As Rafe pointed out this week on CB's weekly podcast, everyone's already seen the movie's being released this week. We've got three brand new, wide releases, but they've all received early sneak previews in one form or another earlier in the month. Of the three, it's School for Scoundrels that audiences are most likely to be interested in, though it may not win the weekend's biggest take by much.
Who cares how much money Hollywood execs have to swim through in their money bin. Let’s look at which new releases are worth watching this weekend:
Expanding
Michele Gondry's The Science of Sleep expands into 221 theaters, and it's gotten good enough reviews that it's worth seeking out. This is the first opportunity for the world outside of New York and Los Angeles to get a look at it. Get moving.
Limited Releases(Opening in fewer than 500 theaters.)
The Queen has been getting incredible buzz on the festival circuit, and this weekend it begins its theatrical run in three theaters hidden way somewhere in New York or Los Angeles. It's billed as a behind the scene look at Queen Elizabeth II's struggle to reach a compromise with Prime Minister Tony Blair in the wake of Princess Diana's death. It's the second time this year Helen Mirren has played a Queen Elizabeth, and apparently she's only gotten better at it.
Open Season (Opens in 3,833 theaters.)
Open Season is Sony's attempt to break into the computer animation biz. They're a little late in entering the genre and we'd probably all have been better off if they'd stayed the heck out. It's getting lashed critically and deserves every attack. It stars Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher as the voices of an animated bear and deer respectively. They get lost in the woods, accosted by hunters, and eventually decide to take the forest back from its gun-toting intruders.
The Guardian (Opens in 3,241 theaters.)
The Guardian pays homage to the unheralded and often deadly work of the Coast Guard's rescue swimmers in a film starring Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Costner. Kutcher plays a troubled young man who enlists in the Coast Guard, and Costner plays the crotchety old instructor who dumps buckets of water on his head.The film's trailers are perhaps the worst of the year, but the movie itself is better than it ought to be.
School for Scoundrels (Opens in 3,004 theaters.)
Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder plays a loser who enrolls in a class to build his confidence with women. Teaching the class is Billy Bob Thornton, who's been permanently typecast as an asshole of the highest order. He's been pulling the same duty since Bad Santa, and he's at again only this time with Heder to torture. It's getting terrible reviews, but then so is everything being released this weekend. I'm making it my pick because I'm in love with the idea of seeing Jon Heder suffer. Go get him Billy Bob.
STILL IN THEATERS AND WORTH YOUR TIME: Jet Li's Fearless, Invincible, The Last Kiss
