Dinner for Schmucks: A career minded business man (Paul Rudd) thinks he's struck gold when he finds an extremely uncouth IRS agent (Steve Carell) to bring to his boss' monthly whoever brings the biggest idiot gets a promotion dinner but wacky complication ensue once Carell's dullard becomes attached to his new found buddy. Movies like this are worth leaving The Office over? This film has a fairly serious design flaw; if we laugh at Carell's dope then we're complicit in Rudd's cruelty. Material like this can work if handled by a skillful satirist but Schmucks is directed by Jay Roach of Meet the Parents fame so it's virtually guaranteed to be two very long hours of awkwardness interspersed jolts of spewing bodily fluids. Pass. Also starring Zach Galifianakis, Stephanie Szostak, and Bruce Greenwood.
Fun Fact: Via The Los Angeles Times: Filming of the dinner scene took place at the same location as was used for Wayne Manor in the Batman television series. Man that might be more undignified than Batman: XXX.
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Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore: Seriously? Were the $200+ million budgets of Avatar and Iron Man 2 justified? Yes, those films made more money than they cost but would that money have been better spent making ten $20 million films that probably wouldn't have made as much money? And was Bryan Singer's Valkyrie really a better film for paying Tom Cruise $20 million plus 20% of the films gross just to be the its least appealing aspect? Leonard DiCaprio was the worst part of Inception but would a film as cinematically ambitious as that been made with a lower profile star? No clue film is such an expensive art that financial considerations have to be taken into account when concieving of a new work and the fact is bigger budgets mean bigger artistic compromises so whatever motivated Brad Peyton to get into filmmaking, he dreamed of wasting $150 million make a sequel to a James Bond pastiche starring CGI pets with celebrity voices but maybe his next will be a deeply personal meditation on love and loss. Anything worth doing requires sacrifice. Starring Bette Midler, Chris O'Donnell, and Jack McBrayer.
Fun Fact: Toby Maguire and Alec Baldwin choose not to reprise their roles from the first Cats & Dogs.
Charlie St. Cloud: High School Musical star Zac Efron stars as the titular character; a young man so devastated by the death of his younger brother that he that he takes a job as a caretaker at the cemetery where his brother is buried so he can carry on imaginary conversations with him until one day he meets a girl that makes life worth living again. The film is being touted as Efron's bid to transition to adult roles. Not good ones though, that apparently comes later. Also stars Kim Basinger, Charlie Tahan, and Ray Liotta.
Fun Fact: With these three films opening in the same week, this might be the worst weekend for new releases this year.
All hope is not lost because Cedar Lee Theater is showing The Girl Who Played With Fire, the second theatrical adaptation of Stieg Larsson's incredibly popular Millennium Trilogy. The film follows crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) and genius hacker/vengeful killer Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) as they fall into another web of secrets and lies, this time while trying to expose Swedish sex trafficking. This film is thrilling pulp fiction of the first order and by far the best thing opening in Cleveland this weekend.
Cedar Lee will also be screening American Splendor, the theatrical adaptation of recently deceased Cleveland legend Harvey Pekar's most famous work, to benefit the American Cancer Society. The showing will be at 7:00pm today and will be introduced by Pekar's longtime friend and Splendor co-star Toby Radloff. Admission is only $5 and all proceeds go to the ACS. It's a great cause and excellent film so it'll be well worth your time.
Mario blogs regularly at A Polemic Killer Room
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