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It was a battle between heavyweights this past weekend as Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited and Ang Lee's Lust, Caution opened in limited release in Manhattan. Based on estimates compiled by Leonard Klady of Movie City News, it appears that The Darjeeling Limited walked away the winner, earning $141,600 at two locations for distributor Fox Searchlight, while Lust, Caution made $62,800 at its single location for Focus Features.

Both films played at the New York Film Festival, but neither received overwhelmingly positive reviews, so it seems a case where both movies had a very high "want to see" factor. Recent publicity about Owen Wilson may have piqued curiosity about The Darjeeling Limited, while news articles about the NC-17 rating assigned to Lust, Caution for its sexual content surely propelled additional viewers into the theater.

Our own Erik Davis described The Darjeeling Limited as "a tough film for audiences to grasp, in that there's not much of a story to hang onto," so it will be interesting to see if the film can draw an audience beyond the devoted Wes Anderson-ites and the curious. As to Lust, Caution, James Rocchi saw it at the Toronto festival and called it "a challenging piece of cinema that also thrills, a complicated bold work that's bigger than its problems," while Jeffrey M. Anderson concluded: "If only [Ang Lee] could ignore the 'Best Director' hype and focus, he could still contribute something worthwhile to the cinema." The film's lengthy running time, subtitles and rating all point to limited returns despite the sensational start.

Another new limited release, sex trade thriller Trade, failed to draw much interest, averaging just $1,266 at 90 locations, but two films that expanded in their second week performed well: Sean Penn's Into the Wild ($19,390 average at 33 locations) and the revisionist Western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford ($18,520 average at five locations).

The kidnapping and trafficking of young woman for the sex trade is a serious issue. Trade, alas, is just a seriously awful film. Rarely has a message movie been as noxious as director Marco Kruezpaintner's, which manages to be not only contrived and culturally offensive, but also exploitative of the illicit practice it theoretically opposes. Its right hand wholly ignorant of what its left hand is doing, the film asks us to sympathize with young Mexican Jorge (Cesar Ramos) after his thirteen-year-old sister Adriana (Paulina Gaitan) is grabbed by Russians and sold into sexual slavery, even as it makes clear that Jorge is an unrepentant criminal hailing from a dangerous country defined by its legion of cretins and crooked cops. It then attempts to elicit empathetic horror at the treatment of Adriana and her fellow abductees by their captors, while simultaneously lavishing so much lurid attention on their abuse that titillation becomes the prime objective. And of course it indulges in grim postscript statistics about the extent of sex trafficking, this after having previously exhibited absolutely zero interest in realism, as evidenced by Jorge's magical knack for sticking to Adriana's lengthy trail from Mexico City to New Jersey.

After spotting the snatched Adriana on a bustling metropolitan Mexican street - a preposterously convenient development indicative of the film's laziness - Jorge eventually stumbles upon a nasty, ramshackle building where she was held. There, he surreptitiously spies American insurance fraud investigator Ray (Kevin Kline), a cowboy hat-adorned mystery man who also seems to be looking for someone in this out-of-the-way dump. In order to enter the States to rescue Adriana, Jorge stows away in the trunk of Ray's car. Apparently, border patrol doesn't check car trunks, because this goofy plan works to perfection - until, that is, Ray discovers his stowaway and...well, after a few contentious conversations characterized by Jorge calling Ray "gringo," grudgingly befriends him. Predictably, despite age and cultural differences, the two are more alike than initial impressions let on, as The Motorcycle Diaries scribe Jose Rivera's phony script (based on a 2004 New York Times article) soon reveals that Ray is gripped by an inescapable, fanatical desire to locate the young daughter who vanished into thin air years earlier.

In just a few days, on July 24, the New York International Latino Film Festival will kick off in, obviously, Gotham. The fest has now released its film list, and I wish I could say that it is an amalgam of highly-reviewed fare that is worth giving up spending your summery, July days in the great outdoors. Unfortunately, none of the films listed on indieWIRE seem to be highly-regarded, by either reviewers or IMDb fans. Now, this could mean nothing for the enjoyment of some regular moviegoers, but I don't think we're talking about a "Wild Hogs" sort of scenario.

The fest is opening with Marco Kreuzpaintner's Trade. Cinematical has been covering the film since 2005, when it was called Welcome to America, and Milla Jovovich was co-starring along with Kevin Kline. Since then, Leeloo left the project, and we got posters and a plot. While the film's scenario sounds a bit unbelievable, it looked to be a potentially-decent treatment of the sex trade. However, if Variety's Berlin review is to be believed, it's unfortunately not worth the effort. Even Kline, who I consider to be one of those men who can make the most of anything, was said to have had "possible the most stark miscasting of his career." Ouch!

That being said, I'd probably rather see that than what was selected to wrap the festival -- the Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony-starring El Cantante. I will fully admit that I just don't like those two, so putting them as starring vehicles in a film just makes matters all the worse. Fortunately, my predilection to run in the opposite direction when I see them won't keep me from a moving cinematic experience, again, at least if Variety's TIFF review is to be believed. Right at the top, the review describes the movie as "a virtual template for every imaginable cliche of the musical biopic." (Our Kim Voynar will be reviewing it on August 3, when the film opens, so stay tuned for her spin on the music biopic.) But these are reviewers, and many a film foible can be forgiven in the regular movie-going public. Or, at least, by fans of Anthony and Lopez -- which is probably why it's a headlining film. That being said, it's still great to see an increasing selection of Latino cinema, and hopefully next year will have a fest full of raves.

Those with a good memory, or a penchant for Milla Jovovich, might remember Martha Fischer's initial word on Welcome to America in 2005. At the time, she was set to have a lead role in the film. However, since that time, the film has moved beyond its Jovo-origins and is now headed for release. Some things have stayed the same, and some things have had a little twist.

The film, now named Trade, seems to be centered more on the Mexican brother and sister, than on Kevin Kline's character, Ray. Briefly, after Jorge's 13-year-old sister is kidnapped by sex traffickers, he tries to find the kidnappers and retrieve his sister. Along the way, he meets Ray, who suffered a similar loss. Together, they investigate the sex trade between the US and Mexico, bringing the long-standing international problem right to US soil as the pair follow leads that bring them through an internet slave auction and then a "stash house" in New Jersey.

The film is looking to be the cogent answer to those disappointed with Teresa Villaverde's treatment of the sex trade in Transe. While she adeptly showed the horrors committed on women by focusing on one in the thick of it, the film seemed too detached, which made the movie hard to swallow and resulted in a number of people walking out during its screening at TIFF. However, Marco Kreuzpaintner's treatment seems to be a bit of both sides -- the disturbing inside as the young girl is protected by a Polish girl who was also kidnapped (probably who Jovovich was supposed to be?) and the outside struggle to break in and save her. CHUD has a more in-depth description of the film, along with its posters, which are indeed beautiful and heartbreaking.