Normally at this time of Earth’s orbit around the sun, I go into hibernation mode for a several weeks, waking up sometime in October. It’s the end of the summer movie season and the beginning of the big studio garbage dump-athon, week after week of shit movies that no one wants to see because, well, like I just said, they’re shit movies. Okay maybe 1 or 2 solid films sneak in. But generally, the last 2 weeks of August through September suck. That’s just the rule. I didn’t invent it. God did.
Yet last year—one of the great years of cinema—shattered the law. Okay well, half of it anyways. After the release of Superbad, the last 2 weekends of August 2007 still stunk (unless you dug The Nanny Diaries or Hallo-RobZombie-ween, anyone anyone?) But holy flocking unicorns did September deliver an uppercut of awesome–3:10 to Yuma, Eastern Promises, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Unwieldy Film Title, Into the Wild, The Kingdom, and The Darjeeling Limited.
So here we are. It’s 2008—one of the worst years of cinema in recent memory—and it looks like I won’t be avoiding the theater this September either. Although, after the great Tropic Thunder (you must see this film) unleashes its full-retard hilarity on the world most people can probably catch up on their reading during the final weeks of August (with the possible exceptions of Hamlet 2 and Traitor… Whaaat? I can’t pass up a film with Don Cheadle, Jeff Daniels and Guy Pearce). But back to September.Burn After Reading, Blindness, Ghost Town, Lakeview Terrance, Choke and Miracle at St. Anna are loaded in the bullet chamber for a September release.
That means a month spent with the Coen Brothers, Fernando Meirelles, Ricky Gervais, Neil LaBute (hey, I refuse to count out a genius like LaBute despite directing the disastacular Wicker Man remake), Sam Rockwell and Spike Lee. This reads like something out of a November film slate. But no, it’s all happening in the month autumn arrives. Good times, my friends.
However, I have to wonder what’s up with this. Two years in a row now there’s been a promising line-up during September. Have the studios finally figured that September is as good as a month as any to drop some quality flicks on an audience left brain-dead from the last 2 weeks of August films, physically wiped from the smothering August heat and emotionally drained by the Jerry Lewis telethon? It sure as hell can’t be for the stellar box-office prospects. If studio execs were gardeners then September would be their winter. The month remains one of the wimpiest box-office periods of the year.
The last several years have trended towards back-loading the calendar with the Oscar-bait. Perhaps the pedigree flicks rolling out in September are just the natural result of overflow from a too crowded schedule of Oscar-winning wannabes in the last 3 months of any given year.
Maybe there’s a bigger issue at hand. The natural order of things seems out of whack with so many decent-looking films hitting screens during September. It’s as if something is coming to a head. End of days type stuff. Or in the words of Dr. Peter Venkman, “Human sacrifices, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!” Are studios cranking these flicks out as one last hurrah before it all ends in a thunderclap?
Just wait a minute before you think of me as some unshaven, sandwich-board wearing nutcase (which I am by the way). Have you looked at your weekend movie calendar lately? Take a peak at October 3, 2008. It’s the date Beverly Hills Chihuahua wrecks unholy havoc across cinemas nationwide. I swear I awoke on the couch in the middle of the night a few weeks ago and saw Kirk Cameron on TV pointing out this scenario in Revelations. Maybe I was in the midst of some horrifying fever dream. Not sure. Regardless if it was reality or a holy vision from Allah, wasn’t Cameron in some shitty movies about the end of the world? I think so—which probably means he knows his shit when it comes to the apocalypse. He’s the nation’s foremost celebrity expert on the matter. And I think Kirk Cameron knows something. And I think the studios know something too. And I think we better enjoy these September films. They may be the last we see… ever.
