Friday movie roundup - April 20
Welcome to Friday! I hope it is to your liking. Myself, I am not happy with it, for I have a stuffy nose and other cold-like symptoms, and it makes me headachy and phlegmy. You have some good movies awaiting you, though!
“Hot Fuzz,” from the guys who brought you “Shaun of the Dead,” is a loving spoof to buddy-cop action movies like “Lethal Weapon,” with a by-the-book cop and his slobbish partner investigating a series of odd “accidents” in a sleepy British village. It’s a wonderfully clever and funny movie. Go see it at once, I insist.
In the legal thriller department, there is “Fracture,” in which Anthony Hopkins shoots his wife in the head, confesses to it, hands over the gun — yet is slippery enough to still evade the grasp of the district attorney’s office (represented by Ryan Gosling). Good fun here, with a particularly clever central mystery.
If you need a horror film, there’s “Vacancy,” which has Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson stopping at a creepy old roadside motel and having to fend off dudes who want to murder them. It sounds lousy, I know, but it’s actually quite efficient, non-gimmicky, and tense. It’s barely 80 minutes without the credits and doesn’t have any downtime.
“In the Land of Women” is also opening, but I couldn’t attend a screening so I don’t know what to tell you about it. Look for a review here Monday-ish.
There was some commotion at the “Vacancy” screening last night near the end when a trio of teenage girls were text-messaging. They make an announcement before these things not to use your phone, not even for texting, because the light is bright and it annoys people. They said if you do, you’ll be asked to leave. Well, one of these girls was violating this rule, and her two friends were supporting her, and people around her were trying to get her to stop, and it nearly turned into a melee or a fracas or a brouhaha, because she WOULDN’T STOP.
Afterward, the outraged people were complaining to the poor studio rep who was running the screening but who hadn’t noticed this was going on. Meanwhile, the girls, now in tears, were over complaining to the manager about all these old meanies who were harassing them! Didn’t they UNDERSTAND that she had to text her mom to tell her the movie was almost over and ask her to come pick her up?! Come on, you guys! YOU GUYS! SHE HAD TO TEXT HER MOM!!
It was really funny to watch the girls go through their routine for the unsympathetic manager, because they seemed to honestly believe that somehow THEY were the victims here. Sure, they’d been told not to use their phones during the movie, and sure, the people around them started out asking nicely. (They got less nice about it as the girls refused to comply, apparently.) But come on! Asking a teenage girl not to use her cell phone for 90 minutes — well, you might as well ask the pope to perform your abortion. It’s not gonna happen. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, teenage girls gotta text.
Teenage girls: Seriously, what goes on in their little heads?
Anyway, this week’s “In the Dark” podcast is here, phlegmy voice and all. Enjoy my mucus!
April 20th, 2007 at 7:10 am
I was looking forward to an F or D movie review, but the teenage girl story works, too.
April 20th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Cell phones are not allowed at the high school where I teach. Students are always claiming, “My mom is calling.” Great! Let me talk to her and explain board policy. No means no. Even to you, pushy power parent!
April 20th, 2007 at 10:11 am
I almost spit my coffee out on my monitor after I read that Pope doing your abortion line. That was great.
April 20th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
It’s not just teenage girls, unfortunately. Teenage boys are almost as bad about using their cell phones in movies, church, school, and any other inappropriate places you can imagine. Texting is a blight on society, and movie theaters should all install cell phone blockers inside their theaters, but not in hallways. If people want to text, call, or whatever, then they can go out there. Just as movie theaters do not have toilets installed in the middle of the seats, and require people to go out into the hall in order to use the bathroom, the same should be done for cell phones.
April 20th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Other stupid moviegoers: the “please move down” people. I hate getting to a movie a half hour early, getting good seats that I want, then having a couple of morons (usually some dude on a date (hint: pick her up a half-hour earlier)) can stroll in as the lights dim and see one empty seat at one end of the row, a second at the other end, then play the whole “will you move down so we can sit together” game. No. Get there on time.
Last week some girl asked me to move down, and the guy sitting in front of the seat next to me is a freaking giant, head and shoulders above the rest. I told her, “No thanks, I’m happy with my seat.” She looked at me like I just stole Christmas from her. Screw that. Get a watch, look at what time the movie starts, and get there 15-20 minutes early.
April 20th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
I strongly disagree with this. I don’t think responsible cell phone users should be punished for the sins of the morons. My wife and I would NEVER go to the movies if we knew that for those two hours, our babysitter could not reach us. I leave my phone on vibrate and would leave the theater if I needed to answer a call, so I am not part of the problem. If a theater installed cell phone blockers, I would never go to that theater again, and I suspect other parents would be the same way.
April 20th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
We’ve had this discussion before, haven’t we?
I think a good compromise would be to have certain screens in a theater be cell-phone-proof while others are not, or else certain time windows where the theater’s cell-phone blocker would be activated. That way, people have a choice.
April 21st, 2007 at 7:48 am
Beedub-I don’t think that’s a reasonable solution. Imagine going to a movie and finding that the movie you’d been dying to see was only on a cell phone blocked screen. You’re a person who must have access to your cell phone signal, so that movie is now out of the question for you!
I can’t imagine movie theaters going to such lengths, or movie distributors agreeing to something that would discourage people from seeing their movies.
