It’s That Time Again…

(Relatively) New on NightsAndWeekends.com:
Pineapple Express
Brideshead Revisited
Swing Vote
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
American Teen
The Wackness
Step Brothers
The X-Files: I Want to Believe

And by “that time,” I mean August, a time when the weather’s hot, and the movies…not so much.

Things have been pretty strange in Film Critic Land this summer. Some weeks (most of them, in fact), we’ll have just one screening. Maybe two. Then suddenly we’ll be bombarded by five in one week. Then we’ll go back to one the next.

This week, things were pretty up in the air. I had all kinds of random screenings on the schedule, but I wasn’t sure which ones I was actually going to attend.

For instance, on Tuesday morning, there was a screening of a French thriller. Despite the fact that I tend to enjoy both thrillers and French films, I just wasn’t feeling it. It was raining, and I was tired, and the screening was at the theater on the other frickin’ end of town. So as I was getting ready to leave, I called David.

“I’m not missing a screening, am I?” he asked as soon as he picked up. I explained that he was, in fact, forgetting about a Tuesday morning screening—but I was contemplating skipping it.

I did, however, offer a trade: The Midnight Meat Train. It’s a movie that we’ve all been obsessing over ever since we saw the trailer at the Good Luck Chuck screening last fall. Last week, while I was compiling one of my millions of weekly newsletters, I noticed that it was scheduled to open on Friday. Since I hadn’t heard anything about it, I did a little searching and found that it was, in fact, opening. At one theater in town—my old friend, The Cheap Theater. No kidding. It was opening directly to the discount, second-run theater.

Originally, the plan was to hit the theater on Friday afternoon—but Jason was heading out to New York for the weekend, and David had friends over, so we scrapped that idea. So, while we were discussing the French thriller that we were skipping on Tuesday, we decided to hit The Cheap Theater instead. It was, after all, Tuesday—which meant that it would cost a buck instead of $1.25. Talk about a bargain…!

The movie was scheduled for 12:25, and I was running behind, as always. To make matters worse, it seemed that (as is usually the case), I was the only one on the road with anywhere to be. Everyone else had no problem driving 15 under the speed limit and waiting at intersections after the light turned green, just to see if anyone else wanted to go through first. When I finally made it to the theater parking lot, I ended up behind two guys in a pickup, who were barely even idling. As I followed them, I figured that they were actually cruising for chicks in the Wal-Mart parking lot. I kid you not. Now, I realize that we don’t have beaches to cruise here—like the one we had back home in Michigan—but I didn’t realize that people here had taken to cruising the Wal-Mart parking lot as an alternative.

So I finally got myself a parking space, and I was rushing through the parking lot when my phone rang. David.

“I just went in there,” he told me. “It’s full…of old people.”

Apparently, he’d even walked out of the theater to check the sign again—to make sure that he hadn’t walked into the Horton Hears a Who! theater. But no. There it was. The Midnight Meat Train. Filled with senior citizens.

When I finally got inside, David was waiting in the lobby. And I got in line behind a woman who paid for three tickets with dimes. I wish that was an exaggeration, but it’s not. This was just my luck.

So we finally made it into the theater as the trailers were starting. And despite the fact that we figured we’d have the theater to ourselves, David was right—it was packed. At 12:25 on a Tuesday afternoon. And, yes, there were at least 20 elderly moviegoers already in their seats. I couldn’t help but wonder if they had any idea what they were in for.

I, on the other hand, knew what I was in for. Kinda. It was totally gruesome—more so, I think, than any movie I’ve ever seen. Sometimes, in fact, it was so over-the-top that David and I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. It was sick and twisted, but it was funny.

Strangely, though, David and I were the only people in the theater who were laughing. And that just made me laugh harder. I laughed so hard, it hurt. And then I felt a little bit ashamed of myself. But I couldn’t help it.

