“Monsters vs. Aliens” conquered the box office this wekeend with a gross of $58.2 million — no surprise there, as it had no real competition and it was a giant DreamWorks entertainment machine with Happy Meals and Super Bowl ads and everything.

Expect a flood of industry articles about how Jeffrey Katzenberg’s obsession with 3D will change the face of Hollywood; do not, however, expect it to actually happen. If 3D was the essential element to box-office success, surely “Coraline” would have been the mammoth hit it deserved to be.

And as I’m putting the blog post together, I learn that Maurice Jarre has died, aged 84. Please take a moment to play the “Lawrence of Arabia” soundtrack at full volume in his honor.

“Monsters vs. Aliens” may not have much going on in the story department, but I have to give it serious props for the production design and the fondness the filmmakers clearly have for cheesy 1950s sci-fi movies.

I never pass up a chance to write about monster movies, so this week’s Sympatico/MSN movie gallery –  which name-checks the Golden Age inspirations of Ginormica and her friends — was a no-brainer.

Much like this guy, actually.

The days just fly by, don’t they? One minute I’m making my way through a huge pile of Cinefranco screeners; the next, I’m staring down the complete schedule of the Tibet film festival. Gosh, it’s good to be well-rounded.

But it’s Friday now! Movies are opening! Let’s get to the breakdown!

“Before Tomorrow”: The producers of “Atanarjuat” and “The Journals of Knud Rasmussen” bring you another slice of Inuit life — this one a far more amateurish and obvious construction that seems far more concerned about playing to mainstream tastes than its predecessors. Susan and Jason do not share my assessment, however.

“Hank and Mike”: A pair of cranky and obnoxious Easter bunnies get laid off and look for new work while still wearing their bunny suits. Doesn’t sound like much, but people still love “Bad Santa”, so what do I know? Andrew kinda liked it; Kieran, not as enthused.

“Hansel & Gretel”: A Korean revision of the grim fairy tale; in this telling, it’s an adult who gets taken in by creepy kids. Andrew offers a cautious endorsement.

“The Haunting in Connecticut”: Lamest title in a while. Lamest poster, too. (Attention marketing departments: Ectoplasmic vomit should probably be kept out of your campaign. Let it be a surprise.) Jason and Andrew call bullshit on the whole affair.

“Monsters vs. Aliens“: Some engaging characters and truly magnificent production design very nearly carry DreamWorks’ 3D CG spectacle over the yawning potholes of its confused second half. My review should be online any minute now. UPDATE: There it is!

“Sunshine Cleaning“: In which mismatched sisters Amy Adams and Emily Blunt learn to understand one another when they start cleaning up crime scenes. Sundance-certified edge has never seemed so … dull. And someone really has to tell Alan Arkin to stop playing all those wacky grandpas. He’ll burn himself out, and then what’s left? Musicals?

“Twelve Rounds”: Fox didn’t screen Renny Harlin’s latest movie for us, so all I know at this time is that it stars wrestler-actor John Cena and is, according to the TV spots, very frenetic with the running and the yelling and the blowing up of things. So, a Renny Harlin movie, then.

Lots of stuff to do and watch this weekend, so posting may be sporadic. But I’m around, I swear.

The first week of spring brings rain clouds, a desperate sense of hope and the first of many, many film festivals.

I take a look at Cinefranco in this week’s NOW, and find a mixed bag of genres and themes, with all the attendant highs and lows. The twisted sexual dynamics that defined last year’s festival are mostly absent, which is kind of a shame; those were a lot of fun.

Ah, French people. They’re just, you know, freaks.

So I did a phoner with the Canadian Press last week about the latest iteration of D-Box motion chair technology, which is about to make its way into theaters and is already starting to crop up in the Blu-ray realm.

And this is what resulted.

I’m pretty sure I don’t sound like that. I’m usually quite witty and articulate, even. And I use contractions, really I do.

I don’t really think Guy Ritchie is willing to take his Sherlock Holmes movie quite that far, but Robert Downey, Jr. could totally pull it off. After “Tropic Thunder”, I’m pretty sure the guy can do anything; hell, if Downey wanted to play Holmes through the filter of Kirk Lazarus, I would be the first in line.

