1. 3:10 to Yuma - $14.1 million
During another one of those early September, post-summer weekends when most habitual moviegoers, thoroughly exhausted from the preceding three months' worth of soul-sucking blockbuster sequels, can't find the strength to make a trip to the multiplex, 3:10 to Yuma proved the grudging first choice of those motivated enough to separate themselves from their couches. Once settled into their stadium seats, we're sure ticket buyers were sufficiently entertained by two hours of a dirty-faced, peg-legged Christian Bale glowering at charming rogue Russell Crowe while waiting for Crowe's psychotic, gay lieutenant to rescue his boss from a date with a prison train, where he might conceivabl y meet a crazier, more handsome trigger-man.

2. Halloween - $10.034 million
With Halloween having dropped over 60 percent from its record-breaking debut, we're forced to conclude that everyone who was interested in learning more about the developmental issues that led Michael Myers to become the masked, suburbanite-disembowelling psychopath we all know and love showed up on opening weekend.

3. Superbad - $8 million
To celebrate Superbad's passing of the all-important $100 million box office milestone, proud producer Judd Apatow will present writer/star Seth Rogen with a solid-gold movie projector featuring a twelve-inch penis where one might normally expect to find its lens.

4. Balls of Fury - $5.693 million
We've recently been treated to comedies about competitive dodgeball and ping-pong, but has anyone put Kickball: The Movie into development? Walken would be up for it if the money was good enough.

6. Shoot 'Em Up - $5.450 million
Any studio brave enough to put up a promotional website in which a new mom fires a machine gun at a baby carriage deserves a better result than this. We are officially disappointed in America.

• WEEKEND BOX OFFICE September 7-9, 2007 [Box Office Mojo]

When we first see Charlie Prince, he is astride his horse, one hand draped delicately over the other with the limpest wrist this side of the Mississippi river. He is by far the nattiest dresser in the entire cast, and if that isn't mascara he's wearing when we first meet him then I'm Buffalo Bill. [...]

Within the first five minutes of Prince's appearance onscreen, one character refers to him as "missy" and "Charlie Princess," a nickname usually not uttered to his face, but apparently widely used behind his back. Naturally, Prince is utterly ruthless, killing anyone who gets in his way, and showing no emotion at all - not unless he's interacting with Ben Wade (Russell Crowe), who clearly makes Charlie swoon.

Without giving too much away, we think it's safe to say that all gay cowboys—even the good guys—ultimately get what's coming to them. But we can't help but wonder if director James Mangold couldn't have gotten his point across without the gratuitous third-act sequence in which we catch Charlie standing in front of a full-length mirror with his genitals tucked between his legs, admiring himself in a skeleton hoop skirt.

• Review of Russell Crowe's "3:10 to Yuma" [afterelton.com]