February is a kind of special month for movies, I think. Hold on with me. See, January is a washout. We all know that. If it opens in January, it's shit, end of story. But February, see, every so often, you get really lucky, and something absolutely outstanding opens in February. And I'll tell you what, there's nothing quite as intensely happy as when you're in the middle of absolute nowhere, cinematically, and then along comes something that's actually great and brilliant and all. I much prefer great films in February to any other month of the year. Fingers crossed and knock on wood, there's actually a film this February that I think is going to be pretty amazing, too.
5.2.2010
But that movie doesn't come out yet. First we have to muck through what looks like it might be one of the most awful prestigey movies in history: starring Channing Tatum (a pretty slab of anti-acting), Amanda Seyfried (a talented actress who gets no good parts whatsoever), and directed by Lasse Halström (an epically bad filmmaker), Dear John is also, saints preserve us all, a story about The Days After 9/11. The nicest thing I can think to say is that it's virtually impossible for this movie to be even a quarter as bad as I'm expecting from all of what I just typed.
There's only one other wide release, From Paris with Love, which I am almost excited about: director Pierre Morel's Taken was probably my favorite action movie of 2009. But that starred Liam Neeson as an angry revenge-seeking ass-kicker; the new one is John Travolta, looking his very silliest, with a bald head and a terribly unfortunate goatee.
Speaking of Morel, one of the limited releases this day is District 13: Ultimatum, a sequel to his directorial debut, District 13. And for its other flaws, that film had a mind-blowing opening sequence, so I can get behind that. Other limited releases: Jackie Chan in The Shinjuku Incident, because we love seeing Jackie Chan being old onscreen, and Frozen, which I would cynically describe as "Open Water on a ski lift", but hey, maybe you liked Open Water more than I did.
The desperately flawed Red Riding Trilogy also makes a quick U.S. tour, starting today, if you're interested. I'd suggest you oughtn't be.
12.2.2010
The slate of three wide releases opening this weekend fascinates me. It's a cross-section of three very different kinds of desperation, all mingling together, and it sort of feels like everything is counter-programming to everything else.
The likeliest box-office winner, I'd guess, is The Wolfman, a remake directed by the slick high-concept hack Joe Johnston; I'd also guess it will be the relative best of the three, but all I'm really hoping for is that Anthony Hopkins is every bit as crazed as he seems in the trailer. The other two releases are Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, the latest doomed-to-failure attempt to find a new Harry Potter series, and this one even happens to be led by Chris Columbus, the man who got that other franchise off to such a grim start with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Finally, we have another Love Actually clone, this one monolithically titled Valentine's Day: this sounds desperately anonymous, maybe, until you realise how very few movies are actually flat-out named after holidays, and those disproportionally horror pictures. Anyway, it re-teams Garry Marshall with Julia Roberts, if you're the sort of person likely to care about that sort of thing.
19.2.2010
Finally, after a completely inexplicable postponement from October, 2009, comes Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese's return to warped psycho-horror-thrillers, almost 20 years after Cape Fear, featuring Leo DiCaprio's Looney Tune version of a Boston accent. Four months of added waiting have only made me more excited about a movie that was already one of the most exciting films of the last quarter of 2009; I can't imagine, with the director involved, that this was some sign of poor quality on the film's part, and I still assume that the Oscar season would have been way more interesting with this film a part of it, but no matter. Better late than never.
So much does everybody obviously agree with me, that the film isn't getting any wide-release competition - though one of the weekend's limited releases happens to be the latest (last?) film by Roman Polanski, The Ghost Writer. Cue the hand-wringing about whether it's an immoral act to pay money to see this film or not!
26.2.2009
A nice easy weekend of boring crap to usher us out of the month: the first-ever film directed by, but not written by, Kevin Smith, Cop Out; because clearly, his skills lie more in his direction than his writing, you know? I mean, how much better would Clerks have been with some funny dialogue to match the coruscating visuals? Also, Breck Eisner - Michael Eisner's son, who is plainly getting work for his talent and not his connections - is remaking The Crazies, and as long as that means a nice new Blu-Ray edition of George A. Romero's 1973 original, I am more than happy to keep my mouth shut about the necessity of 1970s horror remakes.
