Nobody at Paramount Pictures this morning had to worry about the overall box office (and those that do should get their head examined) intake totaled in so far for action mainstream director Michael Bay’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Joining The Dark Knight in its gigantic numbers (despite the huge wave of negative reviews), Transformers 2 raked in a cool 108.9 million, bringing in over 200 million domestically ever since its June 24th release. Too bad Philip guesstimated a little too far (121 million) even though judging from the ridiculous lines in front of movie theaters all over the nation, you’d think it did accumulate that much.

"...and then Optimus shoots and KABOOM!"

Don’t forget, for those of you who actually remembered, there were two other openings during this past weekend. Then again, of course almost all of us would forget My Sister’s Keeper amidst the huge robots beating the ever-loving crap out of each other. The overly melodramatic film centering on a young girl suffering from cancer and her sister demanding emancipation in order to choose whether or not she wants to literally give a part of herself to her sibling in order to let her live. Starring Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin and Sofia Vassilieva among many others, the film only managed to scrape in 12.4 million (unlike the 9 million prediction).

There also is the recent release of the Michelle Pfeiffer romantic drama, Cheri. Based off a novel of the same name, the story follows a courtesan as she straightens out a friend’s young adult son, only for him to fall for her and turn his life upside down once they depart from one another. Since its in such a limited release, Cheri managed to only make 405,701 total. Another honorable mention of new releases goes to the Kathryn Bigelow directed war drama, The Hurt Locker. Only in limited release in Los Angeles and New York (until July 10th) the film took in 145,352 and has the nice nod of having the best per screen average despite its ridiculously limited release.

Overall, the only films that seemed to show a little bit of promise despite the monstrous takeover from the Autobots and the Decepticons was the remainder of the top five (The Proposal, Up and The Hangover). Check out the rest below:

Weekend Box Office (June 26-28)

1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen  ($108.9 Million)
2. The Proposal  ($18.5 Million)
3. The Hangover  ($17 Million)
4. Disney/Pixar’s Up  ($13 Million)
5. My Sister’s Keeper  ($12.4 Million)
6. Year One  ($6 Million)
7. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3  ($5.4 Million)
8. Star Trek  ($3.7 Million)
9. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian  ($3.6 Million)
10. Away We Go  ($1.7 Million)

Everyone sharpen up their 1930′s dialect, because this week blasts off on Wednesday with the release of the anticipated Michael Mann film, Public Enemies, starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale and Marion Cotillard. Along with it on Wednesday comes the third installment of the Twentieth Century Fox film, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. On Friday comes The Girl From Monaco and I Hate Valentine’s Day.

This is one of those weeks where what happened last week doesn’t matter, what the Top 5 will do doesn’t matter, and Michael Bay gets to count all his money. Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen is going to storm in, kill everything, and destroy all competition. If this topples what The Dark Knight did last year, all hope for quality blockbusters will be lost.

If I had my way….this would happen:

1. The Hurt Locker $224M
2. Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen $142M
3. The Proposal $19M
4. The Hangover $15M
5. Up $12M

Instead, we’re likely going to get this:

1. Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen $121M (weekend. Total = $210M)
2. The Proposal $17M
3. The Hangover $14M
4. Up $11M
5. My Sister’s Keeper $9M

I confess myself disappointed.  Alright, I never had high hopes for “My Sister’s Keeper” in the first place, but nonetheless I sucked it up and went into the movie expecting a decent movie regardless.  You could say I’m disappointed because there were moments during the movie that actually showed potential and served as windows that peeked into a better movie, but alas those moments are few and far between.  For the most part, what turned me off was the fact that the screenplay seemed to value manipulating your emotions to make you cry, rather than letting the material do that naturally.

“My Sister’s Keeper”, co-written and directed by Nick Cassavetes, revolves around a suburban family whose oldest daughter Kate is in the late stages of leukemia.  Abigail Breslin plays Anna Fitzgerald, the younger daughter who was conceived as a donor child, one who would provide Kate with whatever she needed from her own body.  When the movie opens, Anna is 11 and she has lost the desire to help her sister, mainly because she wants to live her life like everybody else.  “What if I need my kidney someday?” she asks.  So, Anna goes behind her parents’ backs and approaches a famous lawyer named Campbell Alexander (Alec Baldwin).  Anna hires Campbell, despite the fact that she’s a minor, and takes her parents to court.  As you would expect, Sara and Brian Fitzgerald (Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric) are enraged at her daughter for having doubts at this late a stage.  one of the few things this film does best is portray the moral ambiguity of the situation.

