1. Battle: Los Angeles (Sony/Columbia, 3,417 Theaters, 116 Minutes, Rated PG-13): Or, Independence Day, the grim and gritty version.
Well, perhaps that’s unfair. I mean, there really is not a lot of originality that you have when it comes to alien invasion movies. They’re aliens, they invade. Fairly simple. Where the originality comes from is in the execution.
This interpretation seems more grounded in reality, treating an alien invasion as war, not as science fiction. It does have a good cast, so this might just be a cut above your typical alien invasion clobnes. However, if there’s a montage of Los Angeles landmarks blowing up, then there will be trouble.
2. Mars Needs Moms (Disney, 3,117 Theaters, 88 Minutes, PG): I
come from a generation that considers Berkeley Breathed an absolute genius. My generation is one that was able to read Bloom County in our local newspapers each and every day. That comic strip was unsurpassed social, political and cultural satire with a lot of warmth and bite.
Breathed has had a productive second career as a children’s book author. And while we will never see a Bloom County film, one of his kid’s lit entries arrives today.
The concept is simple. Mars has a shortage of moms and starts taking some of them from Earth. A boy whose mother was taken decides to get her back.
3. Red Riding Hood (Warner Brothers, 3,030 Theaters, 100 Minutes, Rated PG-13):I don’t know about you, but I feel that this film isn’t properly mocked enough on the Internet. Let’s fix that.
So, you are going to build a movie around a fairy tale. Financially, this makes sense. Fairy tales are well known and in the public domain. There are no rights to pay. This makes the film cheaper to make. Fine. But how are you going to make a film of it? it’s maybe a half hour of plot. Wolf eats grandma. Wolf dresses as grandma. Riding Hood visits grandma. Wolf tries to trick and eat Riding Hood. Woodsman comes in and kills Wolf. The end.
But what if the wolf isn’t a wolf, but a werewolf! Werewolves are sexy! And since they are sexy, let’s have the werewolf and riding hood have a romance! But we need conflict, so let’s make her have feelings for the woodsman too!
I don’t know if grandma still gets eaten, but does iyt really matter?
