February is gone, and with it the first great film of 2009 (your mileage may vary; but if Coraline isn’t, at the least, much better than we should expect from a winter release, then I don’t know what). March, eh, I’m not so sure about. But surprises do happen.

6.3.2009
The big release of the first third of the year, without question, is Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the watershed comic book series Watchmen. Color me dubious. This much is certain: it will not be a completely successful adaptation of the novel, which contains far too much information presented in ways entirely unique to its original medium. But can it be a good movie anyway? Personally, I hated 300, and it looks like Watchmen is playing a lot of the same tricks, particularly the trick called “slow motion”. Trying to keep an open mind, but I fully expect this to be one of the most unbearable blockbuster popcorn movies of 2009.

The rest of the weekend is a hodgepodge of New York only debuts and limited releases of tiny films nobody has heard of. I am particularly interested in 12, a Russian take on 12 Angry Men; everything else is stuff that I’ve heard of in name only, like The Horsemen, or not at all, like Phoebe in Wonderland.

13.3.2009
Two remakes aimed at two mutually exclusive audiences headline the new releases: Disney’s Race to Witch Mountain, versus the latest update of a ’70s horror movie that was perfectly fine to begin with, The Last House on the Left. Neither trailer gives me anything like what you might call “hope”, although Witch Mountain‘s hokiness is undoubtedly the more intentional.

The indie movies are equally divided: Brothers at War, a super-serious Iraq documentary, and Sunshine Cleaning, a quirky Sundance-style comedy with Amy Adams in what appears to be something other than a characteristic “sunny, innocent optimist” role.

What’s a poor teen sex road comedy like Miss March going to do in an environment but this, but pack up and give up, I don’t wonder.

20.3.2009
Okay, so I’m actually excited about Duplicity. Tony Gilroy does a long con movie, Clive Owen stars. The writer-director already proved with Michael Clayton that he could direct a perfectly pleasing genre thriller (but a Best Picture nominee? Still don’t quite follow that one…), so I’m going to go on hoping that the end result is as entertainingly shallow as the trailer makes it out to be.

What else… I Love You, Man, a dude rom-com starring Paul Rudd, whose presence is always enough to get me into movies I really shouldn’t want to see; The Great Buck Howard, with John Malkovich in camp mode, and that’s usually good for a few unmemorable laughs; and Sin Nombre, a sensitive drama about the immigrant experience, with accolades from Sundance. But let us not permit that to prejudice us against it.

Oh! How could I ever forget Knowing, in which somebody, somewhere apparently thought, “You know what was wrong about the contemptible The Number 23 and the ludicrous The Happening? Neither one of them starred Nicolas Cage!” Oh God, Alex Proyas, how far you have fallen from directing Dark City.

27.3.2009
To hear Jeffrey Katzenberg tell it, Monsters vs. Aliens is going to be the film that changes everything in regards to 3-D. Except that Coraline already scooped him. Ah, well, the trailer is surprisingly funny for a DreamWorks Animation product, much less focused on pop songs and more one characters and gags. Fingers crossed.

I also have my fingers crossed for Adventureland, in which Greg Mottola, director of Superbad, pays further loving tribute to the 1980s. The only concern I have is that Superbad had the peerless Michael Cera, who is off my shitlist now that he’s maybe signed up for Arrested Development: The Movie, while Adventureland boasts the altogether peerful Ryan Reynolds and Kristen “That goddamn vampire picture” Stewart.

Still, my fingers are not crossed at all for 12 Rounds, in which the acting talents of John Cena are paired with the directing talents of Renny Harlin, and the baby Jesus cries. Also, The Haunting in Connecticut, or as we call it around my place “The Amityville Horror got remade again? No? Oh, I see, it’s in Connecticut. Carry on”