Hollywood junk-movie season

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AFTER THE SHOW
Movies, TV, Culture and Society

Number 489, March 7, 2010

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HOLLYWOOD'S PRE-OSCAR
SEASON OF JUNK MOVIES

For two months, the film industry releases
only its worse pictures. Why is that?

By John Greenwald

Thank goodness, the Oscars are tonight (ABC, 8:30-11:30 p.m.). I'm elated for more reasons than the broadcast itself, though I'm one of those who feel that, at three hours, the show could be 30 minutes longer.

The Oscars mean the two-month long dearth of major, new Hollywood releases is over. For those months, the studios release few films of quality or even high entertainment value. They give us the leftovers, the also-rans, the movies worthy of the direct-to-video bins, not the big screen.

The industry thinks filmgoers stay home between January and early March. Once we've seen the best leftover Thanksgiving and Christmas films, we're going to drive under the covers and not come out until the weekend after the Oscars. <>

Not true.

Yes, during the winter months parts of the country, like New England, may be snowed in or frozen over for a few weeks, and therefore disinclined to check out the local multiplex. And huddled at home, more and more Americans see movies on DVD, or from their cable company or through the Internet. (Also, every four years, the winter Olympics keep people at home).

However, the rest of the country, where most Americans live, basks in warm, bright sunlight, low humidity and little rain. Perfect filmgoing weather, if only there were some movies worth seeing. Wedded to the old winter way of doing business, Hollywood holds off releasing good films until its spring season, which in its calendar year begins the weekend of and after the Oscars.

Let's do a new movie head count. For February 2010, the industry released 13 films -- mostly genre and clichéd pictures. But this month, March, it has or is scheduled to put in theaters 27 movies, 50 percent more, according to movieinsider.com.

Only two February films stood out: Shutter Island," Martin Scorsese's dark psychological thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio; and Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer," a thriller about British politics, deadly international games, and mysterious black sedans.

"Ghost" is essentially an independent film despite its modestly well-known cast (Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan and Kim Cattrall). But "Shutter" say big Hollywood production. Scorsese is a star director, DiCaprio a megastar actor. Still, neither has been a monster draw at the box office. In fact, "Shutter" was their biggest opening weekend hit, taking $41 million.

"Shutter" is doing so well because of a major gamble its distributor, Paramount Pictures, took. The film had been set for an October 2009 release. But Paramount thought it had a better a chance for box success during these lean, pre-Oscar months, especially when there was little worthy competition at the multiplexes. Paramount also used the Vancouver Olympics to advantage. It placed a wide variety of commercials during the games' first week.

The gamble worked. Hungry to see a movie, with little else to see, and lured by well-made commercials, audiences came.

"For an R-rated thriller, in February, to open this big, it's hard to recall anything like it," Steve Siskind, Paramount's worldwide marketing v.p. told the New York Times. These commercials got TV viewers to talk about "Shutter," and then see it, the Times reported.

But this good news for Paramount has to be seen in the context of Hollywood's pre-Oscar junk film months. Typical are the two movies that opened in my neighborhood last weekend, the one immediately before the Oscars: "The Crazies" and "Cop Out." Both are genre films, which means they don't have to very good or original at what they do. They just have appeal to fans of their respective genres.

"The Crazies," a remake of George A. Romero's 1973 film, concerns a town being taken over by murderous, deformed "crazies." It's been half-praised as little more than a well-executed grade-B horror film, but one with touches of humor and irony (the military brought in to fight the crazies are just as crazy).

"Cop Out," directed by alt-film director Kevin Smith (1994's "Clerks," 2008's "Zack and Miri Make a Porno"), stars Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan. Full of poop jokes, clichéd cop buddy humor and bad filmmaking all around, it's been condemned in Rottentomatoes.com's top critics survey -- a mere 21 points out of a possible 100.

The only February film I saw, as much by accident as anything else, was "Valentine's Day," a limp romantic comedy. It was so overfilled with characters to be confusing at first and plain tiring by the final fade out. The script has 16 major characters, give or take. Most depend on the actors to make them interesting, but few have more than seven or eight minutes on screen to grab and keep our attention, especially as they're running around in half a romantic panic.

The cast ranges from hot young actors, such as Jessica Alba, Ashton Kutcher and Ashton Kutcher, to a few seniors, such as Shirley MacLaine and Hector Elizondo. The audience was mainly tweens and pre-tweens, who oohed and giggled appropriately, when they weren't texting or leaving halfway through. Veteran director Garry Marshall (2001's "The Princess Diaries") can hardly keep up with the goings on.

Faced with those kinds of films, no wonder I can't wait for the Oscars and for the good-movie months to begin.

Readers can e-mail John Greenwald at johnedit@comcast.net.

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Copyright 2010 by John Greenwald. All rights reserved