A surprisingly low-key movie weekend for the heat of the awards season, no? The lack of truly big releases in the game provides quite the assist for smaller, artsy releases like "Shame," "Sleeping Beauty" and Takeshi Kitano's "Outrage," which may have been otherwise buried in terms of attention– come on, we all know 'Muppets' is taking the b.o. trophy away from those horny vampires. Though we don't think the Michael Fassbender-sexes-every-lady-in-NYC flick would really have had a hard time getting butts in seats anyway. As long as your facist cinema house doesn't ban in for its NC-17 rating! Ok, so what's on the docket this weekend?
I know it sounds flippant when I describe the serious sex-addiction drama "Shame" as "Fassbender-sexes-every-lady-in-NYC," but don't act like that is not a huge selling point for this movie. Do not even play. Not after that eye-fucking trailer. Women will be out in droves for this one. Also, as I was watching some programming on Logotv.com (yes, it was "Rupaul's Drag Race") that trailer where Carey Mulligan sings "New York New York" played roughly 35 times. So apparently Searchlight is marketing to gays and the ladies who watch Logo. Smart moves, seriously. Our review from Venice says, "the film is powerful, beautifully acted, and more than ever, we'll be watching what McQueen does next like a hawk," and Fassbender's performance is a "tour de force." Rotten Tomatoes: 81% Metacritic: 71
More sexy weird mildly deviant-ness in "Sleeping Beauty" with Emily Browning, where she plays a young woman who takes a job as a lingerie-clad waitress and ends up in as the titular sedated sex worker. Our review says, all the elements of the film work to "craft a haunting, haunted world that still feels real as the rent and raw as a wound," and it's "a unique story, untellable in any other medium, that resists both easy dismissal and glib praise, sinking into the mind with the ungraspable, all-pervading power of a dream." RT: 48% MC: 60
National, no GLOBAL treasure Takeshi Kitano returns to yakuza with "Outrage," his 2010 Cannes entry. Our review says, " Kitano's dark humor and absurdist take on the genre is involving, refreshing and gleefully vicious… beautifully shot, and the violence has a certain choreographed quality to it that is impressive," but ultimately, the film is "a near-parody, pointing out the futility and ridiculousness of the so-called honor system that runs through the yakuza, revealing it to be simply empty words… his approach goes from cynicism to indifference to outright contempt; Kitano doesn't seem to care about his characters." RT: 90% MC: 69
Hitting theaters November 30th, "Khodorkovsky" is a doc about one of Russia's first billionaires, jailed for his outspoken defiance of the government. Our review says the film is "both entertaining and intelligent, a documentary paced well, and thankfully not to the detriment of its substance." RT: 89% MC: 73
Michelle Yeoh stars in "The Lady," Luc Besson's latest directorial effort, an adaptation of the true life tale of activist and political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi. David Thewlis stars as her British husband. The result? Admirable but not particularly compelling according to our review which calls "a glossy prestige picture that’s appropriately inspiring, but some may find its stiff-lipped nobility slightly too bloodless to leave a lasting impression." RT: 0% MC: 42
I highly recommend you check out the laughable trailer for "A Warrior's Heart," narrated with all the verve of a sedated Valley Girl by Ashley Greene. This inspirational lacrosse film (yes, they made one of those) stars minor "Twilight" actors Greene and Kellen Lutz in this tale of a young lacrosse stud who loses his dad in Iraq (they went there) and learns to live and love again at some sort of Native American youth lacrosse/wood chopping camp (oh, they went there too). With creepy Ethan from "Lost," the blonde kid who got fired from "Glee," and that big blonde dude from ABC Family's "Greek." RT: 14%
Remember Dane Cook? He's in a movie again! It's called "Answers to Nothing," which I don't think actually means anything in the English language! It looks like some kind of angsty melodrama about really upset people, kidnappings, bad emo songs from the 90s, mistresses, etc. With Elizabeth Mitchell, Julie Benz and Barbara Hershey. RT: 11% MC: 29
"Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie" documents the life of Canada's most well known environmentalist. RT: 83%
"Lads and Jockeys" is about… you guessed it, a training ground for aspiring jockeys in Paris. RT: 57% MC: 58
