Movies to Watch on Halloween

Happy All Hallow's Eve, everyone. In honor of my favorite holiday, a brief list of the films I enjoy watching.

Before we begin, though: I am not a horror fan. At all. I've seen The Exorcist, and I appreciated the artistic qualities of Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, but that's about as far as it goes.

1. Shaun of the Dead

A film of many faces. A standard slacker-loses-girl, slacker-grows-up-and-gets-girl-back romantic comedy, a horror film, a parody, and really just all around clever.

My favorite aspect of the first Edgar Wright/ Simon Pegg film is that the screenplay wraps back in on itself in so many fun ways, from "you've got red on you" to the word "exacerbate." And it has a much better cast than a straight-faced zombie film normally would, inlcuding Bill Nighy and Lucy Davis (of British "The Office" fame).

2. Donnie Darko

Beyond it's great high school elements, Donnie Darko also happens to be set around Halloween. And while that's no more than mild related to the story in a thematic way, it does provide for everyone to be in costumes on the day that the world ends.

And, thanks to time travel, Donnie gets to spend a month with the creepiest bunny ever.

3. The Frighteners

This pre-Rings Peter Jackson film holds a special place for me as one of the first films that I ever paid for with my own money, and bought of my own accord: a used copy for $3.99 from the bin at Randall's.

And no matter how creepy the hologram cover was, it's mostly just funny. I mean, if I could see ghosts, I would just use them for a scam too.

Also, what does Trini Alvarado do for work now that she can't coast on her amazing ability to look like Andi McDowell?

Michael Clayton Review

Tony Gilroy, screenwriter extraordinaire of the Bourne movies, opens his directorial debut with an odd sort of tension: off screen, Tom Wilkinson rambles through a manic, rapid monologue about corruption and greed, while the camera lingers on scenes from an empty office building: boardrooms, florescent lights, and blinking phone lines.

It's spare, but it's moody and atmospheric- an encapsulation of the artful tension the rest of Michael Clayton maintains so well. A few minutes after the plot proper starts, George Clooney's titular hero is driving along a wooded road when he sees something, and gets out of his car too look. He walks up a hillside to approach three horses, standing idly by the highway, for no apparent reason.

The music hums to an autumnal swell, and you wonder, briefly, if this is a movie about the power of nature to enrich our lives.

Then his car explodes.

It's a punch to the gut, and it's a great moment to involve you in a legal thriller that on paper is pretty standard: A class action lawsuit is being filed against a mega-corporation for causing health problems with some sort of pesticide (or something)- Wilkinson is the head of the defense who buckles under the strain of fighting on the side of true villainy, and Clooney the shadowy "fixer" from his firm assigned to reign him in.

Tilda Swinton delivers a strong turn as the nervously ruthless legal head of the evil corporation, who must decide how far to go to protect her company. All three performances are stellar, but Clooney especially shines as he shuts down his breezy persona to exude weariness and anger: anger at compromise, anger at his thankless job, and anger that his life might have to be in danger before he considers doing the right thing.

After a tense climactic confrontation, the film ends with a uniquely perfect credit sequence: a single, minutes long shot inside a taxicab that allows everyone to relax, finally. It isn't until everything is over that you realize you've been holding your breath the whole time.

When to See it: As Soon As Humanly Possible.

The Netflix Diaries: Banlieue 13

So for me, beyond Daniel Craig's all around badassery, the coolest part of Casino Royale was the elaborate chase at the beginning, with Craig pursuing a fast, jumping bad guy, played by Sébastien Foucan.

This reminded me of a French movie I'd heard about a couple years ago, released here as District B13- it's a film starring David Belle, the founder of "parkour." Parkour is basically the art of running around and climbing things- using an urban environment to move in the quickest, most efficient way possible in an emergency. Foucan is actually Belle's childhood friend, and founded the practice of "freerunning," which is pretty much the same as parkour but more flashy.

Anyway, I assumed that Banlieue 13 would be as fascinating to watch as the chase sequence in Casino, and parts of it were. But mostly it's just another over-stylized piece of fluff from producer/writer/French ADD sufferer Luc Besson.

