Crap, it’s Friday. I almost forgot to do Openings! Perhaps it’s because there’s really nothing going out this week that seems at all worthwhile. Nonetheless, my apologies for being a few hours late.
Bronson (trailer)
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn (Pusher, Pusher II, Pusher 3)
Personal Interest Factor: 6
Prison story that won some hype at Sundance, especially for the performance of Tom Hardy as over-the-top psycho “Charles Bronson” (there’s a long true story here if you want to look it up). Anyway, since I’m blessed with an abundance of time, I’ll probably check this out sometime next week out of boredom as much as anything else.
Metacritic: 69
Labor Day (trailer)
Director: Glenn Silber
Personal Interest Factor: 1
Documentary of the 2008 election filtered through the eyes of SEIU – partly financed by SEIU.
Metacritic: 18
This Is It (trailer)
Director: Kenny Ortega (Newsies, Hocus Pocus, High School Musical 3: Senior Year)
Personal Interest Factor: 3
For more than a decade, I’ve made an effort to see films that get Ebert’s 4-star rating, but this is the second time in the last month that I’m going to have to take a flat-out pass (the other was We Live in Public. Perhaps not coincidentally, both films are documentaries of a sort, and even more to the point, both trade in a sort of celebrity-worship culture that I have no interest in or use for. Besides which, random Michael Jackson rehearsal footage constitutes a movie these days?
Metacritic: 67
21 and a Wake-Up
Director: Chris McIntyre
Personal Interest Factor: 2
Never heard of this before, but both Chicago critics hated it. Based on the director’s stay in an Army hospital during the Vietnam era.
Metacritic: not listed
The Yes Men Fix the World
Director: The Yes Men
Personal Interest Factor: 5
The Yes Men are what you might call industrial pranksters; they do stuff like pose as corporate representatives for companies that they don’t represent to take responsibility for disasters that the real companies certainly do not take responsibility for. That’s all well and good – I have no real sympathy for corporate interests in general – but, well, eh.
Metacritic:
