mr. Law lounging alongside co-star Ms. Zeta-Jones on a scarlet leather banquette. Unfortunately, Shindigger was not fortunate enough to grab a few words with the dashing star. Maybe we don’t do enough theater?

blehay@observer.com

Channing Tatum, People's Sexiest Man Alive.

– Wait, does giving Channing Tatum People's "Sexiest Man Alive" superlative mean that it's not going to Ryan Gosling? Again? If not, why not, and why Channing Tatum? And are we talking about Magic Mike Tatum or Dear John Tatum or 21 Jump Street Tatum, because that guy is just so versatile we really don't know?

– Matt Lauer, another "sexy man who is still alive" might be in the process of getting booted from Today, because no one likes how the Anne Curry thing went down and it is Mr. Lauer's fault, allegedly. Also his "brand is damaged," which is the funniest thing to say about someone, when you think about it. It sounds like it should be off of a deleted scene on the Clueless DVD.

– Thank God, dummy: 30 Rock won't be ending without one last appearance from "Beeper King" Dennis Duffy, aka Liz's first boyfriend, aka Cassidy from L&O: SVU, aka the bad things that AllState Insurance is trying to warn you about, aka Dean Winters (his actual name).

– Jason Biggs and his wife really need to have their Twitter accounts suspended during election cycles.

– Not only will Anchorman 2 be a musical, but it was originally designed to be a Broadway musical. Were the returns for the Elf musical so bad that Adam McKay just decided to scrap the idea and make a feature film instead?

Alex Pettyfer and Matthew McConaughey in "Magic Mike."

Channing Tatum, the star of Chelsea Clearview critics' pick Magic Mike, has said that he plans to star in a sequel--this despite director Steven Soderbergh's stated desire to retire once he finishes his biopic of Liberace. "We're working on the concept now. We want to flip the script and make it bigger." This is not the garden-variety response celebrities give when asked completely hypothetical questions about movies that will never exist (today's example: Rose Byrne forcing enthusiasm about a movie adaptation of Damages); Mr. Tatum produced Magic Mike, which is loosely based on his own career as a stripper.

Tatum and McAdams: ‘Til death (or mental illness) do us part?

The Vow is not exactly a woman’s picture. It’s more about how a man falls in love, loses his love and gives up everything in life to focus on regaining his love. Maybe it’s a woman’s picture from a male point of view. However you slice it, it’s a welcome loaf—far from perfect, but as filling as a home-cooked meal.

“Moments of impact define who we are,” says the sculpted Channing Tatum, who used to be a male stripper before he became a movie star, and still looks it. That’s the kind of sappy corn syrup that passes for narration, and Mr. Tatum is better playing gladiators and hell-raising soldiers than he is saying it. He’s a guy named Leo, who owns a recording studio. Luscious Rachel McAdams is Paige, a sculptress studying at the Chicago Art Institute. They meet cute and marry even cuter after he spells “Move In” with blueberries. Then, on a romantic winter night under street lamps that light the snow like candles, their car is rear-ended by a truck that sends Paige through the windshield. When she regains consciousness in the hospital, brain damaged and wearing a Band-Aid, all she remembers is her life before Leo. When he comes to her room, she thinks he’s her doctor. He vows to floor her with love, but she feels like she’s sharing space with a stranger. She doesn’t even recognize him buck naked. He moves to the couch. Then her parents (Sam Neill and Jessica Lange) take over, and her long-term memory includes a vivid romance with an old boyfriend (Canadian heart throb Scott Speedman) who returns, wanting his share. She falls into old habits, old cocktails, old favorite meals (she forgets she’s a vegetarian). The most important thing she forgets is the vow she made at her wedding: “Regardless of the challenges that might come between us, we’ll always find our way back to each other.” Leo devotes his life to making Paige fall in love all over again, and what I forgot is what a sucker I am for so much sincere humanity and heartbreak, no matter how corny it seems.

