The One Movie You Should See This Week

Aliens blow up Los Angeles, Jane Eyre gets remade, and Christopher Walken plays a Jewish mobster. Who gets your ticket money?

By Andrew Osborne

Good news: the weather's getting warmer and we're almost through the mid-winter cinematic drought, with a few decent flicks already poking up like the first buds of spring. Bad news: just as winter surely isn't done with us yet, we still haven't quite escaped the B-movie dregs of early 2011. Even worse news: Hollywood is releasing Mars Needs Moms, another family movie that uses that creepy, dead-eyed Polar Express animation. I mean, if I were a kid looking for a videogame-y alien invasion scenario drenched in CGI, I'd much prefer Battle: Los Angeles, although that's pretty much the only scenario in which I'd see Battle: Los Angeles. The last time extraterrestrials blew up Los Angeles, we got 2010's lousy Skyline.

According to IMDb and Wikipedia, there have been more than two dozen film and TV adaptations of Charlotte Bronte's novel since 1910 (not to mention ballets, musicals, a graphic novel, and the film I Walked With A Zombie, which is basically Jane Eyre with 98% more calypso music and voodoo). Past versions of the rags-to-romance tale have featured everyone from Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles to Andrea Martin and Joe Flaherty (in the SCTV parody). But if you've been waiting all this time for the version starring Alice in Wonderland's Mia Wasikowska and Jonah Hex's Michael Fassbender, then guess what? This is your lucky week!

So where does that leave us? Well, since I really don't wanna see Jane Eyre or aliens attacking L.A. for the umpteenth time, I guess my only other option is Little Hot Riding Hood fighting a werewolf in the latest silliness from the director of Twilight, but, wait! What's that? You're saying there's a 1970s crime story in limited release about a war between an Irish mobster and the Italian Mafia, and it features crazy-ass Val Kilmer, spooky Fionnula Flanagan (Lost), Vinnie Jones (Mean Machine), and Christopher Walken as a character named "Shondor"? Sounds like the week might just kick a little ass after all!

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