There’s just no better time to go to the movies than the holidays. It’s all based on best-sellers and marquee directors and trillions of dollars of effects. And this weekend, it’s all designed to make you cry your eyes out. Take the family.
War Horse
War Horse, based on a best-selling novel and a play that was adapted from the novel, is an expertly made Steven Spielberg film, and just the sort of movie that gets Academy members very, very excited. The story is about a boy and his horse and how they are separated during World War 1, and how, he strives to survive and be reunited with his noble animal. The trailer alone will make you weep.
Perfect For: Everyone.
What the Critics Say: Perfectly saccharine, and expertly designed to jerk your tears, they either praise the high-toned gloss, or else, condemn it for being too perfectly designed. Roger Ebert loved it: "War Horse" is bold, not afraid of sentiment and lets out all the stops in magnificently staged action sequences.“ The Village Voice’s J. Hoberman is not a fan: “It might be perverse to accuse a tearjerker as accomplished as Steven Spielberg of being unfeeling. But the overcalculation with which he mechanically trots out one of his most familiar tropes for what amounts to a generic Disney animal story seems to preclude any but the most hackneyed emotion.” Ouch.
Our Take: Bring the Kleenex, just in case the horse gets it.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (limited to New York and Los Angeles; opening wide January)
It took ten years, but here we have it: the September 11 movie. Based on Jonathan Safran Foer’s bestselling novel of the same name, the film, directed by Stephen Daldry (The Hours) is a cry-fest. It tells the story of a young boy named Oskar, whose father (played by Tom Hanks) dies in the World Trade Center. Oskar is on a wild goose chase to figure out the origin of a mysterious black key his father left behind, while his mother (Sandra Bullock) copes with grief.
Perfect For: Again, everyone. Everyone who’s up for a good cry, that is.
What the Critics Say: They are mixed on the overt sentimentality—and unlike Spielberg, Daldry is not nearly as masterful a filmmaker. Entertainment Weekly gives it a B-, writing: “Here's a tale that compacts the grief of an entire world, country, city, and thousands of loved ones left behind into the pain of one vulnerable, fictional boy.” The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis wasn’t nearly so kind. She found the sentimentality to be overwrought. “Crying is one of the great pleasures of moviegoing, but tears can be cheap,” she writes. “And, yes, you may cry, but when tears are milked as they are here, the truer response should be rage.”
Our Take: If it’s between this and Spielberg, go Spielberg.
The Darkest Hour
This oddly placed holiday horror flick has many elements we’ve seen before: an alien invasion, cars crashing, cities being depleted by the new, evil forces, and desolate, empty streets. The twist in The Darkest Hour is that the aliens are invisible, energy sucking monsters. They are eco-terrorists, after our natural resources—energy, primarily. Their primary methodology of killing people is to zap them into a ball of fire. (If Beavis and Butthead were watching, they’d surely say, “Heh, heh, cool.”) It’s a horror story for the environmentalist age.
Perfect For: People who’ve seen The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Mission: Impossible, and Sherlock Holmes and desperately need another reason to get away from their families during the holidays.
What the Critics Say: Nada mucho. The silence is deafening, which means it’s probably not very good.
Our Take: Um. No.
