{"id":38347,"date":"2012-07-27T08:00:35","date_gmt":"2012-07-27T15:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/?p=38347"},"modified":"2018-02-20T20:40:01","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T04:40:01","slug":"weekend-movies-jul-27-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/weekend-movies-jul-27-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Movies: Counter-Programming"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What kind of movies think they can go head-to-head with the Caped Crusader? Little ones \u2013 little movies that aren&#8217;t even close to playing on the same field as &#8216;The Dark Knight Rises&#8217;. This week, we have an R-rated comedy, a dance flick and a few awesome-sounding strange indie titles.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>With family in town and absolutely no desire to see it, this week I threw Aaron under the bus and asked him to review &#8216;<strong>The Watch<\/strong>&#8216; in my stead. Starring Ben Stiller as the same doofus character he always plays, rambler Vince Vaughn rambling it up, a swelling Jonah Hill and some no-name dude, you would never assume that &#8216;The Watch&#8217; was an alien invasion movie. Not a single television spot has suggested that idea. For me, no comedy has looked less funny than this one since &#8216;That&#8217;s My Boy&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Also in theaters is the fourth movie in the &#8216;Step Up&#8217; franchise, this one titled &#8216;<strong>Step Up Revolution<\/strong>&#8216;. As you&#8217;d expect from this cheap title, it doesn&#8217;t star a single familiar face. It does, however, feature a familiar story: An out-of-towner moves to Miami with aspirations of making big in the dance world. Gag me.<\/p>\n<p>Fox Searchlight&#8217;s latest fantastical romantic comedy, &#8216;<strong>Ruby Sparks<\/strong>&#8216;, begins its platform release this week, opening small then expanding wide(r). The film re-teams the &#8216;Little Miss Sunshine&#8217; filmmaking duo with Paul Dano, who plays a down-and-out writer who creates his dream girl as a fictional character and forces her into his reality. The make-believe girl is played by Dano&#8217;s real life girlfriend Zoe Kazan. <\/p>\n<p>As great as &#8216;Ruby&#8217; sounds, the indie release of the week that I&#8217;m dying to see is the gritty NC-17 thriller &#8216;<strong>Killer Joe<\/strong>&#8216;. Emile Hirsch plays a young man who finds himself in over his head financially. He hires a contract killer to murder his mother so that he can solve his problems through her inheritance. Directed by William Friedkin and co-starring Matthew McConaughey, Juno Temple, Thomas Hayden Church and Gina Gershon, word-of-mouth on the movie is very good, but early reviews all cite its hyperviolence and bleakness.<\/p>\n<p>The most-buzzed documentary at this year&#8217;s Sundance film festival opens on a few screens this weekend. &#8216;<strong>Searching for Sugar Man<\/strong>&#8216; follows two African music-lovers on a journey to discover what happened to their favorite rock musician from the &#8217;70s after he abruptly disappeared. But that&#8217;s not the only Sundance flick finally opening for the public. The documentary &#8216;<strong>Big Boys Gone Bananas!<\/strong>&#8216; tells the story of the filmmaker whose 2009 documentary about the allegedly heinous Dole corporation was yanked from the Los Angeles Film Festival due to the fruit and veggie company&#8217;s application of pressure.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What kind of movies think they can go head-to-head with the Caped Crusader? Little ones \u2013 little movies that aren&#8217;t even close to playing on the same field as &#8216;The Dark Knight Rises&#8217;. This week, we have an R-rated comedy, a dance flick and a few awesome-sounding strange indie titles.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_excerpt -->","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":38375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[743],"tags":[765,5425,510,5093,2444,5423,5424,964,5273,2064,134,1112],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38347"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38347"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38573,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38347\/revisions\/38573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}