Other Crap

ROTTEN TOMATOES: movies opening this week

This is the time of year when we get inundated with the products that were not entertaining enough for summer nor prestigious enough for the winter holidays.

• Babylon A.D. - no advance reviews - 3200 theaters. Sci-Fi from Matthieu Kassovitz, starring Vin Diesel. I expect poor reviews since even Kassovitz says it completely sucks. "Veteran-turned-mercenary Thoorop takes the high-risk job of escorting a woman from Russia to America. Little does he know that she is host to an organism that a cult wants to harvest in order to produce a genetically modified Messiah."
  
• College - no advance reviews - 2000 theaters. Frat comedy. No stars. Sounds like a typical straight-to-vid that showhow got a theatrical release. Plot description sounds like a combo of American Pie 5 and 6. Trailer and clips here.
  
• Disaster Movie - no advance reviews - 2500 theaters. The reviews will undoubtedly be awful. It's a movie spoof comedy from the same guys who did Epic Movie (6% positive reviews), Date Movie (2%), and Meet the Spartans (2%).
  
• Hamlet 2 - 60% positive reviews - 1600 theaters. Zany comedy. Got pretty good reviews in a trial run. 5.7 at IMDb, three stars from Ebert.
  
• Traitor - 51% positive reviews - 2000 theaters. Don Cheadle and Guy Pearce star in an international espionage mystery/thriller about an Islamic terrorist (Cheadle) and the supercops on his trail. Ebert awarded three stars, but many critics were unkind.