This Week in DVD and Instant Watching

Twilight: This one came out over the weekend in some kind of big deal midnight event. Well, good for the fans, and I hope everyone who waited or went out in the cold enjoyed the experience, but personally I think midnight sales should be reserved for important things--you know, like Madden football games.

Wreck-It-Ralph: I didn't see it, but many critics lauded this animated film as funny, charming, and well made with a good dose of heart. Yet of course because it was not made by Pixar, it is inherently inferior to "Brave." What, isn't that how it works?

Playing for Keeps: This could well be the most generic movie of all time. Take a familiar genre--the romantic comedy. Add some of the old standbys from some of your favorite familiar romantic comedies--Gerard Butler, Jessica Biel, Catherine Zeta-Jones...Give it a title with a particip--a particip--uh, a gerundial--well, a title with an "ing" word in it. I see Judy Greer is in it, too, no doubt as a sly but sensible best friend. The movie has an appropriate score of 5.4 at IMDB. This post is becoming more and more generic the longer I write about this film. Enough!

Red Dawn: Did the Cold War break out again while I was wrapped up in my "Quincy" reruns? I mean, there must be a good reason to reboot a movie that came out in the 1980s, right?

Lay the Favorite: Speaking of generic, this is apparently supposed to be a comedy movie, so perhaps this synopsis is intentionally parodying itself, but the description from Video ETA actually uses the phrase "stripper with a heart of gold." In some ways, this sounds horrible, but the cast list is interesting: Bruce Willis, Vince Vaughn, Rebecca Hall, Catherine Zeta-Jones (her again?), Laura Prepon, Pacey, Corbin Bernsen, Joel freakin' Murray...and it's directed by Stephen Frears, and it's apparently a real movie that came out for like 2 or 3 days back in December. Maybe this is worth a shot?

In streaming, the first of the month brought its usual dump of catalog titles to Netflix's Instant Watch library, but this is a weak batch. I think most of the titles are MGM second-tier efforts that cycle through every now and then, though I wonder what the quality of the Bela Lugosi White Zombie is. Plus there are some 80s movies I've seen parts of but never the whole thing, like From the Hip and Hiding Out. I might just watch those as a double feature someday and write about it. Do you dare me? Huh? Do you?

(I might well do it regardless, but it would be a lot more fun if you dared me.)