Opening Everywhere: No new movies, just your mom’s legs. Burn.
Opening Somewhere: There are no movies opening in wide release this weekend, but if you check your local listings, you might be able to check out Shame, Answers to Nothing, Coriolanus, and Sleeping Beauty.
FilmDrunk Suggests: Vince’s exact quote to me about this weekend was, “Save your money and take that special someone to see New Year’s Eve next weekend because it looks incredible.”
Answers to Nothing
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 11% critics, 64% audience yelling, “Wooooooooo!” and showing their tits
Gratuitous Review Quotes
“The result is a diligent brand of gloom. When it isn’t being diligently gloomy, it’s being obvious. When it isn’t being obvious, it’s being sneaky, and when it isn’t being sneaky, it’s marching toward a climax of B-movie violence, stupidity and nuttiness that summarily bumps off the movie’s least annoying character.” – Amy Biancolli, San Francisco Chronicle (Someone’s sassy!)
“Fortunately, the strong cast (which also includes Barbara Hershey as Ryan’s idealistic mother and Greg Germann as a kidnapping suspect) helps keep things watchable. But it can never fully surmount an overlong, largely underwhelming script that often swaps forced personality quirks and symbolic gestures for honest dimension.” – Gary Goldstein, L.A. Times
Armchair Analysis: This movie stars Dane Cook in a rare serious turn, which is about as appealing as, well, Dane Cook in a comedic role. But it got me thinking – maybe what we actually need is Dane Cook displaying his annoying, obnoxious, over-the-top comedy in dramatic films. Perhaps that’s the missing formula for success in Cook’s cinematic career. Or maybe he’s just one of those guys who needs to die for us to really appreciate him. I’m willing to try both.
Shame
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 81% critics, 82% audience with erections
Gratuitous Review Quotes
“Michael Fassbender delivers a bold and brilliantly immersive performance as a sex addict in Shame. He is so raw and riveting you won’t be able to take your eyes off him. The thing is, you may want to.” – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone (Fun Fact: Vince has a Peter Travers tattoo on his inner thigh.)
“There’s no doubt that ‘Shame’ burrows into one’s consciousness and stays there, a brooding reminder that most of us are, in some way or another, waging invisible psychic battles.” – Ann Hornaday, Washington Post (My psychic battle is with lesbian pillow fighters, and boy do they always win!)
Armchair Analysis: You can read Vince’s review of Shame – again, I hope – and remember that if Vince doesn’t like a movie full of penis and scarves, then you probably won’t enjoy it either. But most critics loved it because it’s dark and brooding and it’s the closest they’ll ever get to sex in their sad little lives.
Coriolanus (hehehehehehehehehe)
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 92% critics, 69% audience (hehehehehehehehehehehe)
Gratuitous Review Quotes
“The pot is kept at a boil pretty much throughout, a level of intensity that at times can be wearing. But Fiennes ultimately knows to play to Shakespeare’s greatest strength, that incisive understanding of all the ways that humans so tragically, and predictably, repeat mistakes. In doing so, he has taken ‘Coriolanus’ from little known to virtually unforgettable.” – Betsy Sharkey, L.A. Times
“A general advances his military into the war-torn city of Corioles — part Baghdad, part Beirut, part pre-fall Saigon — in battle scenes as urgent and thrilling as those in ‘The Hurt Locker’ or ‘Saving Private Ryan.’ Explosions and gunfire rain down on combat helmets. When the general’s enemy is found, the conflict devolves to a glass-smashing, primeval struggle between two leaders.” – Joe Neumaier, N.Y. Daily News
Armchair Analysis: Yes. F*cking. Please. I love most Shakespeare movies that are done properly and don’t involve Nick Cannon or Wilmer Valderrama, but I become especially apprehensive when I hear the words “Shakespeare” and “modern” in the same sentence, because these “updates” usually bloweth. However, Ralph Fiennes, Gerard Butler and Brian Cox in a classic tale disguised as a relevant war movie? Boner jams.
Sleeping Beauty
Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 48% critics, 27% audience – does no one appreciate art anymore?
Gratuitous Review Quotes
“’Sleeping Beauty’ is frequently surreal, and doesn’t give up its secrets easily, but the title character could be read as a parody of today’s liberated young woman, someone who is so at ease with strings-free sex and who so undervalues herself that she effectively becomes a willing and disposable plaything for powerful men.” – Kyle Smith, New York Post (This may be the greatest analysis of a movie ever.)
“What drags the film out for 101 minutes is the ritual of Lucy, manicured, pedicured and forced to match her lipstick to the color of her labia. I suppose some vague point is intended about how women are by nature forced to be all things to all men, so they might as well get paid for it.” – Rex Reed, New York Observer
Armchair Analysis: When I first saw the title, like many, I thought, “Great, another modernized f*cking Disney story.” Hoooooooooooooo boy, was I wrong! Here’s the description:
Lucy (Emily Browning) is a young university student possessed by a kind of radical passivity. She lets a flip of a coin decide the outcome of a random sexual encounter and she displays an uncomplaining patience when facing the repetitions of her various menial jobs that fund her studies. One day she answers an ad in the student newspaper and interviews for a job to be a lingerie waitress. But she is secretly being initiated into a world of strange new work; one where she will have to give into absolute submission to her clients by being sedated; becoming a Sleeping Beauty. Eventually this unnerving experience begins to bleed into her daily life and she finally develops the will to break the spell by discovering what happens to her while she sleeps.
SOMEONE GET ME FANDANGO AND SOME CRISCO! Daddy has a movie to watch.