CANNES, France -- Liberace fluttered into the Cannes Film Festival this morning and graced the masses with the heartfelt Behind the Candelabra, Steven Soderbergh’s directorial swan song and a touching May-December love story between Mr. Showmanship (Michael Douglas) and Scott Thorson (Matt Damon), his longtime arm-candy companion. (American audiences with a good cable package or their friend’s HBO-to-Go password can watch it this Sunday night.) Mr. Douglas is astonishing in a deeply committed, vanity-free performance as the effeminate, wildly successful and flamboyantly closeted piano player; and Mr. Damon brings true pathos to his role as Liberace’s unhappy boy toy. Delightfully outrageous while almost never feeling campy, with a beautiful script by Richard LaGravenese, Candelabra is the first true gay-marriage drama, an apt romance for the Obama Age where homosexuality, bedazzled as it may be in this outré ’70s-’80s period piece, is never presented as alien or perverse. (Probably the most scandalous part of this film is seeing how much Liberace loved to cook at home for Scott and sit on the couch cuddling over a bowl of popcorn.) This is a fractured fairy tale about two lonely souls, not a True Hollywood Story of immoral decline, and the result is all the more resonant.

Michael Douglas and Matt Damon. (Getty Images)

The press conference afterwards was aptly emotional (though still properly ribald), with Mr. Douglas clearly choking up about the chance to play this part. “It was right after my cancer, and this beautiful gift was handed to me,” he said after a pause to hold back tears. “And I'm eternally grateful to Steve and Matt and Richard for waiting for me."

The occasion was also a sentimental one for Mr. Soderbergh, who won the Palme d’Or here in Cannes in 1989 for his debut, Sex, Lies, and Videotape. "At the end of the day, it's really about two people in a room,” he pointed out about Candelabra. “And that was what my first film was about." He even reminisced with longtime Cannes moderator Henri Behar, who had been in that same conference room with him more than two decades ago. “My hair was darker," Mr. Behar said. "And I had hair!" added Mr. Soderbergh.

Mr. Damon laughed with the press about his many scenes between the sheets with Mr. Douglas. “I now have things in common with Sharon Stone and Glenn Close and Demi Moore,” he said. “It's great. We can all go out and trade stories.” But the main focus of attention was Mr. Damon’s revealing performance—especially the Brazilian spray tan he had gotten for the part. "The world really needed to see this,” said Mr. Soderbergh, who deliberately exploited (with Mr. Damon’s encouragement) the Oscar winner’s derrière, skinny tan lines and all. “Tonight, we'll see it on the biggest screen ever, which is jarring,” laughed Mr. Damon. “This is something you can't unsee. It will be seared into your memory."

Another hit in Cannes, which premiered last night, is an equally delightful look at excess. You want spiritual decadence? Look no further than The Great Beauty. A major revelation and one of the great triumphs of the festival, Paolo Sorrentino’s deliriously louche take on existential despair in the sumptuous bosom of Rome is a 21^st century version of La Dolce Vita, a swirling ode to the Eternal City that will make art-house audiences swoon. At last night’s press screening, virtually the entire crowd, floored by the film, sat in stunned silence through the entirety of the placid end credits—an almost unheard-of occurrence at a festival that prides itself on stampedes from one screening to the next.

Ryan Gosling. (Getty Images)

The suave Italian actor Toni Servillo plays Mastroianni’s celluloid heir, a 65-year-old journalist named Jep Gambardella with an early-career literary novella under his belt and no accomplishments other than attending debauched bacchanales ever since. And as acquaintances, friends and lovers drop like flies, Jep wanders the corridors of Roman high society in search of an enduring connection that will moor him to the world. “Roots are important,” says a Mother Teresa doppelgänger who crosses paths with Jep, in a turn that’s simultaneously satiric and haunting—a tone that Sorrentino astonishingly maintains throughout the film with a self-assurance that makes his high-wire balancing act seem effortless. It’s a perfectly tailored suit of a film, made with the most supple material and cut with masterful lines.

Less than a week remains at the Cannes Film Festival, but major titles are still to unspool, including tomorrow morning’s world premiere of Only God Forgives, Ryan Gosling’s reteaming with his professional BBF, the Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn. Their last effort was the cool-as-ice crime caper Drive; this one is their martial-arts revenge flick. Harvey Weinstein unveiled a few minutes of footage on the Croisette last Friday that made jaws drop, including a quick snippet of Oscar-nominee Kristin Scott-Thomas as a domineering matriarch with a baroque potty mouth (“How many cocks can you entertain in that cute little cum dumpster of yours?” she meows at her son’s sexy date). Further transgressions await.

