The Dark Knight had better watch out – come Oscar time the whole world’s going to be in a randy froth about Burn After Reading.

No wonder Burn After Reading is top of the weekend box office today – just look at the pedigree. An Oscar-winning actor, an Oscar-winning actress and the world’s biggest celebrity starring in a movie by the most recent winners of the Best Director and Best Picture Oscars. In fact, never mind the weekend box office – Burn After Reading should be gold-plated and put on God’s mantlepiece forever.

It probably won’t be, because in fact Burn After Reading looks like the sort of self-consciously wacky nonsense that’d go straight to DVD if the Coen Brothers didn’t direct it. But, hey, you can’t argue with a number one spot at the US weekend box office – that’s the Bangkok Dangerous spot, after all.

We’ve always thought of the Coen Brothers as the Box Of Chocolates Described By Forrest Gump’s Mother Of Movie Directors (or BOCDBFGMOMD for short). Basically, you never know what you’re going to get with them. No Country For Old Men won every single award going, but their film before it was The Ladykillers – a movie that could only have been worse if they’d let The Cheeky Girls do the soundtrack.

But Burn After Reading, the follow-up to No Country For Old Men, is the number one movie at this week’s weekend box office, so it must be equally as good as Meet The Spartans. And, apparently it is. Equally as good as Meet The Spartans. Hooray for the Coen Brothers. Here’s this week’s weekend box office top five…

1 - Burn After Reading (Want to know why so many people have gone to see Burn After Reading? It’s because it’s officially the only time that people can drool over Brad Pitt and George Clooney for ab hour and a half without them either droning on about Darfur or bitching about the paparazzi. Score!) $19,404,000

2 - Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys (We don’t know what this movie’s about, but we’re guessing it’s about a family of black people who reunite before having deep heartfelt tragicomic conversations about themselves in a gushy self-help style that nobody can really say they enjoy. We’ll just watch the trailer to see how right we were… ach, close enough) $18,020,000

3 - Righteous Kill (Remember when a movie starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino would have been exciting rather than third at the weekend box office tedious? No, us neither. We’re only young) $16,500,000

4 - The Women (A film about some women. That’s literally everything you need to know) $10,088,000

5 – The House Bunny (Know what this means? It means that The House Bunny is more popular than The Dark Knight. Eat that, The Dark Knight. Obviously, the superiority of The House Bunny over The Dark Knight won’t be made official until it’s made another $475,000,000 and caught up financially, but that’s only going to be a matter of days away) $4,300,000

Read more:

Weekend Box Office – Box Office Mojo

This week’s list.

Folded:

• Son of Rambow on DVD (the most heart-warming movie experience of the year so far. Blub)
• Cool retro poster for Burn After Reading (God, how good does this film look?)
• John Akii-Bua (interesting documentary on BBC4 about this legendary athlete a couple of weeks back. You probably didn’t watch it)
• Team GB, or the Great British Team to give them their less shit title (well, we done alright, didn’t we?)
• Gillian Anderson (the movie sucked, but she has absolutely still got it)

Creased:

• Quantum of Solace teaser trailer (from the looks of this, Daniel Craig is just going to be thumping everyone he meets for two-plus hours)
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars (enough, George. Enough)
• The X-Factor (enough, Simon. Enough)
• This guy (God knows what his lady is so proud of)
• Karen Taylor and her belt collection (she wears a giant one for every single sketch in her show. Maybe to make her knockers look big, maybe because she’s a bit of a bloater)

It’s been summer now for over a month. Yes, really. That’s why it’s sunny.

Folded:

• The Dark Knight (attach a catheter, sit back and enjoy)
• Burn After Reading (seen the trailer for this upcoming Coen Brothers comedy yet? It’s more exciting than most whole films)
• Giles Coran (funny fella, funny writer, looks the business in flares)
• Sue Perkins (funny lady, funny lesbian, looks foxy in a wig)
• David Axelrod (legendary jazz-funk composer/arranger. His track Holy Thursday has recently been sampled by rap producer ‘Swizz Beatz’, but don’t let that put you off)

Creased:

• Death Race (the trailer for Jason Statham’s update makes the movie look sub-Van Damme circa early 1990s)
• ‘Island Crush’ (an alcoholic fruit drink drenched in sugar. Like drinking toothpaste mixed with throat pastilles)
• The Lost Boys 2: The Tribe (or ‘twibe’ as that fella off Shipwrecked would say. We don’t need a sequel, not even to laugh at)
• Free IQ tests online (ever taken one of these? That proves you’re an idiot)
• The Bourne Conspiracy game (‘This is fun. Oh, I blinked and didn’t press that button to jump over the wall. Hang on a sec; I’m not even Matt Damon!’)