With January of 2012 only a few days old,announcing the arrival of the mid winter movie season is far from premature.
Much like the dreary dog days of August at the multiplex,the new films on the horizon tend to be staples from the B movie genre garden of dubious delights.
However,that doesn't mean you can't find a sweet snack of brain candy goodness to enjoy in whatever funky flavor hits your spot. Let's browse thru a few duets of genre samples and see what looks good or at least watchable:
MONSTER ALERT
Horror flicks feel more chilling in cold weather and movie monsters are the perfect creepy comfort food. Demon possession rears it's ugly head in The Devil Inside,another documentary style of scary movie in the current tradition of such low budget frights as The Last Exorcism and Paranormal Activity.
The main driving force of the plot here is a quest undertaken by Isabella(Fernanda Andrade)and a pair of rogue priests to discover if her mother was truly controlled by a demon when she murdered three people during an exorcism. Despite the all too familiar conventions of the story,there appears to be some bang for your buck here worth checking out:
With vampires and werewolves still reigning over the monster squad in most pop culture circles,it's no surprise that folks were anxious to revive the Underworld series and with Kate Beckinsale back on board,Underworld Awakening might truly be the wake-up call that this franchise needs.
Beckinsale returns as Selene,the vampire warrior maiden who is roused from her frozen slumber in a laboratory to find that both vamps and Lycans are now being hunted by humans.
She seeks members of each species to team up with not only to defend their race but to find a hybrid child whose untapped abilities could sway the balance of this new war.
The only downside I can see here is the pointless addition of 3D,but if it helps to fill those theater seats,perhaps it might be useful after all:
ACTION GIRL ADVENTURES
Director Steven Soderbergh takes a trip downtown for his latest caper called Haywire. Gina Carano plays Mallory Kane,a freelance hitwoman who is often hired out by government officials to do the wetwork that they would rather not be known for.
On one routine job,Mallory is double crossed in order to smooth out an alibi for a extremely corrupt bigwig. Not one to roll over and play dead,she decides to hunt down those who set her up and give them a taste of her special recipe for payback.
Some of the men in Mallory's line of fire include Michael Douglas,Antonio Banderas and Michael Fassbinder,quite a classy bunch for a B movie brawl there:
Sweet little Amanda Seyfried takes on the women in peril genre with Gone,where her character Jill is forced to find a serial killer on her own before he makes her younger sister his next victim.
Jill was a prisoner of the killer some time earlier and managed to escape his clutches yet when bringing the police back to where she was being held,no physical evidence could be found.
With such doubt cast upon her story,Jill has trouble convincing the authorities that her missing sister Molly is now in danger from the same man. I guess just about every big league Hollywood actress has to do at least one thriller and this film is Seyfried's turn at bat:
SCI-FI SHOWDOWNS
Taking the found footage approach to it's story,Chronicle starts off from where many comic books begin as three teenage boys gain superhuman powers after stopping by a strange crater.
Instead of vowing to rid the world of evil,the guys act like typical teens and start fooling around with their powers in the form of pranks played in public.
All too soon,one of them starts doing more than playing and things get out of hand,not to mention incredibly dangerous. This realistic tone on such a fantastical subject sounds like possible makings of a sleeper hit when it comes out in February to me:
The Darkest Hour was a late Christmas release but it still should be hanging around a theater or two near you. This alien invasion drama follows a pack of young Americans vacationing in Moscow when a swarm of electrical creatures attacks the Earth.
They soon find themselves working with a band of local survivors to combat their common as well as hard to see enemy. This movie has a pretty glossy look to it but I highly doubt that any of it will linger long in your memory once it's gotten to the end credits:
Take heart,movie fans;we only have a couple of months until spring arrives with a basket full of cinematic goodness such as The Hunger Games. The pickings may be slim right now,but a bounty of riches awaits us as the odds are ever in our film going favor:
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