New In Theaters: Dec 4

Welcome to the first edition of my weekly feature, New In Theaters. The goal is to let readers know what's coming out in any given week, as well as let you know what I think is worth seeing based on the trailers. Each film gets a one sentence trailer review, and all titles link to either their trailer on an external site, or the appropriate blog entry.

Wide Releases:
Armored: Typical Hollywood thriller/heist gone wrong movie, with nothing to distinguish this one from the pack.
Brothers: This looks to be an overly dramatic bid to earn its three main actors, Oscar nominations.
Everybody's Fine: Just because you put a lot of famous people in a movie doesn't mean it'll be any good; you need more than that to impress me and this trailer doesn't have it.
Transylmania: Eurotrip with vampires.

Limited Releases:
Serious Moonlight: Looks to be a moderately amusing but entirely forgettable movie you take a date to.
Up In Air: Reitman's excellent looking followup to Juno.

Pick of the Week: Up In Air. It looks to be a stylish comedy with a heart and a brain. Plus it's got the super talented, charismatic Mr. Clooney as the star. I can't see this one being bad. Roger Ebert says this one is a favorite to take win Best Picture. Too bad it's in a super limited release and most of us will have until Christmas to check it out. Among wide releases my top pick is Brothers. Sure this one looks to be a pretty shallow attempt to earn its leads acting nominations. Sure it looks like every emotional note in the film will be cranked up to 11, with no variance or subtlety, but at least it looks like it's trying to be good, which is more than I can say for the other wide releases this week. The rest look like shallow commerical fare, which is even less interesting than shallow Oscar bait.

Up In Air

So, This is the movie I'm most looking forward to this awards season. Juno was probably my favorite film of 2007, and Thank You For Smoking is one of my favorite satires of all time. Add in George Clooney, who's an actor with an inhuman amount of charisma. Even in bad movies Clooney is very watchable, and we have no hints that this will be a bad movie. This film appears to be a character study/comedy hybrid which is something we don't see very often. Usually character studies in Hollywood are part of an overly self important, super serious drama. Reitman's sharp comedic timing, and expert pacing should allow what could be a tiresome story about a loner learning the value of having relationships in his life. Of course I expect the script to have more depth than that, and I expect Clooney's character to be satisfyingly complex, but even if it was that tiresome Hollywood story, I expect I'd be entertained.

I can't think of a film in recent memory whose soundtrack so brilliantly helped to set the tone of a movie than Juno's. In any other movie, the Kimya Dawson soundtrack would most certainly "too indie" but in Juno it helped complement Diablo Cody's offbeat dialogue to create a truly unique world. Up in Air looks to continue this tradition with 3 truly great songs throughout the trailer that all just feel right. It's hard to explain why they feel so perfect, but they do. The last song in particular, with its upbeat tempo, but decidedly melancholy feel is just spot on.

When Juno came out, there was a lot of discussion about how awesome the acting was, how much depth the script had, and how good the directing was I think people forgot how funny it was. It seems Juno was a better all around movie, then it was a straight comedy, and Up In Air looks to be following in the same mold. A great movie that just happens to be funny, but damn does it have potential to be incredibly funny. Zach Galifianakis freaking out was very humorous, and the exchange about old people and Asians in the airport displayed some very clever writing and made me laugh out loud. Now, there's a good chance I'm setting myself up for disappointment but even its only half the movie Juno was, this could end up being one of the best of the year.