Recently in Reviews of Movies We Haven't Seen Yet Category

Love Happens: Yeah, Well, So Does Cancer

The newest Jennifer Aniston movie opens this weekend, and we already feel weird saying that. If there is such a thing as an "Aniston movie," it's defined by terribleness, and almost certainly does not deserve its own categorization. But it's not like we can call it the latest Aaron Eckhart film, or the newest Brandon Camp picture, because those are both even more preposterous, so we're stuck with it. Luckily, we have zero plans to see the movie, because... well, there are several reasons, really.

Taking Woodstock: How Ang Lee Makes Everything Boring

There is a part of us that is vaguely interested in the movie Taking Woodstock, since we love Demitri Martin on his show Important Things, and the supporting cast (Emile Hirsch, Eugene Levy, Liev Schreiber cross-dressing again -- remember Mixed Nuts?) is impressive. But while the concert at Woodstock was certainly an exciting event, haven't there been enough movies about it? And is Ang Lee really the director to tackle the subject matter? Because when given exciting material, Lee has a tendency to turn it into a snooze-fest.

Do You Wanna Date James Cameron's Avatar? Hell, Yes.

In the past, we've wondered if James Cameron's project, Avatar, could really live up to the hype. Even the trailer, released last week, left us feeling kind of meh. But on Friday, Cameron released 20 minutes of 3-D footage in IMAX theaters nationwide, and it was instantly apparent why Cameron felt an Avatar Day was necessary, and why non-3-D footage of the movie doesn't convey how amazing the movie looks. Not that the movie is some groundbreaking piece of cinema: the storyline is a sci-fi take on Dances With Wolves (with a dash of Soul Man), the designs for the aliens and the military vehicles are old hat, and some of the dialogue is horrible. But when you're watching naked, blue versions of Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington running around the jungle in high-definition 3-D, all of these worries melt away. Read on for a day-after description of the footage; I may be hazy on some details, but it's mostly the same as the footage that was shown at San Diego Comic-Con. And don't worry about spoilers, as a 3-D James Cameron informed us a the beginning that these are all from the first half of the movie.

I Liked Post-Grad Better When It Was Called Reality Bites Aww, why am I picking on little Post-Grad? This modest movie starring Rory Gilmore and Matt Saracen is completely minding its own business and is totally harmless, but still -- I keep seeing the commercials for it, and I can't helped but be irked by all the things whoever made Post-Grad (the person who directed Shark Tale? And the person who wrote a thing Demi Moore directed?) lifted from Reality Bites.

Fall Movie Previews Without Pity are Live! Looking to find out what the big movie releases of the fall are? Well, barring any unfortunate incidents like last year's surprise postponement of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, MWoP has put together the essential guide to the final season of 2009, broken down into five convenient categories: Comedies and Dramedies, Serious Dramas, Chills and Thrills, Animation and Sci-Fi, Action and Adventure. There's a bit of cross-pollination in there, but all of the big releases this season are covered in one of those galleries, as well as some little gems we can't wait to see. Sure, there are a lot of Oscar-bait movies and horror flicks, as is the season's wont, but there are also a lot of big spectacles and even a few potential blockbusters, so start planning your calendar appropriately!

The Goods: How Much Jeremy Piven is Too Much?

Once upon a time, Jeremy Piven was a humorously welcome presence in our movies and on our televisions. (Remember when he played TV George on Seinfeld?) Then something happened. His rapid-fire conversation style and cocksure bravado went from charming to kinda obnoxious. Maybe it was when he got a regular gig on Ellen, or when he stopped playing the best friend all the time, but whatever it was, his shtick started to get a little old. We're reluctant to go see his new movie The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, because we're worried that partway through we'll hit our capacity for Piven and have to leave the theater. To try and break it down scientifically, we looked back at Piven's body of work to see how much Piven, exactly, is too much Piven.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: Could The Movie Actually Be Good?

Here at MWoP, we've been taking a "wait-and-see-but-don't-hold-your-breath" approach to the G.I. Joe live-action movie. Early on, the visual disparities from the cartoon were pretty jarring, but then, so were the X-Men movie costumes, and that worked out okay. (I'll leave the Transformers movie designs aside, since A. I still don't like them and B. the movies were successful in spite of them, making my opinion moot.) But when the commercials and action scenes started showing up -- including performance-enhancing accelerator suits, which were never part of the G.I. Joe mythos until very recently -- we started to worry a bit more. And now they've declined to screen the movie for the press. But given the fact that negative buzz got so bad at one point that director Stephen Sommers (Van Helsing) was rumored to have been fired, that may be a wise choice. Regardless, it seems there may be nothing to worry about.

James Cameron Frantically Scrambles to Keep People Interested in Avatar

Mark your calendars, because August 21 is Avatar Day! What's that, you ask? Is it some sort of new holiday where a benevolent bearded wizard gives you presents? Kinda. James Cameron doesn't sport a beard any more, but he is giving the world what he probably thinks is the greatest gift of all -- a free, 15-minute clip of his new, 14-years-in-the-making CGI spectacle movie, Avatar! Unfortunately, you need to go to an IMAX 3D or other 3D theater to see it. Because it can't be fully appreciated on the Internet or TV, of course. Which is apparently why absolutely zero footage has been released from this enormous movie that comes out in less than five months, aside from a few pieces of artwork and the footage that was recently shown at San Diego Comic-Con. Description of the footage ranges from highly positive to "lower your expectations". Based on what I've heard (a lot) and seen (very little), they're already pretty darn low.

Funny People: Cloudy, With a Chance of Unfunny

Apparently, Funny People wants to be all things to all people. In a trend hinted at in 40-Year-Old Virgin and attempted in Knocked Up, Judd Apatow seems to want Funny People to be a raunchy comedy and a touching romantic drama about second chances. We have no idea if he can pull that off (Knocked Up doesn't give us much hope), but you have to give him credit for trying, especially since he's assembled one of the pound-for-pound funniest casts we've seen in a while. Of course, for every funny movie one of these stars has been in, there's been a dud, so there are no guarantees. We ran down the cast's capacity for funny in our Funny People Risk Assessor gallery, so check it out before you decide whether to roll the dice on your comedy.

Why Does I Love You, Beth Cooper Remind Me of Weird Science?

The trailer for I Love You Beth Cooper may make it look like your standard teen comedy, but there's just something about it that I can't put my finger on. Sure, it follows the same "beauty and the geek" pattern of films like Can't Hardly Wait, but the premise, the sets, the characters... something about it just screams "1980s" to me. I'm getting a little bit of Who's That Girl?, but I'm mostly getting a lot of Weird Science, which is, well, weird, because the film does not appear to involve two teenagers creating the perfect woman using their computer. (Although, if two nerds were to build their ideal woman today, she would probably look a lot less like Kelly LeBrock and a lot more like Hayden Panettiere, if not exactly like her.)

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