The Vow seems extra moving because its sincerity is not contrived. It’s a true story and the real-life couple who experienced its trajectory are shown at the end, reunited after years of effort and hard work. The writer-director, Michael Sucsy, is probably not old or smart enough to have seen Greer Garson and Ronald Colman in Random Harvest, Mervyn LeRoy’s 1942 masterpiece about love and amnesia, but to a ripe old movie buff like me, The Vow brings back warm memories. It is nowhere as elegantly written, richly endowed or inescapably human—and God knows, it does not have the magic of Greer Garson—but no movie about amnesia that cuts through the hurdles of fate to declare love triumphant should be ignored as easily as some critics have dismissed this one. Chicago has never looked more luminous, the actors are all appealing, the characters are clean and decent and worth caring about, and you go away with a glow in your heart. This movie is not for pessimists who consider sentimentality a subtle form of subversive manipulation, but I embraced the feel-good heart it wears on its sleeve. At a time when we’re surrounded by a surfeit of cinematic pretentiousness, depression, vulgarity and mean-spirited violence, The Vow is a welcome antidote to cynicism, and a bracing tonic that proves love hasn’t disappeared from the film experience completely.

rreed@observer.com

THE VOW

Running Time 104 minutes

Written by Jason Katims and Abby Kohn

Directed by Michael Sucsy

Starring Rachel McAdams, Channing Tatum and Sam Neill

3/4

1. Dear John: $32.4 million ($32.4 million total)

The Super Bowl wasn't the only place to find an upset over the weekend. Chalk up the surprise success of Dear John to counterprogramming and the power of Twilight fans. While the boys were busy preparing for the big game (and not buying tickets for the red meat action provided by From Paris With Love), the girls rushed to theaters to see Channing Tatum romance Amanda Seyfried and shed some tears; a ridiculous 84 percent of Dear John's audience was female and 64 percent were under 21. Those percentages allowed the Nicholas Sparks adaptation posting the biggest Super Bowl weekend ever, topping the $31.1 million Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds grossed in 2008. Of course if all those girls knew they could get the same pang in their heart from the adorable Google commercial that aired during the Super Bowl, we have a feeling the results might have been a tad different.

2. Avatar: $23.6 million ($630 million total)

And so the reign of Avatar as the number one move in America has ended. Before you shed a tear though, remember that over the last eight weeks Avatar shattered the all-time domestic and international grosses held by Titanic and scored nine Oscar nominations. Heck, it even broke another record this weekend. Despite not finishing first, Avatar still scored the biggest eighth weekend ever, besting—you guessed it—Titanic. And in case you were wondering: it was Lost in Space that ended the historic 15-week run of Titanic back in April of 1999.

3. From Paris With Love: $8.1 million ($8.1 million total)

Disaster said what? Not only did From Paris With Love give John Travolta his worst opening since Lucky Numbers in 2000 (we don't remember it either), but it also grossed less than Battlefield Earth. Altogether now: bombs away!

4. Edge of Darkness: $7 million ($29 million total)

And speaking of bombs... those holding out hope that the word of mouth for Edge of Darkness would salvage its soft start can stop now. Down 59 percent, the Mel Gibson revenge flick was certainly not the image rehabilitating hit the former star needed. Also not image rehabilitating? Mr. Gibson calling a reporter an "asshole."

5. The Tooth Fairy: $6.5 million ($34.3 million total)

So this is happening, huh? For the second straight week, The Tooth Fairy showed remarkably solid legs and now looks poised to be a money maker for 20th Century Fox. Down an Avatar-like 35 percent, the Dwayne Johnson kiddie flick proved unquestionably that kids will indeed watch anything.

