For a film that clearly thinks it is very profound and way
ahead of the curve, Transcendence is surprisingly retrograde. It recycles ideas
and concepts from countless sci-fi films such as Donovan’s Brain, to Frankenstein, to Colossus:
The Forbin Project, to 2001, to Andromeda Strain, to even Her which, of course,
was made around the same time as Transcendence. And after all is said and done, the ultimate message you get is that, technology is bad. Ho hum.

And it seems that whatever box office fire Johnny Depp
used to have is fading fast. Are audiences getting bored with him? Maybe audiences don’t like to see him playing a normal
guy? Or maybe because most of the time in the film, he’s just a face on a giant computer
screen, and not a flesh and blood person that people can connect with. Whatever
it was, audiences weren’t lining up see his new film this weekend, which came in
fourth with just over $11 million.

Heaven is for Real, co-produced by T.D. Jakes – which was expected to make a real challenge for the No 1 slot this weekend, considering
the popularity of the book, its mid-week Weds opening and that faith-based
movies have been doing very well of late – came in third, with a very solid $28
million, for a five-day total.

And Marlon Wayans’ A Haunted House 2, which, not
surprisingly, was not screened to the media in advance,  came in with $9 million.

So it was left to last week’s No. 1 and No. 2 films – Captain
America: The Winter Solider and Rio 2 – once
again, being No. 1 and No 2, in that order, this weekend, with Captain America
doing $26.6 million, and Rio following up with $22,5 million.