Spy Kids 4 | featured news

“The Help” continues to clean up at the box office, taking over the No. 1 spot with $20.5 million in its second weekend. The drama about Southern black maids had debuted in second-place a week earlier. “The Help” raised its domestic total to $71.8 million and bumped “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” which slipped to No. 2 with $16.3 million after two weekends at the top.

Every one of my sources had a different Top 5 list all day -- and there wasn't even a consensus until tonight that DreamWorks' holdover The Help (which needs none) is Friday's No. 1 movie. The problem was that the new releases -- Dimension/Weinstein Co's Spy Kids 4D, Nu Image/Millenium/Lionsgate's Conan The Barbarian, and DreamWorks/Disney's Fright Night are all bunched together behind another holdover, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes.

This week at the movies, we've got a heroic strongman (Conan the Barbarian, starring Jason Momoa and Rachel Nichols), pint-sized agents (Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D, starring Jessica Alba and Joel McHale), scary neighbors (Fright Night, starring Anton Yelchin and Colin Farrell), and part-time lovers (One Day, starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess). What do the critics have to say? The 1982 Conan the Barbarian became a seminal entry in the sword-and-sorcery subgenre, maiking Arnold Schwarzenegger a star in the process.

The "Spy Kids 4" cast is rounding out more and more, and damn if it's not looking pretty great. Jessica Alba is already set to play the kids' mother, herself a retired spy who is forced back into the game. While raising two grown kids and a new baby, no less.