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

Catherine Zeta-Jones (Getty Images)

Catherine Zeta-Jones, who's enjoying a mini-comeback with a slate of upcoming films including the musical Rock of Ages, has reportedly been cast as a doctor in Side Effects, an upcoming Steven Soderbergh thriller wherein Blake Lively takes pharmaceuticals to mute the effects of her depression. Ms. Zeta-Jones previously appeared in Mr. Soderbergh's Traffic and Ocean's Twelve, and in an interesting congruence, bravely went public with her own bipolar disorder last year.

Carano. (Claudette Barius/Five Continents Imports, LLC)

Just what we need — another violent comic-book fantasy about another covert government operative (a catch-phrase that describes just about everybody in escapist-action franchise movies from incoherent Tom Cruise Mission Impossible flicks to Jason Bourne cinematic Xeroxes with Matt Damon). This one is called Haywire. The only difference is that this time the battering ram doing all the kickboxing, slicing and killing is a woman, more or less played, since she cannot act, by kung fu expert, karate specialist, martial arts star and Angelina Jolie wannabe Gina Carano. She’s a female boxer who was defeated in 2009 by Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos in the Strikeforce Women’s Championship, whatever that is. The men she beats the crap out of are an all-star bevy of camera-ready hunks baring their pecs in faceless roles to sell tickets. They are wasting their time, but, boy, do we need them. It is doubtful that the box-office flame exuded by Ms. Carano on her own could draw moths.

Haywire makes no sense whatsoever, which should come as no surprise. It’s the latest brainless exercise in self-indulgence from Steven Soderbergh, whose films rarely make any sense anyway. (I liked Erin Brockovitch, but I now think it was a fluke that will never come again.) Any director who wastes valuable time watching female boxing instead of learning how to make better movies has lost me already. In the opening scene, Channing Tatum walks into a roadside diner in upstate New York and smacks the living daylights out of a woman named Mallory Kane, played by Ms. Carano with more muscles than charm. Naturally, she turns the tables and leaves him unconscious, steals a car belonging to a mind-blown young man named Scott (Michael Angarano), and drives away. Screeching and careering through the snow, she relates everything that happened to her as Scott works hard to keep from screaming before he’s excised from the movie and never seen again. Cut to Washington, D.C., where the overexposed Ewan McGregor is instructed by boss Michael Douglas to eliminate the two-fisted Mallory. Flashback even further to Barcelona, where she and Mr. Tatum were once lovers on a hostage-rescue mission, before she discovered she was marked for assassination. In Dublin, while tracking down a Chinese nationalist, she poses as the wife of another secret agent, played with typical out-of-the-shower, tight-towel nakedness by gym-pumped Michael Fassbender, but instead of taking her to bed he tries to take her out. In retaliation, she chokes him with thighs like sandbags during Hurricane Katrina and fires a bullet through his handsome head. Trying to figure out why she’s been betrayed in an interminable series of splat-crack-pow scenes, she turns into a rogue agent and goes viral, throwing herself off rooftops, smashing through plate-glass windows, leaping from one building to another, bouncing off walls and kicking a lot of groins. It all ends up back in the present, at the elegant New Mexico home of her father, a former Marine turned best-selling author, curiously played by the sturdy and dependable Bill Paxton, who is very good, very brief and very much reduced to the status of a walk-on. Surprise! The anonymous killers and thugs show up, and there’s more fighting to come as she demolishes a lot of beautiful furniture and marvelous architecture, heading for one last showdown with one final master criminal (Antonio Banderas, unrecognizable behind a bushy mouse-gray beard). One can only wonder what Mr. Soderbergh paid so many first-cabin alpha males to make fools of themselves in this piece of junk.

The leap-frog settings across two continents are more eloquent than anything in the dumb, sophomoric script by Lem Dobbs, who also wrote the screenplay for Mr. Soderbergh’s pretentious and unwatchable Kafka. You realize early that nobody connected with Haywire has any interest in coherent narrative filmmaking. The movie is nothing more than a locker-room joke. Nothing resembling plot, character development or a star-making career move of any kind is anywhere apparent. The whole point of this time-wasting farrago of idiocy is that women can cut, kick, slash, burn, maim and kill just like men—and make bad movies that are just as stupid. Mr. Soderbergh doesn’t even try to guide his unknown, inexperienced leading lady from the fight ring to the acting arena. He just cranks up the camera and lets her punch herself catatonic. Maybe it’s the role she’s playing, but Gina Carano has all the charisma of a Sherman tank.

rreed@observer.com

HAYWIRE

Running Time 93 minutes

Written by Lem Dobbs

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Starring Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor and Michael Fassbender

1/4

Damon.

