It looked like the latest instalment of the Harry Potter films was going to stay at the top of the box office chart ’til the new year kicked in, but it limped off like a weary magician after a failed children’s party.

Instead, the top five is a Harry Potter free zone with Tron landing the Christmas number one (read our review here or you’ll die) spot, which shows that people don’t want substance at this time of year.

They want 3D aerobee!

And so, CGIfests feature heavily in the Christmas box office with Tron rubbing shoulders with Yogi Bear and the hippie-dippy cod-Christian fable of The Chronicles of Narnia.

Anyway, we don’t want to say too much about the films because… well… we have to write about them in the chart run-down and we’re already running out of words.

We’ve been writing words all year and nearly maxed out.

You’ve noticed right?

1. Huzzah! The daydreams of Pacman finally get realised with some amazing graphics and a complete absence of story (okay, there is some story, but no-one can be bothered with that can they?). Yep, Tron Legacy is nerd eye-candy of the highest order and cementing our need for real life speeder bike things. $43,600,000

2. Yogi Bear is, despite what he claims, one of the stupidest bears around. Everyone knows damn well that Boo-Boo is the brains in the outfit. A recent viral video saw Yogi getting his brains blown out by a money hungry Boo-Boo, which is totally not how this film rolls. $16,705,000

3. Hark! The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is, without doubt, one of the longest film titles of the last decade. There’s talking lions and all that shit. $12,400,000

4. The Fighter sees a welterweight boxer scrotebag called Dicky Eklund plunging into the cheery world of crack addiction, high violence and prison. Mark Walberg and Christian Bale take their tops off. Merry Christmas. $12,200,000

5. The Tourist is a thriller film directed by the hilariously named Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. The main draw it seems is that it gives people the chance to stare at Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, thereby imagining what they might look like when they have sex with each other. $8,700,000

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It goes without saying that, this week… just like last week… and probably next week, the new Harry Potter film is topping the box office chart. Even if Deathly Hallows Part 1 was seven hours of Daniel Radcliffe staring into a fridge wondering what to eat, it’d still top the chart.

That’s not to say the new flick is rubbish. We gave it a rather positive review. Yes, yes. Calm down. We do actually like some stuff y’know?

But this weekend, a lot of people turned up at the cinema to watch all manner of crap.

Crap? Yeah, our good mood didn’t last long. Fact is, one of the new entries this week was Burlesque – a film which stars Cher and Christina Aguilera and is largely being treated like its the The New Showgirls. This of course, means it’ll be a crock of poo, and invariably, end up a future DVD classic to watch while drunk with chums.

After all, that’s what Showgirls is for isn’t it? The most appalling acting and one of the most grotesque sex-scenes anyone will ever see, anywhere, ever.

That includes illegal bongo films where people actually die.

1. Yep, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 is still sitting pretty at the top of the charts this week and it doesn’t look like it’ll be moving any time soon. $50,345,000

2. Tangled is the latest picture from Walt Disney. It’s a hideously cutesy musical which feels a little outdated these days. However, there’s always an appetite for hokey crud like this. Yes, even if it features Mandy Moore. Basically, it is Rapunzel. Apparently, its the most expensive animated film ever made, with a budget of $260 million. Thus far, it has recouped $49,100,000

3. Megamind. Animation. Blue heads. Will Ferrell. Whatever. You know the drill. We’re sick of writing about it now. It’s a popular film though. Here’s an amount of money to justify it or something. $12,850,000

4. Burlesque. High camp with disappointing reviews. But what do us critics know anyway? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. $11,800,000

5. Unstoppable is a very predictable film and, as well you know, sometimes, nothing hits the spot like a predictable thriller-action film. $11,750,000

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Like the music charts, cinema has a race for the Christmas number one spot. For some reason, people want to go to the cinema in the most miserable of weather. Honestly, you’d be better off staying inside.

However, Harry Potter & Co have timed their run to perfection to try and bag the glory of being the most watched film at the end of 2010.

Handy really, because the film will be fresh in everyone’s mind when they’re compiling their Films Of The Year lists.

You’ll be completely unsurprised at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sitting pretty at the top of the weekend’s box office charts.