After the movie, David decided that he was hungry—though I’m not sure why, since I was pretty sure that I’d never be able to keep anything down again. Since there was a Tim Horton’s nearby, though, we walked over there—so David could get a sandwich, and I could get my iced coffee fix. While I was at it, I got a bagel, too. And I kept it down.

There, at Tim Horton’s, were even more elderly folk. David and I wondered how many of them had just seen The Midnight Meat Train. We then decided that, when we’re old, we, too, will go to crazy movies at The Cheap Theater and follow it up with a coffee at Tim Horton’s. It seems like something we’d do. We’ll invite our grown children to join us, and they’ll be extremely embarrassed. David’s pretty sure his son will have moved to Australia by then to get away from him.

After we finished our post-movie snack, we headed back to our cars and said, “See you in a few hours.” I then rushed back to the office to write up my review before I had to head back out for another screening at night.

Tuesday night’s screening was Pineapple Express. It had screened at random times for weeks, but the past weeks have been ridiculously busy, so I was waiting until the last minute to see it—so were David and Bill. But it was just us—and my husband…and Bill’s brother. It was a surprisingly calm and stress-free screening, really. It went off without a hitch. And I was surprised that I liked the movie a whole lot more than I expected to. So it was a good day all around.

On Thursday, I was planning to catch Tropic Thunder with everybody else. Since I’d already been to another screening, I didn’t have to go, but I wanted to—because it’s so funny that I wanted to see it again. The main purpose, though, was to take my husband, who had missed the previous screening. I’ve been talking about it ever since I saw it, and he was looking forward to seeing it, too. Unfortunately, he ended up having to fly down to Florida on Thursday afternoon, so the screening was out. Instead, I stayed home and watched North by Northwest, which I borrowed from David approximately eight months ago. So it was okay that I stayed home for once.

Next week, however, I probably won’t be so lucky. Nights off…HA! So far, I’ve got screenings on the schedule for Monday and Tuesday morning, along with Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night. We’ll see which ones I actually see. It is, after all, August. And watching five August movies in three days could probably be considered a pretty reliable method of torture. Perhaps they should look into using it in Gitmo.

The Ups and Downs of Entertainment

New at NightsAndWeekends.com Since Last Week:
Untraceable
Mad Money
27 Dresses

Wow…it’s been quite a week in the entertainment world, hasn’t it?

First, on Tuesday, I got to my desk to check the list of Oscar nominees. A few nominees were blatantly obvious; a few were surprises. I, for one, was shocked and disturbed by the nod given to Norbit. Now, I realize that it’s for makeup. And I’m sure that it took some makeup magic to get Eddie Murphy to cross both gender and racial lines. But do we really want to encourage people to do it again? I say no.

But then came the real shock of the week. On Tuesday, I was scrambling to finish up a few last reviews before heading out to a screening, and I listened to a CD on the way to the theater—so when I got there, I had no idea what had happened. It wasn’t until we were all settled in that Kevin said, “So everyone heard about Heath Ledger already, right?”

“No,” I said, figuring it was some new role he’d signed on to play. “What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

It all just came out of nowhere, and it knocked the wind out of me for a second. Really, I thought Kevin was messing with me—because that’s what Kevin does. But he wasn’t messing with me at all.

Before the movie started, we just sat there, talking about how tragic it was, how it made no sense. At that point, speculation was still leaning toward suicide, and no one could really understand why. Why Heath Ledger? Some might say he was at the top of his game, but I wouldn’t say that—because the top of his game was still to come.

