With the release of A Christmas Carol, it would appear that the holiday movie season is officially upon us. I’m not too excited about that movie, but there are a few other interesting movies out this week.
Bliss
Director: Abdullah Oguz
Personal Interest Factor: 5
Turkish film about a young woman who escapes an honor killing by fleeing her small village.
Metacritic: 76
The Box (trailer)
Director: Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko, Southland Tales)
Personal Interest Factor: 7
Previously reviewed on this site by Nick, who concludes that it’s “a step in the right direction” for Kelly after Southland Tales. That sounds good to me … I didn’t hate Southland Tales as much as everyone else.
Metacritic: 45
A Christmas Carol (trailer)
Director: Robert Zemeckis (Contact, Cast Away, The Polar Express, Beowulf)
Personal Interest Factor: 5
Zemeckis used to be a favorite of mine, but I confess that I don’t understand the appeal of his motion-capture movies. This one looks pretty bad, both in the sense that it doesn’t look very good, and in the sense that it actually looks bad. Maybe the movie looks better, but so far it doesn’t seem like the motion-capture stuff is advancing at all.
Metacritic: 54
The Fourth Kind (trailer)
Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Personal Interest Factor: 1
The fifth kind: anal probes. The sixth kind: nattering on about your abduction to a disbelieving, state-appointed psychiatrist. The seventh kind: being brainwashed by aliens into seeing stupid horror movies.
Metacritic: 34
The Horse Boy (trailer)
Director: Michel O. Scott
Personal Interest Factor: 3
Documentary about parents who take their autistic child to the outer reaches of Mongolia in order to treat him.
Metacritic: 63
The Men Who Stare at Goats (trailer)
Director: Grant Heslov
Personal Interest Factor: 8
Reviews haven’t been the greatest, but it looks like fun to me. Director Heslov co-wrote Good Night, and Good Luck with Clooney.
Metacritic: 56
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (trailer)
Director: Lee Daniels (Shadowboxer)
Personal Interest Factor: 6
Tough call on this one. A lot of good reviews, dating back to Sundance. But I’d be lying if I said that it doesn’t look like two hours of pure misery.
Metacritic: 76
(Untitled) (trailer)
Director: Jonathan Parker (Bartleby, The Californians)
Personal Interest Factor: 4
Comedy starring Adam Goldberg, set in New York’s art world. Haven’t really heard anything about it.
Metacritic: 59
Sometimes you’re comments are slightly bewildering to me.
I actually liked Disney’s Christmas Carol. The animation and 3D are really sharp and noticeably improved over Polar Express and Beowulf, neither of which I enjoyed. Carrey is fantastic in his multiple roles. Zemeckis doesn’t dick around with Dickens’ story either meaning regardless of anything else the movie still tells a classic tale. And does it pretty well too.
I just saw The Box tonight… and I wish I enjoyed it more than I did. Kelly took a simple cautionary tale and turned it into an overly convoluted movie that still relies on an ultimately simplistic Twilight Zone-ish reveal. Marsden and Langella are both quite good, but Diaz is terrible. And how can digital water effects actually regress from The Abyss twenty years ago?
I might see Christmas Carol just to see it in the 3D XD (X-treme Digital) format here. Otherwise, I’m looking forward to seeing the live play at the Goodman Theatre in December.
Today I got the free paper (Red Eye by the Chicago Tribune) at the train station, which I normally don’t read. They featured an “interview” with the goat from The Men Who Stare at Goats. The Q&A was really really really dumb. I guess they couldn’t get Clooney, but it reminds me why I don’t read the Red Eye in the first place. At least it will make good packing material for the move.
That’s only natural.
I should be seeing “The Road” today, so expect another amateur review over the weekend!
Touche, sir…
No need for me to write a full review, but I want to note for posterity that I hated A Christmas Carol. I saw the 2-D version, because as everyone knows 3-D gives me a headache.
Nonetheless, the movie triggered one of the worst headache I’ve had in years. It’s a focus nightmare. My eyes were naturally trying to focus on extraneous stuff in the extreme foreground (e.g., the falling snow). I literally had to go home and lay in the dark for two hours afterwards. I promise I am not kidding or exagerrating.
Also, the three spirits apparently try to teach Scrooge the meaning of Christmas by inflicting him with horrible motion sickness. That’s the only explanation I can think of for all the swooping and soaring through 19th century London that the film does.
And frankly, the movie sucks anyhow. Carrey is pretty horrible as Scrooge, doing some dumbass old man caricature that makes it impossible to take the character or his transformation seriously. And the animation is hopelessly ugly and crude for the amount of work that obviously went into it – honestly, I don’t think it could look any worse than it does. Zemeckis’s motion capture is so obviously folly that I can’t believe he’s sticking with it. It just looks wrong.
Basically, I have nothing good to say about it. I hated it worse than The Polar Express, which is really saying something. It’s maybe the most miserable time I’ve had at the movies all year.