The cinematic doppelganger effect seems to happen on a cyclical basis. Every few years, a pair of movies are released whose concepts, narratives, or central conceits are so similar that it’s impossible to envision how both came out of such a complex and expensive system with even the fairest amount of awareness of the other. Deep Impact and Armageddon. Antz and A Bug’s Life. Capote and Infamous. Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Observe and Report. And now two R-rated studio-released romantic comedies about fuck buddies played by young, attractive superstars have graced the silver screen within only a few short months of each other. We typically experience doppelganger cinema with high-concept material, not genre fare. To see two back-to-back movies released about the secret life of anthropomorphic talking insects, a hyperbole-sized rock jettisoning towards Earth’s inevitable destruction, a Truman Capote biopic, or a movie about a mall cop seem rare or deliberately exceptional enough as a single concept to make the existence of two subsequent iterations rather extraordinary. Much has been made of the notion that Friends with Benefits is a doppelganger of No Strings Attached (the former has in more than one case been called the better version of the latter), but when talking about the romantic comedy genre – a category so well-tread and (sometimes for better, sometimes not) reliably formulaic that each film is arguably indebted to numerous predecessors – can we really say these films are doppelgangers in the same vein as the high-concept examples, or [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Some years at the cineplex are just better than others. Which years those are can always be debated, hence the reason why FSR writer Paul Sileo and FSR’s resident devil’s advocate Josh Radde sat on their collective asses to hash out whether or not 2009 was particularly strong or notably weak.

Johnny Five is still alive. And unfortunately, he’s in the hands of a Mall Cop director.

In Boston, the only city in America with corruption and crime, a policeman’s daughter is shot right in front of him, so he tracks down answers and sets to ass-kicking.

Normally a move like this could signal an upcoming bomb, but this might actually be good news for audiences and for Youth In Revolt.

Rob Hunter loves movies. He also loves taking pictures of people in uncompromising positions and situations. These two joys come together in the form of blackmail payments that he receives every week and immediately uses to buy more DVD’s. So join us each week as Rob takes a look at new DVD releases and gives his highly unqualified opinion as to which titles are worth BUYing, which are better off as RENTals, and which should be AVOIDed at all costs.

In our attempt to make sense of the cinematic world, we analyzed the weekend box office numbers. Our findings? We want a mall cop we can see on the TV.

Kevin comes forth not to bury Hannah Montana (and parent company Disney), but to praise her.

Suffice it to say that Our Long National Nightmare is Over. Paul Blart: Mall Cop has been taken down at the box office by, well, Taken.

We have in store a humdrum weekend with three new movies rolling out: Taken, The Uninvited and New in Town. Still, the big question on everyone’s mind is whether any of these three will be able to stop the big, fat steamroller that is Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

Well, my fears were confirmed. I had heard these stories that Paul Blart: Mall Cop was tracking well and was possibly going to win the box office, even though a lot of other people were predicting other movies would do better.

Kevin Carr drags you kicking and screaming into the weekend with reviews of My Bloody Valentine 3D, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Notorious, Hotel for Dogs and Defiance.

Neil is hob-nobbing around Park City, Utah with his flunkies, hoping to score some make-out moments with John Stamos or Garry Shandling. So, Kevin is left in the Magical Studio in the Sky with special guest host Kristin Dreyer Kramer from NightsAndWeekends.com to talk January releases.

I dunno if Martin Luther King Jr. would be impressed with this lineup cluttering up the holiday in his name — movies like Paul Blart: Mall Cop. How about Hotel for Dogs?! Aren’t you fed up with dog movies by now?! Add to that lineup My Bloody Valentine 3D.