Belle plays a tough guy vigilante who partners with a tough guy cop (Cyril Raffaelli) to rescue the film's titular crime ridden barrio from a gang lord who's stolen a nuke. Also he's trying to rescue his sister. That's pretty much it. Of course the nuke is on a timer, and the shady looking government dudes who conscript our heroes for the job have predictably shady intentions.

The film's biggest claim to fame is that the action sequences are all done with no nets, wires, or stunt doubles, and considering that fact they're pretty impressive. But the rapid-cut, MTV-on-crack visual style of Besson's team makes it easy to forget that anything we're seeing is real- we may as well be watching a video game.

Add in what's either a very clunky script or a very clunky translation, and it adds up to a pretty underwhelming experience. In the right hands, a unique form of physical stuntwork can really add something to an action movie (like the aforementioned Casino Royale), but in the middle of a shoddy film it's wasted.

There is an interesting subtext to the film: it was released in a Paris less than a year before the riots of the impoverished youth in real-life ghettos. But Banlieue 13's particular vision of urban Paris of the future is surprisingly white-washed, between the two leads, which leads me to think that the filmmakers didn't really have the majority of the Arab and black Paris ghettos in mind.

30 Days of Night Review

(editor's note: The first post from my friend Dave! Enjoy.)

30 Days of Night is the latest entry into the storied vampire sub-genre. Adapted from a graphic novel, the film tries to establish its own edginess by re-imaging the vampire figure, a la Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later zombies, and putting a new restriction on the characters the vampires terrorize in the film: this haunted house is hundreds of miles wide, with no hope for escape.

In Barrow, Alaska, vampires eagerly descend when the sun sets for 30 days, as happens in the Arctic Circle. It’s up to a team of locals to fend off the slaughter until the sun’s rays can come to the rescue.

David Slade, the latest music video director turned Hollywood film director, makes his feature debut with 30 Days of Night, and brings a deft visual touch. He creates a dark, stylish and oddly claustrophobic environment, and he saturates the screen with a muted color panel- allowing the viewer to feel the cold.

Josh Harnett, playing the town’s heroic sheriff (Interesting Fact: Alaska does not have sheriffs: they have state troopers. This is also inaccurate in the graphic novel and really bothers me for some unusual reason), is blasé and his estranged wife, played by relative newcomer Melissa George, offers very little as well. The two real stars are Ben Foster in a cameo role and Danny Huston as the head vampire. Huston, who has made a career out of playing off-the-wall supporting roles, is legitimately menacing- the audience in the theatre actually screamed at him during appropriate moments.

The technical aspects of the film are where the money and work seemed to go. The cinematography, make up and special effects are very finely crafted. The music is unobtrusive and dissonant, a must for horror films.

But there are noticeable problems: The dialogue is not terribly crisp and leaves the viewers incapable of completely identifying with the townspeople. The script, written by Steve Niles and Stuart Beattie (Who has achieved a lifetime free pass in my book because of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and Collateral), also creates more questions in the plot than it answers. And the film’s final scene will incite laughter from many people in the theatre, no matter what arresting visuals preceded it.

A valiant effort from Slade, who tries to emulate David Fincher to a varying degree of success, in crafting 30 Days of Night for the big screen. It’s just a shame that the film’s villainous undead have more life than Hartnett’s usual blank-eyed stare.

When to See it: On DVD

Trailer Report: Lars and the Real Girl, The Kite Runner, Juno

The trailers in front of The Darjeeling Limited: a mixed bag.

Lars and the Real Girl



Meh. I was most interested to see how often the crowd laughed at this one- there was a chuckle when the doll first appears, another one at "she loves kids," and that was it: the joke gets old before the trailer is over.

Add in the unrealistic behavior of the townspeople, the not as poignant as they think it is dialogue with the brother, and it all looks very beige to me.

The Kite Runner



Haven't read the book, but I have this theory: reading an English novel about foreign cultures is all right, because words on a page don't take you out of anything. But a movie about a foreign culture where everyone speaks English all the time is distracting: they can be middling like Memoirs of a Geisha, or terrible like K-19: The Widowmaker.

And with all the slow fades, sweeping shots, gratuitous slow-mo, and music swells in this trailer, it really looks like they've Frank Capra-ized Khaled Hosseini's novel. And that title graphic looks like a Hallmark Original movie title.

