Dinner and a movie may be a cliched night out on the town, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be just as fun as drinking Pabst in your dorm room or shouting over blaring music at a local watering hole. This time of year doesn’t produce the action-packed blockbusters of the summer or the Oscar-hunting flicks shown during the holidays, but there are some movies worth catching in the upcoming months. Below is a list of movies debuting in Eugene in February and early March that you can catch when the bar scene gets tiring and you want a calming night.
(All dates are tentative. Films will be shown at either Regal Cinema at the Valley River Center, Cinemark 17 at the Gateway Mall in Springfield or the Bijou Art Cinemas on East 13th near the University.)
“Something New” (Feb. 3)
Career woman Kenya (Sanaa Lathan) is looking for the man of her dreams. She’s successful and beautiful, but can’t seem to find Mr. Right. Instead, Kenya, an African-American, finds Mr. White. Brian (Simon Baker) is a landscaper whose pigmentation is a tad lighter than the men Kenya is used to dating. Expect both black and white stereotypes to be thrown around like dough at a pizza joint. The director’s name of this romantic comedy is Sanaa Hamri, and there has never been a Hollywood flop with both the star and director’s names being Sanaa – this can’t miss.
“When a Stranger Calls” (Feb. 3)
Like Jared the Subway guy on six-inch meatball sandwiches, Hollywood has been bingeing on horror remakes lately (see “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “The Amityville Horror”). This is another horror flick coming back for round two. The original was released in 1979 and was a hit. There is little word on how closely this edition sticks to the original, but just in case it is a carbon copy, we’ll ruin at least some of the movie for you. Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle, of “Poison Ivy II” fame) is a high-school student baby-sitting some kiddies. The phone rings and a mysterious caller says, “Have you checked the children?” The children, indeed, are dead, just as you would expect the career of an actor from “Poison Ivy II” to be.
“Firewall” (Feb. 10)
Harrison Ford may be 63 years old, but the old guy can still deliver one helluva punch. With any luck, Ford is still as believably tough as he was as the most action-packed president ever in “Air Force One” (apologies to action-packed Grover Cleveland). In this thriller from Richard Loncraine (who directed an episode of the HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers”), a bank security executive (Ford) is forced to rob his own vault when his family is held for ransom. No offense to Han Solo, but does an audience need another action movie with a kidnapped family as the protagonist’s motivation? The answer is: absolutely, if there’s a guy who gets a discount at Denny’s throwing haymakers and spouting catch phrases.
“Curious George” (Feb. 10)
The trailer warns, “Get ready for some serious monkey business,” and the poster reads, “Show me the monkey.” Universal Pictures no doubt has more hilarious plays-on-words up its sleeve. Despite catchy slogans, the animation in this flick looks pretty raggedy next to Pixar presentations such as “Toy Story” and “The Incredibles.” But Will Ferrell is lending his voice to the film as The Man in the Yellow Hat and Drew Barrymore, David Cross and Eugene Levy are also on the vocal track. The real draw here could be the previously unreleased tracks by Jack Johnson. Hopefully Double J didn’t monkey around on this soundtrack. Sorry.
“The White Countess” (Feb. 10)
This Bijou Art Cinema presentation was originally released in 2005 but makes its first Eugene showing in February. Ralph Fiennes plays Todd Jackson, a disillusioned former U.S. diplomat who has lost his sight and his family in the political turmoil of 1930s China. He has slipped into the grime of a sordid bar scene but comes out wanting to open his own watering hole. Not to spoil the ending, but word on the street is this artsy period piece ends with the guys from “American Pie” turning 21 and invading Fiennes’ establishment with beer bongs and girls in bikinis.
“Freedomland” (Feb. 17)
Like “Something New” (see above), this movie deals with complicated racial subject matter. But the milieu around this story is a tad darker than a romantic comedy: A white woman accuses a black man of a heinous crime, turning two cities, one predominantly white, the other predominantly black, against each other. Julianne Moore, Samuel L. Jackson and Edie Falco, the one and only mobbed-up MILF from “The Sopranos,” star. This is Jackson’s 85th role since his seminal turn as “Hold-up Man” in Eddie Murphy’s 1988 laugh-fest “Coming to America.”
“Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World” (March)
The Bijou is planning on presenting this comedy from Albert Brooks, who wrote, directed and stars as a curly-haired American (himself) assigned to spend a month in India and Pakistan and find out what makes the Muslims in the region laugh (despite India being predominantly Hindu, an inside joke on American ignorance, perhaps?). One scene from the trailer shows Brooks on stage telling a joke: “Why is there no Halloween in India? Because they took away all the Gandhi.” He says “Gandhi” with a middle-aged white man’s version of an Indian accent, making it sound like “Candhi.” The crowd sits in silence. When he asks how many people speak English (thinking somewhere in the vicinity of zero) every last hand in the place reaches for the sky. From the trailer this movie looks funnier than a bad Gandhi joke.
“Block Party” (March 3)
This documentary is for anyone who ever yelled “Hwhat!” or “I’m Rick James, bitch!” months after it was hip. The footage was taken from a real party that Dave Chappelle threw in Brooklyn, and features his standup interspersed with live performances from the likes of The Fugees, Kanye West and Mos Def. Word from the Toronto Film Festival, where a rough cut of this com-musical debuted, has this as the best hip hop doc ever made, but what do Canadians know, eh?
