MOVIES FOR THE WEEKEND

Now that I've been given the flick by my former employers (budget cuts...), I've got lots of time to catch up with everything (and more).

Today is District 9. Tonight is The Time Traveler's Wife. Tomorrow is Julie & Julia. Next week I'll catch a matinee of The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard.

I caught A Perfect Getaway yesterday and it was very enjoyable; nasty, mean, violent, twisted, twisty, stylish, and very entertaining. It's not brilliant, it doesn't reinvent the wheel, but for what it was (a pulpy B-movie thriller) it really delivered. I'll have some more comments on it soon.

Also, on DVD, I caught up with the extremely satisfying JCVD, with Jean-Claude Van Damme giving a career defining performance (I know, that's not really saying much, but just wait until you see him here). The film has one of the best opening shots I've ever seen. More on that in the near future. I also watched the tedious new car racing extravaganza Fast & Furious, which while boasting some damn impressive real-time car stunts, ended up being a total rehash of the first movie, with zero pep or spark from the cast, and with an annoying over-reliance on sub-standard CGI to bolster the action sequences. It pretty much sucked, except for a few moments of vehicular mayhem. I'll have a DVD round up column soon with full reactions to these two along with some other titles I've recently seen.

The end of the summer movie season is nearing...