Now-a-Dollar Dec. 23 | Buzz Blog

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Now-a-Dollar Dec. 23

Posted By on December 23, 2010, 12:59 PM

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With your Christmas spending out of the way, you may be looking for entertainment on the cheap. This week's new bargain-theater debuts are mostly ones that were well worth waiting for. ---

The romantic dramedy Life As We Know It boasted one of the most head-smacking concepts of the entire year: Two people (Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel) who were known to hate each other have to raise a baby together because their tragically deceased "friends" named them co-caretakers in their will. Even if you don't find the characters individually unpleasant, you'll grieve for the poor child whose birth parents were so painfully stupid, and whose new parents are just plain painful.

Feel-good real-life sports drama comes in the form of Secretariat, with Diane Lane as the housewife who inherits the race horse destined to make history. John Malkovich may provide some color in both is wardrobe and his performance as Secretariat's eccentric trainer, but there's very little here beyond genre formula.

And then there's the genre formula provided by Jackass 3 and Saw: The Final Chapter -- both of which featured "3D" in their initial release titles, but will be in good old 2D in bargain theaters. If what they offer was ever going to appeal to you, chances are you caught them during their first go-round.

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Scott Renshaw

Scott Renshaw

Bio:
Scott Renshaw has been a City Weekly staff member since 1999, including assuming the role of primary film critic in 2001 and Arts & Entertainment Editor in 2003. Scott has covered the Sundance Film Festival for 25 years, and provided coverage of local arts including theater, pop-culture conventions, comedy, literature,... more

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