Juno



The final entry in the trilogy of pregnancy movies about progressively younger people: first the late twenties country pregnancy Waitress, then the early/mid-twenties LA pregnancy Knocked Up, and finally the teenage pregnancy Juno.

And this looks good. The trailer does anyway, because it relies on the film itself to do the talking, not the Voice Guy or music. The only way to justify the feel-good montage at the end of the trailer is to make us care about the characters in the minute and a half that comes first, and they nail it.

Also, "shenanigans" is a funny word.

The Darjeeling Limited Review

I’m a Wes Anderson fan. As I already mentioned, I wouldn’t be out seeing Wes Anderson movies if I didn’t think I would like them, so of course I loved The Darjeeling Limited.

Critics say he makes the same movie every time, but so what if he does? The one movie he makes is visually dynamic, has great music, deadpan humor, and gets better after multiple viewings. And there’s only five of them, so in the face of multiple action blockbusters, crappy teen comedies, and torture-porn horror movies among a billion different easily recognizable Hollywood tropes, five of them isn’t enough, if you ask me.

As to the specifics of this one: if you’ve seen any of the trailers or tv spots, then you know pretty much the entire plot: Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, and Owen Wilson play three brothers reconnecting on the titular train in India, a year after their father’s funeral. That’s pretty much it- the plot takes many different soap opera like reveals and twists, but the usual disaffection keeps the tone of the movie more dark comic than maudlin.

Schwartzman and Brody deliver similar brooding turns as men getting over a breakup and dealing with impending fatherhood, respectively. But Wilson is the best as the oldest brother, who deals with a motorcycle accident by taking fastidious control of their trip, with a laminated itinerary and asking for control over their personal decisions.

The near-OCD of Wilson’s character is an obvious surrogate for Anderson’s detail-oriented, precise directorial style: Wilson even holds onto his brother’s passports for safekeeping. In a telling scene near the film’s conclusion, he offers them back, but they smile and say it’s all right if he holds onto them- Anderson giving himself tacit approval.

And why not? The basics of the film are a little sparse and simple, but any lack of subtext is made up by the backdrop. Darjeeling is a wonderful land’s-eye view of India, better than a tour guide and full of tourists’ awed reverence. The high point of the film is an encounter with The Namesake’s Irfa Khann and the rest of a small village, which plays out for ten full minutes with no English dialogue, and no subtitles.

It would be fascinating enough on the travel channel. So while the film itself, at least after one viewing, is arguably Anderson’s least complex (there’s a lot of obvious metaphors, from the several pieces of the father’s luggage they carry around to Wilson’s character removing his wound dressings and saying “I guess I have a lot of healing left to do.”), the feel of the film is deep and meditative.

So definitely try to catch this one.

But if you didn’t like Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, or The Life Aquatic, then I don’t know what to tell you.

When to See It: As Soon As Humanly Possible

Descisions, descisions

So as you may have noticed, I never made it to see Michael Clayton this whole week- that's how busy it's been.

So after most of September and early October, I find myself with a wonderful conundrum: so many movies to see, so little time (and limited means, for that matter).

Milwaukee's Landmark Theater branches finally got their prints of The Darjeeling Limited and Lust, Caution, so those are high on the list. And then there's the aforementioned Tony Gilroy legal thriller, and the brothers Affleck's effort, Gone Baby Gone.

Four movies, only one me. At least I know what I'm not seeing: Things We Lost in the Fire looks bland, 30 Days of Night involves Josh Hartnett, and Rendition isn't holding up under the critic's scalpel.

Here's the plan, I think- Darjeeling tonight at 9:30, and then possibly the two major releases (Clayton, Baby) on Sunday. Lust, Caution might have to wait until later in the week, as it only plays at 8:00 pm and is two hours and thirty nine minutes long- that's three hours plus with previews.

What will everybody else see this weekend? Who knows? Consensus seems to be that 30 Days of Night will top the charts with $20 million or so, but then nobody saw Why Did I Get Married? coming last week (including yours truly. I thought people liked fat-suits?).

Obscurity Hall Of Fame: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Hey folks- it's been a busy week. It looks like I'm a little ahead of myself in trying to become the Bill Simmons of movies (for non-Espn.com fans, he's a sports columnists that frequently gets complaints that he never posts enough). But hey, you try taking six classes at once sometime.

