I was kicking around a tortured "spring thaw at the multiplex" lede, but decided against in the name of taste. The point stands, though: March is usually the month where the first little green shoots of decent filmmaking start to poke up from the snow of hastily-dumped genre fare, with the occasional early-blooming crocus of a Ghost Writer or Duplicity to perfume the air with the scent of top-shelf cinematic entertainment.
[Immediately after writing the above paragraph, the author laid down for several hours to nurse a martini and a pounding sense of a shame].
What was I saying? Ah, yes, it's the month when good movies start to trickle out. Let's get to em!
4.3.2011
I, at least, think there's a good chance that the first one of those good movies happens to be coming right out of the gate; and surely I am not alone in thinking that the trailer for Rango promises something a bit subtler and more refined than the ordinary animated family flick? At the very least, more visually attractive? After three increasingly degraded Pirates of the Caribbeans, I'm happy to see Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp collaborating on something fresh: the results were awfully good the first time.
Surely we can all agree, at least, that it's very possibly going to be the highlight of a weekend including the years-delayed Topher Grace comedy Take Me Home Tonight, whose working title was presumably That '80s Movie; the somewhat less-delayed The Adjustment Bureau, a Phillip K. Dick adaptation with the not-inconsiderable merit of Matt Damon in the cast - he has a sort of sixth sense for choosing scripts, I deem, though every time I see the omnipresent ad, I get a little bit less convinced that there's any "there".
And Beastly. Mustn't forget Beastly. AKA Beauty and the Beast done up Twilight style. Starring that Alex Pettyfer kid who seems to have suddenly coalesced into movie stardom out of absolutely nowhere whatsover.
11.3.2011
Jesus, it's like the month of fucking "Twilight plus a classic fairy tale" movies. For here comes Red Riding Hood, directed by Catherine Hardwicke no less, who gets further and further from the estimable title of The Woman Who Directed Thirteen with every year. Starring, as the young woman in red torn between the love of two werewolves (Christ...), Amanda Seyfried, in the latest salvo in her stealth campaign to make us all regret ever thinking she was the next big thing in young actresses.
Looking to be a bit better, at least: Battle: Los Angeles, with a trailer that seems remarkably anti-fun for an alien invasion movie, but the spectacle of Aaron Eckhart in a lead action role ought to be good for some weirdness, at the very least. Looking to be considerably better: a new Jane Eyre, which is mostly exciting for a really fantastic cast, including the fucking brilliant pairing of Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska. Whether the movie will be any good... but Fassbender hasn't yet picked a bad project.
Looking to be much, much worse than all of it: Mars Needs Moms, the latest in the line of immorally ugly mo-cap films made by Robert Zemeckis's now-deceased ImageMovers Digital - and this one isn't even directed by Zemeckis, but by Simon Wells, who I for one recall best as the perpetrator of the singularly unnecessary 2002 remake of The Time Machine.
18.3.2011
And now I'll confess to not being able to find anything appealing in the whole weekend slate; nor anything about which I have much of an opinion at all. Which breaks my heart a little bit in the case of Paul, a comedy about two geeks road-tripping with an alien, and more importantly the latest film co-starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost; and though I adore those men, the trailer is just sort of irritating. Or maybe it's the presence of Seth Rogen's voice in the trailer. Have I mentioned that I'm ready for Seth Rogen to stop making movies? Because I am very much ready for that.
Otherwise: Bradley Cooper takes smart pills and fights Robert De Niro in Limitless, and Matthew McConaughey plays a lawyer who drives a Lincoln and gets involved in a thriller, in The Lincoln Lawyer. The year is young, but I'll be staggered if we don't already have a winner for the Worst Title of 2011.
25.3.2011
The "March Tentpole Movie" wasn't exactly invented by 300 back in 2007, but certainly that movie did a hell of a lot to validate the extension of cinema's summer season into the first quarter of the calendar year. And now that film's director, the infamous Zack Snyder, is back for the second time (following 2009's lumpy Watchmen), with Sucker Punch, his first ever original screenplay. Are you scared? Well how about now: it involves a team of young women in schoolgirl outfits battling fantastic creatures in a stylised version of what I think is World War II, in slow motion. With swords. And for some godforsaken reason, Scott Glenn is involved. I must give Snyder credit for making himself absolutely impossible to parody.
