Go To The Movies: Weekend Movie Discussion

Seriously, are any of you going to see Bucky Larson: Born to Be A Star? If so, why? Yet another entry in the burgeoning genre of ‘Wait, I thought that was a fake movie in a movie’ movies, Bucky Larson is from the asshole who brought us The Hot Chick and The Comebacks. It’s his third film in a decade - this guy if nothing else takes his time to craft the truly worst movies imaginable.

You should be out seeing Contagion, and I’m not just saying that because the site’s first major take-over ad buy was for the Warner Bros film (we get paid no matter what). It’s a really great movie, and it’s the kind of smart thriller that reminds us we can go to the movies, be treated like adults and still have fun. Read my review of Contagion right here.

Also opening this weekend is Warrior, a movie whose title I take issue with on purely semantic terms, as it’s about TWO warriors. Gavin O’Connor’s film is a merciless choke hold of emotional manipulation that works well enough. What makes the film worth seeing isn’t the tediously by-the-numbers story (the film’s biggest triumph is that it manages to be six different tediously by-the-numbers movies all at once) but the top form lead performances by Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy. Read my review of Warrior here.

There are a couple of limited releases hitting this weekend in the big cities that actually matter, but there’s also Creature, a weird DTV movie that somehow ended up on a massive 1500 screens this weekend. I think it’s a race between Creature and Bucky Larson to see who has the worse per-screen; everybody who has seen Creature reports that it’s horrible.

This is a transition week, moving into the fall season, and it’s a good one. Warrior and Contagion are both worth your money (although Contagion really is much better), and from here things get interesting. September isn’t the strongest month of the year, but there are a few films coming out this month that we might be seeing show up at the Kodak Theater next year.