Redbox, the Blu-ray and DVD kiosk renter, announced with a little fanfare their movies that were rented the most, by genre, during the course of last year. You will notice that most of the popular rentals were not award winners or box office stand outs.

Here are the results announced via a 5-minute video presentation by Redbox:

•Most Rented Action Movie: Green Hornet
•Most Rented Family Movie: Rango
•Most Rented Horror Movie: Insidious
•Most Rented Comedy Movie: Just Go With It
•Most Rented Drama Movie: The Tourist

Looking at the Redbox’s tally for individuals, we start with Natalie Portman who is honored with the most-rented actress of 2011, due to Black Swan, Your Highness, No Strings Attached and Thor.

Your Highness

Next is Kevin James who took the praise as lifetime achievement award for entertaining Redbox users year-after-year. His Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009) is the fastest Redbox DVD to reach the one millionth mark.

Thus, it’s hard for me to believe, the most rented Redbox film of 2011 was Just Go With It. The silly comedy stars Adam Sandler and Jennifer Anniston. Anniston was even honored with a bonus award for her other comedy role as the sex-crazed dentist in the dark-comedy Horrible Bosses.

Just Go With It

You may be asking yourself why relatively unsuccessful box office movies, like Green Hornet, are so popular at Redbox. It’s easy to surmise that movie goers wait for the box office duds to arrive on the disc rental market to rent them. If you do the math, box office money makers stay in the theaters longer, such as Fast Five, Kung Fu Panda 2, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and their Blu-ray and DVDs counter-parts are purchased by movie goers – instead of rented — whereas less-popular movies are rented via kiosks or Netflix.

The Redbox results indicate the older releases have better records because titles like Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean, arrived closer to the end of the year. Still, not a single one of the award winners takes a position on the current Redbox Top 20.

It will be interesting to watch Redbox during 2012 because from the looks of it, see the above graphic, the kiosk movie renter is sure to expand even more.

Limitless stayed afloat over the weekend, nailing the top position at the box office. The other movies played do-si-do in the top five positions.  It look like Bradley Cooper can carry a movie, and we was smart enough to bring Robert De Niro on board.

Rango came in second by crawling up and over Paul and Battle: Los Angeles. Battle: Los Angeles held its place in third by defeating The Lincoln Lawyer, which ended up in fourth and Paul, who is a much calmer alien than the one in Battle, ended up in fifth.

Obviously the top five movies changed quite a bit from Friday’s box office. The final five in the top ten seemed to stay the same with Red Riding Hood holding on to sixth place and Hall Pass rounding out the top ten.

1. Limitless
$19,000,000

2. Rango
$15,300,000

3. Battle: Los Angeles
$14,600,000

4. The Lincoln Lawyer
$13,400,000

5.  Paul
$13,200,000

6.  Red Riding Hood
$7,300,000

7. The Adjustment Bureau
$5,900,000

8.  Mars Needs Moms
$5,300,000

9.  Beastly
$3,300,000

10. Hall Pass
$2,600,000

Johnny Depp voice stars in Rango, the new animated movie from Paramount. The new movie took a strong hold of the box office on Friday and never let go. Another new movie, The Adjustment Bureau, starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt held onto its second place with Beastly, a new release as well, stayed at third place. Then, Hall Pass earned fourth place with Gnomeo and Juliet taking over fifth place.

The top three movies at the box office are all new releases and very different genres. Rango is geared toward the family audience. The Adjustment Bureau is more for the mature audiences, and Beastly is geared toward teenagers.

Results:

1. Rango
$38,000,000

2. The Adjustment Bureau
$20,900,000

3. Beastly
$10,100,000

4. Hall Pass
$9,000,000

5. Gnomeo and Juliet
$6,900,000

6. Unknown
$6,600,000

7. Just Go With It
$6,500,000

8. The King’s Speech
$6,500,000

9. I Am Number Four
$5,700,000

10. Justin Bieber: Never Say Never
$4,300,000

Johnny Depp voice stars in Rango, the new animated movie from Paramount. The new movie took the top spot at Friday’s box office earning around $9.5 million.

Matt Damon and Emily Blunt starrer The Adjustment Bureau trailed behind Rango bringing in about $6.7 million. Next in line was Beastly, which I haven’t heard too much about lately, but stars Vanessa Hudgens and Alex Pettfy, is also a new release, grabbed about $3.5 million. Then, good-old Hall Pass earned about $2.7 million with Just Go With It rounding out the top five at about $1.9 million.

On the lower rungs of the box office, Unknown earned about $1.8 million with Academy Award winner The King’s Speech and I Am Number 4 both earned about $1.6 million. Disney’s 3D movie Gnomeo and Juliet, last week’s favorite, collected about $1.5 million. Another new release Take Me Home Tonight earned about $1.2 million ended the top ten.

