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When Sony announced plans to turn hundreds of hours of rehearsal footage from Michael Jackson’s This Is It concerts into a concert film, Peter Travers was concerned that the limited amount editing time would hurt the final product. However, “I’m kind of shocked at how good this movie is,” Travers says in his video review of This Is It.

Read Peter Travers’ review of This Is It.

Like the King of Pop himself, This Is It is flawed, spending too much time interviewing Jackson’s backup singers and dancers and not enough time showing the entirety of some of the This Is It performances. However, when the film clicks, it provides an incredibly intimate look at one of the greatest performers the world has ever seen, especially in scenes like the one featuring Thriller’s “Human Nature.” Jackson appears frail in the footage, but once he starts dancing, you’re reminded why he was the King of Pop.

For more on This Is It, read Rolling Stone’s opening night report on the film. And visit our Essential Michael Jackson Coverage.

Can Ted Danson recall Norm from *Cheers*’ real first name? Is he willing to sing the show’s famous theme right here in the *Rolling Stone* office? Peter Travers grills the star of *Damages*, *Curb Your Enthusiasm* and *Bored to Death* about everything from smoking fake weed (which “works just as well,” Danson says) to his relationship with Woody Harrelson in the latest episode of *Off the Cuff*.

Even the vengeful Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) couldn’t see this trap coming. Every sequel to the *Saw* franchise that began in 2004 has opened north of $30 million. Not this time, horror fans. *Saw VI* had to settle for a puny half that much, debuting in its traditional pre-Halloween spot. WTF? It wasn’t the movie’s fault. *Saw VI*, taking a satirically serrated edge to, of all things, HMOs, is actually better than the last two entries in the series. And it has decent reviews to prove it.

Watch Saw VI star Tobin Bell on Off the Cuff With Peter Travers

What Jigsaw didn’t count on was *Paranormal Activity*, launched by Paramount with a viral promo campaign that really caught fire. This weekend *Paranormal* grabbed a massive $22 million from fewer than 2,000 screens. *Saw VI*, on over 3,000 screens, took in only $14.8 million, making it the box-office shame of the series. My advice to Jigsaw in *Saw VII*? Go back in time and trap that yuppie paranormal couple in their bedroom with the nastiest torture trap you can devise.

With one weekend to go until Halloween, the cinematic fare entering movie theaters this Friday is frighteningly bad, and Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers tells you what to avoid like the plague this weekend *At the Movies*. Since we’re closing in on October 31st, we’ll kick it off this week with Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, the movie adaptation of the 12-part British novel. Despite the presence of the always-great John C. Reilly, this movie is “lame.” A boy goes to a freak show, gets bitten by a vampire and zaniness ensues. Between True Blood and Twilight, vampires are hot right now, but this movie is pure Scum Bucket. Since the movie only used the first three books of the series for this film, Vampire’s Assistant ends with a cliffhanger, but after this debacle of a film it’s unlikely those sequels will ever be made.

Next is a film that was forecasted to be a major Oscar player, Amelia, starring two-time winner Hilary Swank as the aviatrix Amelia Earhart.

Do you want to play a game, Peter Travers? Our movie critic falls under the influence of *Saw* star Tobin Bell in the latest *Off the Cuff*, where the pair spar over the fate of Jigsaw, Bell’s most bone-chilling *Saw* scenes (“I think that the surgery on my brain in *Saw III* was amazingly done — extremely credible”), the scariest scenes he’s ever seen (from *The Wizard of Oz* to *Dancing With the Stars*) and criticism of “torture-porn” films.

Pinch me. I must be hallucinating. A truly great movie, the Spike Jonze film of Maurice Sendak’s *Where the Wild Things Are*, hit the box-office No. One spot, a space usually reserved for the wretched likes of *Couples Retreat* or the violently stupid *Law Abiding Citizen*, which had to settle for runner-up status. How did quality win out?

There’s only one film you need to catch this weekend At the Movies, and it’s the cinematic adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. The film is a must-see for everyone of every age, and Rolling Stone’s movie critic Peter Travers awarded it four stars in the new issue of RS.

It takes a director like Spike Jonze, who Travers calls “one of the most imaginative filmmakers out there,” to create such an incredible tale out of a children’s story that only had 10 sentences. All the performances are incredible, from newcomer Max Records — “Best performance by a child this century,” says Travers — to the voice work from James Gandolfini and Lauren Ambrose. And no, the PG film is not “too scary” for younger audiences. “This is a movie for everybody, and Spike Jonze has done something special,” Travers says of this visual and emotional tour de force.

Now it’s time for Travers to tell us Where the Scum Bucket Films Are.

