Liam Neeson Wants To Kick Your Arse (Even Yours, Zellweger)

Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, your regular guide to everything new, noteworthy and quaintly Zellwegerian at the US movies. This week: Liam Neeson battles the Blartocalypse, Elizabeth Banks goes bad, and The Class is in session.

WHAT’S NEW: Some weeks we don’t even know why we bother surveying the northern winter’s new-release folly — like what compelled Fox to open a male-geared actioner like Taken in the dead zone of Super Bowl weekend, or what compelled DreamWorks to open (let alone make) The Uninvited at all. The latter film, a remake of the contemporary Korean classic A Tale of Two Sisters, is particularly confounding: Evil nurse Elizabeth Banks turns evil stepmother by marrying David Strathairn. Brows furrow, quick cuts and gloom ensue. Once upon a time this might have been a camp masterpiece. Now it’s just another diluted mass-market solicitation to pay first, ask questions later, hopefully after the ‘Works/’Mount has wrung $US14.3 million from its shrugging public.

Taken, meanwhile, reinventing Neeson as the spry ’00s equivalent of Charles Bronson, has bigger ambitions, namely to make the Super Bowl holiday safe for ass-kicking Euro-trash en route to at least a $US25 million frame. The meddlesome Paul Blart: Mall Cop will suck a good $US4 million of that under his Segway wake, alas, and we can look forward to a DVD rematch three months from now. Smashing.

Also opening: Widow Michelle Williams grieves her adulterous arse off in the buried Sundance tragi-drama Incendiary; the acclaimed Filipino porn-theatre family saga Serbis; the Invisible Man reimagining The Invsible Chronicles; the indie B-thriller Sam’s Lake;and Terence Davies’ affecting Liverpool doc Of Time and the City.

THE BIG LOSER: We know better than to underestimate Lionsgate, especially with NFL counterprogramming like New in Town. But we also have a lot of faith in our first impressions, and Renée Zellweger’s latest has an unusually stillborn pallor to it — a one-quadrant romcom facing opposition from the heartland to the Blart-land. $US10 million and/or a Top 5 berth would be the coup of the young year; we like it for $US7.9 million and maybe a photo-finish for eighth with Hotel For Dogs.

THE UNDERDOG: France’s verite schoolroom drama The Class won Cannes, is a front-runner for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar, and is a prime candidate for the week’s top per-screen average. If you don’t see it this weekend you’ll just have to beat a busier rush next month, so be the first on your block and get it out of the way.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD’s include Officer Sam Jackson’s sleeper hit Lakeview Terrace, Officer Colin Farrell’s not-so-sleeper bomb Pride & Glory, the Rainn Wilson abortion The Rocker, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Rocknrolla, and the faith-y Kirk Cameron blockbuster you’ve been waiting for, Fireproof.