Quiz: How well do you know your movie gangsters?

Public Enemies is one of the most eagerly awaited movies of the summer precisely because it’s not your usual blockbuster. It’s about a real criminal — John Dillinger — and stars two guys who like to go big in movies, but not explosions and special-effects big.

Johnny Depp likes to make his characters completely inhabit the screen, yet somehow, he doesn’t quite chew the scenery. And Michael Mann makes his movies stand out with style and gives them some sort of touch that lets his audience know this is not your usual movie.

In both men’s cases, the movies they make can be divisive to critics — some thinking that Mann values style too highly over substance, some thinking that Depp can be too much of a caricature, etc.

Public Enemies scored a 61 at Rotten Tomatoes, and a 71 on Metacritic.

• FilmBlather’s Eugene Novikov called the film ‘one of the most interesting and challenging wide releases of the year’: “(Public Enemies) uses the gangster movie form to say something profound and unexpected about the way we respond to evil.”

• Sean O’Connell of Carolina Weekly says Mann gets wrapped up in the Dillinger hype: “(Mann) is more enamored with the Dillinger myth than with the actual man.”

• Devin Faraci of CHUD (Cinematic Happenings Under Development) says the movie feels like a sequel without a first film: “The movie plays like a rise and fall story (sort of like Soderbergh’s Che, which was split into two halves) but there’s no rise.”

• Lest we forget that Depp’s in the movie, Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News paints him as the hero of the situation, basically saving things: “Johnny Depp is so compelling and charismatic as John Dillinger, he provides enough firepower to make the film legit.”

Ice Age: Rise of the Dinosaurs: The third in the series about a group of prehistoric animals isn’t exactly getting the kind of strong critical love of animated counterparts such as Up.

It only scores a 35 on Rotten Tomatoes and a 51 on Metacritic.

Keith Phipps of The Onion’s AV Club says the film actually tosses out what made the series special in the first place: “Let other movies have their velociraptors and their T. Rexes — here was a movie happily filled with mammoths and saber-toothed cats. The series kept it going for one more entry, but throws its commitment to the era away with movie number three, a ploy sure to anger Ice Age purists everywhere.”

Apparently, there are buttons even Bruno won’t push. The makers of Sasha Baron Cohen’s new film have decided to excise a scene making fun of Michael Jackson, according to Total Film.

In the scene, Bruno calls Michael’s sister, LaToya, and makes fun of her brother’s voice and tries to get his phone number. The scene was in pre-press screenings but won’t make the final print.

• What’s cooler than playing one famous real gangster? Playing two in quick succession.

Fresh off his part as Baby Face Nelson in Michael Mann’s epic Public Enemies, Stephen Graham jumps into the extremely juicy role of Al Capone in Martin Scorsese’s upcoming TV series, “Boardwalk Empire”.

Graham, a Brit who also made a memorable turn in the jarring This is England, talks with Empire about maintaining a New York accent: “I spend all my time with the teamsters, the drivers, because they’re all from New York. I hang around with them and eat Italian food.”

• Amy Adams joins an already strong cast in the upcoming “The Fighter”, according to the MTV Movies Blog. Mark Wahlberg is playing true-life boxer “Irish” Micky Ward, while Christian Bale is Ward’s trainer and brother. Adams is a tough-as-nails paramour for Micky, who won the world welterweight title in London and is well-known for his three epic fights with Arturo Gatti.

• Diane Keaton was injured on the set of the film Morning Glory. She bumped her head, but she is OK, according to AccessAtlanta.

However, the circumstances surrounding the injury have me worried. Apparently she was filming a scene in a sumo suit. This can’t end well.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” claimed a box office victory over “Terminator Salvation.”

The live-action family comedy starring Ben Stiller won $70 million over the Memorial Day weekend, according to estimates from distributor 20th Century Fox. That put it well ahead of the first “Night at the Museum” movie, which had a $30.4 million three-day opening in December 2006.

“It’s blown away our expectations,” said Chris Aronson, senior vice president of domestic distribution for 20th Century Fox. “We’ve nearly doubled the opening of the first ‘Night at the Museum.’ It’s an incredibly strong No. 1 that beats out ‘Terminator,’ which I think most people thought would win the weekend.”

“Terminator Salvation” pulled in $53.8 million over the four-day holiday weekend — plus $13.4 million on opening day Thursday — bringing the post-apocalyptic action film starring Christian Bale and Sam Worthington to a total of $67.2 million since debuting, according to distributor Warner Bros.