From Paris With Love

What's the story: Fun fact: While you may have thought last weekend's Edge of Darkness was the follow-up film from Taken director Pierre Morel, it wasn't! Instead the Luc Besson protégé returns this weekend with From Paris With Love. If it feels like this movie was produced back at a time when co-star Jonathan Rhys Meyers was on the cusp of acting greatness, that's probably because it was: The first trailer for From Paris With Love appeared online back in December of 2008, when memories of Match Point were still fresh. Oh well. Regardless, action junkies should line up for the mix of explosions, violence, car chases and a completely absurd-looking John Travolta, who goes all Broken Arrow in his role as a rogue C.I.A. agent. The reviews for From Paris With Love have been arsenic, though, so more refined palettes might want to stay home.

Who should see it: Nicolas Sarkozy.

Dear John

What's the story: Nope, not a big screen adaptation of the Judd Hirsch sit-com. This Dear John is actually an adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks novel of the same name. Channing Tatum (channeling his inner Josh Hartnett) stars as John, a soldier who falls in love with a small town girl (the always-on-the-cusp Amanda Seyfried) while on leave from the Army. Needless to say, letters are written and love is gained, lost, gained and ... well, like we said, it's an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel. You know what to expect. Here's a hint: lots of tears.

Who should see it: Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling. (There's still hope for them!)

Also opening: The best movie of the weekend? Try Frozen. The Open Water–meets–Okemo Mountain horror flick about three skiers trapped overnight on a chairlift has gotten rave reviews (Rex Reed called Frozen a "must-see"). Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the slopes ...

America's enduring obsession with the folk-hero outlaws and gangsters of the 1930s is about to get ratcheted up a few notches. Ace director Michael Mann’s  Public Enemies, with Johnny Depp as an unlikely but undeniably mesmerizing John Dillinger, opens on July 1, but I liked it so much I am compelled to write about it early. I don’t think anyone will mind. Thrilling, glamorous, richly textured and breathlessly action-packed, it is one of the best movies of the year.

Eschewing biographical data and jumping instantly to the point, it begins in 1933 with the world’s most famous bank robber’s daring and imaginative breakout from a Lima, Ohio, jail (he literally walked right out into a waiting car). Since no cop could catch him and no prison could hold him, it was the first of many. For economically downtrodden Americans, it was the fourth year of the Great Depression, but for Dillinger and his gang, which included the psychotic Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham); the paranoid Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum); ruthless schemers Harry Pierpont (David Wenham) and Alvin Karpis (Giovanni Ribisi); and the murderous Homer van Meter (Stephen Dorff), it was the golden age of bank robberies. They’re all here—their depraved personalities, mind-boggling escapades, narrow escapes and horrible endings—inspired by Bonnie and Clyde and pursued with a vengeance by ace F.B.I. mongoose Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale). The actors are uniformly wonderful, and the film never lags far from the action, even in the love scenes.

Yes, the story has been told before, in countless movies and TV shows, but the Dillinger played by Johnny Depp is such a lover that it soon becomes clear why his strange mixture of danger and charisma inspired foppish, inexperienced crime fighter J. Edgar Hoover to label him “Public Enemy No. 1” while the disillusioned public—broke and already unsympathetic to the banks that had lost their savings and foreclosed on their homes, farms and businesses—cheered him on as a modern-day Robin Hood. (During his heists, Dillinger often took the time to destroy loan files and mortgage records.) In his element among the crooked cops and flashy Roxie Harts of Chicago, Dillinger met and fell for his one and only. The girl who knocked his socks off was Billie Frechette, alluringly played by Oscar winner Marion Cotillard in her first role since Edith Piaf in the unforgettable La Vie en Rose. Billie is presented as a sweet, naïve country girl, half-French and half–Native American, from the Menominee Indian Reservation, who meets Dillinger at a dance in November 1933 and fears his aggressive overtures. In real life, she had already covered a lot of territory in the Chicago underworld, and her first husband was in prison for mail robbery when she met Dillinger. So becoming the lover of Public Enemy No. 1 was actually a rung up the ladder for an adventuress. They lived together as passionate companions until she was arrested in 1934 (although she drove a getaway car only one time) and served two years in prison for harboring a fugitive. She went on to live a respectable life until her death in 1969.