31 January 2010
7 comments:
Just a few rules so that everybody can have fun: ad hominem attacks on the blogger are fair; ad hominem attacks on other commenters will be deleted. And I will absolutely not stand for anything that is, in my judgment, demeaning, insulting or hateful to any gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. And though I won't insist on keeping politics out, let's think long and hard before we say anything particularly inflammatory.
Also, sorry about the whole "must be a registered user" thing, but I do deeply hate to get spam, and I refuse to take on the totalitarian mantle of moderating comments, and I am much too lazy to try to migrate over to a better comments system than the one that comes pre-loaded with Blogger.
My girly chick flick detector can't decide what to make of Valentine's Day. And my girly chick flick detector is usually very trustworthy. Except when it told me I wanted to see Because I Said So. That was a very big mistake.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing for me about Valentine's Day: Half of Hollywood is in this movie. I mean, the poster is nothing if not a collage someone put together of pictures they cut out of US Weekly.
ReplyDeleteWhen there are this many stars in a movie, I've found it means one of two things: 1. The script was so outstanding that everyone really wanted to be in it. 2. The producers just started shoveling money at people in the hope that they can at least make their money back by hitting every conceivable fandom they can (Jessicas Alba AND Biel! George Lopez AND Queen Latifah! Taylor Swift AND Shirley MacLaine!).
After watching about 15 seconds of the trailer, I fell very firmly into the opinion that this was the latter sort of film.
Dear God, Dear John. Am I the only one who notices Tatum's been playing soldier a lot (G.I. Joe, this). He's got the looks, but we're not sold that he can actually ACT. You've seen one Sparks adaptation...
ReplyDeleteOn From Paris With Love, I can't figure out from the trailer if this is suppose to be a straight action film or a SPOOF of action films. That kind of ambiguity is dangerous because it makes it look like the filmmakers couldn't decide what it was so they decided to mesh both styles, leaving an unbalanced film.
The Lightning Thief looks like a bastard son of the upcoming remake of Clash of the Titans and is another in a series of adaptations that thinks by adding a hyphen to its title it will make it as grand and epic a story as The Lord of the Rings.
Finally, Valentine's Day brings to mind something like The Great Ziegfeld or Grand Hotel where a lot of big stars have bit parts. I wonder why the tagline isn't "More Stars Than There Are In The Heavens".
This is the second year in a row I saw no new films in January (I basically just catch up with the leftovers from the last year), and the only thing that really interests me this month is Shutter Island. I don't think it'll be top-tier Marty, but with the exception of Color of Money I've never seen a film of his I didn't find interesting and this looks like a lot of fun even though I started running away from trailers of it months ago. I think that, along with Herzog, Soderbergh and a few others I can't think of, he's just the most fascinating filmmaker still working, and even when he doesn't hit homers, he doesn't waste my money.
ReplyDeleteValentine's Day looks like it might be trying to destroy the rom-com by filling it with every cliché in the book, and I lack the optimism to think that maybe, like 500 Days of Summer, the trailer doesn't indicate that it will use those clichés for good.
For February, I'm only genuinely interested by The Wolfman, which looks like a well-made remake with a star-studded cast, and Shutter Island. Like Jake said, I find Scorsese to be one of the most fascinating filmmakers working today, and he always assembles some of the best teams for his projects, from editing to production design to cinematography.
ReplyDeleteUgh. My wife wants to see Valentine's Day. I tried to deter her by saying Julia Roberts utters that same annoying laugh in every movie she's in, and the filmmakers who maker movies always punctuate the trailers with that annoying laugh...it's like they think her laugh is going to get us to see the movie...
ReplyDeleteShe did watch The Descent (Hey, when's that sequel coming out?!?) with me when we were dating, so perhpas this is where I get my payback.
Also, I agree with you about Shutter Island...in fact I just posted something on my blog about Cape Fear and how I think Shutter Island could be a visceral horror enjoyment like that film was. I'm looking forward Scorsese's second foray into the horror genre.
But yeah...looks like another shit month for movies. The Wolf Man just looks like the kind of movie that will be a popular rental, but two horror flicks in February seems odd.
Always enjoy these previews, Tim.
I am so the reason that Hollywood stuffs movies like Valentine's Day with as many people as possible in hopes of dragging people out to see it, because the mere fact Topher Grace is in it makes me want to go. I've had a crush on him since the sub-par Win A Date With Tad Hamilton.
ReplyDelete*hides with shame*
I mostly hate how it works.