It’s one of those franchises that get people really excited. We reckon that, like mental Star Wars fans, there’s been people who have watched a screening, left the cinema, only to queue up and watch it all over again. They’ll do this over and over ’til they need a poo or a shower or something.

But there’s another new entry in the top 5 too.

1. Little wizard man (well, he’s not a boy any more, is he?) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 splashes straight into the deep end of the top spot this weekend, trouncing everything else in sight. There’s not much hope of anything moving it from this lofty position before the year is out either. $125,120,000

2. Pixar’s Megamind continues to be very popular and as it has been on the box office chart for a number of weeks, we’ve completely run out of things to say about it. $16,175,000

3. Unstoppable? The runaway train came down the track and she blew, the runaway train came down the track and she blew, the runaway train came down the track, her whistle wide and her throttle back, and she blew, blew, blew, blew, blew. $13,100,000

4. Due Date You know the one right? Robert Downey Jnr and a man who needs to see a baby coming out of his wife? It’s been in the box office chart for a while now, so it must be doing something right. $9,150,000

5. The Next Three Days sees a woman (played by Elizabeth Banks) accused of murder. She didn’t do anything though. This of course, affects the relationship with her professor husband (played Russell Crowe). Anyway, trying to save her from a life of prison, nasty criminal sort (played by Liam Neeson) gets involved. And so, a caper to spring someone out of jail begins. $6,750,000

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Oh look! The cinema, as a whole, is still in business. Yep. People still want to go and sit in a darkened room with a bunch of grazing idiots, staring at a screen that actually reduces your intelligence and gives your eyes cataracts.

It’s probably the greatest service that the movies has really because, for every diminished bit of vision and braincell lost, you walk out into that big horrible world and notice one less disgusting thing about it.

And this weekend, we’ve got a bright blue scalp to thank.Yes indeed.

Everyone is still obsessing about an animation, which of course, was always going to do well in the build-up to Christmas. For some reason, humans don’t like staring at real actors around the festive period because it reminds them of mundane things like bills and shoe repair.

Animated characters are fanciful and daft.

1. Has previously alluded to, Megamind still tops the box office charts. It’s the flighty tale about a blue man being a baddie and then, changing his mind and becoming a goodie. Possibly. We can’t remember. Popular culture has eroded our brains so badly that we can’t remember anything. There’s a woman prompting us with thoughts while poking at us with a broom handle. $30,055,000

2. Unstoppable is clearly, the entirely stoppable film (as it lands at number two in the chart) which is an action thriller thing which stars Denzel Washington and Chris Pine. For our ticket stub, we get the thrilling story of a runaway train and two men trying to stop it… and she blew, blew, blew, blew, blew. $23,500,000

3. Due Date is an odd couple tale and a child gets punched in the face or something. $15,530,000

4. You know what we need? We need a film that makes us all frightened into thinking that we’re being invaded by aliens. That’s right. Aliens. Aliens who want to wage war and vaporise our legs clean off our bodies. And so, we get Skyline which is shamelessly a first parter, please watch the sequel or someone gets killed in a Hollywood parking lot. $11,678,000

5. Morning Glory is the film where Harrison Ford tries his hand at comedy. Properly we mean. Not like the funny asides in the Indiana Jones films. It also stars Diane Keaton and Jeff Goldblum, which essentially means its a film for your mum and dad to have a wank over. $9,625,000

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Are you lot still going to the cinema to watch films? We don’t even know why we asked that because, it is staggeringly obvious that you are. That’s why we’re writing about new films that are coming out and the like.

The thing is, when you start articles about charts and the like, you have to pad it out with a bit of fluff in an attempt to get you to click over the jump and read the meat of the articles.

Of course, these post-modern intros which look like its poking fun at the format, when in fact, it isn’t, don’t help matters at all. However, it does meet the word-count required, so we can now stop this farce and get on with telling you what landed in this week’s cinema chart and where.

So. Right then.

Enough of that.

Cinema charts. Yes. What topped the chart? Well, it’s the tale of supervillains with blue heads and Robert Downey Jnr starring in a comedy thing which we’re sure is very hilarious.

