This Weekend, Watch This: A comparison for the new releases for March 15-17, 2013

This Weekend, Watch This

A comparison for the new releases for March 15-17, 2013

By Curt David

March 15, 2013

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New movies are released into theaters every weekend. How do you decide which movie to watch? Some movies sound awesome (Howard the Duck), but then do not do too well commercially. Other movies star your celebrity crush (Zoe Saldana in The Words), but then do not get much love critically. Still other movies are recommended by friends (but friends can be idiots). And if you are like 9%* of people, you are not even aware of which movies are being released, yet alone which movies you should pay your hard earned money on.

I’ll save you the hassle of researching every movie by comparing the new releases for each weekend in this column. Then I’ll tell you which movie you should watch in the theaters.

For the weekend of March 15th, the new movies in wide release are The Call and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.

	The Call	The Incredible Burt Wonderstone	WINNER (1 point per category)
Clearest Title	Does this refer to a telephone or a way of life?	I don’t care about the plot, that is a beautiful title.	The incredible point goes to Burt Wonderstone.
Best Genre and Rating	Thriller Rated R for violence, disturbing content, and some language.	Comedy Rated PG-13 for sexual content, dangerous stunts, a drug related incident, and language.	Speaking of incredible... multiple wide releases with multiple genres! 1/2 point for each movie.
Best Plot (in haiku form)	Kidnapped girl calls cops Operator takes action Finds bad guy herself	Two bad magicians Have to compete with new guy Ridiculousness	While a little unbelievable, I wasn’t expecting the plot of the first movie to be a real plot. Clever-ish. The Call wins a point, and the two movies are tied!
Best Trailer	+ Unique, not every operator at 911 gets involved with the crime - Trailer didn’t make it clear why the operator would do that, though - Standard thriller creepiness	+ Seems Anchorman over-the-top silly + The title is amazing - Not 100% sure how funny it will be, but that’s with any trailer	I didn’t belly-laugh (see Conclusion 3), but my favorite trailer was indeed The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.
Coolest Lead Actor	Halle Berry from X-Men, Monster’s Ball, and Die Another Day.	Steve Carell from The Office, Date Night, and Crazy, Stupid, Love.	Both great actors. Both wildly good looking. Both will split the point.
Best Cast	Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine)	Jim Carrey (Ace Ventura), Steve Buscemi (Fargo), James Gandolfini (The Sopranos), and Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine)	Little Miss Sunshine represent! I respect Ms. Breslin, but will have to give this point to the boys.
Best Street Cred For the Production	Director Brad Anderson also directed The Machinist.	Director Don Scardino has directed almost every TV show known to man.	And both directors have done some stuff...another 1/2 point each.

So out of a maximum of 7 points per movie, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone scores 4 and 1/2 points and The Call scores 2 and 1/2 points and a gold star.

You may interpret this column for your own movie preferences. For example, if you like thrillers aimed at adults, feel free to watch The Call. However, if you are still on the fence, please read the following conclusions from the scientific data gathered in this column.

Conclusion 1: On paper, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is the best movie to watch this weekend.
Conclusion 2: Each week I give a gold star to the movie with the best tagline. Both were average this week, but I expected more from a comedy (“Abracatastic”), so the winner will be The Call (“There are 188 million 911 calls a year. This one made it personal”).
Conclusion 3: I watch two to five trailers every week of my life for this column. Many movies are comedies. Many comedy trailers only make me smile or slightly chuckle, before I forget about the trailer for the rest of my life....all that to say...today I belly-laughed throughout the Hangover III trailer and then laughed-so-hard-I cried at the ending giraffe scene. I watched it 12 times in a row.

*Statistic is completely made up.

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