Movies, movies everywhere
November 7, 2009and not one damn thing I truly want to see. A few possibilities, minus the ones we’ll never agree on. Let’s see. Top ten at the box office this week…
Michael Jackson’s This Is It: aging drugged-out pedophile rehearses for concert that never happened. From all reports, his nose does not fall off. Nothing to see there.
Paranormal Activity: I could go for this. In fact, I’d probably enjoy it. I hear the acting is unobtrusive, the writing and direction build hellishly good suspense the old-fashioned way (they eeeeaaaaaarn it), and so what if I already know the origin of the paranormal activity? Demon, ghost, whatever. No chance in a million years of convincing the spouse to see it.
Law Abiding Citizen: hmm. Not that I’m not desperately seeking my next Hannibal Lecter (the one from the first book, damn it, not the lame, dissected version of Thomas Harris’s financial need), but family man to mass-murdering sociopath in ten years? First of all, doesn’t happen. Second and more importantly (because I’ll suspend my disbelief from a nanofiber for a good scary crazy person), it’s going to lose one of two ways. The best revenge fantasies show the toll the process takes on the victim-turned-perpetrator, and if the blurbs are using the right terminology there won’t be any of that with a “soulless” killer. On the other hand, the best scary crazy people are the ones you never quite understand, the ones who arise and exist and die unexplained (Thomas Harris, you bastard), and here we have a dead family/flawed justice system/wasn’t there once some flick called The Fugitive? to explain everything. Bleh.
Couples Retreat: go away, Vince Vaughan. Just go away.
Where the Wild Things Are: aha. This could work.
Saw VI: saw Saw. So I’ve seen it. After a while, even extreme Goldbergian splatter becomes boring and repetitive (and please don’t even try to Post-it a plot in there). “Oh, look, her head is trapped… and his arms are tied with… and the key/switch/antidote is… and they have to… bang/splat/temporary relief.” Come to think of it, it’s exactly like mainstream porn.
Astro Boy: no.
The Stepfather: can see this on LMN any day. No reason to pay for it.
Cirque du… Hey! More Sparkly Vampires: bless their little money-train jumpin’ hearts.
and number ten…
Amelia: about which I can only say, from a glance at the picture and reviews, that hey, Hilary Swank does look a lot like Amelia Earhart, that the gushing press release sounds like the back of one of those “Easy-to-Read” paperback biographies always lying around the corners of seventh-grade classrooms, and that a movie bumped into the PG category for “mild sensuality and smoking” is probably not going to retain my aging interest.
Choices, choices, choices.
Zombieland? Men Who Stare at Goats? I think my spouse and I may manage common cause on both. But we’ve got a whole season of Mad Men to watch, so probably won’t actually go to the theater.
Opinions differ as to whether Paranormal Activity works best in a theater with an audience, or one that’s damn near empty. I still say a few other adults around can be helpful. (As opposed to those fucking teenagers who make it their mission in life to NOT suspend disbelief, or even attempt to let the movie work on them, just so they can talk shit later. Unfortunately, you can’t choose your audience.) Equally unfortunately, this one WILL NOT work at home unless you’ve built a theater room. So see it in a theater even if you have to leave Weenie-head at home.