Off The Couch And Into The Theater: September 2009

August was a pretty successful movie month. Despite only seeing one film (maybe two) that will end up on my Top 10 list by year's end, every experience was worthwhile. In reverse order, The Final Destination (in 3D) was exactly the kind of end to the summer trash candy I needed. I guess I'm not good at differentiating between the movies from this franchise, because critics say it's a lot worse than the first three, even though it's exactly the same as all of them. Inglourious Basterds was everything I wanted it to be: funny, violent, creative, and had great music. District 9 was interesting and overall I liked it, but it did feel like it wanted to be too many different things, which kept me from getting truly pulled in. Lady Amy pretty much covered The Ugly Truth, so it's obvious why watching that movie with her was a laff riot. The Taking of Pelham 123, the final of three films viewed at the drive-in, was the perfect movie to watch at 1AM and just smile with one eye open at Travolta's reiteration of his Face/Off role (with homoerotic undertones this time!) and Denzel's routine everyman-with-skillz protagonist. And then there was Funny People, which was actually quite bad and I don't even remember anything except not liking any of the characters, but I watched it with Jerksica about five hours before I proposed to her, so my mind was elsewhere, and sitting in the theater was riveting, though it had nothing to do with the movie. Here's September releases, almost all of which are crap, save two hopefuls (one indie, one wide release), with "Will-I-See-It?" percentages in parentheses...

Sept 4th: I've seen the trailer for Gamer (4%) more times than I care to see any 2-3 minute advertisement ever, but alas, there's still a tiny part of me that wants to see Michael C. Hall in a weird collarless shirt chew up the scenery with Ludacris and Gerard Butler as ex-cons who are controlled in a video game, but just like Death Race, if they survive it, they are set free. Extract (50%) seems lazy, but so did the film's director Mike Judge's Office Space when it came out, and that turned out to become a classic. Same for Idiocracy - crap, maybe I should change that percentage. And I do love me some Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, and JK Simmons action (all of them always play the same character, but what characters!). All About Steve (1%) looks like a joke romantic comedy; like its trailer should have been put at the beginning of Tropic Thunder with its wacky fast-forward camera work and Bradley Cooper finally becoming noticeable as the tool that he was before and during The Hangover, and always will be. At the indies, documentary Afghan Star (19%) chronicles the eponymous country's version of AI, where you have to risk getting shot to become a star. Renee Zellweger tries to go arthouse with My One And Only (11%) as a single mom on a road trip searching for the man that will make her a kept woman. It's set in the 1950s, so settle down, feminists.

Sept 11th: I was srsly excited for 9 (62%) when all I had to go on were the darkly animated stills floating around the movie blogs, but now that the commercials are airing, it looks like a flimsy video game with animation comparable to Dreamcast, not Pixar. Sad! Speaking of sorrow, Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself (3%) is another entry in the Madea saga, this time focusing on the single mom being courted by a man who tells her she needs to change her seedy life as a lounge singer around. Sorry, feminists. Sorority Row (48%) is a horror movie. Guess what it's about. I'll give you a hint. The plot synopsis starts with, "A killer on..." The Baader Meinhof Complex (51%) dramatizes a sect of 60s German terrorists called The Red Army Faction, which could be thrilling, boring, informative, or some combination of the three. Captain Abu Raed (6%) is actually an airport janitor, but he likes to tell the local Arab children fantastical stories of being a pilot so he can...uhh...no, it's totally platonic, right? No, iMDB, I will not click on "full synopsis." Sorry. I found out about Andy Griffin's return to the screen in Play The Game (7%) on ET, so you know it's gotta be good. "He plays a retirement home gigolo," Mary Hart said at me harshly, and my ears exploded. As you can see by our faves sidebar, Brigitte really wants to see The September Issue (2%), in which we watch the editors of Vogue get ready for, that's right, the September issue of their magazine! How 'citing!

Sept 18th: Well, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs (21%) ruins one of my all-time favorite childhood picture books by giving it an effing plot. Leave well enough alone, everyone except Pixar (sorry for the repeated Pixar references, I'm listening to the awesome Up soundtrack as I write this post)! Jennifer's Body (89%) is the number two most exciting film of the month, despite its incorporation of Megan Fox and Diablo Cody. I have faith though that Cody will be a better tongue-in-cheek genre screenwriter, though, instead of trying to write characters we're supposed to take seriously. Especially with a nice thick gender discussion when Fox starts supernaturally murdering boys, and specifically boys. The Informant! (74%) looks like Steven Soderbergh having fun again without having too much fun, i.e. Out of Sight, not Ocean's Quadrillion or Bubble. Let's hope that works out with Matt Damon in the lead self-explanatory role. Love Happens (<3%).>Bright Star (63%), the new Jane Campion movie, and I loves me some The Piano, but that is her only good film to date, plus you know me and romance period dramas. Nevertheless, it's about Keats and his untimely death, so I could just curl up with a blankie some lonely night and Netflix this someday. Thirst (99%), however, is the real romance film to pitch a tent for. A vampire priest, Chan-wook Park of Oldboy and Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance fame, and a whole lot of sexy time? My self-made hype better not let me down. It Might Get Loud (57%) documents the electric guitar through three lenses: The Edge (great guitarist, hate his band), Jimmy Page (great guitarist, don't care about his band), and Jack White (terrible guitarist, hate his band). And yet, it's a mildly interesting idea for a music documentary. The Beaches of Agnes (__%) is an autobiographical documentary about some director named Agnes, none of whose movies I've seen or heard of. Hence the blank. Burning Plain (30%) is what is sure to be another lame attempt at "hyperlink cinema" (think Magnolia or Babel), with a description that's so vague it hurts, including phrases like "shattered lives," "a sin from her past," and "redemption, forgiveness, and love." #Barfmerotten.

Sept 25th: Bruce Willis gets Matrix-y with Surrogates (69%), in which he is a detective in a world where people use clones of themselves to go and do their work/errands for them. Should be an entertaining-enough diversion. We can only hope George Bluth, Sr.'s surrogate is involved somehow. I'm only putting the percentage for Fame (75%) so high because Jerksica warned me upon seeing the poster this weekend at the theater that I might as well surrender to seeing it now. Never saw the original, but might just for comparison purposes. Also because I like killing myself in the eyeholes. Kate Beckinsale's Antarctic thriller Whiteout (38%) sounded a lot cooler on paper, but the trailer makes it look pretty rote and, well, too white. I get it, it's Antarctica. Also, she's getting less pretty as the years go on and that makes me pouty. Pandorum (27%) is literally just Alien with multiple creatures instead of one, right down to the characters waking up from hypersleep and the whole film taking place inside a dark, dingy spaceship. At least my former Film Studies students will hopefully recognize its rip-off-ness. They will, won't they?! I know some people have seen This Is England, so those people might be interested in that director's new feature Somers Town (49%), similar in that it's an urban-centric character study, this time specifically in London, but dissimilar in that it looks more boring. The Other Man (22%) is the 12th film to be titled as such, and Liam Neeson once again gets angry, this time because his wife is cheating on him and he must find out who with. Psst, it's Antonio Banderas, not evil terrorists, so you should prolly back off and leave well enough alone, bud. Paris (15%) is the fourteenth film/TV series to be titled as such, and it stars a guy named, of all possible French names, Pierre, and he gets sick and so he watches the city from his balcony, only from what I can tell, there's no Rear Window/Disturbia excitement here. Just plain French city life. Yeah, well I got a fever too, and the prescription is not WATCHING NOTHING HAPPEN.

This entry was posted by chris, on Sunday, August 30, 2009. You can leave your response.