1. Megamind crash landed at the top of the box office charts this weekend, showing that the world still has a huge appetite for whatever DreamWorks Animation chuck our way. This new flick features the voices of Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Jonah Hill, David Cross and Brad Pitt and sees a baddie turning good, a goodie turning bad and… well… pratfalls ensue. $47,650,000

2. Robert Downey Jnr stars in Due Date which is all very funny. Har har har. We see highly-strung father-to-be Peter Highman hitching a ride with aspiring actor Ethan Tremblay, which gives us the whole odd-couple thing of flighty swine meets stressed out square, so they can bicker and ultimately grow close to each other. WILL THEY MAKE IT TO THE BIRTH ON TIME? WILL THE DAD ONE NAME THE CHILD AFTER THE ACTOR ONE? PROBABLY! $33,500,000

3. The film For Colored Girls is based on a play with a long and silly name – Ntozake Shange’s ‘For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.’ That would look rubbish on a film poster. Anyway, the play featured only 7 women known by colors performing a collection of 20 poems, and the movie has given each of the 20 characters names. Each of the poems deal with issues that impact women. It’s thought stirring stuff so fans of bubblegum romcoms, look away now. $20,100,000

4. Oh look! Red is still in the chart! That’s nice for Bruce Willis isn’t it? $8,858,000

5. Saw 3D – the film that lets you vomit in three glorious dimensions. Strong performer since it came out and likely to look a bit rubbish if you watch it on a non 3D television set. So there. $8,200,000

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With Halloween on the way, everyone seems to be in the business of wanting to scare all the poo-poo out of their bums, leaving the people who subcontract cleaners to our megaplexes rolling in money.

Of course, the mark of a successful scary movie is how much money is frightened out of our collective wallets and in through the tills.

And this weekend, Paranormal Activity 2 is the thing frightening your pennies into submission, landing at number on the weekend box office charts.

Yes indeed! You’re all getting the willies (not the kind you might see at a very different type of cinema) for kicks and then going home to have awful, awful nightmares about it.

That, or you’re going and tutting all the way through the film and then coming home to write nasty reviews on a forum or personal blog. Well done you. You’re definitely our kind of person.

Anyway, let us peer at the chart with an amount of cash stuck on the end.

1. As we mentioned, Paranormal Activity 2 tops the charts and, if you haven’t seen it or don’t know the set-up, it’s about a family who think that people keep breaking into their house. That’s not very scary is it? Well, it is if you consider that they set up security cameras around their home, only to realize that some really dark shit is going down. BOO ETC $41,500,000

2. WOOOOO! WOOOOHOOHOO! Poo! Hurting yourself! MORE POO! Yes indeed, Jackass 3-D continues to do well which probably means that snobby movie type are all sat around worrying about the death of cinema. One word to that lot – HA HA. Oh. That’s two. $87,147,000

3. Red shows how very, very old Bruce Wills looks in an adaptation of a comic book thing. Everyone likes making films of comics at the minute, so hecklerspray looks forward to someone putting the story of Hotshot Hamish on the silver screen. $43,483,000

4. What’s this? Hereafter is a drama about some American, a French journalist and a London school boy. No, they don’t walk into a pub to set up a punchline, but rather, are all touched by death in different ways. Okay? Here’s the money. $12,320,000

5. The Social Network invites you to buy a sheep on Farmville or whatever the shit this film is about. $72,931,000

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Unfathomably, there’s people out there still attending the cinema. You just can’t wait a couple of months to watch a film in the comfort of your own home, where there are less idiots and the chance to pause proceedings so you can urinate freely without hurry.

That said, film makers have got wise to this and started making everything in 3D so you have to go to the bloody picture houses.

Avatar gave us the chance to see blue people having sex with their ponytails and now, the latest smash, Jackass give you the chance to watching someone having a shit in three glorious dimensions!

Yes indeed. You disgusting excuses for humans have gone to the cinema in droves to watch a group of grown-ups vomiting ’til their rings quiver and indulge in a variety of stunts that quite frankly, would make a medieval court jester blush.

Still, it is nowhere near as depressing as the thought of watching a film based around Facebook which is essentially a lesson in watching geeks get laid and argue with each other about HTML.

Whatever. Here’s what the people of America have been watching complete with arbitrary sums of money tacked on the end.

