Off The Couch And Into The Theater: March 2010

There are a crapload of movies coming out this month. I don't even know why, other than maybe hoping spring break rushes kids into the theaters to see a whole bunch of mediocre retread? You know Hollywood's going down the tubes when the most promising wide release in the next thirty days features time travel via jacuzzi. And judging by my past month of movie-going habits when I had tons of Oscar bait options in my mist and still failed to see more than a few flicks, I am not going to do any better at attending the cinema with the following schlock at my fingertips. Or does it actually mean I'll be more likely because I actually hate myself and somehow revel in flocking to the theater for so-so films? Anyway, my February viewings of Crazy Heart, the Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts, and Precious were all kind of a wash anyway. They all had their definite upsides (good acting, well made, etc.) but none really stood out to me in any phantasmagorical way except the Denmark-made "The New Tenants" from my Oscar shorts excursion, which better win Sunday night or I will cry like the big dumb baby that I am. Here are your March 2010 releases (with "Will I See It?" percentages in parentheses):

Mar 5th: Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (73%) looks like one more in a long line of old story-rehashing with an overdone creepy aesthetic that is more boring than it is engaging. Even if it is in 3D this time. Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, and Ethan Hawke all play cops with intertwining personal dramas in Brooklyn's Finest (34%), which sounds as appealing as rewatching any of those actors' other mainstream films, though I am a sucker for watching cop movies by myself on Nerdflix years later. Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer (48%) unfortunately has nothing to do with the PBS kids drama about a ghost that helps you solve crimes through writing and therefore I see little to no reason to see it, except that I can't help but be curious by Polanski's inability to make a good movie post-1980. St. John of Las Vegas (4%), which was supposed to come out last month, finally gets its release this weekend, and I still don't care about an over-stylized Steve Buscemi as an insurance fraud investigator trying to win the heart of Sarah Silverman.

Mar 12th: Paul Greengrass for some reason decides to cast Matt Damon as a character just like Jason Bourne (oh yeah, probably because those movies were hits) but isn't in Green Zone (56%), which I might see just because I remember liking that last Bourne movie. Edward Cullen shows he can be sad and romantic but not a vampire this time with Emilie de Raivin in Remember Me (10%) and I don't really know what it's about but it really doesn't matter, does it? Jay Baruchel somehow landed a leading role in She's Out of My League (61%), which is a bland romantic comedy that I will most likely see just because of the tangential Judd Apatow connection. Our Family Wedding (8%) is a wide release film starring Forest Whitaker that is a pretty self-explanatory light drama that I had never heard of before until just now. A Prophet (82%) is an Oscar-nominated foreign language film about an Arab man who becomes a Mafia kingpin when sentenced to a lengthy prison term, so since I'm watching The Sopranos now and am in the midst of teaching The Godfather, this one's a given. The Red Riding trilogy (55%) looks like it has potential even though somehow one of the cops from Hot Fuzz is the main detective in this dark historical noir, but I am not sure how I'll be able to see three movies within a few weeks time and so I might wait until DVD altogether. A Town Called Panic (64%), an stop-motion animated flick with cowboy and Indian figurines, could either be riotously awesome or dreadfully dumb. Finally, the fourth film opening at the arthouses this weekend is The Yellow Handkerchief (13%), in which strangers played by William Hurt, Kristen Stewart, and Maria Bello somehow end up on a road trip through Louisiana together. Snoozefest alert!

Mar 19th: Somehow not a generic action flick, The Bounty Hunter (1%) is this year's requisite Gerard Butler offensively sexist romantic comedy, this time co-starring Jennifer Aniston. Diary of a Wimpy Kid (15%) is yet another mainstream release that I didn't know existed until now, and apparently it's based off a popular book about a smart-ass junior high kid. Steve Zahn is in the mix somewhere I guess. The Runaways (90%) is the Joan Jett and co. biopic, following Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning, and more as they pretend to be punk rock chix. The tepid reviews from Sundance are the only thing keeping me from seeing this otherwise entertaining-looking flick. Repo Men (35%) is unfortunately not the sequel to the non-plural Emilio Estevez cult fave, but rather an action-version of Repo! The Genetic Opera, about illegal organ hunting starring Jude Law and Liev Schreiber. Sounds trashy, possibly fun, and definitely terrible. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (49%) is an indie thriller, so it automatically bypasses the 40% mark, but it looks dull because it's about a computer hacker, so it can't quite break the halfway threshold. Fish Tank (42%) looks like it may be a hipster mumblecore pain in the ass, but then again, those movies also always have potential because they are sparse and haunting as much as they are boring. This one's about a 15-year-old whose mother brings home a new boyfriend. Mother (45%) is once again an indie thriller, but is also Asian, which gives it bonus points, but also sounds like your typical revenge flick (mother looks for revenge on son who was framed for murder) so it also doesn't quite make the halfway mark. Art of the Steal (78%) looks like a fascinating documentary (not always an oxymoron) about how somebody tried to legally seize the art gallery fortunes of a man who voraciously fought for having a museum in the Pennsylvanian countryside rather than in a sterile downtown setting.

Mar 26th: The best Dreamworks can come up with combat Avatar is How to Train Your Dragon (14%), which looks like a mopey animated-for-kids version of just the dragon training scene from the aforementioned blockbuster over and over again. Hot Tub Time Machine (97%), as much as I may hate to admit it, will definitely get seen even though I still haven't laughed at anything in its trailer. And so goes the sad inevitabilities of life. Greenberg (86%) is the latest Noah Baumbach (The Squid & The Whale, Margot At the Wedding) creation and thus I will most assuredly see it, especially since it seems to be Ben Stiller's chance to redeem himself and do something more low key for the first time in years. Terribly Happy (73%) is a Danish cop flick, so it gets way more percentage points than any American cop flick, and it involves a policeman who's prone to nervous breakdowns, so that makes it introspective, thus even more points. Neil Young Trunk Show (2%) is a Neil Young concert film that's finally getting its arthouse release and although I respect the man's talents, I have never clicked with his music. Chloe (67%) is Atom Egoyan's latest melodrama, and I'm glad I finally saw last year's Adoration, so I'm going to put more of an effort into catching this one in the theater. Lastly, City Island (26%) is yet another family comedy drama, this time taking place on Staten Island and starring Andy Garcia as the patriarch, so it really doesn't bear any grand interest to me.

Off The Couch And Into The Theater: February 2010

Before we head into the releases for the upcoming month, a quick review of films viewed in January: the largesse of Avatar was undeniable and yet it also contained some of the most revoltingly offensive/hypocritical messages and lazy storytelling tactics of all time. So depending on what mood I'm in, I'll tell you it's awesome or it's terrible. The truth is, it's both, though as time passes, my fondness for the film's sheer entertainment/immersiveness value wanes, like my fondness for most popcorn movies do nowadays. That said, Brigitte's weekly fan fiction proves that Avatar's existence has a worthwhile purpose. Youth In Revolt was a surprisingly decent entry in the pretentious indie teenager genre, often making up for its manic and amateur qualities with magnetic dialogue and great supporting performances from Ray Liotta and Fred Willard. An Education, which I'm still not sure how I ended up buying tickets for, was (as I could have predicted if it weren't for the positive critical buzz) a bore, a chore, and didactically confused, to say the least. A small interesting nugget of 60s feminism frustration gleamed through its sluggish script and unsympathetic characters, but never enough to actually say something coherent. Peter Saarsgard is still one of my least favorite actors (creepazoid city!) and the movie's ending made me text DoktorPeace, "Adventureland is wayyyy better than An Education." Now here are February's releases (mostly crap) with Will-I-See-It percentages in parentheses...

