Weekend Forecast: 8/22/08
By Craig Kennedy - August 21st, 2008; 12:01 am
Kimberly Rivers Roberts and Scott Roberts in Trouble the Water
Ouch. It looks like summer is over but the fall movie season still hasn’t begun. The wide releases look almost completely forgettable so, once again, I’ll dig into the slightly more promising limited releases first.
- Trouble the Water. Coming from the producers of Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine, you’d expect that this hurricane Katrina documentary would be more politically slanted, but directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal have the discipline to allow the powerful human story to largely speak for itself. While an occasional swipe is taken at the failure of all levels of government in reacting to Katrina, the core of the story revolves around two residents who weathered the storm in their home in the flooded 9th ward, Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her husband Scott. In addition to using footage that Kimberly captured with her video camera before and during Katrina, Lessin and Deal also followed the couple as they coped with the aftermath in the months afterward. What emerges is a harrowing but ultimately inspiring story of survival that also leaves you asking important questions about how something like this could happen in a country that likes to call itself the most powerful nation on Earth. Stay tuned for a full review of Trouble the Water plus part one of an interview I did with filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal. Tickets
- Hamlet 2 (wide 8/29). On paper, the idea of Steve Coogan as a failed actor turned high school drama teacher mounting an irreverent musical sequel to Shakespeare’s classic tragedy in order to save his failing drama department sounds like a winner. When you throw in Melonie Diaz, I’m almost sold. Unfortunately, the trailer was kind of wretched. It seemed to be the popular favorite at Sundance though, so maybe that’s a good sign. Tickets
- I.O.U.S.A. From the director of Wordplay, this documentary is a sobering bipartisan look at the national debt and how badly screwed the United States is economically. Rather than point fingers and lay blame, it seeks to illuminate the problem and offer solutions. Intended to be digestible by regular people who are not economics majors, it succeeds at the former but I found it fell a little short of the latter. Tickets
- Cthulhu. Inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, this horror film is about a history professor whose life is slowly plunged into terror when he returns to his childhood home to find that his father is involved in a mysterious cult. You never know with these kinds of things. It’s all in the execution. Tickets
- Momma’s Man. Here’s another one that got good notices at Sundance. From the producers of Half Nelson, it’s a comedy drama about a 30-something who stays with his parents in his childhood home during a business trip to New York. When the job is finished, the draw of life before it became complicated and adult is too much and he decides to stay rather than return home to his wife and child. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess it’s a more insightful look at a man’s inability to grow up than what we’ve been getting lately from the Apatow crowd. Tickets
Opening wide:
- The Rocker (Wed. 8/20). Rainn Wilson (TV’s The Office) is a one-time rock and roll drummer who was kicked out of his band just as they were about to hit the big time. He gets a second chance at rock glory 20 years later when his nephew’s band needs a drummer. I’ll just bet he teaches them a little bit about the school of rock and they allow him to realize his dreams. I like Wilson so maybe this one has potential. On the other hand, the studio bumped it from its original August 1 slot to a much quieter weekend at the end of the month so it’s pretty clear they don’t have much faith in it. Of course, it’ll be a frosty morning in hell the day I take the opinion of a studio bean counter seriously. Tickets
- Death Race. This sounds like not so much a rip-off of Paul Bartel’s cheesy original as it is simply a lifting of the title and the idea of a contest where you kill people with cars. Not a bad concept as far as excuses to crash things and kill people go (and in case you doubt I’m a lifelong fan of crashing things, this was one of my favorite toys when I was little), but minus the satire of the original I’ve got no use for this one. Tickets
- The House Bunny. Though Smiley Face, it convinced me of Anna Faris’ gift for comedy (I never saw any of the Scary Movie movies). Her latest film sounds like Revenge of the Girl Nerds. In it she plays a slightly past her prime Playboy Bunny who is kicked out of the Playboy mansion. With nowhere to turn, she becomes the housemother for a sorority of unpopular girls. Let me guess, she teaches the nerds a little something about being pretty and scoring boys and they teach her a little something about beauty being only skin deep. Am I right? Yeah, I’m right. Tickets
- The Longshots. Hey look, it’s another bland family comedy from Ice Cube. This one’s about the first girl quarterback in Pop Warner football history and it’s directed by Fred Durst. You remember Fred. He’s the dope from Limp Bizkit, the rap-metal act that was popular for about 10 minutes in the late ’90s. How much do you want to bet his directorial career is shorter lived? Tickets