The movie catalogs this romantic subplot, juxtaposed with both the exploits of the Dillinger gang and the frustration of Southern gentleman G-man Purvis and the fledgling F.B.I., with its antiquated crime-detection techniques, in their efforts to trap them. There is violence (it’s a movie about gangsters, not naughty kids on skateboards), but it’s never as bloody as anything in a dozen Martin Scorsese movies. And the shootouts are leavened by humor. Dillinger is so full of cocky self-confidence that when he finally comes face to face with Purvis in prison, the exchange is surprisingly raffish. “What keeps you up nights, Mr. Dillinger?” asks Purvis.  “Coffee.” These are hoods who remain undaunted in their belief that no one can catch them (“They’re not tough enough, smart enough, or fast enough”), and even when he’s dragged off to prison to await execution under armed guards, buoyed by the “bravos” of the crowds outside, Dillinger remains optimistic. He was as adept at staging escapes as he was at robbing banks and taking hostages, and squeezed out of more tight spots than Harry Houdini. He may have been on the wrong side of the law, but there is no doubt whose side the audience is on. Transferred from an Illinois jail to an escape-proof state penitentiary in his native Indiana in 1934, Dillinger steals the car of the female county sheriff (Lili Taylor) and drives back across the state line, risking everything for a reunion with Billie. There’s a marvelous scene, tightly staged by director Mann’s all-encompassing camera, where he walks boldly into the Chicago Police Department, enters the Dillinger investigation offices, peruses the wall photos of everyone he’s known and lost (including Billie) and asks the preoccupied cops listening to a ball game, “What’s the score?” The events of July 22, 1934, when he met his fate at the hands of special agent Purvis and his agents outside Chicago’s Art Deco Biograph Theatre, where Dillinger had just watched Clark Gable and Myrna Loy in Manhattan Melodrama, are brilliantly detailed, including footage of the movie itself. Ironically the press had nicknamed Purvis himself “the Clark Gable of the F.B.I.” You learn things. I never knew Dillinger had been set up by his moviegoing companion, an illegal brothel madam from Romania who betrayed him to Purvis to protect herself from being deported. (Excellent work by Branca Katic, one of the stars of the hit HBO series about Mormon polygamy, Big Love.) Even the Biograph marquee has been faithfully reproduced.  

It’s all here, exhaustively researched and painstakingly re-created. Curiously, there’s no mention of Dillinger’s wife, Beryl, and Michael Mann’s screenplay, co-written with Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman, takes liberties by condensing some events and combining a few characters, but with so many informers, gunmen and tertiary historic plot contributors, it’s amazing that so few key elements found their way into the discard pile. From Billy Crudup, as the silly, publicity-seeking J. Edgar Hoover, to Johnny Depp’s magnetic starring role, replete with neatly cropped hair, piercing dark eyes, no sign of a tattoo and a lewd smile in the corner of his eyes, every role large and small is polished to perfection. (Johnny Depp gives the best performance of his career.) Even the bank plunders in broad daylight seem freshly staged. Since it’s more in the biographical vein of Bugsy than the grand opera of The Godfather, no easy comparisons come instantly to mind. But with the shiny cars with white-wall tires; the tailored, double-breasted pinstriped suits that give you an idea where Giorgio Armani’s fashion inspiration comes from; the music (lots of early Billie Holiday and big band jazz); and the navy blue midnight world of the Great Depression—Mr. Mann does more to illustrate the fabric of the gangster era than any film since Pete Kelly’s Blues.

