Top 10 Films At The Box Office

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" ruled the box office for the second week and "Guardians of the Galaxy" was runner-up in its third week, leaving three very different new films - "Let's Be Cops," "The Expendables 3" and "The Giver" - fighting for the remaining spots in the top five. The combined box-office appeal of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Wesley Snipes, Jason Statham, Antonio Banderas, Jet Li and many more action stars wasn't enough to get audiences out in the same numbers. With "Divergent" opening earlier this year to more than $54 million and the next installment of the "Hunger Games" franchise waiting in the wings, the results for "The Giver" could add fuel to concerns that audiences can take only so many young-adult novel adaptations. The visual effects are solid, especially the computer-generated turtles, who are believable as flesh-and-blood characters. A willing cast playing stupid-cool characters, video-game-friendly action beats and a touch of heart make this a rare pleasant surprise in a summer that has sorely lacked them. The laughs are loud, lewd and low in "Let's Be Cops, " a spoof of cop "buddy pictures" that is pretty much the definition of "an August comedy." "The Expendables 3" begins with a violent gun battle, something involving Sylvester Stallone flying a helicopter and Dolph Lundgren shooting at a passenger train with a machine gun. The story of an Indian family that relocates to Europe and opens a restaurant in rural France, this is an appealing film about different food cultures, with fine performances by Helen Mirren (as a formidable French restaurateur), the humane and likable Om Puri (as the Indian patriarch) and Manish Dayal, as a young cook with talent. Like some demented combination of "Taken" and "Tree of Life," this latest from Luc Besson is a full-out action movie, set against a background of international crime, as well as an investigation into the nature of human existence. Scarlett Johansson plays a woman who is forced to become a drug mule and ends up - as a result of drugs seeping into her system - using an enormous portion of her cerebral capacity to become a dangerous genius. Five films and eight years into the unlikeliest of film franchises, a series that has changed characters, changed locations and changed studios, with none of the movies anywhere near being a blockbuster, you really do wonder why every so often - usually in the dog days of summer - "Step Up" returns. The best that can be said for "Step V" is that it has some sparkling moments of choreography, clever gimmicks as themes for the dance-offs and lovely costumes.