Week of 9/14

Yes, I set up a new blog because I found the film-centric on too restrictive. Yes, my first posts are a preview for a ten-week film season. I get the hypocrisy here. Moving on...

The second week of fall feels a lot like the summer - lacking. After two promising films we got today, next week is looking pretty weak, at least for wide releases. We have:
(Picture clicks head to IMDb for all the info you could ever want)

The Brave One
To be honest, I really can't bring myself to care about this one. The racial overtones seem so heavy handed, it feels like this one is shooting to be this year's Crash, but without the ill-advised awards. On style and plot alone, I have a hard time differentiating this one from that Kevin Bacon revenge flick - something awful happens, main character flips out and seeks revenge. Apparently a really bad, unfortunate-looking makeover is a major part of exacting your revenge after the death of a loved on. Coulda fooled me. A definite pass for me - what happened to Jodie Foster, by the way? OK in Inside Man, I'll admit that, but before that, Panic Room is the only thing I remember, let alone the only thing that even remotely piqued my interest.

Mr. Woodcock
Aside from Billy Bob Thornton as the title character with an obvious name gag, can you give me one good reason to see this movie? Sean William Scott doesn't count. Funny guy, I admit. This is a pairing that could, with the right motives, be very funny. But frankly, Billy Bob hasn't had the right motives for a couple of years now. The last time I remember enjoying him was either Love, Actually or Bad Santa, maybe the two most varied Christmas movies to feature the same actor in FOREVER. Again, pass. Somehow, I ended up owning School for Scoundrels. Guess where that is? That's right. Still in the plastic.

So that's kind of depressing. Fortunately, if you're in a major market, you have a saving grace in limited release next week. However, even limited offers a mixed bag:

Across the Universe
I think this wins the award the trailer I am happiest to get rid of this year, narrowly beating out The Simpsons. Julie Taymor's Vietnam pseudo-protest film, which will inevitably draw connections to Iraq, has been pretty heavily pushed in front of major releases for most of the last six months. I get it. It's a nice, La Boheme-esque tale that shows artistic expression at its best, making a clear statement about one's priorities and involvement in the world around them in the process. Think Moulin Rouge, but without the shred of subtletly that Baz Luhrman was able to unearth. Hell, they even cast Jim Sturgess, a nearly perfect Ewan McGregor look-alike, in the male lead. AND they named him Jude. I wonder what late 60s tie-in they can make here. Taymor seems to be stretching to make this one relevant and original by drawing on one of the more accidentally original movies of the last couple of years, and I can't see this doing anything but falling flat on its face. If you like musical films, I'm sure you're already there, but honestly, what is here that you can't get from the aforementioned Luhrman film for the stylistic touches, or, for the contest, from the vastly more interesting-looking Forrest Gump? (Yeah, I never thought I'd write that sentence either.

Luckily, to counterbalance all of this, those of us in major markets get:

Eastern Promises
Here, we get arguably three of the best performers of the last ten years (Viggo Mortensen post-LotR, Naomi Watts, and international favorite Vincent Cassel) under the direction of David Cronenberg, who delivered my favorite surprise of the last few years (2005's amazing and disturbing A History of Violence). The plot puts Mortensen in a similar situation - a hidden identity violently and unexpectedly being revealed, with Watts doing the revealing. Frankly, I have no idea what Cassel is doing in the movie, but he is one of the few people in Hollywood who can really do no wrong. All three have proven many times that they are willing to go wherever a script or director needs them to go, and make things as ugly and gritty as necessary, and this darkness is the area when Cronenberg really thrives. Cassel's Hollywood roles have not yet allowed him to show the complexity of which he is capable, but I think this is where he will be able to break out. Cronenberg seems to have found a suitable battery mate in Mortensen, each one helping the other break away from their more genre-defined and driven pasts. The trailers look like a nice twist on the usual gangster story, and if A History of Violence is any indication, every other element will be well worth the price of admission as well.

Next week (9/21), five wide releases compete for box office bucks, headed up by another western (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) and a long-overdue novel adaptation (Into the Wild). That should be posted tomorrow... stay tuned.