Anyhow, somebody visited the set of Ritchie’s movie for Sympatico/MSN this week, so they asked me for a movie gallery about other famous detectives and their drugs of choice.

Just remember, what works for Sherlock Holmes and that nice Dr. House may not do anything at all for you, so don’t blame me when injecting Tom Cruise’s daddy issues directly into your eyeball doesn’t make you able to Handle The Truth.

You know those weeks where a jillion movies open and I manage to miss out on covering anything, just because of the way the schedule falls? Well, this is not one of those weeks. Let us begin.

“The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins”: Okay, I haven’t actually seen this one. But Susan loved it enough at last year’s Hot Docs to put it on her Top Ten of 2008, and she continues to champion it now.

“Duplicity“: In which Tony Gilroy does for megastar caper flicks what he did for 1970s moral thrillers in “Michael Clayton”, which is to say he throws a lot of money at the production and offers a couple of plot reversals that will be unexpected if you went out for popcorn at just the wrong moment, and then sits back and waits to be called a genius. But aren’t these movies supposed to be entertaining?

“I Love You, Man“: Paul Rudd and Jason Segel turn their brief comedic sparks in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” into a feature-length goof on romantic comedies — and yeah, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost did the man-crush thing two years ago in “Hot Fuzz”, but that was in the context of the buddy-cop genre, so this is different. My review should be online any minute now. (UPDATE: There it is!)

“Knowing”: Thanks to the prophecies on a fifty-year-old scrap of paper, Nicolas Cage knows things! Scary things! Things that man was not meant to know! Okay, I haven’t seen this one, either, but I really want to … even if Adam thinks I shouldn’t.

“The Magic Flute“: In which Kenneth Branagh once again demonstrates the dangers of critics throwing around words like “genius” and “wunderkind” at emerging actor-filmmakers. Because twenty years later, they make us want to eat them. The words, I mean.

“Polytechnique“: After almost a decade’s absence, Denis Villeneuve comes roaring back to features with this harrowing meditation on survivor guilt, viewed through the horrific prism of the Montreal massacre. Gus Van Sant only wishes Elephant was this powerful. (Also, check out my interview with producer-star Karine Vanasse.)

“12“: Nikita Mikhalkov moves “Twelve Angry Men” to modern-day Moscow. (The accused is Chechnyan.) It works better than you’d think, though there’s no reason it needed to clock in at 159 minutes.

“24 City“: Jia Zhang-ke’s documentary fiction about the death and resurrection of the Chinese factory town of Chengdu wowed ’em at Cannes. No reason it shouldn’t wow you now, right?

Also of note today: Cinematheque Ontario screens a restored print of Max Ophuls’ “Lola Montes“, and “Battlestar Galactica” fraks off forever with a two-hour finale.

No spoilers, please; it might take a day or two to catch up to it. I’m awfully busy right now.

They’ve got to be happy at Disney this weekend: “Race to Witch Mountain” is the number-one movie in North America, pulling in $25 million, easily besting runner-up “Watchmen”. Which couldn’t have been difficult, given that “Watchmen” is rated R and runs fully an hour longer than the Disney picture.

New entries “Last House on the Left” and “Miss March” came in third and tenth, respectively. And “Taken”, the Luc Besson-produced thriller in which Liam Neeson beats up Paris to rescue his daughter, held strong in fourth place — it’s the sleeper of the year, having grossed approximately $126 million in a little over six weeks.

The good news: Liam Neeson is back on top, baby! The bad news: Disney’s probably going to sign him to play the befuddled government agent chasing Zac Efron in a 21st century update of “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes”.

You think I’m kidding, don’t you?

Reboot. Re-imagining. Re-invention.

These are words that get thrown around a lot by the movie industry these days — usually when they’re trying to launch a new version of an old, half-remembered property, or fix a franchise its producers believe should have been more successful the first time around.

Sometimes it even works: Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies and Martin Campbell’s “Casino Royale” are reboots in the best sense of the term. But what happens far more often is that someone like Michael Bay gets his monster claws on a horror movie he vaguely recalls seeing as a teenager and produces a new version that resembles the original property in name only, with everything that made the first version powerful or resonant drained away in the name of faster-bigger-louder.

Those movies are the ones I’m addressing in today’s Sympatico/MSN gallery. You’ll understand.