Expanding:
- Elegy. This romantic drama starring Ben Kingsley as a college professor and Penélope Cruz as the grad student he falls for jumps from 6 theaters to around 100. My initial enthusiasm has cooled somewhat, but I think it’s still worth checking out and I may even come up with that review I promised. Tickets
Opening in LA:
- In Search of a Midnight Kiss. It’s set in a beautiful black and white Los Angeles, but it opened first in New York. Go figure. Anyway, this is the one where a young man goes looking for a New Year’s Eve date on Craig’s List and comes away with either a blind date from hell or the girl of his dreams. A pretty funny and enjoyable micro-budgeted indie that is much better than its trailer suggests. If you support true indie films, this one is definitely worth a look. Tickets
- Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer. O’Day isn’t exactly a household name outside of jazz circles, but here she’s given her due and now LA finally gets to see it. Tickets
- What We Do Is Secret. Biography of Darby Crash, founder and lead singer of the influential LA punk band The Germs. A little too squeaky clean to be a convincing portrait of the late ’70s early ’80s LA punk scene, but energetic and entertaining nevertheless. Recommended for fans. Tickets
Filed under: Weekend Forecast
Tags: Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer, Anna Faris, Ben Kingsley, Carl Deal, Christina Applegate, Cthulhu, Death Race, Elegy, Fred Durst, Hamlet 2, I Served the King of England, I.O.U.S.A., Ice Cube, In Search of a Midnight Kiss, Jiri Menzel, Kimberly Rivers Roberts, Melonie Diaz, Momma's Man, Penelope Cruz, Rainn Wilson, Scott Roberts, Steve Coogan, The House Bunny, The Longshots, The Rocker, Tia Lessin, Trouble the Water, What We Do Is Secret
Related Posts: - More on Katrina doc ‘Trouble the Water’
- LiC Interview: ‘Trouble the Water’ Part 1
- Review: Trouble the Water (2008) ****
- First Impressions: Trouble the Water & American Teen
- Weekend Forecast: 8/1/08
Trouble the Water and I Served the King of England, along with In Search of a Midnight Kiss, are the films I’m most interested in from this group. Elegy, because of the two leads and your recommendation.
In the next few days I plan to catch up with a host of films. Boy A and Man on Wire in about thirteen hours in Berkeley. Finally.
TROUBLE THE WATER and the Menzel are the ones I am most interested in.
Ms. Rivers’ and Mr. Roberts’ dogs are sweet. I’d love to have a big dog again.
She could keep my little fuzzy guy company.
“…it’ll be a frosty day in hell…”
Hah hah, Craig. Words to live by.
But, in my illustrious experience, they don’t always stick to the wall.
It’s a shame IN SEARCH OF A MIDNIGHT KISS isn’t playing up here. But it may never.
I won’t hold my breath…
IN SEARCH OF A MIDNIGHT KISS in my opinion is one of the ten best films of 2008 so far. I haven’t been able to shake it.
And ANITA O’DAY could very well be in that mix as well. Stellar documentary.
I’ll be in Little Rock (did you know there also used to be a Big Rock?) this weekend, so the film options are considerably better than around here. Unfortunately, I’m going to/throwing a couple of baby showers and have family in town, so time’s limited. We’re definitely going to squeeze in Man on Wire. The others at the arthouse theater here are Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Wackness, The Children of Huang Shi, and Brideshead Revisited. I’m hoping we can manage to see at least one of those, as well.
I second everything Alexander said in his first paragraph. Trouble the Water, I Served the King…, and Midnight Kiss all sound very interesting, still mildly curious abut Elegy after the comments here at LIC.
This weekend though only Elegy opens here and I might get to that one, although I was eyeing finally catching up on Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder, although honestly those will likely last longer in theaters than Elegy. All depends on which way I end up going…drama or comedy.
Also hoping to catch Up the Yangtze, which finally arrives here too.
I hope to get to Vicky Christina Barcelona this weekend. Out of all the new releases of this week I’m most interested in Trouble the Water but I’ll be out of the city again this weekend. I’ll have to catch up with it during the week, if I can.
How do you pronounce “Cthulhu”?
I’m also playing catch up and am ending my month long weekend drought at the theaters. I plan on Bottle Shock today or tomorrow, and Elegy and Hamlet 2 on Saturday. We get Kicking It here for a week but it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to get to it next week.
I saw VCB last night and loved/liked/loved it. Have to wait still to read everyone’s reviews. I think you’ll like it, Alison. Seems you and I were the last ones to see it.
I hope Yangtze lives up to the hype, Joel, and I look forward to your thoughts. I liked what you had to say about Encounters, by the way.
When they eventually arrive, I’ll be excited about Trouble, Kiss, England and Momma’s. Like Ryan said yesterday, there are A LOT of movies coming out all of a sudden that I’m getting really excited for. Summer’s over!
