Let the right horse win

But first, why am I going to four films, only one of which is a must? Let's see, by the numbers . . .

1. Some time back--3 years, maybe?--I was running low on the 2/$13.99 passes to Showcase Theaters that Costco sold, so I bought 10.
2. Bargain matinee prices then were barely more than $7, so obviously, I would use those passes only on full-admission screenings.
3. But shortly after my purchase, Showcase expanded its bargain matinee policy to what I'd been familiar with back in the Midwest: all shows before 6 p.m.
4. This meant that I rarely had an opportunity to use my passes, which was no big deal until
5. The Rave chain bought Connecticut Showcases.
6. I was afraid my remaining passes were now worthless, but recently I learned (thanks, Nancy!) that Rave will honor the passes until mid-December.
7. So, with 8 passes left, I'm in the market for a couple of bursts of serious cinematic excess. Beginning today.

Wait a minute (I say in red. for embarrassment): did I say 7 movies on the weekend and 4 today? How about 3 plus a remedial math lesson today? Let's see . . . if I go to a 109-minute film at 1:35, there should be no problem in catching movie #2 at 3pm, should there? Well, should there?

Golly, I've planned a lot of these multiflick itineraries; there's really no excuse.

Case 39

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The test of whether a mediocre scary movie is worth 2 hours of your time plus a coupon you paid 7 bucks for a while back but will be worth nothing if you don't use it soon is whether it has at least one genuinely mindfucking shot. This one does: Emily (Renée Zellweger) is convinced that the ostensibly angelic Lilith (Jodelle Ferland) is indeed the spawn of Satan and has—taking a hint from the girl’s parents, but not buying hardware nearly as sturdy—begun to put bolt latches on the inside of her bedroom door. She drops a screw (naturally), which (naturally) rolls under the crack under the door and out into the hallway (naturally). Emily cautiously opens the door a crack, finds the nearby coast clear, and reaches her hand out gingerly in pursuit of galvanized fastening device.

Camera follows her hand, and there, by the screw, is (naturally) Lilith’s foot. Camera sweeps up and (wait for it) there looms Lilith, still the same angelic-looking Lilith, but magnified by camera angle and probably a distorting lens of some sort so that the adult woman on her knees is looking up at a looming Alice-when-she’s-10-feet-tall. Wonderful shot, brilliantly objectively-normal-pov-creepy moment.

Not a bad flick, but isn’t it about time Adrian Lester got another meaty Hollywood role again like in Primary Colors?

Secretariat

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OK, this shovels the schmaltz like Eddie Sweat shoveling oats for Big Red (and, come to think of it, shoveling something else the G rating doesn't let them show), but if the sight of those magnificent animals doesn’t put you in an uncritical mood—and if 31 lengths in the Belmont can ever get old for you—then what are you doing coming to a Disney sports movie in the first place?

Let Me In

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This is a good film, and if I had never seen Låt den rätte komma in, this might have blown my mind just as much as that one did. In the event, so little is changed that my snobbish, if-I-can-read-subtitles-while-the-actors-are-speaking-incomprehensibly-why-can't-everyone? reaction was, "This was necessary why?" But in the course of my long postscreening phone conversation with my daughter (who--and feel free to correct any inaccuracies in my characterization, Daughter--was just as impressed by the Swedish original as I was, but so disturbed by it that it might not be accurate to say she "liked" it), I promised her that I would give permission here for anyone less snobby than I (which, let's face it, is just about everyone, witness the compulsion to use the technically correct "I" there rather than the harmlessly more usual "me") to see this one on its own merits, which are comparable if not equal to the original's. (And to be fair, the soundtrack of the Swedish version didn't include Greg Kihn's "The Breakup Song" or Bowie's "Let's Dance.")

One interesting if speculative point my daughter made, though: she feels that the very fact of hearing incomprehensible, harsh, Scandinavian words having to be translated by English at the bottom of the screen added to the distancing, the otherness that the original film worked upon her. I suspect that may indeed be the case, so if you're not just dead (as it were) set against subtitles, Netflix the right one in.

Trailers

• Burlesque—Cher and Christina Aguilera in a movie that wants desperately to be Fosse-esque (you got a better way to spell it?).
• Unstoppable—Tony Scott, runaway locomotive; high enough concept for ya?
• Megamind (3D)—A Dreamworks riff on Superman.
• Harry Potter and the First Half of the Last Book (3D)—Excuse me, but it’s true: Hermione is hot.
• African Cats—From Disneynature, for Earth Day.
• Tangled (3D)—A much expanded but no more persuasive version of the trailer.
• Black Swan--Single White Prima, from Darren Aronofsky.
• The Warrior's Way--Can't say it any better than IMDb's categories: Action. Fantasy. Western.