1. Yessir! It’s a scatfest with Jackass 3-D. Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O and them others all get together to attach things to themselves and fall over LOADS like a skidmarked version of Total Wipeout all over the course of a couple of hours. To be honest, it’s barely a film if the narrative is purely sniggering at pratfalls. Still, who cares right? $50,000,000

2. Red is an action-comedy thing based on a limited issue comic book. The film stars a very old looking Bruce Willis and some other actors. Red is a rubbish name for a film isn’t it? Well, you’ll be glad to learn that it means ‘retired, extremely dangerous’. Probably includes guns. $22,500,000

3. Oh look! The Social Network is about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook! And… uh… $63,119,000

4. So what is Secretariat about? Well, it’s a Disney film about the life of Secretariat, the 1973 race horse winner of the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing. Can we assume that this horse talks like Mister Ed and can fly or something? Of course not, this is some achingly sentimental piece of fluff starring John Malkovich with his weird staring eyes. $27,517,000

5. Is Life as We Know It based on REO Speedwagon’s 12th LP? Is it bollocks. It’s a film that stars the utterly charmless Katherine Heigl in some odd-couple rubbish where two people hate each other and then probably end up quite liking each other. Involves a baby and a car-crash. $28,865,000

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By God the cinema looks like a grim place to be at the moment. There’s a full-on fervour for the type of film that was churned out in the ’80s. Yep. The yuppies are back and there’s movies being made about them.

Last weekend, one of the original highflyers returned and crash landed at the top spot. Gordon Gekko from Wall Street arrive with the sequel and now, well, we’ve got the newest kind of go-getter with Yupster, Mark Zuckerberg.

Unfathomably, someone saw fit to make a film about him and Facebook. Yes. A film about a bloody website.

1. Sitting at the top of the movie charts like a gargoyle is The Social Network, which is a film about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The film is the typical schlop of the rise to power, the acquiring of enemies, huge parties and swimming pools filled with women and, of course, people smashing their fists against tables and shouting a lot. Also stars Justin Timberlake. Have a series of numbers which denote the amount of money spent by people wondering how you go about making a film of a website – $23,000,000

2. Talking owls play out unimportant stuff blown way out of proportion in the fantasy romp, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. Basically, this is filling a hole for those too breathless to wait for the new Harry Potter films. It earned this amount of money $10,855,000

3. Michael Douglas is astonishingly ill, so we can’t make any jokes about him because that would be plain nasty. We can, however, not that his character in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is a complete shit. $10,100,000

4. The Town continues to be popular among cinema-goers and Ben Affleck must be thrilled to bits. Basically, he’s did absolutely everything in this film. He played every single role, shot every frame and forged his phlegm into the reels which are played in the cinema halls. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY TRUE. $10,000,000

5. Still hanging around the top 5 is Easy A, which is a kooky comedy thing about people’s virginity. That’s because people’s virginity is funny, right? $7,000,000

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When will this dreadful ’80s revival piss-off? Seriously. Bad hi-tops, lurid florescent Ray Ban copies, androgynous synthpop, gym memberships, Soda Streams and bloody cabin boy shoes are rampant across the world. It’s like being stuck inside Simon Le Bon’s wardrobe with a gun and no bullets.

The best you can hope for is that you’ll bleed to death after beating yourself about the head.

But the fascination with all things ’80s and the unashamed greed it promoted continues apace… highlighted of course, by the re-emergence of Gordon Gekko in the latest Wall Street film, which has topped the box office charts.

1. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps or Wall Street 2 if you prefer saw the 300-year-old Michael Douglas hauling his wrinkled genitals off his Welsh child-bride to bring us the sordid tale of finance in a film that looks like rolling CNN news. Oliver Stone is on hand to direct, which obviously means that there’ll be a load of cinematic trickery employed to try and paste over the cracks of a film full of holes. A well-timed though as everyone in the world hates bankers right now. $19,000,000

2. Oh look! It’s a stupid talking animals film! Yep, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole Soren sees a young barn owl getting kidnapped by some other owls. Because that’s what owls do. These nasty, baddie owls kidnap orphaned owlets into brainwashed idiot soldiers. Then, the hippies intervene from Ga’Hoole or something and it becomes one of those irritating Wind in the Willows style scraps of The Noble against The Grotty. $16,335,000