It is often predicted that the world will no longer end with the whimper of a long, boring war, but with the scream of a fatal, incurable and fast-moving plague. Addressing that theme in time to scare the living daylights out of everybody, Contagion is a star-studded, apocalyptic wake-up call to the horrors that await mankind in a test tube. We’ve made so much progress in terms of immunology, technology, scientific research and medical miracles that the planet considers itself immune to everything from small pox to swine flu. But there’s still no cure for cancer or AIDS, and the canvas of new viruses gets broader every year. So the topicality in Contagion is dark and unquestionable, if not creepy and off-putting. Tracking the global spread of an infectious virus that leads to deadly brain hemorrhages with no vaccine, writer Scott Burns and maverick director Steven Soderbergh have jump-started the serious fall movie season with an ambitious project that packs a wallop without much guarantee of commercial success. We have enough to worry about already; this movie says why bother, since we’re all doomed anyway.

Telling a complex story in a coherent narrative arc has never been one of Mr. Soderbergh’s strengths, and chronicling the day-by-day panic of a killer virus jumps all over the place. Melding elements from diverse sources, the film has a documentary quality that wastes the talents of an impressive A-list cast. The bubonic plague epidemic that wiped out half of Europe in the Middle Ages was finally traced to a contaminated well in a town square. To discover the origin of the mutating horror in Contagion you have to wait until  the very last scene. The trajectory actually begins with Day 2. Feeling ill, a jet-lagged Gwyneth Paltrow returns to Minneapolis from a business trip in Hong Kong with a strange cough that leads to a migraine headache. Before her husband (Matt Damon) has time to properly welcome her home, she goes into a seizure, foams at the mouth, and dies in the E.R. Their son is the next victim. Like wildfire, the sickness spreads to the people she met on her trip who begin to gag, sweat and faint from Tokyo to Texas. As the cases multiply, so do the guest stars. At the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, health official Laurence Fishburne puts Kate Winslet, a leading doctor in the field of communicable diseases, in harm’s way to investigate the outbreaks with mortally toxic results. Meanwhile, at World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva, researcher Marion Cotillard tries to trace the virus back to its origins in Asia, where she is kidnapped. Isolating people exposed to the virus is hard enough, but how do you quarantine 98 million people in China?

As the plague gains momentum, Homeland Security clocks in, suspecting bioterrorism and requesting sample vaccines to be injected into the drinking water like fluoride. Schools close. Naturally, as in all international crises, there are always the profiteers. After Laurence Fishburne is ordered by the Food and Drug Administration to keep research a secret, Elliot Gould shows up as a scientist who defies the shutdown of his research lab, growing the virus himself and taking credit for a medical breakthrough in print. Meanwhile, Jude Law enters the national radar as a sleazy journalist who makes millions by peddling a false cure in the form of a homeopathic treatment called forsythia. Mr. Soderbergh illumines every shadowy corner of this global pandemic with hypothetical examples of what to expect in an actual case of germ warfare. The Secret Service escorts the president out of Washington,  through an underground passage. Banks, gas stations and public transportation collapse. Nurses go on strike. Hospital generators expire. Pharmacies are looted for bogus serums. Evacuation routes are blocked. Cities are looted and left in trash piles. And while the volume of misinformation builds, here’s a contemporary anxiety to mull over: in the age of Twitter, Facebook and the Internet, it’s easier to reduce an entire civilization to hysterics than ever before. None of the fragmented subplots are followed to a satisfying conclusion. Even after Jennifer Ehle, as a dedicated and heroic lab researcher, ignores government approvals and permissions for human experiments and tests a trial vaccine on herself, inoculations are determined by national lottery depending on birth dates.