Feb 5th: Amanda Seyfried over-narrates the latest Nicholas Sparks ocean-tide-as-metaphor-for-everlasting-love adaptation Dear John (4%) alongside Channing Tatum, who is an actor that deserves an award for being even less recognizable than Sam Worthington. John Travolta apparently went straight from the Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 set to the sound stage for his new action flick From Paris With Love (42%), where he plays the exact same villain with the exact same bald head and goatee. Too bad this time he's opposite Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who was kind of like the Channing Tatum of the 90s (but with an accent!) instead of Denzel. At least Denzel knows how to scream convincingly. Dubbed as "Open Water on a ski-lift", Frozen (54%) is -- uhh -- about people that get stuck on a ski lift, possibly with some kind of murderer involved. Don't care enough to research it, but am interested enough in the gimmick to tip this over the halfway percentage mark. I'm nonsensical like that. Over at the indies, District 13: Ultimatum (39%), which has no relation to last year's District 9, is Luc Besson's (The Professional, The Fifth Element) umpteenth attempt at regained relevancy, and while I'm sure it's pretty and action-packed, you're going to have to be more creative than just "urban sector run by gang bosses needs a hero", sorry Luc. The trailer for Creation (33%) has Paul Bettany as Charles Darwin touching his fingers gently to a monkey's fingers with his mouth agape as a bright light swells behind them. It's hilarious. I'm glad trite indie biopics are finally getting the parody treatment. Wait, it's not a parody? Speaking of biopics, The Last Station (12%) is about Tolstoy something something (falls asleep). Sorry, I know I'm an English teacher, but man, what a drag. I really don't care about watching Christopher Plummer in a ratty beard pontificating all actorly-like with James McAvoy for two hours.

Feb 12th: From the depths of editing, focus group, and re-shoot hell comes Benicio Del Toro as The Wolfman (70%), which I will probably see and get sad about, even though I'm fine with An American Werewolf in London being the only good lycanthropic film in history. Valentine's Day (28%) is like Love, Actually but like, you know, less deep? Is that even possible? Another dilution of hyperlink cinema, it follows various intertwining couples as they break up and make up, surely in a very fluffy manner. Yawn. Meanwhile, Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (31%) rides the Harry Potter coattails with its chosen-tween thematics, this time with Poseidon's son getting the reins to do something completely magical and dramatic while the wind blows in his hair/fins. I'll admit, for a movie aimed at 10-year-olds, it looks vacantly entertaining. Kurosawa's classic Rashomon (78%), otherwise known as the original Vantage Point by idiots everywhere, gets an epic re-release at the Minneapolis arthouse, and if you haven't seen it, I'll probably talk you into going if we're not too busy catching up on our Oscar nominee consumption. Lastly, St. John of Las Vegas (52%) is one of those unfortunate insufferable indies with a great cast and a disgusting sheen of quirk and self-deprecation smeared across its film stock. Former gambling addict, current insurance fraud investigator Steve Buscemi gets talked into returning to Sin City with his partner Romany Malco by his boss Peter Dinklage, all the while longing for his co-worker Sarah Silverman. It could be so good, but its horn-inflected soundtrack and brightly-lit cinematography ensures us it will be unbearable.

Feb 19th: Marty Scorsese doesn't get much competition this weekend as he releases the long-awaited Shutter Island (100%), which has him returning to his less serious, more pulpy Cape Fear side. This is exciting for me because I think the best thing about The Departed was its sly and clever dialogue and pacing. Let's hope he gets equally outlandish here, all while making the suspense taut and gritty, like Affleck did with previous Lehane source material in Gone Baby Gone, not like Eastwood did with Lehane source material in Mystic River. The one other official release of the weekend is the German/Austrian film North Face (6%), about two Nazis who tried to climb an insurmountable mountain once. If I could never have another mountain-climbing movie come out in theaters in my lifetime, I'd die a happy man. The weekend will also be blessed with the annual indieplex release of the Oscar Nominated Shorts (98%), which have become a staple tradition amongst the Minneapolis Blogulator staffers, though with ticket prices soaring and award-nominated short films coming to iTunes faster, I'd say there's a slight possibility that we'll just hole up in somebody's apartment with a laptop and enjoy them sometime before the big show.

Feb 26th: For the final weekend of the month, which is apparently also wacky movie title weekend, we start first with The Crazies (:-/%), about a small town that gets infected by a dangerous toxin that turns everyone...you guessed it, cuckoo for blood. Timothy Olyphant is in it, if that matters to you, and it's based on a 1973 horror shlock flick of the same name, but I think that after The Strangers, I'm done with modern mainstream slasher flicks. Formerly titled A Couple of Dicks, Cop Out (63%) has Kevin Smith trying out the action-comedy genre, surely with intensely failed results. Even with genre mainstay Bruce Willis and co-star of the imaginary genre flick White Cop/Black Cop ("One does the duty, the other gets the booty!"), Tracy Morgan, I don't see how this could turn out anything but an overly self-aware cliched mess. Nevertheless, I'm curious. And finally, we have 44 Inch Chest (48%), a flick with some powerhouse actors like Ray Winstone, Ian McShane, and Tom Wilkinson who team up to kidnap and torture the not-so-secret-anymore lover of Winstone's wife. It could be interesting, and definitely sounds like something 16-year-old me would want to see, but in a post-torture-porn society (is it too premature to use that phrase?), I don't know if I could stomach it.

What are yallz excited 'bout? Now that the Oscar noms have been announced, which ones must you see before the big show in March?

Off The Couch And Into The Theater: January 2010

Okay, so before we dive headfirst into our 2009 listomania here at The Blogulator (stay tuned for a relatively no-frills series of posts running down our cumulative favorites in movies, music, TV, and more from last year), let's take a quick look at the upcoming month of January's releases (with "Will I See It?" percentages in parentheses). A couple of years ago I started referring to January as the "dumping grounds" month of the year for the studios, because, well, they are. It wasn't so much a coinage of terminology on my behalf as it was an acceptance of something perceived as truth by many well before my virgin eyes. Yes, it's true. As the Oscar forerunners trickle back in re-release form, here be the movies that actually kick of his bright shiny new decade of ours. Take a look with me, won't you?

Jan 8th: Vampires run out of humans to get their suck on with in Daybreakers (23%) and Ethan Hawke looks a little less creepy than he did in Tape and a little more creepy than he did in Hamlet (looks like he didn't change his wardrobe either). Michael Cera creates a personality that is mustachioed and a tongue-in-cheek ladies man for Youth in Revolt (84%), which is still annoyingly being touted as "co-starring The Hangover's Zach Galifanakis". If it wasn't for the unexpected split personality Adaptation-esque detour, I would give a rat's patooty about this movie, but it does look kinda clever, especially when piled up aside the rest of the month's offerings. Leap Year (58%) is the most agonizing type of prototypical mainstream romantic comedy in that the entire plot is explained in the trailer (minus whether or not she marries the guy from Party Down or the dopey potato peeler) and yet, it looks eminently watchable, if only largely because Amy Adams is the most attractive and vivacious lady currently congesting the silver screen. A 2009 holdover at the arthouse coming this weekend is The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (95%), which will almost assuredly both disappoint and astound, as is Terry Gilliam's modus operandi nowadays, not unlike Richard Kelly, but Kelly's only been at his unique slapdash mindfuckery for less than a decade and Gilliam's been ramming it down our throats (sometimes to gorgeous avail and sometimes with complete and utter confusion and annoyance, a la The Brothers Grimm) for over two generations now. Oh well, it will still be a fun trainwreck to witness.

