The Box Office Power Rankings do not like the Twilight movies. We are not fooled by the excitement or ticket-buying power of teenage girls. We are on Team No One. (Did I do that right?)

Neither movie has ever finished better than third place in the Box Office Power Rankings. We are confident that this validates our methods.

BROTHERS

In director Jim Sheridan's Brothers, adapted from a 2004 Danish film of the same title, a stalwart Marine captain (Tobey Maguire) is captured, tortured, and presumed dead during his fourth tour in Afghanistan. Miraculously, however, he survives the ordeal, only to return home convinced - and not entirely without reason - that his loving wife (Natalie Portman) is sleeping with his ex-con brother (Jake Gyllenhaal). Even if the movie weren't a remake, this wouldn't exactly be the most inventive of plotlines, but there's still enough about Brothers that's raw, painful, and touching to make it satisfying melodrama regardless of its contrived design. Or rather, there would be, if you weren't so frequently distracted by all the capital-A Acting that's going on.

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON

Like last November's film version of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, this November's follow-up, the helpfully titled The Twilight Saga: New Moon, is a mostly dour affair, a vampire tale less concerned with blood-letting than with the pain of teenage heartache, romantic longing, chastity, and maudlin acoustic ballads. That's why, despite some occasional levity, it's a shock to find director Chris Weitz's movie boasting not one but two absolutely outstanding jokes.

As people tell us time and time again, box-office performance is in the eye of the beholder.

Box Office Mojo wrote that Michael Jackson's This Is It, in its debut weekend, did "exceptionally well for a concert picture or music documentary." On the other hand, Disney's A Christmas Carol "stumbled a bit out of the gate."

Guess which one made $30 million and which one pulled in $23 million in its opening weekend.

Yep. The stumbler made more.