The worst Oscar season in recent memory gave way, perhaps inevitably, to the worst January movie slate since I’ve been paying attention to such things – and as bad as bad Oscar movies can be, I’m certain we’ll agree that bad January movies are much worse.
February seems a touch better, including one movie that is among my top 5 most anticipated for 2009. Still the midwinter doldrums for the most part, but at least it’s an upswing.
6.2.2009
Speak of the devil, here’s that one movie I’m super-excited about right now: Coraline, adapted by Henry Selick (the man behind Tim Burton’s curtain in The Nightmare Before Christmas) from a Neil Gaiman children’s book in what looks to be unthinkably sexy 3-D stop motion animation. The one person I know who’s seen it claims that it was better than his already-heightened expectations.
Beyond that, you could never tell that it wasn’t the sweaty ballsack of the year from the multiplex marquee: Push, a sexycool action movie with hollow young people; He’s Just Not That Into You, a romcom with a gigantic cast of stars that most smart people either don’t like or aren’t familiar with; Fanboys, a long, long-delayed indie movie that may or may not be chopped to hell; and the deep dark evil that is The Pink Panther 2.
13.2.2009
A confession: I am looking forward to the remade Friday the 13th, far more than I can conceivably defend in any sort of logical way. A bit of it has to do with my genuine affection for the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre, made by mostly the same crew. A bit of it has to do with my feelings towards the series: you start to fall in love with something you hate that much. I don’t know. All I’m saying is, if you see a really hard-core positive review in two weeks’ time, please don’t think of it as a reflection on my character.
Scarier than that film will have any prayer of being is the fact that most of the films this weekend look at least likely to be decent: the uneven but usually exciting Tom Tykwer has a conspiracy thriller on deck starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts called The International, while the borderline-good director James Gray is releasing an apparent drama for grown-ups, not children who want to play at grown-ups, Two Lovers.
Really, the only obvious clinker looks to be Confessions of a Shopaholic, the latest in the horrid recent spate of “all women are consumer whores!” subgenre.
20.2.2009
Aaaaand… back to your usually-scheduled crap. The latest in the evergreen “all men are sex addicts” subgenre, Fired Up, and a new Tyler Perry movie, Madea Goes to Jail. I can only hope it’s a remake of the classic Jim Varney vehicle Ernest Goes to Jail, as that is just about the only thing that would get me into the theater.
(The other thing would be if it were actually Medea Goes to Jail, like I first typed accidentally. Tyler Perry does modern-dress Greek tragedy! Who wouldn’t see that?)
The limited-release schedule includes a new adaptation of The Velveteen Rabbit directed by Michael Landon, Jr, a documentary about a dead grandma called Must Read After My Death, and a documentary about a wannabe fashion designer titled Eleven Minutes. My money is on the documentaries as being the likeliest to not utterly suck.
27.2.2009
I have been accused of harboring a desire to see Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience. The individual making that accusation has been appropriately written out of my will.
No, the big film of the weekend for me is likely to be Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, the first attempt since The Movie That Killed Raul Julia to adapt one of the most popular video game series of the 1990s to film. Video game adaptations, the most ill-fated subgenre in the history of cinema, are a sort of favorite of mine; in the manner that they are favored by all lovers of truly wretched filmmaking, that is.
In limited release, we’ve got Crossing Over, which appears to be “Crash, but for illegal immigration” and Assassination of a High School President, which has such a great title (no sarcasm) that I’ve avoided learning anything else about it.