To make up for lost time, today's post is extra-long and extra-dear to my heart. It's not often that people as into movies as I am can definitively name a "favorite movie of all-time," but Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, passes all the tests for me: gun to my head, desert island, etc.

I saw this movie six times in theaters (once at a budget theater across town), bought it immediately on DVD, traded with Dave later to get the two-disc special edition DVD, watch it at least three times a year- the list goes on and on. The centerpiece of my living room is this poster, my girlfriend and I quote minor lines from it all the time, and here's the best part- this year for Halloween we're going as Joel Barish and Clementine Kruczynski.

And I thought that everyone had seen this- after all, the great Charlie Kaufman took home the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for it. But in trying to describe our Halloween plans to people that I know, even the young, trend-setting hipster crowd I run with, not that many people had even heard of it- and the ones that had watched it did so only because we forced them to, A Clockwork Orange style.

So consider this the honor position, magna cum laude inductee into the Obscurity Hall of Fame. For the uninitiated, it's about Joel (James Carrey), who discovers that his recent ex-girlfriend of two years, Clementine (Kate Winslet) has had him erased from her memory by a company called Lacuna, Inc. And he decides to do the same thing.

Much of the movie takes place in his head, as he navigates his memories of Clementine and realizes that he may have made a mistake. The memories start to disappear in roughly backward order, giving the film a very Memento-like structure, though Kaufman is quick to point out that he was writing it well before Memento came out. It's a complex film in structure- some may say needlessly so, but if you watch it more than once it's simple to understand.

The performances are brilliant: Jim Carrey is not my favorite comic actor, but he transforms himself into an introverted, nervous artist so well that you really feel for him. Kate Winslet is going to win one of those "body of work" Oscars pretty soon, even though she's only 32- she's so convincing as the impulsive Barnes and Noble worker that I do double takes every time I see her speaking in her British accent elsewhere. She is Clementine to me.

Tom Wilkinson, currently earning Oscar buzz for Michael Clayton, leads a terrific group of supporting actors as the head honcho of the oddly ramshackle Lacuna memory-erasing service ("Lacuna," if you're wondering, means a gap or missing part). Kirsten Dunst got an inordinate amount of press for her small part, but she plays a naive assistant well. Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood are excellent as one eccentric and one creepily pathetic memory technician, respectively.

This film is the whole deal- excellent acting, Gondry's expressive visual interpretation of having your memory erased, an excellent score and soundtrack production by Jon Brion, one of my favorite musicians of any format. It's not often that a film leaves me speechless immediately after the credits roll, but I had nothing to say after this one.

Unless I met someone that hadn't seen it. Then I can talk your ear off.

Doomed by the Premise

So, the other day I off-handedly referred to Ryan Gosling as this generation's De Niro, and I got six Google hits searching for him specifically. Now, in the storied history of this blog, that's a lot of traffic.

I was of course then tempted to spend an entire week on Ryan Gosling, just to shamelessly bid for more traffic- I would even be excused in that he has a new movie out, Lars and the Real Girl.

But unfortunately, it looks ridiculous- another example of a film with a great actor that's doomed by the premise. A man that falls in love with a sex doll is either going to make for a crude, annoyingly base film that hammers the same joke into the ground, or an overly precious, whimsical movie that hammers the same joke into the ground. From the early reviews, Lars and the Real Girl is the latter. Of course it doesn't help that it's from the director of Mr. Woodcock.

So I probably won't see that one. Much like last year I didn't see Venus, because I love Peter O'Toole, but not Peter O'Toole chewing scenery and perving it up around a nineteen-year-old.

Then there's movies with reportedly great lead performances that are just too depressing to even be tempted: Angelina Jolie will probably get an Oscar nomination for A Mighty Heart, but I'm not a big fan of beheadings. I love Don Cheadle but I never worked up my enthusiasm for genocide enough to watch Hotel Rwanda. I'm not even huge enough into atrocities from the Iraq war to have made it to Tommy Lee Jones's recent In the Valley of Elah.

I can't imagine any actor or actress that I would see anything starring them, can you? But maybe that's because I understand that movies are more than star vehicles, if they're done right. I'll never forget all the people complaining about the lack of Jim Carrey's hamminess and crazy facial expressions walking out of the theater from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (a future Obscurity Hall of Fame member).