In the process, Public Enemies becomes one glamorous, glorious, gun-blazing whale of an entertainment.

rreed@observer.com

1. Obsessed: $28.5 million ($28.5 million total)

Idris Elba, box office superstar! Er, well, not really. As much as we like the former Stringer Bell (and Beyoncé for that matter), credit for this opening must go to the marketing department of Sony Screen Gems. They treated Obsessed like a one-off slasher film and reached their desired audience—58 percent was female, 51 percent over the age of 25. Before everyone gets too excited though, consider how slasher films usually depreciate at the box office. In February, Friday the 13th opened with $43.5 million over Presidents' Day weekend and dropped 80 percent the following week. We don’t expect as big of a fall for Obsessed, but unless the word of mouth is stellar expect a sizeable tumble next week.

2. 17 Again: $11.7 million ($40 million total)

Zac Efron’s movie stardom tour continues to roll along, as 17 Again dropped 51 percent from last weekend to land in second place. While that might seem steep, remember that the similarly themed 13 Going on 30 crumbled 53 percent in its second weekend and still wound up with $57 million in total grosses. We might be blinded by by The Efron and his floppy bangs, but we think 17 Again has another $25-30 million left in its coiffeurs.

3. Fighting: $11.4 million ($11.4 million total)

Yawn. While under any metric, $11.4 million for a movie about street fighting has to be considered a win, something about this number screams apathy. The problem here is that while the Channing Tatum vehicle was positioned as an opportunity for women to see the beefy star sans shirt, exit polls showed that males made up 58 percent of the audience; all the girls were too busy seeing Obsessed. Better luck next time.

4. The Soloist: $9.7 million ($9.7 million total)

As much as we’d like to spin this opening into something positive— The Soloist will have legs and wind up grossing close to $50 million, just you watch!—we can’t do it in good faith. This is a bomb. When other adult-minded pictures like State of Play and Duplicity find themselves opening up in the teens, anything less than that is unacceptable. Blame Paramount: while the reviews weren’t through the roof, they were still good enough to play last November, when the film was originally scheduled (The Soloist has a respectable 61 percent Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes). Opening The Soloist in the spring felt like pushing a square peg into a round hole. This is a fall movie, plain and simple.

5. Earth: $8.55 million ($14.2 million total)

Reason number 2,168 to buck the trend and buy Disney stock: they were able to pull in almost $9 million this weekend for a movie that is ostensibly a feature length version of a television show people could have watched for free.

An umbrella-armed escort accompanied actor Terrence Howard into the Regal Union Square Stadium 14 amid a torrential downpour on Monday, April 20, for the premiere of his new movie Fighting, which is, essentially, a movie about fighting.

“At first, I thought it was going to be a basketball movie,” said Mr. Howard, dressed casually in a T-shirt, jeans, leather jacket and paperboy cap.

Talk about a slam dunk! “You’ll see a lot of my trademark moves out there,” said world champion kick boxer Cung Le, who plays a villain in the film. “So, watch out for the scissor kick!”

Brawling, it turns out, was the theme of the day. Just a few blocks up Broadway, at the AMC Loews 19th Street Cinemas, director James Toback was simultaneously premiering his documentary about the boxer Mike Tyson, simply titled Tyson.

“I think it’s appropriate,” Mr. Howard said of his own film’s clashing title. “This isn’t necessarily about fisticuffs, it’s about emotional battles that everyone goes through. … Fighting, you know, is more of a synonym for the human condition.”

Symbolic or not, Mr. Howard and co-star Channing Tatum still mock-boxed for the cameras.

Mr. Tatum, who brought along fiancée (and Step Up co-star) Jenna Dewan, seemed less enthused about the film’s combative moniker. “Trust me,” he told the Transom, “I gave them a thousand different other options for it.”

Like what? “God, eh, ‘Last Chance,’ eh, ‘Scared’. … It’s about relationships,” he added. “The whole movie is about relationships.”

Meanwhile, Ryan Kavanaugh, CEO of Relativity Media, which helped produce the film, struck a defensive pose along the red carpet when asked about the company’s hotly rumored three-year deal with Lionsgate studios. Then he delivered the stiff-arm: “If there was a deal or would be a deal, I wouldn’t be able to talk about it at this point."