With a three-day total of $43 million, that puts the fourth movie in the “Terminator” series behind “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” the last of the franchise’s installments to star Arnold Schwarzenegger. The third chapter took in $44 million in its first weekend in 2003.

“I think people expected it to be No. 1 because of that ‘Terminator’ name alone,” said box-office analyst Paul Dergarabedian of Hollywood.com. “If you look at it objectively though, it’s a sci-fi action film that played to an older audience. It didn’t have the broad based appeal of ‘Night at the Museum.’”

Paramount’s “Star Trek” held up well with $29.4 million, warping down to the No. 3 spot but raising its total to $191 million. The sci-fi franchise reboot directed by J.J. Abrams is on the verge of becoming the year’s top-grossing movie so far, approaching the $193.5 million gross of DreamWorks Animation’s “Monsters vs. Aliens.”

“‘Star Trek’ is living long and prospering,” said Dergarabedian. “It’s just one of those movies we knew would hold up. People are enjoying it and talking about it. It’s unusual for a summer blockbuster to be propelled by word of mouth, not just the typical marketing push for a big opening weekend. I think it’s going to continue to do well week after week.”

The previous weekend’s No. 1 movie, Sony’s “Angels & Demons,” fell to fourth place with $27.7 million, lifting its domestic haul to $87.8 million.

On the whole, it was another strong weekend of business at movie theaters, which have been drawing large crowds throughout the recession. Dergarabedian pegs the year-to-date attendance at a nearly 12 percent increase over last year. The top Memorial Day weekend at the box office remains 2007, which featured the third installments of “Pirates of the Caribbean,” ”Shrek” and “Spider-Man.”

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Monday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Tuesday.

1. “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,” $70 million.

2. “Terminator Salvation,” $53.8 million.

3. “Star Trek,” $29.4 million.

4. “Angels & Demons,” $27.7 million.

5. “Dance Flick,” $13.1 million.

6. “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” $10.1 million.

7. “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” $4.8 million.

8. “Obsessed,” $2.5 million.

9. “Monsters vs. Aliens,” $1.9 million.

10. “17 Again,” $1.3 million.

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We have seen the future in Terminator Salvation, and the future is noisy.

This fourth flick in the “Terminator” saga takes place in 2018, 14 years after Judgment Day. John Connor is a rising force in the resistance against Skynet, the artificial intelligence network that started thinking for itself and eradicating humanity. He has seen destruction and listened to the recordings left by his mother that foretell his future, but he has yet to send anyone back in time in hopes of stopping it, including the man who will become his father.

(You definitely need to have seen the first three movies to have a clue as to what’s going on here. This is no time to play catch-up. Being a fan also helps.)

McG, director of the “Charlie’s Angels” movies and “We Are Marshall,” drops into this well-established lore and presents a post-apocalyptic world that is repetitively bleak and relentlessly loud. Yes, the machines have taken over, so of course there’s going to be a healthy amount of clanging, crunching metal and automatic weapon fire — but even things that shouldn’t be noisy, like the lighting of a flare, sound like a rocket launch.

And Christian Bale steps into the role of John Connor, played previously by Edward Furlong and Nick Stahl, and he … well, he does the same voice he uses when he dons the black suit for the “Batman” movies, a monotone, guttural growl regardless of the dialogue. Connor’s function as Christ figure is clearer than ever in the script from John Brancato and Michael Ferris, who also wrote 2003′s “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines”; nearly everyone who managed to stay alive describes this “JC” as a messiah and a prophet, but not everyone believes it. The metaphor adds yet another layer of portentousness — but the writers also threw in a couple of classic “Terminator” lines, ostensibly to lighten the suffocating mood. Instead, they’re real groaners.

John must find and protect his future father, teenager Kyle Reese (the plucky Anton Yelchin), while also trying to determine whether to trust the mysterious stranger Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) to help him with this quest. Worthington has the masculine good looks and formidable screen presence to stand strong opposite Bale — but, naturally, he also has to scream a lot. This installation sorely needs more of the kind of liveliness Arnold Schwarzenegger brought to the franchise.

“Terminator Salvation” does feature some inventive camerawork, though — McG is a commercial and music video veteran, after all — and the intricate special effects we’ve come to expect from the series (the work of the late Stan Winston, who died before the film was finished). Several of the new villainous devices are extremely cool, including the Hydrobots, four-foot-long killer eels that attack under water.

But there’s not much here in the way of way of humanity, even with the strong feminine presence of actresses including Bryce Dallas Howard, Moon Bloodgood and Jane Alexander. It seems the machines have already won.

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