Jan 15th: Apparently Jackie Chan is in a movie called The Spy Next Door (1%) and even though the email was right in front of me telling me I could have free passes to an advanced screening this weekend and had a very short paragraph explaining the plot of the film and I knew I was going to be covering it a few hours later in a blog post, I automatically pressed delete just out of sheer reflex. So instead of spending the time to look it up on IMDb, I leave you with wondering with bated breath on that one. What would you say if I told you The Book of Eli (47%) was a post-apocalyptic thriller starring Gary Oldman and Tom Waits directed by the Hughes Brothers, of Menace II Society and From Hell fame? You'd say it at least had potential, right? What if I told you the lead actor was Denzel Washington and it looked like it had the subtleties of a Bruckheimer flick? Ruins all the other promising things, huh? Tricky sequences of questions ruin everything, don't they? Meanwhile, Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil (Too%) apparently got made in some alternative universe in which the first completely forgotten poorly-rendered CGI fairy tale spoof flick was actually enough of a success to warrant a theatrically released sequel. Luckily, the indieplex release of Crazy Heart (93%), aka this year's The Wrestler, except with an aging country music singer, will save this week's releases from total and utter failure, although this is another 2009 holdover, so, yeah...2010, you've got some work to do. There's also the domestic drama The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (12%) starring Robin Wright Penn and Winona Ryder, about a woman nearing a nervous breakdown, which was miraculously transported via time machine to 2010 from the year 1993, when those actresses and a plot like that actually garnered an audience. (Not really.)

Jan 22nd: Even stranger than that Book of Eli movie is that when I saw the trailer for the fallen angel epic battle flick Legion (71%), I was very much aware of its ridiculousness, of its brash chintziness and overly basic Braveheart-with-angels-in-the-desert set-up, and yet for some reason I really wanted to see it. I can't explain why, but researching that the only past directing experience helmer Scott Stewart has is a short film version of the great Raymond Carver story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love"; what the connection is I have no idea, but it must have something to do with why I want to see this bizarre action/fantasy film. The infamous poster that has stained movie theater hallways for way too long now for Tooth Fairy (4%) tells us with a single image everything we need to know without actually knowing anything: The Rock in ice skates, knight's armor, a pair of feathered wings, and his burly hands on his hips. Need I Google more for you? Extraordinary Measures (6%), after further consideration, is indeed not the same thing as either the 1997 Hugh Grant/Gene Hackman medical thriller Extreme Measures nor the 1998 Michael Keaton/Andy Garcia medical thriller Desperate Measures. Instead, it is merely a 2010 Brendan Fraser/Harrison Ford medical melodrama. Way different.

Jan 29th: More IMDb trivia! Did you know the director of Ghost Rider, Simon Birch, Daredevil, and this month's Kristen Bell romantic comedy vehicle When in Rome (29%) is from Hastings, Minnesota? How about that! Useless knowledge pushing educational theory/ideology and/or fond family memories from my childhood out of my head! Hooray! Seriously though, Kristen, if you're ever up this way visiting the great Mark Steven Johnson (what a name, am I right?), stop by my place; I've got scripts better than "unlucky girl finds herself overcome with suitors during a trip to Rome" up the wazoo in my apartment. Really. Mel Gibson stars in Edge of Darkness (32%), a remake of a TV miniseries about a cop who investigates the suspicious death of his daughter, and while I yawn and think about, once again, the 90s (specifically Gibson flicks that even teenaged me thought were time-wasters like Payback and Conspiracy Theory), at least back then the thrillers had a sense of humor about them. He was still coming off of playing Lt. Riggs, so he had to crack a lame joke to keep us from caring about the generic plot. Now it's just sad, even more so given the fact that this is no longer the MG we remember, in so many ways, even if that one back then wasn't that entertaining either. Lastly, probably the only surefire flick to satiate my need for pretentiousness, is Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon (99%). From the twisted mind that brought you The Piano Teacher and Funny Games (also, though, the more reserved and therefore better Cache) comes a black-and-white tale of a small conservative village circa the years before WWI and how mysterious gruesome acts begin to plague the citizens. Sounds and looks like the perfect balance between boring gorgeousness and titillating anxiety-ridden shock cinema, which is exactly how I like to close out a month of Grade-F garbage.

Off The Couch And Into The Theater: December 2009

Here we come, cinema. The final month of the year. I officially have my Top 10 in place, but this is the time in which dramatic shifts can happen and year-end upsets boot out films I really liked but don't remember much anymore from the first quarter of 2009. The November releases that surely did not make it into that final list, however, include The Men Who Stare at Goats, which was excruciatingly middling as a comedy, much less political satire or character study, and Antichrist, which despite me thinking I was overhyping the shock value for the film's first half, quickly cursed myself for not entrusting somebody as screwed (literally!) as Von Trier to turn my life into a walking nightmare for a good two weeks after viewing. Effective? Yes. Does it deserve accolades? Probably, but not from me. I'm too much of a wuss. No, the only film I've seen in the past month that squeaked into my faves of 2009 was the divisive The Box, which was a Lynchian paradise of spooky non sequitur scenes and carefully obtrusive over-acting. It's the perfect blend of the brilliant imagery of Kelly's genuinely brilliant Donnie Darko and the kooky absurdism of his more (justly) hated second venture Southland Tales. If you like nonsense cinema that's as gorgeous as it is abstract and loony, go see The Box. Now to our final month of releases before we head into the January dumping grounds...

Dec 4th: Matt Dillon, Laurence Fishburne, and other actors that should no longer work star in Armored (28%), which yes, is indeed about an armored car robbery gone haywire. Looks like somebody must have let their "guard" down! [Foghorn.] My love-hate relationship with melodrama continues with the release of Brothers (80%), where the world finally shares my confusion over the difference between Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal. I can only hope that there's a Fight Club-style twist and turns out they're the same person coming back from war and Natalie Portman cheated on her husband WITH HER HUSBAND! You see what they did with the title to the heartwarming family holiday comedy Everybody's Fine (21%)? They tell you Robert De Niro and his grown children, including but not limited to Kate Beckinsale, are fine, but in reality, I bet they're not. I bet there's a dollop of dysfunction gravy with some chunks of peppermint pet peeves bark. And therefore, they're both fine because they love each other, but not fine because being a family is harrrrrd! A quasi-National Lampoon installment called Transylmania (3%) arrives in theaters about five weeks after Halloween for some reason, but oh well, never too late for college babes getting nekkid while studying abroad in Dracula's hood! George Clooney looks solemn and tries once again to cover up his Syriana Oscar with a stab at the airplane-themed Up in the Air (92%), directed by Jason Reitman of Juno and Thank You For Smoking fame. I'm hoping so hard that this is more like the latter and less like the former, even though TYFS is still not that great of a movie. Why must I be part of the Oscar bait crowd?

Dec 11th: Disney gets maybe racist with The Princess and the Frog (64%) and Jerksica and I surely won't be able to resist the allure of a 2D animated feature gettin' back to Walt's roots. Invictus (68%) somehow combines Matt Damon playing soccer and Morgan Freeman playing Nelson Mandela, so I give it largely the benefit of the doubt despite its ambiguous premise, but then again, we all know what happens when a biopic isn't starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Peter Jackson does his first post-LOTR picture with an adaptation of The Lovely Bones (72%), which I haven't read, but I'm sure OHD has and I hope can say good things about, because the cinematography looks stunning and very un-Middle Earth-like, and that gets me excited. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (100%) will almost undoubtedly skyrocket into my top 10 list with Herzog's frenzied yet restrained direction, Nic Cage's zany performance, and iguanas! So many iguanas! The Strip (36%) is an indie comedy in which electronics store manchild employees deal with a co-worker getting married. Yeesh that sounds too much like Judd Apatow directing The Hangover. Yes, even I am tiring of the man after Funny People. Me & Orson Welles (83%) displays the talents of once forgotten thespians such as Ben Chaplin and Claire Danes, but the one who's really getting the buzz in this semi-biopic is...Zac Efron? Yessir. Hey, if it's about Orsy boy, I'm up for anything. ANYTHING.