With stars like Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, how can a scary movie miss? I’m kidding. But no one’s laughing at the major cash being pulled in by *Paranormal Activity*, with zero star power, a micro budget of $15,000 and a director, Oren Peli, with no experience outside of programming software. There hasn’t been this kind of heat generated by an unknown horror cheapie since *The Blair Witch Project* hit pay dirt ten years ago. Paramount started the viral buzz (blogs, Facebook, Twitter) a few weeks back with midnight screenings in a dozen college towns. Shockingly, folks lined up to watch a babe (Featherston) and her boyfriend (Sloat) get freaked out by noises in their San Diego home, inciting him to set up a night vision video camera while they sleep to catch what’s out there. That’s it.

The must-see film hitting theaters this weekend is An Education, featuring a star-making performance by young actress Carey Mulligan that Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers predicts will win this
year’s Best Actress Oscar. A coming-of-age tale based in 1960s London, the film stars Mulligan as a 16-year-old who falls for an older man, played by Peter Sarsgaard. Get your mind out of the Roman Polanski gutter; it’s not like that at all. Instead, we’re taken on an odyssey through adolescence with Mulligan’s Jenny as written by High Fidelity writer and the screenwriter here, Nick Hornby. “An Education earns its place at the head of the class,” Travers says.

Don’t be fooled by all those funny little commercials with Vince Vaughn that you’ve been seeing the past few weeks; Couples Retreat is heading straight to the Scum Bucket.

Photo: Columbia Pictures
Just when horror seemed about to lay down and expire at the box office (RIP *Halloween 2* and *Jennifer’s Body*), along comes *Zombieland* to revive a rotting carcass. Audiences forked over $25 million this weekend to watch Woody Harrelson and his pals (including that big star in a surprise cameo) kick zombie ass. Ringing the No. 1 bell, *Zombieland* trounced Ricky Gervais’s *Invention of Lying* ($7.4 million) and left *Whip It* — the much-hyped directing debut of Drew Barrymore — winded and sucking for air ($4.5 million) And whoops — how did this happen? — the critics were just as stoked as the public by *Zombieland*, which scored a huge 89 percent of favorable reviews, according to the website rottentomatoes.com.

First there was the hip-hop remake of Fame, now Hollywood is plotting a modernized version of Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs and a Rosemary’s Baby reboot by Transformers practitioner Michael Bay! Is nothing sacred? In this edition of Damn You, Hollywood! Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers criticizes Tinseltown for their remake obsession and why it needs to stop before someone does the unspeakable Citizen Kane recreation.

First there was the hip-hop remake of Fame, now Hollywood is plotting a modernized version of Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs and a Rosemary’s Baby reboot by Transformers practitioner Michael Bay! Is nothing sacred? In this edition of Damn You, Hollywood! Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers criticizes Tinseltown for their remake obsession and why it needs to stop before someone does the unspeakable Citizen Kane recreation.

A bunch of new movies are lobbying for your box office bucks this weekend, but as Peter Travers says in *At the Movies*, the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man is the cream of the crop. The story of a modern day Job set in 1960s Minnesota, the film stars Michael Stuhlbarg as a Jewish man whose spirituality is constantly challenged after a series of hilarious and stinging tests of faith. His wife leaves him, his son is a pothead, his
tenure is in question, and when Stuhlbarg’s Larry Gopnik seeks the advice of his local rabbis, they offer him only silence. The Coens are the angry God that punishes Gopnik, as it’s their penchant to see how characters react in extreme situations. This film will alienate roughly 90 percent of the Coens’ No Country For Old Men audiences, but it’s a must-see for the other 10 percent.

For anyone seeking a guilty pleasure this weekend, Zombieland is the movie for you.

A bunch of new movies are lobbying for your box office bucks this weekend, but as Peter Travers says in *At the Movies*, the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man is the cream of the crop. The story of a modern day Job set in 1960s Minnesota, the film stars Michael Stuhlbarg as a Jewish man whose spirituality is constantly challenged after a series of hilarious and stinging tests of faith. His wife leaves him, his son is a pothead, his
tenure is in question, and when Stuhlbarg’s Larry Gopnik seeks the advice of his local rabbis, they offer him only silence. The Coens are the angry God that punishes Gopnik, as it’s their penchant to see how characters react in extreme situations. This film will alienate roughly 90 percent of the Coens’ No Country For Old Men audiences, but it’s a must-see for the other 10 percent.

For anyone seeking a guilty pleasure this weekend, Zombieland is the movie for you.

Hollywood came to Broadway last night as Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and James Bond (Daniel Craig) opened in *A Steady Rain*, a drama about two Chicago cops caught in moral quicksand. Jackman plays Denny, a hot-tempered family man with a secret life. And Craig is his best friend, a bachelor who drinks himself into oblivion to hide the love he feels for Danny’s unseen wife. Both actors speak in credible Chicago accents. Not bad for Jackman the Aussie and Craig the Brit. Here’s the problem: Theatergoers are being asked to pay top dollar to watch two stars stand on a bare stage and basically rehearse for the movie *A Steady Rain* will eventually become (playwright Keith Huff says he initially wrote it as a screenplay).