Hollywood seems to be saving its best for last this year, or maybe they don’t have many aces up their sleeves after all. Last week, “Disney’s A Christmas Carol” opened to decent, not spectacular box office, but may have legs through the season. This week though, expect the end of the world to drum up anything but apocalyptic numbers as “2012” is unleashed in theaters nationwide.
In Wide Release: Nuclear November kicks off with Roland Emmerich latest disaster-porn flick “2012.” With “The Road” set to open in a couple weeks, audiences should get their fill of the apocalypse, both grandiose and poetic. The film takes it cues from the Mayan calendar, which ends in 2012. A great excuse, of course, to show the entire world meeting an unsettling demise. You could say John Cusack stars in this thing, but we all really know that the visual effects take centerstage here. For some, this will be the ultimate guilty pleasure film of the season, but we’ll get our kicks with John Hillcoat’s film a couple week from now. The cast also includes Chjwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, and Oliver Platt. Rotten Tomatoes has a fresh rating of 37% for this one, while Metacritic has a score of 50.
Also in semi-wide release (900 screens) is Richard Curtis’ new heart-warmer “Pirate Radio.” The “Love Actually” auteur brings us the story of eight DJs in 1960 England who defy the government’s anti-rock and roll laws and set up a pirate radio station aboard an offshore vessel. Curtis assembles a fantastic cast that includes Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Nick Frost, Kenneth Branagh, Rhys Ifans, and Emma Thompson. We posted our take yesterday, finding the film to be 75% good fun but harmed from a preposterous final act. The film is at a just-ok 55% fresh at RT with a Metacritic score of 56.
In Limited Release: Wes Anderson’s sixth feature, the animated “Fantastic Mr. Fox” emerges on only four screens this week in New York and L.A. before going wide on Thanksgiving. An adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book of the same name, Anderson wrote the screenplay with Noah Baumbach and directed the stop-motion animated remotely from around the world, to the apparent chagrin of some of the crew. We’ve been following the film for years, and are excited to see Anderson doing something different and original with his talents, instead of regurgitating the same formula. With a voice cast that includes George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe and Jason Schwartzman, the film is stacked with great talent to accompany the whimsical old-school animation. We have a couple takes on the film and are pleased with the picture, a nice, charming return to form for Anderson. The critics have fallen in line with a 91% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes and a 88 score from Metacritic.
A great cast headlines director Oren Moverman’s “The Messenger.” Ben Foster (“3:10 to Yuma,” “Freaks and Geeks”) stars as a solider who, upon returning from Iraq, is assigned to the Army’s Casualty Notification Service. He along with another solider, played by Woody Harrelson, are tasked with giving the bad news to fallen soldier’s families. We saw the movie recently and found it to be riveting with amazing performances from the whole cast (review coming momentarily), which also includes Samantha Morton. It is great to see Harrelson working more and getting higher quality roles and he is a revelation in this film. RT tracks the film at an excellent 90% fresh with a Metacritic score of 80.
Directing team Scott McGehee and David Siegel (“Suture,” “The Deep End”) new film “Uncertainty” opens in limited release today. Two different plotlines are explored in the movie, which stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Lynn Collins as couple who make a decision at a flip of a coin. One side takes them to Brooklyn, another to Manhattan. One is a thriller, the other a drama. The trailer looked interesting, but jarring. We’d love to see these filmmakers pull off a project like this, but we’re skeptical. “Uncertainty” is currently at a low 45% on RT with a Metacritic score of 46, suggesting it’s not great. And a couple of reviews we’ve read have said the same, which is too bad because Gordon-Levitt is generally great in everything he does.
Also in limited release this week, “Women In Trouble” from writer/director Sebastian Gutierrez. It presents one day in the lives of ten seemingly disparate women and stars Carla Gugino, Connie Britton, Emmanuelle Chriqui, and Simon Baker. We saw the movie and sort-of reviewed it earlier this week. It’s campy and Oxygen-network worthy, but we can’t really endorse it. RT rates it a low 31% and Metacritic gives it a 43 score.
Also in theaters in limited release is the documentary, “William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe,” which has an agreeable 75% RT rating, and the Sundance film “Dare” starring Emmy Rossum and Zach Gilford that has an not-great 44% score.