I try, as hard
as I can, to see everything that gets released every single
week. This presents a bevy of problems: a lot of films are
shitty, thus my brain is melted in to smaller bits of puddle
each time I sit through a Sex And The City 2 or one
of its kin. At times five or more movies release in a given
week, and ten or so hours of time is oft times difficult for
me to wrangle up in a life wrought with, well, life. A lot
of the time, and it never bodes well, the bigger films don’t
get theatrical premieres because the studios are either too
scared that critical lambasting will deflate their zeppelin
or because, they don’t care. You can poke as many holes in a
Transformer film as you want, it’s still going to
make a bazillion dollars.
There are many reasons why I can’t review everything, but it
doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion on what’s coming out.
Thus, this new column, What I’m Not Watching. If I can’t see
it, I want to at least say how I think it’s going to be and
whether or not it’s worth watching. Also, I’d love to give a
good reason why I’m not seeing these films, because on
occasion it’s just out of my hands.
Tell me what you think. And as always, thanks for reading.
- What I'm Not Watching -
Priest, d. Scott Charles
Stewart
It’s a strange world where Paul Bettany is an action hero,
but this is the world we live in. Upon first notion,
Priest sounded like an abysmal train wreck of a picture.
A film about post-apocalyptic vampires and the warrior
priests that hunt them seems like another sci-fi fluke but
trailer after trailer has convinced me that this film might
be a fair bit of fun. Bettany plays a vampire-hunting
Priest (with a capital P) who turns against the
establishment to reveal that a vampire threat still exists
and Jesus, if it doesn’t look like a shitshow of CGI
violence and Mad Max style imagery. Sadly, Screen
Gems, occasionally awful place that they are, had no
interest in screening this one in San Francisco. Which bodes
badly for their confidence in the picture and even worse for
the possibility that I’ll shell out a nickel to see it.
Will I See It Sans Screening: Nope, sure won’t. And I
certainly won’t rent it. These kinds of big-budget, CGI
genre pics never fair well on my tiny laptop screen.
Forks Over
Knives, d. Lee Fulkerson
Forks Over Knives looks like another entry in to the
"our world is fucked up but there is a solution" genre of
documentaries. I would’ve seen this film as I like to have a
bevy of out-of-context facts to shower my friends with in
moments of silence, but due to an agonizing schedule I
missed the screening. That said, this kind of documentary
has started to bore me behind belief and though I fully
advocate the message the trailer seems to be broadcasting, I
don’t know if I’d drop a cent on seeing this in a theater.
More and more it seems that the general state of shit that
our society and world find themselves in is mirrored by the
general tone of doomsday that our documentaries are aiming
at. I already fear the future, do I need to stoke those
flames any higher?
Will I See It Sans Screening: Maybe. I have a strange
obsession about knowing, and then forgetting, terrible news,
so this might be right up that alley.
Nostalgia for the
Light, d. Patricio Guzman
This is the sort of documentary I am much more excited
about. I had ample opportunities to see this film, but just
failed to do so. Patricio Guzman has crafted a duo of
Chilean dictator flaying documentaries up to this point and
Nostalgia for the Light follows suits. The documentary
follows a group of people in the Atacama Desert, one a group
of scientists probing the Earth’s sky and the other a group
of women who search for the dead Pinochet buried there. It
looks beautiful and moving and Guzman has already shone he’s
capable of powerful films.
Will I See It Sans Screening: Certainly.
The Double Hour,
d. Giuseppe Capotonde
I don’t know how I missed the screeners for this film, but I
feel robbed. From the trailer alone it looks like an Italian
neo-noir rife with sex and violence and tension and there
might not be anything I like more than a noir transplanted
to a different country. It racked up a slew of awards at
various festivals and the trailer does wonders to squish any
thoughts that I’ll ever try speed dating.
Will I See It Sans Screening: Oh yes, possibly this
weekend.
True Legend, d.
Woo-ping Yuen
One part of me thinks this film is going to be the new
greatest kung-fu film to ever grace American shores. The
other part thinks that it looks like a shitty Mortal
Kombat rip-off. Woo-ping Yuen is one of the great fight
choreographers of all time and he’s made a handful of
exceptionally bad-ass films, but this one looks like it
treads the path of computer graphics a little hard. I grew
up on this type of film, hell, any love of film I have was
force-fed to me by my kung-fu loving tennis partner and I’m
drawn to this almost entirely for nostalgia sake. Is it
going to be amazing? In parts yes. As a whole, probably
over-long and a little boring.
Will I See It Sans Screening: Only if I can rally
some troops to come along with me.
That’s the films for the week I didn’t see. Hopefully this
list will be shorter and shorter each week as I find ways to
balance my life with my film reviewing.
- Noah Sanders
-
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