It still surprises me that Heath’s death hit me as hard as it did. It kept me awake that night. It distracted me the next day. And I’m still struggling with it today. And it’s strange—because celebrities come and go in the blink of an eye. But there was something about Heath. Ever since the first time I saw 10 Things I Hate About You, I was a fan (though, just for the record, my husband laughed at me when I told him that I thought Heath would be a nice name if we were to have a son one day). I’ve loved his work—and it was clear he was extraordinarily gifted. He was different. And, well, he was one of those bright spots in my job as a critic. He was one of those actors whom I always looked forward to watching. I looked forward to seeing what he’d do next. But, on top of all that, Heath actually seemed like a genuinely good guy. He never seemed to be obsessed with his own fame. He never seemed to be caught up in the life of a celebrity. He didn’t try to be a star. He just did what he loved—and he was good at it. And, outside that, he just seemed like an ordinary guy. He wasn’t the guy you’d expect to overdose in some dark alley—or to get drunk and run his expensive sports car into a tree. He was the guy you expected to do his job and then return to his own personal hideaway to dote on his kids. He was the guy you expected to take on those classic, memorable roles, to win Oscars, to grow old gracefully, to live a good, long life. And when someone like that leaves us so early, it’s tragic. Heartbreaking.

Really, it’s hard to just move on and blather on about the crap I saw this week under the circumstances. After I heard about Heath’s death, I had to sit through Untraceable, which was so stupid that it made me angry.

Today, though…today I was looking forward to getting out. And after such a heavy week, I needed something like Rambo.

Since Rambo didn’t screen for press, we actually had to wait for the day of release like everyone else. We had to actually pay to get in. But we just couldn’t resist. So David, Jason, and I met up for the 11:15 screening.

As I stepped forward to buy my ticket, I announced, “One for Rambo.”

The woman behind the glass looked a little surprised. “I would have taken you for more of the 27 Dresses type,” she said. That made me laugh—especially since I didn’t exactly love 27 Dresses, and I was actually looking forward to seeing Rambo.

We totally expected the theater to be empty. Really—and 11 a.m. screening of Rambo? But there were actually quite a few people there—and I think there were even two other women. And to add to the fun, we even got to watch a trailer for Midnight Meat Train. It just doesn’t get much better than that.

As for the movie, what can I say? It was one crazy experience. There were flying severed limbs and exploding heads. The dialogue—what dialogue there was—rarely made any sense. But it was so much fun. And, well, it was funny. At one point, I laughed so hard that tears came streaming down my face—and Jason was worried that I was going to choke to death. It’s just that over-the-top. It’s blessedly craptacular. And it was the perfect way to spend a Friday morning.

Movie Reviewing Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

New at NightsAndWeekends.com Since Last Week:
Sydney White
2 Days in Paris
The Brave One

There are some weeks when I love my job. And then there are other weeks, when I realize just how much of a pathetic loser I am. This week was the latter.

This week’s light screening load started on Tuesday morning. I rushed to the theater—running behind as always—realizing that I was absolutely starving already. That’s never a good sign, since morning screenings run well past lunchtime, and I was already starving at 10:30. That meant that I ended up sitting through a very long screening of Paul Haggis’s In the Valley of Elah, trying to muffle the sound of my growling stomach. I was unsuccessful.

Afterwards, I walked down the street with Clay to grab some lunch. And over a delicious salad (I know…I ate a salad, and John wasn’t even there to witness it!), we actually had the following exchange:

Clay: So what do you have planned for this fall?
Kristin: Well…nothing really beyond Thursday.
Clay: What’s Thursday?
Kristin: Um…we have a screening.
Clay: So that’s the extent of your life, huh?
Kristin: Pretty much.

Okay, so maybe that’s not the whole extent of my life. Looking ahead, I’m going to a hockey game in October. And I have tickets to see Spamalot in November. I also have approximately 10 screenings on my schedule so far—and there will be many, many more to come. So you can probably imagine that those little buggers tend to outnumber everything else.