Well, maybe George Clooney. I've got a ticket for Michael Clayton tonight, and I've seen all of his starring roles in the theater except for The Good German.

Obscurity Hall of Fame: Primer

Hey, another new feature! I'm sure you're just as excited as I am. This one is a series of profiles of movies that I own, watch once a month, and quote in everyday speech, but nobody has ever seen unless I force them to at gunpoint.

I'm calling it the Obscurity Hall of Fame: personal classics of mine that barely made an impact on the pop-culture world. The first inductee is one of my favorite time-travel films (look forward to that list): Primer.

Primer is a relatively simple idea, and a universal theme: the accidental nature of invention, and the boundaries of trust. Two friends (David Sullivan and writer/director Shane Carruth) experiment with fiber optic cables (or something) in their free time, and find out they've created something that can transport objects backward in time.

They decide, naturally, to play the stock market a little to take advantage of their discovery. But of course, time travel is never simple, and mistakes and betrayals quickly send the movie spiraling into a hall-of-mirrors of duplicate main characters, odd side effects, and convoluted situations that require multiple viewings to logically understand.

It's a great film, and a great exploration of the theoretical questions that time travel would bring up (which, as my friends can tell you, I could talk about for hours on end. In fact, everyone should read Time Travel in Einstein's Universe, by Richard Gott, and then get back to me. Great book.). And it doesn't dumb any of the science-type-stuff or the complicated ending down, which is refreshing.

So it's an awesome film. That's one reason to see it. The other reason I love it is that it doubles as a crash course in cheap, independent film-making: it was shot on a $7,000 budget, and listening to the commentary by Shane Carruth, it's fascinating to hear how they had to beg, borrow, and improvise to get everything to come together.

They rented cameras, edited it on laptops, shot in Carruth's parents' house and his brother's apartment- his mother even provided the catering. They had so little money for film that there are no deleted scenes- you can even see Carruth's character saying 'cut' under his breath to end scenes, but they couldn't edit it out because it would cut the scene too short.

I don't know about other movie fans/critics/etc., but I always daydream about shooting a movie myself. And even though it's not a success that's likely to be replicated, knowing that some people in Dallas can put this together on seven grand and then win the grand jury prize at Sundance gives me hope.

EDIT: Obscurity be damned! You can watch this on Google video, right now! Do it!

The Netflix Diaries: Croupier

So we've had two-at-a-time Netflix for a year and a half now, and I kept meaning to watch things that I've been meaning to watch and start this feature, but I've had no time. The life of a graduating senior is a hectic one. But the bright red Netflix packets just sit there and stare at you, a reminder that you're paying $15 a month for these DVDs to not be watched for two weeks.

So two days ago we finally watched Croupier, which I saw a few years ago but nearly slept through- my memory of it was hazy, and I only recalled a vague conviction that Clive Owen is pretty damn cool.

And he is. But this neo-noir story about Clive Owen's hard-luck writer who takes a job as a casino dealer (which are called "croupiers" in Europe because they're so pretentious over there) doesn't help one stay awake. Which isn't to say its boring, it's just sparse, dark, and a little slow moving. Director Mike Hodges re-teamed with Clive Owen five years later for the ironically titled I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, which is so slow that my girlfriend and I couldn't finish it, but he is best known as the director of Get Carter.

Anyway, the main draws of Croupier are a tight script, well-rounded cast, and straightforward, BBC style production values, and its definitely a unique film about a subculture so noir-friendly I'm surprised there aren't more films about croupiers.

And while we're here: I have no problem with Daniel Craig in Casino Royale. Great choice, great film. But having seen Croupier well before Layer Cake, I was a strident Clive-Owen-for-James-Bond campaigner long before the choice was made- he spends enough squinting in a badass way while wearing a suit in this movie to convince anyone.

Ah, well. At least he got to badass it up in Sin City and Shoot 'Em Up. But I haven't seen him in a suit since.

Random News!

So it's only been a month, but 25 posts in I have a new respect for daily columnists: finding something to talk about every day is a bitch. Even Dear Abby must eventually just want to tell the eight thousandth woman who hates her mother-in-law to cram it.