Juggling multiple plotlines proved successful in Mr. Soderberg’s Traffic (and even more so in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s vastly superior Babel). Here, the conceit just seems jagged and annoying, without achieving the desired synchronicity. The film often looks like a lengthy public health announcement on the requirements for travel vaccinations. A lot of the medical technology in the dialogue is too technical for the lay mind to grasp.  Who knows from “viral protein cells”? Do stick around for the epilogue—a clever re-enactment of how the virus started, and an explanation of Day 1. The ensemble cast is excellent, if underused. And some of it is downright gasp-inducing, especially when the characters see Gwyneth Paltrow’s lovely head open and the scalp pulled down over her eyes on the operating table. I found Contagion both flawed and fascinating, but it’s not an entertainment.

rreed@observer.com

CONTAGION

Running Time 105 minutes

Written by Scott Z. Burns

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Starring Matt Damon, Kate Winslet and Jude Law

2.5/4

According to an interview to promote his perhaps-last movie Contagion:

Mr. Soderbergh was speaking last month in his office space-cum-painting studio in the Flatiron district of Manhattan, where, having announced his imminent retirement from directing, he will soon be spending a lot more time. Propped against the walls are some of his recent pieces: a pair of striped canvases in red and gray hues and a portrait of the abstract painter Agnes Martin. Mr. Soderbergh, 48, sounded matter-of-fact about the career change. “I’m interested in exploring another art form while I have the time and ability to do so,” he said. “I’ll be the first person to say if I can’t be any good at it and run out of money I’ll be back making another ‘Ocean’s’ movie.”

He's a reverse-Schnabel! And also, very honest. Much as we're like to see him succeed, Ocean's 13 did leave some unanswered questions to be explored in a sequel (e.g. Why do people that rich need to keep stealing things?).  Anyway, it's a win-win!

Soderbergh.

The Hunger Games is a series of sci-fi young adult novels written by Suzanne Collins and published by Scholastic that we know from reading the internet all day that people are really excited about. Presumably they'll be even more excited to learn that Steven Soderbergh is directing the second unit of the movie adaptation. The director is Gary Ross, who directed Pleasantville and Seabiscuit. According to Indiewire, Mr. Soderbergh and Mr. Ross are pals, Mr. Soderbergh works faster than any other director and the movie is due to be finished in only seven months.

-What prurient topic could drag Steven Soderbergh away from retirement? (Call it The Boyfriend Experience, perhaps?)

-Whose hat--which still looks to us like a pastry Photoshopped onto a woman's head (it just doesn't belong there!)--is a new Aretha-style meme?

-Which movie "is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Crash, boom, bang, crash, boom, bang," according to our Manohla?

-How did Condoleezza Rice do as an actress (and did past "acting" in front of Congress help)?

-Which pop star's workout-themed music video, commissioned by Michelle Obama, is in part "building a new image for America"?

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

There is some wear on these treads—specifically with regards to Blair, who has been spinning her wheels in a swampy mess of weekly plotting and scheming for no real reason other than the script telling her to do so—but those breathlessly wailing about the demise of Gossip Girl couldn't have it more wrong. This is a teen show that sidestepped the pitfalls of sending its teens off to college by excising the one major problem with that situation: actually going to college! More adult than ever—must we direct you to Chuck Bass, who, as played by Ed Westwick, seems as weathered and worn as Don Draper after a two-day bender with hippie drifters—the "kids" on Gossip Girl have left high school behind to face some real world problems... like the ramifications of having a threesome! We won't spoil whom the three lovers in tonight's controversial ménage a trios are, but the episode title, "They Shoot Humphrey's, Don't They?," might give you a little hint at the identity of at least one participant. [The CW, 9 p.m.]

Tuesday: V
Say hello to Sean Hannity's favorite new show! We doubt the producers of V intended their silly science-fiction remake of the overly praised 1983 mini-series to be some bastion of right-wing ideology—at its heart, V is likely supposed to be play on post-9/11 fears and terrorism—but that's just what happened after the unintentionally hilarious pilot featured a charismatic alien leader talking about universal health care and preaching a message of hope. (No truth to the rumor that the V's, as they're called, come to earth by way of Kenya.) Politics aside, V is already much more entertaining than ABC's other "we wish this was actually Lost" series (that would be FlashForward which gets dumber by the week), simply because of Lost's Elizabeth Mitchell. As the F.B.I. agent trying to stop the alien takeover, Ms. Mitchell displays the same combination of chilled intelligence and beguiling warmth that she did as Juliet Burke. She's such a strong presence, that we actually worry what Lost will be like without her. [ABC, 8 p.m.]

Wednesday: Frost/Nixon
The 2008 Best Picture nominee you probably forgot existed, Frost/Nixon is perfectly adequate mainstream Oscar bait, until the denouement—a last meeting between disgraced former president Richard Nixon (Frank Langella, chewing scenery like a goat) and foppish television talking head David Frost (the sneaky amazing Michael Sheen) at Mr. Nixon's clandestine California home. It's in that quiet moment that Frost/Nixon transforms from a rote history lesson on the power of the media to full-fledged Greek tragedy. Say what you will about director Ron Howard, but sometimes he gets things exactly right. [Cinemax, 10 p.m.]

