It’s a busy and possibly—in some cases at least—worthwhile weekend at the movies. We have two mainstream titles—Scream 4 and Rio—three art titles—Certified Copy (Carolina), The Conspirator (Carolina), and Win Win (Fine Arts)—one hard-to-classify title—Atlas Shrugged. If nothing else it’s diverse.
And so it’s time for another ActionFest. Last year—its first year—the film festival so impressed Moviemaker magazine that it was selected as one of the “20 Coolest” festivals in the country. In itself, that’s pretty cool, but this year looks to be even cooler—at least to judge by the line-up of movies being screened.
Frankly to me, this week’s most notable cinematic event is ActionFest, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other movies coming our way this week—four-and-a-half of them, in fact. Last week we got lucky—well, Hop to one side—but I’d be lying if I said I was expecting that kind of luck this week.
Actually, I always have questions, but I’m limiting myself here to questions that involve movies, since those are germane to this column. In this case, I’m posing two questions. I don’t necessarily expect any answers, but these seem to be worth some contemplation. Let’s start with this PG-13 version of The King’s Speech that crept its way into theaters this week.
An interesting movie weekend looms. We get two very different art titles—Even the Rain at the Fine Arts and I Saw the Devil at The Carolina—and three mainstream wide releases—Hop, Insidious, Source Code. You don’t often get the devil and the Easter Bunny in the same week—at least I don’t.
I’m going to revisit—albeit briefly, since I don’t have a lot of time this week—one of my earliest (March 2008) “Screening Rooms,” which was called “In Praise of Trash.” Why? Well, because I think there’s a lot to be said for “trash,” and because I was recently taken to task (I’d have rather been taken to Paris or London, frankly) for praising Drive Angry 3D. I was told I had “lost all credibility” with the reader, which actually suggests that the reader was not quite the regular follower of my reviews he claimed to be, since it was hardly the first time I’ve given an exploitation picture a good review. It doesn’t really matter, but what does matter to me is the idea that there is some etched-in-stone rule about what sort of movie can and can’t be liked. I don’t buy that.