I mentioned this at CCC, but I wonder if anyone else can shed light on it. What’s with Wednesday releases in August? PE, TT, The Rocker, and here, next week, Transsiberian. All opening on Wednesdays of non-holiday weekends. I know this used to happen a couple times a year in the past, but now EVERY single week? Between 3:00 AM showings of TDK, summer of 2010 starting in April with Iron Man 2, and weekly Wednesday openings, I’m getting a really bad feeling that box-office goals have now crossed the line and completely overshadowed any interest in building fan buzz. Forget about any special opening weekends or event movies anymore. Anything goes, any time. Open Burn After Reading at 11:00 AM on a Tuesday? Sure! Why not?
So I’m a jaded purist. Sue me.
Death Race, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, is exactly what you would suspect. If you have any attachment to the WTF original, you will likely hate this one in spades. But really, the original is just a trainwreck and if you’re holding onto it with a death grip you need to just get out and breathe more.
I recommend that everyone go and see Hamlet 2 because I have no idea how to recommend it. If it fits your sense of humor you will probably love it; if it doesn’t, you will likely loathe the entire thing. BUT…it is unique in a year of stilted, same-old-same-old comedies (barring Tropic Thunder, which was a breath of fresh air). See it just for the novelty factor. My review won’t go up until next Wed. (stupid embargoes), but here’s a snippet if you’re interested:
“Coogan’s performance is, for better or worse, the lynchpin of the entire film. It is even, dare I say it, a bit fearless, as he embraces moments and lines of pure absurdity with all the gravitas of an actor straining for Oscar gold. Dana (Coogan’s character) is written like Adam Sandler but Coogan plays him like Sean Penn, and the result is either comic genius or over-the-top gorgonzola. When Dana discovers his idol, actress Elizabeth Shue, working in a doctor’s office (she’s ‘playing’ herself), he has a fanboy meltdown that had me chuckling and/or cringing (I can’t remember which). Hamlet 2, and Coogan’s performance, straddles such a fine line that I find I cannot trust my initial reaction. When I revisit it in a year it will either be one of the funniest films I’ve ever seen or an absolute massacre.”
Finally, Wordplay is a fantastic doc for those of you who haven’t seen it, so I.O.U.S.A. gets a shoutout just for that reason alone.
And I love H.P. Lovecraft stuff (I would consider Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness that last good film he made), so count me in for Cthululshuthsush or however it’s spelled.
“We’re just two little girls from Little Rock.
We lived on the wrong side of the tracks.
But the gentlemen friends who used to call,
they never did seem to mind at all.
They came to the wrong side of the tracks.”
Daniel, I’ve always pronounced it “Ku-THOO-loo” but studies show I’m a giant spaz.
I don’t know what that little Wednesday trend was about either. It’s not uncommon for them to do it on holiday weekends, but these just seem kind of random. In the case of Pineapple Express, I think they kind of shot themselves in the foot. Had the film opened Friday like a normal film, I believe it would’ve beaten Dark Knight. Alas…what do I know?
Evan “you need to just get out and breathe more.” ahahah. Yeah, that’s a fact. At least the original is a trainwreck with crazy style. This one feels like bland nothingness. Not fair because I haven’t seen it…I’m just saying.
I love Coogan so I hope you’re right about Hamlet 2. I really did hate that trailer though.
Beyond that I’ll likely catch VCB again and I’d like to take a crack at the Czech film and Momma’s Man.
The Hamlet 2 trailer I saw was quite bad, but I’m hoping it’s better than that. The trailer felt like it was cut to appeal to a broad audience whereas the concept for this one seems very niche, so I’m willing to give it a shadow of a doubt, Evan.
As for Wednesday openings and the general wackiness of this Summer’s release schedule, I’d agree that the studios are now trying anything they can to give the smaller fare a bigger spot for late Summer. It’s silly and will probably backfire, but I don’t really care about how they handle the Summer schedule anyway. If this sort of wacky releases carries over into the rest of the year and starts affecting indie and foreign release schedules, I’ll be concerned. But does anyone really expect that to happen yet? I remain skeptical that any exec would try opening a Coen Brothers film on a Wed, let alone opening wide on a Wed.
Up the Yangtze: This one has been on my radar for nearly 6 months now, Daniel. I missed it at the PIFF and I’ve been looking forward to it since hearing about it here on and off. I saw the trailer last weekend, which got me more interested.
