Week of 9/21

Things looking a little better this week, with one solid wide release surrounded by a variety of standard fare. First up:

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Competing for title of new kickass western of the year, Brad Pitt plays the legendary outlaw in the twilight of his career, while Casey Affleck plays the young member of James's gang who eventually turns a pistol on his leader. While I'm sure there will be scenes reminiscent of harder westerns, including 3:10 to Yuma, the previews show this one as more contemplative. Pitt's style from the past few years comes out strong, looking like he's going to give some quality depth, thoughtfulness and personality to an infamous criminal. I'm not completely high on Affleck - I have high hopes for Gone Baby Gone in a few weeks - so I'm hoping he'll show something off here. Being set up as a coward in the title of your film doesn't seem terribly promising for your character, but hopefully he'll be able to show some depth to equal James. The trailers have a bit of a stylized feel, which isn't at all a bad thing... I'm just worried that this has a chance of going the way of The New World, which I heard from all accounts was beautifully done, amazing in the visuals, but pretty much devoid of anything else.

Good Luck Chuck
As a general rule, I hate Dane Cook. It's one of those rules that I live by, really. Nothing against the guy - I don't find his stand-up all that funny, but I can certainly see why people might. Just not my style. The fact that he's somehow jumped from that into being a major star kind of makes me angry. But good for him, I guess. All that being said... I might see this movie. It actually looks somewhat funny. The premise is pretty standard - Chuck is cursed, because every woman he sleeps with will meet their true love in the next man they date. This is all well and good if Chuck is just looking to get laid, but when he meets the girl of his dreams, he becomes seriously concerned that his "gift" may very well backfire and steal her away. The trailers actually have me laughing pretty consistently, mostly because they're giving Jessica Alba this accident-prone angle that's letting her have more fun and more personality than she usually gets. Director Mark Helfrich makes his debut here, mostly serving as Brett Ratner's editor, but we can't judge one director by the people he associates with. Let's just hope he didn't pick up too many pointers from Ratner. The writer has worked mostly on small TV shows, with one or two episodes per, so whether or not this is funny is a complete crapshoot. Here's hoping.

Into the Wild
Another one that I'm relatively torn about. One one side, I have an extreme aversion to Sean Penn. To me, he is the poster child for self-important blowhards. In addition, I have no real love for the book. Krakauer's novel is interesting, to be sure, but it never quite reached legendary status with me that it did with others. On the other hand, I really like Emile Hirsch, and some of the other casting choices (Vince Vaughn, William Hurt, Zach Galifianakis and Catherine Keener) got my attention. The trailers look good, but they may almost be a little too put together, a little too clean, for the type of story Penn is trying to tell. I'm hoping that Penn found a good story and will focus more on telling that as opposed to trying to bring out the "meaning" of it. Powerful stories - including that of Chris McCandless - will develop meanings on their own, so hopefully Penn won't get too heavy handed with it. Considering the tepid response to his last pet project (All the King's Men), I'm hoping he handles this one a bit more gently.

Sydney White
I admit to knowing absolutely nothing about this movie. Kind of proud of that, actually. Synopses tell me that it's something about hot nerd princess Sydney White leads a nerd revolution at her school. Basically, if you like Amanda Bynes, you're already going to see this. If you don't, then you're probably not. Can't fault someone for knowing their audience, I guess.

Resident Evil: Extinction
I find it really hard to believe that RE: Apocalypse made enough to justify a third movie, but I suppose there are enough zombie-philes out there that will hit all of these movies. It's the new sheep genre, I think. I guess the post-apoc Vegas set they made looks sort of interesting. At least they picked a city that wasn't New York to mess with. And I guess Milla Jovovich needs to work somewhere.

Next up, a couple things that have been pushed back repeatedly, and a limited release of Ang Lee's new NC-17 flick that got banned in China. Hulk 2? I doubt it.