Dec 18th: The movie that gives me the biggest knot in my stomach this month is Did You Hear About the Morgans? (1%), where Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant are a bickering upper-class married couple forced to live in the boonies via the Witness Protection Program. Hilarity/migraines ensue! I'm kind of ashamed to admit that the latest trailer for Avatar (65%) actually makes the James Cameron monstrosity at least look entertaining with not as glaringly distracting CGI effects as the first teaser. Plus James Cameron gets everyone's money. It's just part of being an American we all have to live with. William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe (64%) is a terrible title for a movie if you're interested in not putting people to sleep, especially a documentary, but the subject matter is actually compelling, chronicling the life of the lawyer of MLK, Jr. and Malcolm X. Getting married to a soon-to-be lawyer should make this a strangely perfect date night flick. Also at the arthouse is the foreign comedy The Maid (46%), which I'm sure will contain a lot of cute musical cues as a sad old woman tries to keep her job serving the bourgeoisie. Oh class differences! Young Victoria (4%) is an old clothes movie that reminds me why I put a ban on seeing all old clothes movies in the first place. A young Queen Victoria goes through trials and tribulations of love and power. Barf me into a coma!

Dec 25th: Christmas day releases are always interesting because they're either a) Oscar bait, b) benign family fare, or c) annoying as eff. It's Complicated (20%) falls into category B, because my mom and every other mom in the universe loves Meryl Streep and remembers Steve Martin from Father of the Bride and thinks Alec Baldwin is gruff yet amusing despite his presence in that strange sitcom on Thursday nights. Nine (93%) falls into category A and even though I wasn't a fan of Rob Marshall's minimalist populism in Chicago, I can't deny there was an appeal to it that at least held my attention. The same will happen with his new musical Nine, possibly even more so because it stars Daniel Day-Lewis and is about famed Italian film director Frederico Fellini. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (Eep!%) falls into category C of course and I swear to all that is squirrelly that I thought someone from The Blogulator made up that this movie with this specific title existed. I can't believe they're following through with that. Sherlock Holmes (71%) is largely benign family fare, and of course I fall victim to the Robert Downey, Jr. glamour as much as anyone, but it's also pretty annoying I do think. Since when does Sherlock DO KUNG FU?!?! Man that trailer makes it look fun/annoying. Broken Embraces (68%) is Pedro Almodovar's new flick and once again stars Penelope Cruz, and while his constant refusal to cast anyone else in his movies is both annoying and brilliant (because she's gorgeous and a pretty amazing actress, you see), I never have really latched onto a single Almodovar movie yet. They're all good mind you, and this one about a film director and his lost muse sounds cutely meta, but his style always feels at once distant and overly personal, which is tragic. The trailer for A Single Man (89%), however, might be one of my favorites of the year. It's so deliciously pretentious and artful that you'll prolly need a double-wide straw to swallow it all up, but once again, melodrama, especially at the arthouse, is kinda my new love. But I hate it. But so pretty! But grrr so many emotions! But what wonderful scoring! And so on...

Off The Couch And Into The Theater: November 2009

Okay, now I'm getting pissed. It's one thing to have missed previewing the astounding October releases Law Abiding Citizen (5%) and Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (3%) in my last Off The Couch column due to gross (deserved, but still gross) movie nerd negligence, but it's a completely other thing when I wind up seeing a very respectful four releases [Aside: Zombieland was indeed fun regardless of my pessimism, Whip It was forgettable yet mildly endearing, The Invention of Lying was forgettable yet mildly amusing, and A Serious Man is my second favorite film of the year] from the previous month and still feel like I have a lot to catch up on. Not to mention the vast array of films that will soon be invading the megaplexes and indieplexes alike over the next four weeks! Oh cursed hobby! Thou vile beast of a time spender! When willst your insatiable thirst for torture be quenched? My prediction: sometime in January. But for now, onward we must go into the depths of movie releases (with "Will I See It?" percentages in parentheses) below...

Nov 6th: Why master auteur Robert Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol (2%) is getting such an early release is unbeknownst to me. What I do know is I hope it fails miserably. Long live the original story: A Muppet Christmas Carol! The movie that pretends to be the Paranormal Activity of alien abductions, The Fourth Kind (67%), also gets released, and as the negative reviews come pouring in, I'm sure that percentage will decrease. But the X-Files fan in me will likely give into temptation, if I can trick someone else to join me. Speaking of giving into temptation, despite the awe-inspiring travesty that was Southland Tales, I am seriously psyched to see The Box (96%), Richard Kelly's hopeful return to form, and a hopefully refreshing take on the age-old middle school short story question "Would you press a button to get a million dollars if it meant someone somewhere in the world would die?". The Men Who Stare at Goats (91%), with George Clooney as the head of an alleged telepathic division of the U.S. army, also looks solidly entertaining, if a little light on substnace. It might be this year's Burn After Reading but with a little less misanthropy and a little too much playfulness. I feel I have no choice but to venture over to Uptown to see Lars Von Trier's Antichrist (89%), but there is a big chunk of me yelling inside my brain to restrain myself. It might be the dilemma of the century: to watch Willem Dafoe screw on a pile of dead bodies while an animated fox watches or not to watch Willem Dagoe screw on a pile of dead bodies while an animated fox watches.

Nov 13th: Speaking of quasi-necrophiliac orgies, Roland Emmerich gives us one big throbbing one with 2012 (70%), whose trailer, I will admit, had me captivated this weekend, if only because of its ridiculousness. John Cusack outdriving/flying the apocalypse? Haha okay Roland; count me in. Formerly titled The Boat That Rocked, which is also a lame name, but at least slightly more creative than its new one, Pirate Radio (32%), presents us with Phillip Seymour Hoffman reprising his role as Lester Bangs from Almost Famous, only this time he's on a boat and has a bigger role. Even I, the one who paid money to see Across The Universe, can smell the music-related corniness that lurks beneath this one. The highly anticipated Asian cinema sequel Ong Bak 2: The Beginning (1%) also gets its chance at the big screen this weekend. Who's anticipating it, you ask? Martial arts nerds. Aw, that used to me and my brother back in the day. Sorry, Asia, make a sequel to The Host and then we'll talk. Crude (3%) documents a great civil case between Ecuadorians and Chevron oil. Hopefully they'll make an American version of this with John Travolta or Matthew McConnaughey as the lawyer soon. Also in indie theaters, Gentlemen Broncos (49%) counts Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords amongst its otherwise unknown cast members, in a story about a teenage writer whose fantasy story gets ripped off by an author he looks up to. Sounds affecting and cute. That's a big fat maybe. Lastly, don't get confused, but there actually is a movie coming out called (Untitled) (14%), whose premise matches its title's pretentiousness: an art gallery owner falls in love with an amateur music composer.

Nov 20th: So one of my students basically wrote the plot of Planet 51 (5%) for a short story assignment and now he's depressed it's being made into a crappy kids movie where Average Joe aliens have to deal with a human invasion. I would be depressed too; my student's version of this is actually pretty cool. Then there's New Moon (0%). I'll leave OHD to discuss that when it comes out. I'm at a loss currently forever. Sandra Bullock is the flaky white person that could in The Blind Side (9%), where she takes in a troubled black youth and shows the world that she gives a damn when he becomes an awesome football player. I say this with the utmost facetiousness and yet I was on the verge of tears when I saw the trailer. Stupid swelling music trickery. We Live in Public (39%) fill the requisite documentary slot of the week and is a little more interesting, following the short rise of fall of Josh Harris, the man supposedly responsible for pioneering Internet video communication. Apparently the dude endured mental collapse after having his life broadcast online 24/7 for six moths. Now that's what I call EdTV! Anyone? Anyone? Precious (98%) is a big Oscar-buzz flick where a teenage girl deals with being overweight, pregnant, and trying to attend an alternative school. Hey I teach at one of those! Hey it's like Juno except she has real problems! Consider myself interested. I am also invested in The Messenger (96%), where Woody Harrelson chokes us all up while he visits people's homes and tells them their loved ones have died at war. How they'll churn something so cloyingly sentimental into a full-length plot remains to be seen, but I like crying, so I'm in.

