If you have any interest in going out to see a new movie this weekend, may the Good Lord somehow bless and keep you. Outside of the biggest cities, you have two choices: Because I Said So, a movie that actually deserves the derogatory term "chick flick" or The Messengers, which sounds like a Mormon tract but is actually a supernatural thriller not screened in advance for critics, which is becoming a genre unto itself.
Both of these movies are depressing wastes of talent. Because I Said So features Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore and--forgive while I drool as I type her name--Lauren Graham, and was directed by Michael Lehmann, who in 1989 directed Heathers, and has done absolutely nothing of interest ever since. The Messengers, even more dire, is the latest Hollywood product to be nominally directed by Asian horror specialists, in this case Danny and Oxide Pang, but in fact is the product of so many executive decisions and focus grouped meddlings that the final product is utterly devoid of even the slightest hint of anything discomforting, much less terrifying.
These are movies as time killers, which exist only because there was once a human instinct to go to movies, regardless of what may be playing. But does that instinct even exist anymore? There are so many more options out there; why on earth would anybody pay money to see this sort of thing? The Hollywood machine has been broken for quite some time, but they don't seem to realize it yet. So they'll continue to churn out product to diminishing returns, and wonder why audiences don't show up, and everybody else will be doing something more interesting, at someplace nicer than a multiplex.