The thing you’ll have to remember about Rango, which is today’s review target, is that it combines so many disparate concepts together that, alone, are usually worthwhile, but when you put them together, you get a much larger and much more impressive whole than this has any real right to be.

Rango follows a chameleon who, formerly, lived in a terrarium, and spent a lot of time blending in. But when events find him in the middle of the Mojave Desert, Rango’s going to have to do a lot more blending in than even he thought possible. Landing in the sleepy desert town of Dirt, he invents a rough-and-tumble persona (featuring a long and rambling diatribe explaining how he managed to kill seven outlaws with just one bullet) named Rango, he quickly becomes the town’s hero after, largely accidentally, killing a hawk. It doesn’t take the townsfolk long to make him the new Sheriff, but soon, Rango discovers a whole lot of trouble waiting just under the surface.

Like I said above, there are a lot of dissimilar elements here. First off, this is a Western. That by itself is rare in theaters any more–seeing more than three Westerns in a year any more is a banner year. Second, it’s a cartoon. A Western is rare enough…an animated Western? Now that’s something to pay attention to. Now reunite fully three folks from the Pirates of the Caribbean series (director Gore Verbinski, Jack Sparrow himself Johnny Depp, and Davy Jones, or Bill Nighy) and put them all together.

Don’t light a match anywhere near that pot. In fact, it’s best if you don’t even imagine fire in the same room with that kind of mixture.

While we all know that the whole is not always greater than the sum of its parts, this is just that. Jammed to the gills with parody, heaps of laughs, and good old fashioned gunslinging violence, Rango has got a lot going for it. Watch for a particularly clever encounter involving the “Spirit of the West”–I won’t spoiler it, but you’d do well to not be drinking anything after just after Rango crosses the road on the backs of several pillbugs. Trust me on this.

Would I take the kids to this one? No, probably not. There’s also a heaping helping of mild obscenities going on here, and if the kids weren’t terrified of snakes before, they will be once they get a good look at main villain Rattlesnake Jake, a monstrous diamondback rattler with a Gatling gun for a rattle, voice by, as above, former Davy Jones Bill Nighy. That’s a guaranteed recipe for an incredible movie villain, and Nighy playing the heavy is, once again, a welcome sight.

But still! Laughs aplenty, incredible action, top-notch characters and direction, there is virtually nothing to not like about this highly entertaining romp. Success was pretty much guaranteed just from the spec sheet, so it’s not going to surprise anyone at all that this is good stuff. Even the music is fun, with Los Lobos clearly channelling Dick Dale for the end song.

How good? Good enough for the Screenhead Ten Scale to cheerfully hand over a ten out of ten to an animated Western that really shouldn’t have been this good, but was.

Rango is directed by Gore Verbinski, who also directed the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies. The voices for the reptiles and animals are Johnny Depp, Bill Nighy, Timothy Olyphant, Alfred Molina, Ned Beatty, Abigail Breslin and Isla Fisher.

The clip conveys the idea that the movie is fun. What do you think?

The movie opens March 4, 2011.

If you can’t wait until Sunday, here is the Rango TV Spot that will air during the Super Bowl. Several other TV spots for movies will air as well. Watching the Super Bowl commercials is some times more fun than watching the football game. The only problem with these unique commercials, which cost millions of dollars to air and are a lot of fun to watch during the Super Bowl, is figuring out when to take a bathroom break.

The movie is about a chameleon that finds himself in a Western town beleaguered by bandits and is forced to wear the badge and protect the town.

Directed by Gore Verbinski, the animated feature includes the voices of Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Bill Nighy and Alfred Molina.

The movie opens in theaters March 4, 2011.

Rango’s theme song by Los Lobos sounds a lot like Rawhide. I like the mariachi theme and trumpet; it adds a lot to the overall western feel of the movie.

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Rango is beginning to make sense now that I have seen the behind-the-scenes featurette. However, it is surreal and takes some getting used to because of all these CGI characters.  With that in mind, the movie is directed by Gore Verbinski, who also directed the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  The voices for the reptiles and animals are Johnny Depp, Bill Nighy, Timothy Olyphant, Alfred Molina, Ned Beatty, Abigail Breslin and Isla Fisher.

The movie opens March 4, 2011.

Rango is beginning to make sense now that I have seen this full-length trailer. However, it is surreal and takes some getting used to because of all these CGI reptiles and animals as characters.  I will rely on my daughter, who knows about reptiles and animals, because she goes to Zoo Camp every summer. She will be able to tell me which is which and what is what.  

With that in mind, the movie is directed by Gore Verbinski, who also directed the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  The voices for the reptiles and animals are Johnny Depp, Bill Nighy, Timothy Olyphant, Alfred Molina, Ned Beatty, Abigail Breslin and Isla Fisher.

The movie opens March 4, 2011.