Nov 25th/27th: So is Old Dogs (Ruff!%) a sequel to Wild Hogs or does it just have the same plot with a slightly different cast? I'm too lazy to Google it. Looks like Travolta and Williams dealing with being "old dogs" which may or may not mean references to Look Who Talking Now. The delayed over-and-over-again adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road (84%) finally officially probably hopefully maybe comes out for Turkey Day, if we're lucky. Now I'm back to thinking it's going to suck. Oh well, prove me wrong, Viggo! Ninja Assassin (6%) is another perfect Holiday flick in which ninjas and assassins and ninja assassins go head to head for the whole family to enjoy. Red Cliff (82%) is John Woo's return to the cinema since 2003's Ben Affleck/Phillip K. Dick debacle Paycheck. It's about Chinese dynasties and an epic battle. Not exactly my cup of tea, but if anyone can get me interested in an old clothes war picture, it's Woo. Another docublah, Oh My God (44%) is basically the foil to Bill Maher's Religulous. Instead of mocking every faith, it simply poses the question to a variety of people, "What is God?" Could be boring, could be enthralling, could be both. At least Bill Maher's not involved. The Fantastic Mr. Fox (100%) not only promises no Bill Maher, but also no convoluted marketing campaign that makes hipsters go crazy, kids fall asleep, or basically any kind of bigness behind it, despite its connection to both an uber-hipster director, Wes Anderson, and an author who meant way more to me as a kid than Maurice Sendak: Roald Dahl. Fox is one of the only ones of his I didn't read, but I have high hopes for the simple charm of Dahl and wry warmth of Anderson to meld perfectly as one. And the stop-motion animation looks brilliant. Can't wait. No regrets!

Off The Couch And Into The Theater: October 2009

I only saw one movie in September at the theaters. Extract. And while it was far better than I had anticipated (Ben Affleck is really, truly, what makes it worth watching), what I really wanted to see that night was Cold Souls, but it had already been booted off the screens. Not only that, I can't believe I haven't gotten around to seeing Thirst, The Informant!, or yes, even Jennifer's Body yet, despite the latter's head-in-the-oven act at the box office and with the critics last weekend. So while I cry in my back-to-school no-time-for-movies state, let's look at the three movies (plus all the other crap) that I better find myself spending money for in the next four weeks (all with "Will I See It?" percentages in parentheses)...

Oct 2nd: I've seen every Michael Moore movie in the theater until this one. Capitalism: A Love Story (36%) looks like even more of a jump-on-the-bandwagon situation than Sicko and a rehash of when he truly was innovative back during the Awful Truth era. The Minnesota-filmed Coen Brothers film A Serious Man (97%) needs no explanation for why it needs to be seen, but as everyone's pointing out, it is strange that the biggest star in the film is Richard Kind. Luckily this is no reason to discount a Coen Brothers film. I'll admit Zombieland (88%) looks fun as hell just like the next guy, but I must decree that it also looks only fun. It's Shaun of the Dead minus the wit, it's Dawn of the Dead with a dollop of easy humor stemming from the zombie trend of the 00s. It won't be great, folks. You heard it here first. Despite being directed by Drew Barrymore, Whip It (79%) has gotten good buzz and looks both fun and possibly successfully dramatic. Let's just hope it's not too "twee," whatever that means. I know some of you are very excited about The Invention of Lying (71%), and it definitely looks better than your average comedy, but the gimmick of the plot and feel/look of the trailer is so generic it hurts. I do not have total faith. Some of us Blogulator peeps almost saw a free screening of the environmental doc No Impact Man (28%), but alas, turns out environmental docs are so dime a dozen nowadays that a free screening couldn't even get us to go outside. Speaking of dime-a-dozen, Flame & Citron (16%) covers a true story about resistance fighters during WWII. Too tired to cyber-yawn.

Oct 9th: Okay, so maybe I'm a populist and have lost my independent edge, but Couples Retreat (77%) looks way more entertaining/terrible than anything coming out at the arthouse this week. Okay okay, it's mostly because I still have that crush on Kristen Bell. Yes it will be stupid, but I will laugh at least thrice really hard. Guaranteed. Earth Days (2%) proves that environmental docs, while all seemingly the same, are even less interesting than your average one when it's a doc about an environmental holiday that no one celebrates. Unmistaken Child (5%) is about a boy looking for his reincarnated father, which sounds both depressing and uplifting at once. Too bad I'm shallow and would much prefer Vince Vaughan making sex jokes for 90 minutes. What's wrong with me? The Boys Are Back (49%) shows us Clive Owen's acting chops as a father who has to suddenly raise his boys by himself after his wife tragically dies. The clip I saw on Conan looked surprisingly well acted and naturalistically shot, so I may indeed find myself giving this one a --err-- shot if I wind up for some reason turning down Jason Bateman looking nervous. And of course there's Amreeka (10%), the touching and funny story of an immigrant mother trying to raise her child in suburban Illinois. That sounds great and all, but I want my touching and funny to happen during an island getaway with white folks. Sorry, counterculture cinema. You lose.

Oct 16th: Yes, The Stepfather (63%) will be probably be as good as Dylan Walsh's other notable cinema project, Congo, but it will also have Dan from Gossip Girl, which makes this classic horror premise appealing to me, your average middle class teenager. Who am I? I feel lost being much more interested in seeing these big budget monstrosities than the indie scene. Thank God that Where The Wild Things Are (100%) is universally anticipated, because I don't know what I'd do without a stable rock of a blockbuster such as it to help keep me grounded. Still Walking (25%) is basically the Japanese version of Rachel Getting Married, but it doesn't feature a strung-out Anne Hathaway or a member of TV on the Radio, so I can't get too worked up about it. Oh my, marketing and image works! My tastes are not genuine! LeBron James gets his due (I guess) with the documentary More Than A Game (6%), which covers his rise from the streets to being the sole catalyst for Cleveland's economy. And Coco Before Chanel (4%) explores exactly what the title says. So at least neither of those real life counterparts interest me, and I can feel okay about skipping those at the local one-screen cinema. However, I won't know if my "indie cred" will be validated by The Road (90%). It's getting mad press because of the success of Cormac McCarthy's other big screen adaptation (No Country For Old Men), so that could make a mainstream thing by year's end, but it also is reportedly slow and thoughtful, which would earn me back some indie self esteem!

Oct 23rd: I can't promise Jigsaw will make a blog re-appearance to promote Saw VI (0.0VI%) this Halloween, but we can only hope. No other comments regarding said film. An Education (23%) is getting Oscar hype because who knows why. It's a period romance starring a Saarsgard. Here it comes, the obligatory...snoozefest. I totally forgot that Hilary Swank plays Ms. Earheart in Amelia (56%) this month, and while I'm not getting my panties in a jumble over it, I'm always a sucker for biopics, even when they're undoubtedly going to be mediocre. The Damned United (9%) is a dramatization of the Leeds soccer team's quasi-rise to notoriety in 1974 and while it has Frost/Nixon's Michael Sheen, it looks like every other underdog sports movie ever. The weekend's tiniest release is The Horse Boy (3%), which doesn't look particularly generic or mediocre, but it's about a family that travels through Mongolia looking for someone to help cure their autistic son, so I can't help but not feel compassionate enough to be interested in seeing it.