So while some ideas brew, a few recent newsworthy issues:

1. Warner Brothers nixes female lead roles. This has since been strenuously denied, which makes sense because it's hyperbolically ridiculous. The Brave One does bad, so it must be because female-oriented films aren't profitable? What? I thought it might have done poorly because our long national-love affair with movies that begin with violent murder and rape is over.

If this is confirmed, I would even have to agree with a Warner Brothers boycott. (uh, except for The Dark Knight. I'm only human).

2. The Hobbit gets kinda sorta maybe eventually perhaps closer to being considered to be made. Entertainment Weekly arrived for me today with a picture of Gollum on the front and a blaring headline; "RETURN OF THE RINGS?"

Don't get people's hopes up, dammit. The court fining New Line cinema $125,000 for failing to turn up evidence doesn't really seem like a breakthrough to me. If it turns out to be a snowflake that starts an avalanche, that's just great. But let's not get too excited.

3. The Rock = funnier than Ben Stiller. Hey, both The Heartbreak Kid and The Seeker tanked. I think I may go out and celebrate.

Across the Universe Review

I was torn about seeing Julie Taymor's new film. I love the Beatles, but traditionally dislike musicals. I'm definitely a Taymor fan, but there were multiple rumors of studio interference with her vision.

Finally, since Taymor said they reached a compromise, and since there was nothing else out this weekend but Across the Universe was surprisingly playing in a theater in the next county (Ozaukee), I decided to see it. And it was pretty awesome.

Fair warning: it has no plot, really, it's cheesy beyond belief in places, other parts are way overdone, but I expected all this, and the winning Beatles songs are right up my alley. It's like Moulin Rouge with all Beatles songs, or more like Rent with all Beatles songs (since most of it is set in Bohemian New York).

A liverpudlian named Jude (Jim Sturgess) comes to the great US of A and meets a girl named Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). Get it? Their friends are named Sadie, Max, Jojo, and Prudence. (Get it? Pretty clever, huh?) This leads to an inevitable anticipation of each character's eponymous songs, and they all pop up except for "Sexy Sadie" and "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" (although I suspect those will be in the director's extended edition).

While the simple melodrama of the plot plays out, characters occasionally just burst into song regular-musical style, but other times they sing to the accompaniment of trippy, classic Taymor colorful setpieces. It may be distracting, but come one people: one of those setpieces is Bono as a psychedlic guru singing "I Am the Walrus," and another is a devilish Eddie Izzard (!) madcapping his way through "Being for the benefit of Mr. Kite." It doesn't get any awesomer than that.

I suppose it is a little odd that Beatles music is now such an ingrained part of the cultural wallpaper that it inspires trippy movies and entire Cirque de Soleil productions, but they still maintain their immediacy and pop-song appeal. At least to me they do (people are either Lennon-revolutionaries or laid-back happy song McCartneys, I find, and I'm definitely the latter). And for the most part I didn't mind the reworkings of all of the fab four's oeuvre, except for one rendition of "Blackbird" that Wood (or the person singing for her) absolutely butchered.

So if you're a Beatles fan at heart, definitely go see it. I for some reason always find Evan Rachel Wood completely insufferable (same thing with Toni Collette. Can't explain it.) but I had a great time.

When to See It: Before it leaves theaters

Hotel Chevalier

So in lieu of The Darjeeling Limited itself, yesterday I downloaded Hotel Chevalier, the thirteen minute prologue to it, of sorts. It's free on iTunes.

Obviously, it's not much of a film on its own- I thought of it sort of like an appetizer, a digital precursor to keep us going until the film reaches our respective towns.

And for what it is, it works- Wes Anderson is better at tortured father-son dynamics and family issues in general than tortured relationships, as the awkwardness between Natalie Portman and Jason Schwartzman indicates. But the colors in room 403 of the eponymous hotel are well coordinated, and there's as ever a cool song: "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)," by Peter Sarstedt.

But even if this were crappy, I still think it's an innovative way to generate interest- The best trailers, in my opinion, are the ones that just show part of the film (like this one for The Devil Wears Prada), so a short film that accompanies the movie is even better.

And if you're not familiar with Wes Anderson movies at all, it would be a great litmus test for you, since it contains the sort of artificial detachment that people tend to find insufferable, as well as the music and artfully framed shots that people like.