It’s not only parents who need to be able to receive calls during a movie, but there are people whose jobs require them to be accessible by phone or pager at all times (doctors, for one). My husband is an IT director and is basically on call 24/7. He of course only uses vibrate and would never answer a call IN the theater, but he has to be able to receive calls.
April 21st, 2007 at 8:52 am
I can’t believe I was alive at a time when there were no cell phones. How did parents ever make it? I understand that people must be accessible, but surely you can come up with two hours to see a film without annoying the other people.
But in any event, I think teenagers should be absolutely banned from having cell phones in a theater, since they don’t even have the “what if my babysitter tries to call?” excuse. I think a better solution would be to have theaters for adults only, preferably over 25. I know which theater I would be in.
April 21st, 2007 at 7:02 pm
BeeDub, Jeff, & Holly- Some live (plays, not movies) theaters have dealt with the issue of patrons who expect calls by having you leave your phone/pager with the house manager, with a note saying what seat you are in. If an emergency call or page comes in, the house management staff will come get you.
This service used to be mainly for doctors and people of that ilk. I imagine that in the dark days before widespread cellphone ownership, you would have had to leave the theater’s phone number with the babysitter and have them call the theater itself if there was some emergency with your kids.
April 21st, 2007 at 9:12 pm
I believe the day is fast approaching where movie theaters will no longer actually show movies on their screens, but just allow people to sit in the theaters and talk on their cell phones for two hours.
Theater owners seem to be at a loss as to why moviegoers are so dissatisfied with the modern moviegoing experience. They wonder if the advent of HDTV and high-tech home theater systems is the death knoll of traditional moviegoing. I don’t think that’s the only reason, and probably not even the main one. What moviegoers seem to be resenting more than anything else is OTHER MOVIEGOERS, the ones that are talking, texting, and chatting on the phone while the movie’s playing. General moviegoing etiquette is in the toilet. Why deal with that, they ask, when I can see the same movie at home on my HDTV in a few months?
The ideal (and most obvious) solution to this, I believe, is to ENFORCE THE THEATER RULES. Hire more ushers to patrol the screenings - and to kick the offenders out. Talking on a cell phone? Out. Carrying on a loud conversation? Out. Texting? Out. Gone. No refunds. Zero tolerance. If theater owners did this, moviegoing satisfaction would improve and more people would return to the theaters, offsetting the cost of hiring more ushers.
But, of course, theater owners and managers will never actually do this; they’re too afraid of the kicked-out offenders getting angry and complaining to corporate headquarters, a place usually populated by unsympathetic bean-counters. Complaints, even those lodged by obnoxious a-hole moviegoers, reflect poorly on owners and managers. Thus, they will do nothing that might cause said complaints.
And really, I don’t think that blocking cell phone signals in a theater is a terrible idea. The cell phone problem has become large enough in many theaters that blocking signals is the most practical solution - more practical than, you know, actually enforcing the rules. Some people may not like the signal blocking, may resent being “out of touch” for a couple hours, but I think it’s a sacrifice that may soon have to be made by someone wanting to see a movie in the theater.
April 22nd, 2007 at 4:34 pm
I agree that enforcing the rules is a good idea. I also think anyone who is so easily distracted that they can’t enjoy a movie being projected on a 100-foot screen with sound blasted at 100 decibels because someone three rows away is using a two-inch screen with a tiny clicking noise … well, they have bigger problems in their lives, not the least of which is a major case of movie snobbery. Is it annoying? Sure. Would it be nice if people had the social awareness to avoid annoying the people around them? Absolutely. Should movie theaters enforce their rules? Of course. But if the problem inspires five paragraphs on a blog (not naming any names here, of course), then perhaps a bit of introspection is in order.
April 22nd, 2007 at 4:52 pm
“I can’t imagine movie theaters going to such lengths, or movie distributors agreeing to something that would discourage people from seeing their movies.”
They show Uwe Boll’s movies.
April 22nd, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Weird. At one of the theatres near my house, cell phones’ recpetions are blocked in the lobby and hallways, but NOT in the showrooms or vomitoriums (I include “vomitorium” because it is an awesome word).
And, yes, I hate the “please move down because I decided to come to the movie when it’s half over” people, too.
Joe: I couldn’t agree more; that was funny.
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:59 pm
Sorry, Jeff. It was just that time of the month for me.
April 23rd, 2007 at 8:52 am
Here’s one more addition to the annoying movie experience: At the last movie I went to, there was a couple sitting right in front of me that actually started making out halfway through the movie. They were practically in each other’s shorts before they noticed there were people staring at them from about six inches away. Who knew Blades of Glory had such aphrodisiacal qualities?
Anyways, they stopped, and then the guy lit up his Blackberry. And then the twenty-something girls in the front row started gossiping at the top of their lungs about nothing that was worth making the entire audience listen to, and letting off really shrill laughs, to boot. So, yeah, BeeDub has a good point when she says it’s other movie-goers that are keeping movie-goers from movie-going.
April 23rd, 2007 at 9:02 am
The plural of “vomitorium” is “vomitoria,” or if you want to be especially arcane, “vomitoriae.”
April 23rd, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Thank you, SpellChecker! (Although to be honest, I learned just that about three seconds after I posted my comment above–oops!)