Oct 30th: Michael Jackson's slapdash quick buck concert film This Is It (37%) will be crashing into theaters for two weeks only, giving us all the goods on the fantabulousness that is practicing for an actual concert. Can't we just say, "ooh almost, dagnabit," and move on? So we didn't get a big final concert before he kicked the bucket. Deal with it. Following up the hit-or-miss (almost all of it was "miss") Paris Je T'Aime is its U.S. equivalent New York I Love You (52%), pastichin' up some quirky and quaint short stories about romance in the Big Snapple. None of the stories look unique, but the cinematography will be compelling enough and the use of hipster music will make my heart swoon/gag. A husband and wife go missing in The Canyon (14%), which actually places the lost couple in the Grand Canyon. How that's possible I have no idea, but I have no interest in a cross between Lost in America and Gerry. I'd choose either of those movies over it in a second. And finally we have Skin (42%), in which an African girl grows up in South Africa with two white parents. Sounds like it could be a snoozefest, but I have an odd affection for Sam Neill and while I haven't seen Sophie Okonedo in anything, she looks quietly compelling here. Wait, was that me finding something worthwhile in an indie movie that doesn't feature vampires or hipster music? Sweet, I haven't totally lost it!

Off The Couch And Into The Theater: September 2009

August was a pretty successful movie month. Despite only seeing one film (maybe two) that will end up on my Top 10 list by year's end, every experience was worthwhile. In reverse order, The Final Destination (in 3D) was exactly the kind of end to the summer trash candy I needed. I guess I'm not good at differentiating between the movies from this franchise, because critics say it's a lot worse than the first three, even though it's exactly the same as all of them. Inglourious Basterds was everything I wanted it to be: funny, violent, creative, and had great music. District 9 was interesting and overall I liked it, but it did feel like it wanted to be too many different things, which kept me from getting truly pulled in. Lady Amy pretty much covered The Ugly Truth, so it's obvious why watching that movie with her was a laff riot. The Taking of Pelham 123, the final of three films viewed at the drive-in, was the perfect movie to watch at 1AM and just smile with one eye open at Travolta's reiteration of his Face/Off role (with homoerotic undertones this time!) and Denzel's routine everyman-with-skillz protagonist. And then there was Funny People, which was actually quite bad and I don't even remember anything except not liking any of the characters, but I watched it with Jerksica about five hours before I proposed to her, so my mind was elsewhere, and sitting in the theater was riveting, though it had nothing to do with the movie. Here's September releases, almost all of which are crap, save two hopefuls (one indie, one wide release), with "Will-I-See-It?" percentages in parentheses...

Sept 4th: I've seen the trailer for Gamer (4%) more times than I care to see any 2-3 minute advertisement ever, but alas, there's still a tiny part of me that wants to see Michael C. Hall in a weird collarless shirt chew up the scenery with Ludacris and Gerard Butler as ex-cons who are controlled in a video game, but just like Death Race, if they survive it, they are set free. Extract (50%) seems lazy, but so did the film's director Mike Judge's Office Space when it came out, and that turned out to become a classic. Same for Idiocracy - crap, maybe I should change that percentage. And I do love me some Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, and JK Simmons action (all of them always play the same character, but what characters!). All About Steve (1%) looks like a joke romantic comedy; like its trailer should have been put at the beginning of Tropic Thunder with its wacky fast-forward camera work and Bradley Cooper finally becoming noticeable as the tool that he was before and during The Hangover, and always will be. At the indies, documentary Afghan Star (19%) chronicles the eponymous country's version of AI, where you have to risk getting shot to become a star. Renee Zellweger tries to go arthouse with My One And Only (11%) as a single mom on a road trip searching for the man that will make her a kept woman. It's set in the 1950s, so settle down, feminists.

Sept 11th: I was srsly excited for 9 (62%) when all I had to go on were the darkly animated stills floating around the movie blogs, but now that the commercials are airing, it looks like a flimsy video game with animation comparable to Dreamcast, not Pixar. Sad! Speaking of sorrow, Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself (3%) is another entry in the Madea saga, this time focusing on the single mom being courted by a man who tells her she needs to change her seedy life as a lounge singer around. Sorry, feminists. Sorority Row (48%) is a horror movie. Guess what it's about. I'll give you a hint. The plot synopsis starts with, "A killer on..." The Baader Meinhof Complex (51%) dramatizes a sect of 60s German terrorists called The Red Army Faction, which could be thrilling, boring, informative, or some combination of the three. Captain Abu Raed (6%) is actually an airport janitor, but he likes to tell the local Arab children fantastical stories of being a pilot so he can...uhh...no, it's totally platonic, right? No, iMDB, I will not click on "full synopsis." Sorry. I found out about Andy Griffin's return to the screen in Play The Game (7%) on ET, so you know it's gotta be good. "He plays a retirement home gigolo," Mary Hart said at me harshly, and my ears exploded. As you can see by our faves sidebar, Brigitte really wants to see The September Issue (2%), in which we watch the editors of Vogue get ready for, that's right, the September issue of their magazine! How 'citing!

Sept 18th: Well, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs (21%) ruins one of my all-time favorite childhood picture books by giving it an effing plot. Leave well enough alone, everyone except Pixar (sorry for the repeated Pixar references, I'm listening to the awesome Up soundtrack as I write this post)! Jennifer's Body (89%) is the number two most exciting film of the month, despite its incorporation of Megan Fox and Diablo Cody. I have faith though that Cody will be a better tongue-in-cheek genre screenwriter, though, instead of trying to write characters we're supposed to take seriously. Especially with a nice thick gender discussion when Fox starts supernaturally murdering boys, and specifically boys. The Informant! (74%) looks like Steven Soderbergh having fun again without having too much fun, i.e. Out of Sight, not Ocean's Quadrillion or Bubble. Let's hope that works out with Matt Damon in the lead self-explanatory role. Love Happens (<3%).>Bright Star (63%), the new Jane Campion movie, and I loves me some The Piano, but that is her only good film to date, plus you know me and romance period dramas. Nevertheless, it's about Keats and his untimely death, so I could just curl up with a blankie some lonely night and Netflix this someday. Thirst (99%), however, is the real romance film to pitch a tent for. A vampire priest, Chan-wook Park of Oldboy and Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance fame, and a whole lot of sexy time? My self-made hype better not let me down. It Might Get Loud (57%) documents the electric guitar through three lenses: The Edge (great guitarist, hate his band), Jimmy Page (great guitarist, don't care about his band), and Jack White (terrible guitarist, hate his band). And yet, it's a mildly interesting idea for a music documentary. The Beaches of Agnes (__%) is an autobiographical documentary about some director named Agnes, none of whose movies I've seen or heard of. Hence the blank. Burning Plain (30%) is what is sure to be another lame attempt at "hyperlink cinema" (think Magnolia or Babel), with a description that's so vague it hurts, including phrases like "shattered lives," "a sin from her past," and "redemption, forgiveness, and love." #Barfmerotten.

