Labor Day weekend is, historically, the year’s slowest weekend for movies. Which is fine by me, since the film festival is taking up all the space in my brain, and if there were six or eight new openings to be dealt with today, my head would explode.
Instead, there are just three, and we’ll run through them quickly.
“All About Steve”: Sandra Bullock stalks Bradley Cooper across America in this romantic comedy, which was pushed back from its original March release date and now arrives as Bullock and Cooper come off their respective summer hits “The Proposal” and “The Hangover”. Andrew kinda liked it, but I’m content to wait for the DVD.
“Extract“: Mike Judge’s flat new comedy takes a strong comic cast — Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, Kristen Wiig, J.K. Simmons, David Koechner, Ben Affleck — and wastes every last one of them in a shabby, relentlessly unfunny workplace farce. My review’s in the current issue of NOW, but for some reason it hasn’t made it to the website. I’ll see what I can do about that. UPDATE: There is is!
“Gamer”: In a world where people are turned into human puppets, to be remote-controlled by anyone with the right PlayStation, a prisoner (Gerard Butler) must fight his way to freedom, or something. This is the new film from Neveldine/Taylor, who made the glorious “Crank” … but also made the decidedly glory-free “Crank 2: High Voltage”. I want to believe, but I’m worried.
Welp, I’m off to another day of screenings. Catch you on the weekend …
You’ve welped?