Your Weekend Movie Guide for November 2012

Ah, memories.  One of my neighborhood movie theaters from my youth.  Loews Mount Vernon.  Pronounced "Low-ees."  There's that balcony where my mother liked to camp out.  Why?  Because it was near the smoking section.

Those days are mostly over.  Movie palaces replaced by sterile viewing rooms in dull multiplexes.  They wouldn't be so bad if there was something decent on the screen. 

You know the monthly drill, gang.  I"ll drift through the movie pages of the Los Angeles Times and give you my knee-jerk reaction to what's playing this weekend.  Good luck to all of us.

Wreck-It Ralph:  A Disney cartoon that plays on video game characters from the 80s.  Frankly, I thought I was done with both video games and the 80s.

Flight:  Denzel Washington is a drunk pilot who steers his commercial jet through a disaster.  Only the promise of bonus miles would get me to see this.  I hear from folks who followed the glorious critical reviews that they hated the movie.

Hotel Transylvania:  When is check-out time?

Lincoln:  Reviewed here earlier.  I wanted to love it.  I only liked it.  Some bizarre choices by the director and the screenwriter didn't help.

Skyfall:  Also reviewed here earlier.  The best James Bond film in decades. 

The Sessions:  A review is coming.  Go see it.  Wonderful Oscar-worthy performances in an amazingly compact film.  For more details, come back here next Tuesday.

Cloud Atlas:  What's worse than one Tom Hanks in a two-hour film?  Try five Tom Hanks in a three-hour movie.  A cinematic version of waterboarding.

Argo:  I also saw this but didn't bother writing up a review.  There's only so many hours in the day.  A nifty tale that is especially bolstered by great supporting work from Alan Arkin and John Goodman.  Meanwhile, this is a good movie from director Ben Affleck, who may not be as dumb as I think he is.

Taken 2:  Taken to where?

Paranormal Activity 4:  Paranormal activity for what?

Pitch Perfect:  My crush on Anna Kendrick made me see this.  That's what I get for letting my hormones dictate my movie choices.  She's a 26-year-old playing a college freshman in an a capella singing group.  Geez, there's not a single word in this sentence that makes sense.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower:  Another review coming to this blog.  Boy, I'm really stockpiled with these blog entries.  Go see it now.  Or wait for me to tell you why.

Seven Psychopaths:  The majority of the US Supreme Court.

Chasing Mavericks:  A surfing movie.  That's for those of you who thought this starred James Garner and Jack Kelly.

The Twilight Saga - Breaking Dawn - Part Two:  Just the prospect of me having to say the title to the lady at the box office makes me not want to see this.

Life of Pi:  Opening next Wednesday.  It's got Oscar buzz.  Meanwhile, the trailer's got some cheesy special effects with a computer-generated tiger.  I'll skip it and head to the House of Pies myself.

Barrymore:  Christopher Plummer as the legendary actor.  John, not Drew.

Anna Karenina:  Nyet.

Silver Linings Playbook:  Having lost everything, a grown man moves back in with his parents.  After what happened with Hurricane Sandy, this shouldn't be viewed as a comedy.

Funeral Kings:  Two altar servers find a stash of contraband and get into trouble.  Good news.  I don't see the word "priest" in that logline.

Citadel:  An agoraphobic father teams up with a renegade priest to save his daughter from the clutches of a gang of twisted feral children who committed an act of violence against his family years earlier.  Okay, I see the word "priest" there.

Generation P:  A chronicle of the rise of the advertising industry in Post-Soviet Russia.  I just got to understand "Generation X."  Now the alphabet moves.

A Late Quartet:  Members of a world-renowned string quartet struggle to stay together in the face of death, competing egos and insuppressible lust.  Christopher Walken and Philip Seymour Hoffman are in the movie.  Given the logline, I'm likely not in the movie theater.

Cafe de Flore:  In 1960s Paris, a mother devotes herself to her disabled son.  Uh oh, I feel a yawn coming. 

La Rafle:  A faithful retelling of the 1942 "Vel' d'Hiv Roundup" and the events surrounding it.  No clue what that is.  But, even though it refers to a roundup, I doubt this takes place on a dude ranch.

Holy Motors:  A businessman travels around Paris to a series of nine appointments.  Sounds like a documentary about Microsoft Outlook.

Silent Hill - Revelation:  When her father disappears, Heather Mason is drawn into a strange and terrifying alternate reality that holds answers to the horrific nightmares that have plagued her since childhood.  Could be a longer version of yesterday's episode of "Dr. Phil."

The Man with the Iron Fists:  On the hunt for a fabled treasure of gold, a band of warriors, assassins, and a rogue British soldier descend upon a village in feudal China, where a humble blacksmith looks to defend himself and his fellow villagers.  Russell Crowe stars, so you can expect half the dialogue to be mumbled.

Looper:  In 2074, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent 30 years into the past, where a hired gun awaits. Someone like Joe, who one day learns the mob wants to 'close the loop' by transporting back Joe's future self.  It stars Bruce Willis, so this is essentially "Die Hard in the Future."

Sinister:  A true-crime writer finds a cache of 8mm "snuff" films that suggest the murder he is currently researching is the work of a serial killer whose career dates back to the 1960s.  Sounds like a lost episode of "Unsolved Mysteries."

Hitler's Children:  A documentary about the descendants of Hitler's top Nazi officials.  This sounds fascinating.  I might be a buyer.

Hitchcock:  Opening next week.  Anthony Hopkins as the legendary director and this outlines his life when he was doing "Psycho."  Helen Mirren plays Mrs. Hitchcock.  You can close your eyes during the shower scene all over again.

Rise of the Guardians:  Another cartoon that isn't even remotely like a Looney Tune.  When the evil spirit Pitch launches an assault on Earth, the Immortal Guardians team up to protect the innocence of children all around the world.
Alec Baldwin is one of the voices, so expect a photographer to get punched.

Red Dawn:  A group of teenagers look to save their town from an invasion of North Korean soldiers.  A remake of a movie that should never have been made in the first place.

Dinner last night:  Leftover chicken sausage and vegetables.