3. The Town is, quite possibly, the most vague film title in history. It’s almost as beige as Tesco Value foundation. Yet, despite this, it’s been an immensely popular film which was written by, directed by, acted by, sung by, danced long with, smear tested by, tranquilised by, mimed along to and by and edited by Ben Affleck. Oh, isn’t he stupidly talented! $16,030,000

4. Oooh! She’s a slag! A proper, dirty… well… pretend slag! Or something. Ha. Ha. Ha. Easy A continues to be watched by people daft enough to go to the cinema amongst other people, also daft enough to want to sit in a dark room filled with the disgusting munching noises and people slobbering down each other’s neck on the back row. $10,700,000

5. You Again sees Marni (Kristen Bell) as the new Vice President of a large PR agency which means we’re supposed to hate her. She goes home for a wedding and discovers that someone she used to hate is about and yadda yadda yadda. Sigourney Weaver and Jamie Lee Curtis turn up to settle some scores too, all the while, the claws come out more frequently and everyone wonders why the bothered staying alive long enough to put up with other people. Here is a sum of money. $8,300,000

Well hello! If it isn’t the return of Ben Affleck! What’s he been up to then? Well, he’s been the Man About Town and Smokin’ Aces. He’s enjoyed the Company of Men and… we’re tiring of crowbarring film titles into sentences.

Basically, Affleck is back with a new film which everyone seems to like. He’s not only acting in it, but he’s also written the bloody thing AND directed it too. Three wages at once is a nice little number indeed! Oh, it’s called The Town.

And so, with a load of new films coming out in various stinking cinemas, which ones have been watched more than others?

Is the new Resident Evil still getting the mop out on everyone else?

1. Action crime thrilling thingy, The Town, is based on Chuck Hogan’s novel Prince of Thieves. Chuck Hogan, of course, is the result of a genetic accident that spliced Chuck Norris and Hulk Hogan together to make the world’s hardest and silliest looking man.  The film is set in Boston, Massachusetts where everyone has weird accents. The film features nun outfits and guns… a bit like Nuns On The Run… but not really. (Yes really). $23,800,000

2. Easy A is a hilarious look a some clean-cut kid talking about how she lost her virginity to a gay man! THEN THEY GET BULLIED! HILARIOUS! Then, loads more gay boys ask if they can pretend that they have had sex with her as well, leaving everyone to think she’s some slag or something. She makes money and her good reputation is in pieces. $18,200,000

3. Look! It’s Devil (also known as The Night Chronicles: Devil) which unsurprisingly, is a supernatural thriller rather than a documentary about tiny handheld vacuum cleaners. Of course, this being a supernatural thriller, it means that loads of people die and cry and stand around in dimly lit places wondering what the shitting hell is going on. Of course, the Catholics get involved. $12,584,000

4. Last week’s big hitter Resident Evil: Afterlife falls to number four in the charts, suggesting that, really, no-one is too arsed about this film. So there. Stars thingy and whatsit. $10,100,000

5. Aaah… here we go… a CGI 3D thing called Alpha and Omega which sees some wolves or something pissing about like they’re humans. They are voiced by real life humans Justin Long, Hayden Panettiere, Dennis Hopper, Danny Glover and Christina Ricci. It’s probably like the Lion King. $9,200,000

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Quite why anyone goes to the cinema is beyond us. It’s a stupid place to go to. They play rubbish music in the foyer and they always smell like a mixture of detergent and ageing offal rotating in hotdogs that have developed a thin film of grease and bluebottle droppings.

Yet still, people the world over appear in their droves to cackle about the imagined ‘cinema experience.’

And this weekend, royally kicking the arse of everything else was a computer game played out on the silver screen as Resident Evil: Afterlife showed the makers of the terrible Street Fighter movie how it really should be done.

