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.