Now Playing: Do We Have To?

In January typing up "now playing" posts is going to be painful.

Just Opened
First Sunday beware of First Month releases. Especially comedies
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Seige Tale -features Jason Statham and Leelee Sobieski (omg she's still alive?) in a medieval type thing that looks very contemporary for some [cough] budget [/cough] reason. I like that this movie is clearly a conspiracy to make bald guys sexier to moviegoers. Notice how Jason looks rocking hot as usual whilst all the other guys have really bad wigs and are decidedly unsexy. Is that in his contract? Poor Ray Liotta.
The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything -is part of some franchise called Veggie Tales but, honestly, I prefer to know as little about that as is humanly possibly.

And finally The Bucket List, one of the NBR choices for top ten films of the year (oh dear. board of review peoples. really) went wide. I'm not sure what the point of a first week limited run was for a mainstream movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. This is not a critics pet / platform picture. But what do I know? Box Office mysteries abound. Like: why are people going to see Nicolas Cage movies, still? I know it sounds improbable but they are.

Meanwhile...
It's time to catch up on the would be Oscar players you haven't had the opportunity to see yet. Atonement, Juno, Kite Runner and There Will Be Blood all added hundreds of theaters. For those of you who lift moviegoing suggestions/ideas from the film experience, I am unhappy to report that being named on my top ten list does not add screens to your theatrical run. (Shocking!) So apologies to all that were so honored.

Five films from my top ten list are still playing. You can see how many theaters they're still in in the graphic. The Romanian Cannes Festival winner 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days (also on my list) begins a proper run on January 25th in major cities. The remaining four top ten titles are now on DVD so you have no excuse to skip them (Once, Away From Her, Zodiac and Ratatouille)

Lust, Caution is down to 9 screens and Michael Clayton drops to 31 ...though at least the latter had a long and healthy run. Even There Will Be Blood, a huge talking point picture online, is still on under 200 screens (it had a big theater count add yesterday). If you've been waiting desperately in your smaller city it shouldn't be much longer. The Oscar nominations are announced on January 22nd. Friday January 25th should be an exciting weekend at the movie theater for quality film lovers in smaller markets.