This weekend two low rated movies are coming up. ‘What Happens in Vegas’ with a metacritic.com score of 4.0 and ‘Speed Racer’ with an even lower 3.6. Here’s what the critics had to say:

‘Speed Racer’

Philadelphia Inquirer (7.5): “Speed Racer offers a crazy, turbo-charged mix of cartoon kitsch, gamer action, and a wild new way to think of - and look at - movies.“

San Francisco Chronicle (5.0): “If this action extravaganza represents the future of movies, it’s going to be a sad, dead and awful future.“

New York Magazine (2.0): “Orgy, hell: The film is like a nightmare in which you’re trapped in an arcade with screens on all sides and no eyelids“

‘What Happens in Vegas’

ReelViews (6.3): “Sadly, about the nicest thing I can say about What Happens in Vegas is that I didn’t hate it - although I suppose that’s something.“

The Onion (5.0): “Complain all you want about the affable slobs in Judd Apatow comedies; at least they’re not tools.“

Wall Street Journal (1.0): “What Happens in Vegas… should have stayed in development — forever. This ramshackle — and occasionally repulsive — farce doesn’t even deliver on the minimal promise of its title; most of it takes place in Manhattan.“

I guess this will be another week of ‘Iron Man,’ which picked up the nice metacritic.com score of 7.8 last week.

We already knew ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ was doing well in Asia during its opening weekend, but it’s now beating every expectation in China. With its $75 million budget it wasn’t expected to need the Asian audience and it wasn’t targeting it either. The story is written for the Western audience and a Hong Kong magazine even described it as ‘unbelievably weird.’ But the people in China are loving it, bringing in $21.4 million in 10 days. This makes China the second highest grossing territory for the film, followed by South Korea with a little under $6 million.

‘Iron Man,’ there he is again, started pushing ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ out of US theaters this weekend. And with a domestic gross of just $45 million, Weinstein can’t be too happy. It causes them to need the unexpected Asian audience. With currently $69 million worldwide, it didn’t manage to top its budget yet and that’s without considering the marketing.

Was the movie really that good or did ‘Iron Man’ just wake everybody up after all those slow weeks? Whatever the reason is, the balls are rolling and this is what came out of the success of ‘Iron Man.’

First, the confirmed sequel. Set for release in 2010, but who is involved? Robert Downey Jr. has been confirmed to be under contract for another film, but Jon Favreau hasn’t signed yet. “We’ve been speaking informally about it, and in concept we would all love to work together again. But I found out about the announcement last night, so it’s not something that — we would definitely love to collaborate more with the sequel,” Favrau told EW. Those are some careful words. Apparently Jon Favreau didn’t know about the confirmation of ‘Iron Man 2′ until Marvel announced it last Monday. You would think a man like him shouldn’t have to find out on the news.

Continue reading ‘Iron Man’: the week after