Here’s the difference in sports fans and movie fans. A sports fan will become disenfranchised when their team loses or switches from the National League to the American League. The transformation usually ends with the fan banning mention of their former fave team, wearing a bag over their heads to any games they attend or swearing to never watch a game from said team again ever.

In contrast, I recently saw a couple of movies I was less than enthralled by, This Means War and Wanderlust, but it didn’t want to make me ban 20^th Century Fox or Universal, nor embargo any existing DVDs in my collection that star Reese Witherspoon, Tom Hardy, or Paul Rudd. Wearing a bag over my head to the movies would just be silly because it wouldn’t allow the all important peripheral vision that gives widescreen entertainment its edge. To me a bad movie is just that, and a means to cleanse the palate before a good movie.

I’m not a hater, so I don’t hate Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax or the teen fantasy party film Project X so much as I loathe the feeling of ennui that accompanies the boredom I felt while watching them. Lorax had a fine collection of ersatz Broadway songs composed by John Powell and adheres to Seuss’ otherworldly architecture. Yet I was still bored out of my mind. The Lorax, by the way opens with the new Universal 100^th anniversary logo, which is fine for what it is but having “A Comcast Company” written along the bottom only reminded me that a cool movie studio is now owned by the worst cable and internet provider Houston will ever know. Lorax wants to be all about ecology and green consciousness, and heaven knows that would’ve really gone over big about 20 years ago.

Project X was kind of gross. I wanted to like a movie that seems to channel Dazed and Confused and Fast Times at Ridgemont High but the whole affair went south so fast I felt lucky to laugh (more like a snicker) at a few random puke jokes. The creators of PX took those two films I mentioned in the last sentence and re-imagined them as if they’d become one of those after hours Vegas mob bars where people openly sell drugs and have sex on stage. That being said, PX also shows a flair for taking the found footage genre and making a low budget film (few locations, no name actors) that’s guaranteed to make bank on opening weekend.

Other films and events opening this weekend include:

• W.E. – the Madonna directed film about Wallis Simpson as seen through the eyes of a contemporary woman.
• Norwegian Wood – Japanese language film set in the 60s from noted director Vietnamese Anh Hung Tran. Norwegian Wood revolves around a group of friends and the situations and feelings that come to the surface after one kills himself. Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood composed the score.
• Space Junk 3D – Amazing IMAX film that documents the tremendous amounts of flotsam and jetsam that circle the different orbital layers of Earth. Superb graphics highlight the tale that takes place in outer space as well as terrestrial locales that include Arizona’s Meteor Crater. Showing exclusively at the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s Wortham IMAX Theater. The second photo is this article shows camera techs cleaning the lens on a 3D IMAX camera.
• Undefeated – This documentary about an impoverished high school football team (the 2024 Manassas Tigers from Memphis) won this year’s Best Documentary Oscar.

- Michael Bergeron