SEPTEMBER 2006 MOVIE PREVIEW

At last, good studio films start to amble into theatres, and by good I mean "good," because this is one of the most anemic Oscar bait seasons in recent memory (more on that as October, November and December ramp up). There are only a couple films here that I'm really excited about seeing - guess which ones!

1.9.2006
I first saw the original version of The Wicker Man about a week ago (and "original" is a misleading word to use of a film that exists with four different runtimes), and now I understand less than ever why someone is remaking it, even if that someone is Neil LaBute (who hasn't actually made a good film in years, but my residual love for In the Company of Men and Your Friends & Neighbors forces me to still consider him a great director). The new one has a different gender politic than the original, which is a good fit for LaBute; left unanswered is why professional block of wood Nic Cage has been tapped to act.

Also: Crank, AKA "Speed in a man," with the most antiseptic and glossy trailer of the year. I like what Jason Statham does just fine, but he does is not deliver lines like "My name is Chev Chelios, and this is the day" while zapping himself with a defibrilator so as to keep his adrenaline high enough to avoid slipping into a coma and dying. A tender black-teen-sports-drama, Crossover, and I don't know how anyone could have a problem with that, because sports dramas are the best thing ever. And in limited (i.e. "one theater for one week") release, This Film is Not Yet Rated, a well-deserved attack on the MPAA and its puritanical hypocrisy about having Teh Sex in movies; and Zhang Yimou's return to quiet character pieces (not that I don't like his martial arts epics, but...), Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles.

And lest we forget: what. the. fuck?

8.9.2006
Why, it's Renny Harlin! He might just about be the worst director in the world! And now he's remaking The Touch of Satan for fans of The O.C.! And will I be seeing it? Only drunk. Which is not the same as "no."

The Protector, the de-facto sequel to Onk-Bak looks to recreate its predecessor's combination of fantastic martial arts with a non-existant plot, and to be honest that's enough for me, if the martial arts are really that fantastic. Also, an indie drama-satire-something that I can't quite make out, Sherrybaby, which I could have seen as a sneak preview if it didn't look stupid. And Maggie Gyllenhaal all of a sudden has a whole lot to prove to me after that goddamn Oliver Stone film.

"The most notorious unsolved murder in Hollywood history": Hollywoodland. See also "The most et cetera" below.

15.9.2006
So Zach Braff is a deeply annoying actor, and Paul Haggis is not a particularly good screenwriter (let us say that he needs a good director to bring out his full potential) and Rachel Bilson is just crap. I still love Tom Wilkinson, and while I'm not proud to say it whatsoever, his mere presence will probably drag me kicking and screaming into The Last Kiss, in which Braff is - if you can believe it - angsty.

The second feel-good football picture in three weeks, now starring The Rock instead of Mark Wahlberg, make of that what you will: Gridiron Gang. An indie movie (in the pejorative and treacly sense of "indie") in which Jeff Bridges convinces his conservative small town to pose for a nude calendar lie about winning the lottery make a porn film: The Amateurs. And then there's the Brits stealing from us for a change, in the form of a Christopher Guest knock-off about wedding planners, Confetti. Not to mention a documentary on the FBI's obsession with John Lennon, with the best poster of the year thus far.

"The most notorious unsolved murder in California history": The Black Dahlia. California and Hollywood being different things. I can manage to be excited about both, as I loves me a good L.A.-based period mystery, but they both look so flawed in the casting: Ben Affleck in the first, and Josh "I Make Kittens Cry" Hartnett here. Which is just enough to make this look the worse of the two. And then there's director Brian De Palma, who I hate, although I have managed to see only his bad films. (Didn't like this one, either).

22.9.2006
A mere 10 months after it was first schedule, the remake of All the King's Men finally hits theaters. Ordinarily, I would say that such a delay makes me suspect the film to be of low quality. Not the case here! Rather it is the trailer that gives me certainty that the film is of low quality. Sean Penn appears poised to give the worst leading perfomance of his career, and very few of the other actors look likely to overcome that. Meanwhile, Steven Zaillian continues to erase the evidence that he was ever involved with Schindler's List.

The other big film, for viewers of a certain age, is Michel Gondry's first fiction film without Charlie Kaufman, The Science of Sleep, and while certain things excite me (the cast! a feature-length version of a Gondry video!), I am still filled with misgivings (a feature-length version of a Gondry video?). Time will out.

Minor leagues: Fearless, Jet Li's "last action movie," and the film that dragged Ronny Yu away from Snakes on a Plane; Flyboys, a WWI-era film about fighter pilots, which makes a grizzled old military aviation fan like me get all swoony, with a cast of people I don't know well enough to hate; American Hardcore, a documentary about late-era punk, the most pointless musical form of the last few decades. And then there's Renaissance, a French animated film that looks gorgeous, but I really wish it had the original voice cast. Fucking redubs.

29.9.2006
A weird little week with hardly anything that seems fit for this time of year, unless it's The Last King of Scotland, an Idi Amin film with James McAvoy as Amin's Scottish physician and Forest Whitaker looking exactly the dictator. Otherwise there's a Billy Bob Thornton (yay!)/Jon Heder (boo!) vehicle, School for Scoundrels, that is a complete waste of its Enlightenment-pedigreed title, and The Guardian, a film about rescue divers. Starring Kevin Costner. I think that phrase should always be separated out as a separate sentence, so you can analyze it better. Starring Kevin Costner.

Plus, the likely winner of the coveted "worst of the many bad CGI films of 2006" award, Open Season.