Weekend Movies: Nothing Worth Missing the Oscars For

Out of this weekend’s four nationwide openers, two were screened for press in my region and two were not. One of the titles I saw is so bad that it definitely should not have been, and it’s surprisingly the one receiving the widest release.

Opening at 3,000 locations is ‘Act of Valor‘, an action movie that tries to accurately depict what Navy SEALs go through. Ensuring the authenticity of their actions, real-life active duty Nay SEALs were cast in the lead roles. While the plot and missions at hand are fictional and contrived, the way that they handle the tactical situations are not. These realistic action scenes are great, but because the real SEALs are such bad actors, the rest of the movie is terrible. Stay home and watch your ‘Black Hawk Down‘ Blu-ray instead.

If anybody has the Hollywood system figured out, it’s this guy. Tyler Perry stars in ‘Good Deeds‘ (which he also wrote and directed) as a businessman whose world is thrown off when he meets his office’s new beautiful cleaning lady (Thandie Newton). Perry knows his audience and knows exactly how to win them over. Opening in 2,132 locations, ‘Good Deeds’ is expected to be another surefire success for Perry. Truthfully, since they’ve never screened a Tyler Perry film in my region, I’ve never seen one.

Summit Entertainment is usually on the ball with screening movies very far in advance of their openings – even its awful movies. It sure says a lot for Summit to not screen the Amanda Seyfried thriller ‘Gone‘ at all. Seyfried plays a girl who sets out on a lone mission to find her missing sister’s kidnapper. With a 2,000-location opening, I can’t for the life of me figure out who this movie is supposed to appeal to.

Opening at only 1,900 locations is my pick for the week, ‘Wanderlust‘. Considering who’s in it, I’m surprised at the lack of advertising for the film. Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston play a couple who get sucked into the lifestyle of a hippie commune in Nothern Georgia. With a charming cast and non-stop laughs, this lightweight comedy deserves more love than it’s receiving.

Of the very limited openers, two have my interest. The first is a French kids’ movie titled ‘The Fairy‘. With one IMDb review calling it a live-action version of ‘A Town Called Panic’, I’m sold. The other film, ‘Tomorrow, When the War Began‘, sounds a lot like like ‘Red Dawn’. If you’re anywhere near theaters showing these two, please let us know how they are.

1 comment

  1. jason

    Maybe it’s a regional thing, or perhaps we don’t watch the same TV shows/channels… I’ve been seeing ads for “Wanderlust” pretty much every single commercial break for the last few weeks. Hasn’t made me want to go see it, though.

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