Ice Age 2’s multi-week run at number one will likely end this weekend, buried under bad parody and computer animated rip-off. Scary Movie 4 is going to be huge. With summer drawing closer, over $40 million number ones are going to become more and more common. It’ll be nice to have people actually watching movies again. Now if only there was something good to watch.
Limited Releases (Opening in fewer than 500 theaters.)
It’s a huge weekend for the arthouse crowd in New York and California. As usual, the rest of us living everywhere else are left out in the cold. The creepy, pedophile twisting thriller Hard Candy opens this weekend, and gets fantastic reviews. It’ll play only on the all important American coasts. The Notorious Bettie Page is one of my most eagerly anticipated movies of the year. I won’t be seeing it, because it too only opens in New York and California. Kinky Boots opens, again, only in the extreme American east and west. It’ll sneak preview on a few screens as well, again, probably only in New York and California. And lastly, The Sisters and its star heavy cast debuts. You guessed it, the media hubs of LA and New York City are the only places you can find it. If you don’t live in New York or California, you don’t deserve good movie watching. Instead, Hollywood is punishing you for living where you do with the following films:
The Wild (Opens in 2,854 theaters.)
The Wild was spawned from the same idea that resulted in Madagascar, so it’s no surprise that they look like carbon copies of one another. Which one went into production first is a subject of heavy debate, but I’m not really sure that matters. Madagascar won. Still, The Wild is a computer animated film, which means people will turn up to see it. The film has a good voice cast including Kiefer Sutherland, Eddie Izzard, Jim Belushi, and the genius of William Shatner. But it’s directed by a guy named Spaz, so I guess that means Disney hates autistics.
Scary Movie 4 (Opens in 3,602 theaters.)
It’s going to make a ton of money this weekend, and there’s nothing else opening in theaters outside of New York and Los Angeles, so if you must see something new, I guess you’ll have to see this. Sorry. At least the Wayans aren’t involved. The Scary Movie franchise has been taken over by Zucker, and keeps right on doing the things that it always does: make fun of other movies. To get the most out of Scary Movie 4, we recommend you see the following films in advance: The Grudge, War of the Worlds, The Village, Saw.
Still in Theaters and Worth Your Time: V for Vendetta, Slither, Inside Man
