I’m getting further behind, aren’t I? *sigh* And wait until you see April’s recap, when I get that one written (hopefully I’ll be motivated to get it done during the break). After the jump, reactions to Joyeux Noel, Where the Truth Lies, The Lookout, All About My Mother, Langston Hughes’s autobiographies, Zora Neale Hurston’s first novel, The Eight by Katherine Neville, and more!
Trailers and commentary after the jump. There are a good many of them this week.
There are no Best Bets this week, folks. Go see Hot Fuzz from last week if you haven’t already. If you have, uh…see it again.
The Invisible
Probably this won’t be terribly good. The fact that it’s produced by the same people as The Sixth Sense again deals with people who either see or are dead people doesn’t argue for a lot of creativity. At the same time, the kid is cute, and if he can carry the film it might be an enjoyable small-scale suspenser.
Next
Why oh why do people keep casting Nicolas Cage in movies? His last good one was 2002’s Adaptation, and before that it was…I forget… This is from a Philip K. Dick story (aka the guy who wrote the source stories for Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly, among many other highly regarded sci-fi novels), and could actually be good. In Cage’s hands, it just looks trite and overdone. Plus he’s obviously phoning it in. And on top of that, Julianne Moore (who can be good in the right project, but so often chooses the wrong ones) and Jessica Biel? Nu-uh. Not happening.
Kickin’ It Old Skool
That would be…negatory. For numerous reasons that only start with the spelling of “skool.”
The Condemned
Okay, let me get this straight. You take several death row inmates (presumably all murderers), set them free on an island and make them all try to kill each other and promise to let the last one standing go free; meanwhile, all this carnage is being watched by violence voyeurs. Essentially, you do take out several criminals, but you reward the one who ends up committing the most murders? There’s so much that’s wrong with the concept of this movie. And the reviews have been pretty bad, too, so I’m guessing there’s not much to save it aesthetically either.
Wind Chill
Survival horror doesn’t usually interest me. This one is no exception.
Jindabyne
Okay, you can’t tell nothing from that trailer. From skimming a review or two, I know the men go fishing and happen to come across a dead girl in the river while they’re there, and the movie’s mostly about what they do after that. It’s meant to be a character-driven drama/thriller, I think. Again, difficult to tell from the trailer. It has got a good cast (Laura Linney can usually be trusted to pick good projects) and Australian accents, so it might be worth a look. But on DVD for sure. Limited.
Snow Cake
Well, I like Alan Rickman. I like Carrie-Anne Moss. I don’t like Sigourney Weaver. I like movies about autism. But is it really about autism, or about a man finding himself with two women, one of whom happens to be the autistic mother of a young girl who was killed while hitching a ride in his car? That might be less interesting. Limited.
The Hip Hop Project
Basically, looks like Rize for singing instead of dancing. It’s about a program for kids to express themselves through hip-hop music instead of drugs and violence. And honestly, the hip-hop music that’s actually good? This is what it’s about. I don’t care for rap/hip-hop myself, but that’s personal preference, and if they can use it to channel energy and emotion into music instead of all the other things these kids could be getting into, more power to them. Rize did a great job of showcasing the krump movements, and it looks like The Hip Hop Project could do a similar service for rap. Limited. Opens wide May 11th. (If I had to give a Best Bet it’d bet this one.)
Diggers
Looks like a rather quiet, understated character-driven drama. Usually I like those, but I’m not particularly drawn to this one. Probably because it also looks rather forgettable. I forgot the trailer pretty much as soon as I watched it. Limited.
- There is a bird outside, perhaps a mockingbird given the variety in his/her song, that is singing away like it’s the first day of spring. Except it’s midnight. Could someone please tell him to go to sleep so I can? Otherwise, I would BE asleep instead of down here writing a post.
- I didn’t blog the American Idol results because I forgot it was a two-hour show so I was fifteen minutes late and didn’t feel like rewinding and didn’t feel like blogging from the middle, and didn’t really have that much to say about it anyway. Il Divo is cute. Kelly Clarkson is awesome. Jack Black rocks and Ben Stiller…doesn’t. Yay for 70 million votes and at least 30 million dollars donated. The surprise duet between Celine Dion and creepy holographic Elvis was lame. And making Jordin wait all the way to the end and think she’d been eliminated only to eliminate nobody? Mean. I mean, I’m glad nobody was eliminated, ESPECIALLY Jordin. But I felt tricked (both by the Elvis thing and the no elimination thing), and that didn’t make me happy.
- Hot Fuzz is incredibly good. GO SEE IT NOW. If you like a) cop movies and/or b) British comedy you will love it. And who doesn’t love at least one of those two things? I’m not even kidding. I haven’t laughed that hard since…okay, well I laughed that hard when I was just watching videos on Comedy Central.com.
- Speaking of which, note to self: Do not go on Comedy Central.com and expect to watch only one video. It doesn’t work that way. I say an hour and a half later.
- Avenue Montaigne is not quite as good as Hot Fuzz, and in a very much different way–French instead of British, for one thing, and quietly sweet instead of raucously funny and action-packed. But if you love Paris and ensemble casts, then you might like Avenue Montaigne.
- Everyone seems to think I’m a masochist for taking summer classes. But everyone I know here is taking summer classes, we’re all taking the same summer classes, and in my summer classes I get to read Woolf and Lawrence, and then learn French! And do it with cool, smart people! So it’s going to be awesome. Plus, I’m going to host movie-watching night every week, which will be awesome on even more levels (not the least of which will be motivation to keep my apartment clean).
- St. Louis people, strong-arm the theatre managers there to make sure they’re playing Black Book and Waitress during the two and a half week window I’m home in the middle of May. If I miss those two (especially Waitress), I’ll be pouty all summer.
- Have you guys seen the Ford Edge commercials directed by David Mamet? They’re the ones with the two guys who talk about the Edge being faster than a BMW and quieter than a Lexus? They’ve been running during American Idol pretty regularly, so you probably have. Anyway, I’m going to adopt the “True story? True story.” It’ll replace the Grey’s Anatomy “Seriously? Seriously.” This is the plan. However, Grey’s “seriouslys” have been in my vocabulary for like two years now, so switching might be more difficult than I foresee.
- Each bullet point is getting randomer and weirder. Perhaps it’s time to try sleep again. If the darned bird has realized that it’s FREAKIN’ MIDNIGHT and has also gone to sleep.
Yay! It looks really, really good. Also really, really dark. But then, I remember reading Order of the Phoenix and thinking, wow, this is really getting dark. So there you go. The boys cut their hair, which is a very good thing. And Hermione embracing her rule-breaking side! Awesome. I *heart* Hermione. And Imelda Staunton is going to be great as Dolores Umbridge.