Movies

It Won’t Be Pretty

3 Comments

Eckhart FrankensteinWell, here we are. That week in January when a whole bunch of smaller films roll out to take advantage of the fact that the only major studio release is a genre picture. Which is good news, if you’ve  been meaning to catch up on your festival films …

Devil’s Knot: Colin Firth frets and Reese Witherspoon wails in Atom Egoyan’s entirely unnecessary movie about the West Memphis Three. Just watch any of the documentaries instead.

The Final Member: Icelandic Phallological Museum. Actual scientific institution, or Red Hot Chili Peppers side project? The answer may surprise you! (Okay, it probably won’t.)

Ice Soldiers: Prison Break‘s Dominic Purcell chases defrosted Soviet murder-men around the Arctic Circle in Sturla Gunnarsson’s dull, dull cable movie, which somehow got itself a week’s engagement in the GTA.

I, Frankenstein: Aaron Eckhart mopes in a hoodie as Frankenstein’s monster, caught in an ancient battle between gargoyles and demons. Seriously, I’ve seen it and that’s all I can tell you.

Linsanity: Evan Jackson Leong’s look at the NBA ascendance of Jeremy Lin hits the expected notes, but Julia wishes there was more to it.

Mourning Has Broken: Produced as part of Ingrid Veninger’s $1K Challenge, this dramedy about a man (Robert Nolan) trying to avoid dealing with his wife’s death is … kind of a mess, according to Rad.

The Past: Asghar Farhadi won many critics’ awards and an Oscar for A Separation a couple of years ago; his new picture hasn’t been quite so successful. John explains why.

The Selfish Giant: Clio Barnard follows the brilliance of her experimental documentary The Arbor with this exceptional first feature about a maladjusted youngster (newcomer Conner Chapman). Just go. Go now.

Whitewash: Thomas Haden Church as an alcoholic snowplow operator in Quebec? Sign me up! Except that the movie around him isn’t all that great, according to Rad.

There, that covers the week’s release slate. And for those of you who’ve been seeing weird spam text in this blog’s RSS feed … well, I have no idea why that keeps happening, but I’ll be installing some new security features in the next few days that’ll hopefully take care of it. Thanks for your patience.

3 thoughts on “It Won’t Be Pretty”

  1. Dominic Purcell chasing unfrozen Soviet murder-men SOUNDS awesome — so I’m glad you warned me it really isn’t.

    Someone should make a good movie about Soviet murder-men. Or maybe I just like the phrase “Soviet murder-men”.

  2. Sounds like Whitewash would have worked better if it had been shorter. Shame it wasn’t part of a thematic anthology-type movie. The combo of actor and premise sounds so good. E-books have really opened up the market for buying single short stories and novellas, and iPods do the same for music. I wonder if the movie industry will end up following suit in a way that will make a significant difference to the length of movies that get made and how shorter movies reach the public.

Leave a Reply