Dismal Weekend Box Office Options for January 30: ‘Taken,’ ‘New In Town,’ ‘Uninvited’

First up this week is the Renee Zellweger vehicle “New in Town” which also stars Harry Connick, Jr. as a bland and handsome love interest of some sort. The plot concerns Zellweger’s character who moves to a tiny town in the middle of nowhere from Miami for a business opportunity. It goes without saying that hilarity ensues. Unless you’re a gigantic RZ fan, you should probably steer clear of this one–the pathetic 11% rating at Rotten Tomatoes is a flagging red signal that this flick is godawful.

The critics have been somewhat kinder to “Taken,” directed by Pierre Morel (B13). The film stars Liam Neeson as a sort of Jason Bourne-minus who decides to kill every criminal in France after his daughter, played by Maggie Grace (“The Fog“), is kidnapped while vacationing in France. Neeson plays a former CIA agent who exacts a brutal revenge on the traffickers who hope to sell his daughter into the sex trade. A pretty thin premise, but the 56% RT score suggests it might not be a total waste. Still it’s assumed this will top the box-office as the herd generally takes in the biggest spectacle when given half an option.

YET ANOTHER Asian horror movie debuts this weekend in the form of “The Uninvited.” Starring the usually entertaining it-girl Elizabeth Banks and the less ubiquitous Emily Browning (“A Series of Unfortunate Events“) in a standard “Ghost reveals murderer or does it?!?” tale. With an average of 46%, there’s probably worse ways to fritter away your income–assuming you’re not satisfied with the glut of predictable ghost stories that have flooded theatres of late.

If you’re lucky enough to live in a city where it will open this weekend, your best bet will probably be “Serbis,” the Filipino film that chronicles a family-run pornographic theatre where the clientele often arrange their own sexual adventures. The movie offers a number of alternately beautiful and grotesque vignettes that chronicle the lives of each member of the family. We saw this at NYFF and loved it–if you’re near a theatre where you can take it in, you should definitely give it a shot.

Also getting limited release this weekend is the documentary “Blessed is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh,” the first movie to detail the life of Hannah Senesh, the poet who participated in a rescue mission into Budapest during the Second World War with the hope of rescuing Jewish prisoners. Narrated by Joan Allen, the movie chronicles the remarkable story of Senesh’s involvement with the kibbutz movement, her decision to join a team of commandos infiltrating Nazi-occupied Europe and her eventual capture and execution. It sits at at a 50% on RT but looks like it might be thought-provoking.

Finally, there’s “Medicine for Melancholy,” a pluckly little romance set in San Fransisco. Helmed by first-timer Barry Jenkins, it tells the story of two young black “indie” folks who wake up together after a one-night stand and begin a 24-hour romance. Tracey Heggins and Wyatt Cenac (“The Daily Show”) star as the couple who explore the politics of being black in a pasty-white city and each other as they do the same with the West Coast. The picture currently has a 89% on the Tomatometer and as usual, we didn’t really have time for a review, but we would consider this number grossly overrated. We need to spit out that review soon. We did do a piece on the ghostly-white indie music in this film about disconnected black hipsters. Yes, it’s placed there specifically to hammer home the dichotomy, but we still felt it was ill-suited and the filmmaker simply showed too much affection for it.

So there you go. Good luck in the cineplexes! We’d rent if we were you.

New York Centric Repertory:
But if you’re in New York, there’s a Douglas Sirk/John Stahl retrospective at Anthology Film Archives and Al Pacino’s debut role in “The Panic In Needle Park” (good ol’ Schatzberg) is playing at Film Forum. Thank god for those places. Oh AND, Paul Schrader’s very underrated and overlooked, “Blue Collar” with Harvey Keitel and Richard Pryor (not a comedy, a film we love) is playing at Walter Reade starting tonight. Go see this if you’re in town.