MARCH 2014 MOVIE PREVIEW

Golly, this one just shot right by me. Possibly because not one single North American wide release all month has me genuinely excited. Possibly because the end of February has been so punishingly busy IRL. At any rate, it's not Friday yet, so I still get to call this a preview. Though not a particularly anticipatory one.


7.3.2014

Okay, so "wide release" in the intro paragraph was a hedge: I am in fact massively excited for one film, though one unlikely to have any more than a particularly visible limited release. That being Wes Anderson's eighth feature, The Grand Budapest hotel, which somehow, and somewhat oddly, has me more excited in advance than any of the director's previous films ever have. Getting his momentum back on track has something to do with that; solid trailers as well; certainly its three aspect ratio's gimmick. Boy, do I give it up for multiple aspect ratios.

I do not, however, give it up for animated movies based on cartoons I have adored for as long as I've been alive, all the more so when those animated movies look like they're completely missing anything resembling the attitude or function of those cartoons. Which is why I'm approaching Mr. Peabody & Sherman with the enthusiasm of somebody who just found out they have to clean out the office refrigerator.

For those who care about such things, the seven-years-later sequel 300: Rise of an Empire is finally coming out, to the delight of somebody, I guess. For myself, my opinions towards the project begin and end with my conviction that it really should have been titled 302.


14.3.2014

The end of an era: The Single Moms Club is the very last film in Tyler Perry's longstanding partnership with Lionsgate, and he has at this point no more announced films in the pipeline. I've disliked more Perry films than I've liked - hell, I've hated more Perry films than I've liked, but this is still a weird and discomfiting development, like your first night without a childhood blanket. Dare I say that I'm even kind of looking forward to it now? I dare.

I am not kind of looking forward to Need for Speed, a car racing video game movie that promises to be worse than the Fast & Furious franchise at its all-time lowest. I'm probably not really looking forward to Jason Bateman's directorial debut either, the vulgar comedy Bad Words, though I'm kind of fascinated by the decision to give it a platform release over the remainder of the month.

I am kind of actually terrified of the Veronica Mars movie, though I'm sure as hell going to see it.


21.3.2014

Boy, I'm sure certain that I'm meant to be excited about Muppets Most Wanted, but neither my increasingly diminished affection for the 2011 The Muppets, not the hard-to ignore impression that this is just a remake of The Great Muppet Caper that nobody was asking for or really needs, are making it at all easy to get into that place mentally. I mean, it's the Muppets, so of course, but that only goes so far...

The YA train keeps trying to pull out of the station, with Divergent, about which I presently know nothing other than Kate Winslet plays a villain. Which I can get behind. Also, the notorious Nymphomaniac, Lars von Trier's two-part sex epic, starts to makes itself known in the United States - for myself, if I ever see it at all (and I really, really don't want to), I'll wait for the director's cut, which turns a very long movie into an absurdly long movie, but if you do something, you should do it right.


28.3.2014

Somebody decided that giving Darren Aronofsky a whole lot of money to make Noah was a terrific idea, and that is hilarious to me. But not as hilarious as the beard Russell Crowe has been saddled with. I am by no means an Aronofsky partisan, but I don't see any way at all for this to not be captivating, even if it is a weird, awful misfire.

And speaking of misfires, Arnold Schwarzenegger's dogged attempt to have his old career back continues with Sabotage.

As we started the month with a limited release I can't wait to see when it gets in my neck of the woods, so do we end with another: The Raid 2. It ist he kind of very special film where the negative reviews (there's so much violence and plot-denuded action that it's tiring) make me even more excited than the positive reviews. Which, by the way, have been giddy.