MARCH 2015 MOVIE PREVIEW

This has been an odd winter so far: enormous hits that weren't supposed to be, movies that looked like they were going to be terrible turning out pretty decent (e.g. Kingsman, which I finally saw and will be reviewing sometime today). So it's probably smart to admit that you never can tell, and even though there's not a single wide-release film that I'm looking forward to in March, I'll bet at least one of them turns out to surprise me.


6.3.2015

I'll also bet that it's not Chappie, which finds Neil Blomkamp (whose career, ever since the last third of District 9, has been an experiment in the art of diminishing returns) cross-cutting Short Circuit with a dour post-Nolan action movie. I lack the imaginative capacity to envision this turning out well, though it's never the wrong choice to put Sigourney Weaver in your genre film. So that's at least one thing to look forward to.

Even so, it's at least the most ambitious-looking film of a rough lot, that also finds Vince Vaughn, Dave Franco, and for some inscrutable reason Tom Wilkinson drugging and cursing and sexing their way across Europe in Unfinished Business. I am not much of a Vaughn fan in the best circumstances, and this is plainly not. Also, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is here to remind us that grandmas like to see movies too, and I need to finally stop dragging my heels on catching up with The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Perhaps I will do them as a blog double feature. Because if I suffer, I will make damn sure you suffer with me.


13.3.2015

The first time Disney made a live-action version of one of their animated classics, they had Glenn Close play iconic villain Cruella De Vil. The second time, they had Angelina Jolie play iconic villain Maleficent. And now, they're having Cate Blanchett play rather less iconic villain Lady Tremaine in their new Cinderella, which is where the logic totally loses me. It's like, literally, just a re-skinning of Disney's 1950 animated feature in live-action, without songs with one of our greatest actors playing the wicked stepmother. And, I am sure, doing a kickass job of it; but why bother? Money, obviously, but why really bother? But then, Cinderella is my least favorite of all Disney's princess films, so I clearly don't fit into the target audience.

I am, though, in the target audience for a film in which Badass Liam Neeson and Badass Ed Harris square off, and yet Run All Night looks intensely boring and formulaic in every aspect that isn't those two men being in the same action movie. Especially with Joel Kinnaman in there, all mediocring the place up.

Lastly, I don't usually mention limited releases in these previews, but if you're going to be in a place to see It Follows, you should do so.


20.3.2015

Franchises that feel obligated to messily include their series name in the official title have given us the plainness of The Hunger Games: Whatever and the relative elegance of The Twilight Saga: Whatever Else. But there's something especially charming about the crass functionality of The Divergent Series: Insurgent. Given how fucking useless Divergent was, I expect it to be the solitary element of the film that I shall ever describe as "charming". Fingers crossed for more decent Chicago location porn.

Doggedly attempting to serve as counter-programming, we find this kind of action message movie thing called The Gunman, with Sean Penn as a military contractor. I don't even know. The trailer already practically put me to sleep. Also Do You Believe? is, tragically, not a biopic of late-period Cher, but one of those bleak movies that panders to Evangelical Christian audiences, rubbing their noses in how they're not allowed to enjoy actual movies with actual production value.


27.3.2015

I find myself in the peculiar position of hoping that Home, a ghastly-looking animated sci-fi comedy, manages to become a big hit, because it's sort of the case that the entire future of DreamWorks Animation rests on it turning a profit. And while DreamWorks and I have had our differences - we have, in fact, had virtually nothing but, save for the movies with the words "Dragon" or "Panda" in their title - the landscape of Hollywood studio animation is more vital with DWA alive and kicking than with them dead.

Oh, and Get Hard, your title is an erection joke. Good for you.