Okay, let’s start with the good things.  First of all: the acting.  For the most part, everyone gives a strong performance and it’s clear they’re doing their best.  The portraits both Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric paint of two emotionally worn-down parents is at times riveting, but the rest of the time curiously monotonous, maybe even forced.  But I think the film’s best performance comes from Abigail Breslin, who is sure to be a big star when she gets older.  In fact, she seems to be the only one in the entire movie who captures the emotions of her character perfectly.  Even though Anna is convinced she’s doing what’s best for herself, she still can’t help but question her decision when confronted with moments of her sister’s weakness.  Eventually, Anna does find herself on middle ground, but I won’t go into any more details there.  The other person worth mentioning is Sofia Vassilieva, who plays luekemia-stricken Kate.  Vassilieva does get the more human aspects of her character correct, but at the same time, I just felt there was something pretty vital lacking in her performance, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.  Then there’s Alec Baldwin, who’s also good.  Like I said, the acting was the film’s strongest asset.

Also, there was a subplot involving Kate falling in love with a similarly-diagnosed boy named Taylor that was admittedly sweet and was perhaps the film’s most engaging portion.

Now, I’m not criticizing “My Sister’s Keeper” just because it’s sentimental.  No, I’m criticizing it because it bashes us over the head with that sentimentality to the point where we feel like we’re going to get a migraine.  Director Nick Cassavetes seems to pride himself on making his audiences cry; his last two films were “The Notebook” and “John Q.”  I still haven’t seen “The Notebook”, but “John Q.” was definitely a better movie than this because it found a way to balance the storytelling and sentimentality.  In “My Sister’s Keeper”, the two apects are pretty uneven, and it’s very noticeable.  Add on to that the fact that most of the first half of the movie is composed mostly of hammy bits of narration from the different characters describing their position in this whole affair, and you see what I mean by this film overdoing it.  These narrative bits do become annoying pretty fast and they also grind the flow of the story to a halt every time one of them comes up.  I do admire the writers trying to put us in the heads of each character to better understand their emotions, but for me, it just didn’t work.

Like I said before, “My Sister’s Keeper” did actually have the potential to be good, but the moment it chose to second-chair its storytelling, it began to steadily lose my interest.  The best I can do is commend it for its acting and a decent subplot.  But the rest of it, though…either you’ll be swept up in the tidal wave of emotion or you’ll just ride over that wave.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

How do you go head to head with one of the summer’s most anticipated blockbuster movies? You do it by crafting a masterpiece on family dynamics that should draw everyone but teenage boys and young adult males. Based on Jodi Picoult’s novel by the same name, My Sister’s Keeper takes you into the family life of a child with cancer. Exploring the boundaries of what is ethical in keeping your child alive, you find yourself wrestling with the choices the family made and wondering what lengths you would go to for your own child.

As Sara (Cameron Diaz) and Brian (Jason Patric) struggle to make the right decisions for their sick child, Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), we see how it affects the other two kids. Older brother Jesse (Evan Ellingson) is the one that gets neglected to the point of basically being invisible. And while younger sister Anna (Abigail Breslin) gets a lot of attention, it isn’t the kind she wants. This leads to the crux of the film as Anna goes to ‘91% successful lawyer’ Campbell Alexander (Alec Baldwin) to sue for medical rights to her own body. It seems Anna is tired of being the living donor keeping her older sister alive.

While this is a poignant, tear-inducing movie for any parent (or anyone who has been touched by cancer or a child’s terminal disease), the brilliance behind the story are the uplifting moments of beauty that are celebrated throughout. From a first boyfriend, to a late in life trip to the beach, the snapshots of life show what it means to live everyday to the fullest instead of simply waiting for the inevitable.

And those snapshots come alive with this cast. Diaz is brilliant as a successful lawyer turned unrelenting advocate for her suffering daughter. Understated performances by Baldwin, and Joan Cusack (as the judge who presides over the case) round out a distinguished cast that keeps this from being just another teary chick flick. And while Breslin continues to show acting skills beyond her years as she did in Little Miss Sunshine, Sofia Vassilieva steals the spotlight. Her presence, and her smile, fills the screen with a joy that breaks through the sorrow of the film with a promise that there is more to life than pain.

Readers of the book will be surprised by some major changes in the story, but I believe they’ll see that the spirit of the book has been captured and released on a movie-going public that will cherish this adaptation. And while there will be some disappointment that there couldn’t be more focus on the father and son dynamic or the lawyer’s role from the book, they’ll have to acknowledge that you simply can’t include everything in a movie. What director Nick Cassavates (The Notebook) leaves out from the book, he makes up for in the careful weaving together of the different points of view and story pieces that tie this tour de force together.

They’ll be plenty of loud, action, summer extravaganzas to check out all season long. Take a break from the sensory overload and go with a friend to remember what really matters: doing life together with the ones we love.

Rating: ★★★★★