Five January movies that could be fun
Mark Wahlberg and Ben Foster plot their next move in "Contraband," a white-knuckle action-thriller about a man trying to stay out of a world he worked hard to leave behind and the family he'll do anything to protect. Credit: Universal Pictures/
Good news, moviegoers: It's January!
I realize that January is unofficially known as Bad Movie Month, a dumping ground for films too weak to compete during busier seasons. You definitely don't see many January releases go on to sweep the Oscars. This is a time for second-rate genre pictures -- horror flicks, rom-coms, actioners.
So how is this good news? In January, the movies become fun again. After a long autumn of wrestling with deep subjects like the nature of power ("J. Edgar") and the attacks of 9/11 ("Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"), we can start asking other pressing questions: Can Dolly Parton beat Queen Latifah in a gospel sing-off in "Joyful Noise" (Jan. 13)? Why don't more movies have easy-to-grasp titles like "Man on a Ledge" (Jan. 27)?
I think of January as a remnant of the old B-movie tradition, in which the big-budget A-feature came with a smaller and sometimes more enjoyable B-grade picture. Hollywood long ago stopped selling two movies for one ticket, but the B's come back to life each January. In 1992, Curtis Hanson's gleefully over-the-top thriller "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" (released Jan. 10) became a surprise success, grossing $88 million; in 2008, "Cloverfield" (Jan. 18) pleased audiences and critics alike with a stylish mix of sci-fi and horror; in 2010, the samurai-Western "The Book of Eli" (Jan. 15) became one of my favorite guilty pleasures, a devil-may-care mix of quasi-theology and comic-book action.
Here are five flicks I'm looking forward to seeing this month. I can't promise that they'll be any good, but I'm positive they'll be more fun than "J. Edgar."
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