Sept 25th: Bruce Willis gets Matrix-y with Surrogates (69%), in which he is a detective in a world where people use clones of themselves to go and do their work/errands for them. Should be an entertaining-enough diversion. We can only hope George Bluth, Sr.'s surrogate is involved somehow. I'm only putting the percentage for Fame (75%) so high because Jerksica warned me upon seeing the poster this weekend at the theater that I might as well surrender to seeing it now. Never saw the original, but might just for comparison purposes. Also because I like killing myself in the eyeholes. Kate Beckinsale's Antarctic thriller Whiteout (38%) sounded a lot cooler on paper, but the trailer makes it look pretty rote and, well, too white. I get it, it's Antarctica. Also, she's getting less pretty as the years go on and that makes me pouty. Pandorum (27%) is literally just Alien with multiple creatures instead of one, right down to the characters waking up from hypersleep and the whole film taking place inside a dark, dingy spaceship. At least my former Film Studies students will hopefully recognize its rip-off-ness. They will, won't they?! I know some people have seen This Is England, so those people might be interested in that director's new feature Somers Town (49%), similar in that it's an urban-centric character study, this time specifically in London, but dissimilar in that it looks more boring. The Other Man (22%) is the 12th film to be titled as such, and Liam Neeson once again gets angry, this time because his wife is cheating on him and he must find out who with. Psst, it's Antonio Banderas, not evil terrorists, so you should prolly back off and leave well enough alone, bud. Paris (15%) is the fourteenth film/TV series to be titled as such, and it stars a guy named, of all possible French names, Pierre, and he gets sick and so he watches the city from his balcony, only from what I can tell, there's no Rear Window/Disturbia excitement here. Just plain French city life. Yeah, well I got a fever too, and the prescription is not WATCHING NOTHING HAPPEN.

Off The Couch And Into The Theater: August 2009

No nostalgia fest this week, folks. My sincerest apologies. But if you didn't catch my rundown of the Top Ten 90s Soundtrack Songs on Pajiba last week, surely that will tide you over. Especially with all those catty comments at the end of it from the Internet goblins! And of course we'll delve into the depths of 1992 next Tuesday to continue my Quest for the Single Finest Film of Our Generation. In the meantime, we must focus on the present. Or the near future, rather, as we look into what bountiful gifts of cinema the indian summer month of August has in store for us. July did quite adequately, with two movies I liked a lot but not sure if I loved (the tense but kinda simple Moon and the inventive but kinda empty (500) Days of Summer) and two movies that I thought were going to suck turned out to be just okay (the gorgeous but inert Public Enemies and the more-clever-than-expected but still largely dumb Bruno). I'm still crossing my fingers that at least one more slam dunk comes my way before the summer ends. Check out this month's releases (with "Will I See It?" percentages in parentheses) and let me know what you're most psyched about in the comments...

Aug 7th: I never played with G.I. Joes when I was a kid and when I first heard about G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (52%), I completely dismissed it as a movie in the vein of the other huge blockbuster franchise based on nostalgic action figures that I never played with. But not only did I end up seeing Transformers, which featured no actors I cared about, save John Turturro, G.I. Joe features Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mr. Eko from Lost, Jonathan Pryce, and Dennis Effing Quaid. Meanwhile, I would only be slightly more surprise if I end up seeing Julie & Julia (49%), featuring Amy Adams as a food blogger who idolizes Julia Child and Meryl Streep as Julia Child. With an interesting narrative structure, a positive book review from OHD, and my crush on Amy Adams all in play here, who knows. Paper Heart (69%) with Michael Cera and the awkward smiling girl from Knocked Up looks like (500) Days of Summer meets Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, and thus, the indie hipster marketing prolly sucks me once more. A Perfect Getaway (43%) features Steve Zahn, Milla Jovovich, Timothy Olyphant, and co. getting killed off one by one on an island. Sounds like a fun bad movie night or a boring bad movie night. Or both. The Cove (11%) is a documentary that examines a clandestine dolphin fishing hole off the coast of Japan. I care about dolphins but I could not stomach watching them get fished. This guy would agree with me. End of The Line (2%) is another fishing documentary, but this one's just about regular fish. I could stomach that, but regular fish I don't care about. Sorry. Go dolphins! The Answer Man (20%) is a romantic dramedy between bookworm Jeff Daniels and single mother Lauren Graham. Yawwwwwwwwn.

Aug 14th: I usually don't seek out movie trailers to write this feature, but I had to in order to understand District 9 (88%), which looks like basically Independence Day filmed like a cross between a Nightline special and Cloverfield. A spaceship of creatures is sequestered in a remote part of Africa and an international debate arises about what to do with them. Bizarre, interesting, and it could be totally lame. The Goods: Live Hard Sell Hard (58%) is Jeremy Piven's chance to get on board the Will Ferrell gimmick comedy train as a used car salesman, and while I hate Entourage and haven't liked a Will Ferrell movie like this since Anchorman, I continue to see them. The Time Traveler's Wife (23%) looks schmaltzy and is based on a schmaltzy best-seller, yes, but I do like time travel. But Rachel McAdams does make my tummy hurt. And something tells me time travel won't be the centerpiece of this film. Post Grad (15%) features the other Gilmore Girl, Alexis Bledel, as a college grad that moves back home, aimless, and yup, you guessed it...ready for love! Bledel's adorable, but something tells me GG is the only thing she was ever right for, and ever will be. Ponyo (78%) is an animated Japanese film about a goldfish that wishes it were human that will get the dubbing treatment featuring the voices of Tina Fey, Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, and more for its stateside release. The pastel style looks impressive, but the story sounds flat. Not Quite Hollywood (9%) documents a supposedly "outrageous" time in Australian filmmaking: the 1970s. Wasn't everything crazy then? The content sparks an interest, but it just makes me want to see the actual movies it talks about rather than watch people talk about movies I've never heard of. Spread (24%) stars the Kutch as a lothario (ha!) who resides and dines in luxury with his sugar mama Anne Heche, who I assume at some point finds out he's not really after her for her looks/personality. Wah wah. Adam (63%) is a more grounded version of that Christina Ricci picture Pumpkin in which a man with Asberger's Syndrome finds love...or does he? Yes, but do her parents approve? Maybe. I dunno, it's prolly formulaic, but it looks genuinely sweet to me.

Aug 21st: The only reason Tarantino's latest Inglourious Bastards (99%) doesn't get a full count from me is that I don't know who will go with me to see it. No, his WWII epic hasn't gotten good advance press (just like another fave director's attempt at a similar genre pic last year with Miracle at St. Anna, which I still haven't seen yet), but at least this still looks like a Tarantino flick. Exploitative, over the top, and sensational, yes, but entertaining as all get out. And the climax takes place in a movie theater! I love it already! The only other release set for this week is the limited foreign film Lorna's Silence (13%), which looks both dreadfully dreary and pulsingly dramatic all at once. Albanian Lorna marries Belgian dude so she can start her dream business in Belgium, but of course, the plan doesn't work out so smoothly.

Aug 28th: Oh c'mon. It's just confusing when you name a sequel to a remake Halloween II (0.666%). I never saw Rob Zombie's original "reimagining" from Myers' POV and I'm not all that curious since getting scarred by The Devil's Rejects back in the day, but WTF? Brad Dourif AND Howard Hesseman? What is the world coming to? No one I've talked to is excited about Taking Woodstock (71%), but I can't help but hold out hope that Ang Lee knows what he's doing and will make it a magical experience. Wow I sound like an idiot when I say that. The newly titled The Final Destination (666%), originally called Final Destination: Death Trip 3D, will be the perfect cap to end the summer. I trust that the brilliant minds behind this decade's best death scenes will one-up the 3D adequacy of My Bloody Valentine earlier this year. While I never got the appeal of Paul Giamatti, Cold Souls (91%), in which he plays an actor who hires a new service to extract his soul so he can properly inhabit a role in a challenging Chekhov play. Sounds like Charlie Kaufman retread, but it's about time people started ripping him off more. I'm psyched. Not only do I not get his appeal, but I straight up loathe Robing Williams, so despite the fact that World's Greatest Dad (40%) has a teacher-friendly premise (sounds like he may even poke fun at his famous Dead Poets Society role) and that it's directed AND written by (no, you are not dreaming) Bobcat Goldthwait, it's still about a self-depracating teacher wishing he was famous. That hurts yo. And lastly, Yoo Hoo Mrs. Goldberg (43%) is yet another documentary, this time chronicling the life and times of the little known Gertrude Berg, who was called "the first lady of television," having written tens of thousands of scripts (more than any other woman of her generation and even most men) and fought aggressively against the 1950s blacklist. Interesting, but can it hold my attentions for two hours? Maybe.

