Film reviews: This Is It and Coco Before Chanel

Since the big-name horror movies of the season actually came out last weekend, this week is conspicuously lacking in new releases. The grave-robbing Michael Jackson concert documentary This Is It opened earlier this week, and it include “moments throughout when Jackson stops going through the motions and the old magic returns,” Nathan Rabin writes in our C+ review. But “those oases of inspiration are doled out far too stingily, however, leading to a lumbering Frankenstein’s monster of a project that’s half ecstatic celebration, half creepy exploitation.” Also opening this week is the biopic Coco Before Chanel, which tells the story of the legendary French designer before she was legendary or even much of a designer, resulting in a film “that’s about as exciting as the never-to-be-made Peter Parker Before Spider-Man,” writes Scott Tobias. Hmm, anything good on TV this weekend?