Box Office Trends: September

So for some reason, people always seem to be obsessed with comparing the box office numbers of this year to other years, as if that's somehow relevant. Box Office Mojo, one of my favorite resources/time wasters, always makes it a point to say whether business is up or down from the same weekend last year- because we all know the third weekend in September never changes in national movie-going affinity. Duh.

So I figure I'll only recap the months-that-were by relating the performances of one movie to another: inflation and changing economics in Hollywood will probably render these numbers meaningless in a couple years, but the relative grosses of different movies is a good indicator of contemporary taste, if nothing else.

1. Staying Power

3:10 to Yuma has to feel good about its long-term chances. It opened with a modest $14 million, but never dropped more than 36% week to week, which is pretty extraordinary, no matter the release pattern.

Consider this: 3:10 and Shoot 'Em Up both opened on September 7th- Shoot 'Em Up pulled in a lower than expected $5.7 m. But while 3:10 only took modest hits and stayed in the top five all month long, Shoot 'Em Up dropped 54, 69, and 80 percent in consecutive weeks, and will probably stop being tracked before October's out with a meager $17 million.

Hopefully James Mangold's winning western will continue to stay around this fall, and make a Million Dollar Baby-style push over $100 million after Oscar nominations are announced.
2. The Game Plan vs. The Kingdom

I wasn't really sure which one of these to root for last weekend, which is to say I was rooting for neither, but America has decided: we'd rather see The Rock have an allergic reaction to strawberries than see some hypothetical Saudi Arabian terrorists get blown up. The Game Plan made $22 m to The Kingdom's $17 m. This almost makes me feel better, in a way.

Also, as I said I love b.o.m. for reference, but they employ the worst professional film critic I have ever read on the internet. Ever. Most of the reviews for The Kingdom felt uneasy about the sort of xenophobic, country-full-of-terrorists undertones, but this guy (Scott Holleran) thinks it wasn't racist enough. The title of his review? "The Kingdom: Action Blaster Suggests Osama was Right."

3. Good Luck Chuck opened higher than Stardust

Yep. And people ask me why I'm an atheist.

Other than that, people liked zombies, and sort of liked Jodie Foster shooting people, but September is traditionally a slow month, I hear. A bunch of award hopefuls did okay on a handful of screens, but October will be the big test, when everything goes wide.

The Fly-Over States

I live in Milwaukee. In high school, I was all "I can't wait till I blow this one horse town!" But now, I'm so fond of it and used to its Portland-like, laid back rhythms that anytime I make the hour drive to Chicago, I freak the hell out: narrow streets, taxicabs that look like police-cars, hot dog vendors! My god, man, no one can live at that speed!

So unless I want to finally make it to see In the Valley of Elah, or force myself to see something I don't give a rat's ass about, I have no movies to see right now. What about Friday, you ask? Well, I haven't seen Elizabeth, so I'm not going to pay money for Elizabeth With a Vengeance*, and I'm not seeing The Seeker, because I'm not a proponent of ruining beloved books. And if you think I'm even considering seeing The Heartbreak Kid, obviously you just found this webpage by Googling that title.

(That reminds me- I liked There's Something About Mary okay and all, but aren't the Farrelys a little bummed that they've had not one other movie worth mentioning in previews since then? That was nine years ago, people. Nine. That's like calling Steven Soderbergh "the director of Out of Sight." Great film, but he's had a little bit of success since.)

So I have to wait until the 12th for anything I'm excited about. But here's my point- Michael Clayton (Clooney! Gilroy! Wilkinson! The androgynous villainy of Tilda Swinton!) is opening in 15 theaters on Friday as well. But how many of those fifteen aren't on one coast or the other? One. Just one AMC, in Chicago. If you don't believe me, look at that lonely red triangle on this imdb map.

What gives? Would it kill people to send one print out to other major cities with an arts scene? And what's with the low theater roll-out anyway? In LA, there are people who this weekend can go see The Darjeeling Limited, Lust, Caution, Michael Clayton, Across the Universe, or The Assassination of Jesse James, but will probably choose to stay home and pick their noses (or see The Heartbreak Kid and pick their noses. Zing!).

I'd love to see any of those films, but I'm stuck waiting another week and a half for most of them, and an additional week for Darjeeling. Such is life in the Midwest, I suppose.