So anyway…that night, we had another screening. It was an early one, so I had to gulp down dinner and race out the door. I wasn’t even out of the neighborhood before the fuel light went on in my car. I tried to decide if I’d have enough gas to make it to the theater, but then I realized it would just mean trying to find a gas station after the screening, when, most likely, I’d just want to go home and crash. So I decided to take a couple extra minutes to stop on the way. The problem, however, was that getting gas on the way meant that I couldn’t take my extra-speedy back roads—and after my tank was full and my car was happy, I pulled out into bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Realizing that I could possibly show up at the theater after they’d let in the riff-raff, I called David (who wasn’t actually going to the screening) to ask him to call Jason (who was) for me and ask him to save me a seat. While we were talking, David told me to put in the comedy CD he’d handed me that morning. And I’m so glad I did. By the time I got to the theater, I wasn’t quite so angry anymore.

But then, just as I was walking through the parking lot to the theater, it hit me: I’m a grown woman, and I’m walking into a movie theater by myself on a beautiful Tuesday night—to see an Amanda Bynes movie. How pathetic am I?

Of course, it could have been worse. I could have been one of the grown men who joined me at the theater that night. And, fortunately, Sydney White was actually quite entertaining. So that made me feel better.

On Wednesday night, however, we all sunk to the deepest depths of pathetic-ness. By 6:45, I was once again back at the theater—this time, to see Good Luck Chuck. When I got there, there was already a line of people waiting to get in. That’s nothing new, really. There’s usually a line. But this time, the line was huge.

“Do all those people realize which movie’s playing tonight?” I asked. “I mean, it’s Dane Cook.”

And it got even crazier. We were in one of the hugest theaters available, and it was absolutely packed. The security guard kept coming in to tell everyone to squish into the middle of the row, to allow as many people as possible to get in. The rep even came up and made us move over, saying, “If the press aren’t already here, they’re just not getting a seat.” Yikes! Then again, I wouldn’t have wanted to show up late and have to fight the crowd that was actually gathered in the front of the theater, looking pathetic and begging for seats.

Really. I’m not kidding. People were that desperate to see Good Luck Chuck. I was tempted to tell one of those poor schmucks that I’d be willing to give up my seat for a price—and then I could have gone home and done something less pathetic with my evening. But alas. I stayed.

Before we could even see the movie, we had to endure the usual pre-screening giveaway. This time, they had a million T-shirts to give away, and people were flinging them all over the place. One of them bounced off my seat, just inches from smacking me in the head—so I decided I should probably pay a little more attention. I felt like I was at some crazy baseball game—one played with about 15 different balls, all at the same time, and if you didn’t pay attention, one could come from any direction and give you a concussion.

Finally, the lights dimmed, and the trailers rolled. We actually sat through a trailer for a movie called (and no, I’m not even kidding—look it up) Midnight Meat Train. That’s got to be the best movie title since Snakes on a Plane. And when I saw it, I laughed so hard, I almost fell out of my seat. Midnight Meat Train? Seriously?

All I can say is that I hope they screen that one at a theater that’s within walking distance of a bar with a good happy hour.

Unfortunately, the Midnight Meat Train trailer was probably the highlight of the entire night. Because the movie was astonishingly bad. In those 96 minutes, I saw things that I never, ever, in a million years, needed to see. Things involving Dan Fogler and a grapefruit. And I am forever traumatized. I never once had to cover my eyes during the screening of Apocalypto last December. I even watched those guys have their still-beating hearts cut out of their bodies. But I covered my eyes repeatedly throughout Good Luck Chuck. And if I could have simultaneously plugged my ears, I would have done that, too. When it was all over, one of the guys looked at me and said, “You look stunned.” And stunned I was. Stunned at the sheer badness of it all.

And after it was over, I went home and drank half a bottle of Pepto to try to calm that horrible feeling in my stomach. But I don’t know if Pepto is all that effective in curing disgust and revulsion.

So anyway…there were actually a couple of screenings scheduled for Thursday night, too—one was the new Resident Evil movie, and the other was that new movie starring The Rock. But after sitting through Good Luck Chuck on Wednesday, I decided that I really deserved a break. So I chose to stay home and watch bad reality TV instead—and it made me feel much better.