Off The Couch And Into The Theater: July 2009

June of 2009 is a month that will go down in infamy. Not only did I see six, count 'em - six, movies (ignores the cash register noises his subconscious makes), but I really liked four of them. In fact, four of my 5 favorite films of the first half of 2009 were viewed in the past 30 days. It's times like these that remind me why I spend the first five months of the year either at home or wasting time at terrible movies: because I know that eventually it will all pay off. The Brothers Bloom is a terrific and truly genreless indie, full of comedy, action, drama, and romance, but never sticking too long on any one of them. While WALL-E admittedly had more style and Ratatouille had more class, Up hit me harder emotionally than either and was so unpredictably hilarious that it's the first Pixar film I can see myself willingly let remain in my Top 10 by year's end. Drag Me To Hell is exactly what everyone says it is: both genuinely freaky and ridiculously funny, but what most don't tell you is that it's all in a completely good-natured Are You Afraid of the Dark?-type way, which was refreshing and left me smiling. Oh and best ending to a horror movie since The Descent. Finally, Away We Go was an absolute surprise: quirky and sweet without being nauseating, with characters that felt real while being also ethereally idealistic. So, yes, these movies all made up for The Hangover and Terminator Salvation, and even those movies were at least entertaining! The era of boring movies may be over! (Watches Transformers 2 ad.) Nevermind! Can we look forward to July? Let's see (with "Will I See It?" percentages in parentheses):

July 1st/3rd: It's too bad it looks like Michael Mann has eschewed his minimal sleekness for bombastic generictown with the ads for Public Enemies (93%). Then again, it could be all marketing, similar to Miami Vice. And while that movie largely sucked, and I wish Johnny Depp would go away for eternity, I think we have a better shot at this one redeeming the director, albeit a small possibility. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (1%) opens as well, and seeing Ray Romano on The Today Show for all of two minutes was enough to remind me why I avoid non-Pixar computer-animated films at all cost. Over at the arthouses, The Girl From Monaco (17%) opens and we get our obligatory simmering threesome drama of the year. This one's French and is between an attorney on a high-profile case, his bodyguard, and a member of the press. Yawnaroo. Also, Moon and Whatever Works, covered last month, will come out this week for real (thanks to Switchblade Comb for getting me correct Minneapolis indie release dates).
July 10th: I refuse to go to the lengths necessary to spell Bruno (55%) with an umlaut. I hate that I know I will more than likely go see Sacha Baron Cohen's new dickumentary. I dislike myself for laughing at the iPod joke in the trailer, which leads me to slightly edge out its percentage over the halfway mark. Woe is me. I Love You Beth Cooper (42%) is based on a YA novel that's actually supposed to be genuinely clever and witty, but the film just looks like a C-list teen flick, along the lines of Fired Up, if you even remember what that is. I barely do. The Hurt Locker (81%) is directed by Kathryn Bigelow, she of Point Break fame, and is about a bomb diffusing squad in Iraq. It won accolades at various film festivals, but the awkward line between hard rock-soundtracked action pic and gut-wrenchingly raw character drama is being towed here and I don't know how I feel about that. Jerichow (16%) is a German remake of the classic The Postman Always Rings Twice where an abusive husband gets cuckolded by a sexy man servant he hires to work in his home. The premise is as old as dirt, but with the houseworker recently being discharged from Afghanistan, they're trying to make some modern connection. Too bad it's boring.

July 17th: Can you believe that after Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2%), we still have two more movies of this series to endure? Am I the only one that has literally zero interest in this franchise? I would rather watch Twilight; that's how much I don't care. Oh, but I'd rather see it than the new Ice Age. That's true. Treeless Mountain (28%) is a Korean film that seems very similar to a really good but really sad and slow Japanese film, Nobody Knows, in which kids' parents disappear and they're left to fend for themselves, except this time the little girl protagonists are way young, so it's probably even more sad and slow. Lastly, we get to witness the mighty return of longtime actor, first-time director Michael Keaton in The Merry Gentleman (39%). Mr. Mom plays a suicidal hitman (settle down In Bruges, it'll be okay) who forms an "unlikely bond" (I hate that logline phrase SO much) with a young woman who's searching for a new home after leaving a broken one. Wow that sounds emotionally manipulative, but also I love Multiplicity, so I'm torn.

July 24th: The sure-to-be-delightful farce G-Force (3%) is an art film about pet hamsters who are also rogue spies. It is tantamount to Fellini's early works or even the brawny anti-industrialist subtext found in Chaplin's later efforts. Critics will dismiss it today, but the future is when film professors choose our modern classics, I assure you. The Ugly Truth (4%) stars Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler, a duo I refer to as "Die Already" in a romantic comedy that finally tells women "you have to be both the stripper and the librarian" in order for guys to like you. Orphan (78%) is today's answer to The Good Son, which will always be a creepy guilty pleasure of mine. We will have a party where we watch the Culkin/Wood vehicle in preparation for the new kid-goes-crazy horror flick, I promise. 500 Days of Summer (89%) gives us Zooey Deschanel looking doe-eyed for two hours, the kid from 3rd Rock From the Sun looking wide-eyed for two hours, and the audience trying to die from twee-overdose for two hours. I can't wait for it. Betty Blue: The Director's Cut (42%) is released at the indies, and apparently the non-director's cut was a big foreign hit back in the 80s. The premise sounds like it's the original Manic Pixie Dream Girl flick, except more realistic, i.e. the girl turns out to be actually crazy. Lastly, Seraphine (5%) is about a painter that I do not know. That makes me feel dumb and ignorant art-wise. I'm okay with that, mostly.

July 31st: Eternally known by me as that movie with the terrible poster, Judd Apatow's Funny People (90%) finally gets released at the end of the month. It will be either be touching and funny or saccharine and unfunny. As long as Jason Schwartzmann is in the former category, my money will be considered well spent. Also I like to think Sandler can handle dramatics, but the only evidence of this is Punch Drunk Love, which had a director that was good at style and substance, not just substance. Aliens in the Attic (6%) is the kind of film I would have died to see as a seven-year-old, but I have a feeling if I were seven in a day and age where everything was CGI'd instead of using Jim Henson's Workshop, I would slit my wrists. But what if you found aliens in your attic when you were 7 and they looked like midgets in rubber suits instead of Roger Rabbit cast-offs?!?! How cool would that be?!?! In The Loop (57%) is a political farce that looks like a half-assed single-camera sitcom instead of focused and cinematic commentary like Wag The Dog, but it has potential in James Gandolfini (who hasn't appealed to me until his deadpan smirk seen here), despite its lack of good jokes in its trailer. $9.99 (74%) is an Australian stop-motion feature about people's lives in an apartment building intertwining and while the set-up is weak, the animation looks out of this world. Plus I can hope for a kangaroo popping in and me going, "ooh look! kangaroo!". Soul Power (18%) is a documentary about a soul music festival, and similar to that painter movie, I feel like I should care about knowing who or what this is about, but I just don't. Shrink (49%) features the best possible role for douchnozzle Kevin Spacey: a Hollywood psychiatrist. And yes, this is the same premise as that show Head Case (couldn't get through the 2nd episode, by the way), which airs alongside Party Down, except in this one Spacey really doesn't care about his patients and he becomes a pothead. Sounds terrible and intriguing, all at once.