Movies new in theaters this week - Rotten Tomatoes

Movies new in theaters this week - Rotten Tomatoes

Valentine's Day usually offers some relief from the winter doldrums, and this year is no exception. There are two wide releases which are expected to perform quite well, although both are rated R.

The first is the highly ballyhooed 50 Shades of Grey (3600 theaters, rated hard R, 30% positive reviews) the rare soft-core film which aims for the female target market. Based on an unimaginably successful book (100 million copies) centering on light S&M&B&D, it will be your wife's or girlfriend's choice of Valentine viewing, which is a shame because, according to the critics, it's not only a chick-flick, but a bad chick-flick. It contains everything necessary to make you puke except Hugh Grant, bad tequila, and the Taco Bell Cheesy Gordita Crunch. As one critic noted, it is "a generic romance cynically engineered to appeal to the lowest common denominator of female fantasy." I suppose "generic romance" could be have been OK to sit through, but the salient point is this: the two words that appear as the common threads throughout the reviews are "tedious" and "boring." That can't be good. The good news: Dakota Johnson is naked and tied up.

The counter-programming for the week is Kingsman (3200 theaters, soft R, 70% positive reviews), a comic book adaptation which serves as a high-tech superspy thriller as well as a send-up of the genre. One critic called it a "joyously silly and ultraviolent black comedy." Colin Firth stars as a dapper Bondian spymaster who recruits a blue collar street kid to join his usual team of snobby upper-crust derby-and-brolly types. Samuel L. Jackson is their version of Doctor Evil.

Box office:

50 Shades may break all the February records, and may even have the best opening in history for an R-rated film. The experts predict that it will take in between 80 and 100 million dollars over the 4-day weekend. Pre-sales rank fourth of all time.

Kingsman should take in about $30M and will either finish third or edge Sponge Bob for second place.

American Sniper is expected to finish fourth, which means that three of the top four films will be rated R!