Thursday: Che
Cinemaphiles, take note! Che, Steven Soderbergh's four-hour biopic on the life of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, hits Sundance channel this week, meaning you can see the movie that nearly ended the acclaimed director's career; Mr. Soderbergh called it a "mistake from day one." As a film, Che isn't the home run you would hope for—the first half, entitled, The Argentine is infinitely stronger than the second, Guerilla-but as with all Soderbergh films, it is a work that becomes impossible to ignore. Benicio Del Toro does what you'd expect him to do as Che, but it's the wildly charismatic Demian Bichir (Weeds) who steals the show as Fidel Castro. The revolution never looked so good. [Sundance, 8 p.m.]

Friday: Smiley Face
A film starring Anna Faris and featuring appearances by John Krasinski (Jim Halpert!), Adam Brody (Seth Cohen!), John Cho (Harold!) and Jane Lynch (Sue Sylvester!) should be hilarious. Too bad Smiley Face, Greg Araki's stoner comedy misadventure, falls short for long stretches, especially if you aren't stoned yourself. Still, give Smiley Face credit for one thing: you rarely (if ever) see a movie like this lead by a woman. Ms. Faris, however, appears in almost every scene and is all kinds of funny. If she's actually the female version of Ryan Reynolds, here's hoping there's a Reynolds-like breakout in her future. [Showtime, 4:15 a.m.]

The sun is still shining on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs! For a second straight week the animated film dominated what was a sluggish session at the multiplex, grossing an estimated $24.6 million and setting itself up as one of the sleeper hits of the fall (not to mention giving us the opportunity to make more weather related puns). Storm clouds did, however, circle around the latest batch of new releases (see?). The $80 million budgeted Surrogates landed in second place with only $15 million; Fame tripped into third with just $10 million; and Pandorum crashed into sixth, accumulating only $4.4 million in ticket sales. Thankfully, it wasn’t all bad news for the freshman class: Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story banked $240,000 from just four theaters, meaning it averaged a brawny $60,000 per screen. Numbers like that would make even Ben Bernanke jealous. As we do each Monday, here’s a breakdown of the top five at the box office.

1. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: $24.6 million ($60 million total)

Ladies and gentlemen: we have legs! The Sony 3-D hit dipped a ridiculously low 18 percent from last weekend and has now crossed $60 million in ticket sales to date. To put this into perspective, the only other number one film to have a smaller second weekend depreciation in 2009 was February’s Taken, and that went on to gross $145 million. With no other animated films on the horizon and obviously great word-of-mouth, the chances are good that Meatballs could follow a similar path.

2. Surrogates: $15 million ($15 million total)

If you take away Live Free or Die Hard, Bruce Willis hasn’t had a live action film gross over $100 million at the box office since The Sixth Sense in 1999, a streak that covers a whopping 17 films. Yikes! We hate to sound so negative, but the shoe fits: it appears the days of considering Bruno a movie star are really just about over.

3. Fame: $10 million ($10 million total)

Apparently learning to fly high means barely hitting $10 million at the box office. Not only did Fame pale in comparison to other dance movies like Save the Last Dance and Step Up, it also wound up doing worse than even the ill-fated Rent big screen adaptation. Why doesn’t Hollywood just make a movie out of Dancing with the Stars and get it over with already?

4. The Informant!: $6.9 million ($20.9 million total)

Despite having an ad campaign that falls decidedly into the bait and switch category—after all, the  movie the trailer sold does not exist on screen—The Informant! held up reasonably well over the weekend, dipping only 33 percent. At this rate, the Steven Soderbergh film could wind up grossing around $40 million overall, a number that is similar to that of Michael Clayton. Of course, Michael Clayton wound up with seven Oscar nominations. We're not sure if the The Informant! will even get one.

5. Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself: $4.7 million ($44.5 million total)

The Tyler Perry Express continued to roll along over the weekend, holding off the opening of Pandorum ($4.4 million/$4.4 million total) to finish fifth at the box office. What else is there to say about Mr. Perry? By the time it’s done, Bad will probably wind up grossing what an average Tyler Perry movie grosses, almost to the dollar. If there is a more consistent filmmaker in Hollywood, we have yet to see them.