With the quality and convenience of DVD, plus widescreen televisions that boast images as crisp as a freshly minted dollar bill, air conditioning alone isn't enough to drive today's consumers to their local googolplexes. For the first time in decades, the movies have to be watchable, too, which is presenting Hollywood with its most formidable challenge since it tried to turn Gretchen Mol into the next big thing. Armed with the only materials necessary to make important movie-going decisions—plot synopses and occasionally trailers—the A.V. Club film staff has assembled this helpful guide to which spectacles must be seen among the text-messaging teens, and which ones might be better appreciated on the La-Z-Boy six months later.
MAY 11
28 Weeks Later
What it's about: This sequel to Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later tracks the attempt to repopulate and settle London after the zombie-creating virus of the first movie has supposedly been eradicated. Of course, if that turned out to be true, this would be a pretty dull film.
Why it might be worth seeing in theaters: Horror films tend to be more effective in the theater, where it's impossible to pause in the middle of a shrieking zombie blood-feast and wander off for another bag of guacamole-flavored Doritos.
Why you're probably better off waiting for the DVD: The film features none of the original cast or crew, generally a dire sign in a sequel.
Possible special feature on that eventual DVD: The 28 Days Later DVD featured an alternate ending where one of the film's three survivors died. To top that, 28 Weeks Later needs a series of scenes where all the survivors die. Maybe the zombies should die too, and Earth could just explode in the end.
Delta Farce
What it's about: A trio of dumb-ass National Guardsmen (Larry The Cable Guy, Bill Engvall, and DJ Qualls) headed to Iraq are accidentally dropped in Mexico, which they mistake for a war zone. Such a quagmire might seem hopeless, but if anyone can engineer a desirable outcome in such a trying situation (or "Git-R-Done," as it were), it would of course be Qualls. And to a lesser extent, Larry The Cable Guy.
Why it might be worth seeing in theaters: The primal charisma and raw animal sexuality of Qualls, Engvall, and The Cable Guy can only be appreciated fully on the big screen. IMAX would be ideal, but the lesser screens at the local multiplex will have to do.
Why you're probably better off waiting for the DVD: Do you really want to be seen in public shelling out for a movie starring Larry The Cable Guy? We didn't think so.
Possible special feature: Actual MRI footage conclusively showing audience members losing brain mass as they watch the film.
Georgia Rule
What it's about: After her latest screw-up, rebellious teenager Lindsay Lohan gets shipped off to Idaho, where her restrictive grandmother (Jane Fonda) looks to curb her wild ways. Basically, it's Black Snake Moan for the whole family.
Why it might be worth seeing in theaters: Because in a summer loaded with expensive, CGI-driven blockbusters, great performances are the rarest of special effects.
Why you're probably better off waiting for the DVD: Because you'll be too busy watching expensive, CGI-driven blockbusters to bother with a maudlin melodrama that would play just as well on television.
Possible special feature: The text of the threatening letter producer James G. Robinson wrote to Lohan about her "exhaustion" spells, accompanied by raw footage of the actress passed out in a pool of her own vomit at the Chateau Marmont.
MAY 18
Shrek The Third
What it's about: The CGI ogre voiced by Mike Myers returns to the cash well for another overflowing bucket of money.
Why it might be worth seeing in theaters: By the time it hits DVD, all the hottest spin-off merchandise will already be sold off and sitting forgotten in landfills.
Why you're probably better off waiting for the DVD: Missing out on the chance to sit in the theater eating Snickers bars "with Shrek filling" is definitely the healthy option.
Possible special feature: Trailers for Shrek 4: You're Still Buying This, Huh? and Shrek 5: We Can Keep This Up All Decade If We Have To.
MAY 25
Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End
What it's about: Remember last summer, when Johnny Depp was dragged down to Davy Jones' locker, and Depp's motley crew employed ghost pirate Geoffrey Rush to help them track him down? In this installment, they'll probably track him down. (Also, presumably, the half-dozen other subplots will be resolved.)
Why it might be worth seeing in theaters: Where else will the spectacle of pirate ships on sand dunes and a cannon fight around a whirlpool look as smashing?
Why you're probably better off waiting for the DVD: At home, you can't irritate everyone else in the theater by muttering, "Wait a minute, who's that guy again?" every 10 minutes.
Possible special feature: Timelines, maps, a concordance… whatever it takes to figure out exactly what the hell is going on.
Bug
What it's about: Ashley Judd plays a waitress who holes up in a run-down motel to escape her recently paroled ex-husband, but discovers a far more alarming bug infestation.
Why it might be worth seeing in theaters: William Friedkin's return to horror after The Exorcist—let's pretend his evil Druid tree movie The Guardian never happened—is by all early accounts an intense, skin-crawling experience.
Why you're probably better off waiting for the DVD: Since it's based on a play and there's only one location, the claustrophobic feeling may translate better to the living room than to a cavernous theater.
Possible special feature: Though it doesn't quite replicate the feeling of having bugs crawling under your skin, every 10th DVD opened will result in a nasty outbreak of psoriasis. Will you be the lucky winner?
- Comments