It’s Friday again, but dear god, this is one of the worst weekends for film releases on record.
We expect your hopes aren’t too high that it will mark an end to the cinematic drought of the last few weeks. ‘Avatar,’ barring an unforeseen disaster effecting only IMAX theaters, will maintain its status at the top of the box-office. We’re interested to see how Mel Gibson’s comeback vehicle fares, but mainly because he has quite a few projects in works in the near future, both as star and director. This week is absolutely bereft of new movies to see in theaters. If you do make it out to the movies this weekend — and hopefully you’re not on the ice frigid East Coast or worse, in New York — do yourself a favor and see something that has expanded into wide release (may we recommend “A Single Man” or “Crazy Heart”) or go to your local indie theater (here’s to hoping you actually have one) and support something that only hits in small limited release. Otherwise your options are downright dismal. You’ve been warned.
In Wide Release: Marking his first starring role since 2002’s “Signs,” Mel Gibson returns tail-between-legs with “Edge of Darkness.” Remaking his own BBC miniseries, “Casino Royale” director Martin Campbell directs this story of a Boston detective searching for his daughter’s killer. Trying to capitalize on the success of last year’s similar “Taken,” a solid box office performance would bode well for Gibson’s aggressive comeback attempt. We reviewed the film yesterday, finding it a must for Gibson devotees only. Rotten Tomatoes currently gives the movie a 59% rating while Metacritic chimes in with a 54 score which is far, far more generous than we were. To us it should be sitting around the 30% mark [ed. I personally loathed it].
“Ghost Rider” and “Daredevil” director Mark Steven Johnson tries his hand at romantic comedy with “When In Rome.” Kristen Bell stars as an unlucky-in love New Yorker who travels to Italy where she steals coins from a fountain of love, causing several suitors to woo her aggressively. We got a chance to check out the movie recently and found it to be a poorly executed, relentlessly stupid rom com. RT gives the film a miserable 11% rating while Metacritic is slightly more optimistic with a 30 score.
In Limited Release: Steve Buscemi headlines the black comedy “Saint John of Las Vegas.” Peter Dinklage and Sarah Silverman co-star in the film, about a former Vegas blackjack champion drawn back into the world he’s left behind. We caught the film earlier this week and found its contrived awkwardness to be trying too hard and overly obvious, despite a great cast. The buzz on this one has been virtually non-existent and the reviews don’t look like they are going to change that. Rotten Tomatoes gives the movie a rating of 7% with a Metacritic score of 27.
In deeper limited release there’s “Bass Ackwards” and “For My Father” with middling to non-existent reviews and “North Face” and “Off & Running” with great reviews, but we weren’t invited to any of them, so we have, “no dog in this race” as Mel Gibson loves to aggressively and fondly say.
Lastly, there’s the documentary about R&B singer Bill Withers titled, “Still Bill” which we saw at SXSW last year and generally enjoyed. If you’re a Withers fanatic, it’s a must see, for others, a interesting curiosity and perhaps something for Netflix when it arrives.