I’ve said it before but Up the Yangtze was one of my reviews that got away. Exactly the kind of film I should be championing and yet…
As for the Hamlet 2 trailer, I was shocked at how bad it was because I’d already had modest hopes for the thing from the reaction at Sundance, but yeah, there’s that whole broad audience thing. It’s frustrating because smart movies are shortchanged by dumb trailers. They drive away the audiences most likely to like the movie in the first place. Not that a movie with a song called “Rock Me Sexy Jesus” is necessarily meant for brainiacs, but I think you know what I’m saying.
If “Rock Me Sexy Jesus” is this year’s “Chocolate Salty Balls,” then Hamlet 2 is going to do really well on DVD.
I thought HAMLET 2 has possibly one of the funniest trailers I’ve seen all year.
Any other theatre student will know exactly what I’m talking about.
Somewhere recently I said something about the subjectivity of comic taste. I rest my case on this one.
I don’t know, Joel re: releases. I never would have expected summer to start in April, either. Burn After Reading was an exaggeration, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect this to happen with indies and foreigns going forward. Transsiberian opens here next Wednesday, for example. It’s not really a huge deal on a case-by-case basis. I’m going to see them either way.
I guess I’m just romanticizing the buildup to opening weekend and Friday night packed shows, or the buzz for the first summer movie opening Memorial Day weekend, like Indy did (it should have been the first, not the fourth after Iron Man, Speed Racer, and Narnia).
The quality of my funny ha ha is routinely subjective.
WORDPLAY was a fantastic, criminally overlooked doc that really caught me by surprise. I thought it was much better than the much ballyhooed SPELLBOUND (which I also enjoyed, but not like this). I’m interested in seeing what they do with I.O.U.S.A.
IOUSA was good, but it felt a teeny bit shallow. As I said, they outined the problem nicely, but when it came to actual solutions I was hoping for more.
On the other hand, part of their intention is to get people to wake up to the problem and start sticking the presidential candidate’s feet to the fire about solving it.
My sense of humor tends to be slightly unique and pretty warped anyway.
STRANGERS WITH CANDY is probably the perfect example of what I find really funny.
Craig, I’m sorry to say that I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND (Menzel), the Czech film, is NOT playing in the New York area today, and does open until Friday August 29th.
Is it due out in LA this week? This would be rare if it were.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1091751/board/nest/109541695
Sorry for passing along bad information Sam. Many times with these smaller and foreign films, a date gets changed, but the people who track them don’t update their databases. More frequently, things simply slip through the cracks.
I’ll pick it up again next weekend.
No problem, Craig, these changes are admittedly always happening. We have our plate full anyway with TROUBLE THE WATER, MOMMA’S MAN and perhaps HAMLET 2. The Menzel is better-positioned for next week anyway.
Glimmer, my favorite argument in that thread is that people who hate Fred Durst hate black people. Genius.
I saw Tropic Thunder last night. It was a riot. Not all movies can be great works of art and they don’t have to be. This was pure entertainment and I laughed more than I have at any movie in awhile. There is nothing Robert Downey Jr. can’t do. He was awesome. So funny. And Tom Cruise, man. He was a riot. Even Ben Stiller, who can sometimes get on my nerves, made me laugh. As did Jack Black.
The fake commercial and trailers at the beginning were priceless, especially the one with RDJ and Toby Maguire.
“Winner of MTV’s Best Kisser award.”
ROFLMAO.
Agreed Alison. Of all the big comedies this summer, this is the only one I really liked.
“This head movie makes my eyes rain!”
yeah craig…*genuis* thanks for bringing that to light. ha ha…
maybe this movie should be too surprising. fred has always did it for the kids. ;)
it doesn’t matter if this film is bad. fred wins simply by doing a going wide movie.
hmm i craig i don’t think durst is gonna that easy to get rid of from the movie scene. he needs a media profile to get ‘the nookie’. ha ha… ;)
i’d like to see a durst top 10 films list. i bet he list things no one is gonna believe he likes or has actually watched…
“Winner of MTV’s Best Kisser award.”
hmm i haven’t seen t.t. but i think an award of that sort would have to go to…alison….
:-)
How did you know, glimmer? ;-)
The audience that I saw the movie with was also very lively and laughing, so it made the experience even better. And they applauded at the end (and I heard applause after the show before the one I saw ended).
The movie is so great at making fun of actors and the film business.
Going back to another hot topic, there were still sold out shows for TDK in this theater. Amazing.
Glad we’re on the same page with Fred Durst, Glimmer and I’m not surprised.
TDK is a monster Alison. Proof of what can happen when you mix some smarts into a blockbuster.
Alison, your enthusiasm for Tropic Thunder is the proverbial last straw. I can’t wait to see that film.
The Dark Knight is still selling out shows in San Francisco. The word “monster” almost doesn’t do it justice.
Great to see you back, Glimmer.