There is a single other wide release, and it is Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, because apparently people who are actual children didn't completely forget about the first one by the end of its opening weekend. I am not one of those people.
02 March 2011
14 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.
Rango looks potentially good to you? I must admit, the trailer I saw looked kinda rank. Pretty, but rank.
ReplyDeleteMan it's tough out here for a Zack Synder apologist.
ReplyDeleteWhat can I say, as a visual stylist I think he's intriguing and I admire that his default setting is "go for broke."
Similarly I find his complete unawareness of irony to be refreshing. It's why his version of Watchmen didn't work (though I certainly admire the film in parts) but the fact is I can't help but find anyone who can make a movie about warrior owls with that much sincerity to be intrinsically likable.
As for the other releases Rango looks intriguing and the reviews so far have been encouraging. And The Adjustment Bureau looks like this years The Box...
Which I'm also an apologist for...
Actually it's Snyder's third film; Legend of the Guardians last year was his work as well.
ReplyDelete"Fassbender hasn't yet picked a bad project"
ReplyDeleteYou obviously (and wisely) didn't see Jonah Hex.
As someone who actually did, I can say this: while Jonah Hex is a very bad movie indeed, Fassbender comes off alright in it.
ReplyDeleteSnyder's visual sense is amazing when still. The strongest part of Watchmen (the credits sequence) is in no small part due to the way he's re-enacting a still image.
ReplyDeleteWhat he has done in the editing bay, though, is a sin.
yeah, Fassbender was the one guy who seemed to understand that you need to chew the scenery. And that was a film where even John Malkovich seemed subdued.
ReplyDeleteMrRoivas- maybe it's an "any port in a storm" thing. And maybe I'll be horribly disappointed. But if it's as much a winking throwback to Western tropes as it looks, I'll be giddy.
ReplyDeleteBryce- He's unaware of irony, that much we can agree on. And for reasons not even known to me, I'll be watching and probably reviewing Owls of Ga'Hoole before the new one opens, so we can have that discussion then.
James- I misspoke, perhaps. I meant that it's Snyder's return to the March slot that he essentially invented.
Everyone talking about Jonah Hex: it is sad but true that my first reaction to the unexpected news that Fassbender was part of that wreck was, "I better put it on my queue, then."
"Well how about now: it involves a team of young women in schoolgirl outfits battling fantastic creatures in a stylised version of what I think is World War II, in slow motion."
ReplyDeleteClose, but it's not just World War II as there are several other environments, and the World War II setting is a construct of the characters. It's about a group of women in an asylum who, with the aid of a doctor whose methods on psychological reform stress the creative, use fantastical worlds with parallels to their real-world troubles as a coping mechanism. Their experiences in the worlds, with links to the asylum, give them the knowledge and tools to formulate their escape plan.
As always, though, another entertaining analysis of what March has in store for us. You're also not alone in being enthusiastic about how much of a potentially fun animated throwback Rango looks like -- if it's any comfort, the early reviews have been pretty good.
ReplyDeleteThat's cool, Tim. Every once in a while we need to see a piece of shit so we can appreciate the good stuff.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, looking forward to Fassbender this year with Jane Eyre and X-Men: First Class.
Also looking forward to that Legend of the Guardians review.
The title "The Lincoln Lawyer" reminds me of an early episode of 30 Rock, where Jane Krakowski's character is involved in a movie called "The Rural Juror."
ReplyDeleteI clicked the "Beastly" link, and so I was confronted with its tag-line, and I've laughed out loud for a while, so thanks for that. "Love is never ugly", hahaha, it just kills me, laughing again.
ReplyDelete1) God, Sucker Punch is unforgivably ugly.
ReplyDelete2) Am I the only person who finds it strange that Rango's marketing scheme seems to deliberately recall Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?
3) I don't know why Alex Pettyfer is the new hot young thing but he's rumored to be desired for at least two other roles that will be high profile. I don't get it.
4) Admittedly, my first thought upon seeing there's a Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie was, "wait, I thought that movie already came out a while ago or something." It did not cross my mind for half a second there was a sequel.
Oy vey.