* turns out the new Elizabeth is actually on the 12th as well. The third wide release this Friday? The Jennifer Lopez-produced Feel the Noise. I can't even make fun of this one. The trailer does it all for me.

The Pre-Fall Oscars

Or, the movies and roles that the academy better damn well not forget about. Every year there are numerous Oscar season previews: The Onion A.V. Club just came up with a good one, but I haven't seen any of those movies, and I couldn't speculate on their chances.

Instead, I decided to come up with the major nominations I'd submit if the awards were on September first. What are the best movies and performances released before "awards season"?

Best Supporting Actress

Olympia Dukakis, Away From Her
Laura Morante, Moliere
Michelle Pfeiffer, Hairspray
Adrienne Shelley, Waitress
Maggie Smith, Becoming Jane

I'll admit that this category was pretty thin- I haven't even seen Hairspray, but I hear that Pfeiffer's getting some buzz. Maggie Smith puts in a similar bitchy turn in a different context, but I gave her the lifetime achievement nod, really. Adrienne Shelley's tragic death proabably still won't push her film to any more prestigious nominations, as it's just too cute in the end, but I decided she deserve's some respect for playing a wallflower friend in her last directorial effort. Olympia Dukakis has an Oscar already, and really brings a much needed cynicism to a moving film. But it's Laura Morante for the win, as she really keeps the Moliere biopic from becoming a farce.

Best Supporting Actor

Robert De Niro, Stardust
Robert Downey Jr., Zodiac
James McAvoy, Becoming Jane
Gary Oldman, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Seve Zahn, Rescue Dawn


Robert De Niro plays a wopsy, cross-dressing, flying pirate: enough said. Downey Jr. makes you wish all of Zodiac had followed him instead of Jake Gyllenhaal's cartooonist. Gary Oldman is the best part of a series that's growing in acting gravitas in leaps and bounds, and James McAvoy continues breaking hearts with aplomb. But for my money, Steve Zahn is the one guy that should be among the five nominees in February, no matter what else comes out- he's pure desperation as the less willful friend of a prison-of-war camp escapee.

Best Actress

Julie Christie, Away From Her
Marion Cotillard, La Vie En Rose
Anne Hathway, Becoming Jane
Angelina Jolie, A Mighty Heart
Keri Russell, Waitress

So it's been a slow year for leading actress as well- I had to include Cotillard and Jolie as likely candidates, even though I haven't seen the films in question. Keri Russell finally sheds the WB Network classification in Waitress, and Anne Hathaway is pretty solid in yet another author biopic. But if you've been reading this blog through its short history, you had to know I'm already giving this Oscar to Julie Christie in Away From Her.

Best Actor

Christian Bale, Rescue Dawn
Romain Duris, Moliere
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, The Lookout
Gordon Pinsent, Away From Her
Adam Sandler, Reign Over Me

Yeah, that's right: Adam Sandler- I still have no idea why that film was puched back from last December (to qualify for the most recent Oscars) to March. It turns out he can act, when we wants to apparently. Duris is more grandiose as the famed satirist than I would have expected, given his deer in headlights previous roles in movies like L'Auberge Espagnole. Gordon-Levitt continues his evolution into the relative Pacino to Ryan Gosling's De Niro. But it all comes down to a tough call between my man Christian Bale, and Gordon Pinsent in my favorite film of the year. I'm tempted to say Pinsent just for his awesome voice, but I say this should be Bale's year when all is said and done. By a hair.

Best Picture

Away From Her
Once
Reign Over Me
Rescue Dawn
Zodiac

Yeah, I can't really see a low-budget, under the radar film like Once being nominated, either. But it's honestly as good as anything else I saw this year so far.

As for what I pick to win, do you really need to ask? Did you know it recently won big at the Director's Guild of Canada Awards? That's a homer pick, but still. Also, did you know it came out on DVD on September 11th? You should buy it. Seriously, you should probably start heading to the store right now.

Alas

So sorry my reading public, but I saw no movies this weekend, and have scant time for anything worthwhile today- if you read this blog for the next three months, by then I'll have graduated and will probably be unemployed, and the content will skyrocket in frequency.

Tomorrow I have an excellent post planned about pre-awards season movies that the Oscars better damn well not forget about, but probably will.

Until then, feel free to comment about my lack of professionalism.