Young People Watching Limited Releases
August 29, 2008
Summer ends with just a handful of limited releases, but there should be something here for everyone, including a Canadian film, a critically acclaimed foreign language film, and the latest presentation by Quentin Tarantino.
Goal 2 - Living the Dream - Reviews
House of the Sleeping Beauties - No Reviews
I Served the King of England - Reviews
Sukiyaki Western Django - Reviews
The Year of the Fish - Reviews
Young People Fucking - Reviews
Once upon a time, making a $100 million trilogy about the world's most popular sport seemed like a really good idea. Then Goal stumbled almost everywhere it opened. To make matters worse, Goal 2 - Living the Dream bombed where its predecessor merely stumbled. Add in mediocre reviews and a theater could that is wide too wide (in the dreaded select cities range) and this film will likely bomb so bad over the weekend that Goal 3 will go direct-to-DVD, if they bother to release it at all.
A German film about... I'm not entirely sure. There's no official site, no reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, no plot summary on IMDb. There are a lot of foreign language films that never get a chance here, so it seems strange that this one, which has almost no presence is opening here. I don't even know where it is playing. That's a really bad sign for its box office prospects.
Clearly the best new release of the week, either limited or wide. It is also one of the widest release of the week, but at just six theatres, it is not so wide that one will worry that it won't be able to handle it. That said, while it should do well in limited release, it does have some obstacles if it tries to expand wide, but I think it will do well over the weekend and should perform well with art house crowds over the coming weeks. I Served the King of England opens tonight in six theaters, mostly in the Los Angeles area.
A remake of A Fistful of Dollars, which was a remake of Yojimbo, the Akira Kurosawa film. Sadly, both those movies are vastly superior to this one. In fact, this one has seen its reviews hover around the the 60% positive reviews needed to be considered overall positive, which is well below the 80% I usually associate with movies that have a shot at expanding wide. That said, it was never aiming for mainstream success and was going for cult status, and it could get there. Sukiyaki Western Django opens tonight at the Sunshine Cinema in New York City.
A rotoscoped retelling of the Cinderella story. Unfortunately, reviews are hovering around the 50% positive mark, which is better than most wide releases, but not enough to expect the film will be able to thrive in limited release. The Year of the Fish opens tonight in three theaters, mostly in the Los Angeles area.
Ahhhh Canada! Where else could a movie drop an F-bomb in its title yet be described by critics as sweet? In fact, some critics even complained it was too sweet to be anything more than a lightweight movie experience. However, its Tomatometer score is better than most films coming out this week, and it is certainly worth checking out, even if most people never get a chance to see it till the home market. Young People Fucking, or YPF as some are calling it, opens tonight Village East Cinema in New York City, while it expands to Los Angeles in two weeks.
Filed under: Limited Releases, Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále, Goal! 2: Living the Dream..., Sukiyaki Western Django, Young People Fucking, Das Haus der schlafenden Schönen, Year of the Fish