1. The top of the pile, and by some distance, is Resident Evil: Afterlife. It’s all in 3D and features stuff getting beaten up and lots of dramatic panting. It’s all ludicrous action packed capery, which of course, is perfect for the cinema because the sheer volume of the film itself can cover up the noise of teenagers slobbering over each other in the back row and the fat would-be movie critic gorging on handfuls of cheese covered crisps. $27,700,000

2. The film Takers once had the slightly interesting title of Bone Deep, but alas, the makers wanted to have something even more vague. This crime caper features an ensemble cast that includes more wooden acting than a Punch & Judy convention. We have Matt Dillon, Chris Brown, T.I., Hayden Christensen and a bunch of other people who have CVs that say “GOOD AT LOOKING MOODILY INTO CAMERA’ on them, with the exception of Chris Brown who has “LOL” in comic sans printed out 40 times. Here is a number. $6,100,000

3. George Clooney takes his well designed head into a film called The American. He even plays someone with a really American sounding name – Jack. Here, he raises one eyebrow and falls for a girl in an Italian village and hopes that no-one notices that really, all Clooney is, is an American version of Roger Moore. Directed by Anton Corbijn and shit. $5,896,000

4. Machete looks like a really silly b-movie and is an expansion of the fake trailer that was released together with Rodriguez’ and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse. Danny Trejo gets his first lead role, supported by Cheech Marin, Jeff Fahey, Michelle Rodriguez, Steven Seagal, Lindsay Lohan, Don Johnson, Jessica Alba, and Robert De Niro. Silly, silly, silly. Silly, for the record, isn’t always a bad thing. $4,200,000

5. Here, we find Drew Barrymore once more trying to revive the romantic comedy in Going the Distance. Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, but boy and girl have stupid jobs that spoil everything. Barrymore plays a writer that doesn’t spend all day picking food from her rolls of fat, sobbing uncontrollably on the sofa living on a diet of cereal, straight from the box. $3,835,000

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We… we don’t know how to say this. It seems so alien to us. So unusual. We’re scared and confused.

So we’ll just say it. It’s Lindsay Lohan. She’s made a successful film. We know. Weird, isn’t, it? Lindsay Lohan made a film that people willingly gave up some of their money to see. Bizarre, isn’t it? Lindsay Lohan. Who knew?

Fortunately Lindsay Lohan hasn’t become a total success, because that’d be berserk. But her film Machete has made the weekend box office top five, almost beating the new George Clooney film The American. But that hardly matters. Lindsay Lohan is a success again. And you know what that means? COCKTAILS! US weekend box office top five after the jump…

1 - The American (Starring George Clooney, so presumably its full title is The American Who Can’t Go More Than Five Seconds Without Advertising Coffee Or Booze Wherever He Goes) $12,968,000

3 - Takers (We haven’t seen Takers, but it is a Chris Brown film so presumably it’s about a bank robber who dresses up in stupid bowties and punches women in the mouth a lot. That would certainly make sense) $11,450,000

1 - Machete (So Machete started off as a joke trailer, and then it got turned into a real film. With that in mind, we can’t wait for the feature-length theatrical debut of the Mary Poppins horror film) $11,300,000

4 - The Last Exorcism (Foolish Eli Roth. No matter how successful it is, you can’t ever make a sequel to a film called The Last Exorcism. Quickly, change the title to Possibly But Probably Not The Last Exorcism At All Really, Eli, while you still have the chance) $7,645,000

5 - Going The Distance (A film that Drew Barrymore made with a man who she used to be romantically involved with but isn’t any more, just like Freddy Got Fingered. Although, that said, nobody swings a baby around their head by its umbilical cord in Going The Distance. Whether this makes it a better or worse film is up to you) $6,885,000

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Sylvester Stallone is back. And Dolph Lundgren is back. And Jet Li is back. And Jason Statham is back, so it’s not all good news.

But they’re back. And it’s all thanks to The Expendables, the film where all the aforementioned action stars run around and shoot things and flex their muscles and reminisce about the old days and complain about young people and take cod liver oil capsules and worry that their children never call and make sure the batteries on their Saga SOS alarms are charged up and grimly wait for the cold hand of death, is the weekend box office number one.

