4/15 – 4/17 New movies come out each weekend; come here to find out which fluffy bearded future Flash is starring in something less interesting than NASCAR. It’s a bad time to go to the theater. Keep reading to find out how you should spend your movie going weekend:
Misc. Limited Releases
(Opening on fewer than 500 screens.)
You know it’s a dismal release week when one of your choices is a documentary about a guy who gets paid for being tall. Yes, The Year of Yao opens in theaters this weekend, and will no doubt make money hand over fist in Houston. Shouldn’t this be sold on late-night television as a discount video, possibly accompanied by a telephone shaped as a basketball? How did it end up in theaters? It’s not facing particularly stiff Limited Release competition either. It’s All Gone Pete Tong might get some attention with its wacky name, since they’ve only got it playing in a single theater, seats should be easily filled. Palindromes seems to be doing a nice job of disgusting film critics, and the premise is confusing and convoluted to say the least. House of D sounds like it might be a Tenacious D documentary, but should you live near one of the two theaters it’s playing in and attend it, you’re likely to be severely disappointed.
The closest thing in the arthouse world that might remotely be considered as an item of interest is the family comedy Down and Derby, noteworthy only because it’s not often family movies hit theaters in limited engagements. They’re tossing off that all or nothing philosophy and opening the movie in a meager 58 theaters. In it, you won’t find talking Zebras or SUV destroying comedy starring Ice Cube. Instead, it plays host to a list of long absent names like Pat Morita and Lauren Holley in a cul-de-sac comedy about overzealous neighborhood dads. They’re going for social satire… I think.
The Amityville Horror
(Opens on 3323 screens.)
I’ve always said that if you’re going to remake a movie, remake something bad. Good movies don’t need redone, they’ve already been done right. But there are plenty of good premises out there that for whatever reason just didn’t work, but might if someone else took another stab at them. Whether the original Amityville Horror qualifies as a good premise I leave up to your decision, but what is certain is that the original wasn’t particularly good. Remaking it can’t hurt, especially if you get Ryan Reynolds and showcase him in a ridiculously fluffy Brolin beard. I like Ryan Reynolds, but there’s nothing I hate worse than lousy horror movies, which on the surface this resembles. In any other weekend I’d avoid this thing like the plague, but apparently it’s such a cinematic juggernaut that it scared other more worthy wide-opening movies right off the weekend. Or it’s such a lousy release date that no one else wanted to bother. Take your pick. Unless you live near the artsy-fartsy (and probably also gay) part of a major metropolitan town, this is the only new movie available to you. I hear this is a big NASCAR weekend. Purchase some Goodwill overalls, brutally reduce your intelligence, and give that a spin.