It just goes to show that age ain’t nothing but a number. A really big number, admittedly, and one that that directly corresponds to gradual loss of physical and cognitive ability, but whatever. Full US weekend box office top five after the jump…

1 – The Expendables (We can’t wait for The Expendables 2, where Sylvester Stallone and friends are even older and have to travel around in a fleet of armoured mobility scooters. And The Expendables 3, where they’re bedbound. And The Expendables 4, starring several piles of dust) $35,030,000

2 - Eat Pray Love (A film where Julia Roberts goes to India and samples the cuisine. If our experiences have been anything to go by, the film would have been better off titled Eat Puke Shit) $23,700,000

3 - The Other Guys (Sportsmen, news reporters, racing drivers, actors and now policemen – Will Ferrell can turn his hand to making films about hysterical manchildren from any profession in the world. We’re especially looking forward to his film about the hilarious keycutter who also happens to be a hysterical manchild) $18,000,000

4 - Inception (Inception just gets cleverer and clever. Last week it emerged that if you speed the soundtrack up and play it backwards, you get a pitch-perfect version of Yes Sir I Can Boogie by Baccara. Incredible) $11,370,000

5 - Scott Pilgrim Vs The World (A disappointing weekend box office debut for a film that literally some people are calling ‘quite good, but not as good as I expected to be honest’. A shame) $10,525,000

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Inception has topped the weekend box office for so long that we were starting to wonder if anything could beat it.

But something has. A film has come along and surpassed Inception and its tricksy time structures, impeccable direction and impressive refusal to pander to its audience. But what incredible, Inception-topping masterpiece is this?

Why, it’s The Other Guys – the film where Will Ferrell pulls some funny faces and Mark Wahlberg plays a clueless beefhead. Admittedly we’ve just described every film that Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg have ever starred in, but shut up. The Other Guys is number one, so it’s objectively a better film than Inception. Full US weekend box office top five after the jump…

1 - The Other Guys (The film where Will Ferrell plays a hilariously uptight man-child. No, not that Will Ferrell film. Or that Will Ferrell film. Or that Will Ferrell film. Or that Will Ferrell film. Or that Will Ferrell film. Or that Will Ferrell film. Or that Will Ferrell film. It’s a new Will Ferrell film) $35,600,000

2 - Inception (Forever to be known as the film that would still be top of the weekend box office if only Leonardo DiCaprio was better at playing hilariously uptight man-children. For shame) $18,600,000

3 - Step Up 3D (Almost identical to that StreetDance 3D film from a couple of months ago, but probably a thousand times better because it hasn’t got that hat-wearing dimbo from Britain’s Got Talent in it) $15,500,00

4 - Salt (The film that asks “WHO IS SALT?” and then answers it with “Oh, fuck knows. Probably a spy or something. Nobody actually cares about any of this, do they?“) $11,100,000

5 - Dinner For Schmucks (Sadly not even the funniest Paul Rudd film of the summer, thanks to this legitimately masterful piece of cinema) $10,500,000

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Yes, alright, Inception is quite good. Yes, people are watching it more than once to work it all out.

But seriously. How many times does it take? Inception is now enjoying its third week at the top of the box office, with many of the receipts coming from repeat viewings. So, look, let’s save you some money – and if you haven’t watched Inception yet, don’t keep reading – it was all a dream. The ending was a dream. A dream within a dream within a dream. No, wait, a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream. No, hang on, a dream within a… oh, bugger it all to hell. We’ll have to go and watch it again too now.

Full Inception-heavy US weekend box office top five after the jump…

1 - Inception (Apparently spinning tops are going to be the big must-have toy this Christmas. In shit houses that can’t afford PlayStations) $27,520,000

2 - Dinner For Schmucks (Presumably Come Dine With Me: The Motion Picture. We haven’t been able to check otherwise) $23,300,000

3 - Salt (Now officially the best ever film about some salt since 1976′s Sodium-Based Products Of Our Time: NaHCO₃ – Na₂S₂O₃ · 5H₂O. So well done for that) $19,250,000

4 - Despicable Me (No, still nothing to say about this. Move along) $15,543,000

5 - Cats & Dogs: The Revenge Of Kitty Galore (Who knew that the unwanted sequel to a forgotten, underperforming animal-based comedy from nine years ago would fare so badly at the weekend box office? What’s that? Everyone? Oh) $12,525,000

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